One of the autograph seekers, a little gap-toothed kid in a Yankees’ cap and a striped shirt, raised a baseball glove about half his size and made a catch that would have been worthy of Joe DiMaggio if he hadn’t been knocked on his rump by the force of the ball.
Still squeezing the glove around the ball, the kid stood up, crying, and rubbed where it hurt.
“Hey,” Mantle said, “don’t let Casey catch you rubbin.’ Ball players ain’t supposed to let on they been hurt.”
The kid sniffled and looked at him. “No?”
“Nope. And I can tell you’ve got the makin’s of a hell of—I mean a real fine ball player.”
Irv Noren yelled from the batting cage to see if everyone was all right. Garrett reassured him.
Meanwhile Mantle had taken the ball from the kid. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Gary Danziger,” the kid said. “What’s yours?”
Mantle laughed. “My name is Mickey. Why’d you want my autograph if you didn’t know who I was?”
“I knew you were a Yankee. I just followed the other kids.”
Mantle took Gary’s pen and wrote on the ball. “To Gary. Nice catch. Don’t rub. Best wishes, Mickey Mantle.” He gave the ball and pen back to the boy. “This is so you won’t forget who I am.”
Gary thanked him and retreated to a distance of about five feet, where he watched Mantle with big round eyes.
Russ Garrett said, “You’ve made a fan for life. That kid’s feet aren’t going to touch the ground for a week. Think we ought to tell Irv to watch where he goes firing off his artillery?”
“Irv can’t help it,” Mantle said. “Besides, he never hit the ball so good before.”
Garrett smiled. “You’re a lot quicker with the needle these days than you used to be back in Kansas City. And a lot less of an RA.”
RA stood for Red Ass. It was Stengelese for a player with a bad temper.
“Mine is red,” Mantle told Garrett. “When it comes to that Simmons, it’s redder than the devil’s. What’s he want to come here for? I don’t need him makin’ trouble for me. Why doesn’t he go back to Washington and chase Communists the way he’s supposed to?”
Garrett told his friend to take it easy. He didn’t know about the rest of Mantle’s anatomy, but his handsome, boyish face was sure red enough.
The Honorable Rex Harwood Simmons was a memory for Mantle, a bad one from 1951, a year that had held more than its share of bad memories.
Things had started out fine. ’Fifty-one was Mantle’s first year with the Yankees. He had shown up at Casey’s instructional camp for rookies in Phoenix and tore the place up. He hit baseballs over buildings, and as soon as the Yankee brass decided to move him from shortstop to the outfield, it became apparent that Mantle was going to do something the experts considered almost impossible—jump from Class-C ball right to the major leagues.
The camp was where Mantle had met Russ Garrett. Garrett was trying to do something equally impossible—make like Lou Gehrig and walk off the campus of Columbia University and onto the Yankee roster, talked into the effort by Hal Keating, a former ball player who was now a businessman and a part-time Yankee scout. Garrett had nearly as good a camp as Mantle but failed to make the big club because the Yankees were already stocked with high-quality catchers.
Still, the people in charge were impressed enough to let Garrett begin his professional baseball career in the triple-A American Association. It boded well for his career.
As Stengel put it, “He’ll be wearin’ the pinstripes before you know it, as this is a college boy which can hit and also throw the baseball, though he is wild at times throwin’ to second, but he can run, which is rare in catchers, and he is smart, and can handle a pitcher, which is the most important thing for a catcher to do, which is why Berra is so great, and besides, like this kid Mantles, he’s got what I consider a great-soundin’ baseball name.”
What that meant when it was all deciphered was that Mantle joined the Yankees and Garrett went to Kansas City.
The pressure of New York on the young boy from Oklahoma was enormous.
New York was too big a jump from the places he’d played ball before; just too damn much bigger than Independence, or Joplin, or Commerce. The fans wanted too much, and they wanted it immediately. Mantle brooded, then lashed out. He was booed.
Then there were the draft problems. Mantle was exempt from the draft; 4-F. He had osteomyelitis, a degenerative bone disease. The disease was in remission, but any one of baseball’s constant bumps and injuries could bring it back.
