by Rick Wilber
He came back and stood at the top of the dugout steps. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell. I didn’t then, and I won’t now.”
Weaver left, and Fidel sat in the dugout.
15
They used the photo of George’s painfully shy, crooked smile, a photograph taken in the locker room after he’d been named MVP of the 1959 World Series, on his first campaign poster.
In front of the photographers and reporters, George was greeted by Mr. Griffith. And his father. Prescott Bush wore a political smile as broad as his experience of what was necessary to impress the world. He put his arm around his son’s shoulders, and although George was a tall man, it was apparent that his father was still a taller one.
“I’m proud of you, son,” Prescott said, in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone. ‘You’ve shown the power of decency and persistence in the face of hollow boasts.”
Guys were spraying champagne, running around with their hair sticky and their shirts off, whooping and shouting and slapping each other on the back. Even his father’s presence couldn’t entirely deflect George’s satisfaction. He had done it. Proved himself for once and for all. He wished Bar and the boys could be there. He wanted to shout in the streets, to stay up all night, be pursued by beautiful women. He sat in front of his locker and patiently answered the reporters’ questions at length, repeatedly. Only gradually did the furor settle down. George glanced across the room to the brightly lit comer where Prescott was talking, oil camera, with a television reporter.
It was clear that his father was setting him up for this planned political career. It infuriated him that he assumed he could control George so easily, but at the same time George felt confused about what he really wanted for himself. As he sat there in the diminishing chaos, Lavagetto came over and sat down beside him. The manager was still high from the victory.
“I don’t believe it!” Lavagetto said. “I thought he was crazy, but old Tricky Dick must have known something I didn’t!”
“What do you mean?”
“Mean?—nothing. Just that the President called after the first game and told me to bat you behind Killebrew. I thought he was crazy. But it paid off.”
George remembered Prescott Bush whispering into Nixon’s ear. He felt a crushing weight on his chest. He stared over at his father in the TV lights, not hearing Lavagetto.
But as he watched, he wondered. If his father had indeed fixed the Series, then everything he’d accomplished came to nothing. But his father was an honorable man. Besides, Nixon was noted for his sports obsession, hill of fantasies because he hadn’t succeeded himself. His calling Lavagetto was the kind of thing he would do anyway. Winning had been too hard for it to be a setup. No, Castro had wanted to humiliate George, and George had stood up to him.
The reporter finished talking to his father; the TV lights snapped off. George thanked Lavagetto for the faith the manager had shown in him, and limped over to Prescott Bush.
“Feeling pretty good, George?”
“It was a miracle we won. I played above myself.”
“Now, don’t take what I said back in New York so much to heart. You proved yourself equal to the challenge, that’s what.” Prescott lowered his voice. “Have you thought any more about the proposition I put to you?”
George looked his father in the eye. If Prescott Bush felt any discomfort, there was no trace of it in his patrician’s gaze.
“I guess maybe I’ve played enough baseball,” George said.
His father put his hand on George’s shoulder; it felt like a burden. George shrugged it off and headed for the showers.
Many years later, as he faced the Washington press corps in the East Room of the White House, George Herbert Walker Bush was to remember that distant afternoon, in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series, when he’d stood in the batter’s box against the Franchise. He had not known then what he now understood: that, like his father, he would do anything to win.
Max Apple's stories and essays have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Esquire and Best American Stories, and he has published two collections, two books of non-fiction and two novels. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He taught creative writing at Rice University for nearly thirty years and now teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania. Apple is known for his quiet satire and sharp wit. In this story he reduces Fidel Castro and Cuba's troubled relationship with the United States to a few pitches and some dubious diplomacy on a makeshift baseball diamond in Oriente Province.
Understanding Alvarado
Max Apple
CASTRO THOUGHT IT WAS no accident that Achilles “Archie” Alvarado held the world record for being hit in the head by a pitched ball.
“Because he was a hero even then,” Fidel said, “because he stood like a hero with his neck proudly over the plate.”
When people asked Mrs. Alvarado what she thought of her husband’s career, she said, “Chisox okay, the rest of the league stinks. Archie, he liked to play every day, bench him and his knees ached, his fingers swelled, his tongue forgot English. He would say, ‘Estelle, let’s split, let’s scram, vámonos a Cuba. What we owe to Chisox?’
