“Another time they had a doubleheader. They won both games one to nothing. In both games the pitcher knocked in the run, Jerry Koosman and Don Drysdale.”
“Then—”
Slug shook his head. “All I’m saying, kid, is that these guys win by every means imaginable. By pitching, by clutch hitting, by hustling on every play. It isn’t one man.” Slug gestured down to the field, where Seaver had retired the Orioles one-two-three again and was running off the mound. “Not even him. And he’s great. He’s terrific. But the Dodgers didn’t win in ’67 or ’68 when they had him. And this year he’s still their greatest player, their only great player. Nope. Nobody’s pulling any strings behind the scenes.”
“What about Reiser?” Tommy said quietly.
Slug frowned momentarily. “Reiser? Well, no one was greater them him. No one wanted to win more than him. I don’t know, kid. What kind of power would he have? The will to win? How would that work?”
Tommy shrugged. As it happened, Tommy knew that Reiser couldn’t be the secret ace. He smelled totally normal. Unless. Tommy thought, somehow he, Reiser was clouding his Tommy’s mind. Tommy sighed. Best not start thinking like that, he thought. That way lay craziness.
“Uh-oh,” Slug said with some concern. “Looks like Seaver could be getting into trouble.”
In the ninth inning the Dodgers were up one to nothing. Seaver needed only three more outs to nail down the Dodgers’ third win. He retired lead-off man Don Buford, but then Blair got only his second hit of the Series. Frank Robinson followed with another single, putting men on first and third. “He’s tiring,” Reiser said.
Castro nodded. “Let him gut it out.”
Reiser blew out a deep breath. “I’m going to go talk to him. We can’t let this one go.”
Castro nodded, and Reiser sauntered out to the mound, taking his time. The bullpen was up and working. Given a few more minutes and Gates and McGraw would both be ready, but Reiser didn’t want to take Seaver out. You had to show faith in the youngsters. You had to let them work out of their own trouble, or else they’d never learn how to do it. He’d learned that lesson under Leo Durocher, his first Dodger manager, and it was a lesson he’d never forgotten.
When he got to the mound the look in Seaver’s eyes told him everything he wanted to know. Very few pitchers would actually ask to be taken out. Their eyes told the real story, whether they were tired, hurt, or scared. Seaver’s eyes told Reiser that he was just impatient to get back to work. Reiser nodded.
“Right,” Reiser said. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay, and I’m sure. Remember—Boog Powell is up. Jam him, jam him, and jam him again, but if the pitch catches any of the plate on the inside he’ll hit it out. If you want to waste one, waste it outside, far outside. Don’t let the big son of a bitch get his arms extended. If you do, he’ll hit it out.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the umpire hustling up to the mound to break up the conversation. He looked at Seaver, who still had that somewhat far-away look of glassy-eyed concentration. He looked at Grote, who snapped off a nod and a wink. Grote couldn’t hit much, but he was a great defensive catcher and called the finest game in the majors. He’d make sure Seaver kept his wits about him.
“Okay,” Reiser said. He turned and strolled back to the dugout as Powell approached the plate.
Boog settled into the batters box and pumped the bat twice, three times at the mound. Seaver stared into his catcher’s glove like an automaton, then went into his windup and unleashed his arm like an arbolast blasting a rock at a castle wall. The ball whistled out of his hand, fastball, inside, on the black.
Boog cut at it, unleashing his long, furious swing, and the bottom of the ball sliced off the top of the bat handle, backward, foul, whistling just over Grote’s shoulder and by the umpire’s head.
Boog half-stepped out of the box, swinging the bat loosely in his hands. “That boy sure is fast. Give me another of those.”
Grote smiled. “Okay.”
He put a single finger down, hidden between his thighs, and the runners took off from first and third. Seaver wound up and pumped another fastball to the same spot, maybe a little lower, maybe a little more inside.
Boog swung again, one of the fastest bats in the league, and caught it square, but the ball was right where Seaver wanted it to be, inside, off the black, and Powell hit it right off the handle. The bat shattered, the end helicoptering out somewhere near second, the handle still in his hand as he started to run to first.
