Trying to be gentle with a man he rather liked, Mencken said, “Do you really think so? Guys like that come along once in a blue moon.”
Ruth thrust out his jaw. “I coulda, if I’d had the chance. Even when I got up to Philly, that dumbshit Fletcher who was runnin’ the team, he kept me pitchin’ an’ wouldn’t let me play the field. There I was, tryin’ to get by with junk from my bad flipper in the Baker Bowl, for Chrissakes. It ain’t even a long piss down the right-field line there. Fuck, I hit six homers there myself. For a while, that was a record for a pitcher. But they said anybody could do it there. An’ I got hit pretty hard myself, so after a season and a half they sold me to the Red Sox.”
“That was one of the teams that wanted you way back when, you said,” Mencken remarked.
“You was listenin’! Son of a bitch!” Ruth beamed at him. “Here, have one on me.” He drew another Blatz and set it in front of Mencken. The journalist finished his second one and got to work on the bonus. Ruth went on, “But when the Sox wanted me, they was good. Time I got to ‘em, they stunk worse’n the Phils. They pitched me a little, played me in the outfield and at first a little, an’ sat me on the bench a lot. I didn’t light the world on fire, so after the season they sold me down to Syracuse. ‘Cept for a month at the end of ‘32 with the Browns”--he shuddered at some dark memory--”I never made it back to the bigs again. But I coulda been hot stuff if fuckin’ Rasin came through with the cash.”
A line from Gray’s “Elegy” went through Mencken’s mind: Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest. A mute (or even a loudmouthed) inglorious Arlett tending bar in Baltimore? Mencken snorted. Not likely! He knew why that line occurred to him now. He’d mocked it years before: There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the imaginations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.
Mencken poured down the rest of the beer and got up from his stool. “Thank you kindly, George. I expect I’ll be back again before long.”
“Any time, buddy. Thanks for lettin’ me bend your ear.” George Ruth chuckled. “This line o’ work, usually it goes the other way around.”
“I believe that.” Mencken put on his overcoat and gloves, then walked out into the night. Half an hour--not even--and he’d be back at the house that faced on Union Square.
Copyright © 2009 Harry Turtledove