by Bill Branger
George, to his credit, took this all in as if it made perfect sense. He just nodded his head like one of those toy dogs that the Mexicans carry around in the rear windows of their cars.
“Miss Cleaver. I’m sorry that your distress made you travel two thousand miles on the spur of the moment but I am also pleased that it gave me the opportunity to meet you. If I were a younger man, I would be willing to fight Ryan Shawn right now for the sake of having a chance to try to win your hand. But” — he shrugged and sighed — “I’m an old man and I’ve had my day. I just hoped that, at the end of my day, I would be able to make some gesture, some little step forward for the game that has been so good to me and for the country that I love.”
“He means he fired his fifty-million-dollar payroll and picked up twenty-four homesick Cuban kids for next to nothing and then went out to sell the country that he was doing it for the good of baseball,” I said.
“My country has asked me to make a gesture of friendship to the Cuban people, to show that we can all live in the world in peace and harmony —”
“If George owned ‘Sesame Street’ he’d put it on pay-per-view TV,” I explained to Charlene.
“I met the President and I spent the night in the White House. In Lincoln’s bedroom. I saw Lincoln,” George said.
“Really?” Charlene said.
“He nodded to me as though he was saying I was doing the right thing,” George said.
“He just wanted you to free the slaves who work for you,” I said.
Charlene gave me that “shush” look and said, “You really saw Abraham Lincoln?”
“His ghost,” George said modestly. “That’s when I knew I was doing the right thing, reaching out the hand of friendship, not to Fidel Castro, but to the wonderful people of Cuba.”
“How come you never told me any of this, Ryan?” Charlene said, turning on me.
“Charlene, the only person George ever helped was George, and if he ever reaches out his hand of friendship, make sure you’ve got your wallet locked up.”
“Is this the way you talk to someone who’s made you a major league baseball manager?” Charlene said. “I’m surprised that Mr. Bremenhaven puts up with this.”
“George,” George said.
“George,” Charlene said,
“I get abuse all the time. I get it from the fans and from the press and from the players. I’m everyone’s favorite punching bag, but I try to do my best as God lets me see to do my best.”
“I think you owe Mr. Bremenhaven an apology, Ryan. You’ve been very rude.”
“Charlene, you want me to quit the team or don’t you? You don’t make this easy.”
“I just don’t want you to take me for granted, Ryan — think I’m just the girl in the Houston port of call. I don’t give a fiddle for whoever this Miss Roxanne Devon is, doesn’t even have the courage to tell me where she lives or give her phone number or nothing.”
“Whoever she is,” George said, “Ryan would be crazy to even think about giving up a woman like yourself.”
“Thank you, Mr. —”
“Just George. Everyone calls me George.”
“George,” she said.
“So why don’t you apologize, Ryan, and shake hands with the man? He is paying you an awful lot of money and I don’t think you have any complaint.”
This was ridiculous and I was damned if I was going to shake hands with a snake in the grass like Old George, but I saw that I was doing it anyway and George was slapping me on the shoulder in that hearty rah-rah way of his, saying, “Ryan, maybe it was a good thing to take those spies around New York yesterday. I just wish you’d have let the press know, they could have followed you, it would have been great publicity. Tell you what, let’s do it again tomorrow, the Statue of Liberty thing. Were they impressed?”
“They were cold. It was cold yesterday”
“We don’t want anyone to catch cold.”
“Then why don’t you turn up the heat in that welfare slum you own on the East Side?”
“Ryan Patrick, you watch yourself!”
“Honey, he does own a slum hotel on the East Side. That’s where he keeps his ball players. They got nothing to do all day, they’re trapped in a city they don’t understand, and they don’t speak very good English to boot. All they know is that Castro wants them to play baseball for the Yankees.”
“We might get a segment on ‘Good Morning, America.’ I met Joan Lunden a couple of weeks ago at Le Cirque,” George rattled on.
“George, we ain’t going to see the Statue of Liberty again. You want to put these kids on the news so that Castro gets a hard-on for them? Then what are you gonna do about next year when you want them back?”
“Castro has a contract.”
“George, I just told you to shove your contract up your ass and I ain’t even half as mean as Fidel Castro,” I explained.
“He can’t do that to me,” George said.
“George, he was gonna bomb the whole fucking country once until Kennedy stood up to the Russians. Castro is not afraid of George Bremenhaven looking cross-eyed at him.”
“Well, we have a contract. There’s levels and levels to this thing you wouldn’t understand, Ryan “
“I’m sure there are, George,” Charlene said. “And I’m sure we’ve taken enough of your time over nothing. Ryan, say good-bye to Mr. Bremenhaven — George — and let’s get out of this busy man’s way. I was pleased to meet you, George.”
The slimy shit took her hand again and milked the pinkies a bit longer than was seemly, but Charlene didn’t seem to mind. He did his little Adolph Menjou bow again and said, “Would you be my guest in my private box for the game tonight, Miss Cleaver?”
