Highpockets (7 page)

Hardly had the cop, in language he found difficult to understand, finished, when there was an annoyed squawk from the rear. The red cabriolet with the top down was blocking a large truck that happened to be parked by the curb just behind him. Highpockets thanked the officer hastily, jumped into his car, and quickly started the motor. It immediately stalled. There was a series of angry honks, and, glancing back in the mirror, he saw an evil-browed man with a cap on one side of his head and a cigar in his mouth, behind the wheel of the truck.

For a second or so the ballplayer was so exasperated he had an immense desire to step out and slug the ugly driver. He refrained. The car moved off with that inevitable jerk, going down the street at a lively clip, pursued by the truck, from whose exhaust issued roars and explosions.

Several hundred feet beyond, an ancient car was parked by the curb at the right. A man slid from the front seat just before the red cabriolet drew abreast, got out and, opening the hood, peered within. Seconds later, exactly as the two cars were side by side, a boy raced out from the sidewalk.

Highpockets felt a horrible bump as the boy smashed into the Ford’s right fender and heard a sickening sound of something falling. The youngster disappeared from sight.

It happened so quickly. First he was riding along, no one was there, nothing in front of the car. Then the boy dived out from the side, hit the car, and all at once he was gone, he had vanished. He was nowhere.

There was the fierce squealing of the brakes. His car stopped so suddenly that Highpockets was thrown against the wheel. He leaped out and rushed back, his knees trembling, sweat on his forehead. A boy, red of face, was stretched unconscious on the pavement beside the ancient car. The man leaned over the boy. He looked up.

“Here, mister, help me. You take his legs. Nope, wait a minute, mebbe we better leave him here ... No, let’s carry him to the curb. You’re all right, Dean, you’re O.K., boy.”

Quite plainly the man was as upset as Highpockets. He had no idea what to do next. He, too, was frightened by the suddenness of the accident. The ballplayer bent down. The face of the youngster was smeared with grease, one leg was bleeding badly, his trousers were torn, there was blood across his right arm. He was silent, terrifyingly silent.

Is he badly hurt? Or stunned? Or seriously injured? Or killed? Highpockets stood there, unable to act, unable to move.

Then all at once the kid began to cry. Hurt he was, badly injured he might well be. But certainly he was not dead. His crying had a strong and healthy sound. A welcome one, also, for a feeling of enormous relief rose within the ballplayer.

“Look! He can’t lie here like this. We better take him to the curb and get a doc right off.” He leaned over and lifted the boy’s legs while the father picked up his shoulders. The youngster bawled louder and louder still as they lugged him clumsily to the sidewalk and laid him down.

Highpockets stood wiping his face, looking at the tousled lad, thinking that while he might not be dead he was probably badly injured. Highpockets was miserable. He knew that he had been going too fast for that crowded street, that if he had not been upset he would have been driving at a slower pace and the blow would have been less severe.

In a minute half a dozen kids had collected, and behind the circle surrounding the sobbing boy on the pavement, Highpockets recognized the truck driver with the cigar still in his mouth. Then a policeman sauntered up.

“Lemme see yer license, bud,” he said, casually. He was quite unconcerned about the accident. Apparently this sort of thing happened frequently in Brooklyn.

The father spoke up for the first time. “It’s nothing, nothing much, officer. He’s not hurt bad. This gentleman ain’t to blame.” At this remark the youngster howled louder than ever. The circle around them grew rapidly. Boys’ voices spoke up. “It’s Dean. Dean Kennedy. He’s had an accident.” Windows opened, heads appeared above and across the street.

Highpockets had only a North Carolina license, which fortunately was in his wallet. He handed it over; the policeman glanced at it and handed it back. He grunted.

“That-there your car?”

Highpockets nodded.

“O.K. I’ll call an ambulance,” said the officer.

“Ambulance! We live near here. Look, he’s not that bad, officer,” said the boy’s father.

“Yeah, we better be sure. I’ll just call the Bushwick; they ain’t too far from here. Leave him he there. You never know is they any broken bones. Leave him lie ...” He turned and walked a hundred feet to the red police box on the corner. They saw him open it up with a key and with no apparent hurry, and take the telephone off the hook.

