The New York (33 page)

We got into New York at eight, just in time to miss the rush hour. George had sent a limo out to JFK and the press was jammed in the terminal, asking questions and shooting pictures and tape.

We pressed through the flush with me holding one hand on Charlene's arm and the other on Raul, who was attached to Maria. We were all being battered around by news people. I got a tape recorder in the nose and a microphone in the mouth.

Charlene had had enough. “Will you people show a little common courtesy?” she inquired in her loud way, and the answer was no, not much. She ended up punching a TV reporter in the chest, and a nice little punch it was, too.

I shouted out that the newlyweds were heading for a honeymoon suite at the Meridian Hotel where they would hold a press conference. This was just a small lie, not like some I've told, but I don't think anyone believed me anyway.

I just wanted to fade with Charlene back to my little apartment in Fort Lee — but I thought I'd better check with the driver of the limo when we got out of the terminal. I didn't trust George, and that was the only instinct I was going on. I came around by the driver's window and he rolled it down.

“Where you supposed to take them?”

“East Side Hotel,” the limo driver said.

See what I mean? You shake hands with George, you'd be smart to count your fingers afterward. Anyone willing to dump a $50-million payroll and replace it with a bench of Cuban kids who have to live in a slum is not worthy of much trust. “Gimme your phone,” I said to the driver and punched in George's number.

It rang six times before Miss Foster picked it up. I told Miss Foster that I wanted to speak to George. She said he wasn't in. I said, “Well, you can tell George it was a nice try, but we're going to the Plaza the way it was arranged and I'll send him the bill.”

She hesitated.

A moment later, George came on the line. “You son of a bitch, you're trying to rob me. I own the East Side Hotel, it's got some nice suites in it, just as nice as anything in the Plaza.”

“Any resemblance between the Plaza and your hotel is minor. Like they both have doors and windows. We're going to the Plaza.”

“Not in my limousine, you're not.”

“Then fuck your limo, we'll take a cab. You're trying to cheat your way through this, but it isn't going to work, George. No cutting corners. And that goes for the new contract you're going to offer Raul. No contract, no workee,
comprende
, Señor?”

“You put that spic up to this, Ryan. I can fire your ass.”

“Fire away, George. I ain't gonna fight with you. Send the checks to me in Houston, Texas “

“Is the media there?”

“All over the place. We had to fight our way through the terminal.”

The mood shifted, just like that. George was back to his old bonhomie routine.

“Great, great, great. I was on the Today' show this morning.”

“Why, what did you do?”

“I talked about the welfare of my ball players coming first.”

“And then you want to pet them in a welfare hotel.”

“All right, all right, but this isn't a permanent arrangement, Ryan. You know what a suite in the Plaza can cost? Maybe I can work out a deal on this. All right, pet the driver on the line.”

I handed the phone to the driver. He listened, said “All right,” and replaced the phone.

“What did he tell you?” I asked, checking.

“Take them to the Plaza Hotel. Get them registered.”

“Okay, man,” I said, letting the weight of the world fall from my shoulders. I was so damned tired. “You take care of it, buddy, and here's an extra ten for your trouble. This couple is from Cuba, you know. The woman speaks good English so if you got trouble getting through to the kid, talk to her”

“What do I look like, a babysitter?”

Said it in that chip-on-his-shoulder way that drivers in New York acquire with their licenses. Ten dollars is no longer enough to earn politeness from anyone in New York.

“This kid is Raul Guevara, he's hitting .435 for the Yankees.”

“The last time I was at a baseball game, the seats were a dollar,” the driver said.

“Yeah. Well.” I wasn't going to win anything with this guy and I might as well admit it. But not before I passed him four tickets for good seats for the next game. That mollified him somewhat more than the sawbuck. Then I went over to the newly weds and slipped an envelope into Raul's hand. “It's $500 to keep you in pizza and beer until your next check.” Normally, I don't go around slipping a little something extra to ball players, but Sid Cohen told me to do it and said I'd get the money back from him.

Raul opened the envelope and felt the greenbacks. He looked at me and said:

— This is from you?

— Let's say it all comes from George eventually.

— And this, this limousine.

— George is being very, very generous. Maria broke in then:

“Are they always like this, these news people?”

—- This is them on a good day. Get on in with Raul. The driver is taking you to the Plaza and he'll get you registered there. You got any problem, call me. (I had already written out my New Jersey number.)

They got in the limo and I slammed the door on them. Charlene said, “We should have bought some rice. When we were in Havana.”

“Yeah, I should've thought of it.” Throw rice in Havana, you'd have a food riot on your hands.

Raul rolled down his window.

— I am glad you came to Cuba to resolve this. You are a better man than you think you are sometimes.

— I am a tired man, Raul. The driver of this limo is taking you to the Plaza Hotel, which is very nice. You will get a suite of rooms there and you're on your own until I call you tomorrow. We've got to get my agent to be your agent and get you a decent contract. Remember, sign nothing. If George wants to talk to you, don't understand him. Sign nothing. Nothing.”

“He understands,” Maria Velasquez-Guevara said.

Married eighteen hours and I already saw where this marriage was heading. She was going to be the driver and he was going to be the guy in the backseat.

“Thank you, Señora,” I said.

She smiled then. “No. Thank you. For all that you managed to resolve for us. I have always wanted to see New York City.”

“Yeah, it's something.”

“And I have my Raul,” she said, holding his arm.

“Like I said, I hope it never rains on your parade.”

“And I hope you find some sunshine for yours,” Maria said to me.

Damn. Was she smart or what?

Charlene and I clung to each other through the crowd of press that kept asking me dumb questions. We went around to the cab line at the side of the terminal and when I mentioned Fort Lee, New Jersey, the dispatcher shook his head and called up a Yellow. You could tell them Coney Island, which would take them about six hours to get to, and get away with it, but just a hop across the Hudson River to Fort Lee, you'd think you were asking to be driven to Alaska.

