Switch Pitchers

by Norman German

  I gave the old man a sideways glance. I was beginning to be suspicious of who he was and how much he knew. To coax a little more out of him, I asked, as if it didn’t matter, “And when did you see The Babe?”

  He shrugged. “It was something around 1923, or maybe 1931. I forget.” His tired, wind-callused eyes looked at me, then through me. “As you can see, I am old.”

  Roberto already had two quick strikes on Sam Jethroe, our switch-hitting center fielder. Now Sam moved to the left-hander’s side of the plate to try his luck there. Always good for fifteen home runs a year, Sam, the Braves’ first black ballplayer, added speed to power by leading the league in triples and stolen bases in ’49.

  If there was a plan at all, it looked like someone had called a hit-and-run. When Sam went down swinging for the second out, the hefty man started for third like a tired bull—not fast, but dead determined to hit his mark.

  The catcher must not have thought anyone would be so stupid as to steal third when a left-handed batter opened his view to the corner, because he didn’t even look. When he stood to throw back to the mound, Roberto was pointing toward third, and the catcher instinctively fired without surveying the situation. The ball reached third with the runner ten feet away. Coming in with a full head of steam, the man faked a slide, pulled up short, and slugged the third baseman flush on the mouth. As the fielder’s hand went to check for missing teeth, the runner tagged the base with his foot like he was doing the hokey-pokey.

  I thought a riot would follow. Instead, everyone in the small crowd rose to their feet, raising their arms and voices in unison. “Olé!” they shouted. “Olé! Olé!”

  A few of the Wreckers rushed toward third, screaming about interference rules.

  Grinning and glaring, the stocky man barked, “To hell with the rules. Why do you think they call it stealing!” He laughed with gusto and taunted them. “No, amigos, we no play béisbol americano. This is béisbol Habañero—baseball as it is played in spicy Havana. Now,” he turned and hollered to his boy in the dugout, “bring me another daiquiri!”

  Totally bamboozled by everyone’s reaction, I turned to the old fan while the boy ran the drink across the field.

  “Who is that offensive man everybody seems to love?”

  “Ah,” the old man said with surprise in his voice for the first time. “Lo siento, Señor, I thought you knew.” He unplugged the stogie from his tobacco-stained lips and looked at me with bloodshot eyes. “That is Ernesto ’emingway. The very great writer.”

  “Ernest Hemingway! Well shit, man, why didn’t you say so?” Hemingway was one of those famous men you saw in newspapers and magazines but never in real life.

  I looked back out to third, where Hemingway was taking a lusty pull at his dainty drink. The boy kneeled by the foul line and Hemingway conferred with him as if he were the base coach. He handed the boy the drink, then stepped off two, three, four paces from the bag, checked his distance by reaching back with his hand, then got into an arm-dangling crouch like he was Tyrus R. Cobb.

  In his good-natured, ill-tempered way, Hemingway seemed to be taking the ballgame seriously—too seriously, I thought—and I wondered what he would try next.

  So, apparently, did Roberto Alemán because he took the catcher’s signal from a stretch. From the cries in the stands, I knew the right-handed batter was a sun-kissed isleño named Luis. Smiling but determined, the pitcher looked toward the plate, checked third, quickly glanced at the plate, then back at the runner. Then he unleashed a flash of white light that popped the catcher’s mitt like a bullwhip. Pretending to be swayed by the breeze of the passing ball, Luis grabbed his cap and pressed it down in the imaginary gale while tilting toward the catcher on one leg. The crowd laughed as their local star tumbled back and fell over the catcher, then they cheered on their Papa Hemingway as he lumbered homeward.

  The umpire skipped around the action and spanked the plate a few times with his little broom.

  Roberto ran in to cover home. The catcher’s arm emerged from the tangle and tossed the ball to Roberto. Uninhibited by sideline fences, the fanaticos had already spilled from the stands and poured onto the field, screaming, “Habana jonrón! Habana jonrón!”

  The scene resembled the running of the Pamplona bulls as the natives urged on Hemingway with their shouts. “Touch-a the home! Touch-a the home!”

  And the great-bull Hemingway charged on.

  The whole chaotic mass converged at home. The old man and I were the only ones left in the bleachers, and he was the only one sitting. Everyone seemed to have a role, and everyone seemed to know exactly how the scrimmage would play out. Just before Roberto reached the plate, Hemingway’s drink boy came scampering up and threw himself at the pitcher’s feet. The boy hit and rolled. Roberto raised one leg up and over him but was going down anyway so he flipped the ball to the incoming first baseman, who charged Hemingway with a full head of steam.

  Then the fans from both sides of the field bowled down the first baseman and any other player daring to challenge the suicide squeeze. Everybody—man and woman, player and fan—lay on the ground as Hemingway slowed to a stop just before the clean, well-swept plate. There, he held one finger up to call for silence, said, “I touch-a the home,” then bent over and tapped the plate as if it were a piano key.

