Dead Ball

by R. D. Rosen

  Harvey snorted. “A bunch of middle-age guys in fedoras who’ve tacitly agreed not to mention your private life? C’mon, they were kept men, paid by the ball clubs. There’s no comparison.”

  “He did have some crazy fan sneak into the dugout during the streak and steal his favorite bat.”

  “But they got it back.”

  As they all watched the number-three batter in Baltimore’s lineup drop a banjo hit in short center for a single, Harvey’s cell phone began to warble the opening bars of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” He’d changed the ringing option that afternoon from the funereal “Fuga.”

  He pulled the phone out of his pants pocket and said, “Hello.”

  “It’s me.” It was Mickey. “Just checking in to see how you’re doing.” Since his recent confinement to the sofa, she made a point of calling once a day to make sure he hadn’t harmed himself.

  “I’m fine. Where are you?”

  “I’m at your old stomping grounds. ESPN is doing the Jewels-Orioles game in Providence, which you’d know if you still followed the game.”

  “I do follow the game,” Harvey said. “As it was played many years ago.” He stood to get a better look at the field. “Where are you exactly?”

  “I told you. The Jewel Box.”

  “I meant, where in the ballpark.” It was symbolic of their relationship these days that they should be in the same place and not even know it.

  “Okay,” Mickey said, “I’m wedged in the first-base-line press enclosure, hoping to get two seconds with Moss Cooley after his at-bat.”

  He saw her now, a splash of auburn hair among the gray paparazzi jockeying for position in the little pen next to the dugout. “I see you.”

  “You see me? Where are you, Bliss?”

  “Look over your left shoulder and about seventy feet up.”

  “You’re here? Where?”

  “Look up at Marshall Levy’s skybox. There’s a sad middle-aged man waggling the fingers of his right hand at you. That would be me.”

  “This is too much. Wait—there you are!” Harvey could see the tiny oval of her face break into a smile. “What are you doing there?”

  “Felix thinks he wants to hire me.”

  “To do what?”

  “Motivational coach.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “Whyn’t you come down and see me?”

  “Come up and visit us in the skybox.”

  “Tell her she’s my guest,” Marshall said loudly, then dropped his voice to mutter, “Best-looking woman on TV. Better-looking than Hannah Storm. Or that woman on The X-Files.”

  “Maybe later, if I can get away,” Mickey said. “Maybe after the game.”

  “You know where the elevator to the skyboxes is?”

  “I think I can find it.”

  Harvey, Marshall Levy, and Felix Shalhoub watched as the Providence pitcher retired the Orioles without further damage, and the PA system sprayed the park with loud rock music as the Jewels trotted in for their first at-bat.

  Providence Jewel second baseman Arturio Ferreiras roped a single to left to lead off the top of the first, then stole second.

  “Way to go, Artie!” Marshall yelled, banging the arm of his chair. “God, I love this game!”

  Center fielder Andy Cubberly came to the plate and waved at two high fastballs from Baltimore pitcher Jack Bustow.

  “This guy can’t handle the high stuff,” Harvey observed.

  Felix snorted. “Every housewife in Woonsocket knows he can’t handle the high stuff. Marshall,” he said, turning to his boss, “remind me to talk to Terry about dropping him down in the lineup until his mojo starts working again.”

  “Leave the skipper alone,” Marshall said. “He knows what he’s doing. You know from personal experience, I don’t believe in a lot of front office interference.”

  “What’re you talking about? You’re forgetting it was you who once let my ex-wife sit in the dugout.”

  “I let you make your mistakes when you were at the helm,” Marshall said, not interested in Felix’s view of ancient history, however accurate.

  Cubberly struck out on a change-up, and a tide of clapping and hooting signaled Moss Cooley’s slow progress toward the batter’s box.

  3

  IN DIMAGGIO’S DAY, NOBODY looked really good in a baseball uniform. This could not be said of Moss Cooley. Flannel had given way to form-fitting synthetics, chewing tobacco had given way to sunflower seeds and strength-and-fitness training, and Cooley was a testament to the virtues of this evolutionary process. His jersey with the big green “14” looked as if it had been spray-painted on his sculpted upper body. Felix was saying that for someone with a power hitter’s build—six-two, two hundred and five pounds, according to the program—Moss could hit extremely well to all fields.

