The Brothers K (84 page)

O
n May 29, 1971, in the ninth inning of a home game against Spokane, Papa Toe Chance did the exact opposite. For just one pitch, he played ball not for the sake of his team or his art but for the sake of someone in the outside world. And though his team forgave him for it instantly, though even Howie Bowen forgave him for it eventually, Papa, like Cobb, was a purist. For himself he had shattered the metaphor. And he never threw another pitch.

T
here comes a point in any game of patience—I used to reach it in chess on about the tenth move—when the longing for a spontaneous action, even a suicidal action, feels infinitely preferable to more agonized, self-controlled thought. Papa reached this “tenth move” point against the third Spokane Indian he faced. But the batter, the whole Spokane team, was irrelevant: the man against whom Papa was really making his suicide move was Major Keys.

Ty Daniels had thrown eight innings of five-hit ball at the Indians, and the Tugs had a 2 to 1 lead, when Howie Bowen sent Papa to the bullpen to warm up. Papa didn’t argue. He knew his pitching staff was shot from all the makeup games and doubleheaders. And though he too was shot, he was the stupid-situation reliever.

He had nothing on the ball as Tony Baldanos warmed him up. He’d have to rely on speed if he couldn’t conjure his junk, and at his age that reliance had begun to feel rash. So he was audibly muttering at Ty to hold it together—when the Indians’ cleanup hitter, Joey Arguelles, drilled a double that bounced into the bullpen and nearly rolled up to Papa’s feet. “Looks like I’m about to be deployed,” he told Tony.

Sure enough, five pitches later, four of them balls, Arguelles was on second, the winning run was on first, Daniels was headed for the shower, and Bowen was waving for Papa.

All his life, both as a starter and as a reliever, Papa had used the walk to the mound as a time to dig down inside. It was during the walk that his body became his instrument and the upcoming pitches his only possible means of expression; it was during the walk that he’d enter the metaphor, and grow ruthless. And, even on this night, the walk was as effective as a thousand others before it: by the time he reached the edge of the infield, the entire world was once again just this diamond.

But as he passed third base, Jaime Ramos grinned, gave him a thumbs-up,
and pointed back over his shoulder. “Thay moon,” he said, “she’s
good
for junk!”

And Papa turned inside out: thay moon became a dead lellow world, the sky a boo-black void, the diamond a tiny false haven lying unprotected beneath them, and Howie Bowen—handing him the ball, saying, “Zap ’em, Pop”—was just some bizarre biomorphic irrelevancy. Bowen trudged smugly back to the dugout. Papa stepped tentatively onto the mound. And for the first time in his life it was a pile of dirt no different than any other dirt on earth, and baseball was just a game.

No First Name Walker jogged out to double-check their signs. Papa met him partway, nodded at every word he said, stepped back onto his little dirt pile, and remembered nothing.
Mooncalf. Moon-unit. Moonblind
. He knew his shattered focus was a kind of betrayal. He knew that ballplayers from the game’s beginning had been forced to clear their minds of crises as bad as, perhaps worse than his. But if the same crisis that was merely breaking his focus was obliterating Irwin’s mind and life at that moment, hadn’t this diamond, this profession, this calling become nothing but an escape from the intolerable suffering of his son?

He threw his warm-ups in a state of. siege. Don Prelt, the sixth hitter in the Indians’ lineup, stepped to the plate. The Tug infield moved in for the bunt. Papa went into the stretch, checked the two runners, shook off a sign he hoped meant fastball, threw a sinker. Prelt tried to bunt and fouled it straight down onto the plate.

Strike one. But Papa was still hearing echoes, Keys’s voice this time:
Trust me …
Wilson Walker signed sinker again. Papa shook it off, unleashed his rage, threw a half-crazed fastball, and when Prelt tried to bunt again the pitch hopped, and he fouled it back into the ump’s chest protector.

Strike two, yes. But it was Irwin putting the stuff on his throws. And now it was time to waste a pitch, if the game was still baseball. But Papa felt that Irwin was out of time. He ignored Wilson’s low outside target, blew in another crazed fastball. Prelt swung from the heels. And missed by half a foot.

One out. One moon. Two tiers of fans, roaring. And two Irwins—one in Papa’s arms, beaming up at the moon; one in a white room, drooling on the backs of his useless hands. Wiznewski, the Indians’ hulking first baseman, stood at the plate. Again the infield moved in for the bunt. But the intuition of the Spokane manager was firing on no cylinders this night: he had Wiznewski swing away, and the first pitch was grounded
hard—straight at Jaime Ramos, who forced Arguelles at third, then nearly ended the game with a long throw to first. Wiznewski beat it by an inch.

Two outs. The runners still stuck on first and second. The Tug junkies fired up and chanting now:
Papa Toe! Papa Toe!
And I’ve never stopped wishing that Ramos had gotten just a little more on that throw. Because Papa may have still looked like a pitcher. But his inner struggle was over. And baseball had lost.

