The Last Western (13 page)

The marvels of course were never marvelous enough, for the boredom the people felt was inside them, in what the people of the unremembered times had called the soul.

Even the great wonders of space travel bored and disappointed the people now. Only when some accident occurred would they take an interest in space explorations. They watched and hungered for disaster.

So as the first Cougar stepped to the plate, a sort of frenzied moan came from the crowd, that frightening sound Willie had heard before.

When he looked at the faces of the people and saw their anger and excitement, he knew that however he pitched, whether he succeeded or failed, that hungering and thirsting for marvels would go on. There was nothing he, or anyone else, could do about it.

But now he had to pitch—pitch before the President of the United States and the Vice-President of the United States and 61,000 fans and the twenty-six red eyes of television cameras that were beaming this game to every state in the country, to Canada, to six Latin American nations and by satellite to the armed forces of the United States that were fighting the six strange unexplained, undeclared wars.

High in the broadcasting booth, the famed sportscaster Zack Taylor described the action as follows:

So here he is, fans, the wonder boy from the Southwest, with the wonder pitch. STRIKE ONE!

Tall, about six feet one, on the slender side at 175, red hair,

Oriental eyes and a face that has been described as that of a happy Aztec warrior—though that isn’t exactly right either because Willie is also a black American and supposedly there’s an Irishman back in the fam—STRIKE TWO!

The ball, as you saw, really jumped that time. It looked to us like it jumped a yard as it swooshed up from the plate. There was absolutely no way for Al Freud to get near the ball as it seemed to swerve—and STRIKE THREE!

An amazing spectacle, ladies and gentlemen, absolutely amazing! We here in the booth—let’s be honest—we’ve been somewhat skeptical of this youngster. Like others, we’ve had our doubts. But there was no doubt about those three pitches, and Al Freud has one of the best eyes in baseball.

Here now is big Bill Bultman, slugging outfielder of the Cougars. Last year the Bull hit .356 and drove in 115 runs. Let’s see if young Willie can work his wonders on one of the real power hitters of the league.

Now, looking in from our center field camera, Willie goes into his motion and now—STRIKE ONE! He did it again.

On the replay: The ball leaves his hand, you’ll notice, just a shade earlier than with most pitchers and with a sort of flutter of the wrist. It looks at that point like something in the curve family, but watch closely now. The ball does not break to either side. There! You see that? The ball actually breaks up, and not like a rising fast ball.

Back to live action and strike two! Bill Bultman’s objecting to that call, but umpire Am Toynbee is unmoved.

We started to say, fans, that while many pitchers throw a rising fast ball, this pitch jumps suddenly in the air, as if, in the words of the press, the young pitcher had strung a piano wire ten feet in front of the plate and had somehow mastered the knack of hitting it every time.

And called strike three!

And now Bultman’s hopping mad—wait a minute—Bultman hit Toynbee! Toynbee is down!

Bill Bultman, angered by that last call and the one before it, has just slugged the dean of American umpires, Am Toynbee, who appears to be out cold back of the plate.

So now, with this break in the action, how about opening a nice cold bottle of Regent Ale?

Remember, if it’s happiness you’re after, the magic word is Regent.

Willie pitched another perfect game, the crowd shrieking and screaming with every pitch, but never so excitedly as in the first inning when Bultman slugged the umpire or in the eighth inning when another batter, having struck out for the third time, started out to the mound waving his bat menacingly.

When his teammates pulled the batter back to the dugout, the crowd groaned in disappointment.

After the game, the people spilled out onto the field to get close to Willie, to touch him or talk to him or perhaps only see him at close range.

But Willie, as he went to the dugout with Clio and Mr. Grayson, was frightened. He sensed the anger that was in the air.

He had made a perfect thing and the perfect thing was not enough.

In the clubhouse, though the Hawks had won 5 to 0, there was no joy.

The players dressed quickly and filed out to the bus.

They too had had their fill of perfection. Nothing they cpuld ever do could match what Willie had done. Willie had taken something from each of them—each man’s golden dream of himself.

