The Legend of Mickey Tussler

by Nappi, Frank;

  The fans were starting to voice their displeasure, and the newspapers only fueled their fire. With the skid at three games, the headlines were prognosticating Armageddon, suggesting that the Brewer’s lethargy and all the miscues were cause to be afraid: “ ‘Boo Crew’ Nothing Without Mickey.”

  Murph was at a loss to stem the tide. He tried insulating his players from public scrutiny, issuing an edict that nobody talk to the press until the ship had righted itself. The sportswriters and announcers, however, were dogged in their pursuit, and with each miscue the team made on the field, the inspection intensified.

  His blister fully healed, Lefty got the call the following day. The scene was ugly. The team took the field to a chorus of boos and jeers, and to a proliferation of cigar stubs, hot dogs, and rotten-fruit rinds that rained down on them like a summer storm.

  “Go back inside, you lousy bums!” many of the discontented fans screamed. “We want real ballplayers!”

  In the wake of the team’s pitiful performance, the crowd’s concern for Mickey converted to anger, each fan’s frustration bubbling with a rapacious fury that begged for satisfaction.

  They were facing the Bears, a team against which they matched up well. They just seemed to have their number, defeating them in five of the first six contests. Lefty set them down in order in the first inning, striking out the side with just twelve pitches and silencing, at least for the moment, some of the more vocal naysayers.

  In the home half of the first, the grumbling continued after Arky Fries fouled out and Clem Finster and Woody Danvers tantalized the starving crowd with well-struck balls that died quietly on the warning track. But for the moment, the defensive part of their game was back. Lefty retired the next fifteen Bears to come to the plate, amassing a staggering thirteen strikeouts in the first six innings. The crowd, desperate for something to grab hold of, embraced the surly southpaw and showered him with applause and the celebratory chant of “Lefty! Lefty! Lefty!” The rejuvenated hurler stood on the mound to begin the seventh inning and his spirit soared. For the first time in months, he felt the warmth of the sun on his shoulders. His imagination brimmed with images of making a brilliant impression. As he toed the rubber, his mind’s eye wandered to little children clamoring for autographs, young girls swooning at his every move, sportswriters and photographers fighting for his attention—and of course, he saw so clearly the bright lights of the major league city fortunate enough to capture his fancy. Suddenly, without notice, without warning, the disconsolation of weeks prior was gone.

  The Brewers finally manufactured a run in their half of the seventh. After leading off the inning with a walk, Buck Faber was sacrificed to second on a perfect bunt off the bat of Pee Wee and took third on a wild pitch. Murph’s wheels turned swiftly. He pulled Arky Fries out of the on-deck circle and whispered something in the ear of Nat Rudigan before sending him in to pinch-hit.

  Rudigan made a couple of passes over the dirt at home plate with his front foot, dug himself a nice hole with the other, then wind-milled his bat with gritty determination. Faber led off the bag in foul ground, clapped his hands, and chanted Rudigan’s name, drawing the ire of the Bears’ pitcher. He stepped off the rubber and motioned to third as if a pickoff throw were coming. Faber scampered back, then danced right back out when the pitcher resumed his position. It was all part of the dance. The pitcher collected his thoughts, got his sign, released a thin stream of spit to the ground, and with Faber hopping around in his peripheral vision swung his arms over his head, kicked his leg, and delivered. The ball appeared to be inside, but broke back over the middle of the plate for a called strike. Rudigan looked behind him in mild protest. The catcher chuckled under his mask at the umpire’s indifference, then returned the ball to the mound. With ball in hand again, the Bears’ hurler checked Faber at third again. He bluffed once, then again, before getting back on the rubber. Faber’s lead was a little more brazen this time, and his eyes possessed a clear and present purpose. The pitcher gave one final glance over Faber’s way, then rocked back, arched his leg, and fired. The minute the ball was released, Faber took off as if shot from a cannon. He lowered his head and pumped his arms feverishly, leaving behind him, with every powerful step, a confetti storm of dirt and grass.

