Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (17 page)

1979

CHET WILLIAMSON

GANDHI AT THE BAT

History books and available newspaper files hold no record of the visit to America in 1933 made by Mohandas K. Gandhi. For reasons of a sensitive political nature that have not yet come to light, all contemporary accounts of the visit were suppressed at the request of President Roosevelt. Although Gandhi repeatedly appeared in public during his three-month stay, the cloak of journalistic silence was seamless, and all that remains of the great man’s celebrated tour is this long-secreted glimpse of one of the Mahatma’s unexpected nonpolitical appearances, written by an anonymous press-box denizen of the day.

Y
ANKEE
S
TADIUM
is used to roaring crowds. But never did a crowd roar louder than on yesterday afternoon, when a little brown man in a loincloth and wire-rimmed specs put some wood on a Lefty Grove fastball and completely bamboozled Connie Mack’s A’s.

It all started when Mayor John J. O’Brien invited M. K. (“Mahatma”) Gandhi to see the Yanks play Philadelphia up at “The House That Ruth Built.” Gandhi, whose ballplaying experience was limited to a few wallops with a cricket bat, jumped at the chance, and 12 noon saw the Mayor’s party in the Yankee locker room, where the Mahatma met the Bronx Bombers. A zippy exchange occurred when the Mayor introduced the Lord of the Loincloth to the Bambino. “Mr. Gandhi,” Hizzoner said, “I want you to meet Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat.”

Gandhi’s eyes sparkled behind his Moxie-bottle lenses, and he chuckled. “Swat,” quoth he, “is a sultanate of which I am not aware. Is it by any chance near Maharashtra?”

“Say,” laughed the Babe, laying a meaty hand on the frail brown shoulder, “you’re all right, kiddo. I’ll hit one out of the park for you today.”

“No hitting, please,” the Mahatma quipped.

In the Mayor’s front-row private box, the little Indian turned down the offer of a hot dog and requested a box of Cracker Jack instead. The prize inside was a tin whistle, which he blew gleefully whenever the Bambino waddled up to bat.

The grinning guru enjoyed the game immensely—far more than the A’s, who were down 3–1 by the fifth. Ruth, as promised, did smash a homer in the seventh, to Gandhi’s delight. “Hey, Gunga Din!” Ruth cried jovially on his way to the Yankee dugout. “Know why my battin’ reminds folks of India? ’Cause I can really Bangalore!”

“That is a very good one, Mr. Ruth!” cried the economy-size Asian.

By the top of the ninth, the Yanks had scored two more runs. After Mickey Cochrane whiffed on a Red Ruffing fastball, Gandhi remarked how difficult it must be to hit such a swiftly thrown missile and said, “I should like to try it very much.”

“Are you serious?” Mayor O’Brien asked.

“If it would not be too much trouble. Perhaps after the exhibition is over,” his visitor suggested.

There was no time to lose. O’Brien, displaying a panache that would have done credit to his predecessor, Jimmy Walker, leaped up and shouted to the umpire, who called a time-out. Managers McCarthy and Mack were beckoned to the Mayor’s side, along with Bill Dinneen, the home-plate umpire, and soon all of Yankee Stadium heard an unprecedented announcement:

“Ladies and gentlemen, regardless of the score, the Yankees will come to bat to finish the ninth inning.”

The excited crowd soon learned that the reason for such a breach of tradition was a little brown pinch-hitter shorter than his bat. When the pin-striped Bronx Bombers returned to their dugout after the last Philadelphia batter had been retired in the ninth, the Nabob of Nonviolence received a hasty batting lesson from Babe Ruth under the stands.

Lazzeri led off the bottom of the stanza, hitting a short chop to Bishop, who rifled to Foxx for the out. Then, after Crosetti fouled out to Cochrane, the stadium became hushed as the announcer intoned, “Pinch-hitting for Ruffing, Mohandas K. Gandhi.”

The crowd erupted as the white-robed holy man, a fungo bat propped jauntily on his shoulder, strode to the plate, where he remarked to the crouching Mickey Cochrane, “It is a very big field, and a very small ball.”

