by Rick Wilber
“Pull your jock up and get out to first,” said Lavagetto, the manager. He spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the sod next to the end of the dugout. “Señor Fidel Castro welcomes you to the bigs.”
2
The Senators lost 7—1. Castro pitched nine innings, allowed four hits, struck out ten. George fanned three times. In the sixth, he let a low throw get by him; the runner ended up on third, and the Giants followed with four unearned runs.
In the locker room, his teammates avoided him. Nobody had played well, but George knew they had him pegged as a choker. Lavagetto came through with a few words of encouragement. “We’ll get 'em tomorrow,” he said. George expected the manager to yank him for somebody who at least wouldn’t cost them runs on defense. When he left without saying anything, George was grateful to him for at least letting him go another night before benching him.
Barbara and the boys had been in the stands, but had gone home. They would be waiting for him. He didn’t want to go. The place was empty by the time he walked out through the tunnels to the street. His head was filled with images from the game. Castro had toyed with him; he no doubt enjoyed humiliating the son of a U.S. senator. The Cuban’s look of heavy-lidded disdain sparked an unaccustomed rage in George. It wasn’t good sportsmanship. You played hard, and you won or lost, but you didn’t rub the other guy’s nose in it. That was bush league, and George, despite his unfortunate name, was anything but bush.
That George Bush should end up playing first base for the Washington Senators in the 1959 World Series was the result of as improbable a sequence of events as had ever conspired to make a man of a rich boy. The key moment had come on a May Saturday in 1948 when he had shaken the hand of Babe Ruth.
That May morning the Yale baseball team was to play Brown, but before the game a ceremony was held to honor Ruth, donating the manuscript of his autobiography to the university library. George, captain of the Yale squad, would accept the manuscript. As he stood before the microphone set up between the pitcher’s mound and second base, he was stunned by the gulf between the pale hulk standing before him and the legend he represented. Ruth, only fifty-three on that spring morning, could hardly speak for the throat cancer that was killing him. He gasped out a few words, stooped over, rail thin, no longer the giant he had been in the twenties. George took his hand. It was dry and papery and brown as a leaf in fall. Through his grip George felt the contact with glorious history, with feats of heroism that would never be matched, with 714 home runs and 1,356 extra-base hits, with a lifetime slugging percentage of .690, with the called shot and the sixty-homer season and the 1927 Yankees and the curse of the Red Sox. An electricity surged up his arm and directly into his soul. Ruth had accomplished as much, in his way, as a man could accomplish in a life, more, even, George realized to his astonishment, than had his father, Prescott Bush. He stood there stunned, charged with an unexpected, unasked-for purpose.
He had seen death in the war, had tasted it in the blood that streamed from his forehead when he’d struck it against the tail of the TBM Avenger as he parachuted out of the flaming bomber over the Pacific in 1943. He had felt death’s hot breath on his back as he frantically paddled the yellow rubber raft away from Chichi Jima against waves pushing him back into the arms of the Japanese, had felt death draw away and offered up a silent prayer when the conning tower of the U.S.S. Finback broke through the agitated seas to save him from a savage fate—to, he always knew, some higher purpose. He had imagined that purpose to be business or public service. Now he recognized that he had been seeing it through his father’s eyes, that in fact his fate lay elsewhere. It lay between the chalk lines of a playing field, on the greensward of the infield, within the smells of pine tar and sawdust and chewing tobacco and liniment. He could feel it through the tendons of the fleshless hand of Babe Ruth that he held in his own at that very instant.
The day after he graduated from Yale he signed, for no bonus, with the Cleveland Indians. Ten years later, George had little to show for his bold choice. He wasn’t the best first baseman you ever saw. Nobody ever stopped him on the street to ask for his autograph. He never made the Indians, got traded to the Browns. He hung on, bouncing up and down the farm systems of seventh and eighth-place teams. Every spring he went to Florida with high expectations, every April he started the season in Richmond, in Rochester, in Chattanooga. Just two months earlier he had considered packing it in and looking for another career. Then a series of miracles happened.
