GAME by Fred Holt

 

        Some folks say that the baseball team from Pansy was the best in Arkansas, at least in southeast Arkansas, in 1941, in the summer.  When they came to play, people from all over turned out.  They especially turned out in my town the year Big Alton York came home from the Army and pitched for our team.  When Big Alton pitched, we were almost as good as Pansy.

        Even before Big Alton came back, I went to the game every Sunday.  I attended the Methodist Sunday School and Church Sunday morning so that my folks would let me go to the game in the afternoon.  If the game lasted extra-long, I sometimes missed the young people’s meeting Sunday night.  They didn’t mind that so much. 

        Dutch Gravemire was my favorite player.  He tried out with the Detroit Tigers.  He played third-base and led off the batting order.  Ever so often, he winked and spoke to me after he made a good play.  Those were big times when I was twelve, but I never thought I would play.  I didn’t run very fast, and I took piano lessons.

        The skies turned dark that Sunday in July when Pansy came to town.  The field behind the high school gymnasium was wet from a morning rain.  My daddy said they wouldn’t play, but Popeye King and I went out anyway.  Dutch said the game would start late because some players hadn’t shown. 

        Pansy came with its whole team and more.  They brought all the players they could pile into two pick-up trucks.  They jammed in with a bunch of Pansy girls plus their equipment bags and uniforms.  They wore uniforms.  The also brought the bases. 

        Goat Blackwell’s daddy, our manager, took his time lining off the field and tying down the bases.  Our team took about thirty minutes to warm up.  Everybody knew we were stalling until enough players came.  If the game didn’t start soon, it would be rained out for sure.  After Scrog Davidson turned up, Popeye and I counted eight players.

        The skies turned darker.  The Pansy manager walked over to talk to Mr. Blackwell.  If we didn’t start the game, he wanted a forfeit.  Giving a forfeit was worse than losing, except the time we lost to Pine Bluff, when we couldn’t get them out past the fourth inning before the sun went down.  That was worse than a forfeit.

        Mr. Blackwell called his players to the bench along the third-base line.  They were deciding what to do.  Finally, Stick Greenwood ran over to where Popeye and I were sitting on the ground.  He asked us little boys if anyone wanted to fill in until the ninth players showed.  I didn’t say anything at first.  Even though I always wanted to, I never thought much about playing in a real game.

        I played work-up ball with the Finney boys and Henry Turner on my street.  My daddy and I played catch.  He said I had a natural left-handers’ curve, but I was too wild to make a pitcher.  Uncle Lloyd Adams was president of the Hots Springs Bathers in the Cotton States League.  I followed the Little Rock Travelers and the major league standings in the Arkansas Gazette, and I listened to the Cardinal games on the radio.  Bobby Ellison hit me in the mouth with a bat one day at recess, but I never played in a real game. 

        Just as Stick said that he might ask some older men, like Frisky Mitchell and Runt Williams. I jumped up and started walking onto the infield.  Stick hollered, “Hey! I got one.”

        When Mr. Blackwell saw who it was, he called me over to the bench so he could tell me what to do and what not to do.  He told me I was really too little to play but to try to relax.  He put me in center field so that Stick, in right and Race Horse Sanders, in left, could cover fly balls that came my way.

        I didn’t need a uniform.  None of our players had a uniform.  Some had shoes with cleats.  Some had football jerseys and knee pants.  Most had caps.  Dutch wore the official baseball cap he got when he tired out with the Detroit Tigers.  I could tell that a few wore jockey straps.  The adjusted them from time to time. 

        Pansy came to bat first, and we took the field.  When I got to center field, Big Alton glared at me from the pitcher’s mound, waved me further back, and asked if I thought we were playing softball.  I finally went out so deep in the field that I was sure no ball could ever come near me.

I was wrong though.  The Pansy lead-off man hit Big Alton’s first pitch right to where I stood.  Then it curved away toward left center.  I took off for the spot where the ball was heading.  Halfway there, I knew I wouldn’t make it.  Then I heard Race Horse charging in to cover.  Just as the ball was a foot off the ground, he stuck out his glove, caught it, rolled over, and barreled into me coming on.

I lay flat on the ground, with the wind knocked out of me.  I heard the older men, including Frisky Mitchell and Runt Williams, and a bunch of local girls yelling for Race Horse and laughing at me.  Big Alton didn’t laugh, but he must have felt good about Race Horse.  He struck out the next two batters.

