CHAPTER FOUR
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It was in the final innings of the season in a game that each team had their claws out to win. Their bullpen, already holding a couple of sore arms, had been wiped out by tomaine poisoning. Most of their staff had gone out to the same smorgasborg and all had spent the night over or on the toilet bowl. Our team had hit their starter early, he'd lasted 2 innings and given up 2 runs. Their first reliever couldn't get anyone out and he'd given up another run. After two and 1/3 innings, they were down 3-0 when a hard drive was lined back to the mound, hit the second reliever on the foot, and took him out of the game.
The manager stood on the mound looking for someone to give the ball to. I let my eyes wander over to their bullpen. Nobody was up throwing. Someone pointed to Blazes, sitting on the bench. The coach had obviously let him wander out of his game plans. The odds must have been long for him to get in the game or he would have been in the bullpen instead of gathering splinters in the dugout. Warming up for an hour is not uncommon for a pitcher prior to an outing. I watched him slowly get up and move towards the mound. He looked much older than I had remembered and without the solid tone in his muscles that provided him with a secure carriage. His head hung towards the ground and when he finally looked up his eyes fixed on the plate as if it was the only friend he'd ever had.
As the pathetic remnants of Buck Blazes battled the fatigue that allies itself with defeat, I slipped back to the start of the season. It was auspicious enough beginnings. "I am a Yankee," the speaker's voice pushed through the cracks in the emotion and his eyes struggled to focus through the moisture, "and I'm proud to serve the Yankee tradition." As he paused a gentle breeze lifted one of the two flags he stood between. "I started in the instructional league like many of you. The organization gave me a chance to prove my talent." He was on the field side of the backstop that protects spectators from the ball and the ball from spectators, standing military-straight on home plate behind a podium and his eyes seemed to review each one of his troops individually. "The Yankees make it possible for the best of every generation to play this great game for this great team. All they ask in return is for every player who wears the uniform to protect our tradition. A tradition, gentlemen, that stands for the best in baseball. Old fashioned, traditional baseball. You've been summoned for the role you can play in our winning style of game."
Behind home plate, spread out across the box seat level and looking out onto the well-groomed diamond, the entire organization was mustered, from the lowliest farm team to those swinging for the major league fences. We looked down on the field longing to maneuver through the lush grass or march down the clean white foul lines. As we fidgeted in the seats, the hollow bronzed eyes of the schoolboy immortals stared back at us from the depths of the outfield and measured our grit. I had come up through the ranks dreaming of playing the big game in a Yankee uniform and I was close enough to smell the sulfur. I knew I'd spend the season far behind the front line, eating box lunches on long bus rides leading towards meaningless minor league encounters but when I donned the uniform I looked pretty darn spiffy as a Yankee. As the speaker pushed us his spiel my eyes began to fog up. Besides the crack forces already taking aim in the majors, and they were among the best of their kind, marshalled into the ballpark were plenty of the best and mightiest talent that existed at each level of professional baseball. Although the organization only held a small percentage of the total number of ballplayers, it used up a proportion of the richest resources far beyond its number. So laden with baseball talent were the bleachers that I was surprised the stadium wasn't upended. As I slid my eyes down the aisles evaluating the competition, it was difficult to conceive of myself in any rank except holding a potato peeler and a scrub brush on permanent K.P.. I felt like a pea at a state banquet. I supposed I was present for a purpose but if I rolled off the plate, no one was going to call air-rescue. But the talker kept talking and the more he did the more I was reassured that it was better not to play on the Yankees than to star in another uniform.
The message continued to march by our ears in double time. "You may think that your actions on and off the ballfield are your own, that you can do as you please as long as you involve no one other than yourself. You are wrong. Children of all ages will be looking up to you. They come to the ballpark to see a hero and a major part of your job is to make sure that the light in their eyes does not go dim." He continued on and told us that the Yankees considered the maintenance of curfew the surest way to keep that light from darkening. Curfew would be strictly enforced at each playing level and while we all might grumble, as he put it, "by the end of the year when the other teams are all home with their gloves packed away, the Yankee teams will be playing for the flag." And that's where all of us wanted to be playing, in the championship.
"Team after team is out practicing to knock our tradition flat on its back, to destroy everything that our tradition stands for. Your job is to protect the Yankees against those forces. You're our first line of defense." I stretched taller in the seat and I felt the unspoken and undemonstrated comraderie of those around me. Just point us at those low-lifes and we'd take care of them.
Then he began to tell us a little story about a boy who saved all his paper route money and all of his gardening money so that he could come to every Yankee home game. "There came a day, later, after he had grown into a prominent adult, when someone asked him how he, an orphan, could rise to such heights. He replied. 'I never considered myself an orphan. My family was the Yankees.' He'll be throwing out the first ball this year. You know him better as the Governor of this dear state. So you see the tradition runs deep." I nodded my head with the weight and import of his words and tried to clear my misty eyes. It wasn't just me. I was just a little in a world of big in which the Yankee spirit held things together.
"Hey Prezzy," the voice belched out of our ranks. We all waggled our chins trying to find the interruptor. I don't know what I expected. From the voice's lack of deference and from the curls on the speaker's face perhaps I half expected the guy to be standing on his chair hanging a B.A.. I spotted him. It was Blazes.
"Any truth to what I'm harin about yawl doin some kind of expandin of your stadum fawclties."
"Those are confidential team matters."
"Wale, we awls the tame." He laughingly looked
at us. "And it doesn't sound so confadential to the Lees and Garcias. I mane thar not standin in front of your bulldozers and jackhammers jes cause the machines are thar to hepem with thare gawdens."
The speaker didn't rage. He didn't go into a denial routine. He didn't express at all. He merely restated, "Those are 'confidential team matters' but I'm sure that any questions you have can be answered." And he resumed.
Like the rest of my comrades, I thought Blazes was way off base. How the Yankees handle their business had nothing to do with us. I'd heard of Buck Blazes. He was a gifted pitcher who could make the ball disappear through a haze of smoke. After an illustrious and meteoric minor league career, he was due that year to break into the bigs and anticipation surrounded his penciled name on the roster.
"I want to introduce you to the men with whom I have had the honor of being associated. Like me, the organization has provided means to house their families, to raise their children, and to provide those children with things like an education. Things that when we were young we could only dream about."
