Guy Vanderhaeghe - Homesick

“J do,” announced the old man with some smugness. “Because me, I got a sense of loyalty. A real fan picks and sticks. A genuine fan stands by his team, win or lose, that’s how you know a real fan.”

“Well, you must be a real fan then. Because you’ve got plenty of experience sticking with losers.”

This successful sally prompted his grandfather to return to safer ground. “Mickey Mantle,” he said, pronouncing the name with scornful exaggeration, “isn’t he the cute one, though? Cute enough for them to make a Mickey Mantle doll for little girls, I’d say. They ought to nickname him Mickey Mantle Piece because that’s where he wants to be – up on some mantel where everybody can swoon at the sight of him. Up there nice and high so all the sportswriters can kiss his precious Yankee ass without the inconvenience of bending over to do it. Because you don’t ever want to put a sports-writer to any trouble, he might write something bad about you.”

“Oh, dear,” said Daniel, sensing an advantage, “who’s still mad because Mickey Mantle beat the great Ted Williams out of the ‘56 batting crown?”

For the first time, Vera detected the flavour of genuine anger in her father’s speech. “No, I ain’t mad about that,” he said emphatically. “You know what I’m mad about, it’s the MVP. One thing about the numbers, they don’t lie. So what happened in ’56? A young guy in the prime of life, supposed to herald the Second Coming, beats an old man, thirty-eight years old, out of the batting title by eight-points’ difference in their batting averages. Oh, didn’t he hand that poor old bugger a terrible eight-point whipping! If I had got licked the way Ted Williams got licked, by eight whole points , I don’t know how I’d have been able to live with the shame. I’d have blown my brains out in the clubhouse. Yes, sir. No way else out after a crushing eight-point defeat,” said the old man, relishing his dramatic effects. “Of course,” he added, “it only makes sense that the next year when senile old Williams bats.388 and Mr. Pin-Up hits.365 that the MVP should go to Mickey. That’s only fair. Why, anybody knows that an old fart like Ted Williams had to hit a lot more than twenty-three points better than Mr. Wonderful to earn a little recognition. And I won’t even mention how it’s the sportswriters who vote for the MVP and Williams never hid the fact he thought sportswriters were a big collection of horses’ asses and wouldn’t talk to them. I mean, who gave him the name Terrible Ted? You’re a bright boy, you figure it out, the business of the MVP.” The old man paused significantly. “So I ask you, in all fairness: Who got fucked?”

“Language!” roared Vera.

“Pardon!” His grandfather lowered his voice and leaned toward Daniel confidentially. “So, as I say, these pencil pushers gang up and fuck him. The greatest hitter for power and average the game’s ever seen, fucked over by a bunch of jealous nobodies. But I ask you: What happened last year? Terrible Ted’s back with a vengeance. Numbers don’t lie. Hand the man another batting crown. That’s his revenge on all the press boys who prefer Mr. Oklahoma because he wouldn’t say shit if his mouth was full of it and Ted Williams says what he thinks. What the newspaper men can’t abide in him is that he plays his game, not theirs, and his game is baseball.”

“Ted Williams’ game is baseball. Brilliant observation,” said Daniel sarcastically. “So what’s Mickey Mantle playing then? Chinese checkers?”

“Jesus, give me a chance to explain. Listen. What I mean to say is that Williams’ only game is baseball. He doesn’t play the game of pretending to be the All American Boy according to whatever some newspaper dope wakes up one morning and thinks that is. They hate him because he won’t wear a tie when he goes and testifies in front of Congress. They hate him because he won’t be forgiving and tip his hat to the crowd that booed him. He won’t smile a shit-eating smile and kick the dirt, aw shucks. I figure what they can’t stand is that he doesn’t think they’re important. It’s baseball that’s important. To my idea the man who really loved baseball would play it the same way in front of empty stands as he would in front of full ones. That’s Ted Williams. He never hit a ball to hear the roar of the crowd, he hit it to prove he could. If Jesus H. Christ were to put on a glove and take the mound and everybody else dropped to their knees, Ted Williams would step into the batter’s box and say, ‘Okay, it’s you and me. Show me the best you got.’ The trouble with the fans and Ted Williams is that somehow the fans got it into their heads they ought to matter to him.”

“The fans pay his salary. He owes something to them, doesn’t he?”

“He doesn’t owe them his character. Nobody is owed that. That’s why I admire him. They boo and curse him in his own park, in Fenway. But he refuses to change to please them. He would rather be hated, even at home.”

“It sounds to me,” said Vera, leaning back from the sink to project her voice, “that this Mr. Williams is a big spoiled brat who wants everything his way!”

“Right now I think he’d be satisfied with a fair shake!” snapped back her father. But he knew there was no convincing Vera. He directed his efforts to Daniel. “Take all that fuss about his draft deferment. Wasn’t it a crime how a healthy young man like him should get a deferment with Adolf Hitler running loose in the world? But who said boo about DiMaggio who had a deferment too? Yeah but Joe DiMaggio was a Yankee and a gentleman and everybody loves a Yankee and a gentleman. So which one sees service in two wars, gets called up a second time for Korea? Williams. But then nothing he ever done was right. The crap he got accused of in the papers. He wasn’t at the hospital when his first baby was born. He got divorced. Then everybody wept big crocodile tears because he took a shotgun and blasted a bunch of dirty pigeons in Fenway Park so’s the groundkeepers could get a break from cleaning up pigeon shit. The sonsofbitches even said he sold the furniture out from under his mother when it was his good-for-nothing brother who had stole it.” His voice was growing more and more agitated, quivering with indignation. “Okay, so he didn’t sell her furniture, what else could they say? Let’s say he doesn’t go out to California often enough to visit her. Ted Williams won’t visit his poor old Salvation Army mother, the scribblers said. Who’re they to say how much is enough? Who’re they to say what a man feels?”

Vera, drawn from the sink by his plaintive, desperate tone, propped herself in the entrance to the living room and dried her arms with a tea-towel. “My,” she said, “aren’t you working yourself into a state. Who and what’re we talking about anyway? I don’t think it’s about Williams.”

“Who else then?” demanded her father sharply.

“Oh, I guess Earl hasn’t been by in quite a time, has he? Hasn’t paid a visit, I mean.”

Her father didn’t bother to reply, acted as if she hadn’t spoken. “You know,” he remarked to Daniel, “they say that even now old Ted’s eyesight is so sharp he can read the label on a seventy-eight spinning on the turntable. Do you believe that?”

“I don’t,” challenged Vera, tossing the towel over her shoulder. “And if you do, you’re even more gullible than you look.”

Daniel turned himself toward his grandfather. “It isn’t as if Mickey Mantle is really my favourite player,” he said. “I like Willie Mays a lot better than I ever liked Mickey Mantle. Loads better.”

There was nothing left for Vera to do but stand and stare at her son.