Murcer squatted down in front of Quentin. He put out his right hand, and Quentin shook it. “I hear you’re a fan of mine.”
Quentin nodded. He still couldn’t talk.
“Well, I’m a fan of yours, young man.”
That made Quentin snort. “Why?”
“ ’Cause I hear you’re a real fighter.”
“You mean because I have cancer?”
“That’s the rumor,” Murcer said. “But you look like a tough son of a gun to me.”
“I have to wear a wig,” Quentin said.
“You want to know a secret? So does Joe Pepitone.”
That made the rest of us laugh.
“He got traded,” I blurted out.
“Well, now, that’s true,” Murcer said. “But Pepi hit twenty-seven homers for us last year, and he hit every single one of them in a wig. So what does that tell you about fellas who wear wigs?”
“They get traded?” Lonnie said, which cracked us up again.
Murcer got a big smile on his face. He stood up, walked over to Lonnie, and shook his hand too. “So you’re the wisenheimer of the group. That would make you Lonnie, right? My pal Jerry warned me about you. He said you might give me a hard time. As for the rest of you … I’m guessing you’re Eric the Red, right?”
Eric nodded, and Murcer stepped forward and shook his hand.
“Now, let’s see. That would make you Shlomo … and you Howie.”
He shook both of their hands too.
“How’d you know?” Howie said.
“Oh, I got a whole scouting report on you fellas.”
“You left out Julian,” Quentin said.
“I’m just getting around to him, Quent.” Murcer stepped toward me and looked me up and down. “Speedy Gonzales, am I right? From what I hear, you’re as fast as greased lightning.”
He put out his hand, and I shook it.
“Why don’t you race him?” Lonnie said.
That made Murcer smile. “What do you say, friend? I’ve got a pair of tennis shoes in the trunk.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I hurt my leg last week.”
“Hammy?”
“How’d you know?” I asked.
“It’s always a hammy with you speed merchants,” he said. “I’m thinking I lucked out, ’cause you might’ve made me look bad.”
“Maybe you can come back next week,” Lonnie said. “I’m sure he’ll be healed up by then.”
“C’mon, Lonnie!”
Murcer just laughed. “No thank you! I’m going to be real satisfied with a draw.”
Right then, Jerry Manche popped open the trunk of the limousine and pulled out a baseball glove and a ball. “I don’t think Bobby came all this way just to talk,” he called. “I think he wants to loosen up.”
Murcer stepped back and took the glove and ball from Jerry Manche. “How about it? You fellas want to toss it around for a while?”
“Sure!” Shlomo said.
“What about you, Quent? Think you can ditch that chair for a couple of throws?”
Quentin glanced up over his left shoulder. It took me a second to realize what was going on: he knew his mom and dad were watching from their window on the fifth floor. He didn’t want to worry them.
“Can Quentin stand up?” Lonnie called up to them.
“Just no running around,” Mrs. Selig called back.
Quentin’s face lit up when he heard that. Lonnie stepped behind him and steadied the wheelchair, and Quentin stood up. He wobbled but then got his balance. Then he reached back for his glove, which was hanging off the handle behind the chair.
“You ready?” Murcer said.
Quentin nodded.
Murcer tossed the ball underhand, from ten feet away, and Quentin caught it.
“C’mon,” Quentin said. “I’m not a baby.”
He fired the baseball back at Murcer, a perfect chest-high strike.
Murcer started to laugh. “Hey, friend, I’m just getting warmed up.”
He threw the ball back to Quentin, overhand this time, and Quentin caught it and fired it back even harder than before. This one was high and outside, and Murcer caught it in the heel of his glove with a loud pop. He took off the glove and shook his hand, as if Quentin had just broken his palm.
“Lord have mercy!” he cried. “I think we’d better work in some of these other fellas, or you’re going to put me on the DL.”
Shlomo asked, “What’s the—”
“It’s the disabled list,” Lonnie said.
“Oh.”
