The Great American Novel

by Philip Roth

  This time the pitcher had to cross his arms over his chest and look to the heavens for solace. “God give me strength,” he sighed.

  “In other words,” the catcher screamed, “I’m wrong again. But then in your eyes I’m always wrong. Well, isn’t that true? Admit it! Whatever signal I give is bound to be wrong. Why? Because I’m giving it! I’m daring to give you a signal! I’m daring to tell you how to pitch! I could kneel here signaling for the rest of my days, and you’d just stand there shaking them off and asking God to give you strength, because I’m so wrong and so stupid and so hopeless and would rather lose than win!”

  When the relief pitcher, a rather self-possessed fellow from the look of it, though perhaps a touch perverse in his own way, refused to argue, the Lunatic catcher once again assumed his squat behind the plate, and proceeded to offer a seventh signal, an eighth, a ninth, a tenth, each and every one of which the pitcher rejected with a mild, if unmistakably disdainful, remark.

  On the sixteenth signal, the pitcher just had to laugh. “Well, that one really takes the cake, doesn’t it? That really took brains. Come over here a minute,” he said to his infielders. “All right,” he called back down to the catcher, “go ahead, show them your new brainstorm.” To the four players up on the mound with him, the pitcher whispered, “Catch this,” and pointed to the signal that the catcher, in his mortification, was continuing to flash from between his legs.

  “Hey,” said the Lunatic third-baseman, “that ain’t even a finger, is it?”

  “No,” said the pitcher, “as a matter of fact, it isn’t.”

  “I mean, it ain’t got no nail on it, does it?”

  “Indeed it has not.”

  “Why, I’ll be darned,” said the shortstop, “it’s, it’s his thingamajig.”

  “Precisely,” said the pitcher.

  “But what the hell is that supposed to mean?” asked the first-baseman.

  The pitcher had to smile again. “What do you think? Hey, Doc,” he called to the Lunatic bench, “I’m afraid my battery-mate has misunderstood what’s meant by an exhibition game. He’s flashing me the signal to meet him later in the shower, if you know what I mean.”

  The catcher was in tears now. “He made me do it,” he said, covering himself with his big glove, and in his shame, dropping all the way to his knees, “everything else I showed him wasn’t good enough for him—no, he teases me, he taunts me—”

  By now the two “coaches” (as they were euphemistically called), who had removed the starting pitcher from the game, descended upon the catcher. With the aid of a fielder’s glove, one of them gingerly lifted the catcher’s member and placed it back inside his uniform before the opposing players could see what the signal had been, while the other relieved him of his catching equipment. “He provoked me,” the catcher said, “he always provokes me—”

  The Lunatic fans were on their feet again, applauding, when their catcher was led away from the plate and up to the big brick building, along the path taken earlier by the starting pitcher. “—He won’t let me alone, ever. I don’t want to do it. I never wanted to do it. I wouldn’t do it. But then he starts up teasing me and taunting me—”

  The Mundys were able to come up with a final run in the top of the third, once they discovered that the second-string Lunatic catcher, for all that he sounded like the real thing—“Chuck to me, babe, no hitter in here, babe—” was a little leery of fielding a bunt dropped out in front of home plate, fearful apparently of what he would find beneath the ball upon picking it up.

  When Deacon started out to the mound to pitch the last of the three innings, there wasn’t a Mundy who took the field with him, sleepy old Kid Heket included, who didn’t realize that the Deke had a shutout working. If he could set the Lunatics down without a run, he could become the first Mundy pitcher to hurl a scoreless game all year, in or out of league competition. Hoping neither to jinx him or unnerve him, the players went through the infield warm-up deliberately keeping the chatter to a minimum, as though in fact it was just another day they were going down to defeat. Nonetheless, the Deke was already streaming perspiration when the first Lunatic stepped into the box. He rubbed the rabbit’s foot, said his prayer, took a swallow of air big enough to fill a gallon jug, and on four straight pitches, walked the center-fielder, who earlier in the game hadn’t bothered to return the ball to the infield after catching a fly ball, and now, at the plate, hadn’t moved the bat off his shoulder. When he was lifted for a pinch-runner (lifted by the “coaches”) the appreciative fans gave him a nice round of applause. “That’s lookin’ ’em over!” they shouted, as he was carried from the field still in the batting posture, “that’s waitin’ ’em out! Good eye in there, fella!”

