by Bill Branger
I thought my way through a half-can of beer and I saw the truth of things. I didn’t want to let go. Not yet. Just let me hang on one more time. Go out on the mound in the seventh and hear the crowd and see the sharp faces on those shiny young batters. Be part of the parade. Let me feel it again. Hell, George, I’d pay you, and you know it, you son of a bitch. You know it.
3
Miss Viola Foster is a middle-aged lady of grace and style who was really too good for a crude turd like George Bremenhaven. She gave me a nice smile when I opened the door to the suite and said it was nice to see me, as though she meant it. She took me into the inner sanctum and asked me if I wanted coffee, and I said no. I said it automatically because I was staring at Sam, the clubhouse manager.
Sam was inherited by George from the previous owners of the Yankees. Sam is in charge of equipment, packing, shipping, seeing we get our supplies of uniforms, bats, and balls, and all the other necessary little jobs that let ball players concentrate on important things, like their hangnails and navels.
I bet Sam had never been in George’s midtown office before.
The office is on the thirtieth floor of the sandy-colored building just below Grand Central Station on Park Avenue. It was a nice morning for it, whatever “it” was going to be. The men loped along the sidewalks playing their briefcases against their knees like tambourines and the ladies had that crisp autumn look that takes over the city in October and hangs on smartly until it snows.
“Hey, Sam,” I said. He nodded at me and said nothing. Sam never wastes a word when a silence is better.
George came around his fat rosewood desk like a maitre d’ and grabbed my hand. I expected to be shown a table, but instead he led me to a stuffed leather chair opposite Sam and indicated I should sit. I sat and the leather squeaked as I settled in.
“First, I trust you, Ryan “
I waited for the next shoe.
“Second, I been talking to Sam here about assuming extra duties next season. We’re all going to have to pull our oars together to get this thing done.”
“Pull our oars,” I repeated.
“Shoulder to the wheel,” George said.
“One or the other,” I said.
George said, “Sam, talk to him.”
Sam looked at George with a miserable expression. Anyone in the clubhouse knew that Sam hated George Bremenhaven almost more than the players. This was an instinctive class thing on Sam’s part. His name is Sam Ortiz and when he was twelve he was picking strawberries in California and he and his migrant folks were living in ten-by-ten unheated shacks on the edges of the big helds. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sam was a Communist, except Mexicans tend not to be, in my experience.
“Go ahead,” George said with that grim little look on his puffy fat face. His lips get so tight they almost disappear.
So the next thing, Sam turns to me and says in Spanish:
— This cocksucking son of a whore wants me to test you on your Spanish. He calls me in the middle of the night and he says to me I have to talk Spanish to you to see if you can speak Spanish to me. What in the name of God is this about?
— I don’t know, Sam (I replied in Spanish). Four days ago, he says he wants to keep me around for another year because I speak Spanish and now he wants to test me. Why don’t we ask him?
— Good idea.
“George,” I said in English. “What the hell is this about?”
“What did you say to each other?”
“I asked him if he still fucks chickens and he said I had a venereal disease, he could see it in my eyes,” I said.
“Is that what you said? What kind of a thing is that to say?”
“What do you want us to do, George? Dance the Mexican hat dance? Sing La Cucaracha?”
“I wanna know you know how to speak Spanish,” George said.
I looked at Sam and said:
— This son of a whore has gone crazy.
“I know that word, loco. You think I’m crazy, Ryan?”
“We both think you’re crazy, George.”
“You know, I could go out in this city right now and I could buy Spanish interpreters a dime a dozen. Every courtroom’s got them, every Puerto Rican grocery, every —”
“George, your veins are starting to stand out and that carotid artery is gonna fill your ears with blood in a minute. Just calm down and tell us what you want.”
He was quiet for a second. I looked at Sam and he looked at me. We waited.
“I get rid of Hoak Wilson at noon. One million in cash and assumption of his contract. I’ve already made three point five million and got rid of twenty-two million in contracts and obligations. My accountant is going crazy, this is the best news the Yankees have had since Joe DiMaggio.”
“I’m happy for you, George.”
“Naw, you’re not happy, but I don’t care. I’m happy. You’re just lucky. Lucky you grew up in Texas and learned to speak spic with the Mexicans. I mean, Spanish.”
Sam said nothing. I could have made a corrective cluck, but it wasn’t worth it. George didn’t mean anything; he just talks that way.
“Why’s it lucky, George?”
He stared at me. And then glanced at Sam. “He speak Spanish okay, Sam?”
“He’s okay,” Sam said in his way, shrugging his shoulders. He wasn’t my buddy and I didn’t expect him to go out of his way for me.
George glared at Sam with his Gila eyes as though he could laser the truth out of him. Then he said, “Okay, Sam. That’s it. See you around later.”
Sam sat there.
“Come on, Sam. I got things to do. To discuss.”
“That’s it?” Sam finally said. He started to rise.
