The New York (34 page)

“The other players aren't happy.”

“You
are
the commissioner after all.”

“We can't fuck with baseball. National Pastime.”

“You aren't. We're winning.”

“Ryan, what if I told you that Jack Wade wants to make a deal with us? Tell us about how you get those cars from the Mexican assembly plants and drive them over the border.”

“He would be wrong to say that because it doesn't happen.”

“Well, you know. It takes a while to sort through things.”

“Listen, Baxter. I can't help it if we're good.”

“Not that good. Raul Guevara is faltering.”

“He's still hitting .378.”

“He's going south. How about some other people going south?”

“You want to fix the games?”

“No, no, no. I never said that. I said you can play to your potential. But your potential is not to give Cuba a propaganda victory. Let them say they have the best baseball players in the world. We could take a lot of heat on that. It might affect our standing in places.”

“Like what?”

“Mexico, for starters. Or upset Costa Rica.”

“I would hate that to happen.”

“You think it's been easy to enforce this embargo on Cuba these last thirty-five years? We're not going to give away the Caribbean now because of some baseball players “

“You mean the Yankees can do that? Lose Mexico?”

“It complicates things. Raul has already signed an eight-million-dollar contract. What if Castro sees the further economic possibilities? And the other teams, what if they want a piece of Cuba? This thing snowballs and Castro can just freeze us out. Trump up some crazy charge about the U.S. trying to steal their young manhood or something.”

“That's your problem, isn't it? I'm just a country boy and I play ball the only way I know how.”

“You really want to be part of a federal indictment?”

I thought about it some. Then I put my can of beer on the table and just looked at him before I said, “How'd you like to go through that window? That one right over there you've been admiring the view out of? How ‘bout if I just pick you up and throw you out that window?”

“How ‘bout if you get halfway smart? We talked to George this afternoon. He's waiting for a call from you.”

I should have known.

I picked up my phone and punched in the office number. It was George without any interference.

“Hey, George “

“Ryan?”

“Me.”

“He see you?”

“Sitting right here.”

“He explain things?”

“In his half-ass government way.”

“He's got me in a box, Ryan. Tell me. Are we going to win the pennant?”

“Time will tell,” I said.

“Ryan, I never asked you for anything.”

I closed my eyes.

“Ryan, I don't want you to fix anything, I really don't.”

“I know. You just want me to not make things work quite as well as they have,"

“Ryan. This just makes me sick.”

“What are they going to do to you, George? Income tax?”

“Ryan, we're all in this together.”

“Yeah.”

“All right, Ryan?”

“Yeah,” I said,

I hung up.

“What about it, Ryan?”

“When the government wants you, they gotcha.”

Baxter didn't smile. If he had smiled, I might have really thrown him through that window. But he didn't smile. It was all business. He just nodded, got up, and let himself out the door without another word.

The odd thing about the last series — the one down in Miami before we came home — was the reaction of the Miami Cuban population. Everyone knows how anti-Castro they are and we were getting some heat at the beginning of the season because the kids were, well, Castro's kids.

But all that was by the boards now. Cuban pride was too great and our four-game series in Miami was a triumph, in that we won three of them and won the hearts of the Cubans in Dade County.

Raul didn't do much for his batting average on the trip, but he seemed cheerful about it. Maria was up in New York, but it didn't seem to bother Raul the way it did when she was in Havana. I guess getting married does that to you.

Which brings up Charlene and me.

I was missing her.

Half the nights, I would end up in my room on the road and call her and run up these big long-distance bills just to say nothing to her.

Jack Wade was trying to make a deal on his income tax problems and it turned out that had all been George's fault, too, the way I'd thought it was in the first place. Seems George sicced the IRS on Jack Wade to give me the dog and when the IRS found something seriously wrong, they kept on keeping on.

In a way, I felt responsible for what happened to Jack because it probably wouldn't have happened if he didn't want to give me a job selling cars for him and George Bremenhaven needed me instead to speak Spanish for him.

We got back in New York the first week in September for a fourteen-game home stand.

We lost the first two to Cleveland. Raul went oh for 10. He was hitting right around .310 now, and it was looking worse and worse. So George came down to me in my office off the locker room late one afternoon and exploded.

“What the fuck am I paying this kid eight million dollars for? He's like every ball player I ever dealt with, as soon as he gets the big bucks, he quits on me.”

“I don't think it's that, George. I think he's just adjusting to … you know, being married.”

“And that was your bright idea, too. I should thank you for that, my weekly bill from the Plaza Hotel.”

“George, he wasn't gonna come back if he couldn't bring Maria with him. It seemed like a good idea. Besides,” I said, turning the knife, “you wanted good but not best.”

“Oh, that was a pipe dream anyway. We're in second place now. Second is good. Build on next year.”

“You're plain rotten, George. You work so many deals you can't even keep track of what you want and when you want it.”

“You know what's a good idea? Keeping ball players in cages like you cage dogs in a kennel and let them out once a day for exercise.”

“Players ain't dogs, George.”

“No! Dogs got more loyalty! Raul is stinking up the team.”

“We're still in striking distance of first place,” I said.

“It's that woman! He's too fucking happy! Players are like artists, they need to be miserable to do their best work.”

“I've known happy players —”

“You give a player job security and a contract for life, the next thing is they aren't hungry anymore. I want hungry players, that's why I dumped my payroll last year.”

