Kid Comes Back (9 page)

WELCOME HOME, ROY

HULLO, KID

WELCOME BACK, TUCK

Roy was nervous because it was his first game of baseball, his first chance since his operation, and so much depended on it.

The sportswriters, who as a rule avoided a game with the Phils like an attack of cholera, were out in force. They surrounded him upon the bench, the inevitable Casey in the van, hammering him with questions of all sorts, about flying, about his injury, about his operation. He sat there tapping two bats against the dugout floor, brushing his cap back from his forehead.

“Yeah, I think the operation did me good. Anyhow I feel looser than I was last month. Who? Dr. Davison. He’s supposed to be the best orthopedic surgeon in New York. Spell it? O-r-t... Shoot, that’s your baby, Mac. How’s that, Stanley? Why, yes, I do, really. I feel just like a rookie again. I realize there’s some comers on this ballclub, and I’ve got to earn a job on the Dodgers same’s I did seven years ago. No, sir, I’m not taking anything for granted.”

The photographers swarmed around, clamoring as usual, so he stepped from the dugout and stood before them in the sunshine, holding the two bats in his hand, scowling slightly as he glanced down at the kneeling circle of cameramen, listening once more to their familiar appeals. “This way, Roy... This way, kid... Look over here, will ya please, Tuck... One more, Roy... Hey, Tuck, one more. Just one.”

Finally he was permitted to sink back in peace upon the bench, and the sportswriters turned away for other prey. He sat listening to Casey telling Charlie Draper about an incident that had happened at the Yankee Stadium the previous afternoon. It concerned a war-time rookie who had gone to bat against Spud Chamberlain of the Yanks, just released from service. Casey related the yarn in his customary picturesque manner. “See now, Chuck, this youngster never heard of Spud. He was in high school in Little Rock when Chamberlain left to go into the Army. So when the old man comes in there along in the seventh, he gets two strikes on the kid, quick. Then he explodes his curve, you know, and bang! Mr. Rookie is on the bench, and the old maestro is laughing in his beard.

“‘Gee,’ the kid says to Ed in the dugout. ‘That’s the best curve I’ve seen all season. Who is that pitcher, anyhow?’”

“‘Oh, just a pre-war ballplayer,’ says Ed. ‘Feller by the name of Chamberlain. That pre-war stuff is mighty potent, isn’t it?’”

The coach nodded. “Yep, and he wasn’t kidding, either. Well, the professionals have returned, and it’s sure a pleasure to see some of these old-timers go to work on a batter nowadays. You take Fat Stuff, f’rinstance. When he gets a batter 2 and 2, he doesn’t just wish the ball up. No, sir, he gets it in there with something on it, and good enough so the hitter can’t afford to lay off, either.”

The bell rang and the team took the field, or rather both teams took the field. They gathered round the plate, a moment of agony for Roy, while the gang in the bleachers rose cheering, giving him the warmest and throatiest of welcomes, glad to see him back and showing it, too. The president of the Borough stepped forward, a fine leather traveling case in his hand. Roy was so confused by it all he hardly could hear the words.

“...Credit to our town and our team... fine athlete and a fine soldier... welcome you home again...”

“Thank you, sir. Thanks very kindly; much obliged. Please thank all the boys; thank you very much indeed.”

Then Swanny took the bag from his hand, the plate was cleared, and the game actually began. The Phils went down, and then after two men had flied out, the moment came that Roy had so often pictured, that he had dreamed about across half a world. He was putting on the batting cap with the plastic plate over his temples, taking the two bats from the boy, and chucking him the rosin bag again. Once more he was swinging up to the plate, stepping into the box for the first time in five long years. As he stood there, his bat in his hand, the kids in the bleachers rose with a thunderous and heartening roar. Shouts and whistles of encouragement came to him from the grandstands. Flatbush was celebrating the return of her favorite son.

He took the opening pitch; then swung on the second, a high, slow curve, the kind he usually liked. Somehow it didn’t come off. He didn’t seem to have it. He was stiff, failing utterly to get his shoulders behind the bat. The ball rolled gently toward first, and the baseman slapped it on him as he passed. The fans, who had risen with a roar as his bat swung, subsided with a disappointed moan.

