Calico Joe Read online

  “I’m so sorry,” she says.

  “Have you seen him?” Clarence asks.

  “No, I’m going down tomorrow. As I said, we’re not close, not close at all. Never have been. He left the family when his baseball career flamed out and soon remarried. He’s not a nice person, Clarence, not the kind of guy you’d want to spend time with.”

  “I believe that. I read a story about him years ago. After baseball, he tried to make it as a golfer, but that went nowhere. Seems like he was selling real estate in the Orlando area and not doing very well. He was still adamant that he did not throw at Joe, but the writer was skeptical. I guess we’re all skeptical.”

  “You should be,” I say.

  “Why is that?”

  I wipe my mouth with a linen napkin. “Because he threw at Joe. I know he did. He’s denied it for thirty years, but I know the truth.”

  There is a long pause as we pick at our food and listen to the whirling of the old ceiling fan just above us. Finally, Clarence lifts his lemon gin and gulps down an ounce. He licks his lips, smacks them, and says, “You have no idea how excited we were, how much it meant to this town and especially to the family. After producing so many great players, a Castle had finally hit the big time.”

  “I wish I could say I’m sorry.”

  “You can’t. Besides, it was thirty years ago.”

  “A long time,” Fay observes as she looks down at the river. A long time, maybe, but never to be forgotten.

  “I don’t suppose you were there,” Clarence says.

  “Indeed I was. August 24, 1973. Shea Stadium.”

  12

  My father was in a foul mood when he left the house, alone.

  I dropped a few hints about riding to the stadium with him, but he wasn’t listening. The New York papers were relentlessly hyping the game, and one writer, my father’s loudest critic, described the matchup as “a contrast between youth and age. Warren Tracey, age thirty-four and over the hill, versus Joe Castle, the brightest young star baseball has seen since the arrival of Mickey Mantle in 1951.”

  Jill was away at a camp in the Catskills. I cajoled my mother into taking an early train to the city. I wanted to watch batting practice and, more important, get my first live look at Joe Castle. We stepped off the subway at 4:30, two and a half hours before the first pitch, and the atmosphere outside Shea Stadium was electric. I was surprised at the number of Cubs fans, most of them wearing white jerseys with the Number 15 across the back. Some were families who were well behaved, but many were young men in packs roaming around like street gangs, yelling, drinking beer, looking for trouble. They found it. New York fans are far from shy and seldom back down from a challenge. I saw the police break up three fights before we passed through the turnstiles. “Disgusting,” my mother said. It would be her last trip to the ballpark.

  Shea held fifty-five thousand, and it was already two-thirds full when we settled into our seats. The Cubs were taking batting practice, and there was a swarm around the cage at home plate. Ron Santo, Billy Williams, Jose Cardenal, and Rick Monday were in one group, and as they rotated through, I searched the outfield until I saw him. As he turned to chase a fly ball, I saw the name Castle across the back of his royal blue hitting jersey. He caught the ball near the right field foul line, and a thousand kids screamed for his autograph. He smiled and waved and jogged back to a group of Cubs loitering in right center, probably talking about the women up in the outfield bleachers.

  By then, I had read many descriptions of Joe Castle. In high school, some scouts had worried that he was too thin. He weighed 170 pounds when he was eighteen, and this had bothered a few of the experts. However, his father had been quoted as saying, “He’s not even shaving yet. Let the boy grow up.” And he was right. In the minors, Joe had filled out, thanks to a combination of nature and hours in the weight room. He had broad shoulders and a thirty-three-inch waist. He wore his game pants tight, and one article in the Tribune gossiped about the avalanche of provocative mail he was getting from women across the country.

  As I watched, he seemed to glide across the outfield as the bats cracked and baseballs flew everywhere. I saw my father in the Mets dugout, sitting alone, going through his pregame ritual. It was far too early for him to head to the bull pen and begin stretching. Odd, though, that he was in the dugout. Usually, at two hours and counting, he was in the locker room getting a massage from a trainer. With ninety minutes to go, he put on his uniform. At seventy-five minutes, he left the locker room, walked through the dugout, and headed for the bull pen, head down, refusing to look at the opposing dugout. The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Baseball players, and especially pitchers, are fanatics about their rituals. My father was three and one in his last six starts and four days earlier had pitched perhaps his best game in the last five years. Why would he change things?

