The New York

by Bill Branger

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a historic moment for major league baseball. We wish to help our government in its quest to pursue a rational foreign policy in a new world age,” George began, reading from a paper.

  This set the crowd buzzing. It was exactly the way I felt when George first asked me if I spoke Spanish. I’m sure some of the reporters were hoping that George was about to deep-six himself or reveal he wore ladies’ underwear. I was hoping.

  “In full cooperation with the State Department, we are going to be the first in opening a new bridge to our one-time friend and long-time enemy. I am announcing the end of the cold war in Latin America.”

  This is pure George, if you’ve never heard him. He?s like an ocean liner that sails into a dock hard and insists the dock was in the wrong place.

  “This spring, we will introduce the American public to the most exciting concept ever in baseball history,” he rambled on, “The public, the ordinary fan, has complained for years that baseball has become too high-priced for the ordinary fan, and I have listened to the man in the street and I agree with him wholeheartedly. We don’t need million-dollar ball players to play million-dollar baseball What we need are people whose love for the game transcends mere money. We don’t need more bloodsucking agents sending ticket prices soaring. So, the first thing I want to announce is a ten percent reduction starting next April in ticket and season ticket prices at Yankee Stadium in the Greatest City in the World.” He paused for effect, and then, like he was there, said, “New York!” This does not get much of a response in the rest of the country, but George wouldn’t know that. On the other hand, he was reducing ticket prices. No one ever did that.

  “Mr. Bremenhaven,” a reporter began.

  “Just shut up a second, willya? Gimme a chance to finish,” George said.

  He went on, “Through the offices of our State Department and in negotiation with the government of Cuba, New York next year will have the most exciting baseball team since the 1927 Yankees. I am bringing to this country for the first time in decades the best and brightest of the young men who play baseball in Cuba, the greatest baseball nation in the world after our own great nation. This is not about ideologies but about sports. Although I trust that those young Cubans will see the wonders of America and the wonders of New York and be able to go back home next fall with stories to tell their grandchildren about America.”

  Man, the guy was on a roll, he was piling up nonsense on nonsense the way he did when he really believed in something. This seems to be a common trait among true believers.

  “The New York Yankees organization is committed to excellence, no matter how much it costs. We are committed to the common fan and the price he has to pay. We are committed to global peace and the diplomatic resolution of our differences. We are committed to winning the American League pennant, not in five years or three years or someday soon, but next year! We are committed to bringing together on one team the best and the brightest, the finest and fairest, of what everyone knows is the baseball-lovingest nation in the world except for our own. Now, are there questions?”

  Only about ten million. I love it when I see a bunch of reporters step on one another’s lines trying to be first. Sort of like watching people waiting at a luggage carousel after a five-hour coast-to-coaster that came in ten minutes after midnight.

  George was ready. He was really enjoying it. Yes, he said, he was committed and he was getting rid of his old team not to save money but to commit to excellence. Guy sounded like a teacher I had once.

  “How can we deal with Cuba, when we don’t have diplomatic relations with Cuba?”

  “We are not dealing with Cuba directly. We are dealing with third parties in Mexico City, our allies in the great North American Free Trade Association. That’s what this is about. About a day when our children will be able to walk the streets of Havana —”

  “They can’t walk the streets of Miami,” said a smart-ass from Newsday.

  “I don’t care about Miami, I care about the Greatest City in the World,” George said, Hushing.

  “Who authorized this?” said the Daily News,

  “I authorized this,” George said, seizing the mantle of government. “I own the Yankees.”

  “I mean, who says we can deal with Cuba?”

  “Didn’t you hear anything, you fucking asshole? I said we’re dealing with Mexico.”

  “For Cuban ball players.”

  “Are you a racist?” George said.

  “Are you crazy?” the Daily News responded.

  So it went on and on and the questions got narrower and narrower and I was sort of half-dozing, standing there with a paper cup of coffee in my hand.

  “How will you communicate with all these players, who you say don’t even speak English?”