        When we came in to take out bats, I looked over Mr. Blackwell’s shoulder to check the order.  I saw that I was batting ninth right behind Haywire Denson who hadn’t gotten a hit all summer.  Mr. Blackwell said if another player showed up, I might not get to take my turn.  Dutch asked me if I knew how to hod a bat, and I said I thought so.

        While Dutch got a single, Omer Johnson grounded into a double-play, and Stick struck out, I fished around in the equipment bag for a left-hander’s glove.  I wore a wrong-handed glove in the first inning.  I finally found one that was old and ratty, but it felt better.  I wore it in center field for the second inning and I got way back.

        Nobody hit to me, but I was ready just in case.  I jammed the fourth and fifth fingers of my right hand into the third finger hole of the glove where the padding was out and hanging loose, and I banged the glove pocket with my fist several times so I would more likely catch anything that came my way, at least to look like I would.

        Pansy got one hit that inning, and they grounded out three times to the infield.  We struck out, flew out, and popped one up.  Before we took the field again, Mr. Blackwell said he was glad the game started after all.   If Big Alton’s control held out, we might win, even over Pansy.

        Out in center field, I noticed the skies were darker.  I thought we wouldn’t finish the third inning, but that was all right with me.  I could still call John Herman Thompson before he went to the picture show to tell him that I played in a real game.  John Herman would act like it was no big deal, even though he would be jealous.

        John Herman didn’t care for ball games.  He liked to go to the Pastime Theater and tell about the picture shows he saw.  I wanted to see the shows John Herman saw and tell about them, but my mother wouldn’t let me out at night like John Herman’s mama, except on Fridays and Saturday night, until ten o’clock.  She thought I should stay home to do school work and to practice the piano.

        I could go to the show on Saturday afternoon, sometimes on Friday night, but never on Sunday.  I hardly ever made Bank Night on Tuesday or the Monday, Wednesday, or Thursday night show, except when Judge Perkins took us for Nancy Perkins’ birthday on Monday night to “Gone with the Wind”.  Of course, John Herman had already seen it in Pine Bluff.  Still, I knew he would be jealous when I called him.

        I thought so much about John Herman at the start of the third inning, that I didn’t see the Pansy lead-off man hit Big Alton’s first pitch into center field.  After Race Horse yelled at me, I saw the ball high in the air, looking like it was going straight over my head.  I started to run back to pick it off the ground when a gust of wind slowed it and changed its direction.  The it headed down, right toward where I stood.

        In fact, I didn’t have to move.  I just stayed and waited, banged the glove pocket one more time, and held my hands out in front of me.  When I clamped them together, the ball was there.

        The older men, Frisky Mitchell and Runt Williams, and that bunch of local girls started yelling again, this time for me.  Mr. Blackwell stared like he couldn’t believe it.  Dutch yelled, “Way to go Little.”  Race Horse clapped his hands.  Big Alton grinned.

        I was surprised too and proud, and when I threw the ball back to the infield, it went wild and sailed way over the second-baseman’s head.  During the rest of the inning, I thought so much about catching that ball that I didn’t notice how Pansy made it one run or the other two outs.

        I still felt proud when I came from the field, but I tried to act like it was usual.  As I ran toward the bench, I slipped down near a mud hole beneath the eaves of the school gymnasium.  Frisky Mitchell and Runt Williams came over to pat me on the back, but when they saw my fall, they started laughing again.  Dutch asked, “Do you think you can stand up long enough to bat this inning?”

        I was actually going to bat, and I had to get ready.  I spent some time choosing the right bat and swinging a couple of them around like Dutch did.  Dutch said this was supposed to loosen you up and make the bat feel light in your hands.

        The day I broke Jerry Finney’s Louisville Slugger in a game of work-up, he fussed at me for not holding the brand on top to keep the ball from splitting the bat.  Uncle Lloyd game me a bat signed by a catcher for the Bather named Frank Pawelick.  He told me that Frank Pawelick got more hits by choking up on the handle.  I remembered all this as I waited my turn.

