Bang The Drum Slowly (14 page)

“3 is enough,” said Joe.

“Then leave him sit in for me,” I said.

“No!” said Joe. “No! No! What are you 2 anyway? Are you Romeo and Juliet?”

“Then I must quit,” said I, and I turned my cards over and rose up and pushed back through the crowd.

“I will make you sorry for this,” said Joe, and he called me a couple dirty names again, and Romeo and Juliet, and he also later made me sorry.

But I do not know what else I could of done. I was sorry to quit but would of been sorrier still if I stood and played, one of those cockeyed deals where you are wrong if you do and wrong if you don’t, like the old-time riddle where the fellow says, “Suppose you were up to your neck in a barrel of shit and a fellow was tossing baseballs at you. What do you do? Do you duck?”

WE BEAT Washington Wednesday night, our first night game, and Thursday afternoon, which meant we now beat them 4 times in 4 starts. We beat them 16 times in 22 starts all summer, leaving no doubt in my mind which was the best ball club. The reason they stood up there all year was they fatted up on the second division. They beat Boston 17 times and Brooklyn 18 and Chicago 20, though we had no idea in the very beginning but kept looking over our shoulder at Cleveland and Pittsburgh and even St. Louis and wondering who we had to beat, never figuring it would be Washington.

I beat Brooklyn Sunday, 6–4, not the best ball game I ever pitched if I do say so myself. Sid made me a gift of it with 2 home runs, 7 on his belt now, 4 up on Babe Ruth. He was pretty sick and tired hearing about Babe Ruth. “I am Sid Goldman and not Babe Ruth,” he said, “and I would appreciate everybody keeping their trap shut in the matter,” which we done, though of course the paper done no such a thing but hauled out the records every time Sid connected. Holly says there might be a few people do not know who Babe Ruth was. Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in 1927, before I was even born, the most home runs anybody ever hit.

I seen in the paper where Dutch was worried about Jonah Brooks not getting a base hit since the seventh inning Tuesday, April 19, though if he was it did not show. Jonah caught all through April until the second game of a Sunday doubleheader with Pittsburgh, which Bruce caught, the first complete game he caught since Thursday, July 9, 1954, according to the paper.

He done well. I pitched and won. The sun was low, and the lower it gets the faster I look. He missed a couple signs but he banged out 2 hits, one a double, and was now batting 500 on the year, 6 for 3, his name at the top of the Sunday averages. It was the fourth game I won with the year nowheres even begun practically. I was beginning to get the sniff of that old bonus clause. However, Jonah was back in the lineup Tuesday night against Chicago, and then we wound up the home stand beating Washington 2 out of 3 over Friday and the weekend. Sid hit Number 9 and 10 and we went west 3½ games on top. He was still 4 up on Babe Ruth.

Why shouldn’t Dutch of kept Jonah playing, though the paper kept crying “Weak stick, weak stick” and writing long articles about it if Sid didn’t happen to hit a home run for them to quick drag out Babe Ruth all over again instead? The power was on and the pitching was steady and it would of made no sense benching Jonah.

Dutch kept tinkering all right, but not with Jonah. He kept juggling the order, and when that didn’t work he kept juggling the bench, now yanking Canada and playing McGonigle, now Lawyer Longabucco, once even playing McGonigle in left though I know he would almost rather die than use a left-hander there, now yanking Coker and Perry and playing Ugly at short and Tyler or Wash Washburn at second, seeing what I seen and what the boys would of also seen if they cut out the horseshit long enough and what the paper would of seen if they ever stopped looking up Babe Ruth. It was not pulling like a club. It was 2½ and 3 and 3½ on top all through the west, but it should of been 4½ or 5 by now. It was firing along because me and Sid and Pasquale and Van Gundy and Herb Macy were turning in the work, but you cannot go all the way on a few bats or a few arms. The summer was still very young. The club was not a club, which I personally blame on Joe Jaros to begin with and Goose and Horse and the 4 colored boys and everybody else that couldn’t get in the act quick enough, thinking they had the flag in their pocket in May and looking around for amusement, thinking it was amusement when what it was was horseshit pure and simple.

