Seasons in Hell by Mike Shropshire

Author:Mike Shropshire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPORTS & RECREATION/Baseball/History
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2014-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The East Coast media in particular was snapping at Spiro Agnew’s trousers leg. According to all the papers and TV newscasts, the vice-president was accused of all manner of malfeasance: tax fraud, bribery, conspiracy, driving on the wrong side of the road.

Julie Nixon Eisenhower was in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, throwing out the first ball at the Little League World Series. Her father couldn’t make it, being preoccupied with some distracting affairs back in the capital. President Richard Nixon appeared on television in late August and delivered a speech in which he said he had now determined, for sure, that he had been “misled” by some of his “subordinates” and, having concluded that, declared that it was now high time for Congress and the media to “end the obsession with Watergate so that I can return to the urgent business of the nation.”

The President had perhaps been moved by the inspiring words of Eddie Fisher … “count your blessings.” The real success stories in American life repeat that passage to themselves every day. It triggers an attitude that keeps men like Jim Merritt on a major-league payroll. So what if this was a major-league team that was poised to rank with a handful as one of the most feeble of all time? Jim Merritt had a plan and he was about to light a single candle rather than curse the darkness.

“I’m scheduled to pitch the first game of the double-header on Sunday. If I win, make sure to come down to the clubhouse between games because I’ll give you a fucking good story.” Merritt told me this on a flight to Cleveland where the Rangers would play a weekend series.

Merritt, in fact, was one player on the team that the sportswriters generally regarded as somebody who belonged in the big leagues. Certainly his battle-weary left arm was not the weapon that it was when Merritt won twenty games with the 1970 Reds. That didn’t matter (not with the Rangers, at least) because he looked and acted the part of the big leaguer. Unlike certain Rangers, Merritt gave the impression that he knew his way around in The Show.

Unlike certain Rangers, Merritt did not shop at Hot Sam’s Men’s Wear in Detroit. Unlike certain Rangers, Merritt did not order a cup of Everclear with his breakfast. Unlike certain Rangers, Merritt did not travel with a “fart machine” that consisted of a metal washer and rubber band that, when activated against the plastic surface of the chair at the gate of some airport, would make a foul and disgusting noise that old women found unsettling. So when Jim Merritt said that he might have a meaningful post-game announcement, I believed it would be something worthwhile.

Besides, now I had something to look forward to, since this, after all, was the dreaded Cleveland weekend. Dick Bosman, already an ex-Indian, had been traded back from the Rangers to Cleveland in May and had taken the news gallantly. “There’s a bright spot to this,” Bosman pointed out at the time.

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