The Southpaw (29 page)

Heinz was up. We had got him out twice before, mixing curves and the fast 1. Red give me the sign for the curve, and I shook him off. Okay, he signals, throw the screw, which was what I wanted to throw. Red don’t like me to, though. He says I’m too young and will ruin my arm. I throwed it, and Heinz popped it foul down by the Mayor of New York’s box, and Canada streaked over. Sid would of never made it. I did not think Canada would neither, but over he went, and about 5 feet from the barrier he left this earth and took off. I caught a glimpse of Kellogg racing over to call it. Then I lost sight of Canada, for down he went behind the rail, and Kellogg jerked back his thumb, meaning that Canada made the catch, and the next thing I seen the ball was flying back out of there. It was a pretty good throw, considering that the poor boy was laying on his back all tangled up with the seats and the spectators, and I took the throw about halfway between the line and the stands, and I wheeled and whipped it to Red, figuring that Fielding would of tagged by now and been headed for home. That was what he done, never expecting Canada to get the ball back in play like that, and now he was trapped betwixt third and home. Red run him back towards third and flipped to George. George run him back towards home and flipped to me, for I was backing up Red by now. I run Fielding back towards third and flipped to Ugly, for Ugly come over from short to back up George. Ugly run Fielding down towards home.

Red was waiting, and he stuck up his hands like he was expecting the throw, and Fielding seen the hands go up and naturally reversed again and started back towards third. Only Ugly never throwed a-tall, and Fielding tried to reverse still again, but Ugly was roaring fast down the line, and he tagged Fielding and turned and wheeled and fired back to George at third and damn near caught Casey Sharpe besides.

I was out of it now. Chickering drove Casey home with a single, but I got Blodgett on strikes.

In the top of the ninth, with 2 gone and none on and the crowd moving towards the exits, Casey Sharpe hammered a homer into the upper stands in right. Then Heinz rolled to Ugly, and that was it. That was my first.

We had dinner together that night in the hotel, me and Holly and Pop and Perry and Aaron and Red and Rosemary Traphagen and George.

I suppose I might of hogged the conversation somewhat, hashing over the afternoon about 5 times. Nobody else got much of a word in edgewise until towards the end I noticed I was talking and nobody was listening. Pop and Perry was gassing together, and Aaron and Red was discussing I do not know what and now and then turning it in Spanish for George, and Rosemary was telling Holly about some of the problems of a ballplayer’s wife. It used to be that when I won a game I spent hours and hours jawing it over again for the benefit of anybody that cared to listen, though I got over the habit as time wore on. When I lost I never considered it worth discussing and still don’t.

Finally we broke it up, and me and Holly went walking, and after a time I said, “Well, Holly, I hope Rosemary has filled you in on some of the fine points of marrying a ballplayer.”

“She told me of the problems,” said Holly.

“You are putting me off again,” said I, for I could tell she was stalling like she done that night in February just before I shoved off south.

“What problems? There is 20,000 girls that would give their right arm to be married to such problems.”

“I am not of the 20,000,” she said. “It takes thought.”

“To hell with thought,” said I. “I must have the answer, yes or no.”

“Now is not the time for big decisions,” she said. “You are sitting on top of the world, and it is too easy to be in love when you are sitting on top of the world. How about on afternoons when the chips are flying all wrong? How about on afternoons when all does not go so smooth as it went today? Will you then be in love with me and all the world?

Rosemary Traphagen has told me about such afternoons.”

“Why so gloomy?” said I, but she went on being gloomy nonetheless, and after about 6 blocks we turned around and went back, hardly saying a word the whole time. Later her and Pop and Aaron grabbed the 11 o’clock. I seen them off, and I walked clear back to the hotel. I felt sore.

But walking cooled me off some, and I kept thinking about the dinner that night and what a fool I probably was. At least that’s what I
think
I was thinking. Yet maybe it wasn’t until some time later in the summer that I begun to wise up to myself, for I soon seen where it is easy enough to be in love with all the world on a fine spring night after you have just throwed a 6-hit win but maybe not so easy come steaming August and the September stretch. A lot of things Holly ever said begun to sink in, and I learned a lot about such things as love, and actually, when you think about it, it is a wonder that she didn’t cut me loose then and there, for I was so stupid, and so green, that it makes me sick to mention it.

