Keystone Kids (16 page)

A S
UNDAY CROWD IN
the Polo Grounds. The Sunday crowd is no fun. Weekday fans are smarter; they come regularly and are more tolerant, they know their baseball. But three-fourths of the Sunday crowd were there for one thing—to see the Dodgers beaten. Furthermore, a Sunday crowd meant a capacity crowd and that meant a mass of white shirts in deep center field; hard for the batters when they face an overarm pitcher. A sidearm thrower is not so bad, but an overarm ball coming out of that white background is poison. For this reason the Giants were using Tommy Quinn, their overarm pitching ace.

Razzle was pitching for Brooklyn. Raz was invariably tough against the Giants, who years before had let him out as a rookie hurler up for trial. He wanted to beat them more than any other club. So up to the third inning it was a pitcher’s battle all the way, a wickedly close game. One of those games to be won or lost by the breaks.

In the third Klein came up to bat accompanied by the usual jeers from the Giants’ bench. The pitcher rocked in the box.

“Sit him down, Tommy, sit him down.”

“Don’t let that Jew-boy get a toehold up there, Tom.”

“Brush him back, Tommy. He can’t take it, Tom old boy...”

“He’s a quitter, Tommy, he can’t take it.”

It was the usual chorus. But something had happened to Jocko Klein, as the Giant bench began to realize that afternoon. The big pitcher leaned back and threw a fast ball, a duster that was close to Klein’s chin and sent him sprawling back in the dirt. While Spike from the lines at third watched nervously, the chorus of approval rose from the jockeys in the Giants’ bench.

“That’s the stuff, Tom old boy. This guy’s a pushover.”

Tommy Quinn’s duster was usually thrown with a purpose. He liked to set up the batter for the next pitch. The rookie knew this, knew it would be a curve, got ready for the hook and waited. It came, low, right where he expected, and he slammed it hard into the slot between short and third. The jeers from the home bench died abruptly away.

Razzle, who followed, struck out. Now came the top of the batting order. Spike gave the sign for a hit-and-run and Swanny responded with a dry, crisp drive into right field. Ballplayers all hope to get from first to third on a hit to right. In right field, however, was Jake Schott, the Giant captain, with the best throwing arm in the league.

Although Klein was off with the ball, the hit was clean and straight. Spike measured the distance, weighing that remorseless throwing arm against the speed of his rookie catcher, balancing in an instant the closeness of the score, the importance of getting that first run, the run which might even win the game. He called the boy on to third.

Straining, giving everything, with taut face and tensed muscles, Klein came in.

“Slide... Jocko... slide, boy,” shouted Spike. “Slide... get down...”

The throw was coming straight and true like all Jake’s throws, gaining on the runner. The man and the ball arrived simultaneously. Once again it was a matter of seconds, of fractions of a second. Klein’s feet went out in a whirl of dust, and he made a desperate stab for the corner of the base with one foot as the man above reached down with the ball in his gloved fist.

The hand of the umpire started to rise. Then something happened. Was it accident, was it chance, was it on purpose that Klein came in with his spikes flashing in the sun? You saw their sudden glint, then the third baseman was hastily shaking his hand and the ball was hobbling on the grass behind the foul line.

Instantly Klein was up. He was up and away. The man on the base turned angrily, saw the ball back of the bag, darted after it. Again it was fractions of a second, but this time the throw was hurried and less accurate. Sliding head first for the outer corner, the rookie reached home for the first score of the game.

The Giants didn’t like it at all. Who would? You call a man yellow, and he makes third against the best arm in the business, and slugs and kicks his way home for the only run of the game. A run that inning after inning kept getting bigger and bigger. No, the Giants didn’t like it in the least. They showed it plainly enough in the sixth when, with two out, they loaded the bases and the fans stood roaring for them to score.

Spike trotted across the grass to Razzle. The big chap was cool and undisturbed. He shook off the boy at his side with a reassuring nod, stepped off the mound to catch the signs better, the only calm person in the feverish ballpark. Then he hitched at his pants, stepped back on the mound and stood there, his long arms hanging down motionless. He looked around the bases, at the infield playing deep for the force-out, at the outfield slightly around toward right for the batter. Then he threw. The man at the plate swung a trifle late and while the field started into motion, the ball sailed in the air.