Then the truck driver edged his way through the circle, animosity on his face. “Hey, youse, you Cecil McDade of the Dodgers?”

You run over a kid with your car; you make him lose a leg possibly; you hurt him surely; you lay him up certainly for a long, long time. Just a kid, lying there crying on the pavement. So you forget things, sort of; your job is a long way off. So, too, are your home and your people.

Then you’re brought suddenly back to Brooklyn. Highpockets, disconsolate and worried, turned to nod. He disliked Brooklyn more than ever he had before. He wished with all his heart he had never seen Flatbush. Or the Dodgers, either.

“Ya bum!” said the truck driver, venom in his tones. “Whatcha wanna drop that fly against the G’ints for this affernoon?”

Cecil McDade of the Dodgers! There was a kind of involuntary forward movement all around the circle as the boys on the edge pressed toward him, curiosity on every face. The injured youngster ceased to bawl. The father, kneeling beside him, looked up quickly. Cecil McDade! Why, say, that’s Highpockets.

It was the truck driver who spoke. “Ya bum ya! If that hadda been you out there just now, know what I’d’a done? I’d’a run over ya. Yeah, an’ they’d gimme a pension fer life instead of sending me to jail, too.”

S
PORTSWRITERS ON METROPOLITAN
dailies from one end of the league to the other had interviewed Highpockets and obtained little more information than could be found in the pages of the
Baseball Guide.
Radio commentators, despite their sticky persistence, had no better success. The visit of the Tar Heel delegation to Manhattan was therefore an opportunity the New York reporters seized eagerly. Many sporting columns appeared the morning after Cecil McDade Day in Brooklyn, all concerned with Highpockets and all written before the accident. These stories were mostly accounts of his life in the environs of Bryson City and his early baseball career. A few newspapers even ran photographs of the McDade family on the farm at home. Like the rest of his craft, Casey had talked with the businessmen from North Carolina. Moreover, his observant eyes had seen the photographer rebuffed on the field before the game. Some little investigation plus a few telephone calls gave Casey an opening lead for his column the next day.

The tale is running around that the human umbrella who plays right field for the Brooks knows how to handle himself in a broken field. The other day when told that he had been chosen, with Manager Spike Russell and Catcher Jocko Klein, to play in the All-Star game in Cincinnati next week, he accepted the unusual honor with this crack: “Yeah. All-Star games don’t put no groceries on the table.” And when
Life Magazine
sent a photographer around to get a series of pictures of him recently, Highpockets is said to have demanded the sum of two hundred and fifty dollars for the privilege of snapping his phiz. At first sight it may seem amazing for
Life
, an institution used to having its own way, to be held up by a farm boy from North Carolina. Thinking it over, however, one has to admit that nobody helped Cecil McDade on his journey up from the minors, and it is not likely that
Life Magazine
would offer him a job as executive editor if his eyes go and he loses that home-run punch.

Everyone knows the toothpick squeezes a nickel harder than most ballplayers hold on to a twenty-five cent tip; but investigation among the North Carolinians in the city for Cecil McDade Day yesterday proves there’s a reason. You’ll never get this from Highpockets himself; however, it appears he lives on a hilly farm in the red clay soil of Rabbit Creek up back of town, on land which until lately grew only sour corn and not a lot of that. He is saving to buy fertilizer and livestock to make the place a producing farm, and also to give an education that he never received to his five brothers and sisters. There is no sense pretending that the beanpole is the most popular man on the Brooklyn club, either with the fans or his teammates; yet if some of the latter knew more about his background, they might be understanding in a way they are not at the present time.

Highpockets read all this on the subway going over to the hospital the next morning with no pleasurable emotion. Shoot, those birds, those sportswriters! Always after an angle. Why don’t they let a guy alone! He tossed the paper down, grateful for only one thing about the events of the past day. Directly after the accident, he had called George McPherson, the club secretary, and fortunately reached him at home. An old newspaperman himself, George went into action immediately. He spent several feverish hours at police headquarters, at the hospital, and on the telephone. After considerable effort had been expended and various wires pulled, all traces of the event were submerged from even the inquisitive eyes of Casey himself. No one but the few directly concerned would know about the affair unless one of the participants talked out of turn. Highpockets had no fear of breaking down himself.

