The Southpaw (37 page)

As for Lavalleja, I believe he speaks enough English to order a meal and shine his shoes, and that’s about all. But he fires a baseball good enough. On a better club then Chicago he could win 15 games or more a year, for his E. R. A. is up there with the best. He is a slow worker.

He might scrabble around out there 2 minutes between pitches. The crowd will holler and the opposition bench will complain to the umps, but Lavalleja don’t give a hoot for neither. He takes the attitude that if the fans is in a hurry to get home they should not of come out to the ball game to begin with, and as for the other club the more he takes his own sweet time the more they boil, and the more they boil the worse ball they play. I admire him for that. I got so I could be almost as slow as him by the end of the summer. I could keep 60,000 howling people and the other club waiting whilst I tied a shoe that never needed tying or blowed my nose when it never run, not to mention thousands more on radio and TV. I guess I growed a tough skin over the year.

Lavalleja kept us in agony that afternoon. It was like trying to make time on a highway where every mile there was a full stop sign. Dutch moved Pasquale to center and played Canada in right. It looked odd to see Canada in the outfield. Yet we expected it. Krazy Kress wrote that Dutch was about to cut loose 1 outfielder and bring up a pitcher from somewhere, maybe Dolly Peterson from Q. C. I always liked Dolly and hoped it was true, for we needed another pitcher.

We kept getting men on base almost every inning. Then Lavalleja would drop off in his wintertime sleep, and by the time he was ready to throw again we scarcely remembered our signs, and the batter would back out and look for his sign again, and the runners would wear theirselves thin running up and down the baselines. Piss turned in a fine job, and it was 2-2 going into the ninth. They scored 1 time, and we tied it up right away, Sid lining 1 into the stands in right just over the bullpen, and we went into extra innings.

In the first of the tenth Jeff Harkness beat 1 into the ground in front of the plate. It was an easy play, and I do not know what happened except that Piss went for it and it rolled up his arm and over his shoulder, and Harkness beat it, and then Pisses sinuses begun to trouble him. Vasquez singled. We expected the bunt, and then he whaled 1 that would of crippled George if he did not leap up out of the way. It was stupid baseball, but I guess when you are as low down in the standings as Chicago you will try anything once. Harkness held second, and Leif Lindsay pushed the runners along with a bunt, and Piss throwed 2 wide pitches to Joe Fredericks, and then Red went out and talked with Piss, and then they called for Dutch, and Dutch went out and spoke awhile and finally signed down to the pen for Horse. Horse walked Fredericks on purpose, and we played for the double play on Millard May. We almost got it, too, but “almost” ain’t enough. May rapped down to George, and George fired to Gene and Gene to Sid, and May beat it by a hair, and Harkness scored from third. And that was the ball game, for we could not do a thing in our half of the tenth.

That night I went up with Sid for dinner at his mother’s on Riverside Drive. I was glad to have the invite. Tempers was short in and around the hotel. Sid has got the right idea about living at home if you can.

Friday night is a special time at Sid’s. He has got 1 brother and 2 sisters, and they come and bring their family, 5 kids all told, and Sid sometimes brings 1 ballplayer up. He brung Piss and Lindon and the Caruccis in the past, and Monk Boyd when Monk was a Mammoth. He said he would bring Perry Simpson, but he did not think it would sit well with his mother. He said it took him a long enough time to whip her in line and let him bring Christians much less a Negro. I told his mother I might as well be a Jew for all I was ever anything else, and she got a big boot out of that. I told her that many of my best friends in Perkinsville was boys I played with on the YMHA basketball club. I did not tell her who they were. They was 2 Irishmen, 2 Italians, 4 Jews and Cal Robertson that I don’t know what Cal was. The kids all fell in love with me at once. The oldest was a girl, 16, name of Sylvia, and I tried to shove in beside her at dinner but the other kids would have none of that. There was 1 boy on either side of me and 1 about 7 that wanted to sit on my lap, but his mother yanked him off and his father said if he did not do right he would not take him to the doubleheader Sunday. The 4 youngest kids was named Oscar, Irving, Joseph and Helene. I kept looking across at Sylvia, and her at me, and I had her on my mind a full 2 days afterwards.

