The New York (38 page)

And won and won and won.

Raul had ended up the season hitting .381, which was enough to ensure that he would be the American League player of the year but no Ted Williams. We were in the Series and the boys were the toast of Broadway. The only fly in the ointment, if you can call it that, was Romero, the head bean counter. He defected in the U.S. courthouse. Naturally, we had to take him in. I mean, the U.S.A., not us Yankees personally.

I ended up the playoffs by flying down to Houston. I am not an extravagant man so I charged the ticket to George and the team, but I did fly first class because I owed it to myself. My first season as a big league manager (and last season as a player) and I pretty well steered a gang of Cuban kids to the pennant. Hell, I might turn out to be the manager of the year.

I wanted to tell Charlene Cleaver that I wanted her to be Mrs. Ryan Shawn. I had a ring with me that would pop your eye out and I was wearing my best brown suit.

I might say here that I wasn't exactly sure what Charlene would say to all this. (I had noticed that she waxed and waned about me and was seriously concerned about my bad eating habits, combined with her feeling that I might be mentally retarded in places.) But I rented the best Buick I could find and drove out to her apartment with as much confidence in myself as winning the pennant can bring to a manager.

She had made the reservations at Tony's and I carried a great big bouquet of yellow roses for her. She was impressed by the flowers, I could tell, and even though I had overdosed on the Old Spice, she didn't comment on it. I was getting to like Old Spice. Castro was right about that.

I gave her the ring when we got in the car and said that I wanted to marry her.

She said, “Ryan, are you doing this because you won the pennant?”

“I'm doing it because I wanna marry you, Charlene.”

“Because I'm not going to go off and marry someone just because he thinks he should be celebrating something.”

“Now why would you say that about me?”

“Well, I just want you to know that getting married is different from playing baseball games “

I had six or seven replies to that, but I was smart enough not to offer any of them up.

And she was smart enough to take the ring.

I guess getting married is just about getting smart enough. At least, I hope that's the way it all turns out down the road.

You might just say the sun was shining out on my personal parade and it felt as good as everyone always said it would.

The funny thing was we were going to be facing the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series, which led to all kinds of creative headline writing in the sports pages. Some people don't know that the Reds became the Redlegs for a while during the McCarthy years because Cincinnati did not want to look like it supported Communists. Silly, isn't it? Now there were
real
Communists in the World Series.

When baseball is at its best, it is a feelgood game and it gives pleasure in and of itself. I figured the pleasure I felt had spread to Charlene and to my little parade and the sun felt good. And the pleasure had even spread to old George, who probably didn't even know the shit that was about to hit him.

I flew back to New York for the start of the World Series. It was a night game, because television is the tail that wags the baseball bats these days. There were more people willing to watch night games, which meant more money from sponsors for commercial minutes. Which meant that little boys who dream about being ball players have to go to bed without seeing the game because they got school the next day. Which is a shame.

Charlene came along with me because she had some vacation days and she had never seen a World Series.

We went out the eve of the Series with Mr. and Mrs. Guevara and we had a good old time of it, speaking in two languages and a bottle of champagne.

The next morning I went out to the Stadium early to set up for the TV interviews and to get some personal business done. The last thing I intended to do was to spend quality time with George Bremenhaven.

The guy who waited for me in my manager's office was not from the news media, not by a long shot. His name was Johnson and he showed me a plastic identification card that said he was a lot more important than I was.

I went upstairs with him to George's office and there were more people like Mr. Johnson, government people. We were ail going to have a chat, apparently. I was at ease. I had a tape and they had the same one and we ail knew where we stood when it came to intimidating a poor old shit-kicker from El Paso, Texas.

“Look,” I began, “before any of you guys start talking about your secret stuff, I just want you to know I don't know anything about anything and I would just as soon stay out of it.”

“Sure,” Mr. Johnson said, “except you're right in the middle of the deep doo-doo”

“This is insane,” George said, looking fit for the part. “These double-dealing bastards —”

”Shut up, Mr. Bremenhaven,” Johnson said. “What we have here is a delicate balance involving several federal agencies and a foreign government that we are trying to establish a working relationship with.”

“I don't see that I fit into any of that,” I said, starting to get up. I had been all through this with Baxter back in the bad old days.

“Sit down,” Mr. Johnson said.

I sat.

“You know Deke Williams,” Mr. Johnson said to me.

“Yeah. We were on the team together.”

“You met him in Havana in July.”

“Saw him there, he was getting into the fish business.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“That's what he told me.”

“Mr. Bremenhaven has been named in a criminal complaint. We have arrested a certain Salvatore Bucci on smuggling charges and he, in turn, has mentioned that Mr. Bremenhaven paid a certain amount of money to two men to kidnap Mrs. Maria Guevara last August.”

“This doesn't have anything to do with me.”

“Except that Mrs. Guevara has relayed your suspicions to her parents in Havana who, in turn, relayed them to President Castro. This doesn't make our job in the State Department any easier, you see that?”

“Well, I don't really see what it's got to do with me.”

“What it has to do with you is dealing with the Cubans over the next few months. If Castro blows his top again — and he is a somewhat unstable man —- then it mars all the progress we've made by using the Yankees and baseball to establish a friendly people-to-people contact with the Cubans. You follow me?”

“Not exactly.”

