George Martin - Deuces Down

“Okay.” Tommy stood. There was no sense in questioning Reiser any longer. Reiser didn’t know anything, and couldn’t help the investigation. Tommy was sure of that.

“Remember,” Reiser told him. “You come to me first with the name.”

“I will.”

“Fine. Good luck, Tommy.”

“Thanks.”

Tommy trudged from the office, half-discouraged, half-angry. Not only hadn’t he advanced his investigation, he’d made himself look like a fool. Because he could tell, he just knew, that Reiser was patronizing him. He didn’t believe Tommy for one second. He didn’t believe there was a secret ace on the Dodgers, not at all.

Just another day in the dugout , Reiser thought, but of course, it wasn’t. Ebbets hadn’t seen a day like this since 1957.

The old park was jammed to over-flowing and the fans had cheered themselves hoarse before the first pitch was thrown. All the regular Dodger fanatics were present; the five-piece band known as the Dodger Symphony that played loud but almost unrecognizable tunes as they marched around the park, the guy on the third base line known as Sign Man, who could cause letters to appear on his blank piece of white cardboard, and all the thousands of normal (and abnormal) fans who’d experienced one of the great rides in baseball history as the ’69 Dodgers fought their way to the National League pennant.

Reiser, returned from the pregame conference at home plate with the umpires and Baltimore manager Earl Weaver, plopped down next to Fidel Castro in the Dodger dugout. “How’d he look warming up?”

“Drysdale? Caliente, boss.”

“He better be caliente ,” Reiser said. “We need this one.”

Drysdale was one of the old Dodgers come home, probably to finish his career. He had started with the Dodgers in 1956 and put up some decent numbers for a fading team, as well as garnering a reputation as one of the meanest sons of bitches to toe the rubber. In one of the disastrous trades that marked the end of his general managerialship, Branch Rickey had traded him in 1960 to the Yankees for Marv Throneberry, Jerry Lumpe, and pitching legend Don Larsen who had thrown a perfect game in the 1956 World Series, then squandered his career on booze and broads. Drysdale had put up near Hall of Fame numbers with the Yankees, while only Throneberry had proved marginally useful to the Dodgers. When the Yankees disintegrated in the mid-1960’s, Drysdale went on to have some good years for the Cardinals. The Dodgers had bought him back in ’69 to help anchor the fine young pitching staff they were assembling.

He sauntered in from the bullpen, a towel wrapped around his neck to soak up the sweat he’d already broken. He was a tall, lean, big-jawed man with a ruthless disposition and will to win. He was one of Reiser’s favorites. Reiser knew better than to pep-talk him or pat his ass. That would just annoy him, take him out of the zone he carefully crafted where every ounce of concentration, every erg of energy, was geared toward one thing: throwing the ball where he wanted to throw it. That done, everything else would simply take care of itself.

Drysdale sat off to one side in his own world. The rest of the dugout was full of chatter, young men pretending they believed they belonged in the Series, veterans just enjoying their Christmas in October and hoping that it would last a few more days. Their energy was nearly palpable. Reiser thought that if you’d stick wires in their asses they’d light up the whole city.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” the P.A. system blared, “please direct your attention to right field, where the first pitch will be thrown by a very unusual special guest. It will be caught by our own Roy Campanella, first base coach and Hall of Fame catcher from Dodger glory days!”

The cheers started again as Campy, gone from stocky to just plain plump, strode out to a position midway between home and the pitcher’s mound. The fans’ ovation dwindled into murmured puzzlement as Campy, wearing his old, battered catcher’s mitt, faced the outfield wall.

An armored shell swooped over the rightfield bleachers into the outfield and came to rest over the pitcher’s mound. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the P.A. announcer blared again, “we present The Great and Powerful Turtle! ”

There was a murmur of surprise that quickly grew into an appreciative outpouring of welcome as the Dodger faithful greeted the city’s great new, unknown hero. All over the stands people turned to one another and said, “I knew he was a Dodger fan. I just knew it.”

A small porthole opened in the fore of the shell, and a baseball dropped, hovered, and performed a series of swoops, turns, and arabesques, eventually settling down soft as a feather into Campy’s outstretched glove.

“LET’S GO DODGERS!” the Turtle blared from his own set of loudspeakers. His shell rose majestically and moved off to a spot right above the rightfield bleachers where it stayed for the duration of the game.

Drysdale rose, took off his warm up jacket. “Enough of this shit,” he said. “Let’s go.”

He stepped out of the dugout, and the rest of the team ran out onto the field after him. Castro, Reiser thought as Drysdale hummed his eight warm-up pitchers, was right. D has his stuff today . He retired the Orioles one-two-three in the top of the first.

Jim Palmer was pitching for the Orioles, the youngest of their three twenty game winners, and he looked good, too, as he warmed up in the bottom of the first inning.

Then Tommie Agee stepped up to the plate and lined a homer into the lower deck of the center field bleachers, and Reiser thought, Here we go again. This team is amazing.

But is it? a small voice in the back of Reiser’s head suddenly asked. Is it the team, or was that kid right? Is it someone just manipulating things, jerking puppet strings, with some kind of power given them by the wild card?

Reiser would never had thought of it, if it wasn’t for that kid. Sure, it’s crazy to think that the kid was right, but the world was crazy, had been since September 1946 when the wild card virus had rained down out of the skies of New York City.

Wild carders were banned from pro sports. A guy like Golden Boy would make a mockery of the game. But what if others were subtle, even sly, in the use of their powers?

Reiser looked down the bench. The Hawk sat in his usual spot next to him. Beyond him were the men who had fought so hard over the long summer to bring pride and faith back to Brooklyn. Was one of them secretly manipulating events behind the backs of all the others, stacking the deck so that the Dodgers would win?

Reiser snorted aloud. Bullshit . He knew these men. He’d gone to war with them all summer long. They won and they lost, and it was their skill, determination, and, yes, sometimes their luck that bought them their victories. That was baseball. Sometimes luck was on your side and the little pop up off the end of your bat fell in for a double down the line; sometimes it wasn’t and your screaming line drive sought out the third baseman’s glove like a leather-seeking missile.

Castro caught his eye. “What?”

Reiser shook his head. “ De nada.”

But, somehow, he couldn’t shake the kid’s question from his mind.

Tommy Downs could tell that the Ebbets Field press box attendant was a wild carder, and not only because of his sweet smell. The guy was about five and a half feet tall and he was shaped like a snail without a shell. His hands were tiny, his arms almost stick-like in their frailty. He had neither legs nor feet, but his body tapered down to a slug-like tail. He even had snail-like feelers on the top of his head and a mucous coating on his exposed skin. His features were doughy, but good natured.