The Southpaw (25 page)

The ballplayer is what makes the club. The outfield is sloped to drain better. There is 12 foot of black clay all around the outfield fences so you will know where you are at, and there will not be no more fielders crashing in the wall like Pasquale done that time last year.”

“About that article,” says I. “It is cockeyed in 1 respect. He says we could use 1 more lefthander. He must of been asleep like a bear all spring, for I lost but 1 ball game and would not of lost that but I beaned a kid in Atlanta and had 2 wobbly innings.”

“That is true,” says she. “These writers have got their cockeyed moments.” She thinks a little. “I guess that is all. I am driving back to New York. Is there somebody would like to come?”

Ugly says he will go.

“Anybody else?” says she, and she looks around. “Red?”

“I will take a rain check,” says Red.

She looks around still more. “How about George?”

Red speaks in Spanish to George, and George answers. “George says he will take a rain check,” says Red.

“Patricia,” says Sad Sam Yale, “I have got a problem. Down in Aqua Clara I had a beautiful 9-inch raping tool that was never used more then 20,000 times. I loaned it to Goose, and Goose lost it.”

“A what?” says she.

“A 9-inch raping tool,” says Sam.

“Oh,” says she. “Well, Sam, see my secretary in New York.” She says to Ugly that she will bring her car around to the dubhouse door. Out she goes with Bradley Lord.

“Maybe Henry Wiggen will loan you his,” says Knuckles.

Sam says, “Henry, you punk of a lefthanded son of a bitch, loan me your 9-inch raping tool as I have need for it tonight in Upper Darby.”

I am now positive it is a gag. In the beginning I did not catch the words too clear. I rise from the bench. “Yes, Al,” I say, and I hold in the air an imaginary object, “in my estimation these are the finest raping tools on the market. I have tried them all, and I know. These are my choice for a smoother, superior product, a tool 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.” Then I smile broadly, and there is a great laugh.

Dutch sits on the bench and shakes his head. “Somebody ought to write a book,” says he.

“Somebody ought to write a good book about baseball,” says Sam.

“Somebody ought to write a good book,” says Red.

Ugly is all naked by now. He goes across the floor and in the shower.

“Nice game, Sam,” says he. He runs the water, and the steam pours out. But he is the only 1. Nobody seems to wish to move. Everybody sits back and sucks on their drink. Everybody is relaxed, and everybody is happy.

I swig another Coke. “We had a kid drunk Cokes like that,” says Gene to me. “All in 1 gulp. He was a first baseman in Queen City, a redheaded kid, and he begun 1 year with us and then got took by the Army. Dutch, you remember that kid. What in the hell was his name?”

“That was a kid name of Petey McCall that Mike made over from a pitcher. He was killed in the war,” says Dutch.

“How many Cokes you drunk?” says Sam to me.

“2,” says I.

“I bet you a dollar you cannot drink 1 more all in 1 swig,” says Sam.

“Put up your dollar,” says I, and Sam reaches for his pants and pulls out a dollar, and I do the same. I take a Coke, and I snap the cap. I stand in the middle of the floor and I put my right hand on my hip.

Everybody is watching. With the other hand I pour it down, all in 1 swig. Sam gives me the dollar, and I sit back on the bench.

“What was the matter with sending Ugly home on Gene’s hit?” says Egg to Joe Jaros.

“5 runs ahead what was the sense?” says Joe. “The first thing you know Ugly is sliding and busting his f—ing leg over a run we do not need in an exhibition.”

“Roguski,” says Sam to Coker, “I know what you are thinking, you bastard. You are thinking Joe should of sent Ugly home and left him bust not only 1 leg but his both f—ing arms besides.”

“I was never thinking no such thing,” says Coker.

“For thinking thoughts like that run over to the Philadelphia clubhouse and tell Jay Pringle Sam Yale needs to borrow his 9-inch raping tool,” says Sam.

But Coker never makes a move. He is wise to the gag. He sees how Sam is working down the line to the rookies, trying to pull it on me, and now on Coker, looking for the 1 that will fall. “Maybe you might borrow Perry’s,” says Horse Byrd.

There is a good laugh at this, and the boys look down the line at Perry Simpson. He is shaving a bat handle, and he does not look up. Then he speaks, saying each word slow and deliberate. “It ain’t the right color,” says he.

All the boys roar. “That is 1 nifty kid,” says Sam. “Perry, you are 1 great kid. For your sake I hope that Gene Park dies of the bloody flux by Wednesday.”

