The Legend of Mickey Tussler

by Nappi, Frank;

  On this day, the atmosphere was particularly electric. The Brewers, who traditionally generated little interest outside their immediate geographic region, had suddenly become a draw, due mostly to the hype surrounding their newest pitching sensation. Although Mickey was not slated to pitch until midweek, the crowd caught a glimpse of the “new look” Brewers anyway when Woody Danvers drilled a 2-2 fastball over the center-field wall in the top of the ninth inning to sink the hometown heroes and lift the Brew Crew into second place, just three games behind the rival Rangers of Spokane.

  Their winning ways continued that week, including convincing victories over the Indians and the Sidewinders. Murph called on Lefty next; he had been showing signs lately of snapping out of his prolonged doldrums. Lefty was sharp. He made it through the seventh, bottling up the Spartans with a blazing fastball and a twelve-to-six hook that was, by all accounts, “dropping off the table.” But the Brewers’ potent offense had stalled, providing Lefty with nothing more than two infield hits for support. The anemic attack drew the ire of the irascible southpaw.

  “Unfucking believable!” he ranted, firing his glove against the dugout wall.

  Boxcar put on his inscrutable face. “What’s your problem now, Rogers? Shit, you’re throwing better today than you have in a dog’s age.”

  Lefty’s thoughts zigzagged. Several of the others stopped what they were doing and fixed their eyes on the two men.

  “Oh, nothing is wrong, nothing at all,” Lefty shot back, launching into a diatribe that resonated throughout the dugout. “Everyone else gets runs. That’s all. Sanders, Mickey. I bet even Larry would get a few runs on the board if he took the hill. It’s bullshit. There’s always plenty of scoring for everyone else. Not me. No, sir. Not Lefty. Lefty has to do it all by himself.” He walked off in a clumsy daze. “Bunch of bullshit!”

  Matheson had been watching the entire episode. He spat out a wad of chew on the dugout floor and doddered over to the cantankerous pitcher.

  “Come on now, Lefty my boy,” the old man cajoled. “We need this one. Bad. You sulking and carrying on like this, all full of piss and vinegar, don’t do no good. You gotta shake it. Or we is done. Shit, for want of a nail, the entire shoe could be lost.”

  Lefty turned his head slowly toward Matheson, then exhaled in thunderous, absolutely unbearable exasperation. “What the hell does that even mean?” he wailed. “I can’t listen to this drivel anymore. Do me a favor, you babbling old fool. Just go away. Pick up your sagging mess of a body and get the hell away from me.”

  As the game went on, Lefty crumbled beneath the weight of his discontent. In the eighth, he walked the leadoff batter on four straight balls, which prompted the Spartans’ skipper to play for one run. The next batter squared and dropped a beautiful bunt that hugged the chalk as it crawled up the third-base line. In his haste to cut down the lead runner, Lefty fired wildly to Arky Fries at second, sailing the ball over his head and into center field. Both runners advanced. Lefty sweated heavily and cursed his misfortune once again. Murph folded his arms and glared out at him from the dugout steps.

  Things only got worse. The next Spartan batter took advantage of another mistake—a hanging slider—and laced a single back through the originator, scoring both runners. This was followed by a frozen rope that split Jimmy Llamas and Buck Faber, and a roundtripper off the bat of the Spartan cleanup hitter, Buzz Billings—a prodigious blast that seemed to climb higher and higher until finally slamming into the scoreboard some four hundred feet away. When Murph took the ball from Lefty, the pitcher scowled like a wounded animal. Under his cap, his brow sweated with humiliation.

  “Hit the showers, kid,” Murph instructed. “Enough for one day.”

  Lefty could feel himself slipping out of the manager’s favor, feel the space he had left, a space undoubtedly now occupied by another. The realization stung.

  Murph turned the reins over to Butch Filocomo, who, after walking the first man he faced, induced a 6-4-3 double play before fanning the next batter to stop the bleeding.

  Clem Finster led off the ninth for the Brewers with a sharp single to left. A walk to Amos Ruffings and a push bunt by Pee Wee loaded the sacks for the big boppers. In the wake of the Brewers’ threat, a murmur went up from the restless crowd. The Spartans, mired in last place, were notorious for squandering leads late in the game. All too often, the Spartan faithful were brought to the brink of victory, only to have their hopes dashed unmercifully by an errant throw or misplayed ball.

