For Love of the Game (2 page)

Chapel signed the last baseball. Looked at his watch. Almost ten. She’d be in her office. If.… He knew the number. Dialed.

So long to answer. Always. Ring ring ring. Then, at last:

“Hell-llo. Rogers and Stein Publishing. Can I help you?”

“Like to speak to Miss Grey, please. Carol Grey. Is she in?”

“Just a moment.” Pause. “Oh, hey, is this Mr. Chapel? Billy Chapel? Is that whom I’m speaking to?”

“Right. It’s me. Is Carol there?”

“Well,
hello
, Mr. Chapel. How you doin’? Nice to hear from you. Ah. Just a minute. One minute. What? No. Oh. Mr. Chapel, sorry, but she’s not in her office. They don’t know where she is. I’ll have her paged.” Pause. “Well now, are you pitchin’ today, Mr. Chapel?”

“Guess so.” Waiting.

“Golly, Mr. C.—you take it easy today on our fellas, you hear? Our boys need that game today, and
your
fellas don’t. Isn’t that so? Your team is
last
, so it sure don’t matter to you, but I tell you, here around this office, the way people are excited… Oh. I see. Ah, Carol’s gone out. She’ll be back in a bit, but nobody knows when. Maybe not this morning. Well. Any message you’d like to leave?”

Pause. She must be … okay. Unhurt. Just there. He said: “No message.” Pause. “Just … tell her I called.”

“I’ll sure do that. Gee, I’m sorry about that ballgame stuff. But I have to root for my team, you understand that. You, of all people. I mean, I hope
you
don’t lose, ’cause I sure think the world of you,
I mean, who doesn’t? But I hope your team loses. Well. Nice to talk to you.”

Chapel put down the phone.

Strange cold morning. Odd weather we’re having.

She’s gone to work. So. Health … no problem. Well. Something happened last night … with the family. Bad news. Don’t jump up and down, Billy. Never had a problem with that girl. Now finally a problem. So all right. Calmly. Maybe you can help. Maybe she’ll need you. Patience, Billy Boy.

Knock on the door. Chapel pivoted: the door, unlocked, swung slightly open, the big round bearded face of Gus Osinski, the catcher, peeked round the bend.

“Hey, man, is she decent?” Gus squinted round, searching for Carol, assumed she was in the bathroom. “I come in?”

He came into the room, a mass of pictures and brochures tucked against his great chest. He plopped them on the bed. No one but Gus would have opened the door at this time of the morning. He was Chapel’s closest friend. Chapel’s team changed every year, none but Chapel had stayed for long, and Gus had only been around for about four years, yet of all the catchers Chapel had known, he worked best with Gus. A plan had been building to get together after the season and head for New Zealand, where Gus had never been, and Chapel had supplied Gus with a mass of information.
The big man patted a mound of pictures, gave that massive grin.

“Man, these kept me up half the night. I showed ’em to Bobbie and I tell you, she’s hooked. When do we go? Set the date. Glaciers, for Chrissake. I never seen a glacier. Whole damn frozen river. You know I don’t ski? I don’t. Not me. Christ, I’d be the biggest snowball since—but Bobbie can ski. She has two weeks easy, maybe three, from the airline, so set the date. It’s spring there already, right? Here … two days left in September. What time is that in New Zealand? September, October. How do you work that out?”

“Figure the opposite,” Chapel said.

“Which?”

“Well. September comes like March. October same as April. Then November is May, and so on. Their summer is our winter. Exact opposite. January to them is … July.”

Gus had his mouth open, delighted, figuring. But he had looked at the bed and then was looking at it again and he saw that the bed was crumpled but the pillow was still under the blanket and the bed did not look slept in. Chapel had lain on it during the night but had not undressed. Gus looked round for Carol. No sign. He said: “What … ah … is she here?”

“Nope.”

“Oh, boy. What happened?”

“She didn’t show.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“A fight or somethin’?”

“I don’t know.”

“She just … didn’t come last night? Well … didn’t she call?”

“Nope.” Chapel stood up, rubbed his beard. “Need a shave.”

“Well, hell, man, is she okay?”

“Yep. I just called her office. Didn’t talk to her. But … they said she came in.”

“Ah,” Gus said. Then he said, with deep sudden gloom: “Ah, shit.”

