by Guy Franks
Burks followed orders and hit the first good pitch he saw through the hole into left field. Dane took second. That brought up Estrella. The muscle-bound catcher dug in and got ready to hit. The first pitch was high and away and called a ball, but Estrella fouled the next two pitches off to make it 1-2. The next pitch was over the plate but at his ankles and he laid off. Clinton turned and emphatically pulled the cord on his imaginary Black & Decker chainsaw, yelling “You’re outta there!” The crowd screamed their outrage. The Kingsmen bench was merciless. Estrella looked at Clinton and shook his head in disbelief. Clinton ignored him and instead took off his mask and stared intently into it as though the meaning of life was written inside of it. Estrella shook his head one more time and then walked off, dragging his bat behind him.
Matt Horn strode to the plate like a man going to the guillotine. But he had a plan and that plan was to swing at the first pitch. The Yankee pitcher was no dummy; he knew he didn’t have to throw a strike to get a strike. His first pitch was at the letters but Horn, geared for it, muscled it into right field for a hit. Dane took off from second and got the windmill from Kalecki. The right fielder charged the ball and made a nice scoop and throw. It was going to be a close play at home. The crowd stood. Everyone in the Kingsmen dugout came up to the railing.
It was a close play as the Yankees catcher put down the tag just as Dane slid into home. Clinton lifted his leg, did a pirouette, and gleefully called him out. Shake knew it was close—that Hamilton might have been out—but at this point he didn’t care. He’d had enough.
Shake flew out of the dugout like a heat-seeking missile and Rick followed him fearing the worst. But Shake had no intention of banging the ump. Even enraged he knew where the line was. All he planned to do was get in Clinton’s grill and let it rip, scream bloody murder and unburden himself of a day’s worth of piled-up garbage. What followed was an entertaining show that included face to face bellowing laced with Elizabethan profanity topped off by Clinton swirling his finger in a high arc signaling Shake’s ejection from the game. Shake took off his cap and threw it into the stands where it was gobbled up by adoring fans.
Shake started to walk back to the dugout, thought better of it, and spun around for further comment. Rick was between him and the ump so Shake had to spit out his parting words over Rick’s shoulder: “Past hope, past cure, past help!” The crowd roared their approval.
He walked through his dugout, past the looks of admiration on his player’s faces, and disappeared into the tunnel. The belief that an ejected manager was banned from the field and therefore banned from managing the rest of the game was the biggest fairy tale in baseball. Some went into the clubhouse and set up a relay system with their interim manager (in this case Rick Burton). Others lurked in the tunnel, out of sight of the umps, and dispatched instructions from there. Shake was a little bolder than that. He donned a hooded jacket, snuck into the bullpen, and called in his orders over the phone while his pitchers shielded him from view by milling around in front of him.
From the bullpen, Shake watched his team tie it up with an exciting rally in the bottom of the ninth. It was highlighted by an inside-the-park homerun by Prince. Shake called in his sometime fifth starter and long reliever “Kid” Curry to take them into extra innings. The game went fifteen innings, their longest game of the year, and Curry pitched well until the top of the fifteenth when he gave up a homer to the Yankees lead-off hitter to make it 6-5. The Kingsmen rally in the bottom of fifteenth fell short and their eight-game winning streak game to an end.
Shake followed his pitchers across right field and back to the clubhouse. He wore his hood up and strolled across the field with his hands in his jacket. The stands were quickly emptying. Someone had won a nice snow-blower, he thought, but for those who stuck it out (which was most of them) they were leaving disappointed. And to make matters worse, the beer batter hadn’t struck out once all game.
Shake sat in his office and fielded questions from the local press. The hot topic was umpiring but he was careful not to openly disparage the umpiring crew, or to call out any one umpire in particular. That would lead to a league fine. Instead he mentioned in passing a questionable strike zone that may have influenced the game. The press could read between the lines. Balt the journalism student was missing but Shake chalked it up to summer vacation. After the interview, Orson stuck his head in and said hi. He appeared to Shake to be moping around about something—probably Rex—so he refrained from asking him anything about the old man.
Shake took a long time to complete his post-game report. He wanted to get it right. The line on Basset was misleading and he wanted to make it clear the kid was their indisputable ace. Even with this anomaly, Basset still carried the lowest ERA in the Eastern League. Shake put Sinatra on the cassette player and carefully worked on his report, treating it almost like a damn deposition instead of just a game summary, and when he thought he had it right he faxed it over. (The big club loved his post-game reports. They found them part news story, part literature, and always entertaining.) Besides the fax, Shake would call both the Director of Player Personnel and the Director of Player Development tomorrow to make things crystal clear.
With that done, Shake changed clothes and walked out through the empty clubhouse and into the parking lot. He half expected to run into Rex and for Rex to act like this morning had never happened. But Shake was not in a forgiving mood at the moment. Out of curiosity he glanced over at Rex’s parking spot and saw his car still here, and when he looked closer he could see Rex sitting in the driver’s seat. He hesitated a moment and looked at Rex. The old man just sat there like a statue. Screw him, thought Shake as he started for his car, but he stopped, said “Shit!” under his breath, and walked over to Rex’s car where he rapped on the window.
