Bang The Drum Slowly

by Mark Harris

  “And they probably said pardon me for living, Mr. Pearson, please allow me to kiss your wonderful white ass. Do not tell me what Georgia is like, Author, for I been there once too often and seen for myself.”

  “Can he help being from Georgia?” said I. “You was born there yourself.”

  “And I had the brains to pick up and leave,” said he.

  “Must he pick up and leave?” I said. “His folks and his home are there, and he hopes to die there when he dies.”

  “I hope he gets his wish,” said Perry. “Somebody deal.”

  “Probably the sooner the better,” said Wash.

  “You are a fresh punk,” said I. “What do you know about anything?”

  “Anything I love is a nice friendly game of cards,” said Jonah.

  “Deal me out,” said I. “I can not stand fresh punks talking about something they know nothing about. Do you think you are going to live forever? Is life so long you rather rag somebody than be nice to them?”

  “Listen to me now,” said Perry. “I said play cards or go somewheres else and preach. Nobody invited you in, so as long as you are here join in the fun or else disappear.”

  “I will disappear,” I said, and I went back and called Croix, saying what everybody said was we needed new blood in The Mammoth Quartet. “How about dropping Simpson for Pearson?” I said.

  “Who in hell is Pearson?” he said. “No, I would not drop Simpson if I was you. He is half the laugh. How about Goldman?”

  “No,” said I, “how about me and Pearson and Goose Williams and Horse Byrd? Byrd weighs 240 pounds and would be good for quite a laugh.”

  “Leave me sleep on it,” he said, “and call you back in the morning,” and then he never called me but called Perry instead, and Wednesday night The Mammoth Quartet all of a sudden found their name changed to The Four Brown Mammoths, Perry and Jonah and Wash and Keith. They sung “Davy Crockett” and “Come Josephine In My Flying Machine,” and they stunk.

  If Washington wasn’t always such a soft touch for the Mammoths they would of swept past us right there in that little stretch of 2 weeks between the time we got home from the west and the day of the All-Star Game. They kept smearing Boston and Brooklyn something awful up and down the east, slimming our cushion down to one game by the Fourth of July, which was my 24th birthday, 25% of the way along for me, for I believe I can live to 96 if I keep in shape and don’t come down with a fatal disease and if the son of a bitches don’t blow up the place with their cockeyed bomb. But we blew it back up to 3 on the Fourth, whipping them twice down there before a record crowd that grew quieter and quieter as the afternoon wore on and finally filed out the park without a peep.

  Sid took fire once we hit home, and we played steady ball all week except we lost ground, Washington taking 4 straight from Brooklyn and 2 out of 3 from Boston. Sid hit Number 24 and 5 off Boston Thursday and 26 and 7 off Richie Erno Friday night, which gives you some idea how hot he was. It was the first time he hit 2 home runs in one ball game off a left-hander since hitting 2 off Lowell Shrodes on Friday, April 24, 1953, according to the paper. He was even-up with Babe Ruth, which brung out a record crowd Saturday, Ladies Day, the whole park screaming their head off when he so much as spit. The only thing nobody noticed was we did not win on Friday, but lost, which chipped the lead to 1½. Beating paper records is fine and nice, but the game goes down in history as lost unless you keep the other fellow from scoring more runs, and the boys all said the same, and Sid as well, saying he rather break both legs and cop the flag than beat Babe Ruth and wind up second, and I believed him when he said it, for he is a friend of mine, though many of the boys did not. They never said anything to Sid himself, but they made these dirty remarks concerning Babe Ruth, saying they were tired hearing about him and tired seeing his name in the paper and tired following his record of 28 years ago when any day we were libel to go under if we did not start putting pitching and hitting together. “So what if Sid beats Babe Ruth?” said some of the boys. “Does it pay my bills? I will not be up here forever and must make cash while the sun shines.”

  “Right,” said some of the boys.

  “Right,” said I. “Then why not pull together like a club? What is the sense blaming anything on Sid? He is doing exactly what he is supposed to be getting paid for. Why not everybody cut out the horseshit?”

