Switch Pitchers

by Norman German

  I sat up in the dark and looked around. I was in the bedroom of my house on Evergreen Street in Boston. As I shook my head, the cobwebs fell away and the lost day and night came back to me: hopping across the Keys on a bus up Highway 1, then the slow train through Florida, the Carolinas, Virginia, and on up—the stops and cold meals, the cigar smoke and card games, the talk-talk-talk.

  When I popped the covers off my legs, a warm, sour nausea spread from my stomach. A quick fever flushed my face, then chased an itchy fire from my head to my toes. I rushed to the window, threw open the sash, and thrust my head into the bracing cold of the New England night. Mr. Perini had been pleased with the acquisition of the Alemán twins, but an ominous dread left over from my dream held me like a suffocating straitjacket.

  PART TWO

  The Other Pitcher

  Chapter 5

  SO, here he is at last, Bobby German thought. The great Cuban flamethrower. Well, he sure took his precious time getting here.

  The Lake Charles Lunkers were a month into the season. Bobby had chalked up one win, one loss, and one no-decision. His fourth year with Harry Chozen’s team was starting like the first three. As Bobby’s arm got stronger, his record would improve and he would finish 11-and-8 or 13-and-9. He would have just enough wins to sign another Double-A contract with the Lunkers, and that was all he hoped for.

  By now, he knew he would never climb the A ladder into the Major Leagues. In 1947, his first year with the Triple-A Little Rock Red Roosters, he didn’t have to hope. He was on his way to the big lights after a 22-and-4 season. Then he broke his left hand, his pitching hand, the one that buttered his bread. Over a damn woman. Not a good woman. That he wouldn’t have minded so much. No, the good woman was the one he lost because of the damn woman.

  Bobby looked at Harry Chozen squatting behind the bullpen plate. Chozen signaled for a fastball and positioned his glove low and inside to a right-handed batter. From the practice mound, Bobby wound up and threw a perfect Double-A fastball for a strike. Bobby could fool the Gulf Coast League’s best hitters with his fastball right in the meat of the strike zone, but he never fooled himself about facing down the real hitters, the Major Leaguers. Those days were behind him.

  Harry noticed Bobby looking past him and turned around. When he saw his new signee lugging a blue cardboard suitcase, he stood and took off his mask.

  “Alemán?” he demanded.

  “Yes. I was told to report to the manager, Mr. Harry Chozen.”

  “I’m the manager and I’ve been waiting on you for a month.”

  Roberto thought the catcher was playing a joke on him. He reached the bullpen and held out his hand. “I am looking for Mr. Harry Chozen,” he repeated with a smile.

  Chozen looked at the hand. “I am Harry Chozen. You Roberto or Ricardo?”

  Puzzled, the rookie said, “Roberto.”

  “Roberto,” Chozen said, pointing with the mask clutched in his hand, “I’m the player-manager and I’m ordering you to get in that clubhouse, get a uniform, and get dressed out. You’re pitching tonight.”

  Roberto smiled. “Yes sir, Mr. Player-Manager Harry Chozen.”

  Chozen was not sure if Roberto was making fun of him. He stared down the new prospect until the Cuban averted his eyes. “Where’s your brother?”

  “I do not know, sir. How do you say it? I am not the keeper of my brother.”

  In the long run, Chozen didn’t care one way or another about Ricardo. Or Roberto, for that matter. He knew both would be called up to Triple-A by mid-season, but he needed Ricardo for his five-man rotation. He had been laboring along with three starters for the past month, using position players in relief.

  While the two were talking, Bobby sized up the new pitcher. From what he had heard, Bobby never doubted Roberto was a better pitcher than him. That didn’t matter. But he hadn’t counted on him being black.

  From the moment of the first rumor, Bobby figured Roberto Alemán would be sent up to Triple-A after the All-Star break and probably pitch in a few Major League games near the end of the season. But he hadn’t counted on him being black. He always promised himself he’d never play on the same team with a spade.

  Two years ago, their shortstop, Raul Atán, a native Cuban, was raided from the Mexican League. The move didn’t bother Bobby because he thought of Raul as a Spanish Cuban, not one of those African Cubans. It helped, too, that a Mexican battalion had liberated his brother Bill from a German prisoner-of-war camp.

  Roberto, though, was another matter. When Jackie Robinson broke in with Brooklyn in ’47, Bobby thought the country was going to the dogs. As long as Robinson stayed up North—that’s how he thought of it, with a capital N—he could tolerate it. But then every good colored man he knew started claiming he was Jackie’s cousin or Jackie’s uncle or Jackie’s long-lost kin of one flavor or another.

  Harry Chozen worked his mask back on and squatted his thick body behind the plate. Bobby wondered how Chozen, at forty-two, could keep doing it, night after night for a hundred and thirty games a season, splitting his catching duty only on double-headers, and not always then. Chozen signaled for a curve and Bobby threw it. Unhappy with the pitch, Chozen signaled for three more in succession.

