The Great American Novel (27 page)

“Well,” said Wayne, “I am still puzzlin' that one out myself. What got into that boy in center, that he just sort of stood there after the catch, alookin' the way he did? What in hell did he want to wait fifteen minutes for anyway, before throwin' it? That's a awful long time, don't you think?”

They all looked to Cholly to answer this one. “Well, Wayne,” he said, “I believe it is that dang cockiness again. Base runner on second's got a wooden leg, kee-rect? So what does Hot here do—he
goes.
And that swellhead out in center, well, he is so darned stunned by it all, that finally by the time he figures out what hit him, we has got ourselves a gift of a run. Now, if I was managin' that club, I'd bench that there prima donna and slap a fine on him to boot.”

“But then how do you figure that shortstop, Cholly?” asked the Kid. “Now if that ain't the strangest ballplayin' you ever seen, what is? Stickin' the ball in his back pocket like that. And then when he is at bat, with a man on and his team down by six, and it is their last licks 'n all, catchin' a junk pitch like that inside his shirt. Now I cannot figure that out nohow.”

“Dang cockiness again!” cried Nickname, looking to Cholly. “He figures, hell, it's only them Mundys out there, I can do any dang thing I please—well, I guess we taught him a thing or two! Right, Cholly?”

“Well, nope, I don't think so, Nickname. I think what we have got there in that shortstop is one of the most tragic cases I have seen in my whole life long of all-field-no-hit.”

“Kleptomaniac's what the coach there called him,” said the Deacon.

“Same thing,” said Cholly. “Why, we had a fella down in Class D when I was just startin' out, fella name a' Mayet. Nothin' got by that boy. Why, Mayet at short wasn't much different than a big pot of glue out there. Fact that's what they called him for short: Glue. Only trouble is, he threw like a girl, and when it come to hittin', well, my pussycat probably do better, if I had one. Well, the same exact thing here, only worse.”

“Okay,” said Kid Heket, “I see that, sorta. Only how come he run over to field a pop-up and stoled the pencil right off your ear, Cholly? How come he took our towel away, right in the middle of the gosh darn game?”

“Heck, that ain't so hard to figure out. We been havin' such rotten luck this year, you probably forgot just who we all are, anyway. What boy
wouldn't
want a towel from a big league ball club to hang up and frame on the wall? Why, he wanted that thing so bad that when the game was over, I went up to the doc there and I said, ‘Doc, no hard feelin's. You did the best you could and six to zip ain't nothin' to be ashamed of against big leaguers.' And then I
give
him the towel to pass on to that there kleptomaniac boy when he seen him again. So as he didn't feel too bad, bein' the last out. And know what else I told him? I give him some advice. I said, ‘Doc, if I had a shortstop like that, I'd bat him ninth and play him at first where he don't
have
to make the throw.”

“What'd he say?”

“Oh, he laughed at me. He said, ‘Ha ha, Jolly Cholly, you haf a good sense of humor. Who efer heard of a first-baseman batting ninth?' So I said, ‘Doc, who ever heard of a fifty-year-old preacher hurlin' a shutout with only three days' rest—but he done it, maybe with the help of interference on the last play, but still he done it.'”

“Them's the breaks of the game anyway!” cried Nickname. “About time the breaks started goin' our way. Did you tell him that, Cholly?”

“I told him that, Nickname. I told him more. I said, ‘Doc, there is two kinds of baseball played in this country, and maybe somebody ought to tell you, bein' a foreigner and all—there is by the book, the way you do it, the way the Tycoons do it—and I grant, those fellers win their share of pennants doin' it that way. But then there is by hook and crook, by raw guts and all the heart you got, and that is just the way the Mundys done here today.'”

Here the team began whooping and shouting and singing with joy, though Jolly Cholly had momentarily to turn away, to struggle against the tears that were forming in his eyes. In a husky voice he went on—“And then I told him the name for that. I told him the name for wanderin' your ass off all season long, and takin' all the jokes and all the misery they can heap on your head day after day, and then comin' on out for a exhibition game like this one, where another team would just go through the motions and not give two hoots in hell how they played—and instead, instead givin' it everything you got. I told the doe the name for that, fellers. It's called courage.”

