Kid from Tomkinsville

by John R. Tunis

  “He sure can paste that old persimmon. But you can get him on a low ball if you use it right. No one can throw a fast ball past him. First time I threw a curve breaking outside, figuring to fool him. He took it for a strike. Then I came inside high which was a ball. That guy knows too much for his own good. The next was high inside but just over the plate for strike two. Then I slipped one low inside... and by gosh... he took it....”

  All this time the Dodger bench before the game was a cheery spot. The team was in second place by a good margin, better still it was loose and chattering. To hear them no one would suspect they were closing in on the pace-setting Giants.

  “I’m sitting there with a glass of beer in my hand...” It was Razzle sounding off.

  “Where’s Harry Street?”

  “Must be down at the other end of the dugout, talking. We got Razzle up here.”

  “Whew, boy, it is sure hot out there.”

  “Aw, you guys haven’t any idea of heat. When I was with the Browns we played thirty days in St. Louis when it was over 100 each day. That’s equal to 120 degrees any other place.”

  “Well, as I was saying, I’m sitting there with a beer in my hand...”

  “Hey, Mike... what do you weigh?”

  “’Bout 180. I go down to 170 after a game.”

  “Say, old Gabby could have pepped up those Cubs, couldn’t he? Yes, sir, he’d have plugged that there hole at short all right.”

  “Well, I was with Chambersburg in the Blue Ridge League this year, and I’m sitting in the hotel with a glass beer in my hand, when...”

  “Who’s umpiring next week at the Polo Grounds? I hope Donahoe and Hines don’t follow us over to New York.”

  “I’m sure glad they called that game in the rain yesterday. The way Liebert hit that ball past the 450 foot sign his first time up looked like he might break the game open if it went on much longer. Don’t know how Tuck ever got it at all. That ball had more feathers on it than any ball I ever saw.”

  “Yep, the Kid can sure hound that old apple, Roy can.”

  “Hey, Jerry, how about a movie tonight?”

  “Yeah. Okay, who’s pitching for them?”

  “See... it was like this. I’m sitting there in the hotel with a beer in my hand...”

  “Wainwright? He’s poison for me.”

  “Aw, he hasn’t got so much. No live fast ball, but I tell ya he has a good knuckle ball and a swell change of pace. You gotta watch yourself.”

  “Hey, Red, see Casey’s column today? He says with the Dodgers in second place in August they ought to be given the saliva test. He says...”

  “Aw, nuts to him. That wise guy.” As usual, Razzle had the last word. Almost. “Well, as I was saying, I’m sitting in this-here-now hotel in Chambersburg with a glass beer in my hand when in walks this fella...”

  Clang-clang. Clang-clang.

  “Hey, Razzle, get out there. What d’you think they’re paying you for on this club, to hear yourself talk?”

  20

  “ALRIGHT, RAZ OLD BOY, two down....”

  “Two down, everyone, two down.”

  “Attaboy, Raz, tha’s chucking, that is....”

  “Hurry up, Razzle, take your time.” Harry’s everlasting war cry came from the other side of second. Leading the Giants three to two in the sixth, the team was confident and on its toes. Before the Kid was a scene he had been looking at every day for over two months: directly in front the broad, thick back of Red Allen, his hands on his knees; to the Kid’s right the tall, lithe figure of Eddie leaning over characteristically to scoop dirt from the basepaths; beyond, Harry shouting his tag line, and further along dark-faced Jerry Strong near third. Razzle was in the box and Babe Stansworth, whose hitting had been such a factor in their rush ahead, was in his familiar crouch behind the plate. A scene he knew by heart.

  Crack!

  A slow roller to the left of the box, another easy out. The Kid could see Razzle going across, leaning down... and then suddenly straighten up while the ball hopped past untouched and the batter reached first.

  The big pitcher hopped up and down on one foot and limped toward first. In a second he was surrounded. Red and Eddie and Harry Street rushed over; Babe came out from the plate, while Dave, followed by Doc Masters, scurried from the shelter of the bench.

