Highpockets (6 page)

By the middle of July, Highpockets was batting .305 and had made twenty-seven homers. The team, however, was still anchored in fifth place, and folks in Brooklyn stopped asking every night how the Brooks made out. They simply inquired, “What did Highpockets do today?”

With an open date the club was traveling home from Cincinnati to play a postponed game against the New York Giants, and at the same time to celebrate Cecil McDade Day. That evening on the train Highpockets found himself unable to sleep, and about eleven o’clock wandered out to the club car for a sandwich and a glass of milk. Jocko Klein was reading a magazine as he dropped into the adjoining seat.

“Why, now, that’s a good idea. Think I could use the same,” said Jocko, when he heard his teammate give the order to the waiter. They were munching away a few minutes later when Charlie Draper came into the car with George McPherson, the club secretary. He passed the two men chatting over their sandwiches, and stood hesitating a minute before them.

“O.K., you boys. O.K. Only understand, you’re here strictly on your own.” The ballplayers glanced at him and the secretary continued. “I mean the club isn’t picking up the check on this; it buys your meals, not your late lunches.”

They said nothing and he moved along to the far end of the car with Draper. In a few minutes the waiter brought the check, and Jocko started to dig for his wallet.

“Hold it, Jocko,” said Highpockets, laying a restraining hand on the other’s arm. Then he reached across for the check, picked it up, and rose. Jocko looked after him with a puzzled gaze. What’s that crazy busher up to now!

Slowly Highpockets walked down the swaying car to the table where the road secretary sat playing fan-tan with the coach, a bottle of beer between them.

“Hey there, George.” The secretary raised his eyes. “Twenty-seven homers. Get it?” He laid the check, face down, on the table. The secretary was not slow on the uptake. He picked up the check, while Highpockets went back along the swinging car to his room in the rear of the train.

The next afternoon was an event in Brooklyn. Cecil McDade Day drew a delegation from Bryson City and a larger one from North Carolina; it also attracted a capacity crowd of customers from the environs of Greater New York, who arrived armed with tin whistles, cowbells, horns, and other instruments of noise-making to join in the fun. They yelled and yammered at Highpockets, and their cries were warmer and more friendly than usual. Which did not mean that as paying clients they relinquished the right to shout abuse whenever the occasion arose.

The Brooks were spread out in practice over the park before the game, and Highpockets was hounding the deep fungos from Charlie Draper’s stick, when he was approached by a man with a camera over his shoulder.

“Mr. McDade?” he said, briskly.

“Yessuh.” Highpockets stopped, breathing heavily from his last race for the ball.

“Davis from
Life Magazine.
We’re planning to run a double-page spread on you late this summer, and I’d appreciate a chance to get some shots.”

Highpockets glanced at him with curiosity, and noticed that he was better dressed than the newspaper photographers who swarmed around the baselines and infested the clubhouse after important games. Moreover he lacked the cigar or the end thereof which most newspaper cameramen usually wore in their mouths.

“Where d’you say you came from?” He merely wanted to be sure. A fellow could make mistakes easy in things of this sort.

“Life Magazine,”
replied the man, unslinging his camera in a businesslike way. “Like to get some action pictures of you out here in the field, some close-ups, and a few good shots of you at the bat. Oh, yes, and some time this next week can we make an appointment to take you informally in your hotel room?”

“Yessuh. I’ll shore be glad to accommodate you.” He spoke courteously, but all the while he was thinking.
Life Magazine.
H’m, those boys have the dough. “Yessuh,” he said. “For two hundred and fifty dollars.”

The camera, half unslung, almost slipped from the photographer’s grasp. He hesitated, glanced up at the gangling youth in the monkey suit to see whether he meant it, replaced the machine on his shoulder, and then without a word turned and walked away.

The fans in right had been watching the affair with attention. Not knowing precisely who the man was or what had happened, they gave the photographer the raspberry as he came slowly in toward the plate, past the stands.

Meanwhile Highpockets went back to chasing fungos against the fences. Yes, sir, a fellow sure does need a manager up here in the big time.

