Kid from Tomkinsville

by John R. Tunis

  “Strike... one....” The last word was lost in the tumult.

  He glanced about to see his infield playing deep, looked over his shoulder, and then, getting the signal, nodded. Dave would pull him through. Old Dave who knew every hitter and the weakness of every hitter in the League would get him out of this spot. Close... inside. He wound up quickly, and the hitter swung violently as the ball plunked with that full comforting sound into Dave’s mitt. Again the air resounded. And the ball came swiftly back at him.

  Two and nothing. Wasting one pitch, he burned the next one over low and inside. The batter caught it with the end of his bat, and tapped it weakly toward third. Jerry came running in, scooped it, and hurled it swift and low at the plate. Touch and go... the man was forced out. Had Dave needed to tag him he might have slid safely, but now there were two down and again frenzy took possession of the crowd. One putout from first place. One putout from a no-hit game!

  It was Drake, the big first baseman. Not a .300 hitter and not a bad one either; a chap who batted in lots of runs. Before the game they’d agreed to keep the ball low to Drake, but the first pitch was too low. Ball one. As he turned back to the box he noticed the big clock in right field pointed to ten past eleven. In a few minutes, in two–three minutes, it would all be over; they’d have won or lost and he’d be in the showers, cooling his aching muscles, refreshing his pounding head. Only two minutes, only a few pitches more, only a bit longer now. He took the signal, the same low ball, looked round, wound up and let go. “Ball two!” The roar rose, a sea of noise echoing against the bleachers, bouncing back against the packed stands behind the plate, echoing outside the ball park. Two and none. Only two balls from danger. Possibly from defeat. Be careful now. Don’t take chances. Play safe... get that batter. He nodded at Dave, looked carefully round at the dancing trio on the basepaths, wound up quickly, and shot in his curve. The batter swung over it as the roar deepened. Two and one.

  While he stood scuffing the dirt and shoving his shirt back into his pants, the crowd was shrieking its desire for those last two balls, the balls which would mean the end of the game. The suspense was more than they could stand. Only two strikes. Two strikes, that’s all. Dear God... two strikes—give me two strikes... just two strikes... two strikes and...

  From the box he watched Dave, still the same unworried, unhurried Dave, go into his crouch. No, not that. Not the fast one. Too risky. He didn’t dare; he was too frightened to try it. So he shook Dave off. But the catcher insisted, and insisted with such energy that all at once the Kid remembered. This was Dave’s trick. The batter would think they were switching when they weren’t.

  At the plate the big Cincinnati first baseman stood menacingly swinging his bat and crowding the plate. That pitcher was scared. Ah, that rookie was frightened. This was the cripple; this was the one to hit. He stood ready, waiting, and as the ball came down the groove swung a trifle late.

  The ball went up in the air.

  The second he swung the Kid knew he was late, but his heart thumped. Then he realized it was up in the air. Behind him someone was going back, Gabby and Jerry Strong, the third baseman, together, while Tommy Scudder in left was racing in toward them. Even through the noise he could hear Gabby’s piercing yell.

  “MINE... MINE... MINE”...

  The Kid started to run for the dugout because he knew they’d mob him. Actually he started running as the ball settled into Gabby’s hands, but his teammates were too quick. They made him a prisoner, clumped him on the back, wrung his tired right hand till it was limp and sore. By the time they reached the exit his feet were off the ground, and the crowd leaning over poked him on the back, touched his arm, his sleeve, his body, showered bits of torn paper down, yelled and cheered. In the dressing room it was worse.

  Just inside the door stood MacManus with his Irish grin and a hand that almost wrenched the Kid’s off. Doc Masters was slapping everyone with a towel, and old Chiselbeak, who looked after their clothes and did the locker room chores, was handing out Cokes with abandon. Excited shouts, laughter, general pandemonium, the door opening every second to let in some sportswriter, Casey with his hat off and a cigarette in his mouth as excited as the rest. Through it all the Kid was neither too stirred nor too happy to forget the man who made all this possible. He struggled through the gang and fought his way across the room to the catcher’s locker. Sweaty, tired, lines of fatigue under his eyes betraying the strain of the evening, Dave was pulling off his Brooklyn uniform. For the last time.

  Maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t the last time after all. The Kid pushed through, but others were already beside him. From the stands it was Roy Tucker, the young rookie, the new Dodger star; but the men who had watched from the field and seen Dave carry him through the game and then pull his pitcher together in the tense moments of the ninth to outguess the best hitting team in baseball, they knew. He felt warm and pleased as he watched them patting Dave’s back, grabbing his fist, calling through cupped hands in the noise and pandemonium. He tried to catch Gabby’s eye. Was Gabby noticing this too? Maybe it would make a difference, maybe Gabby would change his mind. Gabby knew baseball, Gabby did.

  No, Gabby wouldn’t change his mind. Because this was life, baseball was, and life was like that. One minute you were unknown and the next minute you were up in front; one minute you were a fixture on a club and then the next out of a job. Before his locker, Dave was pulling off a wet shirt with the word DODGERS on it. For the last time.

  11

  THE KID MISSED HIM badly. With Dave gone there was no one to turn to for advice, no one who could help when he had new batters to face, nobody to whose room he could go in the evening when he felt on the spot as his winning record grew each time he took the box. And with his record, the strain. Because now everyone knew about the Kid from Tomkinsville. Fans in other towns poured out merely to see whether he’d add another game to his winning list, and opposing teams invariably put more punch into their attack in the hopes of breaking the spell.

  The strain was general. The whole squad felt it. With the team in first place by half a game one day and trailing the Cincinnati Reds by a game the next day, every pitch, every throw to first, every catch in the outfield, was vital. Moreover the break between the first and second division became sharper as New York, goaded on by Murphy, and Chicago, with good-natured Earl Bartlett, their catcher and manager, pulling them along, came closer and closer. Gabby was like a mechanical toy wound up and unable to stop. Each afternoon he was on the basepaths scrapping with the enemy players and umpires alike, a very comforting person for the Kid to have behind him during a close game. There was the series in Chicago, for instance, which wound up with both teams raising their spikes and the pitcher dusting off the hitters as if they were in there for that one purpose. Buzzy Adams, the big Chicago ace, was noted for loosening up the batters, and he took it out on the Dodgers so that even the best hitters on the squad began going into the bucket. Gabby decided something must be done. When he came to bat early in the game he deliberately got on Adams.

  “Get your feet off the plate, Gabby,” cautioned the big man in the box. Gabby, like a terrier, shook himself with rage.

  “Why, Buzzy, you haven’t got guts enough to dust me off,” he said, pounding the plate with his bat and scowling.

  A minute later a fast ball scraped his chin.

  “Try that again and I’ll knock your block off....” He picked up his bat which had fallen from his hands as he ducked back, and stood in silence at the plate, waiting, with everyone in the stands and on the two teams watching the duel of nerves between the pitcher and batter. Gabby crowded the plate a bit closer, while the coaching lines rang with angry yells from Draper and Cassidy, the first base coach. Buz wound up slowly, and the ball came....

  “Ball twooo...” It was wide and outside. The count ran to three and two and then Gabby got his base on balls. For some reason Buzzy kept his pitches away from them the rest of the game.

  Sometimes, however, Gabby�
��s tight nerves and scrappy spirit affected the morale of the club. In St. Louis one afternoon in a close game there were men on first and second with none out and the score two to nothing against the Dodgers. From the bench Gabby gave Swanson the signal for a bunt. The pitcher threw two wild ones, and on the next pitch Swanson hit a “gopher ball” out of the park. Those three runs put them ahead, and eventually won the game. While half the team swarmed from the dugout to shake the center fielder’s hand, Gabby stormed to the plate, raging.

  “Get in to the clubhouse, you fathead,” he shouted. No one saw Swanson the rest of the afternoon, or Gabby either, because he took himself out and spent the time lecturing Swanny on the value of discipline. To make it sink in, he finished by slapping on a $50 fine. Two days later when Big Bill McLoughlin, the Cardinal catcher, hit a home run, Gabby fined Swanson $25 more for failing to hustle after the hit. Everyone wondered where and when Gabby’s explosive temper would strike next.

