Bang The Drum Slowly (4 page)

He played all sports in high school, and in his junior year he won a scholarship to Southern States U. However, he quit school after the football season of his senior year at high school to help his father farm. Southern States U got wind of this and rushed a man down to talk Bruce into going back and getting his diploma, which Bruce said he would be glad to get but asked, “How will my father farm the farm without me?” and the man from Southern States U went back and sent down an experimental tractor for Bruce’s father to farm with. They sold their horse, and Bruce got his diploma.

By now the war busted out, and he went. It was something to do, and he thought he would like it better than college. He trained in Virginia and invaded France, sometimes in the thick of things and sometimes just laying around until one day he found himself in the middle of a hole in a field and nobody around that he knew. He figured just lay low and see what happens, and with his spare moments he dug his hole deeper, every so often peeking up over the top and seeing what he could see, and if he seen anybody he shot him. Then he hid down in his hole again, and when he could not keep his eyes open any more he spraddled out like he was dead, and when he woke up he dug some more and give a look around every so often. When he was out of bullets he tied a white hanky on top of his gun and walked back towards England. He was picked up by Americans or Frenchmen and shipped either to England or straight back to the U.S.A., and he was discharged in Virginia and went home.

That summer he played ball for various towns, catching mostly but also doing some pitching, these deals where towns pay 3 players, their battery and one other, and he made maybe 40 dollars a weekend and helped his father the rest of the time. Soon Southern States U got wind he was back, and the man come, and Bruce said he would be happy to go to college only how would his father farm without him again, and the man said, “Did we not send you a tractor some time ago?” But Bruce said his father needed more help than only a tractor, and Southern States U sent down some college boys wishing to learn farming. They helped Bruce’s father, and Bruce went up.

He was partly used as a defensive line-backer. I don’t know exactly what you call it, for I personally give up football when a kid and do not read about it and never look at it. If it flashes on the screen in the newsreel I go take a leak. He roamed up and down the line, too fast for anybody to go around, and anybody with a football come near him he tackled him. On the offense he whipped off these short little passes, 5 and 8 yards, very deadly and very accurate, and now and then reared back and flung a long one, and Southern States U lost only 2 games the first year Bruce was up, and none the second, and they played in a Bowl somewheres the second year, and won that, too, and it was easy work, no pressure.

He roomed with a fellow name of Hut Sut Sutter way up over the gymnasium, Sutter now with Green Bay. I run across him 2 winters ago on the banquet circuit at a Youth Jamboree in Baltimore where we both spoke, the only time I ever laid eyes on him, a short, wide fellow, and he told me he would show me some fine whorehouses in Baltimore. But I had a train to catch and anyhow was never interested in whorehouses to begin with. All winter they horsed around in the gymnasium, shooting baskets and swinging on the ropes and swimming in the pool, and once a month they took off in a college car and hunted up whorehouses, Sutter a regular expert in this matter. They played baseball for Southern States U in the spring, and when their season was done they went and played in the Alabama State Amateur Baseball League, though it was actually more Mississippi and Louisiana than Alabama, back and forth along the Gulf all summer, 8 and 10 ball games a week to make it pay, and never carrying more than 10 or 11 men on a club for the same reason, a League without a schedule and without records, so you might of been in first place or last, you never knew. You hit a town and hooked up with another club and went from town to town across Alabama and across Mississippi and into Louisiana until you played all the towns, and then you looked around for a new club to play against, and you started back, and maybe you stood with your own club and maybe not, because if one club was short a man you swapped shirts and joined it.

He was still pitching and catching, both, about half and half now because he liked to pitch, though he was all speed and nothing more. People told him he would never be a pitcher without more variety, but he did not care. He liked to pitch. He was not interested in going any place in baseball, then and maybe never, playing only for the kicks and what little cash was in it. A League where it never mattered if you won nor lost was the kind of a League he liked. What difference did it make to him if boys with “Mobile” on their shirt beat boys with “Biloxi,” or the other way around, especially when you were just as libel to wear “Panama City” next week and “Baton Rouge” the week after? If somebody had wore “Bainbridge” on their shirt it might of made a difference, or if it been a league in Georgia, so he wore whatever shirt anybody threw at him, and he pitched when he could and caught when they needed a catcher, and he hit hard, loving more than anything else to stand up there swiping away at a baseball. In parks with short left fields they told him don’t hit too hard because they could not afford lost balls, and he done so because he is the kind of a fellow that does what anybody asks him to, probably loaned his last dollar to anybody he knew 2 days in a row, anybody that give him a long, sad story, though no matter if he loaned it or not he would of went home broke anyways because him and Hut Sut Sutter kept the whorehouses showing a net profit from New Orleans to Port St. Joe. He caught the clap in Phenix City and cured it with miracle drugs in Birmingham. He grew and added weight. He was only a kid, just turned 20.

