Centuries of June

by Keith Donohue

  “Crowded,” Christy said. “People will do anything to beat the heat.”

  Mopping his brow with a handkerchief, Mr. Hopkins paused at the table and waved his evening’s newspaper. “Did you hear about Doheny, the pitcher? Paper says he went bughouse. Up and left the Pirates and went home to Massachusetts.”

  Suddenly alert, Christy said, “In the Post this morning, the headline was ‘His Mind Is Thought to Be Deranged.’ Claims detectives are following him.”

  Pat laid down a card. “Don’t be too sure what you read in the papers. Eddie Doheny is a lefty, and you can never be sure about a lefty. He’s always had a temper. Remember that bat he threw at the Giants catcher back in May?”

  “Gee, I don’t know, boys.” Mr. Hopkins shoved the wad of his kerchief in his back pocket. “The Pirates have the look of doom. Clarke has been hurt, and Sebring goes off to get married. And now this fella has lost his mind. It’s like they won’t have enough boys to field a team.”

  “Maybe they’ll sign you, Papa,” Adele laughed.

  “I think Doheny’s just worn out with all this heat,” Pat said. “Just needs to cool off a couple days at home with the missus.”

  His remark drew a grunt from Mr. Hopkins, who then nodded and shuffled from the parlor, his kerchief bobbing like a rabbit’s tail.

  “Tell the gals what Honus did last summer,” Christy said, “when it was so hot.”

  “Last summer, the Pirates were the best. Nobody could beat ’em, talk about a team. Anyhow, comes September, and they’re guaranteed to win the league championship flag, so a couple of my pals says they’re going out to Carnegie Township where Honus Wagner lives and give the Dutchman a box of cigars and the best steaks they can find, just to say thanks, since those cranks were real sporting men and had made a ton of dough off the Pirates. They take the tram over to his place and the father is there—you know he lives at home with his folks—and it is hotter than Hades, and he says sure, go on upstairs. John—that’s what they call him at home—is just cooling off. And what do you think, middle of the day, but the great Honus Wagner buck naked in a bathtub filled with ice he crushed with an old baseball bat, and he’s drinking a bottle of beer, and he says to the fellas, sit down and have one.”

  Helen gave him a look. “Don’t say words like that.”

  “Like what? Hotter than Hades?”

  “No,” said Christy. “She don’t like you swearing in front of the women folk.”

  “What’d I say? Buck naked?” He threw his cards into the middle of the table. “Gee, it’s so hot. That don’t sound like a bad thing right now.”

  Pressed against her temple, the glass of iced lemonade did nothing to cool off Adele. It was a hot and muggy night.

  Through the screen window, light flashed, and thunder sounded in the distance. It had been a hot and muggy night, and perhaps that explains why I was naked when I landed on the bathroom floor. Usually I wear something to bed, unless pajamas prove uncomfortable when it is too early to air-condition but too humid for a good night’s sleep. The sudden spike in moisture must have made me strip. Now, with a thunderstorm threatening, I wondered if I should call the cat inside and close all the windows in the house in case of torrential rain.

  “Not to worry,” the old man said. “We can turn it off or on by will.”

  “You mean it’s not going to rain tonight?”

  “Special effects,” he said. “Even as a little boy, you were prone to rather vivid imaginings.”

  How could he know about my childhood, especially if he is the Irish playwright who wrote his masterpieces in French? I began to suspect that he was not who I imagined him to be. But if not Beckett, then who? The child at his feet was pretending that a bar of soap was some kind of aircraft that he could fly at the end of his hand, and he aimed the jet straight for the face of the commode, before swiftly turning at the last possible moment to avoid a crash, all the while making the sound of a sputtering engine. The old man had become distracted by the child’s play. “Bbbrum-bbrum-brum,” Beckett said to the boy.

  The sound of his blubbering lips transformed into the sound of a movie projector. All of us except Adele turned our faces to the light. The young men in their antique costumes trotted the bases, hit the ball with their wooden sticks, and spun their arms like windmills before delivering the pitch. The big German, Wagner, stands poised at shortstop, and the batter’s hit skips sharply toward his left. He digs for it and throws a shower of dirt and pebbles out of which the baseball emerges tailed like a comet and lands in the first baseman’s mitt. Behind Adele, the game goes on, unabated by her continuing narrative.

