Chapter: May
The season was alive with possibility that for the nonce seemed more promise than question. The Mets’ offense continued to drive, spurred by Soo and now rallying around the thrumming engine that heralded the advance of the armor division, the emergence from long hibernation of their designated hitter, Dunk Murphy.
When your father is a college basketball hero of award, championship, and nationwide fame, and you share his name, it is only natural that you will, before you can walk, share his nickname. However, it became quickly clear as he aged that Duncan, Jr. was not of the long, lean model of his dad, but rather had inherited the fuller, blockier form of his mother’s side. And his footwork was atrocious. But, by the time he was a freshman in high school he could hit the ball into the stands at the football stadium next door, so there was always a place for him. Before graduating from JV he had been moved off short and into left, and his college days bounced between first and right. Any pro team knew what they were drafting, athletically, and the team that did were pleasantly rewarded when he displayed the same marketable charisma of his sire. In fact, such was his popularity with the fans after his eight years of service in Milwaukee that even though it was that he opted to leave in free agency, the local press anointed him the spurned star and cast team management as the parsimonious antagonists.
His first season in New York had been rocky – two trips to the DL and a paucity of power – and it was wondered in the mouths of observers and in the depths of his chest whether his decline had come sudden and horrid like the plague. Now the home run remembered him, and they spent their days side-by-side in the box score.
As May warmed the hitting heat spread to the action of every bat in the lineup, from Dunk Murphy’s monstrous blasts to the elfin slap-singles of utility infielder Obro Dibino. The score kept climbing: 6 runs, 8 runs, 12 runs. The team was given nearly a week of grace by the judges of the byline, until some bitter soul insisted on examining the other half of the box and pointing out that the bottom was falling out in runs allowed: 5, 7, 8. The vanguard was charging and the rearguard was disintegrating. Every game was becoming an uncomfortable internal race and there were nights that a few wooden bats were insufficient to bail out the boat. Bullpen implosions and starter struggles mounted in inevitable succession as each half of the staff taxed the other. The defense started making mistakes. Mets mistakes. The kind the fans knew as a taste on their tongues; it lingered after the swallowing of each sour season and reminded them with tally marks on the prison wall of fandom how long it had been since their last pennant.
Other than Dibino spelling a beleaguered member of the infield, Shawn refused to alter the defensive arrangement, against the wailing of the petitioners in the stands. Round-faced, Georgia-born Preston Thoms, always so eager to please, had even tried switching his glove hand in Spring Training when he learned he would be playing first, but it had not worked out. When a man spends his life at third, is drafted by the Reds to be their future at third, and is dealt from Triple-A because Cincinnati has gone ahead and signed a big name free agent but the Mets still need someone at third, he cannot simply cross to the other side of the looking glass in a month; so now he was dancing at the summer ball, putting his back to the runner, and attempting cross-body throws that sometimes did and sometimes did not find an outfielder first. Meanwhile the hot corner was being overseen by Zinovo Gara, Venezuela’s least passionate man, who had grown into a ballplayer, solid in several senses of the term, roaming the wide plains of right and left, now wriggling plaintively in the lobster trap of the infield dirt. Both men were swinging the bat with uncommon potency, but frustrating the faithful with their infidelity to the easy put out.
There was never, Bruce had to admit, exactly a good time for the defense to be failing, but this certainly seemed the worst. May was almost exclusively divisional play, and where the team had hoped to build upon their lead, they instead found it slipping into memory labeled “overachieving,” their current course dubbed “correction.” Across the league, the month was producing tight contests and tightening races, but for the time being, especially with their first games of the year against the Yankees suspiciously placed at the end of the month, all Bruce’s attention was on the East. It was a crowded division.
