The Southpaw (17 page)

Mike laughed, and he said, “There is no need, but it is up to you.”

Then he left, and we begun to dress for supper.

I got in uniform that night and worked out. The crowd give me a fine hand when I come on the field, for they had by now read it in the paper, and I tipped my hat and played pepper with some of the boys.

Then I moved down to first base and took a hand in the drill and kept pretty loose.

After the drill I ducked back through the dugout and into the clubhouse, and I was alone. I showered and dressed, feeling sad. I cleaned out my locker. The 4 of us had lockers together, 1 right after the other, and I stuck a note in their lockers, and it said, “I will see you in Aqua Clara in the spring, and we will be in the Series next October.

Good luck. Your friend, HENRY WIGGEN.”

Then out I went, catching a cab on Rocky Mountain Avenue. We heard about 2 innings along the way, the Cowboys pasting the hell out of Denver. Perry hit a home run with 2 on in the third. The cabbie asked me if I had ever saw the Cowboys play. He said it was the best dub they had in Q. C. in quite some years. I said I had saw them play once or twice and thought particularly high of that fellow by the name of Wiggen. He told me that Wiggen was signed on by the Mammoths and had went off that very day to New York by air. “What is your line of work?” said he to me.

“I am a heaver in the horsehide plant,” said I. That was a joke that me and Coker and Perry and Canada played on people. We would run into some people in a restaurant or a bowling alley or somewheres and get to talking, and they would say, “What do you boys do?” Then Coker would speak up. “We work in the horsehide plant,” he would say. “This here is Henry, and he is a heaver, and this here is Perry, and he is a scooper. I work alongside of Perry. This here is Canada, and he works the far throw.”

They would say, “What is the far throw?”

“Why,” said Coker, “everybody knows what a far throw is. Only a particularly pinheaded person would not know.”

“Oh,” they would say. “A
far
throw. I did not hear you right at first.”

The cabbie said, “You are a what in a what?”

“A heaver in the horsehide plant,” said I. “Sometimes I am a swatter, but mostly I am a heaver.”

“Where is that?” said he, “for I seem to forget.”

“Why, it is over there near the ball park. Do you mean to say you are a cabbie and do not know where the horsehide plant is?” said I.

“Oh,” said he, “the
horse
hide plant. Why do you not speak up when you speak?”

At the airport I picked up my tickets and weighed my bags through and bought some insurance out of a machine, 50,000 dollars made out to the New York Mammoths. What a simple soul! Then I read some magazines while they dillied and dallied until finally they left us on the plane. The last I heard we beat Denver 15-3, but I could not get the details, and I have never been back to Q. C. since.

Chapter 14

It took me about 10 minutes to get past the clubhouse guard. Naturally they post a guard there, for you have got any number of these kids that in the course of a year tries to worm through and tell Dutch Schnell what a great ballplayer they are. The guard gripped me like I was some sort of a crook and led me in the clubhouse. We seen Sid Goldman sitting on a bench putting laces in his shoes, and he looked up, and at first he did not recognize me, and I said, “Sid, why do you not tell this fellow just who I am?”

The cop said, “Do you know this boy?” and Sid squinted at me and said, “Yes, he is the new pitcher,” and the cop left go of my arm. Sid stretched out his hand. “I hit a home run off you 1 time in Aqua Clara,”

he said, and he give me a smile.

“And last spring I struck you out twice in Jacksonville,” I said, for we had played a couple exhibitions there, Q. C. and the Mammoths, and we shook hands and he said, “Boy, if you will pull us out of this slump you are my friend for life.”

The Mammoths at the time was 6 games behind Brooklyn, which was in second, and only 2 games ahead of Cleveland, with Washington behind Cleveland, about 11/2 games. There was the danger of falling back to fourth and maybe out of the first division money altogether.

They had give up all idea of climbing higher. What they wanted now was to fight off Cleveland.

“Well,” said I, “you have just shook hands with the best left-hander this town has ever saw,” and he laughed, and just then Dutch Schnell come up behind me, and he said, “If you are 1 half so good as you say you are I will be 1 happy old man.” Then he took me down the line and give me the locker Bub Castetter had before he was sent down. Dutch tore off Castetter’s name and said they would put up mine, and I said he might as well paint it with paint that would last forever, for I had a mind to stay up in the big time for 20 or 25 years, and he said he was highly encouraged by my remarks, and he turned and walked back through the door to his office.