“I’d calm him down. ‘Arch,’ I’d say, ‘Arch, Chisox have been plenty good to us. Paid five gees more than Tribe, first-class hotels, white roomies on the road, good press.’
“‘Estelle,’ he would say, ‘I can’t take it no more. They got me down to clubbing in the pinch and only against southpaws. They cut Chico Carrasquel and Sammy Esposito and Cactus Bob Kuzava. What we owe to Chisox?’
“When it got like that, I would say, ‘Talk to Zloto,’ and Zloto would say, ‘Man, you Latinos sure are hotheads. I once got nine hits in a row for the Birds, was
Rookie of the Year for the Bosox. I have the largest hands in either league and what do you think I do? I sit on the bench and spit-shine my street shoes. Look there, you can see your greasy black mug in 'em.’ Zloto always knew how to handle Alvarado.”
Zloto came to Havana, showed Fidel his hands, talked about the '50s. Fidel said, “They took our good men and put them in Yankee uniforms, in Bosox, Chisox, Dodgers, Birds. They took our manhood, Zloto. They took our Achilles and called him Archie. Hector Gonzalez they called Ramrod, Jesus Ortiz they made a Jayo. They treated Cuban manhood like a bowl of chicos and ricos. Yes, we have no bananas but we got vine-ripened Latinos who play good ball all year, stick their heads over the plate, and wait for the Revolution. Fidel Castro gave it to them. It was three and two on me in Camagüey around November 1960. There were less than two dozen of us. Batista had all roads blocked and there was hardly enough ammunition left to kill some rabbits. He could have starved us out but he got greedy, he wanted the quick inning. When I saw that he was coming in with his best stuff with his dark one out over the middle, I said to Che and to Francisco Muñiz, ‘Habana for Christmas,’ and I lined his fascist pitch up his capitalist ass.”
“I’m not impressed,” Zloto said. “When I heard about the Bay of Pigs I said to myself, ‘Let’s wipe those oinks right off the face of the earth.’ You took Cuba, our best farm property, and went Commie with it. You took our best arms, Castro, our speed and our curve-ball artists. You dried up our Cuban diamonds.”
“Zloto, Zloto,” Fidel said. “Look at this picture of your buddy, ‘Archie’ Alvarado, Don’t you like him better as ‘Achilles’? Look at his uniform, look at his AK 47 rifle.”
“I liked him better when he was number twenty-three and used a thirty-six-inch Hillerich and Bradsby Louisville Slugger to pound out line drives in Comiskey Park.”
“There’s no more Comiskey Park,” Fidel said. “No more Grace, no more Chuck Comiskey to come down after a tough extra-inning loss and buy a drink for the whole clubhouse. No more free Bulova watches. The Chisox are run by an insurance company now. You punch a time clock before batting practice and they charge f
or overtime in the whirlpool bath.”
“That’s goddamn pinko propaganda,” Zloto said.
“You’ve been outta the game, big Victor,” Fidel said. “You’ve been sitting too long out in Arizona being a dental assistant. You haven’t been on the old diamonds, now AstroTurfed, closed to the sun, and air-conditioned. You have not seen the bleachers go to two-fifty. While you’ve been in Arizona the world changed, Zloto. Look at our Achilles, four fractured skulls, thirteen years in the big time. Played all over the outfield, played first and played third. A lifetime mark of two ninety-nine and RBIs in the thousands. He never got an Achilles day from Chisox, Bosox, Tribe, or Birds. When he came home Fidel made him a day, made him a reservist colonel. I did this because Achilles Alvarado is not chickenshit. You, Zloto, know this better than anyone.
“Achilles said to me the first time we met, ‘Fidel, the big time is over for Archie Alvarado, but send me to the cane fields, give me a machete, and I’ll prove that Alvarado has enough arm left to do something for Cuba.’ A hero, this Achilles ‘Archie’ Alvarado, but they sent him back to us a broken-down, used-up pinch hitter with no eye, no arm, and no speed.
“‘Achilles, Archie,’ I said, ‘the Revolution was not made for Chisox, Bosox, Bengals, and Birds. We didn’t take Habana for chicos and ricos. Cuba Libre doesn’t give a flying fuck for RBIs. The clutch hit is every minute here, baby brother. Cuba loves you for your Cuban heart. I’ll make you a colonel, a starter in the only game that counts. Your batting average will be counted in lives saved, in people educated, fed, and protected from capitalist exploitation.’”
