The Dead Pull Hitter

by Alison Gordon

  “I’m proud as can be of all my boys. If they’re looking for a most valuable player on this team, they’re not going to be able to give away a car. It’s gonna have to be a bus, because every man on this team deserves it. That’s what we are, a team. Each man makes his contribution, even on the bench, and I know that every one of them is pulling for everyone else.”

  I wasn’t sure whether I was going to get the giggles or throw up, so I started for the press box. Christopher Morris joined me.

  “The ol’ philosopher’s in good form today.”

  “I think I’ve heard it all before.”

  “Who hasn’t? Let’s get some lunch.”

  Over lukewarm scrambled eggs and grey sausages, I told Christopher about my conversation with Thorson.

  “Either Craven’s a good bluffer or Thorson hasn’t communicated with him very well. He seemed pretty calm about it last night.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t play poker with the man. They going to get this game in today?”

  “Probably. They can suck the water off this field in half an hour. One blessing of artificial turf, unless you happen to be a fan sitting in the rain. They never call games around here unless it’s really pouring.”

  When we went into the press box, the Zamboni was indeed vacuuming the outfield while the ground crew took the tarpaulin off the infield. Players were playing catch in front of the dugouts, stretching, and running short sprints.

  “The weather office says we’re clear for three hours,” said Moose Greer.

  “Great. Just call down to the clubhouse and tell them to play fast.”

  The press box was filling up, as were the stands. The fans filing down the aisles were crazy with anticipation. Some of the younger ones had painted their faces blue and white and waved grotesque giant foam fingers in the air and yelled stuff about being number one. The older fans were more sedate, some positively grim. They weren’t going to celebrate prematurely. The anthems were sung by a local barbershop quartet. It was rumoured that Ted Ferguson was having an affair with their publicist, so they sang the anthems a lot. We stood in the press box, continuing our conversations out of the sides of our mouths, anxious to get back to our keyboards. I was in my seat before the last “stand on guard” had finished reverberating.

  “Got your game face on, Henry?” asked Jeff Glebe, the lead columnist on the Planet, wedging his long legs under the counter that served as a desk.

  “Hey, I came to watch,” I said, “and I’m planning to give it 110 percent. I just hope I can stay within myself.”

  The Titans ran on the field as the crowd roared. I focused my binoculars on each one in turn.

  Tiny Washington was the first out of the dugout, waving to the crowd as he trotted to first base. Alex Jones was next, rookie nerves making his eyes huge. Then Stinger Swain, glowering fiercely. Billy Wise went to his place at shortstop calmly and stood grooming the dirt with his spikes.

  The outfielders ran out together, then split three ways, like an aerobatics team in mid-display. Preacher Kelsey looked determined as he went to left field, phlegmatic David Sloane jogged to centre field as if he was out for a Sunday run in the park. Eddie Carter covered his nerves with a deceptive exuberance, detouring to chat with Washington, the first-base umpire, and Jones before getting to right field, where he exchanged quips with the fans in the stands.

  After Gloves Gardiner strolled to his station behind home plate, the captain on the bridge of his ship, Steve Thorson came out of the runway and sprinted to the mound. The fans were on their feet cheering, and the players in the dugout joined the applause.

  “Hardly exciting at all, eh, kid?”

  Jeff is one of the few sportswriters I know who admits to enjoyment of the moment.

  Thorson’s first pitch was a strike, a slider that barely nicked the inside corner. I sensed relief all over the stadium. Thorson had it.

  Unfortunately, Ron Haskell, the Red Sox leadoff hitter, had it, too. He lashed a single to right field and promptly stole second.

  Thorson picked up the resin bag just so he could throw it down in disgust. He glared at Gloves, even though Haskell had stolen the base on his delivery. There wasn’t a catcher in baseball who could have thrown Haskell out with the lead he had taken.

  Thorson’s next pitch almost went by Gardiner, and the crowd began to stir uneasily. The third pitch was high, and Gardiner ran to the mound. The two consulted briefly and angrily. Gloves does not like being shown up. With a three and one count, I half expected them to walk Teddy Amaro to set up a double play, but Thorson came back with a fastball across the heart of the plate, which Amaro watched, and followed it with a changeup Amaro flailed at for the third strike.

