20

DELIRIUM

Mussolini’s in love with Shirley Temple, but if he knew there was a rookie dago in center field, he’d have sent the kid carfare and saved Henry Ford a few bucks.

Dizzy Dean? Let me tell you a thing or two. He was human, Dizzy Dean. But if I had a horse named Dizzy Dean I’d bet the farm on him. I’d ride him into the sunset. That horse would be a thoroughbred and you’d know him for the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree windup swish with his tail, and there’d be no flies on him. He’d fan ’em all with that tail.

I talked to Diz before the great game, and he was wondering what it was about the gap between his big toe and the second toe that possessed a horse-fly to bite. “I ain’t a horse,” he protested. But don’t expect the bite to have much effect on the way he pitches tonight. It’s not like that shot that Earl Averill hit off his left foot a couple of years later. That’s the one that did it for Diz, made him put too much pressure on his arm and throw it out.

“God gave me the ol’ flipper,” he said of his right arm, while we’d all like to believe that God was a little more fair in doling out the endowments. Or would we? Suppose we all had whipsaw arms. What the hell would baseball be then? Better to believe that God gives us all gifts. Different ones, to amuse Himself. Some mysterious, no doubt. Surely God has the best seat in the ballpark, being, as He is, everywhere. Quick that He is, He might be riding in on a Dean fastball, able to adjust His vision to the many revolutions the ball is making, then hop off as Gibson smites one or maybe just hop around to the other side for the round-trip ride out. If I were God I’d do something like that. I’d invent baseball just for something like that. A kind of “el” ride that you and I will never take, and I’m wondering—if baseball had a patron saint, would he be a lefty or a righty?

And I’m wondering what in God’s eyes would be a perfect game. One where no hitter ever touches the ball? Or one that’s called on account of darkness or the dawning of the seventh day because ball after ball has been smacked over the fence, out of the park, even by Durocher? In effect I was wondering if God was a pitcher or a hitter, but that’s the kind of dualism that got Marx, not Groucho, off the mark. Look at Babe Ruth. He was both. If you’re looking for a model of God, look no further than the pudgy Sultan of Swat, who could match fastballs with the Big Train, Walter Johnson. The Yankees took a page out of Nietzsche’s book, the “God is dead” thing, and let the Babe take a walk. But he’ll be here, tonight, will make his entrance on two feet, like everybody else—Dasher, Prancer, Ducky, Lippy, Pepper, Flash, Schnoz—then the guy we’ve been waiting for, the one with the red nose. George Herman Ruth.

We have to wonder also, while we ride out this theological streak, why Diz got his right arm from God, while the myth of a black man with the same magic, in his fingers, is that he got it from the devil, that Robert Johnson sold his soul for the blues. No one ever suggested that Satchel Paige got his right arm from God, though Satch probably would have said that Man o’ War was ahead of him in line and chose the feet . . .

Meanwhile, hitters are always exculpated from such deals with power above and below. Their notion of power is right at the belt buckle. They’re good ol’ boys who chop wood and just turn that stroke horizontal and aim it at a chip headed at them at ninety-eight miles an hour.

 

Those are the thoughts buzzing through the neWWsboy’s portable typewriter, high under the eaves of Fenway Park, just settling into my wooden box seat to watch the greatest game ever played, under GE and the Monarchs’ lights. Harry had the Monarchs drivers bring their three trucks, each with one set of lights, to Fenway. The system was so noisy that the outfielders couldn’t hear the infielders, and they would occasionally trip over wires, running for fly balls. Catchers had a hard time with foul pops, staring into the lights. Harry had an engineer work on the noise problem, with some success, and he deployed the entire system in the outfield, where the noise was less bothersome, while the GE system was distributed mainly behind first, third, and home. Following the Monarchs’ lead, Harry had white canvas draped over the new thirty-seven-foot left-field wall to augment the reflection of light. The Monarchs’ lights and dynamo took two guys to handle. Harry recruited John Henry Seadlund and James Atwood Gray for the job and paid them handsomely, especially with the side deal that each kept secret from the other, on Harry’s orders. This was his insurance policy, with the whiteout clause, the one that would keep him blissfully anemic, that is, minus two thousand pounds of iron in his diet.

