by Gerald Duff
Your body will sag, it will quit looking outside where things happen on the diamond, and turn inside where the blood lives and the heart pumps and the breath comes and goes. The body will stop its working and quit living in the world, and that’s the way the body notifies you of a failure to do what you ought to’ve done.
In that second game with the Monroes, I had good stuff. It wasn’t my best like it’d been at times before, but it was working all right. I was getting folks out when I needed to, the times they hit my pitches wasn’t hurting me too bad, and the ones on my side were picking up during the times I let down. A couple of hard hit balls to the outfield ended up being outs instead of doubles or triples. Phil Pellicore at second base caught a line drive he ought not to have able to, and he doubled up a runner when he did that. We were behind, though. The Zephyrs had scored three runs by the end of the eighth inning, the Rice Birds had just two, but the Monroe pitcher had got real tired by then, so we felt real encouraged when we got a man on third and first with only one out in the top of the ninth.
You could feel something fixing to happen, and you could tell it was going to favor our side. You can’t measure that exact, but anybody that’s played baseball for a while can call up times when the air changes and all the motion slows down on the field and everything around you gets a hard edge around it that glows a little, enough for you to see it, if you’re on the field playing that game of ball.
That kind of light don’t come from sunshine or electric bulbs. It’s coming from inside the things you’re looking at.
That was happening for the Rayne Rice Birds in the top of the ninth with men on at the corners, only one out, and the shortstop coming to bat. We were about to pick up that run at third that would tie the game, then get the man at first around the bases and safe at home so we’d be ahead, and after that, no matter what happened when we made our last out of the inning, I’d get up on the mound and put three more Zephyrs down and finish them off. We’d ride back south to Rayne in the toad mobile, knowing we’d be in the playoff games with Opelousas and maybe end up the season on top in the Evangeline League.
All of us was standing up in the dugout by then, watching Mike Gonzales walk to the plate squeezing his bat and looking out at the third base coach. It was Harry Nolan.
Harry did a useful job coaching at third. He watched Dutch Bernson close as he sat in the dugout flashing signs, and he made us all get used to changing signs and paying attention when we were at bat being told what the manager wanted us to do. Signs is Harry’s livelihood was the way Dynamite Dunn put it. He dreams about signs like a starving man dreams about eating.
So when Mike Gonzales came to bat in that ninth inning situation, he knew what Dutch was likely to want and what he’d tell Harry to signal to the batter. Mike never was a long ball hitter, but he could work a pitcher, and he didn’t strike out much. He could put the bat on any given ball most of the time, too. But it was late in the game, and the Monroe pitcher was flagging a good bit. I forget his first name, but I can still see Menard up on the mound, sweat pouring off of him in that late afternoon sun, looking at his catcher and hoping to be able to get out of that last inning.
The worst thing Mike could do right then was hit in front of the runner. That could lead to a double play, and that would be the end of things with Monroe. We’d have lost both games. We’d have rode the toad mobile all the way from Rayne to Monroe and back and not got a thing out of it but sore muscles and lost sleep.
Harry was flashing signs at Mike, touching his nose, putting his hand on his head, pawing the dirt with first one foot and the other, rubbing the letters on his shirt, hollering Mike’s name, saying shortstop, shortstop, shortstop, and weaving around in the coaching box like he was fenced up with barbwire and couldn’t find a way to get out of the pen.
Mike Gonzales turned away from looking hard down at Harry jumping around at third and took his stance in the box, Menard went into his windup, and it was just then a sound started up in my head, a heavy buzz with a thin whistle somewhere behind it. That told me here it is. It’s now that it’s going to happen. And it did.
The pitch left Menard’s hand, Phil Pellicore took off for home from the good lead he’d eased into at third, and Mike stuck out his bat the way everybody is taught to do when bunting a ball. The runner from first was headed for second, but I didn’t have my eye on him. Instead I watched the ball pop up in the air from Mike Gonzales’s bat, not down into the dirt like a bunt’s supposed to do, and settle into the pitcher’s glove as he came down off the mound to field it and then throw it to the catcher for the tag of Phil Pellicore sliding into home, hoping to be safe at last. He wasn’t, though. He was out, and Mike was out, and the game was over.
