The Legend of Mickey Tussler (20 page)

The Brewers took the field in front of a stunned crowd that had been devastated by the early-morning headline: “Baby Bazooka Beaten!” They sat, in languorous waiting, united in this circle of suffering. Most fans that afternoon wore the news like a black veil through which no words could be voiced. No ballpark had ever fallen this silent. Others articulated their horror in writing, on banners and placards professing their adoration for the missing hero:
WE LOVE YOU, MICKEY—GET WELL SOON
!

The players were also limp, mired in listlessness. They took the field, trotting out to their positions with a sense of heartless obligation. They shagged fly balls, fielded grounders, and, when the cry of “Play ball” went up, held up their chins and readied themselves for battle as best they could.

Gabby Hooper took the ball in Mickey's stead. He was used by Murph almost exclusively as a mop-up guy, but with Lefty's blister and a twin bill on the docket for the following day, they needed everyone to take his game to the next level.

The Giants' leadoff batter opened the game with a sharp grounder to Danvers, but his backhand was tardy, and the ball deflected off the heel of his glove, kicking into foul territory and down the third-base line for a two-base error. The next batter took Hooper's first pitch and sent a weak two-hopper to Fries, who corralled it, pumped twice, then sailed the throw into the first row of seats behind first base.

“Jesus Christ, Frenchy,” Finster screamed. “I'm standing right here!”

The third-, fourth-, and fifth-place hitters all singled hard to the outfield, scoring two runs and loading the bases while setting the table for what looked like a brutal inning. After a walk to the next batter, and a dying quail that fell between Pee Wee and Amos Ruffings, the eighth-place hitter turned on a fat, flat fastball, depositing the mistake deep into the Giant bullpen for a grand slam. Fifteen minutes into the game, the Brewers were reeling, facing an eight-run deficit.

Murph watched with weary, puzzled curiosity. Even in their worst slump, they had never played so poorly. Maybe it was to be expected. After all, they were embroiled in an ordeal. All around them floated this airy disquiet, something stale and deleterious hanging on the oppressive August air. It would take a little time, he thought, for them to shake the doldrums. He sat down on the end of the bench, palms set together and pressed gently to his lips, as if lost in thoughtful prayer.

The day grew hotter, with no breeze to cool the stifling humidity. The Brewers had allowed six more runs after the first-inning barrage and trailed now by fourteen. The Giants' pitcher, Red Meadows, had hung up seven straight goose eggs, crippling the Brewers' hitters with a knuckleball that was dancing like a moth around a hanging lantern. In the seventh, Arky Fries fouled out to the catcher, but Pee Wee and Jimmy Llamas reached consecutive bases on balls. Clem Finster ran his count full before swinging wildly at a ball in the dirt. With two outs, Woody drew the third walk of the inning, loading the bases for Boxcar.

“Finally,” Murph said to Lefty, who looked as if he was struggling to stay awake. “This is just what we need.”

The crowd, which had been silenced all day by the news about Mickey and the abysmal play of its team, recognized the possibilities too and began to stir.

Meadows had never had any luck against Boxcar, until that day. In his first two at bats, Boxcar had been retired on a weak comebacker and had struck out swinging. Meadows had been using knucklers all day to keep the Brewer catcher off-balance, so he decided to start him off with some good old-fashioned high cheese. Surprised by the selection, Boxcar took the pitch for a called strike one. It got him thinking, just enough so that when Meadows delivered again, Boxcar's bat was way ahead of the ball as it danced across the plate. Now in the hole 0-2, he knew he had to shorten up his stroke to protect against any further chicanery. With his hands now two inches higher on the handle, he caught the next floater just before it drifted by him, serving the offering the other way into the gap. The ball split the outfielders cleanly and rolled all the way to the wall. The runners scampered around the bases with little difficulty. They were fleet of foot, each crossing home plate by the time Boxcar approached second base.

Boxcar was moving full tilt, as fast as his damaged knees could carry him. His face was tight and his thoughts were somewhere else, someplace only he knew. Despite the lopsided score, and the protestations coming from the bench and players alike, Boxcar hit the bag in full stride, put his head down, and rounded for third. He just kept running. The Giant right fielder scooped up the ball with his bare hand. Then, out of a crow hop so forceful it threw him right to the ground, he released a missile, a tracer that never got more than four feet off the ground, right to the third-base bag to peg Boxcar by a healthy margin.

