Central Park’s greenery glowed in the afternoon rays. Twain and I halted our carriage some distance from a gazebo where a band tuned noisily for the Sunday afternoon concert.
“You don’t look the worse for wear,” Twain noted. He wore an ivory-colored linen waistcoat and white silk necktie. A pair of dark glasses—“green spectacles”—perched on his nose.
“Could hardly feel much better,” I told him.
We spread a blanket and settled.
“There’s a good deal about you, Sam, that don’t add up if studied very close.”
I felt myself tensing. “What do you mean?”
“Now don’t get riled. It’s just that I’ve been studying you. I can’t help it, it’s my nature. I pride myself on knowing folks. When I talk about the pilot trade back in my rivering days, I generally lay the claim that I ran afoul of every type imaginable. But God’s truth is, I never met one quite like you—though there were a number who didn’t let on much about themselves.”
“You think I’m hiding things?”
“Think it? I know it! What’s more, it’s like you’re studying how to behave. Sort of like I did when I came here at fifteen, not knowing how to act at all, lookin’ around for signals but keeping quiet and hoping nobody’d notice.”
He looked at me speculatively. “Now, mind you, I’m not criticizing. A man’s business is his own. As a general thing I’m partial to them who consider before starting their jaws. And I’ve observed you enough to see that you manage all right. In fact, for a greenhorn, you make out tolerably.”
He waited for the band to finish a clamorous passage.
“Now, I’ve considered this, Sam. I’ve learned to trust my estimation of my fellowman, and I’m seldom wrong in my judgments.”
I smiled at his earnestness. “What’s on your mind?”
“I want to pass on a tale told to me after a lecture up in Elmira last year. I happened to stick in a warmhearted piece about a certain John Irishman. Well, the next day an old codger appeared at the Langdons’ front door and stirred up such a ruckus to see me that the servants finally gave in.
“I went out and sat on the porch swing and smoked while he poured out everything he had to say. He was Irish himself, and he talked so thick it was hard to decipher him at points. But I got the gist, and once he wound up and pitched into it, he had my hair fairly standing at attention.
“Started off telling me he could feel death coming. Didn’t want to depart with his secret untold. Naturally, I asked what the secret was, but he told me to be patient, it was a mite complicated. And so it was.
“Late in the war, after the two sides stopped exchanging prisoners in ’sixty-three, a surplus of Secesh captives forced the building of more Yankee prisons. In May of ’sixty-four one opened for business in Elmira, right down on the Chemung River. Well, they hadn’t even got barracks up yet; the prisoners lived in tents. During the summer things went along, but once the cold flowed in it was mortal hell. Boys perished from exposure. Smallpox broke out. In the spring of ’sixty-five the Chemung flooded, dysentery got bad, and then to cap it all, they got hit with erysipelas.”
“With what?”
“You’d maybe know it as St. Anthony’s Fire. Head turns red and swells, high fevers and delerium. It spreads like perdition when those with it can’t be isolated—like in a cramped prison. The Rebs got to dyin’ so fast—one out of three during the worst of the pox—that for a spell they were carted off to the cemetery nine at a time, that being how many coffins the ambulance wagon held. It went on around the clock.
“The old-timer knew all about this ’cause he worked in the death house. That was a shack just off the hospital, where he packed the boys in their boxes and did whatever precious little else to prepare ’em for their Maker.
“Now, another consideration during all this is that the Yankee guards were the New York Ninety-ninth Regiment—mostly Fenians who’d survived Meagher’s Irish Brigade in places like Antietam—and they got this plum of a job for the duration.
“Now the Irish, you know, are thick as thieves, and gambling comes as natural to them as breathing. The guards held regular games and often let prisoners in on ’em too. There were a good many Irish Johnnies—people forget that when they claim migrants alone won the war for the North—and sizable amounts of money changed hands, sometimes up in the thousands.”
“How’d the prisoners get money?”
“Oh, they were allowed to receive drafts—drawn on Yankee banks, of course. Some lived fairly high. One in particular, who went through the faro and poker sessions like wildfire, got assigned to burial detail. His name was . . . well, I don’t rightly know it, but he came to be called O’Shea. Mark that, Sam, it’s critical. Before long, working together as they did, O’Shea and the old-timer got to be like father and son.
