Now, I hope you read what I wrote before about T.J. an’ how he was pretty much took over by baseball fever, but if you didn’t, well, I’ll just say you never come across a machine so magnificently created for a single purpose. He ate, and breathed, and lived, and dreamed baseball right up ’til he got hit in the head by a pitch and afterwards he just wasn’t the same. It wasn’t too long ’fore he signed up with a Canadian regiment (that was ’fore America got stuck in over there) and next thing we knew he was at a place called Verdun fightin’ the Huns alongside the French. The history of how he come to be there, near as anybody’s worked it out, is that the Canadians had him marked for a pilot but they had trouble makin’ his way of thinkin’ fit the mold, so they shunted him off with a little group of misfits on the French who was more’n happy to have anything that’d hold up a uniform, and them’s who he was with at Verdun. Now it probably don’t seem that baseball has much to do with the Great War, but it does, and if you’ll be patient I’ll lead up to it.
Now, Butchy says there’s two things T.J. did that was remarkable, and the first one is pure T.J. First, you’ve got to understand that boy didn’t do things the normal way like me an’ you would. He saw the world with different eyes, or somethin’. I can’t explain. But you know how it is with cows or birds, how you get a few headin’ in one direction, the rest all follow along? Sure you do. Well, every now an’ then one of them cows or birds goes off on its own like it hears somethin’ the rest don’t hear, or sees somethin’ they don’t see, or else maybe it just don’t care. That was T.J. Not that he didn’t care, but he never was one to do somethin’ just ’cause everyone else was doin’ it. He must’ve give them Canadians fits.
Well, when Butch and Cootchieman got to the front, they heard lots of stories ’bout everything they missed up to that point, and some was awful cruel, and some was heroic, and some was sorrowful beyond speakin’, others was just entertainin’. But there was one that was just plain odd, and it had to do with a soldier everybody called General T. J. Grandy, who wasn’t a general at all, but only a private, and who Butch and Cootchieman come to figure couldn’t’ve been no one else but our own T.J. Part ’cause of the name, which combined his initials with Grandpa’s nickname, and part because he was infested with baseball.
He hadn’t exhibited nothin’ out of the ordinary in the beginnin’. In fact them other misfit Canadians said he was kinda quiet and kept to himself. But after four or five weeks in them trenches gettin’ pounded all to hell by German short-range artillery night and day, somethin’ in his brain sprung loose and he started talkin’ ’bout nothin’ but baseball. Statistics, players, teams, averages, he knew ’em all clear back to the Flood an’ that’s all he talked about. They say he pretty much ignored the war for a while, like he was back in the Oklahoma cornfields he talked about. That mention of Oklahoma tied it up as far as Butch and Cootchieman was concerned. Who else could it be? Anyway, seems he’d made himself a ball out of odds and ends and whatnot and took to pitchin’ it off just about anything that would bounce it back, and when them German guns wasn’t poundin’ that was about the only sound you heard; thud, rattle, roll, pop and drop, just like used to drive us nuts back on the farm. No doubt now, it was T.J.
Now, somethin’ grand happened to bring him back from wherever his brain was, and to appreciate it, you gotta understand that baseball wasn’t just a pastime to T.J., it was more like a religion, though Ma, bein’ a Bible-quotin’ Baptist, wouldn’t’ve appreciated the comparison. So it won’t come as no surprise, if you know baseball at all, that Ty Cobb was about as close to God, to T.J.’s way of thinkin’, as it’s healthy for a mortal man to get. So when he found out through the grapevine that Cobb was servin’ with the doughboys at St. Mihiel, not a day’s walk away, and that George Sisler and Christy Mathewson was with ’im there, well that was like hearin’ the Holy Trinity was in the neighborhood and it was just the news he needed to slip his cog back in the groove.
T.J. decided that what that war needed was a baseball game.
