John Grisham - Calico Joe

We pass the bowls and begin eating. I feel compelled to at least make an effort to discuss her art but decide against it. A visit like this will never be repeated, and I want to hear and talk about Joe Castle. After some chatter about my wife, daughters, and job, I manage to get things back on track.

“What was it like in 1970 when the draft was approaching?” I ask.

Clarence chews, swallows, takes a sip of water, and says, “Pretty crazy. We thought he would be the number one pick in the draft, at least that’s what the scouts had been saying for two years.”

“The town thought he was about to get rich,” Fay adds.

“Top money back then was $100,000 for the early picks. In case you haven’t noticed, this is a small town. Folks were openly discussing what Joe might do with all his money. Then something weird happened. In late May, Calico Rock was playing in the finals of the state tournament, over at Jonesboro, and Joe had two bad games. He had not had a bad game in ten years, then bam, two in a row. Some of the scouts got spooked, I guess. The Cubs took him in the second round, offered him $50,000, and away he went.”

“What happened to the money?” I ask.

“He gave $5,000 to his church,” Fay says, “and $5,000 to the high school, right, Clarence?”

“That sounds right. Another $5,000 went to dress up the Little League park where he had played so many games. Seems like he paid off the mortgage on his parents’ home, which wasn’t that much.”

“No shiny new Corvette?” I ask.

“Oh no. He paid $2,000 for Hank Thatcher’s Ford pickup. Hank had just died, and his wife was selling some of his stuff. She didn’t want the truck, so Joe bought it.”

I remind myself, again, of why I do not want to live in a small town. Such personal details would never be discussed, or even known, in a city.

I cannot remember the last time I have eaten vegetables as fresh as Fay’s. Sara cooks healthy meals, but I have never tasted squash and eggplant like this. “Delicious,” I say for the second or third time.

“Thank you,” Fay replies graciously. I notice that she eats very little. Clarence washes his food down with water, but the lemon gin is still close. Two fishing boats float quietly by on the river and head for the docks below the bridge in the distance. Our conversation drifts to Fay’s sister, who is dying of cancer in Missouri and wants them to visit her over the weekend. The cancer talk brings things around to my father. “When was he diagnosed?” Fay asks.

“Last week. It’s terminal, just a few months, maybe weeks.”

“I’m so sorry,” she says.

“Have you seen him?” Clarence asks.

“No, I’m going down tomorrow. As I said, we’re not close, not close at all. Never have been. He left the family when his baseball career flamed out and soon remarried. He’s not a nice person, Clarence, not the kind of guy you’d want to spend time with.”

“I believe that. I read a story about him years ago. After baseball, he tried to make it as a golfer, but that went nowhere. Seems like he was selling real estate in the Orlando area and not doing very well. He was still adamant that he did not throw at Joe, but the writer was skeptical. I guess we’re all skeptical.”

“You should be,” I say.

“Why is that?”

I wipe my mouth with a linen napkin. “Because he threw at Joe. I know he did. He’s denied it for thirty years, but I know the truth.”

There is a long pause as we pick at our food and listen to the whirling of the old ceiling fan just above us. Finally, Clarence lifts his lemon gin and gulps down an ounce. He licks his lips, smacks them, and says, “You have no idea how excited we were, how much it meant to this town and especially to the family. After producing so many great players, a Castle had finally hit the big time.”

“I wish I could say I’m sorry.”

“You can’t. Besides, it was thirty years ago.”

“A long time,” Fay observes as she looks down at the river. A long time, maybe, but never to be forgotten.

“I don’t suppose you were there,” Clarence says.

“Indeed I was. August 24, 1973. Shea Stadium.”

My father was in a foul mood when he left the house, alone.

I dropped a few hints about riding to the stadium with him, but he wasn’t listening. The New York papers were relentlessly hyping the game, and one writer, my father’s loudest critic, described the matchup as “a contrast between youth and age. Warren Tracey, age thirty-four and over the hill, versus Joe Castle, the brightest young star baseball has seen since the arrival of Mickey Mantle in 1951.”

Jill was away at a camp in the Catskills. I cajoled my mother into taking an early train to the city. I wanted to watch batting practice and, more important, get my first live look at Joe Castle. We stepped off the subway at 4:30, two and a half hours before the first pitch, and the atmosphere outside Shea Stadium was electric. I was surprised at the number of Cubs fans, most of them wearing white jerseys with the Number 15 across the back. Some were families who were well behaved, but many were young men in packs roaming around like street gangs, yelling, drinking beer, looking for trouble. They found it. New York fans are far from shy and seldom back down from a challenge. I saw the police break up three fights before we passed through the turnstiles. “Disgusting,” my mother said. It would be her last trip to the ballpark.

Shea held fifty-five thousand, and it was already two-thirds full when we settled into our seats. The Cubs were taking batting practice, and there was a swarm around the cage at home plate. Ron Santo, Billy Williams, Jose Cardenal, and Rick Monday were in one group, and as they rotated through, I searched the outfield until I saw him. As he turned to chase a fly ball, I saw the name Castle across the back of his royal blue hitting jersey. He caught the ball near the right field foul line, and a thousand kids screamed for his autograph. He smiled and waved and jogged back to a group of Cubs loitering in right center, probably talking about the women up in the outfield bleachers.

By then, I had read many descriptions of Joe Castle. In high school, some scouts had worried that he was too thin. He weighed 170 pounds when he was eighteen, and this had bothered a few of the experts. However, his father had been quoted as saying, “He’s not even shaving yet. Let the boy grow up.” And he was right. In the minors, Joe had filled out, thanks to a combination of nature and hours in the weight room. He had broad shoulders and a thirty-three-inch waist. He wore his game pants tight, and one article in the Tribune gossiped about the avalanche of provocative mail he was getting from women across the country.

As I watched, he seemed to glide across the outfield as the bats cracked and baseballs flew everywhere. I saw my father in the Mets dugout, sitting alone, going through his pregame ritual. It was far too early for him to head to the bull pen and begin stretching. Odd, though, that he was in the dugout. Usually, at two hours and counting, he was in the locker room getting a massage from a trainer. With ninety minutes to go, he put on his uniform. At seventy-five minutes, he left the locker room, walked through the dugout, and headed for the bull pen, head down, refusing to look at the opposing dugout. The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Baseball players, and especially pitchers, are fanatics about their rituals. My father was three and one in his last six starts and four days earlier had pitched perhaps his best game in the last five years. Why would he change things?