Magic Time, page 9
“The more I see of what’s available the less interest I have in remarrying. Your Mom and I were together for eight years all told, we had something real special going and I wouldn’t trade those eight years for all the women ever made.
“I never considered for a second letting somebody else raise you guys. And I think that has to do with your mom, too. Every time I look at you and Byron I see the half of you that’s Gracie, and when you smile, or Byron laughs, or when either one of you stands with your hands on your hips when you’re angry, the way Gracie used to do, why I see her all over again, and it’s as if she isn’t dead at all.
“Besides, if I was to bring another woman to live in this house, I’d probably have to take down your mom’s photographs, and I can’t stand the thought of that. If I ever find a woman I’d do that for, then I guess I’ll know it’s time.”
TWELVE
The inter-squad game was so much fun. The adrenalin was flowing hard — I could feel it rising in me like mercury in a thermometer plunged in hot water — and by the end of the game I felt like a ghost. I was invisible. Invincible. I was so high there was no play I was incapable of making. It was as if the game had been a showcase for my talents.
The first batter hit a lazy two-hopper to me, the second batter did the same. The third walked. The clean-up hitter laced one straight up the middle, but I’d been shading him that way, and I back-handed the ball a good ten feet behind second base. If there had been no base runner it would have been an infield hit, but all I had to do was shovel the ball to Bobby Manuela, as he waited on the bag, like a tiger waiting for a steak, for the easy, inning-ending force-out.
I handled eight chances in all, my confidence growing with every one. I turned the pivot flawlessly on two double-play feeds from Manuela. The starting job was mine. I could play for fun, which I did.
And the fans! I have seldom heard such applause when I was introduced. I have never received such applause when I was introduced. Dilly Eastwick doubled as public-address announcer, sounding as if he were introducing the combatants in a heavyweight boxing match.
“AND FROM CHICAGO, ILLINOIS …” he paused for a fraction of a second to let the words echo, “VIA LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY … OUR NEW SECOND-BASE MAN …” and again the fractional pause, “MIKE HOULE.”
I was pleased to see he got the pronunciation right: Hool. In the Doll House Café I’d heard my name pronounced Hoo-lee, and Hoo-LAY, and someone even tried out HOW-lee.
The stands steadily filled as we took batting and infield practice. By the time the national anthem was sung, a cappella, by a grey-haired woman who was actually very good, the stands were packed and there were people standing and sitting on the grass in foul territory beyond the first- and third-base bleachers.
When we were at bat, besides studying the opposing pitcher I stared around the ballpark, wondering how an inter-squad game could generate such enthusiasm. The fans seemed evenly divided between the Greens and the Whites. Many of the fans behind our dugout wore white T-shirts with green trim, or actual white and green uniform tops and caps that matched ours. Some waved white pennants with green letters. The situation on the third-base side seemed identical except the color combinations were reversed. Someday there might be a civil war in Grand Mound: the Greens versus the Whites.
There was an aborted version of the wave practiced on both sides of the field, but each ended at mid grandstand, where I assume the fans for Green and fans for White divided. I was glad to see the wave fail. Like mascots, cheerleaders, and loud music it has no place in a thinking person’s game like baseball. To me, the wave in baseball is the equivalent of cheering aloud at a chess match.
“What in the world do they do when the actual season begins?” I asked Bobby Manuela between innings, as we were refining our signals to be sure we always knew who would cover second in the event of a steal.
Bobby just smiled and shrugged. “They’re a very expressive lot. That’s why it’s so much fun to play here.”
“Are all the other towns in the league as baseball-mad as this one?”
“You’ll see soon enough,” said Bobby.
Vague answers are the norm here in Grand Mound. This morning, I asked Emmett, “What time does USA Today get to town, and where can I buy one?”
“Well, now, Mike,” Emmett said, “we don’t have much call for outside newspapers like that. Not that you can’t get one,” he added, noting my look of concern. “You can buy a copy of the Sunday Des Moines Register down at the drugstore, and I’ve heard they carry the Chicago Tribune some weekends. But, we have the Grand Mound Leader every day, and being off the beaten track as we are, we’re more interested in what’s happening in Grand Mound than anywhere else.”