  I didn’t know the next player. Randy Slaughter was playing first in place of Dave Marsden, who had a bad knee. The media notes said he’d just been called up three days earlier. He was a nineteen-year-old who had never played higher than Double A ball. He hailed from Needle’s Eye, Virginia.

  “Now there’s a thriving metropolis for you.”

  “I bet the whole town’s watching the game,” Jeff said. “All four of them.”

  “Hey, let’s not knock small towns,” Moose said. “I have a ballpark named after me in Vulture Gulch.”

  “Vulture Gulch? Where the hell is Vulture Gulch?”

  “It’s hard by Rooster Creek, down the pike from Bob’s Corner.”

  “You Yanks come up with some great names, Moose.”

  “Vulture Gulch is funnier than South Porcupine? Well, excuuuse me.”

  In the meantime, Mr. Needle’s Eye had singled to left field. Kelsey’s throw held Haskell at third, but with one out, there were a lot of ways he could score. It got very quiet in the stadium.

  Bobby Johnson was the designated hitter. He was an arrogant jerk, a high-priced free agent who thought he was worth the money he was paid. Worse, he was a great hitter. I’d seen him win a lot of games.

  The fans booed. Johnson dug in and gazed impassively at Thorson. It was a meeting of massive egos. I wasn’t sure which of them I liked less. Under the circumstances, I had to root for Thorson.

  “Why are they booing? They’ll just get him mad.”

  Thorson’s first pitch brushed Johnson back. He glared at the mound and defiantly dug in again. The second pitch was at his throat. Here was the intimidation implicit in the game, laid out naked and ugly for all the world to see.

  When Thorson’s third pitch was in exactly the same place, the fans grew quiet. Johnson stepped back into the box and swung his bat gently, finishing the motion by pointing it at Thorson’s head.

  Thorson took the sign from Gardiner impatiently.

  “He’s got to walk him,” Glebe muttered. “He can’t pitch to him now.”

  “There’s no way he’s going to back down.”

  The next pitch was a fastball right down the middle. Johnson swung so hard he fell to one knee, missing the ball entirely, and the bat flew out of his hand, towards the mound. Thorson waited for Johnson to walk to the mound to retrieve it, then picked it up and poked him in the chest with it.

  This was getting exciting.

  The next pitch was a slider that nicked the outside corner for a called strike. Max Leonard gave the call a little bit extra as Johnson glowered at him in disbelief.

  Some fans were on their feet clapping rhythmically as Thorson set again.

  “I don’t believe this,” Glebe said.

  Thorson then threw the hardest pitch I’d ever seen him throw. He completely overpowered Johnson, whose swing missed the ball by a foot. The umpire rung him up emphatically.

  “Holy shit,” said Jeff. I concurred.

  Right fielder Barry Redmond came to the plate without much enthusiasm and popped up the first pitch. He slammed his bat down in disgust and walked off the field without watching Gardiner catch it to end the half inning.<
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  The game never got easier. It was still scoreless by the bottom of the seventh. Eddie Carter led off. The Red Sox pitcher was Harry Grimes, a crafty old veteran who threw an assortment of junk that looked as if I could hit it, and he made the Titans look like chumps. Carter is what’s known in the game as an aggressive hitter—a player so impatient he swings at everything—and had twice grounded out on bad pitches.

  He had obviously decided to wait the pitcher out this time. Grimes started him off with big lazy curveball that missed outside. Carter was twitching with the effort not to swing at it. The next pitch was a strike, followed by two balls. The fifth pitch was what Grimes laughingly referred to as his fastball, motoring right in there at about seventy-five miles an hour.

  That was the first of seven pitches Carter fouled off, protecting the plate and waiting for his chance. It was a gutsy performance, and he was rewarded for it. The thirteenth pitch was in the dirt, and Grimes kicked angrily at the rubber as Carter sprinted to first.

