Boxcar won a few games for them the more conventional way as well. He buried the Colts with a towering, game-winning homer; he neutralized the prolific running game of the Giants by gunning down seven would-be base stealers; and with the game on the line, he dashed the hopes of the Tigers when he dove headlong into the stands, snaring a foul pop that should have landed safely three rows back. Everyone—fans, opponents, sportswriters—watched in amazement, and all agreed that it was the most incredible stretch of dominating baseball they had ever seen one person play.
But, despite the superhuman exploits of Boxcar, the Brewers still lost another game in the standings to the red-hot Rangers. While the Brewers were struggling just to keep their collective heads above water, the Rangers had gone on a 15-4 run, beginning about the time Mickey was sidelined, and had completely erased the Brewers’ commanding lead.
On the upside, the Brewers still had Lefty. He took the hill against the Sidewinders, with the Brewers in a deadlock with the Rangers for first place. Aside from Boxcar, Lefty was the only Brewer who had actually thrived in the absence of Mickey. He was just about unhittable in his last five starts and was throwing the baseball with a command and artfulness that hadn’t been seen since his rookie year. His burgeoning strikeout total and domination of opposing batters had captured the imagination of the Brewer fans and lifted them out of their late-summer swoon. After weeks of hapless and hopeless play, they finally had something to believe in.
It was a Friday night, and after a long week of dairy farming, tool and die making, and other labor-intensive endeavors, the crowd was ready to unwind. They had come to cheer on the home team, carrying with them expressions of anticipation as well as placards, confetti, cowbells, and an eclectic assortment of other implements of merriment.
Lefty wasted no time, stoking the celebratory fires with a strikeout of the Sidewinders’ leadoff man. The “bleacher creatures,” selfprofessed Brewer diehards who had come about during the Brewers’ earlier domination, roared with approval, clapping their hands, stamping their feet, whistling, and finally, after dancing what looked like some tribal rumba, hanging a rubber snake in recognition of the first killing of the night. Lefty loved it. He stepped off the mound and watched as the boisterous celebration that began in the bleachers erupted into a wave of frenetic movement that washed across the entire park, ending with a raucous chanting of his name. Life was beautiful.
The game was scoreless at the end of the fifth inning. Lefty’s dominating performance, coupled with the Brewers’ inept offense, made for a quick, uneventful game, another pitcher’s duel. On the Sidewinders’ half of the scoreboard, just below the word hits, stood the number 0. Across from that, on the same line on the Brewers’ side, was the number 2. Ten rubber snakes hung from a metal bar that ran along the first row of bleacher seats.
The lack of offensive support dampened Lefty’s spirits. He sat on the end of the bench brooding, leaning forward, head down between his knees. He was convinced that yet another of his great efforts would die the same death as so many others, until Clem Finster got a hanging slider in the bottom of the seventh and drilled it out of the yard.
The minute Lefty heard the crowd howl, he sprang from his seat. “Oh, yeah, Finny!” he yelled, pumping his fist in the air. “That’s right. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s just what I needed!”
Boxcar and Murph exchanged a look. Then Murph glowered. The push of blood in his head seemed to cease unexpectedly, removing him momentarily from what he was watching. Winning was sweet. Christ, it meant everything to him, now more than ever. But Lefty’s narcissism was intolerable. “Fucking guy,” Murph mumbled out loud. “Unbelievable.”
Lefty continued to throw darts, insulated in a cocoon of self-absorption, and the bleacher creatures continued to hang snakes—fourteen of them through eight innings. Despite the excitement, a peculiar hush seemed to fall across the crowd, like calming air moments before a late-afternoon thunderstorm. Something special was about to unfold, and the entire ballpark could sense its steady approach. With just three outs to go, Lefty had yet to yield a hit and was standing toe-to-toe with baseball immortality.
Under the silent flicker of lights that glowed like stars set in a sleepy sky, the Sidewinders took their final shot at Lefty. Their leadoff man, Buzz Stuber, looked sick, like a little boy on his first day of school. He came to the plate, eyes wide, his whole body shaking as if he were operating an invisible jackhammer. Lefty had punched him out three times already, all swinging, and now Stuber was facing a dubious date with the golden sombrero.
“Okay now, Stubey!” the Sidewinders bench yelled to him. “Come on now. It only takes one.”
The frustrated batter locked and loaded, the bat sliding around ever so slightly in his sweaty palms. Boxcar put down one finger. Lefty nodded, then lifted his right leg and whipped his arm around. The ball was swift and painted the black of the plate for strike one. Stuber’s spirit sagged even further. He shook his head dejectedly, kicked the dirt, and blew a long puff of air out of his mouth. He malingered a bit outside the box, tapping his spikes and fiddling with his belt buckle, procrastinating with this and that until the umpire admonished him. “Let’s go, fella. Play ball.”
Stuber stepped back in. His hands were a little steadier now and his knees had stopped knocking. Lefty grinned with confidence as he stared him down, and wild expectation filtered through his head, including the postgame hoopla that would undoubtedly accompany his first career no-no.