“Meanwhile, at night, O’Shea and ten others set about digging a tunnel from inside the hospital. By the time they’d burrowed under the stockade walls sixty feet distant, the smallpox siege was at its peak and they decided to make a break right away. But two nights before their target time, O’Shea was cleaned out in a poker game by a Yank sergeant named Duffy. It was generally suspicioned that Duffy cheated and that he’d stockpiled considerable funds since coming to Elmira. O’Shea was bitter. He confided to the old-timer about the game, and also about the breakout. He swore he’d square himself with Duffy before he escaped.
“Then a number of things transpired. The breakout went as planned. Eleven boys were counted missing. Eventually ten were recaptured, and security tightened down considerably. But the eleventh, who had trailed the others through the tunnel, was never seen again. Can you fathom which?”
“Got to be our man O’Shea.”
“The same. Now here’s where it gets right interesting. Duffy was found in his tent, his throat slit. Next to him, a large oak chest had been prized open. Scattered around like chicken feathers were bank drafts and currency—Secesh notes—in the thousands. But missing were thousands more in greenbacks and gold! Upwards of twenty thousand, near as they could estimate.”
“U.S. dollars?”
“Yes, partly in greenbacks—that’s what Yanks were paid with—but mostly in gold eagles and double eagles.”
“Duffy must’ve been one hell of a cheater,” I said.
“Likely so, but there’d often be several thousand sitting in just one pot. Look at it that way, and it’s not hard to calculate him salting away quite a load over a year and a half.”
“What happened to O’Shea?”
Twain chuckled. “For five years now a lot have wondered that. The Fenians are especially curious, since they claim first rights on the money. Rumors had O’Shea getting plugged by a guard the night of the breakout; or making it all the way to Richmond, only to be killed later in the war; or still living today like a god somewhere in the South Seas. In any case, the money never turned up.”
He emptied his pipe and reloaded it leisurely.
“But you know where O’Shea is, I gather?”
“Don’t crowd me,” he drawled. “Story as good as this needs time to spin out to its proper length.”
I lay back on the grass and watched wispy clouds trailing lazily against the sky. Soldiers’ shapes moved among them.
“The old man was in his shack by the death house that night, nervous as a cat. You can fathom his shock when O’Shea staggered through the doorway, bleeding from a mortal wound. What happened was, he’d sneaked in on Duffy and delivered a good lick to his head, figuring it would hold him. But just when O’Shea’d cleaned out all the usable money from the chest and packed it in two big knapsacks, Duffy jabbed a blade in his back. He was trying to repeat when O’Shea grabbed it away and finished him. But it was too late for O’Shea. He died in the old man’s arms.
“Well, the alarm sounded and Hades tore loose. In the confusion the old man made two trips to Duffy’s tent—it was all he could manage to lift one knapsack—and brought the money back to his hut. He spent the next days mourning over the boy, scared to death they’d come in and find the money and blame him for Duffy’s murder. He wracked his mind to figure some way out of his predicament.”
Twain refired the pipe with maddening care.
“What he finally came up with was this: He packed O’Shea into an extra-long pine box—remember, O’Shea wasn’t his name, but that’s what the old man stenciled on the lid to cover his tracks—and he packed the money in quart jars all around the boy.”
“But wouldn’t they check the phony name against prisoner records?”
“I asked him that very question. He told me some prisoners never gave their rightful names at all, just said ‘registered enemy.’ Moreover, the prison hadn’t made any plans for boys dying. First they buried them along the riverbank, till those got swept away in the flooding. At the height of the pox they used communal graves. It was all a tangle. So he didn’t fret about discrepancies—’cause nobody was looking.”
“Well, what happened?” I said. “Did the old man get the money back?”
Twain eyed me shrewdly. “Once I tell you, Sam, the two of us’ll be the only ones alive who know. I want to make a proposition. If you decide to go for the money, I’d want half as my share. Discreetly done, of course.”
“Why cut me in? If the old-timer’s dead, why not take it all yourself?”
“I don’t dare. If it ever came to light I was linked with a grave-robbing scheme, my standing with Livy’s relations’d be blasted all to perdition.” He sighed. “A sultan’s treasure for the taking, and I can’t make a stagger at it. You’re the only one I’ve run into who might be foolhardy enough to take on the job, yet honest enough to trust.”
I laughed at his assessment. “Okay, I promise. I mean, I want to hear what happened. Who wouldn’t? But I can’t see myself robbing a grave.”
“I’ll just leave it with you, then, and expect you’ll keep your shutters up.”
I nodded.
