Murder at Fenway Park (5 page)

When I let him in, Stahl took a glance around the room, and wearily asked, “Fletcher out getting cigars?” I nodded, but doubted if I seemed convincing.

“Uh-huh,” he grunted. Stahl wore a tired expression and a blue herringbone suit that looked a size too small. “Don’t worry about it, kid. You did okay today. Tomorrow you’re starting at second. When we get to Philadelphia, you’ll fill in at shortstop. Get some sleep.”

He turned to go out the door, and added, “Oh ... don’t bother to wait up for Fletcher.” When Stahl left, I thought his was a job I didn’t envy. He was expected to bat .300, field his position at first base, run the team in the day, and baby-sit it at night.

With my bed now free, I undressed and tried to take Stahl’s advice.

Once I was under the covers, it occurred to me that whoever left the message might return, perhaps to clarify its meaning. I tried to sleep lightly, keeping one eye open to spot any intruder. I found that it can’t be done. All I accomplished was tire my eyes by trying to close only one at a time. I was soon asleep.

I awoke with a ringing in my ears. Was that the alarm clock? No, it’s still dark out. Wait a minute, are my eyes open? I chafed my right eyeball by sticking a fingertip in it. Yes, my eyelids are open. So, it’s still night. Why am I awake?

Hchoowook. Shptoo.
Ping!

That
was the noise. I sat up.

“You up, kid?”

“Mmm ... yeah.”

Hchoowook. Shptoo.
Ping!
Fletcher hit the spittoon with another gob of tobacco juice. “Well, you oughta go to sleep,” he said. “We got a game tomorrow.” With that helpful advice, Fletcher spit out his wad and plopped into bed.

The next day, I did get a turn at batting practice, probably because nobody else wanted one. It was a chilly sunless spring afternoon and there were bees in the bats. Unless the ball was hit with the sweet part of the bat, it stung like hell to make contact.

Since I was starting the game this time, I paid attention to the field instead of the bleachers and the fans. And to get my mind off the message that was left in my room, I tried to concentrate on the proper use of a baseball bat. After taking my practice hits, I checked out the ground near home plate. I wanted to see how far a bunt would travel, and in what direction. Some groundskeepers graded the foul lines so that balls would tend to roll either fair or foul, depending on their own team’s bunting skills. The ground here looked level, but it was packed hard. To keep the ball from skipping too fast and far, I’d have to deaden a bunt by holding the bat loosely.

I headed back to the dugout where most of the Sox sat huddled in their red plaid warm-up jackets. Without a jacket of my own, it struck me how drab the Red Sox uniform was in comparison with the bright coats. The entire outfit was flat gray with faint blue pinstripes, even the bill of the cap; the only extra decoration anywhere was BOSTON spelled out on the front of the jersey in navy block letters. The Red Sox’s new ownership may have done a great job building Fenway Park, but Bob Tyler and his partners would have done well to snazz up the team uniforms some, too.

Only two other players lacked the colorful overcoats: pitcher Charlie Strickler and catcher Billy Neal, an aging battery that just joined the team. Continuing his effort to bolster the injured Red Sox roster, Tyler bought the duo from Frank Navin for $5,000 cash. It gave me some degree, if only a day’s worth, of seniority on the team.

Holding the lineup cards in one hand and a battered brown megaphone in the other, the plate umpire faced the crowd behind home plate and announced the starting lineups. He must have given the names of both nines, but all that caught my ear was
Rawlings, Second Base.
I savored the sound as it echoed through the stadium.

The Highlanders were throwing Jack Warhop at us. Smoky Joe Wood, the only Sox player who looked as young as I, was pitching against him.

Harry Hooper again led off the game, this time by popping out to third. Duffy Lewis and Tris Speaker went down easily, too, and I trotted to second base as the Sox took the field.

I quickly discovered why Joe Wood was called “Smoky”: he threw the ball so fast that the only thing visible was the smoke that seemed to trail behind it. I used to think this an exaggeration by the sportswriters, but the blur of the speeding ball really made it look like it had a tail of steam. Smoky Joe had his best stuff this day; he shut down the Highlander batters in the first inning, striking out the side.

