The New York

by Bill Branger

  “He’s less than worthless,” the second guy said.

  “You want me to fix games?” I said to Baxter.

  “Not at all. That would be tinkering with the Pastime. Not at all. You said it yourself. These are kids, first time up. They can’t carry this off.”

  “Remember the Philadelphia Whiz Kids?” I said.

  “No,” Baxter said. “And I don’t want to remember anything except that the Yankees had a decent year and didn’t do anything to embarrass us, or Cuba, or the game.”

  “Keep talking like that, they’ll make you commissioner.”

  “You think this is a joke?”

  “Since you guys are busy spying on me, tell me this — who sent those letters to Charlene? From Roxanne Devon.”

  “Who?”

  “You know who “

  Baxter blinked. “We don’t read people’s mail”

  It was my turn to blink. I sipped my MGD.

  “You got the picture, Ryan?” Baxter said.

  “Why let all these Cubans in in the first place if you were just wanting to go halfway?”

  “I don’t make those decisions.”

  “Come on, Baxter.”

  “Maybe it got out of hand. Maybe Bremenhaven smoked the people at State. Maybe Castro came up with the idea as a non-negotiable demand. He’s been stonewalling us for thirty-five years and this is the first chink we’ve seen in the wall he’s built up. He’s crazy abut baseball”

  “Just crazy, I’d say,” I said.

  “This is the hand been dealt. We don’t want brawls on the field, we don’t want the Cubans to wear out their welcome —”

  “What welcome? Empty seats at first. Then death threats.”

  “There’s always a contingent.”

  “We neutralize opposition.”

  “This is baseball,” Baxter explained.

  Baseball.

  “So what it comes down to is you want them to play and play semi-hard but not so hard that it might upset anyone.”

  Baxter and the second one just stared at me.

  “And you give me the booga-booga about Jack Wade just to make sure I know where I stand.”

  Again, silence.

  And that’s when I really started to get hot. And no one knew it at the time but that was the start of the whole thing for me. This goes back to fourth grade and fighting for a girl and getting whupped by my Dad and getting into a fight over a Mexican in that Billy Bob bar on the road to Galveston. And George himself.

  It was everything and nothing but it was settling down into my craw and these two boobs from the government wouldn’t have understood it if I explained it slow.

  “You got the picture?” Baxter said.

  “It makes me sick,” I said.

  “Sensitive,” said the second guy.

  “Fuck you, No Neck. I ain’t throwing games.”

  “Nobody asked you to.”

  “You practically did.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did too. Double-did too “

  “Cracking wise,” said the other.

  “Yeah, cracking wise,” I said. “Someone has to be.” I tried to cool down then, I really did. “It don’t matter anyway.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  “Making threats. You think I could get them to win the pennant if I knew how? I never been on a team that wins the pennant.”

  “That’s to the good,” Baxter said.

  To the good.

  27

  Did I say it was a long season?

  You play twenty or thirty games in spring training and then you do the regular season, which is 162 games long spread from the cold winds of April to the cold winds at the end of September. Then the playoffs start. There are eight teams in the playoffs, which start with a best three of five series and then go into another best three of five series to determine who gets in the World Series. Finally, in the absolute freezing cold of October, depending on which part of the country you’re in, we have a World Series, which is the best four of seven. By this time, the other sports are up and running. Hockey is in the exhibition season and so is pro basketball, and pro and college football is already about half over. So when I say that baseball is a long season, I am talking about a lifetime.

  The kids were kids until they hit their first big slump. We lost five in a row and the boo-birds were out in force every night.

  I tried shifting them around, but nothing was working. All you can do as a manager is take the heat from the media and try to keep up the confidence of the kids. It was tough, but that’s why I get the big bucks.

  George.

  George really hit it off with Charlene, but thank God she had to go back to Houston and work. I had enough trouble trying to handle George without her being around.

  George was doing his crazy act during that losing streak. He fired me twice in a row and then undid it before game time when the reality set in. I’ve seen George fire lots of people, and when he fired me twice, it was like I was watching someone else or reruns. He ranted and raved and said I was a worthless son of a bitch and that I had shit for brains and the rest of it. I figured if I could make the firing stick just once, I would be home free because he’d have to pay off my contract. I didn’t want any more government guys in my life.

  But it didn’t stick. The only constant during the streak was Raul Guevara. It seemed the sadder and lonelier he got, the better he hit. He was batting .436 and there was talk in more than one newspaper that he would be the first man to hit over .400 since Ted Williams did it in 1941. Even when we lost a game, he hit. I tried to cheer him up more than once and we spent a couple of afternoons on off-days at the Tapas bar, listening to stories of old Havana from Señor José Martí Riccardo. I got an education from that old man, and even though I knew the FBI was listening in on the conversation, I didn’t give a fuck.

  The other thing about the losing streak was that Baxter and the other guy probably thought I was doing what I was told to do. I admit I made a few bonehead errors. Managing is like baseball, a game of probables and inches. I left the starters in too long and then spent too long trying to cheer them up afterward.

  One night, pissed off, I let them have it.

  “You, Raul. You come up here and you translate.”

