The Southpaw (41 page)

Wednesday morning about 6 A.M. Bruce woke me and told me the radio said there was a wreck on the train from Boston. He said they put on a number of extra sections to bring down the crowds, and 1

end of the railroad forgot to tell the other what was up. I told him to turn off the radio and get back in bed. He said he always got up early, ever since he was a boy in Bainbridge, Georgia, and he asked me would I come and go hunting with him in the winter, and I said I would if he turned off the radio, and he done so.

But that was all the sleep I got. I was jumpy, and I was worried about my back, for it was tight from the knob behind my neck to the knob of my spine, and I dreamed all night that we dropped 3 to Boston and lost the lead, and Bruce said he believed that dreams come true because he dreamed 1 time that there was rabbits in a certain meadow, and he went there and there was. I said I believed it was impossible that we could drop 3 in a row to Boston. I said if we took even 1 we might scrape through, for I knowed that as long as we had the lead we had hope. Once we fell behind we would never make it back.

Sam worked. I had not worked since the Wednesday before in St. Louis, and I do not know what the strategy was, but Dutch picked Sam. Fred Nance was on the hill for Boston. Me and Keith Crane kept warm in the bullpen.

Sam was in trouble now and then. He give up 1 in the fifth and another in the sixth and steadied down for the seventh, and in the last of the seventh Canada and Vincent singled after 2 was out, and Sid blasted a home run and we led 3-2.

Sam was rocky again in the eighth. Here and there amongst the crowd the song took up whenever Sam was in trouble, and groups of people would sing, “The old gray mare she ain’t what she used to be, ain’t what she used to be, ain’t what she used to be,” most of them down from Boston or over from Brooklyn, and generally they was drowned out by the rest. Nonetheless the song come through. It never bothered Sam, or if it did he did not show it, knowing as well as anybody that he was not what he used to be. Nobody at 34 has the stuff he had at 30, or 25. The crowds begun to sing that song in Washington the weekend before Labor Day, and they picked it up in Brooklyn and sung it a number of times during the holiday doubleheader, and it was with us yet on Wednesday and all through September right down to the wire.

Casey Sharpe begun the trouble for Sam in the eighth with a single, and Heinz moved him along with a bunt. Chickering slammed 1 back towards the box and it went through into center, and Canada come in fast and fielded it with his bare hand and uncorked the long throw home, and it bounced once near the box and kicked up the dust, and Red took it at the plate and slapped it on Sharpe, Chickering going to second on the play, and the telephone rung in the bullpen, and it was for me. I walked the long walk across the green.

Tubs Blodgett was the hitter, Chickering on second, 2 down, and still the 1 run lead for us. Tubs reminds me of Mike Mulrooney. I do not know him in a personal way except to say “Hello,” but he is the friendly type, and he looks like Mike, red of face and jolly. He hits with a black bat, and he waved it and looked as fierce as he could, though it is hard to look fierce when your face is a natural smile and you look like Santa Claus without the beard. I throwed a few down to warm, and then I was ready, and Red put his mask on and signed for nothing but curves. We always throw curves to Tubs, and I checked Chickering, and then I throwed the curve, and it did not break, and Tubs whaled it down the line in left, and a great cry rose from the people. I did not look. Then the cry all of a sudden stopped, for the ball hooked foul, and the new ball come out and I checked my runner again, and then I throwed a second curve, and it broke better then the first, though not very good a-tall, and Tubs whaled it again, trying to pull it close, aiming for the wall in left, and this time it hooked but not so soon, and finally it done so and landed in the upper deck a bare 5 feet foul or so.

Red come down and asked me what was the matter. “Nothing,” I said.

“Only my back. I do not seem to get the full motion.”

“I do not think he will expect another curve right away,” said Red, “so we will throw him another,” and he went back behind the plate and settled in his crouch, and a drop of perspiration rolled down off my nose, and I stepped off the rubber to itch it before I throwed, and I felt of my face, and it was wet like I was fresh out of the shower, and I toed back in and tugged at the peak of my cap with my thumb and first finger, and with the other fingers I took the sweat of my brow and rubbed it along my fingertips, and then, with my fingers still wet, I throwed the curve.

