by Darryl Brock
In the fourth, Brainard, playing agilely behind the plate, ran down a foul bound, and Mac speared a sinking liner to snuff a rally. We laid a goose egg on them in turn, and finally touched Spalding in our half, scoring four runs; with two out I stepped to the plate with Waterman again on third. Spalding, working me inside and out, finally got too cute. Timing an outside change-up, I drilled it up the right-center alley. The ball slammed off the fence and caromed among the carriages. By the time the outfielders retrieved it I’d slid into third. We led 8-4. Andy led cheers on the bench. The crowd roared. It was one hell of a moment. Standing there tingling and grinning, I wanted them all to be up there in the stands: Cait impressed, Timmy yelling his head off, O’Donovan seething.
Refusing to be blown out, the Rockfords came back stubbornly with three runs in the fifth. They were aided considerably by me. I went deep for Barnes’s long fly, couldn’t hold it, then overthrew the cutoff, allowing Barnes to circle the bases. The next Forest City crushed one off the fence, a mile beyond Andy. When a hard-hitting lefty moved to the plate, Harry waved us over in a shift as severe as any ever put on for Ted Williams. Sure enough, the batter lined to Sweasy in what normally would have been the hole between first and second. We came in to take our licks—and got whitewashed again, on sensational fielding by Barnes.
“He’s getting on my nerves,” George complained, having a rare bad day at the plate.
Barnes was getting on all of our nerves. So was Spalding. The Rockfords trailed us like grim shadows.
Stockings 8, Forest Citys 7.
In the sixth, Harry and Brainard changed places. Brainard, tentative in the box without Allison’s reassuring presence, walked the first Forest City. The second punched a hit-and-run single past Sweasy. Two infield outs produced a run. Only an acrobatic stop and snap throw by Waterman saved another. In the bottom half we regained our bare lead on Mac’s double and a seeing-eye single by Gould—who then brought Harry as close to cursing as I’d seen him by getting himself picked off first. My usually imperturbable mates showed signs of cracking.
In the next moment a foul off George’s bat caught Addy full in the face. Blood spurted from his nose as he sagged to the turf. I thought he’d been brained. We ran to him; his nose was smashed, his cheek already swelling. I brought ice from the booth. At length he staggered to his feet and insisted on playing. It was plucky, everybody agreed. In my estimation it was also fairly stupid. Nobody asked me.
When Addy led off the seventh, Harry pulled us in a bit, figuring the injury had sapped his strength. But the stocky hitter connected on a high pitch and drove it far over my head. Again they had knotted the score, 9-9.
I led off in our half. Spalding glowered, mindful of my triple last time. Brush-back fastball, I guessed. As he strode into his motion I adjusted my stance. The ball blurred toward me, rising slightly and spinning inside—but not as far as Spalding intended. I swiveled into it and whipped the bat. CRACK! The ball rocketed into the blue summer sky. It hung for a long moment above the left-field fence before dropping lazily into Kenner Street.
I wish I had videotape of it. I wish shutters and film had been fast enough to capture any of the lovely sequence that followed as I rounded the bases and was mobbed at the plate. The Commercial—bless Millar’s florid soul—would term it “a grand old hit,” one of the “longest ever made on the grounds,” and the Gazette would say that “Fowler, a new hand, filled Allison’s place admirably.” I stashed the clippings in my special drawer.
A grown man hitting a ball over a fence. Silly, probably, but for an instant of existential joy, a moment of pristine sensation, it was hard to beat. Andy was all over me. Mac and George and Gould bobbed around me like toys on a string. Harry nodded as if it had been no more than he’d expected. Brainard, Waterman, even Sweasy, pumped my hand. Heady stuff. No wonder old-timers don’t want to quit.
The crowd stayed frenetic as Harry followed with a ringing double. Andy grounded out, but Brainard drove a ball into the corner and circled the bases when it skipped past the right fielder. They shut us down then, but we’d scored three.
Stockings 12, Forest Citys 9.
