The Southpaw (30 page)

We opened in Pittsburgh on a Wednesday, still trailing Cleveland by 1.

I worked, my third start of the year.

It rained the night before, and now and then a few drops spreckled down. The boys complained the outfield was sloppy. Dutch started Swanee in left in place of Vincent Carucci on account of Vince wearing glasses. He can never keep them clean in the rain.

In the fifth, with 2 out and nobody on, Lucky Judkins grounded down to Mills and it looked like the inning was over. But Morty kicked it around some, and Lucky was on, and Pittsburgh was soon to know that when you can get a Mammoth out you best do it while the doing is good, for Swanee followed with a hit into left, sending Lucky to third, and Sid shot another into right, scoring Lucky and moving Swanee to third. Then Pasquale drilled 1 back through the box into center, Swanee scoring, Max Gurwell, the Pittsburgh pitcher, going off to the showers, and the score now 2-0.

It was still like that in the last of the seventh. I had 2 strikes on Steve Baker and Red called for a curve, nothing too good, thinking maybe we would just nick the corner and get the call. It was in there, and Frank Porter, an old-time immortal, now an umpire, called it a ball.

Red flipped his lid. Red never argues unless he feels he is right. I believe that was the first squawk he raised all year. Many a ballplayer squawks loud and long 3 times a week, but not Red, and it makes it all the worse on the ump because everybody knows that Red never beefs unless he has had a raw call. He got up out of his crouch and said something to Porter, and Dutch bellowed out from the dugout, and I come down the line, and Ugly and Gene and Sid; and George shouted down from third, “Up yours, up yours,” and we ganged up on Porter and give him an awful nasty talking to, and then we cooled down a bit and the boys started back to their positions, Red putting in a last word. “You know,” said he, “you got to keep awake even on the O-and-2 pitch. That was a good pitch and this here man should be out. There is 1 thing that burns my ass over and above all other things in this world and that is to have a man struck out and then have him still up at the plate,” and he banged his fist in his glove and stamped his feet and growed all scarlet in the face. Finally Porter turned his back.

I shouted down that in my opinion when an umpire went blind he should be pensioned off, and Porter turned around again. “Ain’t you the smart 1?” he said. “Did some big-league ballplayer teach you that clever statement?”

Red crouched down and give me the sign, and with it the music, and he shouted down to me, “We will get him anyways, Henry, even if Porter is a Knarf Retrop.” That done it!

“Time! Time!” shouts Porter, loud as he can. “Stop the goddam game!

Traphagen! Out! Out I say! Off the field!” and he give Red the thumb, jerking it back and pointing to the dugout. Red got up and looked at Porter and then begun to laugh, and Dutch come off the bench shouting, “Why? Why?” and the whole rhubarb was on again. Joe Jaros come out to me. “What did he say?” said Joe.

“He called him a Knarf Retrop,” I said, and Joe begun to laugh and went back to the bench and told the boys, and they all laughed and begun shouting at Porter, “Knarf Retrop!” for about 1 inning until finally he come over and ordered the whole bench into the clubhouse, all except Dutch and 1 coach to be named by Dutch, and the bench went off laughing, and the boys in the field was laughing, and even Pittsburgh was laughing though they did not know at what.

What it amounted to was it give us all such a laugh and relaxed us so much that we loosened up and begun to play ball like it was all in fun, like it was hitting practice where you are all loose and limber and nothing counts but take your swipes and leave the next man bat.

George opened our ninth with a single. Dutch was coaching third now, with Joe Jaros shifted over to first, and Dutch signed for the sacrifice, playing for 1 insurance run, the score still 2-0, and Lucky stepped out of the box and looked down at Dutch, pleading like, and Dutch switched it and give Lucky the sign to hit away, just playing a hunch, and Lucky rammed a double down the line in right, Dutch holding George at third, there being none out, and Swanee hit, sending George and Lucky home, and Sid followed with his third home run of the year, a drive into the stands in right that was still rising when last I seen it. With Ugly on and 2 gone Goose lifted 1 into the bleachers in left. I fanned to end the inning, and we got them out quick enough in the ninth to take the ball game 8-0. That was number 3 for me. I was the first in the league to win that number.

Lindon Burke pitched and won Thursday, his first start of the year, and his cause was helped when Squarehead pinch-hit and connected for his first and only big-time home run.

