The little fella got the out, I’ll give him that, only it was a spring-training out, as important in the great scheme of things as a low fart in a high wind. And that was the end of Frank Faraday’s baseball career. One broken arm, one broken leg, a concussion – that was the score. I don’t know what became of him. Wound up washing windshields for tips at an Esso station in Tucumcari, for all I know.
So we lost both our catchers in the space of forty-eight hours and had to go north with nobody to put behind the plate except for Ganzie Burgess, who converted from catcher to pitcher not long after the Korean War ended. The Ganzer was thirty-nine years old that season and only good for middle relief, but he was a knuckleballer, and as crafty as Satan, so no way was Joe DiPunno going to risk those old bones behind the plate. He said he’d put me back there first. I knew he was joking – I was just an old third-base coach with so many groin pulls my balls were practically banging on my knees – but the idea still made me shiver.
What Joe did was call the front office in Newark and say, ‘I need a guy who can catch Hank Masters’s fastball and Danny Doo’s curve without falling on his keister. I don’t care if he plays for Testicle Tire in Tremont, just make sure he’s got a mitt and have him at the Swamp in time for the National Anthem. Then get to work finding me a real catcher. If you want to have any chance at all of contending this season, that is.’ Then he hung up and lit what was probably his eightieth cigarette of the day.
Oh for the life of a manager, huh? One catcher facing manslaughter charges; another in the hospital, wrapped in so many bandages he looked like Boris Karloff in The Mummy; a pitching staff either not old enough to shave or about ready for the Sociable Security; God-knows-who about to put on the gear and squat behind the plate on Opening Day.
We flew north that year instead of riding the rails, but it still felt like a train wreck. Meanwhile, Kerwin McCaslin, who was the Titans’ GM, got on the phone and found us a catcher to start the season with: William Blakely, soon to be known as Blockade Billy. I can’t remember now if he came from Double or Triple A, but you could look it up on your computer, I guess, because I do know the name of the team he came from: the Davenport Cornhuskers. A few players came up from there during my seven years with the Titans, and the regulars would always ask how things were down there playing for the Cornholers. Or sometimes they’d call them the Cocksuckers. Baseball humor is not what you’d call sophisticated.
We opened against the Red Sox that year. Middle of April. Baseball started later back then, and played a saner schedule. I got to the park early – before God got out of bed, actually – and there was a young man sitting on the bumper of an old Ford truck in the players’ lot. Iowa license plate dangling on chickenwire from the back bumper. Nick the gate guard let him in when the kid showed him his letter from the front office and his driver’s license.
‘You must be Bill Blakely,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘Good to know you.’
‘Good to know you too,’ he said. ‘I brought my gear, but it’s pretty beat up.’
‘Oh, I think we got you covered there, partner,’ I said, letting go of his hand. He had a Band-Aid wrapped around his second finger, just below the middle knuckle. ‘Cut yourself shaving?’ I asked, pointing to it.
‘Yup, cut myself shaving,’ he says. I couldn’t tell if that was his way of showing he got my little joke, or if he was so worried about fucking up he thought he ought to agree with everything anyone said, at least to begin with. Later on I realized it was neither of those things; he just had a habit of echoing back what you said to him. I got used to it, even sort of got to like it.
‘Are you the manager?’ he asked. ‘Mr DiPunno?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m George Grantham. The kids call me Granny. I coach third base. I’m also the equipment manager.’ Which was the truth; I did both jobs. Told you the game was smaller then. ‘I’ll get you fixed up, don’t worry. All new gear.’
‘All new gear,’ says he. ‘Except for the glove. I have to have Billy’s old glove, you know. Billy Junior and me’s been the miles.’
‘Well, that’s fine with me.’ And we went on in to what the sportswriters used to call Old Swampy in those days.
I hesitated over giving him 19, because it was poor old Faraday’s number, but the uniform fit him without looking like pajamas, so I did. While he was dressing, I said: ‘Ain’t you tired? You must have driven almost nonstop. Didn’t they send you some cash to take a plane?’
‘I ain’t tired,’ he said. ‘They might have sent me some cash to take a plane, but I didn’t see it. Could we go look at the field?’
I said we could, and led him down the runway and up through the dugout. He walked down to home plate outside the foul line in Faraday’s uniform, the blue 19 gleaming in the morning sun (it wasn’t but eight o’clock, the groundskeepers just starting what would be a long day’s work).
I wish I could tell you how it felt to see him taking that walk, Mr King, but words are your thing, not mine. All I know is that back-to he looked more like Faraday than ever. He was ten years younger, of course … but age doesn’t show much from the back, except sometimes in a man’s walk. Plus he was slim like Faraday, and slim’s the way you want your shortstop and second baseman to be, not your catcher. Catchers should be built like fireplugs, the way Johnny Goodkind was. This guy looked like broken ribs and a rupture just waiting to happen.
He had a firmer build than Frank Faraday, though; broad in the butt and thick in the thighs. He was skinny from the waist up, but looking at him ass-end-going-away, I remember thinking he looked like what he probably was: an Iowa plowboy on vacation in scenic Newark.
He went to the plate and turned around to look out to dead center. He had blond hair, just like a plowboy should, and a lock of it had fallen on his forehead. He brushed it away and just stood there taking it all in – the silent, empty stands where over fifty thousand people would be sitting that afternoon, the bunting already hung on the railings and fluttering in the morning breeze, the foul poles painted fresh Jersey Blue, the groundskeepers just starting to water. It was an awesome sight, I always thought, and I could imagine what was going through the kid’s mind, him that had probably been home pulling cow teats just a week ago and waiting for the Cornholers to start playing in mid-May.
I thought, Poor kid’s finally getting the picture. When he looks over here, I’ll see the panic in his eyes. I may have to tie him down in the locker room to keep him from jumping in that old truck of his and hightailing it back to God’s country.
But when he looked at me, there was no panic in his eyes. Not even nervousness, which I would have said every player feels on Opening Day. No, he looked perfectly cool standing there behind the plate in his Levi’s and light poplin jacket.
‘Yuh,’ he says, like a man confirming something he was pretty sure of in the first place. ‘Billy can hit here.’
‘Good,’ I tell him. It’s all I can think of to say.
‘Good,’ he says back. Then – I swear – he says, ‘Do you think those guys need help with them hoses?’
I laughed. There was something strange about him, something off, something that made folks nervous … but that something made people take to him too. Kinda sweet. Something that made you want to like him in spite of feeling he wasn’t exactly all there. Joe DiPunno knew he was light in the head right away. Some of the players did too, but that didn’t stop them from liking him. I don’t know, it was like when you talked to him what came back was the sound of your own voice. Like an echo in a cave.