There was lots of noise started up then from the Monroe crowd in the stands. All that was in my head was the little click the ball made when Mike Gonzales bunted it after getting the sign from Harry for the hit and run.
“The son-of-a-bitch bunted,” Dynamite Dunn said. “He popped up a goddamn bunt to the pitcher.”
“You noticed that, too, huh?” G.D. Squires said. “I wondered if I was the only one seen it.”
Nobody laughed at what G.D. said, and nobody said another thing but a cuss word or two. That business cut off quick, though, and by the time Mike Gonzales came walking back to the dugout holding his bat by the barrel instead of the handle, everybody had turned away from looking at the same spot where every single one of us had our eyes set not a minute before.
When something goes wrong, and it’s done and can’t be fixed no matter how much you might want it to be, you will not look into another man’s eyes to see if he knows how wrong is the deed you just witnessed. You don’t want to be part of another man’s knowing what you already know and don’t want to know. That misery ain’t for passing around so everybody can take a little piece of it to carry. You’ve got all the personal load you need, and you can’t bear taking on a speck more of that burden from somebody else’s share.
When Mike Gonzales got back to the dugout where the Rice Bird players were picking up their gear and heading for the door into the clubhouse to get dressed as fast as they could and crawl into the bus, he had something he wanted to say. He needed somebody to look him in the eye and listen to him say how it wasn’t his load to carry all by himself. He was ready to persuade whoever would look straight in his face that what had just happened couldn’t have gone any other way than it did. Just wait, he was saying by the way he was carrying his bat, shaking his head, and getting ready to talk to anybody who’d meet his gaze, just wait and give me a chance, and I will make you understand why I couldn’t have done a thing else but what I just did.
“Gemar,” he said. “You saw the sign Harry gave me, didn’t you? I know how close you watch the third base coach. You saw him put the bunt sign on.”
I kept on doing what I was doing, picking up my glove it may have been, or looking around for the jacket I wore between innings to keep my arm hot when I was pitching.
“Harry put on the bunt sign,” Mike Gonzales said. “There can’t nobody say he didn’t do that. I saw it, and all of you saw it, if you was watching. I just did what I was told to do.”
“I don’t doubt that a damn bit,” Dynamite Dunn said. “I would testify to it. You did just the exact thing somebody told you to do.”
“The bunt sign was on, goddamn it,” Mike said, rubbing his hand across his mouth like a bug had flown up into his face and he was trying to wipe off where it’d landed. Was it still around somewhere? Was it about to try to crawl in his mouth?
“It was on, all right,” Dynamite said. “Right up to the time Harry took it off.”
“He never took it off,” Mike said. “Harry never did. All of y’all, hold up your hand if you saw him take off the bunt sign.”
“This matter is not subject to popular vote,” G.D. Squires said. “We ain’t in the Louisian
a legislature. I’m done sick of hearing about it, and I’ve got things to do somewhere that ain’t here.”
“What’s that, G.D.?” somebody hollered out, wanting to talk about something else, you could tell by the way he said it.
“I got to get drunk,” G.D. said. “That’s what I got to do, and I ain’t looking forward to it.”
“Why not?”
“The means I got at my disposal to get drunk are low and sorry,” G.D. said. “But it’s a poor workman that quarrels with his tools. Let’s get on the goddamn bus, boys, and go home.”
“Y’all heard what G.D. just said,” Dutch Bernson said to us as the Rice Birds headed into the clubhouse in Monroe.
“You heard what he just said,” Dutch hollered again. “We got to get back to Rayne. Now we got us an extra game to play that we never counted on. It’s work to do, gentlemen. Let’s load up and leave.”
