The Southpaw (8 page)

I did not keep score in the regular way, but I kept a careful track of what Sam throwed to each batter. You could see his brain at work. He mixed his pitches plenty, keeping Boston guessing, now speed, now a curve, now a change-up, now a screw, now high, now low, never the same thing twice except when you
least
expected it.

Nance batted first for Boston in the sixth. He got a good hand, for people usually always give the pitcher a hand, knowing how hard he works, and Nance slapped a single into right and the crowd begun to whoop it up a bit. Behind me this fellow shouted, “Say, son, I will bet you a bag of peanuts Boston scores,” and I said I would bet him 10 against his 1, and he took me up, and Sam whiffed Black on the same curve he had throwed the very first pitch of the game—the exact pitch that Black least expected—and Pop looked at me and winked. Granby popped out, and the pressure was off, or so it seemed, but Fielding walked on a curve that looked good to me and looked the same to Dutch and Sam, and Dutch roared up out of the dugout and give the ump an earful.

Then the game took up again, Casey Sharpe batting. How careful they worked him! They throwed him a wide curve that he went after and missed. Then Sam throwed him a screw that he give it the go-by, and finally he laced a 2-2 fast ball that was good but not
too
good on a line into center, and Swanee Wilks took it without moving more then 5 feet.

Probably no outfielder in baseball knows better how to play hitters then Swanee. He been around a long time. I seen the peanut boy and I shouted, and he tossed me a bag and held out his hand for the money, and I said, “That genius back there has got your money,” and the fellow tossed it to him.

In the last of that inning, with 2 on, Ugly Jones looped 1 in the lower tier in right, and 3 was in and the game looked just about on ice.

But Sam got in trouble in the ninth. Dopey Davidson singled, and the crowd that was milling towards the exits slowed down a little, and Felsheimer singled and Dutch Schnell come up out of the dugout and him and Sam and Red and Ugly had a little conference out on the mound, and then Dutch signaled down to the bullpen and a young fellow name of Gordon Wood come slowly across the green, and Sad Sam went slower yet down in the dugout. He got a mighty hand, nobody probably clapping any louder then me. This gives me a laugh now—me standing there and pounding my hands to a pulp over Sam Yale. Another thing that hands me a laugh when I think about it is me sending 2 bucks through the mail about a month afterwards for a collection towards Sam Yale Day when he was give a Buick by the fans. In fact, this never fails to hand me a laugh—a couple thousand clucks making 60 a week throwing their chips on the pile for a fellow like Sam making 60 a day Sundays and holidays averaged out over the whole year, 4 months vacation a year against 2 weeks for the cluck, 4 hours a day against 8 for the cluck.

Wood warmed up some more with Red, and this stupid fellow said, “There is a kid with a style that will go places.”

Where has Wood went? I can find no trace of him in the books.

However, for that 1 inning at least he had what it took, though it struck me whilst he pitched that he had nothing to speak of—a little speed, a little curve, fair control—and I turned and said to Pop, “Why, Pop, pitch for pitch I am the equal of him.”

“I can see that,” said Pop. “I been thinking the same. But we will give it a little time yet. We must not rush these things. We will give you a couple years yet for flesh to grow on your bones and experience to gather in your head. You are still but 16,” which I was, 17 that July.

Then we drifted away with the crowds and out of the park and down to Grand Central by subway—the wrong 1 the first time—and home on the train, and dinner on the train, the first time I ever ate dinner on a train. That was a great day for me, when I first seen Moors Stadium and Sam and Dutch and Swanee and George Gonzalez and Scotty Burns and Sunny Jim Trotter, and we talked it over all the way home, and that night I laid in bed and went over it time and again in my mind, play by play and inning by inning.

In the morning I woke up, and it was like I dreamed a dream so fine that you want to go back and dream it again, and I looked out the window and seen things laying there just like always, and I pounded the window sill until the glass shook, and I said “Thunder, thunder, thunder,” and I knowed that some day I would get up in the morning and it would not be this view a-tall. It would be the big towns, New York and Brooklyn, Cleveland and Chicago, Boston and Washington, Pittsburgh and St. Louis, big towns and big parks, and there would be 30,000 people and my name on 30,000 scorecards and the music and the singing and the cheering, and I would touch my hat when they cheered, and I would wind and rear and fire and they would see, and they would know an immortal when they seen 1, and I dived back on the bed and pounded the pillow, and I shouted again, “Thunder, thunder, thunder and THUNDER,” and I felt better and went downstairs to breakfast. 

