by Mark Harris
It was the first time in many a year that the Mammoths wound up in the second division. Yet it was expected. It was an old club that had saw good days in its time, but old men cannot stand the wear and tear of baseball day in and day out and night after night. They will miss the close ones. They will be throwed out at first base by a step where 2 years before they would of beat the play, or a fly ball that in the past they would of gathered in now drops between them for a base hit, or the power that a few seasons ago would send a ball into the stands for a home run is gone, and the ball drops short and is just another long out. That is how pennants are won, by a step here and a few feet there and just that little extra power when it counts.
In the winter the Mammoths cut loose 6 ballplayers. It was sad. Pop said you cannot let sentiment interfere, so I did not, but it was sad nonetheless to see those great names cut adrift, for they was my heroes for many a year.
There was talk that Dutch Schnell was through as skipper, but in the fall it was announced that he was signed on for 3 years more, and he made a statement saying he would win more pennants before he bowed out for good, and he begun to rebuild, and before long he was on his way to that pennant he had spoke of. The Mammoths bought Hams Carroll that winter, and picked up Sid Goldman for a song. Also, their farms begun to produce in a big way. The Mammoth farms are spread all over, from AA in Queen City down to these rickety leagues that play only weekends and maybe 1 night during the week. Plus this there are a dozen full-time scouts beating the bushes all over America and down in the Latin Leagues as well, including contacts in colleges and semipro ball in all the 48, plus the Legion tournaments plus private individuals that pass on information to the club. The Mammoths leave no stone unturned in their hunt for the ivory. Herb Macy and Gil Willowbrook and Piss Sterling become a part of the system that winter as well as Canada Smith and Coker Roguski and Perry Simpson and me. This is the cream that was sifted in the long run from the dozens and dozens of punks that put their name to a Mammoth contract. Mr. Moors spared no expense. He turned his pockets upside down and bought the best. If you have got the cash you can win pennants so long as you are willing to spend it. Them that has gets, according to the old saying.
(I should mention something here about the name of “Piss” Sterling, for I know that many fans will wonder how come. I see where his nickname is listed on the official roster as “Jack,” but I never in my life heard a soul call him that and I doubt that he would turn around if they did. He has got terrible kidney trouble that acts up in tight situations. 2 and 3 times a game he will rush back to the John, and in a tight game, or down the stretch like last summer, he might make that little trip just about every inning. He has also got sinus trouble. But we call him Piss, and a better fellow never lived.)
That winter I worked like a fool. I suppose I had the idea I was keeping in condition, though I since realize that when you are a kid you are always in condition, never stiff, never above your weight, never sore anywheres from top to toe. But I read in “Sam Yale—Mammoth” in the chapter called “Keeping In Condition” where hiking was good for the legs. A pitcher’s legs are as important as their arm, so I hiked a good bit, me and Holly, up through the hills. 1 time I pulled her on a sled clear to Berrywick Mountain, 5 miles.
Also I played handball in Mugs O’Brien’s gymnasium, and I rowed the rowing machine. Mugs said he never seen anyone so faithful about keeping in condition. I topped 6 feet that winter, just 1 inch under Pop, and was 170 even on the scales.
I also played basketball at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association of Perkinsville with the club that finished first in the city leagues. I was supposed to join it to be eligible but I did not have the money and Albert Goldenberg, a Jew, put up the money and got me a card. I do not think much of basketball. Actually I consider it pretty nearly as dreary as football. Do you call that a game where your best bet is to put 5 men on the floor that their chief quality is that they are overgrowed? Where do your brains come in, and your speed and your lightning strategy, your planning and your figuring and your careful decisions? Compared to baseball what they call these contact games are about on a level with a subway jam. I do not wish to aggravate people that like these particular sports, but when you stop and think about it it is really tragic that so much energy is wasted in such a great deal of pushing and shoving and trampling and getting up and falling down or else some 7-foot ox standing and dropping a ball through a hoop.
Besides this I pumped gas at Tom Swallow’s Texaco station on the square. This was for the money pure and simple and had nothing to do with conditioning. I worked for Tom from after the World Series through Wednesday, December 14, 1949, when I quit him flat. It was the most boring period of my life.
