The Southpaw (18 page)

Then it was a fast ball, letter high, and Black never seen it, and the count was 2 and 2. Then I struck him out with the screw.

The crowd give me a good hand, and they give the razzberry to Granby, the next Boston batter, for he was not popular in New York since 1 time he spiked Ugly Jones in a play at second. He tried to cross me up by bunting down the third base line. I seen him shift when the ball left my hand, and I went down fast, and Red yelled “Wiggen, Wiggen,” meaning for George to get out of the way, and I fielded it clean and whirled and fired to Sid Goldman at first, and Granby was out by a full step.

Now I was relaxed. It was like I was always up there, like I was there all my life, with the Mammoths, and I went back to the hill and scrubbed around with my toeplate, and I fingered the resin bag, and I looked up at the scoreboard and out at the fielders, and I was no more nervous then if I was back in the Legion league in Perkinsville.

Fielding stepped in. Casey Sharpe, the Boston clean-up man, was kneeling in the on-deck circle. “Get on,” shouted he to Fielding, “and I will drive you home,” and then he shouted something out at me that I will not repeat, and I shouted down to him, “Go back to the dugout, Casey, for number 3 is at the plate.” Fielding must of liked those shoulder balls I throwed him, for he went after 2. He did not have the good fortune to get wood on them, however, and then Red called for the screw, and Fielding got a slice of it, and he skied it up behind third base. Ugly and George both went for the ball, and Ugly called “George” and George took it on the lope, a very easy play, and that was the ball game.

You would of almost thought we clinched the pennant. The clubhouse was downright cheerful. We got a later score on Cleveland, and Cleveland was losing, and Dutch come by, and he said to me, “Good work,” and then he went back in his office. That was the game we needed, and we knowed it.

Patricia Moors was all smiles. Bradley Lord give us the warning, and she come through on the way to the office. She stopped near the door, and she said, “Sam Yale, nice game,” and he told her he thought so himself, considering that he was more overworked then a n—r, and she said, “Where is Pasquale Carucci?” and he come forward, and she said, “That was a fine catch. I never saw DiMaggio make a better 1,” DiMaggio being Pasquale’s hero since he was a kid, and Pasquale said “Thank you, ma’am,” and then she looked around some more, and her eyes lit on me, and mine on her.

“1-2-3 they come up and 1-2-3 they went down,” I said, and she laughed, and when she laughed all the diamonds jiggled on her ears, and she brushed back her hair with 1 arm, and I think there was about 4 pounds of bracelets on the arm, and she stood looking at me.

“You set them down fine,” she said.

“I rather thought the same,” said I.

And still she stood there and looked at me, and I at her. “The trouble with you,” she said, “is that you do not have enough confidence in yourself,” and she laughed and turned and went off towards the office, and I watched her go, and a fine sight it was.

That day we dressed slow, me and Lindon, and in the days after. We made the last tour of the eastern clubs, and I worked just about every day down in the bullpens, yet Dutch did not use me. He said he would pitch me the last game, which was Sunday in Boston, and we beat them Friday and Saturday and knocked them out of the top spot, Brooklyn taking 2 from Washington in Brooklyn, and then it rained on Sunday and I never got the chance. I guess nobody give a damn but me, the race already settled, Brooklyn, Boston, New York and Cleveland finishing 1-2-3-4.

We had a meeting in the hotel that afternoon, and the boys voted shares of the third-place money. They voted me 100 dollars, which was good enough pay for 1 inning of work, and then we broke up, and it was sad because you knowed there was some amongst us that had played their last games in the big time. Next year they would be on their way down, down and down to nowheres.

Yet I was happy, for I was on the way up, and I said to Lindon, “I guess we are sitting on top of the world, away up in the clouds, and the gate is open and the music is playing,” and Lindon said the same.

