The Southpaw

by Mark Harris

  I said I would certainly like to fornicate with her.

  She slapped my face.

  After she slapped it she said she was sorry, and she rubbed my cheek.

  Everybody was falling-down drunk, folks from New York and folks from Boston and folks from Perkinsville and writers from both places and a few ballplayers as well, tomorrow being an open day and all.

  I remember seeing a high society lady flat on the floor and Mayor Real of Perkinsville beside. Somebody picked them up and sat them straight in a chair. Wherever Patricia went I went. Everything she told me to do I done. “Move that body out of the line of march,” she said, and I done so, and the longer things went on the more people was strewed about. There was 1 society girl from New York that about every 20 minutes tried to jump out the window. There was 3 or 4 big society ladies that give me their jewels and bracelets and such. Patricia told me keep everything that they give me lest the hired help grab it off, and she give it all back the next day. “Just follow me,” she said, rather thick of tongue. But later, when I was not looking, she slipped off. I had the feeling that I had got the gate.

  I wandered around a bit, munching on the food, not drinking, for I never drink. Bill Duffy of the Perkinsville “Clarion” was there. He was standing with a glass in his hand reciting “Casey At The Bat,” and I listened to him awhile, and then I drifted off. Here and there a lady would give me her jewels.

  There was 1 girl, no more then 19, high in society in Boston and formerly married to a San Francisco Seal. She snaked up to me and asked me if I believed she had the nerve to strip down and go walking on Beacon Street. I said I believed she did, for she was drunk enough, but I said she would only get hauled in and I could not see no sense in that. She agreed there was no sense in it, but she said she never done anything in all her life that you could call distinguished. “I wish I was a ballplayer,” she said, “for a ballplayer is a man that lives by what he does in life.”

  In the morning I took all the jewels to Patricia’s room. She knowed who they all belonged to. She give me a tall glass of seltzer water with different pills in it, saying this would fix my hangover. I told her I was not hung over, having drunk nothing the night before but Coke, but she did not seem to hear. I drunk 1 glass slow while she drank 3 or 4. She told me we was busting all attendance records, with Boston sold out for tomorrow and the Stadium sold out for the 2 with Brooklyn before the club headed west again. The telephone rung all the while, and people asked her this place and that, and she told them no, saying she was in conference with 1 of her ballplayers.

  I cannot understand it now, but at the time I would of give anything I owned or could beg or borrow or steal to fornicate with that woman, and every time I thought I might be able to edge around to the subject the telephone rung. Finally the call come that she was waiting for, and she hung up and she said, “Well, Henry, I guess that winds up our business for the morning,” and she went inside to another room, and I sat there awhile clinching and unclinching my hands and not knowing what to do next. I had half a mind to go after her. I thought I might charge in there and do with power what I could not do with strategy. After awhile I got up from the chair and turned and heaved the glass against the door that Patricia disappeared behind. It smashed to pieces. The door opened cautious, and she looked out, all bare at the shoulder. “Somebody knock?” she said, and I picked up the nearest thing, an ash tray, and she closed the door quick and locked it, and I went back up after Perry and Coker and Canada and Lindon, and we went out to the ball park to give Perry the chance to stay loose for the race tomorrow.

  Friday the park was full by noon, with as many standing as the law allowed, plus about 2,500 more roped off in the right field corner. Any balls hit in the crowd behind the ropes was declared doubles only, and it turned out fine for us, for Sid and Lucky and Ugly and Sunny Jim between them popped about 12 in the crowd during the afternoon.

  Sam Yale worked the first game. Goose caught him, leaving Red rested and free to handle me in the nightcap, and Sam coasted through, and we took it 9–4. Perry was beside me on the bench, so nervous he could scarcely see, sitting with his glove in his hand that by the end of the ball game he twisted the lacing until at last it snapped in 2. You should of saw him try to work a new lace back through the holes with his hands trembling like a schoolboy asking a girl for his first date.

