The Southpaw (14 page)

In come Mike Mulrooney. He was all dressed up. I had never saw him so dressed before, and I hardly recognized him, but you can never forget him once you hear him laugh. He laughs a great, rich laugh, and he shakes all over and his face gets redder then it was before. I had read a good deal about him in the books before I ever met him, and some of the writers called him “Laughing Mike.” Yet there was never a 1 that did not have the highest respect for him as a ballplayer, and then when he was too old he went to Queen City and managed the club there, the Queen City Cowboys. He was laughing now, saying “Damn it, where is Henry Wiggen? Henry, have you not heard them calling you for the last hour on the speaker, and old man Moors in a fit of temper?” and he hustled me in my clothes and took me by the arm, and out we went. “He is waiting at the hotel,” said Mike.

He come to town to see Ugly Jones, and he figured he might see a few more at the same time between planes. Ugly is the Mammoth shortstop, and every year he is a holdout. He was asking 17,000

and Mr. Moors said in the newspaper that Ugly could rot in Arkansas before he would get that sum, and finally they agreed to talk it over in Aqua Clara, and they had both flowed in that afternoon. Ugly got his name because he is so Ugly. He is married to a moving picture actor by the name of Linda Lee Harper, and a beauty she is, for I seen her in several pictures and later a number of times in the flesh.

“It seems to me,” said I, “that you have not got to call in the boss himself just to can a man,” and Mike laughed and told me not to worry about that.

Old Man Moors had a whole sweet to himself in the hotel. Mike went in, never even knocking, and I practically fell over from the smell of perfume. The first person I seen was Dutch, and I said, “Dutch, that is a mighty strong perfume you are wearing tonight,” and Mike laughed and laughed. Nobody else laughed, though I thought it was rather a comical remark myself.

The top of the club was there, Mr. Moors and Dutch, and Egg Barnard and Joe Jaros, both Mammoth coaches, and Jocko Conrad the head of the scouts, and Bradley Lord the club secretary. They had a number of tables shoved together, and they all sat around them. They was all covered with papers and beer, and every little bit the bellboy would come in with a telephone, and then Mr. Moors would talk in it awhile, and then come back to us. Between them all they just come through a long session with Ugly, and he signed for 15,000 about an hour before.

Then I knowed what the smell of perfume was from, for in walked Patricia Moors. She is vice-president of the club. Her name is on the contract. She is the daughter of Lester T. Moors, Jr., about 30 years old and 1 of the most beautiful women ever seen, bar none. She come in through the door behind where they was all sitting and took a place at the table, and I looked at her, and her at me, and nobody said nothing, and then Mike introduced me to all the people, and I shook hands all around, and when I shook her hand it was all smooth and covered with rings, and her bracelets jangled on her wrist like a metal tag all a-clink on a running dog, and she drawed her hand out from mine very slow, rubbing it along my palm, or so it seemed at the time.

“This is 1 of the boys I want,” said Mike to Mr. Moors.

“How would you like to play at Queen City?” said Dutch to me. Queen City is AA in the Four-State Mountain League.

“We will start you at 225,” said Mr. Moors, “for we have had good reports on you all up and down the line.”

The price sounded low. “Many of the AA boys I been talking to are getting lots better then that,” I said.

“Ho ho,” said Mr. Moors. “I see where we have got another problem on our hands. Are you 1 of them ballplayers that plays only for the money or are you 1 of those kind of young men that we wish to have in our system that is in there for the love of the game?”

“Well,” said I, “anybody will tell you that I love the game, but Pop says never sell myself short. I am worth more then 225.”

“He loves the game,” said Mike. “I know that he loves the game.”

“Who is Pop?” said Patricia.

“My pop,” said I. “He was with Cedar Rapids in the Mississippi Valley League.”

“Here is the thing,” said Dutch. “You must not get the idea that you are doing us any favor in Q. C. You are going to Q. C. as a favor to yourself.

A season or 2 under Mike Mulrooney will make a ballplayer of you.”

“We are building,” said Mr. Moors. “It is next year and the year after that we are aiming at. You are not yet ready. You are still not a ballplayer a-tall.”

“I would not put it just that way,” said Mike. “He is a very fine young ballplayer, but he has got his faults.”

“Pop says I am just about the finished product,” I said.

