Switch Pitchers

by Norman German

  “How’s that?”

  “The hypochondriac lives in perfect health till his hundredth birthday, then dies peacefully in his sleep. His tombstone says, ‘I told you I was sick.’”

  The man grinned. He swirled the ice in his glass and took a drink. “I want mine to say, ‘You’ll never get out of this world alive.’ You know, sort of like a sermon to the people readin’ it.”

  Bobby nodded. “I want mine to say, ‘He were a puzzled man.’”

  The man finally laughed. “How much you want for that one?”

  Bobby said, “That one’s not for sale.”

  Chapter 22

  CYRUS Vance won the first game of the triple-header, his jaws working the peanut butter in the late innings. The game started at two in the afternoon and lasted just under an hour and a half.

  In the second game, Leo Tycer was going smoothly until the fifth inning, when he pulled a groin muscle stabbing at a weak grounder. Chozen didn’t want to use Bill in long relief because he had to pitch him at least seven innings the next day in the first game against New Orleans. He made a quick decision to use center fielder Lamar Cagle. The Big Chief had a strong but erratic arm, and Chozen thought he might scare the daylights out of the weak Galveston hitters and squeak out a victory.

  He didn’t. The third seven-inning contest against Galveston was coming up. With three more games over the next two days against hard-hitting New Orleans, the Lunkers could lose only one more. If they lost two, the chance to bring a championship to Lake Charles would not likely come again. Chozen, a realist, knew that if he didn’t win this year, he would never win. Ricardo’s name had already made the front page of the Boston Globe. Without Ricardo, the usual crop of Lunkers would have no chance against the new Triple-A opponents.

  Chozen knew Ricardo’s right arm was not as strong as it would be if he had been throwing all season. Before the night game, the manager reminded his fielders that every chance counted.

  “No errors, men. Ricardo’s going to throw a lot of grounders and you have to chew ’em up and spit ’em out fast.”

  Darnell missed working the first game because of school. Bobby told him if he ever played hooky to make a ballgame, the deal was off. He got him the job, and he could take it away from him. After the second game, Bobby waved him over.

  “How’s business?”

  “Fine, Mr. Bobby. Some of the white men tell me I should stay up in Nigger Heaven where I belong and let the white boys work their territory, but most are pretty nice.”

  “What chew doing wid all dat cash?”

  “I’m spending a little and saving the rest, Mr. Bobby, just like you told me.”

  “Thas right,” Bobby said. “Man’s gotta enjoy the fruits of his labor. You going to the beach carnival this Sat’dy?” Saturday was Colored Night.

  “I was thinking about it. Why? Do you think I shouldn’t?”

  “No, you should. Jes don’t spend none o’ your money.”

  Darnell frowned. “Now, how am I supposed to have fun without spending no money. Any money,” he corrected.

  “By spending someone else’s.” Bobby poked one of the lonely cowboy’s tens through the link fence.

  “Thanks, Mr. Bobby!” Expecting a dollar, Darnell opened the bill and saw the number ten. “Mr. Bobby, you don’t have to give me your hard-earned money. I got my own now.” He pushed the bill back through the fence.

  “I ain’t giving it to you,” Bobby said. “You’re earning it.”

  “How you figure?”

  “You don’t really think we coulda made it this far without your luck, do you?” Darnell smiled. “Now, listen up. Dis is how you gonna earn dat. Between every inning of the next game—and I mean every inning—I want you to come to the dugout and get a rubdown. By the end of the game, I want you to be as bald as my rabbit’s foot.” Bobby dangled the bony claw in front of his face.

  Ricardo sailed through to the fourth inning but started to tire in the fifth. In the sixth, he missed Chozen’s outside target and got tagged for a two-run homer that barely made it over the far left-field fence.

  Carlton squawked through the PA system, “That’s a cue ball in the corner pocket.”

