Mullane was an Irishman who liked to drink hard apple cider, curse, and throw spit balls. He was in the process of attempting to make a comeback to the big leagues following an early, and ill-advised, retirement. The Louisville manager thought it would be smart to test Mullane’s arm against Cascade before signing his contract and allowing him to join the team. He wanted to see if Mullane still had his good stuff.
The rumor was that Mullane had once thrown a no-hitter in a major league game, but nobody could find statistics to confirm the rumor. There was much intrigue surrounding Mullane, including whispers that he could pitch with either hand, a rarity. If this was true, it probably meant he had perfected the art of throwing spit balls with either hand.
The coaches exchanged lineup cards at home plate. The umpire inspected the cards, took his time satisfying himself that everything was in order, and proceeded to roll the ball to the mound to signal the start of the game. The ball was a regulation ball, precisely the same ball umpires put into play in the majors. The battle was joined.
The crowd had swollen to dramatic proportion. It seemed that not a single soul from town was missing. There were ranch hands wearing chaps and leather vests, copper miners with lanterns and hard hats at their feet, women wearing dresses that swept the ground, nuns in black habits, and school children set free from school.
Cascade, the home team, was the first to take the field. This left behind the embarrassment of an empty bench, since Cascade, a town in the middle of nowhere that only recently had been incorporated, had the wherewithal to attract only nine players to their roster. Conversely, the mighty Colonels had the full roster of a major league ball club. The Louisville bench was crowded with players who were busy hefting bats, oiling mitts, reclining, standing up, walking around, spitting tobacco juice at the ground, chatting, and so on.
In the top of the first, Billy set down the Colonels in order. The batters never took the bats off their shoulders. They were looking to see what Billy had to offer, and he had plenty to offer, indeed.
The pitches hissed at the air before popping the catcher’s mitt. The crowd of locals applauded politely. The suspicion was that Louisville had been instructed by their clever manager to not actually swing at any of Billy’s pitches, but to report to the players waiting on deck about the speed and accuracy of his pitches. They were looking for signs that Billy had a flaw in his delivery that would serve to tip batters that his breaking ball was coming. These signs were called tells. Thus far, Billy’s pitches were flawless. Furthermore, there were no tells in his delivery to give the Colonels an advantage.
Our side went down in order in the bottom of the first inning, as expected. Neither side had as much as fouled off a pitch. However, it really didn’t look like a classic pitcher’s duel. The reason is Cascade really didn’t have any hitters in the lineup likely to pose any threat whatsoever to a big league pitcher like Mullane, and Mullane was indeed a big leaguer, regardless of which hand he decided to use to pitch. On the other hand, Louisville was stacked with power hitters, including their invincible cleanup hitter, the powerful Ducky Holmes.
I watched Billy’s face as he glared over the top of his glove at the catcher’s signals. He was using all of his energy to keep his pitch count low, but through the middle innings he had already begun to tire. This may have been due to the unusual way he warmed up that day. He took a series of warmup pitches. Then, he broke his normal routine by cooling off only to warm up yet again, sensing that the Colonels might have been scouting him. The second set of warmup pitches may have contributed to his lack of stamina, and Cascade would need plenty of stamina from Billy that day to avoid embarrassment.
This was a pitcher’s duel in the sense that we were still hitless through six innings, but it wasn’t a classic pitcher’s duel. Mullane faced Cascade batters that had no prayer of making any contact whatsoever with major league pitching, and Mullane knew it. Conversely, Billy was throwing at dangerous hitter after dangerous hitter. He had to unleash his best stuff over and over, and he couldn’t afford to yield a single hit. If Louisville scored even a single run, the game would be over.
However, the game wasn’t over. In the top of the seventh, Billy began to rely on his knuckle curveball. That pitch began to fool the Colonels. He faced the middle of the lineup.
