Kid from Tomkinsville (12 page)

“Boy, were you hot today....”

“Great stuff, Kid; that’s keeping ahead of those batters all right, all right....”

MacManus came across the room to his locker. “Roy, that’s pitching, and it’s about time we did something for you. Drop into the office tomorrow—No, tomorrow I’m in Boston. Drop in Thursday or Friday. I’ve torn up your old contract and we’ve got to make out a new one.”

A new contract! His old one called for a couple of thousand dollars, which had seemed a fortune when he signed it early in April. A new contract. That meant more. Real money. Now he would be fixed, for Jack MacManus was a real guy.

Soon the sportswriters, having finished their stories, came in. They drifted nonchalantly across the room pretending not to see him, laughing and kidding, but with their eye fixed upon their prey. They surrounded his bench and stood watching him like an animal in the zoo, as he peeled off his sweaty undershirt, his pants, his soggy stockings. Question after question was thrown at him. How did he feel?... Was he nervous out there?... Did the record help his pitching?... Would he?... Did he?... Could he?...

“Wait a minute, you guys. Lemme have a shower, will yuh?”

“Yeah, sure, let him have his shower,” they replied in unison as he went across to the steaming water.

There were laughter and shouts coming from the shower, boisterous cries and yells. Immediately upon stepping into the warm water he was soothed, refreshed and relaxed. His muscles stopped aching. The tired feeling in his body slowly disappeared, and a great contentment took possession of his frame. Outside, the boys were horsing round, slapping each other with the ends of wet towels... calling names, someone suggesting a movie to someone else... when it happened.

Like that. Suddenly. One minute he was up, then he was on the floor, before he could save himself or do anything. Tom Swanson, standing just outside the shower, jumped quickly to avoid a wet towel-end, and as he did so fell against the Kid in the beating curtain of water. Blinded, the Kid stepped further in... slipped... and fell. On his elbow. His right elbow. There was a stinging pain.

Someone reached in and hauled him up and out. Dripping wet, in a hush, and a deep silence. Doc Masters at the far end of the room curtly left someone on the rubbing table and ran to where the Kid was sitting on a bench, his face twisted in pain, feeling of his injured elbow. From nowhere a circle gathered, men with towels in their hands, men half-dressed, naked, reporters, players, all with serious faces. Then Gabby with only his pants on came pushing and shoving through the circle, cursing.

“How many times have I told you men... Who did that?... Who shoved you, Tuck?... How many times I’ve said... Is it okay, Doc, is it okay, is it?...”

The Doc paid no attention to him. Instead he kept gently rubbing the sore spot, until the acute pain subsided. The Kid tried to smile. “Yep, it’s better now, much better.” His face was sweating; in fact he was sweating all over. But the pain was less violent. A few days’ rest wouldn’t hurt him anyhow. Doc suggested. He was overdrawn. He was down fine. But the elbow would be okay; nothing serious about that.

The reporters weren’t sure. They didn’t want to miss a story if there was one, but yet they weren’t anxious to get out on a limb. The news spread. Once in his room in the hotel with his arm bandaged and liniment taking out the soreness, the telephone rang. Newspapers, radio commentators, press associations, everyone wanted to know whether he had been injured and if so how badly. Finally in despair he told the operator not to connect him, and slowly undressed. A dozen times, twenty times, a hundred times, he fingered his right arm tenderly, trying to decide if the pain was going down. It was a hot night. And he was a worried boy as he lay thinking of what one careless shove might do, realizing for the first time the importance of physical condition and its possible effect on his paycheck. Stories he’d heard came back; locker room gossip of men who got blood poisoning, who received leg or arm injuries which cut short their baseball life, flooded his brain. That catcher... what was his name... on the Browns... and Donnelly of the Red Sox, the best lefthander in the League... and the young rookie from the Coast who lost his leg from an infected spike wound... yes, and Fat Stuff, who was trying to nurse a weak arm along....

As he turned over he realized suddenly that it wasn’t called his salary arm for nothing.

W
HENEVER
G
RANDMA WAS
in trouble she made tea. Whenever she was tired and exhausted and worried from trying to keep the farm going with the help of the young Johnson boy next door and a hired man seldom reliable, she brewed tea. Strong tea. Tea occupied much the same place in her life that beer did in Razzle Nugent’s. Inasmuch as she was not in training she availed herself of her particular stimulant more often.

