by Philip Roth
LEGAL COACH: Suits me.
TRICKY: There we are then. Two from the Professor’s list and two of your own choice.
HIGHBROW COACH: To the list then, gentlemen. 1: Hanoi. 2: The Berrigans. 3: The Black Panthers. 4: Jane Fonda. 5: Curt Flood.
ALL: Curt Flood?
HIGHBROW COACH: Curt… Flood.
SPIRITUAL COACH: But—isn’t he a baseball player?
TRICKY: Was a baseball player. Any questions about baseball players, just ask me, Reverend. Was the center fielder for the Washington Senators. But then he up and ran away. Skipped the country.
HIGHBROW COACH: He did indeed, Mr. President. Curt Flood, born January 18, 1938, in Houston, Texas, bats right, throws right, entered big league baseball in 1956 with Cincinnati, played from ’58 to ’69 with the St. Louis Cardinals, presently under contract at a salary of $110,000 a year to the Washington Senators, on the morning of April 27, 1971, with the baseball season not even a month old, boarded a Pan Am flight bound from New York to Barcelona, giving no explanation for his hasty departure other than “personal problems.” Though Flood is known to have purchased a ticket for Barcelona, he apparently disembarked in Lisbon—wearing a brown leather jacket, bell-bottomed trousers and sunglasses—there to make connections with a flight for his final European destination … The question, gentlemen, is obvious: why, a week to the day before the uprising of the Boy Scouts in Washington, D.C., why did Mr. Curt Flood of the Washington baseball team find it necessary to leave the country in so precipitous and dramatic a fashion?
TRICKY: Oh, I think I can answer that one, Professor, knowing sports as I do inside and out. Poor Flood was in a slump, and a bad one. In his first twenty times at bat this year, he’d had only three hits, and two of those were bunts. Fact is, Williams had benched him. He’d sat out six starts in a row against right-handed pitching. Now I may be the highest elected official in the land, but I still don’t think I’m going to second-guess Ted Williams when he benches a hitter. No, sirree. On the other hand, you can well imagine the effect being benched had upon a one-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year star player like Flood.
HIGHBROW COACH: With all due respect, sir, for your knowledge of the game, which far exceeds my own, this “slump,” as you call it, might it not have been just the right “cover” for a baseball player planning to leave the country in a hurry, just the right alibi?
LEGAL COACH: If I get your drift, Professor, are you suggesting that Ted Williams, the manager of the Senators, is implicated in this as well? That benching Flood was part of some overall plan?
POLITICAL COACH: Now hold on. Before we carry this any further, I want to say that I think we are skating on very thin ice here, when we are dealing with a baseball figure of Ted Williams’ stature. Despised as he was by many sportswriters in his time—and I’m sure we could call upon these people for assistance, if we should want them—my gut reaction is that it is in the best interests of this administration to maintain a hands-off policy on all Hall of Famers.
TRICKY: And what a Hall of Famer! I wonder how many of you know Ted Williams’ record. It certainly is a record for all Americans to be proud of, and I’d like to share it with you. Just listen and tell me if you don’t agree. Lifetime batting average, .344. That makes him fifth in the history of the game. Lifetime slugging average, .634. That makes him second only to Babe Ruth himself! In doubles, fourteenth with 525; in home runs fifth with 521; in extra base hits seventh with 1,117; and in all-important RBI’s, and I really can’t say enough about RBI’s and how important they are to the national pastime, in RBI’s, also seventh with 1,839. And that isn’t all. Led the league in hitting in 1941 with an average of—just listen to this—.406! In ’42 again, with .356; in ’47 with .343; in ’48 with .369—(Suddenly angry) And they said Jack Charisma was the one who had the memory for facts! They said Charisma was the one who had the grasp of the issues! Oh, how they loved to downgrade Dixon! No wonder I had a crisis in that campaign! They were always picking on me! My beard! My nose! My tactics! Well, just let me say one thing as regards my so-called “tactics”: if in any of the averages I have just quoted to you, I have altered Ted Williams’ record by so much as one hundredth of one percentage point, I will submit my resignation to Congress tomorrow. Now that would be an unprecedented act in American history, but I would do it, if I had dared to play party politics with the American public on a matter as serious as this one.