All this time Pop kept saying sit tight and 1 day soon a scout would appear. Around Thanksgiving a man come from Chicago. He had reports on me from a number of people that seen me pitch, and he showed us the reports and they all had good things to say, and he offered me 1,000 to sign. Pop said 5,000 or nothing, and the man said he had no orders to pay anything like that, and Pop directed him back to Perkinsville, telling him there was a train every few hours. I did not say a word. Pop said leave it all to him.
About a week afterwards a man come from Cincinnati. He said he had signed up 25 young ballplayers between October and December. “How much are you paying a young fellow to sign?” said Pop, and the man said he was not paying a cent except fare to spring training, and Pop said if Cincinnati had such splendid habits of saving money they might just as well save their breath besides because I was not signing up free like somebody’s slave. The man hemmed and hummed and said he might pay 500 as a starter. Pop said he did not care where he started so long as he ended up at 5,000.
“There are boys all over the land that would give their right eye to put their autograph on a Cincinnati contract,” the man said.
“I am pleased to hear these remarks,” Pop said. “I am sure you can win many pennants on sheer enthusiasm.”
They could not get together, and then finally it was December 14 when the telephone rung early in the morning, and it was Jocko Conrad down at the railroad, and he said could I meet him there, and Pop said no but I could give him a few moments here at home. Jocko is an immortal that played with the Mammoths from 1919 to 1931 and had a lifetime average of .323. I was nervous, and I shook, and then he pulled up in front of the house in a big red 1950 Moors Special. He climbed out with a brown envelope in his hand. He was a little fat around the middle. If you did not know who he was you would of took him for some ordinary business man and not an immortal in the Hall of Fame. He rung the bell and Pop left him in. “I am Jocko Conrad,” Jocko said.
“We was expecting you,” Pop said. “We are also expecting a man from Cleveland.” (A lie, though Pop carried it off. All the time Jocko was there Pop give him the impression he was practically run ragged entertaining scouts.)
“I am glad to meet you,” said I to Jocko. “What can I do for you?”
“Leave us put it the other way around. It is me that has come to do something for you,” he said. He took some papers out of his envelope and begun to fire questions at me, my age and my height and weight and married state and the condition of my teeth and general health and was I ever arrested or inside an institution, and at last he popped the question. “Young man,” said he, “how would you like to belong to the Mammoth organization?”
“I might not mind,” I said.
“Do you not like to play ball?” he said, studying me real close.
“Sure I do,” I said. “I love baseball. It is a great game.”
“We are looking for boys that really want to be in the organization,” said he.
“I would just as soon play in Perkinsville,” I said.
He did not act like he heard me. He dug down through his papers and come up with a letter from Bobo Adams. “I have a letter from Bobo Adams,” he said.
“I struck Bobo out on 4 pitches,” I said.
“Bobo says you are a good boy,�
�� said Jocko.
“Anybody will tell you the same,” I said.
We must of talked above an hour. He had letters on me from Jack Hand of the Scarlets and Mr. Gregory N. Oswald of Perkinsville High as well as Bobo, plus a raft of clippings from the Perkinsville “Clarion”. The sum and total of it was he asked me would I sign a contract agreeing to sign a new contract if I produced the goods at Aqua Clara in the spring and was kept by the Mammoth system. I said I would like to help him out by signing such a contract but that I could get cash from the Perkinsville Scarlets and never be put to the trouble of traveling. “Well,” said Jocko, “suppose I was to throw in a little bonus for signing?”
“That might help,” said I.
“1,000,” he said.
Pop snorted.
“2,000,” said Jocko.
I begun to think fast. I thought and thought, and while I done so my eyes roamed about, and Jocko said, “Maybe 2,750,” and my eyes kept wandering and went clear out the window and lit on the 50 Moors sitting in the sun. The figure 4,000 jumped in my mind.
“4,000 and your 50 Moors,” I said.
