The Pacific and Other Stories (25 page)

For the next few minutes, the Yankees were deep in thought, and no one
moved. Then Berra stood up and, with his left hand, removed his mask in the practiced gesture that he had accomplished many thousands of times. Stengel thought he was giving in. But Berra took a breath, pulled the mask back to his right shoulder, and hurled it like a pie plate beyond the third-base line. “That stands for me!” he shouted, and squatted down, confident that he would not have to catch the next pitch.

Mantle smiled the smile of someone who, though he may be about to lose grievously, will feel a deep satisfaction even in loss—as if the things that people do, all the hundreds of millions of different things, were measured not merely in the visible and apparent accounts of the world, but in another ledger of far greater import. He crossed the third-base line, and waited. Just standing there made him feel like his ancestors who had crossed oceans, knocked down forests, and fought wars.

Then the others followed suit, until only Stengel, the new outfielder, and Wylie were left behind the first-base line. Stengel was irritated beyond measure, but delighted as well. “Wylie, you don’t even count. You’re not a player, get away from me.” He looked at his team. “Okay, nuts, you want to mutiny? Okay. You’re outa your minds. But, look, I like it! You know why I like it? I like it because it’s justice. You’re doing so badly, you deserve a cut in pay. That’s why.”

He turned to Martin, still on the mound. “What about you?”

“I’m with them,” Martin said, pointing to the team.

“And so am I, goddamit!” yelled the new outfielder, crossing over.

“You mustn’t say that,” Roger scolded as the outfielder ran by him.

“Let’s go then,” Stengel said. And then, to Roger, “Did they put you up to this, kid? Did they pay you?”

“No one ever paid me anything,” said Roger, “in my whole life.”

After assessing Roger, Stengel turned to Martin. “Billy, don’t hurt him. Gentle pitches, nice and easy, all of them.”

“You haven’t seen him,” Martin said.

“But I have seen him. He’s standing right there. Look at him. Can you believe it? Kid, if you can hit the ball out of the stadium once in fifty pitches, you can have as many more pitches as you need to hit it out again, and then I’ll sign you as a Yankee for a million dollars a year.”

“It has nothing to do with money,” Roger said, and tapped the plate with the bat. “It can’t have anything to do with money. I don’t want the money. I just want to teach you,” he said earnestly, “to hit these objects, these …
balls
, with perfection.”

Because there was no other sound except the dim roar of traffic on the Major Deegan, even the slight luffing of the flags in the June sky was audible. The Yankees knew that what they expected was not possible, but they believed that they were going to see it.

“What lies behind the wall, past the tall white building?” Roger asked.

“The Bronx,” Berra answered.

“And what lies beyond the Bronx?”

“Long Island Sound.”

“Are there many boats in Long Island Sound?”

“On a day like today,” said Berra, “there are.”

“Beyond Long Island Sound, then?”

“Long Island.”

“Of course,” said Roger, unhappily. “And then the ocean.”

“Then the ocean,” Berra confirmed, “like water off a duck’s back. Why?”

“I wouldn’t want to hit anybody,” said Roger. “Play ball.”

As Martin wound up, Stengel was filled with joy, because, if Roger could do this, doubling salaries would be nothing compared to the revenue that would pour in. To see a ball hit out of Yankee Stadium, people would come from Borneo. If Roger couldn’t do it, the pay cut would free up funds for hiring some new players with blood in their veins. But, most of all, Stengel, like his team, like everyone, loved being at the threshold of great events.

The ball flew in, expressly. Roger now had the look of a professional, the Mantle look, the forward-oriented, concentrated gaze, the ease, the love of action. It was the attitude of the kind of racehorse that lived above all to run.
Shtreimel
tilted, he stepped forward and leaned gracefully into the pitch. The bat connected with the ball, this time with a sharp up-angle that every experienced batter and all the coaches deemed impossible for propelling the ball over the wall. It was simply too steep. Even had Ruth hit a ball so steeply it would have flown gloriously high but not even reached the bleachers.

This ball, however, left a faintly white trace and seemed to accelerate as it climbed. Everyone except Roger shielded his eyes and followed the trajectory. The ball made no parabola, but kept going up. They waited for it to lose power and head down, plopping into right field, but it didn’t. Only when it disappeared from sight did they realize that it was not going to come down in the stadium. They didn’t know where it was going to come down. It was gone.