The score was even at two apiece for most of the game, and then in the lower half of the seventh, the Phils got men on first and second. The next batter caught a fast ball on the nose, sending it on a line over the pitcher into the field. As he charged in from his old spot in center, Roy saw the familiar figure of Spike at short leap through the air, vainly lunging for the ball with his gloved hand. Rushing in, Roy realized the drive was dipping, and tried to get down to it, to bend over. Somehow he was tight, locked up, unable to get down. The ball went through his hands for a triple to the fence.

They came into the ninth with the Phils ahead, four to two. Spike, who never liked being beaten, and cared even less to be licked by a last-place club, walked up and down the bench calling for a hit. Swanny led off by working a pass. The next batter hit a grasscutter that sent Swanny to second, but was himself nabbed at first. Again Roy stepped to the plate, knocking the dirt from his spikes, this time determined to smack the ball. Out in center the kids were shrieking in unison:
WE WANNA HIT. WE WANNA HIT. WE WANNA HIT
. He connected on the third pitch, but again he was stiff, unable to get any power behind his bat. The ball dribbled down the line, and he was an easy out. Discouraged at this weak and futile effort, he came back to the bench, shaking his head. I’m not right. Gosh, I’m not right yet!

Spike was on deck, however, with a clean single to right that scored Swanny. He stood on the bag, signaling for Lester Young to pinch hit for the next batter. Charlie Draper uncurled his legs as the big rookie swung up to the plate.

“This guy may unload one into the bleachers if that pitcher gets the least bit careless,” he remarked.

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the rookie exploded the first pitch. You could tell it was soundly hit by the ring of bat and ball. It soared into the sky, high, high, and dropped in a mob scene of excited kids in the second tier of the stands in deep center field.

Back in the locker room ten minutes later, Roy stepped into the telephone booth before he had even showered. He dialed a number. “Give me Dr. Davison’s office, please.”

The next morning he was in the surgeon’s office.

Again there was the same process, the same careful examination, the leg-lifting with the pain shooting up his hip, the slow, labored bending toward the floor, the measurements of each leg. The doctor stood there a minute, feeling Roy’s hip, saying nothing. Then he examined the X rays with attention, and finally told Roy to dress.

“Mr. Tucker, we’ve got your leg fixed so far as the outward motion is concerned; but it’s plain you are still getting that pressure on your nerve there.” He looked at the pictures in his hand. Then he looked up, hesitated a minute, and said, “I think perhaps we’d better try a leg-stretching operation next.”

Suddenly the horrible truth was apparent to Roy. He isn’t sure. He doesn’t know for certain what will cure me; he’s experimenting.

Two months before he had assented eagerly to an operation, groping for any relief that was offered. Now it seemed harder. Was this the right thing? Would it really help? Would it cure him or at least put him on the road to being cured? His whole career depended on it, on this man and his skill.

He sat, unable to talk, unable to make a decision. Back in the Air Force he had wanted only one thing—to be discharged as soon as possible, to be a civilian once more, to be back with the club. Once there, he had been sure all problems would soon be solved. Now he was slowly finding out that problems arose in civilian life as well, only here he must settle them. No one was telling him what to do now. Roy Tucker had to make the decisions for himself.

A
FTER THE LEG-STRETCHING
operation in December, Roy headed south. He reached Florida a month before the rest of the team, because he was anxious to get into condition for the season ahead. There was lots to be done. Beyond question the last operation had helped. It had definitely removed some of the pressure from his hip and leg, made him looser. The rest, he felt sure, was exercise.