Boog was strong. If anyone else had hit that ball it was just a little pop-up to the second baseman, infield fly and two out, but Boog was strong. Weiss, playing second, knew the ball was over his head, knew he had no chance to get it, but ran out into right field anyway, legs pumping desperately. He glanced into the outfield and saw Ron Swoboda running right at him, furiously, eyes clenched on the ball as it floated softly up and out. Swoboda was a solid two-ten, a one-time ballyhooed slugger who didn’t quite make it. He was one of the three or four rotating Dodger right fielders. He was by far the worst fielder. Weiss was a slightly less robust one-sixty-five, a utility infielder who had a very light stick but a great glove. He figured if anyone would catch it, it would have to be him, so he kept going, though Swoboda was thundering at him like an avalanche of doom and the ball was dying out there in no-man’s land beyond second base but hardly into the outfield, kind of in center but Agee was nowhere in the picture and kind of in right but there was no way Rocky was going to reach it, no way in hell, and suddenly Swoboda was diving, was springing forward parallel to the ground as the ball was coming down so softly it would barely dent the grass when it hit but it didn’t hit the grass as just an inch or two from the ground Swoboda stabbed it, reaching out back-handed, hit hard, tumbled over, and held on.
For a second there was silence in the stadium. No one seemed to believe what had happened. Blair, on third, had kept his presence of mind, and as Swoboda caught the ball and bounced along the turf, came in to score on the sacrifice fly, cursing all the way. Frank Robinson, on first, had gone half-way to second, then turned and went back when he was sure Swoboda had held onto the ball, cursing all the way. Boog, standing near first with the handle-half of the broken bat still in his right hand, stopped, and cursed.
Castro, in that one calm, utterly quiet moment, turned to Reiser and said, “Even the man with hands of stone can flash leather when you need it most,” like he was quoting from some forgotten book of the Bible.
Then, as Swoboda stood and tossed the ball back into second, Ebbets Field erupted into unbelieving applause, the fans pouring their hearts out to the man who stood in right, the front of his uniform stained with grass and dirt.
It was like Mays’ over the shoulder catch against Wertz in ’54, Reiser against Mantle in ’56 among the monuments in center, Agee’s the previous day. But, hell, those guys were fielders. They could catch the ball. Swoboda, for all his lovable determination, was a butcher. He couldn’t catch measles if you put him in a hospital ward full of spotted children.
Sign Man flashed “MIRACLE IN FLATBUSH,” the band played something, nobody was quite sure what, and the fans yelled themselves hoarse. Again. Brooks Robinson came to the plate, and had to step out because the noise still surged over Ebbets like an unanswerable tide, until Swoboda, hands planted firmly on hips, touched his cap in acknowledgment. There was one last crescendo of approval, and then the noise dulled to a muted background rumble that peaked again when Seaver dispensed with B. Robby with three pitches and the Dodgers trotted back to the dugout.
“All right,” Reiser shouted. “We’ll get it back, we’ll get it back,” but the Dodgers didn’t. They went down in the ninth, and, the score one to one, the fourth game of the 1969 World Series went into extra innings.
“You okay,” Castro said to Seaver in the dugout as he took off his warm-up jacket, and the young pitcher nodded at the tone Castro used, which was more statement than question. He went out into the field and disposed of the O’s with no problems in the tenth.
Grote led off the bottom of the tenth for the Dodgers, the seventh man in the batting order. Reiser wondered how much longer the game would go—likely longer than ten since this was the weakest part of a rather weak Dodger batting order, and the O’s had a strong, well-rested pen.
Grote hit an easy fly ball to left, and Reiser was thinking that maybe Seaver could go another inning, maybe not. Then he realized that Buford, normally a fine outfielder, was standing rooted to the spot. When he finally started after Grote’s fly-ball, he didn’t have a chance to catch it, and it dropped in front of him. The “H” in the Schaefer Beer sign on the top of the right centerfield scoreboard flashed to signify “hit,” but Reiser knew that base runner was a gift.
Grote didn’t hit very well and couldn’t run very fast but he hustled on every play, so by the time the ball got back into the infield he was standing on second base.
