Novels 1973-1977: The Great American Novel My Life as a Man the Professor of Desire by Roth Philip

Author:Roth, Philip [Roth, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781931082969
Amazon: 1931082960
Goodreads: 11647
Publisher: Library of America
Published: 2006-10-19T07:00:00+00:00

In September of that wartime season, with the Keepers and the Reapers battling for sixth, Kakoola owner Frank Mazuma signed on a midget to help his club as a pinch-hitter in the stretch. The midget, named Yamm, was the real thing; he stood forty inches high, weighed sixty-five pounds, and when he came to the plate and assumed the crouch that Mazuma had taught him, he presented the pitcher with a strike zone not much larger than a matchbox. At the press conference called to introduce the midget to the world, the twenty-two-year-old Yamm, fresh from the University of Wisconsin, where he’d been the first midget ever in Sigma Chi, praised Mazuma for his courage in defying “the gentleman’s agreement” that had previously excluded people of his stature from big league ball. He said he realized that as baseball’s first midget he was going to be subjected to a good deal of ridicule; however, he had every hope that in time even those who had started out as his enemies would come to judge him by the only thing that really mattered in this game, his value to the Kakoola Reapers. In the final analysis, Yamm asked rhetorically, what difference was there between a midget such as himself and an ordinary player, provided he contributed to the success of his team?

“The difference? About two and a half feet,” said Frank Mazuma, taking the mike from the midget. “And let me tell you something else about little Mr. Yamm here, gentlemen. Every time he comes to bat, I am going to be perched up on top of the grandstand with a high-powered rifle aimed at home plate. And if this little son of a buck so much as raises the bat off his shoulder, I’ll plug him! Hear that, Pee Wee?”

Chuckling, the reporters rushed off to the phones (supplied by Mazuma) to get the story to their papers in time for the evening edition.

Sure enough, the first time the midget was announced over the public address system—“Your attention, ladies and gentlemen, pinch-hitting for the Reapers, No. ¼, Bob Yamm”—a man wearing a black eyepatch, an Army camouflage uniform, a steel helmet, and carrying a rifle, was seen to climb out through a trapdoor atop the stadium at Reaper Field and take up a firing position on the roof. Needless to say, he did not find it necessary to pull the trigger; in Yamm’s first ten pinch-hitting assignments, not only did he draw ten walks, but he was not even thrown a strike. Even the sinking stuff sailed by the bill of his cap, and of course when the opposing pitchers began to press, invariably they threw the ball into the dirt, bouncing it past the midget, as though he were the batsman in cricket.

In the interest of league harmony, the other P. League owners had been willing to indulge the maverick Mazuma for a game or two, expecting that either the fans would quickly tire of the ridiculous gimmick, or that

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