“Before I throw this open to questions, I have an announcement to make,” George Bremenhaven said on that gray L.A. morning.
I can tell you what the weather was because I was there. George asked me to come. Ordered. All of this at one in the morning, the usual hour for a George Bremenhaven phone call. The man has the social life of wallpaper. I stumbled around my tongue and told him I didn’t want to go to Los Angeles even to see Michelle Pfeiffer and he made it clear I couldn’t refuse. Charlene was right. I was already in his web, which he had just barely started spinning. But I was stuck.
All right. I went to L.A. for two reasons. One was that George popped for the room and air fare. The other was that I was curious about what was going to happen to Dr. Johnson next. Boswell needs eyewitness facts, not watching everything on C-Span.
No, the third reason was that I still had it half in mind to bam George for setting me up. Charlene had got under my skin with what she’d said about me, about George making me the scapegoat and the Judas goat, and I thought if I saw George, it might just remind me to pop him in the chops.
I didn’t, of course. George, if he cared, probably knew that.
Another thing I have to explain about George is that he’s a Republican and the guys in the White House were Democrats. I figured that out by myself before I ever went to L.A. He was a patsy for them in just the way I was a patsy for George.
(I picked up that “patsy” from old movies, not that they talk that way anymore in New York City. Even the cab drivers in New York ain’t colorful, unless you consider scary colorful. They’re all foreigners anyway; they only speak in foreign, so maybe if I understood foreign, they’d be colorful. You go down Broadway, you don’t see guys and dolls and people who talk like that. You see colored guys selling junk jewelry on the sidewalk and towel-heads running delis. Where’s the color in that? The whole country is bent on speaking like they speak in Omaha. I read one time that all the 800-numbers are in Omaha because Omaha people are smart and speak clear English, which means no accent when they answer the phone, so there’s nothing to offend anyone from any part of the country. Take Johnny Carson, he’s from Nebraska, but if I were to ask you where he was from, you’d have a hard time remembering because he doesn’t sound like he’s from any place at all. Who would have thought it came down to talking like Omaha?)
That tangent comes from thinking about George and everything George puts everyone through. It makes you crazy.
To get back to it: George made me have dinner with him that night in the hotel and the closest I came to punching him was telling him about the letter from Miss Roxanne Devon to Charlene Cleaver and about the IRS man coming around Jack Wade at the dealership.
“I don’t know anything about that shit,” George said, eating a very unhealthy charbroiled steak. He stabbed a piece of the steak and made it disappear. While he was chewing, I said very calmly:
“You’re full of shit, George. You’re just the kind of evil son of a bitch who would do something like that. Like this kid I knew, pulled the wings off butterflies. To see what they would do when they couldn’t fly anymore.”
“You are not a butterfly, Ryan. You’re an employee.”
“Why’d you want to mess me up with Charlene?”
“Why would I want to do that? And what about this Roxanne Devon, you fucking her?”
“There ain’t no Roxanne Devon, which you know anyway. And where would you get a name like that?”
“I had an aunt named Roxanne once.” He tried to look wistful then, like one of those kids drawn on eating plates that get sold to collectors for anything but eating. “She’s dead. I always liked that name,” George said, chomping another piece of steak.
“Why Jack Wade?”
“Who?”
“George, I know you did it.”
“Prove it.”
“It’s a federal offense to pretend to be a federal officer … I think.”
“Is it really?”
“George, you have a reputation for cavorting with unsavory people. I mean, besides your fellow owners.”
“That’s not true,” he said. He was getting whiter in the face and he was chewing harder, which means I was getting to him. I relaxed a little and turned on a smile.
“So you were afraid I would go back to Houston and stay there and tell you the hell with the contract.”
“I wasn’t afraid, Ryan. You’re too in love with baseball and money to do something like that. Besides, you’d be lousy selling cars, believe me.”
“How would you know?”
“I wouldn’t buy a car from you.”
“I wouldn’t sell you one.”
“On principle, right?”
“Something like that.”
“Ryan, you don’t have any principles. Look, you’re here, eating my food, drinking my wine. A man of principle wouldn’t do that.”
