Feeling Sick
Monday, September 12, 1927: New York City
The endless road trip finally came to an end when our train crept into Penn Station just after midnight on Thursday. The station is normally quiet at that hour, but it felt especially empty this night, since for the first time in my two seasons with the team, Ma Gehrig wasn’t there to meet the train.
Lou’s mom picks him up, even when we arrive in the middle of the night — like I’ve said before, their relationship is a little unnerving — but Ma Gehrig’s been in the hospital for the past three weeks with some sort of thyroid condition.
Lou has been pretty private about it, so we don’t know the details, but everyone can see he’s worried about her — acting like a small boy who’s about to be orphaned. And it’s showing up at the plate. In our last four games at the Stadium, in a dozen at bats against the lowly St. Louis Browns, Lou only had one hit, a seeing-eye single.
Normally, Lou’s the first player in the ballpark, but since we got back to New York, he’s become the last man in, showing up just before batting practice, with bags under his eyes from lack of sleep.
“You heading back to the hospital?” I ask him as we walk down the hallway back to the locker room after our game on Saturday. Of course, I already know the answer.
“Yeah,” is all he says.
Never a big talker inside the locker room, now after our games Lou quickly dresses without once looking in the mirror, not even when he ties his tie. Then he’s gone. When he returns the next day, he’s wearing the same clothes.
When Schoolboy shows up in the same clothes two days in a row, he’s whistling a tune and talking about a girl. Lou’s not whistling. His overnights at the hospital are clearly wearing on him, emotionally and physically.
“It’s hard sleeping in those hospital chairs,” he confided to me after the first night.
Exhausted and distracted, he sits in the dugout between his at bats staring out onto the field. All the guys see it. Everyone is keeping their distance. Everyone but the Babe.
Ruth knows Ma Gehrig well — he goes to the Gehrig family’s apartment in Washington Heights a couple of nights each homestand for her home cooked meals. Having spent 12 years of his life locked up in an orphanage, those dinners are more than just a meal for the Babe.
After Ruth found out Lou was spending nights at the hospital, he told Pete Sheehy, our new clubhouse boy, “Every day, as soon as Mr. Gehrig walks in that door, I want you to come get me, no matter what I’m doing, whether I’m in the middle of batting practice or taking a shit. You got that, keed?”
This morning Pete got lucky, as Ruth was shagging flies when Lou arrived.
As soon as Gehrig walked in the door, Pete ran out to the field, and less than two minutes later the Babe strolled back into the locker room, pretending he’d forgotten his cap. He stopped by Lou’s locker and without making a big deal of it asked, “Hey, keed, how’s Ma doing today?”
“They’re still not sure, Babe. They may have to operate, but they may not know for a couple more weeks.”
“I know it hurts ya, Lou, but don’t let yourself get all twisted up in knots worrying about her. Them docs down at St. Vincent’s are the best.”
The Babe should know. That’s where he was taken after he almost died in 1925. And his wife’s been hospitalized there three times for mental breakdowns.
“See you out on the field, keed.”
During our games, whenever we’re at bat, Ruth sits down next to Lou. Then at the end of the inning, he puts his big paw on Lou’s shoulder and says, “Comon’ Keed, let’s get out there and hold the bastards.”
The Babe’s heart is as big as his bat.
As for his bat, it has once again turned into a magic wand.
In the last two weeks, he’s slammed 10 home runs. He’s now got 50 homers — more than half the teams in both leagues — and 140 RBIs, with three weeks still to go in the season. Hell, until Ruth arrived in New York, no American League team had ever hit 50 home runs in a season. Now he’s done it three times. Suddenly, the Babe’s got an outside chance to break his own record of 59.
After Ruth stroked his 50th today, hundreds of fans spontaneously said goodbye to summer by tossing their straw hats onto the field while he trotted around the bases.
Straw hats were raining down for about five minutes. It started out as a drizzle, then turned into a downpour. First, a couple dozen flew onto the field from the upper deck, then hundreds more followed. After a couple of minutes anyone who still had a straw hat on his head in the Stadium was castigated and bullied into tossing it.
The whole place was cheering and laughing.
All the players on both teams came out of the dugouts and spent a couple of minutes putting on hats and throwing them back into the stands. It took a while for the grounds crew to clear the field.
