Rookie of the Year (4 page)

“... Well, Bill, in the seventh the guy goes wild. You remember, when they scored that tying run. ‘Folks,’ he says, ‘folks, I just wanna tell you one thing. This is... the nuts. Yes, sir... the nuts. I’m a-broadcasting to you about the greatest team in baseball, and when the World Series comes, they’ll run them Yankees clean out of the park.’ ”

“Yeah, he’s something, isn’t he? Tommy Holmes sat next to him one afternoon in the broadcasting booth. He said it was like being at a doubleheader; you saw one game and heard another.”

Casey glanced up. The yells for the waiter from that table in the corner increased. “Those boys had better watch out. If Spike Russell catches Hathaway down here two days before he’s gotta pitch, he’ll peel his hide off him.”

“Aw, Russell thinks he knows everything there is to know about baseball. Why, I was connected with baseball before he was dry behind the ears,” said Hanson.

Casey, watching the trio in the corner, made no reply. The whole room was looking at them now. Then he turned back to the bar and his half-finished drink.

“What was I saying? Oh, yes, Snazzy Beane. Well, then, in the sixth, when they threw Baldwin out at third, he really winds up. ‘Say, folks, do you suppose they broadcast these games to Flatbush? If they do, them folks can’t be enjoying their dinner much. I’ll say. An’ we ain’t gonna stop winning, either. We’ll belt that boy Hathaway right off the mound next Monday night, you see if we don’t. He beat us in Brooklyn; but he won’t repeat, you take it from ol’ Snaz. We’re in, folks, and you can call up them Yanks and tell ’em that for Snazzy!”

The commotion at the corner table became louder as chairs scraped and the three rose and came toward the bar. They were singing, all of them.

“She’s gonna cry... until I tell her that I’ll never roam... Chattanooga choo-choo... won’t you take me back home... home... home...”

They pushed and shoved their way past the crowded bar to the stairs. Jim Casey, ever sensitive to a news break, shoved half a dollar on the bar and disengaged himself from his stool. Without a word to Hanson he trailed the three singers to the doorway as they staggered upstairs. Arm in arm, they emerged into the lobby and reached the elevator just as the door opened with a bang and Charlie Draper followed by Spike Russell stepped out.

The manager took one look. He turned without speaking and walked into the Coffee Shoppe. The veteran coach was at his heels.

By morning everyone knew it, for a thing of this kind spreads fast on a ballclub. So no one was surprised the next day when a meeting was called. But this was not an ordinary meeting. Only the team was present; outsiders were excluded. Doc Masters wasn’t there, and the players noticed that Chiselbeak held the door open while the two coaches stepped through, and then kept Bill Hanson from entering. They looked at each other. Certainly this was no ordinary meeting.

“Now there’s just one thing I want to bring up this afternoon.” The room was painfully quiet. Aha, so he’s going into that! Yep, that’s it!

Spike paused and glanced around; at his brother in the group at his feet; at the others, most of them dark and tanned, a few like Swanson who was blond and never seemed to tan no matter how much he stayed in the sun. But Bob and Swanny and all of them were tired and drawn about the eyes. They were solemn and serious, too. They knew what the meeting was about.

“I’ll get right to the point. I want... nobody... on this club... touching liquor. Hope that’s understood.” How can you say it more simply? How can you get it over to them that I really mean business, that what I’m saying is no joke? He looked at the men on the benches before him, sitting about the floor or leaning against the lockers. His face was hard. He hesitated, holding the two rookies, Hathaway and Baldwin, in his glance, addressing them directly. “If any of you boys, and that means any of you, feel you must... that is, if you feel booze is necessary... well... get out!” The last words came savagely. Heads all over the room went up. The men leaning casually against the lockers suddenly straightened. “If liquor is necessary, go to some other team; don’t stay here. There’s some things a few managers overlook. I can’t. I don’t want you if you drink; don’t care how swell a guy you are; don’t care if you bat .400 or win me twenty-five games a year. I don’t want you. If you stay, if you stay and start drinking, and I catch you...” His voice dropped but it lashed through the quiet room. “... If I catch you, and I will catch you as sure as sure... I’ll fine you fifty bucks the first time, and a hundred the second. There’s two men on this club know already I’m not fooling.”

The silence that lasted, painful in its length, was broken as usual by Razzle. No matter how serious the moment, the brash prima donna of the team had to inject his personality. “How ’bout the third time, Spike?”

