I didn’t know the Widow Kieberger from Adam’s off ox, but she came up to me inside a Yuma grog shop, sat down, introduced herself, and told me her hardships, which were plentiful. Though she wasn’t hard to look at, I had pretty much stopped listening and started cogitating a polite way to get away from her, maybe suggest that she find a deputy U.S. marshal, contact the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, or perhaps I’d mention a couple of buckets of blood where she could find men who killed cheap. Having just gotten out of the Hellhole, I had little desire to go back behind those walls. Or hang. That’s when I happened to catch a few words she whispered.
Setting my glass on the table, I cleared my throat, and she stopped talking.
“Did you say . . . baseball bats?”
Her face paled, and she stared at squashed scorpions on the floor. “Yes.” I barely heard her.
I killed my bourbon. “Let me get this straight. This major, he breaks into your house, with eight other ballists, and they proceed to beat your husband to death?”
She didn’t look up.
“With baseball bats?” I added.
“Forty inches,” she whispered. “White ash. One was flat.”
I nodded. “For bunting.”
“Or pounding a sleeping man’s head to mush.”
“Baseball bats.” I waved at the barkeep, who sent a strumpet over with more Chicken Cock and another glass. Once the barmaid left, the widow added, without looking up, “Then he ran me out of Contention City as a . . .” Her eyes lifted toward me. I understood.
“Baseball bats,” I repeated, then killed half of my fresh bourbon and felt that heat rising, turning my ears red, like they were prone to color when some umpire made a bad call or Hank Fuller swung at a pitch a mile over his head.
“That ain’t right,” I said.
She had to tell me the story again, but this time I listened. When she finished, I asked, “Isn’t there any law in Contention?”
“The town marshal is the right fielder. He came with them that night.”
My head shook, trying to comprehend this outrage. “Folks in town let this go on?”
“When’s the last time you’ve been to Contention City?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Haven’t been anywhere, ma’am, for three and a half years.”
“They love their baseball,” she explained. “And Major Perry has never lost a game.”
I pondered. This Major Perry fielded one of the best baseball clubs in Arizona Territory. Undefeated in six years. Throttled teams from Tombstone and Tucson. Even beat the boys from Bisbee, which had some mighty fine ballists. But when they weren’t dominating a baseball diamond, Contention’s First Nine kept the workers under control. So, when some revolutionary like Mr. Kieberger started talking about improving conditions at the stamp mills, Major Perry and his ballists, including the town’s law dog, would bust into a darkened bedroom and bludgeon the man to death for being an anarchist—with forty-inch bat-sticks.
Gives ballists like me a bad name.
“So . . .” I hesitated. “What do you want of me?”
When she told me, I sighed. “I haven’t played in years, ma’am.”
“You played with the prison guards,” she said. “I saw you in a couple of games. I found out about you. That’s what gave me the idea.”
My head shook. “The guards needed a catcher. It got me out of shoveling caliche or getting tossed into the Snake Den. And we lost plenty of games, even to those velocipede riders on that train to California.”
Her green eyes hardened. “I said, I found out about you. You could get a team. You could beat Major Perry’s murderers.”
That gave me pause. I squinted. “What exactly is it you want me to do?”
She told me.
“And . . .” I put this kind of delicate. “What’s in it for me?”
She told me that, too.
The next eastbound Southern Pacific took me to Lordsburg, New Mexico Territory, where I caught a stage to Silver City and met Hank Fuller in the Copper Tarnish Saloon. Last time I saw Hank, he was a hundred and seventy-seven pounds of baseball prime and on his way to sign with the Louisville Colonels. Now, he topped two-fifty and played for the Fat Fellows. The bib front of his uniform pictured a foaming mug of beer. His meaty right hand held an empty mug, which was getting refilled, again. The Fat Fellows were celebrating their 20-to-6 victory over the Slim Jims. That’s how far Hank Fuller had fallen. He’d gone from playing professional ball to playing for kegs of beer.
Since the Fat Fellows had won, the Slim Jims bought the beers—and all were drunk—I didn’t have to spend any of the Widow Kieberger’s greenbacks. After the crowd thinned out, or passed out, Hank asked what I wanted. I told him. He asked how much it paid. I told him that, too, which sobered him up right quick.
“What do you want from me?” he asked.
“To lay off any pitches a mile over your head,” I said.
We traveled to Tombstone and sat high up in the grandstands, watching the Contention Millers wallop the home Tigers.