The boys begun to gather. Sid introduced me to them as they come in, and some of them shook my hand and chatted, and some of them shook it but never said a word. The gloom hung heavy. The 1 who spoke the most was George Gonzalez, and he blabbered away for 2 minutes in Spanish, and I never understood a word, and I said, “Do you remember when I struck you out on 3 pitches at Aqua Clara?” and he said, “Up yours, up yours,” which is the only 2 words of English that he seems to know. It was the only time anybody in the clubhouse laughed all day. Me and Lindon Burke dressed side by side, and he asked me how everybody was back in Q. C., and I told him they was all fine and running away with the flag, and somebody said, “It is nice to hear that somewheres there is a Mammoth club that is winning a flag.”

“Buck up your courage,” said I, “for the tide is changing now that I am here.”

“Shut up,” said the voice.

“No, sir,” said I. “I will not shut up.”

But just then Lindon nudged me with his elbow, and he said, “You had best shut up.”

In come Bradley Lord with a suit over his arm, and he brung it down to me. It smelled all fresh and clean like it just been took out of the moth balls, and I looked at the number on the shirt, and it said “48” and I said, “I cannot wear such a shirt.”

“Why not?” said he.

“Because of the number,” said I. “I cannot wear no number that has got 12 in it.”

“That is ridiculous,” said he.

Then the same voice come again, and it said, “Bradley Lord, God damn you, go back and get that boy a shirt with a number like he likes it or I will break your f—ing back between my 2 f—ing hands.” The boys all call him Bradley Lord, for nobody likes him well enough to call him Bradley, and yet nobody would ever call him Mr. Lord, and then I knowed whose voice it was. It was Sad Sam Yale’s, for I could tell by the way he said it—”God damn you”—which was the first thing he ever said to me at Aqua Clara that time. His voice was like thunder, and it rolled like thunder rolling in across the mountains, and you could feel it in your belly, for it made you shiver and shake, and Bradley Lord scampered off and come back with a different shirt, number 44, and he said real soft, “Is that a better number?”

“Yes it is,” said I, and I took it, and away went Bradley Lord. I shouted out, “Thank you, Sam.”

“F— you too,” said he.

Cleveland was in town, finishing up on a 3-game series. We had beat them the first day, and they beat us the next, which was the day before I come, and the day I come they not only beat us but massacred us as well, winning 9-1 and drawing up to 1 game behind.

The scoreboard showed Washington beating Chicago, and that made us feel no better, and the clubhouse afterward was quieter then hell.

Generally the Mammoth clubhouse will be full of writers. But when we hit the slump that year Dutch give the order not to let a single 1 of them donkeys in. You cannot blame him. They are like the plague.

There is not a 1 of them that has got the guts and gumption to get out there and play ball theirselves, yet they know just exactly how the game should be played. They will get the fatigue from climbing 6 steps, yet they know how Perry Simpson should steal a base. They will get a cramp in their arm from writing a few words down on paper, yet if a ballplayer pitches 7 innings and poops out they are as libel as not to decide he is a quitter. They tell Dutch how to manage the club, and if he does right they will crow in their column for 2 weeks, saying it was all their idea to begin with. They are like fans. Red says the only difference between the writers and the fans is that the fans have at least got the honesty to pay their own way in the park.

Yet ballplayers read the papers day and night, mostly buying “The News” in New York. Red Traphagen will buy “The Star-Press,” but I can’t see it. I only buy it on Sunday when they run the pitching records and batting averages.

Cleveland lost the day after to Boston, Boston turning the trick again the following night whilst we was taking 2 in a row from Chicago. That give us our 3-game edge again and things begun to be more tolerable around the clubhouse. I got to know some of the boys, and half the club was my personal friends before the week was out. The west went back west, and Brooklyn moved in at the Stadium beginning on a Sunday, and a hot 1, with Sad Sam slated to work. There was a good crowd, for Brooklyn always draws well against the Mammoths, besides which they was still hopeful of overtaking Boston, which they finally done 2 days before the end, as you know. I was down in the bullpen as usual but I did not throw a ball all afternoon, just sitting and watching while Sam turned in a neat job. We scored 3 in the third and 2 in the fifth and that was enough. 5-0.

We still had the 3-game edge on Cleveland when Boston come in in the middle of the week with the flag hot in their nose and dumped us 2 straight, and we lost ground. Things was back to where the clubhouse was like a museum, so silent and still, the boys watching their third-place money about to float away, and maybe fourth as well, and I dared not speak above a whisper, for the tension was so high it was like you was sitting on thin ice and the least little rustle would crack it and down you would go in the drink.

