The Southpaw

by Mark Harris

  The rupture was spreading throughout my body. I was pumping all over, in my groin and in my stomach and in my head, and it was like I had a dozen hearts and each was beating all at once in a dozen different locations, and I bust into a sweat and my throat was dry as dust and my hands like ice.

  After a long time she come back through the dark and sat beside me, and I held her hand in mine and drawed her closer, a little at a time, expecting any minute she would yank loose and draw off. Yet she never did. “You will get a baby,” I said.

  “No I will not,” she said, and I took her at her word.

  Then all the beating stopped, and the various hearts in their various places all drifted back to the 1 single slot where they belonged, and the cold got warm and the shivering stopped and my sweating body dried, and I was peaceful. I begun to hear the sounds of the night, crickets chirping and traffic on the highway far in the distance, and I seen stars in the window.

  I slept, and when I woke it was beginning to get light, and Holly was asleep. I took her in my arms and woke her, and she did not seem to mind, for she smiled and I give her 1 back, and she laid with her hair spread out on the pillow like a crown behind her head, all golden and brown in the dawn. I said, “I am Henry the Navigator,” and she launched into a speech herself, saying she was queen of the ship and mistress of the sea and lover to Henry, meaning me.

  Chapter 5

  CHAPTER 4 shoots out a little bit ahead of things, however. I should of told you first about April 13, 1948, when me and Pop went to the Opener at Moors Stadium, that being the first time I ever seen a big-league ball game and the last time I ever paid my way in. Pop hired his regular sub to drive the bus, a wimpy fellow name of Mr. Hilbert from East Perkinsville that ain’t happy unless he is holding down 5 or 6 jobs at once. Myself, I never worked a day in my life except 2 months in the winter following graduation pumping gas at Tom Swallow’s Texaco station and never hope to.

  We got up that morning when it was still dark out, and cool, and we rustled up a quick breakfast and grabbed a couple oranges for my pocket. It did not seem possible that on this very day I would see Sam Yale in action. Nothing seemed real or true. It was like a dream, and when we left the house there was a mist hanging down, making things more like a dream then ever, and the road was bare of traffic and Pop lost no time in getting down to Perkinsville. We swooped in the depot and piled out and went inside and bought our tickets and a Perkinsville “Clarion” and a New York “News,” both filled with a lot of dope concerning the openers. Brooklyn and Washington opened the day before down in Washington, and there was a picture of the President throwing out the first ball. There was a big picture of Sad Sam on the front of the “News,” and over it it said READY TO HURL. It was the eleventh straight time Sam Yale hurled the opener for New York. He was posing with a ball in his hand and that mighty left arm stretched out before him. Pop said he looked old. He was then just turned 30.

  The train come in on the dot of 6, and then she pulled away through Perkinsville and we sat with our feet stretched out on the seat in front, all green and soft, and we read the papers and then swapped them and read the other, and the conductor come past and punched our ticket and said where was we going so early in the morning, and we told him, and it turned out that he was from St. Louis and often seen Dutch Schnell’s house. Dutch owns a big house way out on Delmar Boulevard. He asked me if I was a ballplayer, and I said if he was still around in a couple years I might get him a pass or 2 for the Mammoths. He said that was very generous of me.

  We come down through Westchester County, 1 of the richest counties in the world though rather slummy in along the railroad. The sun come out bright, and we fairly flowed through them towns. There was people standing on the stations, but we went down the middle track and never stopped. I hate these trains that as soon as they work up a little speed they stop at a station.

  We got off at 125th Street and lazied over west. Pop asked a man how to get to Moors Stadium, and the man reeled off a set of directions that I couldn’t hardly understand.

  “How about if we wish to walk?” Pop said.

  “You cannot walk,” said the man.

  “Why not?” said Pop. “I want my boy to see the town a little.”

  “You simply cannot,” said the man. “What are you? A radio show?”

  “No,” said Pop, “we just wish to walk,” and the man said we was crazy, but he told us how, and we started out. There begun to be less and less white people and more and more colored, and soon we come to a part of town where there was no white people a-tall, and the worst run-down houses I ever seen. Pop said that people lived in the houses.