Every time he seen us he said, “Romeo and Juliet,” and I laughed, and after he said it about 20,000 times I said, “Joe, I will leave you in on a little secret. After the first 20,000 times a joke stops being funny all of a sudden.” But he kept on, and when he called me “Romeo” I called him “Grandfather,” which he is proud to be except if you say it that certain way, and he stopped for a couple days and then called me “Romeo” again, and I said, “Romeo was a great lover, Joe. Are you jealous? If you are so jealous, Joe, I believe you can buy these little pills give you back your pep in bed you lost when you were young like me,” and he said, “You mind your tongue, boy, and be careful how you rag your elders.”

“Do not pull your rank on me,” I said. “Give is give and take is take.”

Ugly said the same. It must of been Ugly passed the word along to Dutch because I know Ugly and Joe didn’t speak for awhile. Dutch put the squelch on Joe. But he was mad and lonely. He walked around with a deck of cards in his pocket and nobody to play Tegwar with.

Bruce never minded. He said, “They love to rag us, Arthur,” and I said they did, and I waited for him to discover they weren’t ragging me, only him. It takes him longer than most to discover a thing like that. Call
me
a name and I call you a worse one back, and the laugh is on you in the end, but call Bruce a name and he can never think of one to call you back. It is easy pickings, like punching a punching bag that can not punch back. Maybe it would be a smart move some time to string up a bag in the clubhouse and leave people punch it when their gripe is on.

Horse and Goose picked it up, calling him “Juliet” and raking up all the oldest gags in the world, saying, “How tall are you, Pearson?” and he said “5’ 11”,” and they said, “We never seen a pile of shit so high before,” or saying, “By the way, Bruce, what is your whole complete name?” and he said, “Bruce William Pearson, Jr.,” and they said, “Well, up yours, Bruce William Pearson, Jr.,” until quite a number of the boys told Goose and Horse why not cut out the horseshit and play baseball.

I said the same. I said, “One of these days we are going to start looking around behind us for Washington, but they will not be there because they will be up ahead of us,” which was true, for we could not shake them off.

“It is a club of crying kids,” said Horse. “It ain’t the old Mammoths.”

“If you rag them they run and tell Dutch,” said Goose. “The game is gone to hell, and I am glad to be fading from the scene.”

“Why not just fade quiet?” said Coker.

“Why not just shut your Polack mouth?” said Goose, “before I plaster it shut?”

“Why not try?” said Coker, and he stood up, and Goose stood up. But nothing come of it.

Goose hit 35 last summer. He was drinking quite a bit, borrowing 5 here and 5 there and going off alone and drinking it up and waking up with a head in the morning. One day he fell asleep on the bench in St. Louis, and Dutch seen him and begun to say something but then only turned around again. What would of been the use?

Holly says, “Henry, people will wonder how boys get such names as “Goose” and “Horse” and “Piss”. You must tell them.”

“It is all in “The Southpaw”,” I said.

“Then tell them the pages,” she said, and I said I would, and I spent about an hour flipping through the pages and could not find where I said it, though I know I did. I guess I ought to know.

“You find the pages,” I said, “and write them down.”

“That is all I have on my mind,” she said. “I have washing and dipering the baby to do, and
your
mail to answer and
your
tax to be figuring out and
your
insurance racket and
your
food and
your
car to be running in and getting greased and
your
telephone to be answering all day, and now all I am supposed to do is start reading
your
book all over again.”

“Do you wish me to finish this book before the winter meetings?” I said. “If so, find the goddam pages.”

“I will not,” she said, which she must of meant because she never did. “And do not swear around the baby.”

“When she is old enough to understand I will stop,” I said, and I will, or at least I hope I will, though I do not always do everything. All winter all I was going to do was lay around and play with the baby, and then I never done so. I will certainly do it next winter or die trying.

