Mr. Vertigo

by Paul Auster

  The following spring, my man continued to curse and scuffle and raise hell, but that was only because he didn’t know any better. He triggered brawls with his brushback pitches, was called for balks two games in a row and decided to stage a sit-down strike on the mound, and when he stood up at a banquet and called the new league president a crook, the resulting fracas led to some fine cowboy theater, especially after Diz refused to put his signature on a self-incriminating formal retraction. “I ain’t signin’ nothin”’ was what he said, and without that signature Ford Frick had no choice but to back down and rescind Dean’s suspension. I was proud of him for behaving like such a two-fisted asshole, but the truth was that the suspension would have kept him out of the All-Star Game, and if he hadn’t pitched in that meaningless exhibition, he might have been able to hold off the hour of doom a little longer.

  They played in Washington, D.C., that year, and Dizzy started for the National League. He breezed through the first two innings in workmanlike fashion, and then, after two were gone in the third, he gave up a single to DiMaggio and a long home run to Gehrig. Earl Averill was next, and when the Cleveland outfielder lined Dean’s first pitch back to the mound, the curtain suddenly dropped on the greatest right-hander of the century. It didn’t look like much to worry about at the time. The ball hit him on the left foot, bounced over to Billy Herman at second, and Herman threw to first for the out. When Dizzy went limping off the field, no one thought twice about it, not even Dizzy himself.

  That was the famous broken toe. If he hadn’t rushed back into action before he was ready, it probably would have mended in due time. But the Cardinals were slipping out of the pennant race and needed him on the mound, and the dumb-cluck yokel fool assured them he was okay. He was hobbling around on a crutch, the toe was so swollen he couldn’t get his shoe on, and yet he donned his uniform and went out and pitched. Like all giants among men, Dizzy Dean thought he was immortal, and even though the toe was too tender for him to pivot on his left foot, he gutted it out for the whole nine innings. The pain caused him to alter his natural delivery, and the result was that he put too much pressure on his arm. He developed a sore wing after that first game, and then, to compound the mischief, he went on throwing for another month. After six or seven times around, it got so bad that he had to be yanked just three pitches into one of his starts. Diz was lobbing canteloupes by then, and there was nothing for it but to hang up his spikes and sit out the rest of the season.

  Even so, there wasn’t a fan in the country who thought he was finished. The common wisdom was that a winter of idle repose would fix what ailed him and come April he’d be his old unbeatable self again. But he struggled through spring training, and then, in one of the great bombshells in sports history, Saint Louis dealt him to the Cubs for 185,000 in cash and two or three warm bodies. I knew there was no love lost between Dean and Branch Rickey, the Cards’ general manager, but I also knew that Rickey wouldn’t have unloaded him if he thought there was some spit left in the appleknocker’s arm. I couldn’t have been happier that Dizzy was coming to Chicago, but at the same time I knew his coming meant that he was at the end of the road. My worst fears had been borne out, and at the ripe old age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, the world’s top pitcher was a has-been.

  Still, he provided some good moments that first year with the Cubs. Mr. Vertigo’s was only four months old when the season started, but I managed to sneak off to the park three or four times to watch the Dizmeister crank out a few more innings from his battered arm. There was an early game against the Cards that I remember well, a classic grudge match pitting old teammates against each other, and he won that showdown on guile and junk, keeping the hitters off-stride with an assortment of dipsy-doodle floaters and change-ups. Then, late in the season, with the Cubs pushing hard for another pennant, Chicago manager Gabby Hartnett stunned everyone by giving Dizzy the nod for a do-or-die start against the Pirates. The game was a genuine knuckle-biter, joy and despair riding on every pitch, and Dean, with less than nothing to offer, eked out a win for his new hometown. He almost repeated the miracle in the second game of the World Series, but the Yanks finally got to him in the eighth, and when the assault continued in the ninth and Hartnett took him out for a reliever, Dizzy left the mound to some of the wildest, most thunderous applause I’ve ever heard. The whole joint was on its feet, clapping and cheering and whistling for the big lug, and it went on for so long and was so loud, some of us were blinking away tears by the time it was over.

