‘None of that matters, don’t you see? Not now.’
‘What—’
‘Just shut up and make out a lineup card. As for that kid …’ He thought, then shook his head. ‘Hell, let him play, why not? Shit, bat him fifth. I was gonna move him up, anyway.’
‘Of course he’s gonna play,’ I said. ‘Who else’d catch Danny?’
‘Oh, fuck Danny Dusen!’ he says.
‘Cap – Joey – tell me what happened.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I got to think it over first. What I’m gonna say to the guys. And the reporters!’ He slapped his brow as if this part of it had just occurred to him. ‘Those overbred, overpaid assholes! Shit!’ Then, talking to himself again: ‘But let the guys have this game. They deserve that much. Maybe the kid, too. Hell, maybe he’ll bat for the cycle!’ He laughed some more, then went upside his own head to make himself stop.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You will. Go on, get out of here. Make any old lineup you want. Pull the names out of a hat, why don’t you? It doesn’t matter. Only make sure you tell the umpire crew chief you’re running the show. I guess that’d be Wenders.’
I walked down the hall to the umpire’s room like a man in a dream and told Wenders that I’d be making out the lineup and managing the game from the third base box. He asked me what was wrong with Joe, and I said he was sick. Which he sure was.
That was the first game I managed until I got the Athletics in ’63, and it was a short one, because as you probably know if you’ve done your research, Hi Wenders ran me in the sixth. I don’t remember much about it, anyway. I had so much on my mind that I felt like a man in a dream. But I did have sense enough to do one thing, and that was to check the kid’s right hand before he ran out on the field. There was no Band-Aid on the second finger, and no cut, either. I didn’t even feel relieved. I just kept seeing Joe DiPunno’s red eyes and haggard mouth.
That was Danny Doo’s last good game, and he never did get his two hundred. He tried to come back in ’58, but no go. He claimed the double vision was gone and maybe it was true, but he couldn’t hardly get the pill over the plate anymore. No spot in Cooperstown for Danny. Joe was right all along: that kid did suck luck. Like some kind of fucking voodoo prince.
But that afternoon Doo was the best I ever saw him, his fastball hopping, his curve snapping like a whip. For the first four innings they couldn’t touch him at all. Just wave the stick and take a seat, fellows, thank you for playing. He struck out six and the rest were infield ground-outs. Only trouble was, Kinder was almost as good. We’d gotten one lousy hit, a two-out double by Harrington in the bottom of the third.
Comes the top of the fifth, okay? The first batter goes down easy. Then Walt Dropo comes up, hits one deep into the left field corner, and takes off like a bat out of hell. The crowd saw Harry Keene still chasing the ball while Dropo’s legging for second, and they understood it could be an inside-the-park job. The chanting started. Only a few voices at first, then more and more. Getting deeper and louder. It put a chill up me from the crack of my ass to the nape of my neck.
‘Bloh-KADE! Bloh-KADE! Bloh-KADE!’
The orange signs started going up. People were on their feet and holding them over their heads. Not waving them like usual, just holding them up. I have never seen anything like it.
‘Bloh-KADE! Bloh-KADE! Bloh-KADE!’
At first I thought there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell; by then Dropo’s steaming for third with all the stops pulled out. But Keene pounced on the ball and made a perfect throw to Barbarino at short. The rook, meanwhile, is standing on the third base side of home with his glove held out, making a target, and Si hit the goddam pocket.
The crowd’s chanting. Dropo’s sliding, with his spikes up. The kid don’t mind; he goes on his knees and dives over em. Hi Wenders was where he was supposed to be – that time, at least – leaning over the play. A cloud of dust goes up … and out of it comes Wenders’s upraised thumb. ‘Yerrrr … OUT!’
Mr King, the fans went nuts. Walt Dropo did too. He was up and dancing around like a kid having an epileptic fit and trying to do the fucking Hully Gully at the same time. He couldn’t believe it.
The kid was scraped halfway up his left forearm, not bad, just bloodsweat, but enough for old Bony Dadier – he was our trainer – to come out and slap a Band-Aid on it. So the kid got his Band-Aid after all, only this one was legit. The fans stayed on their feet during the whole medical consultation, waving their ROAD CLOSED signs and chanting ‘Bloh-KADE! Bloh-KADE!’ like they wouldn’t never get enough of it.
The kid didn’t seem to notice. He was on another planet. He was that way the whole time he was with the Titans. He just hauled on his mask, went back behind the plate, and squatted down. Business as usual. Bubba Phillips came up, lined out to Lathrop at first, and that was the fifth.
When the kid came up in the bottom of the inning and struck out on three pitches, the crowd still gave him a standing O. That time he noticed, and tipped his cap when he went back to the dugout. Only time he ever did it. Not because he was snotty but because … well, I already said it. That other-planet thing.
Okay, top of the sixth. Over fifty years later and I still get a red ass when I think of it. Kinder’s up first and loops out to third, just like a pitcher should. Then comes Luis Aparicio, Little Louie. The Doo winds and fires. Aparicio fouls it off high and lazy behind home plate, on the third base side of the screen. That was my side, and I saw it all. The kid throws away his mask and sprints after it, head back and glove out. Wenders trailed him, but not close like he should have done. He didn’t think the kid had a chance. It was lousy goddam umping.
The kid’s off the grass and on the track, by the low wall between the field and the box seats. Neck craned. Looking up. Two dozen people in those first-and second-row box seats also looking up, most of them waving their hands in the air. This is one thing I don’t understand about fans and never will. It’s a fucking baseball, for the love of God! An item that sold for seventy-five cents back then. But when fans see one in reach at the ballpark, they turn into fucking greed-monsters. Never mind standing back and letting the man trying to catch it – their man, and in a tight ball game – do his job.
I saw it all, I tell you. Saw it clear. That mile-high pop-up came down on our side of the wall. The kid was going to catch it. Then some long-armed bozo in one of those Titans jerseys they sold on the Esplanade reached over and ticked it so the ball bounced off the edge of the kid’s glove and fell to the ground.
I was so sure Wenders would call Aparacio out – it was clear interference – that at first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when he gestured for the kid to go back behind the plate and for Aparicio to resume the box. When I got it, I ran down the line, waving my arms. The crowd started cheering me and booing Wenders, which is no way to win friends and influence people when you’re arguing a call, but I was too goddam mad to care. I wouldn’t have stopped if Mahatma Gandhi had walked out on the field butt-naked and urging us to make peace.
‘Interference!’ I yelled. ‘Clear as day, clear as the nose on your face!’
‘It was in the stands, and that makes it anyone’s ball,’ Wenders says. ‘Go on back to your little nest and let’s get this show on the road.’
The kid didn’t care; he was talking to his pal The Doo. That was all right. I didn’t care that he didn’t care. All I wanted at that moment was to tear Hi Wenders a fresh new asshole. I’m not ordinarily an argumentative man – all the years I managed the A’s, I only got thrown out of games twice – but that day I would have made Billy Martin look like a peacenik.