Opening Day: Or, the Return of Satchel Paige

by Les Standford

  Sharon stopped and straightened her skirt, which had hiked up a bit from sitting on Hasslebrow’s desk. “You don’t have to apologize to anybody for signing the best fast-pitch softballer in the Southwest, Mr. Hasslebrow.”

  “This woman batted .418 on a men’s team,” Wattles reminded him. “And fielded a nifty .987.”

  “I could’ve played for the King and his Court,” Sharon added, referring to a fourman team of barnstormers that Buck had once seen wallop a full team of Clearwater state champions about as badly as Mr. Paige and his group had walloped the men from Mars. “But the sonofabitch wanted me to have a sex change operation.”

  “Thank God,” someone said.

  “The Great American Pastime,” Hasslebrow mumbled, paying no attention. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s only one day,” Wattles reminded him, as they backed out. “What could one day do to a whole sport?”

  IV.

  As it turned out, Wattles

  needn’t have worried. Hasslebrow called a team meeting before practice the next day and made the announcement. “I just wanted all you men…,” here his eyes lit upon Sharon, who had just then crossed her slim and golden legs. “That is, I wanted all of you team members to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”

  “The horse’s what?” Wattles called.

  “El caballo es un pendejo,” Minoso mumbled absently, as his eyes drifted to another land.

  Hasslebrow ignored them and swept his tiny, ex-butcher’s hand toward Lucco, who sat smiling at the head of the group. Buck thought it was the first time he had seen the man smile.

  “The point is, gentlemen. . . I mean, everyone. . . the point is, that we’ll be losing our manager soon, and I wanted you all to be prepared well in advance.”

  There was a brief pause, then a number of cheers flew up from the group, and even a raspberry from somewhere deep in the crowd. Lucco’s smile never wavered. Sharon, who had bent over to check the polish on her toes, straightened slowly, her mouth hanging open, her eyes wide.

  “That sonofabitch never said a word to me,” she whispered.

  “That’s right,” Hasslebrow went on. “Late this afternoon Mr. Lucco was called up by the Triple A team in Hartford. It’s one fine and rare opportunity for him as you all know– just one step away from the ‘bigs.’ He’ll be with us through the opening game with the Mice, however, and I know we’ll want to send him off with a win.” Hasslebrow ignored the catcalls and broad laughter, and called upon the manager to say a few words.

  Lucco stood up and the room grew quiet as his eyes swept over the rows. When he came to Sharon, his face colored, and he dropped his gaze. “I just want you all to know that this comes as a real surprise to me, but it’s an opportunity up there I’ve gotta take. I know you fellows are going to have a good year here, what with a new owner behind the team and all, and I’ll look forward to seeing some of you being called up to Triple-A, too.”

  “Yeah,” Wattles called. “If there’s a plague that wipes out everybody in Hartford, maybe.”

  Lucco ignored the comment, then looked quickly at Sharon, whose eyes had turned to knives. He lowered his head again. “Well, that’s all I have to say except we’re gonna work hard the rest of the week and we’re gonna win that opener.”

  Buck felt the hair prickle on his leathery arms, and realized he was touched by something in the manager’s delivery. Beside him, Sharon breathed harshly through her teeth. Wattles was scribbling notes for a press release on Sharon’s fast-pitch background. The rest of the players scraped their chairs, anxious to get outside, to throw, to catch, to swing, to run. It was as if nothing had happened, Buck realized. Their faces were clear. If not Lucco as the manager, then someone else.

  For the next four months they would follow the bounding of the tiny white ball and dream of a shot at the big time, and Lucco’s departure would have nothing to do with their chances. Unless, of course, the manager might put in a word on behalf of one or another of them with the Hartford ownership. In that regard, Lucco’s promotion could even be a good thing, so far as they were concerned.

  “Engaged five years, and now that sonofabitch is gonna run out.” Sharon’s furious whisper broke in on Buck’s ruminations. “I know it! I can tell the way he won’t look at me. God damn it!” Buck saw the tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

  “Maybe he wanted to surprise you,” he offered, but Sharon withered him with her glance.