The game was still scoreless when I led off the top of the third. I chose my spot for the first pitch: curveball, belt-high on the outside corner. That’s where Warhop put it, and I took a cut. The ball broke sharper than I expected, and I topped it a bit, hitting a hard grounder between third and short. I tried to leg it out to first, as the shortstop went in the hole to field the ball. I should have been out by a step or two, but the play didn’t click somehow. As usual, Hal Chase had been playing a deep first base, and he didn’t get to the bag in time for the throw. The ball skipped off Chase’s glove and flew into the stands. I went on to second base as the umpire retrieved the ball from the fan who caught the overthrow.

That play felt funny. The timing was off, and it shouldn’t have been. I looked to first base, and saw Chase smirking as he moved back into position. Was he playing his games again? Although Chase was unquestionably the best fielding first baseman in the game, he was known for slacking off at times. Rumors had it that he was friendly with gamblers and would sometimes throw games for his pals. But I don’t think anyone ever actually caught him at it. Perhaps the stories circulated only because there are always rumors about odd people—and Chase was certainly that. Who but a screwball would throw lefty and bat righty?

While I speculated about Chase, Warhop picked me off second. It is impossible to think and run at the same time.

The innings passed quickly with neither team scoring.

Whenever the Sox batted, I kept my eyes on Hal Chase, looking for any funny business. If he was trying to throw the game, he’d have to blow some more plays.

In the fourth, Duffy Lewis grounded to third and again Chase didn’t make it to the bag in time. He did look to be hustling, but again the rhythm of the play was wrong.

My next at bat came in the sixth. With a 2–2 count, Warhop served up a low lazy curve. I slid my right hand up the barrel of the bat and rapped down at the ball with a short stroke. The ball shot off the wood, down onto the hard earth. It hit a foot in front of home plate and bounced up to the height of a pop fly. By the time it came down, I had crossed first base safely. Hal Chase glared at me with pale gray eyes and greeted me with scorn,
“Nobody
hits Baltimore chops no more.” That’s okay—so what if I’m old-fashioned? I’m on first base with a single. But there I stayed, as the hitters who followed me went down on outs.

The game remained scoreless into the top of the ninth inning. And that’s when I figured out how Hal Chase did it.

Jake Stahl hit a grounder to third to open our half of the inning, and I kept my eyes on Chase from the moment the bat made contact. While the ball skipped to the third baseman, Chase stayed anchored well off the first base bag. Then just before the ball was fielded, he broke for the base. When the third baseman’s throw arrived, Chase was hustling as hard as he could to take the throw at first—but his initial delay ensured that he wouldn’t be in time to catch the ball cleanly. The son of a bitch. He was really throwing the game.

Yesterday, with the sight of a dead man still fresh in my eyes, I would have thought that murder was the most heinous of crimes. But now I’d seen Hal Chase try to throw a baseball game. It was an offense that seemed worse than murder—a crime less gruesome, but a sacrilege more sinister.

B
efore the first game in Shibe Park, I worried that I would be intimidated by playing against the Athletics. Not only were they my old boyhood favorites, but just off their second straight World Series win, they would likely be Boston’s toughest competition for the American League pennant.

Once the first game began, however, my awe for the Athletics faded away. Maybe because it wasn’t the same field where I had watched them as a boy.

My nonchalance lasted only until the next day, when we faced Gettysburg Eddie Plank. Plank had been pitching for the A’s since I was nine years old. He was one of those hurlers I batted against time and again in countless daydreams. Somehow the prospect of trying to hit him in real life didn’t seem as promising as it did in my fantasies of years ago.

My first at bat against Plank turned out to be an embarrassingly futile effort. I felt physically weak, with no strength in my legs or power in my arms. I swatted at three pitches and struck out without even a foul tip.

In my second try against him, I was just angry enough with myself that it offset the nervousness. The net effect was that I felt strong and sharp. On his second pitch, I tagged a line drive single up the middle, just inches over Plank’s head. At first base, I cheered to myself: I can hit Eddie Plank! Yes, I belong in the big leagues.

I ended up one for four, but that one felt like plenty. Plank won the game, giving Philadelphia a split of the first two games of the series.

After the game, the locker room was the usual babel of talking, groaning, cussing, and spitting. Still generally ignored by teammates, I changed quietly, barely paying attention to the intermittent comments that buzzed around me.

“He got himself killed.”

That
caught my attention. I wasn’t sure who said it, or what preceded it. I lifted my head and tilted it this way and that, angling my ears to try to extract additional information from the fragmented words and phrases that darted about the room.

“Look at these goddam corns—my feet are killin’ me.”

“Anybody seen my towel?”

Hchoowook. Shptoo.
Splat!

