The House of Daniel (36 page)

And Timpanogos Park—the ballyard—was set smack in the middle of Sowiette Park, with trees and grass and tennis courts and a swimming pool and I don't know what all. Nice place to go on a hot summer afternoon. You could sit in the shade of the trees and enjoy a picnic. Or you could come to Timpanogos Park, set down half a dollar, and bake your brains out in the bleachers. Plenty of people did. If it wasn't a sellout, it came close.

The Provo Timps were like the Industries—like most of the teams in the Utah Industrial League. Some of their players worked in town. Some were pros who hadn't wanted to move away when the Utah–Idaho League folded: found work they liked, had a wife or girl close by, or came from around there and didn't feel like pulling up stakes. They played for the Timps to keep their hand in and to help keep the wolf away from the door.

Their pitcher, a lefty, had gray streaks in his sandy hair. He wouldn't beat himself—we'd have to do it to him. The whole team was like that. They knew what they were doing. Maybe the Crawdads could have rattled them with speed, the way they rattled the Industries in Denver. We didn't have that kind of speed ourselves, though. We had to play our game and hope we came out on top.

I did notice that their pitcher fell off the mound toward the third-base line more than some. So when I led off the top of the third, I pushed a bunt to the first-base side. As soon as it got past the mound, I knew I had a hit. Their second baseman picked it up and hung on to it.

A single and a sacrifice fly brought me home. “Yeah, Snake!” Harv whacked me on the behind when I came back to the dugout. “That bunting drives 'em bonkers. They aren't looking for it, and you fatten up your batting average.”

“It needs some fattening up.” I was just about good enough to play for the House of Daniel. Harv hadn't gone beating the bushes to flush out another center fielder. But he hadn't moved me up from eighth in the order, either. I didn't scare anybody with a bat in my hands. I could hurt people: I was fast, I knew how to bunt, and I could hit
some
. Scare 'em? Nope. That was a different kettle of crabs.

Then the Timps got a couple of runs. We tied it up, and it stayed tied at two into the ninth. About as different a game from the one at Bonneville Park the day before as you could imagine.

We had a guy on third with one out—a double and a long fly to right to move him along a base—when I came up. The Timps brought all their infielders in tight. Their third baseman was practically in my lap. He'd already seen that I could drop one down, and he didn't want me squeezing in the lead run.

More than one way to skin a cat, though. First pitch, I shortened up as if I was gonna bunt, then let it go by for a ball. That pulled their third baseman and first baseman in another half a step. I shortened up again on the next pitch, but instead of bunting I chopped down on the ball, hard. The bouncer went over the third baseman's head and out into left. The run scored.

“Butcher boy!” Harv yelled from the dugout. “Didn't know you had that in your bag of tricks!” I grinned over at him.

“Smart poke,” the Timps' first baseman said when I took my lead. A second later, he added, “Dammit.”

Their pitcher was wearing down. Two more singles brought me home. Fidgety Frank went out for the bottom of the ninth with a two-run lead. When he could smell a win like that, nobody was tougher. He set the Timps down in order. We had ourselves another one.

The crowd applauded us as we came off the field. Yes, Mormons are polite people. The Timps' pitcher came over to me. He already had a towel soaked in water and ammonia around his neck to help him cool off. “You oughta be against the law,” he said. “Wasn't for you, we woulda won.”

“You play with nine,” I said. “You need all of 'em.” I guess I sounded modest. But I meant it. Baseball's a team game. If Frank hadn't pitched well, if we hadn't made the plays with the leather, if there hadn't been a man on third for me to bring in … If, if, if. We would've been a different team then, and it would've been a different ballgame.

“Well, I hope they're paying you what you're worth,” he said.

“Hey, Harv!” I sang out. “This guy says you oughta give me a raise.”

Harv looked over to make sure I wasn't talking about anybody from the House of Daniel. When he saw who was standing next to me, he said, “Sure—long as it comes out of his pocket.”

“See ya,” the Timps' pitcher said, and walked away quick. We all laughed.

