The Southpaw (5 page)

Many a book I borrowed that winter from the library after my card was put through the process. I returned them all, all except “Sam Yale—Mammoth,” and I read them all, too, laying on my bed with my feet stretched over the foot, munching on candy bars and milk. I cannot remember all the names. I learned a good deal about pitching and strategy and the ways of big-time players and managers, and after I finished a batch of books I would read through Sam’s again.

There was also some books of baseball stories, such as those by Sherman and Heyliger and Tunis and Lardner, although Lardner did not seem to me to amount to much, half his stories containing women in them and the other half less about baseball then what was going on in the hotels and trains. He never seemed to care how the games come out. He wouldn’t tell you much about the stars but only about bums and punks and second-raters that never had the stuff to begin with. Heyliger and Sherman and some of the others give you a good baseball story that you couldn’t lay it down.

There was 1 fellow name of Homer B. Lester that wrote a whole series of 16 books about a pitcher called Sid Yule, which was just another way of saying Sam Yale. There was “Sid Yule, Kidnaped,” and “Sid Yule, No-Hit Pitcher” and “Sid Yule in the World Series” and 13 more, and all the books had 24 chapters and run 240 pages and you couldn’t skip a 1. There was always a picture in front and 1 on page 80 and 1 on page 160 and 1 right at the end, but I would try not to look at the pictures until I come to them, otherwise I would know what was coming.

I guess I knowed, though, pictures or not, for 1 book got to be pretty much like the next after awhile. In the beginning there would be some plot being hatched against Sid, and it sounded pretty tight and you knowed he was in danger, and you itched to warn him. Usually it was gamblers, or traitors on his own club. Chapter 2 was always a discussion of what went on in previous books, so I always skipped it.

Then Sid would come in the picture, unawares that anything was being hatched to do him in, and he would walk right in that trap. He might get a telephone call saying a kid was sick in a hospital, and he would rush over to cheer that kid up and sign a baseball and then some of these gamblers would creep up behind and smash him over the head and cart him off to some dark place in a rough part of town.  Then he would come to, and be dizzy, and he would unloose the ropes and fight his way out against 4 or 5 of these chaps.

In the background of your mind you would remember that there was a big game going on this very day, and his club was losing, and he would grab a cab and off they would go at 60 or 70, and Sid would dash in there just in time to pull the fat out of the fire. You never knowed for sure if he would make it because Chapter 23 would bob up, telling you all about what would happen in the next book and where you could buy it or send for it by mail, but then you got back in the story, and he always won out, and there was a moral at the end, such as “Friendship Pays” or “Live Clean and Win.”

I read the whole 16 that winter, and then spring come, and things begun to happen so fast and so frequent that I laid off books and never read 1 again until last summer when I went in a good bit for quarter murders.

Such corny crap as that is all behind me now. I ain’t even interested in Sad Sam Yale no more. You spend a long period with a fellow and he stops being a hero all of a sudden. Sam ain’t all he is cracked up to be. But I didn’t know it then. I wasn’t but a kid.

Chapter 4

It was in May of my junior year at Perkinsville High that I was signed on as batting practice pitcher for the Perkinsville Scarlets, and it was also about then that me and Thedabara Brown begun to go together.  She was 16 and as pretty as many a girl that passes for a movie star.

She later married Mort Finnegan that was the catcher for Perkinsville High and not bad a-tall but used to drop third strikes an awful lot. He was afterwards killed in the war against Korea and she married a catcher for Sacramento in the Pacific Coast League.

I had not yet had the experience of fornication at the time, although I read a good bit about it in Aaron’s books. When I brung the subject up she did not know what I was talking about, saying she never heard it referred to before in such a vulgar way, and she chased me out of the house and told me never come back.

But I come back the very next night, and her old man was sitting and waiting. He asked me where did I learn my manners and did I think his daughter was a whore, and I said no, and he said he had a mind to punch me in the nose right then and there. Then he rose and seen that I was larger then him, so he sat back down again but invited me to make myself scarce. He went on to say a number of nasty things about young men of my type and ballplayers in particular.

