As the game moved into the late innings, both teams struggled to take advantage of good fortune. The Southsiders failed to score in the fifth even after the black hurler walked the leadoff man. The Northsiders rapped into a double play with the bases loaded to end the top of the sixth.
The game itself was tight, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The blacks carried on about bride Dwyer. “Didn’t she know her man’s secret before she felt what he was packing?” “Judge shoulda took mercy on the poor woman.” “She’ll never be the same.” Their second baseman worked his mouth relentless. It changed how Karel saw an infielder in the ready position, how the man let his arm dangle crudely between his thighs. Down the Southside dugout, faces lengthened as the ballplayers watched and heard what the Northsiders jibed them with. “No joke she sued. Sore as she’d be, who’d blame her?” That second baseman jawing. Fowler was his name, a small light-skinned man. Karel wished the man would stop talking. Jimmie Collins, a skinny man with jug ears who managed the Southside team, rose to the lip of the dugout and shouted, “Shut up now about that. We’ve heard plenty.” It only made things worse. “What’s that, Jim?” Fowler asked. “Now, she wasn’t your daughter, was she? That’d be an awful shame.”
The Southsiders would have to win the game. That was the only way about it.
They went up swinging for homers. They crashed into second base as hard as they could. They blistered the knuckles of the blacks with inside fastballs. But the blacks could play this game too and give as good as they got. They could blister a white’s knuckles if they wanted, out there afield in Rourke Park, this game their yearly chance to bean a white in the back, or come in sliding with spikes high and get away with the aggression. When Jap went hard into second on a steal attempt and nearly spiked Fowler, Fowler tried to land a punch on Jap, but the ump wouldn’t have it. “That’s the end of it,” the ump warned, a finger up in Fowler’s face. “I’ll call the game off if the rough stuff don’t stop.”
Jap was nearly forty. He’d played a dozen seasons in the minors and was dropping back now, after he’d been cut from a B league team that summer. He was small and had dark, bushy eyebrows, a swollen pug nose that made him look like a fighter. He wouldn’t ease up. The Northsiders wouldn’t either. That’s why everyone prized this tradition the whole year over. It was their one chance. It was sanctioned. Whatever violence came.
It wasn’t until the eighth that the whites broke through. Bill Sutez was on third after a double and an error when Ducky brought him home with a sacrifice fly to left. The score was 3–2 in favor of the Southside going into the final frame. “We’re almost there,” Karel said. They didn’t dare relax as the Southside took the field. They would shut up those boys from the Northside. They’d earned this.
Still, as the first batter struck out on four pitches and the second batter popped to third, you couldn’t blame any of those Southsiders if they eased up in the field. Only that Northside second baseman stood in their way.
Fowler worked his jaw as he stepped in the box left-handed. He was short and scrawny, not much bigger than Alfred, so the Southside outfielders snuck closer to urge on their pitcher, Ralph Snyder. Ralph looked like he should have been working a broom in a sawmill instead of trying to get the last out in a game like this. Unremarkable in his uniform, thin and grubby, his soiled jersey flagged out over his belt in back. Tobacco juice dripped off his chin as he leaned in for the sign Ducky Sutez put down. But Ralph had value—a sidearm lefty who threw junk and wasn’t afraid of anyone. He went right after the Northsider, throwing a fastball for strike one, then a curve for strike two. Even as Fowler took the first two offerings, he still ran his mouth. The next pitch from Ralph was hard, up and in, to knock Fowler off the plate and change his eyes, and was followed by a breaking ball down and away in the dirt. Fowler didn’t flinch. “Don’t waste nothing on me. Bring it here,” he said, pointing to the middle of the plate with his bat. With the count even, Ralph would come back over the plate. Everyone knew this. Fowler didn’t have much power, but he was fast. Walking him was out of the question.
Ralph didn’t exactly look fresh out there on the mound, but he had enough left to pound three more fastballs on the outside half that Fowler could only spoil. All Fowler could do was hold the count even. Out in the bowl beyond the outfield fence, all the black folks cheered him on. He was their only hope, that Fowler. He had to keep the game going. It didn’t look like he had much chance, but he spit into his hands and stepped back in anyway. He choked up on the bat and jumped on the next pitch, a fastball that straightened out on Ralph and stayed up. Fowler got into it. This the only time he stopped talking, stumbling out of the box, head down, just running, not even seeing as the ball rocketed over Bill Sutez into the right field corner. They’d played him to hit the other way, not believing he could pull a fastball, but that was exactly what he did. He cranked it into the corner. He was off to the races.
Karel jumped to the top step of the dugout—they all did—to see the ball skip to the fence and carom into foul ground. Fowler was already around first, chugging to second, running hard, headed for third the whole way. He should stop at third. But the way this guy swaggered, the way he talked, Karel knew the play wouldn’t end until Fowler scored or was put out. And the ball was stuck in the corner. Bill Sutez was botching the play. By the time Bill found the ball he’d overrun it, and then fumbled it, and then launched wildly to the infield. It was all Jap Marceau could do to knock the ball down as Fowler turned third. The ball squiggled from Jap, spinning in the dirt not far away, but far enough. Fowler would tie the game.
Everyone saw what happened next. How Ducky, catcher’s mask at his side, prowled up the line from home plate. There was no throw coming, but Ducky blocked the plate anyway. As Fowler started to strut, knowing he’d score, Ducky put a shoulder into him. Fowler didn’t see it coming. Ducky dropped him to the chalk. The guy’s legs still kicking as he hit the ground. By then Jap had the ball raised to his ear and let fly. Ducky took the honors himself and tagged Fowler, the black, as he still lay there in the dirt.
“Ducky did that on purpose, didn’t he?” Jimmy said. “Jeez. I’d say he did.”
They all looked to the ump for a ruling, the air gone from the field. He took his time giving one, thinking things through as Fowler turned in the dust to see. The umpire squeezed a fist near his chest. Fowler was out. It was over.