Sophomore Campaign

by Nappi, Frank;

  “Look, Box, I don’t expect you to understand. I know you’re upset and all. This has nothing to do with you. But you have to trust me. This kid is the real deal. I’ve seen him. He’s legit. He can really help us now. Forget his color and all that stuff. He’s a perfect fit for this team.”

  “Perfect fit? Are you out of your mind? You think these guys are gonna want to share a field, and a locker room, with some no name colored boy from the sticks? Come on, Murph. You’re better than that.” All around Murph swirled an unpleasant air of admonition.

  “He’s a guy, Boxcar. Just a regular guy. I’m surprised at you. Of all people. Who cares what color he is? If he makes us better, and can help us win, who really cares? He’s just a another damn ballplayer. Puts his spikes on just like we do. And I’ll tell ya something else. You would like him. Mickey’s met him already and loves him. Can’t stop talking about him.”

  “Mickey is simple, Murph,” Boxcar shot back. “A child who doesn’t know nothin’ about the world and the way things work.” Murph’s blood was roused. His nostrils flared and the skin around his cheeks tightened. Boxcar was at a loss to handle the rush of exposure he suddenly felt.

  “You know what I mean, Murph,” he said painfully. His mouth was twisted, as though he were struggling with something inside of it, and his face remained slightly averted, as if to ward off the palpable feeling of change that was all around them. The conditions and unspoken truth that had governed their lives previously were now gone forever.

  “With or without your stamp of approval,” Murph went on, “I am walking in to that locker room and introducing him to the guys. He’s playing with us, Box. Now I’d rather do it with you, but you can go if you like. It’s your choice. And nobody will judge you. But this is my decision. And like it or not, I’ve made it.”

  Moments later, in a semiconscious stupor engendered by unconscious thoughts that had only just recently found a voice, Murph addressed the team. The formal announcement was not much of an announcement at all, for everyone had already heard the rumors and rumblings. But with the announcement came an old, familiar madness and resistance.

  “What the hell is he thinking?” Danvers carped. “This is Boxcar’s replacement? Is he for real?”

  Others grumbled as well, not with the same pugilistic intent as Danvers, but out of fear and frustration and uncertainty. The room all at once became a cavernous tomb, filled with bodies that featured slumping shoulders and drooping heads. Murph, aware that most disorders of the mind and soul could be read clearly in the state one’s physical affect, tried to assuage the unrest.

  “Look, fellas, we are in a tight spot here. Losing Boxcar is a tremendous hit. I know that. And he would have been here today, if he were feeling better. I don’t know. Maybe that would have helped. But with or without him, we have to get on with things. Sure, it may not be easy. I know that. But Lester here has agreed to help us out. And just as I stood before all of you last season, with Mickey, and asked for your confidence and patience and loyalty, I am asking again. Different is not the same as bad. I think we know that now. We are better than most people. We have proven that. So what I think is that we can make this work.” The grumbling grew stronger and assumed a more definitive shape.

  “I don’t think this is good, Woody,” Finster whispered. “It don’t feel right. How can this possibly work?”

  “Work?” Woody repeated. “How can it work? Simple. It can’t. It won’t work. Not now. Not ten years from now. Not ever. I’ll bet anything it blows up right in Murph’s face.”

  Others caught wind of Woody’s rant and began grumbling again themselves—a low, insidious murmur that vibrated ominously off the concrete walls. Lester watched, along with Murph, as the room slowly morphed into a contagion of irrepressible anger and frustration. Lester, tender of heart but tough of constitution, felt the animosity but stood tall, equally ready for acceptance or a full-fledged attack. He smiled faintly, strangely, and buried his sweaty hands deep in his pockets. Then he spoke.

  “I would, uh, just like to say that I ain’t here to take no one’s place. No, sir. I play ball too. Know what it means to be loyal to teammates. Hell, I ain’t Raymond—uh, Boxcar. Never claimed to be. But he ain’t me neither. I’m just a guy—like all of you here—who wants to play ball. I play hard and I will play hard for you too.” Lester’s voice strained with trepidation. His eyes, glassy now with emotion, sagged a bit as they scanned the patchwork of wooden faces that had all but dismissed anything he had to say. Murph sighed quietly. He knew that talk was cheap. In order to quell any misgivings, the group would just have to see for themselves how talented Lester was. The proof, as Matheson said, would be in the pudding.

