Sophomore Campaign (9 page)

Lefty grinned behind his glove. He too saw what they all saw. Boxcar was just a shell of his former self. The Rangers' ace wasted no time attacking, letting fly a rising fastball right down the center of the plate. Boxcar saw the ball okay, but his bat was late and sagged, and struggled to move through the hitting zone. The swing was awkward and spastic. He lost his footing and crumbled to the ground. A collective gasp swirled through the ballpark, as if the air from twenty thousand balloons had suddenly been released. It was painful to watch. They could not speak; all they could do was look on, silenced by the increasing drama, and pray silently that what they were seeing was not really happening.

Boxcar struggled to his feet, dusted off his jersey and readied himself for the next delivery. This time Lefty came inside, but the ball ran too far off the plate and was called a ball. The crowd began to shake itself from its stupor, trying to energize their
exanimate hero with applause and cheers. Boxcar heard the tribute, like a sweet melody from days long since past, but could do little more than wave at the next pitch. Lefty sensed the desperation and went right for the kill, unleashing yet another tracer that whizzed through the still air, boring in on Boxcar's knuckles. The enervated catcher clenched his teeth and whipped the bat head through the zone with every ounce of strength he had. The crack of the bat was loud but deceiving. The ball struck the bat on the trademark, sawing it off in two. The handle remained in Boxcar's hands and the other half, jagged and splintered, rolled helplessly, along with the baseball, back to the Lefty who quickly scooped up the latter and fired it to second base to begin a nifty 1–6–3 twin killing. The inning expired before Boxcar even had the chance to run to first.

On the way in to the dugout, Murph stopped the winded idol. “Hey, Box, you okay to go another inning? You don't look so good.”

Boxcar winced. His face flushed while he struggled with the emerging reality. He could choose, he thought, the easy way—the lesser of the two stances. He could be unfaithful to himself, and to the others, and just pack it in. Bag out, before it became too damned embarrassing and painful. For everyone. Or, he could play on, refuse to throw away his soul, the very essence of who he was, just because his body had chosen to betray him. “I'm fine, Murph. Ya hear? Fine. Don't you even think about it. I am finishing this game.”

Mickey bounded out to the mound to begin the top of the second inning. He waited patiently as Boxcar donned the shin guards and chest protector. His eyes scanned the crowd. He saw so many colors—red, blue and off white mostly. The Brewers' colors were well represented that day. He marveled at the mixture, but decided that he'd much prefer to have all the colors separated from each other. Maybe have a section of stands for the people with red shirts,
a section for blue, and one just for the off white. He struggled momentarily with what to do with those fans wearing shirts sporting an amalgamation of the Brewers' traditional colors. It was just his way. Everything had its place and order. Standing in the shower, the top half of the body got completely scrubbed first so that none of the dirt would run down onto clean legs. It was always pants first, then shirt. Right shoe and sock always went on before the left. Vegetables came before meat. And bread for last, except when it was liver. When it was liver, the liver went first, followed by the bread to soak up the juice and then vegetables to kill the taste. Dessert was no different. Pie and cake had to divided into squares of even proportions before eating. Brownies were okay as is, provided they were not cut too big, in which case alterations were a must. Cookies posed no problem at all, except in the case of oatmeal raisin or chocolate chip, where one of the raisin or chips extended beyond the surface area of the actual cookie. Then it could not be eaten. And it was green M & M's first. Then yellow, red, and orange. Brown was last. Always last.

Clarence tortured the boy his whole life, calling him names and mocking his unusual behaviors, all the while suggesting that Molly had somehow ruined him and needed to be held responsible. “What the hell's with this boy?” he always thundered. “Friggin' retard. That's what he is. I never saw such a boy as this. What in tarnation did you do, woman, to screw him up so?” It was only now, free from Clarence's tentacles, that they both finally felt as though they could be themselves. Standing there, waiting for Boxcar, Mickey began counting colored shirts when the tardy catcher jolted him away from his thoughts.

“Hey, Mickey, let's go here. I'm ready for you. Start warming up.”

