John D. MacDonald

A Young Man’s Game

He came awake in the first gray of morning, and saw the palm tops above the mist, coming toward the car and sliding by the window on his side. He rubbed a hand across his face and massaged the back of his neck with big fingers, shifting in the seat and feeling the tingle of circulation along a half-numbed leg, Madge sat small and alert on her cushion, hands tight on the wheel, chin uplifted, as she watched the road ahead where the car lights yellowed the mist.

“Good sleep, honey?” she asked, not taking her eyes from the road ahead.

“I don’t know yet. How far we get?”

“Into Florida. We ought to be there in time for lunch.”

He stretched in a massive way, hearing the muscles of his right shoulder pop, yawned wide, growled as he yawned. With his left arm still outstretched, he knuckled the back of her fair head lightly.

“Hey!” she said.

“Lots of years, kid. Lots of trips. Lots of blubber to work off every spring.”

“Not so much this year, Wally,” she said defensively. “Gosh, not like last year.”

“About twelve pounds will do it,” he agreed.

She gave him a quick glance. “Don’t try to do it too fast”

“Want me to drive now?”

“Wait until you’re all waked up. I’m not really tired yet,”

Usually they managed better, bringing the car down, but this year there had been a hitch in turning the reins of the business over to Thomasson. The accountants wanted to install a new system and Wally Prows wanted to wait and see how it worked out. He hadn’t wanted to show up late. Every year, it was just that much harder to get into shape — without complicating matters by losing the first few days. He told Madge he could fly down and then she could bring the car on down, taking her time, but he saw the sharp disappointment in her eyes even as she agreed. So they worked it out, figuring that if they took turns driving, they could make it — just make it. He hoped it would be warm. Heat would make it easier to melt off the winter fat.

Once the sun cut the mist, they began to make better time. He took the wheel and Madge sat beside him, legs pulled up under her. Her head sagged against his shoulder and she slept.

At eleven-thirty, when they were a few miles out of town, he awakened her gently. She patted her hair and fixed her lipstick. He went out of his way to drive by the field. He saw that the stands had been enlarged and repainted. The turf on the field looked new and good. Three men in heavy gray sweat suits were jogging across the outfield grass. The staff would have been in town for a week, getting things lined up, sorting equipment making up training schedules. The trainer would have the whirlpools set up and the tables and the hot lamps. As he drove slowly by it seemed to him that he could detect the familiar locker room smell-socks and sweat and liniments and astringents and oiled feather.

It was a good town, a good place to train. He drove on out to the beach. Old Man Giffert was in the rental office. Mrs. Giffert came trotting in moments later.

“By golly,” Giffert said. “By golly — Wally Prews. And how yon, Miz Prews? It’s sure fine to see you folks again. Now the baseball’s started for sure. We got you in the same cabaña again. Number seven. Anything you need, just anything at all, you just holler. By golly, Wally, you sure got a-holt of one in that last Cleveland game. By golly, you put it out of the park. Pinch-hit home run. Bet it felt real fine.”

“It felt fine, Dan. We’ll go get settled in. It’s good to be back.”

He unloaded the car, and while Madge unpacked, he called Lew at the hotel.

“Lew? This is Wally. Yeah, just got in. What do you mean, shape? I’m a fat old man. Look, we got to get some lunch. Is Alice down yet? Fine. Suppose we stop around later. See you.”

He hung up, aware of Madge standing motionless by the dresser, some of his shirts in her hand, watching him.

“All right,” he said, too harshly. “He sounded okay. What’s he supposed to do? Run over here and kiss me?”

“Please, Wally.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He walked out onto the beach. There had been some erosion. The beach wasn’t as large as before. But the sand was clean and white. He snapped his cigarette away. When she came out and said she was ready, they went and ate at the beach restaurant they liked.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” he told her gently.

“I guess he just scares me, honey. He didn’t used to. But you know how he is. Oh, he’s nice enough, I guess — but people mean absolutely nothing to him.”

“It has to be that way. He’s an old man. Suppose he gets sentimental. Then he starts fielding teams full of crocks like me and every game is old-timer’s day. He’d give me his shirt, his car and his bank account if he thought I needed it. But he sees me dogging it and he yanks me out like he never saw me before. But I’m okay this year. He’s got too many kids. He needs balance. I’m okay this year.”

“Of course, you are, dear.”

And something about the way she said it brought back some of the dull anger. He forced it away and smiled at her. “You going to eat this place clean out of shrimp again this year?”

“Mmmm,” she said. “Bushels and tons.”

He watched her as she scanned the menu. The booth light touched the gray streak over her ear. Eighteen years in organized ball. Seventeen years married. A long time. So that the words said do not mean much. The real meanings all come clear behind the words.

The front office had sent along the contract in triplicate, in mid-December. The typed figure shocked and angered him. They had given him the maximum cut allowable, the full twenty-five per cent. He’d called Lew at his Texas place ten minutes after he ripped open the impressive envelope.

