Carnival Baseball

by Colby Cox

  Sergeant Safran was now ready for war.

  As he worked on the lineup, Sarge glanced over at Charles Tanner. The rookie with the golden arm was taking in some last minute advice from Haney Mane. Sarge quickly looked away, but then forced himself to focus on Tanner, the sole reason for the game. Today the young man was twenty-one. Tanner did not have the slightest idea that his life hung in the balance. Sarge had known Tanner’s father to be a good man, but how could a good man sign over his son’s soul? Where was the goodness in that? He shook his head and finished writing down his starting nine and batting order. He then copied the list on another sheet to hand over to the opposing coach.

  1 Savoy Special - left field

  2 Dane Dugas - shortstop

  3 Gary South - centerfield

  4 Sarge Safran - first base

  5 Wonder Boy - right field

  6 Ralph Sankey - second base

  7 Erv Bream - third base

  8 No Legs Ruben - catcher

  9 Charles Tanner - pitcher

  When Sarge laid down his pencil, Mink appeared at his side.

  “I’ll tell you this, Sarge. I ain’t ever seen a crowd like the one tonight. This place is a regular zoo.”

  “Mink, go ahead and get the guys out on the field and limber up. I’ll be out shortly.”

  Mink turned to the players and clapped his hands. The sound bounced off the locker room’s concrete.

  “All right, ladies. Let’s hit the field.”

  The players scrambled for the exit door all at once. They were nothing but nervous energy and the thought of an outlet for it was a welcomed relief. Sarge watched them file through. Seconds later he heard a muffled roar as the fans in the packed stadium got to see the home team for the first time. Odds were against them, but at least the people stood behind the men of Wilmington.

  When Sarge walked out of the dugout’s shadow and into the early evening sun, the fifteen thousand who were able to beat the demand for seats exploded with hoots and hollers. Hundreds began to call his name and kids scrambled to the first base line with extended pens and programs in hopes of an autograph.

  He was able to ignore their pleas for a little while as he looked over his men who now dotted the field. He pulled a pack of Injun Joe chewing tobacco out of his back pocket and pinched out a wad that would have choked Poco. Sarge stuffed it in his mouth until his right cheek looked swollen.

  Doc Bismark was in left field with Wonder Boy and Savoy Special. The two robots ran back and forth across the grass as the doctor carefully watched over them. Bismark wore his white laboratory coat that nearly reached his feet. He held a clipboard to his side.

  Mink and most of the pitchers loosened their arms at the opposite end and Biscuit Wagner took throws from Tanner, who used the practice mound in the right field corner. A small crowd formed near him and threw words of encouragement his way.

  Finally, the whines and calls from the kids hanging around first base got to be too much for the coach. He shook his head and walked over to them. They yelled with excitement and bounced up and down on their toes. Sarge spat a thick stream of tobacco juice down in the grass. He always had a soft spot for children.

  “All right, all right, you bunch of runny-nosed monkeys, don’t get your diapers all in a bunch.”

  Sarge grabbed the extended pens and wrote his name down for the souvenir seekers. As he continued, he caught sight of a man seated in the front row. It was the infamous East Side loan shark, Mr. Godfrey. After Sarge scribbled his John Hancock on over a dozen programs, he walked over to him. Godfrey smiled wide. His dark bald head glistened in the low light. There was only about another hour of sun left.

  “Say, hey, Mr. Godfrey. Long time no see.”

  Godfrey’s two bodyguards and part time leg breakers, Ronnie and Daniel, were on either side of the frail man like bookends. Godfrey wore his trademark sunglasses and all three men sported tailored silk suits.

  “Hello, Mr. Safran. I do not get to see you as often now that Delilah has moved on to larger venues within the city.”

  Sarge changed the subject.

  “You should have gotten word to me that you wanted to come, Godfrey. I would have sent you some free tickets.”

  “Thank you very much, Sarge. I must confess that I normally shy away from athletic contests, but I was given these tickets by a business associate. He presented me with an offer that I certainly could not refuse.”

  A tiny red flag rose up in the back of Sarge’s mind.

  “Yeah, well, It’s good to see you, Mr. Godfrey.”

  “Likewise, Mr. Safran. Good luck.”

  As Sarge pulled away from Godfrey, his eyes swept the crowd in its entirety. The place was literally stuffed. There was not an open seat and extra bodies took up camp in the aisles. Even the areas behind the sections used as passage ways were crammed with standing bodies.

  Sarge then noticed the baseball jerseys. He picked up on Vance Evans and Frenchy Smith of the Savannah Plague first. They were about midway up between right field and first base. Both men sported their home game shirts. Vance saw Sarge looking his way. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled down towards the field.

  “Show these guys some Carny Ball, Sarge!”

  Every few aisles and sections were peppered with them. He saw Huntington, Zanesville, Pittsfield, Wheeling, Albany, Baltimore, and Norfolk. There were players from Cumberland, Savannah, Paducah, and Philadelphia. Every where he checked, he could pick them out. Carny Ball players were present in spades.

