The Natural

by Bernard Malamud

  When Pop came out in his street clothes, a yellowed Panama and a loud sport jacket, he was startled to see Roy sitting there in the gloom and asked what he was waiting for.

  “No place to go,” Roy said.

  “Whyn’t you get a room?”

  “Ain’t got what it takes.”

  Pop looked at him. “Scotty paid you your bonus cash, didn’t he?”

  “Two hundred, but I had debts.”

  “You shoulda drawn an advance on your first two weeks’ pay from the office when you came in today. It’s too late now, they quit at five, so I will write you out my personal check for twenty-five dollars and you can pay me back when you get the money.”

  Pop balanced his checkbook on his knee. “You married?”

  “No.”

  “Whyn’t you ask around among the married players to see who has got a spare room? That way you’d have a more regular life. Either that, or in a respectable boarding house. Some of the boys who have their homes out of town prefer to stay at a moderate-priced hotel, which I myself have done since my wife passed away, but a boarding house is more homelike and cheaper. Anyway,” Pop advised, “tonight you better come along with me to the hotel and tomorrow you can find a place to suit your needs.”

  Roy remarked he wasn’t particularly crazy about hotels.

  They left the ball park, got into a cab and drove downtown. The sky over the Hudson was orange. Once Pop broke out of his reverie to point out Grant’s Tomb.

  At the Midtown Hotel, Pop spoke to the desk clerk and he assigned Roy a room on the ninth floor, facing toward the Empire State Building. Pop went up with him and pumped the mattress.

  “Not bad,” he said.

  After the bellhop had left he said he hoped Roy wasn’t the shenanigan type.

  “What kind?” Roy asked.

  “There are all sorts of nuts in this game and I remember one of my players—seems to me it was close to twenty years ago—who used to walk out on the fifteenth floor ledge and scare fits out of people in the other rooms. One day when he was walking out there he fell and broke his leg and only the darndest luck kept him from rolling right overboard. It was beginning to rain and he pulled himself around from window to window, begging for help, and everybody went into stitches at his acting but kept their windows closed. He finally rolled off and hit bottom.”

  Roy had unpacked his valise and was washing up.

  “Lemme tell you one practical piece of advice, son,” Pop went on. “You’re starting way late—I was finished after fifteen years as an active player one year after the age you’re coming in, but if you want to get along the best way, behave and give the game all you have got, and when you can’t do that, quit. We don’t need any more goldbrickers or fourflushers or practical jokers around. One Bump Baily is too much for any team.”

  He left the room, looking wretched.

  The phone jangled and after a minute Roy got around to lifting it.

  “What’s the matter?” Red Blow barked. “Don’t you answer your telephone?”

  “I like it to ring a little, gives ’em a chance to change their mind.”

  “Who?”

  “Anybody.”

  Red paused. “Pop asked me to show you around. When are you eating?”

  “I am hungry now.”

  “Meet me in the lobby, half past six.”

  As Roy hung up there was a loud dum-diddy-um-dum on the door and Bump Baily in a red-flowered Hollywood shirt breezed in.

  “Hiya, buster. Saw you pull in with the old geezer and tracked you down. I would like for you to do me a favor.”

  “Roy is the name.”

  “Roy is fine. Listen, I got my room on the fourth floor, which is a damn sight classier than this mouse trap. I would like you to borrow it and I will borrow this for tonight.”

  “What’s the pitch?”

  “I am having a lady friend visit me and there are too many nosy people on my floor.”

  Roy considered and said okay. He unconsciously wet his lips.

  Bump slapped him between the shoulders. “Stick around, buster, you will get yours.”

  Roy knew he would never like the guy.

  Bump told him his room number and they exchanged keys, then Roy put a few things into his valise and went downstairs.

  Coming along the fourth floor hall he saw a door half open and figured this was it. As he pulled the knob he froze, for there with her back to him stood a slim, redheaded girl in black panties and brassiere. She was combing her hair before a mirror on the wall as the light streamed in around her through the billowy curtains. When she saw him in the mirror she let out a scream. He stepped back as if he had been kicked in the face. Then the door slammed and he had a splitting headache.