The box score:

BOSTON

NEW YORK

ab. r. h. po. a

ab. r. h. po. a

Black cf

4 0 0 1 0

Gonzalez 3b

4 2 1 1 2

Granby ss

4 0 1 2 1

Judkins cf

3 1 1 2 0

Fielding 1b

4 0 1 7 2

V. Carucci lf

4 0 1 2 0

Sharpe rf

4 2 2 2 0

Goldman lb

1 1 1 7 0

Heinz lf

4 0 0 2 0

Smith lb

1 0 0 3 1

Chickering 2b

3 0 2 2 3

P. Carucci rf

4 1 2 1 0

Blodgett 3b

2 0 0 3 1

Jones ss

4 0 2 2 3

Richardson c

3 0 0 5 2

Park 2b

3 0 0 3 3

Nance p

1 0 0 0 1

Traphagen c

4 0 1 5 1

Lewis p

1 0 0 0 2

Wiggen p

4 1 1 1 2

AHampden

1 0 0 0 0

Total

32 6 10 27 12

Tawney p

0 0 0 0 0

Total

31 2 6 24 12

aHit into force play for Lewis in eighth.

Boston

0 0 0

0 0 0

1 0 1 —2

New York

2 0 4

0 0 0

0 0 - —6

Error—Chickering.

Runs batted in—V. Carucci, Goldman, P. Carucci 3, Jones, Chickering, Sharpe.

197

Two-base hits—Wiggen, P. Carucci, Goldman, Granby.

Home run—Sharpe.

Double plays—Jones, Park and Goldman; Chickering, Granby and Fielding; Smith, Wiggen, Traphagen, Gonzalez and Jones; Gonzalez, Park and Smith.

Left on bases—Boston 3, New York 7.

Bases on balls—Off Wiggen 2, Nance 2. Lewis 2.

Struck out—By Wiggen 5, Nance 1, Lewis 2.

Hits—Off Nance 5 in 22/3 innings, Lewis 4 in 41/3 innings, Tawney 1

in 1 inning.

Winning pitcher—Wiggen. Losing pitcher—Nance.

Umpires—Zinke, Kellogg, Neininger and Bowron.

Time of game—2:32.

Attendance—29,812.

Chapter 25

Any kind of a race, whether dogs or ponies or boats or cars or men or baseball clubs, begin the same. All are bunched at the start. Then the gun goes off or the flag goes down or, when it is baseball clubs, the first ball is throwed out, the openers played, and they are off.

At the beginning, for a week or 2 weeks, or maybe a month, they run neck and neck, and the eastern clubs meet the eastern clubs and west meets west, and then the east goes west or the west goes east, depending on the schedule, and soon each club has played the circuit round. You have got a look at the new hitters that come up in the spring, and your own hitters have saw the new enemy pitchers, and some of the kids that come up with all the fanfare finds out they cannot hit the big-time stuff, and some of the new young pitchers finds out they was pretty flashy down in AA or AAA, but now they cannot get a man out, and down they go, out of remembrance.

Now, after the first swing west and the first swing east, after the first turn of the course you might say, the field straightens away. Them that have it sticks, and them that don’t begin to fade. Quality begins to show, for it is a long pull, and over the long pull your day-in-day-out clubs move out ahead of the field, maybe only 2 clubs, maybe 3 or 4, and on the other clubs the weaknesses begin to shine through, and a second-rate bench begins to hurt because fellows get injured aplenty in this game called “Baseball.” And the club that might look good over a week or 10 days begins to look poorly and weakly over the longer haul.

It ain’t the short series that means a thing. It is how are you fixed when July comes round. Is your bench strong? Have you got the kind of ballplayers that when the pressure is on, when the heavy cash rides on every pitch in every ball game will they still have their nerve? Will you hustle in August like you hustled in May?

Things started last spring according to form. We got away fast. Sam Yale beat Boston the second day, though Knuckles lost on the third, and we split 2 with Brooklyn and went down to Washington and took 2 out of 3. The rotation was working nice, Hams and Piss rounding out the staff and the relief coming on when needed, mostly Horse Byrd, sometimes Lindon, Dutch juggling once and skipping my turn so as to throw righthanders against Washington and keep me and Sam ready for the series up in Boston. I beat Boston the first day there and Sam done the same the second, and the third day it snowed, and we moved out on the noon train and back to New York for 3 with Brooklyn in Brooklyn before the first trip west. We was in second place then, with Cleveland leading by a game. If anybody was worried it never showed.

