Painting the Corners Read online

  The two of them were consoling each other in Carlson’s office long after the game. They were trying to work out the order in which they might best use their other pitchers the next day, when Galen Morrison knocked on the door and opened it. His right arm was in a sling, tucked in close to his stomach. He assured them that he felt all right and reported the doctor’s prognosis that he’d be as good as new in a couple of months.

  “You’d like to find a way to pitch Tommy tomorrow, wouldn’t you?” It was more of a statement than a question.

  They looked at him, but said nothing. They had already concluded that circumstances had taken that choice out of their hands, and couldn’t imagine what Morrison had in mind.

  He realized what they were thinking. “Well, you can still do it,” he said. He saw each of their heads move slightly, as if asking him to let them in on his secret. But their eyes were blank and their silence continued. Finally, Carlson spoke, unable to restrain the sarcasm in his voice.

  “Oh yeah? How? Please, don’t be bashful.”

  “Listen,” Morrison answered matter-of-factly, “there’s one other guy back in Peoria who can catch Tommy as good as me. Caught him a lot while Tommy was in high school when he was learning the knuckler out of a pitching manual and finding out what he could do with it. If I get hold of him right away, I can have him here tomorrow by game time. I already checked the train schedule and we can do it if you want.”

  Carlson and Abbott were flabbergasted. The questions suddenly flew out of their mouths. “What’s his name?” “How do you know he’s in shape?” “Are you sure he’d come?” “When’s the last time Tommy pitched to him?” They were both standing very close to their injured catcher by the time they exhausted their inquiries.

  Morrison answered everything they asked, assuring them that Lee Carteret could do the job. “But he’s gonna have to catch a train to Chicago pretty quick to make connections if you want him here. You’ve gotta fish or cut bait.”

  Carlson and Abbott looked at each other and communicated without saying a word. “Call him,” Abbott said, pointing his finger at Morrison. “Get him here,” Carlson shouted. “Hurry up, find a telephone.”

  Morrison left the office. Carlson went back to his chair and fell into it with a loud sigh. Abbott kept standing, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.

  “What do you think?” Carlson asked. “Is this guy gonna be for real?”

  “I don’t know, Moose.” Abbott shook his head. “I’m afraid to think about it. Did we do something to deserve two miracles in one season?”

  The cab bringing Galen Morrison and Lee Carteret from Grand Central Station to the Polo Grounds arrived at the ballpark about 30 minutes before game time. Carteret already had on the size 32 Browns uniform that Morrison had picked up from the equipment manager that morning, along with the brown team cap that bore the city’s initials in front and was quartered off with narrow orange lines running down in four different directions from the button on top. He brought his own spikes and would use Morrison’s catcher’s glove. Abbott gave Carteret a handshake with a fast “Glad to see ya.” He hustled him out to the bullpen so he could watch him in action as Tommy Morrison warmed up. Twenty minutes later the coach returned to the dugout with a big smile on his face.

  “It looks good, Moose. Morrison’s knuckler is doing everything but a disappearing act and Carteret can handle it. He’s a real silent type, though, doesn’t say a word. Tommy told me that’s the way he always is. Has to concentrate every second. It suits me, as long as he catches what the kid throws up there. Only thing is he’s on the short side and his arm doesn’t seem all that strong. It could be a problem if Tommy lets them get on.”

  As crucial and deciding games go, the last game of the World Series between the Browns and Giants was just average, one that would have bored many observers if played during the regular season. There were no home runs and not a single outstanding defensive play. It was a major letdown for both teams from the day before and could only be called exciting because the score stayed close for all nine innings.

  The fans who jammed into the park that afternoon were pumped up. Their anticipation rose whenever one of the Giants got on base, and their hopes were dashed each time Morrison recorded another strikeout to end a rally. In the end, St. Louis took a 3-2 lead into the bottom of the ninth. Then, despite a one out opposite field triple by the Giants’ shortstop, it held on for the victory. With the crowd on its feet and shouting encouragement, the second out was recorded when Morrison’s knuckleball dipped past the hitter trying to squeeze the run in from third. Dawson Douglas, a hero a day earlier and New York’s last hope, took three desperate swings at Morrison’s servings, all in vain.

