World Series (12 page)

The most dangerous man on the field. But even a homer will only mean two runs, thought Roy. Hammy hit hard. From the sound Roy knew it was headed his way. He went back, back, back as far as he could. The sun was in his eyes, he could see nothing. He reached up his glove.... There it was! The game was over.

Instead of stopping, he wheeled and kept on running past the shrieking bleachers all the way to the clubhouse, his hand still uplifted, the ball clutched in his glove, a grin a mile wide on his face; while the fans were running to form lines at the box offices to buy tickets for the seventh game.

Meanwhile the team stormed into the dressing room. Clack-clack, clackety-clack. The ball was still stuck in the webbing of his glove.

“Boy, they’ll have to take a hammer to get that one out.” Someone was slapping him on the back. Someone else called across the room. Once again it resounded to shouts and laughter. The photographers were climbing on chairs and tables, on the tops of lockers, their flashlights popping. The Dodgers were still in the fight.

“Yippee...yippee!”

“Yippee! Who said we couldn’t hit their pitchers?”

“Hey there, Chisel, you old slowfoot, gimme a Coke.”

“Naw. We ain’t started yet.”

“Yippee. Yowser!”

“Nice going there, Elmer.”

“That’s chucking, Elmer.”

The big pitcher seated on a table was sucking a Coke through a straw. Reporters surrounded him.

“What were you throwing out there today, Elmer?”

“Same stuff I been throwing for years. Mostly fast balls. I threw a few high neck-in pitches, and they got hungry.”

“You sure poured it in those last few innings,” said Dave. “Almost too fast for these old eyes.”

“Yessir, Elmer, you pitched a grand game out there. They were stretching most of the time.”

“Aw...when you got a catcher like Dave Leonard a man can’t help coming through. He’s with you all the time.”

“That’s right.” This emphatic remark came from Charlie Draper who entered dragging the big leather ball bag. “Dave, you caught a darn fine game, I’ll tell the world. A couple of those low pitches there in the sixth or seventh, if they’d got away we’d sure been out of luck.”

“He pulled me through. Don’t I know it,” said Elmer.

“Who’ll you pitch tomorrow, Dave?” As usual, Casey was on the job.

“Dunno. The man who’s the whitest, I guess. The man who’s most scared.”

Old Chiselbeak circulated through the room, his face smiling and happy, catching wet garments thrown to him as the players got ready for the showers. More people came in. Across the big room the team shouted remarks.

“Congratulations, Roy.”

“Nice work yourself, Eddie. How you ever got to that one in the sixth I dunno. It looked like a hit from my place.”

“Shoot! We’ll beat those birds tomorrow. Yes, sir, Miller and all of ’em.”

“We sure will.”

“Yippee...yippee....”

“Great work, fellas.”

“Thanks lots, Pete. Thanks, Casey.”

Back in his dressing room off the main quarters, Dave with a cigarette in his mouth began to undress. He was tired. No fooling, he was tired. The strain of playing and running the team and holding the pitchers together was telling. He felt he couldn’t face up to the next day. His thighs and legs ached. His muscles were sore all over. Slowly he threw off his shoes and started to pull down his pants when he found himself surrounded by a circle of reporters. The Dodgers had won. True, but old man Leonard was the story. Old man Leonard who pulled a shaky pitcher through to triumph, who caught a grand game of ball, who started the rally that won, and who at forty actually stole second under the eyes of the best catcher in the American League.

Dave was the angle. They’d have to concentrate on Dave. More men entered and he glanced up at the growing circle, the reporters with pads out, some with folded paper, all with pencils at the ready. There were Casey and one or two more columnists, there were Rex King of the
Times
, bespectacled and kindly, quickwitted Sandy Martin of the
Post
, big Jerry Regan of the
Tribune
, Dennison of the
News
, as well as lots of Cleveland writers he had never seen before. A mob of them! It was a formidable assembly.

He paused, sitting there on his four-legged stool, his trousers half-on, half-off.

“Don’t tell me you bums want me to give you a story tonight. Get out of here, the whole lot of you. Go into the big room there and talk to the boys. They’re the ones that did the work.”

D
AVE WAS TIEING
his necktie before a cracked mirror in his dressing room. This cracked mirror dated from the time twenty years before, when as a cub he had broken in with the White Sox. Everywhere he went he carried the cracked glass and hung it on the wall of his quarters.