(All applaud)
POLITICAL COACH: Mr. President, that was a most impressive recitation of the facts, and has only served to strengthen my conviction that it would be utterly foolhardy to bring a slugger like Williams under federal indictment.
TRICKY: Good thinking. Good sharp political thinking. Of course, with Flood himself, we have a very different situation. To be sure, he batted over .300 for the Cards in ’61, ’63, ’64, ’65, ’67 and ’68, but never once did he lead the league in hitting or home runs, as Williams did, and his slugging average is almost half what Williams’ was at the end of his career.
Of course, in 1964, Flood did lead the National League in base hits with 211, and something like that could stir up a certain amount of sympathy. Now let me make one thing perfectly clear: I am not saying that he is anywhere near the all-time leader in that department, George Sisler, who got 257 hits in the year 1920, but a fact is a fact, and we are going to have to confront it. Those 211 base hits could mean trouble.
HIGHBROW COACH: Mr. President, under ordinary circumstances I too might be leery of bringing a charge as drastic as whichever one we come up with, against a man who, as you so wisely remind us, led the National League in total base hits with 211. But Curt Flood is something more than your run-of-the-mill hitting star of yesteryear: he is a bone fide troublemaker, and was in hot water right up to his neck even before I put him on my list. That is why I put him on my list: for not only has he jumped a hundred-thousand-dollar contract and skipped the country only a month into the season, but he of course is the man who in 1970 refused to be traded by the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies, claiming that the trade denied him his basic rights to negotiate a contract for his services on the open market. Subsequently, he hired as his attorney none other than Lyin’ B. Johnson’s appointee to the Supreme Court…
POLITICAL COACH (hopefully): Abe Fortas!
HIGHBROW COACH: No, no, but almost as good. Arthur Goldberg. G-o-l-d-b-e-r-g. And these two instituted a suit against baseball on constitutional grounds, asserting that organized baseball was in violation of the Antitrust Laws, and that the owners, by trading players from one team to another without their permission, treated them like pieces of property, which was both illegal and immoral.
Now, impugning the sacred name of baseball in this way did not go over very well with a good many loyal Americans, including the Commissioner of Baseball himself, and in the eyes of many, sportswriters and fellow players, as well as fans throughout the country, Flood, and his mouthpiece Goldberg, appeared to be out to destroy the game beloved by millions. Flood, in a book he has written on the subject, even quotes himself as saying in conversation, “Somebody needs to go up against the system. I’m ready.” And, gentlemen, that is only one of the self-incriminating statements that is scattered throughout that manifesto. Of course, as if all that he has said and done isn’t compromising enough—including hiring a Mr. Goldberg to represent him in this attack upon the most American of American sports—Flood is a black man.
LEGAL COACH: Where is he now, Algeria? That would sew it up for us, if he was in Algeria.
HIGHBROW COACH: To the contrary, had he fled to Algeria—which he has not—they would already be selling posters of him at bat in a beret, and ads to “Free Flood” would be appearing daily in The New York Times, signed by movie stars and Jean-Paul Sartre. There’d be marches and pickets and probably one of those mule trains camping on the White House lawn.
TRICKY: Oh, those mule trains! Those marches! Really, I can’t stand those things. It never fails—every time the
y start marching on Washington, I’m the one who has to leave town. Now does that make any sense to you? I’m the President, I live here, and still I’m the one who has to pack his bags and get on a helicopter and go when these marchers start pouring in from all over the country! Honestly, I’ve got this big beautiful house, and I spend half my life living out of suitcases. Can you imagine what it’s like for a President, on practically five minutes’ notice, to try to pack everything he needs in his briefcase, while outside the window the propellers are going and everybody is screaming “Hurry, hurry, let’s get out of here, before they go crazy and send a delegation to the door!” Oh, it’s just awful. One time I forgot my jersey, one time I forgot my cleats, one time I even forgot to pack my ball—and really, the whole weekend was just ruined. And those marchers couldn’t care less!
HIGHBROW COACH: Well, you won’t have to leave town this time, Mr. President. Because this fugitive has not fled to Algeria to set himself up as some kind of ersatz revolutionary leader in exile; nor has he fled to Africa to live among his own kind, as he might have done if he were looking to build a following. No, there isn’t going to be much sympathy in this country, I can assure you, for a handsome and muscular young black man like Mr. Curt Flood, who, from all indications, has decided to make his home—gentlemen, it couldn’t be better—in Copenhagen.
