Painting the Corners Read online

  Sunday was my father’s only day of rest, and he normally slept until noon. But on that particular morning he had washed and dressed and was at the breakfast table before ten o’clock. My mother made apple pancakes for my two sisters and me because she knew what would please me the most. For it was my birthday.

  “We haven’t had a chance to buy you anything,” my father said, pausing for some theatrical effect, “but maybe you’d like to see the Red Sox with me today.”

  I was thrilled. “Yes,” I said, almost shouting my response. My father could see the huge smile breaking out on my face. My mother told me years later that it was the happiest she’d ever seen me.

  “Can we come too?” my sisters asked, almost in unison.

  “Not this time,” my father told them. “Another time we’ll all go together, but today it’s just the men.” He waited a few seconds before turning back to me and winking.

  Our trip to Fenway Park that afternoon was one of the rare occasions when — for the first time in both their lives — a father and son got to experience the thrill of emerging from the dark entrance ramp into the sunshine of the field and were momentarily spellbound by the lush green carpet of grass filling the ballpark. I was overwhelmed by the noise of the crowd, the shouts of the vendors moving up and down the aisles with their peanuts, soft drinks, and hot dogs, and the smack of baseballs hitting leather as players from both teams loosened up in the area between the dugouts and the foul lines. I wanted to get as close to the field as I could, but the ushers in their red blazers and blue pants allowed only box seat ticket holders into those sections. As game time approached and the lineups were announced, we moved away from the action and out to our seats in the right field bleachers.

  The competitive season had ended for the Red Sox weeks earlier when they were eliminated from the pennant race; but they were playing their last series of the year against their hated rivals, the Yankees. I spent much of that cool, sunny afternoon teaching my father the rules of the game and sharing with him the accomplishments of the Boston hitters as they came to bat. He wondered why the players left their gloves out on the field when they returned to the dugout each inning, and seemed disappointed that no one on either team had made his prediction come true by stumbling over one while running to make a catch.

  There was drama in the game we saw, right to the very end. The Red Sox were down by one in the ninth inning and had runners on second and third base with two outs. The public address announcer informed the cheering crowd that Denton Heywood was being sent up to pinch-hit for the pitcher. Heywood, a left-handed batter, would face the Yankees right-handed pitcher.

  “They’ll walk him,” I told my father, anticipating my being able to explain the strategy to him as soon as the intentional pass began. The Yankees manager ran out to the mound to talk to his pitcher.

  Most of the major-league players who had gone off to war in the early ’40s did not return to their teams in 1945, after the Japanese surrender in August. They were content to go home to their families and take a long rest before getting their bodies ready for spring training and a new season of baseball the following year. The teams competing for the championship that year were stocked with minor league players who wouldn’t have been there if the real “big leaguers” hadn’t had to interrupt their careers.

  Denton Heywood was born and raised in Dorchester, about nine miles from Fenway Park and a dozen blocks from where I lived. I discovered years later — while looking through a biography of wartime ballplayers — that he had just passed his twenty-second birthday when he batted in the first game I ever saw. The Red Sox had promoted Heywood to their Triple-A farm team in Louisville that summer when injuries forced them to bring several players from that club to Boston. Then, as soon as Louisville was eliminated from its playoffs in September, he was called up for the last few weeks of the season so that everyone in management could get a look at him.

  Heywood had asthmatic problems that kept him out of the military, and the Boston sportswriters — skilled at impugning any rookie’s ability upon his arrival into town — were almost unanimous in telling their readers that he lacked the talent to play the game at the highest level. He had made their stories about him in the city’s four major newspapers appear accurate by failing to reach base in the dozen pinch-hitting appearances he’d had since coming to Fenway Park.

  To the surprise of the crowd — and to my embarrassment — the Yankees manager decided to go after Heywood instead of loading the bases for the leadoff hitter. “I knew it,” my father said, when he saw what was happening. The count went to 1 and 2, and then Heywood barely managed to stay alive by foul tipping the next three pitches. He looked completely outmatched.

  “Hit one out,” I begged, in desperation, and was rewarded an instant later with a fly ball that rose on a glorious arc and carried over the visitors’ bullpen into the right field bleachers — a game-winning home run. Rising to my feet along with everyone else, I watched the flight of the ball, certain for most of its ten-second journey that it was heading directly at me. And then, in the most jealous moment of my life, I saw it come down into the glove of Billy Killian, a boy who was two grades ahead of me in the same junior high school back in Dorchester.

  On the following day, I got the chance to hold the baseball at school and listen to Billy exaggerate the difficulty of his catch. I heard him tell everyone around him during morning recess how he waited at the players’ gate for Denton Heywood to leave Fenway Park and asked him to autograph the ball. On the side opposite his name, Heywood had — for whatever reason — also inscribed the date, “10/2/45.”