These were the biographies that I rolled around on my tongue. All were former ballplayers who had come up through the organization and were at work in some aspect of the game from announcing to front office public relations to talent scouting. I continued to savor their monologues and let the personal histories in their talk take me to a banquet feast of imaginings: I was at a big desk dressed in a silk suit and deftly fielding questions from a small band of reporters and my remarks were being received with warm approving amusement. Or I was in bleachers tallying marks on a sheet of paper and using my keenly trained eye to catch subtle gifts of talent. Or I was back in uniform with a fungo bat on my shoulder teaching a shortstop how to break to his right. I came out of my reverie as the speaker was finishing up, "Take care of your deportment, care for the game and Yankee baseball will take care of you."
The Director of Public Relations for the organization took his turn behind the podium. I brought myself back to attention. If he was expecting a snappy salute, I was ready to square one off. "Gentlemen, I'm enlisting your support in the battle being waged on all fronts for decency and the way of life that we all hold so dear. Many of you have probably noticed the newspaper and magazine reports concerned with the rising rate in juvenile crime, school drop-outs, illicit drug use and other forms of behavior that is unacceptable by society's standard. We believe we have an answer to this crisis." I was being distracted by a skirmish taking place in a corner of the stadium and by the occasional unfriendly remarks uttered from behind me and fired at the podium. Through the interference, I tried to take the speaker's words into my heart. "Our answer is in the traditional values. Values that baseball represents. Values that the Yankees uphold every time they take the field. Values that are embodied in the excellence produced by our program. If we fail as an example, then baseball fails and takes with it what was won by the sweat of those who went before you." The scuffle off in a removed tier of the park subsided as the security guards threw out a couple of the maintenance crew who had wandered into the speech and we're listening while eating their lunch. "You are the soldiers on the front line. Your skill and hard work keep us free to live decent lives."
I heard one of the vets behind me remark to the guy next to him, "They're not going to let us take our wives again on road trips. They say it distracts us from our job."
The other voice said, "It figures, they got to keep us hungry."
"Nothing is easy about this task. Challenges stand before us. Many are those who do not want you to succeed. But you must persevere and you must win. For our part, we'll be backing you in every way we can. To that end, we have developed a campaign." He unfurled a large poster of a player in a Yankee uniform taking a strong cut at a phantom ball. The picture was captioned, "Take a strike for morality, decency, and the Yankee way of life." The bottom held the words, "Sponsored by your Yankees." Later, someone would count up the strikes, but as I looked it made me itchy to find a foe and take up arms for the fight ahead and Buck's disruption was all but out of my mind. Soon the fans would be called upon by a media blitz to become involved in the campaign. Till that time the placards and the posters would follow us to spring training where we would keep alive their spirit.
A player likes to report to camp and step to the plate and hammer his first three pitches out of the park snapping the manager's head and sending him checking your number against his clipboard. After the organization meeting, I reported to camp and managed to drive my first impression deep, unfortunately, I was batting out of order.
The exact instructions that broke the team from its first huddle didn't bother to stop by my ears so I followed the nearest players out of the melting group. We formed a small band, then paired off to toss warm-up throws. With the benefit of my keen perceptions, it wasn't long before I realized I'd signed up with a squad of pitchers and catchers. I'd caught before so I was relatively confident I could pull off the charade. I was considering that the fellow opposite me had a delivery motion that was awfully direct for a pitcher when it occurred to me to notice that he had the big oversized mitt. I looked at my hand dressed in the infielder's glove. I quickly surmised I was suppose to be the pitcher. If it wasn't the first minutes of the first day, I probably would have told the guy that it was a pleasure throwing with him and moved to where I belonged but I had decided I didn't want to raise eyes with a bonehead play. Besides, I wasn't sure where I belonged. So I figured I'd pitch some till we huddled again. The catcher looked a little non-plussed but I thought I was doing pretty fair. Only two things could have prevented my delivery from becoming Hall-of-Fame great and since a batter was nowhere in sight, I was half way home. As fate would have it, I got picked off base.
"Show me your curve." The second obstacle to
immortality presented itself. The coach's words had come from behind my ear and I had jumped from being off guard.
I don't have a curve per se but I've always wanted to develop one so I thought I'd give it a shot. If a person had exceptionally good eyesight, I believe he might have seen the break. I knew right away the coach's eyes were faltering.
"What the blue tarnation is your problem?"
I had already reached a point where I did not want to admit I hadn't been listening but I had not quite journeyed to the realization that my ruse was not going to work, so I perservered. "I don't really have a good curve."
"Well you're going to have one." And he began to demonstrate the basics. I was really getting the hang of it, I thought.
"How many innings did you go last year?" the coach interrogated.
I tried to recall the year. I had platooned, yet I had played in a fair number of games. I came up with a number.
"You pitched that many innings?" he asked incredulously.
"No. I played that many innings. I've never pitched before in my life."
I guess that was when the word leaked out that I was not a pitcher.
His look was sincere and heart-felt, "When you come on board the Yankees, you can play wherever you want. No position is out of reach. You want to be a battery mate, fine. Even be the captain of the club. You just make sure you find the position where you can make the team and keep the boat trim."
His steady sober gaze told me all I needed to know about my responsibility towards the boat's keel.
In spring training, rumors and speculations are served up as often as fly balls so when it came down the pike that Blazes had been traded no one lifted a brow. Nor would anyone think to question. Trades were all handled confidentially by the team's office. That was the way the business was run. Besides, rumor had it that he had asked more money than he was worth and the Yankees wisely weren't buying.
I had my own worries. Even by the first scrimmage my name wasn't appearing on any version of the line-up card. The organization, probably because I was known for making contact, had me down as a pinch hitter. But pinch hitting for me was like trying to pick up a dime with a first baseman's mitt on the hand. If I didn't play consistently, I was hopeless at the plate. The ball seemed to come by with its tongue out spraying a rasberry at me. So I sat on the bench expecting to be blinded by each pitch I faced and trying to fortify myself by sharpening my eyes on the face of the ballpark.
As I looked out onto the field I wasn't treated to the same visual feast as in the grand stadium of the majors. This park had a hard dusty infield with foul lines that seemed to roll with the curve of the earth. The fences were lined with team flags: the "Traps" had a flag, they were sponsored by a plumbing outlet; and the "Lube Balls", sponsored by Joe's Garage; and the "Pepperoni Nine", sponsored by a pizza outfit; and my favorite, the "Cows" with no sponsor at all. The diamond was used by the municipal little league. Later, after a handful of road trips I learned to appreciate the beauty of our playing conditions, not because the park bloomed before my eyes nor because the other diamonds were wilted old things, but because hitting the road was like rattling death. The team bus was old. As old as the St. Louis Browns according to one of the coaches who swears he recognized it in their old team photo. The only new component was the oil that was routinely dumped in the crankcase to billow out in the passenger compartment. During our first scrimmage, the bus was wisely put out of sight.
