Gehrig stared at him. «Then… where are we?»
Mack smiled gently. «That all depends, Louis. It all depends on this game. And that big fellow sitting up there in the stands.»
«The Babe?»
Mack nodded as Rizzuto slapped weakly at a curve and popped it toward Eddie Stanky at second base. The Scooter trudged halfway down the base path, then turned toward the dugout, looking glad to be out of range of Mays’ bean balls. Gehrig scanned the infield. «Wait a minute, where’s Hornsby? Who’s that little fellow out at second?»
Connie Mack sighed unhappily. «The other team has a certain amount of flexibility in the rules,» he said.
«They can take players in and out of the lineup whenever they want to?»
With an even deeper sigh, Mack admitted, «That was just one of the provisions that Mr. Comiskey insisted upon, Louis. There are others changes, too. Now and again you’ll see them playing on an artificial surface, a kind of fake grass. It helps the singles hitters immensely. You’ll see their Rose fellow take special advantage of that, I suspect. And if this threatening weather actually turns to rain, they’ll play indoors, in a ballpark with a roof over it.»
Gehrig gaped at the thought.
«And they even have what they call a designated hitter, Louis, a fellow who just steps up to the plate and hits for the pitcher. He never has to play any defense.»
«Free substitution?» Gehrig shook his head in surprise. «Fake grass? A roof, for God’s sake? Full-time hitters? That just doesn’t seem like baseball to me, Mr. Mack.»
«There are a lot of us who feel that way, Louis, but those are today’s rules.»
«And we can’t get our own roof, or use a permanent hitter if we want?»
Mack took off his straw hat, used the back of his hand to mop his brow and put the hat back on. «Well, Louis, it’s more that we choose not to. It just doesn’t seem right to me. We are, after all, on the side of the angels, Louis. I thought we ought to play the game the way it’s meant to be played.»
And Lou nodded in agreement, then turned to look up into the box seats, where the Babe sat, watching.
To the Babe’s credit, by the bottom of the first he was pretty much done with the hot dogs and beer and was limiting himself to an occasional peanut, carefully squeezing the shell to crack it, then breaking off the top half of the shell and tossing the nuts, nestled there in the bottom half, into his mouth.
But that was all, just the peanuts. Oh, and a sip of beer once in a while to wash them down. And just one more hot dog now and again.
But he was slowing down on the eating because, in truth, the game was beginning to bother him. He knew it was just some sort of exhibition, and so they were being a little easy on the rules and all, but not only were Comiskey’s guys substituting right and left, coming in and then out of the game whenever they seemed to want to, they were also playing a mean, vicious brand of ball.
In the top of the second, for instance, Ty Cobb, at the plate again even though he’d hit in the first and wasn’t due up, slashed a line drive into the gap in right that had stand-up double written all over it. The black kid in right, though, got a good jump on the ball and chased it down on the third hop, before it got to the warning track. Then he turned and fired to second, and it was suddenly a close play as the ball and Cobb approached the bag at the same time.
And damned if Ty didn’t come in with those spikes up high, trying to move the shortstop, that Rizzuto guy, off the bag or cut him if he stayed in. Rizzuto, to his credit, stood his ground, catching Aaron’s throw on the first hop and bringing the glove down in front of Cobb’s right foot as it approached the bag. Out.
But the left foot, up high, caught Rizzuto on the right calf, tearing right through the baggy flannel and cutting open a good six-inch gash that bled badly until the trainer, Bob Bauman from the Cardinals, trotted out from the dugout to get enough pressure on it to stop the flow.
Rizzuto limped off the field under his own power, but he was obviously in pain. Marty Marion, tall and lanky for a shortstop, came out to replace him. Cobb, glaring defiantly, watched it all, hands on hips, until Rizzuto left, then trotted into the Comiskey dugout to a few handshakes and back slaps from his teammates.
And in the bottom of the second Carl Mays hit two of Mack’s players. First he put a fastball into Aaron’s ribs, then he followed that up with another heater that caught Brooks Robinson on the left wrist. If Brooks hadn’t gotten that hand up in the way, the ball might have caught him in the face. There was an audible gasp from Mack’s dugout as the dull thwack of the ball hitting flesh echoed through the park. Then there were angry shouts, but Mays, imperious on the mound, ignored them, and Klem, behind the plate, bade the game go on.
The Babe, munching peanuts, scowled as he sat in the stands. It wasn’t right. One side not only seemed to get special rules but also played a really mean brand of ball. He was starting to get downright mad about it. Okay, it wasn’t like Comiskey’s guys were a bunch of choir boys they were rough, tough players, by God, and everybody knew it; but the Babe thought this game was meant to be for fun, for the love of the game and all that. Those guys shouldn’t be cutting each other up out there. They’re playing like it was a World Series, like their lives depended on it.
They took Mays out after Charlie Gehringer whacked a double down the right-field line. The Babe stared, wide-eyed, at Comiskey’s new pitcher. The guy had a beard! Must be from the House of David team. He was a southpaw, in to face Williams and then Lou.
Williams walked. Lou swung and missed a really wicked curve ball. The bearded lefthander grinned on the mound and yelled something the Babe couldn’t understand. Hebrew, maybe.
He tried his curve again. Wrong move. Lou smashed it ‘way, ‘way out there, so high and deep the ball disappeared into the bright sky. Three-run homer. That was all for the bearded lefthander.
But Comiskey’s guys started hitting, too. And slashing any infielder who got in their way. Durocher barrelled into Charlie Gehringer at second on a routine double-play ball, knocked him flat. It was such a cheap shot that the Babe jumped out of his seat and yelled at Durocher as he trotted in from the field. Leo glanced up at the only man in the stands and seemed to look—embarrassed? The Babe sat down again, stunned at that.
The game went on, seesawing back and forth. The Babe would roar whenever Comiskey’s guys pulled one of their lousy stunts. It felt real good, in fact, to let the anger explode, tell those cheap-shot bums what bush-league bastards they were, get the juices flowing again like they hadn’t in a long, long time.
«By God,» the Babe muttered to himself, «if I wasn’t so old, if I wasn’t in such rotten shape, I’d go out there and teach those sonsabitches a lesson they wouldn’t forget.»
But he was old and fat and useless. And he knew it.
Then came the sixth inning.
A chunky righthander named Wynne was pitching for Comiskey now. Lou was at the plate, and the Babe was thinking about all the good years he and Gehrig had put in together.
Truth be known, the Babe had always had mixed feelings about Lou. On the one hand, he envied the Dutchman a bit, that tight focus on the game, the way he always kept himself in shape, the reputation he had as a nice guy and a smart one, a real gentleman. In a lot of ways, the Babe wished he could have been a gentleman.
But, on the other hand, the Babe thought that Lou had always been so busy being nice that a lot of times he didn’t seem to be having much fun. The booze, the women, the high life—it was all part of the fun, and if the game wasn’t fun, why play? My god, it ought to be fun, that was the whole point. Lou had always seemed so damned serious about everything, and that was too bad.
That was part of what was making the Babe so mad right now about these other fellows, these guys playing for Comiskey. The way they were playing was too low, too mean, for it to be any fun. They had forgotten what the game was about. It wasn’t life and death, it was baseball, for Christ’s sake, the joy of hitting, of catching and throwing the ball, or rounding third on a home-run trot, of sliding into second with a double, of just knocking the dirt off the cleats with the handle of the bat.