It was the third season back in New York for the Dodgers and Giants. California had changed – the quakes; the climate; the economics; the propositions and measures toward realizing the easing of federal oversight, rattlings of independence that had the side-effect of producing of Texas the staunchest pro-Union muscle in the body politic – and the Big Apple’s long-lost sons had begun feeling out the prospect of moving back home. Dodgers’ ownership had passed into a generation of hands that assumed “Chavez” to have been some noteworthy pitcher of the organization’s past, and had spat upon Los Angeles in departure, fairly leaping into the alluring arms of promised revenue, and rather cutely titling their new stadium Prospect Park, in honor of the shrinking green space out of which they had carved the lot. The Giants had been noisier, the discussion becoming a public affair as they held out over the particulars of relocating to Manhattan. The city, of course, had been willing to demolish large swaths of Harlem to accommodate the team, while Stoneham’s Boys naturally had their eyes further downtown: Ultimately a compromise nestled them below Pleasant Avenue and on the river, even extending the stands over the FDR so players could knock home runs into the water where no one would collect them. The season following the team’s departure, a petition was begun in San Francisco to keep them from leaving; it of course had no impact, but the concept’s subsequent incorporation and public offering were very successful. When both organizations were settled, the mayor had beamingly announced that now “every borough has a team!” a statement which had more than delighted some ninety-five percent of the city’s population and lost him a number of donors.
The results of the move for both teams had been mixed. Neither had been presenting a strong roster for several years now. The Giants found the town cool in reception, either harboring grudges for a slight that predated the living population or else disinterested in the whole notion of a sporting club in town. The Dodgers, meanwhile, had landed on the tail of another White Flight and were straining mightily to keep some segment of the beast within reach. At the same time, with the national broadcast fees, the league compensations, the sudden obsolescence of all preexisting merchandise – they had no complaints on the subject of income.
The Mets continued to bounce between good games and bad, taking two from the Giants but dropping two to the Dodgers, before taking the plane to Maryland. The Baltimore Orioles were, as it happened, no longer housed in Baltimore; they had abandoned the city to its turmoil and for its own part the city was far too tired to fight for the dignity of its name with a baseball team. After flirting with Olney, the orange and black had landed in Laurel, and the gargantuan construction of Northrop Yards dominated the view as one approached. Bruce found the place disconcerting, inside and out, the heat emphasizing the medical sterility of the atmosphere, blank-faced men in pricey suits ignoring the action from well-appointed suites. The Orioles were expected to show but not contend this year, their roster performance a more extreme version of the Mets’ current woes, with powerful bats and an underequipped rotation. The first two games were split with same score, 7-6. New York took the third with an eighth-inning comeback, just barely failing to give it away in the bottom of the ninth.
In the middle of the month, the Mets reached out of the division to get punched around by the dominant Tigers and the suddenly-surging Blue Jays, stealing just one game from each, their host cities’ downtowns still secured in a bubble that kept at bay the realities that were devouring the metropoleis. The bullpen blew a late lead in the third game at lowly Cleveland, denying the sweep. They were going to be limping into the Bronx at a moment when they most needed to be strong.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
George sneered as he faced the mumbling, perfumed forms of the team executives: men who hid their fear – the most despicable kind of man. He did not sit – did not even draw out a chair – and they were made to feel like fools no matter how they situated themselves. He had spoken what was law, and they were murmuring in needless agreement as he was already leaving.
One spoke to his neighbor with a shrugging tone of careless volume, “I guess we’ll have to visit the CashMachine.”
George wheeled as the scythe is wielded, and fixed the speaker in the space between them as the other had wandered into the tunnel of a ghost train that knows only spectral light but full corporeal force. His remonstration was staccato: “Don’t call him that. Don’t ever say that. He’s there; he’s alive. He’s got sentience; he’s got a soul. That’s all he is now, and that makes him a man – more than you’ll ever be. Respect your betters.” Even tinged with emotion, his voice was the iron fist, and that alone pleased him. He permitted no reply and marched to his chambers.
There was truth in it, though; they needed to be better. Cash would have to get to work. Number Twenty-Nine was a good kid – he called a good game, swung a good bat – but he wasn’t a leader in the deep truth of the word; he wasn’t a Captain. Number Nineteen was finally finding himself in home run power, but the others had not followed him. Number Twenty-Eight was a real ace – he was living up to that contract – but Number Thirty-Five was letting his down. Something had to be done to shake them up. Somewhere out there was a missing piece. Somehow they had to rediscover that road to championships.
The month was wearing on. The Yankees had crushed the Phillies, broken Cleveland, taken series from Washington, Baltimore, even Boston, who were proving far more capable than prognostication had granted. Still, they would fade in time as it were their duty. The Giants and Dodgers were hanging in there, but they weren’t the threat. No, it was that rock-and-roll upstart in Queens. That was the fight in this division. That was what must be answered.