“Hayes,” Reiser shouted. Milton Hayes, defensive replacement and pinch runner, went out to second for Grote. “We need this run, we need it,” Reiser said tensely to Castro.
“We’ll get it.”
Weiss, hitting eighth, was intentionally walked, bringing up the pitcher’s spot in the batting order. Seaver was out in the on-deck circle.
“We’ve got to get that run,” Reiser called Seaver back.
“You could leave him in to bunt,” Castro said, but Reiser shook his head.
“We’ll create more doubt if we put in a pinch-hitter to do the bunting.” He looked down the bench. The Dodgers had a weak bench, but there was one man who might be able to do the job, and, at the same time, plant the maximum amount of doubt in the Orioles’ mind. Reiser called to Don Drysdale. “You’re hitting. I want you to get the bunt down. Ignore whatever the signs say, just get the bunt down. We need those men moved over.”
“Yes sir,” Drysdale said.
He marched out of the dugout and took his place in the batter’s box. The O’s bought in a right-hander to pitch to the righty-hitting Drysdale who promptly plopped the first pitch down the first base line. He took off as fast as he could. Ellie Hendricks sprang out from behind the plate, quicker than seemed possible for a man his size, pounced on the ball, and threw it to first. Drysdale’s arms were pumping like a sprinter’s but his feet were moving with somewhat less speed. His left arm pumped downwards just as Hendricks released the ball, and his throw hit Drysdale on the wrist. Hendricks watched unbelievingly as the ball trickled towards second base. Davy Johnson and Boog Powell scampered after it, but Hayes, clapping his hands like a madman, crossed the plate by the time Johnson picked up the ball. There was no one even covering the plate, and the Dodgers had won two to one.
Ebbets Field went insane. The words flashed on Sign Man’s cards, “AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING,” as the Dodgers celebrated in a mass dance around home plate.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15TH, 1969: GAME 5
Tommy knew this was his last chance to uncover the identity of the secret ace, to get the story of a lifetime and start himself on the pathway of fame and fortune.
The game had already begun. Koosman was pitching against McNally, Tommy thought. He didn’t really know. He was losing track of the unimportant stuff and focusing in on the big picture: the identity of the secret ace.
Slug Maligne seemed like a nice guy for a joker, and he sure knew his baseball. He didn’t believe that a secret ace was molding events for the Dodgers. But maybe he was being just a little naive. Even though he was young, Tommy figured he had a pretty well-developed detective sense, and he knew a scam when he smelled one. And he could smell one at Ebbets, all right.
Only he couldn’t pin the smell down to a specific individual. There were always too many people around. The scent itself was rather weak, but it had to stick to the clothes and belongings of whoever it came from. If he could check out the lockers on the quiet, take a whiff of the equipment, the players’ street clothes, maybe he could finally track down the ace who’d been manipulating things behind the scenes.
He’d come to believe that Slug was right about one thing, though. It probably wasn’t one of the big name players. He’d managed to eliminate some of the names conclusively. Some he wasn’t sure of. But it had to be, he figured, one of the little guys, one of the newcomers to the Dodgers. Otherwise, why hadn’t they played their cards before? Why hadn’t they built success for them and their team in the past? Swoboda, for example, or Ed Charles. Why would they wait for this year to start pulling their tricks?
He had a couple of people in mind. He waited his chance and slipped behind a laundry hamper in the corner of the trainer’s room while no one was looking; then it was a matter of quiet patience until the locker room cleared out right before game time. He had to be careful. He had to be quiet and subtle because occasionally a player would pop into the locker room to go to the bathroom or something, but Tommy had good ears. He could hear them coming down the hall and he was quick to hide. The lockers themselves presented no obstacles. They were stalls rather than real lockers, made of boards and wire fencing, totally open in the front. Some were messy enough to briefly hide in if someone came into the room.
It was nerve wracking, but Tommy thought you needed nerves to be a good reporter, and he had plenty.
