“Ball-less Evans!” a row of soldiers chanted. “Ball-less Evans!”
Over the PA system, Milt Frye said, “Steady now, folks. Your management has great regard for our military, but we won’t tolerate smut from any quarter.”
“Ball-less, ball-less, ball-less Evans!” the GIs chanted. Frye’s scolding didn’t faze them a bit, and when he barked, “Those persisting in immature hooliganism, even men in uniform, will be removed,” a whole row of them turned towards the press box and shot it a rippling sequence of birds that would’ve won a drill competition at Camp Penticuff. But, truth to tell, no spectacle was grosser that night than our Hellbender regulars. Even folks with kids had more kindly feelings for the GIs than they did for our stumblebums.
Going into our final at bat, after playing like blind men, we were down just one run. Nutter’d kept us in it, pitching smart and refusing to rattle even when his fielders performed like dancing hippos. The shock of the night-a blow to Mister JayMac’s strategy of letting us humiliate ourselves at home-came when we somehow won the game, three to two.
It wasn’t pretty. Or just. But so what?
The win put us at eight-and-eight on the season. Opelika, Eufaula, and Cottonton lost that same night-to Quitman, Marble Springs, and LaGrange respectively-so we picked up a full game on both the Orphans and the Mudcats and broke a fourth-place tie with the Boll Weevils. But it still teed me Mister JayMac had held us rookies out, especially with his starters sucking wind like they had.
“What would our starters have to do to pit the boss to give us new boys a chanst?” Junior asked Skinny Dobbs.
“Lose,” Skinny said. “Them buggers got to lose.”
Actually, Skinny’d got that wrong. We played our next game against Lanett at five on Saturday afternoon. The league’s schedule makers had decreed a number of twilight weekend games, to go on without lights. A nagging drought’d dogged the South for years, crimping its ability to make electric power. Day and twilight games eased demand. That was good. War plants-shipyards, torpedo factories, assembly lines-had to run around the clock. You could squeeze a whole game in between five and sunset, if you didn’t go to extra innings.
Anyway, just before we dressed out for the second game in the Lanett series, Darius came into the locker room and read the lineup to us:
“Batting first, playing shortstop, Danl Boles…” He went on from there, but the only other items to get my interest came in the seventh and eighth spots, where Junior and Skinny would bat, Junior playing second base and Skinny taking over from Trapdoor Evans in right.
“Is this a joke?” Buck Hoey asked Darius. “I hit one for three last night. Nobody else did better.”
“Mr Curriden did,” Darius said. “If you hadn’t walked up his backside on that pop-up, he mighta done even better. That knot on yo fohead go down yet?”
“Easy, Darius,” Hoey said. “You’re treading thin ice.”
Darius rubbed his oxford’s toe across the concrete floor. “Aint no ice in here atall. Was, you could put it on that knot you got.”
“Read it again,” Junior said.
So Darius read the afternoon’s starting lineup again. My body began to hum, like a tuning fork. Saturday, June 5th, 1943. Soon, I’d actually start at short on a pro ball club.
“I can’t believe Mister JayMac wants me on the bench,” Hoey said. “I’ve got a nine-game hitting streak going.”
Darius popped the lineup card with his knuckles. “Nothing here say the change got to last fo awways, Mr Hoey.”
That drilled a nerve with me. If I booted a chance, or fanned with runners in scoring position, Hoey’d most likely have his job back tomorrow.
“So whatn hell we sposed to do!” Evans asked Darius.
“How bout rest?” Darius said. “Seems logical to me.”
“The hell with that,” Hoey said.
“Well, capn, Mister JayMac wants you to coach first.”
Vito Mariani was scheduled to pitch. “Buck up, Buck. I’ll set em down so fast you won’t have enough bench time to rub the nap off your pants.”
Darius left. Hoey stared at the floor. Knowles, the deposed second baseman, went over to Junior and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Tear em up, kid,” he said.
The game wasn’t a laugher, but the Linenmakers never really got close either. Kitchen Fats for Victory Night followed Friday’s Scrap Metal Collection Night, and although nobody got in free for bringing in hamburger grease or bacon drippings, Milt Frye and three usherettes saw to it every fan who turned in a can of solidified fat got his or her name put in a drum for a drawing during the seventh-inning stretch. Top prize was a weekend for two in Atlanta, with a room at the Ponce de Leon Hotel. Anyway, the drawing seemed to mean as much to the civilians in the stands as the ball game did.
You could smell the rancid kitchen fats everyone’d brought in. The idea was that munitions factories would melt down the drippings to extract their glycerin, then use it to make bombs or howitzer shells. Kitchen Fats for Victory. After the war, though, I heard we’d used it to make soap. Dirty dogfaces have low morale, and the services needed our kitchen fats for soap. But asking civilians to turn in fats for soap didn’t sound romantic. Or sanitary. So the government told the public our used grease would go to make devices for blowing people up, and wham! the home front got with the program.
Anyway, I went three for four. A squib behind second base was my first safe bingle in money ball. A row of GIs gave me a standing O-out of sheer relief the Hellbenders wouldn’t stink worse than the stadium did, like we had last night. They loved it I could put wood on the ball.
Hoey, coaching first, sauntered over to me as I returned to the bag after making my turn. The center fielder’d just faked a throw behind me, a threat I hadn’t much credited.
“Don’t let the cheers go to your head. Those guys’d cheer a little old lady tripping on a popcorn box.”
I watched Charlie Snow, a super hitter, settle in and tap his spikes with a Louisville Slugger he’d lathed into the shape of a skinny champagne bottle.
“Me, I’d be ashamed to reach base with a dying gull like the one you goofy-bunted out there,” Hoey said.
I shrugged. My batting average was a perfect thousand-at least for now.
“Watch O’Connor’s pick-off move. Get tagged out here and you might as well’ve gone down swinging.”
“Back in the coach’s box,” the umpire Happy Polidori told Hoey, “and leave the poor kid be.”
“Up yours, Polidori. It’s my job to give advice to kids with marshmallows for brains.”
“Move it,” Polidori said. “Your body, not your mouth.”
With no go-ahead from anyone, I stole second on O’Connor’s first pitch. The GIs came to their feet, whooping. Lanett’s catcher didn’t even try to throw me out. I lifted a hand to Hoey-to show him I hadn’t hurt myself, not to mock him-but he kicked up a cloud of red dirt, p.o.’d.
Snow hit a long single to right. I came home. The whole rest of the game went like that. We ended up winning eight to three-no laugher, as I say, but no knuckle-whitener either. My other two hits were a bunt toward first and a high bounder off the pitcher’s rubber. Hoey badmouthed them too, calling them luck, saying the next time I went to church I should drop a C-note in the plate. It almost, not quite, relieved me when the Linenmaker right fielder ran down my longest clout of the day and webbed it against the Belk-Gallant sign for the game’s second-to-last out.
Hoey applauded this catch. He liked seeing me robbed of a four-for-four outing on a ball I’d flat-out creamed.
At shortstop, though, I did manage a perfect day. Despite his earlier brag, Mariani didn’t pitch well. Junior and I consistently got him out of jams by turning double plays or knocking down potential RBI rollers. On our double plays, we clicked like castenets.