Keystone Kids

by John R. Tunis

  “You love it, don’t you, Razzle?” said Bob.

  “I sure do. I eat it. I love to play the game, to talk about it even. If I didn’t like it I’d get me another job. See here. If we should win the series, I don’t care whether I get a full share or nothing. That’s how I feel about baseball. Hullo, bub.”

  A boy stopped them and asked for their autographs. Spike had observed that some of the team affected to be bored when asked for their signatures, others curtly refused. Not Razzle. He stopped and signed, after which they both signed below him as was proper for a couple of rookies.

  The crowd on Montague Street was thinning out. “D’you know how these kids spot ballplayers for autographs?” asked Razzle.

  “Anyone could spot you a mile off, Raz.”

  “No, no fooling. They’ll spot you, too. Every town they will. Know how they do it?”

  They didn’t know and Razzle, pleased at the opportunity, explained. He explained simply by pointing to his carefully combed black hair.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Your hair, see. They notice your hair is wet, so they know you’ve been in the showers. O.K., you’re a ballplayer. Get it? Simple.”

  An older boy extended an autograph book and a pen in his hand.

  “Sorry to bother you, sorry to be a pest, Mr. Nugent.”

  Raz paused and signed. “That’s all right, bud, I’m not bothered. I like it. The only thing is when folks stop asking me. If people quit pestering me I’ll stop eating.”

  They all signed and passed along. At the parkway Razzle hailed a taxi but the Russells took the subway. Spike, still cautious, was not anxious to spend money needlessly. Back at the hotel, the desk clerk handed them an envelope with their room key.

  “It came by special messenger this morning just after you boys left for the park,” he said.

  The envelope was marked BROOKLYN BASEBALL club on the outside, and was addressed to Mr. Robert Russell. Bob opened it in the elevator and handed it to Spike without a word. It was a short note sending him back to Nashville and enclosing a train ticket with a berth for that evening.

  Like that! The unmentionable thing, the thing they never talked about, that they both dreaded, had come. Separation at last. The break-up of the Russell boys, the keystone combination of the Savannah Seals, the Little Rock Travelers, and the Nashville Vols, the boys who had stuck together since their days of outlaw ball in North Carolina, since the time when their mother kept a boarding-house on West Forrest Street, Charlotte. Now at last it had come, the parting, separation, the break-up of the Russell boys. The thing they never talked about and always feared.

  “No, sir,” said Spike in a definite tone, throwing his coat on the bed. “No, sir! I like it here fine; it’s a good bunch of boys and all that, but I won’t leave you nohow. And anyway I don’t like playing alongside old Davis, really. He chucks a hard ball and I’m used to you throwing a soft one; he don’t suit my timing at all; he puts me off more often than not. If you gotta go back, I go back, too.”

  Bob would have none of this. “Why, man, you must be nuts. What you wanna do, gum our chances for big league ball forever? This guy Davis, he’s old; he can’t last forever. He’s so old he’s old enough to be a pitcher.”

  Despite the soreness inside, Spike laughed.

  The age of the pitchers was one of the things that had most surprised them in the big time. Not that the pitchers weren’t good. But they certainly were old, some of them. Bob was right. That man Davis was old; he was nearly through.

  “Why, man, you must be plumb crazy. Figure yourself now in Crane’s place with the team dropping behind. I saw MacManus come in to the locker room yesterday or the day before and give Ginger Hail Columbia. D’you think Ginger wants to go out there and have the wolves holler at him because he’s slow on ground balls or because the team isn’t winning? He wants no part of that. He wants to stay right where he is, on the bench. If you quit now he’d never forgive us. And we’d neither of us ever get back into big league ball.”

  “But to bust us up, to break us up for the first time.”

  There was a long silence.

  “That’s baseball, Spike. We’ve got to do it, we must, so’s we can get back together again. Gosh knows, I hate to leave...”