SPIRITUAL COACH: No!
HIGHBROW COACH: Yes, Reverend, Copenhagen. The Mecca toward which the filth peddlers of the world go down on their knees morning and night. The pornography capital of the world.
POLITICAL COACH: Wow! (Ecstatic) And that’s not all they’ve got in Denmark to compromise Mr. Flood, is it?
HIGHBROW COACH: Very fast on your feet, young man … The word is miscegenation. Not that we have to come right out with it, any more than we mean to say, in so many words, that he is a known smut addict.
SPIRITUAL COACH: No, please, you mustn’t. Where a baseball star is involved, we are inevitably going to be dealing with young impressionable minds, boys eight, nine, ten years of age—If they were to hear such words …
POLITICAL COACH: I agree, Reverend. It’ll be better by far to do it by “implication.”
LEGAL COACH: Fine with me. What about you, Mr. President? Think you can manage that? A hint here, a slur there, instead of coming right out with it?
TRICKY: Well, if it’s a matter of making the Reverend feel at ease about the wonderful young Little Leaguers of this country, I sure am going to try.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, gentlemen.
TRICKY: You see, Reverend, there’s that restraint again, there’s that sense of proportion and moderation that according to the newspapers I’m not supposed to have. After all, here is a black man engaging in just about the wickedest act any American can imagine, and with the women of Denmark, who are among the whitest in the entire world, and yet instead of coming right out with it, and thus exposing our Little Leaguers to a highly dangerous and tempting idea, we are going to smear him by insinuation and innuendo.
SPIRITUAL COACH: I’m deeply indebted, Mr. President.
POLITICAL COACH: We thought that went without saying, Reverend.
HIGHBROW COACH: Good enough, gentlemen. I shall now proceed to read the list one more time, so that you may decide how you wish to cast your votes. 1: Hanoi. 2: The Berrigans—
POLITICAL COACH: May I interrupt here? I wonder if I can take a moment to make a case for the innocence of the Berrigan brothers.
LEGAL COACH (outraged): The innocence of the Berrigan brothers?
POLITICAL COACH (backpeddling): Of this charge! Of this charge!
LEGAL COACH: But we haven’t even decided yet upon the exact nature of the charge—so how can they be innocent? Where is your evidence? Where is your proof?
POLITICAL COACH: Well, I don’t have any.
LEGAL COACH: Then, maybe, young man, you oughtn’t to go around calling people innocent until you do!
POLITICAL COACH: I grant you that—but what I am fearful of is this: if we do try to pin still another crime on those priests, we are going to produce a sympathetic reaction toward them such as you ordinarily don’t get until after an assassination. I should tell you that at this very moment a Hollywood movie is in the early stages of planning, in which Fathers Phil and Dan Berrigan are to be portrayed by Bing Crosby and an actor, as yet unnamed, who will be made up to resemble the late, great Barry Fitzgerald. Now these Hollywood producers, gentlemen, no matter how they may dress or wear their hair, are not hippies or left-wing fanatics by any stretch of the imagination. Underneath those anti-establishment muttonchops they are hard-headed businessmen with a product to market and an audience to exploit, and they can spot a trend developing a long way off. According to my informants, the movie being planned deals sympathetically with two priests who decide to blow up West Point, after Army defeats Notre Dame before seventy million television fans in the big football game of the year. There’ll be nuns and songs and so on, and who knows but that a picture like this could turn the whole damn country Communist overnight.
MILITARY COACH: Two hundred million Reds on American soil? Not if I have anything to say about it.
POLITICAL COACH: Easier said than done, General. Shoot two hundred million Americans—if that’s what you have in mind—shoot one hundred million Americans, and I’m afraid you’re going to give the Democrats just the kind of issue they can play politics with in the ’72 elections.
