Keystone Kids

by John R. Tunis

  MacManus, shrewd, intelligent, realized instantly he had made a bad mistake. But before he could correct himself the boy replied.

  “Thank you very much indeed, sir, but I reckon I better stick with my brother.”

  “What? Why, you young fatheads! You fresh young bushers... throwing away your last chance... you two chowderheads! This is your last chance... don’t you appreciate...”

  Now he was angry. MacManus liked to jockey with other people, but he enjoyed winning these battles and he usually did win. When losing he didn’t enjoy himself at all. And he was losing, he knew he was losing, although the two scared boys did not. For almost the first time in the long weeks of indecision, Spike was thoroughly frightened as the Dodger owner, red in the face, rose from his chair, strode across the room, took the two contracts off the table and hurled them over.

  “Take ’em, take ’em, you young bushers, you fresh young rookies... you...”

  They reached over and each picked up a contract from the floor. Both contracts were made out in typewritten figures for the same sum—seven thousand five hundred dollars!

  9

  THE FLORIDA SUN beat down on the small ballpark so reminiscent of those the Russell boys had known in their minor league days; on the veterans and the rookies, on Slugger Case and Fat Stuff and Elmer McCaffrey, who knew all the answers and worked out slowly and deliberately; on Ginger Crane, the manager, no longer on the active list for the first time in his fourteen seasons in the majors; and on the Russell boys cavorting like two ponies in the dust behind second base. Standing in the rear of the batting cage, Ginger surveyed his squad and listened to Bob Russell, the chatterbox of the team, in action.

  “Uhuh, he does more talking than all the rest of the team put together. Shoot, we needed some chin music out there; it helped toward the end of last season. We’d never have finished third without those kids in there.”

  “Ginger, do you expect to play those boys together, or will you break ’em up and shove Ed Davis in?” asked one of the sportswriters.

  “I can’t tell, can’t tell a thing. Too early yet. Depends on how the kid shapes up, how Ed’s arm holds out, on a lot of different things. Listen to him out there now.”

  From the dust of the infield came the harsh, brazen chatter of the little second baseman. “Boy, you gotta get your hands round that thing,” he yelled to a rookie outfielder. “You have to get your hands round it; there aren’t any handles on the ball.”

  Spring training was a grind, yet Spike and Bob enjoyed it. For one thing, much of it was new to them. They liked being with a big league club, liked living in a comfortable and luxurious hotel; they liked the players, no longer strange faces but friends; most of all they liked this chance to show what they really could do without the pressure of the pennant race to tighten them up. The only thing they really disliked was the badgering of the newspapermen who pestered them continually.

  Nothing bothered Spike and Bob in all baseball as much as this interviewing. Once during the second week of spring training, a reporter was trying hard to get a story from them.

  “Just what do you boys find is the main difference between the majors and the minors?”

  They looked quickly at each other. As usual, Spike spoke for the pair. “The pitchers, I’d say. A man faces a good pitcher every day in the week up here. Down at Nashville we used to have a lamb every now and then to fatten up the old batting average. When you come up to the majors you don’t notice much difference at first except that the pitchers are all tough.”

  “Isn’t the fielding better?”

  “Sure is. Everything’s faster; there’s... oh... there’s a lot of little things; more polish; the hitters don’t go after the bad balls so much.”

  Yet deep in their hearts both boys felt there was one difference they wouldn’t discuss with any writer. That was the difference they most noticed—the difference in managers.

  Grouchy Devine was a laconic, deeply religious Irishman who went to Mass each morning, a man of great sensitivity and a feeling of affection for every one of his twenty-five players. To him every man was an individual problem to be solved. He was quiet, kept to himself off the grounds. In their stay on the Vols they had learned enormously from him, but they had never seen him criticize a player in public nor ever dispute an umpire’s decision. In fact, his reputation for grouchiness came mostly from the fact that he stayed away from reporters asking for interviews about the team. Whenever one of the sportswriters asked him early in the season, “Well, Grouchy, how does the team look?” he would wave his hand in the direction of his perspiring athletes and reply, “There they are. Take a look for yourself.”