“George Bremenhaven may or may not have been involved in a criminal conspiracy to kidnap Mrs. Guevara. We don't really care and we have no interest in pursuing this. But President Castro cares. And cares deeply. And so does the management of major league baseball, which does not want to lose its antitrust exemption. Am I being very clear?”

.”Somewhat clearer but it still doesn't involve me —”

“It involved you, you shit, when you told Raul you thought I'd kidnapped his fucking wife,” George said.

“That was just a suspicion based on a character study,” I said.

“You're fired. As of now.”

Mr. Johnson held up his hand. “No one is fired, Mr, Bremenhaven. You're not going to have the say on that any more.”

“And why not?”

“Because you are going to sell the New York Yankees to a minority ownership consisting of Deke Williams, a former Yankee pitcher, and a consortium of Cuban businessmen in Miami, New York, and Chicago.”

“I am doing no such thing.”

“On the other hand, you could be looking at life in federal prison for kidnapping,” Mr. Johnson said. “All anyone has right now is suspicions. Charges. We don't really have to get into this, do we, Mr. Bremenhaven? You can sell the team at a fair price and make a reasonable profit —- a very profitable profit — and go your own way. At the same time, Mr. Williams has demonstrated he has the wherewithal to become a black owner of a major league team, something we have neglected to have.“

“But what about me?”

Everyone looked at me.

“You, Mr. Shawn, will manage the team in the Series and sign a contract for next year if you're so inclined. Mr. Williams speaks highly of you. As does President Castro. We've backgrounded you nine ways from Sunday and you seem to be a reasonable American man who has no serious flaws we've detected. And you're not to play with tape recorders anymore.”

Apparently, we weren't going to bring up that nasty old tape I made with Riccardo's help. So that was all right.

“Yeah, you're right. I like compact discs better. Better sound quality.”

“What the fuck is this about!” George screamed. But no one paid him any mind.

“You'd be the ideal fellow to work for a black owner with a Cuban team and Cuban investors,” Johnson said to me as though George had disappeared.

“Yeah, that and speaking Spanish.”

“And learning not to peddle your conspiracy theories concerning the unfortunate kidnapping of that maid in the Plaza Hotel.”

I looked at Johnson and the other government men and then at George and George was staring right through me the way he does. I knew he was thinking his way out of this thing but not finding any way.

“What do I have to do?” he finally said.

“Enjoy the World Series. And please be a good host to Mr. Deke Williams when he joins you in his box,” said Mr. Johnson.

“I gotta sit with him, too?”

“It's part of our scenario,” Mr. Johnson said.

“This is all your fault, Ryan, you son of a bitch.”

Actually, it was, wasn't it? The more I thought about it, the happier I became.

“But what was Deke doing in Havana?” I asked Johnson.

“This is about business, Ryan, and you don't know anything about business. He was there because he contacted us through his senator. We liked his ideas, particularly in establishing an export fish business. And we like our … friends … to have friends. When George made the mistake of telling you of our scheme in opening ties to Cuba last winter, you told Mr. Williams. He saw the commercial possibilities.”

“I told you to keep your fucking mouth shut!” George exploded and jumped out of his chair. One of the security men sat him down. He was shaking with rage.

“Yeah, well. I only told Deke.”

“'I only told Deke,'“ George mimicked. “And now that shine is going to take over my Yankees.”

“You did it to yourself, George,” I said.

“‘You did it to yourself,'“ he mimicked. It was getting dangerously childish, so I stopped speaking.

“I hate this son of a bitch!” he explained to Mr. Johnson.

Mr. Johnson said, “You are going to play ball, aren't you, George?”

We all waited.

“Or there is federal court, prison, those things,” Mr. Johnson said.

Yeah, well.

George is cruel and mean, but he is a coward at heart. And just think, at the moment when his New York Yankees finally became American League champs, well, I tell you, the thought of it keeps me tickled to this day.

And it was my fault in part, wasn't it? I mean, involving George and Catfish and everyone? I didn't know it at the time, but I think I know it now and that makes it even more fun, thinking about George and his ulcer and the way he couldn't see his way out of a trap that was partly my making.

You see, I ain't an owner and he is.

And that means, when you get to do a gotcha to an owner, why, you go ahead and do it.

Gotcha.

Charlene and I got married that fall in the Riveredge Episcopal Church where her mother attends services. We went on our honeymoon in New Orleans, which is where everyone goes for a honeymoon, and Deke popped for the hotel room, which was very nice of him. For an owner, I mean. He also asked me to manage the Yanquis again and I told him yes. Everything was going along on an even keel.

He became an owner in December when the majors approved his purchase of the Yankees from George. And George? Well, what would you say if I told you he ended up as ambassador to Guatemala? Yeah. That's what I thought, too. I wonder if he had to learn Spanish.

Now, in case you don't know how the kids did in the World Series, well, that's another whole story in itself and I'll get around to telling it someday. Let's just say that winning the American League pennant made them heroes in a couple of countries and Sid Cohen got someone to work up an instant book on them.

Every day with Charlene is a different parade, and that's mostly what I got out of that strange year. I was so darned busy not wanting to miss anything that marched through my life that I missed everything else. You know that Charlene knows the names of all the lowers? And that she reads the 
Wall Street Journal
every morning just like it was as interesting as a regular paper? And that after church on Sunday, we can talk ourselves into an afternoon nap, just sitting together on the couch and not watching anything on TV? There were a lot of things I never knew were parades of their own and just as interesting as the ones I had been watching all these years.

It goes to show you, don't it?