  Meanwhile the team was partly crippled by injuries of the usual sort. A fighting ballclub means a club that takes chances, and taking chances inevitably brings on minor injuries and bruises; a lame back here, a weakened ankle there, a sore arm or a bad shoulder. Many of them carried “strawberries,” those painful patches of raw skin as big as a football that come on players’ hips and legs from sliding. Red Allen and Karl Case were in batting slumps which didn’t help. Only the hurlers continued to hold up, with Roy the number one and Razzle Nugent the number two man close behind. The pitching staff was turning in pennant-winning stuff.

  They came into Pittsburgh in first place, a game and a half ahead of Cincinnati and three games ahead of the third-place Cubs. Gabby had a routine with his pitchers that seemed to work. He explained it to Roy. On some teams pitchers frequently got a day off after a full game, but with Gabby never.

  “A pitcher should do something to exercise his arm every afternoon, and especially on resting day. You pitched yesterday. Jake goes in day after tomorrow. All right. I want you out there warming up that arm this afternoon. That removes any kinks or sore spots that might have set in overnight. Jake will throw part of batting practice today, and Rats and Fat Stuff too. Tomorrow Frenchie De Voe goes in, and Jake rests, while you and Rats take batting practice. Jake goes in Thursday and you can rest that day. Y’see, some boys need more arm exercise than others, but everyone ought to tune up between starts.”

  The system worked. Razzle threw a great game that afternoon, shutting Pittsburgh out with only three hits, and Gabby, feeling his pitcher needed some relaxing, told him to have a couple of beers, Razzle’s favorite drink, with his dinner. Although their victory was hurt by the misfortune to Jerry Strong, the third baseman, who was lost for a while. A Pittsburgh batter on first tried to stretch a single to right. Furious that Karl Case’s throw was there waiting for him, he carved his initials into Jerry’s legs and the little third baseman had to be carried off the field. Right on top of that came another disaster.

  The Kid was lying on his bed after dinner in his room in the Schenley across from Forbes Field, where the Dodgers always stayed in Pittsburgh. He was reading Casey’s column in the Post-Gazette. Now Casey’s column was the sort of thing you always chuckled over when Casey talked about someone else or some other team. That evening the Kid enjoyed it. For Casey was exercising his wit at the expense of the Chicago management, gentlemen with whom he had never seen eye to eye.

  “Frederick Charles Robertson was the baby they were all hollering about down South last spring in the training camps. Maybe you remember. He came from the Pacific Coast League where he was a sensation, to join the Chicago Cubs, who paid plenty for him. $100,000 was the figure, and never denied. All through spring training Mr. Robertson got the headlines. He was a feature story for every touring baseball writer. One of the big national weeklies gave him an elaborate spread. It was young Robertson this, and young Robertson that.

  “All the while a youth named Roy Tucker was working out quietly with the Brooklyn Dodgers at Clearwater. It seems this lad had no money to report to the team, so he borrowed carfare from his grandmother with whom he lives on a farm outside Tomkinsville, Connecticut. Going through the routine without benefit of headlines, he was just another rookie that Jack MacManus had picked up somewhere. One more of Wild Jack’s mistakes, the boys explained.

  “None of the touring scribes stopped to interview Roy. None of the national weeklies played him up. He was merely one more freshman in training camps. A good-looking kid who might do for a season with Decatur. Well, here it is almost August, and what about it? That unknown kid from Tomkinsville is about the hottest thing in pitching in either league. He started winning in May and hasn’t stopped yet. Everyone knows his record and how the other night over in Cincinnati he shut out the league-leading Reds without a hit.”

  The Kid’s face grew hotter and hotter. Gosh! Why, Casey wasn’t such a bad guy after all! Why did all the players pan Casey, and keep away from him so much? He must be all right, that man Casey. The printed page danced before his eyes.

  “‘Tucker wins again,’ sing the headlines. He’s copped his fourteenth straight victory, the best record any first-year pitcher ever made. He’s a fogger with a fast one that’s fast, a curve that breaks, and he pitches with his noodle. He knows how to play the hitter and what to do with the ball. He’ll take advice, and the boys say he will get better as he goes along, and incidentally he can pound that pill, too. Several games he’s won by timely hits at the right moment. He’s as fast as anyone on the club, he can field, and if he could cook I’d marry him.”

