The Great American Novel

by Philip Roth

  “But—but, if I feed the boys these Wheaties—is that what you want me to do?”

  “Exactly! Every morning, just a little sprinkle!”

  “And we win—?”

  “Yes! You win!”

  “But—that’d be like throwin’ a game.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like throwin’ it. I mean, we’d be winnin’ when we’re supposed to be losin’—and that’s wrong. That’s illegal!”

  “Throwing a game, Roland, is losing when you’re supposed to be winning. Winning instead of losing is what you’re supposed to do!”

  “But not by eatin’ Wheaties!”

  “Precisely by eating Wheaties! That’s the whole idea of Wheaties!”

  “But that’s real Wheaties! And they don’t make you do it anyway!”

  “Then how can they be ‘real’ Wheaties, if they don’t do what they’re supposed to do?”

  “That’s what makes them ‘real’!”

  “No, that’s what makes them unreal. Their Wheaties say they’re supposed to make you win—and they don’t! My Wheaties say they’re supposed to make you win—and they do! How can that be wrong, Roland, or illegal? That is keeping your promises! That is being true to your word! I am going to make the most hopeless baseball team in history into a team of red-blooded American boys! And you call that ‘throwing a game’? I am talking about winning, Roland, winning—what made this country what it is today! Who in his right mind can be against that?”

  * * *

  Who, indeed. Winning! Oh, you really can’t say enough good things about it. There is nothing quite like it. Win hands down, win going away, win by a landslide, win by accident, win by a nose, win without deserving to win—you just can’t beat it, however you slice it. Winning is the tops. Winning is the name of the game. Winning is what it’s all about. Winning is the be-all and the end-all, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. All the world loves a winner. Show me a good loser, said Leo Durocher, and I’ll show you a loser. Name one thing that losing has to recommend it. You can’t. Losing is tedious. Losing is exhausting. Losing is uninteresting. Losing is depressing. Losing is boring. Losing is debilitating. Losing is compromising. Losing is shameful. Losing is humiliating. Losing is infuriating. Losing is disappointing. Losing is incomprehensible. Losing makes for headaches, muscle tension, skin eruptions, ulcers, indigestion, and for mental disorders of every kind. Losing is bad for confidence, pride, business, peace of mind, family harmony, love, sexual potency, concentration, and much much more. Losing is bad for people of all ages, races, and religions; it is as bad for infants as for the elderly, for women as for men. Losing makes people cry, howl, scream, hide, lie, smolder, envy, hate, and quit. Losing is probably the single biggest cause of suicide in the world, and of murder. Losing makes the benign malicious, the generous stingy, the brave fearful, the healthy ill, and the kindly bitter. Losing is universally despised, as well it should be. The sooner we get rid of losing, the happier everyone will be.

  But winning. To win! It was everything Roland remembered.

  * * *

  14–6 against Independence, nine runs scored in the first inning. Seven Mundy home runs! Eight Mundy stolen bases! WAYNE HEKET STEALS HOME!

  8–0, knocking the Blues out of the pennant race. THE MUNDYS KNOCK THE BLUES OUT OF THE PENNANT RACE! Deacon Demeter goes all the way, scattering three hits. Four Mundy double plays. WAYNE HEKET STEALS TWO BASES! FIFTY YEARS OLD AND HE STEALS TWO BASES! Home runs: Rama (2), Skirnir, Agni, and Damur. NICKNAME DAMUR, FOURTEEN YEARS OLD AND NINETY-TWO POUNDS, HITS A HOME RUN INTO THE UPPER DECK!

  Asylum. Four home games against the Mundys for the Keepers. This should land them in fifth for sure. This is their chance to overtake the Greenbacks for sure. MUNDYS SWEEP FOUR IN A ROW. Demeter, Tuminikar, Volos, Buchis hurl COMPLETE GAMES! TUMINIKAR UNLEASHES FASTBALL OF YORE! HEKET STEALS FIVE BASES! PTAH HITS SAFELY IN SIXTH CONSECUTIVE GAME! Home runs in Asylum: Rama (4), Skirnir (3), Baal (6), Agni (2).