  Chozen threw the new ball out to Ricardo, thinking, I’ll be damn if that mixed-metaphor son of a bitch announces for the Lunkers next year. Me and Slater got to have a talk about that.

  At the end of the sixth inning, the score was 4-2, Whitecaps. Ricardo had his arm freshened by a thirty-minute rain delay, then Chozen led off the bottom of the seventh and final inning with a single. He replaced himself with Deg Grose as a pinch runner. Then Deg stole second and was driven to third by a Hardie Nettles single.

  Big Chief Cagle stepped to the plate with the crowd going wild. And struck out. Scoop Atán was batting in the five hole. He was a contact hitter, not a power hitter. Reading double play into the future, some of the fans started to leave. Scoop connected solid on an 0-and-2 curve that disappeared in the left-field lights. With help from the glare and drizzle, the ball was misplayed, two runs scored to tie the game, 4-4, and Scoop had a standup triple. Then Zig Emory hit the only walk-off home run of his twelve-year minor league career.

  “Oh, Lord,” the judge said, banging his gavel. “Did you see that one, folks? Ziggy hit that screaming little demon right into the afterlife.”

  Zig Emory was so happy he rounded the bases twice, growing a trail of hysterical fans like a comet grows a tail near the sun.

  The Lunkers now needed to win only two of the next three games. Pretty good odds with home-field advantage, Chozen thought.

  Darnell was not bald by the end of the game, but his scalp felt like it had been skinned like a catfish.

  Chapter 23

  THE Calcasieu River Bridge was almost complete. The dedication ceremony would occur in just a few weeks. The governor would be there, as well as Mayor Lyons, G. Franklin Slater, Sheriff Ham Reid, and a host of lesser officials. Bobby wanted the bridge to himself one last time. After the triple-header, there would be no bars or nightclubs or even late poker games for the players. They needed hard rest after the late return from Houston, then the hot afternoon and humid evening of baseball. Bobby reached the summit just before midnight.

  Over the summer, the gap in the bridge had been spanned with a massive steel truss. It was the first time he had seen it up close. On a fishing trip the week before, as Bobby rounded the bend in the river near Ripley’s dock, the bridge came into view on the southern horizon like a small structure a boy had built with an Erector Set.

  Bobby put his hands on the chest-high rail and looked down. Downstream, a tiny tugboat struggled to push a toy ship against the current and into position by the loading dock of Lone Star Cement. Bobby imagined that his own life, even from so short a distance, must look pretty small.

  To his right, the white beacons and yellow flares of industry put out the stars and twinkled downriver until they were snuffed by distance and darkness. When he looked to his left, a small pang rose in his heart as the carnival’s party-colored lights evoked his childhood with Bill, sneaking into circuses to create small disturbances with stolen fireworks, platoons of boys bicycling to the state fair in Shreveport, and once, when he was twelve, traveling with his family to Dallas for The Greatest Show on Earth.

  By comparison, the beachside carnival seemed quaint. As always, the Ferris wheel dominated the scene. But there was a new ride, like a Ferris wheel turned on its side, that spun screams from its riders. Another ride scrambled passengers in seats shaped like giant coffee cups—powder blue, pale pink, faded orange.

  Bobby remembered riding the Ferris wheel with Irene to the tune of Kay Starr’s “Wheel of Fortune.” After his throwing arm had been taken from him, he wondered for years whether fate would compensate him by returning the woman. Several operations by good doctors had given him back most of his arm, but even the best doctor cannot save a patient who is too far gone. Bobby’s own hard work ratcheted him up the steep grade to Double-A. Then, with
out Bobby ever expecting it, time healed the rest of his arm and restored its speed. But even time could not give him back the old dancing movement of his original fastball. His fingers were too gnarled and stiff for that to ever happen.

  Looking at the twirling lights, Bobby marveled at the energy men put into fluff—carnivals and baseball and such—all the time spent on sports, men determined to beat each other over a meaningless goal, while the poor barely survived.

