“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” the P.A. system blared, “please direct your attention to right field, where the first pitch will be thrown by a very unusual special guest. It will be caught by our own Roy Campanella, first base coach and Hall of Fame catcher from Dodger glory days!”
The cheers started again as Campy, gone from stocky to just plain plump, strode out to a position midway between home and the pitcher’s mound. The fans’ ovation dwindled into murmured puzzlement as Campy, wearing his old, battered catcher’s mitt, faced the outfield wall.
An armored shell swooped over the rightfield bleachers into the outfield and came to rest over the pitcher’s mound. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the P.A. announcer blared again, “we present The Great and Powerful Turtle!”
There was a murmur of surprise that quickly grew into an appreciative outpouring of welcome as the Dodger faithful greeted the city’s great new, unknown hero. All over the stands people turned to one another and said, “I knew he was a Dodger fan. I just knew it.”
A small porthole opened in the fore of the shell, and a baseball dropped, hovered, and performed a series of swoops, turns, and arabesques, eventually settling down soft as a feather into Campy’s outstretched glove.
“LET’S GO DODGERS!” the Turtle blared from his own set of loudspeakers. His shell rose majestically and moved off to a spot right above the rightfield bleachers where it stayed for the duration of the game.
Drysdale rose, took off his warm up jacket. “Enough of this shit,” he said. “Let’s go.”
He stepped out of the dugout, and the rest of the team ran out onto the field after him. Castro, Reiser thought as Drysdale hummed his eight warm-up pitchers, was right. D has his stuff today. He retired the Orioles one-two-three in the top of the first.
Jim Palmer was pitching for the Orioles, the youngest of their three twenty game winners, and he looked good, too, as he warmed up in the bottom of the first inning.
Then Tommie Agee stepped up to the plate and lined a homer into the lower deck of the center field bleachers, and Reiser thought, Here we go again. This team is amazing.
But is it? a small voice in the back of Reiser’s head suddenly asked. Is it the team, or was that kid right? Is it someone just manipulating things, jerking puppet strings, with some kind of power given them by the wild card?
Reiser would never had thought of it, if it wasn’t for that kid. Sure, it’s crazy to think that the kid was right, but the world was crazy, had been since September 1946 when the wild card virus had rained down out of the skies of New York City.
Wild carders were banned from pro sports. A guy like Golden Boy would make a mockery of the game. But what if others were subtle, even sly, in the use of their powers?
Reiser looked down the bench. The Hawk sat in his usual spot next to him. Beyond him were the men who had fought so hard over the long summer to bring pride and faith back to Brooklyn. Was one of them secretly manipulating events behind the backs of all the others, stacking the deck so that the Dodgers would win?
Reiser snorted aloud. Bullshit. He knew these men. He’d gone to war with them all summer long. They won and they lost, and it was their skill, determination, and, yes, sometimes their luck that bought them their victories. That was baseball. Sometimes luck was on your side and the little pop up off the end of your bat fell in for a double down the line; sometimes it wasn’t and your screaming line drive sought out the third baseman’s glove like a leather-seeking missile.
Castro caught his eye. “What?”
Reiser shook his head. “De nada.”
But, somehow, he couldn’t shake the kid’s question from his mind.
Tommy Downs could tell that the Ebbets Field press box attendant was a wild carder, and not only because of his sweet smell. The guy was about five and a half feet tall and he was shaped like a snail without a shell. His hands were tiny, his arms almost stick-like in their frailty. He had neither legs nor feet, but his body tapered down to a slug-like tail. He even had snail-like feelers on the top of his head and a mucous coating on his exposed skin. His features were doughy, but good natured.
“Hi ya, kid,” he said cheerfully as Tommy approached the press box. “I’m Slug Maligne, ex-Yankee, press box attendant.”
“Tommy Downs,” Tommy said routinely, holding out his press pass, “The Weekly Gospel.” He paused as the joker’s words sunk in. “Ex-Yankee? You mean, the New York Yankees?”
Slug nodded cheerfully, as if this were a subject he never tired of discussing. “That’s right. I was with them for twelve days in the spring of ’59. Even got into a game. Yogi and Ellie Howard were both hurt. That was why I was on the roster. I was playing for the Joker Giant Kings-you know, the barnstorming team; I played for them off’n’on for over twenty years-and we were in town when Yogi and Ellie went down on consecutive days. Maybe I wasn’t the greatest hitter, but I was terrific defensively. Nobody could block the plate like me,” Slug said proudly. “Game I played was the second game of a doubleheader. Johnny Blanchard caught the first game; we were winning the second twelve to two and I caught Duke Maas for the last two innings.”
“Wow,” Tommy said. There was a story there, too-The Forgotten Joker of Baseball-but he couldn’t lose sight of the story he was chasing. In fact, maybe here was somebody who could help him, if he played his cards right. “That’s really interesting. Say, do you think you could spot another wild carder, if they were on the Dodgers?”
Slug frowned. “An ace, do you mean? Because anyone could spot a joker like me-and as far as I know I’m the only one who made it to the majors, even for a single game.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said. “An ace. Haven’t some funny things been happening on the Dodgers this year?”
Slug’s upper body shimmered, as if he’d shrugged tiny shoulders. “Kid, you hang around any team for a year, you’ll see a lot of funny things. Why, I remember back in ’56 when I was playing with the Joker Giant Kings-”
A sudden roar again shattered the air.
“Man,” Tommy said. “I’ve really gotta follow what’s going on with the game. Can we talk later?”
“Sure, kid,” Slug smiled, and Tommy made his way into the crowded press box where rows of reporters were banging away at their portables.
“What’d I miss?” Tommy asked.
“Drysdale doubled two in,” one of the scribes said laconically, shifting his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “Dodgers lead three to nothing.”
Reiser didn’t have to even think about managing until the fourth when Drysdale showed his first sign of weakness. He gave up a walk and a single. With two outs Ellie Hendricks, the big, hard-hitting Oriole catcher, scorched a line drive into left center. It looked like a certain two-run double, but Tommie Agee came out of nowhere with his smooth center-fielder glide that ate up the ground under his feet, reached his glove back-handed across his body, and snow-coned the ball in the webbing, robbing the stunned Orioles of two runs.