  It was the guy from the Los Angeles Times. It was a smirky question. The New York Daily News guy had asked the same thing before but in a different, furious way that just made George go off the deep end and answer it with no answer at all. The L.A. guy didn’t really care, but everyone likes to watch a train wreck as long as he isn’t in it.

  “I’m glad you asked. Standing over there with that cup of coffee — heh, I hope it’s coffee — heh heh — is the man to answer your questions, because I want to announce that I have re-signed my star reliever Ryan Shawn, a good old boy from Texas who has been with the Yankee organization for the past eleven years. You want to answer him, Ryan?”

  No, you miserable son of a bitch, you sandbagging sack of shit. I spilled some coffee on the front of my slacks.

  The press turned like the Marine Corps band doing a right wheel. It was that precise.

  I was certainly the center of attention at that moment and I hated it.

  “Uh,” I began.

  Now, ball players learn how to talk to the sports press right off. All you say is stuff like “We can do better” and “Team has no / in it” and “I’ve been working my way out of this thing” — crap that doesn’t mean anything. But this press was going to be vicious no matter what I said.

  “Uh, George there, uh, Mr. Bremenhaven, he wants me to help translate on the field.”

  “Do you speak Spanish?” asked the Kansas City Star guy, the same son of a bitch who once said I was a beanball hitman just because I plonked the first baseman on the Royals. Cheerleading son of a bitch.

  “Well, it’d be a little hard to translate on the field if I didn’t, wouldn’t it?”

  That was the wrong thing to say. The rule is that the press gang can smart-mouth you but you can’t do the same back.

  “What I meant was,” the snot from K.C. said, “the Cubans speak a form of Castilian Spanish, affected somewhat, with a tendency to lisp. This is attributed to the affectation of the upper classes in Spain to speak in the manner of Philip the Second, who lisped badly. So what I meant was, there’s Spanish and there’s Spanish. Just because you understand Mexicans doesn’t mean you’d understand Castilians.”

  “Shit, pardner, I don’t even understand you,” I said. Now that got a laugh because it had to and there are a few press guys, here and there, who still got a sense of humor. But I was going to pay for it, I knew it.

  “How do you feel about dealing with Communists?”

  “I dunno, I never have.”

  “But you’re going to. Do you feel you’re betraying your fellow baseball players?”

  “Some of them are Communists.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Sy Edelman with Kansas City, for one,” I said, naming the first baseman I had beaned long ago.

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “It’s why I beaned him,” I said. “Doin’ my bit.” But it was wrong, what I was saying. I was trying to keep it light, but these boys who write about sports, they want everything heavy. Who gives a shit who’s a Communist? There are no atheists on pitcher’s mounds. Or something.

  I got it two or three times in a row about didn’t I feel I betrayed my old teammates by staying
and how long did I know about this plan, and was I a Democrat or Republican. Bam, bam, bam, like coming in to do long relief in the fifth and losing the lead on doubles to three sorry-ass hitters at the bottom of the lineup. Makes you want to throw up. About the only thing they didn’t ask me was how long my dong was.

  Finally, to save myself, I did the only thing I could think of: I headed for the tunnel, which in this case was the double door at the back of the conference room. I even dropped my cup of coffee, which, thank God, was coffee or some writer would have had it analyzed to see if I was drunk at eleven in the morning.

  Leaving was also the wrong thing to do because it looked like I was evading questions. I was, but not for the reasons they thought. Hell, I was never so good that I had to face the high-profile media. Just drop in a quote like “I was lucky out there today” every now and then. They scared hell out of me, was all. I looked back once and saw George up there, having the time of his life watching me get it.

  Judas goat.

  I needed to call Charlene real bad and cry in her beer. I needed to see what I could do next to get myself out of this.

  10

  I didn’t think my picture in the Houston Post looked very flattering. It showed me spilling my coffee, and the headline said something about Texas Boy Betrays Baseball for Castro, or something along those lines.