  Kakoola. Mundys take three in a row. Ho-hum. Ockatur two-hits old mates. Rama-Baal home run barrage continues. Heket scores from first on long Damur single! Steals everything except the catcher’s underwear. Skirnir’s great catch breaks back of Reaper rally! Reliever Chico Mecoatl fans last seven Reaper batters! Tuminikar whiffs sixteen with blazing fastball. Mazuma delighted as incredulous capacity crowds witness massacre of locals. “Know that R that used to stand for ‘Ridiculous’?” says Mazuma. “Stands for ‘Renegades’ now. One more season without a home, and they’ll be the greatest team in the history of the game. And the most dreaded!”

  Then Terra Inc. 8–1, 9–3. Simple as that. The Mundys, boom, boom, boom; the Rustlers, swish, swish, swish. Eleven in a row.

  Assorted statistics for the miracle: Heket, 14 stolen bases; Rama, 12 home runs; Baal, 10 home runs, 4 triples, 2 doubles; Ptah, hit safely 11 consecutive games; Damur, batting average for 11 games, .585 (in contrast to .087 for previous 142); complete games pitched, Tuminikar 3, Ockatur 2, Demeter 2, Volos 1, Buchis 1. Wild pitches, none. Passed balls, none. Errors, 3, all on Skirnir, trying to make acrobatic never-say-die shoestring catches.

  Oh it was wonderful, it was glorious, it was heavenly—except at night, when he could not sleep because of those nightmares in which he stood before the conscience of the game, the Commissioner himself, and received his just deserts. “But I didn’t eat any myself, Your Honor—I swear I didn’t! Not a one!” “You fed the others, Roland.” “They fed themselves. They lifted the spoons to their own mouths and chewed and swallowed all on their own, I swear!” “But who brought those boxes of illegal Wheaties to the table, Roland? Who sprinkled them in with the others?” “But it was that smart little Jew that put me up to it, Commissioner! He forced me to, by playin’ on my hopes!” “Roland, I have no more love for a smart little Jew than the next fellow. Baseball has always been a Christian game, and so it shall remain, if I have anything to do with it. But if Jews don’t belong here, neither do ballplayers who fall for their schemes to make an easy buck.” “But I didn’t want to make a buck. The little Jew did. I only wanted to play baseball with a real big league team!” “Well, that’s unfortunate, because as it now stands, you are never going to play baseball with any team again. You are banished for life, Roland Agni. You are a traitor and a crook.” “No! No!”

  And leaping from his bed he would run down into the hotel lobby to telephone Tri-City.

  “Look, Isaac, what if somebody dies!”

  “Nobody’s going to die, Roland.”

  “But maybe this stuff can kill somebody who isn’t supposed to have any.”

  “Roland, you just keep feeding them the Breakfast of Champions, and don’t worry about a thing.”

  “But—but you should see Old Wayne. He starts packin’ it away—well, I get worried! Suppose he ups and croaks. That’d be murder!”

  “You want to be a Mundy forever, do you?”

  “Well, no. But I don’t want to get the chair, either! Or get banished! I mean, you watch those guys out there, the way they’re playin’, and you think, if they keep this up, they’re going to die!”

  “Die? Why?”

  “Well, they’re too good, that’s why! I just think sometimes in the middle of an innin’, when we’re battin’ around and scorin’ and goin’ crazy on the bases, that all of a sudden, I’m goin’ to look in the dugout and they’ll all be dead!”

  “Nobody’s died yet from winning, Roland, not that I’ve ever heard of.”

  “But maybe if they lost one, sort of to give their systems a rest…”

  “Just what the bookies are waiting for. Why I’m still getting six and seven to one, Agni, is because Las Vegas expects the collapse to come every day, and it doesn’t. And it won’t, so long as you do your job. Understand me?”

  “Well, just so long as nobody gets harmed … or paralyzed … or somethin’ like that. I keep thinkin’, one mornin’ they’re all goin’ to be eatin’ breakfast, and then they’re all just goin’ to
get paralyzed from head to toe. That could happen too, you know.”

  “No, it couldn’t.”

  “Why not!”

  “Because I’m a scientific genius, Roland, that’s why not.”