George barked into the empty air, where some spirit would take his words to the appropriate heads: “We begin Phase Two!”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Karver Bentley’s impressive rookie season and sterling spring had earned the twenty-three-year-old the last spot in the Mets’ rotation, but in the second month of his second season he found himself in what was not so much a slump as it was a twirling, flaming crash that would pulverize the fuselage and throw the wings three miles apart on impact. He could no longer strike anyone out; he could no longer even miss a bat. His Pitching Runs/Game was nearing 5.00, while his innings per game did not reach so high. He was spending more time with his head in his hands than the ball there and he was mercifully sent to the ‘pen to work it out when Jackson strained a hamstring, so another could be called up into his place. Even the nastiest of his doubters found themselves ill at ease with the fashion in which they were proven correct.
Gabriel Segad, fourth arm in the rotation, relied on the ground ball. So accustomed was he to whirling to watch his defenders make a play that once at a game in Kansas City he had taken a grounder off the back of his leg, spinning to find it like chasing his tail, much to the amusement of the home crowd. Suddenly those ground balls had found wings, and sailed cruelly into those broad spaces in the outfield where the grounds crew did not sweep and lay tarp. As such, his whirls now often found him staring helplessly, apologetically, into the remorseless eyes of the team’s prickly shortstop, Ron Martinez, the senior of the middle infielders who were common offers in trade speculation amongst the amateur managers of the borough’s breakrooms, as both violated the code of acceptable eccentricities.
There were reports of bad blood between Martinez and Sebastian Roos, the hotshot Dutch shortstop whom the Mets had dealt as part of the Soo deal, even though by all accounts the two had never met, but the simple truth was there seemed to be an uncomfortable mist between Martinez and the entire rest of the world, a condition he was not shy to highlight. He did not trust South American players, or Caribbean players, or other American players. It was not precisely that he thought them dishonest, nor exactly that he considered them incompetent; rather he regarded everyone else as though he did not believe they were quite real. In fact, the only man he trusted in all the world was the one that stood on the other side of second base and loaded Martinez’s cannon at the start of the 4-6-3, Stil Javleck. Javleck had appeared in the footnote elements of a swap of a handful of lesser prospects with the White Sox, risen through the ranks less on star power than by attrition, and had from his earliest days owned the reputation of “strange.” When he was hit by pitch – which was often – on the jog to first he would bow his shaking head and laugh, as though this one, this time, struck not just his body but his very credulity – every time. Five seasons ago, his rookie campaign had ended in a gruesome collision at second with Marquon Williams, Baltimore’s burly right fielder, who to all that would listen would swear that as Javleck lay rolling on the ground, clutching at the leg that had borne the weight of two athletes and all their momentum and at the knee that had bent, nearly snapped, against nature’s intent, he was laughing, laughing. It had so haunted the young Oriole that he, too, withdrew from the contest after the play, even though he was barely bruised. The press had given up on interviewing the infielder; his responses were beneath even allowable nonsense. He batted left, he walked, he made contact, his glove operated with machine proficiency: He added value. But Martinez and Javleck occupied a plane out of step with reality, and only their pitchers expressed affection.
As Bruce entered the reception area, Belinda clapped her hands together, sharp and gaily, accenting a pause in the orchestral performance of her portion of her telephone conversation.
“Oh, but that wasn’t the end of it! This man starts telling me about his werewolf problem. Like I have nothing better to do than solve his werewolf problem. I said, ‘Look, just get a silver bullet.’ He tells me, ‘But there’s more than one.’ I said, ‘Then ask them to stand in a line!’ And I walked away! Honey, I just walked away.”
While she spoke, she conveyed through a dramatic scowl, gestures, and hand signals whom Bruce was to expect in his office, so that his stride stayed cool and even when he entered to find awaiting him Shelly, the Mets’ earnest, and by his demeanor long-suffering General Manager, and his sharp, no-nonsense Number One, his silken right hand, his Assistant General Manager, Shelly. After pleasantries, Bruce sought to start on a light note.
“Any progress on those Australian prospects we heard about?”
Shelly’s carefully pursed lips failed to disguise the hundred unpleasant thoughts that addressed his preparation of a response, “We missed the boat on Brangan. Twins snatched him up right quick. But we beat the Cards to Hoyler. He’ll be stateside soon and assuming he makes progress at the rate our guys predict, he could see the majors in . . . three years. The Chinese are pissed, but they’re the ones who don’t play ball.”