Grandma knew baseball. Being the grandmother of the Kid, she had to. But she had learned much from his letters and from the New York newspapers to which he subscribed for her. She not only understood the game, but also the casual significances which lay behind newspaper stories or the patter of the radio announcer. When Roy was pitching she always had the radio tuned in, a new magnificent machine with short wave and other facilities that Grandma scorned.

“Now that was bad of him, real bad of him, buying that expensive thing. I wish he’d save his money. Besides I’d just as lief have kept the old one; fact is I was kinder fond of it.” So she was, but the Kid knew she’d never get Cincinnati and St. Louis on the older set.

The radio was chattering while she rose and left the room to make tea. Despite the view over the back meadows where the hired man was mowing steadily, the kitchen seemed cheerless. She bent over and with a vigorous gesture turned down the arrows of the kerosene stove. Roy had wanted her to have a gas range, but she put her foot down. Gas was dangerous. Always she had cooked by coal in winter and kerosene in summer, and always she would. Moving to the sink she pumped water into a tea kettle and placed it on the stove, struck a match and lighted the soaking wicks of the kerosene stove.

“Click-click-click-click-click-click,” came the familiar sound of the machine in the meadow, and the hired man’s peculiar way of addressing the horses. “Oopse, there, Sandy, oopse....” Grandma stood listening, her gaze on the back road and the distant hills, hills she had seen as a child and as a woman, a sight so accustomed that from the window over the sink she actually saw nothing. What she saw was a wide green field dotted with men in white and a boy standing alone in the middle, his hands on his hips. He was in trouble. What the trouble was she couldn’t tell, yet something was wrong. A voice from the other room called her back again to the kitchen in the farm.

She returned to the parlor and sat down in the rocker before the radio. “Now, folks, that makes three men on base, three on and nobody out. First three Boston batters have singled, Kline’s hit was a clean smack to left and only fast fielding prevented a run. Roy Tucker out there on the mound... looks unhappy.... He’s rubbing his right arm.... Now Gabby’s coming in from short to talk to him.... Remember, this will be his sixteenth straight win, folks, no rookie ever won sixteen straight his first year before, and no pitcher in the League, in either league, ever won more....”

“There they go. He’s set... his foot goes up... first pitch... is... wide, ball one. Ball one.
Is
this crowd nuts! They sure want to see the Dodgers get back into first place by taking this game, and they’re all out there pulling for that Kid in the box. Here comes the pitch, ball two. Isn’t a very good start. What’s the matter, Roy? He doesn’t seem ahead of the hitters the way he usually is. Two balls, two and none... there it goes, a hit... a fly to deep center.... Swanny’s going back... back... he’s up against the fence now...
IT’S A HOME... A HOME RUN....
” And his voice was lost in a tremendous roar.

“Well, I guess that was a little lucky. Pretty lucky, that was, just cleared the fence, a few feet this way it’d ’a’ been out. Kelley went for the cripple and knocked it over the fence, and that means four runs. Four runs isn’t so much against this scrappy ballclub... now the boys are round the box talking to him, and Gabby’s slapping him on the back; they’re still behind him. Here comes Chick Duffy, the Braves’ right fielder, bats .285....”

“Strike one....” Again that terrific roar filled Grandma’s sitting room. “There’s the old Tucker, burning his fast one in there for a called strike. Here’s the pitch, wide... a ball... one and one... nobody down, first inning in this game between the Dodgers and the Braves here at Ebbets Field.... Here it comes... he hits... down the left foul line... Scudder’s after it... Duffy rounding first... he takes second safely... Duffy cracks a double to left, that’s the fourth straight hit against Tucker.... Just hear that crowd yell.”

Grandma wiped her face nervously. Outside from the meadow the sounds of the mower persisted, “click-click, click-click, click-click,” as though nothing mattered but the cutting of the hay.

“Rubino, Boston catcher... bats .305... a dangerous man. Duffy dancing off second... the Kid watches over his shoulder... his leg goes up... here it comes... Tony hits... a clean single to center... Duffy on third, coming home... Swanson throws to the plate... but Gabby cuts it off to prevent Rubino taking second on the throw-in. Say... the fifth straight hit, fifth run scored...”

