Kid from Tomkinsville (9 page)

“Ask Gabby Spencer. Here he comes.” The manager came across the lobby with quick, nervous steps.

“Hey boys! Tuck, you know it’s your turn to go in, don’t you? And we want this game the worst way, too.”

“Tonight?” His first game at night. And without Dave back of the plate. In desperation he spoke up. “Don’t suppose, Gabby, you could let Dave catch me tonight, could you? I’d pitch better ball, I think.”

The manager started to shake his head, looked at him with clouded face. “I’d much rather have Stansworth catch you. That’s what I planned. You gotta get used to him; y’see, it’s time to cut the squad, and we had to let old Leonard out.” Then, watching the disappointment and despair in his expression, “Well, if Dave wants to go in, it’s okay with me. We must win this game, that’s all.”

The Kid took the elevator to the fourteenth floor, but there was no reply to his knock on Dave’s door. However, the veteran catcher was taking off his clothes when he reached the ball park that evening, and grinned across the lighted dressing room as though nothing had happened, although by this time the Kid knew enough about his home and his life to realize that plenty had happened. Silently the Kid took his shirt, trousers, and underwear from the locker and began to dress. All at once it struck him.

The last time! The last time he’ll ever catch me! The suddenness with which it had happened was terrifying; one minute Dave was Leonard, the veteran catcher to whom everyone on the squad came for help and advice; the next minute he was out. Given his release. It was like his own climb in a few months as an unknown rookie from a small Connecticut town to a celebrated figure in big-time baseball with his name on the sports pages of every metropolitan daily. The Kid, the Kid from Tomkinsville... that star rookie the Dodgers picked up last spring....

Speed, he reflected as he took off his clothes and drew on his uniform, speed was what counted in baseball. Well, here was a speed they didn’t often mention: the speed with which a player rises—and goes down. Speed? Yep, there was speed for you. No more Dave behind the plate. Why, he couldn’t pitch to those other mugs! He’d tried it often; it didn’t work. Dave was
his
catcher. It was Dave who’d taught him all he knew, showed him the apparently simple but difficult knack of steering his number two pitch down the proper channel, neither too high where the batter could knock it a mile nor yet too low where even Dave, his best friend, couldn’t reach it.

What would he do without Dave quietly squatting on his hams, down in the crouch until the ball came? The other catchers always rose as he threw the ball. Besides giving him no target at which to throw, this motion frequently caught his eye and distracted him. There just wasn’t anyone like Dave. Anyone to kill that nightmare of all pitchers, the hit-and-run. Other catchers let opposing teams get away with it and blamed him as a rookie. Suspecting a hit-and-run, the catcher calls for a pitch-out even on the two-and-nothing pitch. But in calling for such a pitch most catchers betrayed themselves by leaping from the box to catch the ball, so runners were invariably tipped off. Dave never did this. He was too smart a catcher, he always waited that extra second, that dangerous second, and nabbed the runner on bases. It was those little things which made Dave different, which helped and steadied a young pitcher in critical moments of close games. He needed Dave. He had to have Dave. Stuffing in his shirt and buckling the belt of his trousers he wandered across to the old catcher, hardly knowing what to say.

“Gosh Dave, what’m I gonna do now?”

“Do? Go in there tonight and win that ball game. Pitch your head off, boy; that’s what you’re going to do. We have to have this game.” His arm in the Kid’s, he drew him outside and through the ramp onto the field. And the Kid resolved that for Dave it would be the best game he ever pitched.

Batting practice was held in the setting sun, while two bands entertained the early comers. Already the stands were filling up and it was plain a crowd would be on hand at game-time. Daylight lasted until almost eight-thirty, and in between batting practice there were stunts to amuse the bleachers, a footrace in which Jess Owens, the colored Olympic sprinter, ran a footrace against Harry Street, the fastest man on the team, giving him a ten-yard start in a hundred yards. Going back to the bench for a minute the Kid heard someone say, “Fire department just ordered the gates closed. Bet Mac is happy; look at that gang coming in.” He glanced up at the stands. They were almost filled but still the crowd was pouring through the entrances.