  After the game I begun to warm with Bruce, and the umps laid out 100 yards, stretching in from left, cutting across the skin of the infield and finishing up at the first-base line. 3 writers come down on the field, 1 from Boston, Krazy Kress from New York and a neutral from Washington. They had the 2,000 wrapped in a silken handkerchief. Perry and Heinz practiced starts. 4 umps worked the race, 1 at the start, 1 in the middle and 2 at the finish. The boys run without their caps.

  There was 2 false starts. Heinz jumped the gun the first time and Perry the second, and then they was off, neck and neck until the very last. About 5 yards from the finish Heinz give a spurt, and he won it, and Perry kept right on going, circling around and heading for the dugout and disappearing through the door, never even stopping to shake hands. He got booed a-plenty by the crowd, almost as much as Heinz got cheered, and Boston come rushing over for their money, and the Mammoths turned and ducked back in the clubhouse. I stood and warmed with Bruce 15 minutes or so before going in.

  Perry was crying and laughing at once. The boys was sitting around jawing, drying off, taping theirselves, getting a rub from Mick. I told Perry he run a good race and it was all over now, so forget it. I guess that was what all the boys been saying. What was 900 dollars to a bunch of fellows that figured to cut up a Series melon in October coming close to a quarter of 1,000,000? Now and again 1 of the boys would come past Perry and swat him 1 or spit water at him or call him a name, all in fun, and when they done so he laughed and the tears run down his cheek, and Dutch took him by the shoulder, and he said, “You took up his challenge. You done the best you could. You run a good race. Take off them mean-looking shoes and put on your shoes, for you are starting at second.” That give Perry back his good spirits, and he dressed and went out and drilled.

  Dutch juggled the order a bit, batting Perry second and shoving Lucky down to the number 3 spot, Swanee 6, and it never bothered us a bit, all that patchwork, for we bunted Boston crazy, and when we was not bunting we was dropping doubles in the roped people. Perry got booed in the first, in thanks for which he ripped off a single, stole second, and then come home on a single by Lucky.

  Heinz got all the cheers and none of the hits. He got on base once on a cheap single and tried to steal, and Red throwed him out by a good foot and a half. Running bases is more then simple speed. If you wish to learn how to run the bases watch Perry Simpson, not Heinz. We won the ball game 8–2 without straining, and we left Boston sadder then it was when we come, and 6½ games behind besides.

  We swung west and then again east. We was 8½ to the good after the Washington doubleheader July 4th. The band played “Happy Birthday to You” to me, for it was my twenty-first birthday. The boys chipped in and bought me a couple very beautiful shirts with a note inside saying now I was 21 and a man like all the rest. I am the youngest fellow on the club, though to tell you the truth I believe many of them still act like kids about a lot of things. We split with Washington, Boston splitting with Brooklyn.

  We had hopes of maybe clinching the flag about early September. We made up a pool, writing down dates on shreds of paper and throwing them in a cap, all the dates from September 1 through 30, enough for all the players, 3 coaches, Dutch and Mick. Clinching the flag is where you have got the mathematics beat, so even if you lost all your ball games and the nearest team won all theirs nonetheless you would win, because of the mathematics. We all throwed in a buck and drawed a shred of paper. I drawed September 5. It seemed a little early, yet possible. Then Ugly said we ought to throw in more, for what was a pot of 30 dollars to some fellow that had a share of the Series melon coming up. So we throwed in 2, an
d Sam said “Goddam it, how about 5?” and we all throwed in 5 and wrapped it in a towel, all 150, and laid it up on the shelf in Dutch’s office, and everybody wrote their name on the shred they drawed and put it in a glass. Somebody figured to have 150 extra come September. Red said it would pay a part of the tax on a Series share. The boys all gripe about taxes. Aaron Webster never pays any taxes, saying it all goes for the wars.

  Around this time the votes was in on the All-Star squads. There was about 4,000,000 votes from every state and a number of foreign countries, the fans voting for all the players but the pitchers. The manager picks the pitchers, the manager always being the man that won the flag the year before, and this year it was Frank Arms of Brooklyn, and he chose me and Sam from the Mammoths and Bill Scudder from his own club. All the rest was righthanders. Mammoths that won in the voting included Red, Ugly, Pasquale, George and Swanee. We all felt especially good for Swanee, for he been off the squad for 3 seasons. He led the voting with 1,294,792.

