Although all the players were professionals, their pay was very low in those days and some of them had part-time jobs away from the ballpark. They were given a small expense account by the owners and had to find themselves room and board in the town. None of them could afford the Empire Hotel in downtown Devil’s Lake or even the Palace, out there on the highway, which had only eight rooms. So they had to find a family with an extra bedroom or two that could take them in and feed them. We never did that in our house, although we could have, but I’ll explain that to you as we go along.
Marion Houston, whom you asked about, played in Devil’s Lake for three years back then. He was tall and strong, with a full head of curly red hair going in all directions and a smile that could change your mood even if you’d just come from a funeral. He was the left fielder for the Demons and could hit the ball farther than anyone else on the team when he connected. Once in a while a player from our league was bought by a major league team and assigned to one of its minor league clubs. Marion didn’t have enough all-around talent to figure that would happen to him, but he was young enough to still hold on to that dream.
There was a story once in The Prairie Times, our local paper, in which he talked about his name. He said that his great-great-grandfather was part of the Houston family that gave the City of Houston its name. They had moved into the eastern part of Texas from Louisiana about fifteen years before the fight at the Alamo, and one of the Houston daughters actually died there along with her husband. As for his first name, according to what he told the paper, his folks fell in love with the name Marion for some reason and decided they would give their next child that name whether it was a boy or a girl.
In his first summer in Devil’s Lake, Marion lived with the Dondelinger family. They had a couple of teenage sons who were fanatics about baseball, and I guess the boys were always all over Marion to practice with them whenever he wasn’t at the ballpark. He’s the kind of guy who couldn’t say “No” to that, but I would hear from one friend or another that Marion wished Eric Dondelinger would set up some rules so that the boys would know when to leave him alone.
The Demons finished third in the North Dakota standings the first summer that Marion was here. He hit twelve home runs, averaging one every week, but he struck out an awful lot and wasn’t considered the player you’d like to see up at bat in the ninth inning when you really needed a hit. At the end of the season, though, Marion was given a contract to come back the next year.
Before he left Devil’s Lake to return to Texas, Marion looked around to make arrangements for a different place to stay. I guess he heard somewhere that the mayor of Devil’s Lake had a large house for his wife and himself, with a daughter away at college. He made an appointment to see the mayor in his office and asked about renting a room for the next baseball season.
“I’ve seen your home on Maple Avenue, Mister Mayor, and it sure looks like you’d have an extra room I could stay in. I’m a quiet person, I’m sure I’d like anything your wife cooks for dinner, and Eric Dondelinger can assure you I always pay my rent on time. I’d even be willing to see your grass gets mowed without you having to pay me for it.”
The mayor was not a big man—the body of a second baseman you’d probably say—with a ruddy complexion and a thin salt and pepper moustache. He wore a light-colored sports jacket made partly of silk over a blue buttoned-down shirt and a striped tie. “I could have saved you a trip over here, Mr. Houston, if I knew that was on your mind,” the mayor told him. “The fact is I never rent out rooms to baseball players.”
“Is there a reason for that?” Marion asked.
“Yes, there is, and I’ll be honest with you about it. I’ve lived in Devil’s Lake for over thirty years, and I’ve seen the players come and go for about twenty of those years. Too many of them have been drunk in the streets, or out of control at parties, or doing something they shouldn’t be doing. I often have to get involved just because I’m the mayor here, but I don’t want anyone living in my house who could be acting that way. You may be a fine young man, Mr. Houston, but I refuse to take any chances, so I just don’t rent to ballplayers, period.”
Marion was considering whether to just get up and go, or plead his case further, when the mayor added, “And besides, I have a daughter who has been spending this summer with friends in Michigan, but she’ll be home next summer and I don’t want any strangers living in the house with her. It’s out of the question, Mr. Houston. The most I can do for you is have my secretary make up a list of folks in town who do rent to ballplayers and I’ll check off the ones I think you should try first. Would you like that? I can probably have it for you in half an hour.”
“Yes, thank you, I would,” Marion said.
He picked up the list a short while later, and by the end of the day he had rented a room with his own bathroom from the Kretchners. It wasn’t big or beautiful, but it was clean, the price was right, there were no children in the house, and he and the Kretchners had taken to each other while they discussed his living there. As if anyone could have a hard time getting to like him.
After Marion went back to Texas, we had our usual dreadful winter which I’ve never gotten used to as long as I’ve been here. That was followed by an exceptionally wet spring, and there was even some flooding in a couple of the towns around us. But in the middle of May, all the baseball players on the Demons began arriving back in Devil’s Lake and working out at the ballpark to get ready for the start of the season. The park is called Randolph Finderson Memorial Field, by the way, and it’s located just two blocks east of Main Street, right near the shopping district.
