Kid from Tomkinsville

by John R. Tunis

  There was a moment or two of silence.

  “He did?” MacManus was slightly puzzled. He knew his rival probably didn’t mean it. And yet...

  “Uhuh. He says the team that beats Brooklyn will win the pennant. Only he doesn’t know which one of the seven it will be.”

  18

  DIFFERENT MANAGERS; DIFFERENT WAYS of running a ballclub. Gabby stressed fight. Fight and discipline. You had to do what Gabby said, and like it. Every member of the club had to be in his room in the hotel at eleven and answer when old Chiselbeak made the rounds and knocked on every door. Dave abolished this. He stressed one thing: initiative. Each man was to live sensibly, to do his own thinking on the field. For instance, signal-stealing, a pastime of Gabby’s which Charlie Draper, the third base coach, had developed into an art, was abandoned. As a catcher Dave knew far too much about mixing signals to feel they did you much good even when you knew them.

  “I was on the old Senators back in the ’33 Series, and Monte Davis stole all the Giants’ signals. What good did it do us? We couldn’t lick ’em. Any first-class catcher can mix up signs so that wiseacre out there on second will be crossed up. If he signs in a fast ball and the pitcher serves a hook—well, you know the answer. That’s one reason you don’t find Scrapper Knight or the good hitters taking information. I want this club to play heads-up, percentage ball; most of all I want them to do their own thinking out there, not be relying on someone handing them the signals....”

  But if signal-stealing was out, much of the raucous spirit which Gabby had instilled into the club stuck. They were still a noisy, fighting team, they still got on with umpires like a family of wildcats, were still cordially disliked by those gentlemen and respected if not feared by all adversaries, even though they had finished the previous season in sixth place. Gabby’s pep and ginger was not entirely lacking, either, for Harry Street at short turned out to be an acceptable replacement. Confidence? He had it, a-plenty. Pep? Fight? He was full of it. His eternal chatter, his everlasting slogan: "Hurry up there... take your time...” rang out over the diamond from the field or bench every day. At first the team and especially the older players, save the Kid, his roommate who knew him best, disliked him; to them he was still “that fresh young busher at short.” Then during the pre-season training camp games they began to admit grudgingly the youngster had something. Afraid of nothing, Harry was making stops back of second Gabby would never have touched. In the early stages he led the squad in hitting. Before long everyone had an opportunity to see that he could turn the heat on the enemy also. It was during the trip north when the Dodgers were playing one-night stands with the Detroit Tigers that young “Childe Harold,” as the sportswriters named him, stunned both teams.

  Harry believed the bigger they are the harder they fall. So he turned his attention to the biggest thing at hand, Scrapper Knight, the great Tiger star who for six years had led the American League in batting, and after a long career was slowly nearing his end as a big-time player. The terror of pitchers, he was also the terror of fielders on the basepaths because more than one of them carried Scrapper’s initials carved on shinbones or hips. In the first game of the series, with the score three to one for Brooklyn in the fifth, Scrapper singled and the next man slapped a beautiful low line drive to Karl Case in right. The Tiger star, with a generous lead off first, saw it wasn’t going to be caught and, as was his habit, tried for third. Passing second, Harry gave him the hip, not crudely enough to attract the attention of the umpires, but sufficiently to throw him out of his stride so he was cut down by two feet at third base. When the two teams changed sides, Scrapper walked over. He was boiling mad.

  “The next time you try that, you fresh young busher, I’ll cut your legs off.”

  Harry stood holding his ground. Chin to chin he looked the great man in the eye.

  “You’ll cut nothing,” he said coldly but distinctly. “You been bulldozing guys on second for years, but you can’t pull that stuff on me. Next time you come round I won’t be so careful; I’ll spill you on your ugly old face.”

  For almost the first time Scrapper was speechless. Players didn’t talk back to Scrapper, let alone fresh rookies; they had respect for him. He was dangerous. He was the star batter of the League. He was Scrapper Knight, the great Scrapper. Now everyone had heard the boy’s rejoinder, old Stubblebeard the umpire, several members of the Dodgers, as well as four or five Tigers who gathered about to watch Scrapper carve the youngster up. They all stood transfixed.