Still, people talked. If he was well enough to play baseball, why wasn’t he well enough to go and fight for his country?
Favoritism, they said. Draft dodging.
Rex Simmons did a lot of talking along those lines. The congressman got a lot of mileage out of Mickey Mantle’s draft status. He threatened congressional investigations. The Yankees flew Mantle back to Oklahoma for another physical. He was again declared 4-F. The congressman proposed a law that would remove the exemption for osteomyelitis victims who had gone a certain length of time with the disease in remission.
Soon the boos Mantle heard were being mixed with taunts. Draft dodger, they said. Coward.
It was too much. What did they want from him, anyway? As hard as he tried to keep his mind on the game, he still heard the taunts. His play suffered badly.
By June Casey had stopped playing Mantle every day. Soon he didn’t use him at all. On July 12 Mantle was sent to Kansas City.
He didn’t play so well in Kansas City at first, either. Congressman Simmons would come to the games now. People would cheer for him; he’d bring doctors around, try to get them to say Mantle was faking.
Mantle was ready to quit baseball until his daddy, who’d come up from Commerce to see him play, read him the riot act one night in the hotel.
“I thought I’d raised a man,” Elvin Mantle said in disgust. “You’re nothing but a baby.” He got out his son’s suitcase. “Come back and work in the mines.”
Mickey was shocked, said he wasn’t going to quit that easily. His father clapped him on the back, said he knew all along he’d raised a man. He told his son to go play ball the best he knew how and forget everything else.
So Mickey went out and played ball. He made a shambles of the American Association for the rest of July and August and was called back to the Yanks at the beginning of September.
Not that he ignored his troubles completely. That wouldn’t have been human. He talked to people, including Russ Garrett.
Garrett, a little older and, as a city boy and a college boy, a lot more sophisticated, was glad to listen to the miner’s son’s problems. He became sort of a not-too-big-brother, though he had his troubles, too. Something about a gal—he never got too specific.
Garrett was playing some kind of baseball, too. The rumor got around Mickey and Russ would travel to New York together.
Then Garrett got his draft notice.
He came in from practice and found it waiting for him in the Blues’ locker room.
Garrett had been expecting it, but he’d been praying it wouldn’t come until he’d at least had a chance to show some of what he could do in the big leagues. That wouldn’t happen now for two years, unless he got stateside duty or. ...
It was useless. Frustration led him to make a remark to Mantle, a remark he would have signed away seventy-five points off his lifetime batting average to have back.
“Hey, Mick,” Garrett had said, “how do I arrange to get a case of osteomyelitis?”
He had meant nothing by it—it was supposed to be a fatalistic wisecrack to show he could take a tough break like a man.
But in the summer of 1951 Mickey Mantle was laughing at no jokes about osteomyelitis. Especially from guys who called themselves his friends.
Mantle lashed out. “I hope,” he told Garrett, “I just hope someday you have to spend your nights worryin’ if you’re gonna be a cripple when you wake up in the morn
in’!” Then he stormed out of the clubhouse.
The next day he was on his way to join the Yankees. Garrett played out the week with the Blues (and the blues), then reported for his army physical.
The next Mantle heard of his old pal Rags, there was a very good chance that he would be a cripple.
Of course, that hadn’t happened, but everybody but Garrett seemed to know he was through as a ball player, and in a foolish, nagging way Mantle felt guilty about it. He’d jinxed his friend, put a curse on him. And now Garrett was out of the hospital and back around baseball. Mantle had to see him and be reminded. Somehow it only made him feel worse that Rags seemed to hold no hard feelings at all over the incident.
“... and I don’t know what he’s up to, Mick,” Garrett was saying. “He’s got that Reds-in-sports subcommittee, but that’s ridiculous. Everybody in baseball is too rich, too independent, or too damn grateful to be a Communist—he can’t be here for that.”
Mantle nodded. He’d heard Garrett say that before.