 

This is, think the squirrels and mice of Fenway Park, indeed unusual. The October void left by Babe’s moving to New York being filled by something other than our droppings (those little fan notes for Harry Frazee). From September to March, the kingdom of Fenway has been ours, since the Red Sox last won the World Series in 1918. Until today. When Babe returned. Now the eighteen-man cotillion is under way, disturbing our rest with all those miniature suns. Nature turned on her head. The moon and the multiplying suns sharing the same sky. Unnatural spectacle mirrored on terra Fenway. And once in a while one of the stars fell, among the fungoes, out of everyone’s grasp. Seen from up there, somewhere an excited God might abide, Fenway was illuminated more than any other diamond on the planet’s dark side. The shooting star disappeared, like a gold fob into a pocket, a ball into His mitt, as He bellowed in that celestial voice of His, “Play ball.” Not a peanut vendor in sight. Nothing to be scavenged but the condiment leftovers on Ruth’s hot-dog wrappers. And those without sauerkraut stragglers.

Now a light touch—not the pressure of bat bunting a ball or the catch and throw of Durocher—but the touch of interstellar light on a particular player. It came in packets, little star satchels that scientists and laymen alike assume to be evenly distributed, as if randomness meant justice, as if the makers of stars and their light didn’t throw spitters, emery balls of light, making some players shine more brightly. Touching whom, tonight?

 

It had to do with the open-air cathedral, pagan constellations shining down notwithstanding. Landis found himself walking down the aisle parallel to the one Darrow took, one section over, both of them headed for seats in the middle. Even their descending steps mirrored each other’s, Landis in a black suit looking already like an umpire, and Darrow in an off-white linen suit. Landis in a top hat, Darrow a high-crown fedora.

It was the marriage of convenience and of opposites. The two men entered the front row and there seemed no alternative to sitting next to each other. The somehow hallowed neutral territory spurred a smile and a handshake, their individual differences and even animosity checked at the pew’s entrance, both men eager to share the excitement of the greatest game ever played. As the game got on, the old enemies were swapping baseball anecdotes. Darrow had both suit-jacket pockets filled with peanuts. He would pull out a handful and Landis would pick one, then another, till both pockets were empty and shards of the feast crunched under their feet.

They were joined by Lombard and Raft.

Henry Ford took a seat next to Landis, who offered him some peanuts. Ford cupped his hands to catch them. When one fell to the ground he voiced a soft “Shit” and retrieved it.

Landis laughed. “You hate losing even a peanut. What’ll you do if your team loses the game?”

Ford turned and glared at him. “I got that peanut, didn’t I?” The corners of his mouth turned ever so slightly into a grin, leaving Landis to ponder Ford’s allusion.

“I just love this game, don’t you?” Landis smiled.

“I’ll like it more when Harry brings the beer. To tell the truth, before this year I hadn’t seen a game in years, and if we don’t win this one, it’ll be my last.”

Landis marveled at the lights. “I see a great future in night games, especially during the week.”

“We lost a few hundred man-hours in September. Grown men choosing a game over work.” Ford shook his head.

“I see you brought your hat,” Darrow joked about his wager with Ford.

“I see you brought yours,” said Henry, pulling the boater tighter as the drizzle recommenced and while Bostonians were at home thinking of football, thinking about getting the storm windows in, or thinking about next year—for the Red Sox. Most were not yet thinking about the Bambino’s curse. They were glad that the mosquitoes were gone, and the flies, save some stragglers. Bees had already gone past their fall frenzy for failing light and warmth. The moths were all born-again, to the candlepower gods of Fenway, whose penumbra was visible in Brook-line, where rumors were flying about other gods, gods in pinstripes. And gods who had to be of the underworld, black gods.

Harry escorted Knowledge Clapp to the row behind Henry and the others. Knowledge was in black, as usual. Black shoes, socks, suit, and hat. The shirt was white and collarless. He might have been taken for a preacher, but the book he carried was not a Bible. Its blank pages were filled with coded references, formulas, and esoteric data as well as the scouting report on the black team. His guilt over selling out his race was assuaged with white powder and by the fact that he’d held something back. He’d pleaded ignorance about Martin Dihigo. But he knew about the Cuban’s disdain for walks and that second base was his best position after pitcher, and that nobody ever dared to run on him on a relay.

Satchel had won a coin toss with Diz and chose to bat last. He called the team together in the clubhouse. “I don’t have nothin’ special to say to y’all. It’s just a game. Let’s go out and kick their ass.”

The players added their individual affirmations and broke for the field to shag flies, play shadow-ball, and limber up. All except Josh. He was hunkered down, trying to get a grip on his anger, the anger of the invisible. His response had always been to take it out on the ball. He would grit his teeth and pound it, send it packing, scuffed, dented, send its stitched mouth to the orthodontist for some heavy repair, send it out of play.

How far could he hit it? How far would he have to hit one for them to notice? And if he hit it too far, would that keep him invisible even longer? If white poets jumped from ships, what should a black ballplayer do? Josh measured himself against Ruth, literally—walking off his home runs with a near-perfect three-foot stride. He didn’t come up short.

