“Musta been thinking about something else,” Joe answers sheepishly. Why is he worrying about flying saucers? He’s never seen one in his life. He’s seen the two red taillights of that Oldsmobile receding down Second Street, though.
”Don’t think, for Chrissakes,” the other Rocket tells him. “You’ll only screw yourself up.”
He’s not wrong. You can’t think when you’re playing ball. You’ll be a split second late, half a step slow, if you do. You have to play and play and play till your body automatically knows what to do, and your head backs off and lets it.
Joe’s swing is like that. He’s always been a hard hitter. This year, he’s something extra special. The ball jumps off his bat, in the practices and after the season starts. Some of the shots he hits go farther than Professor Goddard’s prewar experiments that gave the Roswell Rockets their name.
He hits ‘em long. He hits ‘em early. He hits ‘em often. The Longhorn League belongs to the hitters. So do the West Texas–New Mexico League, the Big State League, and the Arizona-Texas League, all in the same part of the country. The air is thin. The weather’s hot. Pitching staffs are small, and wear down as summer grinds along. Lots of guys run up big numbers here. But even by the inflated standards people in these parts are used to, Joe has a season to remember.
They play mostly night games. During the day, when the Rockets are home, Joe pumps gas. At night, he takes dead aim at the whitewashed planks of the right-field fence at Park Field. It’s only 329 down the line. He’s smacking ‘em way farther than that. He knocks one into the rodeo grounds next to the ballpark, which interrupts the calf-roping.
He gets a free ham every time he hits one out, too: the team has a deal with a local meat-packer. He doesn’t keep most of them. Some of the Cuban kids who play for the Rockets praying a big-league organization will notice them are hungry all the time. They don’t get paid the way he does, and they need the meat.
He passes fifty homers early in August. By the end of the month, with the season winding down, he has sixty-four. That means he’s passed Babe Ruth, whose sixty has stood as the major-league mark since 1927. But the record in the minors is sixty-nine. Joe Hauser did it in 1933, and Bob Crues tied it in 1949 playing for Amarillo in the West Texas–New Mexico League. Joe Bauman played with him there a couple of years earlier.
On the night of September 1, Joe gets close. Real close. The Sweetwater Spudders are in Roswell. Their franchise is spuddering; they moved from Wichita Falls in June. And Joe has a game for the ages. Four homers. A double. Ten RBIs. Oh, yeah. The Rockets win, 15-9.
Sixty-eight. One to tie the record. Two to bust it wide open. Nobody in history has ever hit seventy, not since Abner Doubleday said “Let there be bases” and there were bases. All of a sudden, Joe’s a big story. Oh, he’s been a big story in Roswell the whole season, and in the other Longhorn League towns, too. But now he’s a story across the whole country. AP lines carry news of what he’s doing from coast to coast. When’s the last time that happened in Roswell?
Oh. The thing back in ‘47, the one people don’t care to talk about. Whenever Joe thinks about that, he shies away from it like a cat that just got a squirt in the face from a water pistol. So he doesn’t think about it much. It’s not as if he hasn’t got other things on his mind.
The next day, Pat Stasey, the manager, moves him from cleanup to the leadoff spot so he’ll get more chances to hit. But he doesn’t connect on the second. The record sits on his shoulders, heavy as a piano. He hates the flash bulbs going off every time he comes up. It’s not just the local photographers, either. Sports Illustrated has sent a guy to Roswell. So has Life. He is big news, and kind of wishes he weren’t.
The game on the third, against Midland, is the Rockets’ last one at Park Field. Joe ties the record in the seventh inning. The piano falls off. But if he’s gonna break it, he’ll have to break it on the road. Along with the rest of the guys, he climbs into the bus for the long, hot haul to Big Spring, Texas. The national shutterbugs and reporters bum lifts from the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate who usually cover Longhorn League games. A little convoy rolls east along US 380.
Not quite knowing why, Joe wonders if he’ll see a Rocket 88 pacing the rickety old bus, but he doesn’t. Is that good news or bad? He’s not even sure it’s news at all.
Big Spring is bad news. The Broncs won’t pitch to him. Time after time, he has to toss the bat aside and trot down to first base. Even the Big Spring fans boo. The Rockets have nothing else to play for. They won’t win the pennant. Artesia has already clinched it. And that’s where they head next, for a Sunday doubleheader to close out the season.
Joe played for Artesia for a couple of years before moving up to Roswell ahead of the ‘53 season because he could get the Texaco station there. The fans of the NuMexers (they were the Drillers when he played for them) razz him whenever he comes back to town.
“Whoever made this schedule’s just plain squirrely,” Stasey complains. “Two hundred miles from Roswell to Big Spring, two hundred more from Big Spring back to Artesia. But Artesia’s only forty miles south of Roswell. We shoulda gone there first, then into Texas.”
“You want things to make sense, you shouldn’t play this game,” says Vallie Eaves, the pitching coach. He’s past forty, but he still goes out on the mound every once in a while. When he was younger, he made it to the bigs--the only Rocket who can say that. He wasn’t very good, but he made it. Stasey and Joe nod.
Before the game, the Artesia manager walks over to Joe. “I heard what they done to you in Big Spring,” he says, and spits a stream of tobacco juice onto the hard-baked ground. “I think that was chickenshit. We’ll pitch to you. We won’t groove one, but we’ll give you your chance. Fair’s fair.”
“Obliged,” Joe answers. “That’s white of you.” Would the other manager say the same thing if he didn’t have the pennant sewed up? Not likely! But Joe will take what he can get.
He happens to notice three little bald guys in fedoras and sunglasses sitting in the grandstand back of first base. They look so strange, he almost points them out to the guys he plays with. Somehow, though, it slips his mind. As a matter of fact, it slips right out his mind. So do they, which is odd, because they’re down by the front. And none of the other Rockets seems to see them at all.
Joe still feels funny batting leadoff, but whatthehell, whatthehell. Though Artesia hasn’t liked him since he bailed for Roswell, the crowd cheers and stomps when the PA announcer calls his name. That, or something, makes him feel easier as he steps to the plate.
On the hill for the NuMexers is a Cuban kid, José Galardo. Their manager wasn’t kidding--he pitches to Joe. Joe takes a couple, fouls off a couple. Artesia has a big ballpark. It’s over 350 to right, and the wind blows toward the plate. If Joe breaks the record, he won’t break it with a cheap shot.
The kid comes in with a fastball on the 2-2 pitch. Joe swings. Nothing sweeter than bat hitting ball squarely. He knows it’s gone before he finishes his follow-through. No, it’s no cheap home run. It’s way the hell out of there.
“Number seventy!” the PA man yells. Like a man in a dream, Joe rounds the bases. His feet hardly seem to touch the ground. If hitting number sixty-nine was getting the piano off his back, seventy is the piano stool. When his spikes come down on the plate, he’s grinning just like Christmas.
And it’s just like Christmas another way, too. When you do something special in the Longhorn League, the fans let you know they appreciate it. They shove cash out through the chicken-wire screening that keeps foul line drives from murdering them. Joe walks down the first- and third-base lines, gathering it in.