  As soon as the pinch-runner took over at first, it became apparent that Dr. Traum had decided to do what he could to save face by spoiling the Deacon’s shutout. Five runs down in the last inning and still playing to win, you don’t start stealing bases—but that was precisely what this pinch-runner had in mind. And with what daring! First, with an astonishing burst of speed he rushed fifteen feet down the basepath—but then, practically on all fours, he was scrambling back. “No! No!” he cried, as he dove for the bag with his outstretched hand, “I won’t! Never mind! Forget it!” But no sooner had he gotten back up on his feet and dusted himself off, than he was running again. “Why not!” he cried, “what the hell!” But having broken fifteen, twenty, feet down the basepath, he would come to an abrupt stop, smite himself on his forehead, and charge wildly back to first, crying, “Am I crazy? Am I out of my mind?”

  In this way did he travel back and forth along the base-path some half-dozen times, before Deacon finally threw the first pitch to the plate. Given all there was to distract him, the pitch was of course a ball, low and in the dirt, but Hothead, having a great day, blocked it beautifully with his wooden leg.

  Cholly, managing the club that morning while Mister Fairsmith rested back in Asylum—of the aged Mundy manager’s spiritual crisis, more anon—Cholly motioned for Chico to get up and throw a warm-up pitch in the bullpen (one was enough—one was too many, in fact, as far as Chico was concerned) and meanwhile took a stroll out to the hill.

  “Startin’ to get to you, are they?” asked Cholly.

  “It’s that goofball on first that’s doin’ it.”

  Cholly looked over to where the runner, with time out, was standing up on first engaged in a heated controversy with himself.

  “Hell,” said Cholly, in his soft and reassuring way, “these boys have been tryin’ to rattle us with that there bush league crap all mornin’, Deke. I told you fellers comin’ out in the bus, you just got to pay no attention to their monkeyshines, because that is their strategy from A to Z. To make you lose your concentration. Otherwise we would be rollin’ over them worse than we is. But Deke, you tell me now, if you have had it, if you want for me to bring the Mexican in—”

  “With six runs in my hip pocket? And a shutout goin’?”

  “Well, I wasn’t myself goin’ to mention that last that you said.”

  “Cholly, you and me been in this here game since back in the days they was rubbin’ us down with Vaseline and Tabasco sauce. Ain’t that right?”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Well,” said the Deke, shooting a stream of tobacco juice over his shoulder, “ain’t a bunch of screwballs gonna get my goat. Tell Chico to sit down.”

  Sure enough, the Deacon, old war-horse that he was, got the next two hitters out on long drives to left. “Oh my God!” cried the base runner, each time the Ghost went climbing up the padded wall to snare the ball. “Imagine if I’d broken for second! Imagine what would have happened then! Oh, that’ll teach me to take those crazy leads! But then if you don’t get a jump on the pitcher, where are you as a pinch-runner? That’s the whole idea of a pinch-runner—to break with the pitch, to break before the pitch, to score that shutout-breaking run! That’s what I’m in here for, that’s my entire purpose. The whole thi
ng is on my shoulders—so then what am I doing not taking a good long lead? But just then, if I’d broken for second, I’d have been doubled off first! For the last out! But then suppose he hadn’t made the catch? Suppose he’d dropped it. Then where would I be? Forced out at second! Out—and all because I was too cowardly. But then what’s the sense of taking an unnecessary risk? What virtue is there in being foolhardy? None! But then what about playing it too safe?”

  On the bench, Jolly Cholly winced when he saw that the batter stepping into the box was the opposing team’s shortstop. “Uh-oh,” he said, “that’s the feller what’s cost ’em most of the runs to begin with. I’m afraid he is goin’ to be lookin’ to right his wrongs—and at the expense of Deacon’s shutout. Dang!”