He’d checked the first two guys on his list—Nathan Bright, the third string catcher, and Steve Garvey, a young third baseman the Dodgers had called up late in the season mainly for pinch-hitting duty—and found nothing out of the ordinary, except that Garvey seemed to get an inordinate amount of fan mail from girls who liked to include their photos with their autograph requests. He found himself lingering over a couple of the photos, almost tempted to pocket one or two—Garvey’d never miss them—until a sudden roar from the crowd outside wrenched his mind back to his quest.
He put the photos back. There was one more name on his list of suspects, Milt Hayes. He’d been in the majors for a couple of years, and was a fringe talent. The Dodgers mainly used him as a pinch-runner and defensive specialist in the outfield. Maybe, Tommy thought, he figured his time in the big leagues was limited. Maybe he saw the Dodgers had a chance this year and he figured to get that one championship ring in his career. Maybe—
“Can I help you, kid?”
Tommy straightened up from Hayes’ locker, a startled, guilty look on his face. He turned to see Don Drysdale staring down at him, a look of concern compounded with wonder on his stern features. Drysdale was big, raw-boned and said to be downright nasty. He must move quieter than a snake, too, otherwise he wouldn’t have caught me. He stared at Tommy with a hard glare that had intimidated more than a few major league batters.
“Uh, gee, no, Mr. Drysdale,” Tommy said, “I was, uh, I was—I have a press pass!” Tommy held it out like a magic talisman in front of him.
Drysdale nodded uncertainly. “Uh-huh. Well, kid, I suggest you get your butt back up to the press box, then, with the other pervs and drunks. I don’t think you’re going to get much of a story out of sniffing somebody’s street pants.”
If only I could tell you, Tommy said to himself. But he knew he couldn’t.
“Yes sir, yes sir,” he said, sidling past the player, who turned to keep an eye on him as he scuttled for the locker room door.
He was almost there, when suddenly it hit him.
The smell. What he’d been looking for. There was no doubt about it whatsoever. He looked at the name over the locker, and was stunned.
He was sure Drysdale thought he was nuts when he started to laugh.
Tommy heard another roar from the crowd before he could make his way up to the press box, but it had a sort of downcast, moaning note to it, so Tommy knew that whatever had happened was bad for the Dodgers.
“What happened?” he asked Slug Maligne, who was perched in his usual spot in the box.
“Where you been, Tommy?” Slug asked. “You’ve missed half the game.”
“Working on my story,” Tommy said.
Slug shook his head. “You’re missing the story, Tommy. The game is the story, kid. If you want to be a reporter you have to remember that, first and foremost. What happens down there on the field, where men give their hearts, where sometimes they leave pieces of themselves, all in search of that moment of perfection, whether it’s a throw or a catch or swing of the bat, that’s the story kid. Everything else is just lipstick on a pretty girl.”
Tommy was pretty sure he didn’t believe that. The story, to him, was a secret found and exposed, but he didn’t feel like discussing the philosophy of journalism with Slug, who wasn’t a journalist, so couldn’t be expected to understand such things. “Well,” Tommy said, “what’d I miss?”
“First, McNally hit a two-run homer for the Orioles.”
“McNally?”
“Yeah. McNally. You know, the Orioles pitcher?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Now Frank Robinson just hit another one. It’s three to nothing for the Orioles.”
Tommy wanted to shake his head and laugh, but he didn’t. That would upset Slug, and he did sort of like the guy.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “The Dodgers are going to win.”
Slug smiled at him. “I like a fan with faith in their team.”
Sure, they’re going to win, Tommy thought. The secret ace will take control any time now. He settled back to watch and wait.
As the game wore on, McNally looked invincible. Koosman found his groove and gave up nothing more. But McNally was still in total command as Cleon Jones, who hit .349 during the season but was having a poor Series, stepped up to lead-off the sixth. McNally threw one of his sharp-breaking curves and it bounced in the dirt at Jones’ feet. Play halted as the ball rolled towards the Dodger dugout, and Jones got into a discussion with the plate umpire.
“What’s going on?” Tommy asked.
“Looks like he’s claiming the pitch hit him,” Slug said.
Suddenly Pete Reiser bounced out of the dugout and showed the ball to the plate umpire. The umpire looked at, and waved Jones to first. Earl Weaver ran out of the Orioles dugout, his face already red, but turned back without a word as the umpire silently showed him the ball.