We were scrimmaging a team on the Yankee payroll that was in a league one class up from us. As their batters discarded one of their warm-up bats and moved out of the on-deck circle and stalked towards the plate, their faces were locked in concern. A concern I would see mirrored on our countenances the next scrimmage when we lined up against the team from one class lower in the organization. The facial expression seems to be a twitch brought on by close contact with players who wear the same uniform and play the same position. If the front office knew the consternation it caused by the meetings, I'm sure they'd never have scheduled them.
Having our ace on the mound probably didn't help the already unsettled stomachs of our opponents. His nickname was "Swishman" or "The Swish". I had incorrectly surmised it was because of his fastball. I quickly learned otherwise. Although he was one of the most diligent workers on the team, the rest of the pitching staff and the team in general called him a limp-wristed pitcher and ostracized him. He had a way of moving and giggling that they found irritating. When he was in the game he cheered or moaned over every skip of the ball. He rooted and cajoled while the team stayed tight-lipped and unmoved. I was more tolerant, I suppose mainly because he had been the only player who had taken lightly my first day mistake of pretending to be a pitcher. I heard him tell the pitching coach. "He's got a mystifyin change. If you kin get hem to develop a fastbawll to go with it, he'd have hisself a good one-two punch." When his assigned roommate asked for a room switch, everyone seemed to know why. He moved out and the coaches moved me in.
"You seem to get along so well with him Gloverman, the two of you should make a great couple." His tone was not meant to be explanatory but I gave him only a show at complaining.
Even though I was not looking forward to deflecting the flak I was going to take, I'd been on enough teams to recognize a curfew alibi when it introduced itself. I figured even if the pitcher reported on my activities, no one was going to be listening. Indeed, he'd have to suffer their insinuations wondering why he cared I wasn't in my bed. So I became his roommate. Still, I didn't want him, or especially any other person on the team, getting any funny ideas so I kept him at a good distance.
I thought I was clever sneaking around breaking curfew until I came back early one night and found that he was gone. This happened several times subsequently. The possibilities I considered were not very appealing. I shook off the pictures I had in my mind of the bars I supposed he frequented and their activities. Then one night I finally caught up with him in a little joint with greasy old pictures on the wall and the beer in big mugs handed to the customer with the foam running down the sides. After stepping foot in the door only to see an old man in a corner with a guitar playing some lowdown crying kind of a song, I turned to leave and spotted him in the center of the room. If I hadn't decided that the night was a wash and there was nothing left to do but turn back, I might not have moved over behind him and said, "Bedcheck!" He nearly jumped into his beer.
"Don't you do that. You want fer me to get all choked?"
"Kind of a dismal place isn't it?" I grabbed a chair as I looked around trying to make sure the kind of bar it was. "How'd you slip by the angel tonight?"
Our guardian angel stood watch over us at night in the hotel lobbies. He wasn't a real angel but he was supposed to protect us from ourselves which made him close to one. His main function was to make sure the players maintained curfew. He was a government man. He had been one sort or another of legislator or bureaucrat all his working life and he had kept some of those habits formed on the job.
As we sat slurping our brews, Swishman began to unravel the first of many stories told in many similar bars.
"It wuz the year befur this one. The bus had fought its way through a helacious storm of rain to deposit us lock, stock and barrel at our hotel. It wuz not officially sanctioned, decreed, or ardained but we knew we had a day off settin on the harizon. Evin if the downpo lifted, which from all weather reports wuz not evin on the tote board, the next day's game wuz goin to be cancelled since the field wuz goin to look like a pig's playpin. There wuz no need to tortore time to death with pinochle as we waited fer game time and no reason not to hit the town that night. Asides, my roomie that year wuz a guy whose most redeemin quality wuz that he wuz an outstandin card cheat.
"But evin though we knew we had the night off, the revelation had not trickled down to the angel.
"The hotel dutifully turned on the fur alarm system at all the exits except the front. Our room wuz an elegant 10 x 10 affair with a telvision we had to pound into service. My roomie and I warn't about to be cooped up in some crummy little room with a TV on the fritz. We thought we'd take in a movie. Whin we attempted to slip out of the hotel we found the angel sittin in the lobby earnin his pay and workin up a lather doin it.
"After some pacin the floor we hit upon a shinin good notion. We called room delivry. Whin the bellboy arrived, we arranged fer him to snatch us a couple of the bell uniferm coats and hats. As we dressed, we revelled in our wit, celbratin our genius. We proceeded down to the lobby anticipatin a night on the town, prancin like stud horses. All we had to do wuz take a pass cross the guard.
"There sat the angel and with our heads tucked well up into our bell caps, we commenced to takin our stroll. We were jes bout out the door and congratulatin ourselves on puttin one over on the old guy whin we heard, 'Hey. Room Service.' We continued on. 'Hey! Room Service!' the voice wuz more ensistint and it dawned on us that we were the room service he wuz durrectin his voice at. We slithered over to him.
'Could you bring me a dinner menu and wine list,' he said without lookin up from his readin material. We rushed off to the dinin room.
"We looked at each other and couldn't stop slappin our thighs with jubilance, 'I can't believe the old boy doesn't recognize us. What geniuses of deesguise. I told you this wuz sure-fur.' We brought him the menus with a renewed conferdance in our step.
'I'll have the lobster and steak, somewhat steep in price but tonight is a special night. And how about yer best dry champagne.'
"My pawtner inquiahed, 'What do you think he's cel'bratin? Maybe his control over the team,' we chuckled.
"The clock in the kitchin wuz tickin but we still had enough of the night remainin to serve his dinner to him thereby providin us with rib ticklin foolery later on. We brought the dinner.
"'Somethin's wrong here.'
"We held our breath thinkin the shenanagin wuz up.
"'I can't eht alone. Bring me two more glasses.'
"His guests were nowhere in sight but we dutifully complied with his request. We were feeling somewhat discombobulated by the affair at this point and would have brought him boiled baseballs wrapped in glove leather if he had asked fer it.
"He pohed the champagne into the extra glasses and as he did, we turned to git along. 'You're not goin to refuse my offer and leave me to dine alone are you? It's bad foam to drink without compny. You two can stand there and toast each other.'