  That should have been the end of him. The gallant warrior takes his last bow and shuffles off into the sunset. I would have accepted that and given him his due, but Dean was too thick to get it, and the farewell clamor fell on deaf ears. That’s what galled me: the son-of-a-bitch didn’t know when to stop. Casting all dignity aside, he came back and played for the Cubs again, and if the ’thirty-eight season had been pathetic—with a few bright spots sprinkled in—’thirty-nine was pure, unadulterated darkness. His arm hurt so much he could barely throw. Game after game he warmed the bench, and the brief moments he spent on the mound were an embarrassment. He was lousy, lousier than a hobo’s mutt, not even the palest facsimile of what he’d once been. I suffered for him, I grieved for him, but at the same time I thought he was the dumbest yahoo clod on the face of the earth.

  That was pretty much how things stood when he walked into Mr. Vertigo’s in September. The season was winding down, and with the Cubs well out of the pennant race, it didn’t cause much of a stir when Dean showed up one crowded Friday night with his missus and a gang of two or three other couples. It certainly wasn’t the moment for a heart-to-heart talk about his future, but I made a point of going over to his table and welcoming him to the club. “Pleased you could make it, Diz,” I said, offering him my hand. “I’m a Saint Louis boy myself, and I’ve been following you since the day you broke in. I’ve always been your number-one backer.”

  “The pleasure’s all mine, pal,” he said, engulfing my little hand in his enormous mitt and giving a cordial shake. He started to flash one of those quick, brush-off smiles when his expression suddenly grew puzzled. He frowned for a second, searching his memory for some lost thing, and when it didn’t come to him, he looked deep into my eyes as if he thought he could find it there. “I know you, don’t I?” he said. “I mean, this ain’t the first time we’ve met. I just can’t place where it was. Way back when somewhere, ain’t I right?”

  “I don’t think so, Diz. Maybe you caught a glimpse of me one day in the stands, but we’ve never talked before.”

  “Shit. I could swear you ain’t no stranger to me. Damnedest feeling in the world it is. Oh well,” he shrugged, beaming me one of his big yap grins, “it don’t matter none, I guess. You sure got a swell joint here, mac.”

  “Thanks, champ. The first round’s on me. I hope you and your friends have a good time.”

  “That’s why we’re here, kid.”

  “Enjoy the show. If you need anything, just holler.”

  I’d played it as cool as I could, and I walked away feeling I’d handled the situation fairly well. I hadn’t sucked up to him, and at the same time I hadn’t insulted him for going to the dogs. I was Mr. Vertigo, the downtown sharpie with the smooth tongue and elegant manners, and I wasn’t about to let Dean know how much his plight concerned me. Seeing him in the flesh had broken the spell somewhat, and in the natural course of things I probably would have written him off as just another nice guy down on his luck. Why should I care about him? Whizzy Dizzy was on his way out, and pretty soon I wouldn’t have to think about him anymore. But that’s not the way it happened. It was Dean himself who kept the thing alive, and while I’m not going to pretend we became bosom buddies, he stayed in close enough contact to make it impossible for me to forget him. If he’d just drifted off the way he was supposed to, none of it would have turned out as badly as it did.

  I didn’t see him again until the start of the next season. It was April 1940 by then, the war in Europe
was going full tilt, and Dizzy was back—back for yet another stab at reviving his tumbledown career. When I picked up the paper and read that he’d signed another contract with the Cubs, I nearly choked on my salami sandwich. Who was he kidding? “The ol’ soup bone ain’t the buggy whip it used to be,” he said, but Christ, he just loved the game too damned much not to give it another try. All right, dumbbell, I said to myself, see if I care. If you want to humiliate yourself in front of the world, that’s your business, but don’t count on me to feel sorry for you.

  Then, out of the blue, he wandered back into the club one night and greeted me like a long-lost brother. Dean wasn’t someone who drank, so it couldn’t have been booze that made him act like that, but his face lit up when he saw me, and for the next five minutes he gave me an all-out dose of herkimer-jerkimer bonhomie. Maybe he was still stuck on the idea that we knew each other, or maybe he thought I was somebody important, I don’t know, but the upshot was that he couldn’t have been more delighted to see me. How to resist a guy like that? I’d done everything I could to harden my heart against him, and yet he came on in such a friendly way that I couldn’t help but succumb to the attention. He was still the great Dean, after all, my benighted soulmate and alter ego, and once he opened up to me like that, I fell right back into the snare of my old bedevilment.