“Yeah, you got work back at the Stadium and I got things to do. Just keep this under your hat, okay?”
Sam, shrugged again.
“Understand?” George warned him.
“Si,” Sam said. If he had a sombrero, he would have held it across his belly to show respect for el patron, Sam pulls that Mexican peasant thing when he wants to show his contempt for you. I could see he didn’t understand a damned thing. Neither did I.
Sam opened the door and went out, closing it behind him.
George pranced around his desk on those surprisingly small feet and grabbed at a pile of papers.
“Sign these,” he said.
“Whoa,” I said, holding up my hand. “I gotta read them first.”
“It’s all boilerplate, the usual crap. See, this is the last contract you signed and this is the one you’re going to sign. The same.”
“Except for less money,” I said.
“You agreed.”
“I agreed. But what’s this?”
“An agreement not to disclose confidential information. It’s becoming very routine in the business world.”
“Not disclose what, George?”
“Confidential information “
“Like what, George?”
“Confidential information that you don’t have yet but you may acquire in the course of your duties with the New York American League baseball club,” he said.
“Why, you gonna raise ticket prices and not tell anyone until they show up at the stadium?”
“Bigger than that, Ryan.”
“You’re going to move to New Jersey.”
“Sign it.”
“I don’t know,” I said, scanning the sheets of paper.
“Look, if you’re going to be Boswell to my Johnson, I need to trust you.”
“You going to write a dictionary? Maybe a Spanish-English dictionary?”
“I’m going to reinvent baseball,” George said.
Major league ball club owners talk this way as they teeter along from crisis to crisis. Read the sports pages today and the baseball news is all about how much someone is making or some owner is losing or attendance or television, anything but marks on a scorecard or the sound of a bat.
“Sort of like a new Charlie Finley.”
“Charlie would have loved this idea.”
“What idea?”
“Sign the fucking form, Ryan.”
Shit. I was intrigued enough to sign it. I also signed the contract and made George sign his. We were a team again.
George gave me my copies and he slipped his into a drawer of his desk that locked.
“Don’t we need a witness?” I said.
“I’ll fake that later,” he said. “Now, Ryan. The secret. It’s worth it, all this fooling around. But it stays secret until after the winter meetings in Las Vegas, until I can finally dump all the players I want to dump.”
“How many is that, George?” My voice was sort of quiet. Baseball is a brutal kind of business and you’re here today and traded tomorrow. Still, you play with those guys, live with them on the road, they’re flesh and blood and they have families and friends and hopes and fears. You wouldn’t know it to read about them in some of the sports columns. Or listen to an owner.
“Twenty-four. Everyone but you, Ryan. I told you, you survive like Ishmael.”
“And you’re going to kill a white whale, George?”
“Something like that.”
“Like what?”
“Where are the best ball players in the world? Besides here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Japan “
“Too little. No power.”
“Venezuela. Mexico.”
“You’re getting warmer.”
“I was never good at this kind of questioning, that’s why I got bad class discussion marks in school. You want an answer, you furnish it.”
“Cuba.”
I let that sink in.
“Cuba, what?” I said.
“Cuba, Cuba,” he said.
“You’re going to buy some ball players in Cuba? I thought we didn’t trade with Cuba, something like that.”
“Reality is setting in, in the world and in Washington, even in Havana.”
“And what is reality?”
“Castro wants dollars. And recognition. And he wants the U.S. to lift trade embargoes. Funny thing is, so do we. But the administration doesn’t want a backlash here so it has to proceed with caution.”
“I didn’t know you knew so many famous people.”
“I do. I was just in Washington. Spent the night at the White House. You know where I slept?”
I thought of several smart-ass answers but offered none of them. I was fascinated by the lizard in the blue suit across from me.
“In Lincoln’s bedroom.”
“How is it?”
“I saw his ghost.”
“Did you.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you, George, if you believe you.”
“He just stared at me and then he nodded once and disappeared.”
“Maybe he had to go to the bathroom.”
“I was dreaming about Cuba and what I want to do and he knew it. Lincoln. You know, aside from everything else, this is a good thing I’m doing. A good thing for our Hispanic friends.”
“Like that spic, Sam,” I said. I shouldn’t have bothered. It just rolled off that chubby blue suit.
“The deal is done, but it has to stay secret until I get rid of my payroll,” George said. “You signed a confidentiality agreement and I can have your ass in prison if you breathe a word of this to anyone. But I’ve got to have, you know, be in at the beginning, be able to give testimony on it when the time is right.”
“What?”
“Twenty-four Cubans. The twenty-four best Cuban baseball players. The best. The best ball players from one of the best baseball countries in the world. They’ve been living under Castro for more than thirty years, but they can play baseball. Castro plays baseball. It’s the national sport.”
I was understanding every word, but they weren’t really registering deep. I took a breath and then another,
“Next spring in Florida, Castro airlifts in twenty-four elite baseball players to play for the New York Yankees. You realize how much this cuts my payroll? I’m arranging for them to have rooms all together on a floor in the East Side Hotel.”
