lover in Mexico-
Russ is thinking base hit all the way but glances routinely at the clubhouse sign in straightaway center to see if the first E in CHESTERFIELD lights up, indicating error.
Robinson retrieves the ball in short right.
'So this guy's on his honeymoon in Acapulco and he's heard all the stories about the incredible cunning of Speedy Gonzalez and he's frankly worried, he's a highly nervous type and so on the first night, the night of nights, he's in bed with his wife and he's got his middle finger plugged up her snatch to keep Speedy Gonzalez from sneaking in there when he's not looking.'
Mueller stands in, taking the first pitch low.
In the Dodger dugout a coach picks up the phone and calls the bullpen for the eighteenth time to find out who's throwing good and who ain't.
Mueller sees a fastball belt-high and pokes a single to right.
'So then he's dying for a smoke and he reaches over for a second to get his cigarettes and matches.'
Russ describes Dark going into third standing up. He sees Thomson standing in the dugout with his arms raised and his hands held backwards gripping the edge of the roof. He describes people standing in the aisles and others moving down toward the field.
Irvin dropping the weighted bat.
'So then he lights up quick and reaches back to the bed finger-first.'
Maglie's already in the clubhouse sitting in his skivvies in that postgame state of disrepair and pit stink that might pass for some shambles of the inner man, slugging beer from the bottle.
Irvin stands in.
Russ describes Newcombe taking a deep breath and stretching his arms over his head. He describes Newcombe looking in for the sign.
'And Speedy Gonzalez says, Sen-yor-or, you got your finger up my a-ass.'
Russ hears most of this and wishes he hadn't. He does a small joke of his own, half standing to drape the mike with his suit coat as if to keep the smallest syllable of raunchy talk from reaching his audience. Decent people out there.
Fastball high and away.
The crowd noise is uncertain. They don't know if this is a rally in the works or just another drag-tail finish that draws out the pain. It's a high rackety noise that makes Russ think of restive waiting in a train station.
Irvin tries to pull it, overeager, and Russ hears the soul of the crowd repeat the sorry arc of the baseball, a moaned vowel falling softly to earth. First baseman puts it away.
Decent people out there. Russ wants to believe they are still assembled in some recognizable manner, the kindred unit at the radio, old lines and ties and propinquities.
Lockman stands in, the towhead from Caroline.
How his family used to gather around the gramophone and listen to grand opera, the trilled r's of old Europe. These thoughts fade and return. They are not distractions. He is alert to every movement on the field.
A couple of swabbies move down to the rail near third base.
How the records were blank on one side and so brittle they would crack if you looked at them cross-eyed. That was the going joke.
He is hunched over the mike. The field seems to open outward into nouns and verbs. All he has to do is talk.
Saying, 'Carl Erskine and fireballer Ralph Branca still throwing in the bullpen.'
Pitch.
Lockman fouls it back into the netting.
Now the rhythmic applause starts, tentative at first, then spreading densely through the stands. This is how the crowd enters the game. The repeated three-beat has the force of some abject faith, a desperate kind of will toward magic and accident.
Lockman stands in once more, wagging the yellow bat.
How his mother used to make him gargle with warm water and salt when he complained of a sore throat.
Lockman hits the second pitch on a low line over third. Russ hears Harry Caray shouting into the mike on the other side of the blanket. Then they are both shouting and the ball is slicing toward the line and landing fair and sending up a spew of dirt and forcing Pafko into the corner once again.
Men running, the sprint from first to third, the man who scores coming in backwards so he can check the action on the base paths. All the Giants up at the front of the dugout. The crowd is up, heads weaving for better views. Men running through a slide of noise that comes heaving down on them.
The pitch was off the plate and he wrong-waved it and Harry started shouting.
The hit obliterates the beat of the crowd's rhythmic clapping. They're coming into open roar, making a noise that keeps enlarging itself in breadth and range. This is the crowd made over, the crowd renewed.
Harry started shouting and then Pafko went into the corner and Russ started shouting and the paper began to fall.
One out, one in, two runs down, men on second and third. Russ thinks every word may be his last. He feels the redness in his throat, the pinpoint constriction. Mueller still on the ground at third, injured sliding or not sliding, stopping short and catching his spikes on the bag, a man in pain, the flare of pulled tendons.
Paper is falling again, crushed traffic tickets and field-stripped cigarettes and work from the office and scorecards in the shape of airplanes, windblown and mostly white, and Pafko walks back to his position and alters stride to kick a soda cup lightly and the gesture functions as a form of recognition, a hint of some concordant force between players and fans, the way he nudges the white cup, it's a little onside boot, completely unbegrudging-a sign of respect for the sly contrivances of the game, the patterns that are undivinable.
The trainer comes out and they put Mueller on a stretcher and take him toward the clubhouse. Mueller's pain, the pain the game exacts-a man on a stretcher makes sense here.
The halt in play has allowed the crowd to rebuild its noise. Russ keeps pausing at the mike to let the sound collect. This is a rumble of a magnitude he has never heard before. You can't call it cheering or rooting. It's a territorial roar, the claim of the ego that separates the crowd from other entities, from political rallies or prison riots-everything outside the walls.
Russ nuzzles up to the mike and tries to be calm although he is very close to speaking in a shout because this is the only way to be heard.
Men clustered on the mound and the manager waving to the bullpen and the pitcher walking in and the pitcher leaving and the runner for Mueller doing kneebends at third.
They are banging on the roof of the booth.
Russ says, 'So don't go way. Light up that Chesterfield. We're gonna stay right here and see how big Ralph Branca will fare.'
Yes. It is Branca coming through the dampish glow Branca who is tall and stalwart but seems to carry his own hill and dale, he has the aura of a man encumbered. The drooping lids, leaden feet, the thick ridge across the brow. His face is set behind a somber nose, broad-bridged and looming.
The stadium police are taking up posts.
Look at the man in the upper deck. He is tearing pages out of his copy of Life and dropping them uncrumpled over the rail, letting them fall in a seesaw drift on the bawling fans below. He is moved to do this by the paper falling elsewhere, the contagion of paper-it is giddy and unfor-mulated fun. He begins to ignore the game so he can waft pages over the rail. It brings him into contact with the other paper throwers and with the fans in the lower deck who reach for his pages and catch them-they are all a second force that runs parallel to the game.
Not far away another man feels something pulling at his chest, arms going numb. He wants to sit down but doesn't know if he can reach an arm back to lower himself to the seat. Heart, my heart, my god.
Branca who is twenty-five but makes you think he exemplifies ancient toil. By the time he reaches the mound the stretcher bearers have managed to get Mueller up the steps and into the clubhouse. The crowd forgets him. They would forget him if he were dead. The noise expands once more. Branca takes the ball and the men around the mound recede to the fringes.
