The Southpaw (40 page)

The poem goes as follows:

“Oh, the outlook was not brilliant for the Mudville 9 that day, For the score stood 4 to 2 with but an inning left to play, And so when Cooney died at first and Burrows did the same, A gloomy silence fell upon the patrons of the game.”

That is the first stanza. There are many stanzas, but they come harder and harder for Bill the older he gets, and the drunker.

Sometimes he will get to “Cooney,” and sometimes to “Burrows,” and sometimes as far as the “gloomy silence,” but generally he never gets very far beyond the “outlook,” where “the outlook was not brilliant,” and that was what beat in my mind, over and over,

“Oh the outlook was not brilliant,” for that was how it was, not brilliant a-tall.

I believe the words of the poem run around in my mind 3 or 4 days, probably until after we hit the east again, and I never remembered it till now, thinking back on everything that happened.

Yet as far as that goes nothing ever really
happened
a-tall, at least nothing to
write
about, and probably that was what the trouble was, that nothing happened, that all was quiet. The things that was eating away at our mind was never mentioned. The rumors about Dutch was pretty much at an end, yet it hung over our head, though we never spoke of it, just like it hung over our head that the fat lead we had not many weeks before was now scarcely a lead except on paper, and Boston was coming on in a rush, and the Series melon that dangled before our eyes might 1 of these days move clear out of reach, and yet we never mentioned it nor ever admitted that we was nervous and afraid.

Now, in the spin, there was nothing but silence, and nobody had a good word for the next 1, and tempers was short and you waited around expecting any minute that somebody would blow their top, and all you hoped was that you was somewheres in a far corner of the lobby when it blowed.

Lindon drawed the assignment the first day in St. Louis. He had my sympathies. It was supposed to be Piss but his sinuses dripped like crazy and his bladder acted up. He has a bad bladder, which is how he got his name, and when he is nervous he cannot control it. It would of been my turn after his, but I had worked Saturday and so it was Lindon, and he blowed up at Piss in the clubhouse beforehand, and Piss never answered but just stood there at the trough with 2 cotton sticks up his nose, leaning with 1 hand against the wall and standing maybe 5 minutes and then going back and laying down on a bench and then getting up and going back to the trough, and you could see he was in no shape to pitch, and I said so to Lindon, and Lindon said if he worked regular like me he would not care, but here he was supposed to go out and turn in a job after not working for weeks except an inning in relief just before we left New York, and he called me a dirty name, which he would not of ordinarily did.

Lindon kept getting in trouble and then pulling out. Red steadied him and made him take things slow, and Lindon wore a worried face and frowned and scowled and done 100 useless things that sapped away his energy, mopping his face 2 and 3 times between pitches and picking up the resin and throwing it down and picking it up again, and he balked once in the eighth and it damn near cost the ball game, but he pulled out of that, too, and after every inning he come in the dugout sweating like I never seen him sweat before, his eyebrows plastered down to his head, and I fanned him with a towel between innings and told him I never seen 1 man throw so much stuff as him.

The score was tied 2-2 when Jim Klosky come up with 2 down and none on in the last of the ninth and lined 1 into the corner in right center, square in the angle of the wall where they come together, and Swanee and Pasquale give chase. Both boys have played St.

Louis many a time over the years, and they know the walls, but it was a hard 1 to play nonetheless, and Pasquale got his glove on the ball, but it spun out, and Swanee trapped it and begun the throw about the time Klosky steamed around second, and Gene Park took the throw in short center and fired in, and Ugly yelled “Burke,” meaning Lindon should cut it off because Klosky made third standing up, and Lindon cut it off behind the box about halfway to second.

What got in Lindon then I will never know. Klosky made the turn at third, edging a few steps in towards home, and Lindon cocked his arm, and Klosky made a faint for home, though of course he had no plans whatever in that direction, and he edged off a few more steps, and then a few more still, and still and yet a few more. Then all at once he broke for home. I do not know why except that when your club is in fifth and headed neither up nor down you might try anything just for the laughs, and Lindon stood with his arm cocked, like he was a statue froze to the spot. It seemed like years. It might of been as long as I second, and there was still plenty of time to nab Klosky at home, and then he throwed, except he did not throw home to Red, but down to George at third, throwing to the wrong base like you will see kids do on a playground 9, and George come out for the throw as fast as he could and took it and fired to Red, and Klosky hit the dirt and made it by the split of a second, and that was the ball game.