"Not wanting to break our silince we accepted without protest. The champagne began to flow freely and he ardered food until he had his fill. With resignation we looked outside the windows. It wuz clear that the night wuz shot to bits. Our one small consolation wuz that not only had we not bin discovered in our deesguise, but we had managed to drink pricey champagne fer free.
"'How about the check?'
""Whin we fetched the check from the dinin room, we both whistled. He had eht a fair amount of what appeared to be gormet quality food and beverage.
"'I'll just sign my room number.' He siahgned and left.
"Now we opinly laughed at the angel's short-sightedness. It was the ripsnortinest trick we had sin en some time.
"'If we knew that it wuz going to be this easy, we would have gone out every night from the biginnin of the season,' we told each other.
"'And we got free booze off him,' we ribbed.
"Walking back to the kitchin I noticed the check. He'd signed it with a room number alright, ours.
"It wuz a good joke on us. But that's how it goes. The angel got fatter and we got poher. Our guardian angel wuz just doing his job evin if his job that night wuz making sure he stayed employed. I mean, if we had gone out and no evil had befallin us, thin we might have gottin it in our heads that we could live without angels. As he explained it later to us, 'we might think we can live without an angel, evin cite examples of some who do, but deep down we wanted and needed our angel.' By runnin herd over us he made sure no one wandered out of line and lost his career on the way to market, not to mintion devalued the team as a whole."
We could get a chuckle from a curfew violation or feel the tingle in a midnight sneak but on other teams minor infractions left a player drawn and quartered. I got a glimpse of this imbalance when I crossed paths with Blazes. He had not made it to the bigs like the expectation. He'd been traded to an organization that only had room for him in the same class of ball as the one I was playing. Still, it was almost accidental that I met him at all.
It was during a break in the action when we were playing the team he was on. Although no one had seen his name for some time in the box scores, I thought I'd mention him more as a topic of conversation than out of any real concern.
"Hey where's Buck?" I looked at the first baseman but he was cast towards the mound like he was expecting the pitch to be delivered. He was a big plodding guy and reminded me of a dumb cow. "Where's Buck Blazes?" I repeated.
"He ain't playing." His tone told me to drop the subject.
After the game, Blazes was outside the stadium. I almost didn't recognize him as he leaned against a parked car. My previous query to the first baseman into his whereabouts had gone unanswered but I was not sufficiently disturbed to let it linger in my mind so I wasn't expecting to see him. He motioned at me and I moved towards him.
"I hud you war lookin for me?" he said.
"I just wanted to say hello."
"Wale you said it."
I paused for a moment previewing the question I was about to ask but fumbling over my own thoughts, caught off guard by his hostility. "Are they treating you well?"
His eyes swept up from the ground and they tolerated my presence.
"What do you car? You don know me."
I didn't and I was beginning to wish I had never heard the sound of his name. "I saw you pitch before and I just wondered if you were getting taken care of like you wanted?"
"Is that what you all believe, the Yankay press rlease? That I was holin out for monay." Before I could protest that that wasn't on my mind he continued.
"You just betta hope that the soona or the lata don come and you don hafto say war your salry come'n from, what gets taken away from who to pay for your what."
I began to apologize but I wasn't sure why.
Then he abruptly ceased his harangue at me and said, "Ah don know why am abothrin ta get red in the face. Ah was the same as you. Biggety as a peacock to be a Yankay." He was shaking his head at the futility of stepping inside shoes. "Lookin at that crisp white unifoam you'd a nevah know it was mahed in dung and blood."
I felt sorry for him at that point watching him rave with what I thought to be blind bitterness.
"But you give it no nevuh mind. Keep your eyeah on the bigs and the Yankays 'll do their part. They pay their divdends, jus the divdends. They players stan fat next to the rest of the league so thare's no un to bothuh bout tame mattuhs. So you jus keep your eyeahs on the bigs."
Now that was advice I could use.
The team bus blasted its horn and I twitched to the side like a fugitive scanned by towerlights. "I've got to take off now but maybe I'll see you next time I'm in town."
"Yeh, maybe," with the same mixture of tolerance and contempt.
The ride back was long and I tried to dismiss Blazes by closing my eyes and searching for sleep.
On the next road trip, sitting over a couple of beers, I asked Swishman, "Why do you think it is that the rest of the league hates us?" His eyebrows raised and he mutely shook his head in an "anyone's guess" answer to my brainless question. I admitted to myself the ridiculousness of taking up the quandary with him. Why was I asking him? His own teammates treated him like a ball aimed at the head. He probably never even noticed a marked difference in the way the other teams acted towards us.
He quit looking bemused then he quit looking towards me. "I don't really see the other teams or evin hear my own anymore. I feel like some kind of an old soldier whose glasses hold old visions of young faces that no longer exist. My eyes rest up on the plate and I throw the ball 'cross another field. It's a field back befer uniferms. That first field had a shirt as first base and a second base that if you stepped on, you were aut'matic'lly out because it was the cinner fielder's glove. Games started promptly whin we had at least one field opin. Thas where we learnt to shift with the hitter; the pitcher moved to the third base line for a lefty. And the teams were always of equal ability 'cause if they werin't, we changed them. Whin I get on the mound and look at the batter, I try not to see past that first bunch of guys." It was an uncharacteristic intimation from the Swish. I'd heard plenty of his stories but they were always aimed at the funny bone.
"Faster 'n you could say organization my father and some of the other fathers found out we wuz reg'lar-like playin baseball, they came in to show us the right way to play. They bought us uniferms and bases and made shore we never had to play with a coverless ball wrapped in black 'lectrical tape. Not everyone made the transition. Some were outside the bound'ries the fathers imposed so that no ringers could be imported. A couple were too old and at least one too young to meet the age requiahemints. We needed to make shore that no one was too dominating or too dominated, making things so caddywampus that there were injuries. One of my best pawtners couldn't get his parints to sign up for the ensurance.
"My father was an attorney and he tended to view the world in those terms. He told me when you inner into an innerprise you give some to get some and the strength of the contract is in the innerdependence. Or something like that, he wasn't the plainest speaking man I ever met." His recollection was making his mouth and cheeks turn up like a smile. "You know I have the strangest feelin that somewhere along the way I've signed somethin without readin it."
He mused some more to himself, then said to me, "No, Rap, I don't know why the rest of the league doesn't find us perfectly charmin."
I put out my offering, "Maybe they don't like us because it's easier for us. I mean moneywise."