Lefty delivered a fastball, inside half of the plate. Stuber never flinched. He rotated his hips, went down almost all the way to one knee, held the bat out flat with a slight tilt to the left, and dropped a picture-perfect bunt down the third-base line. Danvers was caught flat-footed behind the bag. He charged frantically, trying to compensate for his poor positioning, but in his haste to barehand the ball, it rolled up his palm and off his wrist, coming to rest at last just to the right of his foot.
The miscue sent Lefty into orbit. He stormed around the infield, hands on hips, swearing and spitting, looking to the heavens in tortured disbelief. Then he glared over in Danvers’s direction, picked up the rosin bag from behind the mound, and fired it to the ground, barking about stone hands and bush-league play. The fit continued for another minute or so, with everyone watching in disbelief, before finally subsiding after the official scorer ruled the play an error. Then, and only then, did Lefty’s vitriol soften enough to allow him to continue.
Boxcar, however, had seen enough. “Time!” he called, motioning for the infielders to join him in the center of the infield. He flipped up his mask and walked out to the mound, fists clenched, biting his lip. His gait was deliberate, purposeful, and his face sweaty and crimson. Reaching the mound, he stood for some seconds and did not move. A great hollow of darkness appeared to be facing him. There was so much he wanted to say, to do, that for a brief moment it paralyzed him. Everyone just stood around waiting. The silence was interminable. Then, as if a light switch had suddenly been thrown, Boxcar was back.
“Hey, asshole!” he began through clenched teeth, poking Lefty’s shoulder and motioning over to Danvers. “You got a problem with Woody? Do ya?”
Lefty said nothing, just stood there quietly, frazzled in front of the penetrating gaze of the assembled company.
“What about Pee Wee? Or Fries? Or maybe it’s Finster? Are they doing it for you today?”
Lefty grinned nervously. The outward show of disrespect lit a fuse somewhere deep inside the fiery catcher.
“Listen, you selfish piece of shit,” he threatened, grabbing him by the throat. “We’ve been down this road before. I won’t do it again, you hear? These guys—all these guys—play for Murph, and the team. Not you. You understand? Fuck your goddamned no-hitter. It don’t mean shit.”
Boxcar let him go. Lefty’s face was remote, still voiceless. His eyes swept momentarily across his teammates, then shifted above Boxcar’s shoulder to the crowd, then fell again on the disdainful visa
ge directly in front of him.
“Hey, you listening to me, Rogers? You getting me? Don’t you ever show up another teammate again—not on my time.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lefty answered. “I got you, tough guy. You can stop putting on the show. Everyone saw you.”
Lefty retired the next three batters in order. When the final pitch landed safely in Boxcar’s glove, the no-hitter was complete. Lefty threw his arms up in exultation and jumped around on the mound like a little boy, waiting to be mobbed by his jubilant teammates. It never happened. They just left him frolicking in a querulous bonfire of self-idolatry. Only some of the fans were with him—the few who were not estranged by the odd on-field exhibition just moments before. This tiny faction stood and applauded the effort, lost in a frenzy of vicarious exhilaration that blinded them to the real drama unfolding. Lefty’s teammates’ behavior told the real story. Led by Boxcar’s example, they simply refused to feed Lefty’s swelling ego, offering only brief, perfunctory expressions of acknowledgment before walking silently off the field. It was the quietest no-hitter ever pitched.
Lefty celebrated quietly as well—that night, at The Bucket, with just a few of his more ardent female admirers. He had drawn the attention of some of the local baseball groupies, young girls with wanton ways, determined to hitch their wagon to what they believed was a rising star.
They sat all around him, a coterie of pandering floozies, fawning and drinking and feeding his ravenous ego.
“Oh, Lefty, you were spectacular out there,” one of the girls said. “Like a gladiator. It just made me tingle all over watching you.”
The others giggled coquettishly and added saccharine comments of their own. Lefty ate them up. Every last one.
He had been there awhile, trying to decide which of the harlots he would take home with him, when another girl came up from behind and tapped him on the shoulder. Unlike the others, her face was severe and offered no outward show of affection for the star pitcher. She seemed bitter. All the misery in the tortured girl’s life was present in her dark eyes. She swayed slightly, nervously, from side to side, her head half-tilted.
“We need to talk,” she said, her voice cold and raspy. Now.”
A sort of dullness settled on him. He was tired and drunk and did not really care to engage the girl. He turned only slightly on the barstool, just enough to catch her eyes. “I told you,” he whispered through clenched teeth, “never to come here.” He dismissed her with an abrupt turn of his head.
She did not leave. “George, you promised.” She grabbed his shoulder. “You said if I helped—”
He flared at her. She was slow of wit. Her dimness made his blood boil. “I said not to bother me here,” he ordered. “Now, turn around and go away.”
She crumbled. Laney Juris had met Lefty the first week he was with the Brewers. She was standing outside the train station, waiting for a distant relation from the East who never showed. He had just gotten off his train and was fumbling with his bags.
An enormous orange sun was staring at him from the tips of the distant trees. He stood looking at it. Then he saw her. She was smiling. Although her face was covered by a shadow cast by her hat, he could see the ends of her mouth, bent up toward her eyes. “Beautiful sun,” he said to her, struggling to manage the load in his hands. “Gonna be a hot one tomorrow.”
