The Given Day (Coughlin 1)

Sticky Joe's first pitch came in too loose and too fat and Ruth had to time his swing just right to miss it. He missed it big, trying to sell it, and even Sticky Joe looked surprised. The next one was tighter, had some corkscrew in it, and Ruth fouled it back. The one after that was in the dirt, and the one that followed was up by his chin.

Sticky Joe took the ball back and stepped off the mound for a moment and Ruth could feel all the eyes on him. He could see the trees behind Luther Laurence and he could see Hollocher and Scott and McInnis on their bases, and he thought how pretty it would have been if it had been clean, if the next pitch was one he could, in good conscience, send toward God in heaven. And maybe . . .

He held up a hand and stepped out of the box.

It was just a game, wasn't it? That's what he'd told himself when he decided to tank. Just a game. Who cared if he lost one silly ball game?

But the reverse was true as well. Who cared if he won? Would it matter tomorrow? Of course not. It wouldn't affect anyone's life. Now, right now, it was a case of two down, three on, bottom of the ninth.

If he serves me a meatball, Ruth decided as he stepped back to the box, I'm going to eat. How can I resist? Those men on their bases, this bat in my hand, the smell of dirt and grass and sun.

It's a ball. It's a bat. It's nine men. It's a moment. Not forever. Just a moment.

And here was that ball, coming in slower than it should have, and Ruth could see it in the old Negro's face. He knew it as soon as it left his hand: it was fat.

Babe thought about whiffing, sliding over it, doing the fair thing.

The train whistle blew then, blew loud and shrill and up through the sky, and Ruth thought, That's a sign, and he planted his foot and swung his bat and heard the catcher say, "Shit," and then--that sound, that gorgeous sound of wood against cowhide and that ball disappeared into the sky.

Ruth trotted a few yards down the line and stopped because he knew he'd gotten under it.

He looked out and saw Luther Laurence looking at him, just for a split second, and he felt what Luther knew: that he'd tried to hit a home run, a grand slam. That he'd tried to take this game, unfairly played, away from those who'd played it clean.

Luther's eyes left Ruth's face, slid off it in such a way that Ruth knew he'd never feel them again. And Luther looked up as he faded into position under the ball. He set his feet. He raised his glove over his head. And that was it, that was the ball game, because Luther was right under it.

But Luther walked away.

Luther lowered his glove and started walking toward the infi eld and so did the right fielder and so did the left fielder and that ball plopped to the grass behind them all and they didn't even turn to look at it, just kept walking, and Hollocher crossed home, but there was no catcher there waiting. The catcher was walking toward the bench along third base and so was the third baseman.

Scott reached home, but McInnis stopped running at third, just stood there, looking at the coloreds ambling toward their bench like it was the bottom of the second instead of the bottom of the ninth. They congregated there and stuffed their bats and gloves into two separate canvas bags, acting like the white men weren't even there. Ruth wanted to cross the field to Luther, to say something, but Luther never turned around. Then they were all walking toward the dirt road behind the field, and he lost Luther in the sea of coloreds, couldn't tell if he was the guy up front or on the left and Luther never looked back.

The whistle blew again, and none of the white men had so much as moved, and even though the coloreds had seemed to walk slow, they were almost all off the field.

Except Sticky Joe Beam. He came over and picked up the bat Babe had used. He rested it on his shoulder and looked into Babe's face. Babe held out his hand. "Great game, Mr. Beam."

Sticky Joe Beam gave no indication he saw Babe's hand.

He said, "Believe that's your train, suh," and walked off the field.

Babe went back onto the train. He had a drink at the bar. The train left Ohio and hurtled through Pennsylvania. Ruth sat by himself and drank and looked out at Pennsylvania in all its scrabbled hills and dust. He thought of his father who'd died two weeks ago in Baltimore during a fight with his second wife's brother, Benjie Sipes. Babe's father got in two punches and Sipes only got in one, but it was that one that counted because his father's head hit the curb and he died at University Hospital a few hours later.

The papers made a big deal of it for a couple of days. They asked for his opinion, for his feelings. Babe said he was sorry the man was dead. It was a sad thing.

His father had dumped him in reform school when he was eight. Said he needed to learn some manners. Said he was tired of trying to teach him how to mind his mother and him. Said some time at Saint Mary's would do him good. Said he had a saloon to run. He'd be back to pick him up when he learned to mind.

His mother died while he was in there.

It was a sad thing, he'd told the papers. A sad thing.

He kept waiting to feel something. He'd been waiting for two weeks.

In general, the only time he felt anything, outside of the self-pity he felt when very drunk, was when he hit a ball. Not when he pitched it. Not when he caught it. Only when he hit it. When the wood connected with the cowhide and he swiveled his hips and pivoted his shoulders and the muscles in his thighs and calves tightened and he felt the surge of his body as it finished the swing of the black bat and the white ball soared faster and higher than anything on the planet. That's why he'd changed his mind and taken the swing this afternoon, because he'd had to. It was too fat, too pure, just sitting there. That's why he'd done it. That's all there was to that story. That's all there was.

He got in a poker game with McInnis and Jones and Mann and Hollocher, but everyone kept talking about the strike and the war (no one mentioned the game; it was as if they'd all agreed it never happened), so he took a long, long nap and when he got up, they were almost through New York and he had a few more drinks to cut the sludge in his brain, and he took Harry Hooper's hat off his head while he was sleeping and put his fist through the top of it and then placed it back on Harry Hooper's head and someone laughed and someone else said, "Gidge, don't you respect nothing?" So he took another hat, this one off Stu Springer, head of the Cubs' sales department, and he punched a hole in that one and soon half the car was flinging hats at him and egging him on and he climbed up on top of the seats and crawled from one to the next making "hoo hoo hoo" sounds like an ape and feeling a sudden, unexplainable pride that welled up through his legs and arms like stalks of wheat gone mad with the growing, and he shouted, "I am the ape man! I am Babe Fucking Ruth. I will eat you!"