Dave Rowe made an indelicate remark about what our catcher could do with his smarting hands. Then he spit tobacco juice onto my shoes. First he addressed my catcher. “I don’t give a damn about your hand, Fatty. Your nose ain’t bleeding, and you ain’t got blisters, yet, have you? God A’mighty. I remember back when baseball players were tough.”
Next, he whirled and jabbed a finger against my chest. “You’ll stay on this mound, boy. Till hell freezes over. And if you get out of this inning before we have to catch the eastbound for home, well, that’ll be too bad. Because you’re gonna come right back out. I don’t care if we lose ten thousand to squat. I’m gonna show that asshole McKim just what kind of talent you got, boy. And I’m gonna laugh when McKim tears up that contract and leaves you at the depot. Jesus-son-of-a-bitching-pig-shitting-asshole-damn-it-all-to-hell-bastard-loving-Christ, what a shameful embarrassment you are to the entire son-of-a-bitching sport.”
With those words of encouragement, Dave Rowe returned to center field.
“Let’s try a curve ball, Silver,” Fatty Briody suggested.
The Mountain Lions hit that, too.
Somehow, however, I got out of that inning, and we trailed only 7 to 0. True to his word, Dave Rowe sent me back to pitch in the eighth inning, and I did much, much better. When we led off the top of the ninth, we trailed by thirteen runs.
Baseball, of course, is a funny game. Strange things happen, and they started happening for us in our last at-bat.
I walked. Maybe I shouldn’t have. The crowd certainly thought the last pitch to me was a strike, but Mundt called it Ball Seven, and I trotted to first base. Cod Myers and Mox McQuery reached base, too, but Fatty Briody, his hands still smarting, struck out.
Some man in the stands stood up to shout, “I just want to know who the hell’s the National League?”
The folks around him laughed, as did a few on the Denver bench.
Then Dave Rowe came to the plate, and showed the Denver crowd just who the hell the National League was. The second pitch he saw went farther than anything anyone had ever seen in Denver. Four hundred and ten feet, folks said, and I wouldn’t argue with that estimate. Dave had cut the Mountain Lions’ lead to 13 to 4. Rowe would hit another homer in that extraordinary inning as we just kept piecing together run after run.
The crowd began shifting nervously—13 to 5 … 13 to 6 … 13 to 8 … 13 to 9 … Again, Fatty Briody struck out. Two outs. Just one out from a Denver sweep. Rowe followed with his second home run, scoring Myers and McQuery, and we trailed 13 to 12.
By now, the crowd had fallen into a church-like silence.
Jim Donnelly walked to put the tying run on first base, then he stole second base. Shorty Radford then hit a weak roller to third base, but Shorty knew how to run, and when the umpire yelled, “Safe!” we had runners on first and third.
Jim Lillie lined a shot that the third baseman, Frank Harris, couldn’t snag, but he kept the ball in the infield, and caused Rowe to scream and curse and stomp on his cap. “Donnelly, you dumb bastard! Two outs! You should be running on contact. You son-of-a-bitch. If we lose this game, you’re walking back to Kansas City … if I don’t shoot your sorry ass first!”
Bases loaded, and Charley Bassett at home base, and me swinging a bat on deck.
I don’t think I’d ever seen a walk cause so many spectators to curse, groan, and even force a few to walk out of the ball park in disgust. Charley Bassett jogged to first base, and Jim Donnelly touched home to tie the score. We had scored thirteen runs in one inning. That’s what a National League team can do. And I, sick to my stomach, approached the plate with the chance to drive in the go-ahead run … or runs.
“Come on, Silver!” Cindy McKim’s voice did not steady my nerves.
Four balls, two strikes, and two foul balls later, I stared at Harry Salisbury, who did not look tired in the least, even if, in one lousy inning, he had been hammered by our batters.
“You’re hanging tough, Silver.”
I blinked. Dan Dugdale, catching, was speaking to me.
“He’s a good pitcher,” I said. “I’ve never faced a left-hander before … not batting, I mean.”
“You’re a good pitcher, too,” he told me.
Salisbury was kneeling now, tying his laces, rubbing his throwing hand in the dirt.
