And with the glamor of this ceremony attached — gilded — to him. Sandy Shaw himself, for example. Yes, they were all with him right now, to be sure. Some eighty or ninety boys there altogether, a small cut of the thousand or so living UBA veterans who made up the electorate, but enough in concert to wield a tremendous force. Yes, damn it, he ought to break it up somehow.
Sandy's song was over and they were milling about. Small groups were forming up, dispersing, reforming. They'd heard the song and wept and been released. Things would start getting noisier. Sandy Shaw was drinking over there with Shadwell and Bancroft. Jaybird Wall was up to his tiresome tricks again, and Rag Rooney, apparently revived, was back out there seeking new victims. Here and there, arms over each other's shoulders, groups of three or four men were singing together. Well, there were ways he could do it, ways he could bust this thing up and get them out of there, head them home. He reached for the phone. But he hesitated. Enjoyment. What in god's name did enjoyment have to do with people and life and running a goddamn baseball league? He stared dismally at the TV scene. Then, dispiritedly, he did call. He watched Jake appear on the screen, pick up the phone, glance up at the camera, up at him, Universal Baseball Association Chancellor Fennimore McCaffree, alone and full of sorrow, self-pityingly encased in that dark gloom that would pursue him to his grave. "Jake, this is Fenn. Listen… set the boys up a couple times… for me. Will you?"
Things were livening up. Some of the family men had left; but Jake's was still packed and there were still a good many bottles that hadn't got drunk up yet. The collective eye was on Jaybird Wall, whose own night was nearly done. He was into his old ball-chasing act, imitating himself out in left field, losing a fly ball in the sun. Wearing a ball cap over his eyes so just his big red nose stuck out, detoothed mouth agape, using Maloney's derby for a glove, shirttail out, pants sadsackly adroop, shoestrings untied, he rubber-legged around the barroom, trying to spy the falling ball. Sandy picked up his guitar and played a tremolo on a high string. Chants and shouts. "Look out!" Laughter. "I thee it! I thee it!" Jaybird gummed, scrawny arms upstretched to invoke a fair catch, and then, "Glop!", seemed to swallow something. He lowered his chin, pushed back his cap, crossed his eyes, staggered around clutching his throat, then stuffed one finger into his muzzle and leaned over Maloney's derby. He seemed to be prying something out… POP! (sound effects by Jake) — he smiled broadly, produced a baseball from the hat. Applause and laughter. Jaybird beamed, dropped the ball back into Maloney's hat, and with a drunken weave and flourish, grandly donned the derby: CLUNK! (Jake bopping the bar with a beer bottle) and over he went. Descending whistle (the whole crowd in concert): WHOMP (no sound effects needed)! Not to rise again. Not this night anyway. No matter how they whooped and paid him tribute.
Trench and Rooney dragged Jaybird out to keep him from getting walked on, popped him onto the back-room cot, kept there for the purpose. Who hadn't slept there? Home away from home. Had been for Trench anyway. Sandy had a song about it. .
… I'm all washed up, boys,
I got the axe, I got the aches;
Now you'll find me when you want me
On the sack in the back of Jake's!
Mel Trench had ended his playing career here in this town, traded to the Pastime Club by the Excelsiors when his deep belts no longer cleared the wall so often, when they had a way instead of getting caught Difference of ten feet maybe, but it was enough. What was the grave, but a difference of six? He'd watched them lower that boy today, put him under the sod, and he himself had had a pretty sinking feeling. Something like he felt when the Cels traded him off to the Patsies. Nothing wrong with the Patsies, great guys, but a comedown after his heyday with the Cels: five championships in seven years! Oh, they were great, and he, Mighty Mel Trench, the Terrible Truncheon, was the greatest by god of them all! Hell-born Melbourne. Look out! Home-run king and the only man in UBA history ever to win the Most Valuable Player Award two years running. Not even Brock Rutherford had done that. But suddenly he lost it. And the Cels packed him off. He didn't deserve that. All the newspapers said so. A deserving guy. A rotten deal. But he wasn't bitter. They all noticed that. Sweet fellow, they said. Swell Mel. And he'd tried like a bastard for the Patsies, hoping for just one more pennant, but the fences just kept backing off, and the Patsies those years were no real contenders. Toward the end, he wasn't much more than a pinch hitter. Benched Trench. Finally, in XLVIII, they let him go. And then, the next year, the Patsies did win the pennant. No mention of Swell Mel then. He slept back here a lot those days. Hellborn.
Finally, though, it was his old outfit that rescued him, showed up here winter before last with an offer to manage the Excelsiors. Not too much to work with, but at least he couldn't do worse: they had finished LIV in the cellar. So he accepted and gave it all he had. . and wound up in the cellar again last year anyway. And that was where they still were today.
En-Trenched. He had to do something, but he didn't know what. Made him want to cry, just thinking about it.
But anyway he was glad he had come tonight. Helped him see the bigger picture, loosen up a little. All came out the same in the end, he saw that now. Some won, some lost, it didn't really matter; what mattered was… well… the Association, this whole thing, bigger than all of them, that they were all caught up in. When he tried to picture it in his mind, it fuzzed into a big blur, but in his heart and when they were all together like this, he knew what he meant. Yes, it was a terrific bunch of guys out there tonight. Most of them were old-timers, ballplayers he'd watched as a kid, old heroes, in their late fifties now, some of them — like Rooney and Wall here — even older. Still looked and talked and laughed like ballplayers, though. Something in the blood or the heart or the balls that made you keep going, no matter what. He heard old Sandy Shaw out there, tuning up his guitar again. In his sixties, and Sandy still looked like a freckly-faced kid. Trench felt his own thick paunch. I'll be dead before any of them, he said to himself. Didn't really believe it, though. He looked at old Rooney. Pappy. One of the greatest of all time. Lean face scarred with deep wrinkles now. White hair. Crinkled leather skin on the back of his neck looked hundreds of years old. Somebody said he had cancer. And yet look at him: still a terrific scrapper, still out there every day, giving it all he had. Wonderful old man. Hall of Fame. Trench wanted to wrap his arm around him, show the old guy he cared, and that he'd truly be sorry when he died. Tomorrow, Rooney was his worst enemy. If Trench didn't get his Cels out of the cellar, he was through, and he had to start tomorrow, had to knock off Rooney's Haymakers. But still, tonight, he could put his arm around the old bastard and swear blood oaths: I'm with you, man. And he knew, when the chips were down, he could count on Rooney, too. That's how it was in this game.