John D. MacDonald
The Sinner of the Saints
The boy was out beside the house, and he gave Paul a startled look and then came whooping across the lawn to be swung high. The yells brought Myrna out onto the front steps and she stood, smiling in that attractive way of hers, strangely shy, the way she always was when Paul came home from one of the road trips.
He held her close and a lot of the loneliness went out of him. Whatever happened, she was here. She had been here, right up through the farm clubs, right up to the top where now he was unable to fulfill the earlier promise.
He sat Sandy, the girl, on his shoulder and took Kip’s hand and followed Myrna into the house.
“You’re hungry,” Myrna said.
“Ate on the train, honey.”
“You kids run along,” she said. “You can climb all over your daddy later.”
They left obediently, with wistful backward looks.
Myrna regarded him with her quiet blue eyes. “I heard three of the games, saw one on TV, and read about the rest.”
He stood up quickly, restless. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’m the best catcher we’ve got. You know that. Muzzol, the backstop. Hitting .283. Not good, not bad. Powdered one four hundred and forty feet and broke up that twelve-inning deadlock. But it doesn’t do any good.”
“Don’t nibble on yourself, darling.”
“With Crambough they come alive. They work. They laugh and they’ve got pepper and they’ve got to win. When I work behind the plate it turns into a trade, not a game. They miss chance. Belton and Sharker were shaking off my signals all the time. Now Stiss has started shaking them off. Tuesday Stiss shakes off a slow curve and dishes up a fast ball. A gopher. Good-bye ball game.”
Myrna frowned. “Why doesn’t Mr. Rogan tell them they can’t shake off your calls, Paul?”
“Baseball doesn’t work that way. A catcher takes control or he don’t. What the hell can I do? Go bang those guys in the mouth? Five years I’ve been trying to get up here, just to play with them. I work my heart out. These guys... I just seem to amuse them or something. One ball in a hundred gets by me and the fans boo and the infield looks disgusted. That Crambough! He loses a pop foul and what happens? ‘Nice try, Johnny!’ Batting .254, and Rogan uses him on the tight ones instead of me!”
He was standing with his back to her. She came to him. “You’ll work it out, Paul.”
He smiled bitterly. “Oh, sure. How much time is left? We stay ahead of the Sox and we got four more home games and then the series. He uses Crambough behind the plate in the series, and next year I’m back in triple A.”
“Or maybe with another major-league club, darling.”
His face twisted. “I don’t want to be with another major-league club. You know that. Ever since I was a little kid. The big dream. Muzzol catching for the Saints. So now I’m with ’em, Myrna, but I’m not one of them. Damn it, I feel like I ought to go show them my clippings. I want to say, look! I’m Muzzol. I hit .343 last year. I carried the Robins on my back. Know what that would mean to them? Just exactly nothing.”
She looked at him steadily, her hands on his shoulders. “Listen to me, Paul. You’ve got a two-day layoff. We won’t talk about it any more. Just rest, dear. Whatever happens, we’ll make out. You know that.”
“But I...”
She stopped him by putting her fingertips against his lips. “Now kiss me.”
He went out and oiled the lawn mower and went to work on the grass. It wasn’t really high enough to cut, but he wanted the monotony of the job, wanted his muscles used. There were things you couldn’t tell Myrna. Like that foul tip in Cleveland. He knew the ball had been deflected, and the batter knew it, too. And the umpire called it a ball. He had thrown down mask and hat and glove and ball in rage. Nobody swarmed out of the dugout to support him. Nobody trotted in from the infield. And so his rage had quickly faded away when he looked out and saw them standing there, waiting patiently. Detached, unamused.
And then, in Philadelphia, being run over in a play at the plate, after a late throw from Raneri at short. Paul had been bounced back so hard he rolled almost to the screen, getting up sick-dizzy. If that had happened on the Robins, they’d have come in howling for blood. But the Saints just stood around, patient, waiting. And, when nobody backs you, you brush yourself off, watch that big run tallied out on the board, and squat behind the next batter, calling a pitch that will be used only if the pitcher happens to like it.
Over near the hedge, Mr. Crane, his neighbor, smiled and said, “Hi there, Muzzol!”
“Hello, Mr. Crane.”
“I guess you guys are pretty worried, huh?”
Paul wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. “How do you mean?”
“Well, the way the Saints have lost their snap. Hell, you were five and a half games up in July. Looked like a walk-away. Now those Sox are just a game back and they’re coming strong.”
“We’ll make out,” Paul said.
“That’s the trouble with you guys — taking it easy. The Saints been in too many series, you ask me. It’s going to be one hell of a surprise to you guys when the Sox nose you out for the pennant.”
“They won’t.”
“I been following the Saints now for fifteen years. You know the trouble? No spark plugs. None of the old pepper gang. Sure, you got top bail players, but none of them play over their head the way they used to.”
Paul felt anger constricting his throat. “We play to win.”
Suddenly Crane smiled. “I’m not trying to take it out on you, Muzzol. I just miss the old fire out there.” He lowered his voice. “Look, Muzzol. Don’t get sore, but I got something to tell you and I don’t want you taking it wrong.”
“I won’t. What is it?”
“There’s this guy at the office. He likes it out here. We get along swell, and so do our old ladies. You want to unload this house any time, you just let me know.”
Paul stared at him, anger gone, a dull sickness replacing it.
“No point in paying a real estate agent his bite if you don’t have to.”
“Sure,” Paul said.
Myrna put the kids to bed early and a neighbor girl came over to sit. Paul and Myrna walked down to a neighborhood movie. Paul kept up the pretense of being relaxed and happy. But late into the night, with Myrna asleep beside him, he looked at the ceiling and replayed bits and pieces of the games all season.
It was in Boston that he had misinterpreted a signal from the bench and got nailed trying to steal second. After the game, a game they had won, Paul had taken his time in the dressing room, waiting for a tongue-lashing from Rogan. But it had never come. It left him with an empty feeling. Do something stupid and you want to hear about it.
Well, there were three regular games to go, plus a reschedule of one that had been rained out. Three against the Bombers and then that extra one with the cellar Dons. He wondered which ones he’d catch, if any. He knew, bleakly, that he wouldn’t be catching any if it wasn’t for the fact that Johnny Crambough had been in the majors too long to go a full season without relief. And Rogan wanted Crambough saved for the World Series, to give the team that little jump he alone seemed able to provide.
He knew it wasn’t because it was his first year in the majors. It was the first year in the big time for Sildon and Leroy, too. But they had fitted right in, right from the beginning. Something had made them Saints, and that same something had skipped right over Paul Muzzol. Like being admitted to an exclusive club or something, and then they find out something about you that makes you not fit to be a member, so they stay nice and courteous until they get the right chance to ease you out. Nice try, old man.