The House of Daniel Read online

  When all the matchups for the first round were set, Zeb Huckaby said, “Thanks very much, everybody. Let’s go out to the ballpark and take some pictures.” So we did that.

  * * *

  Most of the other guys from the House of Daniel had seen Merchants Park before. It was my first look at the place. I’d have some patrolling to do, all right. It was 457 out to dead center. Somebody told me only three people had ever hit the ball over that fence. One was a Denver semipro. One was Job Gregson. And one was the Bambino. That Denver guy, whoever he was, traveled in some pretty fast company.

  Left field was long, too. Right was kind of ordinary, which meant it’d play short in the thin air. The infield was all dirt—no grass on it anywhere. I hate skin infields. Most of the time, they were what you got when you had a lazy groundskeeper. But the Denver park had nice grass in the outfield. They just did it that way there.

  A whole forest of pillars held up the grandstand roof. Outside, it had said HOME OF THE DENVER BEARS. They’d painted over that when the Western League threw ’em out, but not well enough to keep you from reading it.

  Oh—and the park had lights. They were electrics, not salamanders. Still, I was glad I’d played at that park in Madrid, New Mexico. I had some idea what it’d be like. The odd-numbered games, like ours, would be in the afternoons. They’d play the evens at night. But if we won the first one, we might have to go under the lights for the next.

  They took our pictures alphabetically by the town the team came out of. Billings, Cheyenne, and then … “The House of Daniel, from Cornucopia, Wisconsin,” the photographer called. He grinned as we took our places. “Won’t confuse you people with anybody else.”

  “That’s on account of I’m so good-lookin’,” Carpetbag Booker said. In a different tone of voice, it would’ve meant he had the biggest swelled head in the world. He was good-looking, but that isn’t the kind of thing you want to boast about. But the way he said it, in among us long-haired, bearded white men, just set us giggling. The photographer, too.

  When we could go, Harv said to him, “If you tell me where you’re staying, I’ll take you there on the bus.”

  “That’s a kindly thing to say, but you don’t got to trouble yourself none,” Carpetbag answered. “If’n you don’t mind, I’ll jus’ ride back to the boarding house with y’all. I tol’ a friend o’ mine to pick me up there when I reckoned all this foofaraw’d be over with.”

  “However you want,” Harv said. “We’re glad for your company.”

  Carpetbag pointed at me. “Even this Southern fella?”

  He hadn’t paid me a dime’s worth of notice since he joined the House of Daniel, except when I caught a fly ball for him or threw a base hit back to the infield. How did he know where I came from? However he did it, he knew. Quick as I could, I said, “Even me. Maybe especially me. You’re a whale of a ballplayer.”

  “I ain’t no whale.” His voice went high and shrill. He wanted it to carry. “Ol’ Job on the Crawdads, now, he big enough to be one.”

  “Your granny, Carpetbag.” Job Gregson slurred his words a little. It was early to start tying one on, but I recognized the signs from my pa. Job pointed at Carpetbag. His finger was bent—he had a catcher’s beat-up hands. “Wait till we play each other. We see who goes jokin’ after that.”

  “We sure do.” Carpetbag didn’t lack for nerve. He was a tall man, but there was more of Job Gregson all told than there was of him: I mean a lot more. Of all the fellas I wouldn’t’ve cared to tangle with, Gregson stood high on the list.

  It didn’t come to that, though. They razzed each other some more, and then everything died down. Job Gregson wasn’t the kind of drunk who had to show everyone within nine miles how right he was. Or maybe he just wasn’t drunk enough to do that then.

  Harv took us back to the boarding house. No more than a minute or two after we got there, a cherry-red Chevy, brand new, came round the corner. Driving it was about the cutest little high-yaller colored gal anybody ever saw. I got the feeling she might’ve been driving around the block for a little while by then.

  Carpetbag tipped his Panama. “See y’all at the game tomorrow,” he said, and hopped in the car. He sat real close to that gal. She was laughing as she whizzed away.

  “Hope he ain’t too worn out to pitch by tomorrow afternoon.” Did Wes sound jealous? Oh, maybe a little.