  To leave. It came over him. To leave it all just as he was getting accustomed to the bigness and the strangeness of everything. To leave the team and the players, who merely looked like baseball players to the fans in the bleachers but were all his friends now with individual traits: like Fat Stuffs queer, quick steps as he took the mound from the bullpen to relieve in a tight spot, or the beautiful thrashing motion of Razzle’s arm when he bore down against a tough batter, and the backhanded stab he always made of the catcher’s return. To leave all this, to leave Ebbets Field with the noisy clatter of the vast press box up above, and that sudden “Ooooh!” when a Dodger rapped out a clean hit, and the great crowd on a sunny afternoon looking like a sea of popcorn, and the clack-clack, clackety-clack of spikes on concrete, the smell of the bottles on the stand beside the Doc’s rubbing tables, the sound of running water in the showers, the snatches of song when they were winning, and the stations late at night, the cool, empty platform with the sleepers ready and a porter standing beside the steps. To leave the big time and go back to Nashville. Back to the minors, where they traveled in day coaches, where the clubs bought round trip tickets and met in a central city to swap tickets and save money. It hurt to go back to that, but most of all it hurt to go and leave Spike. That’s what Bob was thinking as they ate their last cheerless dinner together.

  And all the while Spike was thinking: Why, it even helped to have him near, to have him there on the bench, to know he was around. It helped to have him say as they turned in at night, “I wish you were manager of this-here team, Spike.” It helped even though it was funny. It helped to listen to that peppery voice in the rallies, that confident cry, “Go get ’em, gang, go get ’em,” or his favorite shout when they were batting, “The big one left, boy, the big one left.” Those yells, so natural to his ears, sounded almost schoolboyish on this team of veterans who talked about their golf scores, to whom baseball was not excitement and romance but business and nothing else.

  Now he’d have another roomie, a strange roomie for the first time in his life, some bored player like Swanson; no one anyway with whom he could feel at home, no one with whom he could discuss the tough plays and the tight moments of the game. While Bob, the best guy who ever lived, the finest little second baseman in all the game, Bob would be back there on the paths for Nashville, living at Mrs. Hampton’s boarding-house on McGavock Street in Belmont Heights, and he’d be up here on the Dodgers alone. Completely alone. For the first time.

  That’s what Spike was thinking as they ate their last cheerless dinner together.

  They didn’t take long to pack. It doesn’t take long to cram a few shirts, a pair of pajamas, and some toilet articles into a small cloth handbag. They were both silently glad they hadn’t invested in those expensive leather suitcases with their names in gilt on the end.

  Their last time together.

  “I think we should take a taxi,” suggested Spike, as they went down in the elevator.

  “What for? Subway’s always got us there, hasn’t it?”

  Bob was having no sentiment. Neither was anyone else. A couple of players lounging after dinner in the lobby waved an indifferent good-by, Rats Doyle called out to them, and Slugger Case, talking to the newsstand girl, spoke as they passed.

  “So long, kid. Don’t forget us down there.” But he didn’t offer to shake hands.

  They sure hate to see you leave, thought Bob. Man, that’s baseball.

  They reached the station. The train was ready. Spike bought a couple of newspapers and handed them to his brother. They both descended to the train. After wandering up and down they finally discovered the car, not a luxurious Pullman divided into separate compartments with indirect lighting and a bell that soun
ded like a temple in China, but an ordinary sleeper. Bob’s ticket called for an upper. He looked at Spike and Spike glanced at Bob, both thinking the same thing. Going back is different from coming up.

  The break-up of the Russell boys! Each one was thinking to himself: What a pair we could have been out there around second for the Dodgers. Now we can never show them. How the blazes’ll I ever get along without him? Without Spike? Without Bob?

  “Say hullo to all the folks at Mis’ Hampton’s for me. And tell the old dame to be sure and keep some stew for you when there’s an extra inning game. No more of that funny stuff. Don’t you stand for it, Bob; you gotta get your meals.”

  “Sure will. I’ll tell her.”

  “And give my regards to Grouchy, the old bear. He taught me lots, tell him.”

  “You betcha, Spike.”

  “And all the boys, Tom and Dopey and the rest.”

  “Yessir. Now you take care of yourself, hear me?”

  “You, too. I’ll be writing you, Bobby.” Writing to Bob, the best guy who ever lived...