The catch lasted about half an hour. It was the six of us, plus Bobby Murcer, and even Jerry Manche pulled out his glove from the trunk and got in on the act. After ten minutes, Beverly came down the block. She shot me a look as if to say, Why didn’t you tell me what was going on? I should’ve told her. I didn’t think of it—maybe because I didn’t want to think of it, because I felt bad about the situation. But I lent her my glove, and she joined in, and you know what? It wasn’t so bad. Quentin had a good time, even if he ran out of gas toward the end and had to sit back down in the wheelchair.
Afterward, Murcer autographed our gloves with a black Magic Marker. He signed Quentin’s glove first, right below the fake Willie Mays signature branded into the pocket, and never batted an eye. He signed my glove last, right below the fake Bobby Murcer signature, and then looked at me in a weird way. He said in a low voice, “So how come, if Quentin’s such a big fan of mine, you’re the only one with my name in your mitt?”
“My dad bought it for my birthday,” I said. “I guess I kind of asked for it.”
“Is there something on your mind, friend?”
“No.” I stared straight down at the sidewalk.
He handed me back the glove, but as I reached for it, he took my right hand and squeezed it tight in his. “You hang tough. You hear?”
Jerry Manche pointed to his watch, which meant the two of them had to get going. Then he got in the car and started the engine. Murcer walked back over to Quentin and squatted down in front of the wheelchair again. “I know it’s hard, young fella, what you’re going through. But you got the best folks in the world in your corner. The best doctors and nurses, the best family and friends. You also got the New York Yankees.” As he said that, he reached into his suit pocket and pulled out an autographed baseball. “The guys in the clubhouse wanted me to make sure you got this. Every guy on the team signed it, even the coaches and Mr. Houk. What do you think about that?”
Quentin’s eyes were bugging out of his head. You could tell that he had a lot he wanted to say, but all that came out was “Thank you.”
“Hey, aren’t you forgetting something?” Lonnie said.
Murcer looked up at him and grinned. “All right, friend, let me have it. What am I forgetting?”
“You’re supposed to promise to hit a home run for Quentin in tomorrow’s game.”
“Now hold on a minute—”
“Didn’t you ever see the movie The Pride of the Yankees?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Don’t you remember the part where Lou Gehrig promises to hit a home run for the sick kid?”
“Well, I promise I’ll try—”
“But that’s not how it works,” Lonnie said. “You’re supposed to promise to hit a home run for Quentin if Quentin promises to feel better. That’s what Lou Gehrig did.”
“In a movie.”
“But it’s based on real life,” Lonnie said. “I looked it up.”
Murcer laughed out loud. “All right, friend. You got me. I promise, I’ll hit a homer for Quentin in the game tomorrow night. But here’s the deal: whether I do or I don’t hit the ball over the fence, Quentin’s got to hit a homer for me. I’m looking for maximum effort. Not every homer shows up in the box score. When you give your maximum effort, come what may, you’re hitting a home run. Maybe not in the ballpark, but in life. What do you say, Quent? I’ll hit a homer for you if you hit a homer for me. We got ourselves a deal?”
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“It’s a deal,” Quentin said before Lonnie could answer.
April 9, 1970
The Next Game
It’s not Lonnie’s fault, what happened. I just wanted to get that down on paper. Even though afterward Howie started saying how Lonnie shouldn’t have razzed Bobby Murcer to hit a home run for Quentin, and then, after that, Eric started saying how Lonnie shouldn’t have shot that paper missile at his bar mitzvah, there was no way to know how it would turn out. How any of it would turn out, because one thing leads to another.
It’s like the world’s full of dominoes, and they’re standing on their edges, and you’re tiptoeing around them, minding your own business, but sooner or later you’re going to trip into one, and then it’s going to fall into the next one, and then that one is going to fall into the next one, and then the entire setup comes crashing down in ways you can’t predict—unless maybe you’re staring down at the thing from above, which would make you God. But Lonnie’s not God. He’s just a guy, like the rest of us, tripping into dominoes. Maybe he should be more careful when he tiptoes. But then he wouldn’t be Lonnie.
Plus, he feels pretty awful about what happened.
