World Series (9 page)

T
HE SIREN SCREECHED.
It screeched again and again over the busy downtown streets of Cleveland while the team sat back, relaxed and happy, in the bus. A police escort from the Stadium to the station. They sure did things right for you in this town. And tomorrow was another day.

There were more police waiting on the sidewalk when they alighted, and they had made a line through the mob into the station. With quick steps the squad filed through. A scattering of applause greeted them and there were comments from the crowd on each side. These comments were different in tone and texture from the disparaging remarks they had heard on returning beaten to the hotel the previous afternoon.

“There’s Razzle Nugent. Hi there, Raz....”

“Where’s Leonard...there he is...see...in front....”

“And Swanson. And Roy Tucker. And Stansworth, the big guy in the brown hat with his thumb done up.”

“Which one is Tucker? Which one?”

They came to the train gate. On the big signboard was a notice in large, white letters:

BROOKLYN AND CLEVELAND BASEBALL CLUBS. RESERVED FOR PLAYERS ONLY.

At the gate stood Bill Hanson, the business manager, checking them off. “Case...Fat Stuff...Raz...where’s Razzle...anyone seen Razzle?”

“He’s gone to get some newspapers.”

“They’re on the train. Tell him to hurry up; we leave right away. Swanson...Tucker...Allen...Roth...West...”

The Kid passed through and down to the tracks and the train. The Cleveland team was already aboard. They had the rear end of the train with a diner, while the Dodgers had the front end and a diner of their own. Finding their baggage, the gang settled down. Outside on the platform a few curious faces of trainmen and conductors peered up at them, trying to pick out the players in their civilian clothes. Raz’s elegant green suit flashed past, and he burst into the car to be greeted by cheers, for they were in a mood to yell at anything. In several minutes the conductor below waved his hand and swung aboard the step. The car shook slightly and started to glide from the station. They were off! On the last journey of the year.

Food. That was their first thought as soon as the train started and they knew, according to custom, that the diner would be open. They had all eaten at nine that morning and were hungry. Winning made them more hungry. In a mass they descended upon the diner directly ahead. Perspiring waiters were soon rushing back and forth through the swaying car with heavy trays of food. There was a silence save for the clatter of knives and forks. Everyone attended to the business of eating and even Razzle was silent for a while. The Kid glanced around. The last time the team would eat together as a team, he thought. Was it the last time they would eat with Dave?

After dinner they returned to their car and settled down. Razzle began to leaf over the pages of
Time
. Several players started the inevitable game of rummy. A few read newspapers. Most were talking, contented and relaxed. Only Swanson, Case, and Jerry Strong, always serious, were discussing the problem of the hour—Gene Miller. They knew they’d have to face him again to win the Series.

Swanny, who hadn’t got a single hit off Miller, shook his head. “What did you do that first game, Karl? Shorten your stride, or what?”

Like most ballplayers, Karl wasn’t sure what he had done. “Well,” continued Swanny, “you hit him all over the lot in that first game, and I haven’t been able to get a loud foul offa him.”

From the end of the car came Raz’s voice over his magazine. “Hey...Harry...hey, Street...d’ja see Sue come in there this afternoon? All draped up in furs and everything?”

Someone else spoke. “I tell ya, we’ll win! If we don’t grab this Series I’ll eat my hat.”

From across the aisle came the retort, “Aw, you don’t wear a hat.”

“Then I’ll eat yours. No, tell you what, I’ll eat Razzle’s.” Raz’s green hat to match his suit was the secret envy of the majority. Only Raz would dare to wear such a costume and such colors. A chorus of approval up and down the aisle greeted this remark.

“Know how I knew we was in the Series? Know how I knew long before the end?” It was Red Allen from the seat behind. “My uncle Hank in Red Falls, Minnesota, ain’t heard from him for eight years, writes and asks can I get him six seats for the three games in Cleveland. Good seats, please, he says.”

“Yeah, they don’t realize we all have to pay. I paid about sixty bucks for seats for my folks.”

“Sure. Everyone pays. Except Judge Landis.”

“Landis pays. Same as I do. Same as Dave, or MacManus.”

“...And when I give the seats to my missis, I say, ‘Listen, kid, if you go to a ball game, just give your ears a chance.’”