  “Same here. G’d-by.”

  Why, it had come, now, this minute. The time they never thought would come, ever. It was here at last.

  “You’ll be back, I reckon, boy.”

  “You betcha. I’ll be back all right.”

  Yeah, he’ll be back. Back on the Cubs or the Cards or the Sox. They can’t keep a guy with a pair of hands like that down on the farm very long. But he won’t come back to us, though. This is the end, the bust-up of the Russell boys. Here it is. The moment has come, the moment we dreaded, both of us, that we never thought would come, never talked about...

  He couldn’t stand it. He squeezed his brother’s hand, turned and walked down the aisle of the car, out of the door. A conductor, watch in hand, was waving slowly to the front of the train.

  Then just as Spike stepped onto the platform he was seized by a maniac. The maniac wore no hat, no necktie; he was sweating and excited and very red in the face, different from the way Bill Hanson, the club secretary, usually looked. Usually he was cool, collected, urbane, never upset even when being called down by Jack MacManus, the club owner.

  “Hey! Hey, Spike! Get him off, get him off quick... your kid brother... get him off... out... off... quick...”

  He ran back along the car toward Bob’s seat. At last he found it and began tapping wildly on the window and gesticulating.

  “C’mon,” he shouted. “Come on out... get off... get off quick... get off, ya bum, ya...”

  “All aboard! All aboard!” shouted the conductor, snapping his watch just as Bob appeared on the platform of the Pullman, a questioning look on his face. He couldn’t understand what it was all about and no more could Spike.

  The secretary didn’t hesitate. He shoved the conductor aside and, pushing back the porter, grabbed Bob by one arm and hauled him to the platform just as the car began to move.

  “Here... you can’t do that,” said the conductor from the car steps.

  But Bob was off. The train was moving gently past, the windows filled with passengers, their noses against the glass in an attempt to discover what the excitement and the shouting was about.

  “What’s up? What’s happened, Mr. Hanson?”

  “Ed Davis! He caught his bat in the elevator door and it broke his arm. You gotta stay.”

  “Stay! Stay!” shouted Bob. “I can’t...”

  “You can’t? Why not?” Hanson was shrieking now.

  “My bag! I left my bag on the train—with all my things.”

  The secretary stared at him in a fury. Then the anger changed to laughter. “To blazes with your bag! We’ll buy you a whole new outfit.”

  7

  GINGER CRANE PACED up and down the room with nervous steps. His brain trust, Cassidy and Charlie Draper, the two coaches, sat glumly at his side. The boss was in a bad mood, and when the boss was like that suggestions and encouragement were of little help. He walked up and down, up and down, carrying on what he thought was a conversation but what was really a monologue.

  “Two months and a half, two months and a half we’re in front; two months and a half we have the world by the tail, and then bang! Something hits you. Or you fall down a manhole and everyone cracks you over the head with the lid. First we lose O’Toole, then Greene, and then Davis and...”

  “D’you think we could...” Draper was trying to be helpful, but Crane would have none of it.

  “When you’re in the spot we’re in, you don’t think. You’re too bewildered to think. You can only feel. After a while everything is a great big headache.”

  But Draper persisted. “I still think it would help if we could...”

  “Nothing helps,” interrupted the manager. Before the team, on the field or the bench, he had to be confident and cool. In his own room with only his coaches around he could say what he thought, he could really let go, and he was taking advantage of this.

  “Nothing helps when you’re floundering around the way we are, dropping games left and right. It’s strange how helpless a guy feels. Nothing breaks right for you. Sometimes you think you or the world has gone crazy. I swear to heaven, Charlie, I don’t know whether to tell the boys to go out and get good and stiff tonight to loosen them up, or ride herd on them harder and harder. I don’t know what I should do. I’m so damn tired myself I can’t even see straight.”

  He slumped into a chair. There was a moment of silence over the room.

  “Shoot! What have the Pirates got that we haven’t got?”

  “Only first place,” remarked Draper sagely.

  For once Crane didn’t come back at him as he usually did. To disagree with the peppery manager was usually to bring down a torrent of words on your head.