In my opinion Lindon has got all the makings of a first-rate pitcher. I will not say an immortal, for he has not got that kind of stuff. The main thing is wildness. It don’t crop up so long as he has got only the batter to worry about, but as soon as men get on base he begins to worry about his runners, and then he starts throwing too quick, and the first thing anybody knows he has blowed and the only thing left to do is take away the ball from him and say you are sorry and better luck next time. Then the new man comes on from the bullpen to cean up the wreck that Lindon left behind.

As it turned out, Lindon had the honor of pitching us into first place, for Boston whipped Cleveland that afternoon, and that tied it, Boston 11/2 out, Brooklyn 21/2, and the rest beginning to fall behind according to form.

It was this same day in Pittsburgh that Sam Yale got in some sort of a wrangle with a fan hanging over the barrier just off to 1 side of the dugout. Nothing come of it, but the band struck up “The Old Gray Mare,” which is what they always play when they hope to get Sam’s goat. Pittsburgh has got the biggest band in the league. “Well,” said Sam, “they got no ball club so I guess they must give the customers their entertainment 1 way or the other.” That got a good laugh up and down the bench.

I shouted down at Sam, “It looks like you have now got another bandleader to take a poke at,” for on page 105 of the book called

“Sam Yale—Mammoth” it tells where Sam gets all riled up when that song is played and pastes the bandleader if he don’t cut it out.

“I suppose that is another thing you read in my book,” shouted Sam to me. I said it was, and he thought it over a little. Then he said,

“Say there, Knah, how about you sending home for that book,” and I said I would.

We fell behind the next day temporarily. Knuckles tangled in a beauty with Les Chapman, the Pittsburgh ace, and it went into extra innings tied at 2-2. Dutch’s strategy fell flat in the first of the tenth. He sent Squarehead up to hit for Knuckles with 2 on and 2 out and Squarehead fanned, and Bub Castetter come on in the last of the tenth and lost the ball game right quick. Bub said he was not warmed enough. Cleveland beat Brooklyn and was back at the top by 1 full game. We seen a little item in the paper where they was getting orders for World Series seats in Cleveland. That give us a laugh.

On the train to St. Louis I begun a letter home. It is wrote on railroad paper, and it says, “Dear Pop, Would you send me Sam Yale’s book that is laying on the . . .” That is all the letter writing I done from Aqua Clara through July. Perry come along just then and said there was a card game down in the other car, and I shoved the letter in my bag, thinking I would polish it off later, but then I telephoned from St. Louis instead and never thought about the letter again until I found it amongst my gear a long time later. It is 1 of the souvenirs now, and they come in handy, for they bring back memories of all that happened day by day. There is Pop’s clips in the scrapbooks, which is how I remember how the ball games went, plus a good deal of stuff having nothing to do with ball games a-tall but plenty to do with memory. There is an ash tray that Pop swiped out of the hotel the night of the Opener and a spoon we et with down in the hotel dining room, me and Holly and Pop and Perry and George and Red and Rosemary and Aaron, and a hotel glass and a towel and 2 baseballs, 1 signed by the Mayor of New York and 1 that Heinz hit for Boston that Ugly throwed him out at first with the last play of the opener that Canada tucked in his pocket and give to me in the clubhouse after.

I remember that first St. Louis series on account of the weather. It was the first real baseball weather we seen since Aqua Clara, neither too hot nor too cold, and the sun come out warm in the morning and went the distance. We seen the first shirt-sleeves crowd of the year. The boys shed their jackets and sat in the dugout soaking up the sun, and at night, up in the hotel, you begun to see more and more walking around in shorts and less. I guess the reason I remember the St. Louis weather so good is because it was never like that after. We was back in early June and again in July and again late in August, and ever after it was blistering hot. Red says if Old Man River was to spill up Olive Street and wash the town away there would be no comeback from him. He would stand there and cheer the waters on. But you can’t go by Red, for he says the same of all the towns.

Hams Carroll twirled the first game. He stood by the clubhouse window, looking out. “Shine, you old sun, shine away,” he said. “Heat up old Hamses soupbone.” He had it rocky the first 2 innings. Yet Dutch left him in, and we come back in the third with 3 and tied it up.

