“Who’s that?” I asked Little.
“Don’t you know him? Hell, that’s Bucky Maynard.
Only the best play by play in the business, that’s all. Don’t let him know you didn’t recognize him. Man, he’ll crucify you.”
“I gather he doesn’t work out a lot with the team,” I said. Maynard took out a pale green cigar and lit it carefully, turning it as he puffed to get it burning evenly.
“Jesus, don’t comment on his weight either,” Little said. “He’ll eat you alive.”
“Is it okay if I clear my throat while he’s in the park?”
“You can kid around, but if Bucky Maynard doesn’t like you, you got a lot of trouble. I mean, he can destroy you on the air. And he will.”
“I thought he worked for the club,” I said.
“He does. But he’s so popular that we couldn’t get rid of him if we wanted. God knows there have been times.” Little stopped. His eyes shifted up and down the dugout. I wondered if he was worried about a bug. “Don’t get me wrong, now.
Buck’s a great guy; he’s just got a lot of pride, and it don’t help to get on the wrong side of him. Course it don’t pay to get on the wrong side of anybody. Am I right or wrong?”
“Right as rain,” I said. Little liked the phrase. I bet he’d use it within the day. I’m really into language.
Maynard came toward us, and Little stood up. “Hey, Buck, how’s it going?”
Maynard looked at Little without speaking. Little swallowed and said, “Like to have you say hello to Mr. Spenser here, doing a book about the Sox.”
Maynard nodded at me. “Spenser,” he said. His southern accent stretched out the last syllable and dropped the r.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. I hoped he wasn’t offended.
“He’ll be wanting to talk to you, Buck, I know. No book about the Sox would be worth much if Old Buck wasn’t in it.
Am I right, Spenser, or am I right?”
“Right,” I said. Little lit a new Chesterfield King from the butt of the old one.
Maynard said, “Why don’t y’all come on up the booth later on and watch some of the game? Get a chance to see how a broadcast team works.”
“Thanks,” I said, “I’d like to.”
“Just remember you’re not going to get any predigested Pablum up there. In mah booth by God we call the game the way it is played. No press release bullshit; if a guy’s doggin’ it, by God we say he’s doggin‘ it. You follow?”
“I can follow that okay.”
Maynard’s eyes narrowed as he looked at me. They were pale and small and flat, like two Necco wafers. “You better believe it ’cause anyone who knows me knows it’s true.
Isn’t that right, Jack?”
Little answered before Maynard finished asking. “Absolutely, Buck, anybody knows that. Bucky tells it like it is, Spenser. That’s why the fans love him.”
“C’mon up, Spenser, anytime. Jack’ll show you the way.” Maynard rolled the green cigar about in the center of his mouth, winked, and moved out onto the field toward the Yankee dugout.
Billy Carter from the end of the dugout yelled, “Whale, ho,” and then stared out toward the right-field stands as Maynard whirled and looked into the dugout. Ray Farrell had come out of the dressing room and was posting the lineup at the far end of the dugout. He ignored Carter and Maynard.
Maynard looked for maybe a minute into the dugout while Carter observed the right-field foul line from under the brim of his cap, his feet cocked up against one of the dugout supports. He was whistling “Turkey in the Straw.” Maynard turned and continued toward the Yankee dugout.
Little blew out his breath. “That goddamned Carter is going to get in real trouble someday. Always the wisecracks.
Always the goddamned hot dog. He ain’t that good. I mean, he catches maybe thirty games a year. You’d think he’d be a little humble, but always the big mouth.” Little spilled some ashes onto his shirtfront and brushed them off vigorously.
“I was thinking about some Moby Dick humor myself when Maynard was standing there blotting out the sun.”
“You screw around with Bucky and you’ll never get your book written, I’ll tell you that straight out, Spenser.
That’s no shit.” Little looked as if he was in pain, his smallfeatured face contorted with sincerity. Farrell went up the steps of the dugout and out toward home plate with his lineup card. The Yankee manager came out toward home plate from the other side, and, for the first time, I saw the umpires.
Older than the players, and bulkier.
“I think I’ll go up in the broadcast booth,” I said. “If Maynard turns on me and truths me to death, I want you to write my mom.”
Little didn’t even want to talk about it. He brought me up to the press entry, along the catwalk, under the roof toward Maynardville.
The broadcast booth was a warren of cable lash-up, television monitors, microphone cords, and one big color TV camera set up to point at a blank wall to the rear of the booth.
For live commercials, I assumed. Give Bucky Maynard a chance to tell it like it is about somebody’s bottled beer. There were two men in the booth already. One I recognized. Doc Wilson, who used to play first base for the Minnesota Twins and now did color commentary for the Sox games. He was a tall, angular man, with rimless glasses and short, wavy brown hair. He was sitting at the broadcast table, running through the stat book and drinking black coffee from a paper cup. The other man was young, maybe twenty-two, middle height and willowy with Dutch boy blond hair and an Oakland A’s mustache. He had on a white safari hat with a wide leopard-skin band, pilot’s sunglasses, a white silk shirt open to the waist, like Herb Jeffries, and white jeans tucked into the top of rust-colored Frye boots. There was a brass-studded rust-colored woven leather belt around his waist and a copper bracelet on his right wrist. He was slouched in a red canvas director’s chair with his feet up on the broadcast counter, reading a copy of the National Star and chewing gum.
Wilson looked up as we came in. “Hey, Jack, howsa kid?”
“Doc, say hello to Spenser, here. He’s a writer, doing a book on the Sox, and Bucky invited him up to the booth for a look-see.”
Wilson reached around, and we shook hands. “Good deal,” he said. “If Buck says go, it’s go. Anything I can help with, just give a holler.” The kid in the safari hat never looked up. He licked his thumb, turned a page of the Star, his jaws working smoothly, the muscles at the hinge swelling regularly as he chewed.
Little said, “This here’s Lester Floyd. Lester, this is Mr. Spenser.”
Lester gave a single upward jerk of his head, raised one finger without releasing the magazine, and kept reading.
I said, “What’s he do, sing ‘Flamingo’ at the station breaks?”
The kid looked up then. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the amber lenses of his aviator shades. He blew a large pink bubble, popped it with his teeth, and slowly chewed it back into his mouth.
Little said, “Lester is Bucky’s driver, Spenser. Spenser’s going to be doing a book on the Sox and on Bucky, Lester.”
Lester blew another big bubble and chewed it back in.
“He’s gonna be looking up his own asshole if he gets smart with me,” he said. There was a red flush on his cheekbones.
“Guess he doesn’t sing ‘Flamingo,”’ I said to Wilson.
“Aw now, Lester, Mr. Spenser’s just kidding around.”
Little did a small nervous shuffle step. Wilson was staring out at the diamond. Lester was working harder on the gum.
“And I’m telling him not to,” Lester said.
“Never mind, Lester.” The voice came from behind me.
It was Maynard. “Ah invited Mr. Spenser up here to listen to mah broadcast. He’s mah guest.”