The Southpaw
Page 38
“The boys are no different then anybody else,” she said. “The boys are the world, and they are ruled by their belly and their fear. You have learned to do different, and I hope you will always go on following your head and your heart and the things that they tell you about men and money and what happens to courage when the heat is on.”
“I will try,” said I.
Yet we was hardly 100 feet up the Observatory road when my belly begun to need attention. “Any chance of anybody whipping up a batch of hot chocolate?” I said.
“Maybe so,” she said. “Is there anything else you wish to ask me?”
“No,” said I, “for I asked you in February, and I asked you in April, and I asked you in September. After a man has struck out 3 times he begins to think maybe he just ain’t much of a hitter. I struck out 4 times this afternoon and consider it an evil hex.”
“Perhaps you will have better luck this time,” she said. “You have sharpened your eye since February and April and September.”
So I asked her then, for the fourth time, though it wasn’t like I planned it a-tall. I was tired from the ball game and sweaty from the trip and the rain was half raining and half not raining, 1 of them dreariest nights in the world, and then I never even kissed her, or at least not the way I planned it, for we hardly got in the house when Pop and Aaron come chugging in in the 32 and klumping up the steps like a couple oxes.
This reminds me to say a “Thank You” to the many fans that sent cards and such both when we was married and through the winter. In the beginning the mail was enough to make a fellow sick, about 5,000 letters by actual count between the day of Krazy Kresses column and the middle of October, air mail and special delivery on a number of occasions, 19 out of 20 of the nasty sort, after which it slacked off pretty sudden, though even now a letter still comes from a chap first getting up his nerve.
It picked up again in the middle of November (we was married on the 10th by Judge Real, the Mayor of Perkinsville’s brother) and carried over past Christmas and the first of the year, but this time all of them pleasant and cheerful from people that said what I said was right, and actually I begun to feel like a human being again. There was a time when I doubted that I had 5 friends in the world, when many people in Perkinsville would hardly speak to me, when the mail brought nothing but hate and the papers wrote nothing but insults. But then the drift of the mail changed, and then, as you know, the writers themselves voted me both Most Valuable Player and Player Of The Year which I believe I mentioned before in this book but see no harm in mentioning it again for the sake of those folks that might of missed it.
I could also use this space to answer the 1 thing most people most usually ask, “How do things look for this coming year?”
I do not know. I think New York will be the team to beat. Boston is cleaning house from top to bottom, as you know, and it will be a few years yet before they are back in it. I can’t see Brooklyn a-tall. The youngsters at Cleveland are now 1 year smarter, so I expect it will be Cleveland give us the most trouble. 1 year can make a great difference.
But I do wish the Mammoths could come up with 1 more lefthander, for Sam Yale is on the long road down and I do not think Keith Crane can fill his shoes. It is the whole history of the Mammoths that they are short dependable southpaws.
Otherwise the book is done. There is probably a lot that ought to went in but got lost in the scuffle and probably lots more already in that needs to be scratched out. Take it or leave it. Believe it or not. I do not care too much what you believe. Holly says tell folks the truth and they will sooner or later come to believe it, and Aaron says the same. Anyhow, this is it. It sure run long.
THE END