“Maybe Pop is not the final word in these matters,” said Mr. Moors.

“You have got to start considering Mr. Mulrooney in place of your pop, for he is in charge of you from now on.”

“Leave us look at a few pictures,” said Patricia. Bradley Lord jumped up out of his chair and run around the room turning off the lights. Then he run over to the movie camera and switched it on. Bradley is a frog.

You know how a frog does. When he is sitting on the ground you give him a little touch on the behind and up he leaps and starts to run. If Mr. Moors or Patricia Moors is to say a word up he jumps and begins to do what was said. Naturally they don’t go over and touch him on the behind, but it adds up to the same thing. 1 time in the Mammoth clubhouse I was sitting with Red when in come Bradley Lord, and he walked past, and Red said to him, “You are a frog. Did you ever think to yourself what a frog you were?” Bradley Lord said he never considered himself as a frog. “Yet at least,” said Red, “a frog will sometime not jump when he is touched on the behind, for at least sometime a frog has got the sense to lay down and die and not be a frog no longer.” He switched on the machine and throwed the beam against the wall, and it showed my name and the date, and there was pictures of me throwing. “Put her in slow motion,” said Mr. Moors, and Bradley Lord done so. “Now, Dutch,” said Mr. Moors, “tell this boy what is wrong with him.”

“Watch yourself very careful,” said Dutch to me. “Watch your left hand when you throw,” and I watched, and he said, “See how your hand is all out in the open. The batter can see which way your fingers is wrapped around the ball. He knows what is coming. Sid Goldman says he seen your hand this afternoon, and that is how he knowed what was coming. He knowed it was not a curve.”

I watched the pictures very close, and I think I seen what he said I seen. Yet I am not sure. For you must remember that I do not pitch in slow motion.

“That is terrible,” said Mr. Moors.

“Very bad,” said Bradley Lord. He turned off the camera and turned on the lights.

“Then there is another thing,” said Dutch. “You cannot get by in the big-time on fast balls alone. In the camp games according to your charts you throwed all in all in 24 and 1/3 innings a total of 366 pitches.

More then 325 was fast balls. What is the exact count on the chart, Mike?”

“I do not believe in these charts,” said Mike. “286.”

“That is why we are sending you to Q. C.,” said Mr. Moors. “Mr. Mulrooney will get you over your bad habits.”

“Yet the salary is rather small,” I said, “though I suppose I have got no choice in the matter.” I was under contract, and once you are under contract you cannot get out of it.

“You have got to start at the bottom and rise,” said Mr. Moors. “It is all a risk with us. Any minute you might get took by the goddam government draft or break a leg or fall off a train. Speaking of that, how do you stand in the draft? Perhaps you have a punctured ear drum or water on the knee.”

“No,” said I, “I am in the best possible shape.”

Mike studied my chart. “Turned down,” he said.

“Excellent,” said Mr. Moors. “Why?”

“Fighting roils my bowels,” said I. “I am a coward at heart.”

“That is most excellent,” said Mr. Moors.

“Do you belong to 1 of these crazy churches or something?” said Bradley Lord.

“No,” said I. “I belong to no churches, crazy or otherwise. I do not even know for sure what I believe. Aaron Webster says when I find out what I believe I should do it but meanwhile sit tight.”

“Who is Aaron Webster?” said Patricia.

“Goddam it,” said Mr. Moors, “have I got to sit here all night and listen to this palaver? I am due back in Detroit in the morning. Give me the contract,” said he. Bradley Lord give him the contract out of my envelope, and he shoved it across to me. The figures was all wrote in by typewriter. “Sign it,” said he, “for I have got to see some other boys tonight. Do you realize that I have not yet had no dinner?”

I had not realized that, but I realized that
Henry Wiggen
had not had no dinner. I run my eye up and down the contract. I seen a reference to meals, saying we was to get 3 dollars cash every morning. I had ate nothing but a pie and a quart of milk since lunch that Perry give me whilst I was taking a shower. Then I thought of all the money I owed to Perry.

“Well,” said Mr. Moors, “are you going to sign it or not?” I looked all around me. They was all looking at me, and I would look at 1, and he would turn away his head, all except Mike Mulrooney, and he said, “I think you are worth more. But it is not my pie to slice.”