More especially, he figured the misery them boys around him was subject to day in an’ day out would be relieved if they could get their minds on somethin’ else. Seems he mentioned this to some of them Canadians but they reminded him—bein’ practical folk—that the war might interfere. Well, that was so. But T.J., as I said, was of a different turn of mind than most so he sat there tossin’ his ball and thinkin’ and before the day was up he come up with an idea for a new kinda game that he called trenchball.
Now that idea caught on like tinder in a dry box and by week’s end they had four teams, with nine players each, and what boys wasn’t playin’ was spectatin’ and wagering and hootin’ an’ hollerin’ in a way that must’ve got them Germans in the opposin’ trenches thinkin’ some curious thoughts. And it wasn’t just the Canadians got into it, them Frenchmen took hold of the game like a small dog on a long stick an’ the competition got some fierce.
Near as I can tell, though Butchy wasn’t too clear on the principles himself, the game was somethin’ like this: the pitcher an’ the batter an’ the catcher would be down in the trenches, and balls and strikes was called in the normal way by the umpire, who was the rankin’ officer, which abbreviated much argument. If the ball was hit (they used broken rifle butts for bats) the batter had to run the opposite way along the trenches, that is, pretty much through the catcher and the umpire, until the ball caught up with him by soldiers heavin’ it back. If he made it to such and such a point ahead of the ball, it was a single, or a double, or triple and, of course, if he was tagged in between any of these he was out. Apparently spectators could catch the ball and tag a fella out or just hold onto it, dependin’ on what team they was rootin’ for. Now that’s an interestin’ thing as it added fisticuffs to the proceedins. The other interestin’ part come on pop flies, which went to outlyin’ foxholes. Direction didn’t much matter. If it was caught by one’ve them boys in the foxholes, it was an out; if they didn’t catch it, it was a single, or double, or triple, dependin’ on how far out it was. Butchy says them Germans contributed considerable excitement to the game by takin’ pot shots at them boys when they’d scurry out of the foxholes to get the balls that landed between ’em.
There’s worse ways to die, I s’pose, but the ball always come back eventually.
Rules kinda developed as the game went along, an’ it was T.J. who made ’em up. Anyway, them kids lived for that game an’, to hear Butchy tell it, it was pretty much all that held ’em together.
Well, things was goin’ along fine ’til this French general come out to inspect the trenches—which was unusual, ’cause most of them generals preferred to conduct the war from some café or bordello in Paris—an’ he found them boys not payin’ attention to gettin’ killed like everybody else was and he said somethin’ like: “What do you boys think you’re up to?” And when T.J., who had the ball, didn’t make no reply, that general grabbed that ball and threw it clear out into no man’s land. Say what you will of that general, he must’ve had a fair arm, ’cause the ball fetched up in the barbed wire closer to the German side than to ours.
Well, T.J. looked up at that general, then he stood up and shook off the mud to see where the ball went, which was a dangerous thing to do, then he climbed out of the trench and went to fetch it.
You might imagine how that general yelled and cussed and ordered him to get back and die with everybody else and who did he think he was, but T.J. had that ball in mind and, like Grandy always said, that boy was persistent.
T.J. didn’t so much as duck when he struck off across that churned up turnip field. He walked in a straight line to where the ball was, with all hell cuttin’ loose around him, artillery explodin’ like hell on a hot day, picked it up and walked back, climbin’ through barbed wire like it was the rose bush at the bottom of the front yard back home. Folks seen it from the periscopes they had in them trenches. The Germans must’ve seen ’im, too, ’cause they unloaded everything but the kitchen sink w
hen they saw what he’d done, but they couldn’t bring him down. One’ve them Canadians said it was like he was protected by angels or somethin’; like them bullets went right through him.
Anyhow, he jumped back down into the trench, right beside where the general was watchin’ him with eyes stuffed with fury and wonder—that’s what the Canadian said, “his eyes was stuffed with fury and wonder,” I always like that and kind’ve linger on it at this point in the tellin’—an’ started to pick up the game where it’d left off.
