Dispatches from the Sporting Life (31 page)

Sunday morning softball on Hampstead Heath in summer was unquestionably the fun thing to do. It was a ritual.

Manny Gordon tooled in all the way from Richmond, stowing a fielder’s mitt and a thermos of martinis in the boot, clapping a sporty tweed cap over his bald head and strapping himself and his starlet of the night before into his Aston-Martin at nine a.m. C. Bernard Farber started out from Ham Common, picking up Al Levine, Bob Cohen, Jimmy
Grief, and Myer Gross outside Mary Quant’s on the King’s Road. Moey Hanover had once startled the staff at the Connaught by tripping down the stairs on a Sunday morning, wearing a peak cap and T-shirt and blue jeans, carrying his personal Babe Ruth bat in one hand and a softball in the other. Another Sunday Ziggy Alter had flown in from Rome, just for the sake of a restorative nine innings.

Frankie Demaine drove in from Marlow-on-Thames in his Maserati. Lou Caplan, Morty Calman, and Cy Levi usually brought their wives and children. Monty Talman, ever mindful of his latest twenty-one-year-old girlfriend, always cycled to the Heath from St. John’s Wood. Wearing a maroon track suit, he usually lapped the field eight or nine times before anyone else turned up.

Jake generally strolled to the Heath, his tattered fielder’s mitt and three enervating bagels filled with smoked salmon concealed under the
Observer
in his shopping bag. Some Sundays, like this one, possibly his last for a while, Nancy brought the kids along to watch.

The starting lineup on Sunday, June 28, 1963, was:

Jake, like five or six others who had arrived late and hung over (or who were unusually inept players), was a sub. A utility fielder, Jake sat on the bench with Lou Caplan’s Bunch. It was a fine, all but cloudless morning, but looking around Jake felt there were too many wives, children, and kibitzers about. Even more ominous, the Filmmakers’ First Wives Club or, as Ziggy Alter put it, the Alimony Gallery, was forming, seemingly relaxed but actually fulminating, on the grass behind home plate.

First Al Levine’s Team and then Lou Caplan’s Bunch, both sides made up mostly of men in their forties, trotted out, sunken bellies quaking, discs suddenly tender, hemorrhoids smarting, to take a turn at fielding and batting practice.

Nate Sugarman, once a classy shortstop, but since his coronary the regular umpire, bit into a digitalis pill, strode onto the field, and called, “Play ball!”

“Let’s go, boychick.”

“We need a hit,” Monty Talman, the producer, hollered.

“You certainly do,” Bob Cohen, who only yesterday had winced through a rough cut of Talman’s latest fiasco, shouted back snidely from the opposite bench.

Manny, hunched over the plate cat-like, trying to look menacing, was knotted with more than his usual fill of anxiety. If he struck out, his own team would not be too upset because it was early in the game, but Lou Caplan, pitching for the first time since his Mexican divorce, would be grateful, and flattering
Lou was a good idea because he was rumoured to be ready to go with a three-picture deal for Twentieth; and Manny had not been asked to direct a big-budget film since
Chase. Ball one, inside.
If, Manny thought, I hit a single I will be obliged to pass the time of day with that stomach-turning queen Jason Storm, 1b., who was in London to make a TV pilot film for Ziggy Alter.
Strike one, called.
He had never hit a homer, so that was out, but if come a miracle he connected for a triple, what then? He would be stuck on third sack with Bob Cohen, strictly second featuresville, a born loser, and Manny didn’t want to be seen with Bob, even for an inning, especially with so many producers and agents about.
K-NACK!
Goddammit, it’s a hit! A double, for Chrissake!

As the players on Al Levine’s bench rose to a man, shouting encouragement—

“Go, man. Go.”

“Shake the lead out, Manny. Run!”

—Manny, conscious only of Lou Caplan glaring at him (“It’s not my fault, Lou”), scampered past first base and took myopic, round-shouldered aim on second, wondering should he say something shitty to Cy Levi, 2b., who he suspected was responsible for getting his name on the blacklist years ago.