"No doubt the expansion teams find it tough. They've got to buy in and someone has to take the initial hit and the bottom rung of a ladder gets stepped on most frequintly so their players aren't comparin too well to us."
"Where do you think all that buy-in money goes?" I'd finally found my way into the question.
"Gee Gloverman, the hell if I know, I'm not gettin any of it, am I? And if I was, what good would givin it back do? You think it would raise the rest of the sal'ries in the league?"
I didn't know how to answer.
Up to this point in the season I had been platooning but things would soon change and that meant I was able to give Swishman some assistance when he was on the mound. He was a cut ball pitcher. He liked to use a cut on the ball to give him some movement on his fastball. Often when a new ball was thrown into the game, I'd take a throw down to second base and rub the ball against my glove or shoe eyelets or belt buckle just enough to make a little slice in the cover. This was a procedure that the player I replaced, Caisson, would have no part of, not out of any ethical qualms but because he just didn't like Swishman.
Caisson had a bad problem with liguor. When he was young he could play half-crocked or all hung-over and the team management, while not publicly condoning booze, did nothing to disuade him from its use. They had a bonafide star who consistently produced and they weren't about to tamper with success. But as he fell to the fading side of his career he became a nuisance and an embarrassment. However, he still was big with the fans. Fearing a stink that coincided with their decency campaign and would require a subsequent explanation if they put in some hot shot fielding ace groomed to take his place, they stuck me in the lineup at all away games, while at the same time letting him start all of the home games until I replaced him after he had a trip to the plate. The organization would wait for the proper time to dump him. Until then, he was slowly being eased out. So I played an important role on the team. Which was more than a number of the other players did. Our bench was so deep that more than one good player was drowning in it. That was where the organization wanted them. Where they could push the starters and yet not cause damage in another team's line-up.
Before the next game Swishman ran into a former teammate who had the straight scoop on what had happened to Blazes. Since he knew I was curious, Swishman filled me in.
Buck Blazes was a perennial 20 game winner. A player
who set the tone for the clubhouse. When he was happy there was a lot of ribbing and raucous laughter. If a close one was dropped and he was involved, the locker room could be deathly solemn.
It had been drummed into our heads that the Yankee program calls for every player to be what they called an "ambassador". A player must conduct himself in a manner above reproach and just as important, a Yankee must leave no doubt as to his belief in the Yankees. In the early days, the organization built its team around ballplayers who scorned all attempts at the imposition of any kind of system. Their old team photos show a collection of chin-up faces in an assortment of uniform pieces and each face looked straight-eyed and seemed to call out, "I play ball, what of it?" Some old scout must have seen Buck as a throwback to those early years and signed him. Great players many times do not make great managers for a variety of reasons, but mostly because they are incapable of distilling their skills into a systematic collection of exercises. Nor do they fit well into established patterns, sometimes not even to patterns mannered after themselves. The Yankees had organized around the old ballplayers and then found their organization had no more room for them. They didn't fit into the system. That system produced a consistency that could be monitored and manipulated. The club didn't have to suffer the indidvidual lows, even if that meant it had to forgo the exhilarating highs. Perhaps it was inevitable that Blazes rubbed the organization against its grain but he did it with such an abrasive flourish that many Yankees thought he called too much attention to himself.
While we were all doing our best to be ambassadors of baseball, he called himself a "saboteur of goodwill" and said "I ain't here to profess but to profane."
Rather than deal him off to one of a number of anxiously awaiting teams, the front office thought they could save him. One of the guys heard a coach say, "He'll be whistling a different tune even if I have to sew his lips into a pucker."
It was no secret that the pitcher had a quick eye for a female form. The papers got a hold of a story that said he was involved sexually with an underaged girl. When they swarmed his locker, he let loose with one of his usual quotable quotes. "If I had only known, I might of enjoyed it more." Though the original story was never confirmed, it didn't seem to matter. A new story was running around his unrepentent words like the proverbial Chicken Little. His presence represented everything that was going wrong with baseball. And everything going wrong with baseball represented everything going wrong with society. And when he was posed with this observation, he responded by saying, "I see what you mean. It is a heavy burden. But I'll do my best to live up to it." The subsequent rush of voices chorused the fall of the sky. What few remaining supporters he had left were not returning his phone calls. The team suspended him pending an investigation. The baseball commissioner suspended him pending the team's ruling. He was still not reinstated when he was traded. The specifics of the deal were of course not revealed as they were confidential, but the rumors fanned out like batting practice hits. I didn't know at the time that the Yankees had traded him to the team most closely aligned with them in the backroom world of baseball politics. At first, out of curiousity, we'd check the sports columns to see how he was doing. It was many games before he appeared at all and then only to throw concluding meaningless innings in games already won or lost. Then he ceased altogether to appear in the box scores. This fate for a pitcher who complained he couldn't get enough work in a five man rotation.
Swishman's report was still playing catch with my thoughts when Buck's team pulled into our stadium for pre-game warm-ups. When the game started I found him on the bench and then looked away so I could avoid drawing any conclusions. I thought I had effectively dismissed him from my mind until he straggled onto the mound. Our earlier meetings were all but forgotten as I watched his bent pose come around to confront the catcher. He had a long way to go and he looked as though he'd be lucky to get one batter let alone work 7 and 2/3 innings.
"Hey who's this old guy," one of the late-in-the-season arrivals to our team chortled.
A coach said, "That's Buck Blazes and up until a short time ago, most of the smart money would have bet he could have let that arm of his write his ticket. But he had a weakness." We waited for the story the rest of us already knew. "He just didn't understand that talent isn't a right but a privilege and if you don't wear it that way, it goes to someone else. He had appetites for things other than victory. The Yankees, in their wisdom, can't tolerate that kind of dissension on their teams." I supposed that was one way of looking at it and that view must have been satisfactory because neither I nor anyone else raised an objecting voice.
Buck took his alotted warm-up pitches and I believe we could almost hear his bones creak. His first pitch to the batter was so high that the catcher had to rise to pull it down.
I felt embarrassed for him. I didn't really expect to see him suddenly turn into Cy Young but I felt like leaving rather than watch the pitiful remains of his once proud talent.
He threw another pitch and another and managed to get the batter out on a ground ball but he was very shaky and with the top of our order coming up, everyone was anticipating a slugfest.