  “Horseshit!” she spat, and then her face softened. “I’m sorry. I sure don’t mean to take it out on you. Anyway,” she shook her head brightly. “You and me have got a game to win for these turkeys.”

  “Yes, a game. That’s right,” Buck nodded, and he wished he could pull her close and tell her it would be all right, but he was doubtful she would stand for it.

  “Twenty-eight?” Wattles broke in suddenly, staring up at Sharon from his notes.

  She turned to him, wiping at the corners of her eyes. “Say what, Billy?”

  “I wanna know, do you want me to say you’re only twenty-eight?”

  “Listen, Billy. Don’t give me any grief right now, okay?”

  “Well, geez, Sharon, it says right here you were twenty-eight three years ago, when your were battin’ .476 for the Pipers, and I just. . .”

  “Aaaauugh. . .” Sharon groaned, and knocked her chair over backward as she fled the room.

  Buck watched her run, his own chest aching, then he turned to Wattles. “Some people are sensitive about their age, you know.”

  “Well, Jesus Christ! I don’t care how old she is.” Wattles looked wounded. “I guess I was just thinking about it because of you. I mean, you got Satchel Paige whipped three ways from Sunday. When we put it out that we got this eighty-year-old pitcher. . .”

  Wattles paused at Buck’s raised hand. “Okay. Seventy-five. Is seventy-five all right, for Christsakes?”

  “Seventy-five is an interesting number,” Buck allowed.

  “Okay. Fine. So when we advertise this seventy-five-year old pitcher and the first woman to play in organized baseball, well, I just get crazy thinking about it. The way I worked the contract with Hasslebrow, we got a percentage of the gate comin’ our way, Pops. We’re gonna clean up!”

  “Clean up,” Buck nodded, thinking about the Golden Years deal. Copper to Molybedinum already. Maybe he’d make it to Titaniumplated retirement yet.

  “Who cares what the commissioner says. If he raises hell, it’ll just build up the gate.” Wattles was saying.

  “Yes, who cares about the commissioner,” Buck said, and it sounded as if he actually agreed.

  Wattles explained it all to the rest of the players after the morning workout, once Lucco had disappeared. Buck sat behind a bank of lockers as Wattles spoke, so that he would not have to see the expressions on the team members’ faces. But surprisingly, there was no dissent, no protest, and only a few jokes. When Siatris, the lumbering first baseman, suggested that Sharon should have to shower with the rest of the team, Pisby’s voice quivered in protest.

  “I think we ought to treat every one of our team members with respect!”

  “That’s the spirit,” Wattles chimed in. “She’s a hell of a ballplayer. And you all saw what Pops over there can do. Besides, anybody who gives them a hard time loses his cut from the program sales, special concessions, and the after-game concert.”

  “Concert?” someone asked.

  “That’s right,” Wattles said. “Our own Smokin’ Joe Hamilton has got his act together in Miami and he’s bringing it to Vero Beach. Every ticket holder to the game gets a discount to the show right after.”

  “You got all the bases covered, it sounds like,” Sharon said.

  “Isn’t that what baseball’s all about?” he answered. But she was already out the door.

  And so it was settled. As Wattles explained to Buck, “No way we can beat the Mice, but when it comes to the concessions, we can’t go wrong. Fifty cents a pop on every T-shirt, plus an equal share from all
the rest of the crap–your pennants and key chains and whatnot. Besides, a little publicity is the best thing these guys could get.”

  Even Hasslebrow came down to the field later, to apologize. “What the heck,” he told Wattles and Buck after the afternoon workout. “The game’s gotta grow with the times, or how can it stay the national pastime, right?”

  Still, Buck found it hard to meet the man’s sad eyes. He suspected that the owner yearned for the days when the wholesale price of tomatoes took up most of his concern, and baseball was the game it had always been, safe on the pages of newspapers, simple and steady, and as orderly as the rows and columns of yesterday’s box scores.

  And it was the same reason he had felt sadness listening to Lucco’s speech, Buck realized. Despite his toughness, Lucco was just like the rest of them. Happy as any rookie to be called to Hartford. Another shot at the big time, maybe, and certainly a chance to put distance between himself and this ragged conglomeration. Seventy-five-year-old pitchers and women at second base! Even Buck became depressed as he thought of it.

