The Southpaw (36 page)

The crowd was so still my ears itched. Everything seemed unnatural, like everybody was told be quiet and the noise would be filled in later, and every sound carried far, and it was like a dream where you knowed it would all stop happening real quick, and yet it went on and on, the fourteenth, the fifteenth.

In the first of the sixteenth Barkowski opened with a single. It sounded like he hit it with a hollow bat. He danced back and forth up and down the line, and Canada covered, moving up and back with the pitches, trying to keep the runner close and at the same time play the bunt, and I throwed high to Taggart, and he tried to bunt, first fouling 1 off, and then bunting on the second pitch, and it trickled down the line towards first, and I moved over after it, and my legs was heavy and I felt like I was carrying around a sack of lead on my back, and finally I reached the ball and made the throw to Gene at first, for Gene was covering, but Taggart beat it.

McKenna batted for himself. He got a hand, but this time it was me that got the break, for he tried to bunt but popped it in the air, and I moved a few steps to the left and took it, and the runners scrambled back to their bases.

That brung up Reynolds. He is the Cleveland shortstop and been their lead-off man as long as I can remember. The books say he is 36. That would mean he broke into pro ball at 14. I would of rather it been a younger man that would maybe do something real dumb and help me out this late at night. It was the old veterans that worried me and give me the most trouble all year. Red signed for a fast 1, just blaze it through, and it seemed wrong to me but I was too weary to shake it off, and I throwed it, and Reynolds just looked it over, and Neininger called it a strike. He was trying to wait me, and tire me, and somehow that made me mad, and I remember that right about then I seen a little knot of people moving towards the exits, and that made me mad, too, for it seemed like when a fellow is in trouble people ought to at least stick it out and watch and not be in such a hurry to rush on home because it looks a little late. It was after 1 now on the center field clock, and Red called for the same, but neither so fat nor so good, and I throwed it, and Reynolds sliced it off foul down the line in right. It hooked into the stands and clattered amongst the seats, and a lady in a white dress strolled over and picked it up and stuck it in her purse.

I took out the pill Sam give me. I tore off the paper and popped it in my mouth, and it stuck in my throat, and after awhile it went down, and I remember thinking maybe Sam was giving me poison for all I knowed, and I remember that I wondered if anybody ever wrote a murder story where 1 ballplayer murdered another. This was about the time I begun to read murders quite a bit. Then Red give me the sign, and I throwed, and Reynolds swang and lashed it into right, and I knowed that I should of been backing up a base somewheres, but I could not think where to go. So I just turned around and watched the play. I seen Pasquale come charging in and diving and skidding along on his belly and making what they call a shoestring catch, and then all in the 1 motion he was up on his feet and firing down to second. Barkowski was halfway to third, not thinking Pasquale could make the catch, and now he was stopping short and turning and heading back towards second, and Coker took the throw, stretching out toward right with 1foot on the bag like a first baseman, and Barkowski was doubled easy and the inning was over. I never told Pasquale what the catch meant to me, and I never asked Sam what was in the pill. I always meant to.

But soon it was another day and another ball game and I guess I never did.

Sunny Jim opened our half of the sixteenth with a single. Lindon pinch-run for him, and Canada bunted Lindon along.

Pasquale was up there it seemed like years. He run the string out and fouled off a couple. And then I seen him shift his feet just the barest trifle, and I seen where Reynolds seen it, too, and shifted over himself and shouted to the rest of Cleveland to do the same, and Joe Lincoln yelled from the bench. But it was too late, for Pasquale drove 1 into right, and it fell close to the line and Levette Smith come over as fast as he could from where he was playing Pasquale more or less straight away, and he grabbed it and done the only thing he could do, firing it home with all he had, and the ball was still in the air when Lindon slid across.

I looked out at Rob. He was standing with his hands on his hips and his head bowed. He took 1 very deep breath, and then he looked over towards me 1 time, and then he turned and walked towards the Cleveland clubhouse. I felt very sad for him.

