Three Strikes You're Dead

Chapter 25

One story, the Martindale saga, was over, but another continued — the 1938 National League pennant race which, thanks in part to Dizzy Dean, was to become a chapter in Chicago sports lore.

As the season ground toward its finish, the Cubs passed the Giants and the Reds in the standings and kept picking up ground on the Pirates. Dizzy’s arm went bad again, so he wasn’t much of a factor in the team’s success in August or most of September, but Bill Lee and Clay Bryant were nearly unbeatable, and the hitters came to life, too.

The Cubs were six games back of Pittsburgh, then four, then three. And when the Pirates rolled into Chicago for three games the last week in September, the local boys were riding a seven-game winning streak and now trailed by only a game and a half.

Through good fortune and my own lack of planning, my vacation fell on the last week of September and the first week of October. My plan early in the year had been to get some time off in the middle of summer so Peter and I could do things together around the city. I was slow putting in my request, though, and other reporters, some of them with less seniority than I, grabbed off the choice June and July weeks. So I was left with what was to become an ideal time away from the job for a Cub fan — which I had been since they lost the 1918 World Series in six games to the Boston Red Sox and their young pitcher, Babe Ruth.

The first game of the Pirate series was on Tuesday, and Gabby Hartnett surprised the whole town by announcing that he would start Dean, who hadn’t pitched in nine days and hadn’t won a game in five weeks. Monday night in Kilkenny’s, Dean was in grand, chest-thumping, pre-game form, though, affirming that the manager, Gabby Hartnett, was getting smarter by the day.

“Who else would he pick to beat those jerks but Old Diz?” he proclaimed to the whoops and applause of the habitués as he polished off a T-bone at his usual place at the bar, washing it down with a Budweiser.

After Dean left — “to get a good night’s sleep so I can whup them Pirates in style” — the Killer leaned across the bar and whispered to me that Diz had left four tickets for each of the first two games of the Pittsburgh series. “He said he loves coming in here, both for the food and the friendliness. He also said he was sorry he probably wouldn’t be able to get any tickets for us when — that’s what he said, when — the Cubs get into the World Series, but he did leave these, and he wanted me to hand them out to whoever I wanted. So I’m offering you the first crack, scrivener friend. You can have one for either day — take your pick.”

“That’s really swell of him and of you, too, Killer, thanks. Damn, I wish I could see Diz pitch tomorrow, but I’ve got this dentist appointment I’ve had for weeks, so how ’bout Wednesday?”

“You now have ownership,” the Killer said, slipping a ticket from an envelope and sliding it to me. “That’s when I’m going as well, compadre. I couldn’t get Grady to spell me here tomorrow, but he’s coming in the day after to serve the thirsty public.” The barkeep then moved down the bar, discreetly huddling one-on-one with other regulars and slyly doling out the balance of the tickets that Diz had given him.

I wanted to kick myself Tuesday afternoon for missing what surely had been the game of the year. Dean made Hartnett look like a genius by beating the Pirates, 2 to 1, although Bill Lee had to come in to get the last Pittsburgh batter in the ninth when Diz’s arm gave out. That night in Kilkenny’s the hero of the day stopped by, but only for a few minutes.

“Arm’s so sore ah can barely lift it,” Diz groaned, gripping the elbow with his other hand. “But ah wasn’t gonna let that stop me from winnin’ the greatest game of mah life. The Lord was right there with me.” Now the bar was really rocking with cheers, the only sobering element being the news that Augie Galan wrenched his knee during the game and had to be carried off the field. He was probably through for the season.

The next day, the Killer, Morty Easterly, Ed Dugan, and I found ourselves in third-row box seats down the left field line near the bullpen. “Damned if this ain’t the best seat I’ve had in twenty years coming to this ball yard,” Morty marveled, shaking his head. “That Diz, he’s a prince. Killer, next time he comes in, I want to pick up the check for his steak, got that?”

