Highpockets (15 page)

“Will you start this afternoon, Highpockets?”

“Start? ’Course I’ll start. I’ll be in there all right.”

“Hey, Highpockets, the doc thinks you shouldn’t. He told Spike Russell if you do, your arm may go. If you begin throwing out there today, he said he wouldn’t be responsible. He said you might ruin it for good and all.”

“Shucks, that sawbones! I’ll throw all right, I’ll be in there throwing at the end.”

They looked at him and said nothing. Funny chap, this Highpockets McDade from a North Carolina farm. Supposed to be only interested in himself and his batting average, his home-run record. Yet here he is, risking his arm and his future as a ballplayer on this one game. Funny sort of chap, hard to dope out.

The team went out to practice with Paul Roth in right. The fans wondered. Then the boys came back to the bench and sat round waiting for the bell. Down in the dugout, Jocko Klein was putting the tools on and talking in his serious way about Jimmie Duveen of the Cards. The big Redbird hurler was warming up over across the way.

“Glad I don’t have to catch that guy. He hides the ball behind his glove, throws his foot up in your face, looks over at a blonde behind first base, and bang! It’s past before you can see the darn thing.”

“Right, Jocko,” spoke up Bob Russell. “You can’t hit what you don’t see. Holy catfish! He’s plenty bad in the daytime, but at night he’s murder in the first degree. Thank heaven we ain’t playing this game under the lights. Why, he can thread a needle with that-there fast ball of his’n.”

Now the three Dodger relief men were off, carrying their gloves and their jackets under their arms, out to the bullpen in deep right. The bullpen was going into action from the start, for Spike was taking no chances. He wanted to be ready if young Chris Terry showed the least signs of wear and tear. The umpires were strolling up to the plate, where Charlie Draper met them with the batting list in his hand. As usual, the loudspeaker began on the line-ups, the fans listening with more than usual attention, wondering.

Is Paul Roth going in? Will Roth take over right in place of Highpockets? Who’s playing the right garden? What’s cooking? They had seen Highpockets taken out of the game the previous afternoon, and those who had not seen had read all about it. Every sporting column in the city was filled with medical terminology and news of his injury. Every sportswriter overnight became an expert on orthopedics.

“For Brooklyn. Young, numbah thirty, first base. Tucker, numbah thirty-four ...” A great cheer rose across the diamond, echoing back and forth from the stands in deep center to the crowded tiers back of the plate, breaking in waves upstairs. Finally it died away.

“Swanson, numbah twelve, left field.” Again that tremendous burst of noise for the old favorite, a torrent of sound that completely drowned out the announcer’s next words. The old man is taking over left. Spike sure needs this game; he’s working every angle. What about the clean-up spot? Will Highpockets go in? How about Highpockets? Is Roth taking over right or will Highpockets play today?

The announcer was forced to repeat the next sentence because no one heard it. He did so, clearly and with emphasis.

“And in right field ...”

There was a pause, a long pause. He knew there was drama in his words, and he hung over them. Silence settled on the ballpark, a silence so intense you could hear the telegraph instruments ticking furiously away in the press box above the grandstand. No one moved; no one spoke. The umpires stood motionless by the plate. Still the announcer hesitated.

Highpockets! How ’bout Highpockets? Is he gonna play or ain’t he? Is Paul Roth going in for Highpockets?

“And in right field ... McDade ... numbah ...”

It was the roll and roar of the sea. It was a hundred planes together in the sky. It was a spontaneous and sudden tumult which enveloped the field and everyone in it, every man, woman, and child. There were no hoots, no moans, no groans or angry jeers. No raucous calls across the diamond.

This time it was different. It was different because the fans in the bleachers can’t well be fooled. The boys in the ninety-cent seats know baseball better than anyone. They also know something else—they know human values. They recognize a player who is only interested in how many base knocks he gets. They recognize the phony more quickly from the bleachers than from anywhere else; the bleachers are a good place from which to see baseball and the individuals who make it up. The fans there are also quick to recognize the right guy, the team player.

So they yelled and yelled. At last Highpockets belonged to Brooklyn.