Big Babe Stansworth looked up from his crossword puzzle. “Me too. So do I, Red. Say, what’s a six letter word meaning late for dinner?”

Across the aisle sat Fat Stuff, laboriously writing with the stub of a pencil in his notebook. His notebook was famous all over the League. Every time the old pitcher threw to a new man, he summed up the batter’s strength and weakness in his tattered notebook. His observations from the bench were also there. That, the Kid realized, was why Fat Stuff was still one of the smartest pitchers in the business in spite of his age. He watched him carefully copying down notes made on the field.

“Hey, Fat Stuff! D’you mind if I look at your notebook?”

The old pitcher looked up at the rookie, pleased. “No. ’Course not. C’mon over.”

Roy slid into the seat beside the veteran. “Thanks, lots. I might just learn something.” He watched while the veteran went over each Cleveland hitter: Lanahan, Hammerstein, Painter, Gordon, McClusky. There was a series of strange signs after each one. Fat Stuff explained them all: weak on high inside; left-handed pull hitter, hits to left field; straightaway hitter, steps into ball; right-handed, dumps toward third; dangerous bunter. He hadn’t been watching from the bench through the Series for nothing. When he stepped out there to pitch he had each man diagnosed and knew how to work on them. Under each batter’s name he had one written line.

“Don’t walk him.”

Fat Stuff closed the book, put an elastic round it, and slipped this precious possession into his pocket. He carried it everywhere, even on the field, and some of the boys said that his roommate declared he put it in his pajamas at night, too.

“Gotta see Leonard,” he announced briefly.

The Kid slipped back into his seat. Outside it was dark. The train slowed down, rumbled through a small Ohio town, movie theaters a-glitter, the main street crowded with people and parked cars. Why, sure, it was Saturday night. Funny how you lose track of the days on a ball club.

He picked up a newspaper. It was opened at Casey’s column. No one had mentioned the fight of the night before and Casey had not been visible all afternoon. For a moment he wondered whether he would read what the sportswriter said or not. He didn’t want to, yet something forced him. Here goes...

“The rules of baseball require each team to have a catcher in the field. With the failure of Hank West, rookie backstop, to come through after Babe Stansworth’s injury put him out of the Series, radical measures were necessary. So something radical was done. Forty-year-old Dave Leonard, the Dodger manager, braving entanglement with his long gray whiskers, stepped behind the plate in the fifth game of the Series today....”

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey! Leonard wants to see you. He’s in Compartment D, next to the diner.” It was Fat Stuff.

For a moment the Kid sat still. The newspaper rustled to the floor. There was something ominous in those words. Dave wanted to see him. It could only be about one thing. Well, Dave was a square shooter. He’d see things from the player’s point of view.

He walked through the swaying diner where in clouds of smoke MacManus with Charlie Draper and two men he didn’t know sat over drinks. He reached the next car. It had a corridor running down one side and doors opening off the corridor. There was a heavy carpet on the floor, and the corridor was painted a faint green color. Flossy, he thought. Several doors were open showing luxurious compartments. Cassidy sat in one, his shoes off, his feet on the opposite seat, smoking and looking out of the window. From another came laughter and the sound of voices as he passed. He looked at the letters on the doors.

“I had a king and two queens to start...”

“No, he didn’t call me either. He stayed, that’s all.”

Here it was, D. He knocked. Dave was alone, his coat off, working over a mass of papers on a table. He rose and shut the door.

“Hullo there, Roy! Come in, come in. Take a seat, boy.” There was the same warmth and friendliness in his voice as ever; also concern. He came to the point. No asking useless questions, no preliminaries.

“Roy, what’s this I hear about your socking Casey in the lobby of the Cleveland last night?”

“That’s correct, Dave.”

He shook his head and looked out the window. Reaching into his vest pocket he pulled out a toothpick. That means trouble, thought the Kid. He knew the manager’s ways.

“But, Roy, that’s pretty serious. You must realize we can’t have players on this club who go round socking sportswriters. Where’d we be?”

Dave didn’t understand the whole story. Dave just hadn’t heard it all. Dave was a fair guy. He’d better explain to Dave. “You see, Dave, it’s like this. Casey has been riding me for some time now. Other day he lit into me, used most of his column to say I was wall-shy and plate-shy and Heaven only knows what-all.”