In the clubhouse after the game I met Dilly Eastwick, a round freckle-faced man who did not look like his voice.
“I’m Dilly Eastwick, the sports editor,” he said, his small damp hand shaking mine. “I make a point of covering every Greenshirts game myself.”
What I’d been expecting was a Babe Ruth with a journalism degree, someone large and craggy, who could still hit a home run in batting practice or silence a heckler with a fierce stare.
“Mike, I want you to know I really appreciated your play this evening. Why, you danced like Baryshnikov all around second base, and that back-handed stop in the seventh inning was one of the finest plays I’ve ever seen.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Eastwick,” I said. The back-handed stop had been something. The go-ahead run was on second and would have scored easily if the ball had made it through the infield. I launched myself after it, sailing through the air, landing, glove hand outstretched, in time to smother the ball. There was no play, but it held the run at third, and the next batter popped out to end the inning.
“Oh, don’t thank me. It was a perfect pleasure to watch you play baseball tonight. And to watch you run the bases.” His eyes twinkled and his round, moon face beamed.
In addition to acquitting myself well in the field, I went two for four at the plate, with a sacrifice bunt, and stole three bases.
“Well, it’s nice to be appreciated,” I said.
“We’re real special baseball fans here. You’ll always be appreciated in Grand Mound, Mike. You can count on it. Now, if you’ll excuse me I want to get a word with Dan Morgenstern. He’s quite a catcher. That boy was throwing clotheslines to second base tonight.”
The line about me dancing like Baryshnikov appeared in the next morning’s edition of the Grand Mound Leader. So did a comment on my speed, “Mike Houle is so fast on the base paths, it’s rumored he’s able to play tennis by himself.”
One cannot help but be pleased with press like that.
THIRTEEN
My second day in Grand Mound is over and I’ve made several friends. The scrap of gossip I overheard is indeed true, one of our players is Asian. His name is Stanley Wood, and he is the first-base man for the Green team. He is over six feet tall, raw-boned, his long, brush-cut hair gleaming like quills. He is trying, with only moderate success, to cultivate a Fu Manchu mustache.
After our second inter-squad game, again played before a full house of fans ravenous for baseball, I gravitated toward Stanley Wood, wanting to compare our experiences so far.
“That home run you hit must have cleared the fence by forty feet,” I said. “Any guesses on how far it travelled?”
“Thanks. Certainly over four hundred feet. But that’s because us Asians have better peripheral vision than you white guys.”
I assumed he was kidding, but his lines were delivered with a fierce scowl worthy of Ming the Merciless.
“Is that what they say?” I asked innocently.
“Only my team. Yours, being across the field, didn’t have to be so discreet.”
“Fair enough. Welcome to the Midwest. Anyone different is a bit of a curiosity here. You’re probably the first Chinese person they’ve seen outside of a Chinese restaurant.”
“Not Chinese. Taiwanese. Before my family emigrated from Taiwan a few years ago, I helped win two Little League World Championships.”
The scowl broke into an ironic smile.
“In case you’re unable to tell, I’m being inscrutable,” said Stanley. “We Asians study inscrutability in pre-school. Now, go ahead, take your best shot at the Taiwanese Little League Champions.”
“Is this the visible minority section?” Daniel Morgenstern had sidled up to us.
“I’m not sure I qualify,” I replied. “All I can claim is a rumor that I might be one-sixteenth Black Hawk or Nez Percé.”
“Close enough. You guys looked like you were having a serious conversation.”
“Stanley here played for Taiwan when they won the Little League World Series, which as far as I can tell could have been any year from 1960 to the present. I was just about to question the integrity of his accomplishment.”
“Fine with me,” said Daniel. “Tell us the truth now, how old were you guys, and how did you fool all the officials? I’ve seen players yanked off American Little League teams when their birthdate was one day out of line, but I bet some of the Taiwanese players had wives and children of their own.”