There was never a sound in the clubhouse, never a word spoke nor a laugh laughed. There was only the sound of water in the shower, and the sound of Mick tearing tape. If somebody was to snap the cap on a Coke it would of amounted to a noise.

Chicago beat Boston that night. I caught the score on a newscast at 11. I never care much for them newscasts myself, but beginning along about the end of August when the race growed so hot the first item on many a newscast was the ball scores, never mind the wars and never mind the politics, and we would catch that much and then tune out, and I went down the hall and dropped in on Lindon, thinking I might cheer him up, and the room was dark and Lucky said do not turn on the light for he had give Lindon some pills to go to sleep. Lucky said the last thing Lindon said before he went under was tell me he did not mean to call me that name he called me in the clubhouse. Me and Lucky talked in the dark. He said Lindon was all broke up over the boner he pulled, and he cried and cried and carried on plenty, saying he had ruined Coker’s plan to buy his folks the brick house and ruined all the plans all the boys made to take trips in the winter or buy a house or do what they planned with their Series money, and he said that on account of him Hams Carroll’s little girl would be a cripple.

Hams has a little girl with a twisted leg that he would have fixed in Minnesota in the winter with the Series money. Finally Lindon was just about hysterical and Lucky went and got some pills from Doc Loftus and put him to sleep.

I worked and won on Wednesday night with my arm sore from my shoulder partway to my elbow where I strained it trying to shift some of the heavy duty off my back. Red kept nagging me, saying he seen too many arms throwed out by youngsters with more ambition then brains.

Yet I suppose he was as relieved as the rest that I won it, for Boston smothered Chicago 11-1.

Sad Sam Yale went the distance on Thursday, and he won it, and Boston won again in Chicago, and the east headed east for the final time, Boston still hot and the Mammoths glad enough to have 11/2 games to go home on because there was times when it looked like we might have even less. We figured to do better at home then we done on the road, and Dutch said the same, and the writers, too. Things could of been worse, I suppose.

When we hit New York I got a call from the Perkinsville “Clarion” asking me where was Bill Duffy. They had not heard from him in a week, and I remembered that the last I seen of Bill he was planning a trip across the river for a drink with a friend in East St. Louis. But I did not tell them that in Perkinsville, nor I did not tell them Bill was in his cups from the time we left Chicago.

Bill always drunk heavy, but never like that before, and the greater the pressure got the harder he drunk. Under pressure you squirm out the best way you know how. For me it was the far corner of the lobby with a murder. For Bill it was the bottle.

STANDINGS OF THE CLUBS

Saturday Morning, August 30

Won

Lost

Pct.

Games Behind

New York

78

45

.634

—

Boston

79

49

.617

11/2

Brooklyn

72

52

.581

61/2 

Chapter 32

Labor Day fell on a Monday. In the morning, before we was out of bed, there come a knock on the door, a very chipper sort of a knock—

Boom, diddy boom boom, BOOM BOOM—like somebody was in high spirits. We could not imagine who.

The door opened and in walked Keith Crane, his grips in his hand and his face all a smile, and he set his grips on the floor and come over and shook our hand. “How is the flipper?” said I to him, “and what in the world are you doing in New York?”

“I been brung up,” said he. “Judkins been put on the inactive list.”

I shot Perry a quick look. We always liked Keith and wished him well, but we always considered him strictly AA, a good ballplayer but never really the tops, a southpaw with a crossfire delivery that is very puzzling to hitters until they catch on to it, good control and a fair curve but not much speed. He come to Q. C.

our second year there with a great record in the Northern League, which is where the Mammoths send all colored ballplayers until they are ready for AA under Mike Mulrooney. Perry seemed pleased, however. “Maybe you will bring us out of the slump,” he said.

“I believe you are out of it already,” said Keith. We had just took 2 over the weekend in Washington and picked up a full game on Boston.

