The Southpaw by Mark Harris

Author:Mark Harris [Harris, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780803272200
Publisher: Bison Books
Published: 1984-05-15T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

Monday we drilled from 11 till a little after noon. I come up through the dugout with Perry and Coker and Canada, and we stood on the steps.

“There she blows,” said I.

“This is a ball park,” said Canada, for he never seen it before, nor did Perry nor Coker. Perry whistled between his teeth. Coker said, “I suppose if you was lost up there in the stands somewheres they could send a dog out after you.”

For a drill that was supposed to be closed to the public there was certainly a large number of people present. There was men on scaffolds riding up and down along the fences, putting in a last little dab of paint here and there. There was about 100 more sweeping and scrubbing in the stands and bleachers. There was a bunch of men crawling up and down on the towers, testing all the lights. There was 3 men on power mowers, and about another dozen down on their knees clipping with a scissors what the mowers missed. There was 1 man painting the top of the visiting dugout. You could hear hammers and saws in all corners of the park, and there was a fellow testing the loud speaker, “testing, 1, 2, testing, 1, 2,” and the lights on the new scoreboards was flashing on and off. That scoreboard shows just about anything, up to and including a running box score, plus a line score, plus how other games are going in both leagues, plus of course balls and strikes and hits and errors, plus even the names of the umpires. It takes 3 men to run it.

And then of course on top of everything there was the usual plague of writers circulating around the clubhouse and the dugout and the batting cage. Me and Perry no sooner hit the field then a colored photographer run up wanting a picture of the 2 of us with our arm around each other. It come out quite nice in the Harlem paper later on in the week. Other writers come around asking questions and trying to get somebody to say something worth writing down. Soon Dutch come up out of the dugout and made them all clear off the field.

We got some work done. There was a good infield drill plus some mighty impressive hitting. Some of the boys parked a few in the stands. Sid hit 1 over the Gem sign, a mighty blast when you consider that the cage was moved clear back to the screen, and Red walloped 1 that went in just above the Blatz. Squarehead hit the longest of the morning, a drive that went 450 feet that I took without moving, for me and Gil Willowbrook was shagging flies in center. It seemed like I waited 20 minutes at least, for it went so high before it dropped. I said to Gil, “I guess I know where Squarehead hits them.” When Squarehead finished hitting me and Gil moved in about 50 feet.

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