“C’mon, Moe!” Ruth called loudly to the dead-game bantam batter. “Show ’em the old pepper!”

“I will try, Mr. Baby!” Gandhi called back, and went into a batting stance unique in the annals of the great game—his sheet-draped posterior facing the catcher, and his bat held high over his head, as if to clobber the ball into submission. While Joe McCarthy called time, the Babe trotted out and politely corrected the little Indian’s position in the box.

The time-out over, Grove threw a screaming fastball right over the plate. The bat stayed on Gandhi’s shoulder. “Oh, my,” he said as he turned and observed the ball firmly ensconced in Cochrane’s glove. “That
was
speedy.”

The second pitch was another dead-center fastball. The Mahatma swung, but found that the ball had been in the Mick’s glove for a good three seconds before his swipe was completed. “Stee-rike two!” Dinneen barked.

The next pitch was high and outside, and the ump called it a ball before the petite pundit made a tentative swing at it. “Must I sit down now?” he asked.

“Nah, it’s a ball,” Dinneen replied. “I called it before you took your cut.”

“Yes. I
know
that is a ball, and I did swing at it and did miss.”

“No, no, a ball. Like a free pitch.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Wasn’t in the strike zone.”

“Yes, I see.”

“So you get another swing.”

“Yes.”

“And if you miss you sit down.”

“I just
did
miss.”

“Play ball, Mister.”

The next pitch was in the dirt. Gandhi did not swing. “Ball,” Dinneen called.

“Yes, it is,” the Mahatma agreed.

“Two and two.”

“That is four.”

“Two balls, two strikes.”

“Is there not but one ball?”

“Two balls.”

“Yes, I see.”

“And two strikes.”

“And if I miss I sit down.”

Ruth’s voice came booming from the Yankee dugout: “Swing early, Gandy baby!”

“When is early?”

“When I tell ya! I’ll shout
‘Now!’
”

Grove started his windup. Just as his leg kicked up, the Bambino’s cry of
“Now!”
filled the park.

The timing was perfect. Gandhi’s molasses-in-January swing met the Grove fastball right over the plate. The ball shot downward, hit the turf, and arced gracefully into the air toward Grove. “
Run,
Peewee,
run!
” yelled Ruth, as the crowd went wild.

“Yes, yes!” cried Gandhi, who started down the first-base line in what can only be described as a dancing skip, using his bat as a walking stick. An astonished Grove booted the high bouncer, then scooped up the ball and flung it to Jimmie Foxx at first.

But Foxx, mesmerized by the sight of a sixty-three-year-old Indian in white robes advancing merrily before him and blowing mightily on a tin whistle, failed to descry the stitched orb, which struck the bill of his cap, knocking it off his head, and, slowed by its deed of dishabille, rolled to a stop by the fence.

Gandhi paused only long enough to touch first and to pick up Jimmie’s cap and return it to him. By the time the still gawking Foxx had perched it once more on his head, the vital vegetarian was halfway to second.

Right fielder Coleman retrieved Foxx’s missed ball and now relayed it to Max Bishop at second, but too late. The instant Bishop tossed the ball back to the embarrassed Grove, Gandhi was off again. Grove, panicking, overthrew third base, and by the time left fielder Bob Johnson picked up the ball, deep in foul territory, the Tiny Terror of Tealand had rounded the hot corner and was scooting for home. Johnson hurled the ball on a true course to a stunned Cochrane. The ball hit the pocket of Cochrane’s mitt and popped out like a muffin from a toaster.

Gandhi jumped on home plate with both sandalled feet, and the crowd exploded as Joe McCarthy, the entire Yankee squad, and even a beaming Connie Mack surged onto the field.

“I ran home,” giggled Gandhi. “Does that mean that I hit a run home?”

“A home run, Gandy,” said Ruth. “Ya sure did.”

“Well, technically,” said Umpire Dinneen, “it was a single and an overthrow and then—”

“Shaddup,”
growled a dozen voices at once.

