Highpockets (2 page)

Casey noticed that the boy ran grimly into the dugout, refusing to tip his cap or make any conventional gesture to the yelling crowd above.

“Makes it all look so easy,” said the reporter next to him.

“Just what I was thinking myself.”

Now the Dodgers came in for their last raps, the two teams battling evenly and no one across for either side. Roy Tucker, the first batter, beat out an infield roller, and the next man, attempting to sacrifice, popped to the pitcher. There was one out as Highpockets came to the plate. The Boston infield shifted. A roar rose over the diamond.

The whole park stood. Out in left field even the two bullpen pitchers paused to watch the drama. Every time he had come up, Highpockets had hit the ball straight at the fielders on the right side of the infield, going three for nothing. Yet the pitcher knew how dangerous he was and worked on him with care. It was pitcher’s weather. The sun was low, and an east wind had come off the river, blowing the smoke from the locomotives in the Boston and Albany yards directly across the diamond. Out of the smog and smoke the fast-ball hurler of the Braves was not easy to sight. He had control, too, and could spot the ball where he wanted. The odds were against the batter.

Yet Highpockets seemed not to care. He stepped into the batter’s box in a din of catcalls, croaks, hoots, and various forms of the raspberry, as calmly as though he were deaf. If he realized the importance of the moment or heard the derision of the stands all round, above, and behind, he gave no sign. Loose as ever, he stood swinging his bat, waiting coolly, while the runner danced off the bag at first.

The opening pitch was low, inside. He glanced over at Charlie Draper behind third. The coach rubbed his hands across the front of his shirt, and Highpockets tapped the plate twice with his bat to show he had the signal for the hit-and-run on the following ball. One glance at Roy Tucker off first proved that he, also, understood and was set to go. The pitcher wound up. Highpockets dug in his spikes.

He intended to hit, he fully meant to follow instructions, but the ball was inside, hard to reach, difficult to get a piece of, and suddenly he thought of his batting average and let it go past. Instead of swinging to protect his teammate scampering for second, instead of trying to foul the ball, he did nothing. The catcher rifled the ball down to second, and Tucker was out by a yard.

Of all this byplay the fans knew nothing. Only Highpockets’ teammates on the bench, the coaches in the field, and Casey in the stands, who guessed by their movements what had happened, realized the sin he had committed. Roy Tucker picked himself up from the dirt and walked slowly back to the bench, looking intently at Highpockets in the batter’s box. Highpockets, setting himself for the next pitch, never saw the look. Casey in the press box was much keener.

It was a fast ball, belt high, and he creamed it. You lost it momentarily in the haze over the park, and could only see the center and right fielders racing back, and Highpockets tearing around the bases with all stops out. Then you saw it, high above the layer of smoke and fog. The ball seemed to hang in the air, slowly clearing the bullpen in deep right and the jury box, which was a mass of excited kids with outstretched arms, and so over to the street beyond.

There was nothing grudging in the tribute of the crowd as Highpockets circled the bases. Yet the gesture he made to the applauding thousands as he trotted in toward the Brooklyn dugout could hardly be described as complimentary.

L
ATE THAT AFTERNOON
he sat in the Coffee Shoppe of the hotel, his long limbs wrapped around the unsteady legs of the little table. Directly opposite was the door. Across the door was a thick, plush cord, and behind the cord was a line of would-be diners with hungry, anxious faces. Highpockets noticed neither the door nor the line. He was thinking whether to order another ice cream.

If he failed to see the waiting crowd, he also failed to notice the girls eating at various tables in the vicinity. Most of them observed Highpockets. His long frame, his face darkened by the sun of a dozen ballparks, his sport shirt open at the neck, made him noticeable among the white-faced people in the dining room. The girls glanced over at him from time to time, yet he never stared back because he never saw them. He was thinking intently about that ice cream. It had been a tough day, fighting the Braves pitcher and the hostile crowd; consequently he was both exhausted and hungry. Maybe he should sort of celebrate that homer in the ninth with just one more shot of ice cream.

The waitress, a stout, motherly woman, stepped up and began to clear the table, which was piled with empty dishes. Her gestures were impatient and she looked over occasionally at the line in the doorway. To most people this would have indicated a desire for the table, not to Highpockets. Calmly he continued to concentrate upon that ice cream.