Next man up to the plate, C. Bernie Farber, who had signed to write Lou Caplan’s first picture for Twentieth, struck out gracefully, which brought up Jimmy Grief. Jimmy swung on the first pitch, lifting it high and foul, and Moey Hanover, c., called for it, feeling guilty because next Saturday Jimmy was flying to Rome and Moey had already arranged to have lunch with Jimmy’s wife on Sunday. Moey made the
catch, which brought up Al Levine, who homered, bringing in Manny Gordon ahead of him. Monty Talman grounded out to Gross, ss., retiring the side.

Al Levine’s Team, first inning: two hits, no errors, two runs.

Leading off for Lou Caplan’s Bunch, Bob Cohen smashed a burner to centre for a single and Myer Gross fanned, bringing up Frankie Demaine and sending all the outfielders back, back, back. Frankie whacked the third pitch long and high, an easy fly had Al Levine been playing him deep left instead of inside right, where he was able to flirt hopefully with Manny Gordon’s starlet, who was sprawled on the grass there in the shortest of possible Pucci prints. Al Levine was the only man on either team who always played wearing shorts—shorts revealing an elastic bandage which began at his left kneecap and ran almost as low as the ankle.

“Oh, you poor darling,” the starlet said, making a face at Levine’s knee.

Levine, sucking in his stomach, replied, “Spain,” as if he were tossing the girl a rare coin.

“Don’t tell me,” she squealed. “The beach at Torremolinos. Ugh!”

“No, no,” Levine protested. “The civil war, for Chrissake. Shrapnel. Defence of Madrid.”

Demaine’s fly fell for a homer, driving in a panting Bob Cohen.

Lou Caplan’s Bunch, first inning: one hit, one error, two runs.

Neither side scored in the next two innings, which were noteworthy only because Moey Hanover’s game began to slip badly. In the second Moey muffed an easy pop fly and actually let C. Bernie Farber, still weak on his legs after a cleansing, all but foodless, week at Forest Mere Hydro, steal a base on him. The problem was clearly Sean Fielding, the young RADA graduate whom Columbia had put under contract because, in profile, he looked like Peter O’Toole. The game had only just started when Moey Hanover’s wife, Lilian, had ambled over to Al Levine’s bench and stretched herself out on the grass, an offering, beside Fielding, and the two of them had been giggling together and nudging each other ever since, which was making Moey nervy. Moey, however, had not spent his young manhood at a yeshiva to no avail. Not only had he plundered the Old Testament for most of his winning
Rawhide
and
Bonanza
plots, but now that his Lilian was obviously in heat again, his hard-bought Jewish education, which his father had always assured him was priceless, served him splendidly once more. Moey remembered his
David ha’Melech: And it came to pass in the morning, that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die.

Amen.

Lou Caplan yielded two successive hits in the third and Moey Hanover took off his catcher’s mask, called for time, and strode to the mound, rubbing the ball in his hands.

“I’m all right,” Lou said. “Don’t worry. I’m going to settle down now.”

“It’s not that. Listen, when do you start shooting in Rome?”

“Three weeks tomorrow. You heard something bad?”

“No.”

“You’re a friend now, remember. No secrets.”

“No. It’s just that I’ve had second thoughts about Sean Fielding. I think he’s very exciting. He’s got lots of appeal. He’d be a natural to play Domingo.”

As the two men began to whisper together, players on Al Levine’s bench hollered, “Let’s go, gang.”

“Come on. Break it up, Moey.”

Moey returned to the plate, satisfied that Fielding was as good as in Rome already. May he do his own stunts, he thought.

“Play ball,” Nate Sugarman called.

Alfie Roberts, the director, ordinarily expected soft pitches from Lou, as he did the same for him, but today he wasn’t so sure, because on Wednesday his agent had sent him one of Lou’s properties to read and—Lou’s first pitch made Alfie hit the dirt. That settles it, he thought, my agent already told him it doesn’t grab me. Alfie struck out as quickly as he could. Better be put down for a rally-stopper than suffer a head fracture.

Which brought up Manny Gordon again, with one out and runners on first and third. Manny dribbled into a double play, retiring the side.

Multicoloured kites bounced in the skies over the Heath. Lovers strolled on the towpaths and locked together on the grass. Old people sat on benches, sucking in the sun. Nannies passed, wheeling toddlers with titles. The odd baffled Englishman stopped to watch the Americans at play.

“Are they air force chaps?”