It was a pop-up, a foul fly. Klein’s mask was on the ground, his head upturned, as he twisted and then started toward the Giant bench. Close, closer, closer. So close it was dangerous. None of the Giants called or warned him.

“Look out, Jocko, look out, Jocko!” Spike’s voice was drowned in the uproar as the catcher went on. Don’t tell me that guy isn’t a ballplayer! Boy, is he a ballplayer!

His upturned face followed the ball, his mitt was close to his chest as it descended. Now he was on the edge of the step. He tottered, held out his mitt, caught the ball, and fell heavily into the mass of scattering players below.

There was a moment’s delay. Then he limped slowly out of the dugout with the ball in his fist.

So into the seventh, the eighth, the ninth. The run which had looked big earlier in the game now looked as big as a thousand. Pinch hitters came in for the Giant pitchers, relief men took the mound, runners were substituted for slow men on the bases. Still the score remained one to nothing.

Then the end, the last of the ninth, with the crowd screaming for a score, a run, only one run to tie it up and send the game into extra innings. The Giants got a man as far as second with one out. The Giant captain then came to bat and hit a long, lazy single to center field.

The runner on second was the Giant third baseman who had lost the ball and then made the wide throw to the plate to let Klein score. He was out for blood. Waved on by the coach at third, he set sail for home, head down, his arms swinging, determined to score if he killed someone. But he was competing against another throwing arm as good as anyone’s in the league. Roy Tucker, charging in, took the ball on the first hop and threw smoothly to the plate. It needed a better than average throw to beat that runner, and the center fielder delivered just that—a throw waist high, right on a line into Klein’s mitt.

The Giant runner, ten feet away, heard the plop of the ball in the glove even before he could start his slide. He knew he was out, knew his team was beaten, knew a slide was futile. So angrily he hurled himself at the catcher. Klein was braced to meet the shock and protect the plate; but even so the force and fury of that charging drive was too powerful. The Giant came in, knee up. Klein tagged him and then shot away. There was a bump, a bump you could hear all over the field, a bump that would have lifted anyone but a rugged catcher clean out of the ballpark. As it was, Klein went sprawling head over heels in the dirt beside the plate.

With agony Spike watched from the cut-off position halfway to the box. Hold it, Jocko; hold that ball, kid. Hold it and you’re the people’s choice, you can run for president in Brooklyn.

He held it. He had it in one clenched fist. He waved it in the air and then tossed it away. He was going into the Giant player with everything he had.

“Well... fer cryin’... out... loud!” Inside the clubhouse old Chiselbeak, his arms full of dirty towels, paused in mid-passage. In the alcove, where Doc Masters sat on his rubbing table, was a small bench with a portable radio on it. From the radio came the fantastic story of Jocko Klein. No wonder Chiselbeak stood motionless, no wonder the Doc listened with open mouth. Klein, the Jewish catcher of the Dodgers, was in a fight.

“... Boy-oh-boy... they’re slugging it out now, all right... there’s a punch... and another... Taylor lets him have it with both barrels on the jaw... Casey, the plate umpire, jumped Klein... the catcher shook him off like a rat... now other players are rushing up... but the two men are still slugging... they’re really slugging now... they’re in close... wow!... wow!... was that a punch! Oh, what a sock... Klein gave it to him hard... and again... there goes Taylor... he’s tumbling... he’s down... he’s out... and sixteen men have jumped Jocko Klein and yanked him away...

“Just hear that roar over the ballpark... hear that crowd howl... hear them go... wait a minute... I think... yes... there it comes... there it comes... the old heave-ho... the old heave-ho for Klein... there goes Klein... off the field for him... boy, will he get a fine slapped on him for this afternoon’s work!”

No wonder Chiselbeak stood there motionless with the dirty towels in his arms; no wonder the Doc sat with his mouth open, as they both listened. No wonder both were speechless.

Then the outer door opened and a figure appeared. He was dirty, he was wet, his monkey suit was torn, the strap of one shin guard had broken and flapped ridiculously at his heel, his face was strangely red. As he entered he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving it smeared with blood. His eyes were swollen, his cheeks and his jaw were raw and bruised.

The towels were slipping from old Chiselbeak’s arms. “Well, fer cryin’... out... loud, Jocko! Fer cryin’ out... loud!”