In the next inning he squared off against our first batter. He took the sign with the ball in his glove and his fingers clinging to the seams. From out of his wind-up he delivered a strike in around the knees. He threw another quick strike, then some garbage, and got the batter to fly out. So it went. We watched, at first amusedly, and then in silence as he worked the strike zone, moving the ball in and out, up and down.
Between innings he sat apart from the team. It was hard to discern whether it was because he was an outsider to the established order or because the other members sensed something about him that day and didn't want to intrude. On our side, the team became more determined to hit him. At first what was considered a fluke became a loud catcall at our abilities. Buck's team took the lead and on both sides the tension rose.
And he worked on. Through his perfect innings we watched a broken man throw a curve here, a change there, and whatever else it is that broken men throw. In the end, after the last out, he walked off the field in the same way he had walked on, his head bent towards the ground.
When he'd finished his outing one of the coaches pronounced, "Looks like the Yankees did their job well. Got him right with the program."
But I'd stood in the parking lot and heard his unquivering steady voice. And I'd watched him throw his stuff. Maybe the program rode along with his fastball but there was something else propelling it. Something whose spirit kept it humming towards the plate. And that took hold of me and tried to shake my eyes wide.
Like one of those dolls whose lids are closed when it's in a reclining position and then flip open when it's raised, I was staring straight ahead but not seeing. It was all I could do to keep the gaze steady and not focus on the affairs that followed.
In the midst of the Yankee's drive for decency, just as what they had hoped would happen was taking shape, just as the name, "Yankees", began to be identified with virtue like the name "Ruth" is synonymous with home runs, just as they were delighting in the renewed interest in the national pastime, just as the entire organization was admiring the long ball, someone yelled foul. It was there in the out of town newspaper I brought back to the hotel room. Imbedded in the back pages of the sports section as filler between advertisements ran a paragraph noting the appearance of a former great at a groundbreaking ceremony across the street from the Yankee ballpark.
"Hey, take a look at this. The front office has plans for a construction project."
"That's real news. They probably also plan to sell hot dogs and peanuts at their games."
"But they've been denying any expansion of their stadium. How can they be not expanding and breaking ground at the same time?"
"Maybe it's plain ol' Yankee engenuity." Swishman was spreading out the other sections of the paper looking for the comics which I had cleverly kept attached to the sports section. "It looks like the Yankees have bigger plans. It sez here 'alleged that officials from the mayor's office conspiahed to assess a lower tax burden on the Yankee arganization and arrange for permits, eminent domain grants, and a variety of sweetheart deals.'" He read it again then looked up at my shock-struck face with a great wide smile. "It looks like the fix is in."
At the next newsstand I could locate, I picked up a paper originating from where the Yankees major league team was headquartered. I unfolded the paper to a story on a Yankee community action program that brought underprivileged kids into games. The society pages ran a profile on a top Yankee exec focusing on his contribution to the community through his volunteer efforts. Both stories made it clear that without the support of the Yankee organization good work couldn't continue. The sports section noted that gate receipts indicated interest in baseball peaked when the Yankees were the premiere team in the league. The print barrage didn't stop there. A special supplement on the leading industries within the city featured articles on several top businessmen and curiously, they all credited athletics and in several cases, specifically baseball, as an important force in setting their lives upon a straight path. Even I got the message. The moral fabric of the society depended on athletics such as baseball and baseball depended on the Yankees to stay vital.
I continued to purchase the hometown paper of the Yankees and over the course of many issues the story and accusations were revealed and confronted. The charges and rebuttals were spaced over a series of dailies so that only a careful student of history could piece together the total involvement. The front office continued to state that they were not at liberty to discuss specific charges that were confidential to both parties but they categorically denied all wrong-doing.
In response to the clubhouse scuttlebutt, management reprinted and distributed an editorial gathered from a major newspaper. The column cited the many programs started by the Yankees calling particular attention to its current decency campaign. It ended with the following: "If the Yankees aren't going to do it, then who is? We are all fortunate that they take the responsibility for our freedom. The surest way to lose our hard won liberty is to let the moral value of the nation be undermined. The battle that the Yankees are waging is of such urgency that they are justified in their all-out, result-oriented attitude. While we can not condone all their excesses, far be it from us to risk criticism that may draw vital energy away from the task at hand. We wish the Yankees Godspeed in their efforts."
Opinions circulated around the clubhouse. Most were similar to our managers. "Seems to me there's two camps. There's those that like the Yankees. And there's those that don't like us and want to see us beaten down. There's those that have moral fiber and walk outside in the sun and there's those degenerates creeping in the shadows."
As in all wars, casualties were inevitable. The first to fall on our team was Caisson, the second baseman the team had been trying to replace. About the time the allegations against the team were beginning to gain momentum in other cities, the Yankee organization entertained well-attended press conferences in which individuals from several of their teams were singled out for suspension because of their failure to meet the Yankee's new guidelines for proper behavior. The spokesman for the organization said that this action should give notice that the Yankees are standing firm in their committment to their cause despite the pressures being mounted against them. The Yankee organization then issued a challenge to the other clubs to follow with there own reforms. Their actions attempted to grab the high ground against their opposition. Indeed, by continually redefining the focus of the reports their ongoing scandal became old news.
By the end of the season, the Yankees were trumpeting the success of their program in influencing the overall morality of the nation. Their research showed that the country had become more "liveable" through their efforts. When someone asked "What research?", the Yankees answered steadfastly maintaining that statistics don't lie. Baseball, they said, is a game of statistics and a .300 hitter is a .300 hitter. It was difficult to unlock such an argument.
It was probably only incidental that the organization was enjoying the biggest gate in its history and was able to command a substantial price for advertising time. Their health and robustness were signs that their efforts were rewarded. It would have been nice if I had felt as hearty. Not that my game had suffered, but nagging irritations continued to plague me. Like for instance the kid I'd met and the trouble I had obtaining complimentary tickets for him.
I'd first come across the kid before one of our games. I was making my way from the parking lot to the locker room. Supposedly, we were to move briskly whenever we were representing the club, not to avoid autographs or public contact, but to appear as though we were men on the move with important work to be accomplished. As usual, I was slumping across the asphault looking so detached it could not be suspected I was headed in any particular direction, let alone remotely connected to the baseball club. The kid was hopping a ball off the stadium wall just below a sign that said "No Ball Playing". The steady careening of the ball can slip a young mind out of his surroundings and into games he never played and games he never will play. I intercepted the ball as I walked through his line of fielding and shot a grounder back at him as I continued to walk. He was no stranger to the subtleties of playing the angles on the wall and he glanced a pop-up into my still traveling hands. One of the coaches had come up behind me and he let me know I was suppose to act like a professional. Though I was wearing loafers, I did the old untied-shoelace routine until he passed. I watched the kid some more. If the wall wasn't his only buddy, he was wasting a mighty sorrowful expression.