Now the yelling drowned his voice. It lasted for what seemed eternity to Grandma. She understood perfectly what had happened. Roy was tired. He should have had a good rest, a week at home with good cooking, not the hotel stuff he had to eat. Imagine. A boy like him trying to pitch baseball games twice a week through a hot summer. It was outrageous.

“... and... yes... yes... there he goes... yep, Gabby is beckoning old Fat Stuff Foster from the bullpen, and Fat Stuff is pretending not to see him and throwing a couple of fast ones, ’cause he was caught a little short there, no one expected the Kid to be yanked like this. Guess the boy is overworked...” here Grandma raised her head quickly in approval... “he’s going to the showers now and the crowd is giving him a great hand, hear ’em...” The roar was enormous, it kept rising louder and louder and she could hardly hear the voice of the announcer. “... seems to be rubbing his elbow... crowd still cheering... they’re all disappointed he came so close to the record without making it... Draper and Cassidy, the coaches, are running up, Draper has his arm round him, asking him something... now Fat Stuff is coming into the box, Fat Stuff Foster, No. 6, taking the place of Roy Tucker, No. 56, in the box for Brooklyn, the score four to nothing... correction... five to nothing for Boston in the first inning, no one out and a man on first....”

Grandma leaned over and snapped off the radio. She knew, or felt she knew, what had happened. Too much. He’d been given too much work. There was silence in the room, yet still through the kitchen window came the eternal click-click, click-click, click-click of the mower in the meadow below the house. Then another noise, a kind of hissing sound from the kitchen. The water was boiling. Grandma jumped up. In her lean body and the way she yanked the kettle from the stove were the same lines and the same gesture of a boy who walked across a sunswept diamond and threw his glove with a jerk into the dugout.

D
OZENS OF CHILDREN
stood or sat on wooden benches with their parents waiting for their turn to be called. It was hardly a cheerful spot. Most of them were on crutches, had splints on legs or arms, or worse still, wore iron braces. He passed quickly through the big room used as a clinic. In the corridors cool nurses looked at him curiously, and orderlies walking by glanced at his tanned face; a face now familiar to readers of the sports pages. And to everyone connected with the hospital because they all knew about the Kid from Tomkinsville and his injury.

Down the corridor round a corner he came to a room which had the words “
X RAY
” on the door.

Stripping to the waist, he was placed on a cold table while a murderous-looking machine suspended on an iron arm was poised above his shoulder. It pointed like a huge gun at his heart. Two silent nurses hovered about, twisting and turning the gun, and from time to time an intern popped in to watch proceedings.

“Now then,” she said briskly. “Please hold your breath... ready....” A light flashed somewhere, and the machine whirred and buzzed. They photoed him on his back and on his face. They snapped him from every angle, high and low; they took pictures from both sides. The Kid lay there, patiently obeying orders, wondering when they would ever have enough but willing to go on as long as necessary if only he could get his arm back in shape.

Funny thing, it felt all right, even when he pitched. He could throw his curve as well as ever, but the moment he tried to bear down, the second he attempted to shoot his fast one in, there was a stinging pain above the elbow which slowed up his delivery. Moreover, the longer he pitched, the worse the pain became. A week’s rest did no good, and even after ten days his arm was in the same condition when he went out to pitch to the batters.

Meanwhile his injury hurt the club. With the Kid useless, with Razzle still out, the other pitchers were overworked and soon felt the effect of too much pitching. Gabby, who was a hard loser, began to get plenty of practice. From first place the team slipped down to second and then third. The strain was telling all round. Roommates suddenly burst into anger because the man with them used their toothbrush by mistake. Fights broke out; gradually the team morale, which had been buoyed and sustained by the tenseness of their drive for the pennant, cracked. Gabby stormed and raged against the other teams, he harried the umpires more incessantly than ever, he prodded and pricked the men on the squad continually. All to no good purpose. They kept dropping.

“Y’see, it’s like this, Mac.” He was sitting with his feet against MacManus’s large mahogany desk one morning toward the end of August. “There’s one thing a first-division club must have, and that’s a pitcher who can go in there and stop a losing streak. If the team is going badly and has lost three or four games in a row, and you have a guy like Sweeney of the Red Sox or Buck Temple of the Yanks, or Razzle, for instance, who can jump in and stop it—well, you aren’t going to be hurt much. It’s that losing streak we fell into after Tucker got hurt that did the damage.”