In the top of the seventh, Billy ran up the count to three balls and two strikes on the leadoff hitter. If the next pitch was a ball, the Colonels would have their first base runner of the game, their first sign of life. Cascade couldn’t afford to concede even one run, and we definitely could not afford to let the cocky Colonels get the idea they could rally. Billy had to be perfect.
That’s why Art Welch, the Cascade manager, called time and walked slowly to the mound.
“If you walk him, I want you to pick him off,” Art said, nervously smoothing out the dirt on top of the mound with his cleats. “They haven’t moved first base in how many years? You’re a lefty. Why do you feel the need to look at first base in order to throw there from the stretch? Give it a high leg kick, look home, and throw to first while still looking at home. It’s not a balk. It is called memory.”
“Art,” Billy said.
“Yes?”
“Get the hell off my mound.”
With that, Art turned, spat tobacco juice at the grass, and returned to the bench.
If the string of strikeouts persisted, Billy wouldn’t have to face the powerful Ducky Holmes until the top of the ninth. As soon as Art left the mound, Billy regained his composure and struck out the side.
The Louisville players seemed confounded by the steady diet of breaking balls. Billy had them swinging from their heels. Each player wished to end the game with the heroism of a titanic home run blast. The Colonels had apparently abandoned the idea of winning the game tactically by simply reaching base, bunting at least one runner into scoring position, and sending the runner dashing for home with the game winning run on a scratch hit through the infield. Apparently, a tactical game plan was beneath the dignity of a big league team facing a team of local rummies. The Colonels were going for broke. They wished to humiliate us with a gargantuan blast. That blast still had not come through eight innings.
In the top of the ninth, the contest would come down to the mighty Ducky Holmes facing a tiring “Steamboat”. There were two outs. The Louisville manager did not fear actually losing the game. He didn’t want to suffer the embarrassment of a group of amateurs carrying a National League team to extra innings.
The first pitch to Ducky was a fast ball. Billy’s pitches were starting to flatten out, losing the customary hop that had frustrated every batter thus far. Ducky stepped out of the batter’s box as if to compose himself. He spat into his hands and glanced knowingly at the Louisville manager. I wondered if they believed Billy was finally vulnerable.
He was. The next pitch, a breaking ball, didn’t drop off the edge of the table. It hung. Ducky unleashed all of his might on it. The hanging pitch simply spun in the air. The ball lingered there as if to announce itself as a target. Ducky obliged.
He struck the ball with absolute authority. The crack of the bat sent a report to the Cascade mountains. It made something inside of me jump as well.
The ball soared against the sky. I watched its trajectory down the first baseline. It was heading for a place clear of the fence and out in the wilds of Montana beyond the fence.
Ducky tossed his bat aside and arrogantly went straight into his home run trot. He watched the beauty of the ball in flight, as he trotted. We all did.
All eyes were on the ball, the Cascade hopefuls, the Colonels, Ducky, and Billy, too. Billy watched the tragic ending the ball offered, craning his neck to behold its towering flight. The ball absolutely flew toward the right field fence.
Ducky was nearly at first base when the ball suddenly, and inexplicably, hooked foul. The ball had drifted indisputably foul before it cleared the fence. Ducky kicked the dirt near first base in frustration. An audible groan went up fro
m the Louisville bench.
“Foul! Nope!” The home plate umpire ruled in a loud and clear voice, sweeping his extended right arm toward the first base sideline to reinforce his call.
Predictably, Billy fooled Ducky with the next pitch, a breaking ball at the knees. It was strike three. Louisville was out in the top of the ninth.
This left little, if any, realistic chance the game would not progress to extra innings, since Cascade had no real threat in its lineup, and Mullane had breezed through eight innings unscathed. He was ready to face the bottom of our lineup.
The first two Cascade hitters in the bottom of the ninth could scarcely be called hitters. They hadn’t as much as fouled off a single pitch in their other at bats. Their performance in the bottom of the ninth was not an exception. They were dismissed by Mullane effortlessly and in order. This left Billy, Cascade’s ninth place hitter.