“Who’s the big guy?” Hank asked.
I swallowed my peanut. A first baseman who tops two hundred and fifty pounds was asking about a “big guy.” That ought to tell you something about Contention’s baseball team. Only none of Contention’s First Nine carried his weight in his belly. Those boys packed solid muscle, and every time their bat-stick crushed a ball, I envisioned the Widow Kieberger’s unfortunate late husband.
“That’s Major Perry,” I answered. I knew him because the Widow Kieberger said he played center field. He played it pretty good, too.
“The third baseman is Caleb Cartwright,” Hank said.
“You know him?”
“I played against him when he was with the Pittsburgh Alleghenys. He played last season for that Kansas City club in the National League.”
“The team the National League kicked out?”
“Yep. For hooliganism.”
The Contention Millers didn’t need to resort to hooliganism or beating men to death on this Saturday. Tombstone was awful. The Tigers lost, 35-to-1, but this Major Perry wasn’t the nicest fellow I’d ever seen on a diamond. I mean, the jackass berated his fellow ballists when the third baseman made an error in the eighth inning, allowing Tombstone to score its only run.
They taunted the poor Tombstone ballists. Major Perry screamed insults at his opponents. His teammates laughed when the Tigers made poor plays. Considering how bruised and bloodied Tombstone’s players looked after the game, you would’ve thought Contention’s First Nine used brass knuckles or billy clubs on the players in the field—which they might have.
After the slaughter mercifully ended, the Millers tore apart the visiting team’s bench, laughed, and headed for the depot. The Tigers of Tombstone just stared. Nobody protested. Hank drained his beer. “We’ve got to beat this team?”
Me? I sat there fuming at what I had just witnessed, and I had taken part in some inappropriate behavior on baseball fields. I told Hank, “The Contention Millers have forgotten A.G. Spalding’s prime rule for our sport: ‘To make baseball playing respectable and honorable.’ ”
Hank shook his head. “They forgot another rule, too, Skip: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ”
Rounding up ballists in the Southwest isn’t hard. It’s not even tough to find baseball players who lack ethics. But finding exceptional ballists willing to risk a stay in prison or having their faces pounded to jelly by forty-inch timbers of white ash proved about as taxing as trying to tag out King Kelly when he’s sliding into home. I had to meet up with the Widow Kieberger in Tucson to get more money, but she didn’t put up any fuss. Her husband had been dead for pushing two years now, and she was eager to exact her revenge on Major Perry and his murdering thugs.
I didn’t ask where she came by such money.
Finding a Spalding’s Base Ball Guide proved a mite difficult, but that only set me back ten cents in Phoenix, and I needed to bone up on the rules since I had been out of circulation for three and a half years. Prison guards, you see, made up rules they thought appropriate, and didn’t give a fig how the National League or American Association played the game.
Once I had hired all my accessories—I mean ballists—we practiced just across the border, away from prying eyes. We probably could have swept a three-game series against the territorial prison’s guards, and maybe even whipped those California velocipede riders. But we certainly were not undefeated after four barnstorming seasons.
Yet that’s what the Tucson Enterprise reported, of course, since I paid the inkslinger one of the Widow Kieberger’s double eagles to print exactly that: that we were undefeated. It’s also what the posters the Widow Kieberger paid to have printed announced, too. I made sure Contention City got some of those posters.
Sure enough, when the American Zephyrs—Hank came up with that handle for us—played the Tucson Base Ball Team (there’s an original name for a club) on a Friday afternoon, Major Perry arrived by train to see us play.
“Congratulations,” the major said after our 20-to-nothing victory. He held out his massive right hand.
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t accept your hand, sir.” I kept shaking to get the feeling back into my stinging hands. “Masterson wasn’t at his best today, but even his worst hurts like blazes after nine innings.” (Kent Masterson wasn’t at his worst, either, but nigh his best, and my hands remained swollen and numb after catching him.)
“You don’t wear a mitt, sir?”
Some catchers did—so did infielders and outfielders who could take the heckling—even in the professional leagues. But you try wearing a mitt playing for and against prison guards. They’d have thrown me in the Snake Den. I shook my head.
Major Perry praised our pitcher, and lauded Hank’s hitting—Hank hadn’t swung at one bad pitch the whole game—and then the major got down to business. Why, his team down in Contention City was undefeated, too, and he thought a game against us would bring in quite the crowd.
“We don’t play for beer, sir,” I told him. “We get half the gate and an appearance fee.”