T
HE TEAM STEPPED
from the express at North Philadelphia the next morning into an oven. The heat reached out and slapped them in their faces as they left the air-conditioned train. Taxis were fireless cookers. The dressing room at Shibe Park was a steam bath. Someone with a newspaper remarked that it was the hottest July twenty-seventh in Philadelphia for eighteen years.

The heat destroyed you, beat you down. Even under the roof of the dugout you sat gratefully on a towel, wondering how the bullpen pitchers could stand it out there in the sun in deep right field. As usual there was a sparse crowd scattered through the big double-decked stadium; you expected sparse crowds playing the Phils. But the torment of the weather was bad, and for the Dodgers it was accentuated by three rabid fans who sat just above the dugout.

This trio, huge fellows in their shirtsleeves, spent the afternoon amusing themselves by pounding on the roof of the Dodger dugout with empty pop bottles and needling the Brooklyn players as they went up to and returned from the plate.

The strain had begun to tell. After that hard-fought victory over the Giants of the previous afternoon there was a let-down, and the Phillies were making the most of it. They scored once in the third, knocked McCaffrey out of the box in the fourth by scoring two more runs, and hit Rog Stinson for a couple more in the sixth.

Losing to a team in first or second place is one thing; but you hardly figure to drop games to the Phils so easily. To make things worse, toward the closing innings that pound-pound-pound above their heads became as agonizing to the tired nerves of the Dodgers as the tom-tom of savages in the African jungle. In the field reliable players like Harry Street let grounders go through or mis-timed pop flies. While at the plate the whole batting order was tied up in knots.

Especially annoying was the hammering of the fans at Jocko Klein. A week before, perhaps even a few days before, the shouting of the fans would have been taken philosophically as part of the game. But a few days had passed, and the feeling of the team had changed. They felt differently; they had to feel differently since he had licked the Giants almost single-handed the day before and had become a fighting, scrapping ballplayer. As the Dodgers returned to the bench after the end of the seventh, the three fans became more raucous than before. Spike moved over to Paul Roth, telling him to be ready to take his raps for the pitcher if a rally should start. In front of the dugout Klein, on one knee, was unbuckling his shin-guards. The fans in the box above saw him and burst into a frenzy of abuse.

“Aw... yer Jew-boy, you’re yeller, ya big bum.”

“Yer yeller kike, look out there or he’ll pare yer beak offa ya.”

It was too much. Half the team were instantly on the step of the dugout, holding on to the roof, looking up toward the leather-lunged lunatics in the box above. The catcher, his back turned, his neck crimson, stood up to unfasten the straps of his chest protector.

“Yer yeller, Klein, ya know ya are.”

Bob Russell, standing beside Swanny, felt himself getting warmer than the weather. It was too much.

“Hey there, you guys,” he shouted. “Lay off! Cut that out!”

It was exactly what the fans wanted, the first sign all afternoon that their needling of the team had any effect. In unison the three thumped the dugout roof with their empty pop bottles, and one large shirt-sleeved figure rose from his chair.

“Come up and make us, ya bum, ya.”

“Lissen, mug,” yelled another, “if you don’t like it ya know whatcha can do, don’t ya?”

“Hey there, Klein,” shrieked a third. ‘You’re yeller, you know you are; you can’t take it, you Jew-boy.”

That settled it. They were a team and one of the team was under fire. It was time to act.

“Come on, boys,” said the second baseman of the Dodgers. Grasping the edge of the dugout he hauled himself up with one motion and scrambled over the roof toward the box and those shrieking fans.

Now Bob Russell was a favorite with everyone on the club. A manager can’t have favorites or be a favorite either. But the whole team loved their peppery little second baseman, and they didn’t intend to watch him go into battle alone. Right on his heels were big Swanson and Harry Street. And Raz Nugent. And Roy Tucker, death in his eyes, armed with a formidable looking fungo stick.

Fists flew. So did bats, chairs, rolled newspapers, anything which could be used as a weapon. The three fans fell before the onslaught of the furious Dodgers. Not, however, without a struggle. It was one of the best free-for-all fights in baseball history, involving players, fans, ushers, attendants, policemen, and various customers from the vicinity who couldn’t bear to see a fight without mixing in. In three minutes the boxes above the Brooklyn dugout resembled a tank battlefield. All the while the cause of the encounter was sitting quietly on the bench underneath, waiting for the game to continue and his turn at bat to come round.