The Southpaw (21 page)

We was together 2 years in Q. C.”

“He is a nice ballplayer,” Ugly said. “He can go to his right. Give me a shortstop that can go to his right. Keep your eyes off her, for she will only keep you awake nights. Dutch says no contract no work. He will not even leave me put on a suit. I suppose that is Smith on third.”

Canada had took over for George. “Yes,” I said. “He was in Q. C. too.”

“Nice arm,” said Ugly, “but his throws have got the habit of rising.

You married?”

“He used to be an outfielder,” I said. “Mike Mulrooney made him over into a third baseman. No, I ain’t married.”

“You got a girl?” said he.

“Yes and no,” I said.

“I do not like them yes and no girls,” he said. “What do the boys say about me not signing? Does Dutch ever say anything?” Ugly kept looking past me, out at the field.

“They naturally wish you would sign,” I said. “All except Coker Roguski that naturally wishes you would drop dead and give him the chance at short.”

“I can understand that,” said Ugly. “Do the boys know that there is nothing but a lousy 2,000 dollars between me and the Moorses? She has got 5 times that amount riding on her wrist right this minute. There is only 1 thing she ain’t got and that is her snatch ain’t lined with ermine. She might tell you it is but it ain’t. I like Sid Goldman. People say he is weak in the field, but I do not see it. You watch his feet. He will make bad throws look like good throws. Do not keep looking up at her like that.” He laughed.

“She ain’t looking this way,” I said.

“The hell she ain’t,” said Ugly. “She can see through you clear to your cup if you got 1 on. I remember Perry Simpson stole a base off us in a camp game 2 years ago.”

Perry was working out at second now in place of Gene Park.

“He is a nice ballplayer,” said Ugly. “If I was Dutch I would keep him. I see where Roguski switch-hits.”

“That is right,” said I.

“What is she doing now?” he said.

“Just sitting,” said I.

“This is like a goddam concentration camp,” said Ugly. “What in the hell is the sense of turning thumbs down on wives? I like my wife where I can keep an eye on her. Sad Sam has wore the rubber shirt since the first day in camp I suppose.”

“Yes,” I said, “he has.” We watched Sam throw awhile. I watched him every chance I got. He was throwing down to Goose Williams, easy.

“His weight is up,” I said.

“That is 1 thing I never worry about,” said Ugly. “I was born skinny and spent my first 15 years staring up the ass end of a mule. What is she doing now?”

“She is leaving the park,” I said.

“Me too,” said Ugly, and he turned and went after her, and I shagged flies until Dutch shouted lunch.

Ugly signed the next day. The newspapers said that him and the Moorses had a long conference and split their difference. That ain’t what Ugly said. Ugly said him and Patricia Moors had lunch at the Silver Palms and dinner in St. Pete and a midnight snack somewhere on the road between St. Pete and Aqua Clara in a little place called the Pleasant Dreams Motel. He said it was 1 of the most satisfactory conferences he ever had, but it cost him 2,000 dollars.

Coker took it in stride. He had the sense to know that you do not come up from AA ball and knock a man like Ugly Jones out of a job as quick as all that. You dream about it, but you never do it, for the age of miracles is dead. Everybody knowed that Ugly would sign anyways sooner or later. What else could he do? Once you are with a club you are their property. You either sign or you do not play ball. Besides which, no need to feel sorry for Ugly Jones at 20,000.

Coker would be up there anyways, and he knowed it. He might spend a couple years on the bench, waiting for Ugly to give out, but sooner or later he was in. So was Canada, and so was Perry. It was me they was worried about for awhile.

We used to talk about it almost every night up there in the hotel, all except Perry, and the way it looked there was 1 spot open on the pitching staff that would go to either Bub Castetter or me. Bub was probably through, yet maybe Dutch was figuring on him for steadiness. Bub had 10 years experience and knowed the league. I figured me being a lefthander would help, for there was only Sam and me. Old Man Moors would of give 100,000 dollars for somebody like Bill Scudder, say. But Brooklyn would as soon sell the park as sell Scudder.