It was Quentin’s idea that we watch the Yankees game together, at his house, to see if Bobby Murcer would come through and hit that home run for him—which meant the rest of us had to cut our last three periods and rush home, because the game started at one o’clock. But that was no problem. Ever since his wig came off during the fight, the entire school knew Quentin had cancer. Sure, we’d have to answer questions the next morning. But like Lonnie said: once you say the words “Quentin” and “cancer,” what’s your teacher going to do?
Quentin skipped school altogether. He likely would’ve stayed home regardless, on account of it was another bad-breathing day, but him not being there made it easier for the rest of us to sneak out between periods, meet up a couple of blocks from McMasters, and then hustle back to Thirty-Fourth Avenue and over to his house in time for the first pitch.
Mrs. Selig had laid out tray tables of potato chips and honey roasted peanuts, and she made a big pitcher of Hawaiian Punch. We were jammed into his room—the entire gang, plus Beverly. (I wasn’t going to forget about her again.) I was sitting on the floor between her and Lonnie. Quentin was sitting up in his bed, with his back against the headboard. Shlomo, Eric, and Howie were sitting on folding chairs against the far wall. Our jackets were thrown across the pinball machine. We were watching the game on the portable black-and-white television, which his mom had rolled to the center of the room.
Murcer was hitting clean up against the Red Sox. He batted for the first time in the bottom of the first inning. Roy White had just lined a home run over the right field wall, so Murcer stepped to the plate with no runners on base.
Suddenly, the room got real quiet. It felt weird to see him standing there, doing what he always did, waving his bat in a circle, shifting his weight back and forth from his front leg to his back leg, waiting for the pitch. It shouldn’t have felt weird. But it did. It felt like he’d never come to Thirty-Fourth Avenue, like we’d never met him, or like we had met him but he’d forgotten about us and gone back to being Bobby Murcer.
But here’s the even weirder thing: I didn’t want him to hit a home run.
Since the first time I’d heard his name, Murcer had been my guy, and I’d wanted him to hit a home run every time he came to bat. Until right then, sitting in Quentin’s room. Because I knew if he hit a home run, the rest of the guys were going to turn to Quentin and start razzing him about holding up his end of the deal, about giving a maximum effort, about getting rid of the wheelchair, about beating cancer … and how could I listen to that, knowing what I knew?
Murcer walked on four pitches.
“I knew it!” Lonnie said. “I knew it!”
Shlomo asked, “What do you mean?”
“If you’re the Red Sox, why would you throw Murcer a strike when you’ve got Curt Blefary on deck?”
Blefary struck out to end the first inning.
Murcer batted again to lead off the fourth inning. That made it tougher for Ray Culp, the Red Sox pitcher, to pitch around him, since you never want to walk the lead-off batter. The count ran to three balls and two strikes. But then Culp threw ball four, high and outside, and Murcer jogged to first.
“What did I tell you?” Lonnie said. “He’s got no chance.”
Blefary struck out again. Then John Ellis and Danny Cater both popped out to end the inning.
“Culp’s not going to throw him a decent pitch all game,” Lonnie said.
“You don’t know that!” Howie said.
“Would you, if you had a choice between pitching to him or Blefary?”
Murcer’s next at bat came in the sixth, with no one out. The Red Sox had scored three runs in the top of the inning to take a three–one lead. But Thurman Munson led off the bottom of the sixth with a single, and White followed up with a single, which put runners at first and third.
As Murcer stepped to the plate, Lonnie said, “Culp’s still going to walk him. Even if it means loading the bases with nobody out. He’ll take his chances with Blefary. You just watch.”
But then, as Murcer was taking his warm-up swings, something strange happened. You could see it in the lower left corner of the screen. Blefary was getting called back to the dugout from the on-deck circle. He wasn’t going to hit next. The manager was going to put up a pinch hitter for Blefary.
Culp noticed it too. He stepped off the mound and called time out. He took a good look to see who was going to pinch-hit—but no one came out to the on-deck circle. Culp waited and waited, but no one came out. Then, at last, the umpire pointed at Culp. You couldn’t tell what he said to him, but you could tell the ump was annoyed and wanted to get things moving again.
