Waiting for Teddy Williams Page 19

  No one, least of all E.A., made much money at the baseball bat factory. But it was important work, which helped maintain the tradition of wooden bats for the great American pastime, and E.A. regarded it as part of the apprenticeship that would lead to the day he walked out to the mound at Fenway Park and threw his first pitch in a Red Sox uniform.

  E.A. had always loved everything about the Kingdom Fair, especially the early morning of opening Saturday. He loved the smells of the trampled hay field where the fair was held, the fried food, the animal barns. He loved the calliope music and the wheedling, singsong spiels of the midway barkers, like the tall, pretty girl at the baseball-throw booth chanting into a hand-held microphone, “Hey, hey, can’t do no harm to try your arm against Cajun Stan the Baseball Man.”

  She was about E.A.’s age, and with the hand not holding the mike she was juggling three brand-new baseballs. Her skin was the tawny color of E.A.’s old baseball glove and her hair, a deep, rich brown, hung straight to her waist. She wore a spangled denim jacket over a dark blue blouse, with white cowboy boots and tight jeans accentuating her slim legs. Beside her, next to a netted pitching cage with a radar gun, stood a slender, gray-skinned man with graying hair, wearing an elegant white suit with a blue handkerchief tucked into the breast pocket, a daffodil-yellow shirt, a light blue necktie, and spotless white shoes. Sitting on his head at a jaunty angle was a wide-brimmed white hat.

  The juggling girl handed the mike to Cajun Stan, caught two of the balls in her left hand, tossed the third up ten feet, and caught it behind her back, flashing E.A. a grin and making an elaborate bow.

  At the far end of the cage hung a canvas backdrop with a man’s head painted on it. It was Stan’s head—gray hair, rakish white hat, and all. The head’s mouth was open. Above the entrance of the cage was a radar screen. “Try your luck against Stan the Baseball Man,” the girl said to E.A. “Throw the ball faster than Stan, take all the money from the Baseball Man. Throw the ball in the Cajun’s mouth, all Stan’s moola going south. Five dollars to play, ten if you win. This is Stan, the fastest pitcher in all the land. I’m his daughter, Louisianne.”

  Teddy, coming along behind E.A., got out his wallet. “Go ahead, Ethan,” he said, but before E.A. could step up to the cage, Earl No Pearl, already two sheets to the wind, shouldered his way front and center, handed Louisianne a crumpled five-dollar bill, and grabbed one of the baseballs.

  “We got a pitcher here, folks,” Cajun Stan said. “Going to take Stan to school.”

  Earl wound up and threw with all his might. The ball hit the white hat of the head painted on the canvas. The screen above the head flashed 79 mph. Earl shook his head in disbelief.

  Stan took off his hat and handed it to Louisianne. He squinted in at the facsimile of his face, then lifted his hands high over his head once, twice, three times, like an old-fashioned pitcher from the early days of baseball. He kicked one skinny leg high and threw. The ball vanished into the mouth, and the radar screen said 92 mph.

  Earl stared. “That pitch weren’t no ninety-two miles per hour.” He reached out to snatch back his five-spot from Louisianne. Instead, to his further befuddlement, he found himself holding Stan’s hat. The bill had vanished.

  “Thank you kindly,” Stan said, taking back his hat.

  “It didn’t look eighty miles per hour,” Earl complained.

  “Course not,” Stan said, readjusting his hat on his head. “A smooth pitcher with a smooth wind-up, no hitches, the pitch never gone look fast as it is.”

  E.A. suspected that the radar was rigged. Yet Stan’s windup and delivery had been as smooth as fancy-grade maple syrup, and the pitch had been dead-on accurate. Maybe it hadn’t been 92 mph, but it was fast.

  Louisianne was chanting again. “Five dollars to ask Cajun Stan any baseball question. Stump the Baseball Man, you get back ten in your hand. No trouble to double your money. Any query at all, ladies and gentlemen. You’ll find Stan the Man to be a bottomless repository of baseball trivia. He’s here to astound and delight you.”

  Teddy handed her a five-dollar bill. “Try him, Ethan. Ask him a question.”

  Ethan figured Cajun Stan would probably know every hitter’s batting average and every pitcher’s ERA back to Ruth and before. He decided to throw the Baseball Man a curve. “How high is the Green Monster in Fenway Park?”