  I saw the paper the next day because I hightailed it out of the Century Plaza right after George sandbagged me. George didn’t hightail it anywhere. The son of a bitch enjoyed the attention. He was on Nightline with old Ted Koppel that night and, since he was in Los Angeles anyway, he went on the Jay Leno show. He was on TV more than anyone since Bill Clinton explained Gennifer Flowers.

  He was wonderful.

  You and I know that George is a shit, a right-wing money-grubbing bastard who probably steals from orphans, but he was standing there with an American lag on his lapel, talking about giving honest and hardworking Cubans a chance to sample true Western-style democracy. He was doing it all for the good of the game and for the good of the common fan. He kept saying ticket prices were going down at Yankee Stadium next year. He’d save ninety percent on his payroll and end up cutting ticket prices ten percent but never confuse the press with real numbers, I’ve learned,

  The light back from L.A. to Texas is semi-short, but it seemed long to me. I was in a slinking mood. I slunk away from the stewardesses when they asked me if I wanted anything, and when we landed, I slunk into the city. Felt like I was ashamed of something. I took the cab to Charlene’s apartment. Damned if she wasn’t out again. She was starting to make a habit of being out, and I was out of sorts about it. So I walked around a while and then got another cab back to the Longhorn Arms and found my car. Then I did what Texans do when they want to pace a bit: I drove like a bat out of hell.

  Went out of the city headed toward Galveston. When you’re feeling down and dirty in Houston, you head for Galveston. The road was made for roadhouses and pickup tracks in the parking lots. Found me a few. Played some Willie, then some Waylon, thought about busting George in the chops, thought about where Charlene was. It was a cool night and I had the windows open and felt the breeze slapping me in the face. Willie said not to grow up to be cowboys and Waylon said he was the highwayman. That made me feel better and better. Then I ended up at a roadhouse where everyone wore a cowboy hat, even the girls. I was the only one dressed funny — Eastern-looking funny — and I was so full of my own thoughts that I didn’t realize it.

  People were semi-polite and gave me room at the bar. I drank a bottle of beer and then another one. They had the country music channel on the big screen and they were running an old tape of the Judds. I watched and listened and then went out to call Charlene on the pay phone. This time I got her. Asked her where she’d been and she said it was none of my business. Then she asked me where I was and I told her the truth, which was I wasn’t exactly sure, but it was someplace on the road to Galveston.

  Then she said she saw me on television on the news and it had made her sick.

  And then she said I should hurry home.

  It was like morning coming up and I wasn’t hung over, just the sound of her voice made it better. Hurry home. I hurried right along.

  So we watched Ted Koppel together that night and the next morning, she went out and got the papers, even the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal Imagine, they had stories, too. Well, maybe the Times you could understand, the team being in New York and all. But the Journal did this story about the economic impact on a breakthrough with Cuba, a lot of stuff I didn’t understand and I suspect the writer didn’t understand either.

  As I said, I didn’t look good in the Houston Post

  “Makes me look like a fool,” I said to Charlene.

  “Honey, this is just starting.”

  We turned on the TV and there was old George, still at it, on the “Today Show” with Bryant Gumbel. Son of a bitch might be old and Ml of gout, but he had legs. Made it on the red-eye all the way across the country and he looked as fresh as a morning meadow.

  “… I think a lot of credit has to go to Ryan Shawn for volunteering to help our new team make the transition from being the best in Cuba to the best in the American League,” George was saying. “This is a great step toward world peace and it starts with baseball. Imagine that, Bryant.”

  I spilled my coffee for the second time in twenty-four hours.

  Charlene said “Wipe it up” absentmindedly, watching TV. I went in the kitchen and got a paper towel and wiped the rug until the dark stain was a dry dark stain.

  “You’d better stay here. I can go over and get your clothes from the Longhorn Arms.”

  “Why would you have to do that?”

  “Ryan, this here is the tip of the iceberg. They’re gonna be camping out on you over there, the media. You didn’t seem to handle yourself too well yesterday, and I don’t expect you took a Dale Carnegie course since then. So I just figure I could give you a little breathing room.”