  Harv clicked his tongue between his teeth. “If that wore Carpetbag out too much to pitch, nobody would ever have heard of him,” he said. Wes couldn’t find any way to quarrel with that, so he didn’t.

  * * *

  By then, I wasn’t used to getting into town the day before a game. Without a bus ride, without getting into a new room and running around and all, I hardly knew what to do with myself in the morning. Everything seemed to happen too slow. We lingered over breakfast instead of shoveling it into our faces quick as we could.

  We got to Merchants Park with plenty of time to dress and loosen up. A taxi brought Carpetbag Booker a few minutes after the rest of us showed up. He looked happy and relaxed, but what did that prove? From what I could see, he always looked happy and relaxed. Whether he truly was or not, I can’t tell you, but he always looked that way.

  “They gettin’ good money here,” he said when he started to throw. “Dollar an’ a quarter reserved seats, dollar general admission, sixty cents in the bleachers. An’ this is a nice-sized ballyard. I bet you can pack upwards o’ ten thousand in it.”

  Harv studied the sweep of the stands. “I’d say you’re right,” he answered. They might not have seen every ballpark in the country between them, but I bet they came close.

  Some people were already wandering in an hour and a half before game time to watch the teams warm up. Carpetbag put on a show for them—and for the Las Cruces Blue Sox. He kicked his leg extra high. He hesitated here, there, anywhere. He threw over the top, sidearm, submarine, what have you. If he gave the Blue Sox a few things to think about, I don’t expect he minded.

  Their colored outfielder came over to me. He nodded toward Carpetbag. “You call him Tarbaby, too?” he asked.

  “Nope.” I shook my head. “He’s on my side.”

  Willard tilted his head a trifle, eyeing me. Then he nodded. “Okey-doke. I’ll take that. Between the white lines and outside ’em, they’re not the same thing.” He smacked me on the hip with his glove, easy-like, and trotted away.

  Merchants Park wasn’t sold out for the first game of the tourney, but they must’ve had 8,500, 9,000 people in the place. Harv and Carpetbag agreed on the crowd, and grinned at each other when they did.

  Since we were the home team, we took the field first. That felt funny, too—I’d got used to being on the road. I played deep: it was a big outfield. If a dinker fell in front of me, well, fine. But Carpetbag didn’t let it faze him. He got the Blue Sox out.

  They sent a different pitcher against us, older and stockier than the fella they’d used in Las Cruces. He was careful and smart. He had good control, too, almost as good as Carpetbag’s. I haven’t said much about that, but it was a big part of what made Carpetbag what he was. He could put a ball where he wanted it like nobody’s business.

  We got a run. An inning later, the Blue Sox did. We got another one. One of their big left-handed hitters knocked one over the short right-field wall. Carpetbag kicked at the rubber. No, even he wasn’t perfect. Close, but not quite.

  So it was 2-2 in the bottom of the eighth. I worked a walk to lead it off. Carpetbag bunted me to second. Then Eddie hit a sharp grounder to the third baseman. Only it hit a pebble on that skin infield and kangarooed over his head. I scooted in with the go-ahead run and Eddie had himself a bad-hop double.

  Carpetbag set down the Blue Sox one-two-three in the ninth. They were out. We moved to the next round. With a grassy infield, it might’ve gone the other way. We’ll never know now, will we?

  Afterwards, we cleaned up, changed into our street clothes, and went to a steakhouse around the corner for
some grub. The waiter almost got snotty about serving Carpetbag, but he didn’t have the nerve, any more than the dago in Colorado Springs did. Carpetbag, he took it all in stride.

  Then we went back to the ballpark to watch the second game. Except for the one where Rabbit and Double-Double smashed together, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d watched a game I wasn’t playing in. But Harv wanted to scout the other teams. We weren’t the only players doing it, either. We even paid a buck and two bits apiece for good seats.

  This was the Regents and the Denver Half-Soles. The Denver semipros wore road grays, but the crowd cheered them like there was no tomorrow. Some of the stuff they yelled at the colored players was worse’n anything I’d heard before, and I’m from Oklahoma.