This was the name of a well-known SRO and welfare hotel on the east side of Manhattan. Its ambience is halfway between a YMCA residence and a West Texas county jail. It turned out later that George owns this high-rise semi-slum.
“George —”
“The deal costs me five million, half to the Cuban government, the rest to the ball players, Man, do you realize these kids who probably didn’t even have shoes when they were kids are going to have $100,000 a year each?”
“The union —”
“Fuck the fucking players’ union, this is bigger than them and there’s nothing they can do about it if the players’ green cards are sanctioned by the State Department. Man, they are going to have jobs. What’s the matter, are you prejudiced against Cubans?”
“George, you really thought this thing out?”
“This thing is a done deal, Ryan.”
“I don’t like this, I feel like I’ve been let in a conspiracy.”
“You been let in a last chance to rob me of another $625,000, Ryan. This ain’t shoveling shit in Louisiana, boy, this is real money and I know it and so do you. In fact, I know you know it, which is why you agreed to it.”
He had me there.
I looked at the contracts in my hand and folded them and put them in my sports coat. George might be crazy, but there were enough lunatics running the game these days to make anything seem sensible.
“What about the press?” I said. “The fans?”
“Fuck the fans and fuck the reporters. The fans will come if there’s a winning team on the held, and the reporters, as long as they get their free passes and their lunches comped, they’re irrelevant. Besides, this is a liberal town, Ryan, we’re not in West Bumfuck, Texas. I can see the editorials streaming out of the New York Times hailing me for my bold opening to Cuba and to restoring normalized relations blah-biah-blah.”
“Nobody who’s a fan reads editorials, George. They read the sports pages.”
“Let them read. I'm going to have a good team, better than the one I'm getting rid of, maybe the best team in baseball, and all in one year and all for a tenth of what I'm paying out now. Salaries and egos, that’s all I got on the field “
“And what do you want from me?”
“I want you to be present at the creation,” George said. “And I want you to parlez with them.”
“Surely you’re kidding.”
“I don’t call $625 thou a year kidding, Ryan. If you failed your Spanish test with Sam Ortiz, you would be in your fucking Buick now heading across the river to pick up your clothes and drive back to Texas. Believe me when I say it.”
“I believe you, George.”
“Besides, there are some on the team now speak Spanish. But I don’t trust them. They’re spies, and when they all get together, talking their Spanish jive, they’re tighter than clams in champagne. I need an Anglo on the team, sort of an identity thing, the leader of the rebels. Like John Wayne when he led all those Filipinos in that movie. You can be a spokesman for the players.”
Pimping for a bunch of Cuban scabs.
Man, Ryan, you must want it bad enough to sell your mother’s cow.
I looked at George and I couldn’t express how low I was feeling just then. I almost was ready to throw the contract on his desk and walk away from the whole mess. Go down to Houston and sell cars for Jack Wade. Talk it out with Charlene Cleaver, who could probably make sense of it for me and make me feel better.
George. I would have liked to have had the courage just then to pop him one in the middle of his white pudding face. But then what? I’d just see someone else come in to replace me. The grand gesture looks good in movies, but it seldom works in real life, I find. You want to quit, they say here’s your coat and hat. You want to be arrested over principle, hell, they arrest you and throw you in a cell with a three-hundred-pound colored ax murde
rer who hasn’t had pussy in six months.
I always have felt the need to stand up for something like a principle, bet I’ve never gotten to it. Well, not never. There was Kathleen Day in fifth grade and I stood up to Booker Longtree, who was teasing on her to the point of making her cry on the playground. I took him on for Kathleen Day. Booker beat the shit out of me, and when I got home Daddy did the same for fighting. I tried to tell him it wasn’t a fight, more like a slaughter, but Daddy wasn’t much on fine points of law. My last stand for principle.
“You got a problem with anything I said, Ryan?” George asked. He was pushing it now because he knew he’d won.
“You getting anyone good, George? From your buddy Fidel?”
“The best players money can buy.”
“You had those.”
“And they got fat and lazy and they didn’t care if they finished first or third. That’s the trouble with baseball today.”
“Everything’s the trouble with baseball today, George.”
“I got me lean tigers who love the game and play in the dirt and get cheered by peasants just like them. And they hardly make any money”
“Castro tell you this?”
“I know they ain’t making a hundred grand a year”
“Castro sent us those boat people that time, bunch of guys he had in prison. They came over here and did bad things here, too.”
“Castro had the Soviet Union bankrolling him then. He’s got too many fields of sugar canes now.”
“And he needs a field of dreams,” I said.
George beamed. It was his most hideous smile.
“I like that, Ryan. I really do. From field of canes to field of dreams. I like that, it appeals to … to what would you say? Sentiment? To some thing inspiring?”
Inspiring.
When would I learn to keep my absurd sense of poetry leashed?