  The Doc, with his black bag beside him on the ground, bent over and felt gingerly of Razzle’s left calf. A Charley horse. The pitcher with his arm on the Doc’s shoulder limped to the dugout, his face twisted in pain, and, as he approached, threw his glove with disgust onto the bench. There was a hushed silence over the stands. Razzle’s hurt himself! The players looked uncomfortably at each other while Fat Stuff came in from the bullpen and started warming up.

  Things happen fast in baseball. On the second pitch Maguire, the Giant lead-off man, took a belt at the ball and gave it a ride over that short right field fence. Two runs in! As if it wasn’t enough to lose old Razzle in this critical moment of the pennant race, they were also going to drop a vital game. Going into the ninth one run behind, the first Dodger batter struck out, and then McCaffrey, a good hitter in the pinches, was sent in for Fat Stuff. He received his base on balls and, as Swanson came up, made the sort of play that looks good when it comes off and awfully bad when it doesn’t. Anyhow it was foolhardy base running. Swanny hit a slow grounder to short and McCaffrey, with a desperate effort, slid into the second baseman in an attempt to break up a doubleplay. He succeeded. He also succeeded in wrenching his back so badly he had to be carried from the field.

  Roy came to the plate. On the first pitch, a strike, Swanson was off for second, and made it. Two out and the tying run on second. A hit would do the trick, keep them in the ball game, and possibly bring victory. The Kid felt he never had wanted a hit as much as he did that minute, but his very desire seemed to tighten him up. He struck out and the game was over. Muscles had to put in his two cents’ worth as he passed the Dodger dugout on the way to the showers. He called out in a taunting tone:

  “Same old Dodgers.” No one had the heart to take him up.

  This triple blow came at a hot psychological moment. The Giants were staggering from the strain of setting the pace all summer while the Dodgers were afire. To lose the lead, lose the game, lose Razzle and McCaffrey, their two best pitchers, all in one afternoon was bad. Then the next day Harry Street was struck in the face by a thrown ball in practice, and was left behind when the team entrained that night for Boston to have X rays determine whether his jaw was fractured. In Boston the club faced two doubleheaders and a single game in three days with their two best pitchers and the star shortstop out of the line-up.

  In the meantime Roy, for some inexplicable reason, found himself in a batting slump. After being up with the leading hitters, second in home runs in the League, he went for three straight games without a hit. No reason; it just happened. His slump, however, threw a responsibility on Red Allen, the next hitter, who soon found himself asked to carry an unequal share of the load. His batting fell off as well. The team won the second game of the opening doubleheader with Jake Kennedy pitching shutout ball, but lost the other four. Bad weather, cold blasts, fog, a young Boston southpaw rookie, spike wounds received by Tommy Swanson, and a final defeat in thirteen innings, made the Dodgers miserable as they entrained for Chicago. They were now four full games behind the Giants and tied with Cincinnati and the Cubs for second place.

  The club became jittery and dropped two more games in Chicago. The train was late and they arrived at La Salle Street Station only an hour before the opener. Then there was the letdown after that series in Boston, and the team was affected, Roy most of all. Everyone offered him advice. He was a switch hitter, so why not try the other side. Naturally left-handed, he practiced hitting from the other side of the plate and in the first game in Chicago went up from the right. No luck. It was his eighth game in succession without a hit. The Cubs who were enjoying themselves at the expense of the Dodgers were delighted.

/>   “See you boys got a new .400 hitter on your club,” remarked Sam Graff, the Chicago coach, to Charlie Draper on the third base line.

  “Yeah!” Charlie knew Graff and was hesitant. “Yeah... whozat?”

  “This Kid, now, young Tucker.”

  “Tucker! Hasn’t made a hit in...”

  “That’s just it. He’s a .400 hitter, or somewhere about there; hits .200 batting left-handed and .200 hitting right-handed.” Sam roared at his wisecrack. It wasn’t so terribly funny to the Dodgers and especially to the Kid who heard it all over the park. A .400 hitter!

  His teammates all had suggestions to make about the slump. Karl Case, for instance, thought it was his stance.

  “I was with Cleveland in ’34 hitting .365 and led the League on doubles, then I went fifty-six times without a hit....”