That is what you call a spitter. It is outlawed from baseball. A player can pull a suspension for a year if he throws it, for you can kill a man with a spitter if you hit him right. You do not have it under full control.

All this I knowed, and I did not care. I did not wish to kill Tubs Blodgett, but my curve was not breaking on account of my back, and I throwed quick before I had time to think about consequences, and the curve broke big and sharp, for my fingers was slimy and wet, and Tubs swang and missed, striking out and ending the inning. Red whipped it down towards third, like he was making the play on Chickering coming down from second, and George never even reached for the throw but left it roll to the outfield, for the rolling dried it off, and Boston stormed from their dugout and beat their chest and raged and swore and howled and stamped their feet, for it was plain to all that I had throwed a spitter. But Frank Porter could not call it a spitter because the ball was laying out in left, dry, like new, because the rolling dried it, and I was all a-tremble, knowing that I done wrong according to the rules and could of been suspended and might of killed Tubs Blodgett besides. The crowd give me a hand when I come to the bench for the way I fanned Tubs on 3 pitches, and they give Canada a hand for the fine throw on Casey Sharpe from center, yet I hardly heard it I was so scared and shaking.

We scored twice in the last of the eighth, and I coasted through the ninth, and the cushion was 31/2 again and the quartet sung in the shower.

Boston protested to the League on the spitter I throwed Blodgett, and the League turned it down on grounds of lack of evidence though warning Dutch if I done it again I would be in hot water, and Dutch told me and said I must not do it again, and he laughed, for he was in a good frame of mind that night, which was Wednesday night, and he pitched me Thursday.

The heat hit the peak on Thursday. 1 fan dropped dead. I wished I was anywheres else but here, though I turned in a good job for 7 innings and left the ball game with 3 on and none out in the top of the eighth and the score knotted 2-2 on account of my back.

It was not so much the pain. But I could not get the full motion, and the curve and the screw broke crazy, not like they should of broke a-tall, and I worried so much about my motion that I believe I give myself away on several pitches, particularly on the 1 to Blodgett that opened the eighth. He singled, and Toomy Richardson singled, and I finally walked Devereaux after he bunted foul twice. Then Dutch come out from the dugout. We could barely hear each other speak, for the noise was so great, and Red said he believed I ought to be lifted because the curve never broke and the fast 1 did not hop and my control was off, and Dutch said that was reasons enough for him, and Keith Crane come down from the bullpen and I give him the ball and said I was sorry to leave him in such a fix, and I walked off.

He pulled out of it that inning, fanning Black and getting Granby to hit into a double play, Gene to Ugly to Sid, and he got a terrific ovation from the crowd. But then he lost it in the eleventh after throwing 3 innings of perfect baseball on a home run by Granby that cleared the fence in right by 3 feet, if that much.Dutch done away with the extra drill beginning on Friday. We did not even begin to warm until just before the lights went on. It was cooler, and the tenseness seemed to lift with the heat. The crowd was quieter though the figures showed that it was about as large as the day before, not capacity but a good 55,000 at least, and Keith Crane drawed the assignment, the second straight day he worked.

The boys did not seem so tight, nor Boston neither. There was lulls in the game, times that you would of thought everybody lost interest, times when there was no insults floating back and forth, sometimes 2 and 3 innings at a stretch and not a beef against an umpire. There was times on the bench when there would be laughter, and something might come under discussion having nothing a-tall to do with the ball game, and then you was brought back sharp because suddenly you remembered that the melon was riding on every pitch and every hit, and everything anyone was ordered to do they tried to do it perfect at least just this once because it was not only their piece of the melon but also the next fellow’s, and every man’s hope hung in the balance.

Yet we must of been tight all the same. I remember along about the sixth inning, when Dutch sent me down to the bullpen, I looked at him and he sweated so free you would of thought it was the middle of yesterday afternoon when the heat hit the peak, and Joe Jaros beside him was as wet as Dutch, and Clint and Egg the same, their faces glistering under the lights, and up and down the line, 1 after the other, I studied their faces, and all was wet and shining, and I felt of my own, and the same was true.

We was 1 up after 6, but in the first of the seventh Boston got to Keith.