  “They’ll break your heart, boys,” the old men in the bleachers always grumbled to each other. “Just like a cheap whore.”

  Jimmy Llamas smiled as he dug in for his at bat. With the bags juiced, he was sitting dead red—pipe fastball, first pitch. He got it and smashed a searing line drive to left center. He was halfway between first and second when he heard the ball thump in the glove of the Spartan center fielder, thwarting Llamas’ quest for late-game heroics. The stellar play seemed to deflate the entire team. Danvers followed Llamas’ liner with a weak foul-out to the catcher, and Boxcar, who usually thrived on opportunities like these, proved he was indeed human, taking a called third strike to end the game. It was the team’s first loss in more than two weeks, and it left the upstart Brew Crew tied with the Rangers for first place, setting the stage for a classic showdown between the rivals the following day.

  The Rangers sent their ace, Bucky Vardiman, to the hill under a gray sky that threatened to dump rain on them at any minute. Despite a heavy, whistling wind and a dampness that hung over them with ominous patience, Vardiman was on, setting down the Brewers one, two, three.

  “Come on, fellas,” Murph implored desperately. “We can’t keep doing this. We need the bats.”

  Mickey trotted out to the mound in the bottom half of the inning, looking to silence what was already a hostile crowd. A commotion started in the lower seats behind first base. A man with a grizzled beard and paint-stained overalls was doing his best to incite the others around him.

  “Hey, freak show!” he screamed to Mickey, looking back at the others for approval. “Look at me!” He mimicked Mickey’s unusual delivery. “Look at me, funny boy! I’m a ballplayer.” Mickey heard him and was conscious of being watched, but continued to roll his arms and fire his warm-up pitches. He wondered, as he delivered each toss, why the ornery man was taunting him. Having no tangible answer, he mistook the man’s ignorance for his own shortcomings. For a brief moment, he thought of Clarence. The recollection made him wince and shudder, altering his mechanics so drastically that the frazzled hurler sailed the next two tosses clear over Boxcar’s head, much to the delight of the raucous crowd.

  “Come on now, Mick,” Pee Wee said, trotting in from his position at short. “Forget everyone else. Just you and Boxcar. Right? That’s all. Come on now. You can do this—just like tossing crab apples, right?”

  Mickey, still absorbed in thoughts of his father, pounded the ball in his glove.

  “Hey, Mick,” Pee Wee persisted, placing his hand over Mickey’s glove. “Come on now. Nobody’s better than you. Nobody.”

  Mickey said nothing, just stood there, sucking his teeth and staring moodily into the stands. He made out one or two faces, including the slovenly, loudmouthed grumbler, but after some time, each visage just melted into the next, like gray shapes in the darkness.

  When Mickey had seen enough, his eyes, hot and watery, turned to Boxcar’s glove; then he rolled his arms, leaned back, lifted his leg, and fired two more warm-ups—this time strong and accurate.

  The half inning began on the umpire’s call. The Rangers’ leadoff man, Kiki Delaney, bounded to the plate. He was a rabbit. He was only a .260 hitter, but he could go from home to first in just over four seconds. Delaney was also a terror on the bases, swiping a league leading seventy-six bags each of the last two seasons. Everyone in the league knew that he was the catalyst for the Ranger offense. So, the scouting report that Murph gave to Mickey and Boxcar was simple: keep Delaney off the
bases.

  Mickey missed up and away with his first offering, then evened the count with a fastball right down the pipe. Delaney stepped out of the box, tapped his spikes with the barrel of his bat, and checked the third-base coach for signs. After studying a series of frenetic gestures that looked something like a full-blown seizure, he eased back into the box, slowly, methodically, then laid his bat out flat just in time to deaden Mickey’s next offering. The ball wheezed and stumbled, staggering past the mound and out of the reach of a charging Clem Finster before dying just before Arky Fries could get a handle on it. By the time Fries picked it up, Delaney was standing on first base, laughing. “Let ’em play small ball all day long, Mick,” Danvers shouted. “They can’t touch ya.”