“What’s the fee?” the major asked.
I told him.
He wasn’t smiling, but he said that could be arranged. Had I known that a baseball team could charge that kind of money to play a game, I might’ve avoided forty-two months in the Hellhole.
Then I got greedy. “And it’s customary for a little wager between the teams.”
“What do you propose?” he said.
I grinned. “How about your bat-sticks and all your equipment? We put up the same.”
He paled, but nodded. A man like him, with an undefeated team, can’t back down from a wager. I was pleased. After we clobbered his team, the major wouldn’t have any bat-sticks to make another anarchist’s wife a widow.
“How about next Friday?” Major Perry asked.
My head shook. “Sir, we have to be in Los Angeles in a few days.” I excused myself, found my grip on the bench, opened it, and pulled out a book, which I opened and stared at a blank page. “I’m sorry to say that we’re booked for all this month,” I lied. “Let’s see. We’re playing the White Stockings on Saturday the twenty-third before going to Detroit the next Monday.”
Major Perry’s eyes widened. “The White Stockings?” His words come out like a gasp. “In Chicago?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Cap Anson’s a real nice man. And a fine ballist.” The last sentence was the only truthful one I spoke.
“And Detroit?” Perry asked.
“The Wolverines,” I said.
“You . . . play . . . ?”
My chuckle silenced him. “Sir,” I said, “those are just exhibition games. The National League, you must be aware, doesn’t start its season till later that week. We Zephyrs are just a traveling team of ballists—like the Red Stockings of ’69.” I smiled. “They went undefeated, too, you know.”
“And you’ve beaten the White Stockings . . .”
Closing my book, I waved my hand. “Oh, I’m sure if we played Cap’s boys in a full series, we wouldn’t still be undefeated. In fact, Detroit played us close last year. If Hank had not homered in the last inning, well, our record might be a hundred twenty-three and one.”
I opened the book to another empty page. “I guess, though, if you really want to risk your perfect season, we could squeeze you in . . . would Friday the thirteenth of May work?”
“Sure,” Major Perry said weakly.
I closed the book. “We do require half of our appearance fee in advance, sir.”
He paid that, too—by check, but the bank cashed it without argument—and walked, a mite unsteady, out of the baseball park.
Inside the nearest saloon, Hank said, “Maybe we should just take that money and skedaddle while we’re ahead.”
“What about the Widow Kieberger?” I asked, and when Hank just sipped his beer, I added: “Is that what you want to do?”
“No,” he said. “I’d like to beat those Contention killers.”
“So would I,” said Masterson, who had pitched for the Boston Beaneaters till the National League found out about his relationship with gamblers.
“Then we better start practicing,” I said. “And find us a southpaw hitter.”
Naturally, we did not take the train to Los Angeles. Nor did we travel to Chicago and Detroit. I did go to Denver, where I signed up Skyrocket McSorely, who played right field with a center fielder’s speed and batted left-handed. By the end of the month, we were back across the border, practicing every day for our date with the Contention Millers.
While celebrating a real fine practice on the third of May, we all got knocked off our feet. The earth shook. Hank lost six pounds. Masterson lost his breakfast. Skyrocket McSorely confessed all his sins, which sounded considerable. I cried out for my ma.
The rumble didn’t last that long, and the Almighty did not open up the earth and drop us down to Hades. The next morning, another little shake rattled our nerves, and after we found our scattered horses, I rode to Bisbee to see what had just happened.
What had happened, of course, was an earthquake. The telegraph lines were all down, so I spent some of the Widow Kieberger’s money on a stagecoach ride to Contention City.
Not that I was drunk, but what I saw and heard sobered me.
Roofs had collapsed, the whistles at the mine and mills kept blaring, and the baseball diamond lay in utter ruins. Somehow, amid all this commotion, I managed to find Major Perry. Seeing me, he shook his head, and waved at the mess behind him.
“We cannot play,” he told me. “Not on this.”
Ever seen photographs of Atlanta taken after Sherman’s boys marched through? That’s what the Contention City Base Ball Field resembled. It’s what a lot of Contention looked like. I quickly thought of this: “But you do understand that there is no refund on the deposit of our appearance fee.”
“I don’t give a whit about that, sir!” he snapped.
That earthquake was a godsend—for me.
“Why don’t we reschedule our game?” I suggested.
“Next month?” Major Perry said.
“Next year,” I said.