  From bearing down so hard, the Deacon’s uniform showed vast dark continents of perspiration both front and back. There was no doubt that his strength was all but gone, for he was relying now solely on his “junk,” that floating stuff that in times gone by used to cause the hitters nearly to break their backs swinging at the air. Twice now those flutter balls of his had damn near been driven out of the institution and Jolly Cholly had all he could do not to cover his eyes with his hand when he saw the Deke release yet another fat pitch in the direction of home plate.

  Apparently it was just to the Lunatic shortstop’s liking too. He swung from the heels, and with a whoop of joy, was away from the plate and streaking down the basepath. “Run!” he shouted to the fellow on first.

  But the pinch-runner was standing up on the bag, scanning the horizon for the ball.

  “Two outs!” cried the Lunatic shortstop. “Run, you idiot!”

  “But—where is it?” asked the pinch-runner.

  The Mundy infielders were looking skywards themselves, wondering where in hell that ball had been hit to.

  “Where is it!” screamed the pinch-runner, as the shortstop came charging right up to his face. “I’m not running till I know where the ball is!”

  “I’m coming into first, you,” warned the shortstop.

  “But you can’t overtake another runner! That’s against the law! That’s out!”

  “Then move!” screamed the shortstop into the fellow’s ear.

  “Oh, this is crazy. This is exactly what I didn’t want to do!” But what choice did he have? If he stood his ground, and the shortstop kept coming, that would be the ballgame. It would be all over because he who had been put into the game to run, had simply refused to. Oh, what torment that fellow knew as he rounded the bases with the shortstop right on his tail. “I’m running full speed—and I don’t even know where the ball is! I’m running like a chicken with his head cut off! I’m running like a madman, which is just what I don’t want to do! Or be! I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know what I’m doing, I haven’t the foggiest idea of what’s happening—and I’m running!”

  When, finally, he crossed the plate, he was in such a state, that he fell to his hands and knees, and sobbing with relief, began to kiss the ground. “I’m home! Thank God! I’m safe! I made it! I scored! Oh thank God, thank God!”

  And now the shortstop was rounding third—he took a quick glance back over his shoulder to see if he could go all the way, and just kept on coming. “Now where’s he lookin’?” asked Cholly. “What in hell does he see that I can’t? Or that Mike don’t either?” For out in left, Mike Rama was walking round and round, searching in the grass as though for a dime that might have dropped out of his pocket.

  The shortstop was only a few feet from scoring the second run of the inning when Dr. Traum, who all this while had been walking from the Lunatic bench, interposed himself along the foul line between the runner and home plate.

  “Doc,” screamed the runner, “you’re in the way!”

  “That’s enough now,” said Dr. Traum, and he motioned for him to stop in his tracks.

  “But I’m only inches from pay dirt! Step aside, Doc—let me score!”

  “You just stay vere you are, please.”

  “Why?”

  “You know vy. Stay right vere you are now. And giff me the ball.”

  “What ball?” asked the shortstop.

  “You know vat ball.”

  “Well, I surely don’t have any ball. I’m the hitter. I’m about to score.”

  “You are not about to score. You are about to giff me the ball. Come now. Enough foolishness. Giff over the ball.”

  “But, Doc, I haven’t got it. I’m on the offense. It’s the defense that has the ball—that’s the whole idea of the game. No criticism intended, but if you weren’t a foreigner, you’d probably understand that better.”

  “Haf it your vay,” said Dr. Traum, and he waved to the bullpen for his two coaches.

  “But, Doc,” said the shortstop, backpedaling now up the third-base line, “they’re the ones in the field. They’re the ones with the gloves—why don’t you ask them for the ball? Why me? I’m an innocent base runner, who happens to be rounding third on his way home.” But here he saw the coaches coming after him and he turned and broke across the diamond for the big brick building on the hill.

  It was only a matter of minutes before one of the coaches returned with the ball and carried it out to where the Mundy infield was now gathered on the mound.

  The Deacon turned it over in his hand and said, “Yep, that’s it, all right. Ain’t it, Hot?”

  The Mundy catcher nodded. “How in hell did he get it!”

  “A hopeless kleptomaniac, that’s how,” answered the coach. “He’d steal the bases if they weren’t tied down. Here,” he said, handing the Deacon a white hand towel bearing the Mundy laundrymark, and the pencil that Jolly Cholly wore behind his ear when he was acting as their manager. “Found this on him too. Looks like he got it when he stumbled into your bench for that pop-up in the first.”

