There was also another Blockade Billy play; by then he could have taken out a patent. The latest victim was Cletus Boyer. Again it was Blockade Billy down with the left shoulder, and up and over Mr Boyer went, landing flat on his back in the left batter’s box. There were some differences, though. The rook used both hands on the tag, and there was no bloody foot or strained Achilles tendon. Boyer just got up and walked back to the dugout, dusting his ass and shaking his head like he didn’t quite know where he was. Oh, and we lost the game in spite of the kid’s five hits. Eleven to ten was the final score, or something like that. Ganzie Burgess’s knuckleball wasn’t dancing that day; the Athletics feasted on it.

We won the next game, and lost a squeaker on getaway day. The kid hit in both games, which made it sixteen straight. Plus nine putouts at the plate. Nine in sixteen games! That might be a record. If it was in the books, that is.

We went to Chicago for three, and the kid hit in those games, too, making it nineteen straight. But damn if we didn’t lose all three. Jersey Joe looked at me after the last of those games and said, ‘I don’t buy that lucky charm stuff. I think Blakely sucks luck.’

‘That ain’t fair and you know it,’ I said. ‘We were going good at the start, and now we’re in a bad patch. It’ll even out.’

‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘Is Dusen still trying to teach the kid how to drink?’

‘Yeah. They headed off to The Loop with some other guys.’

‘But they’ll come back together,’ Joe says. ‘I don’t get it. By now Dusen should hate that kid. Doo’s been here five years and I know his MO.’

I did, too. When The Doo lost, he had to lay the blame on somebody else, like that bum Johnny Harrington or that busher bluesuit Hi Wenders. The kid’s turn in the barrel was overdue, but Danny was still clapping him on the back and promising him he’d be Rookie of the Goddam Year. Not that The Doo could blame the kid for that day’s loss. In the fifth inning of his latest masterpiece, Danny had hucked one to the backstop in the fifth: high, wide, and handsome. That scored one. So then he gets mad, loses his control, and walks the next two. Then Nellie Fox doubled down the line. After that The Doo got it back together, but by then it was too late; he was on the hook and stayed there.

We got a little well in Detroit, took two out of three. The kid hit in all three games and made another one of those amazing home-plate stands. Then we flew home. By then the kid from the Davenport Cornholers was the hottest goddam thing in the American League. There was talk of him doing a Gillette ad.

‘That’s an ad I’d like to see,’ Si Barbarino said. ‘I’m a fan of comedy.’

‘Then you must love looking at yourself in the mirror,’ Critter Hayward said.

‘You’re a card,’ Si says. ‘What I mean is the kid ain’t got no whiskers.’

There never was an ad, of course. Blockade Billy’s career as a baseball player was almost over.

We had three scheduled with the White Sox, but the first one was a washout. The Doo’s old pal Hi Wenders was the umpire crew chief, and he gave me the news himself. I’d got to The Swamp early because the trunks with our road uniforms in them got sent to Idlewild by mistake and I wanted to make sure they’d been trucked over. We wouldn’t need them for a week, but I was never easy in my mind until such things were taken care of.

Wenders was sitting on a little stool outside the umpire’s room, reading a paperback with a blond in fancy lingerie on the cover.

‘That your wife, Hi?’ I asks.

‘My girlfriend,’ he says. ‘Go on home, Granny. Weather forecast says that by three it’s gonna be coming down in buckets. I’m just waiting for DiPunno and Lopez to call the game.’

‘Okay,’ I says. ‘Thanks.’ I started away and he called after me.

‘Granny, is that wonder-kid of yours all right in the head? Because he talks to himself behind the plate. Whispers. Never fucking shuts up.’

‘He’s no Quiz Kid, but he’s not crazy, if that’s what you mean,’ I said. I was wrong about that, but who knew? ‘What kind of stuff does he say?’

‘I couldn’t hear much the one time I was behind him – the second game against Boston – but I know he talks about himself. In that whatdoyoucallit, third person. He says stuff like “I can do it, Billy.” And one time, when he dropped a foul tip that woulda been strike three, he goes, “I’m sorry, Billy.”’

‘Well, so what? Til I was five, I had an invisible friend named Sheriff Pete. Me and Sheriff Pete shot up a lot of mining towns together.’

‘Yeah, but Blakely ain’t five anymore. Unless he’s five up here.’ Wenders taps the side of his thick skull.

‘He’s apt to have a five as the first number in his batting average before long,’ I says. ‘That’s all I care about. Plus he’s a hell of a stopper. You have to admit that.’

‘I do,’ Wenders says. ‘That cockhound has no fear. Another sign that he’s not all there in the head.’

I wasn’t going to listen to an umpire run down one of my players any more than that, so I changed the subject and asked him – joking but not joking – if he was going to call the game tomorrow fair and square, even though his favorite Doo-Bug was throwing.

‘I always call it fair and square,’ he says. ‘Dusen’s a conceited glory-hog who’s got his spot all picked out in Cooperstown, he’ll do a hundred things wrong and never take the blame once, and he’s an argumentative sonofabitch who knows better than to start in with me, because I won’t stand for it. That said, I’ll call it straight up, just like I always do. I can’t believe you’d ask.’

And I can’t believe you’d sit there scratching your ass and calling our catcher next door to a congenital idiot, I thought, but you did.

I took my wife out to dinner that night, and we had a very nice time. Danced to Lester Lannon’s band, as I recall. Got a little romantic in the taxi afterward. Slept well. I didn’t sleep well for quite some time afterward; lots of bad dreams.

Danny Dusen took the ball in what was supposed to be the afternoon half of a twi-nighter, but the world as it applied to the Titans had already gone to hell; we just didn’t know it. No one did except for Joe DiPunno. By the time night fell, we knew we were royally fucked for the season, because our first twenty-two games were almost surely going to be erased from the record books, along with any official acknowledgment of Blockade Billy Blakely.

I got in late because of traffic, but figured it didn’t matter because the uniform snafu was sorted out. Most of the guys were already there, dressing or playing poker or just sitting around shooting the shit and smoking. Dusen and the kid were over in the corner by the cigarette machine, sitting in a couple of folding chairs, the kid with his uniform pants on, Dusen still wearing nothing but his jock – not a pretty sight. I went over to get a pack of Winstons and listened in. Danny was doing most of the talking.

‘That fucking Wenders hates my ass,’ he says.

‘He hates your ass,’ the kid says, then adds: ‘That fucker.’

‘You bet he is. You think he wants to be the one behind the plate when I get my two hundredth?’

‘No?’ the kid says.

‘You bet he don’t! But I’m going to win today just to spite him. And you’re gonna help me, Bill. Right?’

‘Right. Sure. Bill’s gonna help.’

‘He’ll squeeze the plate like a motherfucker.’

‘Will he? Will he squeeze it like a mother—’

‘I just said he will. So you pull everything back real fast.’

‘Fast as Jack Lightning.’

‘You’re my good luck charm, Billy-boy.’

And the kid, serious as the preacher at a bigshot funeral: ‘I’m your good luck charm.’

‘Yeah. Now listen …’

It was funny and creepy at the same time. The Doo was intense – leaning forward, eyes flashing while he talked. The Doo was a competitor, see? He wanted to win the way Bob Gibson did. Like Gibby, he’d do anything he could get away with to make that happen. And the kid was eating it up with a spoon.