There was a maid that damn near run her legs off back and forth betwixt the dining room and the kitchen. I felt sorry for her. Her name was Mary, and after dinner I snuck back in the kitchen for some milk, for it was against the regulations to have it with the dinner, and she asked me was I not the boy that roomed with Perry Simpson. I said I was. She give me 2 glasses of milk. I must say that you have got to admire anybody like Sid that is willing to give up his milk for his religion.

We begun with a prayer said in Hebrew by Sid’s older brother.

Everybody bowed at the neck, the men and boys covering up their head with a napkin. Then we sat down and begun to stow it away.

There was filter fish with horse radish, and soup with a couple doughy balls floating around, and there was roasted duck and cold slaw with a slice of ice on top and bread without no butter and finally cake and tea. I drunk about an inch of red wine, although it was against my rules to drink but Sid said it would never hurt me. Sid’s sisters pointed out to them kids how careful I was to eat and drink all in the right amount. It was all delicious. Mostly we talked about what was causing the club to slump.

Whatever I done them kids done the same. They hung on my every word, and they felt of my muscles and made me spread my hand, and they studied it. Actually my hand is not too big, spanning about 101/2 across. Sam has got the biggest hands on the club, about 12 inches.

“I will bet you that Henry does not bite his fingernails,” said 1 of the sisters. “Do you, Henry?”

“No,” said I. “I do not. Who bites their fingernails?”

“Irving does,” she said.

“Why,” said I, “ain’t that terrible?”

Irving said he would never bite his fingernails no more.

“I will bet you that Henry does not need to have chocolate syrup in his milk every time,” said the other sister.

“No sir,” said I. “I drink it plain.”

“I hope Joseph heard that,” she said.

He did. He said it would be plain white milk for him forever after.

Then they wanted me to go out in the park with them and play ball. I said I just spent the whole afternoon playing ball. Then this brat Helene says no I did not, for she seen the game on the TV and never seen me even in the bullpen. Sid said I had a crick in my back and needed the rest. This turned the trick, for these kids was Mammoth fans from the word “Go,” and it give them a real feeling of helping the club by not tiring me out. They dumb on my shoulders a little and made me hoist them up and see how much weight they gained, but otherwise they took it easy on me. Irving wished to wrestle with me and show me how strong he was on the living room floor. Finally the kids all went in the other room, all but Sylvia. She was shy and very timid. Every time I looked at her she would blush and look in her cup.

Her father, name of Abner, had many theories on the causes of the slump, all of them cockeyed, and afterwards things begun to break up, for they had to get the kids home to bed, promising them if they would hurry they might catch a part of the Brooklyn game on TV.

Me and Sid and his mother went in the other room. She flipped on the TV and watched Brooklyn and Cleveland. Sid and me stuck our feet up on the window, and the breeze drifted in from the river, and we ate up the few chocolates that the kids somehow missed in the dish. Sid said he believed we would pull out of the slump fairly soon. I said I hoped so, and along about 10 I said I would be nosing along. They said there was cabs down in front of the house.

But I walked. The night was cool, and the river smelt good, and I strolled in a casual way down along the Drive. There was people on all the benches, old and young, men and women and boys and girls, and after 10 or 12 blocks I come to a bench where a young fellow and his girl was sitting with a battery radio listening to the Brooklyn game, and I sat on the end of the bench, leaning and resting for the walk roused the crick, and after a time the fellow left out a whoop and walloped the girl on the back, and I heard cheering over the radio, and I said to the fellow, “What happened?”

“It is all tied up,” he said. “Reeves done it. I knowed he would. Did I not say he would?” and the girl said yes that was what he said, and she slammed
him
on the back.

“Have people really got their hopes up for Brooklyn yet?” I said.

“What are you?” said he. “For the Mammoths?”

Then they bent over the radio again, and soon I heard applause of a familiar kind. “Pitcher up?” I said.

“That is right,” said the boy. “Scudder up and Reeves on third and Wynn on first and none down and shut up a minute for I do not wish to miss a thing.”

“I am dying,” said the girl.

“You are too young to die,” I said.

“What are you?” said she. “A wise guy?”

