The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Faraday was behind the plate when we played our last exhibition game that year. Against the Reds, it was. There was a squeeze play put on. Don Hoak at the plate. Some big hulk – I think it was Ted Kluszewski – on third. Hoak punches the ball right at Jerry Rugg, who was pitching for us that day. Big Klew breaks for the plate, all two hundred and seventy Polack pounds of him. And there’s Faraday, just about as skinny as a Flav’r Straw, standing with one foot on the old dishola. Couldn’t help but end bad. Rugg throws to Faraday. Faraday turns to put the tag on. I couldn’t look.

The little fella got the out, I’ll give him that, only it was a spring-training out, as important in the great scheme of things as a low fart in a high wind. And that was the end of Frank Faraday’s baseball career. One broken arm, one broken leg, a concussion – that was the score. I don’t know what became of him. Wound up washing windshields for tips at an Esso station in Tucumcari, for all I know.

So we lost both our catchers in the space of forty-eight hours and had to go north with nobody to put behind the plate except for Ganzie Burgess, who converted from catcher to pitcher not long after the Korean War ended. The Ganzer was thirty-nine years old that season and only good for middle relief, but he was a knuckleballer, and as crafty as Satan, so no way was Joe DiPunno going to risk those old bones behind the plate. He said he’d put me back there first. I knew he was joking – I was just an old third-base coach with so many groin pulls my balls were practically banging on my knees – but the idea still made me shiver.

What Joe did was call the front office in Newark and say, ‘I need a guy who can catch Hank Masters’s fastball and Danny Doo’s curve without falling on his keister. I don’t care if he plays for Testicle Tire in Tremont, just make sure he’s got a mitt and have him at the Swamp in time for the National Anthem. Then get to work finding me a real catcher. If you want to have any chance at all of contending this season, that is.’ Then he hung up and lit what was probably his eightieth cigarette of the day.

Oh for the life of a manager, huh? One catcher facing manslaughter charges; another in the hospital, wrapped in so many bandages he looked like Boris Karloff in The Mummy; a pitching staff either not old enough to shave or about ready for the Sociable Security; God-knows-who about to put on the gear and squat behind the plate on Opening Day.

We flew north that year instead of riding the rails, but it still felt like a train wreck. Meanwhile, Kerwin McCaslin, who was the Titans’ GM, got on the phone and found us a catcher to start the season with: William Blakely, soon to be known as Blockade Billy. I can’t remember now if he came from Double or Triple A, but you could look it up on your computer, I guess, because I do know the name of the team he came from: the Davenport Cornhuskers. A few players came up from there during my seven years with the Titans, and the regulars would always ask how things were down there playing for the Cornholers. Or sometimes they’d call them the Cocksuckers. Baseball humor is not what you’d call sophisticated.

We opened against the Red Sox that year. Middle of April. Baseball started later back then, and played a saner schedule. I got to the park early – before God got out of bed, actually – and there was a young man sitting on the bumper of an old Ford truck in the players’ lot. Iowa license plate dangling on chickenwire from the back bumper. Nick the gate guard let him in when the kid showed him his letter from the front office and his driver’s license.

‘You must be Bill Blakely,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘Good to know you.’

‘Good to know you too,’ he said. ‘I brought my gear, but it’s pretty beat up.’

‘Oh, I think we got you covered there, partner,’ I said, letting go of his hand. He had a Band-Aid wrapped around his second finger, just below the middle knuckle. ‘Cut yourself shaving?’ I asked, pointing to it.

‘Yup, cut myself shaving,’ he says. I couldn’t tell if that was his way of showing he got my little joke, or if he was so worried about fucking up he thought he ought to agree with everything anyone said, at least to begin with. Later on I realized it was neither of those things; he just had a habit of echoing back what you said to him. I got used to it, even sort of got to like it.

‘Are you the manager?’ he asked. ‘Mr DiPunno?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m George Grantham. The kids call me Granny. I coach third base. I’m also the equipment manager.’ Which was the truth; I did both jobs. Told you the game was smaller then. ‘I’ll get you fixed up, don’t worry. All new gear.’

‘All new gear,’ says he. ‘Except for the glove. I have to have Billy’s old glove, you know. Billy Junior and me’s been the miles.’

‘Well, that’s fine with me.’ And we went on in to what the sportswriters used to call Old Swampy in those days.