  I wouldn’t say that he became a regular at the club, but he stopped by often enough over the next six weeks for us to strike up more than just a passing acquaintance. He came in alone a few times to eat an early supper (dowsing every dish with gobs of Lea & Perrins steak sauce), and I’d sit with him shooting the breeze while he chomped down his food. We skirted baseball talk and mostly stuck to the horses, and since I gave him a couple of excellent tips on where to put his money, he began listening to my advice. I should have spoken up then and told him what I thought about his comeback, but even after he muddled through his first starts of the season, disgracing himself every time he stepped onto the field, I didn’t say a word. I’d grown too fond of him by then, and with the sad sack trying so hard to make good, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth.

  After a couple of months, his wife Pat persuaded him to go down to the minors to work on a new delivery. The idea was that he’d make better progress out of the spotlight—a frantic ploy if there ever was one, since all it did was support the delusion that there was still some hope for him. That’s when I finally got up the nerve to say something, but I didn’t have the guts to push hard enough.

  “Maybe it’s time, Diz,” I said. “Maybe it’s time to pack it in and head home to the farm.”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking about as dejected as a man can look. “You’re probably right. Problem is, I ain’t fit for nothin’ but throwin’ baseballs. I flunk out this time, and I’m up shit’s creek, Walt. I mean, what else can a bum like me do with hisself?”

  Plenty of things, I thought, but I didn’t say it, and later that week he left for Tulsa. Never had a great one fallen so far so fast. He spent a long, miserable summer in the Texas League, traveling the same dusty circuit he’d demolished with fastballs ten years before. This time he could barely hold his own, and the rinky-dinks and Mickey Mousers sprayed his pitches all over the lot. Old delivery or new, the verdict was clear, but Dizzy went on busting his chops and didn’t let the rough treatment get him down. Once he’d showered and dressed and left the park, he’d go back to his hotel room with a stack of racing forms and start phoning his bookies. I handled a number of bets for him that summer, and every time he called we’d jaw for five or ten minutes and catch up on each other’s news. The incredible thing to me was how calmly he accepted his disgrace. The guy had turned himself into a laughingstock, and yet he seemed to be in good spirits, as gabby and full of jokes as ever. What was the use of arguing? I figured it was only a matter of time now, so I played along with him and kept my thoughts to myself. Sooner or later, he was bound to see the light.

  The Cubs recalled him in September. They wanted to see if the bush-league experiment had paid off, and while his performance was hardly encouraging, it wasn’t as dreadful as it might have been. Mediocre was the word for it—a couple of close wins, a couple of shellackings—and therein hung the final chapter of the story; By some ditsy, screwball logic, the Cubs decided that Dean had shown enough of his old flair to warrant another season, and so they went ahead and asked him back. I didn’t find out about the new contract until after he left town for the winter, but when I did, something inside me finally snapped. I stewed about it for months. I fretted and worried and sulked, and by the time spring came around again, I understood what had to be done. It wasn’t as if I felt there was a choice. Destiny had chosen me as its instrument, and gruesome as the task might have been, saving Dizzy was the only thing that mattered. If he couldn’t do it himself, then I’d have to step in and do it for him.

  Even now, I’m hard-pressed to explain how such a twisted, evil notion could have wormed its way into my head. I actually thought it was my duty to persuade Dizzy Dean that he didn’t want to live anymore. Stated in such bald terms, the whole thing smacks of insanity, but that was precisely how I planned to rescue him: by talking him into his own murder. If nothing else, it proves how sick my soul had become in the years since Master Yehudi’s death. I’d latched onto Dizzy because he reminded me of myself, and as long as his career flourished, I could relive my past glory through him. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if he’d pitched for some town other than Saint Louis. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if our nicknames hadn’t been so similar. I don’t know. I don’t know anything, but the fact was that a moment came when I couldn’t tell the difference between us anymore. His triumphs were my triumphs, and when bad luck finally caught up with him and his career fell apart, his disgrace was my disgrace. I couldn’t stand to live through it again, and little by little I began to lose my grip. For his own good, Dizzy had to die, and was just the man to urge him into making the right decision. Not only for his sake, but for my sake as well. I had the weapon, I had the arguments, I had the power of madness on my side. I would destroy Dizzy Dean, and in so doing I would finally destroy myself.

