The Legend of Mickey Tussler (16 page)

Mickey's first pitch to the next batter allowed the speedster to steal second. After the next delivery, he was standing on third. Delaney was putting on a clinic. The Ranger bench erupted in jubilant approval. Mickey groaned. A maudlin urgency filled him. He could see the entire Ranger bench, knees bent, eyes squeezed tight and mouths agape, laughter exploding from every uniform. He could hear them too.

“Baby Bazooka?” They laughed, some doubled over in a desperate search for air. “Are they kidding us? More like Kiddie Cork Gun!”

Mickey heard the jeers. His whole body slumped.

“Shake that off, Mickey,” Murph yelled from the dugout, his eyes on McNally and the others. “Come on, big fella, just work the batter.”

Mickey opened his mouth and licked his lips. They were dry, except for two gummy, white bits of saliva resting in the corners. His stomach ached and he felt a distinct throbbing at his temples. He was close to caving. Then, under the cover of a dark gray sky, Mickey found the tiny red target in Boxcar's glove and the oppression lifted.

“Strike one. … Strike two. … Strike three!” the umpire shouted in succession. The batter sat down. Three pitches later, another batter fell victim. Then another. The raucous heckling and hissing from the Ranger dugout eased to a series of sighing complaints, and from all around the stands, dim rows of pale faces fired deepthroated, guttural invectives not at Mickey but at their own beloved boys of summer, chastising them for their poor performance against what they deemed a less than worthy opponent.

Vardiman and Mickey continued to put up zeros on the board, silencing the crowd with a good old-fashioned pitchers' duel. It was definitely a day for the cerebral baseball enthusiast, one who could appreciate the understated excitement of nibbling corners and purpose pitches. While those enamored with the long ball and barn-burning baseball lamented the “stinker” of a game, the baseball purists delighted in the classic repartee between hurlers, a skillful jousting that left them on the edge of their seats.

With the game was still scoreless with two outs in the top of the ninth, Danvers strode to the plate. He had fanned his first three times up. Vardiman had made him look bad, mixing his pitches and changing speeds with the precision of an artist. Danvers was frustrated. In truth, he never hit Vardiman well. In twenty-one career at bats against the Ranger ace, he was batting a pitiful .048 with sixteen strikeouts. Danvers was always at a loss to explain it.

“I'll be goddamned!” he would say after facing his nemesis. “This son of a bitch is toying with me.” The others always laughed and rode him about it. Usually, Danvers just moped and sulked. But on this day, he was downright angry. Vengeful. He walked through the dugout spouting off about pride and retribution and how they were all masters of their own destinies. He stood at the dish this fourth time, sinewy and loose, knees bent, shoulders square to the pitcher. He grit his teeth and waved his bat over his head in willful defiance, determined to expiate not just the day's disappointments but every one of his previous failures as well.

Vardiman began the sequence with a tight slider for a called strike. Danvers shook his head and readied himself for the next offering. Vardiman peered in at the catcher. He shook off the first few suggestions before nodding at the last. He reared back, cocking the ball behind his ear, and let fly a two-seam fastball. Danvers swung wildly as the ball buzzed through the air, leaving the befuddled hitter a tangled, crumpled mess. Strike two. Vardiman took the ball back. He positioned himself on the rubber. Danvers stepped out to collect himself. His face, already contorted with frustration, hardened even further when he saw Vardiman laughing behind his glove.

As he glowered at the smug pitcher, Danvers suddenly relaxed. He felt beyond everything, especially his recent failures, as if he were all at once in the hands of something extraordinarily larger than himself—as if the universe had reached down and embraced him, determined to replace his sickly spirit with a restorative smile. This feeling warmed his stomach and sharpened his senses, allowing him to see the next pitch leave Vardiman's hand as if it were delivered in suspended animation. The laces spun toward him, orbiting dutifully through the damp, viscous air. All the natural impulses and baseball reactions that had lain dormant in the wake of his history with Vardiman surged up inside him; he lifted his foot, placed it down again with purposeful vigor, and whipped the bat head through the hitting zone with blinding speed. The golden lumber found the ball, caught the tiny orb where the bat was fattest, and sent it sailing over the center-field wall. Danvers blinked hard and leaped with joy, circling the bases with spirited gestures.