“You’re drinking a martini and I’m not eating steak.”
“Same thing.”
“George, why’d you invite me here?”
“Why do you think?”
“Because you’ve just about sold off the team with no sign of hiring anyone.”
“More than half. Just got a couple more. My lawyers are looking into the Cookie Coletti contract. I think I can can him without paying for it.”
“George, you are really a shit.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said that. Normally, once would be enough, I would have let you walk. But I’m generous tonight. It must be the wine.”
“George, that’s a martini.”
“Same thing. How can you be Boswell if you don’t hang around Johnson?”
“If I knew I was gonna have to spend social time with you, I would have asked for a raise.”
That rolled right off. Another chomp of steak. The steak actually looked good, not that there was anything wrong with the redfish, but the steak actually looked very, very good. Why the hell hadn’t I ordered a steak? Charlene wasn’t here, she wouldn’t know. Except it might stay on my breath.
“But you didn’t ask for a raise. The reason you didn’t was that your agent Sid was trying to shop you last season and you got no takers. And you still want to be in the Show.”
“Well, that’s water slopped out of the trough. What are you going to do, George? You make that announcement that I think you’re going to make and you’re going to be dog meat.”
“Really? Among whom?” He said it just like that, with arrogance and coolness in his voice.
“Everyone. The fans, press — I told you that before.”
“Listen, Ryan. I’m going to reveal something to you that no owner has ever told one of his employees.”
He paused for dramatic effect.
“I don’t give a shit. Because I know fans and I know press. Who are the beloved owners? Bill Veeck? Right. Never won shit, so he turned on the charm.”
“He won in Cleveland. And the ‘59 White Sox.”
“Same thing.” That didn’t make sense, but George wasn’t paying attention now. He was fixing his little Gila monster eyes on me and not letting go.
“I know fans, Ryan. You finish third, you’re a bum. You appear in the field and they boo you even if you were announcing a fund to save a kid with cancer. It goes with owning. But win and they might not love you, but they respect you. They back off. They say, ‘Well, that old George Bremenhaven is a son of a bitch, but he gets things done.’ Fans pile up all their resentments in life on the owner of the team they follow. That’s a fact. Win, and your shit doesn’t stink. Lose nobly and they’ll bury you in a concrete bridge in New Jersey.
“Now, media. Press — the sporting press — is just the same, only more vicious. You get a winner, especially in New York, they’d let you walk down Fifth Avenue in a dress and find a way to explain it was the latest in macho fashion. Lose and they can’t wait to get you, even get you indicted, encourage lone gunmen to stalk you, burn your house, shoot your dog. Press are vicious and they’re so used to it, they don’t know they are. They think they’re the good guys, the arrogant cocksuckers. Even if you win, like I said, you can’t really take all the credit for it, even if you deserve it.
“It’s a no-win situation, Ryan, which any owner knows from the start. So we don’t play that game. You don’t like the way I run a team, buy me out. You listen to the shit on WFAN in New York? Whiny little losers call in whose high point in life is to go to the Stadium and boo the millionaire players and then get on talk radio to pretend they’d be better owners. I don’t listen to whiners, Ryan, or take advice from cheerleaders, so that’s why I don’t give a shit what the press or the fans think about me.”
It was quite a tirade, but he delivered it in a low voice so it didn’t get circulated around the room. I wished I had ordered steak, I was feeling that miserable. Like an ex-smoker facing a crisis without a weed nearby.
All I could say was, “Well, George, I got no part of it. Just send me my check on time.”
“You got no part of it? Man, you’re in it up to your asshole,” George said with a non-amusing chuckle. Charlene had said something similar.
“I don’t see how. I don’t own the team. I don’t tell you what to do.”
“But you’re my number one boy, Ryan, on and off the field.”
“I think I’ll just throw up quietly, here, in place,” I said.
“Come on, get some balls,” George said. “It won’t be that bad, I promise you.”
Like all promises, especially from owners, this one was flawed in ways I didn’t even guess at that night.
The next morning, George did his announcement in the Century Room in the hotel. There was a good crowd from the press, because he had put out sweet rolls and a wet bar. Also because the sporting press wanted to see what it was that George could explain he was doing all fall, getting rid of players.