Rex rolled down his window and quickly asked, “Where am I?” as though he had stopped a passing pedestrian.
“Beehive Stadium,” answered Shake without missing a beat.
“Where do I live?”
“I think you’re at the Marriot in Farmington.”
“How do I get there?”
Shake took his cap off (Speed had given him a new one), scratched his head, and looked into Rex’s eyes. It was legit. There was no light of recognition. “Well, first off, you go out this gate—” He proceeded to give Rex directions to the Marriot, which Rex listened to intently and nodded understanding. When he was done, Rex thanked him and rolled up his window and drove out of the parking lot.
Three to one he’d get lost, figured Shake, but he wasn’t about to follow him home. Not his caretaker, he told himself but knowing, as he thought it, that it was easier said than done. His refined humanity wouldn’t allow it, or perhaps it was his innate sympathy for the human predicament that would never allow him to condemn a man without first trying to get in his shoes. The old man had built up a wall of self-justification, and Shake feared that only some great earthquake would tear it down. Rex needed Corey back in his life. Everybody needed something. What he needed was a cold beer and the Mermaid was only minutes away.
On the drive over, Shake turned down the radio and let his mind wander. He needed to relax. It had been a long grueling day and the day still wasn’t over. He thought about Lucy—her and her Fire Festival of Lithia—and inevitably began to compare her to Mimi.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past
Twenty-five years later and he still compared women to Mimi. He did this with all the women he had dated over the years and all of them, including Lucy, came up short. Besides her sublime beauty, Mimi had possessed a quiet intelligence that glowed like a halo around her. She loved Shakespeare and baseball, and not because he did but because she possessed an artist’s soul. He had loved her dearly, and wherever she was, there was the world. Lucy wasn’t the world
Then what was Lucy, he wondered. She was like his favorite
candy—affordable, savory but, in the end, not very filling. There was a thing missing. Yes, he had to admit to a hunger within him that, over the years and into middle age, had grown rather than subsided. It was a restlessness that wouldn’t leave him alone. The real question was: what was he looking for when he knocked on Lucy’s door at night? He fumbled through the bat rack of his thoughts looking for the answer but the best he could come up with was one word. “Cathedral.” He was looking for a Cathedral. It was funny way to say it but it got closest to the truth. Was he getting religious after all these years? He wouldn’t say he wasn’t religious. He was brought up a Catholic, for crying out loud, but he didn’t attend church much. So what was it? But suddenly he found himself too tired to run this thought down, so he fell back into his comfort zone. Baseball was his religion, he concluded. What was it Durocher said? “Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand.” Exactly.
The wheel of his thoughts came back around and there was Mimi again. Yes, she had been his world—until he called her a whore and destroyed it all. “But enough of that,” Shake told himself as he pulled into The Mermaid Tavern. “Enough of that. ‘I’ll see what physic the tavern affords.’”
Kalecki and Benedict where there but Burton and Larkin, both married men, were home this Saturday evening with their families. He realized he was starving so he ordered a French Dip with fries and sat down with his two coaches to drink beer, eat, and talk baseball. When their pitcher of beer emptied Bernie, just starting her shift, came over to take their order for a fresh one. This shifted Shake’s attention. He had carried out his part of the conspiracy and told Larry about overhearing Bernie tell Lucy she still loved him. Lucy had done her part with Bernie, and now Shake was curious to see the fruits of their labor.
She came up next to Larry. “Another pitcher?” she asked.
Shake and Bob waited for Larry to jump in and start the verbal brouhaha, but he was silent, so Bob said, “Sure. Make it a Miller this time.”
“I’ll get you a new glass,” she said as she leaned over Larry, resting her breasts on his shoulder while grabbing his glass. She paused there for a moment before straightening up.
“You’re a sweetheart,” replied Larry, looking up and winking at her. She walked off with one empty pitcher and one empty beer glass.
“What the hell was that?” demanded Bob sounding like a man who had just been robbed of this evening’s entertainment. “’Sweetheart’… What the hell do you mean by ‘Sweetheart?’”
“Nothing,” said Larry with a shrug. “She’s a sweet kid. We made a pact not to argue anymore.”
“A pact?”
“Yeah, and I’m taking here out to dinner tomorrow night.”
“Dinner, huh?” commented Shake. “Well… will wonders never cease.”
“She’s a sweet kid.”
“If you say so,” said Bob still reeling from the one-eighty. “I think you’re just going soft.”
Shake chuckled and changed the subject back to baseball. Larry looked grateful. Bernie returned with a full pitcher for all and a frosted mug for Larry. She poured them all a fresh beer starting with Larry, said “Enjoy,” and left them alone. Bob shook his head in mock disgust and drank his fresh beer.
Their brain trust broke up about ten o-clock and Shake found Lucy sitting at the bar. He could ask her about the festival or he could not. He could tell her how nice she looked or he could not. Maybe they would end up having sex tonight and maybe they wouldn’t. He didn’t really care—he was still carrying the game around with him like a golden sombrero. That and everything else today had put him in a bit of a funk. It was the same kind of funk you got as a player when you struck out four times in a game.