There could have been titters, laughter even. But before the team’s mood could change, Spike jumped. He turned quickly toward the big pitcher standing against a locker to the side. There was anger in the sudden movement of his body, anger in his voice and his quick words. Everyone connected with the club from MacManus down treated Raz with the respect that his salary, his reputation, and his pitching record deserved. Spike Russell was different. He forgot all that. To him Raz was just another player. And for once the showboat of the squad regretted his remark. For once he was not to enjoy holding the center of the stage.

“Razzle! There isn’t... there won’t be any third time. For you or anyone else on this club.” He spoke as if he meant it and he did. They realized their manager was in no light mood. “I may lose my pitching staff. O.K. I may risk the pennant. O.K. again. I may even break up this club. O.K. If you’re a drinker... you’re through as far as I’m concerned. That means you, too, Raz, same as everyone else. Baseball’s a business. If business interferes with your drinking, go where it doesn’t.

“What’s the reason I’m tough about this? It isn’t the usual reasons. This is no Sunday School; we’re a ballclub, not a reform school. Even a few beers now and then slow a man up; he don’t get that extra step in beating out a bunt or stealing second, or that burst of speed he needs to nab a low drive in the field or grab it one hop sooner. That’s all true enough, but that’s not all there is to it. The point is this... a drinker... only one drinker... can ruin a club and its pennant chances, too. My brother Bob and me learned this a long while ago and it cost us plenty.”

Now there was a slight rustle over the room; a cough in the rear, the scrape of a spike across the floor, the noise of a bench creaking as someone shifted. Yet they watched him closely, they listened carefully as he continued.

“Back some years ago we were a couple of utility outfielders on the Dallas Rebels in the Texas League. ’Bout halfway through the season several of the boys got banged up, and Rhodes, the manager, shoved us in at second and short. We were only kids and we took quite some knocks; but we hung on, we played ball, and toward the end of the season the club finished third and was in there fighting in the play-offs for the Dixie Series against Beaumont. Night before the deciding game, a scout from the Pirates came to see us. Said he liked our looks and might send us along with Buster Reynolds, our star southpaw, up to the Syracuse Chiefs, their farm in the International League.

“There was our chance. We couldn’t believe it. Buster, now, he was plenty hot that season. He’d won seventeen for us and looked good. He met this scout the same evening, and afterward he thinks: ‘I’m as good as in the big time; I’ve made the grade,’ he thinks. ‘I’ll just loosen up and have me a beer.’ He did. Had several. Next day Beaumont scored six runs and knocked him out of the box in the first inning. We never got a chance in the field until the scout had quit in disgust. The final score was eight to nothing. Buster didn’t go to the Chiefs that next year; neither did we.

“We figured we were through ’cause Buster Reynolds went haywire that night. We weren’t. But it was a long road up; a couple of years with Scranton in the Eastern League, then for a while with Little Rock in the Southern, until we were traded to Nashville and Grouchy Devine. Three-four years all on account of that bender of Buster Reynolds’. We lost the pennant, we lost the Dixie Series, and a lot of time into the bargain. So... you’ll understand why I mean business about liquor on this club.”

There was silence again. Everyone was thinking the same thing — of men they’d known; of Mike Stanley of the Cubs, who ruined his career and ended up as a grounds-keeper in Cinci; of that kid Beichman on the Senators, who was let out in the middle of the season; of old Jeffers, the veteran lefty, who couldn’t hold on in any league; of a dozen others who had suddenly disappeared, dropped out, lost to baseball, never heard from again. That’s what they were all thinking.

“So it’s no drinking. That means...
no
drinking. I don’t know how I can make it any straighter. I don’t know how I can prove to you I mean business... except to say you’ve been warned, everyone on this club. Is that plain? Do you get me? I want no excuses, nobody saying they didn’t know... they didn’t understand... they didn’t think I meant it that way.”

This time even Razzle was quiet. No one dared look at Hathaway and Baldwin in front. No one stirred. No one moved and the room was silent. Spike Russell reached back in his hip pocket for his glove.

“Meeting dismissed!”