  My mother bought me a souvenir program, then some ice cream, and I chatted with the fans around me. Eventually, Joe drifted to the Cubs dugout opposite where we were sitting. He got his bats, put on his helmet, and began limbering up. To get away from the stands, he stayed close to the batting cage. When it was his turn, he jumped in, bunted a few, then began spraying the ball to all fields. Bodies moved closer to the cage. Photographers were scrambling into position and clicking away. In his second round, he cranked it up, and the balls went deeper and deeper. He unloaded in his third round, from both sides of the plate, and hit five straight bombs into the bleachers, where hundreds of kids scrambled to get the souvenirs. The Cubs fans were screaming with each shot, and I would have cheered too, but I was in the Mets section; plus, my father was the opposing pitcher, and it did not seem appropriate.

  When he walked to the mound in the top of the first, the fans gave him a rowdy welcome. There was not an empty seat in the stadium, and for over an hour the Cubs and Mets fans had been yelling back and forth. When Rick Monday lined to short on the first pitch, the stadium roared again. Two pitches later, Glenn Beckert popped out to right field, and Warren Tracey was cruising.

  The announcer said: “Now batting and playing first base, Number 15, Joe Castle.”

  I took a deep breath and began chewing my fingernails. I wanted to watch, then I wanted to close my eyes and just listen. My mother patted my knee. I envied her apathy. At that crucial moment in my life, in the life of her husband, in the lives of countless Mets and Cubs fans across the country, at that wonderfully supercharged moment in the history of baseball, my mother could not have cared less what happened next.

  Not surprisingly, the first pitch was high and tight. Joe, batting left-handed, ducked but did not fall; nor did he glare at my father. It was a simple brushback. Welcome to New York. The second pitch was a called strike that looked low, but Joe did not react. The third pitch was a fastball that he slapped into the stands near us. The fourth pitch was low and inside. The fifth pitch was a changeup that fooled Joe, but he managed to foul it off.

  I was holding my breath with each pitch. I was praying for a strikeout, and I was praying for a home run. Why couldn’t I have both? A strikeout now for my father, a home run later for Joe, back and forth? In baseball, you always get another chance, right? I pondered these things between pitches, a complete nervous wreck.

  The sixth pitch was a curve that bounced in the dirt. Three balls, two strikes. Billy Williams on deck. Shea Stadium rocking. The Cubs ten games in first place. The Mets ten games back but winning. My father versus my hero.

  Joe fouled off the next eight pitches as the at bat turned into a dramatic duel, with neither player yielding an inch. Warren Tracey was not about to walk him. Joe Castle was not about to strike out. The fifteenth pitch was a fastball that looked low, but at the last second Joe whipped his bat around, scooped the ball up, and launched it to right center, where it cleared the wall by thirty feet. For some reason, when I knew the ball was gone, I looked back at the mound and watched my father. He never took his eyes off Joe as he rounded first, and when the ball cleared the fence
, Joe gave himself a quick pump of the fist, as if to say, “All right!” It was nothing cocky or out of line, nothing meant to show up the pitcher.

  But I knew my father, and I knew it was trouble.

  The home run was Joe’s twenty-first home run in thirty-eight games, and it would be his last.

  * * *

  The score was tied 1–1 when Joe walked to the plate in the top of the third with two outs and no one on. The first pitch was a fastball outside, and when I saw it, I knew what would happen next. The second pitch was just like the first, hard and a foot off the plate. I wanted to stand and scream, “Look out, Joe!” but I couldn’t move. As my father stood on the mound and looked in at Jerry Grote, my heart froze and I couldn’t breathe. I managed to say to my mother, “He’s gonna hit him.”

  The beanball went straight at Joe’s helmet, and for a second, for a long, dreadful second that fans and writers would discuss and debate and analyze for decades to come, Joe didn’t move. He lost the ball. For a reason no one, especially Joe, would ever understand or be able to explain or re-create or reenact, he simply lost sight of the ball. He had said that he preferred to hit from the left side because he felt as though his right eye picked up the pitches faster, but at that crucial split second his eyes failed him. It could have been something beyond the center field wall. It could have been a slight shift in the lighting. He could have lost the ball as it crossed between my father’s white jersey and home plate. He could have been distracted by the movements of Felix Millan, the second baseman. No one would ever know because Joe would never remember.

