The Southpaw (20 page)

“Why am I doing it?” Dutch said. “Am I just naturally some kind of a son of a bitch? No. I am working you hard because I aim to win a flag this year and I am not going to have it took away from me by the middle of August because my club give out from under me. I have saw that happen too often. And why does it happen?”

He did not seem to want no answer.

“Because of ballplayers not taking training serious enough,” he said.

“Because there is too many goddam ballplayers that think the spring season is set up for golf and the dogs. You men are here to work and I aim to work you. You know how long the summer runs? It runs to the last day of September. It does not run to Labor Day or the goddam Fourth of July or the middle of May. I have saw too many clubs that about the middle of August they are dragging their ass like a bunch of goddam gymnasium teachers. That is why you are here, to get in shape, and the harder you work the better it will pay you off in the end. Is that clear?”

It was clear. But the lecture wasn’t over yet. Dutch would work up a head of steam, and once he got there he hated to see it go to waste.

“I am the boss,” said Dutch. “Joe Jaros and Clint Strap and Egg Barnard is my right-hand aids. That has got to be dear once and for all. There can never be more then 1. If there is more then 1 man giving orders then you have not got a ball club but a mob, and I have never saw a mob win a flag yet and never will. When I say I am the boss I mean that I am the boss. I mean you take orders from me and not from any of the Moorses nor from any son of a bitch back home that writes you a letter and not from any goddam radio announcer that comes around and asks why you played it this way when you should of played it the other. By the Lord God Christ Almighty if I tell you to run the bases on your hands you will do like I say. Them goddam announcers is all mouth and 50 percent horseshit.” (These are Dutch’s opinions and none of my own.) “That brings up the writers,” he said, still traveling on that same head of steam. “I do not want you hanging with them bastards any more then you can help. Okay, they want a story. Answer their questions in a polite way. If they get too personal just tell them you do not know. Listen to them when they got something they wish to get off their mind. They always think they know more baseball then the ballplayer himself. The only catch is that they never do. If you was to show them a baseball they would scarcely know what it was. If you was to throw it at them they would be scared shitless and duck for cover and never come out till morning. I am the f—ing manager of this f—ing club and not some damn writer. If they write something in their paper that does not go down just forget it. For God’s sake do not argue with them. And for the love of Jesus never hit 1 of them bastards because if you was ever to hit 1 they would write about it till their fingers was wore to the bone.

“I am telling you all this from 40 years of long experience in baseball.

I think I know what I am talking about. I was playing this game when some of you was pissing your drawers and the rest was no more then a fine and anxious gleam in your old man’s eye, so I know. There ain’t a club that will win except 1 that works its ass off in the spring so that by the middle of April you are not just getting in condition but you are
in
condition. When I say in condition I do not mean 5 pounds over your weight or even 1 pound. I mean you are
at
your weight. There is some of you that look like you never done a thing all winter except shuffle back and forth between the bed and the kitchen. If there is anything I hate it is a fat man. I am near 60 years of age and never weighed more then 210 in my life.” Dutch went over to the scales and climbed on. “Red,” he said, “you are a smart boy. Come over here and look at these scales,” and Red went over and worked the weights until they balanced.

“210,” said Red.

“That is what I mean,” said Dutch. “Half of you has got the look of a gymnasium teacher.” He mopped his head, and he stood there on the scales and talked some more, and the scales jumped up and down, and the fiercer he talked the more they jumped. Dutch was plenty fierce then and all through the summer. There was never no question who was the boss.

“This year I am going to have a running club,” shouted Dutch. “Some of you may remember the Mammoths of 35. That was a running club.

It begun running in February right here in this park and it never stopped until after the Series. You know who won that Series. We never stopped moving. We beat out hits we should of never beat out, and we made doubles out of singles and triples out of doubles. We caught fly balls we should of never caught and we stole bases we should of never stole. We hustled all the way. Do you know when we begun to hustle? It was in the spring. That was when we begun. This is my motto. Hustle. Every pitch counts, and every inning and every ball game, and you cannot relax and say we will start winning them in April. We have got to start getting in a winning frame of mind now, in the spring. Okay, now let us get out there and get to work.”