  Bump’s room was next door so Roy went in and lay down on the bed, amid four purple walls traced through with leaves flying among white baskets of fruit, some loaded high and some spilled over. He lay there till the pain in his brain eased.

  At 6:30 he went down and met Red, in a droopy linen suit, and they had steaks in a nearby chophouse. Roy had two and plenty of mashed potatoes. Afterwards they walked up Fifth Avenue. He felt better after the meal.

  “Want to see the Village?” Red said.

  “What’s in it?”

  Red picked his teeth. “Beats me. Whatever they got I can’t find it. How about a picture?”

  Roy was agreeable so they dropped into a movie. It was a picture about a city guy who came to the country, where he had a satisfying love affair with a girl he met. Roy enjoyed it. As they walked back to the hotel the night was soft and summery. He thought about the black-brassiered girl in the next room.

  Red talked about the Knights. “They are not a bad bunch of players, but they aren’t playing together and it’s mostly Bump’s fault. He is for Bump and not for the team. Fowler, Schultz, Hinkle, and Hill are all good pitchers and could maybe be fifteen or twenty game winners if they got some support in the clutches, which they don’t, and whatever Bump gives them in hitting he takes away with his lousy fielding.”

  “How’s that?”

  “He’s just so damn lazy. Pop has thrown many a fine and suspension at him, but after that he will go into a slump on purpose and we don’t win a one. If I was Pop I’da had his ass long ago, but Pop thinks a hitter like him could be a bell cow and lead the rest ahead, so he keeps hoping he will reform. If we could get the team rolling we’d be out of the cellar in no time.”

  They were approaching the hotel and Roy counted with his eyes up to the fourth floor and watched the curtains in the windows.

  “I read Scotty’s report on you,” Red said. “He says you are a terrific hitter. How come you didn’t start playing when you were younger?”

  “I did but I flopped.” Roy was evasive.

  Red cringed. “Don’t say that word around here.”

  “What word?”

  “Flopped—at least not anywhere near Pop. He starts to cry when he hears it.”

  “What for?”

  “Didn’t you ever hear about Fisher’s Flop?”

  “Seems to me I did but I am not sure.”

  Red told him the story. “About forty years ago Pop was the third sacker for the old Sox when they got into their first World Series after twenty years. They sure wanted to take the flag that year but so did the Athletics, who they were playing, and it was a rough contest all the way into the seventh game. That one was played at Philly and from the first inning the score stood at 3-3, until the Athletics drove the tie-breaker across in the last of the eighth. In the ninth the Sox’s power was due up but they started out bad. The leadoffer hit a blooper to short, the second struck out, and the third was Pop. It was up to him. He let one go for a strike, then he slammed a low, inside pitch for a tremendous knock.

  “The ball sailed out to deep center,” Red said, “where the center fielder came in too fast and it rolled through him to the fence and looked good for an inside-the-park homer, or at least a triple. Meanwhile, Pop, who i
s of course a young guy at this time, was ripping around the bags, and the crowd was howling for him to score and tie up the game, when in some crazy way as he was heading for home, his legs got tangled under him and he fell flat on his stomach, the living bejesus knocked out of him. By the time he was up again the ball was in the catcher’s glove and he ran up the baseline after Pop. In the rundown that followed, the third baseman tagged him on the behind and the game was over.”

  Red spat into the street. Roy tried to say something but couldn’t.

  “That night Fisher’s Flop, or as they mostly call it, ‘Fisher’s Famous Flop,’ was in every newspaper in the country and was talked about by everybody. Naturally Pop felt like hell. I understand that Ma Fisher had the phone out and hid him up in the attic. He stayed there two weeks, till the roof caught fire and he had to come out or burn. After that they went to Florida for a vacation but it didn’t help much. His picture was known to all and wherever he went they yelled after him, ‘Flippity-flop, flippity-flop.’ It was at this time that Pop lost his hair. After a while people no longer recognized him, except on the ball field, yet though the kidding died down, Pop was a marked man.”

  Roy mopped his face. “Hot,” he said.