Yep, that was a gamble. But I had seen Contention play and my boys practice. We couldn’t beat the Millers, not with the ballists I had lined up. I also saw just what a boomtown Contention City was, and figured once she got fixed up, there might be more money to earn. I am greedy. Which, along with my temper, had cost me forty-two months in Yuma. And was why even the Beer and Whiskey League wouldn’t let me play on their teams anymore.
“You’d do that?” Major Perry asked.
This was no lie: “Major, it’ll take you a year to get this diamond, and your city, back in shape.”
I can’t call the Widow Kieberger understanding. When I met her up in Benson, she did not sound like the meek, frightened, revengeful woman I had talked to in Yuma. But eventually, reason prevailed. If we were to beat the Millers, if she was to get what she wanted, then patience, and practice, came first. She also conceded, after a second brandy, that she had yet to find a man suitable for her purposes. Turned out, I knew a fellow who would be out of Yuma in November.
After paying off my middle infielders, two outfielders, and a backup hurler, I let the rest of the boys find baseball clubs for the upcoming season whilst Hank and I took off to Galveston . . . New Orleans . . . St. Louis . . . Cincinnati . . . and even Laramie, where a couple of ballists I knew were getting out early on good behavior. From those towns and a handful of others, I sent telegraphs to newspapers in southern Arizona, letting their readers know that the American Zephyrs had won another game, making up a few details and a final score, and hoping no editor would ask for confirmation from another source.
By late October, the mercenaries that made up the American Zephyrs reconvened in Bisbee, and we crossed the border again. In early March, I sent a telegraph to Major Perry, suggesting a date to make up our ball game. He happily agreed to the date and our original terms.
Even the Widow Kieberger looked happy. I had rounded up a pretty good bunch of ballists, and that fellow I’d told her about proved mighty handy at cracking safes.
The game pitting two undefeated teams would be played on Monday, April 30. The payrolls would arrive in Contention City on the evening train on April 28. Contention’s miners and millers would not be paid until May 1.
I didn’t think another earthquake would postpone our game this time. As long as it didn’t rain . . .
We arrived on the same train as the payrolls, and the armed guards, including Contention’s right fielder/marshal, greeted us at the depot. Turns out, some of Major Perry’s ballists—when not beating town teams or clubbing some anarchist to death in his bedroom—also protected Contention’s money on its way to the bank for safekeeping till payday.
Caleb Cartwright, Contention City’s third baseman, grinned a broken-tooth smile and directed us to Mason’s Western Hotel.
That rundown adobe structure wasn’t much to look at before the earthquake, but a year ago, the windowpanes had glass, the adobe walls didn’t show straw, and the roof covered the entire hotel.
“Criminy,” Skyrocket McSorely whispered as we walked down the deserted street. “I thought you said Contention City was a boomtown.”
“The key word in that sentence,” our shortstop, Professor Anderson, said, “is was.”
The Contention Millers had won all twenty-two games last year, but every contest had been played on the road after the earthquake had destroyed their field. Though I had briefly seen the town after the earthquake, I never really appreciated the extensiveness of the damage.
After settling into our hotel rooms, we walked to the Contention City Base Ball Field to practice. On our way, a little waif sprinted out of a ramshackle jacal. He didn’t wear shoes, and I doubt if the urchin had seen a washcloth in months. “Are you the famous Zephyrs?” The boy held out a baseball.
Silent Cobb, our third baseman who hated everything and everybody, took the ball and stared at it. “Uh,” he said, “yeah”—more words than he’d spoken in two weeks of practicing.
“Gosh.” The boy snatched back the ball. “A Zephyrs ballist touched my baseball. Nobody but me will ever touch it again. Even if you beat my team Monday.”
“Your team?” Cobb just doubled his dialogue.
An old man arrived over from the other side of the street. “About all we have left in this town now,” he said, shaking all of our hands, “is our baseball team.” He said it was a pleasure to have us here, that a team with the national reputation of the American Zephyrs would be a great test for the Millers.
“We’ll see if we can compete against something other than other town teams,” said a woman in a parasol who stepped off the boardwalk to welcome us to Contention City.
“At least you’re honorable players,” said a gent in sleeve garters. “Unlike the Tigers of Tombstone.”
“They burned our bench the year before last,” the urchin informed us.
“And abused our womenfolk,” said the old man.
“We hate Tombstone,” said one of the bunch of folks greeting us.
Hank Fuller shot me a glance, and I knew he was wondering if maybe Tombstone had deserved that abuse and beating we witnessed last year.