  Yessir, Casey was all right. He’d stand up for Casey when the boys started panning him at table and saying these newspaper bums didn’t know anything about baseball. He sure would stand up for him. Casey was a great person. Understood the game, too. You could tell that just by reading him. He continued.

  “And Robertson? Whatever became of him, the star for whom someone paid $100,000? Why, Master Robertson is back with San Diego. Well, that’s baseball.”

  His face flushed and he threw the paper on the floor—

  It was someone knocking. All through the last paragraphs he had felt something interrupting his reading, but so intent had he been that he hadn’t realized there was a knock on the door. Not a knock, either, a pounding now, as if someone were trying to break it down. His first thought was fire, but then he heard a familiar, if husky, voice the other side of the transom. He jumped up and threw it open as Razzle came in.

  Tumbled in would better describe that entrance. Razzle’s face was flushed and excited. The star’s penchant for beer was famous, and stories were current of his experiences in former seasons, but so far this year he had been cautious. However, the long strain of pitching first-place ball, followed by the tight game of that afternoon, had been too much for him. Razzle was high.

  His eye caught the open paper on the floor. The Kid flushed. But Razzle was not to be stopped. “Ha... ha! B’lieve what that mug says! Casey!” The scorn of years of baseball was in his voice. “Wha’s he know about baseball... sittin’ up there and tellin’ us how to play the game. Like to see him handle a fogger a few times....”

  The Kid’s attachment for Casey vanished. It was true. What did Casey know about it, or anyone who hadn’t suffered out there on that mound inning after inning with the sun pitilessly beating upon your neck and the thermometer in the dugout at 120 degrees? No, Casey really didn’t know. But the big fellow wanted action. He grabbed the paper and tearing it into pieces threw them outdoors. Then taking a huge chair he stumbled and lumbered across the room and, under the Kid’s terrified eyes, shoved it through the window. BANG! CRASH! BANG-BANG. The sound of breaking glass and splintering wood came from below, followed by shouts. The Kid jumped up and threw his arms round the big pitcher’s body, only to find himself suddenly sprawling in a corner. Throwing him off like a fly, Razzle locked the door and began hauling another chair across the room.

  Now there was a frenzied knocking, while from below
came shouts and CRASH! BANG-BANG! CRASH! as a second chair went to destruction. The Kid made a dive for the door, but Razzle was too quick for him.

  “No, you don’t... either... I’m gonna give you the bum’s rush too....” And seizing the Kid by the shoulders he struggled toward the window. Surely the man wasn’t insane enough...

  “Hey, Razzle, Razzle, for Heaven’s sake, leggo.... Hey, Razzle...”

  Pound-pound, pound-pound from the door, and the exasperated voice of Gabby.

  “Say there, open up that door, Tucker. I’ll fine you plenty if you don’t open up....”

  But the Kid couldn’t open the door. Entwined in the arms of that ferocious bear he was unable to move. Vainly he struggled, yelled, shouted, caught the bottom of the bureau with his feet and managed to pull it over, yet still Razzle held him in a vise, still they neared the window. Then there was a crash. The door burst open. Five husky men jumped together on the luckless pitcher just before he had yanked the Kid to the sill of the tenth-story window.

  His shirt completely ripped off, one shoe gone, his trousers torn in three pieces, a cut on his legs where he had hit something, disheveled, panting, exhausted, he stood watching them subdue the mighty Razzle. No easy matter either, for Razzle was in the mood for a roughhouse and gave as good as he got. Then two more men, apparently hotel detectives, joined them, and the combined forces managed, by pulling and hauling, to batter Razzle into submission, yank him into the shower, and gradually cool his ardor. It was two hours before the cuts, bleeding noses, and other evidences of battle were repaired, and things were back again at normal. The room being irretrievably wrecked, the Kid was changed, and Gabby, with Bill Hanson, the business manager, and Doc Masters, the trainer, attempted to conceal the conflict.