Chapel looked down at the pictures near the cassette: that blond girl on skis. He picked up a cassette: Neil Diamond again, put it on automatically, punched the button. He said: “I don’t know anything yet. I don’t understand … not like her. Maybe it’s just … something got in the way. She’ll call later and tell me.”

“Right. Christ, I hope so.” Pause. “You and that woman … well. But what about our plan? Got to hold her to that, the trip to New Zealand—hey, there’s this thing I want to ask you about marriage. Over there. I mean, how about the hotels over there if you check in with the lady who is not married to you? How do they feel about that? I’ve heard there are some places a little … behind the times. Especially them Catholic places. They tell me—hell, you know, I never been overseas—they
tell me, a lot of guys, that if you pick up any broad and try to take her back to your room a lot of hotels won’t let her in and I don’t want any of that stuff, certainly not with Bobbie. My God,
Bobbie
.”

“You shouldn’t have any problem. Not if you check in together. Not that I know of. I never had any. Bringing a girl
in
, I don’t know about that.…”

Another Diamond song played.

Gus: “But her passport won’t have a married name.”

Chapel: “So if they ask, you got the passport before the marriage, and never did change it. But nobody ever asked us.”

“Good. Great. Takes a load off my mind.” Pause. “Man, have you been to sleep?”

“Forty winks.”

Gus was watching him with concern. “I never been to a
real
foreign country before. Except parts of Canada. Hee. Hey. They all speak English in New Zealand, right? I mean, do they get sticky with another language, like in Canada?”

“No. They’re kind of … Scotchmen. No problem.”

“Good. The French and me, we don’t see eye to eye.”

Knock on the door. Again open immediately: the tall, lean bellhop whom Chapel had known for years, a cheerful black man named Louie, carrying the usual coffee and rolls and jelly, a broad grin, handsome features in a gleaming face.

“
Good
mornin’, Mr. Chapel. How you doin’ this
mornin’, sir? You got them baseballs all signed? Ah, right. Thank you, sir. Them kids, I tell you, them kids’ll all go through the
wall
. They all know you, they see you in them commercials. Hey. You pitchin’ today? How about that? You goin’ in there today?”

“Think so.” Chapel searched for the tip. The bellhop was pouring the coffee. Two cups—he’d brought the extra for Gus. He stood up, that enormous grin growing wider. He cocked his arm like a warrior about to hurl a spear. “Well, I hope you blow ’em away. Zoom!” He whirled his arm and fired: strike. “Ha!” He flexed his arm, wrung it out, massaged the muscle with the other hand, like an old and mighty pro. He moved with natural grace—ex-dancer? He was saying: “I live in this town, but that ain’t
my
team. Motherless bastards. All you gotta do is work for ’em
once
, and, man, the things I could tell ya.…” He picked up the baseball bucket. “ ’Preciate it, Mr. Chapel, ’preciate it. I know the kids that’ll … well. Good luck, sir. Hope you go out there today and”—he gave a cheery, evil grin—“and
dust
’em off, Mr. Chapel. Just dust ’em off.” He departed.

“His own hometown.” Gus was slightly wounded. “Well, I betcha he just doesn’t come from here.”

The Neil Diamond song was beginning to annoy Chapel, and that was unusual: he turned the thing off, stood there, picked up another: old stuff, folk
songs, Burl Ives, kept the hands moving, put on another cassette.

Gus: “Got to tell you this, Chappie, I get cold up
here
in the winter, so, if you don’t mind, I’d just as soon—”

The phone rang.

Carol?

But Gus was near: picked it up.

“Yeah. Right. Who? Well. Okay. Here.” He handed the phone to Chapel. “Manager at the desk.”

Chapel took the thing, put it to the ear. The voice was one of the head men downstairs whose name Chapel did not know. The man was excited.

“Mr. Chapel. Ah, yes. Sorry to disturb you, sir, normally wouldn’t do that kind of thing at all, but, ah, there’s a gentleman down here who wishes to see you, sir, in person, and, well, sir, the gentleman is rather, ah, well, he’s that television personality, sportscaster, whatever the word is, well,
everybody
knows Ross. I mean, it’s that fella from NBC, D.B. Ross. You’re, well, familiar, of course. If you don’t mind, he, ah, tells me that he
must
speak to you as soon as possible, that the matter is, ah, urgent, and that he prefers to do it privately, and not on the telephone. Can he come up?”

After a moment Chapel said: “Is he alone?”

“Alone? Oh. Oh, yes, sir.”

