Waiting for Teddy Williams

by Howard Frank Mosher

  In the dining room of the Common Hotel, even the mounted cougar, moose, deer, and trout seemed to be watching the TV screen. At the end of each half inning the men leaned forward in their chairs and peered out the window to watch Moon, hunkered down on the bat factory roof like a gargoyle, Sox cap pulled low over his ears, stand up and climb his homemade ladder to post another big white wooden o in the proper column. Only then did the score become official in the Capital of the Red Sox Nation.

  With two outs and two runners in scoring position in the bottom of the sixth, the score still Boston i, New York o, the plate umpire rang up Sally on a slider out and down. The ump had appeared to pause for a split second before raising his arm. Maybe it was this hesitation. Or maybe Spence was looking for an opportunity to ratchet up his team and the Fenway Faithful for the last three innings. But as the umpire’s right hand rose heavenward and Sally headed back toward the dugout and the crowd howled its displeasure, Spence started down the base line from the coach’s box, walking as slowly toward the plate as a gunfighter, holding on to his cap to keep the wind from blowing it off his head. The crowd’s anguish changed to wild applause. Every man, woman, and child in Fenway Park, plus millions of TV viewers throughout New England, believed they knew what was coming next.

  Sally ran back up the line to intercept his manager.

  “Exactly where was that pitch?” Spence demanded.

  Sally shrugged. “Close. Maybe a strike. My pitcher throws it, I want it for her. I don’t pull the trigger. My bad, chief.”

  “Maybe a strike,” Spence said. “And maybe not a strike.” He stared hard at the umpire, who stared back. But this time, to everyone’s astonishment, Spence did not press the issue.

  In the top of the seventh, the Alien walked the Mets’ leadoff hitter on four pitches. He struck out the next man, the crowd now chanting, “Eight, eight, eight”—eight outs to go. But the next man in the Mets’ lineup hit a double off the right-field wall, sending the runner on first to third, and as much as he hated to go by the book, Spence did, signaling for the Alien to issue an intentional walk to set up a force at every base. The following batter hit the first pitch directly over second base on one sharp hop. The Sox’s rookie shortstop dived for the ball, which miraculously disappeared in his outstretched glove, the glove coming down hard on top of the base, the shortstop bouncing to his feet like a trampoline artist and gunning out the batter by four steps, turning what had looked like a certain two-run single into an inning-ending double play.

  Boston failed to score in the bottom of the seventh, and though the lummox would have loved to sneak into the Sox dugout and knuckle-punch the Alien Man in the arm, as he had E.A. during the division playoff with the Yankees, he couldn’t figure out how to get away with it. He was still pretty sure that the Mets would get to the Alien anyway and that the Sox, true to form, would find yet another ingenious way to lose the game and the Series. History, after all, was on his side.

  “SIX, SIX, SIX,” chanted the crowd as the graying pitcher walked out to the mound and got ready to put the lid on the New York Mets for the next to last time that afternoon. The wind was blowing harder now, gusting first from one direction, then another. It added an eerie melody to the crowd noise, as if the old ball park were crying out to the team to do at last what they had failed to do for so many years, failed to do for a lifetime, actually, for fourscore years and more. At home in Vermont, E.A. thought, the deer and moose on Allen Mountain would be disoriented by the wind, which confused scents, made it difficult to hear predators and prey alike. He felt something of the same disorientation. What had the Colonel once told him? That it was no fun to fish or play baseball in the wind. It made what should be fan a chore.

  In the top of the eighth, the Alien got the first two Mets on long flies. Both started out to straightaway right, but the wind pushed them toward deep center, where they were catchable, though they jittered about like Wiffle balls, and an inexperienced fielder might not have corralled either one. Now there were only four—“FOUR” roared the crowd—outs to go.

  Next up was Miller Jacks, who, on a 1–2 count, smashed a line drive straight back at the mound. The crack of the ball shattering the elbow of the Alien’s pitching arm was audible in the broadcasting booth and so was Spence’s roar as he charged out of the Sox dugout toward Jacks, now jogging down the line toward first and jabbing a taunting finger at the Alien, sitting on the mound and rocking and holding his elbow, his face stricken with anguish and disappointment.

