Ozzy was thinking about the last time someone questioned him about something he had done. It was another rookie, two seasons ago, during the final week of spring training. Ozmore was sitting in front of his locker, untying his cleats. A wide-eyed rookie sauntered over to him, stood by his side, and started a conversation.
“Hey, Mr. Ozmore, you know you were one of my favorite players when I was a kid.”
Ozmore rolled his eyes up and glanced quickly at the boy’s smooth face. “Is that right?” he replied.
“Sure. Met you at a Braves game. You tossed me a ball. I didn’t have a pen, and the game was about to start, so you yelled to me that I could send you the ball and you would sign it for me. Remember that?”
“Kid, you know how many letters and balls I get?” Ozmore explained.
The rookie shook his head and blew some air out of his mouth. “No, but what I do know is that I waited for weeks for that ball. My mom kept telling me that it wasn’t coming, but I said ‘Buddy Ozmore said so. He’s my hero.’ Yup, you sure were. I had pictures of you in my room. Had your baseball cards pinned to my bicycle spokes. Stood like you when I played stickball. Yup, you were my idol.”
Ozmore stopped what he was doing and took a closer look at the kid. “Man, you must be mistaken rook,” he said, laughing. “Jesus, I ain’t that much older than you.”
The rookie paused for a moment, then brought his hand down hard on Ozmore’s shoulder.
“No, I ain’t mistaken, Pops,” he said. “You broke a little boy’s heart. That ain’t something anyone ever forgets.”
“Well, greenhorn,” Ozmore explained. “That may be true, but you best get your hand off me right now—or a broken heart ain’t the only thing you’ll be crying about.”
“Yes, sir. I always said that if I ever had the chance to ask you why you did that, I would. So, I’m asking. Why the hell would you do something like that? Huh?”
Ozmore exhaled loudly and looked up at the kid. “You gonna get your hand off me, newbie?”
“You gonna tell me why, Mr. Baseball Hero?”
The end result was a fistfight that took three other players to break up. Ozmore took some blows, came away with a shiner and some scratches, but not before he knocked out the kid’s two front teeth and broke his jaw.
Ozmore was remembering all the towels it took to stop the bleeding as Murph stood there, questioning him.
“Are you serious, Murph?” he asked. “You’re really asking me this?”
“Yeah, I’m asking you. Seems like you said something to Jolene and it’s a bit of a problem.”
“I don’t like to be questioned, Murph,” Ozmore said. “Haven’t the boys told you that?”
What existed in Murph’s mind now was the sudden horror that he had just, with one question, eradicated all of the goodwill and energy he had only just begun to enjoy. Still, he knew all too well that Mickey was unsettled, and with Molly’s discontent already preying upon him, he was facing a far more formidable threat than Buddy Ozmore.
“Look, I don’t want to make any trouble for you, Ozzy,” Murph said. “I don’t. All I know is that Mickey is upset because all of a sudden your sister won’t talk to him. Just like that. I really don’t see why it’s a big deal if the two of them are friends.”
“You don’t listen so well, do you, Murph?” Ozmore asked. “I told you how I feel about this.”
“So you poisoned her mind? Told her that she shouldn’t talk to him anymore?”
“I did nothing of the sort. She’s a big girl and probably realized that she needed some space and that she was uncomfortable around Mickey. That’s all. We all are. He’s a little weird, Murph. I mean—come on.”
“So you didn’t—”
“I didn’t tell her anything, but I have to say, I sure as shit ain’t upset about it. Regular folks and other kinds should not mix. It ain’t natural. So save your breath here. Ain’t nothing I—or you, for that matter—can do about it. Besides, shouldn’t you be worried about baseball anyway?”
Murph thought about his new life as a big league manager and how he had become the focus of, even scapegoat for, everyone else’s woes and insecurities. It was always he who was trying to mitigate some issue or problem or concern of someone else’s. Molly. Ozmore. Mickey. Now it was Jolene. All of them needed something from him. And he could not help but feel that although none of it was of his doing, somehow if he did not do the right thing on all accounts, he would end up paying the price.