  At the very top of the left field bleachers, at the furthest point away from the field, the revealed Stranger, Mycroft Safran, sat. He shoveled fistfuls of popcorn into his mouth and gazed across the small Wilmington city-scape. When he squinted and shaded his eyes with his hand, he could make out boats moving across the Delaware Bay. A steady breeze from the east kept the flag dancing on top of the foul pole next to him. It also kept Mycroft and his companions slightly cooler than the other fans that were seated tightly around the field. He wore a light weight tan cotton suit with a white oxford and a purple silk tie. On a whim, he had not put on socks while dressing for the game and liked how it felt without them. He had topped off his sporty ensemble with a straw hat.

  The five men who accompanied him to the game were not so lucky. They all wore long trench coats with hats pulled low. They understood why Mycroft wanted to keep them out of sight, but it did not make the heat any easier. One of them mumbled out loud about how unbearable it was.

  Mycroft dug into his jacket and pulled out a pocket watch. It had once belonged to his father. He checked the time and then cast an eye to the cloudless horizon.

  “Relax, fellas. This heat ain’t gonna last. Matter of fact, it’s about to get pretty damn chilly.”

  Mycroft then whistled loudly to a lemonade vendor.

  “Hey, I need five lemonades up here! And bring some more popcorn!”

  Down on the field, the four pallers conferred together behind home plate. They made small talk. Mink trotted over to Sarge, who was out in front of the Whispers dugout swinging a twenty pound sledge hammer back and forth.

  “Hey, Sarge. What do you make of that? Think this Scratch guy turned tail?”

  Mink pointed over to the visiting dugout. It was completely empty. There were no bats, no water pails, no nothing.

  Sarge continued swinging the hammer back and forth.

  “Trust me, Mink. He’ll show.”

  At ten minutes to eight o’clock, the light breeze became a surging wind. If someone had been watching the posted thermometer next to the front gate, they would have noticed a temperature drop of thirty-one degrees, but all eyes were focused upwards. Men in the stands grabbed their hats to keep them on their heads and some turned away as dust moved through the air. A dark cloud snaked across the sky and enveloped Whispers Stadium. Upon further inspection, many realized it was not a cloud at all. The mass was a shadow of some sort. It came from no where and it sucked away the remains of the August
day.

  Mycroft looked up at the foul pole flag. It snapped violently back and forth and threatened to be stripped away. He laughed out loud and slapped the man sitting next to him hard on the back. The five men with him stopped sipping their lemonades. The sweeping chunk of darkness kept their undivided attention.

  Mycroft turned to them. He yelled to be heard over the gusts.

  “Well, fellas, take a good look at what the cat dragged in!”

  The winds died as quickly as they began, but the night and darkness remained. Sarge looked over to the visitor’s dugout and realized he could no longer see inside. It was as if a black curtain had been thrown over it. It allowed no light. It reminded him of the black box they kept Marielle in during his days in France.

  Aldous Scratch appeared. He stepped onto the field from the veil of dark and casually walked towards home plate. His athletic frame and good looks seemed only complimented by the dashing white baseball uniform he wore. Scratch joined the group of pallers. He shook their hands and then looked over to Sarge. He flashed his perfect smile.

  “Well, c’mon over, Sarge. I am positively itching to start.”

  As Irvin Grodanski, head home plate paller, went over the rules, Sarge got an up-close-and-personal look at Scratch. His uniform, so clean and white it hurt to look at it, displayed a beautifully embroidered crest with a large “D”, “R”, and “H” sewn into the breast pocket. His collar was a royal blue that matched his cap, which was of the style from decades before. It was shallow with a short and stubby brim and had a simple white “D” on the front. Scratch’s stockings were blue as well and ran into a pair of white leather baseball spikes.

  Grodanski asked for lineups and both Sarge and Scratch handed over to him a list of their starting nine and the order that they would appear at the plate. The two men then turned over identical copies to one another. Grodanski shook hands with both coaches and then all four pallers donned their stove pipe hats. The grounds crew threw on the lights and after a few minutes, they whirred to life at full strength.

  Scratch extended a hand to Sarge and wished him luck. It hung in the air.

  “You can take your luck and shove it up your ass.”

  Sarge turned and walked to his dugout with a slight smile curved at the corner of his mouth.

  Mink and Haney Mane met him near the on-deck circle. Sarge knew his assistant coaches were dying to see Scratch’s lineup, but he walked past them.

  “Not here, fellas. Let’s take it into the dugout so Scratch can’t see how curious we are.”

  Once they were safely tucked out of sight in the corner next to the water pail, all three men clunked their heads together to put eyes on Scratch’s list. They knew it would be a hot one. They were not disappointed. Half way through the names, one thing was on all of their minds, but Haney said it out loud first.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Is this some kind of sick joke? All of these guys on this here list are dead!”

  Sarge glanced over at the visitor’s dugout. The total blackout was still there. It was anyone’s guess what lurked inside.

  “You can believe it, Haney. What we are up against tonight ain’t natural.”

  Mink snatched the list from the other two and lifted his shades off of his face. His lips moved with every name he read. His shoulders slouched as the sunglasses slipped off of his forehead and fell back in place.

  “This bunch is the best of the worst.”