“Cut the shit, Fidel,” Zloto said. ‘I’m here because Archie will be eligible for his pension in September. He’ll pull in a thousand a month for the rest of his days. That’ll buy a lot of bananas down here, won’t it?
“You may think that you understand Alvarado, Fidel, but I knew the man for eight years, roomed with him on the Chisox and the Bosox. I’ve seen him high, seen him in slumps you wouldn’t believe. I’ve seen him in the dugout after being picked off first in a crucial situation. You wouldn’t know what that’s like, Castro. I’m talking about a man who has just met a fast ball and stroked it over the infield. He has made the wide turn at first and watched the rosin of his footprint settle around the bag. He has thrown off the batting helmet and pulled the soft, longbilled cap from his hip pocket. The coach has slapped his ass and twenty, thirty, maybe forty thousand Chisox fans start stomping their feet while the organ plays ‘Charge,’ and then he is picked off in a flash, caught scratching his crotch a foot from the bag. And it’s all over. You hear eighty thousand feet stop stomping. The first baseman snickers behind his glove; even the ump smiles. I’ve seen Alvarado at times like that cry like a baby. He’d throw a towel over his head and say, ‘Zloto, I’m a no-good dummy. Good hit and no head. We coulda won it all here in the top of the ninth. That Yankee pitcher is good for shit. My dumb-ass move ruined the Chisox chances.’ He would sit in front of his locker taking it real hard until the GM or even Chuck Comiskey himself would come down and say, Archie, it’s just one game that you blew with a dumb move. We’re still in it, still in the thick of the race. You’ll help these Sox plenty during the rest of the year. Now take your shower and get your ass over to a Mexican restaurant.’ The Alvarado that I knew, Castro, that Alvarado could come back the next afternoon, sometimes the next inning, and change the complexion of a game.”
Fidel laughed and lit a cigar. “Zloto, you’ve been away too long. The Archie you knew, this man went out of style with saddle shoes and hula hoops. Since the days you’re talking about when Alvarado cried over a pick-off play, since then Che and Muniz are dead and two Kennedys assassinated. There have been wars in the Far East and Middle East and in Bangladesh. There have been campus shootings, a revolution of the Red Guard, an ouster of Khrushchev, a fascist massacre in Indonesia, two revolutions in Uruguay, fourteen additions to the U.N. There has been detente and Watergate and a Washington-Peking understanding and where have you been, Zloto? You’ve been in Tucson, Arizona, reading the newspaper on Sunday and cleaning teeth. Even dental techniques have changed. Look at your fluorides and your gum brushing method.”
“All right, boys,” Mrs. Alvarado said, “enough is enough. What are we going to prove anyway by reminiscing about the good old days? Zloto means well. He came here as a friend. Twelve grand a year for life is not small potatoes to Archie and me. In the Windy City or in Beantown we could live in a nice integrated neighborhood on that kind of money and pick up a little extra by giving autographs at Chevy dealerships. Fidel, you know that Archie always wanted to stay in the game. In one interview he told Bill Fuller of the Sun-Times that he wanted to manage the Chisox someday. They didn’t want any black Cuban managers in the American League, not then. But, like you say, Fidel, a lot of water has gone under the bridge since those last days when Archie was catching slivers for the Bosox, Chisox, and Birds. These days, there might even be some kind of front-office job to round off that pension. Who knows, it might be more than he made twenty years ago when he led the league in RBIs.”
Castro said, “Estelle, apart from all ideological arguments, you are just dreaming. Achilles was never a U.S. citizen. After a dozen years as one of Castro’s colonels, do you really think Uncle Sam is going to say, ‘C'mon up here, Archie, take a front-office job and rake in the cash’? Do you really think America works that way, Estelle? I know Zloto thinks that, but you’ve been down here all this time, don’t you understand capitalist exploitation by now?”
Estelle said, “Fidel, I’m not saying that we are going to give up the ideals of the Revolution and I’m not deluded by the easy capitalist life. I am thinking about only getting what’s coming to us. Alvarado put in the time, he should get the pension.”
