Joe was the first of the Unlucky Eight to die. He was sixty-four in December of 1951, when his heart finally gave out. Freddy McMullin went in ‘52; Buck Weaver in ‘56; Lefty Williams in ‘59. Happy Felsch died in ‘64 in Milwaukee; Eddie Cicotte in Detroit in 1969 at eighty-four. Chick Gandil lived to be eighty-two, and Swede Risberg outlived Gandil by nearly five years, dying in Red Bluff, California, in 1975, at age eighty-one. The Swede was indeed a hard guy.
“Why can’t you make a living on a farm like this?” someone asks, and I explain that I am equipment poor, and interest poor, and that my income has not kept pace with the price of land or the price of fuel, which has tripled while my income has remained stable.
“What can we do to help?” says Lefty Williams. “I was born on a farm in Missouri. I got a strong back and I’m pretty handy with my hands.”
Several others nod. “I farmed some, too,” says Buck Weaver.
“I’ve hoed a few acres of cotton myself,” says Shoeless Joe with a smile.
“It’s not the work that’s killing me, it’s paying for the equipment,” I begin, but am cut off by Lefty Williams.
“How about horses?” he says. “Your machines do the work of ten men with horses, but here you sit with more men than you can use. Sell off your machines, pay off your loans, buy up a few horses, and we’ll do your work for you.”
“I remember horses,” says Eddie Scissons. “I grew up on a corn farm in Nebraska. This used to be my farm. Harrowing, disking, plowing, planting, picking. I’ve done them all.”
“Johnny, the catcher, he was raised on a dirt farm in North Dakota,” says Shoeless Joe, looking right at me. “Bet he’d be willing to help out.”
My head is filled with a wild vision of these men, these spirits, out in the dew-cool Iowa dawn, breaking the land, seeding and harrowing, the black reins wrapped around their wrists, cussing their teams on across the black fields, each man still dressed in his baseball uniform.
I see them rumbling in on wagons, the setting sun behind them, the wagon boxes overflowing with golden corn. I see them tending the fields by day, like members of some religious group who are forbidden to use worldly machines, and at night filing into my baseball park for a rendezvous with stalled time.
Their voices are ripe with excitement.
“It would be like rent,” says Joe. “You done this for us. We’ll pay you back.” There is a current of assent.
“But can you do that?” I say. “I’ve never seen any of you anywhere except on the field. What do you become when you walk through that door in center field?”
The silence that follows is long and ominous. I feel like I have just stomped across an innocent children’s game, or broken a doll.
“We sleep,” says Chick Gandil finally.
“And wait,” says Happy Felsch.
“And dream,” says Joe Jackson. “Oh, how we dream …” He stops, the look of awe and rapture on his face enough of an explanation.
The magic has been broken. The other players edge toward the gate in center field.
“I remember horses,” says Eddie again. “You fellows have a right good idea.”
“Let’s go to the house,” says Salinger, taking Eddie’s arm and turning him around. There is an aura of mystery, a definite difference about the game to be played tonight. The opposing team, gray and ephemeral as dandelion fluff, does not consist of the usual opponents, who often appear to be identical to the players from the previous game, with only a change of uniform and adjusted batting stances.
Fittingly, it is Eddie Scissons who first notices the difference.
“That’s Three Finger Brown!” he says, pointing to the shadowy pitcher warming up on the sidelines. “Check his number! Check his number!” he shouts. But none of us know Three Finger Brown’s number offhand.
“Look at the infield!” Eddie crows. “Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance. Do you boys have any idea how lucky you are?”
It does seem to me that the cloudlike infielders have the bear-cub insignia grinning from their ghostly uniforms. But what kind of game is it?
Shoeless Joe avoids my questions when I lean down to talk to him. He doesn’t reiterate what I already understand—that there are things it is better not to know—but changes the subject, discussing, among other things, Moonlight Graham’s .300 batting average since he joined the team.
As the game begins, Eddie gathers us around him like a group of disciples and regales us with the history of each Chicago Cub. He launches into baseball stories of all kinds, as if he were playing a game of free association.