  “Gosh!” The Kid was staggered. Fifty-six times at bat without a hit. Maybe he had thirty or more trips at the plate to go.

  “Yessir. Fifty-six. That’s right. I was hitting ’em all to center and then I changed my stance and shook out of it. Why don’t you try that?”

  But no change had any effect whatever. By this time the whole club was in a slump. From second they went down to third place and within a game and a half of fourth. Dave shook up the batting order, putting the Kid back to fifth and shoving Babe Stansworth into the second spot. But the jinx was riding. When the jinx is riding a ballclub it doesn’t matter what the manager does or who plays or how the batting order is shifted. Regulars like Razzle and Harry Street were injured, replacements were thrown in, and then the replacements were injured also. Tony Kapura, a likely rookie from Minneapolis, fractured his ankle the second game he played, and then the usually mild and soft-spoken Fat Stuff, his nerves on edge from overwork, got into a dispute with old Hines, the umpire, and was suspended for two weeks with a $50 fine slapped on. Everything went wrong: hitting slump, injuries, suspensions. It was all part of baseball.

  There was one bright spot. That was Dave. When the team was going well, Gabby was a marvelous leader, snapping everyone up in the field, keeping them on their toes and acting as a spur when they became complacent. But in a slump his nerves betrayed him. He tightened up and tended to help everyone else do exactly the same thing.

  Whereas Dave’s assets, his quietness, his patience and understanding, were an enormous help as the team looked at trouble. Dave was able to handle the players as individuals, treating each man differently. There was nothing hasty or panicky about him or his methods. True, he lacked the zip and fire of Gabby, there was none of the old college-try atmosphere about the dressing room after a victory, but in such a crisis as they were going through Dave could get more mileage out of a talk or a few words than Gabby or most managers could get from an hour’s bawling-out. If he had to pan someone, Dave was always careful not to do it in the heat of the dressing room where everyone knew about the lecture, but alone in the evening when tempers had cooled off and there was no one round to listen. These men had served him faithfully, they were all doing their best, and he let them know they had time to right themselves as things broke badly. They were given every chance to regain their stride, and as far as their jobs were concerned both Dave and MacManus made them feel they still had everyone’s confidence.

  Most of all, as an old catcher Dave was wonderful with those temperamental artists, the pitchers. The Dodgers, like most teams, were as good as their pitchers, but with Fat Stuff out, Razzle and McCaffrey injured, the work fell on relief pitchers and two newcomers, Davison and Lester. He was asking them for extra duty; they responded with the best they had.

  Once again, and not for the last time, Roy felt the speed of baseball. Speed, speed, speed. It was Clearwater. It was spring. Then all at once it was late August; it was almost fall. Time passed, a dizzy series of games in a twenty-eight day heat wave, with sudden visions of hotel rooms so hot and so lifeless they were like prison cells, of burning afternoons in the outfields of St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, of sleepless nights in pullmans, of a jumbled mass of plays in games won and lost. Early in September things got worse. Each time he came up without a hit made it harder the next time, until the tension began to choke him up. I gotta get a hit, I gotta get a hit, gotta get a hit, he’d say to himself, and then walk up and pop up to the shortstop. Finally Dave pulled him out and put young Paul Roth, a substitute outfielder, in his place.

  He was benched! Still the Kid persisted in his batting practice every morning. One day in Philadelphia he saw Dave standing beside him. A minute later the manager spoke in his ear and asked him to come up to the room that night.

  When he got there he found a worried Dave, and for the first time he noticed new lines over the manager’s forehead. The strain was telling on him like everyone else.

  “Roy, sit down, boy. I’m sorry about the slump; you’ve been choking up, but it won’t last forever.”

  “I can’t figure it out, Dave. I’ve changed my stance and it didn’t do a bit of good. Tried everything, been out swinging every morning....”

  “Maybe you tried too much. Let me tell you what I think your trouble is. You haven’t been playing for Brooklyn the last month.”

  “Not playing for Brooklyn?”

  “Nope. You were playing for Roy Tucker.”

  “For Tucker?”