“Guess I’ll have seconds on the ice cream.”

The waitress, still looking at the door, spoke over his head in tired tones. “Hafta charge you extra for it.”

With that enormous arm he reached suddenly across to the next table and snatched a menu. “Hit says ... hit says ... ‘Price of ontray includes dessert.’ ”

The waitress glanced at the door and down at the tanned blond boy in the chair. “It don’t include two ice creams.”

He sat grasping the menu and thinking. Ice cream, thirty-five cents. That means seven ice creams in the drug store back home. Seven ice creams. In this man’s town thirty-five cents for one serving. But then, it isn’t every day a guy hits a homer off Jimmy (The Fox) Currier of the Braves.

“O.K. Gimme another, anyhow.”

Twenty minutes later, the ice cream downed, he took the check from the waitress and wandered out and up to the lobby. The room was jammed with comings and goings, men with brief cases and women meeting friends near the big clock overhead. They looked at the tall, tanned youngster, and once in a while someone recognized him, looked twice as he walked past. But not often. He went across the lobby, past the newsstand where the evening newspapers containing the box scores for the day were headed: “Highpockets Homers In Ninth.” At the far end there was a writing desk empty. Like the table and the chair in the Coffee Shoppe they were too small for him, and to make room he shoved the chair back, forcing his body to slump clumsily forward.

D
EAR
M
A
,

This took some time. Writing home was a grim affair. But he had promised her.

I’m doing fine. Hit a homer to win the game today in the ninth inning. That’s my seventeenth so far this year. [There was a long wait before he collected himself and plunged again at the blank paper on the desk.] The clean shirts came this morning. They sure charge for laundry in this man’s town.

Someone was standing over him.

“I’m Casey of the
Mail
.”

“Yessuh, yes, Mr. Casey.”

“I saw you were busy. Just wanted to ask a couple of questions. I’ll wait until you finish.”

For once he was happy to be interrupted by a sportswriter. “Nosuh. I’m just a-scribbling a letter to my old ma back home.”

Casey could take a hint. He yanked up a near-by chair. “Home! Where’s that?” Naturally he knew quite well; nevertheless it was a conversational opening.

“Bryson City, North Carolina.”

“Bryson City, hey! What’s the population of that city?”

“What’s the what?”

“I say how big is it?”

“Yessuh. To tell you the fact, I don’t rightly know for shore. See now, we live ’bout two miles from town, up Rabbit Creek a ways. I’d say, well, Bryson City, hits about sixteen hundred people. Maybe a few more.”

“A small town with a big name. How large is your farm?”

“A hundred and fifty acres.”

“Who takes care of it?”

“My paw. And the boys.”

“You got brothers and sisters?”

“Yessuh, Three brothers and two sisters.”

“You the eldest, hey?”

“Yessuh.” He answered questions but volunteered little. The interview didn’t appear to be getting ahead fast. Casey tried another line.

“Let’s see now, you played baseball in high school, didn’t you?”

“Yessuh.”

“What position?”

“Well, I played sorta all over. Pitched a little, and played first and the outfield.”

“Then you went west.”

“Yessuh.”

Casey still didn’t seem to be getting much of anything. In desperation he asked: “Tell me about that bus accident. I’d like to get it straight from you.”

“Ain’t nothin’ much to tell. I’m playing that summer for Boise in the Pioneer League. Most of the minors now, they travel by bus, and we’re goin’ over the mountains one day when we stop at a rest camp on the Pass. There’s a phone message for me. Says I’m to come straight back to town and report to Fort Worth in the Texas League.”

“Quite a jump from a Class C League,” suggested the sportswriter.

“Yessuh.” The boy accepted the suggestion but made no comment. “So I come back to town. The bus goes on, breaks an axle, slips over the side, and ten of the boys get themselves killed.”

It was told casually and without emotion. Casey glanced at him. “Yep, that’s how I heard it. You sure were lucky.” There was a pause. “Tell me something. This hammering you’re getting up here from the fans, does it bother you much?” He tried to ask the question indirectly, but somehow it sounded blunt and inquisitive.

The boy’s look changed. His face was set and stubborn. Now he was out in the ballpark, slashing liners straight into the hands of the infielders in short right, the crowd jeering and booing and whistling as he trotted back to the bench.

There was weariness in his tone as he replied. “One team, one ballpark, they’re all alike.”