Sharpe walked and Heinz singled and Chickering powdered 1 high up, high in the lights and down again, and Pasquale raced and stood with his back flat against the wall, waiting, and then he dropped his hands and walked forwards, back towards his position, and that was the end, as quick and as sudden as I give it to you here, and Boston had it, 6-4, and the cushion was 11/2 again.

There was nothing said. There was no lecture. There was nobody eat out. There was only silence, and I suppose you would call it a peaceful silence except that it was not peaceful neither, and I do not know what sort of a silence it was, only that it was thick and heavy. Dutch went through to his office in back, and soon he come out again, and he called 5 names, looking down in his hand at 5 shreds of paper. He called, “Simpson, September 1—Park, September 2—Wilks, September 3—Gonzalez, September 4—Wiggen, September 5,” and we each come forward and took the shred of paper with our name and the date that we wrote down on the shreds and put them in a glass way back around the first of July, betting 5 apiece on the day we would clinch the flag. I took my shred and folded it and give it a flip with my finger, and it bounced off the wall and landed amongst Hams Carroll’s gear, and he scowled and swore.

“There is 150 wrapped in a towel on the shelf in my office,” said Dutch.

“If nobody wins it we will send it off to some f—ing charity or other,” and he turned and disappeared through the door. 

Chapter 33

Yet it begun to look like the 150 would fall after all somewhere amongst the club. Boston moved out and the west moved in, Cleveland for the weekend plus a make-up game on Monday, and Knuckles won the opener, and Hams lost the second, but Sam Yale beat Rob McKenna on Monday. Boston split 2 with Pittsburgh and then was idle Monday, so the cushion was 2 with an even 20 games to go, and Cleveland moved out and Pittsburgh moved in, and I lost on Tuesday night, and Crane on Wednesday, but Hams come back and won the final. Boston lost 2 out of 3 to Cleveland, and the cushion still was 2, Boston muffing their golden opportunity and Alf Keeler roundly eat out and told to resign by the Boston writers according to information brung back by Lucky Judkins. Lucky spent the week in Boston seeing what he could see and keeping the charts for Dutch.

But Dutch called him back after the Pittsburgh series and made him drill regular and sent Clint Strap up to Boston with the charts because if Lucky could whip the trouble in his back and be put on the active list again he figured to be no little help. Lucky come home with a cold. He was sneezing in the clubhouse Friday before the first Chicago game, and Dutch seen him sneeze and told him go down and get a shot of penicillin from Doc Loftus, and then, on further thought, Dutch made
everybody
on the club go and get a shot and keep it from spreading.

It was this same Friday, not long before game time, that Holly hit town.

The first I knowed of it Dutch was in the middle of the lecture when the clubhouse cop come in with a note. Dutch eat the cop out. But nonetheless he took the note and looked at the name and give it to me, and it was from Holly, saying she was in town and would see me after the game.

She was there till Monday morning, putting up at the hotel with the club, 3 floors downstairs. The Mammoths picked up the bill.

Anything that might possibly have a good effect on the club they was happy to pay for, including shelling out 5,000 dollars right about that time for Hams Carroll’s little cripple girl to get worked on by the doctor in Minnesota.

This had a good effect on Hams. He beat Chicago that day, the first time we won 2 in a row since the weekend in Washington just before Labor Day, and afterwards Holly was waiting out under the El tracks where the wives and the girl friends wait.

It was really terrific to see her. I had not saw her since the night of the Opener in April after having just won my first big-time victory and my head was about 97 times the size it ought to been. She was standing and chatting with a number of the others. When the club wins it is a happy little group out there. Days we lose they are libel to be sitting alone, each in their own car, like strangers. We drove back to the hotel with Red and Rosemary Traphagen, and we had supper together, the 4 of us, and then we went our different ways. Holly and Rosemary become fairly thick over that weekend. Also Holly and Patricia Moors.

Holly takes this morbid interest in Patricia.

I told her I had considerable interest in Patricia myself, though probably for different reasons, and then I was sorry I said it. I am always sorry for things 10 seconds too late, and I apologized about times, and she said forget it. There was a kind of a tightness between us that I do not know if it come from the general atmosphere around the hotel or what. It wound up in a brawl, the first really
big
brawl we ever had, which I will discuss further on in this chapter if I do not wander off too far on other things.