So he reached Florida early and began working hard on conditioning his legs. If your legs are right, your timing is right, and everything else is easy. He had noticed some of the returning veterans try to play ball the previous summer, and they looked to him as if they had lead in their shoes. It proved how far he had to go. By this time his stiffness, his trick of favoring that left side, had almost become an unconscious habit. He had often heard that if you start out with a bad habit in the spring, you’re licked, because you’ll keep it all season. The time for a player to get rid of a bad habit is in spring training season, not after the campaign has begun. Slowly the crowd arrived. Spike Russell with Jack MacManus and the coaches came first, and the others checked in every day. Bob Russell came back from the Navy, and Jocko Klein, just discharged from the Army, returned also. Swanny, as usual, was a hold-out. He invariably was in the spring, hoping, by this device, to escape a few days of the grueling early-season training. There were three or four rookies trying for each position. Many of the pitching staff Roy knew before the war had vanished; some traded, some dropped out of the game, some gone back to the minors as scouts or managers of farm clubs. Only Bones Hathaway, Raz Nugent, and Fat Stuff remained. In place of the others was a crowd of youngsters from Montreal, Savannah, and Olean, boys with poise and promise. Roy watched them carefully. Notwithstanding the constant warnings of the coaches, they were like a bunch of colts, almost burning the catcher’s hands off during the first few days. Regretting it, too, when sore arms developed like an epidemic a short while afterward.

Roy knew he would find the going rough. Players who were tolerated in the war years because there was no one else, were quickly thrown aside; newcomers were sifted out with dispatch and released or sent to the farms. Sometimes he felt confident of getting the stiffness out of his sore left leg. The warm Florida sunshine helped; so did the daily massage, and occasionally he would have spurts of his old-time speed and bursts of his former power. Other days he would find himself tied up, lame and helpless.

In the initial practice game between the varsity and the scrubs, he got a hit the first time up. Then in the fourth, with the bases loaded, he popped up weakly to the shortstop. So he went back to the dugout, kicking the bats in disgust, and slumping disconsolately on the bench. Spike Russell stepped over from the coaching lines behind third and called to the bench.

“O.K. there, Roy. Take your shower, boy, and get yourself a good rub-down. Lester, go in at center, will ya?”

Roy rose and slouched to the clubhouse in left, discouraged and unhappy. As he passed, Spike came over, putting an arm round his shoulder and walking a little way out with him. “Roy, take it easy, take it easy. You’re pressing. You hit a bad ball that time. Say, you were all tightened up; you’re worrying. Don’t worry, boy; I got confidence in you. Remember, you’ve been away from the game a long, long time. Just don’t lose confidence in yourself, that’s all.”

It was extremely hard not to lose confidence in oneself. It was difficult to keep plugging when you saw those youngsters cavorting round you, spearing liners back by the fence, smacking pitches over the scoreboard in deep left field. At this time Roy’s old friends helped, especially Spike and Fat Stuff and Raz Nugent. Raz had great affection for Roy and did his best to cheer him up. If he found the Kid moping in his room, he would yank him away to the pictures or take him outdoors for a walk. One night he insisted on taking Roy on what he termed a secret mission. They finally crashed a high school dance where Raz ended as a soloist with the orchestra, and became the sensation of the evening.

“That big guy slays me,” remarked Spike the next morning when he heard about the episode. “Remember in Chicago how he scared Red Allen to death couple of years ago?” said Charlie Draper. “Remember, Red was rooming with him, and one day he comes in to find a suicide note on the bureau. ‘Life is too much for me,’ it says. Red looks at the open window, and just then Raz yanks himself up over the window sill where he’s been hanging ten stories above the ground. Anything for a laugh, that guy.”

The big pitcher could invariably be called on for amusement whenever things became grim. One of the rookies had a habit of picking up newspapers from the seats in hotel lobbies, and Raz caught him sneaking the sports section from under the arm of a teammate one afternoon. The following morning when he reached the clubhouse, the newcomer found his locker completely stuffed with ancient and excessively dirty newspapers.

Raz’s chief pleasure, however, was catching the youngsters on the hidden ball trick, an act in which he was aided and abetted by Bob Russell. Thanks to Razzle’s clever acting and Bob’s amazing quickness of foot and hand, one rookie after another had to trot back to the bench from second in chagrin.

On a close play at second, Raz would come storming over and pretend to take the ball from Bob. On his way back toward the mound, he would whirl around, apparently all set to throw the ball to Bob in the hope of catching the rookie off the bag. Standing just back of the mound, he would pretend to shake off his catcher, while the unsuspecting runner took a lead. At which point Bob Russell, who had been holding the ball the whole time, would charge over and tag him.

Raz never worked the trick often. He usually saved it for the tight moment of a tight game. Sometimes the coaches knew what was coming and helped him to let the lesson sink in, but in any case he was unusually efficient in snaring the unwary.