“Looked like a homer to me, too,” the ump corrected, but few heard him, for by that time the crowd was on the field, lifting to their shoulders a joyous Gandhi, whose tin whistle provided a thrilling trilling over the mob’s acclaim.

Inside the locker room, Manager McCarthy offered Gandhi a permanent position on the team, but the Mahatma graciously refused, stating that he could only consider a diamond career with a different junior-circuit club.

“Which club would that be, kid?” said the puzzled Bambino.

“The Cleveland Indians, of course,” twinkled the Mahatma.

An offer from the Cleveland front office arrived the next day, but India’s top pinch-hitter was already on a train headed for points west—and the history books.

1983

IAN FRAZIER

IGOR STRAVINSKY: THE SELECTED PHONE CALLS

C
OMPOSER,
conductor, critic, teacher, iconoclast, and grand old man, Igor Stravinsky bestrode this century like a colossus, with feet on two different continents. Already respected and popular in Europe for writing pieces like “Le Sacre du Printemps,” he became equally if not more famous in his adopted country of America. The many friends he made here remember him as a man of breathtaking talent, whether he was composing an epochal symphony or playing shadow puppets in the candlelight after a small dinner party. Like many other geniuses, he was generous, almost profligate, with his gifts. He would write beautiful phrases of music on restaurant napkins and give them to friends, acquaintances, even passersby. Thoughts bubbled forth from him in such a torrent that often when he was sitting in his den writing a letter to a friend he would impulsively grab for the telephone, look up his friend’s number in his address book while holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder, and dial. In a matter of seconds, he would be pouring out ideas that might have required days, even weeks, to travel through the mails. At the other end of the line, the friend would listen with delight as the great man went on, humming or singing at times, until finally he was “all talked out.” Then Stravinsky would bid his grateful hearer goodbye, and, in the pleasant afterglow of inspiration, he would crumple up the unfinished letter, throw it in the wastebasket, and mix himself a cocktail.

Fortunately for us, his heirs, Stravinsky was a man aware of his place in history. With careful consideration for the students and biographers he knew would follow, he saved his telephone bills from year to year, and before his death he donated the entire corpus to the K-Tel Museum of the Best Composers Ever. What a fascinating picture these phone bills paint! With their itemized lists of long-distance calls and charges, they are like paper airplanes thrown to us from the past, providing a detailed record of the seasons of Stravinsky’s mind in the multihued pageant of life as he lived it on a daily basis. And what better time for a close examination of the treasures his phone bills contain than this, the year after the centennial of Stravinsky’s birth? (Actually, the centennial year itself would probably have been better, but even though this year might not be as good a time as last year, still, it is almost as good.) Now let us turn to the documents:

This call, made not long after Stravinsky moved to America and had his phone hooked up, shows him adjusting quickly to the ways of his new country. With scenes of Old World poverty fresh in his memory, he has prudently waited to place the call until 11:01
P.M.,
the very moment when the lowest off-peak rates go into effect. Such patience and calculation indicate a call that was professional rather than social in nature. Almost certainly, the recipient was Stravinsky’s fellow-composer Arnold Schoenberg. It was common knowledge that Schoenberg often vacationed in New Orleans, where he enjoyed the food, the atmosphere, and the people. Stravinsky may have found out from a mutual friend where Schoenberg was staying and then surprised him with this call. Always one to speak his mind, Stravinsky probably began by telling Schoenberg that his dodecaphonic methods of musical composition were a lot of hooey. Very likely, Schoenberg would have bristled at this, and may well have reminded Stravinsky that great art, like the Master’s own “Sacre,” need not be immediately accessible. Stravinsky then probably made a smart remark comparing Schoenberg’s methods to the methods of a troop of monkeys with a xylophone and some hammers. This probably made Schoenberg pretty mad, and it is a testament to the great (albeit hidden) regard each man had for the other that the call lasted as long as it did. Possibly, Schoenberg just held his temper and said something flip to defuse the situation, and then Stravinsky moved on to another subject. Inasmuch as they never spoke again, this intense thirty-eight-minute phone conversation may represent a seminal point in the history of twentieth-century music theory.