  “Okay, fellas,” he interjected, disrupting the uncomfortable silence. “I guess that’s it. If nobody has anything else, I’ll see you all on the field.”

  The group filed out in a tempestuous wind of petulance and swearing. Murph cringed. All of his life had been made up, it seemed, of moments like these. Opportunities that glimmered with hope, only to detonate in a blaze of failure. Would this be yet another conflagration? His mind struggled with the dismal labyrinth of doubt.

  “I thought you said you was all on my side, Mr. Murphy?” Lester asked before following the others out. “Sure don’t sound that way to me.”

  Murph scowled, half maddened by the dissension that was just beginning to brew. “They will be, Lester,” he said. “Don’t you worry, son. Trust me, they will be.”

  THE DEBUT

  It did not take long for the turbid waters of unrest to bubble to the surface. Nobody said anything to Murph or Matheson or anyone else after that afternoon when Murph dropped the bomb on all of them, but their actions told the story. Lester had expected a little razing and the usual high jinks germane to being the “new guy.” Hell, it happened in the Negro Leagues as well. He could recall his first day with the Bears, when his baseball pants, jersey, and all of his work clothes mysteriously disappeared while he was showering after practice. He returned to his locker, mindful that he was expected at a team meeting, only to find that all of his stuff was gone. All he had in his tiny stall was an old T-shirt, two sizes too small, and a torn pair of pink women’s shorts. He was mortified, but couldn’t help but chuckle when he recalled sometime later the ribbing he took when he entered the room.

  “Damn, Lester, you’s sure one fine looking dandy. Purtry as a picture.” All the guys hooted and hollered and pushed him around a bit, but it was all harmless fun. They all laughed about it. There was nothing funny, however, about what was happening now.

  How could there be? How do you laugh about a locker full of manure, with a note attached that read stinky shit for a stinky piece of shit. Or a burlap dummy, fashioned in your likeness, hanging from a backstop by a hangman’s knot. No, there was nothing funny about any of it. But here he was. He had given Murph his promise, and anchored it with expressions of unwavering gratitude. But promises and anchors weigh heavy some times, and Lester Sledge found himself in the unenviable position of showing appreciation for something that was, for the most part, offensive and painful. All of the enmity began to chip away at the young catcher’s resolve. Only Mickey, whose constant questioning of the others at every turn as to why Lester’s arrival had created such a stir, invoking impassioned admonitions and clear directives for the boy to shut both his eyes and mouth, offered any real support.

  “Don’t be sad, Lester,” he told him. “Mickey thinks you’re a swell player.” The boy was drawn to Lester by some ineffable kinship. He was remembering the time last season when Danvers and some of the others nailed his cleats to the floor, causing him to freak out so badly that he almost ran out of the room and never came back. He wanted to explain it to Lester, to tell him that somehow it would be alright, but his lips just could not form the words germinating in his mind. “We’ll play baseball tomorrow, Lester. Yeah. Tomorrow. You’ll play baseball tomorrow and show ‘em you’re a swell baseball player.”

  L
ester’s eyes sank. He wanted to smile, but couldn’t.

  The following evening was one peculiar to Borchert Field. Despite all of the buzz about Lester’s arrival, everything was mute and calm. The sky, although streaked with a pink hue that was inching its way across the horizon, seemed fixed, a painting whose slick canvas had dried and set prematurely. Perhaps the headline that morning had altered the face of things irreparably.

  NEGRO LEAGUE CATCHER TO REPLACE BREW CREW’S BOXCAR TONIGHT

  The turnstiles still clicked, but not with the vigor and frequency of previous nights. Sure, there were those whose devotion to Mickey and the Brew Crew could not be swayed, no matter what the town scuttlebutt was. Others came as well, for different reasons. Some bought a ticket to the spectacle out of a perverse curiosity, driven by a galling need to know what was going to transpire, while another group showed up with the intention of using the tiny ballpark as a platform from which they could espouse their bigotry and hatred. But despite those factions in attendance that night, many seats remained noticeably unoccupied, something that drew the ire of Dennison, particularly since the match-up featured the hometown Brewers once again against the arch rival Rangers of Spokane.