Something was behind this. Casey thought a minute. “Maybe you don’t like Brooklyn,” the sportswriter hazarded. He had no hope of getting a real answer, for he had put the same query to dozens of Dodgers before. No matter what their feelings, everyone always declared that he loved Brooklyn, the greatest balltown in the nation, and its fans, the finest ...

“Nosuh. I don’t like Brooklyn.”

A Dodger who doesn’t like Brooklyn! Casey was rocked. That’s news! As a Brooklyn boy himself, he was slightly annoyed; as a sportswriter seeking a lead for his column, he was elated. He saw it in print: Dodger Home Run King Hates Brooklyn!

“See now, Mister, I’m here in Brooklyn to make as much money as I can. The seven thousand they pay me is peanuts to what the Giants would pay. Or the Cubs.”

For once Casey was speechless. He mumbled. He groped for words. He had no comeback.

“Yeah ... Yeah ... I know, I ’preciate. But your first year up an’ all that ...”

“Yessuh, my first year up. I’ll be better next year. This is my first crack at the majors. Only I’ve got seventeen homers to the fifteenth of June; that’s better’n Ruth’s record, better’n DiMag’s. See now, next year I’m gonna get me a good contract. Real money, an’ a clause like old Bobo Newsom had. His wife hasta go along on all road trips in a drawin’ room, and suites at the hotels, too.”

“Why, say, I didn’t even know you were married, Highpockets.”

“Nosuh. I ain’t.”

“Oh, I see. Got a girl, have you?”

“Nosuh. Leastways, not yet. I might have, though, by next spring.”

Casey looked at him intently. Was this fresh busher taking him for a ride? No, he was serious. But a contract like Bobo Newsom’s his second year in the majors! That’s something!

“Look, McDade, be yourself. You’re a rookie, you’re just a freshman, not Bobo Newsom. Where’d you get those ideas from, anyhow? You have quite some ways to go, you know.”

“Might be. But I’m a better player’n Ruth was his first season or Williams, either. No use kiddin’, you know that; so does everyone. Mr. MacManus knows it too, and he’s the boss; he writes the contracts. Next year I’ll take care to get me a good one, you bet ya. Why not? I get on more than any ballplayer in this-here league. I’ve scored more runs, hit more homers, got more bases on balls ...”

Casey interrupted the monologue. Apparently the boy could have kept on selling himself all night.

“Look here, Highpockets, why don’t you quit thinking about your batting average and play for the team? Why don’t you be a nice guy like the other boys on the club? Why don’t you ...”

“Yessuh. I know a lotta nice guys who don’t win no ballgames. The nice guys are down in the minors; only the mean guys make it in the majors. See now, Mister, I’m just a-lookin’ out fer me. That’s all.”

The sportswriter had often said the same thing about nice guys and the majors, and inasmuch as he had said it in print, he gulped and changed the subject.

“Kinda funny though, you never learned to hit to left field.”

The boy picked him up almost immediately. “What’s funny about it? I can hit to left. Only I cain’t hit the long ball to left. I pull for the long ball.” He hesitated a moment. “They brought me up here to play baseball. I do it the best I know how.”

Casey attempted to backtrack. “Sure, sure, I know, I understand. Only a single at the right minute ...”

“Yessuh.” He had control of himself now. “In the majors they pay off on homers, not singles. You take the Babe, take DiMag, take Williams ...”

Casey looked again at this character. A year ago he was in Mobile, two summers ago in Fort Worth, three years back he was playing for Boise, and four years ago he was pinning a photo of Jimmy (The Fox) Currier, the star hurler of the Braves, up in his room on the farm along Rabbit Creek. Now he was hitting a homer off the Fox to win the ballgame in the ninth inning. For a farm lad from North Carolina, he had his feet on the ground; he certainly knew his way around in the big time. It was true, as Casey had to admit, that in the majors they pay off on homers.

And yet ... “Spike Russell’s a great team man. You’ll find he goes strong for team plays.”

“Mister, look here. Spike Russell’s a bad loser, like all major leaguers. He wants to win. I’d ruther play with a winner, ’cause winning teams pick up the dough.”

This approach to the financial side of baseball was not new among ballplayers. It was, however, much more bluntly stated than usual. “Yeah ... I know ... sure. Only ...”