        Scrog Davidson grounded out short to first.  Haywire Denson flew out to right field, and it was my time up.  If I struck out on three straight pitches, nobody would think much about it, but I still felt proud after my catch in center field.  Now, just being in the game, even to tell John Herman Thompson, wasn’t enough.  I wanted a hit, and I thought about ways to get one as I stepped up. 

        The Pansy pitcher went into his windup.  As the ball left his hand, it looked to be heading straight for my back-bone.  I dodged and dropped the bat just as Bub Tracy called the first strike.  It was hard to believe.  That was surely the wickedest outside curved ball every thrown in Arkansas, at least in Southeast Arkansas.

        Dutch told a bunch of us little boys one day that you ought to wait out a curve ball and that, if it is an outside curve, to step into it.  Dutch tried out with the Detroit Tigers, so I decided to do what he said on the next pitch.  The ball came in, and before I started my swing, I heard it pop in the Pansy catcher’s mitt.  It wasn’t a curve.  It was his fast ball.  Bub called the second strike.

        When Dutch got behind a pitcher on strikes, he stepped back from home plate, grabbed up a fistful of dirt, wiggled his butt, and got set again, like when he first came to bat.  I did all that just like Dutch.  Sure, enough I wasn’t shaking when I straightened up.  In fact, I was fairly calm, and I was thinking.

        I believed the Pansy pitcher would play around with me just o make that bunch of Pansy girls laugh.  I also believed he would throw something different for the third strike, and it would likely be his slow ball.  He knew I would look funny swinging before it got to the plate, so I decided just to wait on it with the bat choked up and the brand on top.

        Just as I thought, he threw a slow floater.  The ball met my bat about neck high, and it took off sailing just over the second baseman.  It landed a few feet away from the center-fielder, who was playing in too close, and it rolled bast him into the outfield.  I didn’t run fast at first.  I watched to see where the ball would finally stop.  As I crossed first-base, I heard Mr. Blackwell yelling for me to get down to second.

        He shouldn’t have pushed me to take second.  I wouldn’t have made it if the center-fielder hadn’t slipped in the mud hole as he threw to the infield, but Mr. Blackwell liked to brag about unusual things he did.  I saw him a few days later drinking a fountain coke at Glasgow’s Confectionery.  He told the men back in the pool hall how he squeezed an extra-base hit out of this little twelve-year-boy the first time he ever came to bat.

        I felt dazed by it all.  The older men and that bunch of local girls yelled again.  The Pansy pitcher looked disgusted.  Dutch hollered, “Sign him up.”  Big Alton jumped up and down.  I prayed for a quick rain so I wouldn’t foul up in the rest of the game and so I could get home to call John Herman Thompson.

        The game wasn’t over though.  Dutch slammed the next pitch way beyond center-field beyond the fence, over the corner of the football field, and onto Rondo Porter’s front porch.  Frisky Mitchell claimed the ball never landed and that it’s going yet.  Years later, standing in front of Glasgow’s Confectionery, Runt Williams saw a space satellite circling the earth and said it was really Dutch Gravemire’s home-run ball.

        Dutch almost ran me down.  He tagged second base before I came to my senses enough to run to third and then to cross home plate.  We scored two runs to lead Pansy by one.  Just as the rains came and washed out the rest of the game.

        The Pansy players tried to squeeze into their pickups to keep dry, but the Pansy girls got there first.  Popeye and I ran past them heading for cover in front of the high school gymnasium.  They weren’t sorry that it rained.  Their second-baseman said they were lucky to get out without losing, considering Big Alton and how he was throwing.

        The driver of the first pickup let out the clutch just as he revved the engine.  The truck lunged forward, throwing the shortstop over the side of the bed and carving a deep rut in the ditch that drained the playing field.  When I last saw the players from Pansy, they headed east on Myrtle Street, toward the Pine Bluff highway.  They turned north toward home, into the rain.

        Some older boys lagged pennies outside the front door of the gymnasium.  Popeye and I watched them while we stayed dry.  In a few minutes, Dutch yelled from his car to see if anyone wanted a ride home.  We ran to get in.  When he let me out, Dutch said I might make a ball-player when I got bigger.

        I ran to the house and sat with my folks on the front porch, watching the rain.  I told them what all I did and what Dutch said.  My daddy said that ball players live hard lives.  My mother said I needed to get cleaned up so I could make the young peoples’ meeting.  When I tried to call John Herman Thompson, his mama said he had just left for the picture show.