B
ALLPLAYERS DISLIKE NIGHT GAMES.
For one thing, night games mean sitting around a hotel lobby all day waiting to go out to the park. Movies? Take in a movie and you’ll tire your eyes in no time. For another thing, night games interfere with a man’s regular meals. A player likes to have a big dinner after he has finished, but if the game is at night, he must eat in the late afternoon, beforehand, and must have a light meal. Moreover, if the contest goes into extra innings, he won’t be able to leave the grounds until after eleven o’clock. Then he can’t get to bed until after midnight and perhaps isn’t relaxed enough to sleep before two or three in the morning. Often he has to rise early to catch a train; in any event his rest is upset. And while lighting in the majors is excellent and visibility good, the smoke pall which hangs over the park in the evening mist is hard on the eyes and makes them smart all the next day.

Yet night baseball is dramatic. The vivid lights give the grass a peculiar emerald color, the uniforms are a brilliant white, the colors all sharpened. And the fans like night games, especially in certain cities. St. Louis is one of them.

They came early that evening; it was daylight when they started pouring into Sportsman’s Park; they came in the dusk; they swarmed in as twilight settled and the batting cage was placed round the plate and the players took hitting practice. Long before the umpires appeared, the bleachers in right and center were jammed and the double-decked stands back of first, third, and the plate were filled. The crowd packed the stadium; the general tenseness in the air gave the game almost a World Series feeling. By now the Cards saw a dangerous contender in the Dodgers and were determined to win. While the Brooks, beaten the day before, wanted revenge from the League leaders.

This was the setting into which Spike Russell threw his star freshman, Bones Hathaway, a tough spot for the youngster. Naturally he was nervous at the start. In the first inning the Cards threatened to tear the ballgame apart. Three straight singles scored a run, and Spike waved to the bullpen for action. He always signaled with his right arm for a right-hander and his left arm for a lefty. This time he waved for Rats Doyle, a left-hander and a man he liked to throw in early when necessary. It wasn’t necessary. Before Rats could get properly warmed up, the batter looked at a third strike, and Bob and Spike took young Hathaway out of a hole with a quick doubleplay ball.

From then on he settled down, pitching brilliant baseball. For many long innings not a Redbird got as far as second. In the sixth the Dodgers pushed over a run and tied the score when Allen doubled, was sacrificed to third, and came in on Clyde Baldwin’s long fly to deep left field. The seventh, the eighth, the ninth, and both hurlers seemed to get better the longer they threw. The tightness increased. The crowd howled and shrieked for a run, clap-clapped and hooted to rattle the youngster in the box, cheered and roared when a Card was walked, groaned and settled back when the next two men struck out and the side was retired. In the tenth, with one down, Bob banged a liner over second base, and Jocko Klein, told to hit, did hit. When the fielder got the ball back there were men on second and third and a score threatening.

The Card infield came in on the grass. A situation like this, with a man on third and one out, is the best situation in baseball for the offensive team. The defensive infield is obliged to play in, making it easier for the batter to hit through them, and adding about fifty feet to the acre of ground in which a Texas leaguer can fall safely. Also a run may be scored on a long fly ball.

The whole set-up screamed for a squeeze play; the stands expected it, so did the Cards. But Spike crossed them up. He ordered Swanny to hit away. Stein, the Card pitcher, was crowding him all the time, pitching tight to his weakness, a high inside ball. Instead of pounding it hard, Swanny only got a piece of it and poked one up in the air near second. The ball disappeared in the haze and smoke of thousands and thousands of cigars and cigarettes. It went up, up, out of one light zone into another, appearing and disappearing and then descending into the glove of the waiting shortstop. Two out!

Shoot! Shucks, that’s bad! “All right, Red, pick us up now; save us, Red, old timer; we gotta get this man over. Hit that ball.”

Red hit. A long ball deep to the right side. The runners were off with the sound of the bat and Red rounded first and was well down toward second when the Card fielder, running a country mile, made a desperate one-handed stab of the ball almost in the stands in right.

The eleventh went past without a score. So into the twelfth and thirteenth. The clock showed almost midnight now, yet not a seat emptied, not a fan moved from the park. A scratch hit put the first Card batter in the fourteenth on base and he was promptly sacrificed to second. A man on second and one out; a dangerous situation with the boy in the box tiring and the stands above shrieking for a hit. Then in deep short, Spike, with one eye on the active bullpen and another on the runner before him on the path, caught Jocko Klein’s signal. He was wiping his mitt across his chest nervously. That meant a throw to pick the man off second on the third pitch.