“Shut up the both of you,” said he, and they listened, and they looked like they was in pain, for they closed their eyes and hunched their shoulders, and the girl put up her hands like she was praying, and Scudder was called out on strikes, and I heard the crowd booing the decision, and the girl said that was a raw call, and she went “Boo-oo-oo-oo” in the radio.

That brung up Schoolboy Wenk, the Brooklyn lead-off hitter. He was 29 by now, but they called him Schoolboy when he first come up 10 years or so before, and the name stuck. He cannot hit speed. “That is 2 down,” said I, for Rob McKenna was pitching for Cleveland.

“What are you?” said the boy. “An expert?”

“A little hit, Schoolboy,” said the girl. “1 little hit and I will love you forever.”

I sat back and listened, but I barely heard what followed, and I cared less. It did not seem important, and I did not seem to be myself. It was like I was somebody else, looking at it all from the outside, just leaning back and listening to 2 clubs on the radio. They was just 2 clubs and nothing more. It seemed funny to me that Rob was pitching with only 2

days rest after the long game Tuesday night, and I said so to the young fellow, and he said the long game was not Tuesday night but Monday, and I did not argue, and after a long time the boy and girl snapped the lid on the radio, and the quietness brung me back to where I was, and the boy give the girl a hug, and she hugged him back, and they seemed very happy, and they drifted off in the dark and out of sight.

I lifted myself off the bench and sauntered over towards Broadway and caught a cab back to the hotel, and the cabby said did I hear the ball scores, and I said no, and he said Chicago beat the Mammoths this afternoon and Brooklyn just this minute whipped Cleveland while Pittsburgh was being smothered by Boston in Boston. He said in case I was interested the Mammoths put up in my very hotel. I said I knowed it. I said they seemed to me like a quiet bunch, however. “Even a little long of face,” said I. “Maybe things is going bad for them.”

“Oh,” said the cabbie, “I doubt that they have got much to stew about. I am the first to worry if things do not break right for them. And I am not worried.”

I suppose he wasn’t, neither. Nobody was—only us Mammoths.

STANDINGS OF THE CLUBS

Saturday Morning, July 26

Won

Lost

Pct.

Games Behind

New York

60

32

.652

—

Boston

56

35

.615

31/2

Brooklyn

53

39

.576

7

Cleveland

49

42

.538

101/2 

Chapter 30

Following is a string of letters that come to me in New York during the last home stand before the last trip west of the summer. Some run longer then others, but even so they make for a rather short chapter.

Do not think that I am sticking them in here just so as to get out of writing a chapter. After you have wrote 29 1 more or less don’t make the slightest difference. The letters are according to date, first come first served. I never answered a 1 of them.

Following is not a letter but a note probably taped on my locker by Mick McKinney or Bradley Lord or maybe Doc Loftus himself. It is from Doc, date of July 26, wrote with pen and ink on official Mammoth paper. It says:

Wiggen: The X rays are back from the hospital. Nothing shows. If there is something wrong with your back it should show in the X rays.

If it does not work itself out I would suggest you see Dr. Solomon, as it is more in his field than mine—something mental, “in your mind.” You may drop down and take a look at them if you wish. I will speak to Dutch about them.

ERNEST I. LOFTUS, M.D.

Following is a letter from Mike Mulrooney to Lindon Burke, date of July 30, wrote in pencil on the paper of the Blue Castle Hotel in Queen City. Lindon come in when I was not there and give it to Perry to read and said show it to me and then give it back. I forgot, and I found it amongst my gear when I got home. It says: 

Dear Lindon,

Dutch has sent to me a report on you, along with a report on Stdys game against Chi. He seems to feel that some word from me might help you to get hold of yrslf. I had been meaning to write to you anyway. I am complimented that Dutch thinks that I can do something from a distance of 2,000 mi. that he cant do right there on the spot.

I dont know exactly how to procede. Lindon, what can one man say.

All that one man can do is steer you along when you are under his wing. In the final analisis you are alone in the box, & if your control fails you at the crucial time you are the best judge of the whys & wherefores. I have before me a chart that Egg Barnard prepared on Stdys game. Dutch has a great faith in charts which I do not share.