MILITARY COACH: The level to which political life in this country has sunk! Now if the military were running this show …
POLITICAL COACH: Granted. Granted. But you do not build a Utopian society overnight, General. And that is why I wish to caution you, one and all, against voting for the Berrigans. I know how tempting it is, especially after what we went through to track them down, but I am afraid that this is another one of those instances when we are going to have to display our characteristic restraint and moderation. Certainly the last thing in the world we want is Bing Crosby in a collar crooning to Debbie Reynolds in her habit about b-b-b-b-lowing things up. Not even Lenin could have devised a more sure-fire method of converting the American working class into bomb-throwing revolutionaries.
HIGHBROW COACH: Ingenious analysis. Nonetheless, I think you misread Hollywood’s intentions. If the Berrigans were to get the chair, to be sure Hollywood would immediately go into full-scale production of some kind of musical about them, along the line of Going My Way. But that is only an argument against killing them. Keep them in jail, and you will be surprised how quickly the public and the movie moguls will forget they exist.
LEGAL COACH: I agree. Bury them alive. Always better.
SPIRITUAL COACH: And more merciful, too. That way, you see, it’s not capital punishment.
HIGHBROW COACH: To move on then. Number two was the Berrigans.
SPIRITUAL COACH: What was one again? Harvard?
HIGHBROW COACH: Hanoi.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Ah, yes. I knew it was something beginning with an H.
MILITARY COACH (angrily): And what about something else beginning with an “H”? What about Haiphong! How can you have Hanoi without Haiphong? That’s like Quemoy without Matsu!
TRICKY: Quemoy and Matsu! Does that bring back memories! Quemoy and Matsu! … What ever happened to them?
POLITICAL COACH: Oh, they’re still out there, Mr. President, if we should ever need them.
TRICKY: Well, that’s wonderful. Where were they again—exactly? Wait, let me guess, let’s see if I can remember … Indonesia!
POLITICAL COACH: No, sir.
TRICKY: Am I warm? The Philippines! No? … Near Hawaii? … No? Oh, I give up.
POLITICAL COACH: In the Formosa Straits, Mr. President. Between Taiwan and Mainland China.
TRICKY: No kidding. Hey, listen, whatever happened to what’s-his-name? The Chinaman.
POLITICAL COACH: Which Chinaman, Mr. President? There are six hundred million Chinamen.
TRICKY: I know, enslaved and so on.
But I’m thinking of, you know, the one with the wife. Oh, it’s one of those names they have …
HIGHBROW COACH: Chiang Kai-shek, Mr. President.
TRICKY: Right, Professor! Shek. Little Shek, with the glasses. (Fondly) The Old Dixon… (Chuckling) Well! Enough wandering down memory lane. Forgive me, gentlemen. Where were we? So far we have Moscow and the Berrigans.
HIGHBROW COACH: Hanoi and the Berrigans, Mr. President.
TRICKY: Of course! See what you did with that Quemoy and Matsu? I was still back there in the fifties. Look at me, my lip is covered with goose flesh.
HIGHBROW COACH: To proceed. Number 3: The Black Panthers. No dispute there. Good. Number 4: Jane Fonda, the movie actress and antiwar activist. Number 5: Curt Flood, the baseball player. Any questions, before we proceed to the vote. Reverend?
SPIRITUAL COACH: Jane Fonda. Has she ever appeared nude in a film?
HIGHBROW COACH: I can’t honestly say I remember seeing her pudenda on the screen, Reverend, but I think I can vouch for her breasts.
SPIRITUAL COACH: With aureole or without?
HIGHBROW COACH: I believe with.
SPIRITUAL COACH: And her buttocks?
HIGHBROW COACH: Yes, I believe we’ve seen her buttocks. Indeed, they constitute a large part of her appeal.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Thank you.
HIGHBROW COACH: Any other questions?
POLITICAL COACH: Well, about the Black Panthers—do you really think that the American people will believe that the Black Panthers are behind the Boy Scouts? That really does require quite a bit of imagination.
TRICKY: Now I take exception there. I don’t want to influence the voting, but I do want to say this: let’s not underestimate the imagination of the American people. This may seem like old-fashioned patriotism such as isn’t in fashion any more, but I have the highest regard for their imagination and I always have. Why, I actually think the American people can be made to believe anything. These people, after all, have their fantasies and fears and superstitions, just like anybody else, and you are not going to put anything over on them by simply addressing yourself to the real problems and pretending that the others don’t exist just because they are imaginery.