Follow the Sharks (2 page)

I drive a BMW now, but back in May of 1970 it was a Chevy wagon, as befitted a young attorney with a young family. Sam was swinging a five-iron on his front lawn when I pulled into the circular drive. His thick forearms were sticking out of a short sleeved white shirt and a cigar stuck out of his mouth. Sam was built like a refrigerator, and somehow managed to look more like a well-conditioned offensive tackle than a pasta-fed businessman.

He climbed into the front seat beside me with the five-iron propped between his legs.

“I thought the Sox were in Detroit,” I said to him.

“They are. They’re facing Denny McLain tonight and Mickey Lolich tomorrow.”

“Then where are we going?”

“Get onto Route 2 west.”

About an hour later we took the Fitchburg exit and Sam directed me to a ball field. I parked the wagon behind some bleachers and looked at Sam. “Now are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

Sam hooded his eyes and turned his face away from me so that he could stare down at me along the lumpy slope of his big nose. He’d done that to me before when I asked him questions about some income he wanted to invest, or a line on a tax form, or the losses he was declaring on his horses. It was Sam’s way of saying, “Just don’t ask, and then I won’t have to tell you.”

We climbed up into the bleachers. The game had already started, and the stands were sparsely populated with college age kids smoking marijuana and wearing shoulder-length hair and tee shirts and blue jeans cut off high on the thigh. Both the boys and the girls. You could tell the boys because they wore their hair a little longer.

It was a big game. Fitchburg State against North Adams State. I supposed it was a great rivalry. “What the hell, Sam?” I complained.

“Watch the game. Shut up. Trust me,” said Sam.

Sam slouched back into the bleachers and propped his elbows up on the bench behind him. He rolled his dead cigar butt around in his mouth and gazed placidly out onto the field. I clearly had no choice but to follow his example.

The May sunshine warmed my face, and the perfect geometry of the game commanded my attention. I knew none of the players. I had no interest in learning whether North Adams or Fitchburg might win. Sometimes baseball is a better game that way. Once in a while I’ll pull over beside the road to watch a bunch of Little Leaguers or a men’s softball game, always amazed at the symmetry of it, no matter how well or poorly it was being played.

Baseball is a game of absolutely flat planes, perfect right angles, precise distances, measured velocities, and beautiful parabolas. Euclid would have loved baseball. The field is a grid laid out in white lines against emerald green. It contains dozens of little contests of inches and feet-per-second, all so equalized that a millimeter’s alteration would destroy the entire balance of the game. Baseball demonstrates repeatedly all the physical laws of motion. It could have served as Newton’s laboratory. The fact that it’s played by flawed and unpredictable human beings creates a classically dramatic tension between the physical and the emotional, the fixed and the random. A single game of baseball is a whole repertoire of one-act morality plays. The good guys win about half the time, which seems to me to reflect the ways of the world.

For several innings I allowed my mind to ponder the abstractions of the game. But after the players had taken a few turns in the field, I began to pay closer attention to the pitcher for the Fitchburg team. He habitually hunched his shoulders and compressed his neck into them as he received the sign from the catcher, much like a turtle beginning to retreat into his shell. Then he’d bend, dangling his arms for a moment before bringing them over his head to initiate his windup. He kicked high, his right arm reaching behind him nearly to the ground, before arching his body like a bow and zinging the ball quick as a dart toward the plate. The North Adams kids, I realized, were completely overmatched. One of them dumped a blooper in back of first base trying to hold back his swing. An inning later another beat out a topped roller down the third-base line. And that was it.

Not only did he get batters out with effortless grace, but the Fitchburg pitcher had what actors call “presence,” and what, in a politician, would be termed “charisma.” He was always in motion. He sprinted to the mound to begin each inning. He got down on his knees to pat and pack the dirt around the rubber. He yelled and gestured to his fielders. When he struck out a batter he thrust his right fist into the air and yelled, “Yeah!” loud enough for me to hear from the stands. Once the first baseman scooped up a low throw from the shortstop, and the pitcher ran over to him and patted him on the ass. Between pitches he sometimes turned his back on the batter and held the baseball up in front of his face. It looked as if he were talking to it.

I reached over and poked Sam on the arm. “That kid out there—that pitcher. He’s good. You notice him?”

“Shut up. Enjoy the game,” he growled.

In the middle of the eighth inning a stocky, deeply suntanned guy wearing a blue knit shirt and a Red Sox baseball cap climbed up into the bleachers and settled beside Sam, imitating his slouch. Neither of them spoke until the inning ended. Then Sam said to him, “He’s doin’ okay, huh?”