  This did not endear him to the press. But the two brothers had often heard him growl in the dressing room, after evading a reporter in search of a story, “When you don’t say anything, you don’t never have to eat your own words.” Spike and Bob remembered this line in their own dealings with the sportswriters covering the Dodgers in spring training, and talked as little as possible to the gentlemen of the press.

  Ginger Crane was exactly Grouchy’s opposite. He was loud, loquacious, liked to talk and be with talkative people who were good listeners, as well. He was quick, nervous, excitable, and in action could always be depended on to do the unexpected. His relations with the press astonished the two Russells. Where Grouchy avoided newspapermen at all times, Ginger hobnobbed with them, ate with them occasionally, even went on fishing trips with them. He was never reluctant to discuss the chances of his team or any team in the league. He was bold, belligerent on the field, and it seemed to the boys he was on the field a good part of every game. He delighted in battles with the umpires or with opposing players, and he thought no more of being sent to the clubhouse than of ordering his dinner at night.

  Ginger ran his team on hunches, shifting his fielders about like chessmen, and throwing in pitcher after pitcher until some games resembled the dying moments of a football battle with substitutes pouring in to get their letters. On hunches he had won one pennant, and notwithstanding his setback of the previous summer he was confident he could win again. Spike and Bob had imagined that his nervousness of the year before was due entirely to the strain of the pennant race. Not at all. Ginger was just as tense in a practice game between the regulars and the yannigans in that little bandbox under the Florida sun.

  The two Russells were dressing for the second exhibition game against the Giants at Miami, listening to the merry chatter of the locker room as the team prepared for the afternoon’s workout.

  “What’s this-here-now Harris—fella used to play third for the Yankees—what’s he doing now?” asked a voice.

  “I understand he’s coaching at Yale.”

  “Coaching baseball at Yale!” Ginger’s contemptuous tone dominated the room. “Shoot! He can do that mornings over the telephone.”

  There was a burst of genuine laughter. Ginger was one manager at whose jokes a guy could really laugh. Spike bit at the top of his sweatshirt as he put it under his supporter, holding it in his teeth by one end to be sure to give himself freedom under the arms. He liked to be nice and loose in his movements and hated clothes that hampered him in any way. While he picked up his sliding pads, Bob was climbing into a pair of basketball pants. This was about the only thing on which the two brothers ever disagreed—the merits of these garments for sliding into bases. Spike heard Cassidy’s voice, strong, acidulous.

  “... Well, seems some 12-year-old kid came up to the Giant manager last week and asked for a try-out. He was nice to the kid, told him to wait a few years and come back again later. Today the same boy shows up and asks for a try-out once more. ‘Why, looka here,’ says the manager, ‘I thought I told you last week to come back here when you was a few years older.’ ‘Well, Mister,’ says this kid, ‘I watched your Giants take that nine to nothing licking against the Dodgers yesterday, and that aged me ten years.’ ”

  Guffaws broke out over the room. The team was certainly feeling good.
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  Spike sat down on the bench before his locker and drew on his inner socks. They came below his knees and he fastened them with rubber garters. As he leaned over, he observed Razzle drawing on two pairs, one over the other. Raz had thin legs for a big man and was notoriously vain. It was little things such as these that amazed the boys about these big leaguers; Razzle’s vanity, Swanson’s tightness with money, Jake Kennedy’s superstitions. They were a strange lot with queer contradictions in their make-up.

  Meanwhile Razzle’s voice dominated the room.

  “A raise? Mebbe I did get me a raise. Why shouldn’t I get a raise?” He was talking with the New York Times reporter who stood with his hands in his pockets watching Raz climb into his clothes. “Won twenty games last year, didn’t I, and got the Most Valuable Player Award?”

  The reporter winked at Bob who was in the act of hauling his outer shirt on and fastening it up. “I thought MacEnnis of the Cards got the Most Valuable Player Award, Razzle.”

