The New York (15 page)

The room was a hotel room, all right, and the air conditioner, which was in the window, worked. It kept me awake half the night, but I didn't dare turn it off. The rain started around one in the morning and the rain danced on the metal box hanging outside the window. I like the sound of rain on metal, I think everyone does. Rain in Texas is manna mostly, unless we get too much of it, and that seldom happened when I was a kid down in El Paso. Rain made you wanna run out in the red dirt road and dance in your clothes until you were soaked. Rain was warm when I was a kid. I bet myself, before I fell asleep, that rain in Havana was warm, too.

I spent three days watching them all on the practice field, but I didn't show my stuff until the last day. It's tricky evaluating minor league talent when you don't know the starting point of what you're looking for, but I was learning the ropes. I watched the players when they were involved in the action and that tells you a lot. Some players, especially outfielders, even in the Bigs, stand around during a game like they just happened to be there waiting for a bus. They don't go on their toes, they barely follow the play, they want to be so cool that they outcool themselves. In other words, they don't come to concentrate on the game.

That was not the problem in Havana. These boys played like boys. They talked all the time, the infield chattered like the inside of a Texas jail at lights out. Yak, yak, yak Spanish, mile a minute.

About this lisping thing. It is annoying at first; you miss certain words even if you speak Spanish as well as I do. Still, we had players up from Panama and Venezuela who didn't lisp, so I could parlez in the locker room if I felt like it, but I seldom did. The other thing is slang. Cubans use slang all the time and it was hard to pick up.

The last afternoon, I took the mound because I wanted to see what these boys would do when they tried a rough sample of major league pitching. Not that I am a Nolan Ryan or even a Deke Williams, but I earned my pay over the past sixteen years.

Raul.

He didn't look like much to me from 60 feet 6 inches away, but looks can be deceiving. Ask anyone ever had to pitch to Molitor.

I remembered the way Raul had stroked that pitcher my first night in Havana. I wasn't fastball, wasn't even a fastballer when I was young. I could do a decent 85 miles an hour, but you only earn a ticket to Des Moiees with that kind of pitch. I was a thinker and I was thinking, standing on the mound. The ball felt wet in my hand because of sweating. Must have been the humidity. Might have had something to do with facing Raul,
mano
y mano
, 60 feet 6 inches away.

I decided to try some chin music, just to tune him up.

I threw it inside, letter high, and he hit the deck in a cloud of dust. When you throw inside on purpose, don't fake it. Dumb shit wants to stand there, let him get plunked in the ribs. That's the way I throw. Deke taught me.

I heard a lot of yakking behind me, but I just took the ball back from the catcher and paid it no mind.

The catcher was a kid named Orestes Manguez and he had an arm. But there was no reason for him to burn it back to me, just because he and Raul were roommates. So I called him out to the mound.

— Orestes (I said in Spanish), batter's gotta learn to deal with the brushback in the Bigs.

— Yes.

— You can throw the ball hard as you want to me, but I don't want no hard feelings. This is just business.

— What?

— Baseball. This is just business. I'm making a judgment here on what your buddy can do.

— He can stick the ball right up your fat Yanqui ass, sir.

—- We're all Yankees now (I said, making a nice pun).

But Orestes wasn't smiling. He grumped his way back across the plate, assumed the squat, and Raul aimed his bat at me and then regripped it with both hands.

High and away.

My intention was to get him to reach for it, tap it into the infield.

Pop. He popped that son of a bitch toward right and I turned to watch the line drive descend. It didn't. Just kept getting higher the longer it traveled. Cleared the wire fence in the outfield by ten feet and the players — those in the field behind me and those lounging behind the plate — started dancing and laughing and yakking it up. I never seen a happier bunch of ball players since I was a kid and we were doing it for the love of the game.

Raul just stood there, grinning at me.

So I tried again. I have a good slider left over from my tutelage days under Catfish. Understand, I'd been idle all winter and might be a little rusty, but I gave it my best shot.

