The Southpaw (45 page)

“Ga-lup, ga-lup, ga-lup.”

But when he spoke he spoke very quietly. “I do not make wrong moves,” said he. “I make a couple hundred moves a day of 1 sort and another, and most of them is right ones. This club has been missing fire since the middle of July. It has proved too old in places and too young in others. It has got gaps a mile wide wherever you look. But I been making right moves.”

“You just said we was the best since 35,” said I.

“I said nothing of the sort. What I said was I said we would pull it out so long as we had no quitters and nobody dragging their feet amongst us.” He was speaking louder now.

“You said we was the best since 35,” I said again.

“Do not tell me what I said,” said he, and he turned red again and wheeled around and folded his arms like an umpire and clattered off in the other direction, his spikes rattling on the cement. That was the only sound. I seen Red, and he was fumbling with his guards, and his jawbone was working but no sound come forth. I seen Perry, and he was looking down at his shoes. I seen Sad Sam, and he was standing by his locker wiping his face with a towel. Except for Dutch he was the only 1 standing, and he looked at me like he was saying, “Remember, Henry, what I told you on the train.
Nobody really gives a f—what
happens to anybody else
,” and he lit a cigarette and sat down and waited to see what would happen next.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I am glad to know the score. Sam told me it would take me 15 years to find it out, but I have found it out in 1. I am 15 times as smart as Sam. Piss on you, Sam,” said I to Sam. “Piss on the whole lot of you. Pitch me tomorrow. Pitch me
today
for all of that.”

Something snapped in my back. I did not give it a thought at the time, but I remembered it afterwards.

“Pitch me any old time,” I said, “but do not call me a quitter or tell me I am dragging my feet. We won 96 ball games through yesterday and 26 of them was mine. On a staff of 9 pitchers plus Crane tell me who dragged their feet and who did not. There may of been right decisions, Dutch, but there was also some boners, and any of the boys will tell you the same.”

Dutch looked up and down the line at the boys, and they all become suddenly extremely interested in their shoelaces. “Time is running short,” said he, looking up at the clock, “and I do not plan to turn this clubhouse into a debating society for Henry Wiggen. I have heard about clubs which was run like debating societies. But I cannot say that I remember seeing any of them win a flag. Has anybody got anything to say in the 2 minutes left?”

Gene Park cleared his throat. “Roguski,” said he to Coker, “you laid a little too deep yesterday. If I was you I would position myself and then move up 2 steps. You have not got the arm of Ugly Jones.”

“I will remember,” said Coker.

Then they filed out, and finally I hoisted myself off the bench and followed, meeting Red in the alleyway where he was waiting until the anthem was done. My back felt much better. “Thank you, Red,” said I,

“for backing me up like you done.”

“It did not seem like a good time for a clubhouse fight,” he said.

“Somebody always comes out with his neck dangling loose. It would never be Dutch’s, so why should it be mine?”

“But why mine?” said I.

“You are young and single,” he said, “and there is 15 other clubs that would jump at the chance to grab your contract. It ain’t true of many of the rest of us.”

“Red,” said I, now noticing for the first time that the pain was pretty much gone, “I will appreciate you hitting about 4 home runs today.”

“I will try,” he said. “We must win it. I do not think that if we lose today we will have the strength to win tomorrow, and I know for sure that we cannot last through a playoff,” and then the cheer went up and the anthem was done, and Red strolled out, and I slumped in a seat flush in the corner of the dugout with my back braced against the walls where they come together with this stinking old hat about 15 sizes too small sitting on top of my head.

It was less of a crowd then on Friday. The weather was warm and clear but there was football games here and there that drained it off, and the Friday record stood, the Saturday figures just barely hitting 75,000, Tawney on the hill for Boston, the best they could do, their staff shot, Sam Yale working for the Mammoths and looking good—at least at the start.

But he was wobbly from time to time, and Dutch lifted him in the last of the fifth for a hitter. The score was 3-3 then. Red, with 1 out, just singled a minute before, and now Swanee pinch-hit for Sam and also singled, and Perry pinch-run for Swanee and stole second, a bit of legwork that worried Tawney no little. George singled, scoring both Red and Perry.