In the night I felt a little crick in my back. I noticed it several times before, beginning in the west, but never like this. I turned over a couple times, thinking maybe it was just from the way I was laying, but it did not go away, and I woke Perry and told him so, and he said what did I expect after working 16 innings. He laid in bed with his arm over his eyes. Then he said several dirty words and pulled the pillow over his face and fell asleep again. I pulled the pillow off his face and told him did he remember waking me in the middle of the night in St. Louis to crack his neck. He said he did, and he stumbled up out of bed and stood there swaying and trying to open his eyes, and he said there was some liniment on the shelf in the bathroom, and I went in and brung it back. It burned, and he rubbed it on where the crick was, mumbling and swearing and saying it could of waited till morning, and after a bit I felt that he was not rubbing, and I turned, and he was sitting there dead asleep with the bottle cockeyed in his hand and dripping down over his leg. I waited to see how far up it would drip. If it dripped far enough he would of woke again in a hurry. But it did not, and I give him a little push and he fell backwards on the bed and never woke up.

The next day I drilled a little, but it still hurt, and I went back in the clubhouse and down the stairs where Doc Loftus has his office. On a hot day it is the coolest place in the park. Piss Sterling was laid out on the table with 2 cotton sticks up his nose. He has sinuses something awful, and it got worse on the trip west. He laid there reading a paper with his arms stuck in the air. He give me a hello and Doc said for him not to talk or the medicine would all run down in his mouth. “Well, Wiggen,” said Doc to me, “I do not see you here very often.”

“I got a crick in my back,” I said.

“That was a great game last night,” he said. “It is no wonder you have got a crick.”

“It sure run long,” I said.

“Leave me see your back,” said Doc, and I pulled off my shirt and he felt around with his hand where I told him to. He said he could not feel nothing, no bump nor no break. He said if it did not clear up in another day or 2 he would shoot some X-rays.

“Maybe it is all in your mind,” said Piss.

“Shut up and lay down,” said Doc, laughing. That was a big joke amongst the Mammoths. When Doc Loftus could not find something wrong with somebody he sent them down to the Navy hospital or some other big hospital, and it usually wound up with a report that it was all in your mind. Then you went and seen Doc Solomon. They said that Pisses sinuses was all in his mind. Sometimes Piss would run at the nose for an hour or more, and if you told him you would be glad to do something if you could he would say, “Oh, it is nothing. It is only my mind that I am blowing out my nose.

“Maybe it is at that,” said Doc.

“Nuts,” said I, and I put my shirt back on.

In come Patricia Moors for a bottle of pills. “I have not slept in a week,”

she said. I believe that was the first time I seen her since I heaved a glass at her over Memorial Day in Boston. “You ain’t ill?” she said.

“I got a crick in my back,” I said.

“Dutch says he hears by the grapevine that some of the boys is beefing about a doubleheader after a night game,” she said.

“They got a right to,” I said. “It was 3 o’clock before anybody got to bed.”

We went out of Doc’s office together, and then instead of going back up in the hot park we sat on the ledge there and looked out through the little slit in the fence where Doc himself generally sits. It give us a sort of a worm’s view, and we seen 2 rough and ready ball games plus a fist fight betwixt Goose and Johnny Libby on a play at third plus some dandy language from Dutch on the play that cost Sam the first game. Sam lost it 5-4, a tough 1. Somebody on the Cleveland bench brung along a trumpet and every little while give out with “The Old Gray Mare She Ain’t What She Used To Be” and then quick hid the trumpet until Carrera went over and found it and made them put it back in the clubhouse.

“Poor Sam,” said I.

“I do not feel sorry for Sam,” said she. “Sam is 1 of the few people I really and truly admire.” She was in a very confidential mood that afternoon, though dog-tired after not having slept in a week. “Is it not odd that after putting thousands of dollars in sprucing up the park I wind up down here?” she said.

“It is out of the hustle and rush,” I said. “Though Dutch will probably wonder where I am all day.”

“I will square it with Dutch,” she said. “Dutch is another I admire.”

“Do you admire me?” I said.

“It is too early to tell,” said she. “1 thing I like about you is you say what you think. You are a very frank type of a person. Most ballplayers I admire as ballplayers only. I admire Red. I admire Red as both ballplayer and man.”

“I admire them all,” said I.

“You go around admiring everybody you lay your eyes on,” she said.

“That is 1 of the things I admire about
you
. Yet you need not do it, for you are in debt to no man, and you never need be. In your job you need only deliver the goods. You are not forced to act like you admire those who you do not. I am your boss, yet you are frank with me. You do not admire me, yet you make no secret of it.”