“Got a daughter living in Seattle, I have. When I visited her, she took me to a game—sent me to a game is more like it. She convinced a neighbor boy to drive me there and back by giving him a free ticket. That Kingdome in Seattle is like playing baseball in your cellar. Why, they’d hit the ball toward first or third base and it would hit a seam in the AstroTurf and skip off into a corner, while the runner went tearing around the bases. And the sound doesn’t carry. You can’t hear the bat make contact, and even when the fans cheer, you can’t hear them. It was like looking at a TV game with the sound turned down.” He stops to chuckle, and his eyes take on their now-familiar faraway expression.
“We had a shortstop when I was in the minors, can’t remember his name, but he used to carry twelve rocks in his hip pocket—scatter them out when he left the field, and he’d pick them up when he came out for the next inning. He’d sit on the bench and watch the face of the shortstop when lazy grounders suddenly hopped over his head like pin-pricked frogs. Stony! That was what he was called! I should have remembered.
“When I was growing up,” Eddie goes on, “why I used to watch a catcher named Gordon Sims; played for Omaha in, I think it was a Class A league. My uncle used to take me up there once or twice a summer. Oh, but that catcher was great; built low to the ground and hard as a locomotive. They used to tell stories about how once the pitcher forgot to duck a throw to second and Sims threw the ball right through him, and got the runner out. It might have been true, ‘cause I’ve never seen anybody rifle the ball the way he could. My uncle said he was gonna be in the Bigs in no time. But he never made it—just disappeared. The next summer when we went to Omaha we stayed in the same hotel as the Kansas City team, and my uncle buttonholed the Kansas City manager and asked if he knew what happened to Gordon Sims. ‘You mean Crazy Sims,’ said the manager. ‘He developed a thing about throwing the ball back to the pitcher, or to second base for that matter. He’d catch the ball and then he wanted to hand the ball to a bat boy and have him walk it back to the mound. You can guess how long he lasted with that attitude—not that they didn’t try to talk him out of it. The Omaha team even paid to send him off to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for a week. He was back planting corn on his papa’s farm in Iowa, last anyone heard of him.’ “
Going into the eighth inning, the Cubs are ahead by four runs, but after a walk, a single, and Swede Risberg’s double off Three Finger Brown, the lead is reduced to three. A walk to the catcher loads the bases, and Frank Chance, who manages as well as playing first base, dispatches Three Finger Brown to the dugout and signals to the bullpen for a left-handed pitcher.
“My God,” says Eddie Scissons as he watches the new pitcher lope in from right field. Eddie stands, whacking his cane on the edge of the bleacher. Karin, who has been dozing in my lap, springs to life.
“Now pitching for the Chicago Cubs, Kid Scissons.” The words reverberate around the stadium, as if it were a hollow gourd.
“I told you,” Eddie says. “Didn’t I tell you?” He looks around. “Where is that brother-in-law of yours now?”
In front of us, Kid Scissons, a swath of blond hair cascading over his forehead, his body solid, pure, and hard as birch, warms up on the pitcher’s mound.
His style is awkward, his left arm whipping out toward first base like a shepherd’s crook when he delivers the ball. As I watch, I remember Eddie telling us how left-handed pitchers came to be cal
led southpaws. “Back in the early days, Chicago’s West Side Park, as you might expect, faced west, so anyone who pitched left-handed was doing so with his southmost hand, or south paw. And that’s all there was to it. Most mysterious-sounding things have simple explanations.”
I look over at Jerry and assume he shares the tingly feeling that dominates my senses.
On the field, Eddie runs the count to 3–2 on Buck Weaver, then walks him. The lead is narrowed to two. I stare at Eddie Scissons, sitting, clutching his serpent-head cane, mouth open in awe like an orphan sitting in front of a clown.
Kid Scissons throws two balls to Shoeless Joe.
“Throw a curve,” says Eddie. “Throw the curve, dammit, it’s my best pitch.”
