The Cardiff Giant by Lockridge Larry

Author:Lockridge, Larry [Last, First name]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-77180-425-7
Publisher: Iguana Books
Published: 2020-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

— Chapter Thirteen —

LOCKED IN

I got locked into the Baseball Hall of Fame after hours. I’d fallen asleep in the men’s room at closing. I was so battered, poisoned, and bitten since arriving in Cooperstown—and pumped so full of antibiotics, emetics, valium, and anti-inflammatories—that I wasn’t steady on my feet and was prone to narcosis.

Upon awakening and exiting the men’s room, I entered the antechamber to the Hall of Fame gallery, eerily lit only by small exit fixtures. To my left was the life-sized statue of Babe Ruth swinging. I paused and looked again, startled to see his broad squat features change into the grinning pig snout of Barry Tarbox. And that was no baseball bat—rather, an alien restraint net fluttered toward me as I tried to escape into the gallery, my body so heavily weighted I could barely move.

Inside the gallery, I heard Tarbox oinking after me as I struggled down the corridor amid the plaques. Was that Ted Williams at the far end? The statue moved, the belly became distended, and the form of Tony “the Bat” Homero strutted up the ramp toward the Bullpen Theatre.

I have a gentle nature, am a well-behaved Midwesterner, but the sight of Homero filled me with rage. Thinking to tear him apart, I ran in pursuit, passing by Robert Redford peering out from a billboard. This was all “only natural,” he said with cool. Only natural? It all seemed to me totally perverse. When I entered the Bullpen Theatre I saw Homero sink into the movie screen where he was featured in a short loop. He was hitting ball after ball out of the stadium, in the jerky manner of a mechanical wooden puppet, to the sound of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” I would be spending eternity trapped in this loop if I didn’t quickly exit—so I ran to the second floor, passing through the gallery, “Pride and Passion.”

Yes, the museum was a repository of American culture. Here they were, the Negro Leagues. There I beheld the Birmingham Black Barons walking through the Colored Entrance. There stood Jackie Robinson, ready to break into the majors. And there was Willie Mays running, his glove extended for all eternity to make the greatest catch ever—off the bat of Cleveland’s Vic Wertz—and doing his inimitable pirouette. Good, I thought, Black players are getting their due.

But my eyes widened as Willie Mays metamorphosed into Hazel Bouche. She had baseballs for boobs and announced, “Black is beautiful. I’m not pitching till Neptune has passed out of the second house of Uranus.” Universal boos and pandemonium at Ebbets Field.

I feared she would set back Black liberation and feminism many years, so I pleaded. “Miss Bouche, please pitch—don’t do this to your brothers and your sisters!”

“Mind your own business, pork chops.”

I ran up another flight to the “Women in Baseball” gallery. “All American Girls,” read the legend. Here I felt safe for a time and gazed on a blown-up photograph of the Vassar College Resolutes of 1876. The nine women were solemn and resolute.

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