THE camp was like a dream. It was night, and I could not see it too well, yet I could feel how big it was, and how it stretched away towards the beach. The moon shone down, and I could see the flat land beyond the barrackses where we was all to sleep, and the next morning I could see that the flat land was all baseball diamonds, 1 after the other as far as the naked eye could reach.
I walked clear through Aqua Clara when I got off the train. It was quiet, and I did not see many people on the street, and finally I come to the camp according to the instructions in the letter. It was an air field for the Army during World War 2, and then the Mammoths bought it from the Army, but it still had the fence around it the way they do to keep the spies out and the soldiers in, and there was signs directing you to the main gate, and I followed the signs, and there was a guard at the gate. “What is your business?” he said. He shone a flashlight in my eyes.
“I am Henry Wiggen,” I said.
“Are you a ballplayer?” he said. “Leave me see your letter.”
I took out my letter and showed it to him, and he checked me off on a list and told me I was in Barracks Number 10, Bed 5. “Ain’t anybody showed up yet?” I said.
“No,” he said. “There is 1 n—r. He is in the same barrackses as you.”
I wondered who he was. I knowed before I ever seen him that the odds was that he was a good ballplayer. The reason is that 9 times in 10 your good ballplayer is your early ballplayer. It is true. I will sit in any clubhouse and watch, and I will tell you who are the strength of your club, for I will notice who comes early and stays late, and who hustles out and watches the other club drill and sizes them up, and I said to the man, “I do not know that fellow but I will bet you he is a pretty fair country ballplayer.”
“Maybe so,” he said, and he shone the light down the lane between the barrackses and flashed it on Number 10. “There is a light on your left as you go in,” he said. “Good luck.”
“Good night,” I said, and off I went and in through the door of Number 10 and found the light and switched it on. There was about 30 beds, all made up for sleeping, all of them empty but Number 7, and I made a good deal of noise with my bags so as to wake him, and he woke and sat up in bed. He was all naked. He always slept naked, for it left his skin breathe. Yet when he was in the money he begun to wear pajamas. That was later, though, and now he was naked, and he give me a big smile and I give him 1 back, and he give me his name, which was Perry Simpson, and I give him mine, and I sat down on the edge of the bed marked 5 and pulled off my shoes and begun to strip down, and he watched me, and he said, “A southpaw.”
“That is right,” I said.
“Well then,” said he, “you ain’t in competition with me, for I am a second baseman.”
“That is a lucky thing for you,” I said. I undressed, and then I went down and switched off the light, and we talked a long time, and it turned out that Perry was straight from high school in Colorado where he busted all records, batting .675 the year before and running the 100-yard dash on the track team. He come away from school with more medals then he could use, and about 2 weeks after graduation was signed by Jocko Conrad, the same as me. He told me his whole life history, and then I told him mine. I was about halfway through mine when I heard him breathing deep, for he had fell asleep. But I did not care, for I was tired anyways, and it is no matter, for between then and now we told each other our life history back and forth many times over.
In the morning, when I woke, he was sitting on his bed and looking at me. The sun was shining in on him, and he was all brown and red and fresh from sleep, and his teeth was white when he smiled. He was sitting in his underwear, and I asked him if he was hungry, and he said he was, and I said I would take a shower and then we would go for breakfast, and I went down to the end of the barrackses and showered and come back and dressed. But he did not dress. I said, “If you are going to breakfast in your underwear you are not going with me.”
“I do not think I will go to breakfast,” he said.
“Are you sick?” I said.
“Maybe you will bring me some breakfast,” he said, “for I cannot go on account of the regulations,” and he give me a thermos that he kept under his bed amongst his gear, and some money, and I asked him could he loan me a dollar until I could lay my hands on some cash, and he give me 1 and I left the camp and went down about 4 blocks to a place called Aunt Jennie’s Old Southern Fried Food Heaven which I remember the name because I took a menu and kept track on the back of what I owed Perry, and I ate 1 dollar’s worth and with the other ordered the same for him and wrapped it up in napkins, and Aunt Jennie herself filled up the thermos.
After the camp got under way there was a regular cafeteria. It was run by the Mammoths in the building that was a mess hall during the war. They sold food there so cheap that it is a wonder old man Moors did not go broke. After about 10 days, when many of the rookies was cut loose, we all ate there as free as air, and Perry as well, but up until the time the camp got started he did not go out and eat on account of the regulations. Personally I think them regulations are pretty damn scurvy.
He ate all the hash I brung him. Then we went down to the latrine and set there awhile. By now the sun was out bright and strong, and we got in our suits. I put on my Perkinsville suit, and he wore an old uniform that he wore in the factory leagues in and around Denver. It was a little tight, for he had growed some over the winter. He had an old ball amongst his belongings, and we went out of the barrackses and over to 1 of the diamonds and begun to throw back and forth real easy.
