I seen the kid afterward, sitting naked on the bench outside the showers. He had a big bruise coming on the side of his chest, but he didn’t seem to mind it at all. He was no crybaby. He was too dumb to feel pain, some people said later; too dumb and crazy. But I’ve known plenty of dumb players in my time, and being dumb never stopped them from bitching over their ouchies.
‘How about all those signs, kid?’ I asked, thinking I would cheer him up if he needed cheering.
‘What signs?’ he says, and I could see by the puzzled look on his face that he wasn’t joking a bit. That was Blockade Billy for you. He would have stood in front of a semi if the guy behind the wheel was driving it down the third base line and trying to score on him, but otherwise he didn’t have a fucking clue.
We played a two-game series with Detroit before hitting the road again, and lost both. Danny Doo was on the mound for the second one, and he couldn’t blame the kid for the way it went; he was gone before the third inning was over. Sat in the dugout whining about the cold weather (it wasn’t cold), the way Harrington dropped a fly ball out in right (Harrington would have needed stilts to get to that one), and the bad calls he got from that sonofabitch Wenders behind the plate. On that last one he might have had a point. Hi Wenders didn’t like The Doo any more than the sportswriters did, never had, ran him in two ball games the year before. But I didn’t see any bad calls that day, and I was standing less than ninety feet away.
The kid hit safe in both games, including a home run and a triple. Nor did Dusen hold the hot bat against him, which would have been his ordinary behavior; he was one of those guys who wanted fellows to understand there was one big star on the Titans, and it wasn’t them. But he liked the kid; really seemed to think the kid was his lucky charm. And the kid liked him. They went barhopping after the game, had about a thousand drinks and visited a whorehouse to celebrate The Doo’s first loss of the season, and showed up the next day for the trip to KC pale and shaky.
‘The kid got laid last night,’ Doo confided in me as we rode out to the airport in the team bus. ‘I think it was his first time. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I don’t think he remembers it.’
We had a bumpy plane ride; most of them were back then. Lousy prop-driven buckets, it’s a wonder we didn’t all get killed like Buddy Holly and the Big Fucking Bopper. The kid spent most of the trip throwing up in the can at the back of the plane, while right outside the door a bunch of guys sat playing acey-deucey and tossing him the usual funny stuff: Get any onya? Want a fork and knife to cut that up a little? Then the next day the kid goes five-for-five at Municipal Stadium, including a pair of jacks.
There was also another Blockade Billy play; by then he could have taken out a patent. The latest victim was Cletus Boyer. Again it was Blockade Billy down with the left shoulder, and up and over Mr Boyer went, landing flat on his back in the left batter’s box. There were some differences, though. The rook used both hands on the tag, and there was no bloody foot or strained Achilles tendon. Boyer just got up and walked back to the dugout, dusting his ass and shaking his head like he didn’t quite know where he was. Oh, and we lost the game in spite of the kid’s five hits. Eleven to ten was the final score, or something like that. Ganzie Burgess’s knuckleball wasn’t dancing that day; the Athletics feasted on it.
We won the next game, and lost a squeaker on getaway day. The kid hit in both games, which made it sixteen straight. Plus nine putouts at the plate. Nine in sixteen games! That might be a record. If it was in the books, that is.
We went to Chicago for three, and the kid hit in those games, too, making it nineteen straight. But damn if we didn’t lose all three. Jersey Joe looked at me after the last of those games and said, ‘I don’t buy that lucky charm stuff. I think Blakely sucks luck.’
‘That ain’t fair and you know it,’ I said. ‘We were going good at the start, and now we’re in a bad patch. It’ll even out.’
‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘Is Dusen still trying to teach the kid how to drink?’
‘Yeah. They headed off to The Loop with some other guys.’
‘But they’ll come back together,’ Joe says. ‘I don’t get it. By now Dusen should hate that kid. Doo’s been here five years and I know his MO.’
I did, too. When The Doo lost, he had to lay the blame on somebody else, like that bum Johnny Harrington or that busher bluesuit Hi Wenders. The kid’s turn in the barrel was overdue, but Danny was still clapping him on the back and promising him he’d be Rookie of the Goddam Year. Not that The Doo could blame the kid for that day’s loss. In the fifth inning of his latest masterpiece, Danny had hucked one to the backstop in the fifth: high, wide, and handsome. That scored one. So then he gets mad, loses his control, and walks the next two. Then Nellie Fox doubled down the line. After that The Doo got it back together, but by then it was too late; he was on the hook and stayed there.
We got a little well in Detroit, took two out of three. The kid hit in all three games and made another one of those amazing home-plate stands. Then we flew home. By then the kid from the Davenport Cornholers was the hottest goddam thing in the American League. There was talk of him doing a Gillette ad.
‘That’s an ad I’d like to see,’ Si Barbarino said. ‘I’m a fan of comedy.’
‘Then you must love looking at yourself in the mirror,’ Critter Hayward said.
‘You’re a card,’ Si says. ‘What I mean is the kid ain’t got no whiskers.’
There never was an ad, of course. Blockade Billy’s career as a baseball player was almost over.
We had three scheduled with the White Sox, but the first one was a washout. The Doo’s old pal Hi Wenders was the umpire crew chief, and he gave me the news himself. I’d got to The Swamp early because the trunks with our road uniforms in them got sent to Idlewild by mistake and I wanted to make sure they’d been trucked over. We wouldn’t need them for a week, but I was never easy in my mind until such things were taken care of.
Wenders was sitting on a little stool outside the umpire’s room, reading a paperback with a blond in fancy lingerie on the cover.
‘That your wife, Hi?’ I asks.
‘My girlfriend,’ he says. ‘Go on home, Granny. Weather forecast says that by three it’s gonna be coming down in buckets. I’m just waiting for DiPunno and Lopez to call the game.’
‘Okay,’ I says. ‘Thanks.’ I started away and he called after me.
‘Granny, is that wonder-kid of yours all right in the head? Because he talks to himself behind the plate. Whispers. Never fucking shuts up.’
‘He’s no Quiz Kid, but he’s not crazy, if that’s what you mean,’ I said. I was wrong about that, but who knew? ‘What kind of stuff does he say?’
‘I couldn’t hear much the one time I was behind him – the second game against Boston – but I know he talks about himself. In that whatdoyoucallit, third person. He says stuff like “I can do it, Billy.” And one time, when he dropped a foul tip that woulda been strike three, he goes, “I’m sorry, Billy.”’
‘Well, so what? Til I was five, I had an invisible friend named Sheriff Pete. Me and Sheriff Pete shot up a lot of mining towns together.’
‘Yeah, but Blakely ain’t five anymore. Unless he’s five up here.’ Wenders taps the side of his thick skull.
‘He’s apt to have a five as the first number in his batting average before long,’ I says. ‘That’s all I care about. Plus he’s a hell of a stopper. You have to admit that.’
‘I do,’ Wenders says. ‘That cockhound has no fear. Another sign that he’s not all there in the head.’
I wasn’t going to listen to an umpire run down one of my players any more than that, so I changed the subject and asked him – joking but not joking – if he was going to call the game tomorrow fair and square, even though his favorite Doo-Bug was throwing.