If there were any justice it would have ended there, with me the day’s hero. But it didn’t. The Forest Citys jumped all over Brainard in the eighth. The first hitter smashed a liner that I botched trying to play on the hop; he took second and scored on Spalding’s grounder that George fielded cleanly but slipped setting himself to throw. The next batter doubled, sending Spalding home. Addy followed with a slow bouncer that George charged, picked up beautifully, and whipped to first. But Gould was astride the bag. Addy lowered his head, broken nose and all, and plowed into the big first baseman, knocking him flat. The ball whizzed past. Addy scrambled all the way to third while the other Forest City scored. Four runs in. We were behind now, and getting clobbered.
Harry changed places with Brainard again. He got his first man to pop to Sweasy. As the second stepped in, he motioned me toward right. Sure enough, a lazy fly came directly at me.
“Got it?” yelled Mac, running toward me.
“Yeah, mine!” I caught the ball and saw Addy tagging up at third. Bypassing the cutoff, I threw to the plate with all my strength. Addy, trotting in leisurely, was astonished as the ball whistled to Brainard on one bounce. Again he put his head down and crashed into a defender. Brainard made the tag and held the ball. But the umpire ruled that Addy—sprawling supine, out cold—had touched the plate first. Brainard stalked off furiously. Sweasy rushed in, foaming with rage, threatening to punch the official. Harry wrestled him away.
“Throw was a dinger, Sam!” yelled Andy from left.
The next hitter fouled out to end the inning. They’d scored five runs and led by two. Then, rubbing it in, they whitewashed us in the bottom of the eighth. Another zero went up on the new telegraph board.
Stockings 12, Forest Citys 14.
An ominous stillness settled over the stands. The next minutes held the fate of our 29-0 win streak, the longest ever. Not to mention Cincinnati’s position in the sporting world.
Sweasy cursed loudly as we started toward the field. Harry told him to be quiet and gathered us together.
“What’s required,” he said, looking each of us in the eye, “is that we try our best. Play hard and fairly. Every moment. This inning is no different from any other.”
If so, I reflected, why was he saying it now?
“God willing,” Harry concluded, “we will prevail.”
“Let’s dose ’em with our ginger!” Andy yelled, thrusting out his hand. We clasped ours over his and yelled as we burst away toward our positions. I bellowed with the rest, energized. The Forest Citys looked at us sardonically.
I’d seen each Stocking carry the club at one time or another with clutch fielding, hitting, running. But I’d never seen us enter a ninth inning trailing. Now that the chips were truly down, would one of us be able to rise to the occasion?
I soon found out.
Pitching brilliantly, Harry treated the Forest Citys to an amazing assortment of floaters. They cocked their bats, crouched, poised, lunged, swung ferociously—and went down in order.
“Now,” he said, when we reached the bench, a smile playing on his lips, “it’s our turn to test their mettle.”
I then had to face a central fact I’d tried to keep out of my mind until that moment: I would lead off the bottom of the ninth. I hefted my bat as the crowd’s clamor built into a chant.
“Home RUN! Do it AGAIN! HOME RUN!”
God, wouldn’t it be sweet? No, don’t think about it. Meet the ball. Get on base. Two to tie. Three to win. I stepped in and swung in level grooves, concentrating.
Spalding didn’t give me a thing I could handle. I looked at off-speed teasers on the corners, then misjudged a rising fastball and popped it straight back to Addy. So much for storybook. Three fucking pitches. I walked back to the bench, staring at the ground. The stands were eerily silent. I almost wished they’d booed.
/> “Lift your head, Sam,” said Harry on his way to the plate. “You’re a Red Stocking!”
God bless you, Harry Wright.
“START IT, HARRY!” bellowed George. I’d never heard either of the Wrights exhort the other on the diamond. But this was no time for sibling restraint.
I forgot my own failure in the drama of this new confrontation: thirty-four-year-old Captain Harry battling the nineteen-year-old phe-nom. Spalding worked the edges cautiously. Harry waited, poised gracefully, no sign of tension; the man should have been an Olympic athlete. He stepped, swung, and met a low fastball smoothly. We jumped to our feet at the crack of the bat.
“I knew it!” George exulted.
The ball slashed over Barnes’s straining fingers into left. My voice was lost among the others. Mac pounded my back as Andy strode purposefully to the batter’s box.
