The Great American Novel (50 page)

And you ask me, “But what's there to hate about, Gil?”
They robbed you of your home! They drove you out like dogs!
and you say, “Hey, where's the hatred come in?”

T
HIRD
D
AY
B
ACK

Fellas, we had to cut it short yesterday so you could go out there and get your asses whipped by the naval station team, with the result that I did not get around to telling you whom to hate for having deprived you of just about everything a baseball team could want. Let me make it easy for you. Just so you don't go wrong—being new as you are to this great adventure of loathing—why don't you begin by hating your fellow man
across the board?
That way you won't grow confused. If you see a guy in a Mundy uniform, he's all right,
but everybody who is not in the Ruppert scarlet and gray, you are to hate, loathe, despise, vilify, threaten, curse, slander, betray, mock, deceive, revile, and have nothing further to do with.
Is that clear? All mankind except those in the scarlet and gray. Any questions?

Nickname, did I happen to hear you say
“Why?”
Because they live off your misery, Damur! Because the nightmare that is your life at second base
gives them pleasure!
Your errors are their solace, your strike-outs their consolation. Mundys, don't you get it yet? You bear their blame! You suffer in their stead! The worse your luck, the better for them—the greater your misery, the happier they will be! Look, haven't you heard? Do I have to tell you
everything?
THE RUPPERT MUNDYS ARE THE OFFICIAL SCAPEGOATS OF THE U.S.A.!

And who
made
you scapegoats, boys? Was it writ in the stars, Specs? God's will, Tuminikar? Well, that's what they tell the peasants, all right, when those poor bastards don't happen to like their lot anymore. That's what they tell the slaves, when they happen to look up from their shackles and ask, “Hey, what the hell is goin' on around here?” Sorry, sorry, nothing to be done for you downtrodden today. God's will. He wants it this way, with you on the bottom and us on the top. Back to work now—we'll tell you if and when there's to be any change with those chains …

Mundys, it isn't
God
that put you on the road! It isn't
fate,
and it isn't
nothing,
either.
It is your fellow man!
Who made you scapegoats, Mundys? The United States government and the brothers M.! The country whose flag you salute, the owners whose names you bear! That's who joined forces to rob you of honor and dignity and home! The state and the owners! Your country and your bosses!

*   *   *

It did not come easy at first, but that's what spring training is for, Gil told them, getting that old unused venom running again, getting out there first thing in the morning to start in working on those old weaknesses of character, like ingrained habits of courtesy and that old bugaboo, the milk of human kindness. Get that gee-whiz out of your voice, Damur—this is no high school dance! Cut out that grinning, Rama, nothing is funny about hate!
Snarl,
Heket,
snarl
at your oppressor—he lives off your old age! I want to hear some
hatred
in there when you shout “Hate!”

Ah, but it was hard. How could you go around insulting some player on the other team when you knew he was better than you by far! How expect to frighten somebody with your bark or your bite who had you pegged for a busher long ago—somebody who in fact frightened
you.
No, it just wouldn't work. Besides, it wasn't that the other players
always
teased and kidded them—sometimes they were downright amiable, even sympathetic with the Mundys for having to be Mundys. Why, if they went around hating everybody, they were going to wind up losing what few friends they still had left in the league.

“You have no friends! You have only enemies! Their smiles oppress you as much as their sneers! You don't want their sympathy—you want their
blood!
”

Oh, but it was so hard. How do you go about hating and loathing those crowds you've been working so hard to placate and appease? How can you possibly hate all those people who you don't even know? Christ, when you come down to it, they're just people, like you and me.

“No, they are not! They are your tormentors! They imprison you by their ridicule! You are in bondage to their contempt! You are shackled by their smirks and their smart-ass remarks! There is no such
thing
as ‘people just like you and me' if you are Ruppert Mundys! There are the oppressed and the oppressors! The Mundys and the rest of mankind—or mancruel, to be precise!”

Oh, but it was hard spreading that hatred around the way Gil wanted. Hate the Mundy brothers
too?
Hell, they didn't even know what they looked like. How can you hate somebody you wouldn't even recognize if he sat down next to you on the trolley car? And they don't even travel on trolleys—those guys travel in limousines! These are important people, these are powerful men!

“And they sold you down the river, boys, kicked you and your pitiful asses out of the inn, just like Jesus and his Mom! That's what important people do. That's how they get to
be
important.”

But, but we're their team, they pay the wages—their father was
the
Glorious Mundy who is back in Port Ruppert buried in deep center field. Their name is our name. How can we hate our own name, if you know what we mean?

“Because their name
isn't
Mundy anymore. It's Muny, good old-fashioned dough! They have maligned the name—mangled it beyond repair!
You
are the true Mundys, boys, and not because it was the name of your robber-baron father, either! No, because it is short for Mundane! Meaning
common,
meaning
ordinary
—meaning the man in the street who's fed up to here with the Muny brothers and their ilk dancing the rhumba down in Rio while the ordinary Joe toils without honor and without reward! The Mundane, who do the dirty work of this world, their noses to the ground or the grounder, their tails to the whip, while the Mundy boys stash it away in Fort Knox! Their name your name? Their team your team?
Says who!
”

Oh, but it was hard, hardest of all hating the U.S. of A. Why, if it wasn't for our country 'tis of thee, there wouldn't even be baseball to begin with!

“Or homeless baseball teams! Look,” cried Gamesh, “what the hell good is a country to you anyway, if there is no place in it you can call your own!”

Oh, it was hard, but as it turned out in the end, not
that
hard. By the time the '44 season had begun, they had trampled out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. Their hatred knew no bounds.