  “But he had his guts in him,” Red said, “and stayed in the game for ten years more and made a fine record. Then he retired from baseball for a couple of years, which was a good thing but he didn’t know it. Soon one of Ma’s rich relatives died and left them a pile of dough that Pop used to buy himself a half share of the Knights. He was made field manager and the flop was forgotten by now except for a few wise-egg sportswriters that, when they are too drunk to do an honest day’s work, would raise up the old story and call it Fisher’s Fizzle, or Farce, or Fandango—you wouldn’t guess there are so many funny words beginning with an f—which some of them do to this day when the Knights look foolish. The result is that Pop has the feeling he has been jinxed since the time of his flop, and he has spent twenty-five years and practically all of his pile trying to break the jinx, which he thinks he can do by making the Knights into the world champs that the old Sox never did become. Eight times he has finished in second place, five in third, and the rest in fourth or fifth, but last season when the Judge bought into the club and then took advantage of Pop’s financial necessity to get hold of ten per cent of his shares and make himself the majority stockholder, was our worst season. We ended up in the sewer and this year it looks like a repeat.”

  “How come?”

  “The Judge is trying to push Pop out of his job although he has a contract to manage for life—that’s what the Judge had to promise to get that ten per cent of stock. Anyway, he’s been trying everything he can think of to make things tough for Pop. He has by his sly ways forced all sorts of trades on us which make money all right but hurt the team. It burns me up,” Red said, “because I would give my right arm if I could get Pop the pennant. I am sure that if he took one and the Series after that, he would feel satisfied, quit baseball, and live in peace. He is one helluva white guy and deserves better than he got. That’s why I am asking you to give him the best you have in you.”

  “Let him play me,” Roy said, “and he will get the best.”

  In the lobby Red said he had enjoyed Roy’s company and they should eat together more. Before he left he warned Roy to be careful with his earnings. They weren’t much, he knew, but if in the future Roy had a chance to invest in something good, he advised him to do so. “There is a short life in baseball and we have to think of the future. Anything can happen to you in this game. Today you are on top and tomorrow you will be on your way out to Dubuque. Try to protect your old age. It don’t pay to waste what you earn.”

  To his surprise, Roy answered, “To hell with my old age. I will be in this game a long time.”

  Red rubbed his chin. “How are you so sure?”

  “It wasn’t for nothing it took me fifteen years to get here. I came for more than the ride and I will leave my mark around here.”

  Red waited to hear more but Roy shut up.

  Red shrugged, “Well, each to their choice.”

  Roy said good night and went upstairs. Entering Bump’s room, he picked up a gilt hairpin from the carpet and put it into his wallet because some claimed it brought luck. For a while he stood at the window and watched the lit Empire State Building. It was a great big city, all right. He undressed, thinking of Pop’s flop that changed his whole life, and got into bed.

  In the dark the bed was in motion, going round in wide, sweeping circles. He didn’t like the feeling so he lay deathly still and let everything go by—the trees, mountains, states. Then he felt he was headed into a place where he did not want to go and tried urgently to think of ways to stop the bed. But he couldn’t and it went on, a roaring locomotive now, screaming into the night, so that he was tensed and sweating and groaned aloud why did it have to be me? what did I do to deserve it? seeing himself again walking down the long, lonely corridor, carrying the bassoon case, the knock, the crazy Harriet (less and more than human) with the shiny pistol, and him, cut down in the very flower of his youth, lying in a red pool of his own blood.

  No, he cried, oh no, and lashed at his pillow, as he had a thousand times before.

  Finally, as the sight of him through the long long years of suffering faded away, he quieted down. The noise of the train eased off as it came to a stop, and Roy found himself set down in a field somewhere in the country, where he had a long and satisfying love affair with this girl he had seen in the picture tonight.

  He thought of her till he had fallen all but deep asleep, when a door seemed to open in the mind and this naked redheaded lovely slid out of a momentary flash of light, and the room was dark again. He thought he was still dreaming of the picture but the funny part of it was when she got into bed with him he almost cried out in pain as her icy hands and feet, in immediate embrace, slashed his hot body, but there among the apples, grapes, and melons, he found what he wanted and had it.