 

Think of Joe Jackson, hounded by Landis for fixing games and banned by Comiskey fourteen years earlier. Think of Joe in his moth-eaten, cracker-barrel suit, at the restaurant of the Miles Standish, because the check-in clerk told him that all players had their meals paid for. Think of Joe holding the menu upside down, closing it and saying to the waiter, “I’ll have a salad.”

“Cobb salad?”

And Joe looking at him suspiciously, thinking—Ty never grazed on green stuff. He’d eat meat, rare, maybe raw. They brought Joe coffee in a china cup so broad it looked like a bowl with a handle that might be a trick for a country boy. In any case, it looked unwieldy, and so he brought his stubbly chin to it and tilted it up, seeing his reflection on the black brew’s shiny surface and saying to himself, “I don’t belong here in this coffee cup.” He poured in the cream.

Umpire Bill Klem came down to dinner smoking his signature calabash pipe, fat as a bishop and dressed in black. Black pants, black shoes, and a loose black sweater drooping over his belly, covered by a Norfolk jacket. The counterman said something to make the ump laugh, and it galled Joe—the off-key laugh—it curdled the regular coffee in his mouth. Anyone who represented the rulers of the game galled Joe these days. The laugh had three descending notes, from mezzo-trombone to mid-range, the same three notes, twice. Joe wanted to bend back three tines of his fork and use the fourth to perform a tracheotomy on the man, just to change the sound of the laugh. Klem seemed to have a prejudice for a sequence of three, which represented to Joe a strikeout, and it didn’t sit right with Joe. He mumbled, “Why does ump rhyme with chump?”

Klem turned to the counterman and wheeled off an order a yard long, with no intonation and with a velocity that said that if his stomach were a pitcher it’d be a fireballer, for sure. Joe asked the waiter for the bill, then remembered it was paid for. He asked which way was Fenway Park, and he took off on foot to find the game.

It took his breath away again to be in a Major League ballpark, the way it did when he first set eyes on that promised land. It seemed sacrilegious to tread on it, plant spikes in the halo of groomed infield dirt. So different from the skin parks he played on, coming up. So called because the dominant substance was not rock, pebbles, roots, or sand, but skin—from hands and legs left by thousands of slides and tumbles on the iniquitous dirt and gravel that passed for a ball field. Fenway in contrast looked like a vast coloring book filled with green. He felt privileged, chosen, to see the coloring book both open and closed. Closed—when it was completely covered in shadow, in the evening, when the crowds had left. Open—when he trotted out to fifty thousand cheering voices. Unimaginable, the roar of it. Every at-bat was righteous. He maketh me to stand in a rectangular box facing an elevated mound with the odds always against me. It had to be.

He had a glove on one hand, supporting himself with the other hand on the knob of a black bat, surveying the park. Pepper stared at the man. “Is that Joe Jackson?”

“Yeah, that’s him,” said Babe.

“He’s uglier than a sheared sheep.”

It became one of those moments before the orchestra starts playing when the whole audience goes silent. Everyone’s attention seemed diverted to the specter in the shadow of the gate.

“Is that Jackson?” said Leo.

“Reckon so,” said Diz. “Don’t know who else it could be.”

“Jesus, he’s ugly.”

Frankie shook his head. “Get a load of that uniform. Could’ve done with a few more mothballs. Well, you’re the skipper. Get up there.”

“What do you say to Joe Jackson?”

“I see you got some shoes?” Frankie jested.

Leo slapped him on the back of the head. “Wiseass. I mean, really?”

“How about, ‘Joe, how the fuck are ya? How’s Ty Cobb?’ ”

Leo frowned and walked over to Shoeless Joe Jackson. He looked on the one hand lost and on the other like he owned the place, some god of the underworld coming back up to reclaim his turf. What was going through his head? The shots he hit? The roar of the crowd? All the years he could have prowled right field? Maybe it was the lights that made him look like a refugee from the underworld. He was a lot heftier than in his playing prime, which worried Leo. His teeth were bad and he hadn’t shaved in two days. But his grip on Leo’s hand when they shook was reassuring. Despite his appearance, it was kind of like shaking hands with the president, if Roosevelt could crush your hand with his.

Joe introduced Leo to his bat. “This is Betsey. Put her away after Landis banned me in ’21. Always thought maybe he would let me back in. Didn’t want to break her in case he did.”

Leo got anxious again. Was it sentimentality? Senility? Then Joe’s bright eyes sparkled. “What do you know about this Paige? Is he as fast as Walter?”

“ ’Fraid so.”

Jackson smiled. “That’s okay. I like a fastball pitcher. You know what he’s gonna throw when he’s in trouble. When I’m up, he’ll be in trouble.”