  Then we come to the Stadium. Everybody has saw pictures, but seeing it in a picture is nothing. It made me feel like a pebble in the sea, and we stood still and looked up at it, and Pop said, “I could of played ball in that park,” and I said, “Pop, I will play there sometime and it will be the same thing,” and we stood looking upwards like 2 boobs from the country. There was men on top, raising the flags, and people waiting on line for the gates to open, and then there was a whole lot of excitement and some kids busted loose from the crowd, shouting “Sad Sam!” and a few ballplayers got out of a cab togged out like 1,000,000, and I seen him and tore over and charged through them kids and stood smack in front of Sad Sam Yale. He looked up at me, right in my eyes. I was froze to the spot and could not think of a thing to say until afterwards, and the kids clung to him and shoved papers out for him to sign, and he signed a few, keeping on the move, and some of the specials come and cleared the way, and he went up the steps and in the clubhouse, disappearing from sight. I begun to shiver from excitement, and all the plans I ever had seemed small and far away, and I knowed I had a long way to go, for somehow, being there right on the spot, things seemed bigger then they seemed when I was home, and it seemed impossible, something I could not carry through no more then I could climb up the walls of the Stadium or go through all that brick and stone and steel just by sheer will.

  When the gates opened Pop bought the tickets. You had to keep moving to keep from being trampled on, and we headed for seats behind the plate, romping through that place as fast as we could go. I jumped over things and now and then collided with someone. After we got settled we begun to study the park. It was vast and huge, and it was like the sea opened up and left a great dry place in the earth. After you been playing ball in a park the size of Perkinsville and then you see this 1 it is like being blind and then getting eyes, and for a good while I could not believe that such a place was really in the world, and Pop laughed and said, “She is a big 1, she is a big 1, she is a big 1,” several times over like a busted record. “She is the park to end all parks,” he said, and I hadn’t no argument there. There was not a worn spot in the grass, and around the infield the sod was brown and smooth like some kind of polished wood.

  By game time there was about 30,000 there, although it looked just about empty for they can seat 80,000 if need be. The bleachers was full. There is a big clock behind the bleachers which is the famous clock that more people can see at 1 time then any other clock in the world. Sometimes you will see a man sitting on the big hand and riding around, polishing up the numbers. We bought scorecards and pencils and checked the cards against the boards, and everything checked.

  The Mammoths at this particular time was rather a different club from a few years later. It was an old club that the newspapers sometimes called The Nine Old Men, many of them past 30. It won its last pennant in 45, whipping Chicago in the Series in 6 games, Sam Yale winning 2, which I remember hearing in Borelli’s. But it was not about to win any more pennants and everybody knowed it.

  The players begun to straggle on the field, coming up through the dugout, and my heart missed a beat every time a new face come on the scene. Little pepper games started up here and there, 1 fellow hitting slow and easy to 3 or 4 ranged out in front of him, just loosening themself up. Every time they worked around to a position where I could see their n
umber I would check it against the card, and slowly the field filled up with Mammoths and the Boston players, and Egg Barnard, 1 of the Mammoth coaches, begun to loft flies to the outfield with a big long fungo bat.

  It is a beautiful sight to see a good outfielder gather in a fly ball, moving over as graceful as you please while from 250 or 300 feet away someone has tossed the ball up in front of himself and laid into it and sent it upward and upward in a high arc until the ball is just a white speck against the blue sky, and then it hits its highest point and begins to drop, and you look down and there is a player loping over, moving fast or slow, depending on how he sizes up the situation, and he moves under the ball and it zooms down in his glove. It looks so easy when a good ballplayer does it. It is not easy. Ask any kid that has ever tried to play ball whether it is easy, and he will tell you. But when a big-league ballplayer does it it looks easy because he is so graceful, and he gathers it in and then runs a few steps on his momentum and digs his spikes in the ground and wheels and fires that ball back where it come from, and it hops along, white against the green grass. I watched them shag flies awhile, and then batting practice, and soon afterwards Pop poked me and he said, “Here he comes, Hank,” and about 30,000 people seen him just an instant after Pop, and he come up the dugout steps with his jacket on and his glove on his hand, and a cheer went up and some of the people stood and clapped, and he turned and talked to another player for a few seconds, and then he moved on those long legs down to the warm-up rubber.