“You exaggerate greatly, of course; I can assure you none of us were over eighteen,” Stanley Wood said with a straight face. “Well, not many of us.” Like a comedian, he paused for laughter. “As for documentation,” he went on, “it is very easy to confuse such volatile things as birthdates when all computation is done with an abacus.”
“Volatile?” said Daniel. “Is your birthday volatile, Mike?” He laughed. “I see we’re not gonna get anywhere here. Seriously, how are you guys being treated?”
“I’m doing fine,” I said. “My family is a little over-zealous, especially where food is concerned. On the other hand, I can state with some certainty that I am being groomed as son-in-law material, pun intended, which is a little embarrassing.”
I am definitely not potential son-in-law material,” said Stanley. “My family, the Lindfors, are horrified. It apparently never occurred to anyone in Grand Mound that Stanley Wood, of San Francisco, California, would not be white. Did your family know they were getting you?” he asked Dan.
“Evidently. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’m living with the only Jewish family in town.”
“At least they knew what they were getting,” Stanley said. “No one, including the executives of the ball club, knew what they were getting when they signed me. I was a last-minute replacement for someone who decided to teach English in Japan. My wily agent, Justin Birdsong, just didn’t tell them.”
“Justin Birdsong is your agent, too?” I asked.
“He must be a busy guy. He’s mine, also,” said Dan Morgenstern.
“You should have seen the face on that Dilly Eastwick character when Mr. Lindfors dragged me into the newspaper office. I guess he wanted Eastwick to see for himself. What a difference a d makes.” And he smiled delightedly, showing wide spaces between his front teeth.
“So, how did you get a name like Wood?” Dan asked.
“My father, who, incidentally, is horrified that I am wasting my time playing baseball, when he moved his land development company to San Francisco, felt the name Woo was too obvious, and that if he added a d, business associates wouldn’t find out we were Asian until they had to look us in the eye, so to speak.”
“It appears to have worked too well,” I said.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not getting any pressure to date or marry the Lindfors’ darling daughter, which, ironically, I wouldn’t mind doing. She’s very pretty.”
“I think you’ve discovered the secret to getting along in Grand Mound,” said Daniel.
“Have Oriental features?” said Stanley.
“No. I was thinking maybe if Mike and I each add a letter to our name, it might work as a talisman to keep unwanted women at bay.”
“What unwanted women?” I asked. “That’s an oxymoron.”
We experimented for a while at adding letters to our names.
We laughed and slapped each other on the back, getting sillier by the minute. There was an exhilaration in letting down after a tough game, as well as the tension of being in a new and odd situation.
“Does anyone have a car?” I asked. “I’d like to take in some of the surrounding towns, maybe drive down to Iowa City. University is still in session there, which means about fifteen thousand women to choose from. How about it?”
“I don’t have a car,” said Stanley.
“Me either,” said Daniel. “They insisted we fly in, remember? I asked about driving down from New Jersey, but they preferred we didn’t have cars.”
“No one said that to me,” I said. “How about a rental?”
“There’s no car rental place in town,” said Stanley. “We’d probably have to go to Cedar Rapids Airport.”
“Catch-22,” I said. “We need a car to get to Cedar Rapids.”
“We could always have a Coke at the Doll House,” said Daniel.
“If we can get past our families,” I said. “Mine will be waiting for me.”
“Mine won’t,” said Stanley Wood.
We settled for walking to the Doll House, though we had to turn down rides from both the Powells and the Greenspans. The Lindfors were nowhere to be seen. But as we were seating ourselves at the Doll House, the waitress Nan Hurchubise approached the table. She was wearing a yellow uniform that showed off her long legs and waist-length dark hair. Stanley stopped what he was saying in mid sentence, and a look passed between them. I caught it, but Daniel didn’t.
“What pitch did you hit over the fence?” Daniel said to Stanley.
“A high, hard mistake,” said Stanley.