“Anyway,” Garrett went on, “we know he used to have it in for you—you were the biggest target he could find, the way to get the most newspaper space. Maybe now that he’s a Time magazine cover boy he’ll lay off.”
Mantle snorted. “I doubt that,” he said.
“Well, for your own good and for the good of the Yankees—for the good of baseball, actually ...” Garrett grinned. Mr. Frick was always giving orders that started with “For the good of baseball.” “... For the good of baseball, don’t let him get your goat, no matter what he says or does, all right?”
Mantle sighed as he signed the last autograph. “It ain’t gonna be easy, Rags. I remember I used to sometimes find myself formin’ violent intentions toward that man. I wanted to ...” Mantle stopped and grinned. “Hear me talkin’. I ain’t like that usually, but I get mad just thinkin’ about Simmons.” He made the congressman’s name sound like spitting.
“Take it out on the Athletics,” Garrett suggested.
“Okay, Slick, it’s a promise. The A’s are in for it from me today.” After a few seconds he added, “If Casey lets me in the darn game.”
“Good enough for me,” Garrett said.
“I’ll do my best. Take care of yourself, okay, Rags? I mean it.”
“Sure, Mick. Thanks.” Mantle punched Garrett on the shoulder, then went to do a little running in the outfield to loosen up.
Garrett watched him go, trying not to be jealous. At last he turned to go and saw little Gary Danziger crying quietly against the railing.
“Hey,” Garrett said softly. “What’s wrong, Champ?”
“I don’t remember where my Grandpa is.”
Garrett told him not to worry. He took a look at the kid’s ticket stub and directed him to his seat.
7
Cheryl Tilton never got a thrill out of the way men looked at her. They looked; she went about her business. That was it, unless she happened to feel like doing a little looking herself.
Right now, though, she wouldn’t have noticed if Jeff Chandler walked by, or even Rock Hudson. She was too angry at the raucous beer-swilling louts who were making idiotic remarks as she passed among them.
There were so many other things she could have been doing. She could have been shopping at Bloomingdale’s or Lord and Taylor. All the stores in New York were staying open Saturdays during the summer—Cheryl could have been bringing her wardrobe up to date in air-conditioned comfort instead of sitting in the broiling sunshine wearing the last outfit she hadn’t mortgaged to a cleaner.
She was wearing what she usually wore at the office—white silk blouse, close-fitting dark gray skirt, and pearls. As a concession to the sun (which would probably burn her fair skin to a cinder), she had on her dark glasses.
Tad had warned her to wear flat-sole shoes, but she’d been too angry to listen to him. Now she was trying to negotiate the concrete stairs in spike-heeled pumps. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the steps had all been the same width, but every fourth or fifth one would be a new landing, which she’d have to stretch a leg to clear. This inevitably caused her skirt to ride up, giving anyone who happened to be looking her way a quick glimpse of soft thigh wrapped in shimmering nylon.
A lot of men happened to be looking her way; it became a sort of game. The men would whistle every time Cheryl’s skirt rose. Click, click, click, and all together, boys, whistle. A consensus arose that after the brunet with the legs, the game was likely to be an anticlimax.
Cheryl was angry and tried walking faster so she could escape these animals. It was a mistake. She stumbled, and her tight skirt rode up her legs. This really gave the boys a show. Cheryl fumed. Rex Simmons sprang to her aid. “Cheryl, are you all right?”
“She’s all right,” Tad said between his teeth. “Pull yourself together, Cheryl, before the photographers notice you.”
That amused the congressman. “Heh, heh. That’s right, Cheryl. We don’t want the New York Mirror damaging my dignity.”
Tad said, “Let’s go. The game is about to start.” Cheryl, even through her anger, wondered how he knew that. There wasn’t a player to be seen on the field.
Eager as an eight-year-old, the congressman scurried to be in place before “The Star-Spangled Banner” started. Cheryl and Tad lagged behind. Baby Brother leaned forward and grumbled into the secretary’s hairdo where he figured her ear might be. “Next time I give you advice about what to wear, maybe you’ll listen.”