I looked at Dan Dugdale, squatting behind me, holding one fat-looking glove in his left hand, and a fingerless one in his right. He had been catching with those all day, and while the players on our bench had heckled him off and on, Dan didn’t seem to mind.
“You are, too, Silver. A good pitcher. Never seen anyone throw as hard as you, kid.”
Relief swept through me. Dan Dugdale, who I had angered two nights earlier, was grinning at me.
“Not today,” I said.
“Balderdash. Things happen. You had command all day. I saw that. You threw exactly where you wanted to. So we hit you. Hell, we’ve hit a lot of great pitchers. And that includes Pete Conway and Stump Wiedman. Remember. Everyone has a bad day. Some days, I couldn’t rope a steer to save my life.”
“How about Molly?” I asked.
He spit, snorted, and nodded toward Salisbury. “Best get ready, Silver,” he said softly. “Expect a licorice ball.”
I did. Salisbury had been rubbing the ball, putting a high shine on it. He didn’t discolor the baseball, not even damage it, but it made the baseball do weird things. Kind of the opposite of the spitball. It came in high, which is where I had called it, floating like a watermelon that I couldn’t miss, shining like a beacon that begged me to knock it out to Wyoming. But Dan Dugdale had warned me. Licorice ball. I had thrown some shine balls myself. Even today. Which way would it break? Left? Right?
Down, I told myself. Away.
I swung.
I knew I’d made solid contact, and immediately dropped the bat and took off running. My teammates on the bench leaped up and screamed. Watching, even Dave Rowe stood. Charley Bassett, Jim Lillie, and Shorty Radford ran around the bases. My eyes tracked down the ball, and I saw it flying deep into right field. I saw something else, too, almost a blur.
George “White Wings” Tebeau had found an angle and chased after the ball.
“No!” I said, and ran harder, as if that would stop Denver’s right fielder. As I reached second base, and turned to third, I looked back, saw Tebeau leap into the air, saw the ball fall neatly into his black glove and bare left hand. I heard the crowd erupt in cheers, and I stopped running, turned, and saw Tebeau bounce off the ground, coming up immediately and showing the umpire the ball he had—somehow—caught and held on to.
“The striker is out!” Mundt yelled.
Well, at least we had tied the score. I just had to get us through the bottom of the ninth inning. Fatty Briody came up to me as he pulled on his thin gloves and whispered in a nasal whine. “Curve balls, kid.” He blinked. “My old hands just can’t take no more of your heat, Silver. Curve balls. That suit you?”
“Sure.” How could I argue with Fatty Briody, whose face looked like a chubby infant? Even if he had pissed in our bed and kept me up all night with his God-awful snoring.
The first batsman I faced was Dan Dugdale. The last batter I faced was Dan Dugdale. The first pitch I threw was a curve ball. It hung. And Dan Dugdale knocked it to the center-field fence and scored easily.
“Hell’s bells,” I heard Dave Rowe say, and I was already walking to the bench, knowing I had just lost the game. The spectators screamed. The Mountain Lions rushed off the bench to congratulate my cowboy pal as he scored the game-winning run on a monster home run that some miner said, after he paced off the distance, had traveled five hundred feet.
“Nice going, boy,” Dave Rowe told me. “You lost the son-of-a-bitching game for us.” Our manager and center fielder didn’t even wait around to shake hands or help tap and drain two more kegs of Colo
rado beer.
I just sat on the bench, head down, with Fatty Briody.
“Don’t kick yourself, kid,” Fatty told me. “It happens. Happens to Grasshopper. Happens to everybody. You threw well. They just hit it. They just hit everything. Must be the damned air.”
“It is.”
We looked up. Dan Dugdale held out his right hand.
Fatty Briody grinned. “Nothin’ personal, Catch’, but …” He held up his reddened palms.
“I’ve got something that might help out with that.” Dan Dugdale pulled out that massive pad he had been catching with … the one my teammates had been ridiculing him for using. Fatty Briody studied it.
“They’d laugh at me if I used that pillow, mister,” he said.
“They laughed at me, too,” Dan told them. “Then they stopped laughing.”
