The Southpaw (46 page)

And the top of it all was Red and Sam, the 2 of them, their foot up on the bar rail murmuring sweet little things in 1 another’s ear like a couple lost brothers that hadn’t saw each other in 19 years.

Oh, winning heals many a wound in the flesh! And I could not help thinking, “What if we lost? What if 6 games between April and September had went the other way? What then? Would Perry and Swanee be drinking together? Would Red and Sam Yale? And suppose I only won 13 games instead of 26? Would I then be the little golden apple in the eye of Lester T. Moors, Jr.?”

I turned and left. When I reached the door I heard a most familiar voice back in the distance. “Where is Henry Wiggen?” it said. “God bless Henry Wiggen.”

But I kept on going, and out by the elevators who should come out of the shadows but Krazy Kress. “Henry,” said he, “could I see you a minute?” and I said he could, and we went down in the Manhattan Drugs. “Now Henry, concerning Korea,” said he, “it is more important then ever that you go along. Sam Yale says he might come.”

“I would not cross the street to see Sam Yale hung,” said I.

“What in the hell is wrong with you?” said he.

“Nothing,” said I. “Nothing and everything.”

“A little good old Japanese air will set you up in the other alley,” said he. “You can relax on the long boat ride.”

“I doubt that the Japanese air is any better then America,” I said.

“Tell me what is wrong,” said he. “I will only find out in my own way if you do not. What was the blowup in the clubhouse this afternoon?”

“No blowup,” said I.

“I understand that you had words with Dutch and Sam. A few rolls in the hay with them Japanese girls will clean the poisons out of your system.”

“Leave us forget Korea and the girls,” said I. “I have got a girl of my own,” and I thought about Holly, and then the only place I wanted to go was Perkinsville, and I remembered Mort Finnegan that got shot to death in Korea for what reason I do not know.

When the waiter brung us our food Krazy wished to pay, but I said no and paid my own, and when I took out my wallet I seen the old picture of Sam that I stuck in there so many years before. “You ever seen this?” I said. “It was in the front of Sam’s book that he wrote.”

“What book?” said Krazy. “Sam never wrote 6 words in his life,”

though a second later he remembered what I was referring to—the book “Sam Yale—Mammoth” that he—Krazy—wrote. “Grab a couple books and catch up on your reading on the boat ride over,” he said.

“These ocean voyages get wearisome.”

“That book was a pack of lies,” I said.

“I would not say that,” said Krazy. “I thought it was a good book and read it several times myself.”

“It is horseshit,” I said. “Sam says so himself.”

“Then why did he sign his name to it?” said Krazy.

“Why, he
wrote
it,” I said.

“He did not,” said Krazy.

“Well then,” said I, “whoever wrote it certainly piled up the horseshit thicker and faster. I could write a better book then that lefthanded.

Furthermore, if I ever wrote a book I would write it myself and not hire some lug to do it for me. Why does not somebody write 1 decent book about baseball, Krazy? There never been a good book yet.”

“There been dozens of good books,” said he.

“There has been only fairy tales,” I said.

“It is a fairy tale game,” he said. “You are 21 years old, Henry, and you have very few brains in your head except with a baseball cap on. Yet you will draw upwards of 10,000 this year for 40 afternoons of work. Is that not a fairy tale game?”

“40 afternoons,” I said. “That is all
you
seen, Krazy. The pain in my back you never seen. I can see the point in a man falling down stairs and coming up with a pain in his back, but I cannot see too much sense in walking around half the summer with a pain from sheer tension. When we sewed up the flag this afternoon the pain melted in a minute. That is too crazy for me, and it made me a little wise to myself. After this I will be Old Take It Easy Wiggen. I bust my ass for no man after this.”

“That is not how greatness is made,” said Krazy. “That is not how a man gets his name in the Hall of Fame with the immortals. Nor that is not how a man cops the big green.”

“Then I will not be great,” I said. “Nor rich.” He looked at me and laughed. “Laugh, you fat fool,” I said.

“Jesus, Henry,” he said, “do not shout at me. I done nothing.

Furthermore, I can not help it if I am fat. My mother and father was fat before me.”

“I apologize for saying you are fat,” I said, “though you certainly are.

And I guess there is really no sense in blowing off to you. I have really learned a lot this year, and it never really added up until this afternoon.