  Mickey’s first pitch to the next batter allowed the speedster to steal second. After the next delivery, he was standing on third. Delaney was putting on a clinic. The Ranger bench erupted in jubilant approval. Mickey groaned. A maudlin urgency filled him. He could see the entire Ranger bench, knees bent, eyes squeezed tight and mouths agape, laughter exploding from every uniform. He could hear them too.

  “Baby Bazooka?” They laughed, some doubled over in a desperate search for air. “Are they kidding us? More like Kiddie Cork Gun!”

  Mickey heard the jeers. His whole body slumped.

  “Shake that off, Mickey,” Murph yelled from the dugout, his eyes on McNally and the others. “Come on, big fella, just work the batter.”

  Mickey opened his mouth and licked his lips. They were dry, except for two gummy, white bits of saliva resting in the corners. His stomach ached and he felt a distinct throbbing at his temples. He was close to caving. Then, under the cover of a dark gray sky, Mickey found the tiny red target in Boxcar’s glove and the oppression lifted.

  “Strike one. … Strike two. … Strike three!” the umpire shouted in succession. The batter sat down. Three pitches later, another batter fell victim. Then another. The raucous heckling and hissing from the Ranger dugout eased to a series of sighing complaints, and from all around the stands, dim rows of pale faces fired deepthroated, guttural invectives not at Mickey but at their own beloved boys of summer, chastising them for their poor performance against what they deemed a less than worthy opponent.

  Vardiman and Mickey continued to put up zeros on the board, silencing the crowd with a good old-fashioned pitchers’ duel. It was definitely a day for the cerebral baseball enthusiast, one who could appreciate the understated excitement of nibbling corners and purpose pitches. While those enamored with the long ball and barn-burning baseball lamented the “stinker” of a game, the baseball purists delighted in the classic repartee between hurlers, a skillful jousting that left them on the edge of their seats.

  With the game was still scoreless with two outs in the top of the ninth, Danvers strode to the plate. He had fanned his first three times up. Vardiman had made him look bad, mixing his pitches and changing speeds with the precision of an artist. Danvers was frustrated. In truth, he never hit Vardiman well. In twenty-one career at bats against the Ranger ace, he was batting a pitiful .048 with sixteen strikeouts. Danvers was always at a loss to explain it.

  “I’ll be goddamned!” he would say after facing his nemesis. “This son of a bitch is toying with me.” The others always laughed and rode him about it. Usually, Danvers just moped and sulked. But on this day, he was downright angry. Vengeful. He walked through the dugout spouting off about pride and retribution and how they were all masters of their own destinies. He stood at the dish this fourth time, sinewy and loose, knees bent, shoulders square to the pitcher. He grit his teeth and waved his bat over his head in willful defiance, determined to expiate not just the day’s disappointments but every one of his previous failures as well.

  Vardiman began the sequence with a tight slider for a called strike. Danvers shook his head and readied himself for the next offering. Vardiman peered in at the catcher. He shook off the first few suggestions before nodding at the last. He reared back, cocking the ball behind his ear, and let fly a two-seam fastball. Danvers swung wildly as the ball buzzed through the air, leaving the befuddled hitter a tangled, crumpled mess. Strike two. Vardiman took the ball back. He positioned himself on the rubber. Danvers stepped out to collect himself. His face, already contorted with frustration, hardened even further when he saw Vardiman laughing behind his glove.

  As he glowered at the smug pitcher, Danvers suddenly relaxed. He felt beyond everything, especially his recent failures, as if he were all at once in the hands of something extraordinarily larger than himself—as if the universe had reached down and embraced him, determined to replace his sickly spirit with a restorative smile. This feeling warmed his stomach and sharpened his senses, allowing him to see the next pitch leave Vardiman’s hand as if it were delivered in suspended animation. The laces spun toward him, orbiting dutifully through the damp, viscous air. All the natural impulses and baseball reactions that had lain dormant in the wake of his history with Vardiman surged up inside him; he lifted his foot, placed it down again with purposeful vigor, and whipped the bat head through the hitting zone with blinding speed. The golden lumber found the ball, caught the tiny orb where the bat was fattest, and sent it sailing over the center-field wall. Danvers blinked hard and leaped with joy, circling the bases with spirited gestures.