Before we left the Doll House that night, Stanley had arranged a date with Nan for after the café closed.
FOURTEEN
Four of us newcomers — Stanley, Daniel, me, and the new pitcher, Crease Fowler — did manage an evening out. I was the instigator. I told Emmett that we wanted some time to do what young ballplayers usually did — I didn’t specify shoot the breeze, enjoy a few beers, and look for female company. Emmett pulled in his cheeks and narrowed his eyes but didn’t raise any objections. We decided intentionally not to include the fifth newcomer, Barry McMartin, in our evening out. Barry is a huge outfielder from Oklahoma with the build and blond good looks of a young Mickey Mantle, but he is a jerk: loud, crude, boisterous, and none of us wanted him along.
The evening didn’t meet my expectations. Grand Mound night life is even less exciting than watching paint dry. We walked to Big Al’s, a bar on the outskirts of town. Big Al’s sounded interesting, but it was a dark place housed in an arched metal building, the type that usually holds machine shops and farm-equipment repair businesses. A blue neon Bud sign bled down the only window. Inside there was a long bar and two dozen tables, a juke box and a small dance floor that didn’t look like it had been used this decade. There were a few farmers at the tables and along the bar, three young guys who looked like construction workers. The juke box wailed George Strait and Waylon Jennings. The biggest disappointment was that there were no women in the place. The bartender, a huge man with a walrus mustache and a beer gut, didn’t wait tables. Customers walked to the bar, paid for their order, and carried their drinks back to their tables.
After an hour, a couple of women did come in, but they were thirty-something types, one in stretch pants and a University of Iowa sweat shirt, the other covered in a garish orange shawl.
“Somewhere there’s a Winnebago without drapes,” whispered Dan.
They took a table nearby and an interest in us. One of them tried to drag Crease to the muddy-looking dance floor, but he escaped. They turned their attention to the construction workers, who were a little closer to their age anyway.
We did get to talking about our past baseball lives. I told about my religious fanatic coaches in the South. Stanley told about playing on the Little League World Champions. Then Crease told us about his last stop before Grand Mound:
“My baseball career ended on a Tuesday night last August at the exact moment that Manny Embarquadero killed the general manager’s dog. In a season scheduled to end August 31, Manny had arrived July 15, supposedly the organization’s hottest prospect, an import from a tropical island where the gross national product is revolution, and the per capita income $77 a year. A place where, it is rumored, either heredity or a diet heavy in papaya juice causes young men to move with the agility of panthers and enables them to throw a baseball from Denver to Santa Fe on only one hop.
“According to what I had read in USA Today, there were only two political factions in Courteguay — the government and the insurgents — their titles depending on which one was currently in power. One of the current insurgents was a scout for our organization, reportedly receiving payment in hand grenades and flame-throwers. He spotted Manny Embarquadero in an isolated mountain village (on Manny’s island, a mountain is anything more than fifteen feet above sea level) playing shortstop barefoot, fielding a pseudo-baseball supposedly made from a bull’s scrotum stuffed with papaya seeds.
“Even a semi-competent player would have been an improvement over our shortstop, who was batting .211 and was always late covering second base on double-play balls.
“‘The organization’s sending us a phenom,’ Dave ‘The Deer’ Dearly told us a few days before Manny’s arrival. Dearly was a competent manager, pleasant and laid-back with his players. He knew a lot about baseball and was able to impart that knowledge, but on the field during a game, he was something else.
“‘Been swallowing Ty Cobb Meanness Pills,’ was how Mo Chadwick, our center fielder, described him. Dearly was developing a reputation as an umpire-baiting bastard, who flew off the handle at a called third strike, screamed like a rock singer, kicked dirt on umpires, punted his cap, and heaved water coolers onto the field with little or no provocation.
“‘Got to have a gimmick,’ he said out of the side of his mouth one night on the road, as he strutted back to the dugout after arguing a play where a dim-witted pinch runner had been out by thirty feet trying to steal third with two out. Dearly had screamed like a banshee, backed the umpire half way to the left-field foul pole, and closed out the protest by punting his cap into the third row behind our dugout. The fans loved to boo him.