He was as good as his word, for we worked that first week like our life depended on it. There was some boys that I think would as soon went on a 12-hour day in a boiler factory. That is what they said, although you can’t believe everything a ballplayer gives out. Usually if you ask a ballplayer how he likes his job he will tell you, “It is better then carrying a lunch pail, ain’t it?” He run us, and he walked us, and he give us exercises sometimes as long as an hour at a stretch, first Dutch and then Joe Jaros and then Egg Barnard and then Clint Strap, 10 or 15 minutes from each, rotating on and off. They was up on a high platform so you couldn’t slack off, although there was some that tried.

Bub Castetter was always careful to get back in a rear rank. He spent more energy figuring out ways to goof off then he would of spent doing them damn exercises in the first place.

Not me. Me and Lindon was up in the front row, and we never missed a beat. Sometimes I was such a damn Boy Scout I feel ashamed. Like 1 afternoon, the first real scorcher, Dutch and the coaches give out, and Dutch ordered me up on the platform, saying, “Wiggen, see if you can draw a little sweat from these boys,” and I give 30 push-ups and 50 deep knee bends and side-arm flings combined, shouting as I went, “
Hup
2 3 4,
hup
2 3 4,” over and over until even Lindon Burke slacked off. I could of went on I don’t know how long but that Sad Sam Yale shouted up to Dutch, “Say, Dutch, how
about
this?” and Dutch called it quits. I guess I would not of won no popularity poles that afternoon. Dutch was all grins.

What did I care? You do not win ball games by votes. It is like Leo Durocher said, “Nice guys do not win ball games.” Dutch knows it and so does everybody that ever laid hands on a glove.

I guess I was really in the best shape of my life. I could of shouted and sung, for I felt so good. Did you ever feel that way? Did you ever look down at yourself, and you was all brown wherever your skin was out in the sun, and you was all loose in every bone and every joint of your body, and there was not a muscle that ached, and you felt like if there was a mountain that needed moving you could up and move it, or you could of swam an ocean or held your breath an hour if you liked, or you could run 2 miles and finish in a sprint? And your hands! They fairly itched to hold a baseball, and there was not a thing you could not do once you had that ball. You could fire it like a cannon and split a hair at 300 feet, and you could make it dance and hop, and the batter could no more hit your stuff then make the sun stand still. When you feel like that you could sing in the street, and that was how I felt by the end of the first week in camp.

It wasn’t until the middle of the second week, however, that we so much as touched a baseball. By then the whole club was in camp, and the writers was as thick as flies and the papers full of the news from the various camps, who signed and who held out, who looked good and who was over their weight, and what the managers was thinking.

Also, there was a good deal of gossip on how the different rookies was showing up. It was too early to tell, there not being any ball games as yet. But a little thing like not having any information to go on will never stop these writers. There was an item or 2 concerning myself. It always sounded to me like they was talking about somebody else. 1 writer said I was “enthusiastic.” I suppose I was.

But the biggest news I made was when I run in with the sap that runs the Hotel Silver Palms. The way it happened me and Coker and Canada and Lindon was roomed on the same floor, Coker and Canada together, Lindon with Bruce Pearson because Lucky Judkins was not yet in camp, and me all alone. Perry was supposed to room with me because all the regulars was in the hotel plus the promising rookies, and everybody knowed that Perry was ripe and ready to come up so he should of been in the hotel. But they have got these damn regulations, so he was over in the barrackses with the punks, and mighty lonesome, too. Me and Canada and Coker went down to see him almost every night. It was like he was in prison and this was visiting day. We would sit around and chew the fat. Lindon come along sometimes, and the Caruccis come once in awhile, for they had a kid brother amongst the punks name of Joseph, a first baseman.

There is 4 Carucci brothers, 3 of them owned by the Mammoths system, 1 by Philadelphia.

On the way back, under the awning in front of the Silver Palms, we run into this joker. I told him what I thought of the damn regulations that a fellow of the caliber of Perry Simpson was holed up in the barrackses.