  While the veteran was struggling in his throat for words, the boy suddenly broke in again:

  “Listen, Scrapper. Everyone knows you’re through. Why don’t you turn in that uniform and give yourself up?”

  The big fellow heard for the first time the sentence he had been dreading for months and months, words that no one had yet dared say to him, words he knew in his heart, knew in his legs where it counted, were true. He, Scrapper the great, was almost through. The young blighter was right. He looked, glared, hesitated, started to throw a punch at the boy’s chin... and then turned away. That was all. There wasn’t any more. But from that moment even the veterans on the Dodgers respected this amazing youngster.

  The previous season during the early games, Roy had been making a name for himself on the mound, while Harry sat in the dugout watching Gabby cavort round short. This year their situation was reversed. Harry was out there playing, while except as an occasional pinch hitter, a role he didn’t much enjoy because of what was at stake, the Kid saw little service as the team moved north. He warmed the bench, eating peanuts and listening to Dave. Learned things, he did, too. Especially about defensive strategy for, as he began to realize, Dave was one of the real strategists of the game. Casey and other sportswriters had hinted during the winter and spring that Dave would try to do the catching, that Babe Stansworth, the regular catcher and a .325 hitter, would be exchanged for a sadly needed pitcher now Dave was back. Nothing of the sort occurred.

  Although he took his turn behind the plate occasionally, Dave let Babe continue as first string catcher, but he never let him or anyone forget who was running things. If the new manager was less pointed in his comments than Gabby, and if he did no sensational master-minding, he had definite ideas and ran his own show with a fine sense of where to place men and what to do under every circumstance, for he knew the hitters better than anyone in the game. Gradually the Kid saw the field as a checkerboard where each man on the club was at a certain place on a certain play; slowly he observed things that as a pitcher he had never seen, or more likely seen a hundred times and always taken for granted without thinking. How, for instance, the fielders studied the batters, or how Dave waved them from side to side, in or out, with the scorecard in his hand as different hitters stepped to the plate. How outfielders watched the wind currents and judged plays accordingly, how when two men were able to catch a fly the one who took it was always the one the catch left in a throwing position. These and dozens of other things the Kid realized, sitting there on the bench in half a dozen cities between Clearwater and Brooklyn.

  They started the season playing well. As Casey remarked in his column one morning, the Dodgers always started playing well. They could be counted to be up front in May and well to the bottom in September. Dave shut his lips when he read this but said nothing. By the end of the first month, as Casey had predicted, the team was in third place, playing snappy ball. But they still needed one first-class pitcher to fill the place left vacant by the Kid. None of the new men proved reliable, while the regulars were all a year older. Dave knew this. So did MacManus who spent hours and hours in planes and trains looking over likely prospects. One deal he wanted to make was for Elmer McCaffrey, a southpaw who had won sixteen games for the last place Phillies the previous season. But this was blocked because the Phils wanted money; plenty of it, plus a couple of players.

  Then on their second western trip in June it happened. Casey expressed his opinion of Mac’s intelligence in this vein:
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  “You can always depend on the Dodgers. If it isn’t injuries, or sickness, or accidents—you remember Gabby Gus Spencer wrapped his car round a telegraph pole last summer—it’s the humidity. Must have been the humidity which went to the head of Laughing Jack MacManus, the Dodger owner, this week. You got to hand it to Jack. He shocks the daylights out of his rivals, pulls off night baseball with its didoes, and all in all is the most refreshing thing in the big leagues since the first bounce was out. But his recent trade of Joe Gunther, the sensational young rookie infielder from Baltimore, and Tommy Scudder, who just now tops the league left fielders at the plate, plus $15,000 cash for Elmer McCaffrey, Philadelphia left-hander, is just one of those things which make folks wonder about Mac’s sanity.