Squatting, Dan pulled the padded black glove over his left hand. On his right, he wore the fingerless leather glove that most players wore.
“I was playing on a team in Peoria,” Dan explained. “Last year. Harry Decker, my teammate, came up with this idea. Split fingers tormented Harry when he had to catch, so he started tinkering. He started with a fingerless glove … like this one …” Dan held up his right hand. “He slipped some raw beefsteak between the glove and his hand. That worked, and I tried it, too. Problem was, playing for Peoria, a steak a day proved more than we could justify as an expense. So Harry put shot in the glove’s pocket and leather on top of the shot. Next, he added more stuffing, rags and the like, and laced the fingers on the back of the glove. Finally, I told him maybe if we put some felt in it, that would do the job. And it has.”
Dan stood, and held out the glove. “It’s yours, Briody. If you want it.”
“I couldn’t take your glove, Catch’,” Fatty said.
“You need it. Pitchers here … they don’t throw the heat that young Mister King throws. And I can make another mitt for myself. Reminds me of when I cowboyed, and spent the winter mending tack.”
Standing, Fatty rose and tried on the glove, gently. He looked over his shoulder, waiting for the jokes, but the Cowboys were drinking beer with the Mountain Lions. “Thanks, mister. Those were two hellish hits you rocked today. First one must’ve gone a mile before it come back to earth. And that one that won the game? Hell, it must be two miles to that fence in center.”
Dan Dugdale laughed. “It’s the thin air, Briody. Trust me, if the National League ever puts a baseball team here in Denver, folks will be lamenting how far the balls go, saying it’s not fair to the rest of the teams.”
He looked at me. “Sorry about the other night, Silver. Hell, I was jealous. Cowboys are human. And …”
He stopped. Americus McKim had come to our bench. He wasn’t drinking any of the Denver beer. He was frowning.
I shot to my feet. “Mister McKim,” I said, and pointed at Dan. “This is Dug. I mean, Dan … Daniel Dugdale.”
“Yes.” McKim had no interest. “Fatty, take that … um … pillow … and … well …” He stopped to study Dan. “Dug Dugdale. I’ve heard that name before.”
“You have?” Dan looked as if he had been run over by an elk.
Mr. McKim shook his head. “No matter. Good hitting today, sir. Solid game you played all the way around.” Complimenting an opposing player—after our team had been swept in three games—took a lot out of Mr. McKim, yet I didn’t notice any anger in the team owner’s eyes.
Actually, I felt excited, thinking, in my ignorance, that McKim might offer Dan a contract. “He’s …” I began, but Americus McKim silenced me with a stare that rivaled Dave Rowe’s.
“If you two gentlemen will excuse me,” my boss said, “I need to have a private word with Master King here.”
Chapter Ten
I knew what was coming. Truthfully, after giving up fourteen runs in three innings, I couldn’t argue that I didn’t deserve to be terminated. All I could hope for was that Americus McKim would at least give me a train ticket back to Missouri.
When the malt and grain man sat on the bench beside me, I expected him to put his arm over my shoulder in some fatherly, comforting fashion, but he just stared at the baseball field, vacant, except for our two card-playing pitchers who were drinking from beer steins over at second base, away from the rest of the Colorado and Kansas City ballists.
“There is a big difference between Joseph Heim and myself,” Mr. McKim said. “All Joe is interested in is making money. He’d sell his soul if he thought that would bring in more people to League Park. I want to win, damn it.” He ground his teeth, clenched his fists, and turned quickly to stare at me with malevolent eyes. “We lost all three games … to this … bunch … of rabble!”
Rabble? Actually I thought the Denver Mountain Lions played like true ballists. They had fun. They knew the game, and played like professionals. They even shared their kegs of beer, and their manager didn’t carry a self-cocking Smith & Wesson and preach drinking, gambling, and consorting with lewd women. Knowing their catcher the way I did, I felt certain that Dan Dugdale did not come into his hotel room at some unholy hour, pass out, and wet the bed.
I did not, of course, contradict Mr. McKim.