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” Murph said.
Game three against the Phillies was a struggle from the start. Shoddy defense by Bobby Elliot and Roy Hartsfield in the first inning, coupled with three walks from starter Vern Bickford, put the Braves in a 4–0 hole from the get-go.
The next five innings provided more of the same lackluster play by the Braves’ defense, resulting in three more runs for the Phillies. The Braves’ offense, however, did manage to chip away at the deficit, capitalizing on some station-to-station small ball and some questionable defense by the Phillies so that come the last half of the seventh, the game was somehow knotted at 7–7.
Murph had let Bickford start the seventh frame, but after a leadoff single and a hit batsman, Murph was motioning to the bullpen for another hurler and on his way to the mound for a brief meeting with his enervated pitcher and Lester.
“Okay, Bicks,” he said, holding his hand out for the ball. “You did fine. Not much help out here today. Next start will be better.”
Johnny Antonelli took over for Bickford and was able to dance through the raindrops en route to an escape routine rivaled only by the great Harry Houdini himself. It gave the rest of the guys a real shot in the arm.
“Atta boy, Johnny,” Murph yelled from his perch on the bench. Everyone else was also swept up in the unexpected heroics—all except Mickey, who sat quietly by himself at the end of the dugout, arranging a group of pebbles he had unearthed during the game. Murph’s bunch parlayed that momentum into a modest rally that began when Sam Jethroe led off the eighth inning with a Baltimore chop to third base that he beat out for an infield single. Two pitches later, he had advanced ninety feet with his league-leading twenty-first stolen base. Next up was Tommy Holmes, who crushed a 2-2 fastball to the deepest part of the ballpark. When it left the bat, everyone was certain it had enough behind it to leave the yard, but the Phillies center fielder ran it down just in front of the wall. Holmes cursed his misfortune and kicked at the dirt as he rounded the first base bag; but Jethroe, who had tagged up despite what appeared initially to be a long home run, trotted into third base easily. There he stood representing the go-ahead run with just one out and the heart of the Braves order coming up.
Bobby Elliot wasted no time cashing in Jethroe’s savvy base running, lacing a single to left field that scored the speedster. Next was Lester, who Murph had moved into the fifth slot after the catcher began showing signs of coming out of a minor funk. With the Braves up by one and looking to pad their lead with an insurance run or two, Lester strode to the plate with one thing in mind—just hit it hard somewhere.
The first offering from Phillies right-hander Blix Donnelly was a fastball off the plate. Lester stepped out of the box and exhaled loudly. He surveyed the outfield configuration with a quick glance, then banged his cleats with the barrel of his bat and stepped back in. Donnelley came back with a fifty-five-foot curveball that bounced in the dirt, putting Lester in a perfect hitter’s count. He was ready, sitting dead red all the way.
The ball was delivered with great force and left the batter’s box as quickly as it had come in. With one mighty swing, Lester scorched the cripple pitch into the right-center field gap. It touched down some 330 feet and rolled all the way to the wall. Elliot coasted home with the second run of the inning, and Lester, who was not known for his speed around the bases, pulled up at third with a stand up triple. The bench erupted with cheers and playful taunts.
“Woo hoo! Look at that boy run!” they screa
med, all the while laughing and slapping each other.
“Whoa, Lester, you like lightning! Lightning, Lester!” The group became even more unhinged when Gordon and Torgeson hit back-to-back jacks, staking the resurgent Braves to a five-run lead.
The visitors dugout was now in a state of complete pandemonium. “We can’t lose, boys!” they screamed. “Nobody’s hotter. Nobody! Fire, fire, we’re on fire!”
The postgame celebration followed the pattern of the previous two. Ozmore’s group assembled once again for what was to be a third consecutive night of drunken debauchery while Mickey stayed back at the hotel with Murph, rattled by his inability to reach Jolene.
“Come on, Mick, you’ve got to snap out of this,” Murph prodded. “It’s okay.”
“But she said it. She told Mickey. She told me. She did.”