“Damn it,” said Mr. Moors, pounding on the table, “I have not had my dinner and all this fuss and bickering is giving me the indigestion. I do not think I should of give Ugly Jones so much to begin with and I do not like to be robbed blind by every ballplayer that gets their foot in the door.”

“I will sign,” said I, “for 250 per month plus 50 dollars in cash right here and now on the spot, for I owe a good bit to Perry Simpson, besides which I have not had my dinner neither and have got a bigger belly then Mr. Moors.” Mike Mulrooney laughed, and pretty soon they all begun to laugh. Mr. Moors whipped 50 out of his pocket and handed it over, and they scratched out 225 and put down 250, and I signed, and Bradley Lord signed as witness, and they said they would send it up to Pop to sign, too, for I was under the age.

Then I went downstairs and ate in the Hotel Silver Palms Grill, and then I went back to the barrackses and give Perry his money in full and told the boys what happened, and then I went to sleep.

About midnight Coker Roguski woke me up. They all been over for a conference—Perry and Coker and Canada and Lindon Burke—and they was all assigned to Queen City along with me. Lindon was recalled that summer, too soon I think, and I do not think he will ever really hit the heights within him. Lindon needs to be mothered like a baby, and there was never nobody but Mike willing to give him the time. “We should have a good celebration,” said Lindon. “Leave us all go get a beer.”

“I do not want the beer,” I said, “but I could go for a bite as I ate my dinner too fast in the excitement.” Then we all went back to the Hotel Silver Palms Grill, all except Perry Simpson. 

Chapter 11-A

It is now 3 A.M. in the morning, and I am disgusted. It is a very cold winter night out, and I have got a fire in the fireplace.

I begun this book last October, and it is now January, and I doubt that I am halfway through. I will give 1 word of advice to any sap with the itch to write a book—do not begin it in the first place.

I got 12 chapters wrote on this blasted thing and it was not easy. My hand does not grip a pencil so good, for it is rather large, and I went and bought a couple big fat pencils called an Eagle number 4 from Fred Levine that does not make my hand so tired. Fred is still rather cool to me.

After I got through the 12 chapters I bumped into Aaron yesterday morning, and he said, “Well, Henry, I do not see much of you any more. Ain’t you afraid of putting on weight staying indoors like that?”

“I have wrote 12 chapters,” I said, “and lost 12 pounds at the least.” 

“I admire your get up and go,” he said.

“Get up and go hell,” said I. “It is the sit down and stay that gets books wrote,” and he got a great laugh out of that.

Well, like a fool I stood there gassing with him, and the next thing I knowed I promised him that if him and Pop dropped over tonight—that is,
last
night—I would read the works out loud. Then I went back and polished up number 12 a bit, and in the evening me and Holly slung sandwiches and coffee together, and about 7 Pop and Aaron come. I begun to read out loud, starting with chapter 1 and following through in order, though here and there I skipped over parts that seemed too personal to mention. I did not read the pages concerning me and Thedabara that night, nor the pages concerning me and Holly. Holly knows it’s there, though, and says okay, and Thedabara will never know the difference because I doubt that she ever looked at a book since Perkinsville High and ain’t likely to take up the habit now. I left out the swear words, too, for Pop’s sake. He gets all red when you swear around him around women.

Every so often they would laugh, and then again they would sit so still it was like if it would of been a book it would of been 1 of those that you can’t lay it down. Sometimes when they laughed they would laugh in the wrong spot, though.

After number 6 Holly called the halt for food, and we all drifted in the kitchen, and afterwards I begun to read out loud again, burping most of the way through 7, and when I got through with number 12 I said that was all I done to date.

Nobody said a word. They all just sat there, and I said, “Do not be bashful. Say anything you want, pulling no punches,” for to my mind it was all very good. I damn near broke my hand doing it. Finally Holly was the first to speak, and she said, “The first 11 chapters is just about right, but number 12 is too long.”

Now, if that was not a dirty crack! Of all the chapters number 12 was the 1 I was proudest of, for it run 73 pages on both sides of the paper, and I done it in less then a week. If that is not some kind of a record I will be mighty surprised.

“Yes,” said Aaron, “I think number 12 is too long.”

“Have you ever wrote a book?” said I to him.

“No,” said he.

“Well then,” said I, “why are you so quick to run down what another writer did?”