  But, thought Roland, if you’re such a scientific genius, you smart little Jew, why don’t you use them Jewish Wheaties on the Greenbacks to make them win? Why don’t you use them on your own father’s team? Because they give people something awful, that’s why! Because one day, right out on the field, the whole damn team is going to turn purple in the face and fall down dead! I know it!

  But of course all that happened to the Ruppert Mundys from eating “the Jewish Wheaties” was that they kept on winning games—and started in giving Roland friendly tips on how to hit the ball, for as it happened, during the course of the winning streak his was the lowest batting average on the club. “You’re pressin’, kid,” said Nickname, at the pregame batting practice, “just meet the ball.” “Believe you’re droppin’ your head there, Rollie,” advised Skirnir, “keep the old bean up.” “You’re uppercuttin’ the low ones, Agni—give in the knees more.” And who said that? The dwarf, Ockatur, who barely came to Agni’s knees!

  * * *

  And what of Ulysses S. Fairsmith? Do you fans even remember the name? If not, then you are in about the same fix by this time as the players themselves.

  Where has the Mundy manager been all season long? Why isn’t he in his famous wooden rocker in the corner of the Mundy dugout, moving the defense around with the gold tip of his bamboo cane? What happened to him?

  Sadly, this: managing the Mundys on the road was worse than anything the grand old man of baseball could ever have imagined. Of course, ever since the death of Glorious Mundy in 1931, he had known his share of disappointment and frustration, beginning with the Mundy brothers selling out from under him the pennant-winning clubs of the twenties and replacing all those greats with the lowest-priced players they could find; certainly when they sold Luke the Loner to the Rustlers, no one would have thought any the less of the venerable manager had he bid Ruppert goodbye. But out of loyalty to the city of Port Ruppert and all the friends he had made there, out of loyalty to the memory of the incomparable Glorious M., Mister Fairsmith accepted without complaint what any other manager of his record would have interpreted as a cynical disregard for his professional dignity. Even his enemies, who ridiculed him behind his back for his ministerial ways, had to admire so impressive a display of character. “There is more to human life than what you read in the won-and-lost column, my good friends,” said Mister Fairsmith, and he was a manager, mind you, who had known the taste of victory and who had cherished it.

  But what happened to the Mundys in ’43 was more even than a man of his forbearance and compassion could bear to witness—or be a party to. Calamity, catastrophe, cataclysm—of course he had expected no less; he had prayed for no less, praying too that the Lord would give him the strength, the will, and the wisdom to inspire his homeless flock to prevail over every conceivable form of suffering that he expected would be visited upon them. But what shook Mister Fairsmith’s faith, what brought him at the age of eighty to the very edge of an abyss even more terrifying than the one he had glimpsed twenty years earlier in Africa, was that rather than being the most profoundly religious experience of a Christian life, shepherding the Ruppert Mundys from one P. League town to the next had turned into a farce and a travesty. Where there was to have been meaningful torment and uplifting anguish and ennobling despair, there was ridiculousness—and worse. These were the most unprofessional, undignified, immoral athletes he had ever seen gathered together on a playing field in his life—if you could even call them “athletes”! This wasn’t suffering deserving of his compassion—this was just downright disgusting behavior! Why, not even those African savages, with their filed teeth and carved flesh, not even those black devils with their hateful abominations, had sickened and revolted him as did the ’43 Ruppert Mundys!

  … And those savages had sickened him, all right. The barbaric ceremony that they had forced him to witness some twenty years earlier had been the most hideous culmination imaginable to a round-the-world trip that, till then, the American newspapers had hailed as a brilliant success, particularly those wonderful weeks proselytizing for the national pastime in Japan. With the assistance of an erudite young theology student, a nephew of his who was as adept with a fungo bat as with the language of this remote jungle tribe, Mister Fairsmith had penetrated a thousand miles into the primitive interior of Africa, the last thirty miles by foot through the jungle, with native carriers bearing upon their backs the bags of bats, gloves, and bases he had borne from America. The villagers, numbering no more than a hundred and fifty men, women, and children, lived in a circle of grass huts not so much larger than a regulation infield. Beyond the village in all directions was half a mile of high grass—beyond that, the jungle.