  It didn’t do them or the Half-Soles any good. The Regents chewed ’em up and swallowed ’em. The colored team pitched better, fielded better, and hit better. They ran ’em ragged on the bases. They stole third. They pulled off a double steal, second and home. The Half-Soles’ catcher threw one into center trying to nab a runner. Their poor pitcher tried like anything to hold the Regents’ runners close. For his trouble, he had not one but two balks called on him.

  When it was all over, it was 11-4. Anyone who watched it knew the Half-Soles didn’t belong on the field with Kansas City. But they were from Denver … and they were white.

  Did we belong on the field with Kansas City? We could give them a better game than the Denver team did—I knew that. With Carpetbag pitching, we always had a chance. But I don’t think I’d ever seen such a quick team before.

  Over the next three days, we went to six more games, three in the morning and three at night. The Crawdads beat the Waco Wildcats even worse than the Regents roughed up the Half-Soles. They did it the same way, too: they ran ’em out of the ballpark. The final was 12-1, and it wasn’t that close.

  As things wound down there, I asked Carpetbag, “Do all the colored teams steal like that?”

  “If you reckon you can get away with it, why not?” he said.

  When the Texans saw they’d lose, they started throwing at the Crawdads. The Pittsburgh pitcher threw back. He hit one Wildcat in the ribs and one in the arm when the guy threw it up to protect his face. There were some hard slides, too. They didn’t quite out-and-out brawl, maybe for fear they wouldn’t get to come back next year if they did. Not a pretty game, though.

  We had a night game against the San Diego Sailors. The day game that day was the Regents against the Cheyenne Buffaloes. We all went and watched it. We figured we needed as many looks at Kansas City as we could get.

  Cheyenne started a little blond lefty who looked like nothing much till he took the hill. The first colored fella who reached against him got his lead … and the little southpaw picked him off. It wasn’t even close. He had a demon of a move. Just to prove it, he picked off another guy the next inning. That slowed down the Regents’ running game. But good, it did.

  Those Buffaloes were a big step up from the Denver Half-Soles. They weren’t fast like Kansas City, but they had power and they didn’t make mistakes. If you don’t beat yourself, the other side has a harder time. Nothing fazed their pitcher, either. They knocked out the Regents, 5-2.

  A lot of the Pittsburgh Crawdads sat right in back of the Kansas City dugout. They laughed and yelled and whooped and hollered and carried on to watch the other colored team in the tournament lose to a bunch of cowboys from Wyoming. They thought it was as funny as the Regents would have if Pittsburgh had gone out.

  We had sandwiches after the day game. You don’t want to fill up too much when you’ll be playing soon. The Sailors, remember, were the team with the scrambled eggs on their caps. Those looked silly, but they could play some.

  Carpetbag said, “’Cept fo’ when I come out here on the train, don’t hardly remember the las’ time I don’t pitch fo’ three days.”

  “Yeah, but did you get any rest?” Wes asked, deadpan.

  Carpetbag sent him a sharp look, then broke up laughing. He knew we’d seen the girl with the red car. “Got me some,” he said, and mimed going limp as a dishrag. He was good. If he hadn’t been a pitcher, he could have gone on stage.

  And he was good when he pitched. Yeah, the Sailors could play some, but they’d never come up against anybody like Carpetbag Booker before. There isn’t anybody like Carpetbag Booker. He made one bad pitch that a guy hit in the gap for a run-scoring triple, but we were up 3-0 by then. We won, 4-1.

  When we went back to the boarding house that night, a different pretty colored woman in a Buick drove off with Carpetbag. He grinned back at us before he slid in with her. “Ain’t it nice to be in demand?” he said.

  “He’ll pitch day after tomorrow,” Harv said, more to himself than to anyone else. “I hope he remembers.”

  * * *

  Carpetbag did remember, of course. He knew what he had to do. He knew when he had to do it. And he did it. In between times, he enjoyed himself.

  Our game against the Cheyenne Buffaloes was the afternoon semifinal. The night game matched the Crawdads and the Salt Lake City Industries. We’d play the winner for the title—unless the Buffaloes beat us.

  They threw that little blond lefty at us. They called him Whitey. People called Carpetbag Booker a whole bunch of things, but I would have bet nobody ever called him that.

  We weren’t gonna run much on Whitey. We’d seen what he could do. He picked Harv off first base anyway. Harv went back to the dugout covered in dirt and shaking his head. By the look on his face, he came mighty close to cussing then.