Only Clio and Mr. Grayson were happy, but their happiness could not survive against the gloom of the players.

Back at the hotel Willie phoned his mother and Cool Dawn in Houston.

They told him he was wonderful.

Willie said it was much more wonderful to hear their voices again.

Then he thought he heard a quavering in something his mother said.

“Is everything all right, mama?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Trouble,” said Cool Dawn.

“What kind of trouble?” said Willie anxiously.

“In the streets,” said Cool Dawn.

“Worse than last year?”

“No,” said Willie’s mother. “Anyway, we’re safe and well. The police have controlled it. Don’t worry.”

But Willie could not help worrying. There had been talk in the lobby of a further civil disturbance in Chicago, and he feared what might be happening in Houston.

He called Carolyn.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“The trouble?”

“Just some of the Apaches fighting.”

“Carolyn?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t—go out?”

“I can take care of myself.”

The sound of her voice made him want to leave everything and go to her.

“I saw the game today. You must be the most famous person in the country.”

“Carolyn, I miss you.”

He waited for her voice again, but over the phone came the laugh of Flexer Sage.

“You was magnificent, boy,” said Flexer, “sheer magnificent.”

“Thanks, Mr. Sage.”

Flexer Sage wanted to know about the game, the Bultman-Toynbee fight, what Thatcher Grayson was like and so on. Finally Willie asked if he could talk to Carolyn again.

“Sure, sure,” said Flexer. “You just keep striking them out, hear? There isn’t no record you can’t bust now, boy.”

There was so much talking and laughter in the background when Carolyn got back on the line that she could hardly be heard.

“I’ll write you a letter,” said Willie. “It’s hard talking on the phone.”

“I got your cards.”

“I’m a terrible writer.”

“Terrible.”

They hung up then in the old joking way, and Willie had failed once more to say the splendid words.

He sat on the edge of the bed and began to worry about the trouble again.

“Carolyn says the Apaches are fighting,” he said to Clio.

But talking to Clio was like talking to a statue. His worries about Martha had locked him up, away from everything.

“I got to talk to her again,” he said.

So Willie left the room while he made his call. When he came back, Clio was even worse off than before.

“Now she doesn’t want us to find Regent,” he said. “She says if we find him, it’ll only be worse for her.”

“Clio,” said Willie, “Mr. Regent is a human being. I’m sure if we find him, we can get him to help Martha.”

“She says he’d call it meddling.”

“Why? How?”

“I don’t know,” said Clio miserably.

The boys discussed the matter at length, Willie finally convincing Clio that they should continue their search for Robert ‘Bob’ Regent.

So began another night of telephoning—hotels, motels, restaurants, nightclubs.

They phoned the New York offices of Regent Wines, and got a list of the TV and radio stations, the publishing houses and other properties of Robert ‘Bob’ Regent and phoned them all, one after the other, but no one anywhere was able to tell them where Robert ‘Bob’ Regent was.

At two in the morning they gave it up.

They had just settled in their beds when the phone rang.

“Western Union with a telegram from Mr. Robert ‘Bob’ Regent,” the operator said.

“Please go ahead,” said Willie, his voice shaking with excitement.

“The message is as follows: The Bird blinds the Cougars. Congratulations. Unity through obedience. Ever your friend. Bob Regent.”

“Is that all?” said Willie.

“That’s all.”

“What’s the address?”

“There isn’t any address.”

“What’s the city?”

“Montevideo, Uruguay.”

That night there was a roaring in the streets of Chicago that was like the roaring of wild beasts.

Willie woke up and went to the window.

There was nothing in the streets but late cabs and somewhere out near Lake Michigan the mournful wail of an ambulance.

He had been dreaming, he supposed, of the crowd at the ball park.

Cleveland
, St. Louis, Kansas City, Washington—everywhere the Hawks played, the vast shouting crowds would pour into the ball parks, crowds so large that many would have to be turned away.

On days when Willie pitched, every seat in the stadium would be sold out by ten in the morning.