  “They give it to him. They give it to him; but I should have been give it. I really won it,” said Razzle with his customary fine disdain for the niceties of the English language. “When that-there committee met, they musta gone into a transom.”

  “Raz, your English is really something,” remarked Fat Stuff.

  “Yeah, and my Spanish is something, too. Say, Fat Stuff, a guy I know who lived in Havana told me the Spanish have no word for shortstop. Whadd’ya think of that?”

  “I wouldn’t worry if I were you, Razzle,” said the old pitcher. “Neither have the Phillies.”

  More laughter. Spike pulled on his pants and buckled his elastic belt. Throwing off his shower shoes which he wore until almost the last minute, he sat down and put on his uniform socks of wool, and then leaned over for his shoes. Those shoes were expensive, made of kangaroo skin, and ballplayers pay for their own shoes. Both he and his brother were always ripping and tearing them in the scrimmages around second base, and to his dismay he had figured out that morning they would probably spend $150 and wear out five or six pairs of shoes apiece during the season.

  Down the line Razzle was still talking. Finally he finished dressing, picked up his glove, and stalked out.

  “There goes the All-American adenoid,” said Karl Case, scorn in his voice. A titter ran over the room. Spike looked down at Bob pulling on his inner socks and Bob looked up at Spike. Both were thinking the same thing and understood each other without talking. What a difference from Grouchy and the Volunteers! There was a real team. Those boys had no groups or factions. For a second both felt homesick for that familiar atmosphere. True, there was never a dull moment, never a day when some trick wasn’t pulled or someone given a hotfoot, never a dull moment on the Dodgers. And yet...

  Yet there were times when both longed for the quieter, smoother methods of old Grouchy, unspectacular, unpretentious, always the same if you did your job and gave your best on the field. A manager sets the tone for the club, and Ginger’s team was almost as argumentative and disputatious among themselves as with other teams on the field and with the umpires.

  “Spike,” said Ginger, taking him by the arm while they were having batting practice before the game, “just run out there and tell Case I want to see him a minute, will ya?”

  Spike trotted out to left where the swarthy outfielder was catching flies. “Hey, Karl, Ginger wants to see you.”

  Karl paused, his hands on his hips. “What’s the matter with his eyesight? Can’t he see me from there?” And to Spike’s amazement he continued chasing flies.

  Old Fat Stuff was standing alone on the coaching line as Spike walked back, wondering what he should do. He told the veteran pitcher. “That guy Case, he’s a card,” said Spike, explaining what had happened.

  The pitcher pulled off his cap and wiped his brow with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Then he replaced the cap on his head. “Don’t he get along with Ginger?” asked Spike. “I always thought they were old pals.”

  “They were. They used to be. But not now. There’s too darned many factions on this club.”

  The umpires appeared and the two players walked back to the bench. Spike was by no means new to baseball, and he realized that with thirty men living together everyone couldn’t feel alike, that pitchers thought differently about things from anyone else, that cliques and relationships were bound to develop. Even so, he wondered, how could a ballclub in this mental condition hope to win a pennant even with high-powered hitters in the line-up?

  That afternoon trouble broke out openly. The game was close and old Raz was in command all the way. In the eighth with a two-run lead, he was hit on the side of the head between innings by a ball thrown accidentally by Harry Street. The ball bounced high in the air and Raz stood ruefully rubbing his forehead, while Harry raced over solicitously, and soon the entire infield surrounded him. Only Case, in left field, maintained an attitude of neutrality about the whole affair by turning his back and calmly sitting down on the grass.

  Finally Raz resumed play. A lump rose on the side of his forehead. In the eighth the Giants got a run when Harry fielded a bunt too slowly. In the last of the ninth with Brooklyn ahead 2–1, Giants were on first and second with two out. The center fielder came to bat. Spike, nervous, turned and saw Karl Case retiring deep in the field. A blooper to short left would cause trouble, and he waved the veteran in but Case paid no attention. Razzle’s first pitch was hit to left. Ordinarily it would have been an easy out, one of those hits that don’t mean a thing. But Karl, playing deep to protect himself, found it hard to handle. He came thundering in and made a desperate stab for the ball. It burned through his fingers to the fence while both runners scored and the two teams dashed for the showers.