“Oh, holy shit!” Danvers groaned. “Now I've seen everything.”

The little momentum that had begun to simmer vanished instantly like a rush of air expelled from a burst balloon.

The Giants capitalized on the sudden shift of momentum, pounding out eight more hits and plating seven more runs. When the massacre was complete, the stands resembled a ghost town, with only wrappers and peanut shells and other vague remnants of life riding on an unexpected wind, drifting carelessly by a scoreboard that marked the final damage: Giants 21, Brewers 3.

The next day featured a twi-night double dip against the Colts. Butch Sanders and Rube Winkler were awarded the pitching duties. Murph was optimistic that his team could put all of the distractions aside and go out and play the game as they had prior to the incident with Mickey.

The crowd was a good one, but many were still anxious about the ongoing saga surrounding Mickey and expressed that concern with more banners indicating their heartfelt uneasiness.

Sanders just didn't have it. His fastball was flat and he was throwing helicopters for curveballs. The Colts pounded him early and hard, batting around twice in just the first four frames. The home team answered back with runs in three consecutive innings, but the Colt onslaught kept coming, pummeling Brewer pitching for twelve runs on seventeen hits to double up the beleaguered Brew Crew, 12–6.

The nightcap was a little better, but the result the same. The Brewers jumped out to an early 3–0 lead on Clem Finster's long home run to left. Winkler, who hadn't started a game in over a year, was doing a fine job, dancing through raindrops inning after inning. He had allowed two hits in each of the first five frames, but managed to pitch his way out each time. Even in the sixth, when he walked the first two hitters, he maintained his composure, getting the next two batters on called strikes. But then the wheels started coming off. It began with a ground ball to Finster that sneaked through the five hole. That was followed by a can of corn to Buck Faber in right that, for some inexplicable reason, landed three feet to his left.

“Come on, fellas,” Murph screamed from the bench. “Get your heads out of your asses!”

His plea did little to arrest the juggernaut of blunders. Pee Wee dropped a pop-up, Danvers booted a dribbler, and two runners scored when Boxcar's pickoff attempt at second base landed somewhere between Jimmy Llamas and the center-field wall.

Murph placed his hand over his eyes and groaned. “It's a circus,” he lamented. “A goddamned circus.”

The Brewers committed a staggering eight errors and ended the day on a sour note, a 13–5 humiliation.

The fans were starting to voice their displeasure, and the newspapers only fueled their fire. With the skid at three games, the headlines were prognosticating Armageddon, suggesting that the Brewer's lethargy and all the miscues were cause to be afraid: “ ‘Boo Crew' Nothing Without Mickey.”

Murph was at a loss to stem the tide. He tried insulating his players from public scrutiny, issuing an edict that nobody talk to the press until the ship had righted itself. The sportswriters and announcers, however, were dogged in their pursuit, and with each miscue the team made on the field, the inspection intensified.

His blister fully healed, Lefty got the call the following day. The scene was ugly. The team took the field to a chorus of boos and jeers, and to a proliferation of cigar stubs, hot dogs, and rotten-fruit rinds that rained down on them like a summer storm.

“Go back inside, you lousy bums!” many of the discontented fans screamed. “We want real ballplayers!”

In the wake of the team's pitiful performance, the crowd's concern for Mickey converted to anger, each fan's frustration bubbling with a rapacious fury that begged for satisfaction.

They were facing the Bears, a team against which they matched up well. They just seemed to have their number, defeating them in five of the first six contests. Lefty set them down in order in the first inning, striking out the side with just twelve pitches and silencing, at least for the moment, some of the more vocal naysayers.