“You boys are playing mighty free with my ball club,” says Dutch.

“Dutch,” says Sam to Dutch, “you do not need a ball club. You need only Henry Wiggen. He will pitch 4 days in every 5. He will pitch doubleheaders and batting practice and in his spare time mow the grass. I walk into the hotel in Aqua Clara the first night, and down comes Henry fresh as a daisy. He is all set to chew my ear. I do believe he was waiting at the window. I go past him up the stairs and flop in bed, all wore out from the trip. 5 minutes later he corners Traphagen. I hear him all the way down the hall. He is informing Traphagen the situation on Ugly Joneses contract, all about the home town and all about pitching. You do not need second-rate ballplayers such as Ugly and Gene. All you need is Henry Wiggen.

Goddam it, ain’t we ever going to clear out of Philadelphia?” He pulls off his shoes and his pants and his stockings. Then he sits down again in his jock, and he scratches his feet 1 against the other.

“Squarehead Flynn,” he shouts, “I would give a lot if you will run over to the Philly clubhouse and ask Jay Pringle to loan me his 9-inch raping tool.”

Squarehead is not sure if it is a gag. He gets kidded so much he never really knows if it is a gag or on the level. 1 time in Q. C. the bellboy brung him a package, saying it was a gift. Squarehead chucked it in the basket, saying he was no longer a sucker for jokes. When it hit the basket it crashed all over the place. We opened it up. It was a set of 6

cocktail glasses for his wife, 5 of them broke and the other chipped clean down the middle.

“Why do you laugh?” says Sam. “If I was dressed I would go myself.

That is the trouble with the average rookie. Tell him a thing and he laughs. That is why you do not get nowheres, Squarehead. Everything to you is a big joke.”

“Sam,” says Goose, “do not make Squarehead go over. I am the 1 that should go over, for it is I that lost it to begin with.”

“You are truly a friend,” says Sam. “I thought Squarehead was my friend. It seems to me that I remember I loaned him 5 dollars when he was broke in Savannah. Is that not true?”

“That is true,” says Squarehead.

Everybody is absolutely quiet.

“Then when a fellow gets down on his luck all the world turns against him,” says Sam.

Squarehead starts to speak, but Goose cuts him off. “Should I go, Squarehead, or you?”

Out comes Ugly from the shower. “Somebody loan me some goo for my arms,” says he, “for I stink like a mule in the summer.” Gene tosses him a bottle of Mum, and Ugly dabs in with his finger.

“Go easy,” says Gene.

“Ugly,” says Red to Ugly, “I know of a thing that stops a man from perspiration.”

“What is that?” says Ugly.

“Death,” says Red.

“Ha, ha, ha,” says Ugly. “That is a real smart remark. Did they learn you many of them smart remarks at Harvard?”

“They never learned me a thing,” says Red. “All I learned I got by myself. They give me a sack full of books and I read them through.

Then they give me a diploma. Then I go down to New York. I go in 1 office and out the other. I have read a sack full of books at Harvard, say I. 50 dollars a week, say they. Up yours, say I, for I can make 50 dollars of an afternoon playing baseball. I sell the books. I send home for my mitt and my mask and my protector. I have lost my shin guards.

I buy a ticket to Aqua Clara with the money from my books. Gussie Petronio is the Mammoth catcher at the time. He has an old beat-up pair of shin guards that he sells me for 2 dollars and 50 cents. Thank you, Gussie, says I, I will do something for you some day. You know what I done for Gussie?”

“You took away the bastard’s job,” says Dutch. Everybody laughs.

“I bought a car off Gussie in the winter,” says Sam. “He runs a Moors agency in Dallas.”

“To me,” says Dutch, “Gussie was always 1 of them ballplayers that had all the makings of a great. Yet he never quite come to the full promise.”

“Gussie is the kind of a guy that if he was here he would lend you his 9-inch raping tool,” says Goose to Sam.

“Squarehead, old boy, run over and borrow it from Pringle,” says Sam.

“Cut it, Sam,” says Dutch. “If you have lost your tool it is your own damn fault. If I was Squarehead I ain’t so sure I would run your errands. Squarehead ain’t an errand boy. He is a first baseman.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” says Sam.

“I will go,” says Squarehead, and out he goes through the door.

Nobody says a word. I wait for the laugh, but there is no laugh.

“He hits a long ball,” says Egg. “The only trouble is that 9 times in 10 he hits it dead center.”

“Mike Mulrooney done everything he could to learn him to pull,” says Lindon.