Horse Byrd was in and out of trouble for 2 innings and finally was lifted for a hitter in the last of the seventh—Sunny Jim it was—Gene Park on second and 1 down. Sunny Jim batted lefthanded against the righthanded Tawney and sent a screaming line drive into the bullpen in right. Knuckles and Piss and Keith Crane was all warming there with Bruce and Goose, and when Casey Sharpe come charging in after the ball you can imagine that these boys was hardly a model of co-operation in helping him get it. They stood their ground while Casey went scrambling around between their legs. Alf Keeler claimed interference and demanded that Gene Park be sent back to third, but nothing come of it.

So it was 6-3 when Keith Crane come on to relieve in the eighth, Dutch forced to the gamble with Keith, Keith being the only lefthander left to throw. Boston rode him hard, calling him all kinds of a n—r. But he stood up under it fairly well, having been coached in the matter by Perry, and he blanked them in the eighth. Dutch moved Canada in to first base and sent Scotty Burns in center. We now had no reserve outfielders on the bench, and no reserve infielders neither, the barrel scraped clean, the long trip almost done but the tank just about dry.

That Boston ninth was murder. With every pitch I whispered to Keith Crane, and I prayed for him, and I twisted and turned on the bench, helping each pitch along, working at least as hard as him, until after what seemed like 25 minutes at least he had 2 down, but 2 on, and Granby the hitter. We all remembered when Granby clubbed a home run off Keith at a crucial time a few weeks before, and Dutch and Keith and Red and the whole of the infield had a long conference. A home run now would knot the score.

Then Dutch come back to the bench, and then Keith pitched—a ball, wide—and Dutch was flying out on the field again and arguing with Toft, and then when that was over with he come back, swearing and fuming and claiming he would see Toft put on the retired list in the winter if he had to murder the Commissioner.

Everybody always asks me, “What kind of a man is Dutch Schnell?” I never know exactly what to say. I think he is a great manager, and the statistics back me up in this. His first and only aim in life is winning ball games, and more often he wins them then not, sometimes doing it with worse material then the next club has got. He brings out the best in a fellow if the fellow is his type of a ballplayer. He is always in a fight, right or wrong standing by his guns. Red says if Dutch was Noah in the Bible he would not of took to the ark but would of stood arguing with the goddam flood. There is nothing Dutch will not do for the sake of the ball game. If he thinks it will help win a ball game by eating you out he will eat you out. If sugar and honey will do the trick out comes the sugar and honey bottle. If it is money you need he will give you money. And if he has no further need for you he will sell you or trade you or simply cut you loose and forget you.

And then it was over—the ball game, the race, the long long haul from Aqua Clara to the flag. Most of all what was over was the backache.

For Granby lifted a shoulder-high curve to dead center field, and Scotty Burns turned and run back 10 or 15 feet and then turned again and camped and waited, and as the ball come down so did the pain in my back, starting from the knob at the back of my neck, down, down, crunch, FLASH! Crunch  FLASH!! CRUNCH  FLASH!!!  knob by knob, hitting the lowest knob at the moment the ball snuggled in Scotty Burnses glove, and out through my spine—gone I do not know where and do not care. But gone, and for good and ever.

Chapter 37

No need to describe the clubhouse afterwards. Such a noise I never heard before nor since, nor such a crush of writers, nor such a flashing of bulbs, nor such a flood of beer, and in the midst of it all Alf Keeler come in from the Boston side, tears running down his cheeks while he pushed through the crowd and reached for Dutch’s hand and shook it. “Congratulations, Dutch,” said he, and then he turned quick and started out, and Dutch called after him, “Good try, Alf,” and this made me laugh a little because I wondered what Dutch would of said if the table been turned, would he of been satisfied with a “good try,” and Krazy Kress come along and slapped me on the back, all 350 of his stupid pounds behind it, and he asked me why so quiet, and then he pushed on.

After about a half an hour things calmed down a little and Dutch stood on a bench and asked would the writers and all others kindly withdraw while the boys transacted some business, and they done so, and we all sat pulling at beers and Cokes and franks, listening to the sweetest lecture ever heard.