Bruce nodded his appreciation, “Great, so that’s our pitching future. You want to talk about our pitching present.”
Nils had once insisted that trades in the desperation of July were rarely as beneficial as those cut early in the season, when everyone was focused externally and by and large dealing honestly. For their parts, the Shellys were at least respectful of the view, if they did not completely agree.
Shelly tapped her ever-present data device, “Realistically, performance will come around on most of the staff. But most is not all.”
Shelly spoke his assent, “Right. I’ve been in talks, and I think I can get Brent Smith from Arizona; he’s number three there, would be a fine number four for us. They know where they’re at and will take minor leaguers for him, and mostly position players at that, but it’s probably going to have several parts on both sides. I know you like to see all the facets before we go ahead.”
Bruce smiled. “I just like to know what’s coming and going.”
“The truth is we think that this year . . .,” Shelly searched for words that would not jinx the turns of fortune and Shelly, mindful of such cultural neuroses, cut in:
“This year could well be our year and we think it’s worth giving up some real prospects to put the final touches on the active roster.”
“Not the top names, mind you, but this could constitute a definite sacrifice,” Shelly modified.
Shelly looked at Shelly and frowned, “I don’t want to sugar-coat it. We’ve got a team at peak-performance ages across the board. We play to win now; that means there might be some lean years on the near horizon.”
Shelly shrugged, “Anything can happen with the draft and dealing, but . . . in a general sense, she’s right. This is our window. What do you say?”
In the travels of Bruce’s eyes over his conversational companions and the room about them, he caught his hand, leaning on the desk. It seemed the oldest hand he had ever seen. He breathed deep. “Let’s go for it.”
José Pescante was moving up in the order. He had always had a fair bat for a backstop, but in his early years had rarely seen spots above fifth. As he grew into his power, he was known to make guest appearances in the second or even fourth slot, depending on who was healthy, but he seemed leashed to management’s fear of his blocking faster teammates. Then came that beautiful season – his first All-Star appearance – when he could do no wrong at the plate. He broke 20 home runs by the end of August. Then a quiet year, then another All-Star selection. Then in the chaos of last season’s search for solutions, he had hit in every spot. Maturing from their love of speed, management had loaded up with the likes of Dunk, Zino, Press – José had no illusions about his own footspeed, but he was pretty sure that if the four of them were put on the starting blocks, he would do no worse than second place. And now he was outhitting them. Strangest of all, it didn’t feel the least bit like a hot streak or some other unnatural creature of the sections of the season; it felt like this is who he was and how he hit.
Still, it was only personally and not professionally satisfying. While others saw the offense running, José knew it was more careening, and soon to stumble. Sure, Soo had found his stroke, and Dunk was back to hitting like the Dunk Murphy that José had made his hurlers pitch around for years, and maybe José’s own progress was legitimate, but the others . . . Bert and all these seeing-eye singles? Press and his line drives suddenly diving over the fence? Lucio not yet caught stealing? It wouldn’t last. If they were going to make the playoffs, they needed another left-handed bat. And if they were going to survive even one round, they needed to stabilize the pitching, and that meant fixing Hank Frampton.
José knew what the problem was. With the exceptions of Westhover, suspected by most of the guys of being that way, and Montanero, who was something of a sleaze, none of the rest of the staff was significantly unattached like Frampton, and bachelorhood did not suit him. Pitchers, José knew, needed that guidance. Frampton was out of his element and it got in his head. The streets and skyscrapers confined him; the noise and music assaulted his sense of peace; and he wasn’t likely to find a source of solace in his social circles. Getting a girl was not the issue; a girl getting you was the quest. New York girls could talk big and act tough, but they had subtleties and dreams of shades quite apart from Frampton’s palette. He needed a Texas gal – the hair, the walk, the vocal rhythm, all of it. He needed the type that could put on the lipstick and boots, could smile and bat her eyes, and then grab him by the crotch and drag him to the dance floor or wherever he needed to be. Or – it struck José now – a tejana in the American sense – yes, that was it: fiery and wise, a stick of dynamite to blast his head out of his ass and knock his cock from his brain and put him into sorts as a man needs to be.