“We ain’t going to sleep here tonight?” Phil Pellicore said. “You mean we got to ride on that bus all the way back to Rayne before we can get to bed?”
“Yes, we do,” Dutch said. “I don’t want to hear no argument about it. We got to get ready to play Alexandria, and that’s got things all sped up. We didn’t know we’d have to think about that.”
“At least some of us didn’t,” Dynamite said. “I reckon I’ll give you that all right, Dutch. Where’s that sorry liquor you been bragging about, G.D.? I need something to put me to sleep.”
“Knock yourself in the head with a bat then,” G.D. said. “I’ll help you do it.”
31
A while later in the toad mobile Mike Gonzales sat beside me in the usual seat we took for away games, trying to get me to talk to him. I was answering every direct question he put to me, I will say.
“You still think Harry took that bunt sign off, Gemar?” Mike said again.
“Mike,” I said. “I know what you did when you popped up that bunt right back to the pitcher, and you know it, too, so don’t expect me to act like we’re talking about something real. I won’t do it no more.”
“Well, all right,” he said and sat quiet for a minute, and I let my ears pick up the regular sound of the wheels on the bus bumping over dividers between the highway slabs. Maybe I can listen to those bumps coming as regular as water running over rocks and I can lull my head into staying in that one place without dozing off. I might be able to get some rest out of doing it.
“Do you want me to tell you about why I did it?” Mike Gonzales said in a low voice not much above a whisper.
“I think I know already,” I said, “not every part of it, but all I want to know. All I can stand to know.”
“It’s about money, mainly,” Mike said. “That’s what made me do it. Needing money.”
I didn’t say anything back to that, putting my mind on the sound of the tires bumping over the asphalt between the concrete slabs of that road we were traveling.
“What I am sorry about was you having to take the loss,” Mike said. “Since it wasn’t really no lack in your pitching that made Monroe come out ahead. You wasn’t in it.”
“I was in it, all right,” I said. “Don’t fool yourself none about that.”
“It’s never going to bother you in no lasting way, Gemar,” he said. “Nobody’s ever going to lay it on you. See, they all know how you pitch and how you hit. That’s all set up and proved for good. You already done that and showed folks where you belong. Besides, all it just means is we got to play one more game than we thought we had to. That ain’t nothing to worry about.”
“You ever stepped up on a mound of dirt with a ball in your hand you got to offer up to let somebody take a lick at it with a bat?” I said.
“No, but hell. You was born to do that. I wasn’t.”
“There ain’t nobody born to play baseball, and do it right,” I said. “You got to make yourself up to be a man able to do it.”
“That’s the difference between me and you. Somebody else made me up. I didn’t have no choice in the matter. I ain’t been give no selection to choose from.”
I decided to give Mike the room he was asking for, maybe let him talk until he quit. “What you mean by saying you didn’t make yourself up? You think I did? Or anybody else riding in this toad mobile had anything to do with it?”
“Here’s what I mean, Gemar,” Mike said, his voice lifting a little as he started off telling his story. “They call me a Cuban, and I call myself that, too. What do you call yourself?”
“A left-handed pitcher. Bat from either side of the plate, though, according to who I’m facing. I taught myself how to do that.”
“That ain’t all you call yourself, and you know what I mean. Now, if I call myself a Cuban, that means they can let me play ball in the Evangeline League, long as I go along and get along. They don’t have to think about what I am. I can joke about being a redbone, and I am that. But most folks don’t make no distinction between a redbone and a colored man, unless it’s to their benefit.”
“I know that, and they sure don’t call me anything but what I am. I don’t need to get into that name-calling business, though, do I?’
“No,” Mike said. “See, but being an Indian now, that don’t hold you back none like it will me if they have to call me a colored man. You can play ball anywhere you’re good enough to do it. I can’t do that. I got to stay low level, keep it minor. Raise my head high enough for folks to have to notice it, and I got to leave wherever I am.”
“Long as you play a good game at shortstop, they ain’t going to make you quit,” I said. “You ought to keep your mind set on that.”