  Sally tackled Spence just before he reached Jacks, but it took the umpiring crew and the police five minutes to separate the surging scrum of battling players. The Alien was carried off the field on a stretcher, Spence accompanying him into the dugout.

  He picked up the phone to the bullpen and stared at it for a moment. Then he said into the mouthpiece, “Say, kid. You feel like getting in a little work this afternoon?”

  42

  JOGGING IN from the bullpen, E.A. heard some scattered boos and a few “woodchuck”s, but there was applause, too, led by Gypsy Lee, now standing on her seat and shrieking, “That’s my boy, you’d better clap for him!” There was so much debris on the field that E.A. thought the posse must be showering him with it. But it was just the work of the wind, now blowing a blizzard of hot dog wrappers and paper napkins and beer cups thrown out of the stands during the melee.

  Spence met E.A. at the mound, placed the ball in his hand, and said, “One out at a time, kid. Throw to Sally, not the hitters. Whatever happens, I’m behind you. You’re my pitcher.”

  E.A. looked up at Teddy and Gypsy. Teddy touched his cap and E.A. touched his. Then he threw his warm-up pitches.

  Sally trotted out to the mound. “This lefty five hitter, she don’t like the curve out. We set her up with heat on the fist, then get her with a back-door curve, nick the outside corner. Don’t forget you got a man on first. Go from you set position. You going to get these out, win the game.”

  E.A.’s first pitch to the lefty, a 98-mph fastball, caught the inside corner, on the letters, causing the umpire’s right hand to jerk out and up, and it was as if he had thrown a switch activating the loudest cheering E.A. had ever heard. The next pitch was a slider, also on the hands, which the hitter fouled weakly into the Sox dugout. Then Sally called for heat at eye level, trying to get the hitter to bite at a pitch out of the strike zone. He wouldn’t, and the count was 1 and 2.

  Through the cheering, E.A. could hear Miller Jacks calling “woodchuck” at him from first base. E.A. remembered that he was Gran Allen’s grandson. The thought made him feel strong and mean as he snapped off the back-door curve that would, he believed, catch the lefty flat-footed, leaving the Sox one inning away from the championship.

  It was a perfect pitch. It started four or five inches outside and several inches high, dropping down and in to nip the outermost corner of the plate at the last moment. The hitter waved at it feebly and popped it out behind the Sox shortstop, into mid-left field. E.A. turned, the crowd now screaming, “THREE THREE THREE,” and started off the mound, watching over his shoulder as the left-fielder took three or four steps in. E.A. watched the fly ball reach its apex, watched a Red Sox hat that he suddenly realized was his own sail several feet over the infield grass toward shortstop, the shortstop reaching out automatically and catching it by the bill, watched as the fluke of wind that had blown off his cap flawed the outfield grass like the choppy surface of a windblown lake and carried the pop fly over the Green Monster into Lansdowne Street.

  New York 2, Boston 1.

  43

  AT FIRST, no one in Fenway seemed to comprehend what had happened. The park was utterly quiet. E.A. realized that the wind had died as abruptly as it had come up. There was no breeze at all, just bright fall sunshine on a packed and silent stadium.

  E.A. knew it wasn’t his fault as Jacks crossed the plate with the home-run hitter close behind him. He knew that the curve ball he’d thrown had been a perfect pitch. The batter had connect
ed with it, however poorly, through sheer luck, and the quirk of wind, later estimated at between 60 and 70 mph, had turned a pop-up to shallow left field into a two-run homer.

  “That’s baseball, kid.” Spence was standing beside E.A. on the mound.

  As bad as E.A. felt, and as completely as he understood that a right-handed pitcher simply cannot throw a better curve to a left handed batter than the one he had thrown, he was determined not to make an excuse. “Sorry,” he said. “I caught too much of the plate with that hook.”

  Spence shrugged. “You ever see that old picture show? Big Wind from Winnetka?”

  E.A. shook his head.

  “Well, that was it. The Big Wind from Winnetka. Now it’s behind us. It ain’t even breezy no more. See?”

  E.A. nodded. This was the Legendary Spence at his best. No raving, no storming. Just straight baseball talk.