"You gonna watch the game today?"
He looked up but not at me. "No, I be playing catch."
"You don't like our team?"
He wasn't answering anything that seemed meaningless.
"If you want to see the game, tell the ticket lady that Rap Gloverman has left a ticket for you."
The kid was being run off by security the next time I saw him several games later.
"You must have some powerful arm there. They think you're going to knock down the wall."
Security had caught up to him and he turned on them to say, "See, I told ya. Your harassing me and I'd like a lil respect."
Security eyed him but spoke at me, "Is he with you? Tell him to take his ball somewhere else."
When they left us alone I asked him if he'd been attending our games.
"You only left me one ticket."
"I'll leave two," as I was speaking, it occurred to me he meant I had left a ticket to only one game, "maybe your father would like to take you."
He stayed transfixed in his serious stare.
"Your father like baseball?"
"I suppose so. I ain't seen him for a while."
I was silent. It was not a line of conversation I had expected nor one I wished to pursue.
"After he hept build the stadium, he couldn't find no mo' work and he left my ma and me."
"Well, you keep checking the box-office."
I didn't see him after that but then again, I didn't look as hard as I might have. I tried to make believe he was up there in the seats above third with his mom enjoying a hot dog and some Cracker Jacks. If he was, I never saw him. It was more convenient to think that he was up in the stands watching me play in the complimentary seat I had arranged than it was actually looking at unkempt hair or listening to his sullen voice. By not encountering him I made sure my concern could stay with free tickets.
Actually, complimentary did not extend all the way to its full implications. The public relations lady, whose name was coincidentally remarkably similar to the league president, just how much coincidence I never discovered, sometimes acted as though I was getting a seat for Arnold Rothstein. "You know you're not doing the boy any favors. All your doing is encouraging dependency. He'll end up being on the dole the rest of his life. He should be learning to work for what he gets and how to stand on his own feet."
"Maybe you could get him a job selling concessions," I offered, although I didn't really want to get involved in the solution process.
"You know that's not in my duties. Besides, we like to hire kids from outside the immediate community so we can establish relationships that are more reciprocal." She brought her voice to bear on the point, "And our complimentary tickets are given out to those guests with the means for payment but who the Yankees want to entertain."
That pretty well summed up the organization's position on free stuff. If you couldn't afford it, then you weren't supposed to get it.
Talk got back to the team and our captain either took it upon himself or was designated to find out why I was putting the team's generosity to the snapping point.
"Gloverman, I don't know why you can't wear a uniform like everyone else. You look a mess." Marshal Rankles, our captain, was looking to give me another fine for slovenly appearance. Not that I didn't try to look all buttoned up but as soon as I stepped on the field my buttons would pop and my shirt untuck.
"I don't care how good you think you are if you don't look like a professional, I don't want you playing on this team."
"I wash, I iron, I even pressed my glove. I shined my hat. Filed my cleats with clean tools. I'm working on it and I think I've come a long way from when I first joined the club. Just a little more patience and I'll be looking like the rest of the team." My face was as straight as a an umpire's mug when he calls a strike that only Paul Bunyon could reach.
I didn't let on that I shared any of the required affections for the uniform. I didn't tell Rankles that I too felt like one of the commissioned. Not because I didn't, but because I didn't want to make anything too easy for him. His leverage was that he wore captain's cleats, mine was that I could kick dirt on his shoes and the normal patriotic appeals could not make me wipe them clean. I pilfered some due deference to claim some dignity that I could not have accorded myself otherwise. It was much like the argument game played between ump and manager. Umps don't change their calls. That's why their umps. But managers roar in their cages to let everyone know who those steel bars protect. If they influence a subsequent judgement along the way, well that's not a bad thing. So I toyed with the captain neither out of disrespect for the uniform or for his person but because it made me feel kind of cheery in an ornery sort of way. In some quarters that was what the Yankee spirit was all about. Even then, I wasn't stupid enough to believe that those notions could be carried along with my glove onto the field or for that matter onto every other aspect of my relations with the team. I preferred to keep them in my pocket and draw them out only at certain times like my dealings with the captain.
Marshal was elected by the team to be captain probably on the strength of his campaign speech. "You all know where I stand. I'm in the lineup everyday."
We did all know where he stood, in tight at the plate, daring a pitcher to reclaim his territory. And if the pitcher let him dig in, he could muscle a ball right out of the park with his big forearms. So he became captain.
After the election the manager patted Rankles on the back and left the clubhouse. Rankles took control to a burst of applause and cheers that followed him into his acceptance speech. "Alright team, I want everyone looking tough and playing tough because if you don't kick butt, then I'm going to kick your butt." The team hooted out its approval. "My first act will be to increase the fine for not hustling. I don't want to see no tail-dragging. This is a team that's going all the way. And if you can't keep up, then you're going to be left behind." More cheers and hoots.
"If we take the team bus we'll be lucky to get out of the parking lot," I thought I'd add a bit of levity to the solemnity of the occasion.
Everyone laughed, for a while.
"Maybe you could tell someone about the bus?" Someone always takes a joke too far.
Rankles was well aware that protesting a call can lead to being thrown out of the game. "Look, the bus is not my job. That's someone elses job. I play baseball, that's the job I do."
He wasn't sizing up the situation all that different from a fair number of the players I'd known. A guy learns right away that he can't be covering all the bags at once, he's got to take his position and hope that no base will be left open because someone else failed to stay in the play. I had thought about it and thought about it and come across a myriad of players with a myriad of feelings and views. Most, I reckoned, never gave the front office two shakes of a sign. They claimed nothing from them and expected the same in return. If a ball came in hard and in tight, they'd pick themselves up and start to dusting. No whining. No words. No looks. They'd pat the dirt off and set themselves right where they were before and not give a squirm or a flinch as they held their breath for the next pitch.
Rankles had a suggestion, "Those kinds of things are for our player rep to handle. I play ball and that's more than enough for me." With that he left the clubhouse followed by about a half of the team. The bounce seemed to go out of the complaint along with him. An invaluable asset to the team destined to rise in the organization, he had been the best choice to broach the subject with the front office. He could bargain for us with authority because he was in a pre-eminent position. Perhaps however, that only meant he had the most to lose.