Only Roland Agni, who had gone down twice, looking, against Lunatic pitching, appeared to be unmoved by Cholly's tribute to the team. Nickname, in fact, touched Jolly Cholly's arm at the conclusion of his speech, and whispered, “Somebody better say somethin' to Rollie. He ain't takin' strikin' out too good, it don't look.”

So Cholly the peacemaker made his way past the boisterous players and down the aisle to where Roland still sat huddled in a rear corner of the bus by himself.

“What's eatin' ya, boy?”

“Nothin',” mumbled Roland.

“Why don'tcha come up front an'—”

“Leave me alone, Tuminikar!”

“Aw, Rollie, come on now,” said the sympathetic coach, “even the best of them get caught lookin' once in a while.”

“Caught
lookin'?
” cried Agni.

“Hey, Rollie,” Hothead shouted, “it's okay, slugger—we won anyway!” And grinning, he waved Big John's liniment bottle in the air to prove it.

“Sure, Rollie,” Nickname yelled. “With the Deke on the mound, we didn't need but one run anyway! So what's the difference? Everybody's gotta whiff sometimes! It's the law a' averages!”

But Agni was now standing in the aisle, screaming, “You think I got caught
lookin'?
”

Wayne Heket, whose day had been a puzzle from beginning to end, who just could not really take any more confusion on top of going sleepless all these hours, asked, “Well, wasn't ya?”

“You bunch of morons! You bunch of idiots! Why, you are bigger lunatics even than they are! Those fellers are at least locked up!”

Jolly Cholly, signaling his meaning to the other players with a wink, said, “Seems Roland got somethin' in his eye, boys—seems he couldn't see too good today.”

“You're the ones that can't see!” Agni screamed.
“They were madmen! They were low as low can be!”

“Oh, I don't know, Rollie,” said Mike Rama, who'd had his share of scurrying around to do that morning, “they wasn't
that
bad.”

“They was
worse!
And you all acted like you was takin' on the Cardinals in the seventh game of the Series!”

“How else you supposed to play, youngster?” asked the Deacon, who was beginning to get a little hot under the collar.

“And you! You're the worst of all! Hangin' in there, like a regular hero! Havin' conferences on the mound about how to pitch to a bunch of hopeless maniacs!”

“Look, son,” said Jolly Cholly, “just on account you got caught lookin'—”

“
But who got caught lookin'?
How could you get caught lookin' against pitchers
that had absolutely nothin' on the ball!
”

“You mean,” said Jolly Cholly, incredulous, “you took a
dive?
You mean you throwed it, Roland?
Why?
”

“
Why?
Oh, please, let me off! Let me off this bus!” he screamed, charging down the aisle toward the door. “I can't take bein' one of you no more!”

As they were all, with the exception of the Deacon, somewhat pie-eyed, it required virtually the entire Mundy team to subdue the boy wonder. Fortunately the driver of the bus, who was an employee of the asylum, carried a straitjacket and a gag under the seat with him at all times, and knew how to use it. “It's from bein' around them nuts all mornin',” he told the Mundys. “Sometimes I ain't always myself either, when I get home at night.”

“Oh,” said the Mundys, shaking their heads at one another, and though at first it was a relief having a professional explanation for Roland's bizarre behavior, they found that with Roland riding along in the rear seat all bound and gagged, they really could not seem to revive the jubilant mood that had followed upon their first shutout win of the year. In fact, by the time they reached Keeper Park for their regularly scheduled afternoon game, one or two of them were even starting to feel more disheartened about that victory than they had about any of those beatings they had been taking all season long.

