Dutch Blue Error (27 page)

“You mean an agent?”

“That’s it. Whaddya say?”

“Me?”

“I’m giving you first refusal, being as you’re my lawyer and I trust you and you can use the dough.”

I shook my head. “You should’ve mentioned this to me on the phone and saved us both the trip, Sam. I don’t know anything about being an agent.”

“Of course you do. You know contracts, you know how to protect somebody’s rights, and you don’t try to screw people. You’d make a helluva agent. Tell him, Stump.”

Kelly took his Red Sox cap off and rubbed his head, which turned out to be as shiny and hairless as a light bulb. “Sox’ll draft Eddie in June. Probably wait ’til the third round, not because he ain’t a first-rounder but because he’s only a junior and nobody else’s heard of him yet. Eddie wants the Sox. Right, Eddie?”

Donagan grinned and nodded.

“Betcher ass,” said Kelly. “Okay. So we draft Eddie. Now, Big Sam here’s wondering about the rest of his education. I’m tellin’ him he can get all that stuff into a contract—deferred payments, big signing bonus, loans, tax shelters, tuition payments, long-term guarantees if Eddie hurts himself—God forbid. I mean, the contract is standard, and the Red Sox are fair. But Sam’s right. Business is business, and they’ll take him as cheap as they can get him. Betcher ass. Bein’ as Sam and me go way back, and it was Sam put me onto Eddie in the first place, I let Sam know how it was. Eddie oughta have an agent.”

I shrugged. “Makes sense. I don’t see why I couldn’t do that.” I looked at Sam. “Though I’m not sure Eddie shouldn’t finish up his education first.”

“Tell ya what,” said Kelly eagerly. “Eddie waits a year, say. Everyone’s heard of him. TV,
Sports Illustrated
fachrissake. Bound to happen. Right? Okay. We draft him this June and he don’t sign, all the others start comin’ around to see what we were so interested in. Get it? Then it’s the damn Mets or the Twins or somebody picks him first. End of Red Sox career. Anyhow, s’pose Eddie slips on the mound at Bentley College or Salem State, hurts his arm or whacks out his knee. Hell, million things could happen. No career, no dough. We pay him, we take good care of him. He’s an investment. He gets good coaching, weight training, proper diet. If Eddie don’t hurt himself, he’ll be up with the big club two, three years at the most. Betcher ass.”

“What about it, Eddie?” I said.

He grinned. “All I wanna do is play ball,” he said. “Get me some of that iron, get out of these crusty threads.”

“Well, I’ll be your agent, if you want me.”

“Mr. Farina said you would. He said you wouldn’t chill me. So thanks, man.”

Eddie’s hand devoured mine again, I shook with Kelly, who mumbled something that sounded like, “Betcher ass,” and Sam and I climbed into my Chevy wagon.

When we had turned back onto Route 2 heading to Sam’s place in Winchester, I said to him, “So what’s your interest in Eddie Donagan, anyway?”

“The kid’s good, isn’t he?”

“Betcher ass,” I said.

Sam grinned. “Stump Kelly’s an old friend. We were in Korea together. Stump was a POW for three years. Cost him a career in the big leagues. So the Sox made him their chief scout for the region. He’s supposed to be pretty good at it. They put a lot of stock in what Stump Kelly says. He recommends a kid, they’ll generally try to draft him. He’s also a kind of trouble-shooter for them. Works with some of the minor leaguers. Special cases, you know? I put him onto Eddie. Favor to a friend, you might say.”

“That explains Kelly, all right. But it doesn’t explain Donagan.”

“Eddie? Didn’t I tell you? My little girl’s gonna marry him.”

E
DDIE DONAGAN SIGNED WITH
the Red Sox in June of 1970, a comprehensive contract, with a nice balance of incentives, guarantees, and options, up front and deferred. I was proud of that contract. We held a little ceremony in Sam’s living room. Stump Kelly was there, and Sam and Josie, his wife, Jan and Eddie, Farley Vaughn from the Red Sox, with whom I had negotiated Eddie’s contract, a photographer from the
Globe,
and, at Eddie’s insistence, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Grabowski from Lanesborough, Massachusetts.

The Grabowskis grew corn and raised cattle on their hilly little spread out in the Berkshires. They scraped and sweated enough money out of that rocky, unyielding earth to send their only son to college. Johnny Grabowski enrolled at Fitchburg State College. He wanted to become a teacher. The college assigned him a red-headed baseball player named Eddie Donagan as a roommate. Donagan had no parents and Johnny Grabowski had no friends, so they struck the obvious bargain. Eddie spent his vacations with the Grabowskis, and Johnny followed Eddie around to parties.