I wasn't really grousing about what Harv gave me, and he knew it darn well. I had more cash in my grouch bag than I'd ever had in my life before. Part of that was because I was getting paid more regularly than I ever had. And part of it was because I didn't have much to spend my money on. I still steered clear of the card games. If you know you're a sucker, that's the best thing you can do.

So I'd shell out for suppers and breakfasts and snacks. Now and then, I'd buy a paper or a magazine to read on the bus and make time go by. But that was about it. I hadn't visited a sporting house even once, the way some of the guys did now and then. Like I've said, if I end up with a girl, I want it to be on account of she likes me. Plenty of men don't care, or there wouldn't be any sporting houses. Hey, when I get horny enough, I don't care so much, either.

Sometimes after a game, the team you played doesn't want anything to do with you and you don't want anything to do with them, either. Sometimes you go out to supper with them and hoist a few. We went out to supper with the Timps. They were nice folks. We ate at a place with pot roast, meatloaf, fried chicken, that kind of thing. I had the chicken. It was fine—I've eaten plenty worse.

We told more stories about the Great Zombie Riots. Or rather, we were starting to tell the same stories over and over. One of the Timps said, “We don't have many zombies in Utah. They aren't against the law, but only gentiles use 'em here. If we do it, we get disfellowshipped.”

That took some straightening out. When he said
gentiles
, he meant any people who weren't Mormons. Even the old Jew who ran the Enid pawnshop counted for a gentile in Provo. And being disfellowshipped was the last step before you got tossed out of their church.

“Do some folks care more about money than about church rules?” Wes asked. I wondered the same thing, but he came out with the question.

The Timp didn't look happy. Neither did his teammates. “It happens,” he said after a pause. “Not too often, but it does. We've got greedy people, too.” They were human beings just like the rest of us. Not a great big surprise, I guess.

 

(XVI)

We went through Salt Lake City again, this time on the way north to Ogden. “Yes, I know it ain't the smooth way to do things,” Harv said, sounding put-upon. “I had it set up so we'd play Provo–Salt Lake–Ogden till the zombie riots knocked things sideways. Then the Timps had a game set for a day when the Industries were free, so we'll put some more miles on the bus, that's all.”

Ogden is bigger than Provo, smaller than Salt Lake City. It has long blocks and wide streets running north-south and east-west, same as they do. The mountains spring up off to the east; the Great Salt Lake is fifteen miles or so off to the west. That stretch between the mountains and the Great Salt Lake, that's where most of the people in Utah live. It's pretty enough and then some. Mountains make a horizon interesting, don't they? Back in Enid, you could see every which way as far as things ran. Not like that in Utah, I found out.

We were taking on the Ogden Gunners. They had been in the Utah–Idaho League with the Salt Lake City Bees. When the pro league hit a rock and sank, most of the team stuck together. They kept the name. I think the uniforms were new, though. Newer, I should say. They still had the old style: white caps with blue brims, crossed rifles over the heart, and an O in a diamond on the left sleeve.

Lorin Farr Park had a short right field with a high fence and was long in center and left. Wouldn't you know it?—the Gunners sported three or four big, tall, strong-looking guys who batted left. That right there warned they knew what they were doing. If the park you play in favors one side over the other, a smart team will find players who can take advantage of it.

They started a southpaw, too, to make it tough on our left-handed swingers. We had Wes going, so we had to hope he was on his game.

It wasn't the kind of game you'd use to teach somebody how to play baseball. They threw at us. Wes threw at them—he was never shy about that. Fidgety Frank took out their shortstop with a body block to break up a double play. They had to substitute for the guy; he got a wrenched knee. Then one of their runners spiked Eddie trying to steal second. Eddie got it bandaged and stayed in. Both sides said some things neither church would've been happy with. Nobody threw any punches and the benches didn't clear, but that was about all we missed.

The fans loved it. They always get excited about games like that. They called us worse names than we called each other, things that weren't in the Book of Daniel or the Book of Mormon.