Friday Dutch pitched Sam, hoping to beat Boston and hang on, Sam grumbling from overwork, but he had it that day, and the guts to go with it. I was in the bullpen again. He got in trouble in the fifth, and I got up and took off my jacket and begun to throw down to Bruce, and then he pulled out of his trouble and I sat down again. Then he was in trouble in the sixth, and then out of it again, and in the eighth Boston had 2 on and 2 down when a young kid name of Hillhouse, now no longer with Boston, hitting for the pitcher, clubbed a drive into right-center that Pasquale Carucci went halfway up the fence and pulled down or it would of went for a triple at least. It was 1 of the finest fielding gems that I ever seen, and I am lucky to have had the chance.

Pasquale got a great hand from the crowd. It was still 0-0 and anybody’s ball game.

In the last of the eighth Gene Park and Red Traphagen singled, and Dutch played the gamble and lifted Sam and sent Swanee Wilks up to hit. I knowed my turn had come, for there was only me and Lindon in the bullpen, and Dutch would not send a right-hander in against Boston if he could help it at a time like now.

I warmed up hard. I was really throwing, and Swanee lined a single into right, and Gene scored, and I knowed it was now my ball game to win or lose for Sam, and when the signal come from the dugout Lindon said to me, “You will do it, boy,” and I started across the field.

Pasquale Carucci, on his way out to right, he give me a slap on the rump, and then it come over the speaker. I will never forget it: “
Your
attention please. Now pitching for New York. Wiggen. Number forty-four. Now pitching for New York.
”

Down around second base Gene Park give me a cluck-cluck with his mouth, meaning good luck, and Sid Goldman and George Gonzalez was waiting at the hill with Red and Dutch, and they said words to me, though I forget them, and then Red went down behind the plate and I throwed a few, and Dutch headed back for the dugout and Sid and George back to their spots, and Ugly come in from short and said something and then turned and went back, and then I was alone.

I remember. I remember I seen Sad Sam standing at the dugout door, and I seen Dutch on the bench with his legs crossed, and I seen the club all leaned forward with their elbow on their knees like they do, waiting and waiting to see if I was a man or just another boy, and down in the coaching boxes the Boston coaches was roaring insults out my way, saying did I happen to know I was now in the big-time and did I not know this and that, usually things of a rather low-down nature, and Red called down from behind the plate, “Give me what I call for and we will be back in the showers in 5 minutes,” and I said to myself, “I will try. Yet at this particular moment I am not sure that I could hit the side of a barn with a basketball.” I looked down at the ball in my hand, and it did not seem like my hand a-tall but like the hand of a stranger attached to my wrist, and the arm was not mine and I did not believe I could trust it. I wished I was anywhere but where I was, maybe down in Borelli’s in Perkinsville, relaxed,
listening
to this ball game. And then I thought of Borelli’s, and it flashed like a vision through my brain that probably this very minute Pop was down in Borelli’s, and there was a silence amongst the men, and the barbers was standing with razors in mid-air, and I could just see old Borelli running out in the street and setting up the cry.

Then I wound and pumped and throwed. It was a ball, slightly wide, and just about then a cheer went up, and I did not know why. For an instant I thought Dutch was lifting me, and I looked around, puzzled, and Ugly Jones laughed and pointed to the scoreboard, and I looked, and it showed 5 runs in the second inning for St. Louis at Cleveland, and I knowed that if we won now we would be breathing easier again.

The batter was Black. I remembered the knee-high curve Sad Sam had throwed when me and Pop come down that day for the Opener, and Black had connected by sheer luck, and Red called for that kind of a pitch now, and it cut the corner, as clean a strike as you ever seen, and Hunt Glidden, the umpire, called it a ball, and I stormed down towards the plate and made a few remarks about how it was my belief umpires ought to be pensioned off once they went blind, and Glidden said to me, “You have throwed 2 pitches in the big time and already you are a hot head. Now get back out there and pitch,” and I offered a few further bits of advice about the knack of being an umpire, and he turned his back. George shouted down from third, “Up yours, up yours,” and Ugly and Gene come in and give Glidden a piece of their mind, and Dutch come up off the bench and told Glidden several things more or less harsh in tone. It seemed to bring the club to life. I think it was the first time in several days that it showed any life, and I went back out and throwed the same pitch again, and this time it was a strike and no mistake.