Chapter 6

2 Sundays after I graduated from Perkinsville High Pop had a very bad day against the Columbus Clowns that he had beat many times in the past. The Clowns usually play 2 games a year in Perkinsville, coming in May for a Wednesday night and then going up to Boston for a couple with the Standards, and then back to Perkinsville for Sunday afternoon. They had whipped us the Wednesday night before, lumping up Slim Doran plenty.

The day was hot, the kind of a day Pop likes, and there was a good crowd, maybe somewheres between 1,500 and 2,000, for the Clowns was always popular. They had a trick pepper game they played with a hollow bat 3 times the size of the regulation, and folks always got a good laugh out of that. They had 1 fellow that put on an exhibition of juggling, slick enough if you like juggling, though I always thought that kind of thing a little out of place in a ball park. When he got through a down come on the scene holding up his pants with 1 hand and his fingers to his nose with the other to show what he thought of the juggler. Then he grabbed a couple bats and tried to juggle them, but he could not, and the crowd laughed, and me and Pop just about busted our sides over this fool though we had saw him year after year.

But when the umpire calls “Play Ball!” all laughter stops for Pop. Now he becomes dead serious, for when he is pitching he is a different man. Pitching he is king of the roost. At home we may be all sitting around, me and Pop and Holly and Aaron, Aaron blathering away and Pop sitting there and looking from person to person, and you can see that the talk is far above his head. He is like some joker in a foreign country where no safe and sane language is spoke. They could be ordering him to hang for all he would ever know of it. After awhile he might go up to bed. Or me and Pop will be walking along the road and come upon Aaron Webster, and Aaron will talk, and Pop will stand there and nod and shake his head and go down the line with Aaron.

Yet I can see that he ain’t got the faintest notion what the score is, and I will say later, “Well, what is it all about? What did Aaron say?” and Pop will shake his head and say, “Beats me.” But dress Pop in his uniform and give him a glove and a ball and set him down on the hill in Patriots Park and he is somebody else again.  He is the master. There is nothing from the beginning to the end of a ball game that Pop does not know why and who and how and what and when and where.

But that particular day he was not quite in form. In the first inning he throwed several curves that did not break. 1 of them got past Tom Swallow and rolled clear to the fence, and Jack Hand looked at me, and he said, “Sonny, I have watched your daddy many a year and never seen him do that before.” In the fourth the Clowns got to him for 2 runs, and in the fifth, after 1 was out, somebody singled, and Jack Hand said to me, “Sonny, why do you not go back and throw a few?”

and I said “Why?” and he looked at me very stern. “Sonny,” said he, “you had best learn to take orders if you wish to get anywheres in this game called “baseball”. Now do like I say,” and I got up off the bench, and Slim Doran come along with me, Slim taking along a catcher’s mitt. We went back behind the fence and out of sight.

I was pretty well warmed, for I had throwed practice, so I throwed very easy to Slim. We could not see the ball game, but we could hear it and we knowed what was happening. You can tell by the sounds of the bat against the ball, and by the sounds of the players and the people, and the next thing that happened there was the batboy scooting around the fence. “Mr. Hand wants you,” he said, and I went.

There was a big conference around the mound, the whole infield and Pop and Tom and Jack Hand, and there was runners on second and third, sitting down on the bags. Pop watched me as I come across the grass, and he give me the ball and whacked me on the rump, and the batboy give him his jacket, and I give the batboy mine. Pop did not say a word. He just trudged in towards the bench. I asked Tom how many was out, and he said 2, and we talked about signs, and he reminded me that there was men on second and third, and I said yes I seen them.

I got set to pitch. I looked over my shoulder at the man on third, and he was close so I put him out of my mind, and I pitched, and the batter teed and swung, but he had not expected anything so fast, and he met it late and popped it down the first-base line and the inning was done.

