Keystone Kids

by John R. Tunis

  The black-haired boy with the catcher’s mitt under his arm uncoiled himself from the floor and went out.

  “Roy! Roy Tucker! Shut that door.” Spike’s voice was curt and sharp, not persuasive as it had been. “Now there’s one thing I’d like to get across today with every single man, an’ I want everybody to get it straight. This is a team. Perhaps we can’t win the pennant, although I haven’t written us off yet by any means. But there’s one thing we can be, a team that’s pulling together. What’s that say? Says we’re all trying hard out there for each other. Says something else, too. That every man’s as good as anyone else, no matter who he is or where he comes from. There’s one player on this club you haven’t been behind. You all know who it is. You think he’s yeller, so you don’t give him support on the field. You’re watching to see him make mistakes. Case, that’s how you got trapped off first the other day. Well, lemme tell you something. He isn’t yeller. He’s a scrapper.

  “Yessir, he’s a fighter. He’s a fighter and he’s fighting something big. He’s fighting... how shall I say it... he’s fighting what all of us who aren’t Jews have done to all those who are, not just right now, not right here, but for so far back you wouldn’t understand. It’s what they’ve had to fight, really, since the start of things.”

  Around the room heads came slowly up, bodies straightened. He heard Red Allen’s mitt slip to the ground and Roy Tucker’s spikes make a nervous sound as they scraped across the floor. He saw Elmer McCaffrey’s lips tighten and a frown come over Harry’s dark face. “You see, you fellas, this isn’t just one kid, here, now. It isn’t only Jocko Klein you guys are riding. I wonder can I make you understand? This boy Klein isn’t yeller. He’s a fighter, only he isn’t fighting any of you. He’s fighting two thousand years.”

  Did they understand? Did he understand? Or was Klein right when he said that an outsider could never understand?

  “Now all this has gotta stop. As long as I’m manager, all you boys will make Jocko Klein feel he’s one of us. He came up, same as you did, the hard way, and I want you to get behind him. Let’s show him we’re with him. He’s not yeller, you take my word for that; you’ll maybe find it out, you fellas, sooner than you think for. Just remember, he came up the hard road like you did; remember how it was when you broke in, Roy, and you, too, Karl, and you, Swanny, and you, Fat Stuff. That is, if you can remember that far back!”

  The tension broke. A smile swept over the room, but there was no smile on the face of the manager’s brother. Nuts, thought the second baseman, nuts to all that! Now he’s giving them the stuff he tried to give me. Nuts!

  “Now I believe this boy has the makings of a real, first-class ballplayer, and I don’t intend to stand by and watch him ruined, either. That’s what you’re doing, you’re ruining him. Oh, I know. I know you didn’t any of you start out to do it. But that’s how it works out. See here, this can be carried too far. Fun’s fun. Sure, everyone must take kidding on a club; that’s part of baseball. But what you boys are doing is...” He paused and looked round the room at the serious faces below... “murder. You heard me, murder. I know he’s weak when it comes to a question of his race. O.K., you guys are using it to destroy his confidence. You’re also destroying the team. You can’t afford to do that. We’ve got a chance if everyone helps. Help me, boys, give me your support on this. Don’t walk out on me over a personal difference. One thing I’m telling you—from now on this Jew-boy stuff is out. Do you all get it? Do I make myself clear on this?”

  They swarmed onto the field, most of them thinking, Yes, that’s correct. That’s right. We gotta give the kid a chance. Under the earnest persuasion of the manager it sounded convincing, but once away from him and out of the locker room, it was clear that the team was still split. As Karl and Bob walked out together, Karl was saying, “Sure, that’s all fine enough. Only after all, this isn’t a reform school; it’s a ballclub. If a guy can’t help himself, what I say is we oughta get another catcher; that’s how I see it.”

  “You betcha, and quick, too, Karl,” Bob rejoined. “Boy, you got something there.”

  The division was apparent. On the side of the manager were the older men, Fat Stuff and McCaffrey and Swanson, and also young Roy Tucker.

  Why, we didn’t realize Klein was going to pieces over all this foolishness. Aw, what the hell! Give the kid his chance.