  Love is sweetest as it ripens, and they were in that pleasant interlude between awkward shyness and any formal engagement, though Adele, when he pressed his case, strongly implied the necessity of such a promise before she surrendered even a hint of her virtue. From time to time, his anger bested his good judgment, but he never took out any frustrations on her. Rather, Pat boiled over and started moving, doing something, going somewhere—tossing a medicine ball to his brother, hitting a punching bag, walking the whole way from Exposition Park to Birmingham, crossing two rivers along the way, or once or twice going to a shooting range to try one of the rifles his father had stashed in the attic. But mostly, Pat was a perfect gentleman, and when the Pirates came back into town for their September games, he was readily distracted by the baseball and the chance to place bets among his fellow fanatics. Unrelenting August had given way and soon enough the heat had broken. Even the southpaw Eddie Doheny had rejoined the team after a few weeks, though all the cranks said he was not quite the same. Charlie Wells and the other sports would guy him on, but Pat would have no part of any such talk, thought the whole matter bad luck. His intuition proved correct when Doheny started acting out again and became unmanageable. His brother, a preacher, came to town on the twenty-second and took the pitcher back to Massachusetts. “Poor man,” Pat said when he read the news. “Some fellas can’t take the stress.”

  The loss of Doheny, however, was overshadowed by the Pirates clinching the National League pennant for the third year in a row, and the talk was that they would accept a challenge from the best finisher of the American League for a world’s championship series.

  “It’s going to be the Bostons,” Christy said at the ballpark. “There’s nobody even close.”

  “The Beaneaters?” Helen asked.

  “Not them,” said Christy. “The ones from the American League. The Boston Americans.”

  “They should be called the Jumpers,” Pat said. “That’s all they are, that whole American League ain’t nothing but a bunch of contract jumpers and money grabbers, and them boys will put the dollar above team loyalty or their fans.”

  “So you think our Pittsburg boys can beat ’em? Best five out of nine?” Christy asked. “Without Doheny and banged up as we are?”

  “Brother,” Pat said, “we’ll beat them senseless. And if they go, I’m going with them. All four of us go up to Boston, what do you say?”

  Helen laughed and scoffed at the idea. “Why, Mr. Ahearn, you sound as if you are making a proposal for yourself and on your brother’s behalf to Miss Hopkins and myself.”

  “A proposal?” Christy stammered.

  “How else could we accompany you on a train trip to Boston?” Helen asked. “Surely you mean to be fully respectable and take us as your wives?”

  Adele stared at her shoes.

  “I tell you what,” Pat said. “You girls stay right here in town, but when Pittsburg wins, what say you and me tie the knot, Adele? And Christy here can marry Helen, and we’ll have a swell old time.”

  Adele had not thought the question of matrimony would be raised like this. She had dreamt of some more romantic setting than the grandstand of the ballpark and some more private moment than in a crowd of several thousand, mostly men. She had reckoned on some more enthusiastic declaration of love in ardor, rather than the afterthought of an out-of-town excursion, when folks she kn
ew had gone to see the Falls at Niagara or honeymoon where a man and woman might get to know each other in a more sylvan or pastoral setting. But there it was, her first and only proposal, she feared, if that was indeed what Pat intended when the words were blurted from his mouth.

  “Ma, ma, ma, ma,” the little boy yelled. “Da-da-da. Bap-a-doo, bapa-doo, Buddha, Buddha, Buddha.”

  Making a cage of his entwined fingers, the old man scooped him up and lifted the bare belly to his lips and blew a frazzled raspberry on his soft skin. The baby laughed and so did the old man, until they were content, and the child wrapped his arms around the thin neck and laid his head against the old man’s shoulder. Within seconds, the child was asleep. Seeing how quickly he had conked out reminded me of the lateness of the hour, or the earliness of the morning, depending upon one’s perspective. I envied the little fella’s peace, his rest unburdened by adult cares. Perhaps some flaring anxiety had awakened me, not the need to empty my bladder. A worry. What had the newspaper said of Eddie Doheny? His mind is not his own? I had a few questions for the proprietor of mine, whoever that may be.