It had never happened before, and no one knew what to do. So Stengel dropped to his knees and said “Holy cow,” more softly than people usually say holy cow, and he kept repeating it, as if he were in conversation with himself, a conversation limited to those two words spoken with different emphasis and intonation. It went something like this: “Holy cow. Ho-ly cow. Ho-ly cow! Holy cow? Holy … cow! Ho-ly … ca-ow! Holy? Cow?” and so on, quietly, madly.

The Yankees gave no thought to their new wealth, for as Roger hit four more pitches, one after the other, into the distant Atlantic, and Casey Stengel made an opera out of just two words, they could think only of how lucky they were to be there at that very moment.

R
OGER TURNED TO
S
TENGEL
and said, “You see?”

“I see,” said Stengel. “I see.”

“I have a suggestion,” Roger went on.

“Sure, we’ll do it.”

“I was watching Mickey hit the balls here and there.”

“Yes,” Stengel said. (Not “Yes?” but “Yes.”)

“Three people wait out in the grass to catch them.”

Stengel nodded as if seeing the game through new eyes. “That’s right. They do.”

“They shouldn’t. The one in the middle should stay, but the others should come closer in.”

“Who would cover left and right field?” Mantle asked.

Roger pointed to both, and said, “The one in the center can go to either.”

“Uh,” said Stengel, most timidly, “we’ve found that, given the depth of
the field, the most a man can cover is a third. You see, the most he’d have to run would be a sixth, which would then give him a chance to cover the field back to front.” Stengel paused. “You have another way?”

“Yeh,” said Roger. “Cover from the center. I’ll show you. Give me one of those kreplach,” by which he meant a fielder’s mitt. (They wouldn’t have known had he not held out his left hand and slapped it with his right fist, as he had seen Larsen do with his glove.)

“Get the kid a kreplach!” Stengel barked, and Mickey Mantle—Mickey Mantle—ran to the dugout as eagerly as a batboy, and emerged with his own kreplach to give to Roger.

Roger jogged to center field. He didn’t go particularly fast, but he seemed to rise as high with each step as if he were wearing kangaroo shoes. Mantle took the bat that had just made history and positioned himself to hit pop-ups.

“Hit one right to him. See if he can catch it,” Stengel commanded.

“What?” Mantle asked. “He just hit a ball out of the park, five times in a row, Casey. You think he can’t do what he says he’s going to do?”

“He’s probably never caught a ball,” Stengel insisted.

“So what,” Berra said. “The start of the middle is the end of the road for the beginning.”

“That may be so, Yogi,” Stengel said, “but let’s make sure to start where he is.”

“I’ll do that if you want,” Mantle agreed, and hit one toward Roger. Mantle was so good that Roger didn’t even have to shift his feet to position himself for the catch, which he accomplished swimmingly.

They weren’t expecting what happened when Roger threw the ball in. Never having thrown a baseball, or even held one, he overthrew. The ball sailed into the back of the upper grandstand. “This has gotta be a dream,” Stengel said.

“It isn’t,” said Berra. “You know how, when you’re dreaming, there’s a sign that says,
‘You’re Dreaming’
? There’s no sign.”

“Yeah,” said Stengel. “You’re right. There’s no sign, so we know we’re not dreaming. Okay, Mickey, let’s see if he can do this. Hit him one as far back on the third-base line as you can.”

“I have a feeling he can do it,” Mantle said, hitting with newfound strength.

The ball went deep into left field, and Roger followed—no, preceded—it with inexplicable speed. His run had nothing about it of gravity. He just burned across the grass, like a fast train, and waited for the ball to come in. This was astounding, but not impossible.

Stengel continued to direct. “I want to see this. He’s standing on the third-base line. Hit one right along the first-base line. If he can cross the field … if he. …”

The ball went high into right. Roger kept his eye on it as he ran. He ran so fast that one of the players said, “Look at that! Look at that!” and Roger arrived in right field in time to catch the ball.

They motioned for him to come in, and as Roger glided toward them along the first-base line, this time carrying the ball with him, Stengel turned to the team and said, “This is a whole new situation.”