  On the other side were Karl and Rats Doyle and Bob Russell. Bob was thrashing it out at dinner with Roy Tucker that night, the center fielder trying hard to win him over.

  “Why, sure, Roy, I guess I’d agree. Maybe we are ruining him. But we couldn’t do it if he didn’t let us. If a guy really hasn’t got it... well...”

  “But, Bob, we know he has. Give him a chance. We’ve seen him play, haven’t we? He’s got a pair of hands like shovels, he’s got a great arm, and he can hit. That is, he could before we started in on him. With the team on him this way, nobody could play good ball. It doesn’t take much to get a rookie down when he’s breaking in. I recall back when Dave Leonard was managing the club, before Ginger Crane...”

  “Spike and I were just coming up to the Vols from Dallas that year. I remember hearing them talk about Leonard.”

  “He was a great guy. A real ballplayer’s ballplayer. Well, that first year... no, come to think it was the second year. The first year I was pitching and busted my elbow. Then I came back and tried to make the grade as an outfielder. I remember striking out coupla times in an important game against the Giants and getting low and feeling no good at all, and Dave Leonard caught me that night in my room packing to go home.

  “ ‘Aha,’ he says. ‘Gonna quit, are you? So you’re gonna quit the club,’ he says. ‘Can’t take it, can you? You were gonna whang that pineapple out of the park this afternoon, an’ you struck out. Then you go to pieces. Can’t take it! Well, boy, don’t forget one thing when you get back on that-there farm up in Connecticut. I come from a fishing country, and there’s a saying down my way, “Only the game fish swim upstream.’ ”

  “Yeah. That’s it! That’s the whole point, Roy. You had what it takes, you were dead game, you stuck it out. This guy quits cold. Now if he was really game, if only he really had it...”

  “No, I wasn’t. Any more than he is. I was all set to cut and run, only old Leonard came up that night and stopped me; made me so mad I cussed him out and stayed on to spite him. Let’s give this kid a chance. Maybe if you had Karl Case and the bench jockeys in the other dugout and the fans and everyone yelling at you and calling you Jew-boy, maybe you’d crack, too. If only someone like Leonard or Fat Stuff could talk with him. If they could explain the boys aren’t on him because he’s Jewish but because they think he’s yellow. Look! You’d be for the guy, wouldn’t you, if he shows he has it?”

  “Sure, if he does. But he hasn’t yet. Spike’s talked to him; so has Fat Stuff. Nope, it’s no darn good, Roy, it’s no good. Now the bird is upsetting the whole team; he’s got us all split, and he’s worried Spike until he can’t sleep nights. His timing’s off, too, way off. Notice he’s started to back up for those balls to deep short. A guy with a Gatling gun for an arm couldn’t do that; you’re handing the runner first base when you do that. And this afternoon on that doubleplay ball in the sixth, a perfect doubleplay set-up with a slow man on first and no one to bust up the play, to kick me around on second. D’ja notice him on that one? All the time in the world, yet he straightens up for the throw and it was four feet high. He straightened up for the toss, something he never used to do. I was lucky to grab it at all. Why, Klein’s even breaking up our combination. I wish he’d never come to this club, that’s what I wish.”

  At the same time the manager was eating dinner with his rookie catcher in a small restaurant, trying to help him, to build him up, working on his confidence, probing for those sources of hidden strength which he knew must be there ready to spring up if they could only be properly tapped. They finished their meal, Spike talking and questioning him.

&nb
sp; “My dad? I hardly knew him. My dad was in the butcher business in K.C. He died a long while ago; my mother brought me up.”

  “Say! That’s funny. My pop died when I was young, and the Old Lady brought us up, too.”

  “That so? My ma kept a boarding-house for butchers and men who worked in the stockyards.”

  “Why, for crying out loud! My ma kept a boarding-house in Charlotte for railway men; we never played ball until after she died.”

  “Then she never saw you up here?”

  “Nope, never.”

  “Gee, that’s tough. You know how ’tis, if you don’t remember your pa and your ma brings you up. You’re closer to her, sort of. Now my ma, she thinks I’m the greatest ballplayer on earth. Spike, you wouldn’t hardly believe it. She has a scrapbook and I betcha she has fifty pictures of me.” His eyes sparkled, his voice was deeper, his face flushed. The manager watched, listened, understood.