When Johnny Grabowski was drafted, Eddie wanted to sign up to go to Vietnam with his friend. Johnny wouldn’t let him. “You stay home and take care of Ma and Pa,” he told Eddie. “And keep that arm in shape. I want to see you in a Sox uniform when I get back.”

Eddie kept his part of the deal. But Johnny didn’t keep his. The helicopter he was riding in was blown out of the sky. He had been in Vietnam for nine days when it happened.

So when Eddie signed his contract he insisted that Jake and Mary Grabowski be present, and after all the signatures had been inscribed and witnessed, Eddie glanced at me, and I said, “Eddie has a little announcement he’d like to make.”

Eddie went over and stood between Jake and Mary Grabowski. He draped his arms around their shoulders and said, “Jake and Mary have been like parents to me. And Johnny was my brother. I love them. I can never repay them for everything. But I wanted to do something. Here’s what I’m trying to say. Me and Mr. Coyne worked out this thing. It’s a scholarship to Fitchburg State in Johnny’s name. It’s for a needy boy who wants to be a teacher. The Johnny Grabowski Scholarship. Mr. Coyne fixed it up with the school, and everything’s all set.”

Mary Grabowski’s thin body shook as she cried softly, and Jake pumped Eddie’s hand.

“You should all know,” I added, “that the money for the scholarship comes out of Eddie’s bonus. It’s enough to cover room and board and tuition for four years.”

That’s how Eddie Donagan was back then. Generous, warm, simple. He loved baseball, Jan, and Jake and Mary Grabowski. He’d never had any money, so giving a lot of it away didn’t strike him as a big deal.

Eddie played for the Red Sox farm club in Jamestown, New York, that summer of 1970, and in September he and Janet Farina were married at St. Eulalia’s in Winchester. Jake Grabowski was his best man, and I was an usher. Sam held the reception under a big tent on his side lawn. Most of the guests were his business associates. It looked like the opening scene from
The Godfather.

That winter Eddie took a couple courses at Boston State, but he didn’t finish them. He worked part-time in one of Sam’s liquor stores. He and Jan lived at Sam’s house in Winchester.

One Saturday night that winter Gloria, to whom I was still married then, and I took Eddie and Jan to a concert at Memorial Hall in Cambridge. The Harvard and Radcliffe orchestra and chorus were performing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It was Gloria’s idea to invite Eddie and Jan—she had a kind of missionary zeal about bringing culture to the unwashed masses, into which category she automatically lumped all professional athletes like Eddie and weekend golfers like me. Jan, with the benefit of her Mount Holyoke education, seemed thrilled at the prospect, and Eddie went along good-naturedly. His idea of classical music was something melodious by Simon and Garfunkel, and when the musicians filed into the hall, the men in their black tuxedoes and the women in frilled white blouses, he leaned across Gloria and whispered to me, “It only takes four Beatles to do a tune. Look at all those musicmasters up there! Man, this song must be something!”

Gloria patted his arm. “It is,” she said. “It’s a great song.”

Jan looked embarrassed. “Eddie, shh!” she said to him.

When the orchestra began to play, Eddie leaned forward. I could see his eyes studying the moves of the conductor. His head bobbed to the rhythms of the music. At the beginning of the second movement, he leaned toward me, his hand carelessly balanced on Gloria’s knee and his eyes bright with recognition, and whispered, “That’s Huntley-Brinkley music, man!”

A little later, when the chorus was singing “The Ode to Joy,” I glanced at Eddie. He was leaning back in his seat and his eyes were closed. Tears glistened on his cheeks.

After the performance the four of us paused on the steps outside the hall to turn up our collars and huddle into our heavy coats against the winter air. Eddie had one arm around Jan’s shoulders. He grabbed my hand and pumped it. “Man, that was beautiful. A great show!” He looked down at Jan. “We gotta get that record,” he said to her.

Stump Kelly had been right about Eddie Donagan’s talent. He played Double A Ball for Pawtucket the following spring, and in August he was called up to the Triple A club in Louisville. His combined record with the two minor league teams in 1971 was fourteen and three. The papers began to hail him as a cinch to make the Red Sox in 1972. He was added to the forty-man roster in the winter and went to spring training with the Boston team.

He called me collect one afternoon that March. I was in my office staring out at the gray city that was suffocating under layers of clouds, fog, and slush. Eddie was in Winter Haven, Florida.

“They’re sending me back to Pawtucket,” he said. “What a bummer.”

“They can do that, Eddie. You’ll be back.”