“Well, I was thinking about getting back to Houston.”
“What do you do in Houston, Miss Cleaver?”
“I’m a nutritionist at Rice University Hospital Center,” Charlene said, still letting him hold her hand.
“Fascinating,” George said, “I really would like it very much if you would be my guest tonight. We can have a little dinner catered in and watch Ryan and his boys jump on the White Sox.”
“You gotta get back to work,” I said to Charlene.
“Oh, Ryan. I have time off coming and I’ve never been in New York City before. It might be fun, George. I would like to be your guest very much.”
I happen to know that Charlene Cleaver, like most Texas men and women, despises baseball. The sports calendar for them begins in September when footballs fill the air and their clogged little thinking compartments. I have heard Charlene do a rundown on the Oilers or on Rice or any team you want to mention and give you the strong points and weak points without dropping a stitch along the way, but when it comes to baseball, she does this big yawn and prepares to wait the game out. She’s seen a few games over by Arlington just because I was playing for the Yanks, but that’s as far as it goes with her. And now she was volunteering to be in the company of a living turd like George through an entire evening of baseball played in 40 degree weather. Figure it out and send the answer to me by Federal Express.
“Tell me, Miss Cleaver —”
“Charlene”
“Charlene, would you mind terribly if the meal is vegetarian? I’ve given up meat, for the most part —”
“Oh, I love vegetarian cuisine,” she said. “Ryan tries to eat better than when I first met him, but sometimes he just goes pig crazy like this one time this winter at a barbecue —”
“I know, I know, When they’re young, they think they’ll live forever.”
“George, last time I saw you in Los Angeles you were tucking into a sixteen-ouncer from Kansas City,” I said with devastating accuracy.
“No, Ryan. You might have seen me eating meat a couple of years ago, but I’ve learned sensible eating now. If you don’t mind, Miss Cleaver, you can have meat if you wish —-”
This man was hitting on my woman by pretending to be a vegetarian. I knew what he was doing, he wa
s just practicing. I knew that Charlene wouldn’t fall for him, but he just wanted to stick the knife in me to see if I was well done. I would have admired it if it wasn’t personal.
We got out of there with our wallets unpicked. I took Charlene in a cab down to the Village and bought her lunch. I was so mad at things in general that I ordered a beer and a plate of ribs.
And no salad.
If Charlene noticed, she didn’t say anything because she saw the way I was. She ate her fish and salad and her veggies and I just watched her.
“What an exciting place this is,” she said once.
“Where?”
“The city. It just seems to throb with life,” she said.
“You ought to hear the garbage trucks at one in the morning.”
“Oh, don’t see a negative in everything,” she said.
“Charlene, you came to New York all because of a phony letter written by one of George’s stooges and so I go over to punch out George and quit the team and give up my baseball career, all for you I might add, Charlene, and you end up making a date with the son of a bitch.”
“It’s not a date, Ryan. He’s just very, very charming and you paint such a negative picture of him,” she said.
“George Bremenhaven is a menace to society. He is also the worst thing to happen to baseball since the Black Sox threw the 1919 World Series. You can’t believe a word he says, and that’s on his truthful days. Vegetarian. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets his kicks watching them slaughter pigs in a rendering plant.”
“That’s disgusting,” she said.
“George is disgusting, Charlene, I can’t believe you agreed to go to his box in the Stadium tonight, I really can’t.”
“I’m just doing it for you, Ryan,” she said.
“For me? For me? Don’t do it for me, for pity’s sake.”
“For your career,” she said.
“My career? Nine o’clock this morning you were accusing me of keeping a babe on the side in New Jersey and I was willing to quit the whole thing to satisfy you. Now you’re going to be courted by a swine like George Bremenhaven to advance my career. What career, exactly?”
“In baseball, maybe even in politics someday. You are part of a great experiment, trying to bridge the gap between our two countries.”
“I’m the manager because I speak Spanish and it’s cheaper for George,” I said. “The kids are playing decent ball, but it’s a long season and it’ll get worse before it gets better. These kids play like kids, they get all het up by the game and it’s fun to to watch them win, but when they have to lose — and everyone loses sooner or later — they won’t have anything to carry them through the bad period. It can get very bad, Charlene. That’s the thing about baseball — it’s a very, very long season.”
I could see that Charlene didn’t believe a word I was telling her. Her evening with George had temporarily turned her against me and she was seeing the old, shiftless ball player that I used to be before maturity set in.
But, dammit, she was making me mad, with her thinking I was someone I wasn’t anymore.
So I shut up and ate my meat to spite her.
26
Charlene and I went back to Fort Lee by cab again around 3:30 P.M. to beat the rush hour. The cabbie cursed my directions but still managed to find the Holiday Inn for Charlene. She gave me a peck of a kiss and a bye-bye and a pickup order for six P.M.
I walked back to my apartment building. I took the elevator up and shoved the key in the lock and opened the door on my little world.
Except it wasn’t my little world at that moment.