  When Carteret caught the final strike, the Browns players rushed out to the mound from the dugout and the bullpen. They grabbed and hugged each other as the disheartened fans watched in silence from the stands. The team’s celebration on the field lasted fifteen minutes and then continued in the locker room when several cases of iced champagne were brought in.

  About an hour after the last pitch had been thrown, while the revelry was still going on, Johnny Abbott discovered that Lee Carteret was nowhere to be found. He wanted to congratulate him again for the game he caught and talk about the coming season. Abbott pushed his way through several members of the press who were still interviewing Tommy Morrison about the game, trying to squeeze more quotes out of him. He interrupted and asked if the pitcher knew Carteret’s whereabouts.

  “Yeah, Johnny, my dad took him to the train station. He had to get back to Peoria right away for something special happening there tomorrow. I heard him say there was no way he could miss it.”

  “That’s too bad. I wanted to talk to him about catching you next year.”

  Morrison smiled. “Forget it, coach. Lee would never do that. Lee’s the stay-at-home type, just wants to hang around Peoria all the time.”

  They had asked the driver to stop at a Mobil station on the way to Grand Central. While Carteret took off the Browns uniform and got into street clothes in the washroom, Galen Morrison chatted with the station owner about business and invited him to stop by for a visit if he was ever in Peoria.

  When they reached the terminal, they had to wait 40 minutes for the train to Chicago. Morrison bought a cup of coffee for each of them and purchased an assortment of fruit for Carteret to take on the overnight trip back to Illinois. He found two seats in the crowded waiting room and they sat down.

  “I’ve got to tell you, Lee, that was one heck of a game you caught.”

  Carteret smiled. “Thank goodness none of their base runners tried to steal. If they did, I probably would have just held on to the ball instead of showing them I couldn’t throw that far.”

  “Now you’ve got to own up that you’re glad I got you to learn how to catch Tommy’s knuckler when I couldn’t be there.”

  “Yes, you were right, but who’d have thought it would ever come to this? I still don’t believe it.”

  “And if word ever gets out, no one else will either. Listen, I understand the team’s going back to St. Louis tomorrow and then there’ll be a parade downtown on Wednesday or Thursday. So me and Tommy should be getting back to Peoria one of those nights.”

  “That’s okay. You guys know where to find me.”

  “We sure do,” he answered.

  * * *

  Two months later, as winter was beginning to send ominous warnings of its rapid approach, and as the hot stove league began to heat up in baseball towns from the Hudson River to the Mississippi, the Browns notified the local press that both Galen and Tommy Morrison had sent back the contracts tendered to them. They informed the team that they would not return to Major League Baseball under any circumstances. The last part of the statement indicated that the Browns still had some interest in bringing Lee Carteret to spring training, but had been unable to make contact with him.

  Shortly after New Year’s Day, Dean Haller, the baseball reporter for
the St. Louis Dispatch decided to do a story on “The Boys From Peoria,” as he called them. Haller wanted to find out what made the Morrisons tick; why they were willing to give up the opportunity to play ball in the Big Leagues and make the “easy bucks” ballplayers could earn. He wrote in his column that every red-blooded American boy he had ever known would give his right arm (if he was a southpaw) to trade places with Tommy Morrison. He also hoped to meet with Carteret, learn more about him, and see whether he intended to return for a tryout with the team.

  When interviewed at his garage, Galen Morrison told Haller the same thing he’d said to Johnny Abbott. “At my age I want to be home with my family during the long summer, not riding trains back and forth to the east coast. It’s when I enjoy going fishing or on camping trips. Besides, there’s a lot of people in Peoria who rely on me to take good care of their automobiles.” No, he said, when Haller was leaving, he hadn’t seen Lee Carteret in a while and didn’t know how to get in touch with him.