Culp stepped back onto the mound, and Murcer stepped back into the batting box. For a couple of seconds, nothing happened. Then Culp glanced at Munson on third, and then at White on first, and then at the empty on-deck circle, and then, at last, he reared back and threw the ball. It came right down the middle of the plate, and Murcer swung, and as soon as he hit it, the announcer cried, “That’s well hit! That’s way back! That’s way back!”
Lonnie and Beverly and Shlomo and Howie and Eric and Quentin started chanting, “Go! Go! Go!”
You know what? Right then, as the ball soared high into the air, at that moment, despite what I knew, despite everything, I changed my mind: I wanted it to be a home run.
“That’s going …,” the announcer said.
“Go!”
“That’s going …”
“Go!”
“That’s gone!”
As the ball sailed over the right-field wall, the seven of us let out a yell. It was one yell. You couldn’t tell where anyone’s voice stopped and anyone else’s started. I glanced over at Quentin, and he was yelling along with the rest of us, and his voice blended right in, and it felt like his voice was coming out of my mouth, and my voice was coming out of his mouth, and there was no difference.
I glanced back at the TV: Bobby Murcer was trotting around the bases. The Red Sox manager was walking out to the mound, signaling for a relief pitcher, and Ray Culp was walking back to the Red Sox dugout. Curt Blefary had come back out to the on-deck circle and was waiting to shake Murcer’s hand.
Mrs. Selig came running into the room to see what the commotion was about. When she saw Quentin sitting up in bed, pumping his fist in the air, she got a huge smile on her face.
Then the announcer said, “That’s a very special home run, folks. Not just because it puts the Yankees back in the lead. No, that home run had a lot more than a baseball game riding on it. You see, Bobby Murcer promised to hit a home run in today’s game. He made that promise to a dying boy who lives in Flushing, Queens. Bobby spent the afternoon yesterday with him and his friends—”
I think that was as much as any of us heard. The announcer’s voice became background noise at
that point, and we turned to Quentin. He was kind of smiling, and his eyes were darting around the room. He didn’t get why we were suddenly staring at him. But a couple of seconds later, you could see him working it through in his mind, replaying what the announcer had said, and then you could see the meaning start to sink in. He brought his hands up to the back of his neck and rocked back and forth. He took three loud breaths through his nose. It was maybe another second before tears started rolling out of his eyes and down his cheeks.
He looked up and cried, “Mom?”
Mrs. Selig ran into the room and knocked over both tray tables. Potato chips and peanuts went flying in every direction. Quentin was reaching for her as she got to the edge of the mattress, squeezing and unsqueezing his hands. She threw herself onto the bed and hugged him, and he buried his face in her shoulder. She was whispering, “No one knows for sure what’s going to happen, Quent. Not even the doctors know for sure. Your father will be home in a few minutes. You can ask him.” But she turned her head and said under her breath, “Oh God …”
By then, there were tears rolling down her cheeks too.
Lonnie stood up and said to the rest of us, “Let’s go!”
Shlomo said, “Shouldn’t we clean up—”
But Lonnie cut him off. “Let’s go! Now!”
That’s what we did. We grabbed our jackets and left. We left Quentin’s bedroom with the Yankees game still playing on the TV, and with peanuts and chips scattered on the floor, and with Quentin hugging his mom, and with the two of them bawling their eyes out.
April 10, 1970
Sherlock Lonnie
Bobby Murcer felt real lousy about what had happened. He called Quentin’s parents from the locker room after the game. I’m guessing one of the newspaper guys asked him about the “dying boy,” and he put two and two together. Otherwise, how would he have known?
It was Mr. Selig who told me and Lonnie about the call when we went over to pick up Quentin in the morning. He told us how decent Murcer was on the phone, and how he said he’d do whatever he could to make things right. I was glad to hear that. I didn’t want to think Murcer had blabbed about the nice thing he’d done for Quentin.
Finding the Worm Page 20