In the home half of the first, the grumbling continued after Arky Fries fouled out and Clem Finster and Woody Danvers tantalized the starving crowd with well-struck balls that died quietly on the warning track. But for the moment, the defensive part of their game was back. Lefty retired the next fifteen Bears to come to the plate, amassing a staggering thirteen strikeouts in the first six innings. The crowd, desperate for something to grab hold of, embraced the surly southpaw and showered him with applause and the celebratory chant of “Lefty! Lefty! Lefty!” The rejuvenated hurler stood on the mound to begin the seventh inning and his spirit soared. For the first time in months, he felt the warmth of the sun on his shoulders. His imagination brimmed with images of making a brilliant impression. As he toed the rubber, his mind's eye wandered to little children clamoring for autographs, young girls swooning at his every move, sportswriters and photographers fighting for his attention—and of course, he saw so clearly the bright lights of the major league city fortunate enough to capture his fancy. Suddenly, without notice, without warning, the disconsolation of weeks prior was gone.

The Brewers finally manufactured a run in their half of the seventh. After leading off the inning with a walk, Buck Faber was sacrificed to second on a perfect bunt off the bat of Pee Wee and took third on a wild pitch. Murph's wheels turned swiftly. He pulled Arky Fries out of the on-deck circle and whispered something in the ear of Nat Rudigan before sending him in to pinch-hit.

Rudigan made a couple of passes over the dirt at home plate with his front foot, dug himself a nice hole with the other, then wind-milled his bat with gritty determination. Faber led off the bag in foul ground, clapped his hands, and chanted Rudigan's name, drawing the ire of the Bears' pitcher. He stepped off the rubber and motioned to third as if a pickoff throw were coming. Faber scampered back, then danced right back out when the pitcher resumed his position. It was all part of the dance. The pitcher collected his thoughts, got his sign, released a thin stream of spit to the ground, and with Faber hopping around in his peripheral vision swung his arms over his head, kicked his leg, and delivered. The ball appeared to be inside, but broke back over the middle of the plate for a called strike. Rudigan looked behind him in mild protest. The catcher chuckled under his mask at the umpire's indifference, then returned the ball to the mound. With ball in hand again, the Bears' hurler checked Faber at third again. He bluffed once, then again, before getting back on the rubber. Faber's lead was a little more brazen this time, and his eyes possessed a clear and present purpose. The pitcher gave one final glance over Faber's way, then rocked back, arched his leg, and fired. The minute the ball was released, Faber took off as if shot from a cannon. He lowered his head and pumped his arms feverishly, leaving behind him, with every powerful step, a confetti storm of dirt and grass.

Rudigan's timing was perfect as well. With the ball just about halfway home, he rotated his hips, slid his hand up the barrel, and pinched the bat between his thumb and forefinger. The delivery was true this time, a fastball right up the gut. Rudigan's bat caught the ball cleanly, deadening it in the no-man's-land between pitcher and catcher. It was a perfect suicide squeeze.

Lefty made the one run stand up. He breezed through the final two innings, racking up three more strikeouts, to finish the day with a sweet sixteen. It was by far his best outing all year. He walked off the field with a shit-eating grin, delighting in the crowd's revival of the earlier chant of “Lefty! Lefty! Lefty!”

The postgame milieu was frenetic and circuslike. Lefty preened about in front of the procession of reporters like a rooster in a henhouse, basking in the boisterous luster. He bent his green eyes to the retinue of writers, signaling with his finger that he would only address one question at a time.

“Hey, Lefty, does this mean the slump is over?” the first man asked.

“What slump?” Lefty replied curtly. “I was hurt, not in a slump.”

“I'm not sure if that's true or not,” the reporter continued, “but I was talking about the team.”

Lefty shrugged and turned his head the other way.

“Lefty, how did it feel today?” another asked. “What made you so effective out there?”

Lefty stood there, without conscious thoughts, lost in his rapture. “Someone had to step up—for the team, you know? That's what the ace of a staff does.”

“Has Arthur Murphy made that official? I mean, just until Mickey gets back?”

“I think the focus should be on what is happening now,” Lefty said. “And right now, Mickey is not a factor.”

“Yeah, but once the Baby Bazooka gets back, don't you think—”

“Listen, is this a postgame conference, or what?” Lefty's nostrils flared and his brow descended hard, forming lines in the shape of a tiny V. A sudden restiveness possessed him, and for a moment his outrage had him anxious and tongue-tied.