“I might have to leave the Evangeline League any minute, Gemar. And that’s why I got to get hold of all I can while I’m still in a spot where I can get at it. I got to think ahead. You don’t have to do that. And that’s why if somebody puts me where I can grab at some money, I got to do it right now. I got to think about myself, Chief Batiste.”
“I don’t like to be called that name, especially by people that know me.”
“Nobody knows you. And nobody knows me. They know what you are, and they know what I am, for damn sure. But that ain’t the same thing. Whenever it gets to the place where they got to admit to somebody what I am, they got to kick my ass out. But that ain’t so for you. And there’s the difference. You just an Indian and that’s good enough to let you hang around. Me, I’m a nigger saying I’m a Cuban and claiming I’m a redbone. You ain’t got that trouble, Gemar.”
That was the way the talks me and Mike had on that subject always went, and generally one of them sessions would stop about the time Mike got to the place where he called himself a nigger. This time, though, it was different between me and Mike. Before when he’d talk like that to me, I’d always just tell myself he was trying to do himself some good in his mind. Just keep my mouth shut and get along.
Now it was different, after what I’d seen Mike do in the last inning of that game against Monroe. Something real had happened, outside in the world and not just inside Mike’s head where he was the only one who had to live there. He’d brought his head problem onto the diamond. Something hadn’t been kept outside them lines that ought to have stayed in its true place. He’d let it slip over to the wrong side.
“It’s different kinds of trouble, shortstop,” I said. “I can look at you and tell what color you are by doing that, and you can do the same when you look at me. Anybody can do that. You’re a nigger. I’m a flathead Indian supposed to be carrying a tomahawk and wearing a bonnet and maybe about to go on the warpath. I’m a hang-around-the-fort. But you know what? On the baseball diamond, that don’t mean shit to nobody. When you claim you missed a sign from the third base coach and you didn’t, now that’s the difference, no matter what color you are.”
“You see things too simple, pitcher,” Mike said. “See, the way I figure it, as soon as
some white bastard thinks about me being a nigger, that means I can do anything I have to do to get a hold of some of them dollars the white man has hogged all to himself.”
“It don’t matter to me about money and how you get it,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the dark woods outside the lights of the bus. “I don’t judge you on that.”
“Well, we’re okay then. We see it the same way.”
“I ain’t finished talking, but I’m about to be,” I said. “Here’s the rest of it. The way a man plays baseball, the way he tries to hit what the pitcher’s trying to get by him, and the way he tries to stop the other ones from getting home when he’s out in the field, that’s the only way baseball will judge you. That’s the rule for deciding what’s done right and what’s done wrong. It’s been fixed like that since the game started up, from then to now, since the People have been playing it. You can hold up what you done against that rule and measure how you played it. You can see what’s true and what’s done right and what matters, and that’s what baseball will tell you. Go against that, and there ain’t no way you can ever be redeemed. You ain’t never going to be pure like a bird. You’re done with. You’re over. You’re out. Go sit on the bench, look down at the rest of the trash lying on the ground in front of you, and study that.”
I looked outside the bus window, as though I’d be able to see something in the dark, but all that came back at me was the reflection of my face in the glass. I didn’t much want to look at that, so I closed my eyes and acted like I was sleeping. I wasn’t, though, and I stayed awake until I saw the sun coming up over the flat country and the rice fields covered with water early in the morning as we made it into Rayne, Louisiana.
32
Catchers like to talk more than anybody else on a ball team. These days, whenever the folks in the rest home wheel me down the hall and put me in front of the TV set so I can watch what they think I want to, a ball game on a screen, I always expect that at least one of them commentators talking on the program will be a busted-up old catcher. It’s very seldom you hear an old pitcher telling about what’s going on in a game on TV, and I have yet to see a retired outfielder taking care of that job. What the TV people want is somebody willing to talk a mile a minute during the whole time the game is on the air, and that’s why they end up hiring catchers to do it.
