“It’s been my life,” Slug said simply. “I played it for over twenty years. Wasn’t a greatly remunerative life, barnstorming around the country with the Joker Giant Kings. Sometimes we barely got out of town with a nickel between us all… but the places we seen, the things we did, the boys we played against…”
“What about the Dodgers?” Tommy asked, steering the conversation back at least to basic relevancy. “What happened to them? They were so great in the fifties, then they got bad… real bad. How come?”
Slug shrugged nearly non-existent shoulders. “Nature of the game, Tommy. Branch Rickey bought the team when Walter O’Malley turned into a pile of ooze back on that first Wild Card Day in 1946.” Slug shuddered. He looked remarkably like a bowl of sentient jello. “Every time I feel sorry for myself, I think of what could have happened, and I feel grateful. Anyway-Rickey was a great man. A great thinker. They called him the Mahatma because he was so clever. He bought the colored man back into the major leagues. Jackie and Campy and Don Newcombe and the rest. Other teams followed him quickly, but he was there first and he got the best. It gave him a couple of years where he was ahead of everybody. He made some great trades. He kept the Dodgers together.
“But nothing lasts forever in baseball, kid. The Dodgers won their last pennant in ’57. They came close in ’58. Finished second to Milwaukee, who they’d just beaten the year before. But after that it just went bad. All of a sudden the team seemed to get old, all at once. Jackie was gone, retired after ’57. Campanella battled age and injury. He hung on for a few years, but he was just a shadow of himself. Pee Wee, Newk, Carl Furillo, all faded. Only Reiser played on, but one man can’t carry a team. Their only decent pitchers were Drysdale and Castro, and Rickey traded Drysdale. In a last attempt to capture past glory, Rickey traded Duke Snider for five prospects, none of whom panned out. Rickey was in his seventies then, and not as sharp as he used to be. His son, who they called The Twig (but not to his face), took over more and more of the operation, but he was never as sharp as the Mahatma. When Rickey died in 1962 the Dodgers started their long stretch on the bottom of the league.”
“But what was special about this year? How come they won the pennant?” Tommy asked.
Slug laughed. “Hell, kid, if I knew for sure I’d write it down in a book and somebody’d pay me ten thousand dollars for it.”
“Do you think,” Tommy said carefully, “someone could be, well, manipulating things… using some kind of power to change the outcome of the games?”
“What, like an ace or something?”
Tommy nodded. “Or something.”
Slug laughed again, giggling like a bowlful of jelly. “If they were, kid, they’re doing a hell of a job. Listen, I’ve watched them all season. They win games every way imaginable. Why, one night Carlton struck out twenty men! Twenty! That’s a record. But he lost four to two because Ron Swoboda hit two two run homers-”
“Then Swoboda-” Tommy interrupted eagerly.
“Swoboda hit.237 with nine home runs for the season. Does he sound like a secret ace to you?”
“No…”
“Another time they had a doubleheader. They won both games one to nothing. In both games the pitcher knocked in the run, Jerry Koosman and Don Drysdale.”
“Then-”
Slug shook his head. “All I’m saying, kid, is that these guys win by every means imaginable. By pitching, by clutch hitting, by hustling on every play. It isn’t one man.” Slug gestured down to the field, where Seaver had retired the Orioles one-two-three again and was running off the mound. “Not even him. And he’s great. He’s terrific. But the Dodgers didn’t win in ’67 or ’68 when they had him. And this year he’s still their greatest player, their only great player. Nope. Nobody’s pulling any strings behind the scenes.”
“What about Reiser?” Tommy said quietly.
Slug frowned momentarily. “Reiser? Well, no one was greater them him. No one wanted to win more than him. I don’t know, kid. What kind of power would he have? The will to win? How would that work?”
Tommy shrugged. As it happened, Tommy knew that Reiser couldn’t be the secret ace. He smelled totally normal. Unless. Tommy thought, somehow he, Reiser was clouding his Tommy’s mind. Tommy sighed. Best not start thinking like that, he thought. That way lay craziness.
“Uh-oh,” Slug said with some concern. “Looks like Seaver could be getting into trouble.”
In the ninth inning the Dodgers were up one to nothing. Seaver needed only three more outs to nail down the Dodgers’ third win. He retired lead-off man Don Buford, but then Blair got only his second hit of the Series. Frank Robinson followed with another single, putting men on first and third. “He’s tiring,” Reiser said.
Castro nodded. “Let him gut it out.”
Reiser blew out a deep breath. “I’m going to go talk to him. We can’t let this one go.”
Castro nodded, and Reiser sauntered out to the mound, taking his time. The bullpen was up and working. Given a few more minutes and Gates and McGraw would both be ready, but Reiser didn’t want to take Seaver out. You had to show faith in the youngsters. You had to let them work out of their own trouble, or else they’d never learn how to do it. He’d learned that lesson under Leo Durocher, his first Dodger manager, and it was a lesson he’d never forgotten.
When he got to the mound the look in Seaver’s eyes told him everything he wanted to know. Very few pitchers would actually ask to be taken out. Their eyes told the real story, whether they were tired, hurt, or scared. Seaver’s eyes told Reiser that he was just impatient to get back to work. Reiser nodded.
“Right,” Reiser said. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay, and I’m sure. Remember-Boog Powell is up. Jam him, jam him, and jam him again, but if the pitch catches any of the plate on the inside he’ll hit it out. If you want to waste one, waste it outside, far outside. Don’t let the big son of a bitch get his arms extended. If you do, he’ll hit it out.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the umpire hustling up to the mound to break up the conversation. He looked at Seaver, who still had that somewhat far-away look of glassy-eyed concentration. He looked at Grote, who snapped off a nod and a wink. Grote couldn’t hit much, but he was a great defensive catcher and called the finest game in the majors. He’d make sure Seaver kept his wits about him.
“Okay,” Reiser said. He turned and strolled back to the dugout as Powell approached the plate.
Boog settled into the batters box and pumped the bat twice, three times at the mound. Seaver stared into his catcher’s glove like an automaton, then went into his windup and unleashed his arm like an arbolast blasting a rock at a castle wall. The ball whistled out of his hand, fastball, inside, on the black.
Boog cut at it, unleashing his long, furious swing, and the bottom of the ball sliced off the top of the bat handle, backward, foul, whistling just over Grote’s shoulder and by the umpire’s head.