“Boys,” said Dutch, “I will be quick. I will say only God bless you 1 and all, for this is the happiest moment of my life. God bless Keith Crane for some cool work in relief and God bless Swanee Wilks for a hit at a time when the cash was on the barrel and God bless Sunny Jim Trotter for the same. God bless you all for being the right man in the right spot at the right time.

“I do not wish to be a gymnasium teacher, but there will be a slight celebration in the Moorses sweet this evening and I would like to request that at least 9 men stay sober more or less, for according to the rules of the Commission we must play tomorrow’s ball game.

Soberest man pitches.”

This brung a terrific laugh. Then Dutch hauled out this towel with the 150 cash inside, and he reached in the glass and drawed forth several slips of paper and found the 1 he wanted. “September 27,” he said. “Jones. Who will take this 150 to Ugly Jones at the hospital?”

Nobody said nothing. Gene said he would take it but he doubted that he would have the time until after the World Series. I thought about taking it myself, for Ugly was always good to me and helped me out of tight spots whenever he could. It was always a good sight to see Ugly coming in towards the mound from short with a word or 2 of advice. If Ugly had of been in the clubhouse before game time he might of spoke up for me, too, and I said I would take Ugly the money and best wishes from all his friends that was too busy to go down and see him theirself.

The boys laughed, and Dutch give me the money and told me go straight to the hospital and not get tangled up with any young ladies along the way. This brung another terrific laugh. “Okay boys,” said he, “now on to your business,” and he went back in his office and Red took over, Red acting captain in place of Ugly, and we voted shares, 29 full shares for 25 ballplayers plus Dutch and 3 coaches, 1,000 each for Squarehead Flynn and Bub Castetter and Keith Crane. Practically every name that anybody could think of we voted them a small slice of the melon—batboys and clubhouse watchmen and specials that guarded the doors. After the Series when the books was balanced my full share come in the mail—5,876 and some change.

But on the way to the hospital I knowed that Ugly wouldn’t of spoke up for me in the afternoon against Dutch, not in 1,000,000 years. The more I thought about Ugly the more I realized that he would be the
last
man on the club to help a fellow out. Ugly Jones and Ugly Jones and Ugly Jones are the first 3 things on Ugly Joneses mind and always was, and finally what I done I shoved the money at this nun at the desk on Ugly’s floor and told her it was from the boys.

“I will give it to Mr. Jones,” said she. “And who shall I say brung it?”

“Thank you, Sister,” said I to her. “Wiggen.”

“How is your back?” said she.

“100 per cent better,” said I. “In fact, it has disappeared altogether.”

“It was all in your mind,” she said.

I ate a bite of supper downstairs in the coffee shop near 2 doctors telling 2 nurses about the ball game today and such things as what it meant when the flag was clinched. Then this 1 doctor explained how Henry Wiggen pitched and what he throwed and the various reasons for his success. I hope he knows more about his own line of work then he does about mine.

Between thinking about Ugly all alone up there in the hospital and hearing all that jabber from that cockeyed doctor I begun to sink in the foulest of moods. By the time I hit the Moorses sweet I was so blue, and so down in the mouth, and so disgusted I could hardly see. By all the rules I should of been riding high, yet I was not, and a whole raft of things was threshing around in my mind, and I tried to look them over as they swum past in a jumble and pick out the single thing that was causing the trouble.

But I could not, and the Moorses and their fancy celebration only made it worse, old Lester T. Moors, Jr., showing me off to his society friends and telling them I was practically his personal discovery, and then probably telling them later how he got me so cheap at contract time in Aqua Clara in the spring of 50, and Patricia wandering around like she was everybody’s mother loaded with jewels to the armpits, and the writers flocking around Dutch that back in August they was yowling for his blood, and Dutch with 1 arm around Lindon crying “God bless Lindon Burke” when a few weeks before what he could of did for Lindon was show a little faith in the boy.

And Perry Simpson and Swanee Wilks clinking glasses together though from beginning to end Swanee hated and detested Perry and hated and detested me even worse for rooming with Perry, saying how could I do it and still hold my head up in public, and all this Perry knowed, for Swanee even told him 1 time to his face like the straightforward fellow he is. Yet here was Perry buttering up to old Swanee.