So far nothing useful. Come on, somebody ask
who
got himself killed.

“I gotta get myself some new spikes.”

“Okay, who took my towel?”

“Who’s pitchin’ tomorrow?”

“Found him under a railroad bridge.”

There! That was a strange sentence for a baseball clubhouse.

I began to successfully filter out the extraneous conversations, and pick up only those comments that didn’t fit in with typical locker room chatter. In no particular order, I was able to gather that a baseball player had been killed, the fellow’s name sounded like “Carrigan,” he played third base for Detroit, his body was found under a railroad bridge in Boston, it was discovered after the Tigers’ last series there, and he had died as the result of a mugging. Since Detroit had preceded us in Shibe Park, I figured that’s how this news started to get around.

I was hoping for information about the dead man I stumbled upon in Fenway Park, and was disappointed. The locker room conversation obviously referred to someone else. I remembered the newspaper story I read about the body that was found in Dorchester, and this fit what I heard in the clubhouse.

Instead of going straight to the hotel after leaving Shibe Park, I took an aimless walk through the streets of North Philadelphia. My thoughts were confused and largely incoherent, but they eventually agreed on one frightening conclusion: a deadly trend was developing.

Although my find at Fenway Park was a horrible one, it was the horror of one gruesome sight, one shocking experience. Now, even more chilling, was the possibility that it wasn’t an isolated incident. Two violent deaths—was it two and counting?—had occurred within a short time of each other. And both were connected with Fenway Park. One victim—maybe a fan—was found
in
the stadium, and the other had just played there. Could the splendid new ballpark be jinxed?

The walk didn’t help me sort things out any, so I grabbed a cheese steak sandwich at a street vendor and went back to the hotel room.

Laying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, I realized that I wasn’t going to clear anything up just by thinking. If I wanted to find out what happened, I would have to talk to people, ask what I wanted to know. But talking could get me in trouble.

Tyler had made it clear that I’d better keep my mouth shut about the dead man at Fenway Park. Of course I knew that his main concern wasn’t my protection as he claimed—he probably wanted to avoid bad publicity more than anything else. Whatever the real reason for his orders, Bob Tyler seemed a man who would not tolerate having them disobeyed.

And then there’s the police. If they failed to find the real killer, the cops might decide to clear up the case by convicting the handiest suspect. Having been found at the crime scene, Captain O’Malley already had me pegged for that role. Asking questions would only draw additional attention to myself.

I wasn’t entirely sure which would be worse: facing Tyler’s wrath or O’Malley’s handcuffs.

Wait a minute ... I
can
ask questions about the Detroit player—it was only the body at Fenway that Tyler had told me to keep quiet about. If Tyler gives me hell for asking about the dead Tiger, I’ll swear I did as I was told, and pretend it never occurred to me that the deaths were connected.

I was still awake when Clyde Fletcher came into our room, much earlier than usual, grumbling about the insufficient nightlife in Philadelphia.

Hchoowook. Shptoo.
Ping!

I looked at him as he sat on his bed. His head seemed to list to one side to balance the massive chaw of tobacco that puffed out his cheek. It gave a tilt to the one huge bushy eyebrow that spanned across both his eyes as it tried to stretch from ear to ear.

Although he seemed unpromising as a source of information on anything but vices, I decided to try to talk with Fletcher. If there was no response, at least I wouldn’t be losing out on much.

Trying hard to sound as if I just wanted to pass the time, I asked him, “You know a player named Carrigan?”

“Bill Carrigan?”

I shook my head at the name of the Red Sox catcher. “No, this guy is with Detroit. Or he was, anyway. Some guys in the clubhouse were saying he got himself in a scrap.”

Fletcher looked puzzled, then seemed to remember him. “Oh.
Corriden.
Yeah, Red Corriden. He was in the last series in Boston. Too bad about him. Just a kid. Musta been about your age.” Hchoowook. Shptoo.
Ping!

“You know what happened to him?” I prodded.

“Nah. Just what I heard the boys saying. I guess he was out where he shouldn’ta been. Somebody beat him up and took his roll. Happens sometimes. Shame though.”

“Third baseman, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, I think so, but he hadn’t played much. Oh yeah, I think I saw him with the Browns a couple years ago. I think maybe he did play third.” Hchoowook. Shptoo.
Ping!

Fletcher ended the brief conversation by killing the light and saying, “Well, might as well get some sleep. Nothing else to do in this goddam town.”