“I know, I read it. He’s said just as bad about Razzle and most of the other boys. That’s no excuse.”

“Wait a sec, Dave. He said that the beaning had made me deaf in my right ear. Never checked, or anything, or even asked me....”

“Yes, but they’s always stories going round about everyone in a World Series. He probably heard the Doc say it might affect your right ear or something like that. You can’t expect...”

“But, Dave, this is different. I might lose my job on account of that crack. I might never get another one.”

“Sure, you might. Same with me or Razzle and the pitchers. I know men who’ve been hounded out of baseball for one reason or another by sportswriters. They don’t handle you with gloves. That’s no reason to go running round a hotel lobby socking...”

Distinctly this wasn’t so good. It wasn’t working out the way he’d expected. Dave was hard to convince. Dave had most likely heard the story from Casey. He went on.

“But you haven’t heard the rest of it. Then came the pay-off. That night in the lobby...last night, it was.” It seemed a hundred years back. “Casey was standing there talking to Harry and said I was scared. Called me yellow. I heard him, Dave; I turned round and heard him say it.”

“So you socked him on the chin.”

“Uhuh. Most anyone would, with any guts.”

“Not ballplayers, Roy.”

“If they don’t, they’d oughta...”

There was a moment’s pause. “Well, Roy, if that’s the way you feel about things, I really don’t know that baseball can use you any more.”

The train lurched round a corner. Awkwardly the Kid pulled himself back onto his seat. He was dazed, almost as if he’d been beaned. Dave didn’t understand, didn’t see his angle at all.

The toothpick waggled in the old catcher’s face. It did a dance from one side of his mouth to the other. For a minute that was a year neither spoke. Then, looking away from him, eyes on the lights of a small town flashing past the window, the manager continued.

“Roy, it’s like this. Without publicity baseball would be dead. And you’d be back on that farm, Roy, and Heaven only knows where I’d be. That publicity comes from the newspapers. Or rather it comes through the sportswriters the newspapers send out. Why do you suppose the ball clubs pay the expenses of those reporters in the training camps down South? Even take their families along, too. The publicity, Roy. That’s what makes baseball.

“Now I’m not saying you haven’t had some provocation, that you didn’t have cause to sock him. So have I and Swanny and almost every ballplayer who ever got anywhere. Point is you forget one thing. For every knock there’s a boost. Have you forgotten last year and that roughhouse in the Schenley in Pittsburgh, when Raz came in and found you reading Casey’s column telling what a great man you were? Remember?”

Gosh, Dave was wonderful. How did he know that at the precise moment Razzle had broken down the door of his room he had been reading Casey’s column? He remembered the scene, the insistent knocking, the words of the sportswriter even. “...he’ll take advice, and the boys say he’ll get better as he goes along...several games he’s won by timely hits...he’s as fast as anyone on the club, he can throw, and if he could cook I’d marry him.”

The manager continued. “Now, Roy, this might have had serious consequences. If Judge Landis had got hold of it, there’d have been an investigation and you’d been suspended. The Dodgers going into the last two games without their right fielder and one of their best hitters!” Say, that was serious. He didn’t realize, he’d hardly appreciated...

“Roy, club owners won’t permit ballplayers to go round socking newspapermen on the puss. You...I don’t say, mind you, that you didn’t have provocation. But I recall MacManus warned you about Casey before the third game. He told you that chap always likes to be riding someone. It’s lucky most of the other sports-writers don’t like him, so they hushed the thing up and it got no further.”

Yes, he’d been wrong. Unquestionably he’d been wrong. He should have kept his temper. He oughtn’t to have slugged Casey. That was bad, all right.

“There’s only one thing to do. Two things to do. First, Roy, I’ve got to fine you a hundred and fifty dollars. I sure hate to do it. But I must. MacManus would fire me in a minute if I didn’t, and he’d be quite justified. It hurts, Roy, to have to set you down like this, because you’re one player on this club that never caused me a moment’s trouble. Not a moment, ever since you joined us down there in Clearwater in the spring of ’39. But...got to do it. The club owners just won’t allow fights with sportswriters, and that’s about all there is to it. Understand?”