“Dr. Walker?”
“Yes, Mr. Bobby?”
Even on the verge of his death, he keeps his humor. “I just need to say one more thing.”
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“You call me Mr. Bobby one more time, and I’mo call you Daar-nell. And I know you left him behind a long time ago.”
The doctor chuckles. “Naw-sir, Mr. Bobby. I’s still the same old Daar-nell. Jes make mo’ money.”
Dr. Walker reaches down and offers his hand to the old pitcher, his patient and friend, and Bobby takes it and holds it and keeps holding it. The man has only a short while, so the doctor leaves him with his son.
The two have never done this before and are not sure what to say. Finally the son asks his father what he should do if he dies before the others reach him.
The southpaw gathers his hands over his chest and looks to his right, toward home, and sees his son leaning over the bed.
He takes a labored breath and starts. “Bury me next to Uncle Bill.”
The son nods.
“Take care of your mother.”
The son tries not to cry but the tears flow and the best he can do is hold back the sound.
“Always try—.” A pain knifes him hard and it takes awhile for him to recover. “Always try to do the honorable thing.” He looks up at his son. “The calls won’t always go your way. But you can still make a good life.”
Bobby German tries to think of the last thing he will ever say.
“The cost of honor is—.” Puzzled, he looks at his son, who looks like him, and he frowns, then turns his eyes slowly towards the darkness over the lights in left field, exhales, and relaxes.
Post-Season
Bobby German was acquitted of assault and battery against Earl Self. His attorney argued that the charge was legally unprovable. He supported his stance by presenting the scorebook, which recorded the throw as a wild pitch.
Bobby used his remarkable memory as a switchman for the Kansas City Southern Railroad, a job that enabled him to mark off and fish most of the year and thus fulfill his lifelong ambition—to be rich beyond the wildest dreams of a non-working man.
Bobby funded Charity-Begins-at-Home-Plate Night until television killed the Lunker franchise in 1961. For a quarter of a century, he took poor boys fishing by the submerged island under the Calcasieu River Bridge. Time and tide have since washed it downstream.
* * *
Roberto Alemán concluded the 1952 season with the Triple-A Little Rock Red Roosters, helping them win the Southern States League championship. That year, he threw four no-hitters and finished with a .35 ERA. He did not become the first Hispanic player in the Major Leagues. That distinction fell to another Roberto—Roberto Clemente—in 1955.
Back in Key West in the fall of 1952, as Roberto passed the time waiting for Hemingway’s boat to arrive from Cuba, two hot mamacitas, both pregnant, each claiming sole possession of him, met Roberto coming out of Sloppy Joe’s with a white woman on his arm and shot him nine times, killing him more or less instantly.
* * *
Harry Chozen, in his role as manager, cut himself from the Lunker roster as a player in 1954, then resigned as manager at the end of the season for making such a poor decision.
* * *
The Hadacol Cowboy was Hank Williams. He wove the line he bought from Bobby into his signature song, “We’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.” The song topped the charts after he died from a toxic combination of alcohol, morphine, and B-12 in the back seat of his blue Cadillac on New Year’s Day, 1953. He was 29.
* * *
Ernest Hemingway published the book about the old man and the sea in the summer of 1952. The nearly defeated old man used the line “The great DiMaggio is himself again” to push beyond his physical limits in quest of the giant marlin. In the DiMaggio line, Hemingway implied that he too could make a comeback and write a final great novel. The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and sealed his choice as winner of the Nobel Prize in 1954.
* * *
Raul Scoop Rules Two-Name Atán reached the Major Leagues as the first Hispanic umpire. In 1997, he was voted into the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame as its 220th inductee.
* * *
Ricardo Alemán, no longer a twin, spent the 1953 season being showboated around the Southern States League with the Little Rock Red Roosters. His coach strained Ricardo’s right arm to meet the team’s short-term needs, and Ricardo bounced around in the upper minors until 1958, when he joined Castro’s sierra forces to fight against hated dictator Fulgencio Batista. During the victory celebration on New Year’s Day, 1959, a Batista holdout wrestled Ricardo’s machete from his hand and slew him on the square in Havana. On the spot where he fell, a bronze statue now stands depicting Ricardo with uplifted arms, a machete in his right hand, a baseball in his left.
Switch Pitchers Page 26