  “And he owes a lot of that to Campy,” Felix said, referring to the Jewels’ elderly batting instructor, whose ministrations sixteen years ago had helped Harvey hit .300 for the only time in his career. “He convinced Moss that he was essentially a contact hitter with power, not a power hitter. Campy convinced him to shorten his stroke, learn to hit inside out, give up ten or twelve home runs a year, hit for the average, be the table setter for Barney and Monkman. Pure genius on Campy’s part.”

  Cooley paused just outside the batter’s box and rotated his head several times in each direction to loosen up his neck muscles. Baltimore’s Bustow stood patiently on the mound, perhaps contemplating his disadvantage as a lefty facing the game’s current best right-handed hitter. Ferreiras wandered a little off second, waiting for the fans to get a grip on themselves and Cooley to step in.

  “One thing about Moss,” Felix was explaining, “is that he’ll surprise you sometimes and go after the first pitch. On the other hand, last week he had this great at-bat against the Indians. He fouled off a few iffy pitches, waited out the walk, and got a rally going. All this despite the fact he’d gone hitless in the game and would probably get only one more at-bat, which is what he got, and doubled off the scoreboard.”

  “Let’s go, Cool!” Marshall shouted.

  From the stretch Bustow delivered his first pitch, a waist-high slider on the outside corner that Cooley promptly drove to the opposite field in a low parabola. It dropped thirty feet inside the foul line and fifty feet in front of the right fielder. Ferreiras chugged around third to score. The crowd erupted. Cooley stood calmly on first base, peeling off his batting gloves with the decorum of a gentleman caller, and said something to the Orioles’ first baseman, who laughed. The Jumbotron went into unspeakable gyrations involving a likeness of Moss Cooley’s face and the phrase “46 straight!”

  When the cheering finally subsided, Levy leaned toward Harvey. “No chance involved there, eh, Professor?”

  “Touché,” Harvey admitted.

  What impressed him was Cooley’s effortlessness, as though he were merely demonstrating an opposite-field hitting technique rather than executing one of the most difficult hand-eye feats in all of sports: hitting an eighty-five-miles-per-hour major-league slider thrown from a distance (when you calculated the actual point of release) of fifty-four feet. Harvey was thinking about how Cooley must feel, getting his hit out of the way early, like a man who steals a successful kiss early on a first date and can relax for a while.

  “Professor,” Marshall said, “what did Felix tell you over the phone about our wanting to hire you?”

  “He said the two of you thought you needed a motivational coach. But I’ve got to tell you—”

  “He was lying, Harvey.” Marshall rotated his glass of Scotch in a tight circle, the melting cubes chattering against the glass.

  “Not that we don’t think your presence will be influential,” Felix said as Guercio, the designated hitter, stepped in. “Teach these boys that winning’s up here.” Felix jabbed a finger at his own head. “That baseball’s a game of fundamentals. Get it? Mentals.”


  “I get it,” Harvey said, snapping a carrot stick between his teeth. “Suppose one of you tells me what’s going on.”

  “Officially, we want you to be our motivational coach. Unofficially—”

  “Can I get you gentlemen another drink?” The black steward was suddenly at their sides. “Some spicy chicken wings?”

  “No, thank you, Robert,” Marshall said, and the steward deftly retreated.

  “Unofficially?” Harvey prompted the Jewels’ owner.

  “Unofficially—and we’re completely at the mercy of your discretion on this matter, okay?”

  “Understood,” Harvey assured him.

  “We want you to protect Moss Cooley.”

  “From the Chihuahuas?”

  “Oh, no,” Marshall said, swirling his Scotch. “Something worse than Chihuahuas.”

  “Cool got something the other day,” Felix said. “An ugly thing that worries us.”

  “What?”

  “We’ll show it to you after the game,” Marshall said. “Let’s just say the gist of it is that someone doesn’t want him breaking DiMaggio’s record.”

