“Yes sir, I shore do like Pittsburgh,” the big pitcher went on. “Good steaks — not as good as these o’course — good night spots, good times. And a real tough team, them Pirates. Wouldn’t surprise me to see us and them fighting it out right down to the very end this year. They got them there Waner boys, y’know, best damn pair of brothers that ever been on the same team — ’ceptin’ for me ’n Paul, o’course.”
“That’s right — what is your brother doin’ these days?” a rotund bald-headed regular named Sunstrom asked.
“Paul’s havin’ himself kind of a tough time jest now,” the more famous sibling said, his voice suddenly lower and his mind surely drifting back to those lost glories of 1934, when the strapping and colorful Dean boys together won a combined forty-nine games and a World Series for St. Louis. And they each won two of the four Cardinal victories in the Series.
“He’s down there in that ol’ Texas League,” Dean continued, “tryin’ to work out his arm troubles. Jest like I am. And he’ll be back too, jest like I will. Heck, what am I sayin’?” Diz roared, his expansive self once more. “Shoot, I already am back, ’cause I never really been away! And now I’m a Cub, dammit, and proud of it, and we’re gonna win us a pennant for these fine Chicago folks here, ain’t we now, Carl?”
Reynolds nodded again, expressionless, and then actually spoke. He asked the Killer for another beer.
I hung around for another half hour or so, absorbing as much of Dizzy Dean’s bombastic but somehow endearing braggadocio as I could digest in a single session. As I started to edge out of the saloon, he was regaling his rapt assemblage about how before the seventh and deciding game of the ’34 World Series he had told Hank Greenberg, the Detroit Tigers star, to relax. “Yore troubles are gonna be over in two hours, because ol’ Diz is pitching. And shore ’nuff, about two hours later, we’d beaten those pore boys from Dee-troit by eleven to nothin.’”
“Snap, don’t run off just yet,” the Killer yelled above the rising noise level. “Did you ever get to talk to Dick Daley?”
“Oh, yeah, I did. Guess I forgot to tell you,” I said as we huddled at the far end of the bar, where we could almost hear each other. “We met twice, once down in Springfield, once here, and he was, well... I’d say fairly helpful. Just between us, I don’t believe the party had anything to do with Martindale’s death. But understand, that’s just me talking.”
“I never thought they did. Did you by chance mention anything to him about how his father had never come in here?”
“Why?”
“Well, the great Dizzy Dean has not been the only new face around the premises lately,” the bar owner said with his lopsided smile. “A few days back now — you weren’t in here that night — who do you think strolls in but Mike Daley himself, as if he just stopped by every day as part of his routine. Told me that he’d been planning to visit me for ages. We had a fine talk, about everything from folks back in the Old Sod to Chicago politics to how his son is doing down in Springfield. And he said he’d be coming back again soon — even if I was located so far north.”
“Interesting.”
“Indeed it is interesting. And thanks, Snap,” he said, clapping a big hand on my shoulder.
“For what?”
He smiled again and went back to the cluster of customers around the two ballplayers. The last thing I heard as I stepped out onto Clark Street was Diz’s audience, begging for more stories. And the last thing I saw was the Killer’s grinning face as he rushed to keep the glasses filled along the crowded bar.
My normal one-block trip home became two blocks because of my roundabout route down a side street and then in through the alley entrance to my building. Also, I’d taken to leaving a couple of my lamps on all day, and the Venetian blinds closed, so that the outfit boys stalking me couldn’t tell when I got home. Once inside the apartment, I immediately telephoned Leo Cahill at home.
“Snap Malek! To what do I owe this nocturnal honor?”
“I’ve got a scoop for your sports section.”
“You’re getting a little far afield from your police world, aren’t you?” he asked in a skeptical tone. News operations at the Tribune — and at all the other dailies in town as well — were rigidly territorial. Other than the top dogs, each editor worried about his own fiefdom and little else. And if you worked in one area of the paper, it was assumed that everything you did as a reporter would be for that area, or that section, and nobody else.
“A true reporter is never off duty, Leo, you should know that,” I sighed in mock solemnity. “Anyway, here it is, on a silver platter. I just came home from a saloon where none other than Dizzy Dean says he’s going to sue the Cardinals for 250,000 simoleons because they wrecked his arm when they made him pitch too soon after last year’s All Star Game, where, as you may recall, he got banged up by that line drive. He also says he’ll give at least a hundred thousand of that to Phil Wrigley as compensation for his lack of playing time with the Cubs so far this season.”
“Dean told you all that?” Leo responded, surprised. “How come? I thought he was pissed off at the Trib.”
“But he doesn’t know I’m with the Trib. I told him I’m a salesman in the steel business.”
“Uh-huh. Interesting. Well, it makes a nice anecdote to amuse your grandchildren with, Snap, but I can tell you that none of my editors would give that story even a column inch.”
“Oh? And why not?”
“Snap, Snap, wake up, for God’s sake, will you? You may be a whiz as a police and crime reporter, I’ll give you that. But you’re out of your league here; you don’t know these guys. Dean’s a bullshit artist — always has been. He’s not gonna sue anybody. He’s just thumping his chest and sounding off. The guy loves attention, can’t live without it. And since he can’t pitch anymore — probably never will again, in fact — he’s going to make noise some other way. Mark what I say, Snap — the guy is a hundred and ten percent hot air. He’s not going to file any suits or even suggest it. He’d get himself laughed out of town.”
“He said just a few minutes ago that he’d be pitching again in July,” I put in gamely.
“‘He said, he said, he said.’ Snap, get off it, will you? I know I rag you a lot about the Cubs, because you’re such an easy target. But this time, I actually feel sorry for you and all those other poor saps who pull for them. So, like I told you way back in the spring, Dean is washed up, through, done. Okay, so he got a little lucky and won... what? Two or three games right at the start of the season, when the hitters were still stiff. But what’s he done since then? Nothing. I told you then and I’ll tell you now — he won’t win five games. Shoot, Dizzy Dean is done winning, period. End of story. Give it up, Snap.”
There was no talking to Leo Cahill on the subject of Jay Hanna (Dizzy) Dean. Let the record show, however, that Leo was wrong on at least two counts. A month later, in mid-July, Diz really did pitch again — and he began to win. At about the same time, he announced publicly that he was suing the St. Louis Cardinals organization for that quarter of a million, and if he collected the money, he planned to give Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley a sizeable chunk of the settlement.
Ultimately, however, baseball’s crusty and dictatorial old commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, said he felt the suit would be detrimental to baseball (whatever that meant), and he put pressure on Dean, who dropped the idea. But it turned out to be a hell of a story, and all of the Chicago papers carried the developments more or less simultaneously and with strong play — but there were no scoops.
There could have been a scoop, however, a full month earlier. Leo Cahill knew that, of course, but he never mentioned it within my hearing. And he never again brought up the subject of Dizzy Dean with me. But you can bet that I brought Dizzy up to him more than once in the weeks that lay ahead.