  “Look, Jocko-boy, tell me something. You don’t ever think of yer ma as a Jew, do you?”

  The boy was startled. No one had ever asked him such a question. “Why, no, of course not.”

  “Fine. That’s what you must do then, that’s what you must do all the time. You gotta think of yourself as a catcher, not as a Jew. Get me? You gotta quit this thinking of yourself as a Jew first and a catcher on this-here team second. The last two thousand years, they don’t matter. See, this is today, it’s now. It’s not even when you were nine years old; it’s right now. You’re a ballplayer, first and all the time. And as long as I’m manager I’ll stick by you, ’cause I think you’ll deliver and be a valuable man on the club. And as long as I do, you’re the catcher of the Dodgers.”

  The catcher of the Dodgers! The catcher of the Dodgers, he thought...

  “Now get this! When anyone rides you, anybody, the bench jockeys, the coaches, the Cubs, the Cards, the Braves, or Case and those boys there, remember one thing. You’re not anything but the catcher of the Dodgers. Forget that dugout, forget those other teams, go out there and play ball like your ma thinks you can. Like I know you can. Like the catcher of the Dodgers.”

  The manager rose. He was going back to his room where his brother would be waiting, knowing exactly how he had spent the evening, leering a little when he returned. But he was leaving behind a different person. Jocko Klein was still a freshman in the league, still the prey of the bench jockeys, the butt of every coach in every club on the circuit. Yet he was slowly beginning to think of himself as the catcher of the Dodgers again.

  They were having batting practice the next morning before the game. Fat Stuff was tossing them up to the hitters. Behind him stood Charlie Draper, with the leather bag, feeding him balls. Each player went up for his raps, Tucker, Swanny, Bob, Roth, Allen.

  At last came the turn of the rookie catcher. He stepped to the left side of the plate, and as he did so Case strode up to the other side. With the flat of his big hand he caught the boy full on the chest and shoved him away. Off balance, the catcher was sent reeling ten feet back, his bat slipping from his grasp.

  “Get outa the way, you kike you; get outa the way and let a man hit that can.”

  The rookie tottered, stumbled, then found his feet. Old Fat Stuff in the box stood watching; the crowd around the batting cage came alive. Everyone realized something was going to break at last. It did. The boy reacted quickly. He grabbed the nearest bat and, turning, was at the plate in three strides.

  “Look, Case.” He waved the club at the astonished fielder. “That stuff’s over. I’m the catcher of the Dodgers, get it? If you wanna slug it out, O.K.”

  His voice was loud and harsh. It carried to Fat Stuff, hands on hips by the mound, to Charlie Draper, open-mouthed behind him, to Bob, perched on second, even to Spike, watching anxiously in deep short.

  “That’s out... over... understand?”

  They stood face to face, jaw to jaw, exactly as they had stood along the first base line the week before. For a moment neither moved; they remained, each with a bat in his hands, waiting. A show-down had come at last. Who would hit first? Or would they drop their bats and go for each other with fists? The whole field watched.

  But this time something had changed. It was the burly fielder who was astonished and on the defensive, the rookie who was hard and unafraid. Case hesitated. He started to lay on with his bat, to go for the fresh young busher, when his eyes rested on Klein’s hands. They were white and tense around the handle of that club; they looked as if he meant business. The big chap glanced down at the stocky figure across the plate, at those hands tightening around the handle. What he saw he didn’t care for.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “O.K.,” he murmured casually. “O.K., pal.” Then he moved away.

  Klein swung his club nervously in his fists and resumed his batting stance. For a second or two no one moved; the entire field was a motion picture stopped in action. Then Fat Stuff turned and held up his glove to Charlie for a ball. He got it, wound up, and threw it in. The boy clouted it with fierceness. There was relief in that gesture, the relief of hitting something at last. The ball sailed away into the bleachers in center field. Fat Stuff turned again, asked for another ball, and this time wound up carefully, throwing a high inside pitch. The boy stepped deftly back and caught it squarely. It was high, very high, and very deep. In fact it was clearing the fence; it was over in Bedford Avenue.