“Heard you got ejected today,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Yeah. Same jerk who ejected me last year.”
“Currents of spiritual energy were working against you.”
“Something was. The whole day’s been off… Off center, if you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“Got a spell to counter that?”
“No, but I did get you something.” She fished into a black bag on the bar and pulled out a chain. “It’s a rune necklace—for men.” She spread it apart and slipped it over his head. “It brings prosperity and well-being to the wearer.”
Shake was surprised—he’d never known Lucy to be a gift-giver—and he looked at the silver chain with its strange markings and said, “Thanks, Luce.” She smiled warmly at him. “I’m not really a big jewelry guy,” he added as an afterthought. “But I’ll keep it with me.” He noticed her warm smile fade away.
“It needs to be around your neck to get its full power.”
“Okay,” he replied as he slipped the chain over his neck and then leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. Her warm smile returned.
He tucked the chain inside his shirt as Lucy brought up the topic of Bernie and Benedict. She was pleased that their little ruse had worked, at least to the point where the two had stopped arguing and were now going out on a date. She wondered out loud where it all might lead to.
“We’ll see if they survive their date first,” commented Shake.
Lucy laughed and stepped away to take care of some business in the back. Shake took off his new cap to check what it was that kept bugging him and found a paper label. He tore it out and leaned over the bar to throw it away. As he did, the chain around his neck fell out and caught his beer bottle on the way back nearly spilling it. He took the chain off and stuck it in his pants pocket. Lucy returned and leaned into his ear.
“Meet me upstairs in twenty minutes,” she whispered. She leaned back and suddenly frowned. “Where’s the rune necklace?”
“What? Oh, it got in the way. Almost spilled my beer so I put it in my pocket.”
“It’s got to be around your neck.”
“I know. You told me.”
“Then why’d you take it off?”
“Cause it got in the way. I already told you I’m not a jewelry guy. See?” he said as he spread out his ten ring-less fingers.
“If you were married you’d wear a ring.”
“Maybe. But I’m not married and don’t plan on getting married.” He said it bluntly and saw again that change of hue in her face. He’d seen that only once before when he turned down her invitation to go to the festival. It was like a shadow passing over her face.
“You need to give a little, Shake,” she said with thickness in her voice.
“Give a little? What do you mean? Give what?”
“Never mind. Let me have it. Give me the necklace back.”
“Suit yourself.” He took the chain out of his pocket and handed it to her. She took it back angrily, balled it up, and suddenly threw it. The chain ball opened up in mid-flight and landed heavily on a table full of people, upsetting their prosperity and well-being.
“Shit!” she said under her breath and hurried off to apologize to her customers.
Another precedent broken, thought Shake sizing up the situation. Anger, expectations, hurt feelings. She was suddenly acting more like a wife than his laissez-faire lover. More like Doris Day than Brigitte Bardot. What was bringing all this on? Menopause? Iron poor blood? Lack of fiber in her diet? Whatever it was he didn’t like it. He also didn’t relish the idea of talking to her anymore in this state.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty,
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
He left the bartender a generous tip and beat a hasty retreat.
(Here concludes the longest chapter of our story. In it we witnessed not only the longest game of the season on the longest day of the year, but also all the mustard and pepper that flavor our main course. But before we close this over-lengthy
chapter, we’ll leave you with our customary couplet: The sun today woke early and stayed late, lighting the paths of their impending fate.)
14
CHAPTER
I don’t care how long you’ve been around, you’ll never see it all.
Bob Lemon
It was the weekend before the All-Star break. Since the Fire Festival of Lithia, the Kingsmen had played .500 ball. Leading up to today, Sunday the 6th, they had played fourteen straight games and gone seven and seven with six losses on the road. It wasn’t really a tailspin (they were still two games up in first) but it was a bit of a funk. Shake knew that every good team had one and it was how a team handled it that mattered. Hitters were in mini-slumps, pitchers weren’t hitting their spots, and two of their top players—Burks and Horn—were on the DL with injuries. But slumps and injuries were part of the game. A team knows when it was good—they just knew—and Shake could still see that confidence in the clubhouse. He wasn’t too worried.
Shake had shuffled his rotation around a bit and had Chuck Davis going against the Nashua Pirates today. That gave enough rest for his big three—Basset, Santiago, and Ellsworth—to pitch in the All-Star Game Wednesday. Svoboda took Burks’ spot in left field and Rosecrans, a utility infielder, was starting for Horn at first. Rosecrans had shown some pop lately in pinch-hit appearances and the big cub wanted to see him get some regular at bats.
It was Dairy Day and there was a cow-milking contest before the game. Guida’s Dairy, Deerfield Farm and others had stands set up selling half-off ice cream. The temperature was pushing ninety and they did a brisk business throughout the day. The game was also brisk and entertaining. The Kingsmen won 4-0 and Davis pitched a three hit shut-out. In the fourth, Rosecrans broke his bat but hit one out for a homerun. Shake had never seen that before and, like most managers who’d been in baseball nearly all their life, he’d seen just about everything.