  But then he smiled. A little at Lucco and his predicament, but more at himself. For, as he thought of the upcoming opener, he could feel his own arm swell and drive the feeling into his creaking chest, and he knew then that he was just like the rest of them and that he would fire every pitch that he could in that game, even if his arm were to fly off finally and trail the ball toward the plate. Strange the effect these games could have, Buck reflected. Very strange.

  V.

  The next day he arrived

  early and was busy polishing his spikes when he heard Sharon’s voice drifting over the lockers from the direction of Lucco’s office: “…not one goddamn word about it, you pissant little coward!”

  And though he felt a trace of shame, Buck edged around a bank of metal lockers so that he could hear more clearly. It was Lucco’s voice then, with an uncharacteristic note of pleading. “Now doggone it, Sharon, how many times I gotta tell you? Soon as I get it going up there, you’re gonna come along, too. I just didn’t want you to get all worked up before. . . “

  Buck heard the sound of a hand slamming on something hard, a desk maybe.

  “That’s a big hatful of crap and you know it, Frank Lucco. Besides, I just want you to know that I’m not going anywhere with you anyway. I’ve got a life of my own, and this game coming up is just the start. I already wrote to the Pipers, and then I heard about this new slow pitch league who’ll probably just die to get a woman who can actually swing a bat. Billy’s checking it out for me. He says I could have a future in slow pitch.”

  There was a pause then, and Buck tried to imagine the look on Lucco’s face. “Aw, Sharon,” the manager was saying. “I don’t think you want to put much stock in all that. I mean, you’re thirty-one years old, and I’m fifty. We ought to be thinking ahead, about maybe…”

  “You think about getting old if you want to, Frank. But I’m not going off to Hartford to paint my toes every day while you boss everybody around and see me when it’s convenient. You can find some other entertainment for the seventh inning stretch!”

  Buck heard the beginning of Lucco’s protest and the sounds of Sharon moving toward the door. He just had time to duck behind the lockers as she stormed out, slamming the door on whatever Lucco was trying to say. A great silence settled upon the clubhouse after she had left, and Buck sat shaking his head with his half-polished shoes in his lap. What was it that Wattles had told the owner? What could one day hurt?

  Throughout the last days of practice, Lucco was a changed man on the field. When Wattles loafed after flies in the outfield, Lucco smiled. When Minoso fired his throws far to the right and left of first, Lucco called out encouragement. When Pisby took a bad hop to the Adam’s apple, Lucco gave him the afternoon off. He even admitted Sharon to regular infield practice and advised Buck on various therapies for a sore arm.

  In turn, the quality of practice began a steady, if minute, improvement. Olivarez began to throw again, and Siatris, all 250 pounds of him, began to charge bunts and stretch for Minoso’s gradually improving throws. Even Wattles, distracted as he was with his promotional efforts, found the energy to hustle after an occasional drive to left- or right-center. Sharon displayed quick hands, and a fair ability to move to the right, though her batting was abysmal. “Good field, no hit,” Minoso observed, and even Wattles had to agree.

  Buck practiced only sparingly, and when he was throwing, he threw in secret, with Wattles catching him in the cavernous walkway beneath the stands. “Ten pitches a day, Pops.” The boy called out to him as the fireballs thundered and echoed from the over-padded catcher’s mitt. While none of his throws had approached the super-sonic speed of that first pitch a few days before, none of his tosses were shabby, either. “You’re doing great,” Wattles assured him after each brief workout, “but we don’t want to wear the old noodle out.”

  Wattles also felt that maintaining some sense of secrecy concerning Buck and his true abilities would build suspense, and it seemed he was correct. Already, the sports editor of the Sun had devoted a column to the opening game: “Mice to face Age and Beauty in Grouper opener,” went the lead, and later in the article were the lines Wattles repeated as they sat over their evening beer on the eve of the opening game.