One day him and Sutter were hanging in the pool at Southern States U, and Bruce said, “Think of all that water, and my mother and father with none.”

“Tell the University move your house over on the town side,” said Hut Sut Sutter.

“We do not own no land,” said Bruce.

“Tell them buy you a hunk of land,” said Hut Sut, and him and Bruce went and seen somebody, and Hut Sut said, “This boy will not lay his hand on one more football until the University buy him a piece of experimental land, and move his house, and pipe his mother and father in on the town supply.”

The University said, “We already bought him an experimental tractor and sent him down some experimental labor, but I suppose we can do the rest as well,” and they done so.

Bruce was latching on to the idea by now, and every couple weeks he went and told the University what they needed, and they sent down a pick-up truck and an air-condition until when Bruce could think of nothing more Hut Sut Sutter said to him, “Why not just put in for some experimental money?” and he done this, too, and he got it, probably not much, but some.

He got along pretty good as long as Sutter was around, but Sutter graduated and his ideas went dry. He went on living in the high room up over the gymnasium, and he sat by the window spitting tobacco juice down, watching it incurve and outcurve. He run with the college girls, but what they wanted most was dancing and being seen at the college spots, which was not what Bruce wanted. I suppose what many a girl was saying was, “Take me dancing and show me off at the college spots, and then we will go up in your room high on the top of the gymnasium,” not saying it but only supposing he would understand how that was how the system was, never knowing how he could not figure systems, how he can never speak with his tongue but only with his strength, and what he done he took to the professionals, and they called him “Honey” and “Dearie” and loved him and left themself be loved, so for 20 minutes at a crack he could always have what passes in his book for love. I suppose if you have none a-tall 20 minutes looks good, even if it keeps you poor, and God knows it kept him poor until I took a hold and grabbed his check and put it in the bank and paid his insurance, only twice a month giving him 20 to go blow at Katie’s.

How he found his way around the second summer in the Alabama State Amateur Baseball League I do not know, for Sutter was off to greener grass, until in July or August, somewhere in there, he run into Ray Pink, formerly of Pittsburgh, now a Mammoth scout. I called him “Roy” by mistake in “The Southpaw” and got 40 letters. Pink seen him pitch and said, “Why kill yourself for peanuts playing this slow ball when with teaching and training you might win big money and glory?” and he give him a new 47 Moors and a hunting gun, telling him he could now drive home in style and hunt all winter and not be bothered with football, shipping him then to the Mammoth farm at Appalachia in the Ind-O-Kent League, Class C, where he finished out the year pitching and catching and generally playing slow ball for peanuts but believing he was better off than he been.

He drove home in his Moors and hunted with his new gun all winter until a couple days before he left for Aqua Clara the Cushion-Gear in his 47 Moors fell apart or blowed up or only laid down and died, whatever it is that happens. Everybody that ever owned a 47 has a different tale to tell. He hopped in the pick-up and drove down to the Moors plant in Tallahassee, Florida, and bought a new Cushion-Gear for $145 and come home and put it in, and when he was done he had no money to get to Aqua Clara, and the City of Bainbridge staged a Night for him, public on the main drag with flags and speeches and a collection box in the shape of a baseball bat. I seen the clips, part of the papers he later burned, and photos of citizens large and small dropping in their buck or 2, and they said in their speeches, “Bruce Pearson will bring fame and glory to Bainbridge,” and turned the box over and wrapped the cash in a baseball stocking sewed closed at the top by a lady of the town, and Bruce stowed it with his gear and was off to Aqua Clara.