  Rudigan’s timing was perfect as well. With the ball just about halfway home, he rotated his hips, slid his hand up the barrel, and pinched the bat between his thumb and forefinger. The delivery was true this time, a fastball right up the gut. Rudigan’s bat caught the ball cleanly, deadening it in the no-man’s-land between pitcher and catcher. It was a perfect suicide squeeze.

  Lefty made the one run stand up. He breezed through the final two innings, racking up three more strikeouts, to finish the day with a sweet sixteen. It was by far his best outing all year. He walked off the field with a shit-eating grin, delighting in the crowd’s revival of the earlier chant of “Lefty! Lefty! Lefty!”

  The postgame milieu was frenetic and circuslike. Lefty preened about in front of the procession of reporters like a rooster in a henhouse, basking in the boisterous luster. He bent his green eyes to the retinue of writers, signaling with his finger that he would only address one question at a time.

  “Hey, Lefty, does this mean the slump is over?” the first man asked.

  “What slump?” Lefty replied curtly. “I was hurt, not in a slump.”

  “I’m not sure if that’s true or not,” the reporter continued, “but I was talking about the team.”

  Lefty shrugged and turned his head the other way.

  “Lefty, how did it feel today?” another asked. “What made you so effective out there?”

  Lefty stood there, without conscious thoughts, lost in his rapture. “Someone had to step up—for the team, you know? That’s what the ace of a staff does.”

  “Has Arthur Murphy made that official? I mean, just until Mickey gets back?”

  “I think the focus should be on what is happening now,” Lefty said. “And right now, Mickey is not a factor.”

  “Yeah, but once the Baby Bazooka gets back, don’t you think—”

  “Listen, is this a postgame conference, or what?” Lefty’s nostrils flared and his brow descended hard, forming lines in the shape of a tiny V. A sudden restiveness possessed him, and for a moment his outrage had him anxious and tongue-tied.

  “Uh, you know what, that’s enough,” he finally said. “You wanna talk strikeouts, I’m game. You wanna know why my curveball was unhittable, I’m all yours. But this nonsense with Mickey—it has to stop. I won’t do it. I’m a baseball player, not some goddamned social worker. You wanna know about Mickey, the manager’s office is just around the corner.”

  When the interest in Lefty waned, most of the writers took the advice and spent some time with Murph. He was his usual affable self, fielding each question with that inimitable blend of candor and wit. Truth was, he felt a modicum of relief. The monkey was off his back, at least for now. But he was battling much larger issues. In between games, he had more important questions to answer. The local sheriff had been conducting interviews with all the players to gain insight into Mickey’s situation.

  John Rosco was a big, stolid man in his early fifties, with a salt-and-pepper handlebar mustache, a throaty voice, and deep, penetrating eyes that gave him an air of dignified mystery. He had been sheriff for twenty-two years and had never seen a situation like this before.

  One week into the investigation, he had gotten nowhere. He began by questioning Murph and Pee Wee and worked his way through several other players before sitting down with Lefty.

  “So, Mr. Rogers, the fellas tell me that you were the last one to see Mickey,” he began.

  “Is that right?”

  “Yup.”

  “And he was with a young lady outside The Bucket?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you know that girl? Ever seen her before?”

  “Nope.”

  “What time was that, Mr. Rogers?” Rosco scratched som
ething on the white pad of paper in front of him.

  “Don’t know that I remember. Two, maybe three.”

  “Any indication of trouble? You know, a quarrel, anything like that?”

  “Nope.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You sure now?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Rosco put down his pencil and took off his hat and laid it on the desk. Some nuance in the pitcher’s deportment struck him hard and sparked a notion in his mind.

  “Saw the game earlier today, Mr. Rogers,” he said, shifting gears. “Pretty impressive.”

  Lefty nodded indifferently. The fan on Murph’s desk blew a hot wind across the side of his face.

  “Must be pretty hard for all of you lately,” Rosco continued. “I mean, with Mickey being on the shelf and all.”

  “We’re okay.” Lefty paused, thinking about the damaging implication of his response. He looked down at the desk and said he was sorry about what had happened to Mickey.