  “Author is right,” they said, and for a couple minutes they all stood around saying, “Yes sir, Author is right,” “Yes sir, Author hit it on the head,” and then they no sooner said this than they started deciding just who was to blame in the first place and who was more horseshit than the next fellow until you were back where you begun.

  Saturday we lost. Sid slammed one with George and Pasquale on in the first inning, and the crowd went mad, 5 home runs in 3 days, probably some sort of a record except I did not even look at the Sunday paper, and we jumped to a 3–0 lead but could not hold it. The power went off, dead, and we dropped it, 4–3. Goose tired, and Bruce caught the last 4 innings and cracked 2 doubles in 2 times at bat, the first time he hit for extra bases in 2 consecutive trips to the plate since September of 49, and we all dragged ourself back in the clubhouse with 2 new records racked up but one more game lost. We sat around listening to the last couple innings of Washington vs. Boston, which Boston finally won, and when it was over Lindon got up and switched it off, and Ugly said, “Lindon, you set a record switching off the radio.”

  Lindon looked at the radio. “I done what?” he said.

  “You set a record,” said Ugly. “Up to yesterday you probably only switched the radio off 15,738 times. Now you switched it off 15,739.”

  “Officially or unofficially?” said I.

  “Every day you live you live one more day,” said Lawyer Longabucco. “You beat your own record.”

  “Officially or unofficially?” said Blondie Biggs.

  “I talked 3,112 official words today,” said Jonah. “That puts me 3,112 official words up on yesterday.”

  “Today is the first time I ever officially hung this jock on this particular nail at 4:02 P.M. in the afternoon of July 9, 1955,” said Perry.

  “Today is the first day we ever lost to Brooklyn by a score of 4–3 after leading 3–0 in the first inning on Ladies Day I bet,” said Harry Glee.

  “Are the ladies official?” said Ugly.

  “Some are and some ain’t,” said Harry.

  “Today was the first time in my official and unofficial life I ever fouled out in the seventh inning with a count of 2–2 on me against a right-hand pitcher name of Fair-bright,” said Canada.

  But nobody laughed. All the time we dressed we kept shouting out new records, how many times we now officially buckled our belt and tied our tie and laced our shoe or shaved or combed our hair, how many official miles the zip on your fly now went, how many times you zipped it with your left hand and how many times with your right, how many official times you looked in the mirror, how many official times you breathed, how many tons of water you showered in and how many times you stood at the clubhouse door and looked back and wondered what you officially forgot, shouting out your record but still not laughing, nobody feeling too much like laughing right about then.

  Blondie Biggs started for us Sunday, a blond-hair bonus boy straight out of college with a side-arm delivery that the boys all say they rather see in a Mammoth shirt than on somebody else, though what they never told him in college was do not keep getting too behind your hitter. He improves as time goes on, but he still had a lot to learn that Sunday which Dutch probably figured could wait until some other time except when we were only 1½ games on top. July is no time to start learning, and he got jittery, Dutch did, and he said, “Author, go warm,” and I went down to the bullpen with Diego.

  “Mister,” said Diego, “you only rest her up 3 days.”

  “You warm me and leave Dutch run the club,” said I, and after I warmed awhile the crowd begun to boo. I looked around, but I could not tell what they were booing at
. It was quite crazy. I telephoned back to the dugout and asked what was up, and nobody knew, and I kept on warming, and the crowd kept on booing. There was this one cluck hanging over the fence, and I said, “What you booing at?” and he threw his hands up in front of his face, afraid that I was going to paste him, though I was not. Finally he come out from behind his hands, still screaming, “Boo-oo-oo-oo, boo-oo-oo-oo, you bum, you phony, boo-oo-oo-oo,” his face all red. He was a little bald up front, and the top of his head was also red, and he was mad and shaking his fist, and I said again, “Cluck! You! Cluck there! What you booing at?”

  He was quite hoarse. He could hardly speak. “Ain’t everybody?” he said.

  “But why?” said I.

  “I do not know,” said he. “Boo-oo-oo-oo, bum, boo-oo-oo-oo,” and the telephone rung, Ugly, and he said, “What did the cluck say?” and I said all he said was “Boo” but did not seem to know why, and I went on warming.