“You’ll have to fight me for it,” Dugan put in, but the Killer insisted that Dean’s next few meals at the bar would be on the house. “By patronizing my humble oasis, he and his noble teammates have brought in so much other new business that I ought to cut Mr. J.H. Dean in on a piece of the action.”

During the pre-game warm-ups, Dean was jogging with several other players on the left-field grass when he spotted us and came over to the brick wall. “Howdy Killer, Mr. Snap, Morty, Ed,” he grinned, tipping his dark blue cap to us. “Seats okay for you?”

“More than okay!” Morty fired back.

“Well, we’re gonna get y’all another win today and push them Pirates down into second place, where they belong!” That drew applause and a few whoops of “Yea, Diz!” from fans in our section as Dean trotted back to the dugout.

Because of the way the game ended, I’ve forgotten almost every detail about it, although I think I have the scorecard tucked away in a drawer somewhere. I do remember that there was a lot of hitting — the pitchers on both teams got pounded pretty good and, going into the ninth inning, the score was 5 to 5. It was past 5 o’clock and getting dark, and the umpires held a conference at home plate, probably trying to figure out how much longer to play.

“This will be the last inning,” the Killer pronounced with assurance.

“What happens if the thing’s tied and they have to call it?” Dugan posed. “The pennant’s on the line.”

“They’ll probably pick up tomorrow where they left off,” I speculated. “Start in the 10th inning, finish that game, then play another one.”

“God, so on the one day we can come out here, we see a lousy tie,” Easterly fumed.

“Ah, but ’tis not over yet, Morty, me lad,” the Killer said with the assurance that only a bartender can summon.

The Pirates went out in the top of the ninth without scoring. The first two Cubs went down in their half of the inning, and the squat Gabby Hartnett lumbered to the plate in the near darkness. He had been an unqualified success since taking over as manager two months before, but at age thirty-eight, his days as both catcher and hitter were about over. Mace Brown, the Pirate pitcher, got two quick strikes over, and on the next pitch, Hartnett swung hard.

I heard the crack of the bat, but in the twilight, I lost the ball somewhere in the air. Everybody stood, though, and I stood with them. “Yes, yes indeed!” the Killer bellowed, his outstretched arm and pointed index finger moving in an arc from right to left across the darkening sky, following the trajectory. I finally picked up the round speck, just before it cleared the high brick left-field wall and disappeared into the bleachers as 40,000 spectators roared in unison.

The barrel-shaped player-manager slowly trundled around the bases, but by the time he reached third, there was such a mob surging onto the field — players, fans, ushers — that it seemed liked he’d never get to complete the full circuit. The crowd pressed in on him as flashbulbs popped, until we lost sight of Gabby somewhere between third and home. He must have made it, though, because the 5 for the Cubs on the big scoreboard had changed to a 6, and they were in first place, where they would stay.

Two days later, after the Cubs had clinched the pennant, I got a call at home from Cahill.

“Leo! I’ve been expecting to hear from you,” I said with bonhomie. “How’s things?”

“Yeah, go ahead and gloat while you can,” he groused.

“Me, gloat? Why would I want to do that?”

“Look, how ’bout us going double or nothing on the Series?” he asked plaintively.

“Are you kidding? You know what kind of favorites the Yankees are? It’s something like 14 to 5, last time I checked.”

“I’ll give you those odds — or more.” He sounded desperate.

“No thanks, Leo.”

“But I got a problem.”

“Yeah. How so?”

“Damn, Snap, I can’t spare fifty bucks. Not now.”

“Oh, I see,” I said, savoring a moment I had been anticipating — and rehearsing — for days. “Well... I have a solution to that ‘little problem’ of yours. You guys in the Sports Department get tickets to everything — tickets you usually don’t want to share with your co-workers in other areas of the paper. I know very well that you do, so don’t bother trying to deny it. How ’bout you give me two seats for one of the Series games? Then I’ll consider our bet paid off.”