“Sixteen K’s, one inning still to go. Two goddam bleeders. No walks. Okay, I guess,” said the man. He appeared to be in his late forties. His face was crosshatched with deep creases that could have been smile lines or old knife wounds. His hands were square and powerful. His teeth were astonishingly white and he showed them often.

“This is Brady Coyne,” said Sam, jerking his head in my direction. “Brady, meet Stump Kelly.”

I reached across Sam to take Kelly’s hand. He squeezed hard and showed me his teeth.

“My friend Stump here is a scout for the Red Sox,” continued Sam.

“You’re interested in that pitcher, I’ll bet,” I said.

“Betcher ass,” said Kelly. “Thanks to Big Sam.”

I frowned my confusion.

“Sam put me onto the Donagan kid,” explained Kelly. “I been birddoggin’ him all spring. The kid’s got it, no question.”

“He’s in the wrong league, I’d say.”

“Betcher ass,” said Stump Kelly. “Good head, great arm. Throws BBs. For strikes. Got a curve’d put a stripper to shame. He could be in Triple A right now, still mow ’em down.”

In the top of the ninth the Donagan boy, rolling his shoulders, wheeling his arms, lecturing the baseball, and grooming the pitcher’s mound, struck out the three batters who faced him. He made the game look unfair.

After he had swatted palms with his teammates and absorbed their slaps to his backside, Donagan took off his cap and wiped his face with his forearm. He looked around momentarily, saw us in the bleachers, and trotted in our direction.

He wore his reddish hair fashionably long, over his ears and collar. His nose was short and sunburned. His grin was broad and ingenuous.

Sam waved at him, and he climbed up into the bleachers. “Hey, Mr. Farina,” he said.

“Nice game, Eddie,” said Sam. “You know Stump Kelly.”

“Sure,” nodded the boy. “Hiya, Mr. Kelly.”

“And this is Mr. Coyne, who I was telling you about.”

Eddie Donagan reached over and engulfed my hand in his big mitt. “Thanks for coming, man.”

I frowned, but just nodded. “My pleasure. You pitched very well.”

“Yeah, I had the good gas today, man. And, let’s face it, North Adams ain’t exactly the Red Sox. A salad team.” He glanced at Sam and Stump Kelly and grinned. “A little cheese for the kitchen, a yakker for the kudo, and it’s sayonara North Adams. Know what I mean?”

I smiled at him. “I’m not sure.”

“Kid’s gonna make a million bucks some day, right Stump?” said Sam.

“Yup. Million bucks. Betcherass.”

Sam turned to me. “The boy needs some counsel, Brady. Already things are complicated.”

“You mean an agent?”

“That’s it. Whaddya say?”

“Me?”

“I’m giving you first refusal, being as you’re my lawyer and I trust you and you can use the dough.”

I shook my head. “You should’ve mentioned this to me on the phone and saved us both the trip, Sam. I don’t know anything about being an agent.”

“Of course you do. You know contracts, you know how to protect somebody’s rights, and you don’t try to screw people. You’d make a helluva agent. Tell him, Stump.”

Kelly took his Red Sox cap off and rubbed his head, which turned out to be as shiny and hairless as a light bulb. “Sox’ll draft Eddie in June. Probably wait ’til the third round, not because he ain’t a first-rounder but because he’s only a junior and nobody else’s heard of him yet. Eddie wants the Sox. Right, Eddie?”

Donagan grinned and nodded.

“Betcher ass,” said Kelly. “Okay. So we draft Eddie. Now, Big Sam here’s wondering about the rest of his education. I’m tellin’ him he can get all that stuff into a contract—deferred payments, big signing bonus, loans, tax shelters, tuition payments, long-term guarantees if Eddie hurts himself—God forbid. I mean, the contract is standard, and the Red Sox are fair. But Sam’s right. Business is business, and they’ll take him as cheap as they can get him. Betcher ass. Bein’ as Sam and me go way back, and it was Sam put me onto Eddie in the first place, I let Sam know how it was. Eddie oughta have an agent.”

I shrugged. “Makes sense. I don’t see why I couldn’t do that.” I looked at Sam. “Though I’m not sure Eddie shouldn’t finish up his education first.”