We come back from the first swing west by way of Washington, 3 games on top, and Dutch said in the Washington clubhouse, “Boys, tonight we start shaking the son of a bitches loose for good. You know,” he said, “to me they are like a fly buzzing around your head, where you sit and watch it awhile without ever raising your hand against it.” He jumped off the scale and pulled up a chair and sat down. “Like this,” he said, sitting with his arms folded across his letters and his eyes looking at the ceiling, watching that fly go back and forth. “B-z-z-z-z,” he said. “Go ahead, you old Washington fly. Buzz me one more time and I will snatch you out of the air, and you will buzz no more.”

From over in George’s corner comes the sound of a buzzing. It is Roberto Diego going, “B-z-z-z-z, B-z-z-z-z,” putting it in Spanish for George. Red never does it like that. Dutch might talk for 5 minutes, and then Red boils it all down to 15 words, but not Diego. He must give it the full treatment, and when he was done George give it back to him, “B-z-z-z-z, B-z-z-z-z.”

“Forget it,” said Dutch to Diego. “This is not so much for George as for certain other persons to begin with. B-z-z-z-z goes the fly until you say to yourself, “Enough is enough. I have give you over a month now to trail along 2½ and 3 and 3½ games behind, and now I think I will reach up and squash out your miserable life”,” and up he jumped, and up Diego Roberto jumped. Up on the scale went Dutch, and the weights all rattled on the stick. “Fly! You are done for! Whack!”

“Whack!” went Diego Roberto.

“But only one thing is wrong,” said Dutch. “I look down in my hand and I have no fly, and I think to myself how could I of missed it when I already seen the circuit once around and know I am the only club in the league. How could I of missed?” He sat down in his chair again, and Diego Roberto sat down. “The fly is still going B-z-z-z-z, B-z-z-z-z.”

“B-z-z-z-z, B-z-z-z-z,” said Diego.

“Forget it,” said Dutch. “I said forget it.”

“Forget?” said Diego. “What is forget?” He whipped out his dictionary. “Mister, forget is not remember, but is too quick to not remember. She just now happen.”

“Forget it means fuck it,” said Dutch.

Roberto threw his dictionary away.

“Do you know why I missed the fly? Do you know why the fly is not dead? Do you wish to know why it was 2½ and 3 and 3½ and could never be shook, and maybe as time went by come up from behind and stole the flag right off New York? Do you wish to know? Tell me if you wish to know?”

“Yes sir,” said the boys. “Yes sir, Dutch.” “Sure, boss.”

“Because he flew right through my fingers is why, if you must know, which he should of never done because on paper he was no club a-tall but only a couple dozen men and boys dressed up in Washington suits. And if you wish to know why he flew through my fingers I will tell you that, too. The reason was because my fingers did not work together. The first finger says to the second finger, “I do not like you because you will not play cards with me,” and the third finger says to the fourth, “I do not like you from way back,” and the next finger goes back to the first and says, “You should hear what finger Number 2 been saying about you,” and the third finger says to the fourth, “Leave you and me cut finger Number 5 dead if we see him, and tell our goddam wife do the same, and bring up the kids likewise.” Boys, this is suicide. I seen it happen on other clubs, and I was always glad. But it never happens on any club of mine if I can squash it, and by God I will. As a starter there will be 2 things. There will be no more cards and no more borrowing nor lending. If anybody owes you money write it down on a piece of paper and we will see if we can clear it through the front office. And tonight will be the beginning of the new way of things.”

“Time, Dutch,” said Egg, for Dutch forgets the clock when he gives you a lecture. “OK,” said Dutch, “leave us go play real ball,” and we all shot out, and when we got there it was raining, though we begun anyways, and Dutch did not like it and said, “Stall,” and the boys stalled, and Frank Porter come over to the dugout and said, “Dutch, tell your boys stop stalling.”

“It is raining,” said Dutch. “Somebody will get hurt.”

“It is I who decides if it is raining,” said Porter. “I say it is not.”

“Maybe not,” said Dutch, “but water is coming down out of the sky, and moonbeams are dripping off your nose,” and the boys went on stalling all the same, and Porter kept coming over and complaining. “I have no control over my boys,” said Dutch.