“I never considered for a second letting somebody else raise you guys. And I think that has to do with your mom, too. Every time I look at you and Byron I see the half of you that’s Gracie, and when you smile, or Byron laughs, or when either one of you stands with your hands on your hips when you’re angry, the way Gracie used to do, why I see her all over again, and it’s as if she isn’t dead at all.
“Besides, if I was to bring another woman to live in this house, I’d probably have to take down your mom’s photographs, and I can’t stand the thought of that. If I ever find a woman I’d do that for, then I guess I’ll know it’s time.”
TWELVE
The inter-squad game was so much fun. The adrenalin was flowing hard — I could feel it rising in me like mercury in a thermometer plunged in hot water — and by the end of the game I felt like a ghost. I was invisible. Invincible. I was so high there was no play I was incapable of making. It was as if the game had been a showcase for my talents.
The first batter hit a lazy two-hopper to me, the second batter did the same. The third walked. The clean-up hitter laced one straight up the middle, but I’d been shading him that way, and I back-handed the ball a good ten feet behind second base. If there had been no base runner it would have been an infield hit, but all I had to do was shovel the ball to Bobby Manuela, as he waited on the bag, like a tiger waiting for a steak, for the easy, inning-ending force-out.
I handled eight chances in all, my confidence growing with every one. I turned the pivot flawlessly on two double-play feeds from Manuela. The starting job was mine. I could play for fun, which I did.
And the fans! I have seldom heard such applause when I was introduced. I have never received such applause when I was introduced. Dilly Eastwick doubled as public-address announcer, sounding as if he were introducing the combatants in a heavyweight boxing match.
“AND FROM CHICAGO, ILLINOIS …” he paused for a fraction of a second to let the words echo, “VIA LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY … OUR NEW SECOND-BASE MAN …” and again the fractional pause, “MIKE HOULE.”
I was pleased to see he got the pronunciation right: Hool. In the Doll House Café I’d heard my name pronounced Hoo-lee, and Hoo-LAY, and someone even tried out HOW-lee.
The stands steadily filled as we took batting and infield practice. By the time the national anthem was sung, a cappella, by a grey-haired woman who was actually very good, the stands were packed and there were people standing and sitting on the grass in foul territory beyond the first- and third-base bleachers.
When we were at bat, besides studying the opposing pitcher I stared around the ballpark, wondering how an inter-squad game could generate such enthusiasm. The fans seemed evenly divided between the Greens and the Whites. Many of the fans behind our dugout wore white T-shirts with green trim, or actual white and green uniform tops and caps that matched ours. Some waved white pennants with green letters. The situation on the third-base side seemed identical except the color combinations were reversed. Someday there might be a civil war in Grand Mound: the Greens versus the Whites.
There was an aborted version of the wave practiced on both sides of the field, but each ended at mid grandstand, where I assume the fans for Green and fans for White divided. I was glad to see the wave fail. Like mascots, cheerleaders, and loud music it has no place in a thinking person’s game like baseball. To me, the wave in baseball is the equivalent of cheering aloud at a chess match.
“What in the world do they do when the actual season begins?” I asked Bobby Manuela between innings, as we were refining our signals to be sure we always knew who would cover second in the event of a steal.
Bobby just smiled and shrugged. “They’re a very expressive lot. That’s why it’s so much fun to play here.”
“Are all the other towns in the league as baseball-mad as this one?”
“You’ll see soon enough,” said Bobby.
Vague answers are the norm here in Grand Mound. This morning, I asked Emmett, “What time does USA Today get to town, and where can I buy one?”
“Well, now, Mike,” Emmett said, “we don’t have much call for outside newspapers like that. Not that you can’t get one,” he added, noting my look of concern. “You can buy a copy of the Sunday Des Moines Register down at the drugstore, and I’ve heard they carry the Chicago Tribune some weekends. But, we have the Grand Mound Leader every day, and being off the beaten track as we are, we’re more interested in what’s happening in Grand Mound than anywhere else.”