“Darn, Snap, that’s tough, that’s really tough to do.”

I paused for effect before responding. “Let me make sure that I’ve got this straight, Leo. You don’t want to pay me the fifty simoleons, is that right? And you don’t want to get me the tickets, which together wouldn’t cost anywhere near the fifty clams I wagered in good faith — and in fact, those tickets probably wouldn’t cost you a copper Lincoln.

“What it really comes down to is this, Leo. A grumpy White Sox fan whose own woebegone team has not been in the series in almost twenty years — and they threw that one — can’t stand it because the Cubs got in again. This same petulant White Sox fan who insisted Dizzy Dean wouldn’t win five games, and wouldn’t even pitch after June... now let’s see, Dizzy has won...”

“All right, all right,” Leo sighed. “Now look here, Snap, I can’t get you a thing for the opener on Wednesday — everybody from the governor and the mayor on down to precinct workers wants to be out there, posing for the cameras down in front with that damn red, white, and blue bunting. But I’m pretty sure I can get you a pair for Thursday.”

“Pretty sure, Leo?”

“Okay, dammit. I will get you two seats for Thursday’s game. That’s a promise.”

“Good seats?”

He sighed again. “Very good seats, third-base side, couple rows back of the Cubs dugout.”

“One more thing. I’m taking my boy, and I want a pass that gets us into the Cubs clubhouse after the game.”

“Now wait a minute, Snap...”

“No, you wait a minute Leo,” I said without warmth. “None of what I’m asking is costing you a damn single dollar. I’m letting you off the hook in a big way, and this is what I want in return.”

Silence. “All right,” he finally said, his voice tight. “You can pick everything up in the Sports Department the day before the game. Martha’ll have an envelope with your name on it.”

“I knew I could count on you, Leo. Thanks.” I cradled the receiver and leaned back in my one living room chair, feeling smug. Norma and Martin Baer had gotten married two weeks before, and Peter told me Baer had said he would take them to Miami Beach around the holidays. “Is it okay with you if I go?” Peter had asked in an uncertain tone.

“Sure, why not? Never pass up the chance to get out of the cold weather here. Besides, you’ve never been to Florida; be a good experience.”

“But you’ll be all alone for Christmas,” he said with what I knew was genuine concern.

“That’s okay, Son. You and I can have our Christmas when you get back. Just the two of us.”

“Yeah, I’d like that, just us. This trip will cost plenty, won’t it, Dad? The train tickets and hotels and stuff?”

“Well, it sounds like Mr. Baer’s got the money to do it,” I told him. “And it’s nice that he’s taking you along.”

Such was my outward benevolent stance to Peter regarding Martin Baer. I was jealous of the man’s wherewithal to show my son places I’d never been able to take him. This was a big part of the reason I decided to pry those World Series tickets and clubhouse passes out of Leo in lieu of the money that he couldn’t afford to part with. Let Baer try to match that.

The Cubs sent their best pitcher, Bill Lee, against the Yankees in the opener, which I caught on the radio. Big Bill pitched well, but Red Ruffing threw better, and the Yankees won, 3 to 1. During the game, the broadcasters reported the speculation that Hartnett had decided to gamble on starting Dean rather than Clay Bryant in the second game, even though Bryant had won nineteen during the season.

Despite the cold, cloudy, and windy weather, Peter and I were in our seats the next day more than an hour before game time, watching the teams warm up. Getting him out of school for the afternoon wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be: It turned out that his teacher, a tall, skinny, and warm-hearted spinster named Forsythe, was a Cub fan who seemed genuinely happy that Peter could see the game. And we promised to bring her a program and a pennant, which really sealed the deal.

“Are the Yankees as good as when Babe Ruth was with them?” Peter asked, as the swaggering New Yorkers took batting practice, pounding pitch after pitch over the left and right field walls.