  Murph was smiling too. The way Mickey was throwing, one run was all they needed. Mickey retired the first two batters in the Rangers’ half of the ninth with little protest. His team’s malaise, coupled with the thought of dropping the game to his mortal enemy, sent McNally into a dizzying fit of petulance. It was intolerable to him that he should be dominated by Arthur Murphy and his twisted reclamation project. Most times, McNally could find a dead space amidst all that bothered him and rest inside, numb to the festering disappointments that scraped at him like tiny shovels. But on occasion, he would get caught in the tide of circumstance, dragged to the shore, and the sun would sting his eyes and shine brightly on all his failures, and he would see everything for just what it really was.

  “Time!” he called, stepping out of the dugout with festering antagonism. Everyone watched curiously as he walked deliberately toward home plate. His eyes were small and dangerous.

  “Hey, ump.” He pointed to Boxcar. “Is that glove he’s using there to code? I mean, I sure ain’t ever seen nothing like that before.”

  “What’s wrong with it, Chip?” the umpire replied curtly, eager to resume play.

  McNally was posturing behind Boxcar, hands on hips, sights set on reprimand. “Have him take it off his hand,” McNally instructed. “Have a look in the pocket.”

  The umpire removed his mask and tapped Boxcar on the shoulder. As he questioned the catcher and examined his glove, Murph came flying out of the dugout like a mother bear protecting one of her cubs.

  “What’s all the commotion, Box?” he asked breathlessly.

  “Relax, Murphy,” McNally snapped back. “Just making sure everything’s legal, that’s all.”

  “Sherlock Holmes here wants to look at my glove, Skip,” Boxcar explained. “Says it’s no good.”

  Murph cut his eyes in McNally’s direction. “What kind of horseshit are you trying to pull, McNally? That glove’s as straight as the pointy nose on your face and you know it.”

  The three of them looked on as the umpire turned the glove over in his hands, deliberating. Murph stared at the trio of fine lines stretching across the ump’s forehead, outraged at the absurdity unfolding before him. The umpire continued to contemplate, and McNally tapped his foot in thoughtful expectation.

  “Chip’s right, Murph,” the umpire finally concluded. “This ain’t regulation.”

  “Come on now,” Murph pleaded. “There isn’t anything in the rule book that says a player can’t have a little paint on his glove. This prick is just trying to get in my pitcher’s head.”

  “I’m sorry, Murph, but I’m at a loss here. Truth is, I don’t really know what to do. You may be right. But be that
as it may, I have to take the glove out of play. I’ll let the guys who make the rules decide later on.”

  “Are you shittin’ me!” Murph exploded. “Is this really happening? What kind of a goddamned circus is this?”

  “Come on, Murph. I don’t make the rules, I just follow them.”

  “Yeah, Murphy. Give the guy a break, would ya?” McNally gloated. “That’s the only fair thing to do.” His eyes were off to the side, and he was trying to pretend the outcome was not his intended purpose. “Rules are rules.”

  Murph’s face flushed.

  “So that’s it?” Boxcar complained, looking to Murph for help. “I’m just supposed to hand over my glove—just like that?”

  “Just give ’im the glove, Box,” Murph said, shaking his head as he walked toward the mound. “You can use the extra one.”

  Mickey was given a few warm-up tosses in light of the delay. Murph stood behind him and watched. Mickey was clearly agitated. He turned to Murph several times and asked for the old glove—the one with the painted apple—but Murph just shook his head and stood behind the mound and watched him struggle with the new one. He cringed as each of the five tosses sailed clear over Boxcar’s head. The wildness was followed by the faint recitation of the now all-too-familiar de la Mare poem.

  “Hey, now that’s the farm boy I remember!” McNally taunted from the bench. “Hot damn!”

  Murph walked around the dirt circle and faced Mickey. The boy was staring down at his spikes, defeated.

  “Listen, Mick, there ain’t nothing to this,” Murph encouraged. “Really. A glove’s a glove. Just pretend that big old mitt is a barrel, filled with apples. Nothing to it. Come on now. Remember— nobody’s better than you.”

  The walk back to the dugout was perhaps the longest Murph had ever taken. God he wanted this game. It had been so long since the Brewers had seen first place. And McNally was such an asshole. He wondered, as he resumed his familiar stance atop the dugout steps, just how he would be able to stomach this sort of loss.