  We were in the clubhouse right before a game with the Orioles. It was warm and it smelled like spring in old Camden Yards, which are really not old but look like they should be. We were on a four-game skid and I was getting sick of it, of the players and of myself.

  Raul came by me, but he looked around at the others in an embarrassed way.

  “I want to tell you the truth,” I began, like a liar. “They love you out there.”

  Raul looked startled, but he translated.

  They looked startled, too, and Tío smiled as though he was looking for love.

  “They love a loser when you’re playing their team.”

  He translated.

  “They love to see you act like a bunch of dumb hayseeds. Peasants. Plowboys.”

  A rough translation this time.

  “You play like girls,” I said.

  This was to appeal to their macho.

  They weren’t smiling now.

  “Pussies,” I said.

  Raul rendered it.

  “You think you’re big league because Uncle Fidel made a deal with George to ship, your asses up here. But George just wants to break the union and you’re nothing but scabs who couldn’t carry a Triple A jockstrap.”

  This took time and I had to correct Raul and he finally said “Say it yourself” and sat down. So I tried to stem-wind in a foreign language:

  — Pussies. You eat pussy, you are pussy. You spread your legs out there. Whores, that’s what you are, because you get paid for it. Worse than whores. You don’t even work that hard at it. Tomas, you play like your grandmother.

  Tío was on his feet. I didn’t notice he had a bat until just then. If I had, I would have picked someone else.

&nbs
p; — You know what happened to me in New York? They told me that you were losers. Two men from the government. From Washington. They said it was all right. They said they didn’t want a bunch of pussies from Havana to ruin the game by winning the pennant. Well, I told them not to worry. I said there was no way you could win a pennant because you were all pussies. I said you would lose to anyone and everyone to uphold the honor of the United States of America and the honor of baseball. Castro says you are the best. Well, if you are the best, then Cuba sucks eggs. The worst team in the league is better than you pussies and I’m sick of you. Sick. But I’m not worried. George is going to have to fire me for real one of these days and then I go home to Texas with my money and I never have to see you again.

  Raul stood up again.

  — Señor, you do not believe what you say. “Fuck I don’t.”

  — Who told you these things? That we were meant to lose?

  — Baxter for one. Romero for another. (I was rolling.) And George said it would be all right by him if you lost because he’s got income tax troubles. If he wins he has to go to jail. I mean, if you win. Which you won’t.

  — You mean, if he wins, he goes to jail? “Fifteen years minimum,” I said.

  Some of them shook their heads. They understood going to jail for incomprehensible reasons.

  — Then we should continue to lose?

  — It’s the best thing for the country.

  — The country?

  — U. S. of A. America.

  — But what if we do not lose? (Raul asked).

  — You start winning and you bring shame to America and I won’t stand for it.

  — You are pretending.

  Yes, I was. I was thinking of how hot I still was at those goons that came to my room in Fort Lee and I was trying to bring the heat over to this, but it wouldn’t work. So I tried to show them.

  — Raul, I’m benching you tonight.

  Silence. I expected an outburst, but there was silence.

  — Bench?

  — Bench. As in, on your ass,

  — Why, Señor Shawn?

  — Because you’re the only chance we have to win. Look at them. Pathetic. Tomas plays grounders like he’s a croquet wicket, right between his legs. Pathetic. You might make it, Raul, and I can’t take a chance.

  — You betray us?

  — Only for America.

  Raul shook his head, “No, you want us to win.”

  He was even smiling. Thank God he was the only one. So I wiped the smile off his face the only way I knew how. I gave him the shot I should have given George when this all came up last fall.

  Raul went down in a rattle of bats. The others were on their feet, but they weren’t coming toward me. I stood over Raul and said, “Suarez, when you’re pitching tonight, the one thing I don’t wanna see is any more of that inside stuff, you understand?”

  — Señor, you taught me to pitch inside.

  — That’s when I thought you were going to be a ball player. Forget it now. Have a good time, don’t take any chances out there, they might turn ugly on you. On all you pussies.

  Two brawls that night. I had to pinch-hit Raul in the eighth and he homered and won the game. The lovely Baltimore fans decorated us with beer cups and Cracker Jack boxes as we went back to the dugout after the ninth. I gave them the finger and that got me thrown out of the game. The League was not amused and I was suspended for a game. The Baltimore Sun said that the Yankees acted more like Caribbean Pirates, not the Pittsburgh kind.

  Raul was only semi-fooled, but he treated me cool for days after that. It was just as well. I had enough heat in me for the whole team and the entire State Department. I was so fed up that I called up Charlene on the road just to fight with her and got my wish. That sobered me a little because we were going to Texas again and I wanted to see her in the worst way, so I called up in Chicago and made an apology and a half, and she half-took it.

  We warmed up toward the end of May and found our winning ways again. I saw Charlene for three straight days when we dipped down to Arlington to play the Texas Rangers, but Raul managed to spoil that, too.

  Charlene came to the second game and I got her good seats behind the dugout, which she didn’t appreciate probably because she didn’t really appreciate baseball. She wore dark slacks and a light blouse with a red bandanna around her neck. She also wore sunglasses that worked for her, even though it was the middle of the night.