I sort of slunk in, toward the back. Besides the press, there were scouts from the other owners with their own tape recorders. No one from the League was there that I could see, but that didn’t mean anything because I don’t rub shoulders with the bureaucracy.
Not usually. Except that time I took Catfish’s advice about playing chin music on this first baseman from Kansas City and ended up beaning him instead. Well, the son of a bitch was practically hanging over the plate — what could I have done and kept my self-respect? But I got a hearing and a fine anyway and five games suspension. On the other hand, I didn’t have a lot of hitters crowding me the rest of the year.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a historic moment for major league baseball. We wish to help our government in its quest to pursue a rational foreign policy in a new world age,” George began, reading from a paper.
This set the crowd buzzing. It was exactly the way I felt when George first asked me if I spoke Spanish. I’m sure some of the reporters were hoping that George was about to deep-six himself or reveal he wore ladies’ underwear. I was hoping.
“In full cooperation with the State Department, we are going to be the first in opening a new bridge to our one-time friend and long-time enemy. I am announcing the end of the cold war in Latin America.”
This is pure George, if you’ve never heard him. He?s like an ocean liner that sails into a dock hard and insists the dock was in the wrong place.
“This spring, we will introduce the American public to the most exciting concept ever in baseball history,” he rambled on, “The public, the ordinary fan, has complained for years that baseball has become too high-priced for the ordinary fan, and I have listened to the man in the street and I agree with him wholeheartedly. We don’t need million-dollar ball players to play million-dollar baseball What we need are people whose love for the game transcends mere money. We don’t need more bloodsucking agents sending ticket prices soaring. So, the first thing I want to announce is a ten percent reduction starting next April in ticket and season ticket prices at Yankee Stadium in the Greatest City in the World.” He paused for effect, and then, like he was there, said, “New York!” This does not get much of a response in the rest of the country, but George wouldn’t know that. On the other hand, he was reducing ticket prices. No one ever did that.
“Mr. Bremenhaven,” a reporter began.
“Just shut up a second, willya? Gimme a chance to finish,” George said.
He went on, “Through the offices of our State Department and in negotiation with the government of Cuba, New York next year will have the most exciting baseball team since the 1927 Yankees. I am bringing to this country for the first time in decades the best and brightest of the young men who play baseball in Cuba, the greatest baseball nation in the world after our own great nation. This is not about ideologies but about sports. Although I trust that those young Cubans will see the wonders of America and the wonders of New York and be able to go back home next fall with stories to tell their grandchildren about America.”
Man, the guy was on a roll, he was piling up nonsense on nonsense the way he did when he really believed in something. This seems to be a common trait among true believers.
“The New York Yankees organization is committed to excellence, no matter how much it costs. We are committed to the common fan and the price he has to pay. We are committed to global peace and the diplomatic resolution of our differences. We are committed to winning the American League pennant, not in five years or three years or someday soon, but next year! We are committed to bringing together on one team the best and the brightest, the finest and fairest, of what everyone knows is the baseball-lovingest nation in the world except for our own. Now, are there questions?”
Only about ten million. I love it when I see a bunch of reporters step on one another’s lines trying to be first. Sort of like watching people waiting at a luggage carousel after a five-hour coast-to-coaster that came in ten minutes after midnight.
George was ready. He was really enjoying it. Yes, he said, he was committed and he was getting rid of his old team not to save money but to commit to excellence. Guy sounded like a teacher I had once.
“How can we deal with Cuba, when we don’t have diplomatic relations with Cuba?”
“We are not dealing with Cuba directly. We are dealing with third parties in Mexico City, our allies in the great North American Free Trade Association. That’s what this is about. About a day when our children will be able to walk the streets of Havana —”
“They can’t walk the streets of Miami,” said a smart-ass from Newsday.
“I don’t care about Miami, I care about the Greatest City in the World,” George said, Hushing.
“Who authorized this?” said the Daily News,
“I authorized this,” George said, seizing the mantle of government. “I own the Yankees.”
“I mean, who says we can deal with Cuba?”