I didn’t dwell on that, however, because a woman brought us cookies. Another resident, bless his soul, carried buckets of bottled beer. But that was nothing compared to what we saw at the Contention City Base Ball Field.
Our practice, I realized, was the first time we had played in front of spectators, excepting, just before we left Mexico, the Widow Kieberger and her safecracker and a few other rogues she’d hired. I’d played real games before smaller crowds.
“Wait till tomorrow,” one man said. “The whole city will be here. Everyone in town!”
Which is what the Widow Kieberger had said when I first met her in Yuma.
Even though we were just practicing, everyone cheered us. They whistled. It felt great, like it used to feel when I was playing years ago. A long time had passed since anyone had hollered encouraging words for me at a baseball field. I sure never heard anything like that whilst catching for Yuma’s guards.
Then I remembered what brought us to Contention.
Just nine years back, this city had boomed after the discovery of silver. Miners found pay dirt in the hills around the town, but Contention thrived because of the stamp mills—hence their baseball team’s nickname, the Millers. The San Pedro River provided water, which most of the mining towns—including Tombstone—didn’t have. Two stamp mills had been established, the railroad arrived, the team kept winning, and life looked fine in Contention City.
We learned all this as those poor folks treated us to supper and beers after our practice.
Of course, nothing lasts forever, someone pointed out, to which Kent Masterson leaned toward me and whispered, “Like the Millers’ undefeated streak,” and grinned.
Folks, we learned, found a way to get water to Tombstone. The mines around Contention got flooded. So did the two mills, especially after that earthquake. One mill had already closed this week, and its miners were waiting to collect their last pay before moving on. Everybody knew the other mill’s days were numbered, too. The railroad had reached Fairbank a few miles south, meaning fewer folks needed to travel to Contention. The Bisbee stage line had already stopped running to Contention. Since the earthquake, folks had been leaving for better jobs, or any jobs. Once, you could hardly find an empty spot at the Contention City Base Ball Field when the Millers played. These days, the grandstands could seat twice the town’s current population.
The team had struggled, as well. Once, the Millers had an outstanding First Nine, a Second Nine that could beat most town teams easily, and even a Muffin Nine that played solid baseball. Now, they had ten players total, and last year they won their twenty-two games by an average of one-point-nine runs. Four of the games went extra innings. One game they won by forfeit. Such things never happened in the glorious days before the earthquake.
When we got back to the hotel, I had to remind the boys, even Cobb, why we came to Contention, what those thugs did to the widow’s husband, and what we could take home after beating the Millers to a pulp.
The last day of April dawned bright and sunny with no wind. We had the Millers whipped before the umpire, an Army chaplain from Fort Huachuca, called us out to flip a coin. The Millers won the toss and elected to be the home team. Masterson snickered, “That’s all they will win today.”
Indeed, it looked that way. Masterson struck out the first six batsmen he faced. We scored two runs in the first inning, and three in the second. The crowd looked like they were attending a funeral.
But, by grab, how they cheered in the bottom of the third. That’s when Caleb Cartwright singled up the middle. He didn’t get past first base.
We led 9-to-2 in the sixth inning. I could hear sobs coming from the little waif whose baseball Silent Cobb had briefly held. Major Perry hit a little grounder to third, and Silent Cobb’s throw had that brute out by a mile—till Hank Fuller dropped the ball.
“Safe,” the chaplain said.
Masterson then hit the next batsman with a pitch.
“Take your base,” the chaplain said, and I muttered an oath. Giving a batsman first base when he got hit had just become a rule in ’87. The soldier boys at Fort Huachuca knew their baseball.
The next Miller got hit, too, loading the bases, and sending me out to calm down Kent Masterson. Hank Fuller waddled over, too.
“Relax,” I told my pitcher, who wasn’t throwing as hard as he could. “Your arm hurting?”
“No.”
“Well, Hank muffed a play. It happens. Forget it.”
“I didn’t muff that ball, Skip,” Hank told me.
Masterson said: “And I know what I’m doing.”
I pulled off my cap to scratch my head.
“We can’t beat this team,” said Silent Cobb, who trotted over to take part in our discussion.
“We can beat the tar out of them,” I said. “Which we’ve been doing.”
The chaplain hollered: “Hurry up!”
Seeing my teammates’ faces, I put my cap back on. “You can’t throw this game, boys.” I felt sick.
“You did,” Silent Cobb said, and I wished he would turn mute again. “With the Brown Stockings in ’82.”