Kid Scissons does throw the curve, and it hangs over the plate as big as a cantaloupe, and Joe swats it over the third baseman’s head. It lands soft as a balloon along the foul line, and lies there while the third baseman races back and the left fielder charges in. When the dust settles, Joe stands on second, Buck Weaver on third, and the score is tied. Chance instructs Kid Scissons to walk Fred McMullin, to load the bases.
“Buzzard’s luck,” says Eddie. “He can’t kill nothing, and nothing will die for him.”
For a second, it looks as if the strategy of loading the bases, to make a force play possible at every base, has paid off. With the count 2–2, Chick Gandil raps the ball sharply, but it takes one hop and ends up in Kid Scissons’s glove. Noisy Kling, the Cub catcher, stands solid as an iron statue on home plate, his glove extended, waiting for the ball and the force out, waiting to double up Gandil at first. But Kid Scissons is not thinking. He has already turned to look at second, where he has a play, but, instead of throwing, he looks back at first, then to second again, where it is now too late to force McMullin. He looks desperately at first again, and throws, but too late to catch the speeding Gandil. Everyone is safe and the Cubs trail. The catcher is still standing on home with his glove extended. He kicks the dust disgustedly and yells toward the pitcher’s mound. Frank Chance says a couple of words to Kid Scissons, and the pitcher’s head snaps straight, as if he has taken a jab to the chin. On the bleacher, Eddie pulls his cap lower over his eyes and concentrates.
The next batter, Happy Felsch, drives the ball deep to left center field on the first pitch.
“Go for it! Damn you, stretch your legs,” shouts Eddie, who stands suddenly, his hair escaping from under his cap. The hair is yellow-white like an old dog’s. The center fielder can’t reach the ball and it rolls to the wall as Happy Felsch slices around the bases, pulling in at third standing up.
Kid Scissons stands dejectedly on the mound. He has not even backed up the play at third. Frank Chance does not walk to the mound; he just signals for a right-hander from the bullpen and points to the dugout. Kid Scissons walks off the field, head bowed, amid occasional boos and a smattering of half-hearted applause. As Kid Scissons slumps onto the bench in the dugout, Eddie Scissons sinks slowly to his bleacher seat, looking devastated.
After the game, Eddie disappears into his room and does not come out until nearly noon the next day; and then his voice is hollow as he asks me if I will drive him to Iowa City. As he gets in and out of the car, his body makes dry sounds like pages of newspaper in a breeze. We make two or three stops in Iowa City, ending up at his apartment, where I expect him to say goodbye. Instead he goes in, and returns with a shopping bag crammed with clothes, carrying his overcoat over his arm.
Dusk and the trappings of magic have not yet lowered onto and around my ballpark. The Iowa wind dominates today: The cornstalks bend ominously, rustling like plastic pompons. The wind is stroking, gusting, warm, living, a pervasive sign.
As I approach the field, I see Eddie Scissons standing alone on the bleacher. He has taken off his cap and is facing into the wind, his hair blown back like snow drifted against a fence. He is speaking, gesturing alternately with his free hand and the hand holding the serpent-headed cane.
Even though the wind is dry and toast-warm, I see that Eddie is wearing the same sleet-gray overcoat he wore when I first met him on the street in Iowa City. But under the coat he is wearing his Chicago Cub uniform, the material new as white envelopes, the blue stripes looking as if they have been freshly drawn by a felt pen.
I stand along the left-field line and stare up at him. He gestures broadly, making a point, but the wind floats his words away. Suddenly, as if the park has been inundated with butterflies and flower petals, the scene changes. The grandstands and floodlights appear, and the players file in through the gate in the center-field wall. They materialize out of the cornfield, as if from some unseen locker room. The sounds and smells of baseball are all about me. I peek over my shoulder and see that Richard has been trailing me, that Jerry and Annie and Karin are crossing from the house to the ballpark. Eddie leans down and whacks his cane on the edge of a board, to attract Shoeless Joe’s attention. He speaks briefly with Joe, who in turn calls the other players closer. Eventually, we all gather on the left-field grass, staring up at Eddie standing on the bleacher, wild and windblown, looking for all the world like an Old Testament prophet on the side of a mountain.