“Well, Wally, you got to look at it this way. That last-year figure, that was figured on a regular. Then you got that slump, and that Whitlock, he come up so good and strong, and that Kimberland was hitting, and so you were — well, reserved for half the season. Then they make out the budget and—”

“Nuts, Lew. This isn’t a salary. It’s more like a pension. I slumped and I came back. I pinch-hit a three-seventeen for you. I do a clown act on only two flies all year. I won’t sign this damn thing.”

“Well, it’s pretty tough, Wally. You don’t sit where I sit. Before television, they never got so cautious. Well, you sit tight. Let me see what I can do. But I don’t think I can do much.”

Two weeks later, another set of contracts was mailed to him. Five per cent of the cut had been restored. He had held out for a month, not communicating with them in any way. That month had been hell. Until Madge had said, “Dear, I’m getting terribly tired of living with a bear. And it’s all pride, you know. Not the money. We can get along. You want to play ball. You’re afraid they’ll let you go on waiver. Just sign, dear. Then you can prove they’re wrong.”

It made sense. He felt a great weight lift off him when he dropped the signed contracts in the mail. And that was it — now. Prove they were wrong. Get out with the kids. Get the timing working. Get the fat off. Get that jump on the ball every time.

Madge drove him out and left him off the next morning. The town people had put new name signs on the lockers of the regulars. His name had been gaudily, lovingly printed and he had to grin at it.

Pilko, the squat, hairy catcher, patted him smartly across the pale winter softness of his waistline and said, “Old butterball. Old mushmellow.”

“Still standing in your hole, Pilk?”

Pilko strained to stand on tiptoe. “Say, Wally, that kid of mine. The boy. Thirteen, he is. And already an inch taller than his old man. A monster, he’ll be.”

The kids up for their seasonal hack at the big time used the unnamed lockers and made as if they were not the least bit impressed with the large names around them. It was always that way. Always nonchalant, and most of them too smart to grandstand.

Wally Prews bundled himself up. He knew that Christy wouldn’t bother him, that Christy would let him pace himself, lean the body down, harden the hands, toughen the legs, build up the wind. And, as always, when he started to jog around the outfield, he felt thick, middle-aged, sweaty and ridiculous. A bulky, overgrown child playing a solitary game with the grimness of all children who pretend.

Pilko ran with him for a time. On the far side of the field, one of the coaches was putting the kids through organized calisthenics. Sweat ran into Wally’s eyes, making them sting. At the end of the session, one of Christy’s men rubbed him down expertly. He was two pounds lighter. Christy, himself, took care of the threat of a blister on the side of his right heel.

Every night at the cabaña, he tumbled into the deepest of sleeps. At first, he was waking up stiff and sore, taking minutes to work his way out of bed. Then, that began to case off. At the end of ten days, he was down to one-ninety, where he belonged, and the sun no longer reddened his brown neck.

Yet lie knew he was not as relaxed as during other years. There was a tension in him that erupted into anger too easily and too often. He took his turn in the batting cage after batting-tee practice. A new kid was throwing them in. Wally measured his distance from the plate with his bat, planted his feet in his wide, solid stance, bat cocked. He hit two steaming line drives and then a pop-up and then two fouls before he got hold of one in the sweetly remembered way and dumped it out where he wanted it. The kid had been throwing with an easy rhythm. On the next pitch, he made a cute little hesitation. Wally didn’t bother to swing. He walked four steps toward the mound and said, “Okay, you pitched a no-hitter. We won thirty to nothing. Now relax and throw.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Prews,” the kid said.

The formality of the address shocked Wally. He went back and got hold of several more before Quinn motioned him out. He jogged out through the hole between first and second and took right field, picking up the glove Whitlock had tossed aside as he came in, and feeling an unreasonable annoyance with Whitlock for not holding the glove, tossing it to him as they jogged past one another.

Annoyance kept him full of adrenalin, and when Whitlock hit a sharp line drive into short right, Wally charged it hard, snapped it off the bounce and practiced a peg to the plate. The pitcher cut it off, but not before Wally saw, with satisfaction, that it was straight, true and fast.

When they played the first exhibition game, splitting up into two teams and opening the stands to the public, Wally was pleased by the hand he got. He got two at bat before relinquishing his position to Kimberland. He struck out once and doubled once, driving in a man from first, a new man who ran as if his pants were on fire.

Even then, he couldn’t shake off the constant irritation, and he told himself that he was sore because he was being purchased at cut rates this year. It certainly wasn’t because he could see that both Kimberland and Whitlock were just as hot as during the last half of the previous season.

The first scheduled exhibition was with the Giants from the other league. Wally started in right. He played three innings but only got one at bat because it was Hearn throwing and he was rough. In his one time at bat, he hit the second ball pitched into a corner for a stand-up double and died there. He knew he had looked good in the field. He threw out Mays when Mays tried to stretch a single into a double. He made a good, long, running catch of a ball that some new kid got a fat piece of, and drew applause on the catch.

But after he came out, he sat sour on the bench, big shoe against the Coke machine, watching without any stir of interest. He knew that Madge was aware of his sourness, and he had seen the little ways in which she had tried to raise his spirits. He tried to respond, and knew his laughter was leaden.

