Lindblad glanced over at Hoss putting on his uniform, and noticed the scar running down his chest.
“Damn, get a shirt over that,” he said.
Lindblad was definitely feeling better than he had after losing five in a row. He was relieved that he hadn’t cost Birmingham the chance to host the All-Star Game. Although he and Blue Moon were the only two Baron pitchers not to get in the game—he’d pitched a complete game against Lynchburg the day before—he was gratified that the losing pitcher was the Barons’ nemesis Manly Johnston.
“Please tell me you’re not going to take your shirt off when we go to Hawaii?” he said.
“Hey, don’t jinx it,” replied Hoss.
Lindblad issued a thumbs-up and then pulled an envelope out of his locker and opened it.
“Oh, my God!” he exclaimed, his eyes widening. “You can leave your shirt off, I don’t care now. This’ll buy some sunglasses.
“I can’t wait to show this to Kathy,” he added.
As soon as he walked into the apartment, Paul handed the envelope to Kathy. She gave him a huge hug and then sat down and wrote a quick letter to her mom sharing the good news:
Dear Mama,
Junior just walked in a few minutes ago and handed me $1,000. I thought he had robbed a bank! But it is ours. He got it for going from A ball to double A and remaining 90 days. We won’t have it long as we are paying our air conditioner off which is $250 and paying $500 on the car and saving the rest in case of an emergency. So, you see there is a place for every bit of it as always.
I’m also sending you $207 to pay the bank off and $34 for our insurance and Dr. Baker.
Love,
Kathy, Jr. kids
p.s. Jr. won his last game making his record 7–5 so I’ll send you the clipping later.
Paul finished reading the newspaper and shook his head. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“What don’t you get?” asked Kathy.
He showed her the headline: CITY AND FBI KNOW BOMBERS OF CHURCH HERE. He read a paragraph aloud:
The FBI knows who bought the dynamite, who made the bomb, who placed it there, and who engineered the crime. “We know every detail about it,” said Lt. Maurice House, chief of Birmingham detectives.
“But they haven’t made any arrests,” he said.
“Why?”
“That’s what I don’t get,” he replied. “I guess they don’t have enough evidence.”
“I hope those guys don’t come to any of our games,” said Kathy.
“Guess we wouldn’t know if they did.”
“I don’t want to even think about.”
Lindblad had followed the Birmingham press’s continued fixation on Finley. It seemed as if there was a story about him every other day. Initially, all the stories were favorable, lauding him for establishing the A’s as Birmingham’s parent club, or for his promise to supply the Barons with “the best available talent,” or for his willingness to spend money on young prospects, or even for his threats to sell the A’s if the other owners approved the sale of the Yankees to CBS. The press celebrated Finley as a maverick and a native of Birmingham.
But Lindblad could detect that the bloom on the rose had faded slightly. The way that Finley made the announcement from Kansas City about Blue Moon’s assignment to Birmingham rather than let Belcher make it annoyed the Barons’ beat writers. Finley’s presumption ruffled the feathers of Bob Phillips of the Post-Herald :
If I were Albert Belcher I’d issue a cease-and-desist order to Charlie Finley suggesting that he has enough problems elsewhere without disturbing a very successful operation at his Birmingham outpost.
But Lindblad wasn’t interested in taking sides in any tension between Finley and the Barons. He was just glad to have gotten his check for a thousand bucks from Kansas City, and hoped that after paying off the bills he’d have enough left over to buy Kathy and the girls new swimsuits for Hawaii.