So he went to the hospital thinking of this with relief, thankful also that it was a boy who had been injured rather than a girl. Boys understand baseball; we’ll have something in common, he felt. Actually, Highpockets’ knowledge of metropolitan youth was confined mostly to the kids who pestered him for autographs, who lined up along the wire netting outside the runway from the dugout to the clubhouse at Ebbets Field, kids who knew the batting averages and records of every player on the club. They, and their counterparts in other cities of the league, were the kind of youngsters he pictured as American boys. To his amazement, Dean Kennedy was another type. Certainly if he was agitated at entertaining a man who had hit thirty homers, he failed to show it.

In fact, conversation between the ballplayer and the boy was not exactly spontaneous. The athlete sat on a stiff chair beside the bed. The kid lay motionless, his blue eyes fixed solemnly on his visitor, a sort of tent of bedclothes over his injured leg, which, so the nurses said, was healing nicely. They had already suggested to Highpockets that the patient might be home in a few days. After ascertaining that the youngster felt all right and had no pain or internal injuries, Highpockets launched into the only subject except farming that he himself knew well. That was his profession.

The American as against the National League, ever a favorite subject of discussion for sport fans, drew no comment whatever from the lad. The pennant race in the National, a red hot affair in which seven and a half games separated the tail-enders and leaders, failed to produce a spark. Even the chances of the Dodgers left the boy unmoved. Highpockets was working hard now, talking far more than ever he talked to the most pertinacious newshound. There was little response. The boy replied with a yes or no.

“Look,” Highpockets asked in despair, “who’s yer favorite team in the National?”

“I d’know.”

“Well, I mean, haven’t you got a favorite team? Mebbe you’re an American Leaguer?’

“Nope,” said the boy. He apparently wasn’t interested in either league.

“See here,” said the ballplayer, somewhat exasperated, “d’ you mean to tell me you aren’t a ball fan?”

The boy in the bed shook his mane of yellow hair. He seemed to feel no special regret for his ignorance, or shame because he lived in Brooklyn and had no affection for the Dodgers. Highpockets was rocked. He had heard of such youngsters, and he presumed there must be some kids who didn’t really care for big league baseball; but he had never met them. He was astonished and a little upset, too. Pursued by boys and girls through every hotel lobby in every town in the circuit, assaulted as he left every ballpark by a bevy of kids with pencils in their outstretched hands, he assumed all right-thinking American boys read the
Sporting News
and collected small cards several inches square with photographs of ballplayers and their names underneath.

C
ECIL
“H
IGHPOCKETS
” M
C
D
ADE

Right Field,
Brooklyn, N.L.

To find one who didn’t, and in Brooklyn, of all places! For a minute he hardly knew how to proceed.

“You mean to tell me you aren’t interested in baseball? That’s strange. How come?”

“I d’know,” said the boy calmly. He wasn’t interested. That was that and he felt no shame about it.

The silence in the room lengthened. As a rule Highpockets enjoyed these pauses in conversation immensely. He liked them especially when he found himself cornered on the bench before the game, because these silences meant his tormentor was running out of stupid questions and getting near the end of the interview. This silence was different. Now he was on the receiving end, instead of the other way round.

A boy who doesn’t like baseball! Imagine that! Highpockets observed that the books and games he had carefully selected to be sent to the lad were piled up on a side table, apparently unopened and untouched. Even the life story of the new strike-out hero of the American League had failed to interest this unusual youngster.

Highpockets dropped baseball with regret. In despair he asked, “What school d’you go to, Dean?”

“Franklin.”

“What grade you in?”

“Eighth.”

Well, that’s something. For the first time since entering the room the ballplayer felt on surer ground. “That so, that so? Now, I have a kid brother down home in Bryson City, boy ’bout your age; he’s in the eighth, too. Then most likely you’ll go to high school next fall.”