I do not remember the sixth or the seventh. A kind of a fog settled down over me. It was like a dream, and I heard all the sounds that you will hear in any ball park of a Sunday afternoon, and men come up to hit against me, 7 I guess, for 1 man singled. As for the rest they come up and went down, and I seen Pop on the bench and it seemed like he was somewheres where he ought not to been, and I looked for myself and could not find myself though I ought to been sitting on the bench and was not, and then the fog begun to lift, and things that was wrapped in the clouds come out in the open. I remember the last 2 innings, for I begun to enjoy myself. I was loose and fast and every pitch broke the way I wanted them to break, and all the pages of Sad Sam’s book come into view, and all the words I ever heard from Pop on the subject of baseball, and all the talking and all the thinking and all the dreaming—everything—everything poured out of me that I stored up during all the years.

2 was out in the ninth when Bobo Adams pinch-hit. Bobo is boss and part owner of the Clowns, a man of 45 and grayheaded, and the crowd give him a hand. In his time he was a great ballplayer with Philadelphia, hitting 51 home runs in 1935. I guess it was curiosity made him bat, for the Clowns did not need the runs. He hits lefthanded.

Tom give me the sign for the fast 1, 1 finger. In semi-pro work there is nothing fancy about the signs, 1 finger for a fast ball and 2 for a curve. It is not complicated like in the big-time where the other team will steal your sign if they can. I throwed the fast 1, and it nipped the corner, and Bobo stepped out of the box and got a new grip on his bat and then looked at me, and I shouted down the line, “Too fast for you, old man?”

“I seen faster,” he said.

“Not awake,” I said. “Only in your dreams.” 4 innings of semipro baseball and I was now telling Bobo Adams what he seen and what he did not!

“You are a fresh kid,” he said, which was putting it mild.

Tom called for the curve, and I throwed it, and it broke very fast, knee-high and outside, and Bobo swang and then halfway checked himself when he seen it break, but too late, and the ball glanced off his bat and looped back foul and out of play towards the visiting bench on the third-base side.

Then I throwed half-speed, close. I have good command of a half-speed fast ball that looks like it might just be a curve, and Bobo stood waiting for the curve to break. But of course it never broke, for it was never meant to, and when he swung he met the ball up close to the handle and blooped another little foul.

Then I fanned him with the screw, and almost before he finished his swing I was ambling over towards our bench. I had made a fool of Bobo.

We scored in the ninth, but not enough, and Pop pumped my hand for the job I done, and the batboy brung me my street shoes and I snatched them and told him to go on about his business and not be getting in everybody’s hair, and me and Pop went in Jack Hand’s office under the stands and picked up our pay. Jack called me back and said I had took the wrong envelope, and he give me another containing 2 fivers instead of the usual 1.

Outside the park we seen Bobo Adams standing by the bus that the Clowns traveled in. Semi-pro ballplayers travel mostly by bus. If they play in a park like Patriots Park where there is no clubhouse set-up they might travel miles and miles without ever showering. The condition of the air must get pretty rare at times, although I suppose a semi-pro ballplayer is used to it. Bobo flagged us down, and he went around by Pop’s side of the car and stuck his hand in the window and shook hands with Pop, for they knowed each other from way back.

“Good boy you have got there,” said Bobo, but he did not look at me.

“He has got a good variety.”

“He will go places,” said Pop.

“But green,” said Bobo. He still did not look at me.

“He will get over it,” said Pop.

“He better,” said Bobo, and then they talked a couple minutes about some common friends they had, and they shook hands again, and Pop talked about Bobo all the way home, dwelling on different times he had struck him out and made him look silly.

When we got home we showered together and sung some of the old songs Pop learned when he was with Cedar Rapids in the Mississippi Valley League. We felt pretty good, and I guess we had a right to feel good.

I pitched every Wednesday night the rest of that summer—the summer of 49—every night but 1, starting 11 games, finishing 9, winning 8, losing 1, getting no decision twice. Jack Hand fired Slim Doran and picked up a kid that worked at half the price and was used in relief when needed. It was a great education for me in rough and ready baseball. It was the only bush-league ball I ever played, jumping from Perkinsville straight to AA.

There was a considerable hoot and holler over me in Perkinsville, and a lot of articles wrote in the “Clarion” by Bill Duffy, and the word spread near and far that here was a great young southpaw working for the Scarlets. Several times the Wednesday night attendance went up to where the only seats left was standing room only. This was partly on account of a rumor begun by Bill Duffy in his column, saying that several big-league clubs had offered me a contract. Sometimes I do not know what gets in Bill. Anyway, the attendance busted all records.  They paid me 40 per game.