  26. The DRH Lineup

  Mink’s words rang true. Carny Ball teams, like any other professional sport, were run under the philosophy that winning was everything. It was a simple equation: winning teams sold tickets to games. The more tickets sold, the more money generated. The more money generated, the wealthier the owner of the teams became. Therefore, most franchise owners would stick contracts in front of any Joe that could help their club tally up the wins.

  Throughout the history of the league, there were many players who brought high moral standards along with their playing skills. After all, discipline, responsibility, and determination seemed to go hand-in-hand with the development of skill and talent.

  Unfortunately, there were times during the short history of the Carnival League when the raw talent of certain players was so alluring and tempting to owners that they would look the other way when it came to other “proclivities” away from the baseball diamond. The list Mink held was nothing more than the top nine of such players. Indeed, it was the “best of the worst.”

  Stonewall Smith / catcher - Smith played two seasons with the Philadelphia Pharaohs after the World War. Regardless of how wild a pitch was thrown his way, Smith never allowed a ball to pass him. No one had ever stolen a base when he was behind the plate. Suspected of dabbling in black magic, Smith was shot and killed during a Philadelphia Police raid on several opium dens near South Street in 1921.

  Noodle Nefosky / shortstop - Noodle received six consecutive golden glove titles from 1920 to 1925. He was considered by many to be the greatest shortstop to ever play the game. Able to stretch his arms to a measured length of twelve feet, Noodle was known for his ability to turn double plays on his own. He played with the Zanesville Zeroes until his Chrysler Roadster was pulled out of the Muskingum River. Noodle’s body was found in the trunk. His neck was slit from ear to ear. Nefosky was so hated by his teammates and the Zanesville area in general, that the medical examiner’s office deemed his death accidental.

  Mad Dog McCann / third base - McCann was the Baltimore Bombers bad boy slugger prior to the arrival of Hooligan Pete. His glove was formidable, but his bat was downright tenacious. He would have gone down in the books as one of the greatest hitters in any league, but his multitude of mental illnesses finally got the better of him. The city who loved his baseball found they could no longer tolerate his outlandish abnormal behavior. He was finally committed to the Rosewood Center near Owings Mills, at the “Asylum and Training School for the Feeble Minded.” He died in 1930.

  Third Leg Simpson / second base - Simpson, a left handed hitter whose average ran above .350 during his time with the Plague, received his nickname, “Third Leg”, due to the high amount of fellow players’s wives he assisted with in the art of cuckolding. He was found dead in a Savannah hotel room on Ogelthorpe Avenue. He had been run through with an antique confederate sword.

  Jimmy “Cobra” Kemp / pitcher - One of the meanest spit ballers to step on a pitcher’s mound, Cobra Kemp beaned the first five Wombat batters who stepped to the plate during an exhibition game in 1927. He was ejected from the mound only to return to the stadium by sneaking in through a sewer pipe disguised as a janitor. Cobra then stormed the field with a bucket full of balls and proceeded to chase down the four players he did not get a chance to hit. Once he struck all nine, Cobra pulled a derringer from his pocket and shot himself through the head in front of eight thousand home town Cumberland fans.

  The game was delayed an entire seventy-two minutes while the Cumberland grounds crew buried Kemp’s body in a hole out in center field. It became Cumberland tradition to begin every first inning by spitting on Cobra’s grave for good luck.

  The Wachorski Brothers / left field, center field, right field - If there was ever a permanent black eye to be found in Carny Ball lore, no one needed to look any further than the tragic tale of Lawrence, Cornelius and Morgan Wachorski. Signed by the Charlestown Chopsticks in 1921 at the tender age of eighteen, the midwest triplets played the outfield like none before them. They were poetry in motion. Cornelius could make a diving catch and then toss the ball up into the air to a converging Lawrence, who would sail it towards home plate three hundred feet away to throw out anyone foolish enough to try his arm. Morgan would rob a home run off of the right field wall and throw his glove with the ball tucked inside to brother Cornelius, who would then throw out runners who failed to tag up on first base. The Wachorski Brothers kept scorekeepers scratching their heads as they wondered how to record double and triple plays performed in the outfield.

  I
t was not long into their rookie season, however, that things went awry. First, Charlestown residents began to report disappearances of their house pets. Dogs, cats, and even birds and turtles mysteriously vanished. Police were stumped by the thefts, but soon forgot about the crimes as their focus turned to more important matters. Women in town who plied the oldest profession began to turn up missing as well. Charlestown detectives toiled on the cases night and day fearing a monster was in their midsts. A break led them to a home near Bunker Hill where, to their horror, they found all four missing women. They also found a huge collection of Charlestown’s pets that were, for lack of better words, “on display.” There, living amongst the macabre surroundings, seated on a couch and eating bowls of hot breakfast cereal, were the Wachorski triplets, acting as if it was all just part of their normal daily activities.

  Members of the Charlestown police force who were unfortunate enough to see the crime scene made certain that the Brothers Wachorski were the next victims of sudden disappearance. Although their three bodies were never located, city detectives still whisper to themselves about the time their department showed the Wachorski trio a true “Triple Play.”