In the clubhouse after the game I met Dilly Eastwick, a round freckle-faced man who did not look like his voice.
“I’m Dilly Eastwick, the sports editor,” he said, his small damp hand shaking mine. “I make a point of covering every Greenshirts game myself.”
What I’d been expecting was a Babe Ruth with a journalism degree, someone large and craggy, who could still hit a home run in batting practice or silence a heckler with a fierce stare.
“Mike, I want you to know I really appreciated your play this evening. Why, you danced like Baryshnikov all around second base, and that back-handed stop in the seventh inning was one of the finest plays I’ve ever seen.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Eastwick,” I said. The back-handed stop had been something. The go-ahead run was on second and would have scored easily if the ball had made it through the infield. I launched myself after it, sailing through the air, landing, glove hand outstretched, in time to smother the ball. There was no play, but it held the run at third, and the next batter popped out to end the inning.
“Oh, don’t thank me. It was a perfect pleasure to watch you play baseball tonight. And to watch you run the bases.” His eyes twinkled and his round, moon face beamed.
In addition to acquitting myself well in the field, I went two for four at the plate, with a sacrifice bunt, and stole three bases.
“Well, it’s nice to be appreciated,” I said.
“We’re real special baseball fans here. You’ll always be appreciated in Grand Mound, Mike. You can count on it. Now, if you’ll excuse me I want to get a word with Dan Morgenstern. He’s quite a catcher. That boy was throwing clotheslines to second base tonight.”
The line about me dancing like Baryshnikov appeared in the next morning’s edition of the Grand Mound Leader. So did a comment on my speed, “Mike Houle is so fast on the base paths, it’s rumored he’s able to play tennis by himself.”
One cannot help but be pleased with press like that.
THIRTEEN
My second day in Grand Mound is over and I’ve made several friends. The scrap of gossip I overheard is indeed true, one of our players is Asian. His name is Stanley Wood, and he is the first-base man for the Green team. He is over six feet tall, raw-boned, his long, brush-cut hair gleaming like quills. He is trying, with only moderate success, to cultivate a Fu Manchu mustache.
After our second inter-squad game, again played before a full house of fans ravenous for baseball, I gravitated toward Stanley Wood, wanting to compare our experiences so far.
“That home run you hit must have cleared the fence by forty feet,” I said. “Any guesses on how far it travelled?”
“Thanks. Certainly over four hundred feet. But that’s because us Asians have better peripheral vision than you white guys.”
I assumed he was kidding, but his lines were delivered with a fierce scowl worthy of Ming the Merciless.
“Is that what they say?” I asked innocently.
“Only my team. Yours, being across the field, didn’t have to be so discreet.”
“Fair enough. Welcome to the Midwest. Anyone different is a bit of a curiosity here. You’re probably the first Chinese person they’ve seen outside of a Chinese restaurant.”
“Not Chinese. Taiwanese. Before my family emigrated from Taiwan a few years ago, I helped win two Little League World Championships.”
The scowl broke into an ironic smile.
“In case you’re unable to tell, I’m being inscrutable,” said Stanley. “We Asians study inscrutability in pre-school. Now, go ahead, take your best shot at the Taiwanese Little League Champions.”
“Is this the visible minority section?” Daniel Morgenstern had sidled up to us.
“I’m not sure I qualify,” I replied. “All I can claim is a rumor that I might be one-sixteenth Black Hawk or Nez Percé.”
“Close enough. You guys looked like you were having a serious conversation.”
“Stanley here played for Taiwan when they won the Little League World Series, which as far as I can tell could have been any year from 1960 to the present. I was just about to question the integrity of his accomplishment.”
“Fine with me,” said Daniel. “Tell us the truth now, how old were you guys, and how did you fool all the officials? I’ve seen players yanked off American Little League teams when their birthdate was one day out of line, but I bet some of the Taiwanese players had wives and children of their own.”