  Adele and Helen wound their way through the mob gathered at the railroad station to greet the team home from Boston on an October Sunday evening. Despite the weather, the cranks had turned out in the hundreds, hoping to get a glimpse of Fred Clarke and the boys, triumphant in return, having taken two of the first three from the Americans. As they filed off the Pullman car, the ballplayers looked like farmers or mill hunks in their Sunday best, and they limped off the train like a company of soldiers, nursing the injuries of a long season. There was Jimmy Sebring greeting his new wife with a kiss. Sam Leever, old and tired, carrying his grip in his left hand, favoring his sore right arm. Little Tommy Leach and Ginger Beaumont engaged in some deep conversation. And there’s Honus Wagner, rushing off to catch the outbound train for Carnegie, waving at the well-wishers, his big German face creased with fatigue.

  And then came the swells. The reporters and hangers-on who rode along with the team. The owner, Barney Dreyfuss, dapper in his cravat and mustache, whispered something to Clarke, who began to make a speech. Behind him cheered the sports, the gambling men who had gone to Boston in search of some action among the bookies there, for almost nobody in Pittsburg was willing to bet against the hometown team. The Ahearn brothers brought up the rear. Christy trotted straight to Helen. Despite her mother’s admonitions, Adele raced to Pat and threw her arms around his shoulders and kissed him squarely on the lips.

  He held on to his hat. “There’s my girl. Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say this ball club would make good?” On the trip home, he gave her a present from Boston, a stickpin with a diamond nestled on top of a small baseball pennant. For luck, he told her, for the luck she brought him. They talked the whole time about the Boston trip and made their plans for Exposition Park and the next four games of the Series. He winced when she squeezed his hand.

  “What’s the matter, Patsy?”

  “Hurt my hand is all. Fella in Boston ran into my fist with his face.”

  Autumn had arrived, and a chill breeze swooped along the Bluff and forced them to shelter on the front porch. Behind the lace curtains, Mr. Hopkins stirred at the sound of their footsteps, so Adele spoke quickly. “You don’t think you’ll have to go back there, do you?”

  “To Boston?” Pat said. “Not on your life. We only have to win three out of four here, and it’ll all be over.”

  She nestled close to him. “And we can be married?”

  “Instantaneously.” He kissed her good night before her old man could knock on the glass.

  “Barf,” Flo said. “Gag, retch, ick.”

  “Don’t do it, sister,” Jane said. “That man ain’t nothing but trouble.”

  “What man isn’t?” asked Alice. “Ask me, they’re all worth a bucket of nothing.”

  “A thimble of bother,” said Dolly. “All talk, no action.”

  Marie nodded. “Vendre la peau l’ours avant de l’avoir tué.”

  “Hey!” Dolly objected to this oblique reference to her man.

  The light dimmed, the moving picture moved again. The crowds moved in and out of the ballyard. Rain fell. The ballplayers appeared tired and out of sorts. One by one, the title cards revealed the sad outcome of the games:

  Pittsburg 5 Boston 4 (cheers)

  Boston 11 Pittsburg 2

  Boston 6 Pittsburg 3

  Boston 7 Pittsburg 3

  The losses happened so quickly that she was not sure how the Bostons had managed to go from being down three games to one to being on the verge of ending the whole championship series. With each contest, Pat grew angrier and increasingly frustrated. During the seventh game, the Royal Rooters and their hired band began to play and the hundred or so Boston fans began to sing to the tune of “Tessie”:

  Honus, why do you hit so badly?

  Take a back seat and sit down.

  Honus, at bat you look so sadly,

  Hey, why don’t you get out of town?

  The boys on the field, even the Dutchman, got a kind of perverse kick out of the cranks’ shenanigans, but in the stands, the Pittsburg crowd howled and started singing their own ditties. Charlie Wells came by, backing Boston and looking for a wager, and Pat nearly came to blows with his old chum. Even his brother steered clear of Pat, and only Adele’s presence brought his temper under control. She sensed his jitters as they waited on the platform for the train to take both clubs and their followers back to Boston.

  “Kiss me,” she said. “Kiss me before you go.”