Leo smiled out of camaraderie rather than conviction. Joe saw the man he most wanted to see and made his way over to him.

“Hello, Commissioner. Remember me?”

Landis rose to his feet, shaking a finger at Jackson. “I banished you!”

Jackson smiled, showing his tobacco-stained buck teeth. Landis gulped air like a carp out of water. Darrow put a hand on Landis’s shoulder, the commissioner’s apoplexy reminding him of Ebenezer Scrooge’s encounter with the ghost of Christmas past.

“I didn’t say he could play!” shouted Landis.

“You didn’t say he couldn’t.”

“The man is banned permanently from baseball.”

“No. The Major Leagues. This is not a Major League game.”

Landis saw the futility of pursuing the argument. He fumbled though his pocket for a tin of snuff and put a wad in his cheek.

 

The rookie, DiMaggio, had the feeling he was being watched. There was a presence in the park he’d never felt before. The kind of presence that made him think “moss” when he saw grass. Something lusher, older. It was as if the something inside him recognized the unseen stranger, as if sixth sense was nothing but the invisible handshake of two blood brothers, meeting for the first time. Then he saw him. A tall specter with a lubbed-up belly like a house that had poorly settled, and crooked teeth stained with decades of tobacco juice. The Natural. The one who broke molds with a full, powerful, fluid swing that sent balls with stunning frequency off and over stadium walls. Line drives you could hang your wash on. “Self, meet self.”

“Hiya doin’, Joe?”

“Hiya doin’, Joe?”

 

Leo walked Jackson to the dugout, then sidled up to Frankie. He lifted the brim of his cap and wiped his forehead. “He’s drunk.”

“Who? Ruth?”

Durocher nodded.

“That fat fuck,” said Frankie. “Biggest game of his life and he gets drunk.”

“That’s probably why he got drunk. Remember what Gehrig said—they’re coming to collect.”

Frankie nodded. He’d faced Satchel Paige, and he knew it would be no picnic. Babe couldn’t bunt or choke up and punch a hit like Frankie could. He had only one way to hit—the big cut that sent him sometimes sprawling in the dirt when he missed, and missing against Paige was a stone, mail-in guarantee. Frankie went into the dugout to confront Babe, who was biting on the first of three hot dogs covered with mustard, ketchup, and relish. “A little heimgemach?” Frankie knew that George Herman would understand the German for home-brew. Babe looked up at him with his mouth full.

“You’re in the bag.”

Babe chomped a few times. “So what?”

“So, get sober, or you’re not playing. Maybe that’s what you want to do, ride the bench.”

“I’ll be okay. Played drunk plenty. Old Pete played drunk. Waner, Mungo. Lots of guys.”

“Waner always gets sober. You know how?”

“Beats me,” Babe said, still chewing.

“Does three back flips and he’s sober as a judge.”

Frankie took a few steps toward the exit.

Babe laughed. “You ain’t suggesting I do back flips?”

Frankie gave what looked to Babe’s blurry eyes to be a nod, then walked out.

“So?” said Leo.

“So cross out ‘Ruth.’ Jackson’s in right.”

Leo took the lineup card and did as Frankie told him. Then he went into the dugout to tell Babe, who rolled up the wrapper for the first dog and threw it on the floor.

“What the hell’s that?” said Leo.

“Couple of hot dogs.”

“How many d’you already eat?”

“One.”

Leo pointed to a bottle on the bench. “What’s that?”

“Bicarbonate of soda.”

“Your stomach bad?”

“Hot dogs don’t always agree with me.”

“Then why do you eat them?”

“I always have. If it works, don’t fix it, right? Moe Berg says it’s yin and yang.”

Babe took a big bite of the second hot dog.

“Gin and what?”

Babe snorted. “Yin. Yin and yang. They balance each other out. Opposites. It’s some Chinese thing. Mystical.”

“Mystical fucking hot dogs? I don’t see any Chinks on the All-Star team.”

“I don’t see you there, either.” Babe took another bite.

“I think you had more gin than yin. And you don’t have to be a pencil whiz to know why.”

Babe looked at him pie-eyed and at the same time with a little of the deer caught in the headlights.

“You’re afraid. All that scallion shit you gave me and Diz . . .” Leo shook his head. “That was grandstanding. You’re just afraid you don’t have it anymore. Afraid Paige will make a monkey out of you.”

“I ain’t afraid of Paige or nothin’.”

“When you come down to it, you’re a big fucking coward.”

Babe swung a backhand fist at Leo and smashed it into a locker. He winced. “I get ahold of you, you little monkey . . .”