Chapter 15

Me and Lindon and Piss Sterling and Gil Willowbrook was planning to take in the start of the Series in Brooklyn together, but then I never went. I don’t know why. Something just come over me. On top of that I promised Al Mellon I would get up on the TV between innings and reel off a little speech on razor blades, and I even learned it by heart like he asked me to, “Yes, Al, in my estimation these are the finest blades on the market. I have tried them all, and I know. These are my choice for a
smoother
shave, a
cleaner
shave, a shave that gives me that pleasant good-to-be-alive-all-over feeling. Fans, take my word for it, penny for penny THIS is your most dependable buy.” (SMILE BROADLY), and then I was supposed to hold the package up in front of the camera and smile broadly like shaving to me was the equal of a broiled steak. But then I got thinking about Holly and Pop and I went straight home from Boston instead. I sometimes recite that speech in the clubhouse with a few little twists and turns in the dia-logue, and then I hold up a jockstrap or a roll of toilet paper or something of the sort and smile broadly from ear to ear. The boys always get a great laugh.

I no sooner hit Perkinsville when Bill Duffy grabs me at the station and tells me there is this great spontaneous demonstration about to take place on the square. There was a banner flung across the waiting room saying “WELCOME HOME, HENRY WIGGEN,” and a band in the street below playing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” and the Perkinsville High anthem, and Mayor Real come forward and pumped my hand several times for the photographer from the “Clarion” and give me a cardboard key to the city. I hadn’t no particular objection to this sort of thing, but I was hungrier then hell and wanted to get home.

Bill said forget it. “Get in the spirit of things,” he said, and he sat me on a platform on the square set up behind the statue of Mr. Cleves with about 15 big shots, storekeepers and politicians and such, and every damn 1 of them got up and made a speech. Bill was the m.c. Never a 1 of them forgot to mention their place of business, though about half of them forgot to mention
me
. 1 of them remembered me but had the idea I was with Brooklyn. They read off a list of things they was to give me, each from their own store, and some of the things was sent to me, too, although some of them I had to go down and fetch myself.

There was a terrific crowd at first, but then it begun to drizzle a bit and some folks took off, and frankly between the rain and the speeches I could not blame them.

Finally Bill auctioned off this picture of me, about 6 feet high all drawed in color by B. C. Donaldson, the top artist of Perkinsville. He had me all dressed up in a Mammoth uniform with the blue sky behind and an assinine smile on my face, the only thing wrong with the picture being that the word “Mammoths” was wrote across my chest.

Actually “New York” is on the shirt, and Borelli bought it for 150 dollars and hung it in his shop over the coat-hooks where Sam Yale used to be. I do not know where the picture is now, and I do not care. To tell you the truth I thought it was corny.

Mayor Real called on me to say a few words. I did not know what to say. I stammered around awhile, saying I was glad to be home about 9 times. I suppose it was a stupid speech though no worse then some of the others. Then I signed about 100 autographs for the kids, and then I drifted off towards home.

After dinner we sat out front, me and Pop and Holly, on chairs in the grass. The rain had passed over, and it was a fine night, and cool, and I told them all that happened from the time I left. It was all new to them, for I had not wrote a letter all spring and all summer. Many a time I would sit down and start a letter, and then along would come meal time, or time to sleep, or time to go to the ball park, or time to catch a train, and the letter would stop dead where it was, and then when I looked at it again it seemed stale and out of date, and I would tear it up and throw it away. Holly sent me some letters with a postcard inside, all addressed, but it seemed like I lost them, or if I wrote them I never remembered to drop them in the box. So I had to tell them everything myself now that I was home.

After awhile Aaron Webster come over with some fireflies in a bottle.

He sat down on the grass beside my chair, and he set the bottle of flies beside him, and he tucked his knees up under his chin, and he listened, and I talked on and on.

Then it was late, and Pop said, “I guess there is now nothing more I can tell you about the game of baseball, for Sad Sam Yale has told you all.” I suppose I laid it on a bit thick about me and Sam, probably giving the impression that we was a good deal chummier then we was. Actually the whole month of September he had 2 bits of advice for me, telling me for 1 thing shut up and number 2 go f— myself, and Pop straightened and stretched and went indoors, and Aaron upped and went off down the road swinging the bottle all lighted with flies.

Then it was quiet, and there was only me and Holly, and we talked that night about a million things or more, just talking to be talking, and I remember how quiet and peaceful it was and how I discovered for the first time in 20 years that I was beginning to enjoy a little peace and quiet in life about as well as anything else.