“I think if anything, they’re even better,” I told him. “They won the Series the last two years against the Giants, and they’ve got Joe DiMaggio — that’s him right there, Number 5, stepping into the batter’s box — who’s only about twenty-three and he’s already hit over.300 all three years he’s been in the big leagues. And the rest of their lineup is terrific, too, although Lou Gehrig’s slowing down now. But at least you can tell your grandchildren you saw Gehrig play; he’s one of the great ones.”

“Do you think the Cubs have a chance, Dad?”

“Not much of one, Peter. Five guys on the Yankees hit over twenty home runs this year, and you can see the way they’re whacking ’em now in practice. And do you know who led the Cubs in homers? Rip Collins, the one with his hands on his hips over there in front of the dugout, who had a grand total of thirteen.”

But once the game started, the Yankees didn’t seem much like killers. Dizzy Dean, throwing his slow, sidearm “nothing ball,” was fooling the Bronx boys on pitches I was sure I could hit. Unfortunately, the Cubs weren’t playing so well themselves. They did take a 1 to 0 lead in the first inning, but in the Yankee second, DiMaggio led off with a single and Gehrig walked. Then after Diz got the next two batters to pop up, Joe Gordon hit a ground ball that either third baseman Stan Hack or shortstop Billy Jurges could have fielded easily. But they banged into each other, falling down like a couple of bumbling Keystone Kops, and both runners scored.

Chicago grabbed the lead back in the fourth when Joe Marty, their best hitter in the series, drove home two runs. And that’s the way it stayed — the Cubs and Dizzy Dean ahead 3 to 2, as the Yankees went down one-two-three in the fifth, sixth, and seventh innings against the “nothing ball.” Then in the eighth, with one man on base, the Yanks’ Frank Crosetti came to bat and took a smooth swing at one of Dean’s slow, slow pitches. Unlike Hartnett’s home run the week before, I saw this one all the way, watching it as it fell into the left-field bleachers. As Crosetti rounded the bases, Diz came off the mound and yelled something at him that we couldn’t hear despite the sudden silence in the ballpark, and the Yankee stopped in the baseline to reply to him.

In the ninth, DiMaggio also teed off against Dean, and the Yankees had a 6 to 3 lead... and the game. Hartnett went to the mound and took the ball from Diz, giving him a pat on the back. As the pitcher trudged slowly off the field toward the dugout, clusters of fans rose to clap, then more followed, and soon the entire crowd was on its feet in salute. The applause and whistling went on for more than a minute, as the Cubs in the field, hands on hips, looked down at the ground or made idle patterns in the infield dirt with their cleats.

“Why is everybody cheering him so much, Dad?” Peter shouted over the din as we stood and clapped. “They hit two homers off him.”

“Eventually they did, but he pitched awfully well for a long time,” I said. “And people will do this when they know they’ve seen somebody give the very best they can.” Also, I might have added, these cheers were in effect a hail and farewell to a legend, who at the age of only twenty-eight was leaving the spotlight for probably the final time.

The Cubs clubhouse was crowded, but there was no noise above the level of murmurs. Players sat half-dressed and dejected in front of their cubicles as reporters knelt down asking questions in lowered voices. “Nice hitting today, Joe,” one said to Marty, who only shook his head and scowled. “You’ll get ’em in New York on Saturday,” another said to Stan Hack, whose wooden smile and nodding response carried little conviction.

As Peter and I weaved our way through the funereal gloom, I spotted Dizzy Dean, still dressed in his uniform pants and cleats but stripped to his undershirt, sweating and slumped on a bench, his street clothes hanging on pegs behind him. Three reporters, one of them from the Trib, stood above him scribbling in their notebooks.

“What did you say to Crosetti when he hit the homer?” one asked.

“Ah told him he wouldn’t of got a loud foul off me two years ago,” the pitcher said.

“Did he say something back?” another scribbler posed.

“He said I was right,” Diz responded in a tired voice, and the reporters dispersed to get quotes from other players.