  Darnell. Bobby suddenly realized he had no idea where the boy lived. He might even greet his father weekly at the American Legion Hall and not know it.

  Bobby looked from the bright moving lights to the dark water below. He put his hands in his pockets. Feeling his lucky buckeye seed, his Zippo, and the naked rabbit’s foot, he began to whistle.

  Sometimes I live in the country,

  Sometimes I live in town,

  Sometimes I take a great notion

  To jump into the river and drown.

  Taking his hands from his pockets, he gripped a slanting I-beam with his right hand and wondered if Louis had welded it. He placed one foot on a cross-brace and stepped up and onto the rail, coming to rest in a catcher’s position. Steadying himself, he extended his body and stood tall in a triangle of steel. Leaning out, he surveyed the city’s skyline, the curve of the beach, the little carnival, and the big lights of industry. Below, he looked for his submerged island but could not find it. Either the tide was too high or the island too small to be seen from that height.

  Bobby imagined diving off the bridge, wondering if a man could survive it. As a boy, he had jumped off thirty-foot bridges into the Red River. On television, he had seen Acapulco cliff divers and wondered if they could make the twenty-story leap and live to tell about it.

  He had spent half his life balancing on a pitcher’s mound. Standing in the triangle of steel excited but did not frighten him. Holding firmly with both hands, Bobby leaned over the water two hundred feet below. As his arms stretched behind him, his chest heaved out and he imagined what it would be like to let go and fall into a swan dive. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His left shoulder ached and his fingers tingled from their tight grip.

  Opening his eyes, he took a long last look at the large semicircle that was his small world, then drew himself back inside the canopy of the bridge and let himself down from the rail. In a motion that recalled an umpire sweeping home plate, he whisked his hands together to rid them of the soot of commerce, then liberated a pack of Luckies from his shirt sleeve and extracted a cigarette. Reaching in his pocket for the Zippo, he felt the comforting contours of the buckeye seed, then the small frail bones of the rabbit’s foot. He pulled out the lighter and struck the flint wheel. A small flame came alive, sputtered in the light wind, and went out. Protecting the flame with a cupped hand, he struck the wheel again.

  Bobby enjoyed his cigarette for a while, then reached in his pocket and drew out the bony rabbit’s foot. He sent his mind back to the time the one-armed fan had given him the good luck charm, when it was fluffy and white. He sent his mind farther back to the living rabbit and wondered where it was raised—in what state, by which man. Had he raised it to sell for food? Did someone else shampoo the useless amputations and affix them to gold chains? Was the rabbit originally white, or did someone dye its fur? Why, he wondered, were rabbits’ feet considered lucky? Clearly, this rabbit’s luck had run out a long time ago.

  Bobby took another drag from his cigarette. Tacking the stub to his lips, he placed the skeletal rabbit’s foot on the rail, then thumped it off the bridge and watched the white foot disappear into the void below.

  Chapter 24

  IN the clubhouse before the game, Chozen briefed his men on Don Hatfield, the Pelicans’ knuckleballer who would open the series.

  “Don’t try to kill the thing just because it looks harmless. With no help from ball speed, you’re not going to be knocking any into the afternoon, the afterlife, or any-damn-where else Judge Carlton says you can hit a home run.”

  A sprinkling of laughter.

  “I’ve told you before how to solve the knuckleball. If it’s high, let the bat fly. If it’s low, let it go. And when you do swing, short stroke it with control. To win against a knuckler, you gotta play smallball.”

  Sitting still in the dugout, Bobby could barely feel the pain in his shoulder. He had iced it after returning from the bridge and again when he awakened. Ready to try anything to promote healing, he dropped by the Rexall Drugstore on the way to the ballpark and bought a bottle of Hadacol.