He laughed. Well, 1 word led to another until finally he said he did not like to argue right smack in front of the main entrance, and he whirled around and started off so fast that his feet got tangled up in themself—

and down he went. I rushed over, meaning to help him up, and Canada and Coker grabbed me from behind and told me to lay off, and the doorman come running over hollering “Gentlemen, Gentlemen!” and the fellow got up from the sidewalk with his nose all bloody, and that was all there was to it. I never hit him. The papers all said I hit him, though I never did.

About a half an hour later there comes a knock on my door. I was laying in the bath reading the paper. “Come in,” I yell, thinking it was 1 of the boys, and in comes Dutch and Bradley Lord and 2 policemen and Mike Mulrooney and this hotel chap with a patch across his nose.

They all come in the bathroom. It made for quite a crowd. 1 of the cops asked me some questions and the second cop took it all down, and then there was a big gabfest out in the room amongst the whole 6  of them, all except Mike. Mike come in the bathroom and sat on the John awhile and talked to me, not about anything in particular, and finally I got out and wrapped a towel around me and went out where the conference was, and Dutch made me shake hands with this fellow, and I done so, and he said he did not prefer any charges against me.

The cops breathed easy, for they wanted no fuss with the Mammoths, nor did the hotel. The Mammoths bring more money to Aqua Clara in 1 month then the town sees the rest of the year through.

Then they all left except Dutch. He seemed pleased with me. He said he liked a scrappy ballplayer, though he said he wished I could manage to save it for the ball park. He give me a couple pats on the shoulder, saying he liked my spirit and all, and he said he give a doctor 5 bucks for patching up the nose.

Naturally the writers got hold of what happened more or less. I think if you was to go by night to the darkest jungle of Africa and paint yourself black and dig a hole and climb in you would no sooner get to the bottom then there would be a writer there, asking you how come. It was in all the New York papers for a day or 2, all about this terrible bloody fight, and pictures of me and Perry and this hotel chap with the patch on his nose. I got a letter from Holly soon after. She said my heart was in the right place but I should of went about it different. It beat the hell out of me how much fuss was made. Everything is crazy.

Sometimes I think the whole world is off their nut.

Chapter 18

Ugly Jones was in the stands down the first base side, leaning forwards with his arms on the rail, watching the infield drill wearing a Palm Beach suit.

I was warming with some of the boys, just easy, no cutting loose as yet, and when I had enough I went over for water, and a kid brought me my jacket, and I slipped it on and went and stood down by Ugly.

“Hello punk,” he said, “how is the flipper?”

“Never better,” said I, and he begun to chat. But suddenly I was not hearing Ugly a-tall, but looking past him, up in the stands, about 12

rows up, in a shady spot, and I seen Patricia Moors in shorts and a halter and beach shoes strapped about her ankles. Her jewelry glistered. She was smoking a cigarette.

“Keep your mind upon the doughnut and not upon the hole,” said Ugly.

I tore my eyes off her and back to Ugly. Lord, what an ugly man he is, too. His lower teeth laps out over his uppers. “You are thinking you would like some of that,” he said. He never looked back towards her.

“You coming up this year?”

“That is right,” I said. I tried to look at Ugly and get my mind on what he was saying. “I hope so,” I said.

“We need another lefthander,” he said. “We have always needed another lefthander. We have got too much righthanded pitching and too much lefthanded hitting. Poor little rich girl, she is down to her last truckload of diamonds. Is that Roguski at short?”

I looked out at the field. Dutch and Egg was running the drill, Egg slapping out grounders and Dutch watching. By now Dutch was fairly well set on his infield, George Gonzalez at third and Ugly at short, Gene Park at second and Sid Goldman at first. Sooner or later Ugly would sign. Dutch spent a couple weeks trying to dig up a utility first baseman. He would of traded Sid away altogether if he could of got Klosky from St. Louis, and there was some talk that the deal was brewing, but it never come to pass. He tried Squarehead Flynn at first for awhile in the spring, but even if he could of learned Squarehead to play the bag he would of still needed to learn him to hit, so Squarehead was back in Q. C. in May. What Dutch finally done was use Canada at first when Sid needed a rest, or sometimes on defense in late innings of tight ball games. “Yes,” said I, “that is Coker Roguski.