  “We’ll get them runs back for you,” Spence said. “This weren’t your fault. Don’t worry about it.”

  The Legendary Spence swatted E.A. on the butt and trotted off the field. E.A. walked the next batter on a 3–2 count with a pitch that could have gone either way, but before the woodchuck chant could get up a head of steam he got the next hitter on three straight 21st-Century Limiteds. The third fastball was well out of the strike zone, but the Mets’ seven hitter swung at it from his heels and missed by a mile, and now the crowd was up and cheering for a Sox rally in the bottom of the eighth. For one more miracle in this miraculous season.

  With one out, the Sox’s shortstop and three hitter, who’d saved the day in the seventh with his double play, hit a line drive high up on the wall. It was fair by thirty feet and would have been a home run in any other baseball park in the world, but the Mets’ left-fielder snagged the rebounding ball with his bare hand, whirled, and threw a strike on one bounce to the second baseman, holding the runner to a single.

  The next hitter struck out on a pitch that E.A. could have sworn Villa literally pulled out of his hat, leaving the Sox one out and one last at-bat away from yet another devastating failure.

  Eduardo Salvadore walked to the plate to a tintinnabulation of foot-stomping and hand-clapping, intensifying into a roar louder than the roar after Fisk’s Shot Heard Round the World, as the Sox superstar took a short stride, head tucked down, swung compactly, and drove Villa’s first pitch over the right-fielder’s head. The outfielder raced back, reached up over his shoulder—and the ball skipped off his outstretched glove, over the fence.

  Boston 3, New York 2.

  Euphoria.

  44

  E.A.’s FIRST MISTAKE in the top of the ninth inning was to try too hard to keep the ball low, in order to avoid a repeat of the pop-fly home run. As a result he pitched around New York’s number-eight batter and walked him. He’d violated a cardinal rule of baseball by issuing a free pass to the leadoff hitter.

  The nine hitter, a decent contact man who only rarely hit the long ball, fouled off several very good pitches. With a 3–2 count, E.A. walked him as well, on a slider on the hands, another pitch that could have gone either way.

  “Time to pay a little social call on the umpire,” Spence said to the macaw. He reached up, grabbed the side of the dugout, and heaved himself onto the field. The crowd’s howl of anger over the called ball four changed into a roar of anticipation. Here came the Legendary Spence, his uniform shirt and pants torn and grass-stained from the brawl the inning before, the macaw perched on his shoulder, making a beeline for home plate.

  The organist played a riff of “Spence’s Hornpipe.” More debris rained onto the field. All over New England, people were off their barstools and couches, cheering for the Legendary Spence. The umpire stood waiting.

  “Sally,” Spence shouted. “Where was that last pitch?”

  “One little inch off the corner.”

  “Has Blue been squeezing my pitcher?”

  “She no squeeze.”

  Spence took several quick steps out around his catcher toward the plate. His chest nearly touched the umpire’s chest, his face jutted into the umpire’s face, and his arms hung straight down at his sides like an Irish dancer’s, like Gypsy’s when she did the River Dance on the cab roof of Devil Dan’s Blade. Thinking of Gypsy, E.A. glanced at the box seat just up the third-base line. There she was, waving her red cowgal hat and shrieking for the umpire’s head along with the rest of the Faithful. The lummox, too, was standing up, motioning for Spence to go sit down, get off the field.

  “You’re squeezing the kid, Blue,” Spence shouted. “This ain’t the time or place for it.”

  “That last pitch missed, Spence. Go back to the dugout where you belong.”

  “I got two eyes in my head,” Spence shouted. “I can see. You’re squeezing the kid.”

  “I don’t want to toss you, Spence. Not in the last game of the Series. If you persist in this, I will.”

  To signal that the conversation was over, the umpire turned a quarter revolution toward the plate. So did Spence, gearing up the Faithful to a new pitch. They knew what was coming. The organist launched into the first bar of the hornpipe. The umpire turned again. Careful not to bump him or say what couldn’t be unsaid, the Red Sox manager followed suit. Fenway was going wild with joy. In all baseballdom, only the Legendary Spence would risk being tossed in the last inning of the last game of the World Series.