  Next up was Alex Jones, who was batting .312, but without much power. He was batting left against the right-handed Grimes and bounced the first pitch directly at the second baseman for a routine double play. A groan ran around the ballpark, with a scattering of boos.

  David Sloane singled up the middle to keep it alive.

  As Tiny Washington walked to the plate, swinging his bat thoughtfully, Greer said, “Bet you five it’s out of here.”

  “I never bet against my heart, Moose. You know that.”

  I liked Washington’s chances against Grimes. He had doubled to lead off the second inning, but no one could score him. He had struck out since then.

  He lined the third pitch into deep right field. I thought it was gone, as did most of the fans, but it hit the fence. Redmond caught it on one bounce for a double. Sloane went to third.

  Orca Elliott was the left-handed designated hitter. As he approached the plate, Marty Hogan came out of the first-base dugout to talk to Grimes and Dick Peel, the catcher. It was a brief conversation. When Peel got back behind the plate, he raised four fingers in the air, signalling the intentional walk.

  “Playing the percentages,” Glebe grunted. “He wants to pitch to the right-hander.”

  Joe Kelsey was on deck, watching carefully as Grimes threw four balls outside the strike zone. Peel almost missed the last one, jumping a foot off the ground.

  “I’d love to see Preacher park this one,” I said. “Just so Thorson would have to thank him.”

  The din was unbelievable. Toronto fans are notorious for their quietness, but this crowd was something else. I could see normally staid people I knew in the crowd, standing and stamping and clapping, screaming themselves hoarse.

  The first pitch was a called strike. The second was inside and high. The third was outside and low. The fourth was a terrible mistake, right where Kelsey wanted it, and he hit a ball that was gone the minute it left his bat, still rising when it went over the left-field fence.

  And all the screaming stopped. There was an instant, a heartbeat of silence when he hit it, a great collective gasp, followed immediately by noise that made what had gone before sound like a murmur, while Kelsey circled the bases.

  I am a sucker for moments of triumph. I can watch Sunday afternoon bowling and get a lump in my throat when one lout from Des Moines beats another, so I was fairly unglued by Kelsey’s home run. Embarrassed, I bent my head to my blurry keyboard and began to write.

  Around me, the Boston writers were trashing Hogan for walking Elliott and the Toronto writers were wondering how Thorson planned to blow this lead. Moose looked at me, then winked.

  On the field, Harry Grimes was impassive, The Titans who had mobbed Kelsey when he came off the field sat back down. To show their glee would be an uncalled-for slap in the ego for the Red Sox, but the excitement was obvious. They were chattering among themselves and most of them found reason to move around: to the water cooler for a drink, to the bat rack to check equipment, up the runway for a nervous pee.

  Thorson sat almost out of sight in the corner of the dugout, with his jacket on his right arm. He crossed and uncrossed his legs, adjusted his jock and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. When Swain grounded out to the first baseman, he got up, dropped his jacket, grabbed his glove, and ran to the mound, eager to get it over with.

  Suddenly there was a shout from the back row of the press box. Sidney, Moose’s assistant, was standing with a telephone held to his ear and a grin all over his face.

  “Tommy Cole just hit a three-run homer. It’s 5–3, Cleveland.”

  “What inning?” Greer asked.

  “Bottom of the eighth.”

  “Don’t hang up that phone.”

  Six outs to go. Thorson got the first three in a row, on a groundout to short, pop to third, and a strikeout. The crowd, still standing after Kelsey’s home run, cheered every pitch. The celebrations had begun, and they were impatient for the game to end.

  They kept cheering when Gloves Gardiner led off with a walk and Owl Wise followed with a single to short right. They booed when Marty Hogan trudged out of the visiting dugout to pull Harry Grimes from the game. He signalled, too late, for his ace reliever, Matt Harata, the Hawaiian left-hander with the ninety-three-mile-an-hour fastball. After eight innings of Grimes’s slow stuff, it would be hard for the hitters to adjust.

  Sure enough, Eddie Carter grounded into a double play, but Jones scored Wise from third with a single to left. David Sloane struck out.

  And Sidney hung up the phone with a bang.