Cheryl ignored him, but she’d heard him fine. Cheryl had had about enough. Working for the Simmons brothers had been exciting at first. They’d raised a demon for the public, then ridden its scaly back to power. But now she knew that they were too small, too petty, too unimaginative to expand their influence or even to hang onto what they had.
Oh, Tad had possibilities, maybe, but he was hopelessly loyal to his brother; and Rex was just plain hopeless. The boys had gotten lucky for a while, but Cheryl was tired of watching them try to figure out what to do next.
Cheryl planned her future while she sang the national anthem. She had experience now. She knew people. She’d be able to pick a likely winner out of the Washington dogfight. Somebody with teeth. Somebody who knew what he wanted more than two days in advance.
Sure, she thought, I can think of a candidate already. He’s got his father’s money and ambition behind him, and he’s just gotten married to that thin-blooded heiress. Damned attractive, too. Cheryl would look him up, find out if marriage had changed his love life any, though she doubted it had. Find out if there was an opening on his staff. If not, it didn’t really matter. She’d find a job with somebody. But she was going to shed herself of these no-class Simmons boys as soon as she got back to D.C. Cheryl sang the last four bars of the anthem with a smile on her face. By the time the umpire shouted “Play ball,” she was positively beaming.
8
It was a long game but an eventful one. To say the least. Russ Garrett watched from the official scorer’s booth in the press box, on the rim of the second deck behind home plate. The scorer that day was a sports writer from the World, Telegram & Sun. The American League paid sportswriters a few extra bucks to score games, and the reporters were usually glad to get them. Garrett was forbidden to sit in the stands and root for the Yankees the way he wanted to, so he shared the booth with his fellow employee of the baseball administration.
When he leaned back in his folding chair and touched his head to the partition, Garrett could hear the smooth Alabama tones of Mel Allen drifting across from another part of the press box. Mel always sounded as though he could talk about baseball forever and do it so well you’d want to listen just as long.
The Yankees started the scoring, picking up two cheap runs in the bottom of the first inning on two walks and a pop fly a fielder lost in the sun.
Garrett was pleased but not surprised. The Yanks were champs, the Athletics near the bottom of the standings, and this sort of thing was to be expected. The majority of the 31,647 fa
ns felt the same way. Some were less pleased—the transplanted Philadelphians, for example. Or the Yankee-haters.
There was always a significant number of people who’d pay for a ticket to a ball game hoping to see the Yankees get beat. They claimed the New York team was arrogant or that it was boring to see the same team win the World Series four year in a row (as the Yankees had), or possibly five (as they showed every sign of being capable of doing this year).
Liberals often rooted against the Yankees. Five years ago Jackie Robinson had joined the Yankees’ perennial rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, to become the first Negro to play in the major leagues. By now most teams had realized that most fans, no matter how prejudiced they might be in everyday life, became color-blind when someone wearing the home colors could pitch like Satchel Paige or hit, run, and field like Willie Mays.
But the Yankees kept playing (and, more maddeningly, winning) with a lily-white lineup. They had bowed to pressure sufficiently to have some colored players on their Kansas City team. Congressman Rex Simmons had seen them play.
About the fourth inning the congressman reflected it might not be a bad move by the Yankees to call one or two of them up. They could run like watermelon thieves; one thing about those boys, they were fast. He was thinking about this because the Athletics had just tied the game on a run that scored all the way from first on a single to left center. Okay, it was the deepest part of the park, but that run never would have happened if DiMaggio were still out there. Or even that draft dodger, Mantle.
The Yankee pitcher walked the next two men, then hung a curveball to Gus Zernial, who proceeded to park it in the upper deck for a home run.
The congressman turned to his companions. “Seems Ford just doesn’t have it today.”
Cheryl said nothing; Tad said, “Right, Rex.”
Tad looked at Cheryl’s impassive features, then at the Band-Aid on the back at his hand. The little bitch had drawn his blood. If it got infected, he promised himself he’d have her taken out and shot. Finally he thought, to hell with her. He had more important things to worry about. Like what Mrs. Klimber might be up to. He hadn’t liked the sound of her voice the last time they’d spoken.
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