B
ECAUSE OF THE MANY
complications that ensued, Stengel knew it wasn’t a dream. Dreams are notable not for their complications but for their lack of them, which is not to say that they aren’t complicated. Precisely because it wasn’t a dream, everyone who had seen what had happened had to be bribed, threatened, begged, or cajoled into silence. This meant the Yankees themselves, including a few coaches and assistant managers, four groundskeepers, and a hot-dog-roll contractor who witnessed the remarkable events while wheeling in several thousand pounds of hot-dog rolls. Stengel (who, as Berra said, was the smartest jerk who ever lived) enlisted those in the conspiracy not only with huge amounts of money but with roles to play. The hot-dog-roll man was retained at $5,000 per week to provide covert transportation for Roger in a hot-dog-roll truck. The groundskeepers were promised, if they kept mum, new lawns and new houses. The Yankees themselves had everything to win.

The problem of secrecy wasn’t overwhelming. The real trouble was that Roger would have to quit a week before Rosh HaShana, which meant he couldn’t play in the World Series. This was unbearable, and as the Yankees played—brilliantly, if losingly—against Kansas City that afternoon, the conversation in Stengel’s office went as follows:

“You’ve got to play in the Series, Roger. You can have anything you want. What do you want? Money? Broads? A car? A trip to Israel?”

“I want the Yenkiss to win.”

“So do I, Roger. That’s why you’ve got to play in the Series.”

“I can’t.”

“Roger, this is important here, really important. Who exactly says that you can’t play in the Series?”

“God.”

“I understand. You want to be a good guy. You want to be devout. You want to follow the rules. But God wouldn’t mind if you played in the Series. I’m sure many famous rabbis would uphold my statement.”

“He would mind, He told me.”

“What passage says that? We’ll get the best rabbis to look at it.”

“There’s no passage. He told me.”

“He told you directly?”

“Yeh.”

“I mean He actually … He … told you Himself? You spoke to Him?”

“I always speak to Him. But this time He came down to the roof.”

“Symbolically.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Mr. Stengel”—which Roger pronounced “Stengeleh”—“I weigh thirteen and three-quarter
shvoigles
. I’m two
yumps
tall. How do you think I hit the ball out of the house? Do you think I could do such a thing alone? Who do you think is in charge here? You? Me?”

N
OT ONLY WOULD
R
OGER
have to quit a week before Rosh HaShana, because of study requirements and holidays, he could play only in five games. Also, he had to have kosher food, and a place to live. Even had Roger been willing to accept money (Stengel foolishly told Mantle that the Yankees would have signed Roger for $10,000,000 a year—contingent on performance), the Yankees would have put him up in the presidential suite at the Carlyle anyway. As they didn’t even have to pay him, this was almost effortless. No one in the
world, Stengel reasoned, would ever make the connection between Roger Reeves, the new rookie fresh out of the Carolinas or possibly Georgia (who knew?), and Winston Wilgis, a neurotic and reclusive rubber heir whose aides paid the hotel staff large amounts of cash to be discreet, and who was never seen and never left his room, although his adopted son, a Hasidic teenager who sometimes wore a baseball uniform, came and went regularly in a hot-dog-roll truck that pulled up to the loading dock.

Roger had bodyguards—two huge couches in bulging suits and bowllike haircuts, whose enormous Magnum revolvers were like giant swellings under their coats. They stood in front of his door whenever he was there, and checked the rabbis who brought carts of kosher pancakes and chocolate milkshakes for milk meals, and Bessarabian shish kebab and chopped-liver sandwiches for meat meals. They shook the Cel-Ray celery tonic bottles to make sure they were not bombs (which, when Roger opened them, they were), and kept all maids and waiters in total ignorance of the occupant of the hotel’s best accommodations. Roger was rather alone.

The first night he was brought to the hotel, after ten hours of unwritten-contract negotiations in which he was totally inflexible and got exactly what he wanted, he was tired. At his insistence they had stopped at a delicatessen at 100th Street and Broadway, where he ate like a cow and drank six bottles of Cel-Ray, his favorite drink in the world, that he had had only once before in his life, during a raucous and disorganized Simchat Torah when he had mistakenly grazed at the rabbis’ sweet table.

They popped him into the hotel room as if he had been in a hotel before, which he hadn’t, and there he was, in the presidential suite of the Carlyle, on the day that he had hit five balls out of Yankee Stadium, but luxury meant nothing to him, and this kind of glory little.