4

EVERY INCH A MAN

4

A chapter containing as much as has ever been written anywhere on the subject of midgets in baseball. In which all who take pride in the nation's charity will be heartened by an account of the affection bestowed by the American public upon such unusual creatures. Being the full story of the midget pinch-hitter Bob Yamm, his tiny wife, and their nemesis O.K. Ockatur. How the Yamms captured the country's heart. What the newspapers did in behalf of midgets. The radio interview between Judy Yamm and Martita McGaff. A description of O.K. Ockatur, who believed the world owed him something because he was small and misshapen. What happened when the midgets collided in the Kakoola dugout. The complete text of Bob Yamm's “Farewell Address.” Exception taken to the Yamms by Angela Trust. In which the Mundys arrive in Kakoola to defeat the demoralized Reapers. A Chinese home run by Bud Parusha travels all the way to the White House; a telegram (purportedly) from Eleanor Roosevelt; wherein a trade is arranged, the one-armed outfielder for the despised dwarf. A conversation between Jolly Cholly Tuminikar and the aging members of the Mundy bench, surprising in its own way. An account of “Welcome Bud Parusha Day,” with the difficulties and discouragements that may attend those who would exchange one uniform for another. The disastrous conclusion to the foregoing adventures.

 

I
N
S
EPTEMBER
of that wartime season, with the Keepers and the Reapers battling for sixth, Kakoola owner Frank Mazuma signed on a midget to help his club as a pinch-hitter in the stretch. The midget, named Yamm, was the real thing; he stood forty inches high, weighed sixty-five pounds, and when he came to the plate and assumed the crouch that Mazuma had taught him, he presented the pitcher with a strike zone not much larger than a matchbox. At the press conference called to introduce the midget to the world, the twenty-two-year-old Yamm, fresh from the University of Wisconsin, where he'd been the first midget ever in Sigma Chi, praised Mazuma for his courage in defying “the gentleman's agreement” that had previously excluded people of his stature from big league ball. He said he realized that as baseball's first midget he was going to be subjected to a good deal of ridicule; however, he had every hope that in time even those who had started out as his enemies would come to judge him by the only thing that really mattered in this game, his value to the Kakoola Reapers. In the final analysis, Yamm asked rhetorically, what difference was there between a midget such as himself and an ordinary player, provided he contributed to the success of his team?

“The difference? About two and a half feet,” said Frank Mazuma, taking the mike from the midget. “And let me tell you something else about little Mr. Yamm here, gentlemen. Every time he comes to bat, I am going to be perched up on top of the grandstand with a high-powered rifle aimed at home plate. And if this little son of a buck so much as raises the bat off his shoulder, I'll plug him! Hear that, Pee Wee?”

Chuckling, the reporters rushed off to the phones (supplied by Mazuma) to get the story to their papers in time for the evening edition.

Sure enough, the first time the midget was announced over the public address system—“Your attention, ladies and gentlemen, pinch-hitting for the Reapers, No. ¼, Bob Yamm”—a man wearing a black eyepatch, an Army camouflage uniform, a steel helmet, and carrying a rifle, was seen to climb out through a trapdoor atop the stadium at Reaper Field and take up a firing position on the roof. Needless to say, he did not find it necessary to pull the trigger; in Yamm's first ten pinch-hitting assignments, not only did he draw ten walks, but he was not even thrown a strike. Even the sinking stuff sailed by the bill of his cap, and of course when the opposing pitchers began to press, invariably they threw the ball into the dirt, bouncing it past the midget, as though he were the batsman in cricket.

In the interest of league harmony, the other P. League owners had been willing to indulge the maverick Mazuma for a game or two, expecting that either the fans would quickly tire of the ridiculous gimmick, or that General Oakhart would make Mazuma see the light; but as it turned out, Kakoolians couldn't have been more delighted to see Yamm drawing balls in the batter's box (and Mazuma taking aim at him from the stadium roof), and General Oakhart was as powerless as ever against Mazuma's contempt for the time-honored ways. When the General telephoned to remind Mazuma of the dignity of the game and the integrity of the league (and vice versa), Mazuma responded by calling a second press conference for the articulate Bob Yamm.

“I have it on very good authority,” said Yamm, impeccably dressed in a neat pin-striped business suit and a boy's clip-on necktie, “that the powers-that-be have threatened to pass a law at the next annual winter meeting of the owners of the Patriot Baseball League of America that will bar forever from any team in the league anyone under forty-eight inches in height. This, may I add, even as our country is engaged in a brutal and costly war in behalf of freedom and justice for all. To be sure, such a law, if passed, would only be the outright codification of that very same ‘gentleman's agreement' that has operated since the inception of the eight-team Patriot League in 1898 to prevent people of my stature and proportions from competing as professional baseball players.