“How the hell can they do that to me? Nobody’s hit me all spring. I shut out the Tigers for three innings day before yesterday.”

“That’s the business you’re in. Stick to pitching. Do your stuff. You’ll make it.”

“I’m gettin’ chilled, man. It’s bogus. A real turnoff.”

“I can’t help you. Keep your mouth shut and throw the hell out of the ball.”

“Yeah,” he grumbled.

“How’s Jan?”

“Oh, she’s okay, I guess. She doesn’t like living in a motel. The other wives chill her. I guess if I’m headed back to Pawtucket she’ll be home in a week or so.”

“Give her my love. And Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“Do your job. Pitch, don’t bitch. Okay?”

“Sure. Ten-four.”

“So how’s the weather down there?”

“The weather? Oh, you know. Florida.”

“By the way, Eddie. Spalding wants to sign you up.”

“Yeah? Is that good?”

“I don’t think so. They figure you’re going to make it. They try to sign minor leaguers up cheap, lock them in, so that when they do make it, it won’t cost them a bundle. I suggest you wait. There’s Wilson, Rawlings, all the rest. We can do better when you’re a big league pitcher.”

“I don’t know, Brady. I could use some of that iron.”

“You don’t need money now. It’s up to you. I say you should wait.”

I heard him sigh. “Sure. You’re the lawmaster. I’ll wait.”

“Smart decision.”

He laughed. “See you later, Counselor.”

The Red Sox were in the thick of a pennant race when they called Eddie Donagan up in July. Fenway Park was sold out the night he started his first game. For Eddie it was what he called a “Bogart”—a big game. “My first debut,” he said. Sam and Josie and Jan and I sat in seats Eddie got for us behind the Red Sox dugout. And Eddie pitched the same way he had that first time I watched him at Fitchburg State College, hunching his shoulders, bending like a bow, and zipping the ball with the speed and accuracy of an arrow. The fans loved him, a gangly local kid, big-shouldered and open-faced and red-headed. He pawed and scraped at the mound, cheered his fielders, chatted with the baseball, and bounded on and off the field like a boy on his way home from school for summer vacation.

The White Sox hitters looked about as skilled as those college kids from North Adams State had looked that first time I’d seen Eddie pitch. They waved at his “yakker,” swung late at his “cheese,” and after eight innings he had a one-to-nothing lead. He had given up four singles, one walk, and, by Sam’s count, had struck out six.

When Eddie sprinted to the mound to begin the ninth inning, the people in Fenway Park all stood and began to applaud. The sound of thirty-five thousand pairs of hands clapping for Eddie Donagan made me shiver. I glanced at Sam and saw that his eyes were shining. Eddie stood awkwardly, flipping the ball back and forth from his hand to his glove while Carlton Fisk, the catcher, pretended to adjust his shin guards. I could see Fisk grinning at Eddie’s discomfort.

When the first Chicago batter stepped into the box the fans continued to stand and applaud. When he hit Eddie’s second pitch hard on the ground into center field, the applause shifted into a chant, “Ed-die, Ed-die,” and grew in volume when Eddie Kasko, the Red Sox manager, hopped out of the dugout and jogged to the mound. Fisk walked out, his mask tucked under his arm, and the three of them talked for a moment. From where I sat I could see them smiling. Eddie nodded his head vigorously, and then Kasko slapped him on his ass and walked back into the dugout.

When the next Chicago batter came to the plate, the noise in the park suddenly stopped. It was Dick Allen, a fearsome slugger in those days, and destined to be the American League’s Most Valuable Player that year. One by one the fans sat down to watch the confrontation.

But there was no drama. Allen hit Eddie’s first pitch high into the misty Boston night, over the left field wall, over the screen atop the wall, and the ball was still rising on the ascending arc of its big parabola when I last saw it. I turned to look at Eddie. His body was still facing the plate, his legs planted in his follow-through, but his head had swiveled around to follow the flight of the ball, and his finger was the barrel of a gun pointed at his temple.

The silence in the ballpark was as awesome, in its way, as the applause of a few minutes earlier had been. Then a guy sitting somewhere behind me yelled, “At’s okay, Eddie-boy. At’s okay.” And the chant built again, “Ed-die, Ed-die,” as Kasko climbed out of the dugout and moved slowly toward the mound. Eddie started to walk toward him, and they met by the third-base line. I could see the back of Kasko’s neck redden as he thrust his jaw at Eddie. I couldn’t tell what the manager said to him, but Eddie’s chin sagged onto his chest, and he trudged slowly into the dugout and out of sight without looking up or acknowledging the cheers.