Chattanooga was the farm team for the Senators, who hadn’t won a pennant since 1933. For fifteen years, under their notoriously cheap owner Clark Griffith, they’d been as bad as you could get. But in 1959 their young third baseman, Harmon Killebrew, hit forty-two home runs. Sluggers Jim Lemon and Roy Sievers had career years. A big Kansas boy named Bob Allison won rookie of the year in center field. Camilo Pascual won twenty-two games, struck out 215 men. A kid named Jim Kaat won seventeen. Everything broke right, including Mickey Mantle’s leg. After hovering a couple of games over .500 through the All-Star break, the Senators got hot in August, won ninety games, and finished one ahead of the Yankees.
When, late in August, right fielder Albie Pearson got hurt, Lavagetto switched Sievers to right, and there was George Bush, thirty-five years old, starting at first base for the American League champions in the 1959 World Series against the New York Giants.
The Giants were heavy favorites. Who would bet against a team that fielded Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, Felipe Alou, and pitchers like Johnny Antonelli, the fireballer Toothpick Sam Jones, and the Franchise, Fidel Castro? If, prior to the series, you’d told George Herbert Walker Bush the Senators were doomed, he would not have disagreed with you. After game one he had no reason to think otherwise.
He stood outside the stadium looking for a cab, contemplating his series record—one game, 0 for 4, one error—when a pale old man in a loud sports coat spoke to him. “Just be glad you’re here,” the man said.
The man had watery blue eyes, a sharp face. He was thin enough to look ill. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re the fellow the Nats called up in September right? Remember, even if you never play another inning, at least you were there. You felt the sun on your back, got dirt on your hands, saw the stands full of people from down on the field. Not many get even that much.”
“The Franchise made me look pretty sick.”
“You have to face him down.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Don’t say—do.”
“Who are you, old man?”
The man hesitated. “Name’s Weaver. I’m a—a fan. Yes, I’m a baseball fan.” He touched the brim of his hat and walked away.
George thought about it on the cab ride home. It did not make him feel much better. When he got back to the cheap furnished apartment they were renting, Barbara tried to console him.
“My father wasn’t there, was he?” George said.
“No. But he called after the game. He wants to see you.”
“Probably wants to give me a few tips on how to comport myself. Or maybe just gloat.”
Bar came around behind his chair, rubbed his tired shoulders. George got up and switched on the television. While he waited for it to warm up, the silence stretched. He faced Barbara. She had put on a few pounds over the years, but he remembered the first time he’d seen her across the dance floor in the red dress. He was seventeen.
“What do you think he wants?”
“I don’t know, George.”
“I haven’t seen him around in the last ten years. Have you?”
The TV had warmed up, and Prescott Bush’s voice blared out from behind George. “I hope the baseball Senators win,” he was saying. “They’ve had abetter year than the Democratic ones.”
George twisted down the volume, stared for a moment at his father’s handsome face, then snapped it off. “Give me a drink,” he told Barbara. He noticed the boys standing in the doorway, afraid. Barbara hesitate
d, poured a scotch and
water.
“And don’t stint on the scotch!” George yelled. He turned to Neil. “What are you looking at, you little weasel! Go to bed.”
Barbara slammed down the glass so hard the scotch splashed the counter. “What’s got into you, George? You’re acting like a crazy man.”
George took the half-empty glass from her hand. “My father’s got into me, that’s what. He got into me thirty years ago, and I can’t get him out.”
Barbara shot him a look in which disgust outweighed pity and went back to the boys’ room. George slumped in the armchair, picked up a copy of Look and leafed through the pages. He stopped on a Gillette razor ad. Castro smiled out from the page, dark hair slicked back, chin sleek as a curveball, a devastating blonde leaning on his shoulder “Look Sharp, Feel Sharp, Be Sharp,” the ad told George.
Castro. What did he know about struggle? Yet that egomaniac lout was considered a hero, while he, George Herbert Walker Bush, who at twenty-four had been at the head of every list of die young men most likely to succeed, had accomplished precisely nothing.