“Tell ya what,” said Kelly eagerly. “Eddie waits a year, say. Everyone’s heard of him. TV,
Sports Illustrated
fachrissake. Bound to happen. Right? Okay. We draft him this June and he don’t sign, all the others start comin’ around to see what we were so interested in. Get it? Then it’s the damn Mets or the Twins or somebody picks him first. End of Red Sox career. Anyhow, s’pose Eddie slips on the mound at Bentley College or Salem State, hurts his arm or whacks out his knee. Hell, million things could happen. No career, no dough. We pay him, we take good care of him. He’s an investment. He gets good coaching, weight training, proper diet. If Eddie don’t hurt himself, he’ll be up with the big club two, three years at the most. Betcher ass.”

“What about it, Eddie?” I said.

He grinned. “All I wanna do is play ball,” he said. “Get me some of that iron, get out of these crusty threads.”

“Well, I’ll be your agent, if you want me.”

“Mr. Farina said you would. He said you wouldn’t chill me. So thanks, man.”

Eddie’s hand devoured mine again, I shook with Kelly, who mumbled something that sounded like, “Betcher ass,” and Sam and I climbed into my Chevy wagon.

When we had turned back onto Route 2 heading to Sam’s place in Winchester, I said to him, “So what’s your interest in Eddie Donagan, anyway?”

“The kid’s good, isn’t he?”

“Betcher ass,” I said.

Sam grinned. “Stump Kelly’s an old friend. We were in Korea together. Stump was a POW for three years. Cost him a career in the big leagues. So the Sox made him their chief scout for the region. He’s supposed to be pretty good at it. They put a lot of stock in what Stump Kelly says. He recommends a kid, they’ll generally try to draft him. He’s also a kind of trouble-shooter for them. Works with some of the minor leaguers. Special cases, you know? I put him onto Eddie. Favor to a friend, you might say.”

“That explains Kelly, all right. But it doesn’t explain Donagan.”

“Eddie? Didn’t I tell you? My little girl’s gonna marry him.”

E
DDIE DONAGAN SIGNED WITH
the Red Sox in June of 1970, a comprehensive contract, with a nice balance of incentives, guarantees, and options, up front and deferred. I was proud of that contract. We held a little ceremony in Sam’s living room. Stump Kelly was there, and Sam and Josie, his wife, Jan and Eddie, Farley Vaughn from the Red Sox, with whom I had negotiated Eddie’s contract, a photographer from the
Globe,
and, at Eddie’s insistence, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Grabowski from Lanesborough, Massachusetts.

The Grabowskis grew corn and raised cattle on their hilly little spread out in the Berkshires. They scraped and sweated enough money out of that rocky, unyielding earth to send their only son to college. Johnny Grabowski enrolled at Fitchburg State College. He wanted to become a teacher. The college assigned him a red-headed baseball player named Eddie Donagan as a roommate. Donagan had no parents and Johnny Grabowski had no friends, so they struck the obvious bargain. Eddie spent his vacations with the Grabowskis, and Johnny followed Eddie around to parties.

When Johnny Grabowski was drafted, Eddie wanted to sign up to go to Vietnam with his friend. Johnny wouldn’t let him. “You stay home and take care of Ma and Pa,” he told Eddie. “And keep that arm in shape. I want to see you in a Sox uniform when I get back.”

Eddie kept his part of the deal. But Johnny didn’t keep his. The helicopter he was riding in was blown out of the sky. He had been in Vietnam for nine days when it happened.

So when Eddie signed his contract he insisted that Jake and Mary Grabowski be present, and after all the signatures had been inscribed and witnessed, Eddie glanced at me, and I said, “Eddie has a little announcement he’d like to make.”

Eddie went over and stood between Jake and Mary Grabowski. He draped his arms around their shoulders and said, “Jake and Mary have been like parents to me. And Johnny was my brother. I love them. I can never repay them for everything. But I wanted to do something. Here’s what I’m trying to say. Me and Mr. Coyne worked out this thing. It’s a scholarship to Fitchburg State in Johnny’s name. It’s for a needy boy who wants to be a teacher. The Johnny Grabowski Scholarship. Mr. Coyne fixed it up with the school, and everything’s all set.”

Mary Grabowski’s thin body shook as she cried softly, and Jake pumped Eddie’s hand.

“You should all know,” I added, “that the money for the scholarship comes out of Eddie’s bonus. It’s enough to cover room and board and tuition for four years.”

That’s how Eddie Donagan was back then. Generous, warm, simple. He loved baseball, Jan, and Jake and Mary Grabowski. He’d never had any money, so giving a lot of it away didn’t strike him as a big deal.