In his next at bat, the Babe once again delighted the Stadium, first by wearing a straw hat in the on-deck circle, and then by punching a hole in it as he went up to the plate.
The Babe has a thing for destroying straw hats. Every year after Labor Day, he goes up and down the train shouting, “Summer’s over boys!” and grabbing the hats off the heads of the players, writers, even random passengers. He punches out the lids, tosses the hats out the train windows — sometimes first setting them on fire — and then, for his pièce de résistance, he eats the last one.
“Jidge started eating hats up in Boston, before I got there,” Schoolboy told me last season. “Stay out of his way,” he warned. “I’m telling you, Ruth goes into a frenzy and starts eating them like a goat with rabies.”
I was certain Schoolboy was playing me, but sure enough, just after Labor Day last year, on our final train ride out to Detroit, the Babe went on a rampage — orchestrated by Hoyt.
First, Jidge collected all the hats on the train and stacked them on a table. There must have been close to 50 of them. While he was doing this, Schoolboy cranked up the Babe’s portable record player. Then, once Ruth was ready, Schoolboy dropped the needle onto a recording of “The Blue Danube Waltz.”
La-La-La-La-Laaah.
DAH-DAH! . . . DAH-DAH!!!
La-La-La-La-Laaah.
DAH-DAH! . . . DAH-DAH!!!
The whole team sang along, quickly drowning out the Victrola.
Each time they shouted — and shout they did — “DAH-DAH!!!” — first Little Eddie Bennett and then Benny Bengough held up another hat for the Babe to punch out.
La-La-La-La-Laaah.
HAT-HAT! . . . HAT-HAT!!!
As the train rolled on, toward Motor City, the Babe left a trail of smoldering hats along the tracks, somewhere around Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Finally, just like Schoolboy had said he would, Jidge ate the last one. It took him about five minutes — and two bottles of bicarbonate — but he finally polished it off, to a raucous standing ovation.
But now summer is over. The days are shorter. And the city is darker.
Sunday nights are quiet in Manhattan, and tonight is no exception.
It’s some time between nightfall and sunrise, but I have no real idea. Nor do I care. I’m standing in Steven’s backyard. Alone.
Just me, two live peacocks, the white rabbit, a flock of pink plastic flamingos, and the Cheshire Cat.
As the summer burned out, so did the Christmas lights that lit up the cat’s smile. Now most of the bulbs are dead, only a few are still glowing. The smile is gone. The chalk outline of his eyes remains. From just the right distance it all looks like a Cat’s Eye Marble that I used to keep next to my bed as a kid. I used to collect marbles. Now I’m pretty sure I’ve lost mine.
I’ve been waiting up for Steven. He’s been away, so our paths haven’t crossed since I returned from the endless road trip. But on our last telephone call he told me he’d be back tonight.
It’s a dark night.
No moon. No stars. No light, save for those dying bulbs.
Then, finally, the lights on Steven’s top floor go on.
It doesn’t take him long to see that his desk drawers and bookcases have been rifled.
After enough time goes by for him to smoke a cigarette and pour himself a scotch, he steps out on his fourth floor terrace, and turns on the lights to the backyard.
While he’s been smoking and thinking, I’ve been collecting stones and counting out 60 feet, 6 inches — give or take a few feet. Now that the flood lights are on, I can finally start knocking out the Cheshire Cat’s lit bulbs from my makeshift mound.
Whack!
That’s the sound if I miss.
When I hit one, it’s a combination of a Whack! and a Pop!
Whack!pop.
Followed by the sounds of glass shards dancing off the wall.
“Where’s my book?” he calls down.
I don’t bother answering him.
“Myles, where’s my book?”
Whack!
Whack!
Whack!
“I seriously doubt Arnold Rothstein keeps his book in an unlocked desk drawer like you do,” I call up to him. “And I know Capone doesn’t. I mean, I’m pretty sure, even though Scarface didn’t mention it when he was giving me advice in Chicago.”
Silence.
Whack!Pop.
Another light goes out.
“Oh, sorry about that, pal,” I say. “I forgot to tell you about my meeting with Capone during our dozen or so phone calls — the ones where you were so goddamned concerned about the health of Silent Bob and the rest of the gang. ”
Whack!Pop.
“It must have slipped my mind.”
Whack!
“But you understand how that could happen, right?”
Whack!
“It’s easy to forget the experience of — ”
Whack!