I can’t tell you where they met for the first time although I’m sure Marion didn’t know that Gail was the mayor’s daughter when he saw her and fell head over heels for her right from the start. I even suspect Gail may have seen him at Finderson Field and arranged to be at whatever nightspot she heard the ballplayers frequented. I can tell you that Marion had come back to North Dakota a little broader and handsomer than ever. In any event, Gail fell just as hard for him, and in no time all their friends recognized that they were a couple. I know now that it didn’t take long before the two of them began talking about getting engaged and marrying each other a year later. They were going to wait until after the next baseball season, when Gail would be out of college.
Things started happening one evening when Gail said to him, “I know it may be a little old-fashioned, Marion, but you’ve got to speak to my father and get his blessing for us.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he told her. “He already let me know once that he doesn’t trust baseball players. If he wouldn’t let me have a room in his house, I don’t think he’s going to want me to have his daughter.”
“Well, he knows I’ve been dating you steady and hasn’t said anything to me about it.”
“But he may be thinking that nothing will come of it. He’s waiting to see if you’ll eventually feel the same way about ballplayers that he does. There’s no reason for him to talk to you about it now and maybe have an argument.”
“Please, Marion, do it for me. I’m sure my dad will say it’s okay.”
Several days later, Marion had the mayor’s first appointment in the morning. The mayor’s secretary had allotted it a half-hour’s time, but the meeting took no more than ten minutes. The mayor was friendly and commented on the fact that the team had not gotten off to a very auspicious start in its first twenty-five games; but he was visibly upset when Marion said that he had come to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage.
“I’ve said this before, Mr. Houston, that you appear to be a nice young man, but you already know how I feel about ballplayers, and I don’t think my daughter would be making a wise choice in marrying one. It’s my hope that she finds someone who has a professional career ahead of him, who can offer her a secure future and who is respected in the community. I’ll tell her exactly how I feel when I see her this evening.”
Marion reported
on the meeting to Gail. She was disappointed, but expressed confidence that she would be able to change her father’s mind. “I definitely want us to have his blessing, Marion. I wouldn’t feel right about getting engaged and married without it.” But even as she spoke, Gail knew she would do anything—even elope—to be Marion’s bride.
“Does that mean you won’t marry me if he’s stubborn about it and won’t accept me?”
She wanted to say, “Of course not, I’ll marry you no matter what.” But she had to make Marion understand how important it was to her. “I don’t know,” Gail told him. “I think I still will, but I just don’t know.”
At the halfway mark of the baseball season, the Devil’s Lake club was in third place of its four-team division, and appeared to be going nowhere. Then, on the very day that Marion was moved from fifth to third in the batting order—a desperation move, the manager later confessed—he got hot. He began having multiple hit games almost regularly, and his sudden burst of home runs provided the winning margin in many of the team’s victories. In the space of three weeks the Demons moved from near the bottom to the top of their division. And they got there, finally, by sweeping a three-game series with the Blue Beavers, the team from Warren that was leading the Minnesota division.
On the first game back in Devil’s Lake, Finderson Field was almost packed. Marion kept the winning streak going with a double in the ninth inning that drove in two runs to end the game. When he returned to the dugout and was shaking hands with all his teammates, he heard a fan close to the field shouting, “Keep it up, Houston, and you’ll be mayor of Devil’s Lake one of these days.” A short while later, Marion was resting in the clubhouse before taking his shower and recalled Gail telling him that her father would soon begin campaigning for reelection. He was completing his third term and had been in office almost twelve years. Although there would be a primary election in the middle of September, her father was quite certain, she told Marion, that he would be running without competition from any other Democrat. On the Republican side, two candidates would contest that party’s nomination to run in the general election.
At City Hall the next day, Marion learned that the only requirement in running for mayor was to submit an official nominating paper along with the signatures of one hundred people who were then living in Devil’s Lake. He took the necessary paperwork with him to the ballpark that day, explained his intention to his teammates and within three days had all the signatures he required. He returned to City Hall and became a Democratic candidate for Mayor of Devil’s Lake.
With one week remaining in the season, Devil’s Lake was tied for first place in its division with the Foresters, the team from Grand Forks. Although they had continued to play well, the Demons had been overtaken for the joint lead when the Foresters won ten of their last eleven games. Marion had continued to be the main reason for the Demons’ success, hitting at a .360 average with five home runs in the two weeks that had passed since he began running for mayor. The crowds at the ballpark had become progressively larger as the season wound to an end with the Demons in the fight to get into the little world series. As Marion’s hits won ball games, his popularity throughout Devil’s Lake continued to grow by leaps and bounds. Unlike the mayor, who had campaign signs up on front lawns all over town, Marion had only the posters with which he decorated the roof and sides of his 1949 Chevrolet. He had asked the team’s general manager for permission to hang a campaign sign across from the ticket booths at the ballpark, but his request was turned down. I’m sure the team’s front office didn’t want to chance offending any of the Demons’ paying customers who may have favored a different candidate.