T
HERE ARE ALMOST THREE
million people in Brooklyn, and only thirty-five thousand that day had succeeded in getting past the cordon of policemen set up early in the morning on the streets around Ebbets Field. Unless you could show a ticket, you couldn’t approach the place. The rest of the population got the game in other ways. No work was done throughout the city. In offices telephones rang unanswered while the clerks gathered around a radio, listening intently, saying nothing as inning after inning went by. Where there were no radios handy, a boy was sent downstairs to keep bulletins flowing from the nearest grill. Usually the boy had only to go as far as the elevator. As the afternoon grew older, every elevator man and every starter knew the exact score. Each person who entered the building asked the same question or made the same remark. “Still nothing to nothing?” “Yes, still no score yet.”

In the taverns all over town, in Manhattan and the Bronx, and of course, in Queens, crowds hung around the television sets, watched Spike Russell have a field day at short, saw Highpockets’ tight face when he came up to bat, and big Jim Duveen, pitching the game of his life, mow down the Brooklyn sluggers. On the streets, strangers spoke to strangers as they never do in New York, and everyone asked the same thing. “Anybody scored yet?” All afternoon white-coated soda jerkers came out of corner drugstores and posted up goose eggs on the sheet stuck to the front window pane. Folks sat in taxis long after they had paid the bill, because for once drivers were content to sit and listen, too, and manage the Dodgers for a change. Around the parked cars by the curb, little knots of people bent forward in silence, nodding as the Brooks pulled themselves out of hole after hole, inning after inning. Truck drivers even made peace with their enemies, the traffic cops, hurling the latest score at them as they turned into the main avenues of town.

Shadows deepened over the tall buildings of the city, while out on the diamond in Brooklyn the two teams battled on, neither one giving way. It was hot, cruelly hot, one of those steaming July days which get misplaced into the end of September, which descend upon a metropolis already old and weary from the summer heat. No one minded the heat that afternoon. Everyone was thinking of the game.

It was Duveen’s day. He was a money player and this was the game to win, the last chance, the one the Cards needed most of all. He was determined to get it. His fast ball was smoke, his curve broke angrily, his side-arm sinker fooled the batters. He slaughtered the top of the order, forcing them to pop up, to fly out, or to hit lazy grounders to the infield. It was Duveen’s day, all right, but not Chris Terry’s. The young Dodger was in trouble from the start. Only expert fielding saved him from a score more than once, as the Cards went to work on him in those early innings.

Spike Russell was the take-charge guy all over the infield. He played shortstop; he played third base; he went out to smother tricky Texas leaguers that the aged Swanny never in the world could have reached; he roamed far to his right to turn hits into double-play balls; he raced to the stands in short left for fouls that would have been impossible for most men and got them. In the second, in the fourth, in the fifth and sixth, the Cards had men on bases and Chris on the ropes. He was saved in each inning by brilliant work in the field.

In the eighth it seemed that the game was over. From deep right, Highpockets was a spectator to the drama. Up to then he had caught a couple of routine flies but had never been forced to throw. The first man singled and reached the pick-off post as Chris weakened again and gave a base on balls. First and second were occupied when Spike signaled to the bullpen. The youngster walked dejectedly off the mound, the crowd applauded, and Bones Hathaway came in from right. No one down and the top of the Card batting order at the plate.

Anxious to give the batter nothing to hit, Bones lost the first man he faced and the bags were loaded. Every player and every fan in the park realized that a single tally might win the game. Highpockets thumped his glove nervously with his fist. As he did so, pain shot up and down his sore arm. Bonesey went carefully to work on the batter, who stood fouling pitch after pitch to the screen behind. Finally he lifted a fly back of first, which Lester smothered while the runners held. There was dynamite in the air as Steve Carone, the Card clean-up man, stepped in.

They were off on the next pitch, all three. The batter hit a stinging grounder to the right of second, a single seemingly through the hole into center. Bob Russell went for it with one of his leaping stabs. He stopped it, reaching out with one hand, and in the same motion tossed to Spike on second.