  “I don’t need to hide behind no woman’s skirt,” I said.

  She giggled. “Not when you’re wearing her pink fluffy robe.”

  Damn. You can never get sympathy from a woman unless it’s to her advantage to give it. Kindness, yes. Women deal in kindness as an everyday thing. But sympathy, no.

  I marched off to the bathroom and took a long, soapy shower. 1 had brought my bag, the one I took to Los Angeles, and I shaved and changed underclothes and socks. Then I slipped into my jeans and a fresh polo shirt and went out to the front room of Charlene’s place. She was sitting there on the couch watching “Good Morning America” where a guy named Orestes Montez was denouncing George Bremenhaven.

  “The Cuban community of Miami has devoted itself to bringing true democracy back to our native land, and now this baseball owner, for selfish reasons, has stabbed us in the back,” is some of what Orestes was saying. I didn’t want to hear any more. I kissed Charlene on the forehead. She looked up.

  “You going to the Longhorn Arms?” she said.

  “I ain’t got no reason not to. I ain’t done nothing wrong,” I said.

  “That don’t matter, what you did. I read this story in the Post and you come across as halfway a Communist and halfway Benedict Arnold in a cowboy hat.”

  “That’s just a newspaper, Charlene, it don’t mean the end of the world.”

  “Watch yourself the next time you go into a Billy Bob Bar, make sure someone don’t crack your skull with a bottle of Bud.”

  “You’re exaggerating, Charlene. Anyway it’s football season and folks in Texas don’t get that riled up about baseball.”

  “They get riled up about Mexicans coming up to take their jobs away from them,” she said.

  “These are Cubans. For Christ’s sake, Charlene, can’t you even tell the difference? Ain’t taking no shitkicker’s job anyway, this is just about baseball players.”

  “When you were washing your sins away in the bathroom, they had the head of
the player’s union on ‘Today.’ He said you sold out your teammates and the entire American League.”

  “He’s as full of shit as a Christmas goose,” I said. “George was gonna get rid of his payroll one way or another, like that fella did down in San Diego not that many years ago.”

  “You think ball players are overpaid?”

  “‘Course I do, but I’m taking as long as they’re giving. Man’s worth what someone is willing to pay him.”

  “You are going to have a lonely life next season. At home and on the road,” Charlene said.

  “Well, I wasn’t expecting any sympathy from you.”

  “Good, ‘cause I ain’t in the sympathy business. I might have been if you’d gone off back to New York at Thanksgiving and popped George Bremenhaven like you said you were gonna do, but you didn’t, so you’ve made your bed and now you’re stuck in it.”

  “Charlene, you really think I should’ve turned down $625,000, which is enough money to set us up in the business of our choosing? This ain’t gonna last two-three days.”

  “Honey, sometimes I think you’re about half-smart and sometimes you’re dumber than a sack of oats. It’s the sack of oats I’m thinking of now. This ain’t gonna end, not a week, not a month from now. George Bremenhaven picked his chump right, if you ask me.”

  “Well, I didn’t, Charlene,” I said. It was a pretty weak comeback but that’s because I had started out looking for sympathy when there was none to be had. Men are always making that mistake.

  “Fine, Ryan Patrick. You go on home now and get the shit beat out of you like I said it was gonna happen, because it will. You go on. I don’t need your trouble when you don’t have the brains to do any different. I see it now. Thank God we didn’t have children — I’d keep wondering which one took after your stupid side.”

  That did it.

  I was out of there and stomping down the hall and taking the stairs to the parking lot without waiting for the elevator. Then I saw the Channel 7 van across the street with the antenna dish on top and something that looked like an automatic weapon sticking out of it. I didn’t care. I got in my Buick Park Avenue and sent it into reverse so hard I took 10,000 miles off my 50,000-mile tires in two seconds. Then into forward and damned near plowed into the side of the van getting out of there.