And they played so beautifully, so well, and so apparently with something higher in mind, that the announcers really did not know what to say—except that they would always remember, and that something had turned that summer to gold.
ROGER’S LAST GAME was in late September, on the dry cloudless day that confirmed to all that summer was finally over. October would bring some heat now and then, but this was the signal that New York’s bejeweled fall had begun, when sharp shadows brought depth and reflection, and because of the declination of the light the rivers looked their bluest. Sounds, too, were sharper, and better sustained on the cool dense air, and no longer was everything blurred by the summer vapor that fills-in the channels of sight and sound.
Everyone knew that the Yankees would be on Detroit like a tidal wave. Bookies were giving odds of ten thousand to one. And for a team on its way to face a firing squad, the Tigers were in a festive mood. They looked forward to the exhibition, to watching Roger hit balls out of the park, and to winning, perhaps, if not the game, a rich pool based on the point spread: the most daring Tiger had placed his stake on a spread of nine hundred runs.
Buoyed by the summer’s place in history and coffers overflowing from the unprecedented gate since June, not to mention the miraculous improvement of the team and the likelihood of its coming back to beat the Dodgers in the Series, Stengel simply announced that this would be Roger’s last game. As Berra always said, “The middle is the end of the road for the beginning,” and Roger was going back to the South (Milledgeville, Stengel had confessed to the public, had been a feint), to a small town that, to preserve his and its privacy and peace, would remain unknown.
When people heard this, they ached. Although the sports press had never stopped trying, Roger had never been interviewed, and the public had exactly the image of him it wanted. He was the ideal and paradigmatic American—lanky, side-burned, taciturn, unmarried, young, rich (they thought), mysterious, and devout. Had he run for president he could have won by a landslide even in a nonelection year, and that fall the presidential campaign was in full swing. Harvard invited him to be its president, the treasury to be on medallions, Wheaties to be on the box. Commercial offers were so lucrative that, had he taken all thousand of them and bargained well, he could have been the richest man in the world.
But all Roger wanted to do was go home, where no one would know anything about what had occurred in baseball that summer—except that a Jewish player had been a brief sensation. Even Schnaiper would not grasp the significance of what had happened, and would not in any case realize that its agent had been the new boy who fetched gribenes for the rebbe. The Yankees would keep his secret and never call on him, content that he had helped them this one time, because this was what he had asked of them.
After the game, he would stay in the locker room until early evening. Dressed again in Hasidic clothing, he would shoulder the books he had not already sent home by book post, and walk out of the deserted main gate, as obscure as he had been when he walked in. He would get on the subway and go back to Brooklyn, where he would continue doggedly the task of his life. But there was one more game to play, the most unusual game ever played in the history of baseball.
The Yankees were up first, and because everyone knew the Tigers would never come in from the field, before the first pitch chairs were brought for every Tiger player except the pitcher. Next to the chairs were little tables with ice buckets, bottles of Coke and lemonade, and snacks. A hundred thousand people filled Yankee Stadium, double its capacity, and in the South Bronx and upper Manhattan millions had gathered, packing the avenues, cramming into all the empty spaces, their faces turned toward home plate, even though the three television networks were broadcasting live. Inexplicably, the rules had been changed, and Roger would pinch hit for everyone on his team, even Mantle. After the national anthem and ten minutes of prayer, Roger walked onto the field.
He was greeted with the longest, loudest, most extraordinary cheer that had ever been raised, a hundred thousand voices amplified by the hornlike shape of the stadium, and a million more following on in the street. Though he knew he deserved no such thing, he was pleased nonetheless—because he understood that they were not cheering for him even if they did not know it—and he bowed his head to honor what they were cheering. Not mistakenly, they thought that this was a sign of humility, which set alight a self-sustaining, self-replicating, waxing roar that rose for half an hour and tumbled from the stadium on waves of thundering air that could be heard from Kingsbridge to Canarsie.
Mantle gave the bat to Roger, who walked gangly-legged to the plate. When the umpire shouted “Play ball!” the cheer went up again and did not die for fifteen minutes. Then, when all was quiet, Roger turned crisply to the pitcher. The pitcher wound up and sent a hundred-mile-per-hour fastball screaming at the umpire, for the catcher, who was eating poppyseed cake, sat on a chair off to the side.
The ball that came in at a hundred miles per hour left at quadruple that speed, whining briefly through the air before it disappeared in the pure blue forty degrees above the top of the flagpole. The fans were wild, but then settled in to simple euphoria as Roger hit pitch after pitch high over the Bronx toward Africa and the South Atlantic. The pitcher was supplied with one ball after another by teammates standing next to huge bins of baseballs on the sidelines. After a hundred desperate throws, his relief came onto the field and stood behind him, and when his arm gave out the relief pitcher took over so as not to break the rhythm of Roger’s drives.
Roger was lost in the soundless incantations that affirm the truth of truths. The pattern of the vast numbers of baseballs streaming over the wall was like a cloth of ghostly white threads, or seeds sown in a light and helpful breeze. Four-hundred-mile-per-hour baseballs pierced the air and whistled over the Bronx in a song, while the announcers said virtually nothing. “Let’s just look on as this unfolds,” they had said, forgetting that they were on the radio and that people listening could not see what they saw, “for it will never be this way again.” And, then, counting under their breath, they joined their audience in subdued amazement as the balls flew by in steady procession, like raindrops speeding sideways in a gale. Two thousand of them were shot from the stadium that day. There might have been more, but Roger stopped at the even number, which he thought might be a record. It was.