They liked the game even better 'cause the Gunners won it 7-5. We had a guy called out at the plate when he looked safe easy. Harv didn't cuss the umpire, but he called him hard of seeing so many ways that the jerk threw him out of the game anyhow.

We didn't go out to supper with the Gunners. Harv stuck around just long enough to collect our share of the gate. Then we went back to our motor lodge. We cleaned up there and found somewhere to eat. If the Ogden team was out celebrating somewhere else, that was its business.

“He robbed us! In broad daylight, he robbed us!” Harv must've said it eight or ten times.

“What can you do?” Fidgety Frank said when he'd heard it often enough to get sick of it. “I mean, Harv, what can you do? You'd best believe we're lucky that kind of crap doesn't land on us even more than it does.”

“Shucks, I know one thing I can do,” Harv said. “I can make consarned sure that squinting baboon doesn't work our game the next time we swing through here. I can make sure his guide dog doesn't work it, either!”

Well, we all started giggling. Not laughing. When I say giggling, I mean giggling. And the sight of two big tables' worth of long-haired, bearded ballplayers giggling like three-year-olds set the waiters giggling, too. One of them laughed so hard, he dropped the apple pie that was supposed to be part of our dessert.

He wasn't happy about that. The price of it would come out of his pay, and you can bet a waiter at a diner in Ogden, Utah, wasn't going to drive home in a Duesenberg. But Harv slipped him a half-dollar to go with his regular tip when we were leaving. The world suited him better after that.

“It was our fault,” Harv said as we walked back to our rooms. “We broke him up and made him drop that pie. Scales oughta balance.”

“You're got a soft heart, Harv,” Wes said. “You've got a soft head, too.” He was still out of sorts because he'd lost the game.

“It could be,” Harv said. “But I don't care. I'm gonna do what feels right by my lights. If anybody else doesn't like it, too bad. No skin off my snoot.”

Wes thought that over. He decided he didn't feel like picking a fight with his manager. The House of Daniel would have had a problem without him. But he would have had a bigger problem without the team. He had sense enough to see it. Pitchers, they're mostly smarter than position players. Mostly.

Next morning, we went to Logan, northeast of Ogden. They played their games on the football field at the agricultural college, but they weren't a college team. They'd played in the Utah–Idaho League, but they went under a year before it did. They went on as a semipro outfit and kept the Collegian name—another verse of that same song.

When you put a baseball field in a space made for football, you're going to have one field that's too short and one that's too long. At the agricultural college, left was the short field—it was only 251 down the line. They had a tall chicken-wire screen that they mounted on two metal posts to take away some of the cheap homers, but it wouldn't take away all of them. Meanwhile, you needed to climb on a horse to go to the fence in right.

Before the game, the Collegians' manager walked over to Harv and said, “Hear you had a run-in with the Gunners yesterday.”

“That's right.” Steam didn't shoot out of Harv's ears, but I don't know why not. “And if you want to play the way they did, we'll have another one with you fellas today.”

“No, no.” Their manager shook his head. “Those guys, they think they gotta show you how big it is every time they put on spikes. You don't throw at us, we won't throw at you. If you do, we can take care of ourselves.”

“We aren't headhunters. You know anything about us, you know that,” Harv said. “Frank may push you back from the plate, but—”

“That's not the same thing. Sure. I know the difference,” the Logan man said. “Fair enough. If it doesn't start, we'll both be happy. If it does, we'll go on from there.”

“Yup.” Harv held out his hand. The Collegians' manager shook with him.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
isn't Book of Daniel talk, but it'd be baseball Holy Writ even if it weren't in the Good Book some other place. They both understood it. So did everybody else on both sides.

The crowd cheered when the Collegians took the field. The cheers sorta faded away instead of coming down on top of us. They sounded lonely and far off. Football fields are different, that's all.

So are games you play on football fields. Wes hit a screamer that would have been out of most parks. I mean to tell you, he almost broke that baseball. It hit near the top of the screen and bounced down into their left fielder's glove. The guy knew his business. He fired it into second. Wes took a big turn around first, but he had to scoot back in a hurry. What should have been a homer turned into a single.