  20

  A SUNDAY CROWD IN the Polo Grounds. The Sunday crowd is no fun. Weekday fans are smarter; they come regularly and are more tolerant, they know their baseball. But three-fourths of the Sunday crowd were there for one thing—to see the Dodgers beaten. Furthermore, a Sunday crowd meant a capacity crowd and that meant a mass of white shirts in deep center field; hard for the batters when they face an overarm pitcher. A sidearm thrower is not so bad, but an overarm ball coming out of that white background is poison. For this reason the Giants were using Tommy Quinn, their overarm pitching ace.

  Razzle was pitching for Brooklyn. Raz was invariably tough against the Giants, who years before had let him out as a rookie hurler up for trial. He wanted to beat them more than any other club. So up to the third inning it was a pitcher’s battle all the way, a wickedly close game. One of those games to be won or lost by the breaks.

  In the third Klein came up to bat accompanied by the usual jeers from the Giants’ bench. The pitcher rocked in the box.

  “Sit him down, Tommy, sit him down.”

  “Don’t let that Jew-boy get a toehold up there, Tom.”

  “Brush him back, Tommy. He can’t take it, Tom old boy...”

  “He’s a quitter, Tommy, he can’t take it.”

  It was the usual chorus. But something had happened to Jocko Klein, as the Giant bench began to realize that afternoon. The big pitcher leaned back and threw a fast ball, a duster that was close to Klein’s chin and sent him sprawling back in the dirt. While Spike from the lines at third watched nervously, the chorus of approval rose from the jockeys in the Giants’ bench.

  “That’s the stuff, Tom old boy. This guy’s a pushover.”

  Tommy Quinn’s duster was usually thrown with a purpose. He liked to set up the batter for the next pitch. The rookie knew this, knew it would be a curve, got ready for the hook and waited. It came, low, right where he expected, and he slammed it hard into the slot between short and third. The jeers from the home bench died abruptly away.

  Razzle, who followed, struck out. Now came the top of the batting order. Spike gave the sign for a hit-and-run and Swanny responded with a dry, crisp drive into right field. Ballplayers all hope to get from first to third on a hit to right. In right field, however, was Jake Schott, the Giant captain, with the best throwing arm in the league.

  Although Klein was off with the ball, the hit was clean and straight. Spike measured the distance, weighing that remorseless throwing arm against the speed of his rookie catcher, balancing in an instant the closeness of the score, the importance of getting that first run, the run which might even win the
game. He called the boy on to third.

  Straining, giving everything, with taut face and tensed muscles, Klein came in.

  “Slide... Jocko... slide, boy,” shouted Spike. “Slide... get down...”

  The throw was coming straight and true like all Jake’s throws, gaining on the runner. The man and the ball arrived simultaneously. Once again it was a matter of seconds, of fractions of a second. Klein’s feet went out in a whirl of dust, and he made a desperate stab for the corner of the base with one foot as the man above reached down with the ball in his gloved fist.

  The hand of the umpire started to rise. Then something happened. Was it accident, was it chance, was it on purpose that Klein came in with his spikes flashing in the sun? You saw their sudden glint, then the third baseman was hastily shaking his hand and the ball was hobbling on the grass behind the foul line.

  Instantly Klein was up. He was up and away. The man on the base turned angrily, saw the ball back of the bag, darted after it. Again it was fractions of a second, but this time the throw was hurried and less accurate. Sliding head first for the outer corner, the rookie reached home for the first score of the game.

  The Giants didn’t like it at all. Who would? You call a man yellow, and he makes third against the best arm in the business, and slugs and kicks his way home for the only run of the game. A run that inning after inning kept getting bigger and bigger. No, the Giants didn’t like it in the least. They showed it plainly enough in the sixth when, with two out, they loaded the bases and the fans stood roaring for them to score.

  Spike trotted across the grass to Razzle. The big chap was cool and undisturbed. He shook off the boy at his side with a reassuring nod, stepped off the mound to catch the signs better, the only calm person in the feverish ballpark. Then he hitched at his pants, stepped back on the mound and stood there, his long arms hanging down motionless. He looked around the bases, at the infield playing deep for the force-out, at the outfield slightly around toward right for the batter. Then he threw. The man at the plate swung a trifle late and while the field started into motion, the ball sailed in the air.