That general must’ve figured T.J. was crazy, but he was so unhappy bein’ shown up like that in front of his men, he decided he’d shoot T.J. right then and there for insubordination. And he took out his pistol and was just about to follow through when he got hit with shrapnel and lost his head.
That’s how Butch would tell it. He lost his head—matter-of-fact —like it was no big news for someone to get their head blown off, even if he was a French general, and that tells you somethin’ more ’bout how bad that war was.
I suppose there would’ve been a fair commotion about the whole affair if the bomb that caused that shrapnel hadn’t been the first of a whole new round that kept everybody occupied with their own problems for a while. By the time the worst was over, them boys had ’em a new commander. T.J.’d undressed that general and put on his uniform, which wasn’t much the worse for wear ’cept for some blood around the collar, an’ nobody objected and that’s how he come to be called General T.J. Grandy. I guess them troops figured a general of their own makin’ an’ who lived in the mud with ’em and ate blood with ’em and was likely to die with ’em was as good as one made by some damn politician somewheres (which was another varmint Grandy’d let you say “damn” about) and wasn’t that democracy? An’ wasn’t that the thing they was fightin’ for after all? So they treated him like a general, even the few low-rankin’ officers there was left, an’ he took it in stride. But he wouldn’t take salutin’ from nobody. And so that French general was stuffed into the chinks in the walls in his underwear—where he did more good than he ever done back in Paris, they say—and the game went on.
Like I said, T.J. had his own ideas about things.
That was the one remarkable thing T.J. did. And the other one was one night he was in the map room when some corporal or somebody remarked how they wouldn’t know up from down if it wasn’t for them maps, the earth was that chewed up. Well, that comment give T.J. another idea, which was that if they’d be lost without their maps, well so would them Germans be without theirs, an’ he figured somethin’ ought to be done to bring that about. So that’s what he did, that very night. Only one other man knew what he was up to, ’cause T.J. told ’im so, in case he didn’t make it back, and that soldier watched him from a periscope when he struck out through no-man’s land with nothin’ but a pistol in that French general’s uniform. This soldier was the same Canadian made them remarks about angels protectin’ T.J. when he went to fetch the ball that time, but this time it was different.
This is what that boy said—an’ this is what gets eyebrows floatin’ every time I tell it, but that don’t make it not so—he said he could make out T.J. pretty clear for a while, ’cause there was lots of explosions on the horizon from them howitzers back behind the lines that showed where he was, but there wasn’t much activity from the Germans just opposite. Anyway, T.J. cut through a couple of coils of barbed wire and then, just as the horizon lit up with a blast, he disappeared. That is, he didn’t exactly disappear, but he turned mostly invisible. “Like he was made of dust” is what Butchy says that Canadian said. He could look right through ’im! An’ the second that illusion happened, if that’s what it was, it was like someone struck a match to a rocket for that apparition took off right through the barbed wire an’ across them foxholes and mud and everything just like they wasn’t there. “Like a ghost” is what that Canadian said. Well, he watched through that periscope so hard his eyes ached, but there wasn’t no sign of T.J. for a good 20 minutes until this other great explosion lit up the horizon and there he was, climbin’ back through the barbed wire like it wasn’t of much consequence, and next thing he knew there was General T.J. Grandy right beside ’im, with a grin on his face an’ a bundle of maps rolled up under his arm!
There it is. You can make of it what you will.
There’s some educated folks who study war pretty hard and most say the Germans started to give up about this time. That’s so. Same folks say that a war of attrition can’t carry on if one side’s got too many reinforcements and this is what happened when the Americans showed up; there was just too many for them Germans to kill. But the boys in them trenches tell a different story.
They say the enemy got all hollowed out when they woke up next mornin’ an’ found their maps gone, an’ that hollowness spread like a cancer through the ranks and took the fight right out of ’em. That’s a point of view. But historians don’t appear to give much credit to comments made later on by German prisoners who told about a ghost, in the uniform of a French general, who swept through their trenches one night an’ stole their maps, an’ that’s what put ’em in a surrenderin’ frame of mind, ’cause there’s no weapons you can use against a ghost, and they’d shot some’ve their own in tryin’.