“Done!” he said, and he screwed open his pen and filled in the contracts and handed them to Pop, for I was a minor and under 21 and could not sign, and Pop looked them over and signed them and I signed underneath. “By golly,” said Jocko, “that was quick work and we will never be sorry. You will get your check in the mail. Could I use your telephone?” and we said yes, and he went over and telephoned Detroit, which is where the head office of the Mammoths is, reversing the charges and telling them to send me a check, and he said he needed a new car for he had give away another.
He gathered up his various papers and put them in his envelope. He put on his overcoat, huffing and puffing, and that reminded him to tell me to keep in condition through the rest of the winter and be in Aqua Clara no later then March 1. I said I was in good condition and doing a lot of walking in the woods and playing basketball at the Hebrew Association. “No basketball,” he said. “That is in your contract when you get the time to read it. It is too dangerous. We do not mind if you walk in the woods. But we do not want you getting your teeth knocked out on the basketball floor,” and I said if it was in my contract I would do what it said.
Pop went off in the school bus, but me and Jocko got in the 50 Moors, me behind the wheel. I reached down by habit for the gear, but there was none, for all you got to do is give her the gas and off she goes, changing gears by herself, yet plenty of pickup. The only time you think about gears is to put her in reverse, and then you press a button and she is set to go ahead backwards. We swung out towards town, and I worked up some speed, and Jocko said to me, “Without looking at the speedometer how fast are we going?” and I said I judged 60, and he said look, and I looked, and we was doing 75 and yet it was like we was barely moving a-tall. I hit 85 by the time we got to Perkinsville and waited with Jocko until the train come. He already had his ticket bought. I said I guess he expected to give the car away, and he said he did, and he laughed.
Afterwards it begun to dawn on me what happened—that I was a Mammoth at last, or at least a small cog in the system—and I went over to the “Clarion” like I always promised Bill Duffy I would if it come to pass, and I told him all that happened, and he wrote it down, and they made some pictures of me reading the contract, and Bill give me a top-notch write-up with a lot of pictures dug out of the file as well as some new ones they took, plus a picture of Pop and an article about him, and some quotations by Jack Hand and Mayor Real and Mr. Gregory N. Oswald. I just about shoved basketball off the sporting section.
When I come out of the “Clarion” there was a number of kids standing around the car and gawking in the windows. The windows work off the dash, no need to crank them by hand like your old-fashion cars. I chased the kids away, asking them didn’t they ever see an up-to-date car before.
The horn has 3 places you can press. Dead center it will play “Take me out to the ball game.” But if you are bowling along the highway and some car is creeping along like a snail press down the left side of the horn and it plays “Lazy bones, lying in the sun.” The third part plays “I love you as I never loved before,” and the longer you hold your hand on the more it plays, over and over, “I love you as I never loved before since first we met upon the village green.”
I pressed the switch and geared her in reverse, stopped for a little gas at Tom Swallow’s and then done 80 all the way home.
When I got home I parked her in the shade. I went upstairs and sat by the window and looked down on her, and after awhile the shade from the tree shifted, and I went down and inched her over in the shade again. I begun to think I had swindled Old Man Moors. She is red with whitewall tires with treads that do not bog down in mud nor snow and will not skid on ice nor ever blow out.
That night in front of Holly’s I blowed the horn all 3 different ways, and she come out to look her over. She has a light up front that you can spot on anything you want, and I shone it on her as she come down the walk, like a spotlight at a floor show, and I played the music, and she opened the door and the lights went on inside so you do not need to be fracturing your shins climbing in and out in the dark, and Holly got in beside me, and she said, “Henry the Navigator has now got the flagship of the fleet.”
“I guess you was never in a boat like this before,” said I.
“Way anchor,” she said, and I asked her if she had ever rode 100 miles per hour, and she said no, and I informed her she was now about to do it, and she opened the door and begun to climb out. I laughed and coaxed her back in, and I backed her around and floated out on the highway, and I asked her if she had ever rode so smooth before, and she said no, and we rode along towards Perkinsville. I played the radio. It all works off the wheel, no need to be reaching down to the dash all the time. We got New York and Albany. Bing Crosby was on in both places, singing “White Christmas,” and we circled around Perkinsville and then come home again. She was in a mood. She invited me in, and then when I got there she read to me out of a number of gloomy books.