“Charlie...”

Charlie Draper on a stool, thick in conversation with Cassidy, looked up. He saw Dave motioning with his head, rose and went over to the manager. Finishing his tie, the old catcher said in an undertone:

“Charlie, I want you should see how many players are going to the banquet tonight.”

“Yeah, Dave. I stuck that notice on the board.”

“No, no. That won’t do any good. I want you should round them up, personal-like. Make ’em feel they oughta show up. Point is, they don’t want to go. But I’d rather they did. You can’t send players to bed at ten o’clock, that’ll only increase the pressure on ’em.”

“But looka here, Dave; I spoke to one or two of the boys. They somehow just don’t want to go.”

“’Course they don’t. That’s your job. You must persuade ’em. Otherwise, Charlie, they’ll spend their time thinking about tomorrow. They come to dinner and pick up a menu with their faces all over the cover. Then they go into the lobby to be pestered by autograph nuts, or take in a movie and tire their eyes out, or sit all evening in their room reading newspapers and tightening up over this-here game. I want them at that banquet where their minds won’t be on the game. For a while, anyhow.”

So Charlie with a pad and pencil went dutifully around the room. He didn’t have a great deal of luck.

“What banquet?” asked Rats Doyle, with scorn in his voice. He had played in other Series and been to other banquets.

“Nuts,” said Harry Street, struggling into his coat. “I got something better to do than go to banquets.”

“How ’bout you, Razzle?”

“Naw. I have a date tonight.”

From player to player, always the same response. They were busy, they were bored, they were not having any banquets. The Kid began to feel sorry for the people running the banquet, and as Charlie, pad and pencil in hand, went around the room, he changed his mind. He’d go. Fat Stuff was going also. Apparently he and Fat Stuff would represent the team that evening.

What kind of a banquet was it? At the bulletin board near the door he paused as he went out and read a letter pinned there.

“The Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with Martin Motors, Inc. requests the pleasure of the company of the members of the Brooklyn National League Baseball Club at a dinner to be held in their honor at the Hotel Morton on the evening of Tuesday, October 6th.” Now that was mighty nice of those folks. Roy felt glad he had accepted. You try to be kind, to arrange a feed and show appreciation of the team’s pull-up, and then nobody takes the trouble to attend. That’s ballplayers for you!

Outside and down the ramp. The game had been over almost an hour but a few stragglers hung round the wire netting, watching the players emerge. Red Allen was standing at one side talking to a group of ladies. His wife was there and Fat Stuff’s wife and several other ladies including a blonde in furs. That might be Razzle’s girl.

They looked at him curiously as he went out the exit and past them, immediately to be assailed by a bunch of boys, pads, notebooks, scorecards extended. For ten minutes he stood there signing his name, the group seeming never to diminish. Finally he worked his way through. No, not quite.

“And mine...”

“And mine, please...”

“Aw, please, Mr. Tucker...”

“Mr. Tucker, just one more, please...”

He knew some of them were repeaters. They were doubling up on him; one autograph for themselves and one for trading purposes. However, having started, he had to continue. Gradually he worked his way toward the gate, still pursued, still signing.

“Taxi...”

“Taxi, mister?”

“Hotel Nevada.” He sank back and slammed the door, almost taking off the fingers of several autograph hounds. The car moved away and he realized how tired he was. Tired, even though they’d won. You were more tired when you lost, to be sure, yet he was tired. The nervous tension was what took it out of you; the mental straining, the hoping, the anxiety, the effort of body and will to pull a game out when the score and the chances were all against you. For just a moment he contemplated an early supper and going to bed. Then he knew he wouldn’t rest. He’d lie in bed going over that game the next day. Besides he had promised and he’d have to show up. It would be a dirty trick to walk out if only a couple of them were attending. At the hotel he paid the taxi, went through the crowded lobby, faces turning as he passed, bought some newspapers and took the elevator to his room.

On one bed was Harry’s laundry, carefully laid out with a slip, waiting to be counted and checked by its owner. But no Harry. Then the telephone rang.

“Hullo.”

“That you, Harry?”

“Nope, this isn’t Harry, it’s Roy. Harry isn’t here yet.”

“Oh.” The speaker rang off.

Now that’s funny. Funny too that Harry wasn’t there. By rights he should be in the room going over his laundry and grumbling because a pair of pajamas or his green shirt hadn’t been returned. The Kid looked at his watch. Three-thirty. Stopped. Must have forgotten to wind it. He took up the telephone.