People who didn’t know any better had assumed that because of his background, money, and education he would grow to be one of the ones who told others what it was necessary for them to do, but George was coming to realize, with a surge of panic, that he was not special. His moment of communion with Babe Ruth had been a delusion, because Ruth was another type of man. Perhaps Ruth was used by the teams that bought and sold him, but inside Ruth was some compulsion that drove him to be larger than the uses to which he was put, so that in the end he deformed those uses, remade the game itself.
George, talented though he had seemed, had no such size. The vital force that had animated his grandfather George Herbert Walker, after whom he was named, the longing after mystery that had impelled the metaphysical poet George Herbert, after whom that grandfather had been named, had diminished into a trickle in George Herbert Walker Bush. No volcanic forces surged inside him. When he listened late in the night, all he could hear of his soul was a thin keening, a buzz like a bug trapped in a jar. Let me go, let me go, it whispered.
That old man at the ballpark was wrong. It was not enough, not nearly enough, just to be there. He wanted to be somebody. What good was it just to stand on first base in the World Series if you came away from it a laughingstock? To have your father call you not because you were a hero, but only to remind you once again what a failure you are.
“I’ll be damned if I go see him,” George muttered to the empty room.
3
President Nixon called Lavagetto in the middle of the night with a suggestion for the batting order in the second game. “Put Bush in the number-five slot,” Nixon said.
Lavagetto wondered how he was supposed to tell the President of the United States that he was out of his mind. ‘Yessir, Mr. President.”
“See, that way you get another right-handed batter at the top of the order.”
Lavagetto considered pointing out to the president that the Giants were pitching a right-hander in game two. “Yessir, Mr. President,” Lavagetto said. His wife was awake now, looking at him with irritation from her side of the bed. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Go to sleep.”
“Who is it at this hour?”
“The President of the United States.”
“Uh-huh.”
Nixon had some observations about one-run strategies. Lavagetto agreed with him until he could get him off the line. He looked at his alarm clock. It was half past two.
Nixon had sounded full of manic energy. His voice dripped dogmatic assurance. He wondered if Nixon was a drinking man. Walter Winchell said that Eisenhower’s death had shoved the veep into an office he was unprepared to hold.
Lavagetto shut off the light and lay back down, but he couldn’t sleep. What about Bush? Damn Pearson for getting himself hurt. Bush should be down in the minors where he belonged. He looked to be cracking under the pressure like a ripe melon.
But maybe the guy could come through, prove himself. He was no kid. Lavagetto knew from personal experience the pressures of the Series, how the unexpected could turn on the swing of the bat. He recalled that fourth game of the ’47 series, his double to right field that cost Floyd Bevens his no-hitter, and the game. Lavagetto had been a thirty-four-year-old utility infielder for the luckless Dodgers, an aging substitute playing out the string at the end of his career. In that whole season he’d hit only one other double. When he’d seen that ball twist past the right fielder, the joy had shot through his chest like lightning. The Dodger fans had gone crazy; his teammates had leapt all over him laughing and shouting and swearing like Durocher himself.
He remembered that, despite the miracle, the Dodgers had lost the Series to the Yankees in seven.
Lavagetto turned over. First in War, First in Peace, Last in the American League ... that was the Washington Senators. He hoped young Kaat was getting more sleep than he was.
4
Tuesday afternoon, in front of a wild capacity crowd, young Jim Kaat pitched one of the best games by a rookie in the history of the Series. The twenty-year-old left-hander battled Toothpick Sam Jones pitch for pitch, inning for inning. Jones struggled with his control, walking six in the first seven innings, throwing two wild pitches. If it weren’t for the overeagerness of the Senators, swinging at balls a foot out of the strike zone, they would surely have scored; instead they squandered opportunity after opportunity. The fans grew restless. They could see it happening, in sour expectation of disaster built up over twenty-five frustrated years: Kaat would pitch brilliantly, and it would be wasted because the Giants would score on some bloop single.