“You exaggerate greatly, of course; I can assure you none of us were over eighteen,” Stanley Wood said with a straight face. “Well, not many of us.” Like a comedian, he paused for laughter. “As for documentation,” he went on, “it is very easy to confuse such volatile things as birthdates when all computation is done with an abacus.”
“Volatile?” said Daniel. “Is your birthday volatile, Mike?” He laughed. “I see we’re not gonna get anywhere here. Seriously, how are you guys being treated?”
“I’m doing fine,” I said. “My family is a little over-zealous, especially where food is concerned. On the other hand, I can state with some certainty that I am being groomed as son-in-law material, pun intended, which is a little embarrassing.”
I am definitely not potential son-in-law material,” said Stanley. “My family, the Lindfors, are horrified. It apparently never occurred to anyone in Grand Mound that Stanley Wood, of San Francisco, California, would not be white. Did your family know they were getting you?” he asked Dan.
“Evidently. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’m living with the only Jewish family in town.”
“At least they knew what they were getting,” Stanley said. “No one, including the executives of the ball club, knew what they were getting when they signed me. I was a last-minute replacement for someone who decided to teach English in Japan. My wily agent, Justin Birdsong, just didn’t tell them.”
“Justin Birdsong is your agent, too?” I asked.
“He must be a busy guy. He’s mine, also,” said Dan Morgenstern.
“You should have seen the face on that Dilly Eastwick character when Mr. Lindfors dragged me into the newspaper office. I guess he wanted Eastwick to see for himself. What a difference a d makes.” And he smiled delightedly, showing wide spaces between his front teeth.
“So, how did you get a name like Wood?” Dan asked.
“My father, who, incidentally, is horrified that I am wasting my time playing baseball, when he moved his land development company to San Francisco, felt the name Woo was too obvious, and that if he added a d, business associates wouldn’t find out we were Asian until they had to look us in the eye, so to speak.”
“It appears to have worked too well,” I said.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not getting any pressure to date or marry the Lindfors’ darling daughter, which, ironically, I wouldn’t mind doing. She’s very pretty.”
“I think you’ve discovered the secret to getting along in Grand Mound,” said Daniel.
“Have Oriental features?” said Stanley.
“No. I was thinking maybe if Mike and I each add a letter to our name, it might work as a talisman to keep unwanted women at bay.”
“What unwanted women?” I asked. “That’s an oxymoron.”
We experimented for a while at adding letters to our names.
We laughed and slapped each other on the back, getting sillier by the minute. There was an exhilaration in letting down after a tough game, as well as the tension of being in a new and odd situation.
“Does anyone have a car?” I asked. “I’d like to take in some of the surrounding towns, maybe drive down to Iowa City. University is still in session there, which means about fifteen thousand women to choose from. How about it?”
“I don’t have a car,” said Stanley.
“Me either,” said Daniel. “They insisted we fly in, remember? I asked about driving down from New Jersey, but they preferred we didn’t have cars.”
“No one said that to me,” I said. “How about a rental?”
“There’s no car rental place in town,” said Stanley. “We’d probably have to go to Cedar Rapids Airport.”
“Catch-22,” I said. “We need a car to get to Cedar Rapids.”
“We could always have a Coke at the Doll House,” said Daniel.
“If we can get past our families,” I said. “Mine will be waiting for me.”
“Mine won’t,” said Stanley Wood.
We settled for walking to the Doll House, though we had to turn down rides from both the Powells and the Greenspans. The Lindfors were nowhere to be seen. But as we were seating ourselves at the Doll House, the waitress Nan Hurchubise approached the table. She was wearing a yellow uniform that showed off her long legs and waist-length dark hair. Stanley stopped what he was saying in mid sentence, and a look passed between them. I caught it, but Daniel didn’t.
“What pitch did you hit over the fence?” Daniel said to Stanley.
“A high, hard mistake,” said Stanley.
Before we left the Doll House that night, Stanley had arranged a date with Nan for after the café closed.