  “It’s over! Indians won!”

  “It’s going to get weird out, real soon,” said Jeff.

  “Look at the fans!”

  As the Titans took the field for the ninth inning, the scoreboard flashed the score from Cleveland. Pandemonium. Security guards and policemen moved to the bottom of each aisle. They were as excited as anyone else, and when the fans shouted at them to get out of the way, they hunkered down, grinning.

  Thorson’s job wasn’t easy. He had to face the meat of the Red Sox order, starting with Teddy Amaro, the number-two hitter. He hit a line drive right at Thorson, who made the catch in self-defence.

  Young Randy Slaughter topped a grounder to Billy Wise, who flipped it to Tiny Washington. Two out. Bobby Johnson, who didn’t want to be the last out, marched angrily to the plate, pumped up by the booing all around him.

  When he hit the first pitch hard and high to left field, Preacher Kelsey fairly danced with joy at the chance to catch the ball. He did it exuberantly, but with both hands, then grabbed it and pumped it in the air as Gardiner and Thorson, who had both frozen to watch the catch, met halfway to the mound in an embrace, soon to be swamped by the rest of the players as the dugout emptied.

  I put the binoculars on Preacher as he did some fancy broken-field running through the fans who were streaming onto the field. He lost his cap on the way but didn’t let go of the ball, which he gave to Thorson.

  Thorson put his arm around Kelsey’s shoulder and then, surprisingly, handed the ball back. Then tears blurred my eyes again, and I got up and joined the rest of the reporters heading for the elevator.

  Moose hugged me.

  “Holy fuck. They did it.”

  Chapter 9

  We ran down the corridor to the clubhouse, with the sound of the stamping, shouting fans booming and echoing overhead. As I walked through the doors, I was hit by the first champagne shower. The sickeningly sweet Ontario bubbly stung my eyes terribly. When I could see again, Bony Costello was holding the now empty bottle and grinning, his own uniform soaked, his hair hanging in his eyes.

  “Gotcha,” he said, then hugged me and lifted me off my feet. It was like being mauled by a bear, but not altogether unpleasant. When he dropped me, I retrieved as much dignity as I could, given that I was drenched with wine, and set off in search of Joe Kelsey.

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bsp; He was on the platform that had been set up by the NBC crew, waiting with Thorson and Ted Ferguson while Bert Nelson interviewed Red O’Brien. The other players watched, swigging champagne from the bottles and whooping with joy, already drunk with happiness.

  Alex Jones had five bottles stashed at his locker. He opened them, one at a time, and made forays into the room to douse his teammates. When Nelson turned his microphone to Ferguson, it was Jones who jumped on the platform and christened the pair. I took snide satisfaction in watching Ferguson’s expensive ultra-suede jacket soak up the wine.

  There was no point in taking notes while they spouted platitudes on the stand. I went looking for comment from some of the lesser stars.

  I found Gloves Gardiner sitting in front of his locker, tears streaming down his face.

  “I’ve got twelve years in this game, and I’ve never even come close,” he said. “I was afraid I never would.”

  “It was a great game.”

  “I’m so proud of all the guys. Steve was awesome.”

  “You and he almost got into it in the first inning. What was that about?”

  “I was just reminding him that we are all in this together,” Gardiner said, smiling tightly. “But that’s all history now. Now we have to look ahead to the playoffs.”

  “What about the A’s? Are you thinking about them yet?”

  “Yeah, a bit. Oakland is a tough team, but we had a good record against them during the season, and in our division they would have finished fourth. This was the big one to win.”

  I could see that Kelsey was finished with the television interviews, so I left with Gloves and fought my way to Joe’s locker.

  There was such a mob I couldn’t even see him or hear a word he said until Tiny Washington, at the next locker, pulled his stool out for me to stand on. I tried shouting questions, but it was no use. I stood on my perch and just watched for a moment.

  Plastic sheets had been taped over all the lockers to protect the players’ clothes. The clubhouse was as crowded as the Eaton’s Boxing Day sale, a happy, jostling mass of players, reporters, and hangers-on.