There were two men inside, one of them Baxter.
I didn’t even say, “What are you guys doing here?” I just stood in the door and waited a moment.
“Come in, Ryan,” Mr. Baxter said.
I let the door close behind me. I dropped the keys on the table and just stood there.
“We have to talk to you.”
“You coming from George?”
“No.”
“Then what do we talk about?”
“About you. About what you have in mind. We want to talk about that little trip yesterday.”
“What trip?”
Baxter said, in a calm voice, “To the fucking Statue of Liberty is what.”
The second man said nothing. He studied me like a pitching coach in Triple A.
“What are you doing? You proselytzing for the U.S. of A.? You want one of those pups to defect, is that it?”
“I don’t want nothing except to play ball and get through this miserable season,” I said. “Why? Something wrong with going out to the Statue of Liberty?”
“Yeah, there’s something wrong,” the second one said finally. He spent his words like a tightwad peeling them off a roll held by a rubber band.
“Who are you? He’s George’s lackey, but who are you?”
“The fucking G is who,” the second one said.
“Ryan, you were not the man we would have picked for your job”
“Thank God you’re not scouts,” I said.
“This is a very, very delicate business. You were the one who told that kid, Suarez, to bean Tradup in the first game.”
“Who told you that?”
“We know things, Ryan, That’s why we are who we are,” Baxter said. This was definitely not the Baxter the Lackey I saw in George’s company. I took off my jacket and threw it on the bed and went into the kitchen and popped a can of Miller, I didn’t offer them one.
“Three brawls in the first ten games. This unsettles certain … expectations we had,” Baxter said.
“What kind of expectations?”
“We’re trying to open a door here. To the Caribbean. These are good ball players, right?”
“They’re half-good,” I said.
“Good enough to play in the major leagues?”
“They’re there, aren’t they?”
“You said last night they weren’t that good. Did you mean it?”
I tried to think back. And then I flushed. I felt my red face getting redder. “You bugged my conversation with those guys in that Tapas place?”
“Did you say it?”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“Hey, fuck you,” said the second guy, the one with no name.
“Yeah, that’s putting it crudely, Ryan, but there it is. Fuck you. We arrested Jack Wade day before yesterday.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Everything. You were going to work for Jack this winter. He was bringing up cars from Mexico and he was keeping a separate book on them. Shiny American cars, made in Mexico, but he was selling them without a tariff stamp and without telling the government or the auto maker about it.”
“I thought we were all free traders now with Mexico.”
“Not free like that, Ryan. You were part of his operation.”
“I never worked for him.”
“He gave you a car.”
“He sold me a car. I got the bill of sale.”
“Is that right?”
“Fuck you guys, both of you. What is this about?”
“About your players, Ryan. You just manage them and let them do what they have to do and well seed them all back intact to Cuba come fall. They can’t win the pennant, can they?”
“Everyone has a chance,” I said.
It was the wrong thing to say.
“No, I don’t think they have a chance,” Baxter said.
“It’s a matter of time will tell,” I said. That’s what I tell baseball writers.
“It wouldn’t look good for major league baseball if a team of rookies, a team of Cuban rookies, won the American League East. Or, God forbid, the pennant.”
“Why?”
It was a lonely little question. I couldn’t figure out these guys.
“You said in your best judgment that the team wasn’t good enough to win the pennant.”
“I was trying to knock Raul into a realistic appro
ach to the game. To the season. It’s a long season.”
“We’re trying to … make friends in an unlikely way. With Cuba. For the post-Castro era, which is inevitable. We can pepper the big leagues with Cuban stars, that’s okay. But we can’t have a Cuban team win the pennant. And we are not making friends, not any of us, when you encourage your players to play dirty and get into fights.”
“I don’t encourage fights.”
“You encourage them to bean opposing batters.”
“Well, yeah. Sort of. You got to establish respect.”
“Fuck respect. What if one of those kids kills someone? It would set us back fifty years.”
“It’s statistically unlikely. Only one guy ever got killed getting beaned in the whole history of baseball.”
“That means it can happen again. We don’t want it to happen to the Yankees.”
“George didn’t say anything about that —”
Without a cue, Baxter started screaming, “Fuck George Bremenhaven, starfucking asshole. He’s got his own troubles. He wants to be useful. He’s got income tax problems, he’s got property problems, he belongs to us. He doesn’t know shit about what we’re trying to do here.”
“What are you trying to do?”
“Open the door. Feed Fidel a little honey and sugar until he keels over someday and we can get on working with the next crowd in office.”
“This has got to be more than just giving Fidel $2.5 million to let his players play here.”
The second man said, “Bright boy”
“Maybe it is. But your role, Ryan, is to keep your head down and let the players play and keep them away from distractions that might give them happy feet,”
“I thought that was Romero’s job.”
“He’s not competent. The Cubans sent him as a chaperone. You think he’s a competent chaperone?” Baxter said.
“He buys knockoff leather coats that ain’t worth a shit,” I said.