  The barrel-chested god was hoisted into the air by his devotees. In the midst of flashing hands—those not supporting him reaching up to touch him—he raised a fist and declared, “Together, we conquer.” His fans took up the slogan, some chanting in English, some in Spanish. Luis lifted up Hemingway’s drink boy, who stuck an already lighted Havana cigar between his master’s white teeth, and the procession marched around home three times before retiring Papa to the dugout.

  Unlike American teams, the Cuban ball clubs rally around ominous slogans that let you know how seriously they take their national pastime. The Almendares Blue Scorpions: He who defeats Almendares dies trying. The Cienfuegos Green Elephants: The tread of the Elephant is slow but crushing. The Havana Red Lions: The Red beating is slow but inevitable. The emphasis on the unhurried dealing of death betrays their desire for vindictive torment, which springs from the daily oppression of Cuba’s citizens.

  I sat down and leaned toward the old gentleman. “Is that the slogan of the Wreckers?”

  “Qué?”

  “‘Together, we conquer.’ Is that the team’s slogan? Its mote?”

  “This I do not know. I think it must be something Ernesto he pick up in Cooba.” He returned his eyes to the game, and I thought he was finished. Then, his words measured, he added, “It is now all opposition in Cooba. But she is giving birth to a Supreme Leader. He will be like the coach of a great but disorganized baseball team.”

  We watched Luis take a confident cut for strike two. The young are always confident like that, especially young beisbolistas.

  “Have you seen El Gran Estadio?” he asked. “In Habana?”

  “Por supuesto, Señor. Our team has just returned from playing many games there.”

  He nodded as if this proved something.

  Roberto went into a fluid windup. Determined to get some wood on the ball, Luis squared off for a desperation bunt. He tried to dampen Roberto’s speed by pulling back on contact, but the ball recoiled off his bat like a sharp grounder to first for the third out.

  Unprompted, oracular, the old man spoke. “Baseball, it is the perfect sport to represent a Communism country.”

  I thought about this for a while, not wanting to contradict my new friend. “Señor, don’t you mean Socialism?”

  He looked at me like I had slapped him. Then the non-cigar side of his mouth smiled. “Communism, Socialism. Cualquiera. It is all the same.”

  I laughed. “And who is this secret Supreme Leader?” Pretending not to hear, he gave me nothing but silence, shutting me out the way old people sometimes do. I waited a while, then sent out another feeler. “Is it Castro?”

  “Listen,” the old man commanded like
one used to giving commands. He leaned toward me and said, very seriously, as if the information might save my life someday, “It is best not to know . . . how it do you say?—It is best to be eegnorance.”

  “Ignorant,” I offered.

  “Sí,” he said. “Ignorance. And I tell you something. How many bats do you think now there are in Cuba?” He paused and nodded, confirming something significant in his mind. “And why do you think they call them clubs, eh? I ask you that.”

  I pondered his question for a while, then shrugged my shoulders.

  “Porque,” he said. He held his hands out like he was testing the heft of a bat. “Because they will be the clubs of freedom in the coming revolution.”

  The bottom of the second inning was uneventful, three up and three down on two K’s and a pop foul caught by Bob Elliott just off third base. I was thankful to be watching a non-hitting game. The bleachers were stationed a few feet from the foul lines and there was not even a short fence to protect the fans, who didn’t seem to understand the danger they were in. In front of us, a little boy playing near his mother had reached up for the foul, which surely would have smashed his face if Elliott hadn’t raced from third and reached among the people to snag the ball.

  Roberto registered three strikeouts in ten pitches in the top of the third inning. When his teammates reached the dugout, they began a rallying cry: “Key West is best! Key West is best!” Manville put the first two batters down, and silence descended over the dugout like a shroud as Roberto stepped out of the depression that was the on-deck circle. From playing and watching baseball for twenty-five years, I knew the gloom could mean only one thing—Roberto was a weak hitter.

  Right when Roberto stepped to the plate, Hemingway kicked a beige chicken off first base. More to Roberto than to the team, he called out mockingly, “Ha! ‘Key West is best.’” He cupped a hand by his mouth and snorted, “More like Key Worst.” The crowd cheered for a while. On the dying fall of the roar, Hemingway gestured with his raised arm for the jeering to continue.

  When the commotion subsided and Manville took the sign from Crandall, any fool could tell that Roberto was determined to rip the first pitch. It was a fastball—no surprise there—but it didn’t have anything on it, and Roberto got under it for a high pop fly just over the shortstop’s head. He was one of the locals filling an open position. I hadn’t heard his name, but he looked enthusiastic and seemed to know what he was doing. He vigorously waved off the left fielder with big sweeping motions of both arms, calling out, “Yo lo tengo! Yo lo tengo! I have it, I have it!” The shortstop kept drifting back but so did the ball, and when he saw he would miss it, he cried out, “No lo tengo! No lo tengo! I not have it, I not have it!” The ball hit a patch of crabgrass and died between the shortstop and Sam Jethroe. Sam had the momentum coming in, and the shortstop had the sense to let him field the ball, which Sam barehanded and snapped sidearm to second, catching Roberto in the middle of the base path for an easy putout.

  The old fan shook his head in disgust. “This campo corto, he is no good.” He slowly hoisted himself from the plank to leave.