There was nobody there but 1 fellow all bundled up in a rubber shirt. He was jogging along by the fence, and I did not get to see his face, and he did not look at us. He done about 3 turns around the field, and then he slowed down to a walk, and he walked very slow, like he was thinking deep, and then he come up behind me, but I did not know it, and he stood there watching us throw. I do not know what finally made me turn around, but I did, and it was none other then Sad Sam Yale.
“Sad Sam!” I shouted.
He just stood there. His face was wet, like he was fresh out of a shower, and he was breathing fairly heavy and all wrapped up in his rubber shirt with a towel around his head, and I could not think what to say, and I said, “Sam, you are fatter then in your pictures.”
“God damn you,” he said. “That ain’t hardly exactly news.”
“Sam,” said I, “I am Henry Wiggen. I am a pitcher. I am proud to meet you,” and I went over to him and took off my glove and stuck out my hand, and he took it, and he smiled a little with 1 corner of his mouth. “Perry,” said I, “come here and meet Sad Sam Yale,” and Perry strolled over very slow.
“I am pleased to meet you,” Perry said.
Sam said to me, “If you ever get anywheres in this game remember that a good pitcher can kill himself in the winter time. I put on 15 pounds this winter and killed my damn self and maybe took 3 years off my playing days as well. I am an old man rushed in my grave by women and liquor. Give them the wide go-around and keep in the out of doors all winter.”
“I know,” said I, “for I read it in your book.”
“Some day I have got to read that book,” said Sam, “for I have got to find out where I done wrong.”
“You have not done wrong,” I said. “You are an immortal. You are a great pitcher, and if I am half as immortal as you I will consider that I done good.”
“I have got to get back to the running,” he said.
“A week of good hard running and you will be down to weight,” I said.
That was not the exactly right thing to say. “God damn you!” he said, but he smiled a little and started off on a trot again, and me and Perry throwed some more. Soon I was loose. I felt like the middle of summer, and Perry said the same. “But we have got to take it gradual at first,” he said, and soon we stopped throwing and went back to the barrackses. We showered, and we sung in the shower. He said I had a good voice, and I said I must of got it from Pop, and he said he bet Pop was a wonderful sort of a fellow, and I said he was, and I told him all about Pop and all about Holly and Aaron Webster.
I went down for lunch at the same place and brung back 2 whole lunches all wrapped in napkins. I kept a close track of all the money I owed Perry, and I paid him back later on. When I got back there was 3 new fellows in the barrackses, just off the train. Of these, 2 was later my close personal friends, Canada Smith and Coker Roguski, and no finer men ever lived. I do not know who the other was. He was missing half the teeth in his mouth. He said the Mammoths was to buy him a whole new mouthful if he made the grade, for it was all wrote up in his temporary contract. He was a righthanded pitcher, and I seen him work in a camp game a week later. I have saw better pitchers on the squad of Perkinsville High, but I do believe that with a few years of experience this fellow might of become a fair Class C ballplayer. These 3 unpacked their bags, and I said, “Leave us all go out and throw a few,” and Canada and Coker and Perry was all for it, and this other fellow said, “I must stay here and get my gear in order, and tomorrow I will start in to work. Tomorrow is time.”
Well, there you have it! Tomorrow is always time enough for your second-rater. Probably he is still fussing with his gear somewheres for all anybody knows. But what about Canada and Coker and Perry and me that got out there and went to work right off the bat? Where are we? Are we holed up somewheres in Class C?
We got out in the sun and loosened ourself playing 4-way catch. Canada and Coker are infielders, and very stylish ballplayers. Coker is a switch-hitter besides. He was born a righthanded hitter, but he drilled and drilled, learning to hit both ways, and it paid him off in the long run. The 3 of them made up the infield when we was at Queen City in the 4-State Mountain League together that year and then again the year after plus Squarehead Flynn at first base. Squarehead is still there and will never rise higher. But a better infield the Mountain League never saw nor ever will.
When we got back in the barrackses the place had filled up a good bit, for by now the lads was piling in on every train. Some come by car, many in a brand new Moors, and some by thumb, and some had rode halfway across the country by bus. There was a young catcher there that started out at Christmas. He would get to 1 city and work a week and then haul ass by bus as far as his money went and work another week and then light out again. He said he washed dishes in 9 cities betwixt Idaho and Aqua Clara.
In a few days most of the beds was taken, and the place was full of noise and chatter. It was the same in the other barrackses along the line. The newspapers said there was 600 of us.