Murph was smiling too. The way Mickey was throwing, one run was all they needed. Mickey retired the first two batters in the Rangers' half of the ninth with little protest. His team's malaise, coupled with the thought of dropping the game to his mortal enemy, sent McNally into a dizzying fit of petulance. It was intolerable to him that he should be dominated by Arthur Murphy and his twisted reclamation project. Most times, McNally could find a dead space amidst all that bothered him and rest inside, numb to the festering disappointments that scraped at him like tiny shovels. But on occasion, he would get caught in the tide of circumstance, dragged to the shore, and the sun would sting his eyes and shine brightly on all his failures, and he would see everything for just what it really was.

“Time!” he called, stepping out of the dugout with festering antagonism. Everyone watched curiously as he walked deliberately toward home plate. His eyes were small and dangerous.

“Hey, ump.” He pointed to Boxcar. “Is that glove he's using there to code? I mean, I sure ain't ever seen nothing like that before.”

“What's wrong with it, Chip?” the umpire replied curtly, eager to resume play.

McNally was posturing behind Boxcar, hands on hips, sights set on reprimand. “Have him take it off his hand,” McNally instructed. “Have a look in the pocket.”

The umpire removed his mask and tapped Boxcar on the shoulder. As he questioned the catcher and examined his glove, Murph came flying out of the dugout like a mother bear protecting one of her cubs.

“What's all the commotion, Box?” he asked breathlessly.

“Relax, Murphy,” McNally snapped back. “Just making sure everything's legal, that's all.”

“Sherlock Holmes here wants to look at my glove, Skip,” Boxcar explained. “Says it's no good.”

Murph cut his eyes in McNally's direction. “What kind of horseshit are you trying to pull, McNally? That glove's as straight as the pointy nose on your face and you know it.”

The three of them looked on as the umpire turned the glove over in his hands, deliberating. Murph stared at the trio of fine lines stretching across the ump's forehead, outraged at the absurdity unfolding before him. The umpire continued to contemplate, and McNally tapped his foot in thoughtful expectation.

“Chip's right, Murph,” the umpire finally concluded. “This ain't regulation.”

“Come on now,” Murph pleaded. “There isn't anything in the rule book that says a player can't have a little paint on his glove. This prick is just trying to get in my pitcher's head.”

“I'm sorry, Murph, but I'm at a loss here. Truth is, I don't really know what to do. You may be right. But be that as it may, I have to take the glove out of play. I'll let the guys who make the rules decide later on.”

“Are you shittin' me!” Murph exploded. “Is this really happening? What kind of a goddamned circus is this?”

“Come on, Murph. I don't make the rules, I just follow them.”

“Yeah, Murphy. Give the guy a break, would ya?” McNally gloated. “That's the only fair thing to do.” His eyes were off to the side, and he was trying to pretend the outcome was not his intended purpose. “Rules are rules.”

Murph's face flushed.

“So that's it?” Boxcar complained, looking to Murph for help. “I'm just supposed to hand over my glove—just like that?”

“Just give 'im the glove, Box,” Murph said, shaking his head as he walked toward the mound. “You can use the extra one.”

Mickey was given a few warm-up tosses in light of the delay. Murph stood behind him and watched. Mickey was clearly agitated. He turned to Murph several times and asked for the old glove—the one with the painted apple—but Murph just shook his head and stood behind the mound and watched him struggle with the new one. He cringed as each of the five tosses sailed clear over Boxcar's head. The wildness was followed by the faint recitation of the now all-too-familiar de la Mare poem.

“Hey, now that's the farm boy I remember!” McNally taunted from the bench. “Hot damn!”

Murph walked around the dirt circle and faced Mickey. The boy was staring down at his spikes, defeated.

“Listen, Mick, there ain't nothing to this,” Murph encouraged. “Really. A glove's a glove. Just pretend that big old mitt is a barrel, filled with apples. Nothing to it. Come on now. Remember— nobody's better than you.”

The walk back to the dugout was perhaps the longest Murph had ever taken. God he wanted this game. It had been so long since the Brewers had seen first place. And McNally was such an asshole. He wondered, as he resumed his familiar stance atop the dugout steps, just how he would be able to stomach this sort of loss.

