Sign Man held up his sheet of cardboard and the word “SENSATIONAL” appeared upon it in thick, black, sans serif letters. The Symphony broke into a spirited rendition of… something… as Agee trotted smilingly into the dugout and the Ebbets faithful shouted themselves hoarse all over again.
“What do you think?” Reiser asked Castro as Drysdale came into the dugout, put on his warm-up jacket, and sat down on his end of the bench.
Castro shook his head. “Don’t worry, yet. He’s throwing smooth. His motion is loose. He’s got a couple more innings in him.”
Once again, the prophet was right. It was the seventh before Drysdale ran out of gas. He retired the first two batters, but then walked three in a row. Reiser hardly needed Castro’s confirmation. It was time for the veteran to come out.
Reiser strolled out to the mound, and signaled for the right-hander, the twenty-two year old flamethrower out of Alvin, Texas, a tall angular kid named Nolan Ryan. Ryan could throw harder than anyone since Bob Feller. The only problem was, he didn’t have much of an idea where the ball was going once he released it. He struck out more than a batter per inning pitched, but walked nearly that many, and with the bases loaded and a three run Dodger lead, there was no room for error.
“We need one out,” Reiser told Ryan as he handed him the ball. Ryan nodded calmly, like he always did, and started his warm-ups as Reiser headed back to the dugout.
“It had to be Blair up next,” Reiser said as he sat down next to Castro. The Hawk, understanding what Reiser meant, only shrugged.
Paul Blair was a veteran, a patient hitter. He’d know Ryan was prone to wildness, and test him by taking a pitch or two. But today the kid seemed to have his control. He poured over two fastballs for strikes as Reiser, watching, gripped the bench, trying to squeeze sawdust out of it.
Castro muttered, “Waste one now, hermano. Make him go fishing. Waste one…”
But Ryan, perhaps overly confident in his stuff, came with heat right down the middle. Blair jumped it. He connected solidly, driving the ball on a line to right center, and Reiser knew that this one was going into the gap and would clear the bases for sure.
But Agee didn’t. He ran to his left with the effortless stride of the born center fielder. Reiser, watching, seemed to see the years fall away and it was as if he himself was out there again, running down the ball. Agee, mindless of the outfield wall as Reiser ever was, dove, skidded, and bounced on the warning track, and some-how managed to spear the ball right before it hit the ground, turning an inside the park home run into an out, and the end of the inning.
If Ebbets had gone crazy before, now it became totally delirious. Sign Man’s sign read “DID I SAY SENSATIONAL?” and the Sym-phony’s percussionist dropped his base drum and it rolled down the bleacher’s concrete steps rumbling like thunder. In the sky above The Turtle’s speakers blared “Happy Days Are Here Again.” The fans deluged Agee with applause. Reiser and Castro just looked at each other and shook their heads as Ryan strolled calmly off the mound.
The inning was over, and so for all intents and purposes was the game. Ed Kranepool hit a homer in the eighth, making it four to nothing. Ryan went two and a third innings, giving up only one hit and striking out four, and the Dodgers were up two games to one.
As the team charged the mound at the end of the ninth, engulfing Ryan in a swarming mass of laughing, jumping, hugging bodies, Reiser sat in the dugout and smiled.
Just another day, he thought, at the ballyard.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15TH, 1969: GAME 4
The press box was oddly quiet as the game started. Tom Seaver, who in only his third year with the Dodgers was already known as “The Franchise,” had taken the mound against the veteran screwballer, Mike Cuellar, another of the Orioles’ plethora of twenty-game winners. Reporters were mostly sitting before their portables wondering what would be the next improbable turn of event, who would be the next unlikely hero.
Tommy found Slug in his favorite perch in the back of the press box, where the joker could see the action on the field below, the action in the box, and the action at the buffet where management fed the reporters hotdogs, burgers, fries, pretzels, and soda. “Hi, Slug.”
“Hiya, kid,” the joker replied with a jolly smile. “Want a hot dog?”
“Sure.”
“Help yourself.”
Tommy fixed himself a dog from the covered serving tray and took a bite, savoring for a moment his favored status as a member of the fifth estate. For the paying customers dogs were fifty cents each. And he could have as many as he wanted. For free.
“Take a coke to wash it down with,” Slug said.
“Thanks.”
But being a reporter wasn’t all free dogs and cokes, clearly. He was getting nowhere with his story. He had managed to strike maybe about ten names off his list of possible aces, and even then he couldn’t be sure he was right. He didn’t trust his nascent power. It seemed to be working pretty well now, standing next to Slug. He could smell the wild card odor come off him in waves, dampened only a little by the mucous layer which covered his body. But in the locker room it was confusing. Today he’d only managed to get close enough to Jerry Grote, Tommy Agee, and Al Weis to cross them off his list. If he had the time, maybe he’d eventually be able to eliminate all the innocent Dodgers. But he had only the rest of today and tomorrow. If he couldn’t find the culprit by then, bye bye story.
He needed help. He needed a strategy, a way to approach the hunt that might lead him to the more likely suspects. There must be some way to eliminate some of them. If anybody knew, Slug, who had seen all their home games, might.
“I looked you up in The Baseball Encyclopedia this morning,” Tommy said. It wasn’t much of an entry. One game for the 1959 Yankees, zero at bats, four putouts. But somehow Tommy knew that Slug would be pleased if he mentioned it.
And he was. The joker nodded happily. “That’s right. It wasn’t much of a career, but it’s more than any of those joes had,” he said, waving his frail-looking arm at the legion of reporters before them. He looked at Tommy. “You know, some people think the Yankees put me in a game as sort of a joke. You know, ‘Look at the joker, ain’t he something?’” Slug shook his head. “But, if they did, the joke was on them. Me, I get to say I was a major leaguer. I’m in the Encyclopedia. I still have my Yankee hat. Out of all the millions and millions of kids who grew up playing and loving baseball, I could say I made it. I was a big leaguer.”
Tommy nodded. This was exactly the mood he wanted Slug to be in. “And you know a lot about baseball.”