  That was a great thrill, too. I pitched the middle 3 innings and give up 1 run on 4 hits. That was the best job turned in, though I cannot say I would like to try it very often. You really sweat, for you are up against the absolute tops. The big leagues is tops enough, where you got 400 ballplayers weeded down from the whole wide world, but in All-Star play you have weeded the 400 to 50, and every man you face is a big man with a big bat. I always dreamed of working in an All-Star game since the first 1 I ever heard down in Borelli’s. It seemed like there was getting to be no dreams left, only the Series.

  The game was at Philadelphia, and afterwards we left for St. Louis, me and Sam and Red and George and Pasquale and Ugly and Swanee. Some of us was in the poker mood, but Red and George will never play and we could not find Sam, and I went in search of Sam and found him in the diner. The dinner hour was over, but Sam knows all the porters and all the conductors, and they admire him and give him pretty much the run of the train. He was sitting at a clean table reading a book, and I told him come and play poker, and he said he could not. “I am improving my mind,” he said. “Say there, Hank, did I not have my picture in front of this book?” He was reading out of “Sam Yale—Mammoth” that Pop sent like I asked.

  “Maybe you did at that,” said I. I had that picture at that very moment folded in my wallet. But I could not tell Sam. “Some kid must of tore it out,” I said.

  “I am glad to be reading this,” he said. “It is pretty goddam long. I been reading 2 and 3 pages at a time.”

  When I was a kid I would wolf that book down once a week regular.

  “But it is all a pack of horseshit,” he said.

  “You should of thought of that before you give Murray Miller the go-ahead,” said I, for Joe Jaros told me that a writer name of Murray Miller on the “News” wrote the book.

  “It was not Murray,” said Sam. “It was Krazy Kress. Krazy wrote it up and sent it down home 1 winter all typewrote on yellow paper. I begun reading it 2 and 3 pages a night but never finished it, and then I give it to Hilda to send it back, for I went hunting with Bub Castetter.”

  He studied the book, smiling and turning it over in his hand. “If I was to write a book for kids I would not write such trash as this,” he said. “This is a good book and teaches them all the right things about smoking and going to church and such. For most kids that is all right. It will get them where they wish to go. They never aim very high. Those that aim high when they get there finds out that they should of went somewheres else. You think you want money and then you get it and you piss it away because it ain’t what you really wanted in the first place. You think you want your name in the headlines, but you get it there and that ain’t what you want neither. You think you want this woman or that woman, and then you get the money and the headlines and the woman besides. Then you find out you do not want the woman no more and probably never wanted her in the first place.”

  “That is right,” said I.

  “How would you know?” he said. “It will take you 15 years to find out. You get so you do not care. It is all like a ball game with nobody watching and nobody keeping score and nobody behind you. You pitch hard and nobody really cares. Nobody really gives a f— what happens to anybody else.” He looked very sad, exactly like he looked in the picture in my wallet.

  “Sad Sam Yale,” I said.

  “I ain’t sad,” he said. “I just do not care. I just play for the money I do not need and fornicate for the kicks I never get. Some day there will not even be the kicks. If I was to write a book they would never print it. It would be 5 words long. It would say, Do Not F— With Me. I would send it to every church and every schoolhouse and tell them to hang it up over their door. It will not get you anywheres in life. But it is the best you can ask for out of life. The best you can hope is that everybody else will just leave you alone. This book is all horseshit.” He shoved it across the table, and I took it.

  “Ain’t it the truth?” I said.

  “Leave us go play some cards,” he said, and we pushed back the chairs and went.

  It was either on this train or on another very soon after that Krazy Kress brung up the tour to Japan and Korea. I forget which, but now is a good place to write it in, this chapter being mostly a collection of odds and evens anyways. He was supposed to take about 20 ballplayers in October on this tour against clubs such as the Yomiuri Giants and the Nankai Hawks of the Japanese leagues. Then we was to go up to Korea itself and play squad games for the soldiers behind the lines.