“Well, O’Shea’s coffin was taken up to Woodlawn Cemetery above Elmira. There’s a Confederate section there with over three thousand graves. They weren’t even marked at the time, but luckily an army sexton copied the names off coffins and kept track of burial plots.”
“I just thought of something,” I said. “O’Shea’s folks had no way of knowing what happened to him.”
Twain nodded. “The old man felt poorly over what he was doing to the boy’s family. His notion was to write them in Carolina, once he’d retrieved the money.
“But it never happened. What he didn’t count on was the army keeping a guard posted in Woodlawn’s military section day and night, all through the war—and after. It’s still guarded, in fact.”
“Couldn’t he have said he was kin? Claimed the body and taken it away?”
“He tried,” Twain replied. “They wanted proof. When he came back with trumped-up papers, somebody recognized him and started asking questions. That scared him off. He fretted for a long while, but came up blank. By the time I heard his tale, he’d given off doing it alone.”
“So what did he want you to do?”
“Use my ‘influence’ with city hall to have the guard removed one night.”
“Plant a bribe?”
“Most probably.”
“Would it work?”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
Ten thousand dollars. My half would set me up for a long time.
“Ponder it some,” Twain drawled. “That money ain’t going away. And if it should happen into our hands soon, why, we could boost Freddy’s flying machine and make ourselves rich as all splendor.”
“That’s quite a scenario,” I said. “You got any moneymaking schemes on the ground? Yours’re all above or below it.”
He laughed, winked his foxy wink, and said no more.
The next morning Twain left for Hartford to attend the wedding of Livy’s cousin and pore over final proofs of Innocents Abroad with his publisher, Elisha Bliss. Then he would accompany the Langdons to Elmira. He had intentions, he said, of journeying to California in late summer. He promised to follow the Stockings’ progress in the papers. He said he’d see me again. We shook hands, and I watched his hack clatter away.
I returned to Earle’s, already missing him. Could bare coincidence have thrown us together? Not likely. But what else explained it?
I retreated into the day’s newspapers. Monday, June 14. I’d been back in time for two weeks. It seemed an eternity.
The Stockings were getting more coverage as the victory streak lengthened. After whipping Boston’s champion Lowells and Tri-Mountains, they’d taken on the strong Harvard team. Powered by Waterman’s early homer, they coasted, 30-11. Their record was now 14-0, and Manhattan writers drooled over the next day’s clash with the Mutuals.
Seeing their names in print, I realized that they were my people, the only family I had in this world. I realized something else: I didn’t want to stay in New York. Even in this slower time it was too big, too fast-paced, too impersonal for me. Maybe I could think of a way to stay on with the club.
At 8 p.m. they arrived at the New York & New Haven depot behind Madison Square. I watched as teams of horses drew the New Haven’s straw-colored cars along rails in the street. The city’s ordinance against steam vehicles forced the disconnecting of trains from locomotives fifteen blocks from the passenger station.
Andy ran up and hugged me hard, recoiling when he remembered my wound. I assured him it didn’t hurt. Brainard and George and the others crowded around, marveling at my recovery.
As Andy brought me up to date at the hotel, I kept thinking inanely, He’s the greatest little brother I never had. He said they’d rented boats in Springfield and rowed miles up the Connecticut River; played on Boston Common’s lower parade ground and Jarvis Field in Cambridge; visited the penitentiary at Charlestown; cruised Boston Harbor on a revenue cutter; seen the Peace Jubilee’s grand organ—the largest in America—with pipes so large a man could stand upright in them; been guests at a burlesque, Humpty Dumpty, filled with gorgeous women in tights soaring over the stage in swings.
“But not one of ’em a dinger like the peach we saw in Troy,” he concluded. “I’m freezin’ to cross her path again.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him. According to the papers, Holt was leaving New York for Philadelphia anyway. I described meeting Twain, but Andy insisted that either I was telling him stretchers or I’d been taken in by a humbug. It must have bothered him to think I’d had high times while he’d pictured me suffering in bed.
Champion tried to keep everybody in the hotel that night. It worked with Allison, Hurley, Mac, and Gould—all from outside the New York area. But Brainard and Waterman vanished before supper, and Andy and Sweasy went out with friends from Newark. George took off for Morrisania, a village across the bridge from the Harlem flats where he’d grown up. Harry, ever responsible, stuck around.
I met with Champion and Harry later on. They asked me to recount the details of the shooting. “You’re positive you saw McDermott and Le Caron?” Champion said. “But nobody else? No possible witnesses?”
