MAYNARD E. FLYNN JUNIOR sat in his office overlooking the diamond. He was, at last, very close to completing his doctoral degree through the Pacific Northwest Internet Correspondence Program, in which he had matriculated sixteen years before. Better yet, he was even closer to disposing of the Boston Red Sox franchise. As the Globe had discovered, and published in this morning’s edition to the consternation and outrage of all New England, for several months he had been negotiating secretly to sell the club to a consortium of Hollywood luminaries and political activists who planned to move the team to Beverly Hills.
A local group headed up by several former Sox players had also made a bid. In fact, a somewhat higher one. But the big lummox had no intention of selling the club to them.
Working his hand flexer frenetically, Maynard grinned. He loved thinking that he would be remembered as the man who, by eviscerating the Sox and then packing the whole kit and caboodle off to the far side of the continent, had with one bold stroke exorcised the curse that had hung over the team since the sale of Babe Ruth. Now the Nation would never again have to confront their great fear, that the Sox might actually win a Series and leave them with nothing to hope for. At the end of the season the team and their fans would go out in a blaze of defeat, leaving the people of New England happy losers for all time to come.
True, the Sox were somehow currently head-to-head with the Yankees in a battle for the lead in the Eastern Division race, largely because of the Legendary Spence’s brilliant managing. Through a stroke of evil genius, Maynard had brought up Ted Williams’s son, John Henry, who had played several undistinguished innings in a minor-league game in Florida, and insisted that Spence start him in left field. After a long session with Spence in the batting cage before the game, John Henry went 4–5 and belted two balls over the Green Monster. Thus far, that was the way the summer was going. The manager used every Spencerian trick for which he was famous and some no one had ever seen before. To enrage crowds at away games and whip up his own players, he’d patrol the perimeter of the diamond carrying a stick with a nail in the end. The boos descended on him along with the debris thrown out of the stands. “We do not need Mr. Spencer to pick up after the fans of Comiskey Park,” the Sun-Times wrote. Never one to go by the book, Spence signaled notoriously slow runners to steal home, called for the double steal with two outs, started coaching third base himself, and routinely gave runners the green light to try to stretch singles into doubles and doubles into triples, often catching his opponents flat-footed.
Late one afternoon before a night game at the Fen with New York, a tall man, graying at the temples, walked into the clubhouse office carrying a thick book called Einstein's Theory of Relativity and the Mechanics of Pitching, of which he was the author.
He opened this tome to chapter five. “Did you know, Spence, that if we could attain enough speed, we could go back to ’seventy-eight?”
“What the deuce for?” Spence said.
“To play that winner-take-all game with New York over again. Throw Dent something else, an eephus pitch maybe. Or,” the tall man continued, “back to 1920 and persuade Frazee to hold on to Ruth.”
“I’d have to rename my parrot here,” Spence said. “There wouldn’t be any Curse of the Bambino.”
“Macaw,” the bird said indignantly. “Not parrot.”
“With a little time travel,” the author said, “think of the team we could put together. Myself, Yaz, Teddy Ballgame. In the meantime, Stan sent me down to help you out.”
“I like the team we’re putting together, Alien. I’m glad to see you. You feel like killing some Yankees tonight?”
That night the Alien Man, having come out of retirement after more than a decade, beat New York 8–4, throwing a five-hitter.
The lummox wasn’t about to panic. He’d seen the Sox on the brink of success before, and he knew it would come to a screeching halt with the turn of the season and the first cool days and nights of fall. The boys of October the Red Sox were not. Nor had they been since 1918. Nor would they ever be, world without end, amen. Maynard E. Flynn Junior, B.A., M.A., and soon-to-be Ph.D., would see to that.
But shipping the team off to Hollywood was not all the lummox had in mind. By the time the snow flew, as his father used to say, he would have another surprise for the good people of Boston. Because immediately after the last game of the season at Fenway, the new owner intended to convert their “lyric little bandbox” to a museum dedicated to the abject failures of the Sox to win a Series.
In the foyer of this unique sports edifice would be, of course, a life-size effigy of Bucky Dent slapping his three-run homer off feckless Mike Torrez. The rest of the museum would consist of a replica of Fenway Park. Around this diamond the paying public—and if the lummox knew Boston, there would be no shortage of people willing to pay through the nose to see the Red Sox Century of Failure and Despair Museum—could stroll at their leisure. The tall figure of Bill Buckner would be off the grass at first base, stooped low, but not low enough, as the ground ball that should have ended the ’86 Series with a championship for Boston scooted between his sore, aging legs. That this had actually happened in Shea Stadium was not a problem to the lummox; a little magic realism would not hurt the tableau he had in mind. From that same fateful Series he’d have young Calvin Schiraldi on the mound, glove on top of his head, an eternal, agonized wince on his face, having just given up a third consecutive base hit with victory one unattainable out away. And who was this but Teddy Ballgame, frozen in transparent blue-green ice inside a cryogenic tank in the on-deck circle, making an ungracious gesture at the press box. Don Zimmer, one foot on the dugout steps, rubbed the gleaming metal plate in his head that doubtless contributed to his decision to leave Torrez in to get shelled even after Dent’s homer. The psychologically challenged Jimmy Piersall capered buck-naked in the outfield, his fingers wagging from his ears. Yaz stood at the plate, eternally popping out weakly to end everything in ’78. And there would be more, much more, including a darkened night scene of the four-time Cy Young Award winner, All-Star shortstop, American League MVP, and Triple Crown-winning left-fielder, in tatters and chains, being ferried in a skiff along a dark stream by two evil-looking men in Confederate military caps, entitled SOLD DOWN THE RIVER.
