The New York

by Bill Branger

  “And why not?”

  “Because you are going to sell the New York Yankees to a minority ownership consisting of Deke Williams, a former Yankee pitcher, and a consortium of Cuban businessmen in Miami, New York, and Chicago.”

  “I am doing no such thing.”

  “On the other hand, you could be looking at life in federal prison for kidnapping,” Mr. Johnson said. “All anyone has right now is suspicions. Charges. We don’t really have to get into this, do we, Mr. Bremenhaven? You can sell the team at a fair price and make a reasonable profit —- a very profitable profit — and go your own way. At the same time, Mr. Williams has demonstrated he has the wherewithal to become a black owner of a major league team, something we have neglected to have.“

  “But what about me?”

  Everyone looked at me.

  “You, Mr. Shawn, will manage the team in the Series and sign a contract for next year if you’re so inclined. Mr. Williams speaks highly of you. As does President Castro. We’ve backgrounded you nine ways from Sunday and you seem to be a reasonable American man who has no serious flaws we’ve detected. And you’re not to play with tape recorders anymore.”

  Apparently, we weren’t going to bring up that nasty old tape I made with Riccardo’s help. So that was all right.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I like compact discs better. Better sound quality.”

  “What the fuck is this about!” George screamed. But no one paid him any mind.

  “You’d be the ideal fellow to work for a black owner with a Cuban team and Cuban investors,” Johnson said to me as though George had disappeared.

  “Yeah, that and speaking Spanish.”

  “And learning not to peddle your conspiracy theories concerning the unfortunate kidnapping of that maid in the Plaza Hotel.”

  I looked at Johnson and the other government men and then at George and George was staring right through me the way he does. I knew he was thinking his way out of this thing but not finding any way.

  “What do I have to do?” he finally said.

  “Enjoy the World Series. And please be a good host to Mr. Deke Williams when he joins you in his box,” said Mr. Johnson.

  “I gotta sit with him, too?”

  “It’s part of our scenario,” Mr. Johnson said.

  “This is all your fault, Ryan, you son of a bitch.”

  Actually, it was, wasn’t it? The more I thought about it, the happier I became.

  “But what was Deke doing in Havana?” I asked Johnson.

  “This is about business, Ryan, and you don’t know anything about business. He was there because he contacted us through his senator. We liked his ideas, particularly in establishing an export fish business. And we like our … friends … to have friends. When George made the mistake of telling you of our scheme in opening ties to Cuba last winter, you told Mr. Williams. He saw the commercial possibilities.”

  “I told you to keep your fucking mouth shut!” George exploded and jumped out of his chair. One of the security men sat him down. He was shaking with rage.

  “Yeah, well. I only told Deke.”

  “'I only told Deke,’“ George mimicked. “And now that shine is going to take over my Yankees.”

  “You did it to yourself, George,” I said.

  “‘You did it to yourself,’“ he mimicked. It was getting dangerously childish, so I stopped speaking.

  “I hate this son of a bitch!” he explained to Mr. Johnson.

  Mr. Johnson said, “You are going to play ball, aren’t you, George?”

  We all waited.

  “Or there is federal court, prison, those things,” Mr. Johnson said.

  Yeah, well.

  George is cruel and mean, but he is a coward at heart. And just think, at the moment when his New York Yankees finally became American League champs, well, I tell you, the thought of it keeps me tickled to this day.

  And it was my fault in part, wasn’t it? I mean, involving George and Catfish and everyone? I didn’t know it at the time, but I think I know it now and that makes it even more fun, thinking about George and his ulcer and the way he couldn’t see his way out of a trap that was partly my making.

  You see, I ain’t an owner and he is.

  And that means, when you get to do a gotcha to an owner, why, you go ahead and do it.

  Gotcha.

  38

  Charlene and I got married that fall in the Riveredge Episcopal Church where her mother attends services. We went on our honeymoon in New Orleans, which is where everyone goes for a honeymoon, and Deke popped for the hotel room, which was very nice of him. For an owner, I mean. He also asked me to manage the Yanquis again and I told him yes. Everything was going along on an even keel.

  He became an owner in December when the majors approved his purchase of the Yankees from George. And George? Well, what would you say if I told you he ended up as ambassador to Guatemala? Yeah. That’s what I thought, too. I wonder if he had to learn Spanish.

  Now, in case you don’t know how the kids did in the World Series, well, that’s another whole story in itself and I’ll get around to telling it someday. Let’s just say that winning the American League pennant made them heroes in a couple of countries and Sid Cohen got someone to work up an instant book on them.

  Every day with Charlene is a different parade, and that’s mostly what I got out of that strange year. I was so darned busy not wanting to miss anything that marched through my life that I missed everything else. You know that Charlene knows the names of all the lowers? And that she reads the Wall Street Journal every morning just like it was as interesting as a regular paper? And that after church on Sunday, we can talk ourselves into an afternoon nap, just sitting together on the couch and not watching anything on TV? There were a lot of things I never knew were parades of their own and just as interesting as the ones I had been watching all these years.

  It goes to show you, don’t it?