  * * *

  The store where I discovered the baseball was located on Herkimer’s main street, which included several blocks of rather seedy-looking establishments. Next to it on one side was a movie theater; it must have been long since abandoned because there was a poster for a Steve McQueen/Ali McGraw picture still encased in plastic on a wall just beyond the iron grillwork erected to close off the entrance. The two sides of the triangular marquee that pushed out high above the sidewalk carried a complete message between them in foot-high black letters, “CLO” on the left and “SED” on the right. A jewelry store, with a display of Timex watches that moved around in the front window on an oval-shaped conveyor belt, was situated on the other side.

  When I entered “The Treasure Chest,” the proprietor came out of the back room to help me. He was a man about my own age whose heavy black mustache struck me almost as a stage prop that was there to try and distract attention from what otherwise was the most outstanding feature of his head — a crew cut that wouldn’t have been any shorter had he just finished his first day of Marine Corps training. He nodded at me, offered that it was a nice day and asked if there was something he could help me with.

  “Believe it or not,” I said, pointing at the baseball in the window, “I remember the guy who signed that. He played for the Red Sox when I was a kid.”

  “Is that right?” he answered, and hesitated a few moments. “Well, I’m not much of a fan myself, beyond Pete Rose or Joe DiMaggio or a few others. You know, the great ones. But no one who’s been in here has ever heard of this fellow. What’s his name again?”

  “Denton Heywood,” I told him. “He had one hit in his whole major-league career. But it was a home run on the last day of the season. He won the ball game with it.”

  He watched me looking down at the ball and probably sensed that I would be the only person coming into his store who’d have an interest in buying it for whatever added value it received from the autograph. He encouraged me to pick up the ball and hold it. “Have a feel of it,” he said.

  I did. The signature was written so clearly, as if Heywood had wanted to be certain that everyone would be able to read it. I flipped the ball in the air, not more than a foot above my hand, and when I caught it I saw the writing on the other side for the first time. Just numbers: “10/2/45.” A shiver moved through my whole body.

  * * *
>
  Denton Heywood reported to the Red Sox camp in Sarasota, Florida for spring training in 1946. By that time, Bobby Doerr was back playing second base, and Heywood realized that his only chance of staying with the team was as a utility infielder. He played in about fifteen exhibition games, splitting his time in the field between second, third, and shortstop, but didn’t impress Sox Manager Joe Cronin. About a week before the team headed north for the start of the season, Heywood was assigned to Louisville.

  On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, in 1945, Heywood had married Patty Ann Shea, his high school sweetheart. She didn’t accompany him to Florida when he left in February, not wanting to distract him in any way from the goal he hoped to achieve; but she packed up their few belongings and joined him in Louisville a few days after he rented an apartment within walking distance of the ballpark.

  The club installed Heywood at third base, grooming him to play that position in a year or two in Boston, and he responded by having an excellent season both at bat and in the field. He was ticketed for a return trip to the Red Sox in September, as soon as the team was allowed to expand its roster for the final month of the season. With Ted Williams leading the way, the ball club had overpowered everyone that year and was able to coast to the pennant. Heywood’s only concern was that his wife, who was pregnant, was due in the latter part of September.

  On August 29th, while the Louisville team was playing a three game series in Utica, Patty Ann was in an automobile accident just a few blocks from their apartment. She was rushed to Memorial Hospital by ambulance and spent the next four hours on an operating table. Word reached Heywood in the middle of the game, and he was driven to the airport by the police. By the time he arrived at the hospital, Patty Ann had given birth, by Caesarean section, to a baby girl. Heywood was told that his wife was dying and that a priest had already prayed with her. He spent the last 30 minutes of Patty Ann’s life at her bedside, watching her cradle the daughter she wanted to be named Christina. By the time the funeral took place back in Dorchester several days later, Heywood realized that he would probably never wear a professional baseball uniform again.

  * * *

  “Where did you get this ball?” I asked the owner.

  “A woman brought it in about two weeks ago,” he told me. “Lives a couple of towns over. Said it belonged to her husband and asked me to try and sell it. He’s the one that got hit last month out on the thruway, just a little west of here. Said she needed to raise whatever she could.” As he spoke, he walked over to the counter where the cash register was located and stepped behind it. “The paper said he was changing a tire in the rain — a nasty night out there — and got killed by some hit-and-run driver they haven’t found yet. You might’ve read about it.”

  I told him I was from Massachusetts and just passing through the area. “Do you know her name?” I asked.

  “Not offhand,” he answered, “but I got it written down in the back with her phone number. I’ll go get it if you’re interested.”

  I said I was, and asked how much he wanted for the ball. He answered right away, telling me he thought $30 was a fair price, especially since I’d known Denton Heywood. He turned a key in the register, took it with him as he headed toward the rear of the store, and returned a few minutes later with a small spiral notebook.

  “Her name’s Ruth Killian,” he informed me, “and she gets half if you buy it.”

  I told him I would take it, and said that I wanted to leave a note for Mrs. Killian. “Do you have a piece of paper I can use, and an envelope?” I took three $10 bills out of my wallet and handed them to him. He tore a page from the back of the notebook and gave it to me.

  It took me a couple of minutes to think about what I wanted to say. At home, I would have written the note out on a scrap piece of paper and edited it until I was satisfied that it expressed all my thoughts. But as I leaned over the counter the words didn’t come easily.