By the time Dave stepped out to warm him up, dusk had settled over the field and there were rockets and flares and fireworks to add to the excitement. Even in deep center he could see the boxes and upper stands filling, which meant a capacity crowd. Soon the powerful arc lights on the roof went on, the stands roaring approval. They made the field emerald green and their uniforms glistening white. There wasn’t a vacant spot visible.

Rats Doyle, warming up beside him, said between pitches, “Jack says they’ve turned about ten thousand away already. Look at that mob out there in left center.” The crowd had packed the seats and was standing in the aisles. Meanwhile the loudspeaker was issuing statistics on the power of illumination.

“... sitting on second base and reading a newspaper would have ten times as much light as necessary.... These lights would illuminate a highway 447 miles long, or a town of 2,000 city blocks....” Dave beckoned him in to the bench. The loudspeaker was giving the batting order. “... shortstop... catcher, No. 38, Leonard... pitcher, No. 56, Tucker. For Cincinnati...” But his words were drowned in an enormous yell. The fans had come to see the Kid pitch them into first place, and this made him more nervous because he wanted it to be the best game he’d ever pitched. With difficulty he heard Dave beside him on the bench quietly speaking in his ear, a ball moving up and down in his right hand:

“Whatever you do, Roy, don’t tighten up. Just forget the team is up there in second place. Imagine you were down in Florida again; don’t pay attention to that gang there. Remember this is just another game, that’s all, and pitch like it was. Now come on out.” A roar, the mightiest roar he’d ever heard, smacked him in the face as he walked slowly out to the box in the middle of that emerald-green floor. Everything seemed false and unreal—the strange light, the tremendous crowd, the night wind on his face, the queer look from behind Dave’s mask; he was in a daze, hardly knowing what he was doing. Mechanically he loosened his muscles, threw the ball as directed, and then heard the crowd shout when Swanson in center pulled down an easy fly for the first out. The next man was hard to pitch to and got a base on balls. This brought another roar, for there were plenty of Brooklyn fans ready to see the Dodgers lose.

He was rattled. He knew he was rattled. Maybe it was the tense atmosphere in the park, inevitable when two teams separated only by a single game were struggling for the lead, or perhaps that eerie feeling caused by the unnaturalness of his surroundings, the cool night wind, and those flaring lights from both sides of the roof. Maybe it was the noisy crowd, or the coming departure of his friend, the man who had pushed and pulled him from a nameless rookie to a winning pitcher on a pennant contender. He didn’t know, couldn’t tell; he only knew his delivery was stiff and strained, and that there was no looseness in his motion. Now Rosetti, the leading batter in the League and the star left fielder of the Cincinnati nine, came to the plate as the stands shouted advice from above. Could he fail on Dave’s last time behind the bat, the one time he wanted above all to do his best!

No. Not that. Putting everything into his first pitch, a curve on the outer edge, he watched Rosetti step in and catch it on the nose. The ball sizzled past before he could recover balance, a clean hit which meant at least one run. Then something happened. It was that something which was making this group of men pennant contenders, keeping them on top in the race. The Kid had seen the play a thousand times, never better performed than at that moment.

From out of nowhere came little Eddie Davis, the second baseman, running full tilt, his body over, his glove outstretched as the ball skinned the ground. There was a gasp round the stands when he stopped it with one hand and without straightening or regaining balance tossed it to Gabby on a string. The ball was shoulder high, and he caught it without any shift in his stride.

Gabby was five feet from the bag when he picked the ball out of the air. Quick as a cat he crossed the bag and losing not a fraction of a second whipped it to Allen at first. Back of second one umpire’s hand went into the air; beside first the hand of the other umpire rose, and with it a full-throated roar from the crowd. The Kid stood watching, helpless and fascinated, seeing the three men function in unison, every reflex, every muscle, attuned to a job where the slightest delay, the slightest misstep or error in timing, would mean failure. There was the perfect coordination of arms and legs, there was the perfect fielding and throwing necessary to get Spike Rosetti, one of the fastest men in baseball, by a step and a half at first. Something came into his throat, he half choked, and then the confidence which had been missing all evening swept over him. There... how could any pitcher lose with men like that behind him!