“That’s the whole reason I took a week off to come down here,” Zloto said. “The commissioner called me up—he heard we were buddies—and said, ‘Zloto, you might be in a position to do your old friend Alvarado some good, that is if you’re willing to travel.’ The commissioner absolutely guaranteed that Archie would get his pension if he came back up and established residence. The commissioner of baseball is not about to start mailing monthly checks through the Swiss embassy, and I don’t blame him. The commissioner is not even saying you have to stay permanently in the U.S. He is just saying, ‘Come up, get an apartment, make a few guest appearances, an interview or two, and then do whatever the hell you want.’” Fidel said, “Yes, go up to America and tell them how mean Fidel is, how bad the sugar crop was, and how poor and hungry we Cubans are. Tell them what they want to hear and they’ll pension you off. The Achilles I know would swallow poison before he’d kowtow to the memory of John Foster Dulles that way. They sent an Archie back home, but Cuba Libre reminded him he was really an Achilles.”
“Fidel, let’s not get sentimental,” Mrs. Alvarado said. “Let’s talk turkey. We want the twelve grand a year, right?”
“Right, but only because it is the fruit of Achilles’ own labor.”
“Okay, in order to get the money we have to go back.”
“I could take it up in the United Nations, I could put the pressure on. Kissinger is very shaky in Latin America. He knows we all know that he doesn’t give a fuck about any country except Venezuela. I could do it through Waldheim, and nobody would have to know. Then we could threaten to go public if they hold out on what’s coming to him.”
Zloto said, “America doesn’t hold out on anybody, Castro. Ask Joe Stalin’s daughter if you don’t believe me. You guys are batting your heads against the wall by hating us. There’s nothing to hate. We want a square deal for everyone. In this case too. As for Kissinger, he might carry some weight with the Arabs, but the commissioner of baseball cannot be pressured. That damned fool Alvarado should have become a citizen while he was playing in the States. I didn’t know he wasn’t a citizen. It was just crazy not to become one. Every other Latin does.” “But our Achilles, he was always different,” Castro said. �
��He always knew that the Chisox, Bosox, Birds, and Braves didn’t own the real thing. The real Achilles Alvarado was in Camagüey with me, in Bolivia with Che, with Mao on the Long March.”
“The real Achilles was just too lazy to do things right,” Mrs. Alvarado said. “He didn’t want to fill out complicated papers, so he stayed an alien. As long as he had a job, it didn’t matter.”
“Zloto,” Fidel said, “you one-time Rookie of the Year, now a fat, toothcleaning capitalist, you want to settle this the way Achilles would settle this? I mean why should we bring in Kissinger and Waldheim and everyone else? I say if a man believes in the Revolution, what’s a pension to him? You think I couldn’t have been a Wall Street lawyer? And what about our Doctor Che? You don’t think he would have made a big pension in the AMA? I say our Achilles has recovered his Cuban manhood. He won’t want to go back. Estelle does not speak for him.”
“Fidel is right,” she said. “I do not speak for Archie Alvarado, only write his English for him.”
“If Estelle wants to go back and be exploited, let her go. Do you want those television announcers calling you Mrs. Archie again as if you had stepped from the squares of a comic strip? Does the wife of a colonel in the Cuban Army sound like a comic-strip girl to you, Zloto?”
“Fidel,” Estelle said, “don’t forget the issue is not so large. Only a trip to the Windy City or Beantown, maybe less than two weeks in all.”
“You are forgetting,” Fidel said, “what happened to Kid Gavilan when he went back to see an eye surgeon in New York. They put his picture in Sepia and in the National Enquirer, the news services showed him with his bulging eye being hugged by a smooth-faced Sugar Ray Robinson. They wanted it to seem like this: here are two retired Negro fighters. One is a tap dancer in Las Vegas, the other has for ten years been working in the cane fields of Castro’s Cuba. Look at how healthy the American Negro is. His teeth are white as ever, his step lithe in Stetson shoes, while our Kid Gavilan, once of the bolo punch that decked all welterweights, our Kid stumbles through the clinics of New York in worker’s boots and his eye bulges from the excesses of the Revolution. They degraded the Kid and the Revolution and they sent him home with a red, white, and blue eye patch. That’s how they treated Kid Gavilan, and they’ll do the same to Achilles Alvarado.”