“Didn’t you hear anything, you fucking asshole? I said we’re dealing with Mexico.”
“For Cuban ball players.”
“Are you a racist?” George said.
“Are you crazy?” the Daily News responded.
So it went on and on and the questions got narrower and narrower and I was sort of half-dozing, standing there with a paper cup of coffee in my hand.
“How will you communicate with all these players, who you say don’t even speak English?”
It was the guy from the Los Angeles Times. It was a smirky question. The New York Daily News guy had asked the same thing before but in a different, furious way that just made George go off the deep end and answer it with no answer at all. The L.A. guy didn’t really care, but everyone likes to watch a train wreck as long as he isn’t in it.
“I’m glad you asked. Standing over there with that cup of coffee — heh, I hope it’s coffee — heh heh — is the man to answer your questions, because I want to announce that I have re-signed my star reliever Ryan Shawn, a good old boy from Texas who has been with the Yankee organization for the past eleven years. You want to answer him, Ryan?”
No, you miserable son of a bitch, you sandbagging sack of shit. I spilled some coffee on the front of my slacks.
The press turned like the Marine Corps band doing a right wheel. It was that precise.
I was certainly the center of attention at that moment and I hated it.
“Uh,” I began.
Now, ball players learn how to talk to the sports press right off. All you say is stuff like “We can do better” and “Team has no / in it” and “I’ve been working my way out of this thing” — crap that doesn’t mean anything. But this press was going to be vicious no matter what I said.
“Uh, George there, uh, Mr. Bremenhaven, he wants me to help translate on the field.”
“Do you speak Spanish?” asked the Kansas City Star guy, the same son of a bitch who once said I was a beanball hitman just because I plonked the first baseman on the Royals. Cheerleading son of a bitch.
“Well, it’d be a little hard to translate on the field if I didn’t, wouldn’t it?”
That was the wrong thing to say. The rule is that the press gang can smart-mouth you but you can’t do the same back.
“What I meant was,” the snot from K.C. said, “the Cubans speak a form of Castilian Spanish, affected somewhat, with a tendency to lisp. This is attributed to the affectation of the upper classes in Spain to speak in the manner of Philip the Second, who lisped badly. So what I meant was, there’s Spanish and there’s Spanish. Just because you understand Mexicans doesn’t mean you’d understand Castilians.”
“Shit, pardner, I don’t even understand you,” I said. Now that got a laugh because it had to and there are a few press guys, here and there, who still got a sense of humor. But I was going to pay for it, I knew it.
“How do you feel about dealing with Communists?”
“I dunno, I never have.”
“But you’re going to. Do you feel you’re betraying your fellow baseball players?”
“Some of them are Communists.”
“Which ones?”
“Sy Edelman with Kansas City, for one,” I said, naming the first baseman I had beaned long ago.
“You know that for a fact?”
“It’s why I beaned him,” I said. “Doin’ my bit.” But it was wrong, what I was saying. I was trying to keep it light, but these boys who write about sports, they want everything heavy. Who gives a shit who’s a Communist? There are no atheists on pitcher’s mounds. Or something.
I got it two or three times in a row about didn’t I feel I betrayed my old teammates by staying and how long did I know about this plan, and was I a Democrat or Republican. Bam, bam, bam, like coming in to do long relief in the fifth and losing the lead on doubles to three sorry-ass hitters at the bottom of the lineup. Makes you want to throw up. About the only thing they didn’t ask me was how long my dong was.
Finally, to save myself, I did the only thing I could think of: I headed for the tunnel, which in this case was the double door at the back of the conference room. I even dropped my cup of coffee, which, thank God, was coffee or some writer would have had it analyzed to see if I was drunk at eleven in the morning.
Leaving was also the wrong thing to do because it looked like I was evading questions. I was, but not for the reasons they thought. Hell, I was never so good that I had to face the high-profile media. Just drop in a quote like “I was lucky out there today” every now and then. They scared hell out of me, was all. I looked back once and saw George up there, having the time of his life watching me get it.
Judas goat.
I needed to call Charlene real bad and cry in her beer. I needed to see what I could do next to get myself out of this.