“Don’t worry so much. I’m sure you’ll catch up with her soon. You’ve got a big game to pitch tomorrow anyway so it’s for the best. We need this game, Mick. Do you know how long it’s been since the Braves swept a four-game road series from the Phillies?”
A sudden break in Mickey’s mania struck Murph as odd.
“Yes,” the boy said.
Murph shook his head. “What?”
“Yes,” Mickey repeated.
“Yes, what?” Murph inquired, growing a little more impatient with the exchange.
“In 1914, the Boston Braves swept the Philadelphia As in the World Series. But that don’t count none since it weren’t the Phillies. Then in 1925, the Braves were swept two times by the Phillies, once at home and once on the road. The next year, 1926, the season began with the Phillies sweeping the Braves again. Then in 1928, the Braves finally swept the Phillies four games, including a doubleheader on May 30th. But it weren’t until 1945 that the Braves swept four games again from the Phillies. That was two doubleheaders that they won. June 6th and June 7th. That were the last time it happened. Last year, in September, the Phillies swept the Braves four straight. But no sweep for the Braves. So it has been five years, sixty months, one thousand, eight hundred twenty-five days, or—”
Murph stood, shaking his head and muttering to himself. “Mickey, I don’t know how the hell you can possibly know all that. But it doesn’t matter. I’m just trying to tell you how important tomorrow is, that’s all. No need for—”
“Mickey needs to call Jolene.”
“What?” Murph asked. “You’re not listening to what—”
“Jolene,” Mickey repeated. “She has to wish me good luck.”
Despite Murph’s best efforts to divert Mickey’s attention away from what he knew would be more disappointment, Mickey spent the better part of the night dialing the phone with no luck. Then, when his fingers tired, he laid his head on his pillow, the only light in the room coming from a streetlamp just outside the window. His eyes were heavy, but hollow, and remained fixed on the ceiling shadows for some time. He traced every inch of the unusual patterns with great precision until he found that these random shapes had somehow morphed into a montage of images with which he was very familiar—Indiana cornfields, Oscar’s pigpen, Lefty’s twisted smile, and the dank prison cell in Sheriff Rosco’s station. He could see with alarming clarity men with hoods and torches, Pee Wee’s cabin in Baker’s Woods, and somewhere in the whirling fusion of the myriad of configurations was the long, sandy curls that flowed over Jolene’s shoulders. It was enough to keep him from sleep the entire night.
So when morning came, and the boy got dressed and made his way with Murph and the other guys over to Connie Mack Stadium, he was not himself at all. It showed. Instantly.
He struggled the minute he took the field. His warm-up tosses to Lester were flat and off the mark. The buzzing of a crowd that had never seen him throw seemed to bore its way into his brain. The laboring only grew worse once the game began. Phillies leadoff man Richie Ashburn walked on four straight balls. Granny Hamner was issued a free pass in the same manner. It was ugly—fast. Eight straight balls to begin the game. Murph saw the young man unraveling out there and knew he had to do something.
“Time,” he called. Then he motioned to Lester and the two of them walked deliberately to the mound. When they arrived, Mickey was distant and unapproachable. His back was turned to them, as if he were attempting to fend off some terrible gusts of wind—winds of the world that swirled all around him like horrible twisters, cyclones, and hurricanes. He was also engaged in the crippling recitation that Murph had not heard in quite some time.
“Slowly, silently, now the moon, walks the night in her silver shoon.”
Mickey turned around slowly once he knew he was no longer alone.
“Oh no, Mick, you’re not doing this now,” Murph said, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “No way. We’ve come too far. You’ve come too far. Come on now. What’s bothering you?”
“Yeah, Mick,” Lester said. “What gives, kid? This ain’t like you no more.”
Mickey expression was vacant. He stared right past them into the kaleidoscope of faces in the stands. “Mickey don’t feel right,” he said. “No good. No good.”
“You sick or something, Mick?” Lester asked.
“Don’t feel right,” Mickey repeated.
“What do ya think, Murph?” Lester asked.
Murph lowered his head and filled his lungs, as if preparing to lift some heavy load. Then with a renewed sense of purpose, if nothing else, he plowed forward. “Let’s go, Mick. You can do this. Just like always. Just hit the glove. That’s all. Hit the glove.”
