JIM! ME! CALLING FROM the big leagues! You know, them leagues Ty Cobb and Warren Spahn was in! Woooo!
I know it’s great. Jim, you would not believe tonight. I got a nickname, I—Yeah, I’ll call Pop. But I can’t tell him all of it. Don’t want to disillusion Pop about the BIG LEAGUES.
No, it’s not—Just let me tell you. It is late, isn’t it? Is that the baby crying? Shit, I’m … You shoulda been up here, Jim. Waiting to show me around. Like in Little League and high school. If it hadn’t been for your knee. Yeah.
I’m going to tell you. Yeah, sort of drunk. In New York. Jim, I ain’t going to get mugged. You’re worse than Pop. No, I just mean—listen, I walk in this afternoon. Right? Visiting clubhouse YANKEE DAMN STADIUM, Jim. Summoned up by the Techs.
Course, yeah, we didn’t exactly grow up drooling to be Techs. Cause there wasn’t any then. But if the Dodgers’d held on to me I’d still be in Lodi. Techs pick me up, this Perridge breaks his leg, and I get a CALL, Jim.
Only thing, to get here, I have to grab two buses and a redeye. And I walk into the dressing room with zip sleep. And first thing, this Spanish guy jumps on my back. Yelling, jibdyjibdyjibdy, ninety miles an hour. Then this bald black guy with a big gut who is stepping real painfully into his pants yells across the room, “Ju-lo get off the man’s back! He don’t even speak Spanish!”
“Jibdyjibdyjibdy espik Esponish!?” the guy yells. And he gets off me, like he’s pissed I’m not bilingle, and he goes to his locker and I see the name, it’s Julio Uribe! You remember, played second for the Orioles a couple years and bounced around, yeah. And—Jim, the fat guy is Boom Holmes! “God DAMN my feet!” he yells, and that’s my greeting to the Techs.
Except just then I meet my Peerless Leader. Berkey. Yells out from his office, “Who you!” Jesus who’d he think I was, I’m the only guy got sent up. I go in, kind of salute, like reporting to duty, only he don’t laugh. He is sitting there eating a—looks like maybe a Franco-American-spaghetti sandwich, real wet, and there’s a big bottle of Maalox on his desk, and he looks at me like I’m already overpaid. “Can you mbunt?” he wants to know. Is all he wants to know. I don’t know whether he can manage, but he has a lot of trouble with his b’s.
“Yeah,” I say. He’s a big sumbitch but a real old sour-looking guy, Jim, looks like Mr. Wiedl used to teach us history and be pissed all the time because we didn’t care about the broad sweep of the great human saga. Only Berkey I guess is pissed because the Techs just about got a lock on last place in June. Yeah.
Anyway, what Berkey does, he grabs me by the arm and drags me back out into the dressing room and hollers at everybody, “This guy can mbunt! He prombly can’t play, but he can mbunt!” And he goes back in his office with his wet sandwich.
And I’m standing there. Clubhouse guy shows me my locker—I’m dressing next to Hub Kopf. Yeah, right. He is talking to Junior Wren. Yeah, used to have the crippled-children commercial. And here’s what they are saying:
“Your niece! How could you … ?”
“Axly it was more my half-niece,” says Junior Wren.
“How the fuck … ?”
“Anyway she was adopted, I think.”
“You think. You didn’t know?”
“Anyway she was in these little shorts and halter and she had this raspberry wine … and I gave her a little bump. Next morning I felt so bad, I quit smoking.”
Here I am hearing this shit from guys was All-Stars once, and meanwhile I am wasted. “I’m Reed Ives,” I say. Cause I’m new in this whole organization, they don’t know me. “I’m wasted,” I say.
“Welcome to the AL,” says Junior. “Have one.” And he gives me a pill.
So—no, I wouldn’t ever depend on it, no, but anyway I pop this thing, and then I ask, “What is it?”
You’re right … but—anyway, “Five milligrams,” he says.
I never did half that! And I’m sitting there thinking, “Oh Jesus. Five milligrams.”
And the next thing, I’m on the field running all over like I’ve had twenty hours sleep. Playing pepper, taking grounders, little b.p.—yeah, I got ahold of a couple pretty good—and then, though, the game starts.