  The sound of a leather baseball hitting a hard plastic batting helmet is unmistakable. I had heard it several times in my games, including twice when I had unintentionally hit batters. I had heard it a month before at Shea when Bud Harrelson got beaned. I had heard it the summer before at a minor-league game I attended with Tom Sabbatini and his father. It is not a sharp bang but more like the striking of a dull object on a hard surface. It’s frightening enough, but there is also the immediate belief that the helmet has prevented a serious injury.

  It was not the sound of Joe being hit. What we heard was the sickening thud of the baseball cracking into flesh and bone. For those of us in the crowd close enough to hear it, the sound would never be forgotten.

  I can, and do, still hear it today.

  The ball made contact at the corner of his right eye. It knocked his helmet off as he fell backward. He caught himself with his hands behind him, on the ground, and paused for a second before passing out.

  There are so many scrambled images of what happened next. The crowd was stunned. There were gasps and a lot of “Oh my Gods!” The home plate umpire was waving for help. Jerry Grote was standing helplessly over Joe. The Cubs bench was ready to explode; several players were out of the dugout, screaming and cursing at Warren Tracey. The Cubs fans were booing loudly. The Mets fans were silent. My father walked slowly to a spot behind the mound, took off his glove, put both hands on his hips, and stared at home plate. I hated him.

  As the trainers hovered over Joe and we waited, I closed my eyes and prayed that he would get up. Shake it off. Trot down to first. Then at some point charge the mound and bloody my father’s face, just like Dutch Patton’s. My mother stared at the field in disbelief, then looked down at me. My eyes were wet.

  Minutes passed, and Joe was not getting up. We could see his cleats and uniform from the knees down, and at one point his heels appeared to be twitching, as if his body were in a seizure. The Cubs fans began throwing debris, and security guards scurried onto the field. Jerry Grote walked past the mound and stood next to his pitcher. I watched my father closely and at one point saw something that did not surprise me. With Joe flat on his back, unconscious, seriously injured, and convulsing, I saw my father smile.

  A gate opened in right field, and an ambulance appeared. It stopped near home plate, a stretcher was removed, and suddenly the doctors, medics, and trainers were much more agitated. Whatever Joe’s condition was, it was getting worse. They quickly loaded him into the ambulance, and it sped away. All fifty-five thousand fans stood and applauded, though Joe heard nothing.

  * * *

  During the break, the Cubs had time to review their options. Warren Tracey had fanned on three straight pitches to make the final out in the bottom of the second, so he would not bat again until the fifth inning. With Ferguson Jenkins pitching for the Cubs, no one in the world of baseball doubted for a second that my father was about to get beaned. Retaliation would be swift and, hopefully, at least for the Cubs, brutal and painful. However, Yogi Berra might decide to pull Tracey for a reliever, thus preventing the payback. The Cubs could also retaliate in the bottom of the third by knocking down one or two of the Mets hitters. This would probably result in a free-for-all, which was exactly what the Cubs wanted as they watched their fallen star ride away in the ambulance. The problem with a brawl was that their target would be safely tucked away in the dugout. What the Cubs wanted was the head of Warren Tracey, and the manager, Whitey Lockman, devised the perfect solution. To pinch run for Joe, Lockman inserted a part-time player named Razor Ruffin, a tough black kid from the Memphis projects, which he escaped by playing football and baseball at Michigan State. He was built like a fireplug and could run like a deer, but as the Cubs were learning, he struggled with left-handed pitching. He entered the game and took his time stretching at first base.