  As the yawning horizon swallowed the sinking sun, the Brewers took the field to a curious amalgam of cheers and jeers. The intimate ballpark, which just minutes before had appeared muted by some diaphanous cover that sealed the happenings as if they were transpiring in some tiny fishbowl, had suddenly erupted into a frenetic frenzy.

  Naturally, Mickey’s disciples were well represented, lead by the wild animation of the Baby Bazooka Brigade, who were chanting Mickey’s name and had come to worship with their signature army helmets and battle fatigues. Mickey’s Minions were also there, waving a bed sheet turned banner featuring a giant red number eight fashioned from the artful placement of two hearts on top of each other and the loving words Go Mickey Go! painted underneath. They too made their voices heard. But the raucous exuberance was soon drowned out by another chant, one that slithered up from the shadows in the seats behind home plate and stole insidiously across the entire field of play: “Go home black boy! Go home black boy! Go home black boy!”

  Lester, who had only just squatted down to receive Mickey’s warm up tosses, heard the venomous cry and felt more than anything, even more than fear and sadness, a feral hatred that had all at once risen from some unknown depth tied to his years of suffering. His face was stolid, even stony, behind his mask. He pounded his glove and thought about his mama. How her poise and equanimity always seemed to bridge the abyss which constantly lay before her.

  “It’s not enough to be as good as them, Lester,” she always preached every time he questioned what he perceived to be her spiritless acquiescence. “We has got to be better.”

  He never understood that part of her, or how playing the role of the obsequious dog could ever result in anything good. It frustrated him more than anything. But it was this moral resiliency that he clung to that day—the same moral resiliency that squelched his demoniac notion to race into the stands behind him and start swinging.

  Murph watched the detached, impassive affectations of his new catcher and prayed he wouldn’t crumble. Things had never seemed so desperate. McNally was watching too, but his prayers were darker.

  “Would you listen to all that yelling?” he gloated devilishly. “Murph has really done it this time. He’s done for. They’ll run him, and his two-bit circus, right out of town.”

  The crowd eventually settled in as Mickey delivered his first pitch, a blazing fastball that missed high and outside. Kiki Delaney, the Rangers’ leadoff man and premier table setter in the league, banged his spikes with the barrel of his bat and inched closer to the plate, exaggerating his crouch deliberately in an attempt to shrink the strike zone even further. The transparent stratagem worked, as the second offering missed upstairs again for ball two. The crowd voiced its displeasure, certain that Delaney had duped the umpire by ducking under the pitch.

  “Come on, ump!” they screamed in frustration. “Get in the game! That ball’s right there!”

  Mickey got the ball back and sighed heavily. Then he peered in at Lester, who again pounded his glove before setting up on the inner half of the plate. Mickey rolled his arms, rocked back, lifted his leg and fired once more, a four-seam bullet that sped toward the plate and exploded into Lester’s glove.

  “Ball three,” the umpire called.

  Murph’s spirit sagged. It was not the start he had hoped for. “Okay now, Mick,” he called out from the top step of the dugout. “Nice and easy now. No worries. Just find the zone.”

  Mickey shrugged his shoulders. He appeared to be somewhat unnerved. His eyes glazed a bit, then wandered into the stands behind the plate, filtering through a nefarious patchwork of angry faces all yelling at both him and Lester. It was a lot for him to manage at one time. He found himself drawn back into the old habits of his mind, and had just begun to recite the first line from the now all too familiar poem, when Murph motioned to Pee Wee at short to come in and talk to the rattled hurler.

  “Hey, Mick,” Pee Wee said, patting him on the shoulder. “What’s up?” The agitated pitcher shook his head and frowned. It all seemed to him absolutely strange and awful.

  “Mickey does not understand, Pee Wee.”

  “What Mick? What don’t you understand?”

  “Those people,” he answered, pointing his glove in the direction of the intrusion. “They are angry. They are angry at Lester. Why? Why are they angry? Lester did not do nothin’ to them. Lester is just catching the ball.”