I guess that is the thing I remember most about the whole winter—how quiet it was—how nothing much happened and yet it was a good winter and I was not all in a dither to hurry it through like the winters before. Probably this sounds peculiar coming from a fellow that in the spring stood a good chance to land a notch with the New York Mammoths. Yet that was how it was, and no sense hiding it or telling it otherwise.

It was the winter of the blizzard. I was at Holly’s when it broke. The snow piled up higher and higher and we built a fire in the fireplace, and I did not leave because I figured it soon would stop, but it did not stop, and I did not leave, and we burned the wood slow to keep from running out, and I laid on the sofa in front of the fire with my head on Holly’s lap, and she sat with her legs tucked up beneath her. Her face looked upside down, yet even upside down I come to the view that it was a pretty face, and I liked to look at it, even upside down, and I laid there and looked up at her, and she read to me out of a number of books. Her chin waggled up and down and up and down when she read, and I watched it, and I laughed, and she said my face was just as upside down to her as hers to me, and I reached up behind her head and drug it down to me, and I give her an upside down kiss.

She read a good deal from the books. There was 1 on psychology and 1 on God, but not so dry as you might think. She also read to me from the book called “Huckleberry Finn” that I had read before and could not see much sense in plowing through again, but she said the second time was better then the first. Generally I would say it is a waste of energy to read a book once, let alone twice. But it is no chore to read a book any number of times if you can lay straight out with your head in somebody’s lap and close your eyes and listen. You can picture all the action in your mind as you go.

There was 2 days of snow, and then it stopped, and I was even a little sorry. Yet I guess it was a good thing, for I had to keep moving and not put on weight, and we walked in the snow clear to Perkinsville in high boots and back, and after that every day we walked a little, 5 miles or so, and my legs stood as strong as they was in the summer, and my wind, and my weight stood put and my appetite was good, and I slept like a bear all winter.

The more I slept the faster the time would go. The next best thing to sleeping is keep busy and never look at the calendar, and the time goes quick. I refereed basketball at the Hebrew Association, and I went to some dinners and made a few speeches for boys and 2 lunch clubs. I pulled Holly on a sled with the rope across my chest like a horse, and we went skating down on the creek where I was bit on the elbow by the bug that time.

Then it was Christmas, and then it was January, and soon afterwards the sun come out strong, and the snow got lower and lower. You could see where it left a wet mark on the side of the houses, and every now and then you would look up and see a great cluster of snow come down off a roof or a tree, and you could see patches of ground peeping through.

And what clinched it for me was my contract in the mail on the fourth of February. There is a law which says that they have got to mail them out no later then February 1. Otherwise clubs would mail them late to keep holdouts down to a minimum. But I had no intentions of holding out, for it was a good contract—8,500 plus maybe a Series share—and we signed it and shot it right back.

The night before I left Holly read to me out of a book that I did not understand much of. The whole point was that the richer you are the better chance you have to get along in life, and if you are poor you had best go about mending your ways, which I did not need no book to tell me, and I said so, and I rose up and took the book away and throwed a heap of wood on the fire, and then I made her lay out the straight way on the sofa, and I laid beside her, and we talked a long, long time, half the night at least. I said a number of tender things which I need not repeat, for they are altogether too rich for the daytime, yet they was all true, and I meant them, every word, for now that I was leaving I knowed that I would miss her and I said so in so many words, and she called me “Henry the Navigator,” which is what she calls me when she is in the tenderest frame of mind.

“Henry the Navigator,” said she, “it will be a long time, and I do wish I would hear from you personal and not have to read about you in the papers.” Then she give me the best advice anyone ever give me concerning baseball and how to play it. She said, “Henry, you must play ball like it does not matter, for it really does not matter. Nothing really matters. Play ball, do your best, have fun, but do not put the game nor the cash before your own personal pride,” and I said I would. I loved her and would of said most anything, and in the heat of it all I asked her would she marry me. She said no. “But we will see what Old Father Time brings forth,” she said.