In the first of the seventh Swanee hit a homer with 1 aboard, for Dutch been playing Swanee regular ever since the Pittsburgh series, and Sid done the same 1 minute after, and Hams blanked St. Louis the rest of the way.

Sam worked the day after. It was warm, though not so warm as he might of liked it, but everybody was hitting and he got by without much trouble. In the middle of the game a wire come for Pasquale and Vincent that their father was very sick in Frisco, and they took off.

Dutch played Sunny Jim in left and moved Swanee over into the sun field. That give us only 1 outfielder on the bench, so the following day Dutch made Canada work in the outfield the whole of the drill, just in case. This bothered Canada, for he was beginning to get a big bang out of first base. However Dutch said that the club was not run for the purpose of helping Canada Smith to get a big bang out of life, and that ended that.

Piss Sterling turned in a nice job against St. Louis the third day. It was a tie game, 2-2, going into the ninth. Scotty pinch-hit for Piss and singled, and Perry pinch-run for Scotty and worried St. Louis to death.

They had never set eyes on him before. He kept dashing up and down the baseline and making Owen Fischer throw over to Jim Klosky, and every time Fischer throwed Perry dove back in head first until finally Fischer throwed 1 that got past Klosky and Perry was up like a grease of lightning and down to second. George untied the whole affair with a single into short left, and Perry come home like a tornado with the run that counted. Gil Willowbrook pitched the ninth and done what needed to be done. Cleveland lost to Washington and we was tied for first again.

We seen in the Cleveland papers in the morning where Vincent and Pasquale’s father died, and we all felt sad and sent a telegram and flowers. In the clubhouse Squarehead said we must go out and murder Cleveland for Vincent and Pasquale. How corny can you get?

It reminded me of how it always was in the books about Sid Yule by Homer B. Lester where somebody would be sick and Sid Yule would go out and win the ball game for the sick 1. I do not believe nobody ever actually
died
in them books, however, and I cannot remember that Sid Yule ever bumped up against Cleveland on a day in May along about the time they had the bug in their brain that they might win the pennant.

They was mostly a very young club, rough and ready, and they hustled, and they fought with the umps and they fought with the opposition and played a good brand of ball up through August or thereabouts until they begun to go down in a heap and wound up fighting amongst themselves. But in May they was still a scrappy outfit that if anybody was to beat they had to hustle and fight and scrap as hard as them.

Dutch give me the assignment, and that pleased me fine, and I told the boys in the clubhouse, “Get me a run or 2 and we will have these lads a good deal quietened down by supper time.”

We got no runs in the first, however. For about 4 innings Cleveland shouted theirselves hoarse trying to rattle me until finally I pulled this little stunt that cost me 25 dollars in fines by the League. “Say boy,”

said they, “it cannot be true that you are roomed with a n—r.” “Maybe Henry is a n—r himself,” said another. “Say there, Wiggen,” said yet another, “I run into your brother this morning. He shined my shoes at the barber shop.” I scarcely minded what they said. It is all a part of the game, and I never answered them, though 1 time they said something that was just a little bit
too
nasty and I stopped working and faced the Cleveland bench and give them the old sign, 1 finger up.

Neininger, umping behind the plate, warned me not to do it again.

The League considers it a vulgar gesture detrimental to the best interests of baseball, and I done it no more that day though I relied on it several times later in the year for 1 reason or another. It cost me 25 each time, and I always paid it quite cheerfully. To me, it is worth 10,000 words, for when no words will say what it is in your heart to say you have said it all with that simple sign—the crooked arm and the old 1 finger up.

Red made me work very slow. These boys was all jitterbugging, hoping to get off to a flying start, and the slower we worked the itchier they got, and Red said it is a well-known fact that a club that is itching must scratch, and as soon as their hand is occupied with scratching they are playing 1-handed baseball. “So leave us take all the time in the world,” said Red, “for in the long run your turtle will beat your rabbit.” This tied in with what Dutch said in the lecture.

“Play steady ball,” he said, “and leave these young kids make their own mistakes.”

I begun to wonder along about the fifth when they was going to begin making them. They jumped me for a run in the third and another in the fifth. I was hooked up with Robin McKenna that next to me is the youngest pitcher in the league. He was blazing them through, and for 5 innings we never got a man past first.