  Raul wanted to know if this was my girl so I introduced him to Charlene. He said he was honored and he kissed her hand, which charmed the hell out of her and she sort of giggled the way she does. And she took off her sunglasses to see him better and, I suppose, let him see her pretty eyes. Raul took it in, inhaled even, and then smiled at her.

  Then he said to me in perfectly understandable non-Ricky-Ricardo English, “You must marry this beautiful woman before another man steals her heart.”

  Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. He was like a talking dog, is all. Charlene was so honored that she batted her eyes and waved every time Raul came to bat or trotted to the dugout. She said she wanted tickets for the next game. I told her they were all sold out, which was not true because you can’t sell out baseball in Texas.

  June is when the pitchers are supposed to lose their edge because the hitters are always slower in coming along. I didn’t think it was possible for Raul to hit any better, but he did, raising his average to a phenomenal .452, which is scarcely human.

  We had a doubleheader in Boston and Raul went nine for nine. Nine for nine. He didn’t have no home runs, though, because of his line-drive style of hitting, which hit the big Green Monster wall in left and merely turned into doubles. I saw the bright side of things, nine for nine, and congratulated him, but he was just too angry and upset to get happy.

  —- That fucking wall, I hate that wall, why do they allow a ballpark with a wall like that?

  — Because it’s always been this way, I guess.

  A team from People magazine went down to Havana and did a profile on Raul and his family and friends and even included a nice picture of Maria Velasquez.

  This, in retrospect, was probably a mistake. Castro loved the publicity and Raul’s family and friends loved it, too, and so did George. Anything Castro and George could agree on was bound to be trouble for someone.

  Raul got a copy of People in New York and wore it out reading it over and over. He tore out the photograph of Maria and placed it in a Wool-worth photo frame and put it on Ms desk in the hotel room. And commenced to write another stem-winding letter to Maria back home.

  One night, I tried to shake him out of his melancholy by taking him to the bar in the Ed Sullivan Theater building where they shoot the David Letterman show. I just wanted to get him out of the hotel and I didn’t want the FBI to be hearing what I had to say to him because I was going to tell Raul the truth about being lovesick.

  This was time for a little heart-to-heart with Raul and I was up for the occasion. We didn’t start with the birds and the bees, because I assumed he knew about that stuff, being a hot-blooded Latin and all. But I went right into the honey pot and pulled out love.

  “Love, Raul, is not everything.” It was a start. Pretty blunt, but you have to start somewhere. I waited for his response.

  “It is the only thing,” he said. His English was picking up, but I couldn’t point out that he was really quoting Vince Lombard! on football.

  — Raul (I said, going back to Spanish), love is a great thing. It is beautiful It is nice and gets you through bad moments. When you are in love, you can eat bologna and like it. When you are in love, you notice sunsets. When you are in love, Raul, you wear purple shirts because your girl likes them. Love is full of crazy shit like that. I know, I know, I been there. But it is not the only thing, the way you make it. You make yourself sick with love and that is not good. Beer. This beer is a good thing. We drink beer and we feel good. But if we drink too much beer, we feel bad. Why do we feel bad? Be
cause it is too much. Too much love is bad.

  — I cannot help myself, Señor Shawn. My body is on ire with love every moment of the day every moment of the night. I dream of love, I think of love, I stare for hours at her photograph in People magazine.

  — Look, Raul. When the season is over, you can go home and get married. Then you can have all the love you want and it’ll be right there waiting for you. It wouldn’t be the worst thing for you now to relieve … well, to get rid of your tensions.

  He smiled at me.

  — You mean, to “handle” it?

  — Well, that too. It’s not for me to tell you what to do but you got to give yourself a break, Raul.

  — You are so cool, so North American. You have a beautiful woman in Houston in Texas who loves you, but you go about your business as if it didn’t matter. You do not write her, you told me that yourself. Do you expect her to wait and wait and wait? I have met her. A woman like that does not need to wait and wait. She is not ugly. You are a fool to let her be alone without you in Texas.

  I was suddenly getting a clue. There were a lot of hoofprints and it wasn’t that clean a clue, but it was a clue nonetheless, Raul was talking about himself. The truth is, I figured it out too late. He was a hot-blooded Cuban, he knew that the country was full of hot-blooded Cubans just like him and that Maria Velasquez was a looker. He was talking about his own anxiety, which is why he was up half the night writing letters and verses to Maria, to keep her distracted from all the male humanity around her.

  Which led me to think about Charlene again. Not that Charlene couldn’t wait a bit, she was thirty-five years old and she could control herself when she had to. Besides, she was English, I think, and there wasn’t a trace of Latin in her.

  Still, she filled out that green dress she wore like someone inspired, like someone who never even read the Wall Street Journal

  — Señor, what are you thinking of?

  — I was just thinking.

  — You were thinking of your woman. “Along those lines.”

  — And I am thinking of my beloved as well.

  — Yeah, well. Here we are on Broadway in New York on a hot June night and there’s not much we can do about it, is there? Except get drunk.