“But Mickey—”
“No buts, Mick,” Murph insisted. He was much more stern than he usually was when handling the young man. “There’s no time for this. This is the show. Ain’t no hiding or monkey business. You hear me? Just throw it like you can. Apples in a barrel, remember? That’s all. That simple. We need this game, and we need you. Now.”
Mickey appeared to be processing the command. His face softened some and his eyes were still. He had even just settled on something he wanted to say when over Murph’s shoulder he caught a glimpse of the umpire on his way to join the meeting. The words never left their tomb.
“Okay, fellas, let’s move things along. Make a move here. Let’s play ball.”
Mickey’s shoulders tensed. Murph frowned.
“You heard the man, Mick,” he said, patting the boy on the back. “Time to play ball. Go get ’em.” With those final words of encouragement, he and Lester walked back to their respective positions. Somehow, the walk seemed longer than usual.
“He gonna be okay?” Lester asked.
“Not sure, Les,” Murph said. “I’m just not sure.”
“Sure wish I knew what was wrong with him,” Lester continued. “Damndest thing I ever saw.”
Murph lowered his head and kicked at the grass. “Don’t worry about it too much,” he said. “I know what’s wrong.”
The visit to the mound had only an immediate impact. Mickey’s first two deliveries to Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus were called strikes. And although Mickey eventually ran the count full, struggling to find his rhythm, he retired Waitkus on a towering foul out up the first baseline that was corralled by Torgeson.
Cleanup hitter Del Ennis stepped to the plate amid all sorts of encouragement for Mickey coming from the Braves bench. Murph had all the guys on the top step of the dugout, chattering and cheering for Mickey’s continued success. It seemed to be working, for the first pitch Ennis saw was a blistering fastball that was by him before he could even move the bat off his shoulder. But the next pitch was high and way outside. So was the next. The two that followed were in the dirt, producing yet another walk and a bases-loaded jam for the Braves.
“Come on, Mick.” Lester prodded as he threw the ball back. “Nice and easy. Just toss it to me, nice and easy.”
Something about Lester’s request caught Mickey’s attention. He was suddenly recalling a summer day back in Indiana. He was eight years old, maybe nine, and standing with Molly by the
pond behind their farm. It was early morning, and the sun had just crept over the distant tree line, lighting the flotsam that drifted slowly on the sleepy body of water. Molly had taken him away from the house to talk to him about Clarence and how to best control his emotions when he got frustrated and things were not going his way.
“So you see, Mickey,” she said, picking up a smooth flat stone that she proceeded to skillfully skip across the water. “Sometimes it’s better to be less angry and forceful, not as strong. Do you understand?”
The metaphor was lost on the boy, who was fixated on what he had just seen. “That rock bounced,” he said smiling. “On the water. It bounced.”
Molly smiled back and handed Mickey a rock of his own. “Yes, I’m trying to show you that—”
“How did it bounce?” he asked. “Rocks don’t bounce none. Water ain’t hard neither.”
“Here, sweetheart,” she said, opening his hand. “See for yourself. You try now.”
He took the rock from her; it disappeared behind his massive fingers. He rolled it around and back and forth for a while as he surveyed the water, looking for the perfect spot. Then he cocked his arm, aimed, and fired. The rock traveled a great distance in a mere second, then entered the water with a loud plop and sunk straight to the bottom.
“Mickey broke it,” he said, beginning to rock back and forth.
“No, no,” Molly said, putting her arm around his waist. “You didn’t break anything honey. You just threw it too hard. Remember what I said. Nice and easy. That’s the way to do things sometimes. Slow down. Don’t be so strong and too forceful. Just let it come.”
Mickey thought about how the next few rocks he tossed were more and more like the one Molly threw. It made him smile, a small, modest grin that paled in comparison to the ear-to-ear radiance he flashed when he finally managed to skip a stone from one side of the pond clear across to the other.
“See,” Molly said, rubbing his back. “Sometimes nice and easy is all you need. Remember that, sweetheart.”
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