Leo was already walking up the stairs. He joined Lombardi on a box seat next to the dugout, put his foot up on the fence, and looked out onto the first-time floodlighting of Fenway Park.

“I’ve been thinking—how we’re gonna win this game. Thinking a lot. And it comes down to slumber and lumber,” said Leo.

“What the hey’s that?” said Ernie.

Leo spread his hands against the sky, framing the partially occluded moon, as if his thoughts issued directly from above. “The way things are is already past, catch? If it is, it had to be, see? That’s what Rickey means when he talks about inevitability. It’s all a crapshoot in the future, but my whole life is about nothing if it ain’t about loading the dice. That’s what we do in St. Louis. It’s the Gashouse thing—fly in the face of inevitability, and what you do is make your own inevitability, like you’re playing a game and making the rules at the same time. That’s what Pepper does when he steals a base. What Frankie does when he gets in an umpire’s face and we get a make-up call. A strike becomes a ball, and the opponent can’t believe it. What looks inevitable gets turned on its head, and you’ve got an edge, see? Same thing when I get on a guy like Cobb. Jaw at him. Just push him a little bit—up here.” Leo tapped his head. “Get him off balance, mentally, just a hair. And that’s the difference between a pop-up and a blooper that falls in. That’s why I always want a Pepper and a Frankie and a Diz on my team. Intangibles—that’s another Rickey word. That’s the Gashouse. You put that together with the tangibles, like you and Ducky, and you’ve got lumber. Now Gehrig—his presence just changes everything. It’s a level playing field till Lou steps up to bat. Then suddenly everyone feels like they’re on a slope and Lou is looking down at them, like the batter’s box suddenly turned into a mound. Like they’re in a bad dream. Or like they’re in someone else’s dream. That’s the slumber part. Tangible and intangible—lumber and slumber. I like our chances.” Leo slapped him on the knee.

Lombardi turned and looked at him. “You think that all up just now?”

“Nah. Took like a week. I laid in bed every night, thinking about it.”

Ernie nodded. “No wonder you guys won the pennant.”

And Leo thought—the slumber part was a stretch. Lumber, he said to himself, revising his thesis, realizing that it described both Ernie’s bat and the way he ran.

 

The afternoon rain had turned to drizzle at around seven, and was in full retreat by game time, at eight, but the field was soaked. Harry saw some stars poking through the clouds. He felt his heels digging into the base paths as he walked them, anxiously. The grass hadn’t been cut in a week and the infield was soggy. Harry tossed a ball across it. The ball bounced but seemed to be held for a fraction of a second with the first impact, losing much of its speed. Harry envisioned the Negroes’ slap hits tunneling into the turf. He imagined bunts that would stop dead on the grass with Lombardi waddling futilely after them. Oscar Charleston saw the same thing, and he knew what Harry was saying to Leo and Frankie. He could tell by Harry’s body language and gestures that the game was in danger of being postponed or even cancelled. The conditions favored the Negro style of play. He interrupted the cabal. “Conditions ain’t the best.”

“That’s what we’re thinking. Might have to call it off.”

Harry was thinking of the logistic difficulty of getting the lights back in place and the loss of secrecy that would be entailed by a postponement. But Henry Ford’s ultimatum—that Dean’s team could not lose—foregrounded his thought.

Oscar rubbed his hand across the grass, then squeezed a handful of dirt through his fingers. “What we do when it’s like this, we take about ten gallons of gas, spread it on the infield and the base baths, then light it.”

Frankie smiled incredulously. “You what?”

“Burn it off. Ain’t perfect, but it helps.”

“You’ll fry the grass.”

Oscar shook his head. “Don’t do much to the grass. Mainly, the gas just burns itself up. The heat dries up the field.”

“You think that will work?” asked Harry.

“Worth a try. You got some gas to spare, from those generators?”

Harry called and waved to John Henry and James Atwood, who were tending to the whole lighting system and making sure the Monarchs’ dicey system functioned. The two men trotted in from the pen where the generators were set up, a small rectangle cordoned off in the right-field corner with twenty-five feet of chain-link fencing. In 1934, Fenway Park had no bullpens.

“How much gas you got?” Harry asked.

“Three twenty-gallon drums.”

“How much do you need for the generators?”

John Henry shrugged. “Maybe forty, fifty gallons, unless it goes extra innings.”

Harry read the players’ faces. They wanted to give it a shot. “Okay, let’s take ten gallons. Oscar, you’ve done this before. You’re in charge. Just don’t set the park on fire. We don’t want the Boston fire department busting in.”

Satch pulled a waterlogged ball out of the soggy turf against the right-field wall. He hefted it. Joe Jackson took the ball from Satch’s hand. “What I’d call a dead ball. Like what we used to play with.”