  Disconsolately the squad trooped inside. Not knowing Karl was close behind him, Raz kept grumbling half to himself. “... Any outfielder oughta be able to catch a ball coming in....”

  Whereat Karl, to no one in particular, paid his respects to pitchers, remarking that “If they’d get the ball over the plate once in a while, we might win games.” On this note the team poured into the dressing room. Spike observed that the lump on Razzle’s forehead was as big as an egg. The unlucky pitcher slumped down on the bench while Doc Masters applied hot towels soaked in witch hazel to reduce the swelling, and Raz kept muttering something over and over which sounded like “Clumsy butterfingers.” Everyone knew Karl had played too far back in order to protect himself.

  However, the Slugger was far from upset by his error. He kept talking in the showers in loud tones for the benefit of his friends and anyone who happened to be listening, amid loud guffaws. “Yeah, they rushed the ball to the Miami General Hospital, and the docs operated. That’s right, they had to take two stitches in the darn thing.”

  His voice could be heard pretty much all over the lockers, despite the noise and roar of the showerbaths. When he emerged, Raz kept muttering to himself as Case went past to his locker, a bath towel around his waist.

  Just beyond Razzle he stopped, turned, and came back. “What’s that? What was that you said just now? What was that you called me, Raz?”

  Poor Razzle’s head was throbbing and he was in misery.

  “I said you was a clumsy, butterfingered clown,” he remarked, rising to go to the showers.

  As he did so, Case reddened and lunged. He struck Raz on the undamaged part of his face and staggered him. But Raz came right back, both fists thrashing the air, whacking and pounding at Case’s body. They grappled. Benches shot across the room; clothes, shoes, the whole dressing room went round and round in a cyclone of noise as the two men wrestled, tripped, tumbled, and sprawled to the floor. While Ginger, the Doc, the coaches, and old Chiselbeak, the locker room attendant, jumped to pull them apart.

  Sometimes a fight in which both men shake hands afterwards clears the atmosphere. But Spike and Bob knew there would be no handshaking after this one. They sat there transfixed to the bench, eyes popping. Seldom had they seen this kind of a row before. Soberly t
hey dressed and soberly returned to the hotel, saying little, both thinking the same thing. Gosh, how on earth can we hope to catch the Pirates when we scrap like that among ourselves?

  They were more sober after reading the evening paper. Spike went to the hotel lobby where Swanson was standing as usual by the newsstand.

  He glanced over Spike’s shoulder. “Well, whadd’ya think of that! Say, what do you think...” He pointed to a column halfway down the front page.

  It was a dispatch from St. Petersburg where the Cards were in training. Their manager had left and Grouchy Devine, the veteran pilot of the Nashville Vols, had been appointed to take over. Spike read the headlines and read them again. He turned toward his brother.

  “Hey, Bobby,” he called, “just look at this!”

  10

  WHEN A TEAM picked to win the pennant starts the season badly, it’s not hard to explain to the public. But when April turns into May and the same team is dragging anchor in third place, when May dies away and June draws near and they are solidly anchored in fourth, there’s trouble ahead. The wisecracks start appearing in the newspapers, sports editors assign cub reporters to follow the team or drop out altogether on the club’s next western trip. When this happened to the Dodgers, most of the trouble seemed to fall upon the broad shoulders of that diplomat and business man combined, Bill Hanson, the club secretary.

  He had plenty to do. For as the days became longer and warmer, nerves became tauter. Inside the club, cliques developed. Some players refused to speak to others, and the two Russell boys had to be more careful than ever what they said casually to men with whom they traveled or to whom they talked in the dugout. You could never tell with the club in such a situation whose feelings you might hurt, or when you might unknowingly step into a nasty situation. Hanson was busy all day and much of the night smoothing out quarrels, arranging things after Ginger had talked indiscreetly to some sportswriter, settling as best he could the daily bickerings. And meanwhile the Dodgers continued to slide slowly down in the league standing.