  Stan laughed. “Why don’t you ast something hard? Thirty-seven feet.”

  “Try again,” Teddy said, giving Louisianne another five-spot.

  “Longest recorded home run in Fenway?” E.A. said.

  “What all this Fenway business?” Stan said. “Nobody care ’bout Fenway, Home of They Losers. Answer you sorry-ass question, old Teddy Ballgame’s five-hundred-and-two-foot shot to right field. Crushed a fan’s straw hat. This like grabbing a Hershey from a baby.”

  “Ask him something challenging, Ethan,” Louisianne said.

  E.A. looked at her quickly. How did this girl know his name?

  But Teddy had another bill all ready to go, so E.A. said, “How many different angles does the playing field around Fenway have?”

  Stan adjusted his radar gun, not looking at E.A., who was certain that this time he’d stumped him. Then the Baseball Man said, “Same number you is old. Seventeen.”

  “I can beat you throwing against that gun,” E.A. said. “Double or nothing.”

  “Why, sure,” Stan said. “You the local he-ro, right? The go-all-the-way-to-the-top boy. You probably right. You beat me. Stand back, folks. Give the local he-ro room. He about to take Stan to school, him.”

  From nowhere, Louisianne produced a baseball and tossed it to E.A. “Presenting,” she said, “the one, the only, Ethan E.A. Allen.”

  The ball felt too light in E.A.’s hand, but he went into his compact wind-up and threw it into the head’s mouth. The radar screen registered 93 mph.

  “Well, now,” Stan said. “Got us a regular Cy Young here. Got us a country boy can throw, all right.”

  Stan flipped his hat to Louisianne and went into his routine, pumping once, twice, three times, kicking, pitching. The ball hummed like a swarm of bees, and the radar screen flashed 100 mph.

  “That can’t be right,” E.A. said.

  “Oh, my,” Stan said. “We got one here. Yes, sir. A bona fide Mr. Know-all.” He looked at Teddy. “I ast you, Edward. How Stan gone teach this boy anything, he already know everything?”

  Stan shook his head. “Yes, sir, E.W.,” he said. “You gots a regular Alfred Einstein here.”

  “Albert,” E.A. said.

  Stan looked at him.

  “Albert Einstein,” E.A. said. “Not Alfred.”

  “Case closed,” said Stan, and Louisianne picked up her microphone and baseballs and resumed her spiel, looking down the midway for another mark, as if Ethan had just fallen off the edge of the earth and she couldn’t care less.

  32

  EARLY THE FOLLOWING morning, just as E.A. loped into Gran’s dooryard after a five-mile run, a battered pink limousine with a loud muffler pulled in behind him. Printed across the driver’s door were the words CAJUN STAN THE BASEBALL MAN. One of its headlights was bashed in. There was a deep crease in the front right door. The back bumper had fallen off, and the limo was rusting out underneath like a Kingdom County junker. At the wheel was Stan, wearing his snowy white suit and hat, a powder blue shirt with a pink tie, and a matching pink handkerchief. Louisianne, beside him, wore a short yellow sundress and matching heels. Sitting in back was Teddy Williams.

  “Ethan,” Teddy said, “this here is my old bud Stan. You met him yesterday. I and Stan played together in college. Back when I first broke in, I caught him.”

  Stan got out of the limo rather stiffly. “How do, bub,” he said. “We meet again.” Stan had the longest fingers E.A. had ever seen. His handshake consisted of three formal tugs, like a trout biting.

  Gypsy came out of the house, shook hands with Stan, and gave Louisianne a big hug as though they’d known each other for y
ears. Then Teddy and E.A. and Gypsy and Stan and Louisianne all went down to Fenway.

  Stan sat down on the Packard seat. “No poison serpents round here, is they, E.W.?” he said. “I and venomous serpents is on the outs.”

  “It’s too cold for snakes up here, Stan,” Teddy said as he squatted down behind the plate to warm up E.A. “It’s too cold for baseball nine months of the year.”

  “Oh, it never too cold or too hot for baseball,” Stan said. “Ain’t that right, Louisianne?”

  Louisianne winked one big, shiny, dark eye at her father. She stood beside the Packard seat and looked around the diamond with interest.