As the pitcher, Billy was not expected to pose any threat to Mullane whatsoever. The Cascade players began picking up their mitts, readying themselves to take the field for extra innings. Billy’s at bat was a mere formality. Nevertheless, taking the big league Colonels to extra innings would be a moral victory for Cascade. We had matched a National League team for an entire regulation game. Sure, Billy was already tired, so if the Colonels bombarded him in extra innings, it wouldn’t have disappointed anyone’s expectations.
The shame in baseball, as in life itself, is not the failure associated with a loss, but the failure to commit the best effort to rage against the probability of loss. Baseball, like life itself, is a game of failure or, more accurately, recovery from failure. The eternal challenge in life, as in baseball, is to learn how to recover from failure.
The rituality of this aspect of the game of baseball is unmistakable. The game of baseball returns each spring as eternally predictable as the earth rotates and the seasons change. Even if Billy failed, and Cascade was defeated, the promise of baseball would remain. It would last to see another spring.
Billy used his cleats to paw at the dirt in the batter’s box, digging a hole to anchor his left foot. He held the bat aloft, admired it, spent time organizing his baggy jersey at the collar and over his shoulders, dropped the head of the bat to the plate, tapped the plate twice with the bat, screwed the toe of his left foot in the hole, and held the bat aloft yet again to behold the label, like the Blackfoot girls were expected to adore the statue of the Risen Christ at the Mission. Now, Billy was pronounced ready by the home plate umpire.
Billy remained perfectly still, expectant. The catcher dropped into his crouch. Mullaney looked into home plate for the sign, the catcher’s flashing fingers between his knees were shielded by his mitt. Billy didn’t need practice swings. On the contrary, he wanted nothing to interfere with his line of sight, his settled focus. It all would happen so fast.
Mullaney accepted the catcher’s sign, wound up, and delivered the pitch.
The crack of the bat was solid, but not deafening. Billy had made contact. That, alone, was a victory. He had seen something in Mullaney’s delivery that tipped the fast ball, let him know it was coming. The tell allowed Billy to time the pitch perfectly.
Unfortunately, Billy was not known as a power hitter or really a hitter of any kind at all. Even with his best swing, it would take a miracle of Biblical proportion for Billy to even get the ball in play. Nevertheless, this was mere supposition. The facts played out differently on the field.
The ball soared to a surprisingly high elevation. The ball was so high that the only way to track it, really, was against the Montana sky. That ball was indeed in play.
The ball climbed beyond reasonable expectation, vanishing briefly in the white mist of a cloud. The ball wasn’t in the clouds. That would have been an exaggeration. It only looked like it was in the clouds. The ball sort of drifted out of the infield and out over the outfield grass, like a mythical God was blowing it to greater heights.
The right fielder tracked it, confidently. He trotted sideways to the far reaches of the park, tracking the ball over his left shoulder, patting his mitt to ready it for the fall of the ball from the glory of its height. The crowd rose, too.
There was the expectation of failure, that the ball would, as usual, somehow descend out of the sky and land safely in the right fielder’s waiting mitt, and the folly of those who dared to dream otherwise would be exposed yet again. The right fielder was the last evil that separated the crowd from the mortality of this timeless ambition.
Everyone, the Colonels, the Cascade faithful, and even Billy himself, expected the ball to drop, drop like the flesh is prone to falter at the end of our days. However, there was no fall. Instead, there was only the wonder of flight.
The right fielder could go no farther. He felt for the wall with his outstretched fingers. The wall stopped him from going any farther. He waited. He wondered. He measured the flight of the ball with his eyes, waiting expectantly.
The ball cleared the right field fence and disappeared. It was gone. It was a home run! It was over! The game was over! Cascade had won! The ball was gone forever!
Billy had done the improbable! He hit a massive homerun to win the game! It was over! The game was over!
Cascade had beaten the mighty Louisville Colonels of the National League in the bottom of the ninth inning! The final score: 1-0. The sportswriters would announce the score in bold type across the banner of the newspapers to document what happened here. Cascade: 1 – Louisville: 0. It was over! It was a home run! The game was over!