“However, I must admit I was in a sweat yesterday,” and he went on to say that the hostess on the airplane kept reporting the scores on the Mammoths in Washington and Boston in Brooklyn inning by inning all during the flight. He said half the plane was for Boston and half for the Mammoths, and they hardly talked about anything else. “How is your back?” said he to me.

“Not so good,” I said.

“Mike Mulrooney says it is your nerves,” said he. “Who will pitch today?”

“Anybody is libel to,” I said. “For all you know you are libel to work yourself.”

“I am just barely off the plane,” said he. “I just got off the plane last night.” He was pretty fidgety at the suggestion.

Me and Perry laughed. “If Dutch works you you had better work and not be full of explanations,” I said.

I was a little late to the park that day. Traffic was slow between the hotel and Brooklyn, and the jam around the park was thicker then I ever seen it before. I got out of the cab and walked the last few blocks through all that crush in the broiling heat. There must of been thousands come over from New York plus of course thousands and thousands from Brooklyn itself. Brooklyn was just about counted out by now, and I suppose they give up on their own chances. What they was really hoping to see was the skids put under us and the road made easy for Boston. Next to seeing Brooklyn win the great joy for Flatbush is seeing the Mammoths lose.

Crane worked and won, fogging them down crossfire and having the good sense to do what Red said on every pitch. Canada turned in a nice job in center field, playing there in place of Lucky now, and it looked like Dutch might have that problem licked.

Boston lost its first game to Washington, and our cushion jumped to 31/2 again with 1 game less to go. We was in better spirits in the clubhouse between games then any time since the western swing, and the quartet sung.

I thought I might work the second game, but I did not. Dutch was saving me for the Boston series coming up. That suited me fine.

Knuckles Johnson worked it and lost it 4-3 to Bill Scudder, 2 of Brooklyn’s runs unearned on a bad throw by Bruce Pearson. Bruce took over for Red. It would of usually been Goose when Red needed a rest, but Goose had 2 floating cartileges in his elbow that kept him on the bench. Dutch eat out Bruce something awful afterwards, and Boston took the nightcap from Washington, so our cushion was back at 21/2.

Tuesday was an open day, but we drilled in the afternoon in all the heat. I throwed some, but mostly I stretched out bare to the waist deep in center field, and I left the sun bathe the back, and it was good.

When we left the park after the drill there was already a line at the bleacher gate, 40 or 50 people sitting up against the wall, the stands mostly sold and only the bleachers left.

The club roomed Keith with Perry, and me and Bruce went in together, Sid living at home now that we was back in New York. That was pretty much the final break-up of the old Queen City gang, Coker and Canada having split some weeks before over a matter I never knowed the inside story of, Lindon fairly chummy with Lucky now, and
them
2 roomies, and Perry with Crane as stated above.

It was in the cards. We still sung in the shower, me and Coker and Canada and Perry, but we did not run together like once we done.

We was Mammoths now, no longer Queen City Cowboys, swallowed up you might say, though never swallowed up really, being neither Mammoths of the old school—Sam and Knuckles and Swanee and that bunch—and yet not green rooks neither, rooming more or less together and drilling more or less together but still and all not tight and close like we was at the first, not like some weeks before when wherever 1 was there was the others 9 times in 10 like these twins that you see pictures of in the paper joined at the hip. Perry and Keith went their own way, and off the field I almost never seen them. They went uptown a hell of a lot. Lindon and Canada developed a very fancy taste in restaurants. They spent a lot of time at Toots Shorses, and Coker put in a hell of a lot of hours at various clothing stores. He soon begun wearing a different suit every day, and I never seen a guy so worked up if his tie didn’t match his socks. Well, that was okay, too.

I figured I could put up with Bruce for a month. Mostly he would sit and stare out the window, and then again he would trail me to my place in the lobby and sit near by, and I would be lost in a murder, and when I put it down he was still there, just sitting. Sometimes he would fall asleep. Sunny Jim said that me and Bruce was not
real
lobby sitters, for your real lobby sitter will neither read nor sleep, but merely sit. That was the most conversation I had with Sunny Jim all year.