Finally I left. I was shaking all over and quite uneasy, for I was scared of old man Brown. I pretty much duck out of a fight whenever I can.

Every time I ever been in a fight I usually always just covered up and left this other chap, whoever he was, whale away at my wrists and elbows and the spaces between. Pretty soon somebody would break it up. Just to
see
2 guys fighting makes me weak. When I was a senior at Perkinsville High we had this military training where the class would split up in 2 groups and fight over Callahan Hill in the lot on Callahan Avenue with bayonets with boxing gloves on the end. We must of fought this fight 100 times and I was always the first 1 killed. Not killed really, but I would just lay down and die, too weak to fight, crouching around until somebody stabbed me with the boxing glove. The fellows used to call this my Coward Crouch. Actually the trouble was it give me loose bowels and how in the hell can you go on fighting with loose bowels? We had this soldier name of Sten Stennerson over from the National Guard that would yell at me, “Wiggen, on account of you we are always losing Callahan Hill,” and finally they sent me to the psychiatrist at the Vets Hospital in Tozerbury. But nothing come of it.

Then about a year later I come up for the draft and went for the examination and seen this same fellow again and he give me a deferment. I was turned down again this past October for the same reason, and to tell you the truth if they never get me that’s okay, too. I mention this for the benefit of the same 100,000,000 boobs and flatheads that read Krazy Kresses column of last September 30th. This used to bother Pop a lot, but Aaron said to Pop, “Why should it bother you? Is it not better for a fellow to go down in his Coward Crouch and live to fight another day?” and Pop said he supposed it was.

I know that it always worried Pop. Yet I cannot help it, and the older I grow the worse it gets until sometimes I think that if they do not stop the wars I am libel to wind up with loose bowels 24 hours a day. I suppose this is a weakness, but everybody has their weakness. About 2 weeks ago a fellow wrote me a letter saying it struck him as very peculiar that a man with so much guts on the ball field is afraid of the war. But throwing a baseball and throwing a hand grenade is 2 different things, and I am at my best with 1 and scared to my toes of the other. Actually when you really stop and think about it it probably wouldn’t be too stupid of an idea if the Koreans and Chinese and Russians and Americans and all the rest come down all at once with a bad case of loose bowels and went somewheres back of the lines and settled down on the John and done some thinking about what fools they were making of theirselves. Where in hell is it getting everybody?

I shouldn’t of gotten off on the beaten track here, for this chapter was supposed to be about Thedabara. Yet when the war comes up I can’t hardly get it off my mind half the time, especially in the winter. All winter long pick up a newspaper and what do you see? War and football, mostly war, until you’re never sure any more how much your nerves can take.

Anyways, I seen her on the street a number of times and never thought a thing of it. She was going at the time with a third baseman that played around in the factory leagues. This was before she went with Mort Finnegan. She was with him 1 Sunday in Patriots Park where I was tossing batting practice, and she waved to me but I did not wave back. Pop always told me to act big-time whether it was semi-pro or Legion or anything else, and I did not wave nor would not even wave to Holly or Aaron when they come.

But I kept thinking about her all through the game, sitting on the bench, and afterwards I caught hold of her by the exit and swung her around and asked her whether she was free that night or if she planned to waste her time on that imitation of a third baseman. “If you must know,” said she, “he has got a 42 Moors.” I laughed. I said I had a 46 and not some old heap of a car that been drove through the war.

This was a lie, but Mort Finnegan had a 46 and used to loan it to me all the time. She said she figured she could ditch this other fellow and meet me on the square at 8 by the statue of Mr. Cleves. He was long since dead by now.

I went in and picked up my pay, which was 5 dollars. I thought it was good money at the time. Then me and Pop piled in the 32 and headed for home, Pop pumping me full of advice like he always done after a ball game when everything was fresh in his mind, but most of it sailed past me for my mind was on other things, particularly on 1 thing, which was fornication.