1 thing I begun to notice, and that was this. When you are a top-flight ballplayer you do not go around collaring everybody you lay your eyes on and tell them so. We was doing our ballplaying on the ball field and our jawing amongst ourselves. If there was anybody we give a riding to it was the opposition, or umpires. As for cabbies and bellhops and such we done our business with them and give them the time of day and a good tip and thank you, and that was that.

I do not mean that you could of confused us with a squad of chess players. Show me a ball club with nothing to say to nobody and I will tell you where they are in their league, for they are probably in seventh place with the cellar door open. I only mean that we was tending to business and tending it good. Off the field there was no water bags dropped out of windows, no nailing nobody’s shoes to the floor nor shortsheeting the bed nor any of the things that you read about in books.

We got back from the first trip to Boston early in the evening. Me and Coker and Canada and Perry and Lindon and Squarehead went down in the Manhattan Drugs for a late evening bite, and we lazed around and played the juke and read the comic books off the stand. It was a cold night out. It looked more like the middle of December then the last of April, and we ended up just sitting there looking out the window at the people rushing by, not talking much, and finally Coker piped up, saying, “Sgurd Nattahnam.”

“Who?” said Lindon.

“Sgurd Nattahnam,” said Coker again.

I caught it right away, for I noticed where Coker was looking. He was looking through the window where the words “Manhattan Drugs” was painted facing outside, reading it off backwards, and I played along, saying “Syadnus Nepo.”

Then Perry caught on and he said “Slaem Tnellecxe,” and soon Canada picked it up, saying “Scitemsoc.” This must of went on for a long while, for even Squarehead latched on to what was being did, saying at last, “Oh, now I teg ti,” and we all got a great laugh out of that. Then we went back up.

There was a big card game down in Sam’s room. I guess everybody was there but Red and George and Scotty and Sunny Jim that never mix in much plus the boys that their wives had a place in the city. Also plus Sid that lives up with his mother on Riverside Drive. We drifted down and watched, lugging in chairs and sitting on the backs so as to see. They had 2 tables shoved together, and it was a nice quiet game, everybody talking low and chatting about this and that, not worrying the cards, and I felt like playing and I said so, and Sam said through the cigar, “Go ahead and get in. All of you boys get in. We will take your money and keep you from spending it careless.”

“There is too many already,” said Goose.

“Hell,” said Sam, “we will play with 2 decks and make it wild and woolly.”

We went and lugged another table and sat in, and we played awhile a dime limit. The wind slapped in against the windows. You could hear it whistling up and down betwixt the buildings. It was all nice and cozy, nobody trying to win, just throwing in their money and running the cards. Along about the fifth hand Coker said. “Check to Esoog.”

“What is that?” said Sam.

“I said check to Esoog,” Coker said.

Sam looked around. He looked at me and I was all a-grin. “Say it 1 more time, you imitation of a shortstop,” said Sam to Coker, and Coker said it again, Sam taking his cigar out of his mouth like that would help him hear. “That is what I thought you said,” said Sam, and he put the dead cigar back in his mouth.

“Beats the shit out of me,” said Goose. “Everybody has throwed down, so I guess he means my bet. Bet a dime.”

“Esoog bets net cents,” Sam said.

“You and that goddam cigar,” said Goose.

“It ain’t the cigar,” said Sam. “It is your ears. I talk as plain as the eson on your ecaf.”

“Say it again,” said Goose. Sam said it again. Coker took the pot with 3 jacks. “Goddam it,” said Goose, “I had 3 sneves,” and he showed his hand to prove it.

Then it wasn’t a poker game no more. It was saying names and asking what was said, and saying it again, and then maybe asking again, and then saying it again, 3 and 4 and 5 times.

“Whose deal?”

“Nodnil.”

“Who?”

“Nodnil. It was Das Mas Elay just dealed, so now it is Nodnil. Next it will be Ylgu. Next after that Yrrep Nospmis. Next after that Ecurb.”

1 by 1 the boys come in. Gene caught on the quickest after Goose, and after him at least 1 fellow come in on every hand, and sometimes more, and them that was in batted it around plenty until there was none but Bruce Pearson still in the dark. I think we was on the train west before Bruce caught on to what was cooking.