  The beaning of Joe Castle caused a thirty-minute delay in the game, and after he was gone, the umpire allowed Warren Tracey a few warm-up throws. The stadium was subdued. The Mets fans were uneasy, and the Cubs fans were exhausted from screaming and booing. Billy Williams stepped to the plate and dug in from the left side. Williams, a future Hall of Famer, was an easygoing type, but at that moment any pitch even close to his head would start trouble. Razor Ruffin took a lead but stayed close to the bag. He was in the game to fight, not steal. Tracey’s first two pitches were far outside. He had lost his rhythm and was throwing, not pitching. With the count 2 and 2, Williams hit a lazy pop fly to center, an easy third out. When it was obvious the ball would be caught by Don Hahn, Razor Ruffin broke for the mound. As Warren Tracey watched the fly ball, Ruffin slammed into the back of his knees and knocked him halfway to third base. Ruffin then pounced on him with both fists and began flailing away. The Cubs, who of course knew the plan, launched a full assault and engulfed Tracey and Jerry Grote. The rest of the Mets were a few steps behind, but within seconds one of baseball’s ugliest incidents was under way. Fistfights spun off as old scores were settled. Bodies hit the turf as four dozen great athletes kicked and punched and tried to kill each other with their bare hands. At the bottom of the pile, Razor Ruffin and Warren Tracey were still locked up, choking, gouging, trying to break bones and draw blood. The umpires were hapless in their efforts to separate the teams. Security guards poured onto the field. Normally, the coaches would try to unlock their players, but not with this brawl. As it continued, the fans went wild, and Shea Stadium seemed on the verge of a riot. Bedlam reigned until a few of the veterans for both teams—Ron Santo, Rusty Staub, Billy Williams, and Tom Seaver—succeeded in pulling their teammates away from the action. When the pile was uncovered, Warren Tracey bounced up with a bloody nose and pointed his finger at one of the Cubs. The umpires shoved him away, and two of his teammates dragged him toward the dugout. He was cursing, shouting, and bleeding until he disappeared. Order was finally restored. Both managers were ejected, along with Tracey, Ruffin, and six of their teammates.

  * * *

  By the time the game resumed, I was too stunned to think clearly. I had witnessed a nightmare—the gruesome beaning of Joe Castle, followed by the emotional shock of watching my father get pummeled by an entire team. My mother was fed up too. “I’d like to leave now,” she whispered. “Me too,” I said.

  We rode the train home without a word. I went to my room and crawled into the bed. I did not turn on the television, though I was desperate for news about Joe.
I was determined not to fall asleep because I had to know if my father came home that night. I doubted he would, and I was right. Shortly before midnight, the phone rang and my mother answered it. A male voice threatened to kill Warren Tracey and burn down our house in the process. My mother called the police, and at 2:00 a.m. my mother and I were chatting with an officer at the kitchen table.

  It was the first of many threatening calls. For the next few months we lived in fear, and of course my father was rarely home to protect us.

  At the age of eleven, I wanted to change my name.

  13

  The mosquitoes find us, and we retreat from the porch. Fay serves strawberries and cream, with some strange herbal tea, in the cluttered library. From ceiling to floor, the walls are covered with rows of books, and there are neat stacks around an old desk. Indeed, there are books all over the house, most covered with dust and packed on sagging shelves, much like an old secondhand bookshop. The Rooks are well-read and thoroughly engaging as conversationalists. I have talked enough and want to listen for a while.

  “We were listening to the game on the porch, weren’t we, Fay?” Clarence asks.

  “Yes, around front. I’ll never forget it.” As the evening progresses, I realize Fay knows almost as much about the game as Clarence. “Very sad.”

  “Vince Lloyd and Lou Boudreau seemed to know immediately that Joe was not getting up. Lou flat out called it a beanball, a payback since Joe had homered the first time up. As we waited and waited, they filled in the gap with some research. Warren Tracey had led the National League in hit batsmen in 1972 and was tied for the lead in 1973. Lou called him a headhunter, among other things. Both agreed that Joe seemed to freeze when the pitch was released. You could tell from their tone that the situation was pretty grim.”

  “Has Joe ever talked about it around here?” I ask. “Not on the record, but maybe to his friends or even his brothers?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” Clarence replies. “A few years later, a reporter from Little Rock—was it the Democrat or the Gazette, Fay?”

  “I think it was the Gazette,” she says. “It’s in one of the notebooks.”

  “But this guy showed up and managed to get an audience with Charlie and Red. He quizzed them about how Joe was doing these days, and so on. He also asked about the beaning, and they said that Joe simply doesn’t remember it. That’s the only time I can recall the family talking about it. Must’ve been twenty years ago.”

  “Is there brain damage?” I ask.