FOURTEEN
Four of us newcomers — Stanley, Daniel, me, and the new pitcher, Crease Fowler — did manage an evening out. I was the instigator. I told Emmett that we wanted some time to do what young ballplayers usually did — I didn’t specify shoot the breeze, enjoy a few beers, and look for female company. Emmett pulled in his cheeks and narrowed his eyes but didn’t raise any objections. We decided intentionally not to include the fifth newcomer, Barry McMartin, in our evening out. Barry is a huge outfielder from Oklahoma with the build and blond good looks of a young Mickey Mantle, but he is a jerk: loud, crude, boisterous, and none of us wanted him along.
The evening didn’t meet my expectations. Grand Mound night life is even less exciting than watching paint dry. We walked to Big Al’s, a bar on the outskirts of town. Big Al’s sounded interesting, but it was a dark place housed in an arched metal building, the type that usually holds machine shops and farm-equipment repair businesses. A blue neon Bud sign bled down the only window. Inside there was a long bar and two dozen tables, a juke box and a small dance floor that didn’t look like it had been used this decade. There were a few farmers at the tables and along the bar, three young guys who looked like construction workers. The juke box wailed George Strait and Waylon Jennings. The biggest disappointment was that there were no women in the place. The bartender, a huge man with a walrus mustache and a beer gut, didn’t wait tables. Customers walked to the bar, paid for their order, and carried their drinks back to their tables.
After an hour, a couple of women did come in, but they were thirty-something types, one in stretch pants and a University of Iowa sweat shirt, the other covered in a garish orange shawl.
“Somewhere there’s a Winnebago without drapes,” whispered Dan.
They took a table nearby and an interest in us. One of them tried to drag Crease to the muddy-looking dance floor, but he escaped. They turned their attention to the construction workers, who were a little closer to their age anyway.
We did get to talking about our past baseball lives. I told about my religious fanatic coaches in the South. Stanley told about playing on the Little League World Champions. Then Crease told us about his last stop before Grand Mound:
“My baseball career ended on a Tuesday night last August at the exact moment that Manny Embarquadero killed the general manager’s dog. In a season scheduled to end August 31, Manny had arrived July 15, supposedly the organization’s hottest prospect, an import from a tropical island where the gross national product is revolution, and the per capita income $77 a year. A place where, it is rumored, either heredity or a diet heavy in papaya juice causes young men to move with the agility of panthers and enables them to throw a baseball from Denver to Santa Fe on only one hop.
“According to what I had read in USA Today, there were only two political factions in Courteguay — the government and the insurgents — their titles depending on which one was currently in power. One of the current insurgents was a scout for our organization, reportedly receiving payment in hand grenades and flame-throwers. He spotted Manny Embarquadero in an isolated mountain village (on Manny’s island, a mountain is anything more than fifteen feet above sea level) playing shortstop barefoot, fielding a pseudo-baseball supposedly made from a bull’s scrotum stuffed with papaya seeds.
“Even a semi-competent player would have been an improvement over our shortstop, who was batting .211 and was always late covering second base on double-play balls.
“‘The organization’s sending us a phenom,’ Dave ‘The Deer’ Dearly told us a few days before Manny’s arrival. Dearly was a competent manager, pleasant and laid-back with his players. He knew a lot about baseball and was able to impart that knowledge, but on the field during a game, he was something else.
“‘Been swallowing Ty Cobb Meanness Pills,’ was how Mo Chadwick, our center fielder, described him. Dearly was developing a reputation as an umpire-baiting bastard, who flew off the handle at a called third strike, screamed like a rock singer, kicked dirt on umpires, punted his cap, and heaved water coolers onto the field with little or no provocation.
“‘Got to have a gimmick,’ he said out of the side of his mouth one night on the road, as he strutted back to the dugout after arguing a play where a dim-witted pinch runner had been out by thirty feet trying to steal third with two out. Dearly had screamed like a banshee, backed the umpire half way to the left-field foul pole, and closed out the protest by punting his cap into the third row behind our dugout. The fans loved to boo him.