“Marion, my father wants to talk to you,” Gail told him late one afternoon as they walked hand in hand from the ballpark toward the downtown shops. She had felt from the start, when she first learned of Marion’s political aspirations, that she would be somehow caught in the middle between the two men. When she asked him why he was entering the mayoral contest, she was surprised to hear Marion tell her that it was one way he could get her father’s blessing for their marriage.
“I think I can win,” he said, “and as the former mayor he would have to respect my new stature and not think of me simply as a ballplayer. It would certainly show that I have the respect of the community.” Marion told Gail that he was prepared to give up his playing days with the Demons after the season and that he would be happy living in Devil’s Lake if he were elected mayor.
The two opponents agreed to meet at the ballpark several hours before the start of the next game. The mayor’s secretary, whom Marion had called, said that the mayor felt it wouldn’t look right for Marion to be seen going into his office at City Hall.
“I’ll be brief, Mr. Houston,” the mayor said as soon as they sat down on a bench in the upper grandstand. “I don’t think you understand everything that’s involved with being mayor of this town, and for that reason I don’t believe you’d do a good job. Believe me when I tell you that there’s much more to do than cut ribbons and attend Kiwanis meetings. That’s exactly what I’ve been telling the folks in Devil’s Lake when I’m out campaigning. But I respect the fact that you were willing to run for the office and that you haven’t tried to tear me down in any way. In fact, as far as I know and from what I’m told, the only campaigning you’ve done is with that baseball bat of yours. I truly believe that if you were to defeat me in the primary—which I don’t think will happen, but anyway–you would lose the general election to the Republican candidate. Whoever that is—and they are both powerful men in this town—will tear into you like a power saw into a sapling. You’ve been nothing more than a summer visitor here for the past two years and you wouldn’t have any answers for the issues in the election, for all the things we fight about in Devil’s Lake the rest of the year.”
The mayor paused a few seconds, loosened his tie slightly and continued. “Right now, it’s a popularity contest between you and me. You’re popular because you help win games for our team. The better the Demons do, the more people like you. But if the team doesn’t get into the little world series at the end of this month, your popularity will have a lot of time to fade away before the primary election on September 19th. Instead of waiting to see what happens, I’d like to make an agreement with you now. I confess that my daughter has told me why you entered this race. So I’ve come to ask you to withdraw from the election and to tell you that I’ll welcome you into our family if you do.”
Marion was silent. He looked around the ballpark, empty except for one groundskeeper filling in some bare spots with white chalk along the left field foul line. He knew instinctively what his answer would be, but realized that the man making the unacceptable proposal might soon be his father-in-law. Were there no such possible connection, he probably would not have been thinking about keeping his temper in check.
When he answered, it was in a low voice. “My folks always told me to be sure to finish whatever I started. That way, if I knew I had an obligation to get it done, I’d think hard about it before I jumped into it. I entered this race to get your blessing, but as much as Gail and I want that, I can’t accept it as a reward for withdrawing. Win or lose, I’ve got to see it through to the end.”
“I’m sorry about that, Mr. Houston.” The mayor stood up, hesitated a few seconds as if getting ready to say something else, but turned away instead and left.
As fate would have it, the Demons played their last three games of the season at home against Grand Forks. The two teams were still tied for the division lead, so whichever club won two of the games would go to the little world series.
The first game was a pitcher’s duel, and the score was tied 1–1 when Marion batted first in the last half of the ninth inning. The infielders were aware of his power and always played back for him. But this time he surprised them by bunting a ball toward third and getting a hit. On the first pitch to the next batter, Marion stole second base and went to third when the throw from the catcher sailed ov
er the shortstop’s head into center field. The Forester’s manager came out and ordered his pitcher to walk the next two batters to fill the bases. By the way, that was only the second Demons game I had ever been to, and all the strategy had to be explained to me by my daughter, with whom I went. She had become a very big fan that year and quite knowledgeable about the game. But the strategy didn’t work when the next player hit a fly ball and Marion scored the winning run after the catch with a beautiful slide into home.
The second game was as different from the first as you could get. They all called it a “slugfest,” and the Grand Forks players were doing most of the slugging. They won the game by a score of 13–7, and had four home runs to none for the Demons.
Well, you can imagine all the anticipation for the final game and the tension around town. It was a Sunday, and that morning the minister in our church said a prayer for the Demons. But it was clear he wasn’t totally convinced his prayer would be answered when his sermon dealt with different instances in which the noblest or the most deserving of men or women didn’t achieve what they desired the most. It started with Moses leading his people through the desert for forty years but not going into the promised land himself, and ended with Gloria Swanson not getting the Academy Award a few years earlier for her role in Sunset Boulevard.
Of course, as you may know, that third game belonged to Marion. He had two home runs, four hits altogether, and scored more runs himself than all the Foresters. Devil’s Lake won the game 7–3, and there’s no doubt that if the election had been held the next day, Marion would not have just been victorious, he’d have won in a landslide.
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