  “Here’s how I see things, Ginger.” Draper didn’t pause between sentences for fear of an interruption. “The team’s numb, no use talking. When you came off the field they lost something, a spark if you like... well, something in there to fuse ’em. To set ’em moving, to get the rallies started in the tight games. It’s the tight ones we’ve been losing. Now this Spike Russell is a dandy fielder with a fine pair of hands, and he’s getting a piece of the ball, too. But he’s certainly no sparkplug.”

  “So what? You want me to go back in there with these feet of mine, and that boy fielding well and hitting over .300?”

  “Nope. I want you to let the kid take over.”

  “The kid. You mean Spike?”

  “No, I don’t. I mean his brother.”

  “His brother! The youngster?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why, he’s... he’s... I don’t believe that boy has started to shave yet. And he’s only had four games in the majors since we put him in for Davis last week.”

  “Makes no never-mind. Take my word for it, he’s a natural. That lad’s a holler guy. It comes to him naturally, and he isn’t scared by these older men, either. Yesterday when Street missed that hit to his left the boy shouts, ‘Get off that dime, Harry, get off that dime and move around there.’ Then he goes way to his right and makes that one-handed catch of Maguire’s liner. Give him the word and he’ll go to town.”

  “Right, Charlie.” Cassidy spoke up. “I’d agree to all that. Baseball isn’t just a game to this kid, it’s life. Why, he’s a new person since he got in there. He isn’t a pop-off guy like Razzle, but he has that same aggressiveness. He’s pepper; it stands out all over him, and he’s a mighty tough loser. Believe me, when he gets on base that lad is a spike-flying dervish. I watched him close yesterday.”

  “Well, we’ve tried about every combination except pitching the bat-boy, so we might as well try this, too,” remarked the manager. “O.K., let’s see what he’ll do. Come on, boys, time to be moving.”

  It was just before game time that afternoon when the manager took Bob aside. “Russell, I want you to do something out there from now on. This team needs a punch in the jaw. I want you to be the punch.”

  Bob was puzzled. “What’s
that mean? I guess I don’t get you.”

  “From now on you’re going to be our holler guy—”

  “Holler guy?”

  “That’s it. Holler. Pep. Pepper. Lots of it. too. Don’t let the crowds that’ll come to see us play the Giants this weekend frighten you. I’ve got things sized up and, as I see ’em, you’re a holler guy. All right, you go out and holler. Give ’em all you got.”

  He looked at the slender figure in uniform. Maybe, after all, Cassidy is right. Maybe it’s a good thing Ed Davis got injured; it’ll give me a chance this fall to see what these kids can do, and anyhow we aren’t getting any place fast the way it stands now. Since I’m not in there they need pepping up; maybe this boy’s youth and freshness will do the trick.

  “O.K., sir, if you say so.”

  “That’s it. Let me hear you holler plenty; let me hear you yelling at the infield and the pitcher, too.”

  “Shucks, the crowd don’t scare me; but, gee whiz, do I have to holler at the other fellas on the team who are older and been longer on the club?”

  “Yes, you do. Forget the others. Just you holler.”

  “I will if you want me to. I’ll holler if you say the word. But, golly... that’s some job, that is.”

  However, no one ever had to tease Bob Russell to “holler.” As he remarked that night in their room to his brother, “I can take a hint when a steam roller runs over me.” In Nashville despite his youth he had been the “holler guy” of the team, and once out there beside second for the Dodgers, all he needed was a go-ahead from the boss. For he was naturally full of salt, yes, and pepper, too, giving it as well as taking it. His voice echoed daily over the infield. “Go get ’em, gang, le’s go get ’em.” And his chatter toned up everyone’s play.

  Moreover, he backed up his voice with deeds. It was Bob’s single in the ninth that sent them ahead in the first game of their important series with the Giants. At first some of the older men looked on him as a brash youngster and muttered under their breaths about the “old college try.” But his stops and throws around second, his sensational fielding and his work with the stick, forced them to respect this youngster. Gradually they saw that he was more than just a fresh youngster with a strident voice.