Seven tosses later, the cleanup hitter for the Rangers stepped
in to try his luck against Mickey. He did exactly as McNally told him. Look for the fastball and adjust to the curve. But try as he might, he was just as ineffectual as the first three hitters. In fact, Mickey retired the side in order in each of the next six innings. Twenty-one up, and twenty-one down. Just like that. The kid was just un-hittable. Boxcar's glove was popping all afternoon like it was the fourth of July and Mickey was freezing hitters with a 12–6 hook that was rolling off the table. Everyone who was at Borchert Field that day said it was the best pitched game they had ever seen. The only blemish on the day was that Lefty had also posted all zeros on the board, so after seven full innings of play, the game remained knotted in a scoreless tie.

The Rangers managed to break up Mickey's bid for a perfect game with two outs in the eighth on a check swing dying quail that fell in between Arky Fries and Amos Ruffings. The crowd cursed the ill-fated knock but soon rose to their feet to salute the exemplary effort of their favorite pitcher. It was quite a run. Twenty-three straight hitters.

Mickey smiled, and tipped his cap to the adoring masses only after Danvers and Pee Wee had run in from their positions to tell him that such a show of appreciation was in order. Then Mickey thanked them all again by disposing of the next hitter with three straight fastballs.

Under a patch of late afternoon sky that had suddenly blanched, illuminating the silhouettes of the players in the field as though they were clay idols glued to a game board, Danvers walked to the plate to leadoff the home half of the eighth. Lefty, working on quite a gem of his own, readied himself for the next frame, vowing not to let Mickey and the Brewers get the best of him. He was thinking about a game last year, when he got too cute in the late innings trying to make the perfect pitch. He had been cruising along, just like
today, destined for a win and all sorts of adulation and attention, when a walk to the leadoff man opened the flood gates and ultimately lead to a rousing Brewer comeback victory. His eyes grew dim remembering.

Danvers was recalling the same thing. Lefty was not that hard to read. Even though Boxcar was slumping, and had looked awful at the plate all day long, Lefty would not want to put the go ahead run on base to start the inning. The idea of pitching around him to get to Boxcar was absurd. With this thought planted firmly in his mind, Danvers dug in and waited like a dispossessed child standing at a candy counter, about to sample a delicacy he had not tasted in quite some time.
First ball, fastball
, he told himself, licking his lips. Here it comes.

Lefty did not disappoint. He reared back and grooved a fat, belt high heater that appeared to Danvers to be spinning in suspended animation. He could not recall the last time he had seen a ball so clearly. He laughed silently to himself as the laces spun closer and closer. How he had longed for this moment—when he could jam his bat up the ass of this pompous, self-absorbed jerk who had betrayed all of them.
God I can't wait to see his face
, he mused. It was the last thought he had in his head before the bat struck the ball cleanly, a thunderous crash that launched the little white sphere into prodigious orbit. A collective jolt of rapturous expectation followed. All eyes in the ballpark traced the flight of the ball as it soared and scraped the sky with a majestic trajectory that sent the hoards of Brewer faithful into a breathless frenzy while leaving Lefty and the entire Ranger contingent crestfallen once it had landed safely some thirty-five feet beyond the leftfield wall.

Danvers savored his trip around the bases, reveling in the shower of praise raining down from the fevered crowd. His gait was buoyant, his strides short and deliberate, celebratory steps that
fanned the crowd's fire while drawing the ire of the humiliated pitcher.

“Don't dig in too far next time, pretty boy,” Lefty jawed as Danvers continued his victory jaunt. “Or there's gonna be one less asshole to worry about.”

With one run to his credit, Mickey seemed oddly taller, more powerful and looming as he stood on the mound with just three outs to go. The Rangers had scarcely touched the burly fireballer all afternoon. They had generated nothing at all offensively.

All they had to show for a day's work was a check swing dunker that had barely eluded the glove of Arky Fries. And now they had just three outs to work with—three shots to get the game tied and back into the hands of
their
ace.

“Let's wake up, boys!” McNally barked wildly. He was looking into the Brewer dugout and scowling at the look of confidence, affixed to Arthur Murphy's face. “I will not—uh,
we
will not lose to this kid and this second-rate bunch of bush leaguers. Come on now. Let's go!”

