“Wonderful,” I said.
“MART KING, THIRD BASE . . . STEVE KING, LEFT FIELD.” Hulking, moon-faced brothers with massive shoulders and biceps bulging from their rolled sleeves.
“Mart’s the younger and meaner, already big as a firehouse. They live for home runs and fancy catches. Generally spoiling to fight, too; give one of ’em a queer look and both of ’em ’ll lay into you quicker’n powder.”
“CLIPPER FLYNN, RIGHT FIELD.” In his late teens, body whippet lean, features chiseled a bit too fine, loving the figure he cut as he mugged and winked at the stands, drawing young girls’ giggles and their escorts’ glares.
“He’s easy bought, it’s said. Got caught using a false name with the Putnams in ’sixty-seven. He’s plucky enough, though not the ace he thinks. He’s heavy at bat and runs hell-to-split.” Hurley spat again. “I’d give a half eagle to watch Andy humble him in a footrace. Then I’d render him an Irish hoist—my boot to his ass.”
The Haymaker captain was announced last. The crowd rumbled in anticipation. “WILLIAM CRAVER, CATCHER.” He thrust a massive fist upward, an animal-like man with a thick torso set on squat, powerful legs. A black mustache curled up the sides of his oblong jaw. The smile on his meaty lips was not reflected in cold, wide-set eyes that scanned us above a mashed-in nose.
“Will Craver’s every brand of trouble you can imagine. During the Secesh war, when most of us were home playing ball as lads, he signed on as a drummer boy. Saw four years of hell and came out twisted. Temper’s short as piecrust now, and he’s said to take pleasure from seeing pain—’specially when he’s the cause of it.”
I reflected on that for a long moment. “Sounds like he needs a padded cell, not a ball field.”
“‘Padded cell’?” Hurley looked amused. “Don’t mistake me, Craver’s a first-rate ballist. Strikes with the heaviest. Throws down runners like operating a gatling gun. He’s steady and fearless.”
Sure, I thought, psychos often are.
“Crooked, though,” Hurley added. “Owned by Morrissey and McDermott—but hell, the whole club is. And he’d never blink at hippodroming.”
“At what?”
“Playing to the odds, maybe even losing, to cash in.”
“You mean he’d throw this game?”
“No, they’re backed by the big sporting money today; he’ll play square. They’re freezing to humble us, too.”
I gazed at the burly figure. “He’s built like a bull.”
“He’s called ‘Bull’ Craver by some. But I wouldn’t care to say it to his face.” Hurley looked at me expectantly. “‘Cheated of feature by dissembling nature . . . I that am not shaped for sportive tricks.’”
“Richard the Third?”
“Not half bad!” He seemed startled. “You show rare promise, Fowler.”
While Harry and Craver met, the band blared marches. The music was ill-suited to baseball, suggesting to me more the supercharged atmosphere of college football.
“Will they play the anthem?” I asked.
“The which?”
“‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”
“Oh, the national ballad. What for? This is a ball match, not the Senate.”
At least one bit of jingoistic idiocy hadn’t yet lodged in the national psyche, I thought.
The captains’ negotiations dragged on. By the rules, home teams proposed umpires; visitors approved. Harry flatly rejected Craver’s first choice. The rules also stipulated that a visiting club provide the game ball subject to a host’s concurrence. Craver refused our dead ball, insisting on a Ryan Bounding Rock, the liveliest ball in existence, certain to maximize the Haymakers’ slugging over our fielding edge.
The captains finally parted. Harry returned and said, “P and S.” Which turned out to mean we’d be using a Peck & Snyder New Professional Dead Ball, livelier than ours, less elastic than the Ryan. Harry bent over the score book to enter the name of the compromise umpire, one J. Feltch, from nearby Cohoes.
From its outset the game was a war. Harry won the toss and sent the Haymakers to bat. As Brainard ambled to the box, toothpick in place, the jockeying began.
“There’s Brain-hard, the gut-bellied tit!”
“His pitching motion comes from planing privy seats!”
“He could use it to jerk off his whole nine!”
They guffawed and poked each other. Brainard paid no attention. Bellan, their leadoff man, stepped in and watched a rising belt-high fastball split the plate.
“Warning!” shouted the ump. “Next I’ll call!”
“Call what?” Allison demanded.
“Wide.”
“WHAT!” Allison jumped in the air. Brainard rolled his eyes and studied the sky.
Bellan took three more pitches—an ominous sign of things to come: thirteen Haymakers, including leadoff men in virtually every inning, would walk that afternoon. Whenever Brainard protested—technically illegal, since only captains were supposed to dispute umpires’ calls—the Haymakers launched fresh verbal assaults.
Suggesting that Brainard’s “jimjams” (wildness) had genetic roots, they proceeded to stock his family tree with startling possibilities.
Finally the pitcher turned in exasperation and said, “Go to damnation!” Champion recoiled in shock at our table. A different reaction came from Bull Craver. He stepped from the Haymaker bench and snarled, “Shut your goddamn flyhole, Brainard, or I’ll shut it quick!”
“These guys are incredible,” I said to Hurley.
“They’re low is what.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “on the evolutionary scale.”
Again he looked at me in surprise. “You know Darwin’s work?”
“Where I come from,” I said, “it’s old stuff.”
Bellan stole second and took off for third on the next pitch. Allison rifled the ball to Waterman, who made a sweeping tag. The ump ruled Bellan safe. Waterman spat a brown stream into the dust between the official’s shoes.
We got a break on the next play. When Fisher walked, Bellan, forgetting a recent rules change, trotted home, accustomed to advancing on walks as modern runners do on balks. Allison promptly tagged him. The Haymakers protested, to no avail.
Mart King, swinging hard enough to fell a tree, bounced a ball back to Brainard and slammed his bat to the turf, shattering its handle in a shower of splinters. Brainard abetted his fury by delaying until King was two strides from the bag before throwing him out. The hulking Haymaker glared