“And the Buffalo Bisons in ’79,” Hank recollected.
My ears reddened, and Hank hadn’t swung at a ball over his head this afternoon. “You . . .” I jabbed my swollen finger at Hank’s fancy lace-up shirt that the Widow Kieberger had paid for. “You remember how these Millers played ball that time we saw them. Played like hooligans.”
“You heard what the Tigers did here,” Hank pointed out.
I countered: “I heard. But I saw how this team played. Like hooligans.”
“Just like I played with the Maroons in ’86,” the professor said. He had walked over, too.
“And ain’t that why you got sent to Yuma?” Masterson said. “Beat up the umpire with your bat-stick in Prescott for calling you out on strikes?”
“Fool deserved it,” I said. “Ball was a foot outside, and low.”
“Do you want to gossip?” the chaplain yelled. “Or play baseball?”
“They beat a man’s head in,” I told my Zephyrs. “With bat-sticks. That’s why we’re playing them.”
“We’re playing them,” Hank said, too honest for his own cheating good, “for what the Widow Kieberger, that safecracker you knew in Yuma, and those gunmen she hired are doing right now.”
“Because,” I argued right back, “of what Major Perry, the town marshal, and the rest of these murdering ballists did to her husband.”
“The Millers aren’t the point,” Masterson said. “I can’t beat them . . . for their sakes.” He nodded at the practically empty stands, filled with the last of Contention City’s lovers of baseball, pretty much everybody in town.
I made the mistake and looked. I saw the little urchin, the old man, the lady with the parasol, and that redheaded strumpet who brought us all the beers we could drink at the cantina we had been frequenting. I saw their faces. The chaplain yelled again, but what struck me was the crowd. Any other city, any other team, and the spectators would be shouting louder than the umpire for us to quit chattering and play ball. They just sat, respectful, patient.
“Don’t be suckers, boys. We’re professional ballists, or once were. Let’s get out of this inning,” I said. Then I slapped the ball into Masterson’s hand and trotted off to my spot.
Caleb Cartwright hit the next pitch over McSorely’s head, and all four runners scored. It was 9-to-6.
It stayed that way till the bottom of the ninth inning. With two outs, and the Contention City faithful resigned to their fate, Major Perry singled. The professor let Contention’s marshal/right fielder’s hard roller go between his legs, and Major Perry wound up on third. Masterson then threw five consecutive balls to the Millers’ second baseman, who ran down to first base.
“It takes seven balls before he can take first,” I pointed out.
“That was in ’86, Skip,” the chaplain said. “And it was four strikes instead of three last year, and they counted walks as hits. Who knows what the rules will say next year.”
Course, I figured if the umpire knew the rule about hitting a batsman, he’d know how many balls it took to send a player to first. It was worth a chance, though. Sometimes, you get umpires who don’t know a thing. Not in Contention City, though. They used smart umpires.
I asked for time and went out to talk to Masterson. When my infielders started to join us, I yelled at them to stay put. I didn’t need my boys teaming up against me.
“Walk Cartwright,” I told Masterson.
He blinked and beamed. “You’re with us!”
“No. I want to win.”
Confusion masked Masterson’s face. “You want to put the tying run on second base, Skip?”
“Yeah, because Cartwright has power. Their shortstop hasn’t hit all game. All we need is one out.”
Masterson grinned. He thought he could outsmart me. “All they need is four runs. I could walk or hit Cartwright, the shortstop, and everyone else.”
“You can try to walk that shortstop, and he’ll still strike out. You can try to hit him, and he’ll dive out the way like the coward he . . .” I stopped. It sort of struck me curious that a member of the Millers could be such a coward on the baseball field and a rapscallion who beat men to death in bedrooms. But Contention wasn’t the same Contention anymore.
Something else, something better came to mind.
“You can walk in all the runs, let Contention win,” I said. “And you’d not only be a sucker, you’d be a heel. You’d be cheating all these folks here. You’d crush them. Kill them. They want to see the Millers win. Not the Zephyrs blow it. You let those boys win with walks and hit batsmen, and you’ll just disappoint everyone left in Contention City. So go ahead. Do it your way. Shame these poor folks. Walk Cartwright. If that shortstop after him can tie the score, good for him. That’s baseball.”
Knowing I had Masterson—because I’d just, for once, told the truth—I walked back, squatted, and waited for Masterson’s pitch.