  A batboy run up and took his jacket, and Red Traphagen moved over behind the warm-up plate, and Sad Sam took the ball the batboy give him and studied it awhile, and then he studied the rubber under his foot and scuffed it up some. Near him there was kids hanging over the rail and waving scorecards, and a little girl leaped the rail and run towards him and the whole park begun to laugh, and some men in park uniforms come charging out from the stands, and the little girl run up to Sad Sam and he just stood there with his arms folded, waiting for them to take her away. The men of the park closed in on her and hauled her off, and the people begun to boo. He begun to warm, unwinding and throwing down the line to Red, throwing very slow at first, and gradually faster and faster. Dutch Schnell went over and talked to him a minute and then moved off, and I watched every move that Sad Sam made. He stopped once and took his hat off and wiped his forehead, and I seen for the first time that he was ever so slightly bald on top. That surprised me some. About 2 rows behind me a fellow yelled, “Do not worry, Sam, for you pitch with your arm and not with your hair,” and a number of people laughed.

  During the infield drill I kept a close eye on Gonzalez. This was his first year, and I wondered if he would show up nervous, but he did not seem to be. He is a little fellow, very fast on his feet from Cuba. Clint Strap, 1 of the Mammoth coaches, was belting the ball around the infield. Each time he come to George he would make him go a different way, first to his right and then to his left, but it made no difference to George for he would gobble her up and all in the same motion fire across to Monk Boyd who was then the Mammoth first-baseman.

  Then the field cleared and the players went down through the dugout to the clubhouses and about 15 men in overalls come out with hoses and rollers and smoothed the infield over again. Then the band played “East Side, West Side” in honor of the mayor of New York who come down and took a seat in a box behind first. There was a lot of cheering, and some booing as well, and the mayor waved his hand and pretended he did not hear the booing.

  Soon the players come out again in fresh shirts. The Mammoths lined up in front of the dugout. I was so nervous you would of thought I was in the game myself. Then they broke for their positions and the crowd give them a great hand. The Mammoths that started that day was as follows:

  At third base George Gonzalez, playing his first big-league game. At shortstop Ugly Jones, just beginning to hit his heights. At second base Bryce Chapin, now in carnival work in California. At first base Monk Boyd, now with Washington. The outfield was as follows: Trotter, Wilks and Burns, all still Mammoths but all due to be cut loose before long. Scotty Burns is definitely for sale since Dutch has turned Canada Smith back into an outfielder. Red Traphagen was behind the bat, then and now generally considered 1 of the great receivers in the game today, and Sam Yale was on the hill.

  Amongst the men on the Mammoth bench that day was the following: Vincent and Pasquale Carucci, outfielders. Lucky Judkins, also an outfielder, was then the property of Cleveland. Gene Park, then playing second base for Chicago, was bought the following year by the Mammoths, was then drafted by the Reserves and then quickly released by the Reserves in the case that caused so much scandal that you probably read about in the papers. Some writers claim to this day that Old Man Moors wangled Gene free, and now and again you will see a reference in the papers to “Twice Bought” Gene Park. Not yet even a part of the Mammoth system was the following: Sid Goldman, Coker Roguski, Perry Simpson, Canada Smith and yours truly Henry W. Wiggen.