Through seven, the game stayed a scoreless tie. By some fluke George could not fathom, Lavagetto, instead of benching him, had moved him up in the batting order. Though he was still without a hit, he had been playing superior defense. In the seventh he snuffed a Giant uprising when he dove to snag a screamer off the bat of Schmidt for the third out, leaving runners at second and third.
Then, with two down in the top of the eighth, Cepeda singled. George moved in to hold him on. Kaat threw over a couple of times to keep the runner honest, with Cepeda trying to judge Kaat’s move. Mays took a strike, then a ball. Cepeda edged a couple of strides away from first.
Kaat went into his stretch, paused, and whipped the ball to first, catching Cepeda leaning the wrong way. Picked off! But Cepeda, instead of diving back, took off for second. George whirled and threw hurriedly. The ball sailed over Consolo’s head into left field, and Cepeda went to third. E-3.
Kaat was shaken. Mays hit a screamer between first and second. George dove, but it was by him, and Cepeda jogged home with the lead.
Kaat struck out McCovey, but the damage was done. “You bush-league clown!” a fan yelled. George’s face burned. As he trotted off the field, from the Giants’ dugout came Castro’s shout: “A heroic play, Mr. Rabbit!”
George wanted to keep going through the dugout and into the clubhouse. On the bench his teammates were conspicuously silent. Consolo sat down next to him. “Shake it off,” he said. “You’re up this inning.”
George grabbed his bat and moved to the end of the dugout. First up in the bottom of the eighth was Sievers. He got behind 0-2, battled back as Jones wasted a couple, then fouled off four straight strikes until he’d worked Jones for a walk. The organist played charge lines and the crowd started chanting. Lemon moved Sievers to second. Killebrew hit a drive that brought the people to their feet screaming before it curved just outside the left-field foul pole, then popped out to short. He threw down his bat and stalked back toward the dugout.
“C’mon, professor” Killebrew said as he passed Bush in the on-deck circle. “Give yourself a reason for being here.”
Jones was a scary right-hander with one pitch: the heater. In his first three at-bats George had been overpowered; by the last, he’d managed a walk. This time he went up with a plan: he was going to take the fi
rst pitch, get ahead in the count, then drive the ball.
The first pitch was a fastball just high.
Make contact. Don’t force it. Go with the pitch. The next was another fastball; George swung as soon as Jones let it go and sent a screaming line drive over
the third baseman’s head. The crowd roared, and he was halfway down the first-base line when the third-base umpire threw up his hands and yelled, “Foul ball!”
He caught his breath, picked up his bat, and returned to the box. Sievers jogged back to second. Schmidt, standing with his hands on his hips, didn’t look at George. From the Giants’ dugout George heard, “Kiss your luck good-bye, you effeminate rabbit! You rich man’s table leavings! You are devoid of even the makings of guts!”
George stepped out of the box. Castro had come down the dugout to the near end and was leaning out, arms braced on the field, hurling his abuse purple faced. Rigney and the pitching coach had him by the shoulders, tugging him back. George turned away, feeling a cold fury in his belly.
He would show them all. He forgot to calculate, swept by rage. He set himself as far back in the box as possible. Jones took off his cap, wiped his forearm across his brow, and leaned over to check the signs. He shook off the first, then nodded and went into his windup.
As soon as he released George swung, and was caught completely off balance by a change-up. “Strike two, you shadow of a man!” Castro shouted. “Unnatural offspring of a snail and a worm! Strike two!”
Jones tempted him with an outside pitch; George didn’t bite. The next was another high fastball; George started, then checked his swing. “Ball!” the home-plate ump called. Fidel booed. Schmidt argued, the ump shook his head. Full count.
George knew he should look for a particular pitch, in a particular part of the plate. After ten years of professional ball, this ought to be second nature, but Jones was so wild he didn’t have a clue. George stepped out of the box, rubbed his hands on his pants. “Yes, wipe your sweaty hands, mama’s boy! You have all the machismo of a bankbook!”
