The House That George Built

“It’s all in the breaks, all dumb fuckin’ luck,” Ruth said. “If Dunn had to sell me to the bigs when I was a kid, who knows what I coulda done? I was thirty years old by the time they changed the rules so he couldn’t keep me forever no more. I already had the start of my bay window, and my elbow was shot to shit. I didn’t say nothin’ about that--otherwise, nobody woulda bought me. But Jesus Christ, if I’d made the majors when I was nineteen, twenty years old, I coulda been Buzz Arlett.”

Every Broadway chorine thought she could start in a show. Every pug thought he could have been a champ. And every halfway decent ballplayer thought he could have been Buzz Arlett. Even a nonfan like Mencken knew his name. Back in the Twenties, people said they were two of the handful of Americans who needed no press agent. He came to Brooklyn from the Pacific Coast League in 1922. He belted home runs from both sides of the plate. He pitched every once in a while, too. And he turned the Dodgers into the powerhouse they’d been ever since. He made people forget about the Black Sox scandal that had hovered over the game since it broke at the end of the 1920 season. They called him the man who saved baseball. They called Ebbets Field the House That Buzz Built. And the owners smiled all the way to the bank.

Trying to be gentle with a man he rather liked, Mencken said, “Do you really think so? Guys like that come along once in a blue moon.”

Ruth thrust out his jaw. “I coulda, if I’d had the chance. Even when I got up to Philly, that dumbshit Fletcher who was runnin’ the team, he kept me pitchin’ an’ wouldn’t let me play the field. There I was, tryin’ to get by with junk from my bad flipper in the Baker Bowl, for Chrissakes. It ain’t even a long piss down the right-field line there. Fuck, I hit six homers there myself. For a while, that was a record for a pitcher. But they said anybody could do it there. An’ I got hit pretty hard myself, so after a season and a half they sold me to the Red Sox.”

“That was one of the teams that wanted you way back when, you said,” Mencken remarked.

“You was listenin’! Son of a bitch!” Ruth beamed at him. “Here, have one on me.” He drew another Blatz and set it in front of Mencken. The journalist finished his second one and got to work on the bonus. Ruth went on, “But when the Sox wanted me, they was good. Time I got to ‘em, they stunk worse’n the Phils. They pitched me a little, played me in the outfield and at first a little, an’ sat me on the bench a lot. I didn’t light the world on fire, so after the season they sold me down to Syracuse. ‘Cept for a month at the end of ‘32 with the Browns”--he shuddered at some dark memory--”I never made it back to the bigs again. But I coulda been hot stuff if fuckin’ Rasin came through with the cash.”

A line from Gray’s “Elegy” went through Mencken’s mind: Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest. A mute (or even a loudmouthed) inglorious Arlett tending bar in Baltimore? Mencken snorted. Not likely! He knew why that line occurred to him now. He’d mocked it years before: There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the imaginations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.

Mencken poured down the rest of the beer and got up from his stool. “Thank you kindly, George. I expect I’ll be back again before long.”

“Any time, buddy. Thanks for lettin’ me bend your ear.” George Ruth chuckled. “This line o’ work, usually it goes the other way around.”

“I believe that.” Mencken put on his overcoat and gloves, then walked out into the night. Half an hour--not even--and he’d be back at the house that faced on Union Square.

Copyright © 2009 Harry Turtledove