At the end of one day, as he was combing his shower-wet hair over the fifty-cent bald spot, Lew came up behind him and said, “You and Madge, you two going to be home later on?”

“Sure, Lew. Stop on over. Bring Alice.”

“Just me. She’s got something on.”

Wally didn’t like the expression on Lew’s face. It was too elaborately casual. He made himself smile. “Come on over any time. We’ll be there.”

Lew came just after dusk. He stood by the screen door and listened to the sound of the Gulf and said, “I stayed on the beach one year. Well, I like to died for not sleeping. Too damn noisy.”

“How about a drink, Lew?” Madge asked him.

Lew folded his lean old body into a chair. “Now, if you got a cold brew...”

When they were all seated, Lew, looking peculiarly shy, said, “Well, I thought you ought to have a chance to put your two cents in this tiling, Madge. Wally’s been playing for me a long time.”

“Eight seasons, Lew,” Madge said quietly. “This will be the ninth.”

“Or it won’t be the ninth,” Wally heard himself say.

“Well, that opens it up,” Lew said, a little sharpness in his voice. “I been on the phone a lot. Trading talk. I’ll keep the other club out of this. Just say this much. They haven’t finished better than fifth in the last four years. They got outfield weakness and power weakness. And they got a kid we want where we’re shaky, over there on third. I think maybe we use you for bait and they bite, Wally.”

“Then go ahead. Don’t come around apologizing in advance.”

“You’ve been one damn miserable man ever since you showed up here, Prews,” Lew said.

“I’ve been playing good ball.”

“I know that. I didn’t expect that.”

Wally stared at him. “That’s a hell of a funny thing to say!”

“I don’t see how it is. Now, take last year. You were going good. Then you got so hot about whether or not you’d show up good enough to get in another year as a regular that you slumped off. Now, you come down here with a big chip on your shoulder and go around biting on people because already you’re wondering about next year. Be honest, Wally Prews. Talk up. Aren’t you think-on next year?”

Wally looked down at his big hands. “Maybe I am, Lew,” he said.

“You’ve got a nice business of your own. You’ve had a lot of years of ball. You were never a sour guy. What’s your trouble now, Wally?”

Wally glanced at Madge and then looked down again. He wanted to put his finger on the trouble. He said the only tiling he could think of. “It... it just doesn’t seem to be any fun any more, Lew.”

“I figured that. You always played hard. You were always a tough competitor. Now you’re fighting yourself and me. You keep it up and you’re going to slump worse than last year. Wally, why don’t you make this the last year? Only you and me and Madge has to know it. Stop fighting yourself. You do that and I won’t trade you. Maybe I’m a little superstitious about you. I’ve done pretty good in those eight seasons.”

Next year, he thought. Watch from the stands. No hard swing and good gutty crack, and the ball sailing high as that great crowd sound came; no running hard for first and then seeing it go and slowing to that jog trot, taking off the cap after you round third. But, also, none of that drawn-down, sick weariness during the hot tag end of the season; none of the forcing of muscles which have lost resilience. And Madge would not have to face the brittle, feline politeness of the other baseball wives. It would be down in the record book and all over.

He looked over at Madge. Her eyes were steady. Her expression told him nothing. “It’s up to you, Wally,” she said quietly.

“But how do you feel?”

“I want what you want. If it isn’t any fun any more...” She shrugged.

He looked at Lew and then back at Madge. “This will be the last season. Lew,” he said. And he saw the gladness in Madge’s eyes, quickly masked.

Lew got up and cuffed him on the shoulder. “Okay, Wally. So now I’m fresh out of bait and we don’t get that fast feller on third the way I wanted.”

They heard him drive away. “Let’s take a walk down the beach, honey,” Wally said.

They walked on the hard sand where the tide had gone out. The last year. It was funny how thinking about it took weights off him. He held her hand as they walked. The last year in ball. The word had been given. He did not want to change it. And he had a feeling that he would be hot, and’ stay hot — substituting the ball sense and experience of eighteen years for Whitlock’s younger legs, Kimberland’s powerful swing. And no slump this year, because it was the last, with everything on the line.

He grunted and it was a sound that was half laugh, half pain.

“Darling?” she said.

“That old carp. That scavenger. All his talk about superstition. Don’t you get it? He gets a good year out of me, maybe the best yet if I can keep lucky. Then next year, either Whitlock or Kimberland goes into my slot.”

She stopped there, turned to face him. “But, Wally, does that mean you won’t...”

He took her by the shoulders and turned her a little so that the moonlight was more clearly against her face. There was a feeling of rest, of peace, within him. And love for her.

“This is a fat old man playing his last year, Madge. And it might even be fun again, like they tell you it should be. It’s a game, isn’t it?”

She smiled in moonlight. “I guess I better be kissed.”

So he did, and they walked back to the cabaña through the wave sounds, his big arm around her, their moonlight shadows sharp and clear on the white Florida sand.

Content

John D. MacDonald
A Young Man’s Game