  Tommy Morrison had his girlfriend with him when he met the reporter at a drugstore counter just a block from the Gibson Filters plant. He’d received a promotion at work, he said, and his face lit up when he mentioned that they were thinking about getting married later that year. Morrison said that he enjoyed fooling hitters with his knuckleball, but that sitting and watching baseball every day, as he had to do with the Browns, wasn’t fun for him. He’d rather be working in the filter plant with his friends and pitching for their team once or twice a week. He told Haller that the money Gibson paid him was enough for what he needed, and said he was sure he’d be doing a lot better in a few years when they promoted him to supervisor.

  “Yeah, pitching in the World Series was a thrill, but I’ve already done it once,” he said. “I don’t figure it would be any different the next time.” Smiling at his girlfriend, he told Haller he was sure he wouldn’t miss the heat in St. Louis, or packing and unpacking a suitcase all the time, or trying to sleep on a train while it click-clacked along at night, blaring its loud whistle at railroad crossings every few minutes.

  Haller wanted to know where he could find Lee Carteret so he could ask how he felt about getting a last-minute call to catch the deciding game of the World Series. Morrison said he couldn’t help, that Carteret seemed to have dropped out of sight for some reason. He was sure the Browns had seen the last of him.

  Haller checked the local telephone book but there were no Carterets listed. He drove over to the storefront offices of the Peoria Gazette on Main Street and spoke to the editor, but the man was not even aware that someone named Carteret from that town had played in the World Series. “We don’t tend to follow baseball all that closely here,” he said, “and if there’s a story on it, it’ll usually be about the White Sox or the Cubs. Those are the teams folks around here would be more interested in.”

  Leaving Peoria, Haller decided to make one last try at City Hall. The information clerk directed him to the elections department where he learned that there was no Lee Carteret registered to vote. He then walked down the long corridor, with its white tile floor and mahogany walls, to the tax assessor’s office. There he was told that there wasn’t any property in town in Carteret’s name.

  “Well, does anyone by the name of Carteret show up on your records?” he asked, indicating his impatience by speaking in too loud a voice. His frustration was getting the better of him.

  The clerk behind the counter wet his forefinger with the tip of his tongue and began slowly turning the pages of the large cloth-covered book in front of him. “Yes,” he said, a short while later, “Amos and Helen Carteret.”

  “Good,” Haller said, confident that the mystery was about to be solved. “Where do they live?” He knew he asked the question in an overly demanding way, but didn’t apologize for it. Instead, he quickly took a small spiral notebook out of his jacket pocket and got ready to make a note.

  “My best recollection is they’re somewhere in Texas now. They moved away from here about five years ago because Amos needed the dry heat.” The clerk turned around toward a heavy woman with jet-black hair who was occupying one of the two desks in the office. “You remember the Carterets, Frances? Where’d they move off to?”

  Frances looked up and stared at both men for several moments. When she answered, she spoke hurriedly, as if annoyed at being interrupted. “New Mexico, I think. Maybe Santa Fe. I just don’t know.”

  Haller stood there. He craned his neck toward the high ceiling above them, drumming the fingers of his left hand on the countertop. “Tell me this much,” he said finally, turning back to the clerk and again showing his irritation when he spoke, “did they have a son named Lee?”

  The clerk turned around to look at his buxom co-worker again. They locked eyes for several seconds, as if that was the only way either one could find an answer. “No, they sure didn’t,” he told Haller as he faced him again, shaking his head from side to side. “Had two daughters, was all.”

  The reporter gave up. It was going to be a long drive back to St. Louis and he decided to get started. His disappointment at not locating Carteret for his story was obvious. “Thanks for nothing,” he said, and left.

  Frances got out of her chair and walked slowly over to the counter. “What was that all about, Earl? I knew something was going on when you asked if I remembered the Carterets.”

  “I just didn’t like anything about that fellow,” Earl said. “He never told me who he was or what he wanted to know for, and he sure didn’t talk with any respect. If he didn’t know Amos Carteret was mayor here for four terms, I wasn’t about to tell him. And I didn’t want him bothering Amos down in Phoenix on my account.”

