Two days later, after the Cubs had clinched the pennant, I got a call at home from Cahill.
“Leo! I’ve been expecting to hear from you,” I said with bonhomie. “How’s things?”
“Yeah, go ahead and gloat while you can,” he groused.
“Me, gloat? Why would I want to do that?”
“Look, how ’bout us going double or nothing on the Series?” he asked plaintively.
“Are you kidding? You know what kind of favorites the Yankees are? It’s something like 14 to 5, last time I checked.”
“I’ll give you those odds — or more.” He sounded desperate.
“No thanks, Leo.”
“But I got a problem.”
“Yeah. How so?”
“Damn, Snap, I can’t spare fifty bucks. Not now.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, savoring a moment I had been anticipating — and rehearsing — for days. “Well... I have a solution to that ‘little problem’ of yours. You guys in the Sports Department get tickets to everything — tickets you usually don’t want to share with your co-workers in other areas of the paper. I know very well that you do, so don’t bother trying to deny it. How ’bout you give me two seats for one of the Series games? Then I’ll consider our bet paid off.”
“Darn, Snap, that’s tough, that’s really tough to do.”
I paused for effect before responding. “Let me make sure that I’ve got this straight, Leo. You don’t want to pay me the fifty simoleons, is that right? And you don’t want to get me the tickets, which together wouldn’t cost anywhere near the fifty clams I wagered in good faith — and in fact, those tickets probably wouldn’t cost you a copper Lincoln.
“What it really comes down to is this, Leo. A grumpy White Sox fan whose own woebegone team has not been in the series in almost twenty years — and they threw that one — can’t stand it because the Cubs got in again. This same petulant White Sox fan who insisted Dizzy Dean wouldn’t win five games, and wouldn’t even pitch after June... now let’s see, Dizzy has won...”
“All right, all right,” Leo sighed. “Now look here, Snap, I can’t get you a thing for the opener on Wednesday — everybody from the governor and the mayor on down to precinct workers wants to be out there, posing for the cameras down in front with that damn red, white, and blue bunting. But I’m pretty sure I can get you a pair for Thursday.”
“Pretty sure, Leo?”
“Okay, dammit. I will get you two seats for Thursday’s game. That’s a promise.”
“Good seats?”
He sighed again. “Very good seats, third-base side, couple rows back of the Cubs dugout.”
“One more thing. I’m taking my boy, and I want a pass that gets us into the Cubs clubhouse after the game.”
“Now wait a minute, Snap...”
“No, you wait a minute Leo,” I said without warmth. “None of what I’m asking is costing you a damn single dollar. I’m letting you off the hook in a big way, and this is what I want in return.”
Silence. “All right,” he finally said, his voice tight. “You can pick everything up in the Sports Department the day before the game. Martha’ll have an envelope with your name on it.”
“I knew I could count on you, Leo. Thanks.” I cradled the receiver and leaned back in my one living room chair, feeling smug. Norma and Martin Baer had gotten married two weeks before, and Peter told me Baer had said he would take them to Miami Beach around the holidays. “Is it okay with you if I go?” Peter had asked in an uncertain tone.
“Sure, why not? Never pass up the chance to get out of the cold weather here. Besides, you’ve never been to Florida; be a good experience.”
“But you’ll be all alone for Christmas,” he said with what I knew was genuine concern.
“That’s okay, Son. You and I can have our Christmas when you get back. Just the two of us.”
“Yeah, I’d like that, just us. This trip will cost plenty, won’t it, Dad? The train tickets and hotels and stuff?”
“Well, it sounds like Mr. Baer’s got the money to do it,” I told him. “And it’s nice that he’s taking you along.”
Such was my outward benevolent stance to Peter regarding Martin Baer. I was jealous of the man’s wherewithal to show my son places I’d never been able to take him. This was a big part of the reason I decided to pry those World Series tickets and clubhouse passes out of Leo in lieu of the money that he couldn’t afford to part with. Let Baer try to match that.
The Cubs sent their best pitcher, Bill Lee, against the Yankees in the opener, which I caught on the radio. Big Bill pitched well, but Red Ruffing threw better, and the Yankees won, 3 to 1. During the game, the broadcasters reported the speculation that Hartnett had decided to gamble on starting Dean rather than Clay Bryant in the second game, even though Bryant had won nineteen during the season.
Despite the cold, cloudy, and windy weather, Peter and I were in our seats the next day more than an hour before game time, watching the teams warm up. Getting him out of school for the afternoon wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be: It turned out that his teacher, a tall, skinny, and warm-hearted spinster named Forsythe, was a Cub fan who seemed genuinely happy that Peter could see the game. And we promised to bring her a program and a pennant, which really sealed the deal.
“Are the Yankees as good as when Babe Ruth was with them?” Peter asked, as the swaggering New Yorkers took batting practice, pounding pitch after pitch over the left and right field walls.
“I think if anything, they’re even better,” I told him. “They won the Series the last two years against the Giants, and they’ve got Joe DiMaggio — that’s him right there, Number 5, stepping into the batter’s box — who’s only about twenty-three and he’s already hit over.300 all three years he’s been in the big leagues. And the rest of their lineup is terrific, too, although Lou Gehrig’s slowing down now. But at least you can tell your grandchildren you saw Gehrig play; he’s one of the great ones.”
“Do you think the Cubs have a chance, Dad?”
“Not much of one, Peter. Five guys on the Yankees hit over twenty home runs this year, and you can see the way they’re whacking ’em now in practice. And do you know who led the Cubs in homers? Rip Collins, the one with his hands on his hips over there in front of the dugout, who had a grand total of thirteen.”
But once the game started, the Yankees didn’t seem much like killers. Dizzy Dean, throwing his slow, sidearm “nothing ball,” was fooling the Bronx boys on pitches I was sure I could hit. Unfortunately, the Cubs weren’t playing so well themselves. They did take a 1 to 0 lead in the first inning, but in the Yankee second, DiMaggio led off with a single and Gehrig walked. Then after Diz got the next two batters to pop up, Joe Gordon hit a ground ball that either third baseman Stan Hack or shortstop Billy Jurges could have fielded easily. But they banged into each other, falling down like a couple of bumbling Keystone Kops, and both runners scored.
Chicago grabbed the lead back in the fourth when Joe Marty, their best hitter in the series, drove home two runs. And that’s the way it stayed — the Cubs and Dizzy Dean ahead 3 to 2, as the Yankees went down one-two-three in the fifth, sixth, and seventh innings against the “nothing ball.” Then in the eighth, with one man on base, the Yanks’ Frank Crosetti came to bat and took a smooth swing at one of Dean’s slow, slow pitches. Unlike Hartnett’s home run the week before, I saw this one all the way, watching it as it fell into the left-field bleachers. As Crosetti rounded the bases, Diz came off the mound and yelled something at him that we couldn’t hear despite the sudden silence in the ballpark, and the Yankee stopped in the baseline to reply to him.