I shook my head.
“We’d never get a conviction,” he said. “You think it all stemmed from the cash box incident?”
“And the Haymaker game.” I told him of McDermott’s losses.
“I’ve heard the same,” Harry confirmed.
Champion looked as if he wished it would all go away. “Are you safe here, Fowler?”
I took the big plunge and told them I wanted to stay with the club. I’d serve as a sub on tour. In Cincinnati I’d work on marketing and publicity innovations I was sure would prove productive.
“You wish employment?” Champion said incredulously. “But only the first nine are salaried. We’re a club, Fowler. Our affairs are handled voluntarily, by members.”
“I’d like to stay connected,” I persisted. “I’ll volunteer, if that’s the only way. Meanwhile, I’d like to finish the tour.”
“But your injury invalidates you as a substitute.”
“I can play in a pinch.”
“He’s not asking much,” Harry said.
Champion sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Very well, but no further incidents, Fowler. We can’t afford trouble.”
“I didn’t ask to get shot—” I began, and stopped as Harry flashed a look that said to quit while I was ahead.
The next afternoon, in uniforms and topcoats, we took the Fulton St. Ferry across a dark, wind-frothed East River. Mist blurred our surroundings and rain swooped in occasional patters. To my left Champion grumbled about the wretched weather dogging the tour. To my right Millar polished his early dispatch for the Commercial. I looked over his shoulder.
. . . the Knights of the Sanguinary Hose can carry off the palm of victory in each of these contests; but as to whether they will, we must let the caution of good old Captain Harry, who knows the tricks of the Eastern gamesters . . .
Knights of the Sanguinary Hose, I thought. Good God. “All I’ve been hearing lately,” I said cheerfully, “is ‘Wait’ll you country-club bastards tangle with our Mutes.’” I saw Millar and Champion wince visibly at the word bastards. “Are they the toughest club we’ll face?”
“Probably,” Millar said, adding that if we got past the Mutuals today, the powerful Brooklyn Atlantics tomorrow, and last year’s consensus champs, the Athletics, in Philly next week, we might finish the tour undefeated. But those were three formidable obstacles.
“The guys seem pretty relaxed,” I said.
“It’s friendly here, unlike Troy,” Millar said. “Brainard and the Wrights played for New York clubs over the years. Waterman was a Mute only two seasons ago. Andy and Sweasy came up with some of the Mutes’ young ballists.”
“They recruit top players, then?” To me the Mutuals were starting to seem like the all-conquering Yankees of my youth.
“All the city treasury can afford,” Champion said acidly. “Currently around thirty thousand a year, tied up neatly in the rolls of the street-cleaning department. How they pass themselves off as amateurs eludes me.”
“Are they one of the oldest teams?”
“One of them,” said Millar. “It’s agreed that the Knickerbockers were first, but who came next is still debated. Around here were the Gothams and Metropolitans—”
“The Mets!” I exclaimed.
“Yes,” Millar said, eyeing me. “And the Athletics in Philadelphia and the Excelsiors in Brooklyn. The Mutuals formed sometime around ’fifty-seven, in Tweed’s old Americus fire department, Mutual Hook and Ladder Company Number One. They’re Tammany’s darlings, of course.”
Under ominous skies the Williamsburg ball field—it bore the name “Union Grounds,” like so many things now—blazed with color. At opposite ends of the grandstand the Mutes’ and Stockings’ flags flapped like medieval knights’ standards. Besides the Mutes’ rode the coveted whip pennant, signifying their status as reigning champions.
The Mutuals marched onto the diamond: somber, formidable figures in mud-colored long pants and tight-fitting jerseys with white dickeys. They were fully as big as the Haymakers and moved with quick grace warming up.
The crowd’s buzzing struck me as knowledgeable—the speculative, anticipatory sound of people familiar with the game. I said so to Andy as I lobbed the ball, testing my side against the pull.
“They’re in the know here,” he said. “But they got nothin’ over Westerners for lovin’ it. In Cincinnati right now they’re crowdin’ up outside the tobacco shops, Ellard’s Sporting Goods Emporium, and all the newspaper bulletin boards down on Fourth. They’ll stand hushed for hours—and bust loose like Injuns when word comes we won.”
World Series. I thought of Grandpa’s stories of his vigils during the battles with McGraw’s Giants. I remembered myself smuggling a radio to school and listening to games thousands of miles distant.