  “I like your outfit, hon,” Gypsy said. “It’s very becoming.” She grinned at E.A. “I’m not the only one who thinks so, either.”

  E.A. threw hard to Teddy for fifteen minutes while Stan looked at Devil Dan’s Midnight Auto, looked across the river, looked at Bill’s license plates on the barn. Like a bored kid staring around a schoolroom. Finally he walked out to the mound and stood behind E.A. like a softball umpire officiating a game alone.

  “Boy,” Cajun Stan said, “what you got to go with that heat?”

  E.A. showed him his curve, showed him the slider Teddy had taught him.

  “What you got for a straight change?” Stan said. “Can you get it over?”

  “I can get any pitch over,” E.A. said. Teddy set up low on the outside corner, flashed four fingers.

  Louisianne said, “I give you E.A. Allen and his straight change.”

  E.A. hit the middle of Teddy’s glove with a slow breaking pitch.

  “No,” Stan said. “That a let-up curve. Bona fide straight change, he gone fool most hitters. Let-up, they hammer it right over that thirty-seven-foot-tall fence we talking about yesterday.”

  “Nobody’s ever hammered it yet.”

  “Who is they to hammer it round here? We talking two different brands of baseball, son.”

  Stan went back to the Packard seat, checking under it carefully before he sat down. “Throw from the stretch,” he barked out. “Like you got mens on base, which you gone have pretty much all they time.”

  E.A. threw out of the stretch for five minutes. Then Teddy stood up out of his crouch.

  “Well?” he asked Stan.

  Stan sighed. He drew in his breath through his teeth and shook his head. “Boy got some old-fashioned heat, him. He got a good enough down-breaking hook, nice tight spin on the ball. Fair slider. Ain’t got no change is the whole trouble.”

  “He learns quick enough, if I do say so,” Teddy said.

  Stan snorted, a mirthless noise. “E.W., what you mean? I ever in my life see a young fella that already knowed everything, here he is in the flesh. I ain’t surprised. Apple don’t fall far from the tree. Got red hair besides. That a bad sign. That the worst. You wants the truth, I never knowed a redheaded pitcher keep his composure out there.”

  Louisianne laughed. Everything her father said delighted her, and Gypsy seemed charmed by both Stan and his daughter. But E.A. couldn’t tell whether Cajun Stan was kidding or serious. All he knew was that if he could learn something about pitching from the Baseball Man, he intended to.

  They were sitting on the stoop, Teddy and E.A. and Stan and Louisianne, drinking ice-cold root beer. Gypsy and Gran were inside making Spam sandwiches on Wonder Bread. E.A. was showing Louisianne his baseball cards.

  “So,” Teddy said to his old bud. “Will you work with him?”

  “Oh, I work with him all right,” Stan said. “But they going to be a steep price. Know-all smart aleck like this young fella? I ain’t studying no free teaching, no.”

  “When you get him signed, take your cut,” Teddy suggested. “Fifteen percent.”

  “I going to. I taking my full fifteen percent. Maybe twenty. Meantime, Louisianne and I need to live, us. Pass me that there cigar box, boy. Let’s see what you got.”

  E.A. handed him the box containing his baseball cards. Stan riffled through them, muttering criticisms of the players. “Ted Williams,” he said, holding up Ted’s rookie card. “I strike him out in three pitches. Four at most.”

  Stan examined E.A.’s Cy Young. “Winningest pitcher of all,” he read. “Huh. I take this. For payment.”

  Thinking Stan meant Cy Young, E.A. reached for the cigar box. Stan yanked it away. “I take this,” he said, shaking the box. “Sell to a fella I knows down Shreveport, c’llects cards. In the meantime, my girl here hold on to it for me.”

  Louisianne took the cigar box. “Let him keep one,” she said. She held the Cy Young out toward E.A. But when he reached for it, it vanished.

  33

  HIS FULL NAME was Stan T. Paige, no relation to Satchel, and he was from Tippytoe, Louisiana. He’d been orphaned at six and raised by an aunt, the madam of a local house of ill repute for whom he was, variously, an errand boy, general nuisance, and surrogate son. The aunt, retired now, was quite wealthy and entirely respectable. Louisianne, whose mother had run off with a voodoo band when her daughter was three, lived with her great-aunt during the winter and traveled with her father in the summer.

