“What’s going on?” Tommy asked.
“Looks like he’s claiming the pitch hit him,” Slug said.
Suddenly Pete Reiser bounced out of the dugout and showed the ball to the plate umpire. The umpire looked at, and waved Jones to first. Earl Weaver ran out of the Orioles dugout, his face already red, but turned back without a word as the umpire silently showed him the ball.
“What-” Tommy began, and Slug shrugged.
“You got me, kid. The ball probably hit Jones on the foot. Maybe it got shoe polish on it. Must have. It’d take something like that to shut Weaver up so suddenly.”
Donn Clendenon, the on-deck batter who’d been watching with interest, stepped to the plate and immediately jacked a two-run shot into the stands.
Slug shook his head, as if in disbelief. “Can you believe this shi-stuff? My God, has this been scripted?”
The next inning Al Weiss, the utility infielder who’d hit two home runs all season, hit another one out, and Tommy suddenly knew it was all over but for the question of the final score.
“It’s like they’re blessed,” Slug said.
Tommy smiled to himself. That’s one way of putting it, he thought.
The Dodgers settled it in the eighth with two runs. Like most of their scoring that season, it was a team effort with a Jones double, a Clendenon ground out, bloop singles, and ground ball errors on the part of the Orioles.
The Dodgers took the field in the ninth leading five to three. The tension was so great that the stadium was virtually silent. Frank Robinson led off the inning with a walk, and Boog Powell came up as the tying run.
It always seemed to be the way of the game. The big man came to bat with the game on the line. If Powell was feeling the pressure, he didn’t show it. He took a mighty swing at Koosman’s first offering. He hit the ball hard, but on the ground, up the middle. Weiss, ranging far to his right at second base, dove, stopped it, got up and threw to Harrelson covering the bag. Robinson barreled down and Harrelson had to leap over him as he hit the bag in a hard slide. He couldn’t make the relay throw to first. One out, Powell safe at first.
The game wasn’t over yet, but Tommy knew that, really, it was. The secret ace wouldn’t let the Dodgers lose.
Brooks Robinson, a tough hitter with decent power, lifted an easy fly to Ron Swoboda, who circled under it (Tommy held his breath, as did every Dodger fan in the stands) and caught it with a smile.
Davy Johnson followed Brooks to the plate. He was a tough hitter with decent power for a middle infielder, but he, too, managed only an easy fly to medium left field. Cleon Jones went right to the spot where the ball would come down, camped under it, caught it, and touched his knee to the ground as if in prayer. Grote ran out to the mound where the Dodgers’ senior citizen third baseman Ed “The Glider” Charles was already doing a dance of inexpressible joy, and it was as if suddenly someone threw a switch and turned the sound on and the stadium erupted with an out-pouring of cheers and screams and shouts that Brooklyn hadn’t heard in years and years. On the third base line Sign Man held up his sign and it said, “THERE ARE NO WORDS,” and, indeed, there were none.
The locker room was like some scene out of a madcap version of hell, or at least pandemonium. Half-naked players ran around whooping and shouting like little boys, spraying themselves with champagne and beer and shaving cream. The utter joy of the moment almost over-whelmed Tommy. He snuck a bottle of champagne for himself, and swallowed a bit, but it was cheap stuff, rather stinging and bitter, not at all how Tommy imagined it would taste, and he ended up surreptitiously spraying it all over the locker room.
He wanted to join in the celebration openly, but the other reporters were at least trying to keep themselves somewhat aloof from the partisan festivities. They were wandering around the room (most surreptitiously swigging beers) asking what Tommy thought were mostly inane questions of the players. Slug’s shoe polish theory was confirmed, but Tommy heard nothing else of importance.
Tommy was determined to keep the surprise to himself, not to let anyone else in on his secret. He wanted to confront Reiser with his certain knowledge, and get the manager’s reaction. Then, The Weekly Gospel would get their exclusive, and what an exclusive it would be: Miracle Dodger Victory Engineered by Secret Ace!
Well, perhaps he would have to work on shortening that headline.
In the end, it was surprisingly easy. Tommy hung around in the rear of the room, in the shadows, watching as the celebration wound down without really ending as the players showered, dressed, and left the locker room still clearly high on emotion and crazed energy. It took awhile, but the locker room emptied of players and reporters and finally the only ones left in the clubhouse were those who also usually arrived first at the ballpark. Tommy found them in the manager’s office, sipping beer and smoking thick, fragrant Cuban cigars.
“I know who the secret ace is,” Tommy said in a dramatic, almost accusatory voice.
Reiser, lounging behind his desk with his feet up and a cigar in his mouth, groaned and sat up straight. “You, again? Jesus, kid, there ain’t no secret ace. I’ve been over it in my head, I’ve watched everyone. There just ain’t no secret ace.”
“Really?” Tommy said archly as he came into the room. “How do you account for all the strange things that happened during the Series? The spectacular catches, the bad throws and Oriole errors, the unexpected home runs, the shoe polish incident?”
Reiser shrugged. “It’s baseball, kid. It’s the nature of the game. Strange things happen. Sometimes players rise to the occasion. Sometimes occasions rise to the players. You can’t explain it. No one can.”
“Then how do you explain the way he smells?” Tommy asked dramatically, pointing at Fidel Castro, who was sitting across the desk from Reiser, cigar in one hand, champagne bottle in the other.
“The way he smells?” Reiser asked.
Shit, Tommy thought, I blew it. “I mean-” He realized there was no sense in lying now. It was better to stick to the truth. “Yeah. I should have told you before. I can smell people who are affected by the wild card-”
“That’s ridiculous-” Reiser began, but Castro interrupted him. “No. He’s right.”
Reiser turned to his old friend. “What?”
“I am a wild carder.”
Tommy couldn’t restrain himself from saying, “See? I told you, I told you!” He could barely restrain himself from doing a little dance of joy. Visions of headlines ran in his head. Screw The Weekly Gospel. He’d take this to The Daily News. And he was only in the ninth grade! Visions of future Pulitzers danced in his head.
“But I am not an ace.”
“What?” Tommy’s face fell. “I don’t believe you.”
Castro shrugged. “It’s true. I never knew I’d been infected with the virus until last winter. I went to see the doctors about my arm. They did tests and discovered I had the wild card. They discovered my ‘power’ when examining my arm.”