The sky brightened. The crowd swelled to six thousand. Our white uniforms sparkled on the field, the underdog good guys versus the sinister dark-clad Mutes. I wondered if the pool sellers saw it that way. I asked Hurley as we took seats at the scorer’s table next to our bench.
“Odds favor the Mutes,” Hurley said. “But only five to four. Our reputation’s arrived before us. We’re starting to attract sober attention.”
Harry won the toss and sent the Mutes up. Brainard’s first fastball brought a rising, expectant, full-throated sound from the crowd.
Within hours of its conclusion, this game would be judged the best ever played. Multitudes would claim to have seen it—far more than could fit inside the ballpark. The contest was hard-fought and low-scoring; at the end it was waged in an atmosphere of goose-pimpling, gut-gripping intensity.
It began with Charley Hunt, the Mutual left fielder, grounding to Waterman; jaw bulged by his ever-present plug, the stolid third baseman calmly played the short hop and threw him out. Jack Hatfield next grounded to Sweasy, who lobbed to Gould. Everett Mills topped another grounder to Waterman, who charged it cleanly but pulled Gould off with a high throw. Brainard walked the next Mute, then knocked down a smash up the middle with a snake-quick backhanded move for the third out.
It previewed what would come in most innings: threatening runners, tight pitching, clutch fielding. Brainard’s fastballs, sinking today, were driven repeatedly into the turf by the Mutes’ bats. In all they grounded out eighteen times against six flies. Conversely, Rynie Wolters, their pitcher, threw rising, medium-speed floaters that we clipped underneath, producing sixteen fly outs.
“Wolters reminds me of Jimmy Creighton,” said Brainard, watching him work on George Wright. “Makes the ball look like it’s coming up out of the ground. ’Cept Jimmy was swifter—swifter than anybody.”
“Who’s he pitch for?” I asked.
Brainard gave me an unreadable look. Andy nudged me and murmured, “He’s dead.”
Well, shit.
George popped to Hatfield. Not an auspicious beginning. Our star rarely failed to get on to start a game. Gould drove a scorcher into left center, but Hunt streaked over the grass and took it against his chest, like a football receiver. It brought an appreciative roar (“rapturous cheers,” Millar would write). But the crowd quieted when Waterman took first on an error, hustled to third on a passed ball, and scored on Allison’s bouncer muffed by the shortstop.
Stockings 1, Mutuals 0.
In the third we tallied again. George rocketed a double to left and scored on passed balls by the rattled Mute catcher, who had trouble with Wolters’s rising tosses when he was close behind the plate. Otherwise, pitching and defense smothered all threats. The Mutes held us to five hits total—unheard of among top clubs—and managed but eight of their own.
The game moved quickly as goose eggs mounted. The crowd watched in deepening silence as we shut out their champions inning after inning. At the end of seven it remained 2-0.
I kept my eyes peeled for McDermott or Le Caron. If they were going to strike, it would happen while we were in New York. The derringer was in my topcoat pocket, close at hand. It seemed unlikely they’d attack in front of ten thousand witnesses. But I didn’t rule it out.
Andy was playing superbly. On base in the fourth, he ignored Mills—the Mute first baseman was notorious for distracting opponents with amiable gossip—and promptly stole second. Taking third on a wild throw, he danced down the line, but Mac’s fly stranded him. In the sixth, with two away and runners tearing from the bags, a Mute batter smashed a ball so high that it vanished momentarily into low-hanging clouds. Hurley groaned, thinking it was gone. But Andy retreated to the fence, leaped high, and came down with the ball in his right hand. The crowd moaned in disbelief.
In the eighth, the Mutes got their leadoff hitter on with a scratch single. The next two hitters couldn’t advance him. Then Mills sent a soft looper outside the left-field line. It looked as if Andy had a chance for the foul-bound out. He sprinted. The ball bounced on the turf. He dove, stretched out, one arm extended. His fingers clutched the ball—and fumbled it.
Hurley swore softly and I tried to shake off an uneasy premonition. Sure enough, Mills connected on Brainard’s next pitch, lining it into right and scoring the runner. The next hitter grounded sharply to George for the force. We were out of the inning, but our lead was cut in half. And the chance for a historic accomplishment—shutting out the mighty Mutes—was gone.
Stockings 2, Mutuals 1.
Allison’s leadoff single was the only spark in our half of the eighth. Playing smoothly and confidently now, the Mutes cashed in three quick outs. The stage was set for the ninth.