  Pee Wee heard Mickey’s protest with his own senses ablaze and struggled to find anything to say that would assuage the ugliness. “I, uh, don’t know Mick,” he explained. “But hey, don’t sweat it. They’re probably not angry at Lester. And even if they were, if you start throwing strikes, everyone will start smiling again.” He trotted back to his position, happy to be relieved finally of the burden of putting into words something both loathsome and inexplicable.

  Mickey toed the rubber and prepared for his next delivery, his eyes fixed on the surly crowd. He paused oddly just before winding up, overwhelmed by the pressing necessity of choosing one direction over the other. He floundered, as always, with the space that these decisions afforded. He felt as he often did in these situations—victimized, a prisoner to all that blew in his face and at his back. He tried to center his thoughts, and almost managed to push the specter of ugliness aside and focus on the game. But no matter how hard he tried, he just could not remove his gaze from the sordidness.

  “Ball four,” the umpire shouted. “Take your base.” The crowd groaned as Delaney scampered down the first base line clapping his hands.

  Some were more vocal about their feelings. “How do you expect him to pitch to a yard ape!” one man shouted. “Murphy, you bum! You’re a bum! Washed up has-been! Get him out of there!”

  Murph and Matheson watched helplessly from the bench as the Rangers’ second place hitter stepped to the plate. A small cloud passed before the pale moon. Mickey tugged nervously at the bill of his cap and got into the stretch position, digging his foot feverishly into the hole just in front of the rubber.

  “Hold ‘em close, Mick,” Murph yelled excitedly, aware of Delaney’s penchant for stealing on the first pitch. “He’s gonna test you guys.”

  Delaney heard the warning and laughed before inching his way off the bag. He had led the league in swiped bases each of the last two seasons. Made even the most prolific backstops look inept with his impeccable timing and blinding speed. Did Murph really think this ragtag duo had a prayer? He continued to inch toward his goal, so that by the time the batter had finished cocking his bat and setting his feet in the box, the brazen Delaney had jumped out to a huge lead. He was clapping his hands and jawing at both Mickey and Lester. Mickey peered in at Lester’s signs. He heard the bluster but was too mired in the routine of his pitch preparation to offer any real resistance.

>   Lester, however, read the storm in Delaney’s eyes like a seasoned sailor and rose slightly from his crouch while working the fingers on his throwing hand involuntarily as if fingering the trigger of a loaded revolver. He knew exactly what Delaney was thinking. It was the same thing all the Rangers were thinking. Run on the new guy.

  The Rangers’ sparkplug broke for second just as Mickey lifted his leg and released the ball home. It was a good pitch, strong and true, one that just missed the outside corner. But nobody was very interested in that. All eyes were on Delaney, who was already halfway to his intended destination

  The crowd held its breath and the tiny cloud released the moon, bathing the players in a dazzling light, just as Lester’s bare hand reached into his glove and pulled the ball back by his ear. Then he released a dart that traveled swiftly, no more than three feet off the ground, right to the inside corner of the bag. Delaney never saw it coming. Just heard the pop of Pee Wee’s glove then and lay there, after sliding into the waiting tag, mired in incredulous defeat.

  “Yer out!” A smattering of applause rose tentatively from the bi-partisan crowd. Most felt it easier to deny themselves the natural impulse to cheer for the home team rather than incurring any wrath or reproach from those in attendance who felt something unnatural was transpiring right before their eyes.

  “Aw heck, he just got lucky, Kiki,” McNally chirped as his speedster malingered off the field and into the dugout. “That ain’t nothing. We’ll get him next time.”

  With the count 1–0 to the second place hitter, Mickey steadied himself and adjusted his feet on the rubber, trying to remedy his wildness. His mind wandered for a moment, with small splashes of last year’s first meeting against the Rangers washing up against the fragile walls of his mind. Even though he came all this way, and had proven time and again that he belonged, it sort of felt the same to him. Maybe it was all of the hysteria surrounding Lester. The air was so heavy with discord, and Mickey found it hard to breathe. Of course it could have been the venomous, penetrating stare of Lefty Rogers, Mickey’s ex-teammate turned nemesis, that had the boy flustered. Or it might have been Mickey, just being Mickey. Whatever it was, it had crept out to the mound, seized him, and would not let go. The boy threw three more pitches, and missed the strike zone each time, giving the Rangers their second consecutive base on balls.