The player rep put forth his suggestion, "Maybe the organization has a good reason for having us use the bus." Player representatives are chosen in various manners depending on the team. On a Yankee team the player rep was elected based usually on who was the most acceptable to both management and players. This usually meant the office was held by a guy who wouldn't be throwing any wild pitches at anyone. "Or maybe they just don't know how bad it is. They have no reason to see us miserable." The speaker was a likeable guy who played it straight so he thought everyone else did. He never heard the grumblings when he saved a tie-breaking base hit that sent our team into extra innings on a miserably humid night. "I believe in the Yankee tradition."
Ballplayers have canine loyalty, they never bite the hand that feeds them. So most agreed with him. He had me convinced although it didn't take much coaxing. All the history I'd been taught and the beliefs of the other players pointed to the bus as an aberration, pointed away from what my own eyes witnessed. Besides, the bus belonged to this class of ball and I wasn't going to be around that long and where I was going the seats were crushed velvet, the service to please any whims, and the ride soft as sleep.
Someone had what he thought was a capitol idea, "I suggest we get up a petition or something to present to the front office."
The players were not really too keen about the petition notion. It was argued that if our complaint was valid, then whether it was filed by one person or a million and one it would be worth looking into. No player on the way up wants to sign his name to any petition that singled him out as a trouble-maker, even if he was being singled out in multiples. Trouble-makers are usually shown the door and that door is usually a trap door leading back down to from where they've come. It crossed my mind that we may have been in the grips of an undue exaggeration as to our importance. After all, the first question any team exec asks a ballplayer who comes up with an idea about anything is, "Who put this thought in your mind?"
I was in the dugout when the player rep came parading in. "I got it. No more smoking, gagging, fume-choking bus. We're going to be riding in the lap of luxury."
Not another team would have to spend a year on a slow bus leading to Miseryville.
"Just like that? They're going to give us another bus?"
"It'll be ready by spring next year. And that's not all. They've got construction underway for a shopping and sports complex that's going in across from the Yankee's major stadium and to which all organization personnel are eligible for family discounts. And we don't have to worry about further problems like the bus. From now on we don't have to report them. They'll take care of everything. To show their good faith they said we don't have to elect a player rep anymore." No complaints registered there. We didn't need a player rep since they agreed to upgrade our bus. Who needed a player rep with such an accommodating club?
While most of the player's tried to figure how they were going to make use of the discounts since we were not stationed where we could make the purchases, I was haunted by the spectre of Buck Blazes rising at our first organization meeting. I heard him pointing his questions and saying something's not right in what's happening to the Lees and Garcias. And I had seen and spoken to the kid outside the stadium and try as I might to deny his existence, I knew he was always lurking outside the park. It seemed absurd and without rationality but I was getting the thinking that they had somehow purchased the bus for us.
I wanted to sit down, rest my head in my hands, and let the rattling stop in my skull. I was dazed. I felt like a bat boy conscientiously running onto the field trying to pick up the bat, then getting blind-sided by what would have been the winning run. But I knew I'd never get the chance to sort it out while we were arming and readying ourselves for the next game.
The coach was in the dugout long before any player and he was breaking up any horseplay and moving everyone onto the field for warm-ups. He wanted the game and he wanted it bad. He was wearing his soul on his face and his face was spleen red with a fearful animal hate.
It was maintained by everyone in the organization that our opponents walked in evil cleats. They played catch with the devil.
Those on the other side seemed harmless enough. They didn't seem all that different from us. According to the coach, this was part and parcel of their insidiousness. The more amiable they were, the more dangerous they became and the more vigilant we had to become. The coach cautioned us, "We've got files on them. I can't reveal all the particulars because their confidential to the team but suffice it to say there's plenty of evidence."
The manager had moved out to the mound making sure Swishman was ready. The rotation had been juggled weeks before in anticipation of the game to make sure our ace would be starting.
Early in the game their pitcher brushed back one of our guys and our manager was out in the ump's face. Two batter's later a pitch hit one of us and several guys were climbing out of the dugout led by the manager. During our half of the inning in the field, the manager was pacing the dugout. Their side went down in order and when we came back to the bench, the coach was all over Swishman.
"But I can get these guys."
"I've told you what I want and you're playing for me so do it. If you don't have the guts to deliver, I'll get somebody who can, understand? Now you handle them like I said and I'll keep this out of your team profile."
Swishman said nothing. He took a seat at the end of the bench. I sat wondering what the team profile was and what mine looked like. We again took the field and again they went down in order.
"Listen Swish, you can't do the job. Hit the showers, Salutore will be going in for you."
"Because I won't stick it in their ear."
"Because I don't think you've got what it takes to pitch for me. Because you won't protect your teammates and the Yankees don't carry players who don't have the courage to stand up for them. You're an embarrassment to the uniform. You're an embarrassment to the Yankees."
The Swishman looked at him for a moment then said, "I'm not a Yankee, I'm a ballplayer." Then he went to the showers.
The dugout sucked air. Tongues and ears that savored curses twinged in revulsion. Yet few were surprised. Swishman was like a corked bat, very effective, but telltale when the wood was chipped away. A player might pose as a Yankee, but sooner or later his true colors wore through the uniform. Swishman was different and no one wearing the uniform wanted anyone peeking under their hat looking for like differences.
But to me the differences were what I thought the Yankees had been about. I knew Swishman and he was as fine a player as I'd ever teamed with. He had always been straight throwing. Never gave it less than his best pitch. And Blazes. I'd seen what no uniform could either disguise nor create. Maybe I didn't know what it meant to be a Yankee anymore. Maybe I never knew or wanted to know. It had been easier to pick up the ball in a bad attempt at a play than it was to have the savvy to let it take its due course foul. I had wanted to make the play. To give glory to the games. To give glory to my position. And to give glory to myself.
The doubts snaked their way behind my eyes and struck at what I had been once so certain of. If what I thought was a Yankee was not, then what I thought a Yankee was, might also be untrue.
When the next season rolled around, my new uniform was tailored as well as any I'd worn. Those former Yankees who I would see around the league in other uniforms likewise wore their numbers boldly across their backs. Standing in the parade line before the opening game, I placed the cap over my heart as the music came over the loudspeaker. I looked around at the other ballplayers on my team, some from the previous year's team and all who I had come to regard warmly and none of whom were Yankees.
It was longer before I could stand off of the line, away from the music, and free of a uniform.