  When Bill German took the mound, he didn’t look like a man under pressure. He looked like a Little Leaguer pitching his first game. Jack Mitchell, the Pelican right fielder who always seemed to have a two-day growth of beard, watched the first pitch come in for a strike. He eyed the next one for a ball. He drove the third one over the center-field fence, or, according to Judge Carlton, into the asteroid belt.

  After the half inning, Bill sat sulking on the bench. When all the players were settled, he threw his glove against the wall of the dugout.

  “Damn,” he said. “Lost my no-hitter in the first inning.” He kept a serious face as the dugout erupted in laughter.

  “Mr. Bobby,” Darnell said through the fencing on the side of the dugout. “How can Mr. Bill be silly at a time like this?”

  Bobby didn’t know how to tell a boy about such things. He lifted his glove to his mouth, took a sip of Hadacol, and thought about it. He looked at the boy and said, “Darnell,” then looked away. He thought of Bill wasting away in the prison camp, eating rice mixed with maggots, losing his teeth to scurvy at nineteen. “Darnell, if you ever look certain death right in the eye and escape, the rest of your life will seem like a carnival, too.”

  He left it at that and so did Darnell.

  In the fifth inning, with the Pelicans sitting on a 6-2 lead, Big Jan Decker had worked the count full and stepped back in the box with a murderous look. While leaning over to take Chozen’s sign, Bill poked his false teeth out as naturally as another pitcher might blow a bubble. It took Decker’s mind off his business for the split second it took Bill to blow a middling fastball by him.

  In the seventh inning, as Cagle drew his weapon from the bat rack, he said desperately to Raul, “Okay, Rules, we need you to come up with something.”

  Raul approached the plate after Cagle singled and Nettles had been tagged at second on a fielder’s choice for the first out. Rules leaned over the plate with his head at the edge of the strike zone. Hatfield took the opportunity to throw the only other pitch he had, a slow fastball, right at the L on Scoop’s cap.

  Scoop fell back in the dirt and held his mouth as Five-by-Five called a ball. Scoop came up arguing and held his bloody tooth out to the umpire, who awarded him first base. When the shortstop crossed the plate behind Cagle for the second run of the inning and took his seat in the dugout, Dickie Chozen approached him holding a towel packed with ice.

  “Some ice for your mouth, Mr. Raul?”

  “Naw,” Scoop said, waving it off. “Didn’t hurt a bit.” He reached up and pulled the cap off a front tooth, then wiggled his tongue in the gap. “Hasn’t hurt since a bad hop knocked it out in Guadalajara five years ago.”

  “But where’d the blood come from?”

  Scoop winked. “Darnell squeezed me some hotdog ketchup. The worst part was holding it in my mouth the whole time I was in the on-deck circle.”

  In the eighth inning, a double steal confused the Pelican catcher and moved Bill to third. From there, Charlie Harper squeezed him home to make the score 6-5. In the bottom of the ninth with two outs and the Pelicans leading 7-5, Scoop was bouncing on and off third trying to rattle the catcher by faking another squeeze play. Between pitches, Scoop returned to third. Then, just as the catcher received the next pitch, Scoop faked a launch for second base. Instinctively, the catcher whipped the ball to second, overthrowing it into the outfield. Raul reversed gears and ran home.

  Despite the desperate
measures, the Lunkers lost 7-6. As the fans dispersed and the players were gathering their gear, Judge Carlton summed up the contest by calling it a real chess match.

  Sitting on the bench with one shin guard already off, Chozen paused while unbuckling the other. “You moron,” he grumbled under his breath. “Would anyone ever describe a chess match as a real ballgame? I swear, one of these days, I’m gonna—.”

  His voice trailed off and the men stepped carefully around him.

  * * *

  In game two of the double-header, Ricardo would pitch left-handed against Thomas H. Frick, the only player in the league pompous enough to use a middle initial in his lineup name. Early in the season, Chozen had pegged him, saying the gawky, unattractive youth possessed the merits of a crow—what he lacked in beauty and grace, he made up for in durability.