“Come on!” I yelled. “You can do it!”
The crowd was up now, imploring. Spalding, abandoning finesse, came at Andy with nothing but heat, bent on overpowering the smallest Stocking. Andy took a ball, watched a strike, fouled off four consecutive fastballs—timing the big pitcher and wearing him down. Harry took off from first as Spalding came in with another fastball. Choking up on the bat, Andy spanked the ball into right. Again we leaped up as Harry made third easily, and now the tying runs were on the corners, our fastest man on first. I felt myself beginning to hope.
Brainard stepped to the plate, toothpick waggling. If he was nervous he didn’t show it. Noise erupted from the crowd. From third Harry flashed a sign to Andy and Brainard, but I couldn’t believe I’d seen correctly: STEAL!
Spalding looked in, concentrating on Brainard. Harry got an enormous jump and broke for the plate at the instant Spalding moved into his windup. Andy simultaneously sprinted for second. Brainard leaned forward, masking Harry’s approach until the last possible instant. Then he stepped back as Harry dove headlong for the plate, his body stretched in the air, one arm reaching beneath Addy, who had caught the rising pitch and plunged to make the tag. There was a pileup and a curtain of dust.
The umpire spread his arms. “Safe!”
I nearly peed my pants. I’d never seen anybody try a stunt like that under those circumstances. Maybe Jackie Robinson did it, I don’t know. But nobody—NOBODY—could have beaten Harry that afternoon. The play galvanized us. I could almost feel energy draining from the Rockford players as a big white 1 appeared on our peg on the telegraph board.
Stockings 13, Forest Citys 14.
Brainard shook Harry’s hand matter-of-factly and stepped back in. With the crowd still vibrating over the double steal, he poked Spalding’s first pitch safely into left center. Andy sprinted home well ahead of the throw. The game was tied.
“It’s curious,” said George on the bench. “Brainard’s not big, fast, or strong. He’s certainly not dependable—yet he beats you. Last year when I was on the Morrisanias and the Stockings upset our cart here, it was Brainard made the winning run. Same thing against the Mutes on the tour, remember? I’ll wager he does it again.”
Just as he said it, Sweasy sent a looper that fell short of the charging left fielder and just beyond Barnes’s clutching fingers. Brainard, running hard, slid across the plate to pull out the victory, 15-14.
Instead of 29-1 we were 30-0.
After the final outs, the crowd spilled onto the field, mobbing us. We dispensed with songs and cheers and ran for the clubhouse. The glum visitors challenged us to games in Chicago and Rockford the following week. After wrangling free lodging and a fat slice of gate receipts, Champion accepted.
Timmy waited at the gate. “We got here in time to see you make your run, Andy!” he yelled.
Great, I thought. It meant he had missed my homer and seen me pop up in the clutch.
I looked up the lane and saw Cait. She seemed to float toward us in a pale green dress that set off her jet hair and jewel eyes.
“I couldn’t keep Tim home,” she said. “He’d have burst.”
“You oughtn’t be here alone,” Andy said.
“You struck well,” she replied, ignoring what he’d said. “The ladies cheered you again.”
“Sam knocked a homer,” Andy said. “Clean over the fence.”
“You DID?” Timmy said.
“It’s a worthy thing to do?” Cait asked.
Timmy explained a home run.
“I saw you perform that, did I not?” Her tone suggested that since I’d shown myself capable of it, why make further fuss?
“Yes,” I said. “Are you accepting my invitation?”
She shook her head. “I must go straight back.”
“I see.” I tried to hide my disappointment. “Maybe there’s time to take Timmy in the clubhouse. Most of the team’s still there.”
“Could I?” he implored. “Please, Mother?”
Her answer nearly caused my mouth to fall open.
“Would you take him, Andy? I want a word with Mr. Fowler.”
Andy said he’d be delighted. As they moved off, we stood silently.
Birds sang in the nearby elms. Dusk was coming on. I tried to imprint in my memory the freckles sprinkled on her nose and cheeks.
“I believe I owe you an answer,” she said gravely.
“You do?”