  He kissed her politely on the cheek. She pressed her forehead against his cheek so hard that he could still feel the pressure days later.

  “You don’t understand, Adele. I put it all on Pittsburg when we were up there. All our money, not just mine, but money from Christy and from my friends and some of the sports. And then I doubled up when the Pirates went ahead. Bet more than I had. More than I could possibly raise—”

  “But Pittsburg will certainly win.”

  “That’s just it. They’re all beat up. No pitchers left. Fred Clarke even sent Eddie Doheny his uniform, but the poor sap is in the nuthouse in Danvers. That’s where I’ll end up, or worse. I’ll owe a small fortune to some very angry men.”

  “Surely, I could help. We could sell this pin,” she said and removed the diamond stickpin from her lapel. “We could find the money.”

  “Don’t lose the flag,” Pat said. “That wouldn’t cover a tenth of what I might lose.”

  The locomotive rolled into the station, and the travelers climbed aboard. He kissed her distractedly and failed to wave from the window of his carriage, despite the fact that she waited for him and kept calling out his name long after the wheels on the train had gone round and disappeared.

  “Round and round, round and round,” the little boy sang.

  The flick flickered to life. A car pulls up to the Danvers Insane Asylum in Andover, Massachusetts, and a solitary man exits quickly and runs to the entrance, dodging puddles. Hard to recognize Fred Clarke without the baseball cap and uniform, but his features are clearer when he doffs his hat and shakes off the rain at the front door.

  The film’s point of view cuts to interior, a patient’s room, white and sterile, and there is Eddie Doheny in the bed. His young wife sits in a chair beside him. A small bouquet rests on the night table, courtesy of Mr. Dreyfuss. Beyond her shoulder, the window is slightly ajar, and the rain drums on the sill. The young wife twists a handkerchief into a butterfly, and the camera zooms in as she speaks. The title card: “He thought he could play when you sent him his baseball uniform.” And Fred Clarke answers: “We only wanted to cheer him.” Mrs. Doheny: “His nerves snapped! When you boys lost for the fourth time, he beat his nurse, Mr. Howarth, with the leg off a stove. He just needs a rest.” She hands the Pirates’ manager a message. Cut to interior of the Vendome Hotel, Boston, where the team is gathered in a bedroom. Clarke opens the envelope and two bills slip out. In close-up, th
e letter reads: “As they were taking away my husband, Eddie said, ‘I owe only two dollars, and that to Claude Ritchey. Won’t you pay him?’ ” Ritchey says nothing, leaves the money on the bedspread. A few of the boys have tears in their eyes as they depart for the ball game.

  Of course they lost. No pitching. Deacon Phillippe was asked to pitch for the fifth time in eight tries, but he was out of steam. Leever’s arm was hurt. Kennedy and the other pitchers, no go. Half that team was beat up, and even Wagner threatened to quit the game altogether. And Doheny was gone for good. He died of TB thirteen years later, never left the asylum. Imagine that.

  For days after the Boston triumph, Adele expected Pat to appear suddenly, swaggering up the avenue, or at least to hear by telegram or letter. But the train carrying the Pittsburg team back to the city dispersed half its passengers along the way. Kitty Bransfield went home to Worcester. Ginger Beaumont lit off for a hunting trip in Wisconsin. Jimmy Sebring, the first person to hit a home run in the history of the World Series, departed near Williamsport, Pennsylvania, with his new bride. Claude Ritchey headed out to his folks’ farm in Venango County. Pat could have jumped off anywhere between here and there. Of the few that made the Pittsburg area their home, none could remember seeing Patrick Ahearn aboard the train at all. A query to the Boston police later that fall was unsatisfactory. The only unknown or missing person from around the dates in question was a tramp found in an alley behind the Vendome Hotel, penniless and drunk, and beaten to death by a baseball bat, and the hotel itself reported that Patrick Ahearn had skipped out on his bill and would the responsible party kindly remit $12. His brother Christy seemed to think, however, that Pat was too clever for such a fate, though he himself was killed two years later by a single blow to the head by a baseball bat outside of Exposition Park. He left behind a young wife, pregnant with their first child. Helen Ahearn named her boy Eddie, after the poor pitcher who had also seemed to vanish from the face of the earth.