  Clarence and Fay look at each other, and it is obvious there are things not to be discussed in my presence. “I don’t think so,” he says, finally, “but he’s not a hundred percent.”

  Fay says, “Clarence is one of the few townsfolk Joe will speak to. Not talk to, as in a conversation, but he has always liked Clarence and will at least acknowledge his presence.”

  “I’m not sure anyone other than his mother really knows what goes on inside his head,” Clarence says.

  “And he lives with her?”

  “Yes, three blocks away.”

  It is almost 10:00 p.m., and Fay is ready for bed. She gathers the dishes, gives me instructions on where to sleep, and says good night. As soon as she is gone, Clarence says, “I need a little digestif, you?”

  As far as I can tell, Clarence is cold sober. He did not finish his last lemon gin over dinner and shows no sign of being tipsy. Same for me—my last sip of alcohol (and the last sip of lemon gin in my lifetime) was two hours earlier. My clock is running on mountain time, one hour behind Arkansas, so I am not quite ready for bed. And I want to listen to Clarence. “Such as?” I ask.

  He is already on his feet, lumbering out of the room. “Ozark peach brandy,” he says and disappears.

  It is a clear liquid with a slight amber tint. He pours it from an ominous-looking jug into two small shot-like glasses. When he sits down, we touch glasses and he says, “Cheers. Now, be careful. You need to sip it very slowly at first.”

  I do. A blowtorch could not be hotter on my lips and tongue. I keep a game face and manage to choke it down, with flames scorching my esophagus until the last drop hits my unsuspecting stomach. He watches me carefully, waiting for some comical reaction, and when I keep my composure, he says, “Not bad, huh?”

  “What is it—gasoline?”

  “It’s a local product made by one of our better distillers.”

  “And untaxed, I presume?”

  “Highly untaxed and illegal as hell.” He takes another sip.

  “I thought moonshine causes blindness and liver damage.”

  “It can, but you gotta know your source. This is good stuff, some of the best—light, tasty, virtually harmless.”

  Harmless? My toes are burning. As the child of a violent alcoholic, I have never been attracted to the drinking life, and after an evening of lemon gin and moonshine whiskey I realize how wise I have been.

  “The second sip is easier, and the third is the best,” he says. I take an even smaller sip, and it burns less, probably because of the scar tissue left behind by the first.

  “Tell me, Paul, how did you know your father was going to bean Joe?” he asks, reaching for his pipe and tobacco pouch.

  “That’s a long story,” I say, trying to find my tongue.

  He smiles and spreads his arms. “We have all night. I usually read until midnight and sleep till eight.”

  I take a third sip and actually get a slight taste of peach flavoring. “He was of the old school. If a batter hits a home run, then the batter wins the duel. His reward is obvious; he gets nothing more. It’s a sin to insult the pitcher by showing off in any way. Standing at the plate and admiring the drive; flipping the bat; loafing around the bases to soak up the attention; and heaven forbid any show of self-gratification or emotion. No sir. The batter wins, and he circles the bases quickly and gets to the dugout. Otherwise, he pays for it. If a batter does anything to show off, then the pitcher has the right to knock him down. That was straight from the old code, and my father swore by it.”

  “That might not work in today’s game,” Clarence says, blowing a cloud of smoke.

  “I wouldn’t know, Clarence. I haven’t watched a game in thirty years.”

  “So, did Joe do something to show up Warren Tracey? You were there. Vince Lloyd and Lou Boudreau said repeatedly that Joe did nothing wrong.”

  “Well, according to Warren’s official party line, the answer is no. No, because he soon began claiming that it was an accident, he did not throw at Joe, that it was simply a pitch up that got away from him. I suspect that once it became obvious Joe was seriously injured, Warren changed his tune and started lying.”

  “You seem awfully certain about this.”

  “When I was a little boy, five or six, I decided I wanted to be a pitcher because my father was a pitcher. I was pretty good and got better as I grew up. I didn’t get a lot of backyard coaching because he was seldom at home, but we lived in the same house, and some of his knowledge rubbed off on me, I guess. I was pitching once and a kid hit a home run, a real shot, and he danced and yelled all the way around the bases. My father was there, which was a rare occasion, and the next time this kid came up, my father yelled, ‘Knock him down, Paul.’ I was