  “Grouper owner Jake ‘Super-Save’ Hasslebrow reportedly has raided the wax museum at the Hall of Fame to come up with Monday night’s starter,” Wattles read with enthusiasm. “Word is that a seventy-five-year-old pitcher who starred more than 50 years ago in the Western Pennsylvania Negro League, where he also won the league batting crown–and probably fielded 1.000, too–will take the mound against Orlando. We hear he’s a fireballer who’s being kept under close wraps by Grouper management. Well, all we can say is, ‘Look out, Satchel Paige, somebody is gaining on you.”

  Wattles dropped the paper at that point, and grinned broadly at Buck. “What do you think of that?”

  Buck shook his head. “I think that Mr. Leroy Paige is spinning in his grave,” he said.

  “Stop being so modest,” Wattles assured him. “You just wait ‘til Monday night.”

  VI.

  On Monday night,

  Hasslebrow called a team meeting for a pregame pep talk. He rolled a wheeled blackboard into the locker room and began to draw furiously upon it, snapping chalk and sending teeth-chilling screechings echoing off the concrete walls. “This, my friends, “ he said at last, stepping aside with a flourish, “is the playing field of the Gods.”

  The players stared silently at what Hasslebrow had drawn. There was a lopsided representation of a diamond, shooting wavering foul lines out toward infinity, with crude stick-figures scattered about. “Nine players,” Hasslebrow intoned, glancing about the room, and Buck noticed that long curling locks had been added to the stick figure at second base.

  “It could have been worse,” Sharon whispered in his ear. “He could have gone for breasts.”

  “Nine players, four bases, two foul lines, one pitcher’s mound,” Hasslebrow continued.

  “Inventory,” Wattles mumbled. “That’s what a grocery guy is good at.”

  “Win or lose,” Hasslebrow said, his voice rising. “Fair or foul. Ball or strike. Never mind what’s happened to modern life. There are no gray areas in baseball.”

  “This man has stopped taking his medication,” Wattles said.

  “Shhh,” Sharon whispered.

  “Out there on that field tonight, each one of you will have the chance to excel, to exceed your human limitations...”

  The door to the locker room flew open with a bang, and Hasslebrow stopped short. “What’s all this about limitations, Freddy?” said the man who had entered the room. He was tall and tanned, his dark blue suit immaculately tailored, his salt-and-pepper hair slicked back in stylish fashion. He glanced about the room, gracing each of the players with his mega-watt smile. “You ought to be perking these men up...”

  When his eyes landed on Sharon, he stopped sh
ort, his gaze so steady that even she had to turn away.

  “What are you doing here, Colden?” Hasslebrow said.

  After a moment, Battey turned to Hasslebrow with his lips pursed, nodding in appreciation. “Freddy, you do have certain instincts, I’ll give you that much.”

  Hasslebrow ignored him, glanced around the room. “This is Colden Battey,” he announced to the others. “Owner of the Orlando Mice.”

  “Forgive the intrusion,” Battey said to the players. “I just dropped by to offer my best wishes...,” and here he turned back to Hasslebrow, “...and to let you know I’ve made a tender offer to the league to underwrite the operations of the Grouper.”

  Hasslebrow stared back, thunderstruck. “Buy the Grouper? You can’t do that.”

  Battey shrugged. “The League can’t afford to have a team go belly up at this stage of the season, Freddy. We’ve simply made a contingency arrangement.”

  “That’s un-American,” Hasslebrow said, starting toward Battey. It would have been comical, Buck thought–the diminutive grocer going after a man twice his size–but Lucco stepped between the two, short-circuiting the fight. “Nobody can own two teams in the same league.”

  There was a chorus of agreement from the assembled players. “Libertad,” shouted Minoso.

  “No way!” added Pisby, his face bright pink with urgency.

  Battey held up his hands and smiled. “I just want to make sure you lads...,” he broke off, cutting a frank glance at Sharon once again. “I want you all to be able to continue your season and keep on drawing a paycheck,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about us,” Hasslebrow snarled, still trying to fight his way around Lucco. “We’re going to kick your butts tonight. We’re going to be just fine.”

  “As a baseball man, you’re a great grocer, Freddy,” Colden Battey replied. “And don’t worry about your players,” he added, with another meaningful glance in Sharon’s direction. “I’ll make sure everyone is well taken care of.” With that he was out the door.