George was going to love reading about himself tomorrow in the
Post
I had told the reporters that he was going to negotiate a new contract for his hitting star and that the agent was Mr. Sid Cohen of Los Angeles. That'd upset his ulcer. He hates agents in general, but he really despises Sid Cohen. This makes Sid's job much easier when it comes to dealing with George.

Charlene and I and our suitcases settled into the Yellow and took it into Manhattan and then up and across the Bronx to the GW Bridge and then over to Fort Home Sweet Home Lee. This time, Charlene came directly to my domicile where the shower works real good and there are plenty of big, fluffy towels to make you feel wanted.

I ordered up Chinese food and a six-pack of Miller's from the restaurant down the street and we took turns using the bathroom. Travel in a foreign country can make you appreciate an American bathroom. Try it sometime. When the food came, I almost felt like a real human being again and that the last day in Havana was just a dream. Except for the Old Spice I had splashed on my face that still clung, or at least, I still smelled. That reminded me of the the two-hour oration at Raul and Maria's wedding and that just made me tired again.

I know we ate. I know we had a beer each. And I know we didn't actually say very much to each other. I pulled out the sleeper from the couch and turned on the TV and climbed in bed.

I was sound asleep before Clint Eastwood shot his first bad guy.

The year of the Yanquis.

Nothing succeeds like success, especially in New York where being Number One is the only thing.

The season had started out with everyone making fun of George and his crew of Cuban kids. The kids had stumbled around and gotten to know one another in spring training down in Lauderdale. Then George fired old Sparky and made me the manager, the only qualification I had being that I spoke some Spanish.

But somewhere along the way, the team started looking respectable. I can't tell you exactly why. Well, it was Raul hitting the moon, of course, but it was a lot of other little things.

The people once came up to the Stadium in the Bronx to laugh at the Cubans and boo them and hold up their “New York Yanquis” pennants and boo George in his box. But you don't boo a winner and the team was a winner and the boos were gone.

We went on a nine-game winning streak after the All-Star break and pulled up in first place in the East by five games. Everything was going well; the kids had their defenses down and their offenses up.

Something else. There was still a lot of hatred out there somewhere for the Cuban players and some people began to resent it. You only kick a guy when he's down so long and then a contrary streak hits some people to build them up. After all, the kids weren't Communists; they were just Cubans. If we could end up loving Russians, we could end up loving Cubans. And some people began to feel that way. We still brawled because the other teams saw the Cubans as a direct salary threat and I don't blame them any more than I blame strikers beating up busloads of scabs coming to replace them. Feel sympathy for the scabs, too, if you want to know, because when a man has got to eat, he sometimes has to do whatever it takes to eat. I know that isn't very principled of me, but I ain't a principled kind of person.

As I said, it was going well. We were winning. And when we lost a game, the gloom didn't sink in deep, not into the bones. The club was as loose and cheerful as it could be with a pennant race rounding the turn and heading into the stretch.

Well, mostly.

It was inevitable that Raul would tail off some, hitting the phenomenal streak and all. But he couldn't seem to get back into the rhythm of the thing.

The other thing was how happy he was.

We had a good long home stand in August and Raul was just one big grin, ear to ear, It was Maria, of course, and Maria was in her natural element in New York. I've talked some about the style that Cubans have — a certain way of walking and talking that depends on the way they carry it off more than what the substance is. Well, that style fits in well in New York, which means that Maria fit in well.

They ate out every night and found some elegant restaurants that I had never been to in all my years playing for the Yankees. Of course, I live on a more modest scale and tend to watch my pennies turn into dollars, but Raul and Maria were having none of it.

Sid Cohen negotiated the kid a two-year $8 million contract, which must have looked like all the money in the world to Raul. Even to Maria, whose parents were better off in the Cuban scheme of things.

The couple was an item around New York, as the newspaper people say. They were wined and dined at parties and they even met the mayor at Grade Mansion.

Pretty heady stuff and I was trying my best to let Raul enjoy it all without lousing up his game. But I must have been doing something wrong.

He was hitting .387 by the middle of August and going south all the time. He hadn't hit a home run in three weeks, either.

Despite all this, the Yankees were holding their own because of the play of the other kids, who were stepping up big time. I realize that last sentence is full of sports clichés but that's the thing about sports, it lends itself well to clichés. Especially baseball, which has been played so long that it's got whiskers on it.

After our extended home stand we had to go on the road to bat the ball around with the cities in our part of the country. We started in Boston, did two games with Toronto, went down to Camden Yards in Baltimore, and then had a four-game series with the Miami Marlins.

It wasn't all peaches and cream on that trip. There was Rush Limbaugh and a piece in the
American Spectator
about Castro cutting a secret deal with the State Department and using the great National Pastime to subvert American interests in the Caribbean.

Among the glitterati in New York that didn't play, because everyone there pretends to be a liberal. But it got us boos in Chicago and in Milwaukee and Cleveland and even a couple more death threats.

That's when Mr. Baxter paid me a second visit.

It was around midnight after a home game and I was bushed and alone in my room in Fort Lee when he knocked at the door. I opened it for him. He was alone this time.

He came in the room, inspected it, and sat down in the single armchair, the one I use to do my thinking in when I stare out the window at New York's skyline over the bridge.

“You all mean to win this thing?”

I just sat there and said nothing.

“I asked you a question.”

“Saw the president is up in the polls. Can't be the worst thing.”

“The worst thing is what they're saying on radio about him.”

“I don't listen to radio except for country music.”

“We do. We have a plan here, Ryan. I didn't tell you that.”

“Planned on us doing well, but not that well.”