This, of course, meant José had to talk to Ron Martinez about something outside of baseball. Ron may have been born in a speck on the map at the bottom of Arizona, but he was wholly Mexican. He was so Mexican he was even named for some futbol player. Ron knew the Mexican places and people that José would not, and although even other Mexicans seemed to be ill disposed toward Ron, they would furnish him with a lead – a scent or a marker at the trailhead that would end with Frampton being positively femininely entangled. But it had to begin with José approaching Ron right now. It was a grim task, and he looked on it as a father regards disposing of the deceased fuzzy mammal his children have discovered near the property. He would do it for the team. This was his mission. José stood up and walked toward the lockers in the corner.
No visitor could help but marvel at the Capitoline grandeur of Yankee Stadium. More than an edifice, more than a neighborhood, it was a world unto itself. The columns, the friezes, the tiles of the promenades: Its imperial majesty recalled not another time, but a fantastic realm outside of mundane comprehension.
Bruce walked into the lion’s den. No one greeted him. No one stopped him. The doors simply opened and closed for his passage. The box set aside for his use was devoid of life, and he agreed with his unsettled nerves that this was the most disturbing reception he could have found. When the Mets won Douglas’ start in the first of the series on a seventh-inning single by Pescante to break a 1-1 tie, Bruce suppressed his reaction. Still the archways seemed anguished in their yawns, and fearful that the haunted palace might try to consume him Bruce escaped as soon as the last out was made and vowed that he would bring accompaniment to the next three contests in the four-game set.
José knew Number Twenty-Nine from their days in the minors, and they had gotten along, but now the Yankee catcher was distant, and José found he could not remember the other’s birth name, as if it had been wiped from the Earth. Number Nineteen, 3B, was on a tear, and Number Thirty-One, LF, was of no mood to be denied at the plate. With Number Forty-Eight masterful in relief, the Mets were strangled, and lost the second and third games in meek surrender.
In the bottom of the ninth of the fourth game, down by one after a back-and-forth contest, the Yankees placed a man on second with two outs. The very next pitch was scorched toward the short right fence, destined for the stands and eternity, when Soo became Mercury in defiance of spheroid fates, winged to the wall and up the wall and took the ball out of the air. It was not the land that shook with the wave of rage. It was the soul of the land and every life on it.
This game was taking a lot out of Bruce. He was tired, and stretched thin, but mostly he felt closed in and crowded. He suddenly needed time to think, without telephones, or the Shellys, or yelling fans, or the ominous presence of a stadium – he just needed to walk the streets of his city, alone, and think.
“Hey, you can pull over here, Moe. I’d like to walk.”
“Are you sure, sir? It’s awful late.”
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
“Should I go ahead and wait for you somewhere?”
“No, that’s all right, thanks. You can head on home. I’ll just walk the rest of the way.”
As the car disappeared down around a corner, Bruce put his hands in his pockets against the cool night and immediately found himself decades before, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, looking without looking and walking like a tough guy has to walk. His reminiscing smile froze and faded. From the alley near by a massive shadow had separated itself from the darkness surrounding and stepped toward Bruce on silent menace. It loomed more than twice Bruce’s height, nearly formless, like a great umbral cloak thrown over a man on stilts. Somewhere near the hooded peak, were those spots, narrowed like eyes, blacker than the blackness, or just a trick of the dark? The streetlamps had died for a block in every direction and Bruce peered through strong moonlight and the glow of distant life. In his peripheral vision, Bruce watched a second shadow thing approach from the street to his left. He took a step. They came no closer. Two minutes must have passed. Bruce turned and walked; they followed, noiseless and undulate lumbering like funereal satire keeping pace three paces behind him. They did not challenge him on the journey, and Bruce found that he was free to think for in their phantasmal company he felt comfortably alone.
REGULAR SEASON RECORDS FROM THE CHICAGO SUN-TRIBUNE
Eastern
W
L
American
W
L
National
W
L
Western
W
L
BOS
31
21
DET
33
19
MIL
31
21
OSJ
36
15
NYY
30
21
TOR
31
22
st lou
31
21
YBC
31
21
NYM
28
24
WAS
28
24
KCR
30
22
TEX
29
23
BAL
26
26
PIT
27
25
CIN
28
24
HOU
21
30
NYD
24
27
ATL
24
27
South Side
24
28
SEA
19
32
RAY
21
30
CLE
18
34
MIN
22
29
COL
19
32
NYG
21
30
PHI
18
34
Cubbies
19
32
ARZ
17
34