And I’m sitting. And I’m, you know, VAW-AW-AW-AWM. There’s these billions of dollars’ worth of Yankees out there a few feet in front of my face, and I’m jumping up, getting water, sitting back down, jumping up, taking a leak and thirty thousand people are screaming all up above and behind me and Junior Wren is looking over and nudging Hub Kopf, and they’re giggling, and Berkey is glaring at me. Cause I’m not even seeing the game. I’m sitting there exploding thinking, “Five milligrams!”
And suddenly Berkey grabs me, drags me off into the tunnel. I can’t believe it, I’m about to fly into smithereens and Berkey is yelling, “If you tell anymbody what I’m mbout to tell you I’ll mbeat your ass”
I’m going Whaaaat and he’s saying, “Mbefore I was mborn my father was hunting with a preacher named Harding Earth. That preacher stood up at the wrong time and my father shot him in the temple, killed him outright. Preacher was to mblame mbut my father swore right then he’d have a son, and name him Harding Earth mBerkey and have him mbe a preacher. He had that son. It was me. Only he never told me. Till the day he died. He told me then. He told me he had done everything in his power, without telling me, to make me grow up to want to mbe a preacher. Mbut I grew up to want to play mball. That’s how much I wanted to play mball. If you don’t want to play mball, I don’t want you around.”
And he leaves me and I ease back to the bench with my brakes jammed on, and I’m sitting there dazed next to Roe Humble—yeah, he’s okay—Humble says, “He give you the shoot-the-preacher story?”
And I just nod and I have no idea the status of the game and next thing, Berkey is standing in front of me, trembling. And he says, “Let’s see you mbunt.”
And he’s sending me up! I don’t even know who I’m hitting for. I’m in the game! Against—you know who pitched tonight for the Yankees?
Tommy Damn John. My first up in the big leagues. Only, I’m not thinking Tommy John. I’m thinking, “Five milligrams!”
And here comes this pitch—well, you know Tommy John don’t waste any time but it seems to me he is idling very low, and I’m jumping up and down and “Five milligrams!” and here comes this dippy-do sinker, wandering up to the plate like its heart’s not in it, and I square off to bunt, which in my present state means I am holding the bat like it’s an alligator, and, dum, de dum, Sink, the ball drops and I miss it a foot.
Yeah. I know Pop taught us. But—and the same thing happens the second pitch. “Five milligrams!” is blasting in my head and then, oh-and-two, he wastes a fastball up and away. And you know, Jim, I like that pitch. I could even hit you, when I was nine, and you threw me something up there. Went with it. And Jim, I got it all.
Jim, I took Tommy John out of Yankee Stadium at the three-eighty-five in right center. Two men on, we’re only behind one run for some reason, and WOOOM I put us ahead. I’m circling the damn Yankee damn Stadium bases, and you know, on the postgame shows they always ask ’em, “What were you thinking about, rounding the bases?”? I’m thinking, “FIVE MILLIGRAMS!”
And I cross the plate and Boom Holmes gives me a high-five—Boom Holmes gives me one, Jim—which, a high-five, is appropriate as shit. And he says, “I didn’t know you was that strawng.”
And all I can think to do is, now everybody’s slapping at me, is open my mouth and holler, “FIVE! FIVE!”
And Junior Wren and Hub Kopf are rolling around in the dugout, and acourse, what the hell, we don’t hold the lead, Jim. But in the dressing room afterwards everybody is hollering, “Five!” “The Big Five!” “Five Ives!”
“Why’re you calling him Five?” this reporter asks Boom, and he says, “Well, that’s ghetto talk, you know. That’s some street talk, there. Means … Means he got the full five faingers on it, you know,” and Junior Wren and Hub and Uribe and everybody else except maybe Berkey knows the truth—they’re yelling, “Full Five.” “F. F. Ives.” And—
Well, yeah, I guess it is a shame, sort of. Never know, yeah, whether I could’ve done it just straight, first time up. Yeah. But, Jim, you know, if I’d been straight I’d’ve sacrificed.
You’re right, that’d been sound baseball.
So, yeah. So, sorry I woke the baby—tell Sharon. I guess I better go, I’m in this restaurant somewhere. I’m still up, Jim. And Jim, there’s this honey at the bar—
Yeah, maybe they don’t call them honey in New York. I’ll call her something else.
I took Tommy John out of the Stadium, Jim! No, not all the way out, nobody ever—I know. But that’s the expression … uh-huh.
So … Well, thanks. I will. I’ll watch it. Yeah. Hey Jim, don’t, you know, don’t tell Pop.