Dave Rowe was never fun to be around, at a ball park or on a train. Fatty Briody, on the other hand, was a miserable person to share a hotel bed with, but, on the baseball field, he was a joy, and one of my few defenders on the Cowboys team. Joseph Heim was Joseph Heim, usually angry, but constantly scheming. And here was Americus McKim, who had been so polite, thoughtful, helpful, and patient with Mother and me. Yet now …
Baseball, I started to learn, brought out the best in some people. In others, it helped some inner demon take control, and that lust to win had turned Mr. McKim into a monster.
“You stunk today, boy,” he said. “Blew the game for us.”
I could have argued that Pete Conway and Stump Wiedman had done no better in the two games they started, or reminded him that Dave Rowe, our star and our manager, had struck out seven times in the three-game series. But I just made my head bob, and tried not to cry.
He blew out a hot breath. “Your mother,” he said, shaking his head, “is a nice lady. Anyway … well, King, we all make mistakes. And I’m afraid that …”
“Yes, Father,” Cindy McKim said once she had covered the distance from the gate in the fence to the visiting team’s bench. “Like that first batch of beer you brewed. Remember?”
Unclenching his hands, Mr. McKim tried to take control of his emotions, but he remained angry, and I feared he would take out his frustrations about my lousy pitching on his beautiful daughter.
“Cindy,” he said in a rough whisper, “you need to …”
But his daughter just gave him, and me, one of those radiant smiles.
“You see,” she said nonchalantly, though I somehow understood that she had come to my rescue. “Father always tells us this story. He says the first batch of beer he brewed wasn’t fit for an outhouse.” She laughed. “Father can be so salty sometimes.”
“Cindy …” His fists had balled again, and, this time, his knuckles started to turn white.
“Yet …” Cindy began as she settled between us. “And this is what Father always says is so important. That’s why he always tells the story. That foul batch of beer did not stop him. ‘If you don’t learn from your mistakes,’ Father always tells us, ‘then you have no chance to improve. You’ll go on to repeat those same mistakes.’” She shook her head, and gripped her father’s fist with her left hand and my left hand with her right.
Her hand on mine felt so wonderful that I no longer feared getting kicked off the Kansas City Cowboys. “Father says we must not let failure bother us. Everyone fails. It’s how you respond to such mistakes that makes you better. Isn’t that right, Father?”
Mister McKim’s mouth moved this way and that without actually opening, and his eyes
burned with rage as they bore through his daughter, then me, and then … looked up.
Dan Dugdale was back, holding two steins of beer. He held one out to me, and, confused, I took it.
“Sir,” Dan said, shaking his head and chuckling softly. “I don’t know where you found this young hurler, sir, but … well … I’ll be glad to see him back to Kansas City. That last hit of mine? The one that won the game. Pure luck. I didn’t even see the damned ball. Pardon my salty language, ma’am,” he added as his eyes darted at Cindy.
His stein clinked mine, and Dan walked back to join the celebration.
“What was his name?” Cindy McKim asked.
I set the beer down. “Ummm. Dug. Daniel Dugdale. We just call him Dug.”
“Dugdale.” Cindy’s father spoke again. “I know I’ve heard that name before.”
“He played for Peoria last year,” I said.
Mr. McKim no longer looked angry. The fist that wasn’t being held by his daughter relaxed, and he brought it up to rub his nose and eyes. “Well …” was all he could manage to say.
“What did you learn today, Silver?” Cindy asked.
I had to think.
“Yes,” Mr. McKim said, but his voice had lost that sharp edge. “What did you learn?”
“Well …” It struck me then. I even grinned. “Well, I learned that I can throw a ball exactly where I want to throw it. And that I can throw it pretty danged fast and hard.” Then I laughed. “And Dug taught me that if you throw a ball hard enough, and a savvy batsman connects, well …” Now Cindy giggled, too, and her father’s lips turned upward, though I wouldn’t say he smiled exactly. “That a good batsman can send that ball over the moon.”
Cindy released both of our hands. “So, what do you do with that bad batch of beer you brewed today, Silver?”
My head bobbed. I thought I understood.
“I … toss it … out.”
“Exactly.” That didn’t come from Cindy. It came from Mr. McKim. He stared straight at me now, no longer expressing that feeling of doom.
The Kansas City Cowboys Page 8