WELL, if I had knowed what was still in the cards for me I wouldn’t of been whistling so damn hard, for I no sooner hit the hotel then I seen in an evening paper where the guess was that if we lost tomorrow I was slated to work Sunday. I read the same thing in 2 more papers, and then I heard it on the radio twice, and every time I seen it or heard it it was like somebody stuck a knife in my back. My back hurt worse that night then any night before or since and I hardly slept a wink except maybe a few hours towards daylight.
Saturday I did not drill. First off I took about an hour getting dressed, and then when I got dressed I had no hat, for some fan swiped it the day before. Mick went rummaging on a shelf and come down with a stinking old hat that was too tight to begin with, and then finally I told Mick forget it and give me a rub instead, and I stripped halfway down again and stretched out on Mick’s table on my stomach. “Actually,” he said, “it is no use. Do you know what I think you are? I think you are 1 of them people that thinks they are sick but never is.”
“You are paid to rub,” I said.
“I have saw many like you in my time,” said Mick. “It is all in your head.”
“Then rub my head,” I said.
The boys floated in and out, Mick stopping now and then to do whatever somebody asked, saying there was boys with real aches and real pains and real complaints that a man could put his hands on and massage them out.
Dutch’s lecture was not so much yesterday’s mistakes and today’s strategy as it was a plain old-fashion pep talk, sweetness all the way, not spreading it on too thick and yet at the same time leaving no doubt in your mind that this was Christmas and he was jolly old St. Nick. He said if ever a club was ready to step out and cop a flag this was it. He said that even with Ugly and Lucky both out of action there was no doubt in his mind and had never been no doubt that man for man we stood head and shoulders over Boston. He said that this particular moment would live in his memory in the years to come, for it was now, this moment, that he felt that he was addressing the finest collection of ballplayers ever brung together under a single roof.
“I rate this club with the Mammoths of 35,” he said. That was high praise, coming from Dutch. He said many a time, in and out of the newspapers, that he considered the Mammoths of 35 the best club ever put together. “I told you in Aqua Clara in the spring that I expected to win the flag this year. I have expected it every minute since, and I expect it this moment. I swear to God and call upon him to strike me dead on this spot if in the deepest corner of my heart I speak anything else but the truth.
“We have had bad breaks. We hit a slump. We lost Judkins. We lost Jones. We have had rotten weather and doubleheaders. But have there been good breaks to match the bad? Have we had 1 good break all summer? Name me 1! No, I guess not. Even so, we are still at the top of the heap, and there will be a flag tucked in our pocket a couple hours from now.”
Sam and Red come in from warming. Dutch asked was there any questions, like he always does. There was none. There hardly ever is, and then, after a long time of waiting, I spoke up. “Dutch,” said I, “I might as well say it. Naturally I doubt that we could possibly lose today. But if by some miracle we do I doubt that I could pitch tomorrow if my life depended on it.”
He looked down at me a long time from where he was standing. He was throwed off his guard a bit, I guess, for that was the first time anybody ever brung up such a question. I could see his wheels turning. I do not know what they was hammering out, but they was turning awful fast, and he started to say 1 thing and then he said another. “Who says you are going to pitch?” he said.
“The papers and the radio,” said I.
“The papers and the radio are not managing this ball club,” said he.
“Well, I am glad to hear it ain’t true,” said I. “It would be the wrong move.”
“Who said it ain’t true?” said he.
“I doubt if it could possibly be true,” said I. “It would be the wrong move.”
It was really terrible how quiet it was. I did not know what he would say next, but I was sure it would be something for the memory book. I was ready to settle for a fine and a suspension or get traded to Chicago or anything. He got red, and then he got white, and you could hear the boys breathing. I thought maybe somebody would say something. Yet nobody did. Whenever the boys got anything on their mind they say it amongst themselves, never to Dutch. All you could hear was a drop of water from a leaky shower in the shower room, “Ga-lup, ga-lup, ga-lup.”
But when he spoke he spoke very quietly. “I do not make wrong moves,” said he. “I make a couple hundred moves a day of 1 sort and another, and most of them is right ones. This club has been missing fire since the middle of July. It has proved too old in places and too young in others. It has got gaps a mile wide wherever you look. But I been making right moves.”
“You just said we was the best since 35,” said I.
“I said nothing of the sort. What I said was I said we would pull it out so long as we had no quitters and nobody dragging their feet amongst us.” He was speaking louder now.
“You said we was the best since 35,” I said again.
“Do not tell me what I said,” said he, and he turned red again and wheeled around and folded his arms like an umpire and clattered off in the other direction, his spikes rattling on the cement. That was the only sound. I seen Red, and he was fumbling with his guards, and his jawbone was working but no sound come forth. I seen Perry, and he was looking down at his shoes. I seen Sad Sam, and he was standing by his locker wiping his face with a towel. Except for Dutch he was the only 1 standing, and he looked at me like he was saying, “Remember, Henry, what I told you on the train. Nobody really gives a f— what happens to anybody else,” and he lit a cigarette and sat down and waited to see what would happen next.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I am glad to know the score. Sam told me it would take me 15 years to find it out, but I have found it out in 1. I am 15 times as smart as Sam. Piss on you, Sam,” said I to Sam. “Piss on the whole lot of you. Pitch me tomorrow. Pitch me today for all of that.”
Something snapped in my back. I did not give it a thought at the time, but I remembered it afterwards.
“Pitch me any old time,” I said, “but do not call me a quitter or tell me I am dragging my feet. We won 96 ball games through yesterday and 26 of them was mine. On a staff of 9 pitchers plus Crane tell me who dragged their feet and who did not. There may of been right decisions, Dutch, but there was also some boners, and any of the boys will tell you the same.”