  We kept getting guys on and then stranding them. Carpetbag wasn’t as sharp as I’d seen him—or else the Buffaloes wouldn’t swing at so many pitches that looked like strikes but weren’t. They held a 1-0 lead through six.

  I tried to bunt leading off the seventh, but it went foul. I did draw their third baseman in a couple of steps, though, and got one past him for a single. Whitey looked over at me. I took off on the first pitch. If he’d come to first, I was hung out to dry. But he went home. I ran. I slid. The tag got me up near the hip.

  “Safe!” the base umpire yelled. Their shortstop didn’t argue, so I guess I was.

  Carpetbag sacrificed me to third. Eddie hit a fly ball, and I scored. We’d tied it, anyhow. In the eighth, Wes hit one down the left-field line that barely got over the wall. The Buffaloes made it hard, but Carpetbag hung on. We beat ’em 2-1.

  “This looks way too much like work,” Harv said, which was about the size of it.

  After supper, we went back to see who’d face us in the finals. The team from Salt Lake put me in mind of the Buffaloes. They weren’t glamorous. They just got the job done. Industries was a good name for them.

  A team like that stood a chance against the Crawdads. The colored outfit had better players, but they were flightier. If they got down and got rattled, they might give the game away. But they didn’t. They scored two in the first, two in the third, and another one in the fourth. After that, they played not to lose. They didn’t do that, either. They breezed. The final was 6-2.

  “See you day after tomorrow at eight o’clock for the first game of the final series between the House of Daniel and the Pittsburgh Crawdads!” the announcer boomed through the PA system. “Get your reserved seats early—we expect to sell out!”

  Still in his catcher’s gear, Job Gregson pointed at Carpetbag and shouted, “Gonna take you over the fence!” He thumped his chest protector with a big, knobby-fingered fist.

  “Good luck, fool,” Carpetbag shouted back. “I’m here to tell you, you gonna need it.”

  “We beat you so bad, we put you in the hospital,” Gregson yelled.

  “Talk is cheap,” Carpetbag said.

  His onetime catcher pointed at him again. “You oughta know.”

  If I ever saw Carpetbag Booker mad, it was then. Good thing he didn’t have a baseball handy, or Job Gregson would’ve been stretched out in the dirt, a knot—or maybe a hollow—right between his eyes to show wh
ere Carpetbag drilled him.

  “That man don’t respect me,” Carpetbag muttered. “He be sorry he don’t respect me. I make him sorry he don’t respect me.”

  “Save it for the game,” Harv told him. “Don’t use it all up here.”

  “I be fine, Mistuh Harv,” Carpetbag answered. “You don’t got to worry ’bout nothin’, on account of I be jus’ fine.”

  * * *

  Before the first game, Zeb Huckaby told both teams all three games were sold out. “Better than eleven thousand tickets a game,” the sports editor said happily. “So speaking just for myself, I hope it goes three. It will add to the pot, and we won’t have to give back any money.”

  The Crawdads’ manager was called Quail Jennings. “All the same to you, we’d rather end it quicker,” he said, his voice as dry as the New Mexico desert.

  “Now that you mention it, so would we.” Harv didn’t have the drawl, but that was the only difference in the way they sounded.

  We won the coin toss. We’d be the road team in game one and at home for two and three, if there was a game three. Carpetbag went up against Lightning Washington. I’d seen him pitch. He threw hard, all right. He could hit his spots, too. He set us down with no trouble in the top of the first.

  Carpetbag got through the first, too, but he walked two doing it. He was missing the corners instead of kissing them. His control was off. In the dugout, he complained, “Umpire’s pinchin’ me, doggone it.” But the ump wasn’t, or it didn’t look that way from center field. Carpetbag hadn’t found his good stuff.

  Other thing was, the Crawdads knew him. If it wasn’t a strike, they laid off. He kept walking people. Then he had to come in. Job Gregson clouted one into the gap in left-center with two men on. I ran as hard as I could, but it shot by me and rolled all the way to that faraway wall. Job ran like the catcher he was, but he got a standup triple. A second later, the next guy singled him home and we were down three.