Even on his rest days, it was always a full house.

People wanted to see the Miracle Kid, as he was called now, wanted to get close to him, above all, wanted to touch him.

In St. Louis after another perfect game, two older men and a woman tore his shirt away.

In Kansas City, they got his shirt, undershirt and one of his shoes.

In the hotels where the Hawks stayed, in the restaurants where they dined, there were always the crowds, pressing and pushing, striving for a glimpse of Willie.

If they saw him, they would ask him for autographs, baseballs, pictures.

Willie always smilingly obliged.

It made him happy to make others happy even though he saw there was nothing he could do about the underlying wonder-lust that had taken many.

It was tiring work meeting people and signing baseballs and shaking hands and having to demonstrate his pitch.

And sometimes there was the fear.

He would spend a half hour throwing the ball before a group of spectators, inviting them to study his grip of the ball and so on, and after he had no more to show, the people would still stay on, their faces unhappy and resentful, as if he had cheated them somehow.

“It’s just a pitch,” he would laugh, trying to tell them that a miracle pitch was after all nothing but a baseball thrown a certain way.

But that was not explanation enough for everyone.

“Fake!” a man cried in Washington. “It’s a hoax!”

“Part of the conspiracy!” another man shouted at the end of another demonstration.

Sometimes these incidents led to arguments among the fans, and once or twice, to violence.

When that happened, Willie would go to the hotel and lock himself in his room.

One night after a game in Boston, a delegation of players came to his room with a copy of Now magazine. Willie’s picture was on the cover.

The story, after describing Willie as a “truly authentic folk hero” and a “needed reminder that a poor boy can still make it to the top in the United States,” went on to quote a California psychiatrist who had written an article on Willie’s pitch.

It was this article the players wanted Willie to read.

At times of stress
, the psychiatrist had written,
man returns to a more primitive state. He looks for marvels and wonders and signs of the miraculous. The greater the stress, the greater his appetite for the preternatural. The tendency is manifested in all aspects of culture—in religion, music, dance and the games. Thus, at the present time, a young baseball pitcher is said to have the power of hurling a “miracle pitch.”

From a scientific standpoint, this is absurd. The pitch is nothing more than a well-thrown rising fast ball which gives the illusion of sharply “.skipping” at the plate. The illusion has nothing to do with the pitch itself; it is rather the product of the psychic needs of the players. Caught up in the general and public need for the miraculous and fantastic, they have convinced themselves the pitch is unhittable. They are the victims of a delusion, brought about by a powerful unconscious urge to believe in the mysterious and inexplicable.

“What’s it mean?” said Willie. “I don’t understand those words.”

“It means,” said Essinger, a renowned pitcher of the previous season, “that what you are doing is a trick.”

“But that’s silly.”

“We’re the silly ones,” said Essinger. “You’ve made us look that way. Silly and useless. You’re ruining the game.”

“I don’t understand, Mr. Essinger.”

“This trick pitch of yours makes fools of batters. It also makes fools of all other pitchers. It reflects on everybody in baseball.”

“Mr. Essinger, every pitcher tries to strike the batter out. That’s the idea of the pitch, isn’t it? Every pitcher tries to trick the batter.”

“Not the way you’re doing it.”

“Mr. Essinger, I have shown you the pitch so many times.”

“Without ever showing me the secret of it.”

“There isn’t any secret,” said Willie earnestly.

The other players scoffed at this.

“You act as if you think I’d hold something back,” Willie said, near tears suddenly. “As if I’d lie to my own teammates.”

“What else can we think?” said Essinger. “You won’t explain how you do it.”

“How can I explain what I don’t understand?”

“Okay, Essinger,” said one of the other players, “make the offer.”

Essinger drew an envelope from the pocket of his red, white and blue sports jacket.

“This is a check for 200,000 dollars. It’s all the money we can raise right now. Tell us the secret of the pitch and it’s yours.”

“There isn’t any secret!” Willie cried. “If I knew the secret, don’t you trust me to share it with you, my own teammates?”