“It’s sure starting to feel that way,” she answered playfully.
The two of them walked for a while alongside the tracks, watching the horizon slowly swallow the big orange ball. She told him all about herself, how she lived alone, and that her mother had died years ago.
“Tuberculosis,” she said. “She was sick a long time.”
“What about your father?”
She answered in a low, even voice, without emotion or tears. “Haven’t seen him in years.”
“That’s rough. I know a little bit about being on your own. Baseball can be a pretty lonely life.”
Her feet threw up dirt and loose gravel. She looked down at the roadside, and at the stones lying in desultory patterns against the metal rail, as if the scene were some sort of portrait of her life.
“Oh, you’re a ballplayer?” she said eagerly. “Who for?”
“Brewers. Today’s actually my first day with the club.”
“I love baseball. The players are pretty okay too.”
They talked some more, then sat down on a redwood bench beneath a Victorian gaslamp and watched the trains pass by.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Laney. Laney Juris.”
“Laney. That’s mighty pretty.”
“Thank you. Do you have one? A name?”
“George Rogers. Nothing too pretty about that, although I do have a nickname.”
She wrinkled her nose, pretending to be formulating a guess. “Are you gonna tell me, or do I have to figure it out by myself?”
“Lefty. Guys on the team call me Lefty, on account of me being a southpaw and all.”
“Well, that’s not very original.” She laughed.
“Maybe so, but it works for me.”
Then he put that arm around her, placed his other palm gently on her cheek, and kissed her. A deep passion flooded her.
“You know,” he told her, “some people say that life’s a casting off—that we have to find happiness whenever we can. You ever hear that?”
She nodded and placed her hand on his knee. He leaned forward, took the hand in his, and kissed each finger, one at a time. She saw him, muscular and firm, as if he had emerged, godlike, from the setting sun.
“You ever make it with a ballplayer, Laney?”
The crudeness of the question startled her. Her eyes blinked twice, as if she had come suddenly from a dark room into the bright sunshine. For a moment, all her feelings were conflicted. She was intrigued, and wonderfully excited, yet suddenly on guard. She had been here before. The memory halted her passion, but then yielded to a more recent recollection, the one of a lonely girl in a single room eating tuna by candlelight.
“No,” she said, the faint cloud around her eyes lifting. “But if someone were to ask me tomorrow, I may have a different answer.”
They went back to Lefty’s place and tore at each other like animals. There was something primal and reckless about their intercourse. His caress was hot and feverish, like warm ocean waves washing over her body. His hands explored the contours of her voluptuous form, beginning with her shoulders and breasts and then slowly, methodically, across her hips and between her legs. His lips brushed her neck, then nibbled their way to her ear, whispering a few salacious things to her before finding their way to hers.
He could feel her body awakening, rising as his tongue danced across the outline of her lips and the weight of his rigid body pressed down against hers. She struggled a little, in playful protest, but he overpowered her, pinning her wrists to the bed while continuing to devour her shuddering form with passionate strokes from his lips and tongue. His hands roamed all over her body.
“You’re so wet,” he said, sliding a finger inside her.
She moaned quietly. “Is that okay?” she asked breathlessly. “Am I okay?”
“Don’t talk.” He placed his hand across her mouth. He was heavy. She submitted, locking her thighs around him and kissing him hard, surrendering herself to this man whom she scarcely knew at all.
When it was over, she lay on top of him, heavy and fulfilled. It was good. So were the days that followed. But Lefty was a ballplayer. And many girls like Laney were out there, which reduced her over time to just an occasional diversion whenever the churlish pitcher was bored or horny. This left poor Laney feeling cheap, and vulnerable. She existed in silent, unfulfilled yearning, bitterness, fettered to this man’s capricious interest in her. Each time they were together, she promised herself it would be the last. She knew, somewhere in her fractured soul, that she deserved better. But the loneliness was brutal, enveloped her until she could scarcely breathe. He was all she had. S
o when Lefty came calling, as he did a few times each month, every fiber in her body wanted to say no, screamed to her to just get up and walk away. She heard the call, but could not bring herself to do it; she stayed and made the promise again.
Now, many months later, she was embroiled even further. Lefty had made a promise to her, too. He had never done that before. She believed him. Trusted him. She had expunged all of the heartache and disappointment, all of the regret and bitterness, all in exchange for a vision of something real and lasting. Now she wanted what was hers.
“I will not leave, George,” she insisted, demanding his attention. She grabbed his arm and began tugging at him. “I helped you. You promised me things would be different if I helped.”
He looked at her and started to say something and then stopped, anger raging beneath his skin. She appeared to him to be this alien presence, secreted suddenly from months of silent brooding. He wanted to hit her, to take his hand and strike her hard, right in the mouth. But the girls were around. So he filled his lungs, unclenched his fists, and then, through tight teeth, finally whispered, “What did you really do, Laney? Huh? Talk to some cowpunching retard? Drink some free liquor? Please. You gotta be kidding me now.”
The Legend of Mickey Tussler Page 18