“Filmmakers, actually. It’s their version of rounders.”

“Whatever is that enormous thing that woman is slicing?”

“Salami.”

“On the Heath?”

“Afraid so. One Sunday they actually set up a bloody folding table, right over there, with cold cuts and herrings and mounds of black bread and a whole bloody side of smoked salmon.
Scotch. Ten and six a quarter, don’t you know?”

“On the Heath?”

“Champagne
in paper cups.
Mumm’s. One of them had won some sort of award.”

Going into the bottom of the fifth, Al Levine’s Team led 6–3, and Tom Hunt came in to play second base for Lou Caplan’s Bunch. Hunt, a Negro actor, was in town shooting
Othello X
for Bob Cohen.

Moey Hanover lifted a lazy fly into left field, which Ziggy Alter trapped rolling over and over on the grass until—just before getting up—he was well placed to look up Natalie Calman’s skirt. Something he saw there so unnerved him that he dropped the
ball, turning pale and allowing Hanover to pull up safely at second.

Johnny Roper walked. Which brought up Jason Storm, to the delight of a pride of British fairies who stood with their dogs on the first-base line, squealing and jumping. Jason poked a bouncer through the infield and floated to second, obliging the fairies and their dogs to move up a base.

With two out and the score tied 7–7 in the bottom half of the sixth, Alfie Roberts was unwillingly retired and a new pitcher came in for Al Levine’s Team. It was Gordie Kaufman, a writer blacklisted for years, who now divided his time between Madrid and Rome, asking a hundred thousand dollars a spectacular. Gordie came in to pitch with the go-ahead run on third and Tom Hunt stepping up to the plate for the first time. Big black Tom Hunt, who had once played semi-pro ball in Florida, was a militant. If he homered, Hunt felt he would be put down for another buck nigger, good at games, but if he struck out, which would call for rather more acting skill than was required of him on the set of
Othello X,
what then? He would enable a bunch of fat, foxy, sexually worried Jews to feel big, goysy. Screw them, Hunt thought.

Gordie Kaufman had his problems too. His stunning villa on Mallorca was run by Spanish servants, his two boys were boarding at a reputable British public school, and Gordie himself was president, sole stockholder, and the only employee of a company that was a plaque in Liechtenstein. And yet—and yet—Gordie
still subscribed to the
Nation;
he filled his Roman slaves with anti-apartheid dialogue and sagacious Talmudic sayings; and whenever the left-wing
pushke
was passed around he came through with a nice check. I must bear down on Hunt, Gordie thought, because if he touches me for even a scratch single I’ll come off a patronizing ofay. If he homers, God forbid, I’m a shitty liberal. And so with the count three and two, and a walk, the typical social democrat’s compromise, seemingly the easiest way out for both men, Gordie gritted his teeth, his proud Trotskyite past getting the best of him, and threw a fast ball right at Hunt, bouncing it off his head. Hunt threw away his bat and started for the mound, fist clenched, but not so fast that players from both sides couldn’t rush in to separate the two men, both of whom felt vindicated, proud, because they had triumphed over impersonal racial prejudice to hit each other as individuals on a fun Sunday on Hampstead Heath.

Come the crucial seventh, the Filmmakers’ First Wives Club grew restive, no longer content to belittle their former husbands from afar, and moved in on the baselines and benches, undermining confidence with their heckling. When Myer Gross, for instance, came to bat with two men on base and his teammates shouted, “Go, man. Go,” one familiar grating voice floated out over the others. “Hit, Myer. Make your son proud of you,
just this once.”

What a reproach the first wives were. How steadfast! How unchanging! Still Waiting for Lefty after all
these years. Today maybe hair had greyed and chins doubled, necks had gone pruney, breasts drooped and stomachs dropped, but let no man say these crones had aged in spirit. Where once they had petitioned for the Scottsboro Boys, broken with their families over mixed marriages, sent their boyfriends off to defend Madrid, split with old comrades over the Stalin-Hitler Pact, fought for Henry Wallace, demonstrated for the Rosenbergs, and never, never yielded to McCarthy…today they clapped hands at China Friendship Clubs, petitioned for others to keep hands off Cuba and Vietnam, and made their sons chopped liver sandwiches and sent them off to march to Aldermaston.