  I never said yes and I never said no. I sat looking out the window and remembering the hand to hand combat at Perkinsville High. Just thinking about it set off these noises in my stomach. I begun thinking about all the boys in Korea that never knowed from 1 day to the next if they was slated to live or die, and I felt sorry for them. Yet I could not see where if I was to go to Korea it would do them any particular good.

  “It will do them much good,” said Krazy. “It will buck up their spirits and give them the idea that folks back home are thinking about them. There is nothing like the sight of baseball to make them think they are home.”

  “I see baseball every day,” I said, “and never get the idea I am home.”

  “This is all expenses free, Henry. Maybe I did not mention that. It will not cost you a nickel.”

  And then it seemed to me that if I was too much of a coward to go and fight in the war against Korea myself I had no business going over and playing ball for them and encouraging them to be fighting it.

  “Hell,” said Krazy, “not only expenses but maybe a little extra cigarette money for your pocket as well.”

  “I do not smoke,” said I, and I looked out the window some more. I thought about Holly and I wished she was around to give me some advice. And I wondered what Aaron would say to me going to Korea and egging the boys on in their war, for Aaron was against it from the start. Him and Pop had a regular knock down squabble when I was even supposed to go and be examined for Christ sake at the Vets hospital in Tozerbury. “Ain’t it awful cold to be playing ball over there that time of year?” I said.

  “Cold?” said Krazy. “Why no. Have you never seen Korea on the map? Korea is more south then St. Louis.” Actually I never saw it on the map until just this minute. I went over to Aaron’s and looked it up. I always had the idea it was out around where Alaska and Russia come together. I wanted to tell Krazy no and I wanted to tell him yes, both at the same time. I wanted to go to Korea if it would do the boys any good, but at the same time I couldn’t see where it would.

  “Ain’t you behind the boys over there?” said Krazy.

  “I am behind the boys,” said I, “but I am against the war.”

  “You know, Henry, you must not forget the fun you are libel to have on such a tour. You know how these Japanese girls are. Why, they ain’t got no more morals then a cat. I understand that for an American buck you can get the works and a meal besides.”

  Finally I said no. I just wasn’t interested. Krazy asked me again 2
or 3 more times over the summer, and every time I told him no. I don’t know why, but my heart just couldn’t of been in it. Yet I believe I am as much of an American as Krazy and probably wouldn’t like the Russians any better then the next fellow if I ever met 1. But I said no, and I said no every time Krazy brung it up.

  Another thing, too, is I will bet that somewhere under the haystack you will find that Krazy had some angle in it that he forgot to mention, some cash to be made most likely. I do not mean that he is a crook or anything like that, but he has got so many irons in the pie that you sometimes begin to wonder. In his column he is always promoting 30,000 things on the side, and if you keep a close watch you will see where whatever comes along Krazy is somewhere where the cash flies. If it is some kind of a benefit dinner who is handling the tickets? Krazy. If it is a collection being took up for some sick kid in the hospital who is all of a sudden the chief collector? Krazy. Is it a new suit of clothes you wish to buy? Or a car? Who will get it for you cheap? Krazy. Or if it is a book you wish to have wrote he will write it for you out of the goodness of his heart, wanting none of the glory and only 66 and 2/3 percent of your take. I was a full year catching wise to all this, but I done so at last, and I believe I know Krazy well enough by now to know that Korea to him is just another benefit dinner, just another sick kid in the hospital, for he has yet to turn Boy Scout and do 1 single deed out of pure love for the next chap.

  Chapter 27

  SWANEE WILKS got his streak snapped the first night in St. Louis by a kid name of Tony Tiso, born and raised on Dago Hill. Somebody was due to stop Swanee sooner or later. Tiso was wild that night, not too wild but just wild enough, and the boys never dared dig in, and we lost it 5–4. Up to that time Swanee hit safe in 29 games plus the All-Star Game. He said he was just as glad to get handcuffed at last, for the pressure gets great.