  Harvey knew enough not to push it. This was the owner’s skybox, after all, not the dugout. But it made him edgy as hell. It was only the first inning, after all. “Why’d you make up all this bullshit about a motivational coach?” he asked Felix.

  “Everybody said you weren’t taking on any cases. That you’d lost the taste for it. So I had to get you down here some other way. Even you have to admit what a hard sell you are.”

  In the eighth inning, with the Jewels comfortably out in front 6—2, Cooley got his second hit, a topped grounder he beat out by a step, and the fans cheered as lustily as though it had cleared the remote 417 FT sign in center. “There’s your chance for you,” Harvey tweaked Marshall Levy.

  “Cool’ll get his hits,” the owner said smugly. “One way or another.”

  By now, it was really beginning to annoy Harvey, the way Marshall kept using the nickname “Cool.” It reminded him of the way parents ingratiate themselves with their children by using their lingo, the way his own late father, for a year or two in Harvey’s adolescence, had kept referring to things in Harvey’s presence as “boss.”

  “Does Cooley know about me?” Harvey asked.

  “Not yet,” Marshall replied as Jewels catcher Ray Costa flied out to end the bottom of the eighth. “But soon.”

  Just after Jewels closer J. C. Jelsky sealed the Jewels’ 6-3 win, meaty storm clouds began rolling in from the west. It was as if nature had politely waited for the national pastime to conclude its business. Within minutes The Jewel Box was under a thick dome of gray licked by lightning. The temperature dropped ten degrees. To the accompaniment of thunder and under the first big raindrops, the grounds crew removed the bases and drew the big tarpaulin over the infield. The tarp itself billowed like a great green cloud before settling down. The crowd drained out of the park and was replaced by the maintenance crew snapping back seats and sweeping the fans’ litter into the aisles.

  Harvey, Marshall, and Felix retired to Marshall Levy’s glassed-in office right behind the skybox to talk baseball. Marshall sat in a Naugahyde executive chair behind his desk sipping Scotch, while Felix and Harvey sat in molded plastic chairs opposite him, both now nursing ginger ales. The office looked as if it had been furnished after a fifteen-minute stop at Office Max. On Marshall’s otherwise sparsely populated desk sat a big brown cardboard shipping box.

  After several minutes, their conversation was interrupted by a portly, shortish middle-aged man poking his head in the door. He had lost all his hair on top, leaving a friar’s fringe of brown hair, but had retained, like many stout men, a boyish face bulging with good cheer. He wore a sport shirt open at the neck under a summery linen sport jacket with a light check.

  “How ’bout dat, gentlemen? History in the making!” the man said in a rumbling singsong baritone, and Harvey knew at once from the overmodulated voice that he was a broadcaster.

  “Snoot Coffman,” Marshall said, sweeping his open palm from Snoot to Harvey. “Harvey Blissberg. Snoot here does the games on radio for WRIX. And Harvey used to play this game.”

  “I remember the Professor,” Coffman said. “But you traded in your bat for a gun, as I recall.”

  “For a while, anyway.”

  “You here for Cooley?”

  Harvey glanced at Marshall.

  “Snoot knows,” Marshall said.

  “We thought he might have some insight,” Felix added. “He knows what goes on with the ballplayers as much as we do.”

  “That’s what I get from having to interview them ad nauseum.”

  “And he can keep his mouth shut,” Marshall said, “although you’d never know it.”

  “You can bet Granny’s bustle on that,” the broadcaster said with a resonance entirely unnecessary for casual conversation. This, Harvey thought, was a man in the throes of a love affair with the sound of his own voice.

  “So I guess I’m the only one here who’s still in the dark,” Harvey said.

  “Not for long,” Felix replied.

  Coffman rubbed his hands together briskly. “Well, I’ll leave you gentlemen alone.”

  “You have any thoughts, Snoot?” Marshall asked.

  “Nope, but give me a chance to think about it. I love a good mystery. Really, I just stopped in to commend you on another fine victory and share my excitement about Moss. You know, DiMaggio was great the moment he came up, but Moss has really blossomed overnight. I’m honored to be broadcasting this amazing streak. As you were,” he added, sliding back out the door.

  When he was gone, Harvey said, “Snoot?”