  All of the players Bobby knew were on their way up, down, or out. No one was satisfied with where he was. Except him. He knew if he had a good season with the help of some unexpected run support, he would rise to Triple-A, spend a frustrating year in a town he didn’t like with people he didn’t know, then get beat back down to Double-A the next spring—and it might not be Lake Charles.

  Bobby liked Lake Charles. A couple of his teammates were from the inland port city and had introduced him to the local fishing. The blacks had their own section of beach and their own theater, The Star, and they were welcome to sit high in the balcony of The Paramount or the upper bleachers of Legion Field—Nigger Heaven the locals called it, and they meant no disrespect.

  Bobby liked the way the town worked. Everyone understood who they were and stayed politely inside the boundaries. When he went to the American Legion Hall on Friday nights, black men twice his age greeted him at the door in white tuxedos, calling him Mr. Bobby. He knew them by their first names and always chatted with them for a few minutes about baseball and fishing, their wives and their children. It all made for a nice family feeling.

  “Bobby,” Chozen called out, breaking his pitcher’s reverie. “If your arm’s tired, we can skip the routine for today.”

  “No, it’s fine. Never better.” Bobby was a man of few words.

  “Well, then get your mind on what we’re doing. Otherwise, we’re just shootin’ decoys.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  On the strength of half a dozen minor-league batting records, Harry Chozen had risen quickly to the top, spending two years with the Cincinnati Reds, three with the Philadelphia Athletics, then, as he slowed from the usual catcher’s injuries, he descended gracefully—seven good years in Triple-A, commanding a better salary for having played in the Majors, then five years as player-manager with the Double-A Lunkers. Harry liked the game, he had invested wisely, and he discovered that Lake Charles had a small Jewish community that made him feel he could raise his two sons there.

  Many players were assigned to Harry Chozen’s club whether he liked them or not, but he had enough influence to handpick a few each year. These he selected based on their character, age, and talent level. They were called The Chozen Few. He didn’t want them to be so good they’d be gone the next year, nor did he want them so old they’d drop into the lower minors after a few seasons, because what Chozen was doing was putting together a family, one that would become part of the fabric of the community and strengthen it for generations.

  Bobby German was one of The Chozen Few.

  He had been a stellar pitcher at Fairpark High in Shreveport, served a year stateside in the army, then pitched three games for LSU in 1945. Dewey Griggs saw one of those games and asked if he would be interested in skippi
ng college ball and playing for money.

  “How much money,” Bobby asked, because even at nineteen he had the notion that he didn’t want to work for a living. And he told the scout so.

  Dewey Griggs smiled. “Not much the first year, Bobby. We’ll put you in B-ball in El Dorado, then jump you to Little Rock by mid-season. If I’m right”—he poked Bobby in the ribs—“and I’m always right, you’ll be pitching for the Boston Braves in ’47.” Griggs shook his head. “Money? The money you’ll make will be beyond the wildest dreams of a nonworking man.”

  And he wasn’t lying.

  Chapter 6

  May 1947

  DURING his first spring training, Bobby stayed at the Randolph Hotel in El Dorado, Arkansas. Most of the recruits found permanent housing after a week, but Bobby made a point of making a good impression on everybody from the bellhops and night clerk to the manager and owner. Confident and handsome with a quiet sense of humor, he knew he was going places and he wanted those places to treat him right when he was there and remember him when he was gone.

  That’s why Mr. Martin asked him to stay the entire season at half rate, with free laundry, pressing, and room service.

  “It’s a deal,” Bobby said. “And if there’s anything I can do for you, just let me know.” Bobby knew this would amuse Mr. Martin because the man owned three large buildings and several tracts of oil and farm land in El Dorado.

  Mr. Martin removed the unlit cigar from his mouth and laughed. “What you can do for me is rack up as many strikeouts as possible for the Oilers.”

  “Now, Mr. Martin,” Bobby kidded, “if I do that, I’ll be taking a train for parts unknown in no time.”

  Mr. Martin put a beefy arm around the slender shoulders of the young hurler. “I know that, son, I know that. Just promise you’ll hop off that train for a few minutes every time it passes through. We’ll keep a room for you if you keep that promise.”

  “Then it’s a promise,” Bobby said.

  By mid-May, he was 6-and-1 with one no-decision and three complete games. He knew almost every important man in the small town, and those he didn’t know knew him.

  He had thrown a shutout the night before and risen to a late breakfast brought to his room by Mr. Martin himself. Folded in half, a twenty-dollar bill served as the coaster under his orange juice glass. Compliments of Mayor McMullen, the card said. Bobby smiled. He liked pleasing people, and he liked the benefits that fell to him when others were pleased.

  After breakfast and a hot bath spent reading the sports page of the El Dorado Daily News, he slipped on his favorite pair of socks with a royal-flush fanned out across the ankles, then the short-sleeve knit he had bought the day before, cream with one thin and one wide tan stripe running down the left side. After slipping on a pair of freshly pressed khakis, still warm from the iron, he stepped into his cream-and-cordovan loafers and moved to the full-length mirror. He carefully parted his wavy blond hair, then swept it up and back on both sides.