“I thought about little else last night,” she said. “I wanted to deny what you said about something happening to both of us. But I cannot keep denying what I know inside to be true.” Her tone softened. “Even should I not want it so.” She paused. “This must sound quite the mystery.”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“‘Tis strangest of all that it was going on well before you arrived. Although I didn’t know for a certainty till the night you first appeared with Andy.”
“Know what, Cait?”
The green eyes held depths into which I could have plunged and lost myself forever.
“That someone very like you, Mr. Fowler, would be coming to me.”
Chapter 16
I saw her only once before we left for Chicago. It was a mild and sleepy Sunday when I called for her and Timmy in a rented carriage. We stopped at the Downtown Fifth Street Market—where vendors were talking violent opposition to a plan to raze the market and erect a fountain—and at Findlay’s, housed in a huge iron structure. Fully provisioned, we went up to Garden of Eden Park and spread our picnic beneath an oak on the edge of a hillside meadow.
Timmy alone seemed free of self-consciousness. He steered conversation, insisting that I tell him everything I knew about baseball and the Stockings. He was ecstatic when I presented him with a bat I'd repaired with brads and glue, a light one that Hurley had cracked. I’d brought another ball, too, and we played catch while Cait made sandwiches.
“I fancy being a pitcher,” he said. “Is Mr. Brainard truly bigger on his throwing side, like Andy says?”
“Acey does look a little lopsided without a shirt on,” I said. “His right arm’s definitely longer, too.”
“Honor bright?”
I laughed. “Honor bright.”
He examined his own skinny arm. “You think someday . . .?”
“That’s a strong arm you’ve got, Samuel.”
“Like Christy Mathewson’s?”
“Could be.”
“Let’s make a pitcher’s box,” I said, tracing a rectangle on the ground with the bat. “We’ll use the tree as a backstop. You pitch and I’ll knock ’em back.”
“For a certainty, he’s taken to you,” Cait said later as we sat beneath the tree watching Timmy explore the meadow. “He’s often jealous if another takes my attention.”
“O’Donovan?” I said, and mentally kicked myself.
“Timothy doesn’t care for him, it’s true,” she said. “And Fearghus isn’t one for children. But he’s been good to us.”
“I see.” So far we’d stuck to safe topics like Timmy and Andy and childhood recollections of Ireland. Suddenly the terrain was uncertain.“Yes, truly, we’re
obligated to Fearghus,” she said. “It’s troublesome to know he’d not accept my being here like this.”
“But here you are.”
“Yes, here I am.”
I stole a long look at her as she brushed an insect away. Her face, framed by the dark curls, looked almost fragile in its soft paleness. The silver ring glinted for an instant in the sun. There was so much we didn’t know about each other. But it was all right; I was where I was supposed to be. I rested my head on my coat and drowsed pleasurably beside her in the warm shade; not even inadvertently did we touch.
“Cait,” I breathed, not aware I’d said it out loud.
“Hmm?” she murmured.
“Oh, I . . . just said your name.”
She said tentatively, “Samuel.”It whispered among the rustlings of the grasses.
Later, walking back to the carriage, she said, “When I was a girl I would go each day to sit in a lovely green dell. It was my secret place.” She shook her head slowly. “It’s been so long since I’ve thought of that.”
I looked at her silently, in love beyond my depths.
“Thank you so much for bringing us, Samuel.”
The St. Louis Empires, “Champions of Missouri,” blew in early in the week, boasting of how their heavy strikers would beat new tunes on us. I doubted it, especially now that Allison was back. After practice Andy and I saw the end of their game against the Bucks. The visitors won, 27-14, but we knew they didn’t have a prayer against us.
The Empires were saved by rain, as it turned out. No longer boasting, they trailed 23-0 when a deluge ended matters in the top of the fourth. There would be no makeup, since we had to leave the next day.
Another train trip. We arrived in Milwaukee at suppertime, twenty-two hours after leaving Cincinnati. Missing no opportunity, Champion had scheduled a game the next day against the local Cream Citys. We stayed at the Lake House, a picturesque inn opposite Union Depot and the steamboat docks. The evening was warm, the sky streaked with vermilion and orange. Andy and I sat on our second-story veranda and gazed out at Lake Michigan.