  Marshall laughed. “Hey, I don’t name ’em; I just pay ’em. No one can say he hasn’t brought a lot more pizzazz to the broadcasts. Not that there was anything wrong with Scott Sipple, our play-by-play man before last year. But Scott was a little… subtle. Snoot’s one those big fans of the game. He’s got half of Providence saying, ‘Now how ’bout dat?’ ”

  Sipple. He was now one of ESPN’s stable of anchors Harvey would occasionally catch at three in the morning on a sleepless night. Harvey wondered if Mickey knew him.

  Soon after the lights of The Jewel Box started to go out in an orderly procession around the park, there was another knock on the door, and Moss Cooley himself came in, larger than life. He wore an expensive navy blue shirt with a nice drape to it, brown slacks, two-tone fabric-and-leather shoes. His espresso-colored face was topped by a nest of six-inch dreadlocks that fell about his head in a moplike fashion. He wore one thin gold chain around his neck and two gold rings on his left hand. He was carrying, incongruously, a brown paper lunch sack. Harvey wondered if it contained a sandwich. That would make good copy—baseball’s biggest hero brown-bagging it.

  Harvey watched as Cooley’s eyes fell on the cardboard box on Marshall’s desk. There was a slight ripple in his composure, signaled only by a blink, and then his eyes were up again, surveying his hosts, who had risen.

  “Congratulations, Cool,” Marshall said. “I hope it never ends.” He came around the desk to bang fists with Cooley, like one of the brothers.

  “Everything comes to an end, Mr. Levy,” Cooley replied.

  “Way to go,” Felix said, opting for a traditional handshake. “Moss, this is Harvey Blissberg, who played center field for us many years ago.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Moss said. “I had your card once. You played for Boston before you ended up in this dump.”

  “Five years.”

  “ ’Course, I was just a little thang back then.” He put his hand, palm down, at knee level.

  “And now look what happened to you,” Harvey said.

  “He got bigger,” Marshall said.

  “And luckier,” Moss added with a smile that revealed a gold bicuspid. “Thank God for that hit in the first inning. I’d be ashamed to keep the streak going on that sorry-ass squib in the eighth.”

  “Chance favors the prepared
mind,” Marshall suddenly said. “And the prepared bat.”

  “Wiser words have never been spoken,” Moss said, humoring the man who signed his enormous paychecks.

  “Actually, wiser words have been spoken,” Harvey said. “Just not by Marshall Levy.”

  “How true,” Moss said, laughing.

  “Have a seat, Cool,” Marshall said. He motioned him to an empty chair and retreated to his own. They all sat. “You’re probably wondering why we brought Harvey down here from Boston.”

  “I was?”

  “Well, in any case, you may be seeing a lot of him. Harvey’s a licensed private investigator.”

  “Wait a second,” Harvey said. “I haven’t agreed—”

  “Of course not,” Marshall said, making a meaningless adjustment of his eyeglasses.

  “I’m a little confused,” Moss said.

  “You’re not alone,” said Harvey.

  “Wait a second.” Moss looked from Marshall to Harvey and back. “You want him to look after me?”

  “With your permission,” Felix said. “Look, I think we all agreed yesterday that, for the time being, the less attention we call to this thing the better. You know what the press would do with something like this.”

  Moss nodded. “For the Chihuahuas it’s like fuckin’ crack.”

  “And we agree, if I’m not mistaken,” Marshall added, “that we don’t want to involve the Providence police.”

  “They’ll talk to the Chihuahuas.”

  “Plus, once this gets out, you’ve got to worry about the copycats getting into the action,” Marshall added. “We need to handle this quietly, if we can, and let you go about your business.”

  Harvey listened, looking at the box.

  “We’re going to do a routine security upgrade here at the park,” Felix said. “But we’re mum about the threat, right?”

  “That’s right,” Moss said. “Let’s keep it low.”

  There was a knock at the door. Marshall and Felix quickly exchanged looks and shrugs. “Who’s there?” Marshall called out.

  “Mickey Slavin. I’m looking for Harvey Blissberg.”

  Harvey was out of his chair in an instant, opening the door only a foot or so. “Hi,” he whispered.