Mickey's feet struggled to find their spot on the rubber. He looked like a baby deer who had just gotten its legs. He was awkward, spastic, and his clumsiness only fueled further the derision coming from the Ranger dugout.

“Why me?” Murph whispered to himself. “Why?”

The frazzled hurler faced the third batter of the inning. Ozzy Newcomb was the ninth-place hitter—an offensive threat by no means. But Mickey looked wild, and Newcomb was up there to work a walk. He set his feet in the batter's box, crouched, and cut the air with a few practice hacks, mostly for effect. Mickey rolled his arms, reared back, and let fly a fastball, up and away.

“Ball one!”

“Attaboy, Oz!” McNally yelled from the bench. “Walk's a hit.”

Mickey regrouped. He sighed heavily and peered in at Boxcar. The catcher was smiling through his mask as he traced with his right forefinger the outline of an apple in the pocket of his glove.

“Come on now, big Mick,” he called. “Come on now. Toss that apple!”

Mickey looked lost, confused by Boxcar's zany antics. He squinted and scrunched his nose, trying unsuccessfully to ascertain some hidden meaning behind his catcher's behavior. But somehow, either the phantom picture or the mere mention of the word
apple
refocused the young phenom, and like the lightning that had just split the stormy sky, he was back. He rolled, reared, and fired a blazing fastball dead center. The pop of the glove was deafening.

“Steeerike one!”

The cry was followed by a distant clap of thunder and two more flashes of white light. Mickey got right back on the rubber and delivered again.

“Twooo!”

McNally scratched his head and cursed the sky. Through the inclement air came the weary groan of the crowd, a song of discontent that struck a chord that vibrated deep within him. All of these flurried failures and eliminations made his mind a barren, echoing place where the voices of detractors resonated with an unrelenting fury. Losing was such a tough nut to swallow. Always was.

He could still remember the very first sting of defeat. He was only eight. It came at the hands of Roger Forester while they sat around a dusty marble ring etched in the schoolyard dirt. Young McNally was the marble champion. Nobody at Thomas Jefferson Elementary was better. Except on that day. On that day, Forester could not miss. One by one, he sent every one of McNally's marbles—green ones, red ones, yellow ones—careening out of the circle.

“Oh my God, Chip!” his friends ridiculed. “How could you lose to Forester?”

He felt so naked, so vulnerable. And all he could think was to run and hide. That's just what he did. But that luxury had yielded with the passage of time. Now he had to face the music.

Through the intermittent lightning and thin veil of rain, Mickey looked ghostlike and menacing. His prodigious presence was never more pronounced than at that moment when his arms rolled and fired one final time, a blurred, gleaming line of white rocketing through the misty air past a sagging stick and into Boxcar's glove for strike three.

Within seconds of the umpire's call, the Brewers' bench erupted onto the field, each player, including Danvers and the other dissenters, loping frantically to join the celebration on the mound. There were hugs and handshakes and slaps on the behind for everyone. It was only one game, and they still had quite a stretch of schedule to navigate, but as Murph said while watching the team hoist Mickey on their shoulders and carry him around the field victoriously, it was “the start of something really special.”

He lingered and watched, savoring the taste of sweet victory. It was glorious. The perfect ending to a perfect day. He held his breath and let the feeling wash over him. His thoughts were varied, ranging from his early days as a rookie to just minutes ago, when McNally tried to sabotage his glory. Then they took a capricious turn, wandering inexplicably to Molly and the farm. It felt weird at first—just snuck up on him and hung on the air for a moment before dissolving into an aura of something warm and familiar. He wondered what Molly was doing, if she was okay, and wished that somehow she could be here to share the moment with them.

But as special as the scene was, Murph could not help but notice that Lefty's contributions to the celebration were perfunctory. He was less than enthusiastic, with forced smiles and contrived exultation. He fooled most of them, but Murph continued to watch. Believing he was free from public scrutiny, Lefty finally abandoned the façade. His mouth morphed into a grimace and his lids blinked maliciously. Murph, preparing to welcome each of his players back into the dugout, thought it was one of the ugliest things he had ever seen.