  There was an announcement by the loud speaker, “Ladies and gentlemen, our national anthem,” and the band struck the tune and some lady that I could not see begun to sing, and a mighty powerful pair of lungs she had. It is really beautiful, for as the last words die away a roar goes up from the people, and for a minute there is no sound but the echo of the singing, and no movement or motion except maybe a bird or the flags waving or the drummer on his drums, and then the music dies and the people spring to life and the chief umpire calls loud and long “Puh-lay ball” and the game is on. I stood there, and I looked down on the Mammoths, and I said to myself, “2 years, 3 years, I will be standing there with my cap over my breast as Sad Sam Yale is standing there now,” and I choked up, for between the music and the thoughts I was on the edge of tears. I seen Sam with his hat over his breast and the top of his head bald in the sun, and then the music stopped and the roar went up, and Sad Sam walked very slow out towards the hill. Over in front of the mayor the photographers was bent down on 1 knee, and the bulbs was flashing all over, and the mayor wound up and throwed the ball out on the field towards Sam. He scooped it up and went to the mound and stood looking down at the ball in his hand. He studied it some, and he seen that it was scuffed, and he throwed it to the umpire for he will not use a ball that don’t suit him no matter if the mayor or the President or the King of England or anyone else has smudged it up. The umpire slapped a new ball in Red Traphagen’s mitt, and Red whipped it down to Sam, and Sam looked all about him to see that everyone was in the exact position they ought to be. Then his eye caught something over near the box that the mayor was in, and he pointed, and the mayor himself come out of the box onto the grass and picked up a flash bulb that 1 of the photographers dropped. He put it in his pocket and went back in and took his seat, and there was a big laugh all around.

  Then Sam got his sign and wound and throwed, a fast curve about knee-high that Black, the Boston batter, drilled out into center for a single. We was sitting right behind the plate, and I seen Black start to swing and then hold it and then swing after all, so it was pure luck that he connected a-tall, and Pop turned to me and said, “He was the most surprised person in the park,” meaning Black, for Pop had saw what I saw. Behind us some fellow begun to moan, “Old Sad Sam is all washed up,” and he begun to sing a song, “Oh the old gray mare she ain’t what she used to be, ain’t what she used to be, ain’t what she used to be,” and I turned in my seat and shouted at him, “You have got your brains in your shoes.”

  “Who says so?” said he.

  “I said so,” I said.

  “Okay,” said he. “I was just wondering.”

  Granby moved Black along to second with the sacrifice.

  With a 1–1 count on him Fielding cut under a letter-high fast ball and fouled it behind the plate. Red Traphagen come racing back. It did not look like he had a chance, but if you know Red you know that he* is the type of a ballplayer that makes his play and stops to think about his chances afterward, and off come the
mask, and the cap with it, and Red come roaring towards the fence, moving plenty fast, even with all that gear, and his red hair was flying in the wind, and he hauled it down about 2 feet from the fence. That was 2 down but Casey Sharpe at bat and trouble in the wind, for he is a dangerous man every day of the week. He fouled a couple off, and then Sam struck him out with the screw, and 3 was down and I turned to the moaning fellow and I said, “Who is so washed up? How many times did you ever strike out Casey Sharpe?”

  We bought red-hots and soda, and the Mammoths went down 1–2–3 in their half of the first. Fred Nance was working for Boston, a right-hander that then had plenty of speed but now relies a good deal more on curves and brains. It was no score for 5 innings. The fellow behind said he wished somebody would score, for he was running out of zeros on his card, and me and Pop got a laugh out of that.

  I did not keep score in the regular way, but I kept a careful track of what Sam throwed to each batter. You could see his brain at work. He mixed his pitches plenty, keeping Boston guessing, now speed, now a curve, now a change-up, now a screw, now high, now low, never the same thing twice except when you least expected it.

  Nance batted first for Boston in the sixth. He got a good hand, for people usually always give the pitcher a hand, knowing how hard he works, and Nance slapped a single into right and the crowd begun to whoop it up a bit. Behind me this fellow shouted, “Say, son, I will bet you a bag of peanuts Boston scores,” and I said I would bet him 10 against his 1, and he took me up, and Sam whiffed Black on the same curve he had throwed the very first pitch of the game—the exact pitch that Black least expected—and Pop looked at me and winked. Granby popped out, and the pressure was off, or so it seemed, but Fielding walked on a curve that looked good to me and looked the same to Dutch and Sam, and Dutch roared up out of the dugout and give the ump an earful.