But I will tell you 1 thing, Krazy. You have f—ed up the game of baseball. You have took it out of the day time and put it in the night.

You have took it off the playground and put it in the front office.”

“It is the same old game,” said he. “There has hardly been a rule changed in 25 years.”

“You have mixed it all up,” I said. “I do not know how. I know only 1 thing. I know only that from here on in I play baseball for the kicks and the cash only, for I got to eat like you do, but as for the rest—Japan and Korea and society bastards like the Moorses, writers and fans and spontaneous demonstrations cooked up by drunks like Bill Duffy, fancy celebrations and the wars and the politics of it—all this I leave to them that glories in it. I bust my ass for no man. I get my head shot off for no man like this Mort Finnegan I was telling you about. And I will never wind up forgotten in a stinking hospital like Ugly Jones.”

“What?” said he. “What about Ugly? What is all this you are saying in connection with Ugly?”

But by then I was off my chair and halfway out the door, and it takes Krazy Kress so long to get rolling that the elevator was closing by the time he hit the lobby. 

Chapter 38

That night I slept like I probably didn’t sleep in 2 months, feeling pretty good about everything, my back in particular, and never giving so much as a thought to my chat with Krazy. Sunday afternoon we finished up, just going through the motion, many of the boys drilling hard and sweating out their hangover, Boston with their bags half packed and ready for the long trip home. There couldn’t of been more then 4 or 5,000 people in the stands, out for the afternoon sun and a little relaxation. Herb Macy and Gil Willowbrook shared the pitching assignment and we won 7-6. Or 8-7. I don’t remember exactly and see no sense in digging through the clips.

I seen neither hide nor hair of Krazy, and that night me and Bruce Pearson went to this baseball movie around the corner from the hotel called “The Puddinhead Albright Story” that even Bruce could see for the usual slop that it was where nobody sweats and nobody swears and every game is crucial and the stands are always packed and the clubhouse always neat as a pin and the women always beautiful and the manager always tough on the outside with a tender heart of gold beneath and everybody either hits the first pitch or fans on 3. Nobody ever hits a foul ball in these movies. I see practically every 1 that comes along and keep watching for that 1 foul ball but have yet to see it.

Monday we sat for our picture, everybody all smiles, the batboy up front on the ground, 1 row sitting and 1 row standing and 1 up high on a bench, everyone there but Ugly. The picture is hung in a frame on the wall. I am looking at it now. Over the picture it is wrote, CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD. Then we drilled a light drill, and by now the farthest thing in the world from my mind was Krazy Kress until about 9 o’clock Tuesday morning Patricia Moors woke me up rapping on the door, and I said come in and in she come with the paper folded back to Krazy Kresses column. “Have you read Krazy’s column?” she said.

“I been sleeping,” I said. “I hardly ever get up at the crack of dawn just to read the papers.”

“Well, read it,” she said, and she give it to me.

First off there was this smart-aleck picture of me that was first took back in September of the year before when I come up to the Mammoths with such a confident attitude about everything, and over the picture it said

“LEAVE US FORGET KOREA”

The column was as follows:

HENRY THE WHINER

We have had just about enough of Henry Wiggen, southpaw extraordinaire whose feats on the ball field have been nothing short of miraculous but whose drawing-room manners leave much to be desired. We are sick and tired of pampering and cod-dling and finding in our hearts the love that surpasseth understanding for a young man whose impudence and arrogance and downright orneriness deserve not the rich purse which he has just won, but, instead, a powerful kick in the seat of his togs.

We hardly know where to begin this sad history. Shall we begin far back when Henry the Whiner complained to his draft board that due to a constitutional disorder he found it inconvenient to enter military service? No, for such a comment on this ridiculous state of affairs might embarrass the soft-headed physicians who fell hook, line and sinker for such a yarn.

Instead, let us travel together to Perkinsville, N. Y., in which pleasant burg young Henry the Ungrateful first saw the light of day. Let us inquire on the streets and in the shops the reasons for Henry’s latest outburst against reason. I did so. I went to a man named Borelli, and a man named Levine, and to a sports-writer named Bill Duffy, as able a scrivener as ever set pen to paper. “Tell me,” I said, “Henry Wiggen complains that folks up thisaway don’t appreciate him. Oh, you gave him his start in Legion ball and so forth and so forth, but he says that these things, and the Welcome Home celebration of a year ago, all had nefarious and mercenary motives behind them. Can it be that you have not been duly appreciative of the honor and the glory he has won for Perkinsville?”

