time.”
“Well, they’ve just won the World Series. According to what’s printed here, the seventh game was the most breathless, riveting contest ever played.”
That was how I learned my boys had become the 1926 champions. Master Yehudi read me the account of the dramatic seventh inning, when Grover Cleveland Alexander came in to strike out Tony Lazzeri with the bases loaded. For the first few minutes, I thought he was making it up. The last I’d heard, Alexander was top dog on the Philly staff, and Lazzeri was a name that meant nothing to me. It sounded like a pile of foreign noodles smothered in garlic sauce, but then the master informed me that he was a rookie and that Grover had been traded to the Cards in midseason. He’d hurled nine innings just the day before, shutting down the Yanks to knot the series at three games apiece, and here was Rogers Hornsby calling him in from the bullpen to snuff out a rally with the whole ball of wax on the line. And the old guy sauntered in, drunk as a skunk from last night’s bender, and mowed down the young New York hotshot. If not for a couple of inches, it would have been another story. On the pitch before the third strike, Lazzeri drove one into the left field seats, a sure grand slam that hooked foul at the last second. It was enough to give you apoplexy. Alexander hung in there through the eighth and ninth to nail down the win, and to top itoff, the game and the series ended when Babe Ruth, the one and only Sultan of Swat, was thrown out trying to steal second base. There had never been anything like it. It was the maddest, most infernal game in history, and my Redbirds were the champs, the best team in the world.
That was a watershed for me, a landmark event in my young life, but otherwise the fall was a somber stretch, a long interlude of boredom and quiet. After a while, I got so antsy that I asked Aesop if he wouldn’t mind teaching me how to read. He was more than willing, but he had to clear it with Master Yehudi first, and when the master gave his approval, I confess that I was a little hurt. He’d always said how he wanted to keep me stupid—how it was an advantage as far as my training was concerned—and now he had blithely gone ahead and reversed himself without any explanation. For a time I thought it meant he had given up on me, and disappointment festered in my heart, a hangdog sorrow that dragged down all my bright dreams and turned them to dust. What had I done wrong, I asked myself, and why had he deserted me when I most needed him?
So I learned the letters and numbers with Aesop’s help, and once I got started, they came so quickly that I wondered what all the fuss had been about. If I wasn’t going to fly, at least I could convince the master that I wasn’t a dolt, but so little effort was involved, it soon felt like a hollow victory. Spirits around the house picked up for a while in November when our food shortage was suddenly eliminated. Without telling anyone where he’d found the money to do such a thing, the master had secretly arranged for a delivery of canned goods. It felt like a miracle when it happened, an absolute bolt from the blue. A truck arrived at our door one morning and two burly men began unloading cartons from the back. There were hundreds of boxes, and each box contained two dozen cans of food: vegetables of every variety,meats and broths, puddings, preserved apricots and peaches, an outflow of unimaginable abundance. It took the men over an hour to haul the shipment into the house, and the whole time the master just stood there with his arms folded across his chest, grinning like a crafty old owl. Aesop and I both gawked, and after a while he called us over to him and put a hand on each of our shoulders. “It can’t hold a candle to Mother Sioux’s cooking,” he said, “but it’s a damn sight better than mush, eh boys? When the chips are down, just remember who to count on. No matter how dark our troubles might be,
“Well, they’ve just won the World Series. According to what’s printed here, the seventh game was the most breathless, riveting contest ever played.”
That was how I learned my boys had become the 1926 champions. Master Yehudi read me the account of the dramatic seventh inning, when Grover Cleveland Alexander came in to strike out Tony Lazzeri with the bases loaded. For the first few minutes, I thought he was making it up. The last I’d heard, Alexander was top dog on the Philly staff, and Lazzeri was a name that meant nothing to me. It sounded like a pile of foreign noodles smothered in garlic sauce, but then the master informed me that he was a rookie and that Grover had been traded to the Cards in midseason. He’d hurled nine innings just the day before, shutting down the Yanks to knot the series at three games apiece, and here was Rogers Hornsby calling him in from the bullpen to snuff out a rally with the whole ball of wax on the line. And the old guy sauntered in, drunk as a skunk from last night’s bender, and mowed down the young New York hotshot. If not for a couple of inches, it would have been another story. On the pitch before the third strike, Lazzeri drove one into the left field seats, a sure grand slam that hooked foul at the last second. It was enough to give you apoplexy. Alexander hung in there through the eighth and ninth to nail down the win, and to top itoff, the game and the series ended when Babe Ruth, the one and only Sultan of Swat, was thrown out trying to steal second base. There had never been anything like it. It was the maddest, most infernal game in history, and my Redbirds were the champs, the best team in the world.
That was a watershed for me, a landmark event in my young life, but otherwise the fall was a somber stretch, a long interlude of boredom and quiet. After a while, I got so antsy that I asked Aesop if he wouldn’t mind teaching me how to read. He was more than willing, but he had to clear it with Master Yehudi first, and when the master gave his approval, I confess that I was a little hurt. He’d always said how he wanted to keep me stupid—how it was an advantage as far as my training was concerned—and now he had blithely gone ahead and reversed himself without any explanation. For a time I thought it meant he had given up on me, and disappointment festered in my heart, a hangdog sorrow that dragged down all my bright dreams and turned them to dust. What had I done wrong, I asked myself, and why had he deserted me when I most needed him?
So I learned the letters and numbers with Aesop’s help, and once I got started, they came so quickly that I wondered what all the fuss had been about. If I wasn’t going to fly, at least I could convince the master that I wasn’t a dolt, but so little effort was involved, it soon felt like a hollow victory. Spirits around the house picked up for a while in November when our food shortage was suddenly eliminated. Without telling anyone where he’d found the money to do such a thing, the master had secretly arranged for a delivery of canned goods. It felt like a miracle when it happened, an absolute bolt from the blue. A truck arrived at our door one morning and two burly men began unloading cartons from the back. There were hundreds of boxes, and each box contained two dozen cans of food: vegetables of every variety,meats and broths, puddings, preserved apricots and peaches, an outflow of unimaginable abundance. It took the men over an hour to haul the shipment into the house, and the whole time the master just stood there with his arms folded across his chest, grinning like a crafty old owl. Aesop and I both gawked, and after a while he called us over to him and put a hand on each of our shoulders. “It can’t hold a candle to Mother Sioux’s cooking,” he said, “but it’s a damn sight better than mush, eh boys? When the chips are down, just remember who to count on. No matter how dark our troubles might be,
Similar Books