  Rosco folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, but I’m willing to bet that a pitching performance like that, with all those people yelling your name, and everyone taking your picture and all—I bet that goes a long way in curing the hurt.”

  “I don’t know,” Lefty answered with all the emotion of a stone wall. “I guess so.”

  Rosco frowned, measuring the real meaning behind Lefty’s terse replies. He found the pitcher to be an odd character. It was no single thing, he thought, but rather a combination of many. He sat there staring at the side of Lefty’s head while many obscure misgivings passed over him.

  “Well, now that Mickey is out of the picture, so to speak, it sort of leaves you in the catbird seat, doesn’t it?”

  Lefty flushed and moved uncomfortably in his chair. His brain spun wildly, then rested on a single thought. “What is it exactly you want from me, Sheriff Rosco?” Lefty felt a stabbing pain at the pit of his stomach.

  “I’m just asking a few questions, Mr. Rogers. That’s all. Just doing my job.”

  Lefty froze, paralyzed by the awkward silence that followed.

  Rosco drummed his fingers a few times on the desk. Then he picked up his hat, met Lefty’s steely eyes with a neutral gaze of his own, and in a strong, clear voice said, “Thanks for your time, Mr. Rogers. Good luck holding off those Rangers. I’ll be in touch.”

  Murph’s team failed to build on the momentum generated by the victory over the Bears, dropping each of the next three games. Murph was beside himself, powerless to combat the insidious contagion of losing that had gripped his entire squad. They lost games in every conceivable way. They could not hit, the pitching had become batting practice for opposing hitters, and the fielding had degenerated into a sorry comedy of errors. Even the mental part of the game had gone south, resulting in a late-inning loss to the Mud Hens when Ruffings, with one out in the ninth and the winning run standing just ninety feet away, caught a fly ball in right and unwittingly flipped it to a young fan sitting in the first row, certain that the game was over.

  Dennison lambasted Murph for the team’s deplorable performance, screaming and yelling about feeling as if someone had a hand on his throat and how he was tired of being fodder for the newspapers.

  “You better think of something!” he warned. “Think of something, and fast!”

  Murph took it home with him every night. He slept for a little while, or maybe he didn’t. He never could tell, for it seemed as though he hovered torturously between the realms of dozing and waking, never quite crossing over into either. But one thing was for sure—not long after he was under the covers, he found himself on the edge of the bed, coiled up in a fetal ball.

  He lay there, listening as the sounds of nighttime mocked his restlessness. A unexpected wind blew against the window, and in his thoughts a cast of amateur actors bumped into each other carelessly on a darkened stage. He directed, trying to order the chaos, but the players just executed their own will, vibrating in a mêlée of impromptu performances. All night long he blinked, trying to drop the curtain and bring the act to a close, but the show went on in painful perpetuity.

  The only one seemingly impervious to the skid was Lefty, who got the ball the next day and turned in another stellar performance: nine more innings, twelve strikeouts, and just one unearned run. He was definitely in the zone.

  His star had gloriously risen from the wreckage. The newspapers grabbed hold of his exploits and lionized him, using such words as savior and such expressions as the cavalry and knight in shining armor. It seemed, as a natural defense to the intolerable hurt, people became desensitized to the Mickey saga; it was just easier to leave that painful chapter behind for the moment and focus on something positive. Consequently, George Lefty Rogers became the talk of the town, the lone bright spot, the port in a season-threatening storm. He was, all at once, the town darling, capturing the hearts of an entire city, especially the younger female followers.

  He began receiving flowers, candy, and other small tokens of affection, including perfume-laden love letters, a fistful of telephone numbers, and invitations to all sorts of social engagements. After one game, he even received a lacy brassiere from one of his more ardent admirers.

  “Do you believe this shit?” Boxcar complained to Danvers as they watched while a throng of teenyboppers attacked the newly ordained king of Brewer baseball on his way to his car. “Does nothing make sense anymore?”

  Danvers’s mind was noticeably absent.