“Sitting alone with Scarface, while he’s — ”
Whack!Pop.
“Ordering you to tell Arnold Rothstein to ‘Stay the fuck out of Chicago’ — ”
Whack!Pop.
“And then telling you how your best friend has played you for a sucker — ”
Whack!Pop.
“Pumping me for information, and then betting on — ”
Whack!
“My — ”
Whack!
“Fucking — ”
Whack!
“Ball club.”
Whack!Pop.
I’m out of stones.
“Don’t worry,” says Steven. He’s standing right in front of me.
He offers me a smoke from his pack. I shake him off, like he’s behind the plate.
“Capone can’t touch you in New York. Rothstein controls this city — he controls the judges, he controls the cops, he controls the lawyers. Christ, he once shot a cop in front of a bunch of other cops, and still got off.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Capone is fucking from New York. And I go to Chicago — we play there three times a year. Is your buddy Rothstein going to travel with the me and the team?
“Not that I’ll be on any team if any of this gets out. I don’t know how John McGraw gets away doing business with Rothstein — but I’m not McGraw, and if any of this gets out I’m done playing baseball, finished — and I’m not just talking about the major leagues. Landis will make sure I can’t even play in a sandbox in Mexico!
“But that’s not the point. The point is —
“The point is —
“Jesus, Steven, doesn’t friendship mean anything to you? How could you do this to me?”
Steven looks me in the eyes. “There’s money involved. Don’t you understand that’s just Amer — “
I cut him off.
“America? Please tell me you weren’t going to say, ‘That’s just America.’”
“Maybe not all of America,” he says, “but certainly New York. Certainly Wall Street. My best friends are Benjamin Franklin and the other Founding Fathers on little green pieces of paper. And don’t worry, I’ve taken care of you. There are a bunch of Founding Fathers in your name.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Give me the book.”
“No,” I tell him.
“Then look in the back. Look at the last few pages, the ones that say ‘Penn State.’”
I open it up, turn to the end, and under “Penn State” I see four pages, filled with numbers, and a bottom line: $57,400.
“Here,” he says, reaching into his back pocket and handing me a piece of paper that turns out to be a bank statement. At the top of the statement is my name. There’s $57,400 in the account.
“It’s your percentage of the winnings,” he says. “Did you think I was going to cut you out?”
“Cut me out? You’re insane. I don’t want to be cut in!”
“Are you kidding me?” he says. “Look how much money we can make, even when you don’t know what you’re doing! Imagine next season when you know what to look for.”
I can’t believe it. He actually thinks there’s going to be a next season. Now I’m looking him in the eye.
“Is everything to you just something to be manipulated, so you can get your cut?”
“Yes.”
He lights another cigarette, and again offers me his pack. Again, I shake him off.
“You play your game, Myles. I play mine. And frankly, this season I’ve been playing a hell of a lot better than you.”
“Who else knows about this bank account?” I ask him.
“Nobody.”
“What about Rothstein?”
“Nobody. I told you.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t. But I’m telling you, nobody knows. Rothstein would think I was an idiot if he know I was cutting you in — ”
“You’re not cutting me in,” I tell him. But he isn’t listening.
“The last thing I want is for Rothstein or anybody else to find out,” Steven says.
“What’s wrong with you?!” I start screaming. “Somebody already has found out! The biggest gangster in the country has found out! Doesn’t that register with you at all?!”
“Capone doesn’t care about our gambling.”
“Oh, really? Have you asked him?”
“I know how these guys think.”
“What are you, the goddamn Sigmund Freud of gangsters?”
“Myles, it’s just business to Capone. Just like it’s just business to Rothstein. He doesn’t care about our gambling, it’s not on his turf. And we’re finished with our advertising in Chicago. The stock price has soared to where we projected it would, right on schedule. Rothstein, Stoneham, McGraw and I are all dumping our shares this week. Rothstein and Stoneham have cleared $10 million. McGraw’s made a quick $800,000. And, well, you’ve seen the book, so you know what I’ve made.”
Five million dollars should be enough for Steven to buy the rest of his Upper West Side block and finish off the biggest backyard in Manhattan — with plenty of Founding Fathers left over for his next Wall Street scam.
I rip out the pages that say “Penn State” and hand the rest of the book back to Steven. Then I turn and walk back through the house, out the front door and into the dark.
Tonight I’m sleeping in Central Park.