I suppose it don’t pay to worry or try to figure ahead. What it all boils down to is what you do in action and not what you jaw about up there in the hotel room. Deeds is mightier then words. But ballplayers are great talkers, though every now and then you run across a fellow that never talks from noon to noon but just plays ball. There’s always a couple on every club. On the Mammoths it’s Sunny Jim Trotter and Scotty Burns. They room together, and I suppose if 1 was to say to the other “Open the window” or “Shut the door” or “Where is my pants?” the other would eat him out for a barber. Many a day I seen them come down for breakfast together and sit side by side and finish their meal and then go out in the lobby and light a cigar and sit in a chair with their head back. They would still be sitting there when you come down for lunch, and then they would go for lunch and rush right back and still be there right up until time to go to the park. I believe they never open their mouth the whole time except to take the cigar out and look it over and put it back in. Maybe I would of been better off if I copied their style. I don’t know. I would not know their voice if I heard it in the dark. If you ever wish to torture your average ballplayer to death simply tape up his mouth. He will not die from the lack of food. He will just go mad from the silence.

Wednesday of the third week the worst of the training was over and we begun to actually play ball. That afternoon we split up in 2 teams, the Eggs and the Joes, Egg running 1 and Joe Jaros the other, and we played a game every day for 3 days. The pitchers worked an inning or 2, just fogging it through the middle, and the hitters had a holiday, whaling the ball to all fields and then loping around the bases.

Nobody was supposed to slide, and the outfielders was not allowed to throw far, only relay, and the infield played deep so as not to get their head blowed off by a batted ball, and most of us come loose all of a sudden, like a cold motor on a winter’s day that coughs and gasps and misses fire and then all of a sudden begins to hit on all cylinders and straightens away and the oil begins to flow and the sparks fire regular, so that by Saturday we was ready for the first real game.

Mike Mulrooney brought over the boys that he lined up for Q. C. There was a few familiar faces, but mostly they was youngsters fresh up from clubs far down in the Mammoth system. It drizzled a little, but we played nonetheless, and Gil Willowbrook started for us and pitched 3 innings, and Herb Macy 3 more, and Bub Castetter finished it off.

These kids was mighty anxious, and they played hard, hoping to show everybody what hot ballplayers they was. Oh, they was the hustlers! I guess they thought if they won that ball game that Dutch would fire all the Mammoths and hire them instead. When you are a kid you dream. Then in the seventh Scotty Burns batted for Herb, and he skittered a single into right. It was a real blow, the first of the year that had the sound and the look of the kind of a hit a top ballplayer delivers. It went on a line, about knee-high, and the first baseman and the second baseman dove, and they neither of them more then seen it go past. I guess Mike’s boys was still thinking that 1 over when George Gonzalez and Scotty worked the hit and run, George punching it through in just about the same place, and there was 2 on.

The hit and run is 1 of the prettiest plays you will ever see. The runner on first will break for second. The second baseman on the other team goes over to cover. The righthanded hitter hits behind the runner, right through the slot where the baseman was. Only he ain’t there no more.

It is the kind of a play where if you miss the sign things is fouled up, but good. If the batter don’t hit, the runner will get throwed out at second, or if the runner don’t run the baseman will stay where he was and gobble up the ball and turn it into a double play for sure. If anybody misses their sign, or if the other team spots it, the whole thing falls on its face.

Anyhow, these poor kids was rattled by now with 2 on and none out and the heavy end coming up. There is nothing worse then a rattled club. Mike come off the bench and went out and tried to calm them down. We give Mike hell from the bench. “Mike,” I yelled, “Q. C. will just love that ball club. They will just
love
it, Mike, just
love
it.” He acted like he never heard me, though I guess he did. Christ, what an ungrateful bastard I can be when I try.

But for all Mike’s talking them kids was just not up to the situation. We finally won the ball game, 12-9, Bub Castetter pitching the last 3

innings and getting touched up quite a bit. I tried not to feel sorry for Bub, for it was his job or mine, yet I could not help it. It is sad to see an old pitcher that 3 or 4 years before could of set down punks like these without half trying out there now and working as hard as he can and just about barely standing them off.

We played Q. C. again on Sunday. It was sunny and hot and the club charged admission to the park. The Cowboys was in their regular uniforms now. There was 1 kid wearing the number I wore the year before, an infielder as I remember. There was quite a crowd out, maybe 5 or 600 people in the stands and a couple hundred colored fans behind the ropes down the left field side. Dutch started Sad Sam, telling me I would finish up, and that give me the chance to watch Sam work the first 3. I was glad for that, and I sat on the bench between Coker and Perry and watched Sam work.