“Give me the right time, please.”

“The correct time is...five forty-two.”

Quarter to six! And no Harry. That’s strange. Where could he be? The Kid took off his coat, lay down on the bed, and opening a newspaper glanced at the pictures. A snap of the field and Kenny Rock sliding into first in a column of dust; Eddie back of second, poised for the throw to Harry, with Gordon straining for the bag. Then his own figure racing for the dugout, left arm extended, the ball shown with a white arrow. Wonderful pictures they took nowadays. Wonderful, yessir.

The telephone jingled again. “A telegram for you, Mr. Tucker. Shall we send it up?”

Now what? Grandma? No, she had refused to come down. She wasn’t, she said, traveling to Brooklyn to see Roy hit on the head with a baseball. It was quite bad enough to hear about it over the radio. Well, maybe she’d changed her mind. He dug out a quarter and had it ready when the boy knocked.

“Thanks. And, Mr. Tucker, would you mind giving me your signature here...on this white paper here?”

Roy signed for the telegrams, signed the white paper also, and took the envelopes, for there were two. He opened one.

“
IN EVENT VICTORY TOMORROW WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED APPEARING TED FALLON HOUR OVER NBC NETWORK THURSDAY NIGHT NINE STOP FEE SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY STOP IF AGREEABLE WILL HAVE REPRESENTATIVE CALL YOUR HOTEL PLEASE CONFIRM JAMES C PARSONS ROCKEFELLER CENTER.
”

Whew. He tore open the other envelope. It was from Chicago.

“
GENERAL STORES OFFERS YOU TWO THOUSAND FOR YOUR ENDORSEMENT ITS GROCERY PRODUCTS IN EVENT TEAM VICTORY AND YOU BAT OVER THREE TWENTY FIVE PETER J KINGDOM VICE PRESIDENT.
”

Whew again! He sat down quickly on the bed. Then he rose and sat down on a chair. Then he went over to the window, saw nothing, came back and sat down on the bed again. You couldn’t endorse cigarettes when you never smoked, but he supposed he ate General Stores’ groceries. He certainly did at home; he remembered buying them in the village for Grandma.

Let’s see now; seven fifty, that makes fifty-two sixty, that makes, no, wait a minute, that makes...He went to the desk and wrote down:

No. That wasn’t right. Why, he couldn’t even add straight. $9,150, not $7,150. Nine thousand one hundred and fifty bucks on one ball game. On one inning, maybe, on a catch in the field, or a scratch single at the plate. And perhaps the other way round; on one of their catches in the field or one of their scratch singles. All that dough, more than he had made from his two seasons in the majors, on one game alone. On one inning, one lucky stab in the field.

He grabbed a newspaper and turned to the sports pages where the batting averages of both teams were listed. His eye skimmed the column. Case...Swanson...Street...Allen...Tucker...there it was, Tucker...now, he was .272 the day before...and .285 tonight.

.285. Well, if he got a couple of hits tomorrow, say two out of two, and that wasn’t impossible, that would make...no, wait a minute. Miller would be pitching tomorrow. How would he do against Miller? Would he tighten up and get scared or be loose and easy in the box against him?

The telephone rang. It had, he realized, been ringing some time.

“Hullo.”

“Harry Street? Street there?”

“Nope. He isn’t. He ought to be, though, any minute.” The speaker rang off. A vaguely familiar voice, but Roy was far too excited to pay much attention. Over nine thousand dollars! Enough to put electricity on the farm, to oil the road up from the state highway, to get Grandma the new electric stove and a Frigidaire, too. All on a single game. On one single inning, maybe.

Well, he couldn’t go on this way. It would tighten him up and he’d be so jittery he’d be useless the next afternoon. So he lay down on the bed, arranged the pillow, and tried to read the newspapers. Yesterday’s game. It seemed a thousand years ago. The account was stale, dull reading. But there were pictures—of Dave in the dressing room, his pants half down and a cigarette in his mouth; of Fat Stuff rolling on the ground in pain. Then there was the mix-up at the plate. That must be Karl and No. 6, that was Swanny. Doesn’t look like him, though. And there was his own back with the big 34, half rising from the circle, his bat in one hand. He turned to Casey’s column and started reading.