  “If his team isn’t in trouble, trust Jack to stick his handsome Irish phiz into things and manufacture trouble. Breaking up his outfield combination, about all the Dodgers ever had, is one thing. Signing Elmer McCaffrey is something else again. Elmer is a good country pitcher who may win ten games for the Flatbush Flounders, but in exchange Mac gave up a cog in the fastest and best-hitting outfield in either league, plus a youngster who showed plenty last spring down in Clearwater.

  “Manager Dave Leonard now reports that he expects to move Karl Case over to left and put Roy Tucker in right. You remember Roy, the Kid from Tomkinsville, who after winning fifteen straight games in the box last summer had the misfortune—only a Dodger could do it—to fall in the showers and chip his elbow bone so he couldn’t pitch any more. Roy is an early-to-bed, early-to-rise, small town boy. Always in shape, winter or summer, he’s one of those earnest types taking voluntary batting practice every morning on the hottest days of summer. He seldom opens his trap except to say something pleasant, and the umpires all like him, about the only member of the club they do, because he never squawks. So far he’s never been put out of a single game. It’s too bad MacManus is losing his head, but there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it.

  “Mac, you don’t win pennants with nice, soft-speaking, early-to-bed home town boys out there in right field.”

  19

  EVERYTHING WAS UPSIDE DOWN. Now he saw things from the other side.

  Once he loved the “Airport” as the boys called Braves Field in Boston, one of the biggest parks in the League and a pitcher’s paradise because outfielders had plenty of room to roam about and pull down hits that would have been homers in Brooklyn. All a pitcher had to do in Boston was get the ball over. Whereas the Polo Grounds, where a man could get a “Chinese home run” by merely hitting 257 feet over the right field fence, was a nightmare. Now things were reversed. Now he saw the game from the batter’s point of view.

  Yet he hadn’t completely forgotten what he’d learned from Dave as a pitcher, and it was a help. He knew exactly how the wind currents would affect different hitters and how the man in the box would throw to them; knew when a low curve was coming to bait the batter, and when the pitcher would keep the ball high. This enabled him to take chances, for he knew the men pitching also. He was able to anticipate drives and catch balls other fielders stretched for in vain; he was fast enough to cut off many balls that most fielders would have let by, and he soon learned how a squarely hit line drive turned into a sinker when it came to the man in the field. Before long he was making the fans at Ebbets Field forget Tommy Scudder. Especially at the plate.

  His winter’s work and his morning batting practice which he kept up steadily had their effect. At first Dave had placed him in the seventh slot just above Jerry Strong, the weakest hitter on the club, and the pitcher, but you couldn’t keep a man who was punching the ball steadily into left field and hitting homers all over the short fences in the League in the seventh spot. So he was moved up to second. It was lucky he liked to hit. Lucky, too, that he had always been willing in practice to go out and shag flies and throw in to the plate. All this helped him in his new position.

  Naturally at first everyone tried to steal on him or pick up an extra base and stretch hits. They soon quit. Because they saw that the Kid was as fast as any outfielder in the business and that his throwing was far more accurate than most. Instead of taking chances, they discovered they were out if they risked his arm, and he began to hold hits that were two baggers to a single base. Casey was still dubious about the Kid as a permanent fixture in right field but other sportswriters went all out, and Rex King of the Times remarked, as his home run total rose with the Dodgers’ standing in the League:

  “Some of the best pitchers imagined that because he had once been a member of the fraternity our Mr. Tucker would be duck soup at the plate. Nothing of the sort. Roy was never a bad hitter and nowadays hurlers who take nicely calculated dusters at his noggin live to regret it. The fact is that this lad can really hit. Yesterday at Ebbets Field with the score tied in the ninth against the Cubs and the winning run on third, Spike Coffman threw his duster at the Kid’s head and knocked him down. He got up, stepped into the box, and whistled the next pitch past Spike’s ears for two bases to win the game. He does much more harm out there at the plate with his old bat than some of the more pugnacious members of the club used to do with their fists. Up in third place, this ballclub certainly isn’t the same old Dodgers.”