The Rangers sent their seven, eight, and nine hitters to the plate in the top half of the ninth, hoping to manufacture some sort of threat. The bottom third of their lineup, however, proved no match for Mickey that day. He fanned each batter on three straight fastballs, running his strikeout total for the day to an unfathomable fifteen, sending the awestruck crowd into a dizzying display of boisterous celebration, culminating with the rhythmic chanting of their hero's name as he walked of the field. Afterward, the clubhouse was buzzing with reporters, all clamoring for a chance to speak with the star of the show. Murph stood at the boy's locker like a sentinel, buffering the hysteria and screening questions, all in an effort to quell any misgivings Mickey may have been feeling.

“How did it feel to go out there today Mickey and be so dominant?” one reporter asked.

“Good,” Mickey replied. “Did you think at all about last year when you were out there?” another inquired. “You know, Lefty Rogers and all?”

“No. I don't reckon so. There were lots of colored shirts out there today.”

“What about the perfect game? Did you think about that at all at any point?”

“Nope.”

The frustrated reporter squeezed the inner corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Well, can you tell me anything you were thinking out there?” he persisted. “Anything?”

Mickey shrugged. “Nothing I suppose. Just lots of shirts.”

“Nothing? Nothing? Aw, come on now, kid. Don't play with me. You must have been thinking about something out there.”

Mickey sat calmly, his eyes affixed to something on the other side of the room. “Nope,” he repeated. “Nothing.”

The reporter shook his head. “Well what about now? Can you at least tell me what's going through your mind now?” Mickey swooned inside, then looked at Murph who was smiling.

“Go on, Mick,” Murph said winking. “It's okay. Tell the man what you told me after you came off the field.”

Mickey grabbed the edge of his locker door with both hands and pushed it shut. “Carrots,” he said. The reporter squinted and his face contorted.

“Carrots?” the man repeated. “Did you say ‘carrots?'”

“That's what he said,” Murph interjected. Then the manager held out both palms and motioned to Mickey that it was okay to continue explaining.

“Duncan and Daphney eat carrots,” he began. “Mondays,
Duncan eats three carrots and Daphney eats four. Monday is always seven. On Tuesdays, they eat eight. Wednesday is nine, Thursday is ten, and today, which is Friday, they eat twelve. Twelve carrots. Except last Friday, it was only ten. Mickey thinks they may be sick. So I will go home now and count how many they ate.”

The reporter stared for a minute, as if in that instant he were suddenly removed from and suspended above the vibration of everything that had led up to this one surreal moment. Murph saw his expression and couldn't help but chuckle. Then he pushed himself into the middle of the crowd.

“Okay fellas, you heard the kid,” he announced. “That's enough for today. We have some important business to take care of at home.”

The day should have ended there, at that moment. This glorious, seamless day that was filled with victory and merriment. It should have concluded with Mickey's final strikeout and the celebration that followed. But Murph still had one more task he needed to tend to.

During the seventh inning stretch, Dennison had sent a note from his seat to the dugout summoning Murph to a post-game meeting in Dennison's office. Murph was benumbed much more than he could have imagined. He sat stiffly across from the despotic owner, his mind lost in a momentary squall of swift visions and painful recollections not entirely unconnected to his present situation.

“I bet you're feeling pretty good about the outcome of today's game, Murph,” Dennison said, leaning back in his chair while dabbing the moisture on his forehead with a cocktail napkin. “Always nice to start the year with a W.” Murph's eyes were watching Dennison quietly. He seemed to be beyond him.

“Yes, yes it is. It was a nice win for us today. No question.”

“Indeed it was,” Dennison said, scratching his chin. “However, I could not help but notice that you guys were not exactly tearing
it up out there. Your boy threw a masterpiece. That's not going to happen every day. We need to hit the ball, Murph. Put up some crooked numbers now and again. And we can't go into battle every day with a captain who's washed up.”

“He's not washed up, Warren. Christ, it's the first game. He's just struggling a bit.”