  “That’s what I figured when you asked,” Frances said. “And how do you think he got Lee Carteret mixed up that way?”

  “I don’t know. Beats me. But if he’s got some crazy idea about Lee, it’s not up to me to straighten him out. I didn’t see any reason to let him know she married Galen Morrison and has been Lee Morrison for some twenty years now. No, sir, not that rude knucklehead.”

  •

  THE LEAST MISERABLE CHOICE

  •

  “When a pitcher’s throwing a spitball, don’t worry and don’t complain, just hit the dry side like I do.”

  —Stan Musial

  THE AFTERNOON BEFORE Opening Day should have been a pleasurable time for Paul Remy. The sound of bat against ball had begun to fill the park late in the morning as the two divisional rivals that would do battle the next day went through their hitting and fielding drills. Media representatives swarmed around the batting cage, their notebooks and microphones at the ready for any interviews they could coax from the players. Maintenance men wiped down the seats throughout the park while others hung red, white, and blue banners on the short wall in front of the field boxes. Food and souvenir vendors moved their products from a line of trucks on the crowded street to the booths that had been set up for them behind the grandstand and bleachers. Remy had been in the middle of it all, smiling unabashedly at everything involved in the start of a new season of baseball. It was everything he had been anticipating for weeks. It was what he lived for.

  But just before noon he had to break away from the commotion around him and return to his office in the executive suite. When he arrived, he found Rick Keenan waiting for him. Keenan was an agent known for his high-priced stable of ballplayers commanding annual salaries in excess of ten million dollars. The item on that day’s agenda that Remy hadn’t been looking forward to was the negotiation of a contract extension for Jamal Orlando, the team’s superstar left fielder. The club’s three-year pact with Orlando would expire at the end of this season.

  Remy had dealt with Keenan on a number of occasions in a twelve-year career as general manager for three major-league teams. He always felt a certain nervous tension whenever a session with the agent was scheduled. There was something unsettling about the man who came to every meeting totally prepared, disdained small talk, and refused to waste tim
e listening to long speeches about why his client’s employer couldn’t afford to pay him market price.

  “I’m not interested in your small ballpark or your low TV revenues or anything else,” Keenan had said moments earlier, just fifteen minutes into the meeting. The words conveyed a tone of annoyance, as if to a student who hadn’t yet learned an obvious lesson. Keenan wore a navy blue blazer over a black turtleneck sweater. His curly black hair had a purposely disheveled look and the lenses of his glasses were the kind that adjusted to the light around him. He didn’t apologize for interrupting Remy’s discourse as to why Orlando’s salary demands were overwhelming. “You know what the going rate is for a player who hits 38 home runs and averages a 120 RBI’s every year. We’re not asking you for any more than what the Braves just agreed to give Wilfred Perez. Like I said, three more years will cost you 33 million dollars.”

  Remy leaned back in his swivel chair and was silent. He was a tall man with brown hair, deep brown eyes, and a tendency to dress informally in clothes of that same color. His left knee ached from all the walking he had done that morning. He was grateful that the date for the arthroscopic surgery it required had been moved up and was only nine days away. That meant he would have to spend his forty-fifth birthday on crutches and that the long weekend in Las Vegas his wife had given him as a present had to be postponed.

  Remy took off his glasses, held them up to the fluorescent light in the office, and saw that they needed cleaning. He reached into the pocket of his short-sleeved beige shirt for the package of Redi-Wipes, couldn’t find them, and then remembered he had used the last one just after arriving at work that morning. The weather forecast for the next day, which by late morning was suddenly warning about possibly heavy rains at game time, was beginning to affect his mood. He knew he had no answer that would make Keenan reconsider his position. Months of trying to convince him that Orlando wouldn’t do as well in another city, that the team’s ballpark was the perfect place for his hitting style, had achieved nothing. “Take him out of here and his stats will suffer,” he argued each time they met. “You know it and I know it. This park’s made for him.” That was his best pitch toward persuading Orlando’s agent to let him sign for less, to agree to a “hometown discount,” as the media called it.