Slider slid the way it was supposed to.

All Raul did with it is what he did before. Only this time it was center held, rising on the line just like a shot fired at a squadron of ducks. A low-lying duck would have been grounded by that ball — I swear it was going 90 miles an hour when it cleared the fence.

When someone hits a ball out as fast as you managed to throw it in, there is something very serious about his hitting.

I must have shook my head in wonder because everyone started cracking up and pointing at me and yakking. To show I was a good sport, I pulled off my glove and threw it down and shook my head again. That got them off again. Then I walked to the plate.

I was going to shake hands with Raul, tell him he had a good stroke.

But when I dropped my glove, he dropped his bat and turned and walked back toward the dugout of the practice field. It wasn't a dugout, exactly, just a covered area over a long wooden bench. The bats were in a rack at the side of the bench.

— Shit, man, I was just going to say you got a sweet swing.

— Fuck you (Raul said), you just got a lousy pitch, is all. I can't believe you're good enough to play for a major league team.

This got everyone laughing again and making mocking gestures. This one clown, Tio, took a glove and threw it down and stomped on it, up and down, and shook his head in mock fury and this got the players all crazy with the giggles again.

Felt my face getting flush, but then I thought better about it. The hell with them.

We stayed at it. The Cuban kids had moxie, which is a New York word I personally like.

Well, I did manage to prove to myself that I still had enough to win one for the gipper. I struck out the clown Tio on three pitches and I managed to get Orestes to ground out, except the second baseman threw the ball a mile over the first baseman's head.

— You boys are a bit sloppy in the field (I said to none of them and all of them),

—- They're just nervous (Raul said).

I stared at him a moment to see if this was another Cuban joke. But Raul wasn't giving any indication.

— They oughta be. Old Fidel there, he says these boys are the best, that's the way he sold them to George. If they can't pick up a grounder out of the dirt, they are going to be the laughingstock of New York City.

— New York will not laugh.

— That's what you say. (I shrugged.)

Raul came over from the dugout and stood about this far from me. His face was serious, and when he was serious he looked jest as young as he was. It was a different look he got when he was batting. This was a twenty-three-year-old look,

— Tell me, Señor Shawn, have you been up in the Empire State Building?

— What's that got to do with handling a grounder?

— It is the tallest building in the world.

— Not anymore.

— I have read this.

— I don't really give a shit.

— What's your problem, Señor?

— My problem is your problem. Can't Jimenez play shortstop? 

Raul just stared at me a moment before replying:

— This business. “Business,” you said. Why is Doctor Castro sending us to North America?

— Beats the shit out of me. Believe me, you boys are not the popular choice.

—- Is there danger?

— Naw. We only kill empires.

— That's a joke, bet I am not joking, Señor.

— C'mon and play ball.

Raul trotted to the outfield then and I settled back to spray a few out there with a fungo bat, just to make sure that the boys actually did know a thing or two about fielding.

It went all right. Raul is not Jimmy Piersall in the outfield when it comes to flat-out fielding, bet he was all right, as good as Doak Walker had been for us at considerably more money. Damn. I was even beginning to think the way George talked, and that bothered me. The other thing was, the guys were taking it seriously. They were on their toes in the outfield, even when the sen started falling and we had been at it long enough to make es all look like drowned rats. I was giving it to them good on the hitting and fielding and the rest of it and they were taking it with a measuring spoon, like medicine.

That night I was taken to a big white building in the center of the city by my guide Martinez, who said I would be received by the Supremo himself.

I was wearing a white polo shirt and dark slacks and sneakers because it seemed to me the heat demanded that no one overdress himself. We took Mr. Martinez's Trabant to the white building and I thought my back would give way before my legs numbed up.