Well, how come T.J. never come back from the war, you might ask. Well, he died. And that was because of baseball, and this is how it happened.
Once the Armistice was signed, trenchball got forgotten, but baseball was all the rage among the doughboys that was left to clean up, and T.J. decided to get up a team and challenge the boys down at St. Mihiel to a game. He knew they’d get whooped worse than the Pryor Panthers ever beat up on the Chouteau Prairie Dogs back home, but heck, so what if he could say he played Ty Cobb himself! And Sisler and Mathewson into the bargain? You could keep your Purple Heart.
Well, the challenge was accepted an’ they found ’em a good field ’bout midway between the encampments and cleared out the land mines and there she was. Butchy was there himself by this time in the flesh. Cootchieman didn’t make it ’cause he was called up to Belleau Wood last time the Germans tried to punch through the salient, and he got killed crawlin’ under some barbed wire. Puts one in mind of his gettin’ caught under the tent at that Hootchie-Cootchie show, don’t it? Seems Cootchieman wasn’t designed for crawlin’. They buried him there in France, and I been told you can find his grave right there out in the middle of a turnip field about ten hollers and a hoot from nowhere.
Anyway, for T.J. it was like he died and went to heaven, ’cause he didn’t only get to play Ty Cobb; Grover Cleveland Alexander himself pitched the game an’ by the sixth innin’ T.J.’d had two homers off ’im! (It’s only fair to confess that by this time both Alexander and Christy Mathewson had got a lungful of mustard gas durin’ the war, and neither was up to what they once was, nor ever would be, and that Alexander was subject to trench horror somethin’ fierce, but still, T.J.’d been through it too, so they wasn’t too far from equal on that account an’ it was still an accomplishment.)
By the seventh innin’ the score was tied and the crowd was in a pandemonium that would’ve drowned out an artillery barrage. Ol’ Ty wasn’t too happy, either. I guess he figured it’d be pretty smooth sailin’, but he didn’t figure on T.J. who struck him out three times! You don’t strike out Ty Cobb three times an’ stay on his friendly side, not that he had much of one. ’Bout the only thing kept ’im from clippin’ T.J. with his bat was that T.J. was from Oklahoma, and as far as Cobb was concerned that was practically the South, which made the difference.
Back before the game started them boys give George Sisler to T.J.’s team, so at least they could make a game of it. Sisler was good about that, an’ he give ’is all.
Well, we’re back in the seventh innin’ now, and Sisler hit one up center just outta reach of Alexander, who dove for it, and he smoked around to second and a little beyond when all of a sudden there was this click. Just a little click. An’ it hushed that crowd immedia
te. They all knew that sound ’cause it was one thing they feared the most and it meant Sisler had landed himself on a land mine and that once he lifted his foot, that’d be all she wrote for the battin’ champ.
It took no time for the rest of the players to clear out, so he was left almost alone ’cept for Christy who was playin’ second an’ who stood by ’im. They was both sweatin’ bullets an’ Sisler was sayin’ prayers with his eyes, knowin’ that, after all he’d been through, his time had come and it come durin’ a game of baseball, of all things. “This ain’t good,” he said to Christy and everyone could hear ’im even if he was whisperin’, which he was, for fear anything louder might set off that damned contraption sooner than necessary.
Christy, who they call the Christian Gentleman, was prayin’ somethin’ fierce, right out loud, and half the men there bowed their heads, which probably wasn’t too encouragin’ for Sisler, but a pretty good practical policy given the situation.
T.J. broke through the crowd and walked straight up to Sisler and spoke to him, and though nobody but Sisler an’ Christy heard what he said, they told everybody later.
“I know how to disarm them things,” T.J. said, an’ Sisler said he was grinnin’ like he was on a picnic. “I’m gonna put my foot right next to yours an’ you sidle yours off that-a-way real slow, an’ I’ll sidle mine on to take your weight and then show you how it’s done.”
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