  The Cubs hit Chicago for the home opener on April tenth. I got Diz on the horn that same afternoon and asked him to stop by my office, explaining that something important had come up. He tried to get me to come out with it, but I told him it was too big to discuss on the phone. If you’re interested in a proposition that will turn your life around, I said, you’ll come. He was tied up until after dinner, so we set the appointment for eleven o’clock the next morning. He showed up only fifteen minutes late, sauntering in with that loose-jointed stride of his and rolling a toothpick around on his tongue. He was wearing a worsted blue suit and a tan cowboy hat, and while he’d put on a few pounds since I’d seen him last, his complexion had a healthy tint after six weeks in the Cactus League sun. As usual, he was all smiles when he walked in, and he spent the first couple of minutes talking about how different the club looked in the daytime without any customers in it. “Reminds me of an empty ballpark,” he said. “Kinda creepy like. Still as a tomb, and a helluva lot bigger.”

  I told him to take a seat and fixed him up with a root beer from the ice box behind my desk. “This will take a few minutes,” I said, “and I don’t want you getting thirsty while we talk.” I could feel my hands starting to shake, so I poured myself a shot of Jim Beam and took a couple of sips. “How’s the wing, old timer?” I said, settling back into my leather chair and doing my best to look calm.

  “Same as it was. Feels like there’s a bone stickin’ out of my elbow.”

  “You got knocked around pretty hard in spring training, I heard.”

  “Them’s just practice games. They don’t mean nothin’.”

  “Sure. Wait till it really counts, right?”

  He caught the cynicism in my voice and gave a defensive shrug, then reached for the cigarettes in his shirt pocket. “Well, little guy,” he said, “what’s the scoop?” He
shook out a Lucky from his pack and lit up, blowing a big gust of smoke in my direction. “From the way you talked on the phone, it sounded like life and death.”

  “It is. That’s exactly what it is.”

  “How so? You got a patent on a new bromide or somethin’? Christ, you come up with a medicine to cure sick arms, Walt, and I’ll give you half my pay for the next ten years.”

  “I’ve got something better than that, Diz. And it won’t cost you a cent.”

  “Everything costs, fella. It’s the law of the land.”

  “I don’t want your money. I want to save you, Diz. Let me help you, and the torment you’ve been living in these past four years will be gone.”

  “Yeah?” he said, smiling as if I’d just told a moderately amusing joke. “And how you aimin’ to do that?”

  “Any way you like. The method’s not important. The only thing that counts is that you go along with it—and that you understand why it has to be done.”

  “You’ve lost me, kid. I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “A great person once said to me: ‘When a man comes to the end of the line, the only thing he really wants is death.’ Does that make it any clearer? I heard those words a long time ago, but I was too dumb to figure out what they meant. Now I know, and I’ll tell you something, Diz—they’re true. They’re the truest words any man ever spoke.”

  Dean burst out laughing. “You’re some kidder, Walt. You got that wacko sense of humor, and it don’t never let up. That’s why I like you so much. There ain’t no one else in this town that comes out with the ballsy things you do.”

  I sighed at the man’s stupidity. Dealing with a clown like that was hard work, and the last thing I wanted was to lose my patience. I took another sip of my drink, sloshing the spicy liquid around in my mouth for a couple of seconds, and swallowed. “Listen, Diz,” I said. “I’ve been where you are. Twelve, thirteen years ago, I was sitting on top of the world. I was the best at what I did, in a class by myself. And let me tell you, what you’ve accomplished on the ball field is nothing compared to what I could do. Next to me, you’re no taller than a pygmy, an insect, a fucking bug in the rug. Do you hear what I’m saying? Then, just like that, something happened, and I couldn’t go on. But I didn’t hang around and make people feel sorry for me, I didn’t turn myself into a joke. I called it quits, and then I went on and made another life for myself. That’s what I’ve been hoping and praying would happen to you. But you just don’t get it, do you? Your fat hick brain’s too clogged with cornbread and molasses to get it.”