They protested, and well they might.

“Thees ees not so,” said the genial Borelli, wielding an angry razor as he shaved a customer in his popular barbershop.

“Not true,” said Levine, proprietor of the adjoining confec-tionery emporium.

“Henry sometimes pops off before he thinks,” said Duffy from behind his littered desk in the “Clarion” office.

Too Much Is Too Much

Or let’s look at it another way. As constant—bless ‘em—readers of this column are aware, I am opposed to members of the Fourth Estate intruding upon the privacy of clubhouses. But there was a blowup in the Mammoth clubhouse shortly before game-time Saturday, and I felt it my duty to ascertain its causes and consequences.

Its cause: Henry the Whiner. Reason: he took issue with that amiable gentleman, Dutch Schnell, on a question of strategy. (One might note in passing that in 1931, the year of the birth of Henry Know-It-All, Dutch was a Mammoth coach and had recently brought to a close a glorious and honorable playing career.) Its consequences: Henry shunned his teammates that evening at a simple but well-intentioned celebration staged by the Mammoth management. (Dutch’s strategy apparently succeeded that afternoon, the sage advice of Henry the Hooligan to the contrary notwithstanding.) Not only did Henry shun the shindig but he took the opportunity to pour into the startled ears of this long-suf-fering scrivener a veritable barrage of epithets and profane observations on the probable ancestry of his teammates. I shall mention no names. I am sure they know who they are.

It seems that they somehow betrayed him, deserted him. I should like to ask who betrayed and deserted whom in a mid-town establishment after Friday’s game—or is it possible that Henry, when he buddy-buddied with Boston second-sacker Chickering shortly after Chickering broke the jaw of Mammoth captain Ugly Jones, was simply putting into practice the injunc-tion to love thy enemies as thyself?

But if Henry so loves his fellow man I should then like to inquire how, earlier this month, in plain view of a packed Stadium, he found it in his ever-loving heart to hurl that most treacherous of all weapons—the spitball—at the jolly Tubs Blodgett of Boston.

The League tolerated this. The evidence, in any case, was cir-cumstantial rather than concrete, due to quick thinking by the learned Berwyn Phillips Traphagen.

But how much longer can we go on tolerating? How long, for example, can the Mammoth front office continue to pay medical bills for Henry the Whiner’s nonexistent backache? And how often, when Henry is lonesome for his girl, can the Mammoths bring her to town and house her comfortably so that Henry, when he needs his hand held, can trip down three flights of stairs to be at his maiden’s side?

The Unkindest Cut of All

However, all this is as nothing in view of his most recent perform-ance.

It seems that a group of public-spirited citizens have seen fit to sponsor a post-season exhibition tour of baseball players to the Orient where, on foreign battlefields, young men who would much prefer to be home playing ball are fighting to protect, among other sacred things, America’s baseball diamonds.

Henry Wiggen was invited to join this entourage. But the sacrifice, it seems, is too great. Money? No, his expenses would be paid. Time? No, he will have little to occupy him once the World Series is concluded.

“What then?” you ask.

I ask the same. I ask by what right a young man who has been generously pardoned from service can then refuse to participate even to this modest extent. I ask by what scale of simple justice do young Americans die on foreign battlefields while other young Americans are permitted to remain at home tossing a horsehide pellet back and forth on sunny afternoons for a salary far exceeding the wages of the mud-spattered soldier.

I should like to know—now—the whys and wherefores of this unspeakable state of affairs.

It is my sad duty to bring these matters to light at a time when all of us are intent on tomorrow’s Series opener. But when Henry Wiggen told me, as he did the other night, “Leave us forget Korea,” I felt that it was my duty to make these facts known.

When Henry was critical of his home town I was willing to laugh off the charge. When he berated his teammates I was willing to believe it was a temporary peeve. But when he calls on us to “forget” Korea and the sacrifices being made there, thoughtful people can only conclude that we have, in Henry Wiggen, a young man who is downright obnoxious.