  At the clubhouse the next morning the unshaven Knights were glum and redeyed. They moved around listlessly and cursed each step. Angry fist fights broke out among them. They were sore at themselves and the world, yet when Roy came in and headed for his locker they looked up and watched with interest. He opened the door and found his new uniform knotted up dripping wet on a hook. His sanitary socks and woolen stockings were slashed to shreds and all the other things were smeared black with shoe polish. He located his jock, with two red apples in it, swinging from a cord attached to the light globe, and both his shoes were nailed to the ceiling. The boys let out a bellow of laughter. Bump just about doubled up howling, but Roy yanked the wet pants off the hook and caught him with it smack in the face. The players let out another yowl.

  Bump comically dried himself with a bath towel, digging deep into his ears, wiping under the arms, and shimmying as he rubbed it across his fat behind.

  “Fast guesswork, buster, and to show you there’s no hard feelings, how’s about a Camel?”

  Roy wanted nothing from the bastard but took the cigarette because everyone was looking on. When he lit it, someone in the rear yelled, “Fire!” and ducked as it burst in Roy’s face. Bump had disappeared. The players fell into each other’s arms. Tears streamed down their cheeks. Some of them could not unbend and limped around from laughing so.

  Roy flipped the ragged butt away and began to mop up his wet locker.

  Allie Stubbs, the second baseman, danced around the room in imitation of a naked nature dancer. He pretended to discover a trombone at the foot of a tree and marched around blowing oompah, oompah, oompah.

  Roy then realized the bassoon case was missing. It startled him that he hadn’t thought of it before.

  “Who’s got it, boys?”—but no one answered. Allie now made out like he was flinging handfuls of rose petals into the trainer’s office.

  Going in there, Roy saw that Bump had broken open the bassoon case and was about to attack Wonderboy with a hacksaw.

>   “Lay off of that, you goon.”

  Bump turned and stepped back with the bat raised. Roy grabbed it and with a quick twist tore it out of his sweaty hands, turning him around as he did and booting him hard with his knee. Bump grunted and swung but Roy ducked. The team crowded into the trainer’s office, roaring with delight.

  But Doc Casey pushed his way through them and stepped between Roy and Bump. “That’ll do, boys. We want no trouble here. Go on outside or Pop will have your hides.”

  Bump was sweaty and sore. “You’re a lousy sport, alfalfa.”

  “I don’t like the scummy tricks you play on people you have asked for a favor,” Roy said.

  “I hear you had a swell time, wonderboy.”

  Again they grappled for each other, but Doc, shouting for help, kept them apart until the players pinned Roy’s arms and held on to Bump.

  “Lemme at him,” Bump roared, “and I will skin the skunk.”

  Held back by the team, they glared at one another over the trainer’s head.

  “What’s going on in there?” Pop’s shrill blast came from inside the locker room. Earl Wilson poked his grayhaired, sunburned head in and quickly called, “All out, men, on the double.” The players scurried past Pop and through the tunnel. They felt better.

  Dizzy hustled up a makeshift rig for Roy. He dressed and polished his bat, a little sorry he had lost his temper, because he had wanted to speak quietly to the guy and find out whether he was expecting the redhead in his room last night.

  Thinking about her made him uneasy. He reported to Pop in the dugout.

  “What was that trouble in there between Bump and you?” Pop asked.

  Roy didn’t say and Pop got annoyed. “I won’t stand for any ructions between players so cut it out or you will find yourself chopping wood back in the sticks. Now report to Red.”

  Roy went over to where Red was catching Chet Schultz, today’s pitcher, and Red said to wait his turn at the batting cage.

  The field was overrun with droopy players. Half a dozen were bunched near the gate of the cage, waiting to be pitched to by Al Fowler, whom Pop had ordered to throw batting practice for not bearing down in the clutches yesterday. Some of the men were at the sidelines, throwing catch. A few were shagging flies in the field, a group was playing pepper. On the line between home and first Earl Wilson was hacking out grounders to Allie Stubbs, Cal Baker at short, Hank Benz, the third baseman, and Emil Lajong, who played first. At the edge of the outfield, Hinkle and Hill, two of the regular starters, and McGee, the reliefer, were doing a weak walk-run-walk routine. No one seemed to be thoroughly awake, but when Roy went into the batting cage they came to life and observed him.