  “Woody, I’m talking to you,” Boxcar grumbled. “What’s eating you tonight?”

  “Nothing,” he replied tremulously. “I just now remembered something that’s been bothering me since that night at The Bucket. That’s all.”

  They both stood stiff in the darkness, shaking their heads, as the senseless fawning unfurling before Lefty perverted his vision with sparkles of specious glory.

  TUSSLER FARM—AUGUST

  Though the day was not that warm, Molly sweated nervously. It was that time of the month when Clarence washed up and took the piglets that had reached sale weight into town. It was usually an all-day affair, which left Molly with the curious feeling of blood beginning to circulate again. And this day was unlike any other; it was extra special, for it coincided with a much needed day off for the beleaguered Brew Crew. Murph had some free time and was going to make good on that promise he’d made to himself.

  He reached the farm just as the changing light of dawn splashed across the sky, creating a brilliant blending of purple, pink, and orange. With a full bouquet of wildflowers in hand, he started to walk up the gravel drive, and on a pile of stacked logs next to one of the food bins, he saw her sitting. She had on a beautiful blue housedress, and her hair was pulled back off her face, braided in the back with a tiny matching bow.

  As he approached, he was struck by her nervous demeanor; she sat there, hands folded, feet tapping, like an actress awaiting her cue. As he saw her drooping profile and considered turning back, certain he would never find the right words to say, his foot found a brittle twig and snapped it in two. She turned and looked at him.

  “Good morning, Molly,” he called, walking toward her gingerly. “Am I too early?”

  She got to her feet, smoothed her dress with both hands, and blushed at the sight of the flowers. “No, no. It’s fine. Just like we said.”

  They sat inside across from each other, her nervous, him looking into her beautifully sad eyes, light blue stones with lashes that burst open from them like the flower petals in his hand.

  “I brought these for you,” he said. “They’re not much, but I thought they would cheer you up a little.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Murphy—Arthur.”

  He smiled at her. “Your eyes. They match your dress.”

  She smiled back, a short, quick smile, and then after some vain effort to be cavalier, she began to shiver and cry uncontrollably.

  “What’s happened, Arthur?” she asked throu
gh desperate sobs. “Is he okay?”

  He came close to her. Her hand was warm and soft. She sat helplessly, staring at Arthur and the light that lit his face.

  “He’s fine, Molly,” he whispered. “Really. I’m so sorry to have worried you like this. It was stupid. Never should have happened.”

  Molly breathed in some of the heavy air and wiped her eyes. She was tired. Languidly, she looked around, struggling for words. She brought the bouquet to her nose—it smelled sweet, and simple. She touched the purple, yellow, and white ruffles and was reminded, with painful memory, of how soft and gentle life could be.

  There was no noise anywhere. He could smell coffee brewing in the kitchen, but did not want to ask for any. He looked at her. She was broken. A lump rose in his throat as he waited breathlessly for her to speak.

  She was beautiful—a blossom that had somehow grown, lovely and fragrant, amidst a cluster of weeds. What, he wondered, was she doing here? With her hair pulled back, her face was winsome, soft and sculptured. In the burn of the morning light, she reminded him of the porcelain dolls his mother collected and displayed when he was a boy.

  “Why, Arthur?” she finally said. “Why Mickey?”

  “I don’t know what to say Molly. The guys all love him. Truly. They had this idea that they wanted to take him out—to a bar—and it just didn’t work out.” He lowered his head, wading through the unfortunate recollection while picking away nervously at the skin around his thumb. “We all figured that—”

  “You knew about this? Before it happened?”

  She stood up sharply and turned her back to him. He could no longer see her face, but imagined, based on the severity of her posture, that it had hardened considerably.

  “I’m sorry, Molly. Really. I know it was stupid. I just wanted so badly for all of the guys—especially Mickey—to spend some time together, so that they felt like they were part of something.” His mouth was dry. He stopped for a moment, unable to complete his thought without moistening his lips. “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Baseball is funny. You can have all the talent in the world, but if you’re not a team, it’s all for naught.”