A pinch hitter named Warren Berman came to the plate—a hunched-up, jittery little utility man who looked like a foregone conclusion, an out waiting to happen. The Indians, after all, were as used up as the Tugs. But Papa hardly glanced at him. Or at the runners. Or at Wilson Walker’s signal. Though his face revealed nothing, Papa was staring at a rectangle of night sky showing at the end of an exit tunnel halfway up through the first tier of fans. And he was thinking only of Irwin. No more stupid relief. Real relief. That’s what he wanted now. Divine intervention, I guess, was what he longed to invoke. How to send a heartfelt message from his little pile of dirt to God—a difficult pitching problem for even a Cy Young Award winner. Was He so far away that it required an enormous gesture? Or so close it would take something incredibly subtle? Papa didn’t know. He was just an old junk pitcher. He would, then and there, have given his life for Irwin. But no one was asking him for it. So all he could think to do was give what he possessed at the moment—

and all that he possessed was his art. Looking to the body as his instrument, to the pitch as the one means of expression, and to the sports-page boxscores as the fossil record of that expression, Papa thought of a gesture both flagrant and subtle which, whatever God might make of it, he could at least share with his son …

A
n
Oregonian
sportswriter named Deke Gant—the same man who’d written the “Baseball Lazarus” story about Papa six years before—devoted an entire column to what happened next. The headline at the top of the column read:

and the column, like its headline, got pretty melodramatic. But from any perspective but Papa’s I’m afraid his last pitch
was
melodramatic. So here is Gant’s account:

A
Portland Tugs envelope arrived at the asylum in Mira Loma two days after Papa’s last pitch. Inside were three pieces of Tugs stationery. Pasted to the first page was a stat—an iota of pure logos carefully cut out of the
Oregonian
box scores. The clipping was tiny. All it said was: “WP – H. Chance.” Pasted to the second page was Deke Gant’s column, the bulk of which I’ve just quoted. The third page was a note, hastily written in pencil. It said:

Irwin:

I’ll be pulling into your area about the same time as this package. And though you may not see me, I’ll be staying close, and doing all I can to get you home, from now till the day you
are
home. Meanwhile, here’s the skinny on a pitch I threw in your honor last night. It was stupid of course. There will be consequences of course. But like you I believe there is a time for crazy gestures. This WP stands for “War Prayer.” God bless you, and God bless your tube of Gleem. See you soon.

Love, Papa

p.s. to Major Keys.

I know you’ll intercept this, and I doubt you’ll show it to him. But I’ll be there soon enough, with plenty more copies. You’ve got two crazies on your hands now, Major. And more where we two came from.

E
verett had never learned, during their Rub-a-Dub era conversations the previous summer, whether Nelson was the Churchill’s Pub bartender’s first name or his last. But he did learn that Nelson told some bad jokes
and some good stories, that he was an ex-American and a draft-dodger, that he poured double whiskeys for the price of singles once he learned Everett was the same, and that, if a customer really forced his hand, he could shell out some damned levelheaded advice. For general purposes Everett considered Chief Yulie the last word in Bartender Wisdom. But when Yulie got serious her advice got sort of pre-Columbian and unsettling. Everett felt unsettled enough already. And advice was only his backup reason for coming to Churchill’s. His primary reason was to get plowed.

“So tell me this, Nelson,” he said, two or three blended whiskeys into the predictable topic. “Is there a chance in hell that an artful and loquacious draft-dodger, if he showed up in person, could convince a U.S. Army shrink that his lunatic brother is really just a misfiled, goofball Christian?”

Nelson shook his head, as he’d been shaking it all evening. “Get this through your head, Everett. Even a
respectable
citizen couldn’t help your brother. And you and me are felons down there. Anything you do in the States will be a futile gesture. And prison will be your reward.”

“Yeah yeah. Okay. But so I go to prison. So what, Nelson? Because how important is my freedom at this point? I’m a civilization of one up here, dammit. Hippies, Yippies, ’Nam, the Bomb, B-ball, Baseball—what the hell’s he raving about? they wonder in Shyashyakook. Milk a goat, grow an artichoke, catch a halibut, they tell me. But my
brother
. Nelson! How can I not lift even a futile finger for the sake of my idiot brother?”

“Because when you’re through lifting it he’ll still be in the asylum, and
you’ll
be somewhere even worse. Why should
that
appease your conscience? You’re going to hate what’s happening to Irwin in Canada or America. The difference is, here you can hate it in front of a bar. Down there you’ll hate it behind ’em.”

Everett sighed, and felt heartsick. “You’re too damned reasonable, Nelson. And so’s this damned Canuck whiskey. Gimme somethin’ irrational! Somethin’ American! Somethin’ downright
Confederate
even. Got any Rebel Yell?”

Nelson started pouring. Everett did some serious Rebel drinking. And they did a lot more vehement discussing. But after the bar had closed, the other customers had left, and Nelson had poured a half pot of coffee down Everett hoping to keep him on the road, the bartender delivered a forceful summary of all his arguments, plus a few twists Everett hadn’t thought of. Among them:

1. “If you want prison for the fun of it, why don’t you go beat the living shit out of that Babcock asshole?”

2. “When you dropped in last Christmas, you and Natasha weren’t too subtle about being in love. And when you dropped in a couple months ago, you weren’t too subtle about being heartbroken and still hoping to find her. If that’s all over and done, fine—and sorry I mentioned it. But if there’s a chance she’ll come looking for you, and if that’s something you want, you better think hard before leaving here. Because there’s no chance she’ll come looking for you in prison.”