“It’s dead, Joe, but it’s still white,” said Oscar, smiling. Jackson was puzzled. He pondered Oscar’s meaning as he picked up one of the two five-gallon jerricans. Turkey and Mule rolled a gas barrel into shallow right field. Joe and Oscar each filled a jerrican and spread the gas. Harry dropped a match.

How perfect was it—Willie Wells—el Diablo, with a bat in his hand and covering part of his face, with flames leaping in front of him? Something scary about it, too. Frankie and Leo looked at him, thinking of the disfigured, scarred legs he displayed like trophies.

The grass was on fire but not really burning. It was as unreal as a Black-White All-Star game. Steam rose up off the grass and the dirt, like Oscar said it would. The image of hell appeared to everyone’s mind at some point. But where hell’s fires encircled, here it was the players who encircled the flames. Hell was a diamond, contained, as if it were paying for sins against the players. Still, it was funny seeing Joe Jackson’s face lit up by the fire, standing shoulder to shoulder with the greats, outside the flaming diamond, where whites and blacks intermingled in a way that somehow would not have occurred without the intervention of the fire. Lou Gehrig found himself chatting with Josh Gibson and Mule Suttles. Oscar Charleston shared some chew with Frankie Frisch. Cool Papa Bell and Satchel Paige compared kangaroo-hide baseball shoes with Leo Durocher.

“Hey, Dizzy Dean, you got the marshmallows?” said Willie Wells.

Diz asked Willie if he had heard the latest episode of Amos and Andy. Josh joked with Gehrig about what it would be like playing ball against the Japanese, never imagining the seventeen-year-old kid who would blank them a week later and duplicate Hubbell’s feat of striking out Ruth and Gehrig back to back.

The fire’s warmth reminded them of a chill they’d come to take for granted. It was, after all, an October night. Satch stood closest to the fire, leading with his right shoulder, his pitching arm. Looking through the smoke at the white canvas over the Lifebuoy ad on the left-field wall, Satch thought of the scalding shower he had just taken in the locker room and the scalding one he would take after it, as if baseball was just something he did between showers. Cool Papa Bell checked the sponges around the wounds on his shins. John Henry looked at the cloudy sky, with an occasional break, a hole big enough for starlight, big enough for an angel to fall through. He thought of them all falling, like parachutists, through space, with no hint of conspiracy. These angels were just a bunch of good ol’ boys, standing by the fire, reminiscing about the good old days, exchanging theories on how far back the center-field wall could be on the head of a pin, how baseball got segregated and the chance that it might integrate.

John Henry and James Atwood blended with the players, who were different in that they wore uniforms that itched, and were closer to the gods in their ability to play the game of baseball, doing their baroque eighteen-man version of a dance on a diamond instead of on the head of a pin.

Diz walked over to Satch and put an arm around his shoulders. “You come on down to St. Louis and we’ll wrap up the pennant by the Fourth of July and we’ll all go fishin.’ I mean it, Satch. Between us, we’ll win sixty games.”

Satch looked Diz in the eye and deadpanned, “Heck, I’d win sixty myself.”

“Ain’t but one man stopping you,” said Frankie, pointing to Commissioner Landis, who sat with his chin on his fist like a gavel, on the bar around the box, staring at the men who stared at him.

“He’s a religious nut, right?” Satch asked Diz.

“Yup. A Holy Roller.”

“Suppose there is a heaven and you can’t get in ’cuz you’re not that religion. And you say you’ll convert but they say they don’t take no converts. How’d you feel?”

Why they stared at each other—Landis, cold and baleful, Satch transmitting in return resentment—was unclear. Perhaps because at this distance a showdown was safe. They were both out of range, and they knew it, as the moon came out winking—sliver moon, the emblem of every outhouse in America, now in the dark sky over Fenway Park.

Landis munched on a couple of peanuts from Darrow’s stash. Harry leaned over. “You got any Cracker Jack?”

The fault lines of a smile appeared on the crag of Landis’s face. He ate only peanuts at a ball game and fancied himself a purist. First were peanuts, which begat popcorn, which begat Cracker Jack. That was the evolution of it. There was no value-added element in a goober, just the personal, manual labor of popping the shell and removing the chemise. The Cracker Jack and its prize in the box were a decadent fabrication. Something for nothing. Not to Landis’s taste. Sometimes Landis would pop a peanut and there was nothing in it. The Burgess shale was littered with such fossils. In 1934, Cracker Jack was in ascendance. What would they think of seventy years hence? Raw fish wrapped in seaweed?

“Bring me Paige,” Landis ordered, and Harry obeyed. Satch shook his hand. He was surprised that the old man was as short as he was, and surprised at the sparkle in his eyes, sparkle that was not saying “Let’s be friends.”