  From the dresser, he loaded his pockets: a fold of bills inside a gold dollar-sign money clip, a lambskin wallet, a pocket knife with a bass leaping across the ivory handle, and his lucky buckeye seed, a gift from his father when he left for LSU.

  Bobby always kept a lot of change for the jukebox and pinball machine in the lobby of the Randolph. He raked a small pitching mound of nickels off the dresser and dropped them into his left pocket, then scooped up a smaller mound of dimes and fed them into his right. After smacking a pack of Lucky Strikes on his palm and extracting a cigarette, Bobby tucked the box under his right sleeve and flipped the silver lid of the Zippo Bill had given him before leaving for Germany. Inside the clear fluid, a green golfer and white flag floated about. He stroked the flint wheel and lit up, then stepped to the mirror. After taking a drag, he nestled the lighter next to his lucky buckeye seed. Bobby pulled the cigarette from his lips and held his breath as his eyes scanned up and down. He exhaled the smoke through his nose and smiled.

  “You are ready, ready, ready,” he said.

  While playing “Big League” on the Bally pinball machine Mr. Martin had ordered for the players, Bobby listened to a string of slow songs he had lined up on the jukebox. Bobby German was in his element. He had won three pinball games and lost only one nickel before the music ran out. After the center fielder trapped the last silver ball, Bobby stepped to the bubbling Wurlitzer and primed it with nickels. He enjoyed waking up with the dreamy songs, but now he was looking for the upbeat records. He made his selections and returned to the pinball machine by the window fronting Main Street. The first song cued up right when Bobby pushed the button to play the game he had just won.

  Gather ’round me, everybody,

  Gather ’round me while I preach some.

  Feel a sermon coming on me.

  The topic will be sin

  And that’s what I’m agin’.

  Bobby was playing and smiling, smoking and winning when a movement on the sunlit sidewalk caught his eye. He glanced up to see a girl checking her reflection in the window. The brunette pressed out a crease in her black-and-white plaid skirt, then trained a curl behind her right ear. Trying to keep the silver ball alive, Bobby looked back and forth from his game to the girl. When she leaned over, he thought she was trying to look at him, but instead she pulled a lipstick out of her purse and started refreshing the job taken off by lunch.

  “Hey, Bobby!” someone called from near the desk. “How’s it going, Lucky Strike?”

  Bobby turned to see Jim Hunt, his second baseman.

  Bobby raised his left hand and waved. “Knocking down the singles and doubles. No home runs yet.” He returned to his game just in time to see the ball ricochet off a bumper and head straight for the pit. He joggled the machine to keep the ball alive, then checked the window after his recovery. Suddenly there were too many distractions. Bobby liked excitement, but he preferred to focus on one thing at a time. The jukebox kicked into the chorus:

  You got to ac-cen—tchu-ate the positive,

  E-lim—my-nate the negative,

  Latch on to the affirmative,

  Don’t mess with Mister In-Between.

  The girl was puckering her lips in the window. Bobby wondered if she could see him. He shot the ball into the outfield and looked at the girl. She had turned sideways and was brushing crumbs from a close-fitting sweater that accentuated her figure. “You bet I’d like to latch on to one of those affirmatives.” The machine gave a loud knock and Bobby knew he had lost the ball. He took his hands from the buttons and moved closer to the girl.

  Rubbing the varnished buckeye seed in his pocket, Bobby admired the girl admiring herself in the window. A cloud passed over, shading the building and turning the glass transparent. The girl was startled to find herself being inspected. Then she recognized the star southpaw of the El Dorado Oilers and smiled.

  Having nothing to say that she could hear, Bobby winked at her.

  The girl laughed and turned to leave, then paused. She faced the window and signaled like a base coach, sliding her right hand down her left forearm, pulling her right earlobe three times, and tapping her nose twice with a little finger. Then she acted like a pitcher trying to hold a runner on first. She brought both hands together over her head, dropped them to her waist, paused, and checked over her shoulder. She lifted her left leg as far as her skirt would allow and threw at the window.

  Bobby whipped his head toward the checkout desk as if she had blown a fastball past him. Where the lobby opened onto the restaurant, he saw Richard Borman, a local attorney, sitting at a table signaling for his check by writing in the air toward the waitress. Thinking to humor the girl with his own pantomime, Bobby turned back to the window.

  She was gone.

  What did her gestures mean? Bobby looked across the street to see if he could spot her. All he saw were more people making signs. A construction worker in a silver hardhat was signaling to a man in a crane as he lowered an I-beam onto the skeletal second floor of the new b
ank building. A boy on the near side of the street commanded his dog to sit by pointing, then turned his palm up to make him shake. A policeman held off traffic from one direction and waved it on from another.

  Up the street, Bobby saw yellow sunshine chasing the shadow of the cloud his way. Then the cloud passed over. The commotion, followed by the bright sunshine, confused Bobby and hurt his eyes, so he turned them toward the cool interior of the lobby. The waitress, Fay Martin, was signing in a kitchen code with her fingers—three up, two to the side, three up. The cook stuck a thumb up and turned back to the grill.