“Usually it is against my policy to talk behind a ballplayer’s back,” says Dutch, “but just between us I will say it is a hard job learning Squarehead anything. You cannot blame Mike.”

Ugly is dressed to kill. He usually always is. “Goodby, you bastards,” he says.

Out he goes, and in comes Squarehead.

“Sam,” says Squarehead, “Pringle says he has got 2 and does not know which you want.”

“Either 1, Squarehead old boy,” says Sam, and out goes Squarehead again.

“Somebody throw me a beer,” says Hams Carroll. He is laying stretched out on the floor. Gil Willowbrook opens a can and carries it to Hams.

“St. Louis bought Jimmy Lusk off Cleveland,” says Joe Jaros to Dutch.

“Who says?” says Dutch.

“I seen it in the paper,” says Joe.

“I never seen it,” says Dutch, “though I believe the change might do Jimmy good. Boys, there will be no more trades.”

Everybody hears this and is pleased. Then it is quiet. A little breeze comes in through the window. The boys that smoke smoke, and the smoke floats out through the window, and now and then somebody goes over and lifts out a beer and opens it. “Pzzz, pzzz,” goes the cans. A few of the boys get up off the bench and begin to strip down. It seems to me like somebody ought to speak. Yet there is nothing to say. There is nothing left to say or do, for it was all said and all did between Aqua Clara and Philly, and all the weight was shed that needed to be shed, and the mob that was at Aqua Clara is now no longer a mob, but a
club
, all narrowed down, and all the dead wood is cut away except for the last slash in May, and that would be Bub and Squarehead, for the boys could figure it out for theirselves, and the boys was all fit and ready to go and waiting only for the cry “Play Ball!” on Wednesday, all brown and fit and itching to get started, and nobody hurt and nobody sick and nobody mad at nobody.

In comes Squarehead Flynn. He has got a package in his hand, about the size and shape of a Coke bottle, all wrapped as neat as could be in toilet paper and tied with the lace of a shoe. He carries it over to Sad Sam Yale, and Sam says “Thank you, Squarehead my boy. I sure appreciate what you done for me.”

“That is okay, Sam,” says Squarehead, and he stands there looking.

“Ain’t you going to open it?”

“Open it?” says Sam. “Would you want it to get all saturated?”

“No,” says Squarehead, “I guess not.”

Sam lays it very gentle on the top of his locker, and everybody watches, and yet nobody says a word, and yet we are laughing to ourselves. Red is talking in Spanish to George, and George busts out in a fit of laughter. But George is the only 1, and we take our shower and dress, and little by little the clubhouse empties out, Scotty and Sunny Jim, Vincent and Pasquale and Sid, Herb and Gil, Dutch and the coaches, Red and George, Lucky and Gene, Squarehead, Bruce and Piss, Hams and Horse, Knuckles and Bub and Goose and Swanee and Sam, then me and Canada and Coker and Perry and Lindon. I am the last. There is nobody left but Mick McKinney. I am always the first to the park and the last away. The final thing I see is the package, still tied all neat and trim, sitting on top of Sad Sam’s locker. Whoever found it afterwards must of wondered.

Following is the article wrote by Krazy Kress in “The Star-Press” on Opening Day but read to us beforehand by Patricia Moors in the clubhouse in Philly. Pop tore it out and saved it. He saved everything that was wrote in the papers from February through September. He bought all the New York papers every day in Perkinsville, plus the Perkinsville “Clarion,” and he clipped them with a razor and pasted them up in 6 different scrapbooks. The article is as follows: OUT ON A LIMB

I returned yesterday to this littered desk from a delightful weekend in Philadelphia, historic home of such wonders of the modern world as Connie Mack and the Liberty Bell. It was not, however, the charm of the Quaker City that contributed to the pleasures of my stay so much as the edifying view I obtained of our own Mammoths. What I saw gratified me, however much it may have dismayed the 61,385 Philadelphians who witnessed the three contests.

Now, as constant—bless ‘em—readers of this column are aware, I am constitutionally opposed to pre-season predictions. It is a dangerous practice, leading to severe cases of embarrassment after the fact. But I hereby break my own rule. I predict. I say, and you may quote me, that the pennant flag will fly from the center-field mast in Moors Stadium this very summer.

No? Okay, you are entitled to your own opinion. But who’s your choice? Boston? Boston is the most obvious suggestion. It has the pitching, to be sure, but it lacks power. It owns baseball’s most fearsome long-distance hitter in Casey Sharpe, but its attack ends there.