We ate fairly light, and then I believe me and Pop set some sort of a record doing dishes. We used to do dishes for 2 in 8 minutes and once done them in 4, and then I decked out in clothes that I must of thought was pretty sharp. Pop said he believed I had a girl in Perkinsville. Then I bolted out and no sooner got past the door then I met Holly Webster coming up the walk. She become permanent at Aaron’s about that time, having went for awhile to college at New Rochelle but in 6 months was in hot water 6 times and finally pooped out and as far as I know was never missed. She was developing a practically sureproof method of cornering me for a lift every time I left the house, Aaron owning no car and never libel to. He gets pretty worked up on the subject. “How did the game go?” she said.

“Pop won,” I said, and she asked me was I headed for the square, and I said I was, and she asked me would I run her down, and I said I would. I dropped her at the square and then continued out to Mort Finnegan’s and borrowed his 46. Mort always thought high of me and would do practically anything, and it is quite unbelievable when you think about it—him loaning me his 46 to take Thedabara out in and then Mort later actually marrying her. Even to this day it is hard for me to believe Mort was killed in the war.

I parked on the square. It was only a little after 7, and I went down in front of the Embassy Theater and lolled around some, standing at the curb with 1 foot up on somebody’s bumper that was parked there. I studied the pictures on the theater, noticing how the men was dressed, and when I got tired of that I ambled across to the Legion hall. It is supposed to be for members only and their ladies, but Mayor Real said I could come any time day or night, for I had pitched for the Legion team from Perkinsville that won the State 2 years running and the National once. You will see his banners on telephone poles, saying “For Mayor, a REAL Man.” This passes for great comedy in Perkinsville.

If you will read in Connie Mack’s book called “My 66 Years in the Big Leagues” you will see where chapter 18 is about the Legion. It says: My baseball career has brought me into intimate contact and relationship with many national movements for civic and social betterment. One of the most important of these movements, in my estimation, is the American Legion. . . . Our American Legionnaires and the members of all our veterans’ associations have helped to make our national game an exemplification of the true American spirit. . . . The American Legion . . . is engaged in a program for molding the future of our American youth by utilizing baseball as a powerful factor in the social, moral, and economic development of the younger generation. Inaugurating a campaign for good citizenship, the Legion has organized more than 500,000 boys into baseball clubs. In 1949 it had 15,912 American Legion Junior Baseball teams competing for the Junior World Series.

Then he goes on to tell where 255 young fellows have come up through the Legion to the big leagues, including more then a few immortals. Legion hall is really a great place where you can relax and hear music or play the slots or poker or shoot a little pool or drink some beer and take your mind off things. Mostly I just sat around talking. Sometimes they had some campaign going and there was something to sign, and you would hear plenty of jokes, mainly about fornication and different unusual cases of it which I never thought was particularly funny.

Around 10 of 8 or so I lazied back across the square and stood by the statue of Mr. Cleves waiting. I could hardly stand. I was vibrating a good deal around the knees. I begun to suspect there was a large difference between fornication as it was wrote up in the books and as it goes off in the flesh. It is like baseball. There is a chapter in Sam Yale’s book called “Nervousness and How to Overcome It,” and I believe I read that chapter 20 or 30 times. Yet it took me years and years to overcome being nervous at the start of a ball game.

It was 8, and then it inched around to 15 after on the big clock in front of the Arcade Department Store, and I looked high and low and all around the square, and every girl I seen looked like Thedabara, and then, about 20 after, she come along with a white dress with flowers sewed in all over, quite short, and her legs was all brown and better shaped then many a movie star, and white shoes with high heels that clicked along on the sidewalk. She come across towards the statue where I was standing, and she said, “I am sorry to be late,” and I said, or begun to say, “That is all right,” but the words got stuck in my throat.

She wore a little gold chain around her neck, and on the end of it was a medal showing a mother and a baby, and the medal bounced down between her breasts, flopping now 1 way and now another, and without hardly thinking I stuck out my hand and grabbed hold of the medal, and the back of my hand rested against her skin, and the skin was warm and smooth, and my eyes closed and she took my hand and lifted it up and away. “I only wished to see the medal,” I said.