The pièce de resistance was already completed. It stood a few feet away from the lummox’s desk, covered with a white sheet. Maynard could scarcely wait to reveal it to Spence, whose clacking spikes he could hear, even now, approaching the door.
Spence gave his cheery shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits knock and stepped inside, the Curse on his shoulder. Maynard pretended to be hard at work on his ever-evolving thesis.
“Well, Junior,” the manager said. “Still studying, I see.”
“A student studies,” the lummox said. “It’s what we do. And kindly don’t call me Junior. I believe that we’ve discussed that on prior occasions.”
The lummox worked his hand flexer and gave Spence and the Curse of the Bambino his fishy stare. Spence wondered what the boy had concealed under the white sheet. Some new weightlifting apparatus, no doubt. He wished the lummox would quit knuckle-punching him and his players in the arm. Awkward though he was, he had a nasty way of catching you right on the muscle, making it smart like a bumblebee sting for twenty minutes afterward.
Junior’s father had been a worthy adversary and sometime friend to Spence. Often, after an exciting win, Spence and the macaw had joined the old owner in his office where, with their good friend Jack Daniel, they would visit and reminisce. The old man would shed real tears and say baseball wasn’t what it used to be and get so drunk Spence would have to drive him home to Revere. One night, as Maynard Senior staggered through the door, he out and peed all over the boy’s mama’s twelve-thousand-dollar Turkish living room carpet, while the mama shrieked steadily and Spence and the child lummox looked on.
“Looky here, Junior,” Spence began.
The lummox let out a great sigh. “I am growing so weary of requesting that you not call me by that detestable cognomen.”
“Look, Maynard,” Spence said, though that didn’t sound right, either, “last night we lost another pitcher for the season. Torn rotator cuff and that’s all she wrote. I’m down to three starters, counting the Alien. What I need here, I need me two, three more arms, we’re going to make a run at the division, much less do anything in post-season.”
“What earthly reason is there to suppose that even with thirty more arms, a ragtag assortment of has-beens, never-was’s and never-will-be’s like your so-called team could possibly ‘do anything in post-season’?”
“Well,” Spence said, “the boys are on a roll, see? Say we take the pennant again. Say we take the Serious. Why, then you wouldn’t need to sell the team. Plus you’d get the credit for bringing the championship to Boston. The thing is, we need to move right now, before the no-trade deadline. After that we can’t bring no more new players on board.”
The lummox put his fingers together, making his little church steeple. “I am well aware of when we cannot sign additional players. Therefore I will give you thirty thousand dollars to use as you see fit. You may buy one thirty-thousand-dollar arm or three ten-thousand-dollar arms. The cash is yours to do with as you wish. A most handsome offer, I should say.”
Spence stared at him, unable to formulate an appropriate reply. The lummox stood up and walked over to the sheet draped over the weight machine or whatever it was. Whipping it off with a flourish, he said, “Don’t you think I’ve just made Mr. Spencer a handsome offer, pater?”
Before Spence’s astonished eyes stood the stuffed figure—he supposed it must be stuffed—of Maynard E. Flynn Senior himself. He was wearing a three-piece suit and his Red Sox cap, and his recriminating index finger was thrust out at Spence as it had been a thousand times when the old man was alive. Spence’s first clear thought was that the taxidermist had done a terrible job. The old man’s nose overhung his lower face by three or four inches, and the eyes were as yellow and feral as those of a caged leopard.
“Wax,” the lummox said. “For my museum.”
Spence felt a tiny wave of relief. Wax was better than stuffed.
“Oh, there’ll be one of you, too,” the lummox said. “Dancing the hornpipe, or something along those lines.”
Spence stared at the lummox. Then Maynard had another inspiration. He reached for the phone on his desk. “Get me my attorney,” he told his receptionist.
With the famous Flynn sneer playing over his lips, he said, “I’m going to make you a sporting proposition, Mr. Spencer. If you can win the World Series this year, I’ll sell the team to the local group. Otherwise, the whole operation, you and your overpriced contract included, will be heading west.”
“If I win the Series you’ll keep the team in Boston?”
“That’s what I said. We’ll finalize it with my solicitor and we’ll make it public. Give those lowly journalists something to write about.”
The lummox put down his flexer and placed the tips of his fingers together. “Here’s the church,” he said. “Here’s the steeple. Here’s Fenway.” He opened up his locked fingers to show nothing but his palms. “Where are all the Faithful?”
So when Spence took three quick steps toward him, thrust out his hand, and said, “You got a deal, Maynard,” the lummox was almost too surprised to knuckle-punch him on the arm, though not quite.