Most ballplayers dislike presentation ceremonies and special days, although none to date has ever been known to refuse a leather traveling case, much less a Ford cabriolet. However, the occasion as a rule affects their play. They become embarrassed, tighten up, fumble at the plate and stumble in the field. Not Highpockets. To him Cecil McDade Day was merely another afternoon of baseball with good friends from home along to see the fun. Except, that is, for the shiny, red Ford cabriolet. The car, well sheathed in ribbons and streamers, with the state flag attached to the bonnet and the top down, was driven slowly around the ballpark by the daughter of the Governor, an attractive blonde. Then the ceremonies of the day began.

The boys on the two clubs stood on the dugout steps, while the shouts and yells of the crowd rose in volume. That day, however, the approbation exceeded the cynical taunts from the stands. For, after all, few fans could completely laugh off a man who had bashed out twenty-seven homers in the first three months of the season.

In tones that were warm and homelike to Highpockets after months of nasal northern accents, the Governor presented him with the keys to the car. The Tar Heels clustered around the plate. They were glad to see him and he was gratefully pleased to see them. Some he had known (and some only by name) in Bryson City; Mr. Smith, the druggist; Mr. Barnewell, the president of the bank; and Mr. Harrison, the lawyer who had offices in Tuttle’s Block. Several of them spoke, and everyone said the same thing in different words. They were proud to have a Bryson City boy make good in the majors, and they had come north to tell him so.

Then the announcer, in the identical tones he used to talk about a new mouthwash or introduce a refrigerator, called on Highpockets in a tremendous din. It finally died away. He leaned far down over the nickel amplifier. His self-possession did not desert him, and if his speech of acceptance was not a lengthy affair, it had the merit of saying what he meant, and his voice was clear and direct over the entire park.

“Folks ... and friends ... I thank you all very kindly. I’m shore obliged to you all for coming up here this afternoon and for giving me this beautiful car. I appreciate it, I shore do.”

He turned and shook hands with the Governor and several of the men around home plate. The radio announcer switched the program back to the control room, for the affair had been broadcast over the network, and that was that. The ceremonies for the day were finished; the ball game, the important thing and especially important when Dodgers meet Giants, could start.

All the while, kneeling on the ground around the batter’s box, their cameras pointed at Highpockets like a battery of machine guns, were the photographers. They wore grimy polo shirts open at the neck, and the majority had desiccated cigar butts in their mouths. The elegant man from
Life Magazine
was not among the kneeling throng.

T
HE THINGS HIGHPOCKETS
recalled afterward about Cecil McDade Day were two, neither one connected with the presentation ceremonies nor the things that were said about him there. The first pertained to the contest. It wasn’t the lucky two-bagger off the handle of his bat, but the fly ball which cost the Brooks the game.

It happened in the sixth inning of a scoreless tie and let in the only run of the game. The day was bright and hazy in turn. At times the sun burned through an overcast, at times it would slide under the clouds. Ten minutes later it would come out in full force.

The whole game dragged along. Every inning seemed to last an hour, for Jerry Fielding in the box for the Dodgers was always a slow pitcher, and that day took plenty of time on every batter. Receiving the ball, he would toss his glove off and stand rubbing up the sphere with both palms for several seconds. Next he would lean carefully over for the rosin bag, dust off his meat hand, toss the bag behind and, stepping to the rubber, stand motionless until he got the sign from Jocko behind the plate. A nod, a peck at the brim of his cap, a look around the bags, a measured sweep of his hand across the shirt. At last he was set to throw.

At the start of the sixth, the day was gloomy. Highpockets, who had been fiddling with his sun glasses on the bench, discovered that he had dropped them and left them there. Instead of stopping the game and asking for them, he said nothing. After the first two batters were out on infield grounders, the sun suddenly broke through, strong and clear. Jerry tired, his control failed for a moment, he threw four balls and passed the third hitter. The next man hit to right field, an easy out that Highpockets sighted and then lost completely in the brilliant sunshine. From the stands, indeed from the playing field, it simply seemed that he was lazy. For he ambled slowly backward, loping along while the ball dropped a few feet beyond his reach on what should have been a sure put-out. And the last of the inning.