“I admire you as to sex,” I said.

“Well, that is something,” said she. “There goes the Boston score,”

and we crouched down for a better look at the board, and Boston beat Chicago, and that meant a full game sliced from our lead.

“Boston is getting the pitching lately,” I said.

“A ballplayer need only do his job,” she said. “He need never throw a party for a politician by way of selling the army the product of Moors.

He need never entertain the owner of a paper so as to get a decent treatment in the press. It does not matter what the press says. A home run is a home run and no 2 ways about it. A pitcher pitches a 16-inning game and not 5,000 writers can take it from him. He never need care what people think or say. All that he does is open and public.”

“Yet there must be people to keep the organization running on all fours,” I said.

“That is the part that is closed from sight,” said she. “That is the part that any cluck can do. There is 5,000 people in this park this minute that can step in and do what I do. But it is mine because I was born to it. My name is Patricia Moors. What gives me the chills is suppose my name was Betty Brown.”

“You need some sleep,” I said. “You ain’t slept in a week.”

“Nor am I libel to sleep for another,” she said. “My mind is too full of a number of thoughts, and none of them pleasant.” Then we rose and headed back up. Knuckles Johnson was coasting through to a win in the second game, and I suppose that might of put her in a better frame of mind. Yet I don’t know. She is 1 of these women caught halfway between keeping house for some cluck and really
doing
something in life. Holly says the same.

Chapter 29

The crick in my back got no worse but no better, so Thursday I had the X-rays shot, going clear down to some hospital on 26th Street.

The nurse that worked the machine said her little nephew spoke of me often and would be pleased to have my autograph, and I wrote it down over my picture that was in yesterday’s paper laying on the table in the waiting room, and then I beat it back in a cab to the Stadium. I missed the drill and never throwed a ball all afternoon, and that helped some.

But we dropped the ball game. Boston and St. Louis was to play that night, but it rained in Boston and that chipped another half a game off our lead. That was July the 24th.

Cleveland moved out and Chicago moved in. Dutch give us a lecture before the Friday game. He said we ought to done better then split the series with Cleveland. He hit hard on the fact that .500 ball was good enough most any time but not right now with Boston as hot as they was. He said what he wanted to do was make them cry “Uncle” as soon as we could and clinch it and have the mathematics beat and then maybe take things easy 2 weeks or so the end of September until the Series opened. “This is the class of the league and there is yet a flag to win, and we are going to win it all right, for there is no question in my mind. But I would like to get it over with.” He mopped his brow whilst he talked. “Red,” he said, “does George know anything about this Lavalleja?” meaning the Chicago pitcher.

Red spoke to George and George give him a long spiel. “George says he comes from a town nearby his own,” said Red.

Dutch mopped his brow some more and spit on the floor and ground it with his toe. Then he said very quiet. “That ain’t what I asked you, Red. I am not interested in the personal history of Lavalleja.”

“George says he is plenty fast and got good control,” said Red. “He has got a fast curve.”

“Thank you, Red,” said Dutch. “You boys heard what he said, so stand right up to him and figure on good control. We ought to pick up a game or so over the weekend.” He walked up and back. “These doubleheaders are driving me out of my mind. Sunday is another.

Well, that is my worry and none of yours. Okay, is there anybody got anything on his mind?” Nobody did, and we all filed out, all but Red and Dutch. Dutch called Red back, and they had a little conference all their own, and I do not know exactly what went on, for I got my story second hand from Coker who got it from Mick. Mick said they was not exactly a couple lovebirds in a cage. Dutch told Red not to be so smart, particularly around the younger men, and set a bad example, and Red said that George said that he heard that Dutch would as soon trade him off and never have another Latin on the club, and this made Red mad, George being his roomie and all. Dutch said why in the devil did not George learn the language of the country that was making him rich. Red said why in the devil did Dutch not learn
George’s
language. Dutch called Red a gymnasium teacher, and Red said if Dutch did not want a gymnasium teacher on his club it could be arranged, and he begun to peel off his shirt until Dutch said to not take everything he said in heat so serious. Dutch said many of the Latins in the league picked up the language by going to the movies and the TV every spare minute they got, and Red said him and George both hated the movies and the TV both. He said George was better off not knowing the language in the first place.