It came, faster than he had thrown since the first inning. Straight across at Cartwright’s belt. Cartwright swung. I cussed. The ball once again sailed over McSorely’s head, but this one went even farther. Three runners crossed the plate, and Cartwright was coming home. The crowd stood, screaming, cheering, but the chaplain started yelling something, too. I kept waiting for McSorely to get the ball, but he just stood at the fence. I didn’t think Cartwright had knocked the ball over the fence. It couldn’t be a home run. Could it?
“Double!” I heard the chaplain. “That is a ground-rule double. Back to second, Cartwright. You—” Our umpire pointed at Contention’s second baseman. “You must return to third base.”
Now, Contention’s faithful in the stands booed the Army chaplain. Major Perry came from the bench to argue.
“Sir,” the ump said, “there is a new rule this year that states if a fair ball bounces over the fence, and that the fence is not more than two hundred and ten feet from home plate, then the hitter must remain at second base.”
That Army man knew everything. The crowd stopped booing. The old man said, “The umpire is correct.”
“So,” I said, just to make sure I understood everything. “The score is now 9-to-8, with two outs?”
“Yes.”
I grinned. The chaplain let McSorely climb over the fence and fetch the ball, and I got ready as Millers shortstop Rotten Willie took his place inside the batter’s lines.
Again, I trotted to talk to my hurler. “Hey,” I argued. “They gave us a good game. Those folks won’t be disappointed now. This’ll be a game they’ll remember, and there won’t be shame in the Millers losing. So don’t be a softhearted sucker.”
Masterson nodded. I went back to catch him.
The crowd roared. Masterson threw a pitch at the waist that the chaplain called a strike. I had to dive to snag Masterson’s next pitch—that’s how bad it was—and heard the ump yell, “Strike two.”
I dusted myself off. Rotten Willie had swung at that pitch? It made me laugh.
Masterson bounced the next one in front of the plate, but Rotten Willie did not swing. The crowd fell silent. Sweat poured down Rotten Willie’s cheeks. Masterson began his windup and fired another pitch. This was a ball, too, way off the plate. Rotten Willie swung. And somehow, his bat connected and sent the ball over Silent Cobb’s outstretched hands as he leaped toward his left. But the professor was running on contact, backing up Cobb, and he snagged the ball in shallow left field on the second bounce.
Contention’s man on third touched home, turned, and waited. That tied the score, but we could win in extra innings. All I had to do was catch the professor’s throw and tag Cartwright out. Winning meant a lot to me. So did the money the Widow Kieberger was stealing.
I saw the baseball clearly. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spied that little urchin, who still didn’t have shoes, still looked dirty, and still clutched that ball he had let Silent Cobb hold the day we got in. I caught the professor’s throw. The Contention player behind me yelled for Cartwright to slide. Cartwright slid. I saw the face of the woman with the parasol. I heard the kid yell, “Slide, Cartwright, slide!” I glimpsed the old man. And I imagined seeing a woman and some men leaving the alley that ran alongside Contention City’s bank. I had real good eyesight and imagination. You need that when you play catcher. I brought the ball down.
“Safe!” the chaplain yelled. “Safe! The runner is safe. The Millers win!”
The place turned into bedlam. Major Perry and his boys exploded off the bench and poured beer on Rotten Willie’s head. The folks in the grandstands cheered and sang and sang and cheered. And they cried.
I couldn’t argue. Cartwright’s toe touched the plate just before I tagged his knee. I made certain of that.
As we shook hands with our valiant opponents, those folks in the stands cheered us, too. A few of us cried, as well.
Even when Major Perry collected our bats, balls, and equipment, my Zephyrs just smiled. A wager’s a wager. We weren’t welshers. I handed Major Perry a hundred-dollar note, too.
“What’s this for?” the major asked.
“Well, some of the folks in this town look like they could use it.”
Tears welled in his eyes. “Our citizens will need this money far more than we shall need your bat-sticks and baseballs, sir, for our future . . .”
That’s when somebody shouted about something going on at the bank.
So, there we sat, waiting for the train to take us up to Benson, sipping hot beer and trying to keep the dirt sifting down from the roof from turning our drinks to mud. Caleb Cartwright came inside, nodded at us, downed a tequila at the bar, and said that the robbers had made off with twenty-three-thousand dollars.
“That’ll finish Contention City,” the barkeep said.
“I’ve already found a job in Globe,” Cartwright said. “Baseball team’s not that good, but it’s baseball.” When Cartwright pulled out a coin, the barkeep said, “No, it’s on me. Loved watching you play these past few years. Maybe I’ll get a job in Globe, too.”