  On the other hand, Casey, the perpetual skeptic, was doubtful. For some time he refused persistently to boost them even when they broke through in second place in late July. They’d been up there last year this time, hadn’t they? What happened? They slumped. They’d slump again. It was inevitable. But the team was going well, pitchers were turning in good performances with regularity, Razzle won eight straight, and McCaffrey, with the Dodger infield dancing behind him, won five straight. That infield was something to watch, and Harry Street, besides being the second leading hitter in the League, was playing great ball around short.

  As for Roy, he loved it. He was happy to be back with the team, happier still when his chance came to play, and, after a season in the box, the outfield position was easy. Before long he became at home in right field, became used to the strangeness of it, the nearness of the fans, not to mention their eccentricities in various cities. There was the queer old lady in St. Louis, who sat in the bleachers to whinny all through each game like a prize percheron. In Pittsburgh, a man with a tremendous bellow invariably sat in a box behind the Pirate dugout roaring with a zest that sent other occupants scurrying away whenever he sounded forth. But the worst of all was Al the Milkman.

  Al was reputed to be one of the wealthiest citizens in Cincinnati. However, he liked to go out to Crosley Field and sit in the bleachers close to right field, wielding an enormous cowbell. Whenever the visiting players, and especially the right fielder, tried to make a catch or stop a difficult ball, Al would sound that cowbell as the ball descended.

  It was in Cincinnati that the Kid let the bleachers bother him. Al took a fiendish pleasure in riding young players, and he had a genius for tormenting them at close range. By the aid of a megaphone he advised the Kid in loud tones to return to the box, informing him as he trotted past between innings that Leonard ought to put a real fielder in right, not a has-been pitcher. In one critical game against the Reds the Kid muffed a hard ground ball through his legs to the accompaniment of that infernal cowbell.

  Later on in August the team moved once more into Cincinnati, tied with the Reds for second, the Giants six games in the lead.

  The day was torturingly hot, the game close, nerves were edgy with second place in the balance, and out in the right field bleachers Al the Milkman was more raucous than ever. The Dodgers with Razzle in the box led two to one in the eighth and Cincinnati had a man on third with two out when the batter hit a high foul close to the right field bleachers where Al was sitting. As the Kid ran over, his tormentor rose, whanging his cowbell violently. Roy sighted the ball, heard the noise, knew he was getting closer and closer to the stands, looked up, got his hands on the foul... stumbled... and dropped it.

  The crowd rose, Al jeering with the res
t. Back walked Roy, ruefully thinking that a hit now might mean the game and second place. All because of that error. Again the batter poked a long fly to right, once more clearly foul. The Kid ran across again as Al resolutely mounted his chair, furiously swinging his bell. Roy instantly saw the ball was going into the stands about halfway up and near his persecutor.

  "Take off your hat!" he shouted.

  Standing in his seat, the cowbell waving, Al removed his straw hat with a flourish of delight, just in time to receive the ball on his shiny bald pate, a blow which knocked him over and out. They had to carry him from the stands, the cowbell silenced. Never again was the Kid bothered in Cincinnati.

  On the bases he was fast, and a useful man to have on first with Allen or Street coming up and a hit-and-run on the cards. He liked running wild on the bases, took chances and more often than not got away with them. Except against big Muscles Mulligan, of the Giants. For some reason the New York first baseman took a fierce dislike to him, was always giving him the hip, or planking the ball on his ribs with more than ordinary fervor. Whenever the Kid made a long hit deep to the outfield, Muscles invariably tried to slow him up rounding first. Roy wanted to be friendly but the Giant infielder took it as a sign of weakness. Other tactics were necessary.

  The Kid got even with him by stealing second or drawing throws from Muscles whenever possible. One day as he went to third on an infield grounder, an idea came. It was merely an idea, a thought in which a situation might develop where he could make Mulligan look foolish. So he made a dive for home and as the Giant first baseman drew his arm to throw, the Kid scrambled back to safety at third again. Time after time, when the same play came up, the Kid repeated the act, hoping some day to catch Muscles napping.

  Meanwhile opposing pitchers began to take notice of him. He made them. “What shall we do with this bird Tucker? Give him a base on balls or play the outfielders the other side of the fence? Notice he got his sixteenth homer yesterday—that ties him with Buck Masterson.”