SECRET SPRING TRAINING REPORT ON COMMUNIST INFILTRATION OF PATRIOT LEAGUE

Excerpts from Memorandum prepared by Gil Gamesh, Manager of the Ruppert Mundys and Chief Investigator, Patriot League Internal Security Affairs Division, for General Douglas D. Oakhart, President of Patriot League, and Mrs. Angela Whittling Trust, Presidential Adviser for Internal Security Affairs, submitted 4/17/44:

1.
Summary.
It is now clear that (a) Communist infiltration of the Patriot League is far more extensive than our most pessimistic preseason estimates; and (b) that the Ruppert Mundys, as had been hypothesized, occupy a pivotal position in the Communist plans for the subversion of the Patriot League. The clarification of (a) has been achieved by (c) continuous surveillance of Ruppert Mundy activities throughout spring training and (d) an analysis of same. Clarification of (b) has been achieved by way of (a) (c) and (a) (d), with equal emphasis given to each. Current trends, unless reversed before conclusion of '44 season, will lead to a Communist-controlled league, with complete dissolution to follow, from all indications, during '45 season, so as to coincide with Communist takeovers in Europe and Asia at conclusion of international hostilities. The situation is very disturbing, as will be reflected in the following percentages, based on the evidence supplied by (c) and (d):

2.
Analysis of percentages
(charts attached) …

3.
Communists detected

a. Communist espionage agents

(1) O.K. Ockatur (P). As reported earlier, Ockatur is in actuality Captain Smerdyakov, formerly a tank officer in the Leningrad Military Unit of the Red Army, now affiliated with the Main Intelligence Directorate of GRU of the Armed Forces General Staff. Because of the blinding of Bob Yamm his reputation is currently at a low ebb in Moscow, where the latest official explanation of that act is that it was committed solely out of personal animosity, in direct defiance of orders. Ockatur argues that he acted in direct
compliance
with orders and accuses his enemies of attempting to ruin him with a charge of “incurable dwarfism.” It would appear from all this that Stalin, in the Russian phrase, has already begun “turning the little fellow on his head in the earth,” and that sooner or later he will be liquidated, perhaps by being beaned by a Communist pitcher during his turn at bat. We must be prepared for this eventuality.

(2) Hothead Ptah (C). Ptah is none other than Major Stavrogin, the infamous “One-Legged Man,” probably the most admired
agent provocateur
ever to be graduated from SHIT.

b. Communist Party members

(1) Frenchy Astarte (SS). Astarte was an active member of the Communist Party in Canada, Latin America, and the Far East before entering the United States under the guise of an infielder. He is fluent in six languages, though pretends to understand nothing but French. On instruction from Moscow Astarte dropped the pop fly in the last of the ninth of the last game of the '42 season, the error that cost the Mundys a tie for seventh, and set the stage for the expulsion from Port Ruppert.

(2) Big John Baal (1B). Trained in the jungles of Central America by local Communist insurrectionists; highly motivated. Cell leader of Mundys, certainly one of the top two or three party members in the league.

(3) Chico Mecoatl (P). Roots in Mexican insurgency movement. Two brothers, three sisters, six cousins, and two stepfathers jailed in Mexico for political activities. Noises he makes while pitching may be code signals.

(4) Deacon Demeter (P). “The Red Deacon,” liaison between party members in organized baseball and party members infiltrating organized religion. Top Southern “white trash” Communist in U.S.

e. Fellow travelers

(1) Jolly Cholly Tuminikar (P)

(2) Nickname Damur (2B)

(3) Specs Skirnir (RF)

(4) Carl Khovaki (UT)

(5) Applejack Terminus (UT)

(6) Mule Mokos (UT)

4.
The Isaac Ellis Development

a. Background and summary; or, “From Surmise to Certainty.” It has long been suspected by the Presidential Adviser and the Chief Investigator of the Internal Security Affairs Division of the Patriot League that the owner of the Tri-City Greenbacks, Abraham Ellis, and his wife, Sarah Ellis, were, like so many of their co-religionists, either “tools” of the Communists, party members, or fellow travelers. It has now been established with maximal certainty
that the entire Ellis family comprises the key intelligence and secret police unit in all of organized baseball.

b. J.E.W.; or, “The Ellis Mission.” The Ellis mission appears to be threefold: (J) to contribute by their very presence to undermining faith in the Patriot League; (E) to mastermind ad hoc espionage activities within the league; and (W) to spy on their fellow Communists within the league and transmit all data as to the loyalty, dedication, and competence of agents and party functionaries to the appropriate Kremlin offices. With a foot in both the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate of the Armed Forces General Staff) and the KBG (Intelligence Service of the Soviet State Security Service, or Secret Police), the Ellises hold the position of
highest-ranking Communist agents in the Patriot League,
outranking Frank Mazuma (Colonel Chiehikov) and the Chief Investigator of the Internal Security Affairs Division of the Patriot League. Their identity is probably known only to Colonel Raskolnikov himself.

c. Isaac Ellis; or, “Moscow Makes Her Move.” On April 12, 1944, three days before the opening of the Patriot League season, Isaac Ellis, the seventeen-year-old son of Abraham Ellis, requested an interview with Gil Gamesh in a cafeteria in Tri-City, where the Mundys were playing a final exhibition game against the Greenbacks. There Ellis made the following proposal:

(1) That he become a Ruppert Mundy “coach” under manager Gil Gamesh

(2) That he be given complete managerial control over team strategy until the All-Star break

(3) That during this “trial” period he be permitted to institute the following changes—

(a) Do away with the sacrifice bunt as an offensive maneuver and the intentional pass as a defensive maneuver