The Maryland club fed us terrapin, crab cakes, and oysters at the Gilmor House on North Calvert. Hurley drank too much wine, and I saw Harry eyeing him.
We played at the Madison Avenue grounds, a grassy expanse near Druid Lake. With Allison’s and Gould’s hands sore from so many games, Harry told me to be ready. I suited up happily. Things seemed simple now, away from New York. Le Caron was in jail and McDermott’s crowd, Millar assured me, never journeyed this far except to follow a top eastern club.
The Marylands’ clubhouse was festooned with evergreen branches and a banner: WELCOME RED STOCKINGS. Five thousand people—a record crowd here—came out to see the conquerors of the East. Among them were a number of Baltimore’s famed belles—the nation’s comeliest women, Brainard asserted. Leaving the hotel, we saw several coyly lift their hems as they stepped from curbs, revealing shapely ankles encased in red stockings. The players whistled and shouted.
“I’d fancy ’em all, one after t’other,” Sweasy said, keeping his voice low so Harry wouldn’t hear.
“They ain’t cheap waiter girls,” Waterman said. “You wouldn’t stand a chance.”
As we took the field I reflected that my teammates were changing as their fame grew. Only Harry seemed unaffected. The others were taking on the arrogant assurance of proven winners, stars even. Well, I thought, what the hell, they were kids, barely in their twenties. They had the rest of their lives to be sober and mature.
The diamond was superb, the Marylands jaunty in new uniforms with blue-and-white checked caps and jerseys. But the game wasn’t much. Our bats boomed from the start: George and Gould rapped seven hits each; Andy and Harry followed with six, and Brainard baffled the Maryland hitters.
In the eighth, Waterman’s shin was spiked and Allison’s head slashed by a foul. In what I considered a strange series of moves, Harry stationed George behind the plate, took shortstop himself, and, with us leading 40—7, ignored Hurley and waved me out to center.
“Don’t run me down!” Andy cried from left.
“Fine,” I yelled back. “You just take everything out this way!”
As luck had it, the second hitter lofted a fly directly to me. Andy sprinted over. “Mine!” I called, reaching for it. In a replay of my first day at practice, the ball bounced out of my hands. Andy dove under me and with a great sliding belly flop snagged it before it touched the grass. Red-faced, I helped him up.
“Thanks for keepin’ that ball alive,” he said, grinning wickedly. “I might not’ve got it otherwise.”
To a few cries of “Muffin!” I came to bat in the ninth. I hushed my hecklers by driving a low inside pitch that screamed over third and kicked up chalk; I pulled into second with a stand-up double and scored moments later on Harry’s single.
“That’s the goods!” Andy said.
A sequence, I thought, for my personal ’69 highlights film.
It ended 47—7. The belles promenaded as we packed our gear, manipulating fans and parasols with the artfulness of geishas, shooting coquettish glances at us, to the discomfiture of their escorts. It was all a little silly, and yet they were gorgeous and still a bit mysterious to me in their panniered dresses, picture hats, and veils. I felt a pang of horniness remembering my night with Charlotte. Could these Scarlett O’Haras compete in her amatory league? I doubted it.
We left for Washington on the 8:20 train. The journey’s only memorable feature was a discussion of Harry’s batting order, which I’d never understood.
“Why, it’s easy,” said Andy. “He’s got the swift runners striking between the slow, to save force-outs and double plays.”
“So George leads off,” I said, “and with his speed and base-running ability isn’t likely to be forced by Gould, who’s slow, is that it?”
Andy nodded.
“Not slow,” Gould rumbled. “Sure to bring George home with his run.”
I finally had a handle on Harry’s unvarying lineup:
G. Wright
Leonard
Gould
Brainard
Waterman
Sweasy
Allison
McVey
H. Wright
The team’s leadfoots—Gould, Allison, Brainard, and Mac—were sandwiched between fast, canny runners. On a modern-day team Allison would never hit cleanup, nor Mac ninth. On a piece of paper I wrote their names in the order I’d have them hit and showed it to them.
Leonard
McVey
Sweasy
Allison
G. Wright
H. Wright
Waterman
Brainard
Gould
I explained that Andy was the perfect leadoff man, Sweasy a push-along spray hitter, George a rare mix of power and consistency ideal for the third slot; Waterman, while not capable of the towering shots powered by George or Gould or occasionally Mac, hit for extra bases consistently and was undaunted by pressure. The bottom three names were virtually interchangeable.
I thought it was pretty convincing, but they didn’t. Sweasy pointedly said nothing. Brainard was offended that I’d slotted him ninth, in rookie McVey’s place. George argued that he wouldn’t score nearly as many runs batting third.
“But,” I countered, “you’d drive in more.”
“It’s making your run that counts,” he said with a grin. “It’s the whole object.”
“Okay, but isn’t maximizing the team’s run production more important?”
‘ I had a sudden and unexpected ally. “George ain’t changed a whit since we were on the Nationals,” Brainard said. “He sulked whenever he didn’t lead the scoring then—and he’d do it now.”
George stared at him, his grin fading. Brainard met his gaze and added, “Course, there’s little chance of that, long as his brother’s captain.”
That produced an uneasy silence. As they looked at each other a moment longer, something seemed to be crystallizing between them.
Oh, shit, I thought, what now?
Chapter 12
Considering its historic qualities and the fact that I’d spent several weeks there the previous year—a century in the future—I thought I would enjoy Washington.
I did not.
We piled out of a four-horse omnibus in front of Willard’s Hotel, around the corner from the White House, at Fourteenth