Landis stared at him, trying to take his measure. “What are you after?”

For a moment Satch felt like the kid carrying bags at the Union Railroad Station in Mobile, where he got his name. Then he grinned. Landis grew mildly irritated. “What is it? Money? Fame? Quim?”

Satch saw in Landis’s white collar then a flag of surrender. And that was in part what he was after—the Major Leagues surrendering to integration. But that was not the whole story. That wasn’t it, exactly.

“Delirium.”

Landis was taken aback. He repeated Satch’s answer in his head. Delirium. “I’ve got a fastball I call ‘Long Tom.’ You know where that comes from, hmm?”

Landis stared at him, motionless.

“Uncle Tom. I throw it fast enough that it ain’t nothin’ but a white blur. You can’t really see it so you can’t really say what it is. That ball is delirious. And that’s what I’m after.”

Landis had stared down the movers and shakers of America. He prided himself on knowing when a man, or woman, was telling the truth. He knew that Satchel’s strange answer was the truth, but all he understood of delirium till that moment was that it was everything a Tin Lizzie wasn’t. And he began to fear for the first time that Dizzy Dean and his All-Stars could not beat this man.

Then the fire burnt itself out. Steam stopped rising off the infield, and Harry shouted, “Let’s play ball.”

Dean’s team took batting practice. Joe Jackson was captivated by DiMaggio. The kid caught everyone’s eye. It was impossible not to watch. The kid had that big, fluid swing and walloped everything off or over the wall. It was uncanny, too, the way the air seemed to become concentrated in a rectangle where Joe stood and everyone’s head was pulled by the low pressure created by his aggrandizement of even the air. Cy Slapnicka was right—he did look like a statue. But if he had the Statue of Liberty in mind, he was misguided. Joe was pure anarchy. As if every pitch were a rule and he was allowed to break it, hit the cowhide off of it, send it unraveling into the nickel seats. “Grace,” said St. Augustine, was “that which was almost unseen.” There it was, nonetheless—grace, first cousin of feral—in everything DiMaggio did.

Old Joe watched young Joe with a nostalgia as big as a grapefruit. When DiMaggio walked away from the plate, old Joe shook his head, smiling. He looked at old Betsey. “Look what you started, honey.”

Old Joe stepped in to take his turn. He rested Betsey against his closed legs and grabbed a handful of dirt, letting it fall through his fingers as he rubbed it. Then he pulled his cap down and stepped to the plate.

“Joe Jackson, why don’t you get a new cap,” said Dandy. “You look like a Civil War veteran.”

“Honey, I feel like one.”

Dihigo didn’t understand the term of endearment. Was that the way players talked twenty years ago? Or guys from South Carolina? Or was Joe just weird, one of those guys.

Willie walked up. “Ain’t that the Natural? Shoeless Joe?”

“Damn, I think it is.”

“He was a hell of a hitter, but he couldn’t write ‘fuck’ on a shithouse wall.”

The black players laughed, and Joe stepped out nervously. He spat and got some tobacco juice on his sleeve. No one but Joe himself noticed.

Babe came forward with a bat on his shoulder. “Don’t get smoked up over it, Joe.”

“I ain’t smoked, honey. I’m fucking heartsick, is what I am. Them colored boys is right. I been thinking for years now about what kind of man I coulda been if I’d gone to school. All the things I might know that I don’t know. And I never will, damn it, I never will. I fucked up with baseball, and I can’t fucking read. I’m fucking sorry I lived. That should be my epitaph—‘Here lies Shoeless Joe. He couldn’t write “fuck” on a shithouse wall.’ ”

Joe felt a little of how his Irish forebears felt, flushed out of Ireland—not piped—the whole tribe descended from a pair that was said to have sneaked aboard the ark. Where Joe lived, selling dry goods and playing ball on weekends, in South Carolina, they didn’t believe in species. They believed in the Jackson mythology. “Did you see the one Joe hit in . . . ?” He felt he should have stayed there, in the mythology.

Satch could see that Joe was pretty steamed up, but he couldn’t clearly hear the conversation. “Hey, Joe, how do you spell ‘hit’?” Satch just meant to tease him, good-naturedly, one Southern boy to another, the way he well knew Joe had been teased, or hazed, for his illiteracy from the day he came to the Majors and he was caught studying a menu upside down. He was innumerate, too. Couldn’t tell time, so you couldn’t expect Joe to be on time for anything. One spring training everyone had to write down how many eggs he wanted. The manager came by and saw a half-dozen uneaten eggs on his plate and asked why. Joe confessed he didn’t know how to make a “2,” so he wrote down two ones.