  By the time the owner returned, I had finished, telling Ruth Killian that I had seen her husband make a spectacular catch of the ball that Heywood had hit for a home run. The owner had wrapped the ball in tissue paper and put it in a plastic bag. I turned around, folded two $20 bills inside the note to Killian’s wife and put them in the envelope he had handed me. I sealed it and wrote her name on the front. “Be sure she gets this,” I told him. “It’s very personal.”

  The next two days passed quickly as Tracy and I visited the other four colleges. The baseball I’d purchased seemed to have me thinking about my own diamond heroes a lot of the time. Heading back, I contemplated a third night on the road and a visit to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown the next day, but my daughter wouldn’t hear of it. Still, I resolved to try and find out what had happened to Denton Heywood. Perhaps he still lived in Dorchester. Maybe the Red Sox would know. I might even have the chance to show him the ball, I thought.

  We got off the highway in Albany and stopped for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. We talked about the schools we had seen, Tracy’s feelings about possible career choices, and her strong desire to backpack by herself around Europe during the upcoming summer. The fortune cookies we opened relieved some of the tension and were good for a laugh because the messages inside would have been perfectly appropriate if only she had picked mine and I’d gotten hers. I had already found my true love and Tracy wasn’t in any position to receive a big promotion. Then I told her about the baseball and Billy Killian. “That’s weird, Dad; it’s really weird,” she said.

  Shortly after we crossed back into Massachusetts, Tracy rested her head on a pillow against the passenger door and closed her eyes. A few minutes later I turned on the radio, looking for some soft music, and picked up a New York station that was doing the news at the top of the hour. Before I could turn the dial, the announcer began reporting that a Massachusetts man had come forward in the hit-and-run death of William Killian on the New York Thruway 26 days earlier. He said that the individual was a regional distributor for Eastman Kodak in Boston who had driven home from the company’s Rochester plant the night of the accident and couldn’t account for a dent in the right fender of his automobile when he discovered it the following day. But on his next trip to Rochester, he read a story about the ongoing search for the hit-and-run driver and suddenly recalled the thump he felt against his car that night during a heavy rainstorm near the Herkimer exit. Police inspected the man’s Buick LeSabre and determined that it was the car that struck Killian. The driver — against whom no charges had yet been filed — was identified as a 59-year-old, one-time professional baseball player for the Boston Red Sox, named Denton Heywood.

  Unbelieving, I looked over at Tracy, but she was already asleep. I spent the rest of the night wondering about the ways that fate had of entangling the lives of total strangers. Surely, I told myself, Ruth Killian had to be thinking about the same thing if she read my note. Somehow, I felt better knowing that she would never have to see that baseball again. And I was suddenly glad that it wasn’t me who had caught Denton Heywood’s home run.

  •

  KNUCKLEBALL

  •

  “There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball. Unfortunately, neither of them work.”

  —Charlie Lau

  THERE IS AMPLE testimony to the fact that a major-league manager can move from a state of blissful dreams to near insomnia, almost overnight, so to speak, by the sudden loss of one of his starting pitchers. Even more so is that proposition true when his team has been picked by all the self-anointed “experts” to win the pennant, and the standings in the middle of July show that the second place team — eleven games behind a month earlier — now trails his own by just a game and a half.

  Moose Carlson, watching every move on the field from one end of the St. Louis dugout, felt sick to his stomach in a matter of seconds when he saw Art Whitlock drop his glove and grab his right elbow with his left hand after releasing a pitch to the plate. The ball was seven or eight feet outside the strike zone when it flew past the three
people at home who were intent on its arrival. Minutes later, as he stood on the Sportsman’s Park mound awaiting the arrival of a relief pitcher, Carlson was certain that Whitlock would not be seeing his name in another box score that season. When the game ended, the Browns manager was distraught that the four run lead they held just before Whitlock’s final pitch had completely evaporated over the final three innings. The team went to sleep — all except Carlson, that is — a mere half game ahead of Detroit.

  At five-thirty the next morning, Johnny Abbott was roused out of a deep slumber by the harsh ring of the telephone in his hotel room. He reached over to the night table for it, and listened to Carlson’s high-pitched voice directing him to be downstairs in the coffee shop in half an hour. By the time he hung up, Abbott was unable to remember the events that had transpired in his dream before it was interrupted; but he smiled at the sudden recollection that everyone else in his nocturnal escapade was female. As he headed for the bathroom, the agitated tone of Carlson’s jarring wakeup call was still fresh in his ear. Abbott had no doubt that his job of pitching coach for the Browns was about to enter a time of turmoil.

  Carlson was the only customer in the coffee shop when Abbott pushed open the glass door leading from the lobby and walked in. The Browns skipper had chosen to sit in the booth farthest from the entrance, facing the far wall. He hadn’t shaved, and his puffed eyes told of little sleep. Abbott understood his long-time friend’s anxiety about finding a reliable pitcher as soon as possible. He watched as Carlson nervously moved his hand through his full head of white hair, busily scratching it.