As he walked outside, Cartwright told us we played a fine game, said he thought he was out for sure when he had started his slide.
Twenty-three-thousand dollars. The professor ciphered in his head. “Ninety-two-hundred dollars for us. That takes the sting out of losing.”
“When do we meet the Widow Kieberger?” Hank asked. He spoke too loud ’cause the barmaid was bringing us another round.
“Joyce got married?” Her face beamed.
“Joyce?” I said.
“Joyce Kieberger. Is that who you was talkin’ ’bout? I used to work with her. She got married?” The rest of what she heard saddened her. “And her new husband up and died?”
I needed that bourbon. “The Widow . . . Joyce . . . Missus Kieberger. She wasn’t married . . . while she was . . . working . . . here?”
Hank drank his beer and Skyrocket McSorely’s, too. Both looked as sick as I must’ve.
The barmaid lowered her voice. “Goodness. Girls in our line don’t get married. Not in the towns where we ply our trade.” She started to leave, turned, and said, “If you see Joyce, tell her Dixie says congratulations—and more congratulations if her late husband was real rich.”
When she stood back at the bar, I muttered something that the professor told me was anatomically impossible.
The urchin stuck his head in what once was a doorway to the saloon. “Train’s coming in,” he said. The whistle affirmed his statement.
“You think that widow will pay us?” McSorely asked.
I gave him the look I give Hank when he swings at pitches a mile over his head.
“You think,” the professor asked, “that she might somehow let word out that we were in on this heist?”
“A few telegraphs,” Hank said, “and they’ll figure it out themselves.”
We made a beeline for the depot, passing the Contention City Base Ball Field. Hank, McSorely, Masterson, and I took a detour, but we got on the train all right, and soon were steaming as far away as we could from Major Perry’s ballists, especially Contention’s right fielder.
As we tried to relax in the smoking car, Masterson sighed. “The thing is, we could have beaten those boys. Had them beaten.”
I shook my head disgustedly. Masterson had been among the first to go soft.
“Won’t get another chance now,” Hank lamented. “Contention City’s done for. That team will always be remembered as going undefeated in seven seasons and one game.”
Cobb leaned toward me. “And you owe us our dough. You said we’d be paid win or lose.” That silent third baseman never shut up.
Hank pointed this out: “The deal was we’d get paid when the Widow Kieberger paid Skip.”
“When we get to Tucson . . .” I began, the idea coming over me and making me feel as good as that urchin and those other Contention City folks must have felt after watching their team win that game. “Why don’t we try to play Tucson’s town team?”
“With what?” the professor said. “Thanks to your bet, we lost our bat-sticks, balls, and all our equipment to the Millers.”
Hank chuckled. So did I.
“No,” I said. “The marshal and major led that posse off as soon as they heard about the bank being looted. Most of the Millers rode out with him.”
Hank added: “Left their equipment and ours, too, at the field. We picked it up. All of it. Put it in the baggage car.”
“Major Perry won’t be using those bat-sticks to club anyone to death ever again,” Kent Masterson said.
“Like that ever happened,” Skyrocket McSorely said. “I’d like to use my bat-stick on that widow’s noggin.”
“Now, now,” I said. “You don’t want to wind up in Yuma. And I’m serious. Let’s play Tucson’s team when we get there.”
“Hey,” Masterson said. “Maybe Benson has a team, too.”
“Most towns do,” Silent Cobb said. “We could also play Tombstone.”
I pointed out: “After we beat Tucson, we should leave the territory. Unless you want to play prison baseball.”
“I bet,” Hank said, “we could play the Fat Fellows in Silver City.”
McSorely said: “And there are plenty of town teams in Colorado.”
Cobb and the professor didn’t look so angry now. Cobb even admitted, “We do have a good team.”
“We might even best the Millers’ record,” McSorely said.
Masterson grinned. “The American Zephyrs. For real, this time.”
“No,” I said. “We use that handle, the major and marshal would undoubtedly find us, and even if those boys didn’t beat anarchists to death with bat-sticks, they surely would stove in our heads.”
We thought.
Long before the train pulled into Benson, we had our name.
The American Suckers had a nice ring to it.
Johnny D. Boggs is a seven-time Spur Award winner. The Little League baseball coach, umpire, and former sportswriter lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife and son. His website is JohnnyDBoggs.com.