Remorse now magnified Joe’s emotions and reactions to everything on a ball field, especially slights. In the old days, insults used to roll right off Joe’s back, but it bothered him that Negroes would make fun of him. He felt like taking Betsey back to the hotel and heading back to Greenville. He stepped away from the plate. Leo saw that it had gotten under his skin. He walked over to Joe.

“Don’t let that razzing get to you, Joe.”

“That boy got my rabbit up.”

Leo turned to the hecklers and smiled. “You want to know how to spell ‘hit,’ Satch? Just take your mother’s name and drop the ‘s.’ Then you’ve got ‘hit.’ ”

Oscar started for Leo, but Satch held him back. “It’s okay, man. I’ve heard a lot worse. I can take care of business myself. I got the apple.”

The players watched Oscar walk truculently away. They didn’t immediately notice that Joe was headed for the door with Betsey on his shoulder.

“Where’s he goin’?” said Leo.

“Home,” said Frankie.

“Like hell he is,” said Babe, throwing down his bat and jogging after Joe. He caught him at the end of the tunnel.

“Joe, wait up.”

Joe turned and waited, with a glum look on his face.

“Come on back, Joe. We need you.”

Joe shook his head. “You don’t need me.”

Joe started to walk again, and Babe grabbed him by the shoulder. “They threw you out once. Now you’re back. You can’t just walk out.”

“I don’t have it anymore, Babe. And those guys got my rabbit up. They can read, and I can’t. They’re colored, and I’m white. I can’t go out there, let them laugh at me.”

“Fuck reading. Reading’s overrated. Does reading make you money? Does reading get anybody laid? I can read, but if I had a choice between being able to read like Einstein or hit like Joe Jackson, I know what I’d take. I’ve seen ’em all. I’ve seen Cobb, and I’ve seen Hornsby, and I’ve seen Gehrig, but I ain’t never seen a man hit a ball as clean as you. When I was a kid I watched you play. I saw you hit, and I heard it. I can close my eyes and hear it now. The ball made a different sound when you hit it. It was clean.”

Joe lowered his head. “That wasn’t Joe. That was Betsey.”

Babe stared at Joe, hoping Joe would meet his eyes. “I’ve seen Black Betsey, and I’ve seen Yellow Betsey, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d seen Blue Betsey. I ain’t much at math, but it’s what Branch Rickey calls the common denominator. It’s you, Joe. This team needs you. I know what you’re going through. Why do you think my head’s bigger than Mae West’s titties? This is the biggest fucking game in the history of baseball, and I don’t want to be the goat any more than you do. I don’t belong on this team any more than you do. Foxx, Waner, Greenberg, Simmons—those guys belong here, not us. But Landis made the rules, and we’re the best these guys have got. You’ve got to play till I get sober. Give me six innings, Joe. I can’t play like this. They’ll laugh at me.”

“They’re laughin’ at me.”

“They’re just trying to spook you. Get under your skin. I saw you taking batting practice. You didn’t miss one ball. Okay, you didn’t put any over the fence, but you made good contact with every pitch.”

“It’s practice. He ain’t throwin’ hard.”

“You hit Walter. Paige ain’t any faster than Walter.”

“That was twenty years ago.”

Babe was frustrated. Joe seemed as stubborn as Ducky and as paranoid as Frankie. He started to walk away. “Tell me the truth, Joe. Do you still get it up?”

“Yeah, I get it up.”

Babe just looked at him with those big, aggie eyes. He wasn’t sure why he asked that question; he just went on his nerve. Joe looked back at the baby-faced man at the end of his career. Joe didn’t entirely get the analogy, the only kind Babe could make, but he sort of intuited it. Babe walked back to the field. Joe watched him exit, then stared at the tunnel wall. He took Betsey off his shoulder and commenced to make an F. Then a U. Followed by a C, and a backwards K. He couldn’t prove it, but he knew it was fuck. He’d seen it a thousand times on shithouse walls. No one had ever read it to him, but he knew it. He wasn’t, for nothing, the Natural.

Babe hit a Dean warm-up ball over the fence, foul, then took a practice swing, waiting for the next pitch, when he was shoved from behind.

“Get out of there, yannigan. I ain’t finished.”

No one ever pushed Babe Ruth out of the batter’s box, as Babe did with hundreds of guys, whenever he felt like hitting, even as a rookie. Joe had that intense gaze and the weird smile of a kid who’d just bagged a squirrel with a slingshot. Babe backed off without a word, smile, or gesture of any kind. Joe hit five balls, two of them the kind of line drive he was known for, then stepped out and let Babe finish his turn. Half in the bag, he hit one halfway to Alston.