“What—” Tommy began, and Slug shrugged.
“You got me, kid. The ball probably hit Jones on the foot. Maybe it got shoe polish on it. Must have. It’d take something like that to shut Weaver up so suddenly.”
Donn Clendenon, the on-deck batter who’d been watching with interest, stepped to the plate and immediately jacked a two-run shot into the stands.
Slug shook his head, as if in disbelief. “Can you believe this shi—stuff? My God, has this been scripted?”
The next inning Al Weiss, the utility infielder who’d hit two home runs all season, hit another one out, and Tommy suddenly knew it was all over but for the question of the final score.
“It’s like they’re blessed,” Slug said.
Tommy smiled to himself. That’s one way of putting it, he thought.
The Dodgers settled it in the eighth with two runs. Like most of their scoring that season, it was a team effort with a Jones double, a Clendenon ground out, bloop singles, and ground ball errors on the part of the Orioles.
The Dodgers took the field in the ninth leading five to three. The tension was so great that the stadium was virtually silent. Frank Robinson led off the inning with a walk, and Boog Powell came up as the tying run.
It always seemed to be the way of the game. The big man came to bat with the game on the line. If Powell was feeling the pressure, he didn’t show it. He took a mighty swing at Koosman’s first offering. He hit the ball hard, but on the ground, up the middle. Weiss, ranging far to his right at second base, dove, stopped it, got up and threw to Harrelson covering the bag. Robinson barreled down and Harrelson had to leap over him as he hit the bag in a hard slide. He couldn’t make the relay throw to first. One out, Powell safe at first.
The game wasn’t over yet, but Tommy knew that, really, it was. The secret ace wouldn’t let the Dodgers lose.
Brooks Robinson, a tough hitter with decent power, lifted an easy fly to Ron Swoboda, who circled under it (Tommy held his breath, as did every Dodger fan in the stands) and caught it with a smile.
Davy Johnson followed Brooks to the plate. He was a tough hitter with decent power for a middle infielder, but he, too, managed only an easy fly to medium left field. Cleon Jones went right to the spot where the ball would come down, camped under it, caught it, and touched his knee to the ground as if in prayer. Grote ran out to the mound where the Dodgers’ senior citizen third baseman Ed “The Glider” Charles was already doing a dance of inexpressible joy, and it was as if suddenly someone threw a switch and turned the sound on and the stadium erupted with an out-pouring of cheers and screams and shouts that Brooklyn hadn’t heard in years and years. On the third base line Sign Man held up his sign and it said, “THERE ARE NO WORDS,” and, indeed, there were none.
The locker room was like some scene out of a madcap version of hell, or at least pandemonium. Half-naked players ran around whooping and shouting like little boys, spraying themselves with champagne and beer and shaving cream. The utter joy of the moment almost over-whelmed Tommy. He snuck a bottle of champagne for himself, and swallowed a bit, but it was cheap stuff, rather stinging and bitter, not at all how Tommy imagined it would taste, and he ended up surreptitiously spraying it all over the locker room.
He wanted to join in the celebration openly, but the other reporters were at least trying to keep themselves somewhat aloof from the partisan festivities. They were wandering around the room (most surreptitiously swigging beers) asking what Tommy thought were mostly inane questions of the players. Slug’s shoe polish theory was confirmed, but Tommy heard nothing else of importance.
Tommy was determined to keep the surprise to himself, not to let anyone else in on his secret. He wanted to confront Reiser with his certain knowledge, and get the manager’s reaction. Then, The Weekly Gospel would get their exclusive, and what an exclusive it would be: Miracle Dodger Victory Engineered by Secret Ace!
Well, perhaps he would have to work on shortening that headline.
In the end, it was surprisingly easy. Tommy hung around in the rear of the room, in the shadows, watching as the celebration wound down without really ending as the players showered, dressed, and left the locker room still clearly high on emotion and crazed energy. It took awhile, but the locker room emptied of players and reporters and finally the only ones left in the clubhouse were those who also usually arrived first at the ballpark. Tommy found them in the manager’s office, sipping beer and smoking thick, fragrant Cuban cigars.