  “Right. You weren’t playing for this team. I’ll explain what I mean. Those sixteen—seventeen—how many was it—those home runs you made were about the worst thing that ever happened to you. Point is, when you began to close in on old Masterson you saw yourself in a flash leading this-here League in homers. The Kid from Tomkinsville. Another Joe DiMag, hey? Thought you were anyhow. You got homers on the brain....”

  He protested, “No, no, that isn’t so, Dave; that isn’t true....”

  “You didn’t even know it, didn’t realize it maybe, but it’s true. You forgot that you were playing for Brooklyn and started playing for Tucker. You became—now what was it the sportswriters called you... oh, yes, ‘Bad News Tucker!’ I saw you that afternoon last month at home when the cameramen all gathered round the plate as you came over with your sixteenth home run, and I saw those kids chasing you for your autograph after the game. Why, the answer’s easy. You just forgot the team, Roy. That’s why I had to bench you.”

  He started to reply, to say it was false, but the words stuck. He’d never thought those things actively, but they were all true and he knew it.

  “Now first of all, Roy, quit worrying. That’s what’s the matter with this whole team now. When you aren’t hitting, all pitchers look good to you, awfully good. Your confidence and timing is all shot to pieces. Oh, I know, I’ve had it happen to me, more than once. The pitcher you always thought you owned can make a monkey of you. Stop thinking about it, don’t let it get under your skin. Next, remember that in this-here game they pay off not on homers, not even on your batting average either, but on one thing: your ability to bat in runs. Baseball’s a team game and don’t ever forget it.

  “Here’s something practical. About your hitting, I mean. Trouble is you’ve tightened up, and every time you step in there you’re as tight as a steel rod. Lemme give you a tip. When you walk to the plate start whistling. What? Oh, anything at all... whistle “Yankee Doodle” and it will loosen you up. Then wade in and smack the first good one. Try it and see. Now, boy, go downstairs and have a couple of beers, and then get on up to bed and forget it. Good night.”

  21

  HOPELESSLY ENTRENCHED IN fourth place in the first week in September, the Dodgers watched the bitter struggle for second between the Cubs and the Cards. Up front were the Giants with a four game lead, not much but safe unless the second place team suddenly became hot. In the American League the Yanks as usual were far out in front, and as Casey put it:

  “The Dodgers in fourth place are so far behind these days they are calling in their farm hands. The Yanks are so far ahead they are calling in their outfield. With three weeks of the season to go both races seem
settled and it looks like another five cent World Series.”

  It was true that Dave had called in some of the likely youngsters from farm teams for try-outs. This fact, added to the approaching end of the season, turned the squad to looking ahead, wondering about jobs for next summer and how the recruits would shape up in trying for their positions. Most of the men who had played through the year were not unhappy about their work. Last season they had risen from last place to sixth, and except for the slump caused by bad luck and unexpected injuries, they might now be in second or third. Next year. It was the ancient Brooklyn war cry. Next year... next year... next year....

  Dave heard it. He heard the words in the dugout, in the showers, in the hotel lobby, and at meals. With two and a half weeks to go the Dodgers were three games behind third place and seven back of second. But if some of the players were contented and had already counted themselves out for the season, he had not. Just as the squad was ready to take the field the next afternoon he came into the dressing room with MacManus on his heels. The Kid felt something was about to happen.

  It was not a hunch because he saw Dave’s face. The veteran catcher had grown older during the wearing summer months; streaks of gray were noticeable over his ears, and there were new lines around his mouth and in his forehead. The strain was telling. When he saw Dave enter the room with a tight look on his face, Roy knew something was going to burst. For whereas Gabby’s fight talks were frequent and impressive, Dave handled the team individually, seldom talking to them as a group. Something important was therefore in the cards, this the Kid knew by the expression on the manager’s face, by the serious look on the freckled countenance of MacManus as he closed the door leading to the office. Dave’s face was serious, too; he hitched at his belt, put one leg up on a bench before his locker, and leaned over on his knee. Just behind stood MacManus nervously lighting a cigarette, and Bill Hanson, the business manager, peered over the heads from a distant corner. The whole family; behind the circle fluttered old Chiselbeak, his arms full of dirty clothes.