The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Okay, top of the sixth. Over fifty years later and I still get a red ass when I think of it. Kinder’s up first and loops out to third, just like a pitcher should. Then comes Luis Aparicio, Little Louie. The Doo winds and fires. Aparicio fouls it off high and lazy behind home plate, on the third base side of the screen. That was my side, and I saw it all. The kid throws away his mask and sprints after it, head back and glove out. Wenders trailed him, but not close like he should have done. He didn’t think the kid had a chance. It was lousy goddam umping.

The kid’s off the grass and on the track, by the low wall between the field and the box seats. Neck craned. Looking up. Two dozen people in those first-and second-row box seats also looking up, most of them waving their hands in the air. This is one thing I don’t understand about fans and never will. It’s a fucking baseball, for the love of God! An item that sold for seventy-five cents back then. But when fans see one in reach at the ballpark, they turn into fucking greed-monsters. Never mind standing back and letting the man trying to catch it – their man, and in a tight ball game – do his job.

I saw it all, I tell you. Saw it clear. That mile-high pop-up came down on our side of the wall. The kid was going to catch it. Then some long-armed bozo in one of those Titans jerseys they sold on the Esplanade reached over and ticked it so the ball bounced off the edge of the kid’s glove and fell to the ground.

I was so sure Wenders would call Aparacio out – it was clear interference – that at first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when he gestured for the kid to go back behind the plate and for Aparicio to resume the box. When I got it, I ran down the line, waving my arms. The crowd started cheering me and booing Wenders, which is no way to win friends and influence people when you’re arguing a call, but I was too goddam mad to care. I wouldn’t have stopped if Mahatma Gandhi had walked out on the field butt-naked and urging us to make peace.

‘Interference!’ I yelled. ‘Clear as day, clear as the nose on your face!’

‘It was in the stands, and that makes it anyone’s ball,’ Wenders says. ‘Go on back to your little nest and let’s get this show on the road.’

The kid didn’t care; he was talking to his pal The Doo. That was all right. I didn’t care that he didn’t care. All I wanted at that moment was to tear Hi Wenders a fresh new asshole. I’m not ordinarily an argumentative man – all the years I managed the A’s, I only got thrown out of games twice – but that day I would have made Billy Martin look like a peacenik.

‘You didn’t see it, Hi! You were trailing too far back! You didn’t see shit!’

‘I wasn’t trailing and I saw it all. Now get back, Granny. I ain’t kidding.’

‘If you didn’t see that long-armed sonofabitch—’ (here a lady in the second row put her hands over her little boy’s ears and pursed up her mouth at me in an oh-you-nasty-man look) ‘—that long-armed sonofabitch reach out and tick that ball, you were goddam trailing! Jesus Christ!’

The man in the jersey starts shaking his head – who, me? not me! – but he’s also wearing a big embarrasssed suckass grin. Wenders saw it, knew what it meant, then looked away. ‘That’s all you get,’ he says to me. And in the reasonable voice that means you’re one smart crack from drinking a Rhinegold in the locker room. ‘You’ve had your say. You can either shut the hell up or listen to the rest of the game on the radio. Take your pick.’

I went back to the box. Aparicio stood back in with a big shit-eating grin on his face. He knew, sure he did. And made the most of it. The guy never hit many home runs, but when The Doo sent in a changeup that didn’t change, Little Louie cranked it high, wide, and handsome to the deepest part of the park. Nosy Norton was playing center, and he never even turned around.

Aparicio circled the bases, serene as the Queen Mary coming into dock, while the crowd screamed at him, denigrated his relatives, and hurled hate down on Hi Wenders’s head. Wenders heard none of it, which is the chief umpirely skill. He just got a fresh ball out of his coat pocket and inspected it for dings and doinks. Watching him do that, I lost it entirely. I rushed down to home plate and started shaking both fists in his face.

‘That’s your run, you fucking busher!’ I screamed. ‘Too fucking lazy to chase after a foul ball, and now you’ve got an RBI for yourself! Jam it up your ass! Maybe you’ll find your glasses!’