“Well, I don't see —”

“I called Cuba, I called that cocksucker in the beard and he didn't take my call. I ended up talking to some colonel and I said Raul is screwing me. You know what he said? He said it was about time someone screwed the Yankees!”

“He didn't mean the team, George, he was talking in general about
yan
kees.”

“He meant me! That son of a bitch is sitting in the Plaza Hotel charging room service and fucking his brains out while he slouches around the park hitting just over 300.”

“A lot of ball players would like to hit 300,” I pointed out.

“It's not good enough for me, though! I've got standards! And I gave him all that money, him and your fucking agent Sid Cohen!”

Managers and general managers get paid to take this kind of abuse from time to time, especially from owners who like to interfere with the team. Owners figure there's no fun in just owning a team unless they can mess with it or throw little temper tantrums or let their wives redesign the uniforms or such,

So I just took it from George and let him sputter along until it was game time and I had to excuse myself to make out the starting lineups.

I didn't really give George any satisfaction, but it didn't bother me, either.

Thinking back on everything that happened next, I should have paid more attention to George's tirade. When a lunatic is giving you signals about himself, you should listen alertly.

Raul went oh for 21.

That's when I benched him for his own good.

He wasn't particularly upset by it but we had a long talk about his decline in hitting.

— I don't understand it, either (he said).

— I think maybe the motivation is gone.

— I don't see how.

— Well, you got yourself married. That makes you happy. I'm happy that you're happy and Maria is happy. But sometimes, to motivate ourselves, we have to be a little bit unhappy.

— I was unhappy before, but I didn't like being it.

— You were hitting .452 before.

— You think it's because I am happy to be with my wife?

— Well, you two have become party people. You're always turning up in “Page Six” in the
Post
and other places. You might just be burning the candle a bit too much.

— I understand what you say. Perhaps you are right. Maria is so much in love with this city. She is dazzled by everything and I want her to be happy.

— Stay home some nights and watch television. Order in pizza.

— Maria does not enjoy pizza.

— Well, maybe she would do it just for you.

But I could see that Raul didn't think so, and, if truth be told, neither did I. Like I said, I did my best by benching him for a couple of games. I figured it might motivate him a little more.

Instead, it got me a visit down at the Stadium from Maria herself. She was dressed to the nines in a little wisp of a thing like Saks is always selling on page three of the
New York Times
. I must say, as I have said before, she is an extraordinarily good-looking woman and quite a forceful presence in a small, windowless, uncheerful room like my manager's office underneath the stands.

She lit into me the way Charlene sometimes does when I order ribs. But this was not about eating.

“You embarrass Raul when you will not let him play and you embarrass me. I don't want to answer questions about why Raul cannot play, A man called me twice from a newspaper this morning. What do I know about baseball? Why are you trying to disgrace us?” Those are the words as I remember them but not the tone. The tone was fast and furious. She was just letting it all out.

Like I said, if you're the manager you have to take that shit from the owner from time to time, but I was damned if I had to take it from the player's wife. Especially after all I had done for her and Raul

“Look, Miz Guevara, since Raul and you set up house in the Plaza, his batting average has dropped about a hundred seventy points. I don't make no connections, but I do think it might be a good idea to spend a few more days hanging around the house and not doing the party party party all day and night.”

“Are you telling Raul and me how to live our lives?”

“Yeah, something like that. I figure it's only fair as long as you feel compelled to tell me how to manage my baseball team.”

“You don't manage except to insult a proud and sensitive man like Raul”

“I don't recall Raul sending back any of his paychecks — his new and improved paycheck, I might add — while he's been hitting zeros.”

“Raul was a happy youth in Havana. He had no desire to come to New York. But now that we're here, we intend to enjoy the amenities of the city,” Maria said in that foot-stomping way of hers.

“Fine, Miz Guevara. You do what you got to do and I'll do what I've got to do,” I said. She had riled me, I have to admit. I also thought that maybe by building a fire under her, she could light up Raul.

I even went so far as to mention it to George.

His Gila monster eyes fixed on me for a long moment before he said anything. Then, “It sounds to me like our problem, all of our problem with Raul, is right there before our eyes. That little señora is raining our ball player.”

“Well, I don't think she's ruining him. He's just got to find a way to balance his life. You know, the game and his social life and all,” I said.

George just stared right through me.

“I wish she'd go back to Cuba where she came from.”

“We can't do anything about that,”

“Why not?” George said.

I didn't like the way this was going. “Look, George —”

“I've got friends in the State Department. We can expel her as an undesirable alien.”

“George, you already put the fix in to get all these Cuban bail players, you can't start putting in the fix to send one of them home —”

“I can do whatever I want,” George said.

It was pretty ominous from where I was sitting. I know Baxter said this and that, but I didn't really understand who had who by the balls. George was upset because the team was faltering. He was upset because he had signed a two-year, eight-million-dollar contract with Raul. Raul was the draw at the box office and I had benched him. Raul was flashing in the pan, so to speak. That made George look like a fool and George didn't like it. That could set George off in a bad direction. I know people like that. They're into control, and sometimes they get their wires crossed.

I don't know what follows what in what happened next, a lot of it is still a mystery and some of it is probably top secret. I don't want to know my government's secrets as long as they don't involve me.

But it did end up involving me to an extent.

Now, I can say I don't know who George talked to about the Maria problem, aside from me. He might be whistling smoke about his famous connections. Then again, he is a man who once saw Abraham Lincoln in the White House, so what do I know?

What did happen is that two men went over to the Plaza Hotel around nine, two nights after George and I talked.