He worked very slow. Here would be this kid at the plate waving his club and itching to go, and Sam was down on the hill just taking his sweet old time. When he finally throwed the kid was wore out from all the exertion. I don’t think there was 1 of them kids that got any solid wood on the ball except 1 colored catcher by the name of Brooks.

Sam almost lost him. He throwed him 3 balls, which was the first time he got behind a hitter all day, and then he throwed the cripple. Very few ballplayers will hit the cripple, which is usually a straight ball that the pitcher fogs through. It is almost a custom not to hit at it, but this kid done so, and he lined it between right and center. Pasquale and Lucky raced over, and Lucky called and took it on the run, and I bet Mike eat that boy out plenty afterwards for swinging on the 3-and-O

pitch. The colored fans behind the ropes clapped, thinking the kid done something worthwhile. That is the way it always is. The fans will clap and cheer at something that anybody knows is bad baseball.

Then on a good play, something that is really hard to pull off, they will sit there like their arm was paralyzed and their jaw broke.

Beginning in the fourth I warmed up with Bruce Pearson, and in the seventh, when I begun to work, Dutch put Perry in at second and Sunny Jim and Scotty and Swanee Wilks in the outfield.

I worked it slow, like Sam done. It used to be that I went out there and fired them through. I always wanted to be pitching. But I learned to take my time and think about what I was doing and not just go ahead and fire like a lot of boys will do. You do not get paid by the pitch.

The first hitter I faced was this same Brooks. He wanted to hit real bad. Fine, thinks I. I see him standing far back in the box, and I see him wave that club, and the club just barely reaches the outside corner of the plate. Red sees what I see. So we throw him 2 that will maybe nick the outside corner and maybe not, and he misses the first 1 clean, and the second he tips back in Red’s mitt. Now he is way behind. He is worried. You can see his mind work. He figures maybe he ought to get closer to the plate, and he leans in a little. So Red calls for a fast 1, close, and I really pour it through, and the kid twists away, and he feels the breeze on his wrist. Now he thinks maybe he was too close after all. So he backs back to where he was. Behind me I can feel the boys tense a little. They know that this kid will go after the next pitch. He has got 2 strikes on him, and he is worried.

Mike Mulrooney comes down from the box at third and says something in his ear. Everybody knows what Mike said. Mike said to stand closer to the plate. But the kid knows better. This kid been playing ball 4 or 5 years and Mike has scarcely put in more then 40.

Oh, these smart kids! Nonetheless he crowds up a little. I give him time to think it over. I scuff the dirt with my toe. I pick up the resin bag to dry the sweat from my hand even though it ain’t sweaty. I look at the ball, thinking maybe there is something wrong with it, even though I know there is not. By now the kid has come to the conclusion that Mike is wrong and
he
is right. So he moves back to where he was. Then I throw the curve, which is what Red calls for.

The same thing is going on in Red’s mind as in mine. It is going on in the head of everybody in the park excepting only that kid at the plate.
Oh boy
, thinks he, here comes a fat 1. He swings at the wide breaking curve. Red grabs it and fires down to third. George whips it to Ugly, and Ugly to Perry and Perry to Sid. The ball is halfway around the infield before the kid knows what happened. He feels stupider then he ever felt before. He walks back towards the Queen City bench, trailing his bat behind. He says in his mind, “Maybe I will listen to Mr. Mulrooney hereafter.” Down behind the ropes the colored fans clap.

I got the first man out in the ninth. Then 1 of them kids rapped a single into center, and about 30 seconds later the ball game was over on a double play, Perry to Ugly to Sid on a hit-and-run that Perry stole the sign off Mike, the sign being kick the dirt twice with your left foot with your right hand on your stomach and your thumb looped over the belt. We kidded Mike about that afterwards. He said he forgot about Perry being in there and remembering the sign from the year before.

That was the last we seen of the Queen City bunch for awhile. We played them twice more in Jacksonville about 10 days later, soon after we broke camp and started north. They were looking smarter by then.