The roars still rung in his ears when he rolled the thumb of his glove and stuffed it into his hip pocket, coming toward the bench. He heard Gabby’s words through a haze. “Let’s get some runs, gang....” Squeezing into his place in the dugout he felt again that surge of confidence and knew he’d pitch ball the rest of the game. On the mound again he saw this was true. He had everything. The batters were little boys and he was playing with them; obeying Dave’s orders he stood watching them hit weak pop-ups or lazy grounders to the infield. In fact it wasn’t until well along in the game, until about the fifth inning, that the chance for a no-hit game occurred to him. The Kid wasn’t pitching only for himself, he was pitching for the team and most of all for Dave. Dave’s last game was going to be one they’d never forget.

Those who lived it never would forget it either. Already Allen and Case and Swanson had given him a run which looked as big as a hundred the way he was going. Interest round the field now centered in the Kid’s chances for a no-hit game, and already a low murmur rose as the stands saw inning after inning go past without a hit from the visiting club. On the bench everyone realized it too, but everyone kept discreetly quiet on account of the Whammy. Mustn’t put the Whammy on him! Gabby chattered about the lights and the yellow ball, Case said as far as he was concerned he’d much rather play all games at night, and Swanson in center remarked that nowadays a guy was playing the moonfield and not the sunfield, at which everyone chuckled in kind of a grim way. Because everyone felt the strain. And when the team was batting, the Kid sat on the bench beside Dave with the older man’s hand on his knee, as the sixth went into the seventh and the fans rose to stretch for the Dodgers, and the seventh became the eighth, and the eighth went into the ninth with no hits, and not a man on base since the fumbling, bungling inning at the start of the game.

The stands rose in a kind of frenzy as he came out to take the box in the beginning of the ninth. Here was baseball history and they were in at the kill. There was a continual roar all around the diamond, and the whole crowd was on their feet. Even from deep center he could hear the roar and the shouts of encouragement, for now the fans were behind him to a man. Three runners out and they’d lead the League! Three putouts and he’d have a no-hit game! He, Roy Tucker, the Kid from Tomkinsville would have...

He walked across in that feverish atmosphere to the box. There he took the ball, straightened out the stepping holes made by Thompson, the Reds’ pitcher, and, stuffing down his shirt, hitched up his pants. Taking a couple of pitches, he faced the batter. His first was a ball. He stood hardly hearing the steady roar from the stands.

“Ball two...” called old Sourpuss Kiggins, the umpire, behind the plate. His voice brought the Kid back quickly to the shrieking ball park, to Dave calmly kneeling back of the batter, to the Cincinnati coaches shouting for a hit from the coaching boxes. He burned in his fast one and a roar greeted him as the umpire raised his hand and pointed toward the right. But the next pitch was a ball. Three and one.

Crack! The ball was in the air. Back, Dave, back.... Roy saw his agonized face searching the sky through that daze of blinding lights, watched him run behind third, heard the shouts. “Leonard... Leonard... yours, Dave....” The catcher stumbled momentarily over a glove, caught himself, got to the boxes, leaned over... and caught the ball in his outstretched mitt. Again that mighty roar sweeping the entire park. One down. Only two more men to go!

The noise increased. Out in left center they were throwing torn paper onto the field. Now Hartwick, the Cincinnati shortstop, came to the plate swinging two bats in a confident manner. As the record approached, the Kid’s confidence which had kept him up ever since the first inning wavered. Suppose he let them hit it? Those two batters became an impossible obstacle, and his poise and assurance faltered. With it went his control and Hartwick was trotting down to first.

When Dave snapped the ball back, he saw Gabby from one corner of his eye shout something between cupped hands. What was it? The Kid never knew, but it hardly helped settle him, and again he found difficulty locating the plate. Vainly the catcher called for a curve, for that favorite fast ball shoulder high, for a low ball hopping by the knees. He couldn’t. For some strange reason his magic touch vanished. Carey, the Cincinnati batter, slung away his bat and moved to first while the crowd shrieked. They wanted a no-hit game.

“Ball one!” The coaches on the lines were calling above the noise, clapping their hands eagerly. At last he was blowing. Stockton, the Red clean-up man, eager to hit the ball but still more anxious to prove by the third base on balls that the pitcher was going to pieces, stood crowding the plate. The Kid tried to shoot one close in; the batter half turned to avoid the ball and it caught him on the elbow. Rubbing his arm furiously he slung away his bat, while the umpire motioned him to first. Three men on. Anything beyond the infield meant a score. The winning run on second!