Dutch looked up and down the line at the boys, and they all become suddenly extremely interested in their shoelaces. “Time is running short,” said he, looking up at the clock, “and I do not plan to turn this clubhouse into a debating society for Henry Wiggen. I have heard about clubs which was run like debating societies. But I cannot say that I remember seeing any of them win a flag. Has anybody got anything to say in the 2 minutes left?”
Gene Park cleared his throat. “Roguski,” said he to Coker, “you laid a little too deep yesterday. If I was you I would position myself and then move up 2 steps. You have not got the arm of Ugly Jones.”
“I will remember,” said Coker.
Then they filed out, and finally I hoisted myself off the bench and followed, meeting Red in the alleyway where he was waiting until the anthem was done. My back felt much better. “Thank you, Red,” said I, “for backing me up like you done.”
“It did not seem like a good time for a clubhouse fight,” he said. “Somebody always comes out with his neck dangling loose. It would never be Dutch’s, so why should it be mine?”
“But why mine?” said I.
“You are young and single,” he said, “and there is 15 other clubs that would jump at the chance to grab your contract. It ain’t true of many of the rest of us.”
“Red,” said I, now noticing for the first time that the pain was pretty much gone, “I will appreciate you hitting about 4 home runs today.”
“I will try,” he said. “We must win it. I do not think that if we lose today we will have the strength to win tomorrow, and I know for sure that we cannot last through a playoff,” and then the cheer went up and the anthem was done, and Red strolled out, and I slumped in a seat flush in the corner of the dugout with my back braced against the walls where they come together with this stinking old hat about 15 sizes too small sitting on top of my head.
It was less of a crowd then on Friday. The weather was warm and clear but there was football games here and there that drained it off, and the Friday record stood, the Saturday figures just barely hitting 75,000, Tawney on the hill for Boston, the best they could do, their staff shot, Sam Yale working for the Mammoths and looking good—at least at the start.
But he was wobbly from time to time, and Dutch lifted him in the last of the fifth for a hitter. The score was 3–3 then. Red, with 1 out, just singled a minute before, and now Swanee pinch-hit for Sam and also singled, and Perry pinch-run for Swanee and stole second, a bit of legwork that worried Tawney no little. George singled, scoring both Red and Perry.
Horse Byrd was in and out of trouble for 2 innings and finally was lifted for a hitter in the last of the seventh—Sunny Jim it was—Gene Park on second and 1 down. Sunny Jim batted left-handed against the righthanded Tawney and sent a screaming line drive into the bullpen in right. Knuckles and Piss and Keith Crane was all warming there with Bruce and Goose, and when Casey Sharpe come charging in after the ball you can imagine that these boys was hardly a model of co-operation in helping him get it. They stood their ground while Casey went scrambling around between their legs. Alf Keeler claimed interference and demanded that Gene Park be sent back to third, but nothing come of it.
So it was 6–3 when Keith Crane come on to relieve in the eighth, Dutch forced to the gamble with Keith, Keith being the only left-hander left to throw. Boston rode him hard, calling him all kinds of a n—r. But he stood up under it fairly well, having been coached in the matter by Perry, and he blanked them in the eighth. Dutch moved Canada in to first base and sent Scotty Burns in center. We now had no reserve outfielders on the bench, and no reserve infielders neither, the barrel scraped clean, the long trip almost done but the tank just about dry.
That Boston ninth was murder. With every pitch I whispered to Keith Crane, and I prayed for him, and I twisted and turned on the bench, helping each pitch along, working at least as hard as him, until after what seemed like 25 minutes at least he had 2 down, but 2 on, and Granby the hitter. We all remembered when Granby clubbed a home run off Keith at a crucial time a few weeks before, and Dutch and Keith and Red and the whole of the infield had a long conference. A home run now would knot the score.
Then Dutch come back to the bench, and then Keith pitched—a ball, wide—and Dutch was flying out on the field again and arguing with Toft, and then when that was over with he come back, swearing and fuming and claiming he would see Toft put on the retired list in the winter if he had to murder the Commissioner.
Everybody always asks me, “What kind of a man is Dutch Schnell?” I never know exactly what to say. I think he is a great manager, and the statistics back me up in this. His first and only aim in life is winning ball games, and more often he wins them then not, sometimes doing it with worse material then the next club has got. He brings out the best in a fellow if the fellow is his type of a ballplayer. He is always in a fight, right or wrong standing by his guns. Red says if Dutch was Noah in the Bible he would not of took to the ark but would of stood arguing with the goddam flood. There is nothing Dutch will not do for the sake of the ball game. If he thinks it will help win a ball game by eating you out he will eat you out. If sugar and honey will do the trick out comes the sugar and honey bottle. If it is money you need he will give you money. And if he has no further need for you he will sell you or trade you or simply cut you loose and forget you.
And then it was over—the ball game, the race, the long long haul from Aqua Clara to the flag. Most of all what was over was the backache.
For Granby lifted a shoulder-high curve to dead center field, and Scotty Burns turned and run back 10 or 15 feet and then turned again and camped and waited, and as the ball come down so did the pain in my back, starting from the knob at the back of my neck, down,
down,
crunch,
FLASH!
Crunch
FLASH!!
CRUNCH
FLASH!!!
knob by knob, hitting the lowest knob at the moment the ball snuggled in Scotty Burnses glove, and out through my spine—gone I do not know where and do not care. But gone, and for good and ever.