We untangled ourselves from the car and went up some steps and through a couple of doors and halls and then we were in a big room with a lovely carpet on the floor and a lot of paintings on the walls. A couple were portraits of Fidel and his merry men in the mountains during the armed part of the revolution. There was also a Cezanne, which I knew was a Cezanne because it was signed Cezanne.

Around ten
P.M.
, Castro and his entourage came into the room and I just stood there, not knowing what I was supposed to do or say. This is usually the best thing if you really don't know what to do next. It's what rabbits do.

Castro smelled of Old Spice when he came around to give me a hug. I did notice that men hugged a lot in Cuba, but mostly each other, I attribute nothing to this, just note it,

—- Señor Shawnus (he said), I hope you have enjoyed your visit to Cuba and you have seen how excellent is the baseball which we play.

— It is excellent, Mr. President. I enjoyed it more than I can say. And Mr. Martinez here was very kind to me to show me the city and everything.

— The hotel room. Did you like the hotel room?

— I liked it very much. It's just like a hotel room in the States.

— Don't patronize me, Señor. I've lived in the States and I would much rather live in Cuba.

— I know what you mean, sir. I am not patronizing no one. I am just saying what I saw, sir. I like your city and your people.

— Then why do you declare unceasing war on us, day after day, trying to bleed us to death?

That stopped me for a moment. The only time I ever thought of Cuba in my life before this whole thing started was wondering why Ricky Ricardo couldn't speak better English and now I was being turned into the United States. I didn't want to get into a fight here over anything. George sent me down to get him some scab ballplayers and I was just doing my job.

— I'm just a baseball player, Mr. President. I don't declare 
war
 on no one except the Baltimore Orioles and the Boston Red Sox.

“Oh, speak English,” Fidel said. “I can barely understand a word you said. Your Spanish is terrible, you're going to have to learn to speak it better”

“I been trying to lisp it the last three days,” I said. I was getting a little irritated with the attitude. Everyone was so sure their shit didn't stink that they didn't even notice what a slum they were living in. These people acted like they were French. The nice thing about Americans was we use language to understand one another. If a Mexican says something in English I don't get, I ask him again and he tries harder until I understand him, even down to using hand signals. The Cubans acted like Spanish was a joke I didn't get, and I say that's rude of them.

“Do you mean to insult me and my countrymen?” Fidel asked. He has very large eyes, brown, but you wouldn't want to get them lit up the way they were lighting up then. I backed off, even literally.

“I didn't mean no nothing, Mr. President. This is a great honor for me to be sent here, to see your best baseball players play and to see your wonderful city. I hope I can come again, sir, when the season is over up north.”

“When the season is over, you will still be playing, Señor Shawnus. In the World Series. Because my brave youths are the best baseball players in all the world and now the world will see that. I have accepted your government's humble petition to make amends for the past thirty-five years, years of insults and plots and acts of war, because I am a man of peace and honor.”

I never saw someone as full of himself as old Castro. Not even George. Not even Tommy Tradup who was the best hitter we had last year before George sold him. Tommy thought hitting a home ran earned him two women per night so he'd just hang out in Elaine's until they'd come to their senses and adore him. But Castro had an excuse, because no one was saying no to him for all those years until the Russians fell in on themselves.

“I don't know what to say,” I said,

“You say ‘thank you,'” he said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“On behalf of a grateful American government.”

“President, I don't know nothing about this stuff, about what's going on with you and us, I just know I was supposed to come down here and escort your ball players to the Yankee spring camp in Fort Lauderdale. I'm just a simple baseball player.”

“With a lousy slider,” he said then.

“What?”

“My Raul humiliated you today when you tried to bean him. You have a reputation as a beanball pitcher, and when you tried to bean our best player, he became very, very angry. To that point, he was willing to accept you for what you are, an old baseball player who thinks he can speak pure Spanish, which you obviously cannot. But when you anger a Cubano, you stir up a nest of vipers, and this little viper struck back and showed you how pathetic your intimidation is.”