On the Monday afterwards things begun in earnest. About 6 A.M. in the morning an announcement come over the loud speaker. There was a speaker set up in all the barrackses, and whenever there was something to say they done it from the main office in Number 1. “Hit the deck,” it said. “Everybody up and at them. Everybody on diamonds 3–4–5–6–7 in shoes and shorts in 5 minutes.” Then there was a big line-up down in the latrine, and then a great hustle and commotion to get over to the field, and we all lined up, me and Coker and Perry and Canada there amongst the first. For about 20 minutes we done exercises according to the loud speaker. It was cool when we got there, but we was all in a sweat by the time we was done. We done all kinds of exercises, giving every part of the body a thorough workout, and then we went back and got under the showers, and we sung, and me and Coker and Canada and Perry done a quartet, for we was all good singers. That was the first of the quartet, down there in the early morning in Aqua Clara.
Naturally there was some that never quite made it for the exercises. They stood in the sack, thinking they was putting 1 over on somebody. Here was this fellow without hardly any teeth laying there in the sack when we come back, and here was this dishwasher from Idaho, still in the sack, and many another all up and down the line.
Yet I noticed they got up when the call come for breakfast. Oh, they was the first on line. You can be sure of that. But they was not there ahead of me, for when the doors opened in I went. About the third morning when I went for my tray I felt a big push behind me, and it was none other then this fellow that had most of his teeth gone, and I swang about and asked him who he thought he was pushing around so early in the morning, and he said, “I am not pushing anybody but some green punk that calls himself a ballplayer.”
“Who is a green punk?” said I.
“Henry Wiggen,” said he.
“Time will tell,” said I. “Time will weed out the punks from the ivory,” and I turned back and begun to load my tray when the next thing I knowed this poor miserable character took me by the shoulder and spun me around and begun whaling away with both hands. What got in him I will never know. I sometimes think maybe when I said “ivory” he thought I was poking fun at his missing teeth. Or maybe it was just that everybody was on edge, and their nerves raw. Anyways, I covered up my face with both hands and went down in what Aaron called my old Coward Crouch and rained off what blows I could while Coker and Canada grabbed the boy and sat him down hard on the floor. It made me so nervous I could barely eat breakfast.
While I was eating a man come along and sat down opposite. He was not a ballplayer, for he was too old, and I did not know who he was at the time, and he said to me, “What was all the ruckus about?”
“There was no ruckus a-tall,” I said, “but just some pitiful moron that is losing his nerve.”
This fellow every little bit he would tug at his coffee, but for the most part he studied me and watched me eat. He was very red of face. You would of thought he just tumbled out of a Turkish bath. He had blue eyes and he laughed a lot, and it was Mike Mulrooney, manager of Queen City which is the Mammoth AA farm, the best they got. Old Man Moors is forever dickering for a AAA city but never gets 1. He did not look a-tall like his picture in the books.
“Why?” said he.
“Because I guess he just does not have the stuff,” said I.
“Do you?” said he.
“Yes,” said I. “It so happens that of all the ballplayers in this camp there is damn few worth much and still damn fewer yet that has got as much baseball in their whole body as I have got in my little finger.”
He asked me what my name was, and I told him. He was very friendly towards me, and by the time breakfast was over I told him my past history, and then I said he would have to excuse me as I had to go back and get ready for the 9 o’clock drill.
“But it is just barely 8:15,” he said.
“That is right,” said I, “and I will be on that field by 8:30. I am a hustler. It is your hustler that wins ball games,” and I, got up and left him and was on the field by 8:30, like I said.
Things begun to be less crowded soon after. In the beginning there was 600 or so. Mornings some of the Mammoths come over and give instructions in various specialties, infielders working with infielders, pitchers with pitchers, and so forth. I was hoping I could get a few pointers from Sad Sam Yale, but he was spending his time running and taking off the blubber. You could see him all the day, plodding around the field, first running and then walking. But after awhile announcements begun to come over the loud speaker calling 5 names at a time down to the Number 1 barrackses where the front office was, and these were the duds and the lemons that the coaches and the scouts reported on as being no damn good a-tall, not even for some Class D club. Most of them was never under contract to begin with. They was told to go away pronto and never come back. Some of them been told the same thing the year before, and some of them for 3 years running. Yet they would come back nonetheless, for they did not seem to know that they could never make the grade. The worse a ballplayer is the less able he is to size himself up. There was a catcher from Indiana let loose, and he bawled like a baby and claimed he would kill himself rather then face the folks back home, and the club put Mike Mulrooney on him, and Mike give that kid a good talking to and cheered him up for the time. Mike is a wonder at lifting your spirits. But the kid later killed himself by jumping off a bridge in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a Class C city in the West Texas New Mexico League.