  Using a machete-like tool with a hooked blade that they swung two-handed—using a nice level stroke and practically no stride at all—the men of the village cleared a hundred square yards of grass for their white visitors, solemn and silent as gravediggers while they worked. Here Mister Fairsmith conducted his classes and organized the first game of baseball ever played on the continent of Africa between all-native teams. With equipment donated at their playgrounds by the schoolkids of Ruppert, and which was to be left behind with the villagers once they had mastered the skills of the game, Mister Fairsmith demonstrated the fundamentals of hitting, bunting, catching, pitching, fielding, baserunning, sliding, and umpiring. The moment he saw the men clearing the field, he realized that he had stumbled upon a tribe of great long-ball hitters. Stumbled? Or had the Lord a hand in this? They were something to watch in the batter’s box; not even their fastest pitcher could intimidate a hitter once he had dug in with his bare feet at the plate, and when they swung it was as though the bat was a blade with which they intended to cut the ball in two. No, Mister Fairsmith did not have to remind these savages, as he did his own rookies throughout spring training, to follow through on the swing. The follow-through was in their blood. They were naturals.

  The trouble erupted over sliding. Though the men were clothed only in genital pouches tied around the waist with rawhide, they did not for a moment flinch from “hitting the dirt.” To the contrary, they slid with abandon whether a slide was in order or not, with the result that by the time a runner had come round to score he was covered with dust from head to foot. No matter how sternly Mister Fairsmith would address them on this matter, they would not even remain on their feet going into first.

  It was not a decision that it pleased him to make, but at the end of the first week, he called the native men together and through the person of his young nephew announced that henceforth any runner sliding into first base would automatically be called out. He regretted having to resort to a measure of this kind, but he simply did not know how else to curb this stupid passion of theirs.

  The spears appeared from out of nowhere. One moment the tribesmen were standing around, listening in their silent, solemn way to what they must have imagined was to be an impromptu class on the finer points of the game—a review, perhaps, of the previous day’s lesson in the squeeze play—and the next they were pressing in upon him with their long weapons of warfare. And to protect himself, Mister Fairsmith, in khaki short pants, half-sleeved shirt, and pith helmet, had nothing hut a thirty-four-ounce Hillerich and Bradsby.

  Then came the wailing of the women, as horrifying a sound as Mister Fairsmith had ever heard—and he had spent his life in baseball parks, he had known crowds to cry for blood before. But not even in Aceldama, Ohio, or Brooklyn, New York, had he ever heard anything to match this. All at once the shaven-headed women were rushing from the circle of huts, some with painted babies still at their scarred breasts, and making a noise as though they were gargling with fire. Oh they were ecstatic, these savage women—tonight they would be dining out on the flesh of Christian gentlemen!

>   Incredible! Horrendous! Or—or was it not a miracle? Yes! They were going to eat him because he had decided to add to baseball a rule of his own devising, a rule that did not really exist. In their own savage African way, they were responding as would the fans at any major league park in America, if the umpire had arbitrarily suspended or altered the code that governs their national pastime. What they had come to understand in one short week was that this was no game for children he had come six thousand miles to teach them, this was no summertime diversion for adults—it was a sacred institution. And who was he, who was anyone, to forbid sliding into first when not even the Official Playing Rules Committee of the three leagues forbade it?

  The natives were right and he was wrong, and being the man he was, Sam Fairsmith told them so.

  At once the women ceased their yowling and the men fell back with their spears. And his young nephew, who had barely had voice enough to translate his uncle’s words, removed the catcher’s mask and began to undo the chest protector behind which he’d taken refuge when the tribesmen had charged Mister Fairsmith; however, like a catcher who may or may not get a turn at bat in the inning, he continued to wear the shin guards.

  Now the leader of the village, a giant of a man for whom Mister Fairsmith had high hopes as a fastballing right-handed pitcher on the style of Walter Johnson, separated himself from his fellows and stepped forward to address Mister Fairsmith in the language of his tribe. He spoke—as they all did on the rare occasions they were moved to speak—with much glowering and eye-rolling.

  Mister Fairsmith’s nephew translated. “Walter Johnson says that it pleases his people that Mister Baseball has chosen not to burden them with a regulation against sliding that would be punishable by an out.”

  “Tell Walter Johnson,” replied “Mister Baseball,” “that I shall try never again to be so mindless and foolish as to place such a burden upon them.”