  When Teddy met Cajun Stan, the Baseball Man was enjoying a three-to-five all-expenses-paid scholarship, courtesy of the state of Texas, for swindling the First National Bank of San Antonio out of $100,000. The money had been designated for a new American Legion baseball stadium. But Stan, in Las Vegas, had plunked it all down on a bet that San Antonio’s double-A baseball team, for which he was pitching at the time, would win their league title. The fact that they did win was of little consolation to him when he was banned from the game for life and sent to prison for extortion.

  Over the next several days, Stan showed E.A. a craftier pickoff move to first. He taught him how to push harder off the rubber with his right foot and demonstrated several different arm angles to come at the batter with. How to conceal the ball in his glove until the last possible moment, how to “cut” his fastball by positioning his top two fingers slightly off center on the outside of the ball so that the pitch ran away from righties and into lefties, how to surprise left-handed batters by throwing a back-door breaking pitch that started half a foot off the plate and then dived in to nip the outside corner at the last moment.

  “How fast?” E.A. asked Stan, who was holding the radar gun, a week after his training started.

  “Ninety-four,” Stan said. “Second time around the league—second time around the lineup maybe—they gone jump all over that heat.” Stan set down the gun and held out his hand for the ball. “Son,” he said, “fetch you hitting bat.”

  “What?”

  “You a hitter, ain’t you? Fetch you bat.”

  E.A. got his bat. Cajun Stan took off his white hat and set it on the Packard seat. Louisianne helped him out of his jacket.

  The Baseball Man walked out to the mound. “Stand in,” he said.

  “Aren’t you going to warm up?”

  “I been warm up forty year. Step into that batter’s box, you.”

  As E.A. stepped up to the plate, Teddy squatted down behind him.

  “Where’s your gear?” E.A. asked him.

  “Don’t swing,” Teddy said. “Just watch.”

  As delicate as a ballet dancer, Stan lifted his hands high over his head three times and pitched the ball. “Ninety-six,” Teddy said.

  “No,” E.A. said.

  “It’s coming again,” Teddy said. “Same place, right over the heart of the plate. Swing.”

  E.A. swung when the ball was in Teddy’s glove.

  “Swing again,” Teddy said. “Now that you’ve seen it.”

  Again, Stan’s hands rose over his head three times. His right arm came snapping down like a cobra striking. E.A. stepped out onto his front foot and started to swing, tried to hold back and couldn’t. For the first time in his life he fell down in the batter’s box.

  Clap, clap, clap.

  From the stoop, over slow, sarcastic applause, Gran said, “He’s ready at last. That’s a stunt the S
ox’ll pay millions for. Look out, Boston. Here comes Ethan Allen.”

  Worse yet, Louisianne was making her palms-up stage gesture toward him, sitting on his ass in the batter’s box, and Gypsy was laughing.

  E.A. looked out toward the mound. “What in hell was that pitch?” he said.

  “That,” Teddy said, “was a straight change. That’s your ticket to the top, son. If you can learn it.”

  34

  MAYNARD E. FLYNN JUNIOR sat in his office overlooking the diamond. He was, at last, very close to completing his doctoral degree through the Pacific Northwest Internet Correspondence Program, in which he had matriculated sixteen years before. Better yet, he was even closer to disposing of the Boston Red Sox franchise. As the Globe had discovered, and published in this morning’s edition to the consternation and outrage of all New England, for several months he had been negotiating secretly to sell the club to a consortium of Hollywood luminaries and political activists who planned to move the team to Beverly Hills.

  A local group headed up by several former Sox players had also made a bid. In fact, a somewhat higher one. But the big lummox had no intention of selling the club to them.

  Working his hand flexer frenetically, Maynard grinned. He loved thinking that he would be remembered as the man who, by eviscerating the Sox and then packing the whole kit and caboodle off to the far side of the continent, had with one bold stroke exorcised the curse that had hung over the team since the sale of Babe Ruth. Now the Nation would never again have to confront their great fear, that the Sox might actually win a Series and leave them with nothing to hope for. At the end of the season the team and their fans would go out in a blaze of defeat, leaving the people of New England happy losers for all time to come.