  Horse and Bruce come down after awhile, and Horse warmed, and the booing started and stopped the whole time, turning to cheering when Sid come up, and silence when he did not hit a home run, and then they actually booed Sid himself in the seventh when he reached across the plate and dumped a single in left instead of waiting for the kind of a pitch he could homer on, the first and last time in my life I ever heard a local crowd boo a local ballplayer for collecting a base hit.

  It was 2–2 in the top of the eighth when Blondie got himself in the kind of hot water he was not libel to pitch himself out of, and I went in and faced a left-hand hitter name of Stan Andersen that Brooklyn then lifted and sent up Hal Wilder instead, a right-hander, an old-timer that been on the roster of 6 or 7 clubs including the Mammoths of 42, a grandfather, I think the only grandfather on the active list, and Dutch come out to the hill and said he wondered if Horse might do better than me against Wilder. He stood thinking about it a long time.

  “What in hell they booing at?” said I.

  “Search me,” said Dutch. “The press-box says they are booing me for working you before the All-Star Game. I can not say that I am the slightest bit interested.”

  “They are simply out of their mind as usual,” said Perry.

  “Lay halfway deep on this son of a bitch,” said Dutch. “He is fast for an old man, but not too deep.”

  The boys went back to their spots, and Jonah sung, singing, “Wing her through, Author, wing her through,” and I threw only one pitch that inning, my best pitch, a halfspeed curve that hooks away from a right-hand hitter and also sinks and slides, which some boys call my sinking screwball and others call a hooking slider, though I myself never bothered to give it a name. I threw it at his knees, and he went for it, thinking it was only straight but then seeing it hook. He tried to check his swing but couldn’t, and he beat it down in the dirt towards second, and Perry come up with it and flipped to Coker, and Coker to Sid, and it was now my ball game to win or lose, which we did in the bottom of the ninth, Number 14 for me.

  I still did not know what they were booing at, and the paper did not know, neither, some saying one thing and some another, but I now know it was none of the things they said. It was only a lot of disgusted people wondering how a club consisting of what the Mammoths consisted of in the way of power and brains on paper only managed to be 1½ games in front of the pack with time half run out. It was the same as saying, “Everything is at your fingertips. Yet you are libel to blow as high as the sky any day. Can you not get a move on?” I believe that for once in their life the clucks were right, and Holly says the same.

  Me and Coker and Perry and Sid and George and Pasquale and Van Gundy left Monday for Milwaukee, 7 of us, more Mammoths than from any club in the league, which gives you some idea the kind of a club it was, rich with stars, and 3 of us were in the starting lineup Tuesday, me and Sid and Pasquale, and in the end it was George saved the ball game with a running catch over his shoulder in short left. He catches many like that, one a week, but Milwaukee never set eyes on him before, and it was all anybody talked about all night. I got credit for the win, my first All-Star win, the first All-Star Game I played in since 52, though I was on the squad in 53.

  Back in the hotel Pop called and said, “Hank, I took Holly to the hospital.”

  “Is he born yet?” I said.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “Is something up?” said I.

  “No,” he said, “it is a first baby,” which it was. “You looked good. Ain’t you ever going to take the rest of your weight off?”

  “Trade your set in on a smaller screen,” said I. “I will look smaller then,” and he got a great laugh out of that.

  “I kind of looked for Sid to hit one today,” he said. “It would of been a nice touch. How is Bruce?”

  “The same,” said I. “He is supposed to call me.”

  “I sure think about him night and day, Hank. You know, if you will pardon me for saying it, he sure been handed one shit deal.”