“I take the word of baseball and begin to talk it. I begin to speak it. I begin to live it. The word is baseball. Say it after me,” says Eddie Scissons, and raises his arms.
“The word is baseball,” we barely whisper.
“Say it out loud,” exhorts Eddie.
“The word is baseball,” we say louder, but still self-consciously. I look down at Annie, who shrugs her shoulders. Karin claps her hands as the rhythm of Eddie’s voice flows into her blood. The baseball players exchange aggrieved glances.
“The word is what?”
“Baseball …”
“Is what?”
“Baseball…”
“Is what?” As his voice rises, so do ours. “Baseball!”
He pauses dramatically. “Can you imagine? Can you imagine?” His voice is filled with evangelical fervor. “Can you imagine walking around with the very word of baseball enshrined inside you? Because the word of salvation is baseball. It gets inside you. Inside me. And the words that I speak are spirit, and are baseball.”
He shakes his head like a fundamentalist who can quote chapter and verse for every occasion.
“The word healed them, and delivered them from destruction. The word makes the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.” He looks around wildly.
“Your mother should be here,” I whisper to Annie. She digs her small, pointed elbow into my ribs.
“As you begin to speak the word of baseball, as you speak it to men and women, you are going to find that these men and women are going to be changed by that life-flow, by the loving word of baseball.
“Whenever the word of baseball is brought upon the scene, something happens. You can’t go out under your own power, under your own light, your own strength, and expect to accomplish what baseball can accomplish.
“We have to have the word within us. I say you must get the word of baseball within you, and let it dwell within you richly. So that when you walk out in the world and meet a man or woman, you can speak the word of baseball, not because you’ve heard someone else speak it but because it is alive within you.
“When you speak the word, something will begin to happen. We underestimate the power of the word. We don’t understand it. We underestimate all that it can accomplish. When you go out there and speak the word of baseball—the word of baseball is spirit and it is life.
“I’ve read the word, I’ve played it, I’ve digested it, it’s in there! When you speak, there is going to be a change in those around you. That is the living word of baseball.”
The players shuffle their feet. Some move away a little, but then it is as if Eddie’s voice pulls them back in.
“As I look at you, I know that there are many who are troubled, anxious, worried, insecure. What is the cure? Is it to be found in doctors and pills and medicines? No. The
answer is in the word, and baseball is the word. We must tell everyone we meet the true meaning of the word of baseball, and if we do, those we speak to will be changed by the power of that living word.
“Can you say the word?”
“Baseball,” we chant, and our voices rise toward Eddie Scissons like doves on the warm Iowa wind.
“The word is what?”
“Baseball.”
“Is what?”
“Baseball.”
“Praise the name of baseball. The word will set captives free. The word will open the eyes of the blind. The word will raise the dead. Have you the word of baseball living inside you? Has the word of baseball become part of you? Do you live it, play it, digest it, forever? Let an old man tell you to make the word of baseball your life. Walk into the world and speak of baseball. Let the word flow through you like water, so that it may quicken the thirst of your fellow man.”
Late that night, I am sitting in the dark at the kitchen table when Eddie joins me. He wears a nightgown that looks as if it may have been made from a Chicago Cub road uniform.
“You’re afraid to talk to him,” he says, pulling out a chair, leaning heavily on his serpent-head cane as he takes a seat.
I know immediately that he is talking about the catcher.
I nod to show Eddie that I do indeed know who he is referring to, and that I am indeed afraid.
“I heard somebody say once, ‘Success is getting what you want, but happiness is wanting what you get.’ “ He lays one of his large hands out on the oilcloth-covered table before me. “You saw what happened to me. I got what I wanted, but it wasn’t what I needed to make me happy.”
“But you still…”
“Believe.” Eddie finishes the sentence for me. “It takes more than an infinite ERA to shake my faith,” he chuckles, not unhappily.
“It’s just that the implications are so immense,” I say.
“They don’t have to be, Ray. I know I’m sounding like I’m trying to be the wise old rascal, and I suppose I am. But you were so excited when you told us about the idea of your catcher appearing. Since he has, all you do is sneak around your own ballpark looking at your shoes.
Shoeless Joe Page 21