  Sally jumped in between the two men. All three were now revolving around home plate like clockwork figures. In the on-deck circle, the waiting hitter glanced out toward the mound and exchanged fleeting grins with E.A.

  Suddenly Spence was through. The hornpipe was over and he was heading for the mound. “How you doing, kid?” he said.

  “Good.”

  “Can you pitch your way out of this?”

  “You just watch me,” E.A. said.

  “All right, Mr. Ethan,” Spence said. “I will.” And he returned to the dugout.

  E.A. reviewed the situation. The Sox were up 3–2, with two New York runners on base and no outs in the top of the ninth inning, the top of the Mets’ order coming to bat. He checked Teddy and touched his cap. Teddy touched his.

  As New York’s number-one hitter stepped into the batter’s box, E.A. found himself envisioning the pattern of baseballs Teddy had painted on canvas for him to throw at in Gran’s barn. Ted Williams’s representation of the strike zone. He could smell the hay and old manure and sawdust of the barn, and he remembered the Colonel’s telling him that games were won on the practice field. Practice was something he’d had plenty of. In his mind he’d been in this situation a hundred times. He could hear the rain on the roof of the barn, hear the pigeons muttering in the cupola, the thud of the ball on the painted canvas draped over the hay bales, and he struck out the leadoff batter on four pitches and the number-two man on five, the fifth pitch a fastball on the inside corner, which hit 99 mph on the radar gun.

  Everyone at Fenway was on their feet. “ONE ONE ONE,” screamed the crowd and then, as the Mets’ three hitter stepped in, “THREE THREE THREE,” calling not just for an out but for another strikeout. Down 0–1, On the second pitch of the sequence, the three batter beat the ball on the ground to the Sox’s shortstop, who charged the ball, fielded it cleanly, then couldn’t find the handle on it to make the toss to second for the force out. The sort of freakish mishap that happens once or twice a season had happened to the shortstop at the worst possible time, leaving the bases loaded with two out and Miller Jacks, the best clutch hitter in baseball, coming to the plate.

  Sally called time and went out to the mound while the crowd’s agonized groans turned into cascading boos for Jacks. “Keep it on the fists,” Sally said. “We don’t want that first pitch too far over the plate, where she can get solid wood on it. I give you a good target on the letters on the fists on the inside black, kid. She don’t dare let go by, but she don’t do much with it. Don’t try too hard to keep the ball low, we can’t walk this guy and tie up the score. We got to go right at her and win the game
here. Okay?”

  E.A. nodded. He looked up at Teddy, who touched his cap again.

  Sally signaled for the fastball in, and a fraction of a second before E.A. lifted his hands to his chest to start his wind-up, Jacks raised his right hand and stepped out of the batter’s box. The umpire threw up his hands for time. Just as Teddy had taught him to, E.A. threw the ball anyway in order not to make any abrupt movements that could injure his arm. The pitch was right where Sally’d wanted it, on the fists, 98 mph. Sally held it framed, but the umpire said, “Time was called,” and though the crowd was enraged, there was nothing anyone could do. The debate on whether Miller Jacks had called for time before E.A. started his motion would rage on in baseball circles for years. But the call had been made and the call stood. Jacks had accomplished what he’d set out to. He had seen E.A.’s best pitch. Now he was ready to hit whatever the boy might throw him.

  E.A. stepped back on the rubber. The runners took their leads. Again Sally signaled for the fastball in and up. The pitch was a couple of inches high, a couple of inches inside. The crowd groaned and booed the call. But there was no quarrel from Sally or from E.A. As E.A. had suspected, Sally’s plan was to move Jacks off the plate with that first pitch, keep him from digging in, then work him away with a slider on the knees. The slider cut the corner as Jacks watched it go by. The umpire’s right arm lifted, and the Faithful set up an oceanic roar. The next pitch was a high, hard fastball, which Jacks fouled straight back into the screen, and the Red Sox were one strike away from winning the World Series.

  Ethan thought Sally would want him to use high heat again to put Jacks away. Instead, the catcher flicked down two fingers. E.A. set, kicked, and threw a curve low off the plate that hit the dirt, so Sally had to block it with his body to keep the runner on third from scoring. Two and two.