With two down, the runner on first was naturally off as the ball was struck. He galloped past Spike Russell at short, who was watching his right fielder loaf after the fly and miss the catch by a yard. The manager stood roundly cursing Highpockets for a conceited busher and a clumsy clown.

Hang it, he thought, hang it all. If this was only an ordinary game today, I’d yank him for that so quick he’d never know what struck him. I sure would.

The bewildered boy in right finally sighted the ball as it got past and out of the sun. Before he could reach it, however, the runner had scored, and the batter was safely perched on second base. An important tally went up on the scoreboard, while the crowd turned to watch whether a hit or an error would be given on the play. The lenient score-keeper signaled a hit, but no one on the club was fooled by that, nor in the stands either.

Not realizing that he had lost the ball in the sun without his glasses, the stands rose, jeering. From all sides came the abuse.

“Hey, there, dogface!”

“Yoo-hoo, Cecil, yoo-hoo!”

“Highpockets, you bum, you; you bum, Highpockets!”

They kept after him whenever he was in the field or at bat during the remainder of the game, which ended one to nothing for New York.

Spike Russell was furious. He made a point of never calling players down directly after a game when he himself was usually in a tense frame of mind. But that afternoon he issued a most unusual order. He closed the clubhouse to everyone, even the newspapermen attached to the team.

The boys showered and dressed in grim silence. Highpockets, more miserable than anyone, hardly knew what to say or how to explain his misfortune. I pulled a rock, he thought, as he sat in his dripping clothes. I sure pulled a rock today. Nobody guessed how disaster had overtaken him or even queried him about it. So he sat glumly on the bench before his locker as the others trooped past to the showers.

Bones Hathaway was the only one who spoke to him. Bones had spent the afternoon on the bench, watching. He came from the showers as Highpockets, naked save for a towel around his shanks, at last moved toward them. The pitcher stopped and faced him squarely.

“Hey, look, Highpockets. Just one thing. You’ll never do that to me.”

The big chap hesitated. His face flushed, his temper flared. He was not afraid of a fight. He wanted to slug it out with Bonesey because of the implied accusation. Then he changed his mind, tried to explain, to say something, to admit his mistake; then he changed his mind again. Face-to-face they stood there, the tall, powerful pitcher and the lanky rookie with the taller frame and the hefty pair of shoulders. Enemies now. And both members of the same club.

Highpockets’ fists tightened on the towel about his waist. He moved past into the showers without a word.

The second thing he never forgot about Cecil McDade Day cost more than a game of baseball. He was to be entertained that evening at dinner in a Manhattan hotel by the Tar Heel delegation, and he was leaving the clubhouse alone when the head groundsman entered and asked what he wanted done with his car.

The car? The car? Of course, the car! Have to take it somewhere. He hated the car already; he wished they had never given him the car. But there the car was. The only thing he could think of was to drive to his hotel and have the doorman send it round to his hotel garage. He discovered it parked near the exit in center field that led to Bedford Avenue. The Ford was devoid of flags and banners, yet still red, shiny, elegant in the afternoon sun.

Several attendants were watching as he stepped in, fishing out his keys, and started the motor. He knew perfectly what they were thinking, so he hastily threw the clutch in and moved forward, pausing as they opened the gate. The car stalled. It took some few minutes to get it going once more because the carburetor was flooded. Several kids passing by saw and recognized him immediately. They leaped to the running board, begging for his autograph. The groundsman shooed them away. Highpockets finally started the motor and jerked out into the traffic pouring down Bedford Avenue.

He was exhausted physically and emotionally from the long afternoon. It was also the first time he had ever driven in the traffic of a large city. So he went cautiously along in the rush and roar of the late afternoon crush, stalling frequently at traffic lights, collecting curses from taxi drivers and queer looks from people in passing cars who knew exactly where they were headed. Finally he turned off and found himself in a comparatively quiet section of residential dwellings. Cars were parked along each side of the street, but he stopped, got out, and asked a policeman for directions.