The silence falling over the diamond was eerie. I could hear coughs in the stands across the field. Then a solitary voice shouted encouragement, and a chorus took it up. It built to a crescendo as the Mute hitter stepped in. Suddenly the tension was too much. Hurley and I scrambled to our feet along with the crowd. The assembled thousands stood and yelled, waiting to see who would falter. Very quickly we saw that it wouldn’t be the Mutes.
Brainard’s fastballs still looked to have full velocity, but the first two batters poked singles over the infield. The next fouled a pitch behind third. Waterman sprinted and lunged, missed by inches, somersaulted, and slammed into a grandstand support. He staggered up, spitting blood and waving off George, who tried to attend him.
The Mute used his second life to push a heartbreaker through the box and past a diving Sweasy. The tying run came home. Mac’s quick throw held the other runners at first and second, but there were still no outs. The crowd danced and stomped and screamed and waved and heaved food and trash and money and hats and umbrellas and coats and canes and scarves and parasols.
“Crap,” I said.
“In a word,” Hurley agreed.
The jubilance was choked moments later when the next hitter lifted a weak pop-up. Waterman moved in rapidly to take it.
“Two, Freddy!” George sprinted behind him to third base. “Two!”
Waterman settled under the ball, cupped his hands—and deliberately let it roll off his fingers. He snatched the ball from the sod, wheeled, and fired to George, who kicked the bag and rammed the ball to Sweasy at second. The chagrined runners were frozen. Double play!
The Mutuals argued vehemently that Waterman had caught the ball before grounding it, but the umpire ruled against him. When the confusion settled, the next Mute stepped in, swung hard, and tipped the ball straight back. Allison sprang high and speared it. He ran from the diamond yelling and holding the ball aloft triumphantly.
We’d escaped. I sat down and breathed again.
Stockings 2, Mutuals 2.
Andy was up. I moved close as he wiped his bat with his lucky rag. His face was taut. I knew he was still down on himself for dropping the foul in the eighth. Jaw muscles bunched, he stalked to the plate. I wanted to look away as he took his stance—feet wide apart, crouched slightly, choking up on the bat—and looked out at Wolters in the crowd’s stillness. He watched a high pitch go by, then got what he wanted. He swung and drilled the ball on a low line toward left. The Mute shortstop jumped, knocked it down, threw quickly. Andy’s legs blurred on the baseline. He left his feet and hurled himself at the bag as the throw came.
“Safe!”
“Yeah,” I screamed. “OH, YEAH!”
Andy looked for Harry’s sign. Steal. He broke for second on the next pitch—and slipped and sprawled. It took half the Mutes to run him down. Andy trudged to the bench, head low and cap pulled down over his eyes. I knew better than to say a word.
“Stir ’em, Acey!” yelled Hurley.
Working his toothpick, Brainard turned smoothly on Wolters’s pitch and rapped the ball safely to left. To our surprise—and certainly the Mutes’—the slow-footed pitcher didn’t stop. Hunt fielded the ball and threw it in without realizing Brainard’s intent. Even so, the cutoff man had plenty of time to nail him at second. But the Mutes’ alarmed shouts must have flustered him. He launched the ball ten feet over the leaping second baseman, allowing Brainard to puff into third.
We hooted and pounded each other. Wolters looked sick; it would take a miracle to hold us now. His very next pitch skidded on the plate and went through the hapless catcher’s legs. Brainard trotted home with the winning run. I hugged Hurley till he sputtered, then lifted Andy and pummeled him till he laughed with the rest of us.
After police had cleared a few maniacs off the field we played the contest to the last out—a nonsensical practice. Sweasy slammed a triple through the Mutes’ dispirited outfield and scored on Mac’s infield out to add a meaningless run—except perhaps to bettors—to our total.
Stockings 4, Mutuals 2.
We stood together, arms entwined, cheering the Mutes, cheering Brainard, grinning and thumping each other, and then singing at the top of our lungs.
“Standing in the central box
The “Brainy” one is found,
He beats the world in tossing balls
And covering the ground.
And as the pitcher of our nine,
He seldom needs to change.
For those will find who play behind—
Our Asa has the range!
Oh, we are a band of ball players
From Cincinnati City . . .”
It occurred to me even then, in the midst of it all, that this heady feeling of belonging, of achieving together, of winning, was high up among the very sweetest things I knew. The others’ faces showed something of the same. That happy circle in the middle of the Williamsburg diamond is burned in my memory.