“I know who the secret ace is,” Tommy said in a dramatic, almost accusatory voice.
Reiser, lounging behind his desk with his feet up and a cigar in his mouth, groaned and sat up straight. “You, again? Jesus, kid, there ain’t no secret ace. I’ve been over it in my head, I’ve watched everyone. There just ain’t no secret ace.”
“Really?” Tommy said archly as he came into the room. “How do you account for all the strange things that happened during the Series? The spectacular catches, the bad throws and Oriole errors, the unexpected home runs, the shoe polish incident?”
Reiser shrugged. “It’s baseball, kid. It’s the nature of the game. Strange things happen. Sometimes players rise to the occasion. Sometimes occasions rise to the players. You can’t explain it. No one can.”
“Then how do you explain the way he smells?” Tommy asked dramatically, pointing at Fidel Castro, who was sitting across the desk from Reiser, cigar in one hand, champagne bottle in the other.
“The way he smells?” Reiser asked.
Shit, Tommy thought, I blew it. “I mean—” He realized there was no sense in lying now. It was better to stick to the truth. “Yeah. I should have told you before. I can smell people who are affected by the wild card—”
“That’s ridiculous—” Reiser began, but Castro interrupted him. “No. He’s right.”
Reiser turned to his old friend. “What?”
“I am a wild carder.”
Tommy couldn’t restrain himself from saying, “See? I told you, I told you!” He could barely restrain himself from doing a little dance of joy. Visions of headlines ran in his head. Screw The Weekly Gospel. He’d take this to The Daily News. And he was only in the ninth grade! Visions of future Pulitzers danced in his head.
“But I am not an ace.”
“What?” Tommy’s face fell. “I don’t believe you.”
Castro shrugged. “It’s true. I never knew I’d been infected with the virus until last winter. I went to see the doctors about my arm. They did tests and discovered I had the wild card. They discovered my ‘power’ when examining my arm.”
“What is it?” Reiser asked.
Castro shrugged again. “My tendons and ligaments are maybe twice as flexible as an ordinary man’s.” He illustrated by bending back the fingers in his right hand. They bent back pretty far. “But, more flexible or not, they were finished in my pitching arm. My arm was dead, useless for pitching. So, I retired.”
“Flexible fingers?” Tommy asked weakly. “That’s your power?”
“My elbow, too,” Castro said, taking a reflective puff of his cigar.
“Hmmm. That’s not much of a story,” Reiser said.
“Still . . .” Tommy said, but hope was fading even as he tried to grasp it.
Reiser looked at him thoughtfully. “Look, maybe we can, uh, make this up to you if you keep it our own little secret.”
“How?” Tommy asked.
Reiser shrugged. “I don’t know. How about a season’s ticket for next year?”
“Well . . .” Tommy wasn’t much of a baseball fan, but his father was. And other people were. With the Dodgers being world champs, tickets would be tough to come by next year. They’d be hot items. People might be willing to tell him things, to do things for him, if he had tickets for important games. “How about two season tickets?”
Reiser shrugged. “All right.”
“Okay,” Tommy nodded, absorbing the notion that he could just as easily be paid for not revealing something, as for revealing it. “I guess I should go write my story now.”
“Your story with no secret aces,” Reiser said.
“My story with no secret aces,” Tommy agreed. Flexible tendons weren’t a footnote, let alone a whole story. Also, he suddenly realized, he’d have had to reveal how he discovered Castro was a wilder carder—by smelling him. Maybe he shouldn’t tell the whole wide world about his talent.
Tommy smiled to himself. As it turns out, he thought, there is a secret ace in the story after all. Me.
He left the two men in the manager’s office, celebrating their victory. He had his story to write, his own victory to celebrate. Maybe it wasn’t as glorious as he’d hoped it would be. There’d be no blazing headlines, no by-line in a real newspaper, but Dodgers World Champs wasn’t exactly chopped liver, and it was a more manageable headline.
It’s so cool, Tommy Downs thought, being a reporter.
He strolled down the corridors of Ebbets Field, dreaming of the thousands of stories to come.