Billy trotted around the bases as only a hero can. Confident, fluid, slow, and without emotion. He didn’t spitefully stab each bag with his cleats on his home run trot. Instead, he seemed to glide over the ground and reverently kiss each passing bag with the souls of his shoes, like a parishioner kisses the ring of a priest.
The crowd turned itself inside out with exuberance. Ordinarily reserved adults jumped, screamed, cried, gawked, danced, and laughed uncontrollably. The Ursuline nuns clasped their hands to cover their mouths. They had witnessed a miracle.
The Louisville side packed up their equipment and said nothing. They would try to erase the experience in Cascade from their minds. However, the school children would not forget. They rushed the diamond to swarm Billy at home plate. He was their hero. He was everybody’s hero. The mighty “Steamboat” Billy Wall had blessed Cascade with its finest hour. They would tell the story to their children and to their grandchildren across the generations. Cascade had challenged the mighty Colonels of the National League and won.
Chapter Twenty
Cascade, Montana, May 1913
I had tears in my eyes remembering Billy. Those glory years were gone forever. There would never be another Billy. He was an aberration that occurred once in a lifetime, if you were lucky.
Frankly, I was embarrassed to be in tears over a stupid baseball game. I had let the Cascade Courier reporter in on an enormous secret. After all of these years, I still had a girlish crush on the divinely gifted “Steamboat” Billy Wall. It was natural. Everyone did. He was much more than a man.
Thinking back, Billy was larger than life. Baseball. Montana. The Pacific Northwest. The railroad. If any of these things loomed larger than “Steamboat” Billy Wall, Billy must have been a mighty close second.
“What did you think of Steamboat, Mary?” The reporter grinned.
“Steamboat?”
“Yes.”
“Steamboat was the second coming of Christ as far as I could tell, the best I’d ever seen. Is that clear? You had a better chance of fooling Mother Nature than hitting Billy’s fast ball. He could knock over a brick wall with it and pick the brick.”
“Did Steamboat ever make it to the majors?”
“Does it matter?” I said, angered. “Doesn’t matter one way or the other. When Christ rose from the dead, there was nothing else He needed to do, except remember it. Do you think He had to rise from the dead a second time, or was once enough?”
“You have a point there
. What did you do after this legendary contest?”
“I handed out flowers. That’s what I did after every game. Each player who did something special got a flower for his jersey button. Players who got a hit or made a nice catch or a great throw got flowers. But for players who hit home runs, I gave away an entire bouquet. Billy got all of the flowers that day. He pitched a no-hitter, hit the game winning home run, and he did it against the vaunted Louisville Colonels of the National League. He will be remembered in the lore of Montana and the entire Pacific Northwest forever.”
“Did you really punch that sportswriter before the game?”
“No.”
We both laughed.
“Of course, I did. The fellow had it coming to him. I don’t want to brag or make you think I was a hot head, but anytime some fellow criticized any of my boys on the team I tended to get a little miffed. This reporter, as you called him—but frankly, I am not sure what exactly he was—the fellow had a big mouth. Imagine you are visitors at a ball field in Montana, or anywhere in the nation really, and you are visiting from the National League. Even the words, National League, have magic in them. The National League is supposed to be something you only read about in the newspapers. You don’t ever think you’d actually get the chance to play a National League team. Well, Cascade got its chance. That’s a big deal. Everyone in these parts thought it was a big deal, because it was a big deal. Everyone looks up to major league ball players. The chance to actually play one, to measure your skill against the best there is, is a dream come true, don’t you think? Now you have to understand, the fellow was a reporter or scout or someone associated with a big league ball club out here in the middle of Montana playing a town team. You got to know that is a big deal to the locals. Instead of showing a little class, you shoot off your big mouth and believe you can get away with it? No chance. Not in Montana, not in the great Pacific Northwest, not anywhere.”
Stagecoach Justice Page 11