A tall, thin, erect figure in a dark suit and white hair stepped out of the shadows and planted himself in front of Dean, holding out a gnarled hand. I recognized him from newspaper photographs: Connie Mack, now probably seventy-five years old and the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics since before I was born. “Son, you pitched a great game out there with what you had on the ball,” Mack said with quiet conviction.

Diz looked up and forced a smile. “Thanks, Mr. Mack, ’preciate it. And yore right... Ah didn’t have nothin’ out there today, ’cept maybe heart.”

“You had plenty of that,” Connie Mack told Diz, patting him on the shoulder and leaving.

Peter and I stood a respectful two paces away, not wanting to disturb the reverie as Diz watched baseball’s Grand Old Man depart. Then Dean turned, saw me, and actually grinned.

“Well, Mr. Snap! Nice of ya to stop by.” He stood and we shook hands.

“Diz, this is my son, Peter. We were cheering for you all the way today.”

“Hey, Peter, pleasure to meet you,” Diz said, pumping his hand. “You got yourself a great dad, but ya already know that, dontcha?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” Peter said. If he was awed, he didn’t show it, and that made me proud of him. “We’re sorry about... sorry you lost today.”

“Yeah, well, like I told Mr. Mack just now, and them reporters what were here before him, I didn’t have nothin’ on the ball. Fooled ’em for seven innings, though, didn’t I, Peter?”

“Yes, sir, you did. Could I...” He held out his program and a pencil.

“Peter, I don’t think Mr. Dean is in the mood to sign any autographs just now,” I whispered.

“Hey, Ah’m always ready to sign, win or lose,” Diz said, taking the pencil and writing at length on Peter’s program. “You play ball yourself, son?”

Peter hunched his shoulders. “Sorta. Second base. I’m not very good, though.”

“Hey, Rogers Hornsby played second base, and he was the best hitter there ever was, anywhere. Well, you keep at it, promise?” the pitcher boomed, tousling Peter’s hair and turning to me. “Mr. Snap, is everything okay? I mean...” he looked to see if Peter was listening, but saw he was engrossed in reading Dean’s handwritten message to him... “about them two thugs what came barging into Killer’s place that night,” he said in a lowered voice.

“They’re gone, Diz, and they won’t be back,” I said. “I never properly thanked you for your accurate pitching that night.”

He raised his shoulders and let them drop. “Glad to help. Don’t know if Ah’ll be back, either. If Ah’m traded or I hang up my spikes, give all them fine fellas at the Killer’s mah very best, and tell ’em they shore made ol’ Diz feel welcome, will ya?”

“I’ll do that, Diz, and that’s a promise,” I said as we shook hands. “Be seein’ you. So long.”

Peter and I left the somber clubhouse and walked out onto Clark Street. Most of the crowd had dispersed, but whistle-blowing cops were still directing traffic at the intersection with Addison and vendors kept hawking souvenirs from their carts, aware that the Chicago portion of the World Series was probably over so this was their last chance to make sales. I bought two Cub pennants, one for Peter, the other for his teacher, and I also handed him the extra program I had bought for her. “Don’t forget to give this stuff to Miss Forsythe,” I said. “It’s always best to stay on their good side.”

“Today was really fun, Dad,” he said, smiling up at me, “even if the Cubs did lose. You sure have a lot of famous friends, don’t you?”

“I don’t know if they’re all what you would call friends, although I sure do like Dizzy Dean, and some day I’ll tell you how much he helped me once. But meeting well-known people, that’s just what happens when you’re a newspaper reporter, Peter. You naturally run into people who make news.”

“Mama says you’re different, though.”

“Oh, does she now?”

“Yeah. What does ‘essential brashness’ mean?”

I gave him my interpretation of that phrase as we walked south on Clark to my apartment. We would have frankfurters and potato salad for supper there before I took him in a taxi to his new home, the duplex on Lake Shore Drive where he lived with Mr. and Mrs. Martin Baer.