About the middle of February I begun to get my things together. I oiled my glove and put new laces in my shoes and hung my Perkinsville suit in the sun to air. It looked funny seeing a baseball suit hanging on the line in the middle of winter. I bought a ticket to Aqua Clara. You pay your own fare and bring your own gear unless they keep you in the organization, which if they do they give you back your fare and you naturally get uniforms from whatever club they assign you to.
The days drug along, and finally I could not stand it no longer and decided to get moving all in a hurry. I was all jittery and excited and moving my bowels about 12 times a day. Vincent Carucci is the same way. Get him excited and half his free time he spends in the can. Many the long hour me and Vincent kept each other company in the clubhouse can last summer.
I went over the night before and said goodby to Holly, and then I come home and me and Pop gassed about 3 hours, and on the following morning, February 20, I got up at 5. Pop wanted to get up, too, but I made him stay put.
Everything I done that morning I thought how it would be the last time for awhile, brushing my teeth for the last time with my foot on the pipe like I always done and working the spigots of the sink for the last time and looking in the mirror whilst I shaved and seeing for the last time the nick I put in 1 side with the handle of a bat when I was a kid because I sometimes stood in front of the mirror posing for photographers in my imagination, and I dressed in the suit I bought at the Arcade in Perkinsville and thought was so sharp at the time, and overcoat and hat and scarf and shoes, all new, and I grabbed my bags and shot downstairs, ducking under the beam at the bottom step that when I was a kid I leaped for and sometimes just managed to graze with the tip of my fingers, and out I slammed.
Then I just about fell over. Who is standing by my 50 Moors but Aaron Webster! “Good morning, Henry,” said he. “Off at last?”
“Oh no,” said I. “I always carry 2 su
itcases around with me at half past 5 in the morning for the sake of balance.”
This was purely sarcastic, but he went right along with it. “Balance,” said he. “I do hope you keep your balance in the time ahead.”
“I will try,” I said. I had only the skimpiest notion what he was saying at the time. “Holy Christ,” said I, “it is freezing out here.” It was about 5 degrees above and my teeth was beginning to chatter. How he stood it I do not know, standing there with nothing on but this raggedy green jacket about 25 years old that he always wears. I used to practically vomit looking at that jacket. Aaron never lets the weather bother him. If I am in that much shape at 80 I will consider the job well done.
“Yes, it is cool,” said Aaron, “but I am planning no long discussion. I just come to give you a little gift.” He dug down in his pocket. “Besides, it is 1 of my observations on life that old people cannot tell young people the score. We cannot pass along our knowledge. Young people must learn for themself. I am just hoping, Henry, that no matter if you fail or succeed in what you are about to try that you will keep your sense of humor. I also hope that you will keep your ways. You have always looked at things in a good way, finding the good things good and the boring things a bore. It would do no good for me to tell you that the bright world of glitter and glamor that you are heading towards is nothing but Graduation Night at Perkinsville High plus Tom Swallow’s Texaco Station. It is all a lot of hardware tinsel to cover the fact of the bore.”
“It is 25 of,” I said. “The train is at 6.”
“A great bore and a great fraud,” he said. “Yet I wish you success, for that is what you want. I only hope you will bear in mind that success is never a matter of how many people slap you on the back on your winning days. You must also be on the lookout for the few good friends who will come around on afternoons that you been knocked out of the box.”
“I certainly will,” I said. Time was inching by and he had yet to hand over the gift. I suppose I may of been short with him, and I am sorry for that. But it was not until more then 2 years afterwards, riding the lobby in Chicago 1 evening, that it all flashed in my mind, and I said upstairs to Perry Simpson later that night, “Does it not strike you as queer that at half past 5 in the cold morning it was not Bill Duffy nor Mayor Real nor Mugs O’Brien nor Jack Hand nor Mr. Gregory N. Oswald that give me my send-off, but Aaron Webster in his raggedy green jacket?” And Perry said it struck him as queer sure enough.