“Well. Okay.”

“Fine! Thank you, sir. He’ll be right up.”

News? Something had happened. Clutch in the chest: pressure, warning. No. Don’t think. He drank the coffee.

Gus: “Dooby Ross. Jeez. I wonder.…”

Chapel: “I need a shave.”

Gus: “I’d watch this bird. Chappie, take care. This guy is what they call a ‘showboat.’ Want me to move out? Leave you alone?”

“Hell, no.”

“Shit. This guy, in some ways, is worse than Cosell. Ah. I was hopin’ it was Carol. Hey. Now, Billy?”

“Yep.”

“Want you to know, before somebody comes. I hope you fix that up. I think a lot of her. And if you don’t fix it up—Christ, how long have you known that girl? Years and years. You two … went good together. You looked good together. Matching pair. I mean, with that girl, you
laugh
. So I really hope—for your sake—Jesus. Is it
marriage
? Is that the point? Is it time for … time to be practical? Ha? What you think?”

Chapel said nothing. Songs often went through his mind, were singing in the back of the brain while he worked, and that one song was repeating itself there now as he stood by the pictures:

Knock on the door. This time it didn’t open. Chapel: here he comes. To Gus he nodded. Gus opened the door: Dooby Ross.

He was famous among television people, had been a sportscaster going back a long ways, back almost to the days of Red Barber, Mel Allen. He was a round, bald man with a flaxen mustache which was his “trademark,” that old-fashioned barber’s mustache. He had a small, round nose, sharp black eyes, a derby he held in his hand. Smartly dressed: a silvery tie, flicker of something diamondlike in the center, a light gray coat. He came into the room, stopped, making an entrance, gazed across the room at Chapel, a brief glance at Gus, then a slight bow.

“Billy Chapel. My pleasure to see you.”

Chapel nodded.

“What’s on your mind?”

The dark eyes were watching, calculating. Chapel knew: he brings bad news. A trade.…

Ross, the showman, paused there for a long moment, took a deep breath. Then he said slowly, clearly: “There is some news that will break in a few days. It’s being held back now by the people who know about it, but I found out about it myself last night. I learned from a … friend. Billy, it’s
about you.” Pause. “The news shook me up. First thing I thought of was: Billy should know. I owe it to you. After all these years. I owe it to you.”

Chapel, softly: “You don’t owe me anything.”

Ross let that pass. He was making his presentation. He folded his arms behind him. “They made the deal in quiet. Sometime last week. They were going to hold it back until the season was over and not let you know till then. That’s only—a few days off. But they figured it was better not to break the news now. But when they let it loose, Billy, they won’t tell you first. Just as they do so often with … Willie Mays, fellas like that. The big boys they—can’t face. So. You’ll hear it on the news or read it in the paper, and that’s the first they expect you to know.”

Chapel knew: traded. It was a cold blossom blooming in the chest.

Ross: “When I found out about it, last night, first thing I thought was this: he should know. Billy should know. Right now. Let him find it out alone. Don’t let them … mob the guy with questions.”

“Trade,” Chapel said.

Ross, no word necessary, nodded.

Long moment of silence.

Chapel looked at Gus. Gus had turned away. Chapel said, after a while: “Traded. Who to?”

Ross: “Don’t yet know. Not yet. I’m workin’ on it. All I know is, a team out on the West Coast. I got that far. From a girl that … hell. That’s not the point. Here’s the point, Billy. They can get a lot
of money out of you right now and they know it, and the word is that you don’t have much more time as a starting pitcher anymore. You’re thirty-seven. They can make big money if they move now. There are a few teams who think that with you in their bullpen they can go to the World Series. And they know how you feel, Billy—” He bared his teeth, gave the look of smelling something sick. “Oh, sure, they know that all right. But dammit, Billy, you played the honorable man all the way. You never came out of the goddam eighteenth century. Christ, Billy, you never made any real legal deal. They’ve got you by the balls,
by the living balls
, and they know that, I know that, goddammit, you know that. You must know that. You just never thought—while the Old Man was around. But Billy, he’s gone now. And the little men are in there now. And, Billy Boy, you’re gone now, too. That’s the goddam miserable shiteating truth. You won’t be with the Hawks next year. Billy, it’s done. And there’s nothin’ you can do.”

Chapel turned, saw a chair; sat.

Music from the cassette: “The pony run he jump he pitch … he threw my master in the ditch.…”