  I reached up and held the man’s arm. “Sit down, hombre, sit down. The game is just getting under way.” He looked at me, then turned his head north toward the docks as if to check on his boat.

  “Ahg,” he said. “What the else hell I have to do this day?” He sat and worked himself into the bleacher plank like it was a cushy executive chair.

  Trying to get the old man back into the game as the Wreckers took the field, I asked him an easy baseball question, the kind you ask a box-mate stranger in order to break an uncomfortable silence between innings, knowing he is sure to have an opinion about it.

  I took a peppermint from my shirt pocket and unwrapped it. Before popping the mint into my mouth, I asked, “Ever hear of Tinker to Evers to Chance?”

  The old man’s dismissive half-grunt expelled a puff of smoke. Still gazing out at the field, cigar waggling in his mouth, he said wryly, “Ever hear of Hildalgo to Zabala to Rodriguez?”

  I waited a few moments to prolong the suspense, then delivered. “Not only heard,” I said, “but seen.”

  He turned to me as if I had stolen his wedding ring. It was the fastest his head had moved in three innings. He stared at me for a while, on the verge of saying something angry to top me. By force of will, he put a sleepy look on his face and glanced slyly to his right, then out at the field, across to his left, and finally scanned beneath the bleachers.

  He unplugged the fat stogie and leaned toward me like he was imparting a religious secret: “Ever hear of Castro to Che to la sierra?” He plugged the stogie back in and settled against the bleacher with a satisfied smile as if the sacred words, uttered in just that sequence, had ended the discussion for all time.

  Roberto struck out the first batter in three pitches.

  “Tell me, old friend,” I said. “What do you think about this lightning striker, this Roberto Alemán? He’s pretty good, no?”

  He turned his bottom lip down as if he were inspecting a good piece of fruit but wanted it for a cheap price. “Qué va,” he said. “He no have every skill. He no is an bateador.”

  “Ah,” I said, finally having something to write down when he confirmed my judgment. So I carefully printed: BIG PITCH, SMALL BAT.

  When Don Donovan replaced Manville on the mound in the bottom of the fourth, I surmised they had decided to go three innings apiece, then let Normie Roy mop up the seventh.

  Donovan stood a lanky six feet, three inches tall. As he walked out to the mound like a newborn stork trying his legs for the first time, I shook my head, remembering Mr. Perini’s crazy thinking in martialing together this gawky band of goony-goonies. Because very few good pitchers are short, he figured he’d sign the tallest contingent of crack high schoolers around, then, since he had Spahn and Sain, wait for the debutantes to mature into the best pitching staff in the National League. Unfortunately, I could tell from what I’d seen in the winterball games that our stateside 1951 season would repeat itself on the mound in ’52. Because—write this down—two great pitchers do not a pennant win.

  In ’51, Mr. Southworth tried to work a three-man rotation, which would have been possible with three great pitchers and four good relievers. But what we had were Johnny Sain and Warren Spahn at the head of the train dragging half a dozen dead-arm bush leaguers. By midseason the fans were chanting “Spahn and Sain, then pray for rain” because they knew we weren’t going to win but two out of three games at a stretch, tops. Spahn was a twenty-game winner nearly every season, but he also led the team in losses most years. Then he was traded to the Yankees late in ’51, so I suspected, with these fledgling goony-goonies, that this year the fans would be singing the same old blue song again.

  Donovan mowed down a couple of semipros followed by a skinny isleño boasting a too-big bat.

  When Roberto took the mound in the top of the fifth, he decided to toy with the first two batters. Their inexperience helped. He struck out both throwing only balls: outside, inside, high. Then: in, high, low. I was here to scout, not coach, so I just shook my head. Hemingway swaggered to the plate swinging three bats, tossed one aside, swung two for a while, then knocked the handle of the short one against the plate before flinging it behind him.

  This prompted the ump to scurry around the catcher and whisk off the already spotless, house-shaped symbol of home.

  The old man pointed a gnarled finger toward home plate and spoke a mystery. “I am like a father to him, and he is like a father to me. He is writing a new book, about me and the sea I have fought and loved so long. It will be un libro muy grande—how to say: an book very great.”

  Caught up watching Hemingway at the plate, I spoke quickly, without thinking about the old man’s feelings. “That’ll be the day. Hemingway hasn’t produced a thing in ten years. He’s like a bush-league pitcher—all swagger, no delivery.”

  The old man gave me a hard stare. His eyes wouldn’t let go, and fi
nally I turned away.

  “Sometimes,” he said, lecturing me, “it is hard for a man to give birth out of himself to the best inside him. It takes time.”

  Just as Hemingway missed the first pitch, the small boy playing in front of us fell through the bleachers, scattering chickens and sending up a cloud of dust when he hit the dry ground. There was no real danger, but you couldn’t tell that to the boy, who was screaming like he had been beaten with the flat part of a machete blade. His mamá, wearing a pink dress with embroidered blue flowers, stooped down in one of the thousand emotionless chores of motherhood, but when her arm would not reach her child, she panicked. She spoke so quickly I missed most of her words. Then an older boy, perhaps the fallen one’s brother, ran under the stands and lifted the child into his mother’s hands.