Now the third-base runner was nearing home plate, and only a double-play could prevent that vital score. Spike’s bare hand speared the ball and, touching the base, he jumped high to avoid the spikes of the sliding runner. He whirled as he leaped and came down to burn the ball to Lester at first. Lester’s glove stretched for it and the umpire’s hand went up. The batter was out by a step, the tally didn’t count, and another zero flashed upon the scoreboard in deep right field.

Bonesey kept the Cards off the bases until the twelfth, when they started to go again. Mike Madden, the Redleg first baseman, fast and powerful, singled to Roy in center. The next hitter smacked a line drive over third and the Card coaches yelled, “Go for two, Mike, go for two!” With a burst of speed he slid safely into third, so there were two aboard once more with no one down.

Bonesey went to work, struck out the catcher, and started on the tail end of the batting list with confidence. The next man caught one of his sliders and laced it to right. Highpockets knew the Cards would take a chance on his sore arm at the first opportunity. This was it.

A great sigh, a collective “Oh” from the crowd went up as the ball was hit. Then he came charging over fast and it slapped into his glove with a smack you could hear from one end of the tense ballpark to the other. Highpockets turned without hesitation as the runner on third sprinted for home.

Two hundred and eighty feet from right field to the plate, a fast man on the bases, a race between ball and man. Highpockets drew back and let go. It was a deadline peg, a perfect strike into Jocko’s glove, slightly to the third base side of the plate where he needed it to block off the burly Card trying to slide in under him. Hold that ball, Jocko, hold that ball, kid!

Jocko held it. The runner was out, the score shut off, and the Cards were racing out for the last of the thirteenth, muttering to themselves about that sore arm of McDade’s which wasn’t supposed to last out the series.

For fifteen long innings Duveen pitched shut-out ball and there was no score on either side. In the sixteenth St. Louis finally got a man on third and squeezed home that important run, the first of the game. The Dodgers came to bat in an uproar that became a frenzy, after Lester had flied out, when Roy Tucker drove a pitch cleanly over second. Swanny sacrificed him to second base, so there were two down as Highpockets stepped in. Every spectator and all the millions outside the park listening in had the same thought.

A homer would win the game. Over the fence into Bedford Avenue, one of Highpockets’ favorite shots, and bang, the contest would be finished.

The Cards knew this, too. Would they pitch to him? Highpockets had gone hitless all afternoon, and Jocko, next at bat, was hitting .340 and had made three of the Dodgers’ six hits that day. Would they pass Highpockets and take a chance on Jocko?

They chose to pitch to him and Duveen went to work calmly, giving him those close-to-the-handle balls. But the hurler failed to realize that he had changed his batting stance. His left foot was ten inches behind his normal position, so he was squared away and ready to hit a good one to left. Actually it was a change-of-pace ball that he hit, a liner down the left field foul line, about ten feet in, right in the slot where they least expected it. Roy was lightning on the bases, cutting over third by the time the left fielder reached the ball and across with the tying run before Highpockets slid into third with a triple.

He was stranded when the Cardinal center fielder hauled down Jocko’s hard-hit drive close to the fence. Now the score was tied, and the contest continued. In the seventeenth, with a man on base, Alan Whitehouse went in as a pinch hitter for Bonesey, and in the eighteenth, Jerry Fielding, the third hurler for the Brooks, took over the pitching assignment. Still Duveen kept going for the Cards.

No score in the eighteenth. In the first of the nineteenth the Redlegs went down in order. With no one out in the last half, Highpockets came to bat again. The memory of that game-saving triple was in the minds of the crowd and they howled for a home-run punch to win. Into the formation on the right went the Cards, and back against the fence went the three outfielders, each one glancing nervously over his shoulder at the wall behind. It was the big moment of the long afternoon, for now they were afraid of him, every one of them.

“Make him pitch to you, make him pitch to you, Cecil,” shouted Draper back of third base.

Highpockets had his orders. Selecting the ball, he took a wicked cut and laced a liner directly at the spot where the shortstop would normally have been playing. It was so plainly aimed at open territory that the crowd rose cheering, yelling and shrieking as he rounded first and then cut back to the bag. For the first time that afternoon the Cardinal bullpen went to work furiously.