  “You are swearing,” I said. You have got to make Pop awful mad to swear, and it give me a great charge inside. Here was somebody else besides myself carrying this mad around inside him. It really hit me, and I done a crazy thing. I got up and kicked the door shut, and it felt good, and I kicked the little telephone table there and sent it flying across the room, and the telephone come off the hook and the operator started screaming, “May I help you? May I help you?” over and over again, and I yanked a drawer out of the dresser and heaved it at her, and I remember I stood there bawling and breathing and looking for something to throw and finally seen the shower curtain, and I grabbed it and pulled it off the bar and tore it in 2 and kicked the toilet and stood with a glass in my hand and aimed it very carefully and slung it across the room at a painting on the wall of a girl carrying flowers and smashed the glass and the frame together and felt much better, and the house detectives busted in and put the phone back on the hook. “Where is the person you beat up in here?” they said.

  “Person?” I said. “Person hell. There were 9 of them. Add up the damage and put it on the bill.”

  “Pay the damage in cash and no questions asked,” the detectives said, and they added it up and I paid it, and they give me a receipt. We will put it on the tax on the long run, medical expenses, because somewheres along the line you have got to blow your fume little by little or else blow it all in one blow later.

  I waited for Bruce to call, and he done so and was fine, and I went down and hung in the lobby. I seen a lot of old familiar faces, Sam Yale and Swanee Wilks and Hams Carroll from the 52 Mammoths. I thought Red might show, but he did not. He never does. Jocko Conrad took me around and introduced me to many old-time ballplayers, telling them, “Here is Henry Wiggen, my very own discovery,” which was about 2% true, but I said nothing. I used to correct people a lot when they lied, but I cut that out. They stood around lying and went in for dinner and lied some more, and they sat around all evening drinking and lying, telling me things I knew never quite happened that way, and I said, “Yes, I remember reading about that,” or “Yes, I heard that game on the radio when I was a kid,” or “Yes, my old man told me about that many a time,” because why in hell snag old men on their lies? Who cares anyhow? Every year they die. You see an old fellow at the All-Star Game, or at the World Series, or in the South, or hanging at the winter meetings, and they lie to you, and the next thing you read in the paper where they are dead, old fellows not so many years before so slim and fast, with a quick eye and great power, and all of a sudden they are dead and you are glad you did not wreck their story for them with the straight facts.

  In the middle of it all I called the hospital in Perkinsville. The operator would not leave me charge the call, saying, “Young men that smash up their room are not in title to telephone long distance,” and I went down and paid cash and went back up and called, and the hospital said, “Nothing doing yet,” and I flew home.

  She was already born when I got there, laying on her belly in a little glass cart on wheels in Holly’s r
oom, practically bald, and I said to Holly, “How come no hair?” for I always had the idea you were born with a lot of hair.

  “She is perfect in every way,” said Holly, “and exactly at her weight, which is more than I can say for everybody,” and we give her the name of Michele, for Mike Mulrooney, manager of the Queen City Cowboys.

  “Flip it over,” I said, “so I can have a look.”

  “You flip it over,” said Holly. “And do not call her “it” because she is a human person already.”

  I flipped her over, and then I picked her up and held her, Michele I mean, sitting on the bed with Holly, and the sun was first coming in the window like it was that morning when Bruce had the attack, or thought he did, and I was about ready to bawl again after just getting through bawling in Milwaukee, sitting there with this little bit of a human person in my hand.

  “It was a good thing George made that catch,” she said. “I could not of waited a minute longer. Then when I got here she did not wish to pop. You were a good boy to come. How is Bruce?”

  “The same,” said I. “He will be pleased. Not a day goes by but what he asks.”

  “Go grab some sleep,” she said.

  “I grabbed some on the plane,” I said.

  “I did not sleep,” she said. “I just laid awake trying to cry.”

  “There is nothing to cry about,” I said. “Why cry?”

  “I do not know,” she said. “Probably if I knew I could. I wonder if they made a mistake out there. It is hard to see how a fellow in such good shape as him could be in such bad shape. I am reading all the books on Hodgkin, and it is true.”

  “It is hard to believe they could make such a mistake,” I said. “They have got such a wonderful reputation on paper.”

  “Go see your father,” she said, and I stuck Michele back in the cart and kissed her and kissed Holly and went home in Neil Weiss’s cab. Neil told me tell Dutch why not bench Vincent Carucci and play McGonigle in left, and why not buy a good catcher or else develop one in a hurry, and I said I would.