  * * *

  The victory celebration began the moment they boarded the asylum bus and lasted nearly all the way back to the city, with Nickname hollering out his window to every passerby, “We beat ’em! We shut ’em out!” and Big John swigging bourbon from his liniment bottle, and then passing it to his happy teammates.

  “I’ll tell you what did it,” cried Nickname, by far the most exuberant of the victors, “it was Deacon throwin’ at that first guy’s head! Yessir! Now that’s my kind of baseball!” said the fourteen-year-old, smacking his thigh. “First man up, give it to ’em right in the noggin’.”

  “Right!” said Hothead. “Show ’em you ain’t takin’ no more of their shit no more! Never again!”

  “Well,” said Deacon, “that is a matter of psychology, Hot, that was somethin’ I had to think over real good beforehand. I mean, you try that on the wrong feller and next thing they is all of them layin’ it down and then spikin’ the dickens out of you when you cover the bag.”

  “That’s so,” said Jolly Cholly. “When me and the Deke come up, that was practically a rule in the rule book—feller throws the beanball, the word goes out, ‘Drag the ball and spike the pitcher.’ Tell you the truth, I was worried we was goin’ to see some of that sort of stuff today. They was a desperate bunch. Could tell that right off by their tactics.”

  “Well,” said the Deke, “that was a chance I had to take. But I’ll tell you, I couldn’t a done it without you fellers behind me. How about Bud out there, throwin’ them two runners out at first base? The right-fielder to the first-baseman, two times in a row. Buddy,” said the Deacon, “that was an exhibition such as I have not seen in all my years in organized ball.”

  Big Bud flushed, as was his way, and tried to make it sound easy. “Well, a’ course, once I seen those guys wasn’t runnin’, I figured I didn’t have no choice. I had to play it to first.”

  Here Mike Rama said, “Only that wasn’t what they was figurin’, Buddy-boy. You got a one-arm outfielder out there, you figure, what the hell, guess I can get on down the base line any old time I feel like it. Guess I can stop off and get me a beer and a sangwich on the way! But old Bud here,
guess he showed ’em!”

  “You know,” said Cholly, philosophically, “I never seen it to fail, the hitters get cocky like them fellers were, and the next thing you know, they’re makin’ one dumb mistake after another.”

  “Yep,” said Kid Heket, who was still turning the events of the morning over in his head, “no doubt about it, them fellers just was not usin’ their heads.”

  “Well, maybe they wasn’t—but we was! What about Hot?” said Nickname. “What about a guy with a wooden leg taggin’ up from second and scorin’ on a fly to center! How’s that for heads-up ball?”

  “Well,” said Wayne, “I am still puzzlin’ that one out myself. What got into that boy in center, that he just sort of stood there after the catch, alookin’ the way he did? What in hell did he want to wait fifteen minutes for anyway, before throwin’ it? That’s a awful long time, don’t you think?”

  They all looked to Cholly to answer this one. “Well, Wayne,” he said, “I believe it is that dang cockiness again. Base runner on second’s got a wooden leg, kee-rect? So what does Hot here do—he goes. And that swellhead out in center, well, he is so darned stunned by it all, that finally by the time he figures out what hit him, we has got ourselves a gift of a run. Now, if I was managin’ that club, I’d bench that there prima donna and slap a fine on him to boot.”

  “But then how do you figure that shortstop, Cholly?” asked the Kid. “Now if that ain’t the strangest ballplayin’ you ever seen, what is? Stickin’ the ball in his back pocket like that. And then when he is at bat, with a man on and his team down by six, and it is their last licks ’n all, catchin’ a junk pitch like that inside his shirt. Now I cannot figure that out nohow.”

  “Dang cockiness again!” cried Nickname, looking to Cholly. “He figures, hell, it’s only them Mundys out there, I can do any dang thing I please—well, I guess we taught him a thing or two! Right, Cholly?”

  “Well, nope, I don’t think so, Nickname. I think what we have got there in that shortstop is one of the most tragic cases I have seen in my whole life long of all-field-no-hit.”