Bainbridge never had a ballplayer got anywhere near the big-time since a fellow name of Mr. Randy Bourne that had one spectacular month with Boston in 1930. At least 6 times I sat in his barn and heard him tell of the month of May in 1930, when he was with Boston, of the home run he hit in Cleveland and the triple in New York, the base he stole in Pittsburgh and the barehand stop in St. Louis until the story simply ends because after once around the circuit the pitchers found him out. I could not listen. I shut my ears. I knew Bruce would of give most anything to settle down forever on a farm near Bainbridge, never mind the fame and glory, only give him time to live. Yet his face showed nothing. He only slouched against the wall and listened.

And when he left for Aqua Clara he felt the pressure, for the town would be watching, all eyes, and the more he thought about it the greater the pressure weighed him under, and instead of going straight to Aqua Clara he cut across to Jacksonville, Florida, and he drunk up his money and threw the stocking away in the ocean and wound up sleeping it off in jail until word got down to Aqua Clara, and the club sent up Bradley Lord, official ass-kisser of Old Man Moors and The World’s Only Living Human Spineless Skunk. I am Player Representative for the Mammoths and sat in on many a winter meeting with the owners, and I guess I ought to know, and Bradley fetched him back down. That was the spring of 48. He was not yet 22.

Mike Mulrooney took him back to QC with him in the 4-State Mountain League, AA, trying him at several spots. Then he said, “You are a catcher,” and Bruce believed that if Mike said he was a catcher he was, because he believed in Mike and was crazy about him. Did you ever meet anybody that was not?

He played good ball for Mike, and he went up in the September stretch of 48, or maybe late in August, and the pressure buckled him, and down he went again. He come up once more in the middle of the following July, and he stood. Dutch had no catching worries then, for Red Traphagen and Goose Williams were enough, more than anybody could ask at the time, and Dutch used Bruce when they needed a rest. He pinch-hit some, when the wind was right, and pinch-run now and again, and warmed pitchers and carried jackets and I guess run back and forth between the bullpen when the telephone broke down. It always does. I don’t know, the field crew forget to roll it up when it rains. It’s a wonder it
ever
works. And I suppose the big reason Dutch kept him, then and after, was because here was a boy that could belt a ball a mile and run like a dear and throw like a rifle, one of the nicest arms in baseball, bar none, if he only didn’t have to stop and think, never a natural but always a powerful promise. Probably Dutch said to himself 49 times, “Why do I not turn Pearson loose?” and then never done so but hung on to him and carried him along like you might start pawing through your drawers and come on a batch of receipts and bills and say, “Why do I keep these?” and then throw them back in because some day they might turn out important, do it 49 times and every time throw them back. In September of 49, the Mammoths fifth, out of the money and headed neither up nor down, Bruce was busting down walls and picking men off base, and Dutch was no doubt saying, “Aha, at last my chicken is coming home to roost.” Then all winter he figured Bruce in on his plans until in the summer of 50 Bruce was Bruce again, a marvelous 2 o’clock hitter and the dandiest looking batting-practice catcher in the business.

I myself joined the organization in the winter of 49 and was at Aqua Clara the spring of 50. I do not remember Bruce there. He was not a fellow you noticed, and anyhow my eye was on the big names, and I kept busy trying to walk like them and spit like them and get close enough to hear them talk, many of them my golden hero since I was no higher than a grasshopper, and I went back west with the QC Cowboys and pitched for Mike 2 years, winning 21 games the second year, not even the full year at that, and I come up in September of 51, and I stood.

I won 26 in 52, my best year and damn near my ruination, for between the Series money and the book I owed the United States Bureau of Internal Revenue $876 which I busted my ass over playing winter ball in Japan and Cuba and hitting the banquet circuit and selling annuities to ballplayers, my mind on too many things, my strength drained away, and my bill with the United States Bureau of Internal Revenue now hiked to $1,125. I wrote them and said, “It is no use. Come put me in jail. I will work it off at a dollar a day hammering rocks.” They wrote again, saying, “Please remit,” and they dragged us through court, and Holly showed cause to the Judge why the bill should of only been 37
½
% what it was, $421.89, and the judge said, “Yes, and this will learn you, Henry, that the way to make more money is to make less, and the way to go broke is to get rich.” He was a Mammoth fan from way back, and read my book, but the damage was done because I could not deliver the goods with my mind full of lawyers and hammering rocks, my strength all wasted away, and 15 pounds over my weight from the banquets.