In the ninth, DiMaggio also teed off against Dean, and the Yankees had a 6 to 3 lead... and the game. Hartnett went to the mound and took the ball from Diz, giving him a pat on the back. As the pitcher trudged slowly off the field toward the dugout, clusters of fans rose to clap, then more followed, and soon the entire crowd was on its feet in salute. The applause and whistling went on for more than a minute, as the Cubs in the field, hands on hips, looked down at the ground or made idle patterns in the infield dirt with their cleats.
“Why is everybody cheering him so much, Dad?” Peter shouted over the din as we stood and clapped. “They hit two homers off him.”
“Eventually they did, but he pitched awfully well for a long time,” I said. “And people will do this when they know they’ve seen somebody give the very best they can.” Also, I might have added, these cheers were in effect a hail and farewell to a legend, who at the age of only twenty-eight was leaving the spotlight for probably the final time.
The Cubs clubhouse was crowded, but there was no noise above the level of murmurs. Players sat half-dressed and dejected in front of their cubicles as reporters knelt down asking questions in lowered voices. “Nice hitting today, Joe,” one said to Marty, who only shook his head and scowled. “You’ll get ’em in New York on Saturday,” another said to Stan Hack, whose wooden smile and nodding response carried little conviction.
As Peter and I weaved our way through the funereal gloom, I spotted Dizzy Dean, still dressed in his uniform pants and cleats but stripped to his undershirt, sweating and slumped on a bench, his street clothes hanging on pegs behind him. Three reporters, one of them from the Trib, stood above him scribbling in their notebooks.
“What did you say to Crosetti when he hit the homer?” one asked.
“Ah told him he wouldn’t of got a loud foul off me two years ago,” the pitcher said.
“Did he say something back?” another scribbler posed.
“He said I was right,” Diz responded in a tired voice, and the reporters dispersed to get quotes from other players.
A tall, thin, erect figure in a dark suit and white hair stepped out of the shadows and planted himself in front of Dean, holding out a gnarled hand. I recognized him from newspaper photographs: Connie Mack, now probably seventy-five years old and the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics since before I was born. “Son, you pitched a great game out there with what you had on the ball,” Mack said with quiet conviction.
Diz looked up and forced a smile. “Thanks, Mr. Mack, ’preciate it. And yore right... Ah didn’t have nothin’ out there today, ’cept maybe heart.”
“You had plenty of that,” Connie Mack told Diz, patting him on the shoulder and leaving.
Peter and I stood a respectful two paces away, not wanting to disturb the reverie as Diz watched baseball’s Grand Old Man depart. Then Dean turned, saw me, and actually grinned.
“Well, Mr. Snap! Nice of ya to stop by.” He stood and we shook hands.
“Diz, this is my son, Peter. We were cheering for you all the way today.”
“Hey, Peter, pleasure to meet you,” Diz said, pumping his hand. “You got yourself a great dad, but ya already know that, dontcha?”
“Yes, sir, I do,” Peter said. If he was awed, he didn’t show it, and that made me proud of him. “We’re sorry about... sorry you lost today.”
“Yeah, well, like I told Mr. Mack just now, and them reporters what were here before him, I didn’t have nothin’ on the ball. Fooled ’em for seven innings, though, didn’t I, Peter?”
“Yes, sir, you did. Could I...” He held out his program and a pencil.
“Peter, I don’t think Mr. Dean is in the mood to sign any autographs just now,” I whispered.
“Hey, Ah’m always ready to sign, win or lose,” Diz said, taking the pencil and writing at length on Peter’s program. “You play ball yourself, son?”
Peter hunched his shoulders. “Sorta. Second base. I’m not very good, though.”
“Hey, Rogers Hornsby played second base, and he was the best hitter there ever was, anywhere. Well, you keep at it, promise?” the pitcher boomed, tousling Peter’s hair and turning to me. “Mr. Snap, is everything okay? I mean...” he looked to see if Peter was listening, but saw he was engrossed in reading Dean’s handwritten message to him... “about them two thugs what came barging into Killer’s place that night,” he said in a lowered voice.
“They’re gone, Diz, and they won’t be back,” I said. “I never properly thanked you for your accurate pitching that night.”
He raised his shoulders and let them drop. “Glad to help. Don’t know if Ah’ll be back, either. If Ah’m traded or I hang up my spikes, give all them fine fellas at the Killer’s mah very best, and tell ’em they shore made ol’ Diz feel welcome, will ya?”
“I’ll do that, Diz, and that’s a promise,” I said as we shook hands. “Be seein’ you. So long.”
Peter and I left the somber clubhouse and walked out onto Clark Street. Most of the crowd had dispersed, but whistle-blowing cops were still directing traffic at the intersection with Addison and vendors kept hawking souvenirs from their carts, aware that the Chicago portion of the World Series was probably over so this was their last chance to make sales. I bought two Cub pennants, one for Peter, the other for his teacher, and I also handed him the extra program I had bought for her. “Don’t forget to give this stuff to Miss Forsythe,” I said. “It’s always best to stay on their good side.”
“Today was really fun, Dad,” he said, smiling up at me, “even if the Cubs did lose. You sure have a lot of famous friends, don’t you?”
“I don’t know if they’re all what you would call friends, although I sure do like Dizzy Dean, and some day I’ll tell you how much he helped me once. But meeting well-known people, that’s just what happens when you’re a newspaper reporter, Peter. You naturally run into people who make news.”
“Mama says you’re different, though.”
“Oh, does she now?”
“Yeah. What does ‘essential brashness’ mean?”
I gave him my interpretation of that phrase as we walked south on Clark to my apartment. We would have frankfurters and potato salad for supper there before I took him in a taxi to his new home, the duplex on Lake Shore Drive where he lived with Mr. and Mrs. Martin Baer.
Epilogue
The preceding is a work of fiction, and all of its principal characters, other than those mentioned below, exist solely in the mind of the author. Also, all of the episodes in which these historical figures interact with fictional ones are products of the author’s hyperactive imagination.
Helen Hayes, who completed her storied run (more than 900 performances) as Queen Victoria in “Victoria Regina” in 1939, continued to be a prominent and popular figure on the Broadway and London stage until the early 1970s. She also acted in films, most notably “Anastasia” (1956) and “Airport” (1970). In the latter, she won an Oscar for her performance as an impish stowaway. It was her second Academy Award, the other being for “The Sin of Madelon Claudet” (1931).
Miss Hayes’ daughter, Mary, died of polio in 1949, and her husband, author and playwright Charles MacArthur, died in 1956. The actress, known as the “First Lady of the American Stage,” died in March 1993, at the age of ninety-three.
Al Capone, terminally ill from the effects of syphilis and its later manifestation, paresis, was released from prison in November 1939 and spent most of the rest of his days in seclusion with his family at their home in Florida, where he suffered from both physical and mental deterioration and periods of intense depression. No longer a factor in the world of organized crime, he died in January 1947, eight days after his forty-eighth birthday.