The players, the management, the professionals, the sportswriters, and the fans were aware that, before Roger, they had never seen a ball hit from the stadium, and that they never would again. To see two thousand in a row, without a miss, without hesitation, pause, or variations in path or timing except those that he willed, was as if God had chosen that moment to make His presence known, and they reacted accordingly in wonder and delight. For the moment, at least, they felt as if the deepest circles within them had been squared, their ragged doubts knit smooth, and the world were ablaze with the light of perfection.
ROGER HAD LONG SINCE tired of the suite in which he lived in deadening luxury on the Upper East Side. It was now empty, as it was empty before his arrival, a rosewood and alabaster tomb without even a body, a columbarium without ashes. In that neighborhood it was fairly easy to get a Fabergé egg but almost impossible to get a kosher chicken. True, the dwellings were well kept and well appointed, they often were as high as birds’ nests, and you could look out and see half a million windows and not a foot of fire-escape iron, but the difference between this place and where he lived in Brooklyn was like the difference between a wool suit on a hanger, and a lamb. There were those who would instinctively choose the suit, and those who would instinctively choose the lamb. It was not for Roger to criticize anyone who would take the suit, but he himself would gather the lamb into his arms.
So with the place where he lived, a jumble of ancient brick in a basket weave of black iron that lay upon the tenements like fishing net sprawled to dry across a city of crates. The streets had no prospect and were tight and twisting. Only from the rooftops could you catch a glimpse of s
hips and blue water, and the trees, being so few and rare, were achingly beautiful.
Roger’s affection for the awkward and homely way in which he lived had not diminished, and it began to enfold him graciously even as he headed out the stadium’s main gate. It was the way his parents had lived, and the way their parents had lived, and so forth, and so on, very far back. But it would be a sin to carry on habit for its own sake, or to venerate the old merely because it is old. After all, given the expanse of the infinite, all that occurred did so within less than the duration of a spark, so everything was new and had to be judged for what it was. Tradition was an illusion, an afterimage—comfortable, yes, but unjustifiable in itself.
The ancient ritual, the black coats, the way of speaking, the languages, the revelations and commentary, the candles, the cuisine, the marriage customs, and the fur-rimmed hats, were things as new as if they had just burst upon the world like the first rays of light. Pop. There they were. To think that they were old would be only a mistake of perspective. What made them what they were, and so different from everything else, was that each one carefully and deliberately put the things of the world in their place. Each was a declaration and vow, each the outcome of a battle in which reason strictly assigned them a post. And thus subdued, the things of the world were sweet, and the world rose, like a planet in ascension, to its proper position.
The subway, inexplicably elevated aboveground, rolled down its track, taking Roger home. It made many turns indirectly in directions different from the one in which he was headed, but the sum and subtraction of the departures would constitute the precision of the aim, and had the train gone merely in a straight line, it likely would have missed. It went noisily amid the appearance of a million gently burning lights that gradually took the place of the bright scales with which the setting sun had armored the face of every building. It went left, it went right, it lurched north, south, east, and west, but then it began its last dash toward Brooklyn like a dog following a trail.
Roger closed his eyes, and a world that once had been came alive in all its tender detail. His mother lived again in moments so taxing to him that it threatened his young heart. His father lived again. They moved in color and dimension, and as the train rushed forward the world doubled back upon itself, twisting immeasurably, confounding time. In these moments, when it was as if he were observing them, unseen, they were, somehow, observing him. He could neither explain nor understand, but he was sure they knew.
When the train rose gracefully onto the bridge and sped with immensely complex clacking over iron rails in an open box of steel held in the wind a hundred feet above the river, the sound made Roger open his eyes. There was the world clear in the night, its sparkling towers piercing a band of brilliant orange light. For a moment, and just a moment—for he had work to do—he thought about what had happened. What had happened was but a single, lovely note in an always urgent song that he had been brought up to sing, like those before him, in protest of mortality, hope of survival, and love of God. It had happened here, in the New World, and why not? If Ruth could, among the alien corn, begin the line in Judah that led to David, then what was not possible here, and what perfection would be disallowed?
Sidney Balbion
EACH HOUR OR SO, the waiter who in his starched white jacket looked like a rhesus monkey left his station to sweep sand from the single tennis court. Though in the end this was less economical than erecting a barrier at the edge of the windblown dunes, the hotel was just scraping by and had neither the capital nor credit for building walls. Every effort was directed instead to making the guests happy. Perhaps their memories of the unexpected luxuries visited upon them in this splendid, sunny August would spur them to book for the next season and to tell their friends, so that the summer of 1940 might see the full occupancy that had not been achieved since 1929.
Accordingly, the hotel in the dunes east of Het Zoute sparkled through the night, steady in the wind but for the Japanese lanterns on its terraces riding the air and staying lit long after everyone had gone to bed, just so that if anyone did venture onto the beach in the dark and turned back to see the hotel, he would see something brave, beautiful, and standing alone.
The laundry worked overtime, for the greatest part of the hotel’s luxury was its cleanliness and the quality of its linens. The silver, more than one would expect at a resort with only two stars—though at the turn of the century it had had four—was finely polished and, because of the sea air, frequently. The chef was French, and very good. Flowers were brought every day from the polders, and at the porte cochere a row of intensely colored flags snapped in the blue as in a Manet.
The more expensive places were grouped farther west along the coast. That was merely fashion, for here, east of Het Zoute, were the most wonderful dunes, ten stories high and a mile wide, and the beach was empty. But something about a hotel standing by itself at the end of a sand-colored road was forlorn, and fashion finds nothing more repellent than the forlorn. Nonetheless, in what it did not know was its last season, the hotel had by its extraordinary efforts become once again a place of luxury, and it deserved to have had its stars doubled, although not only were they not doubled, they would vanish forever after the building itself, having become a German post, would be destroyed by naval gunfire.
But now, in August of 1939, this was unforseen. At ten a.m., breakfast was still being served on the terrace, because there had been a dance the night before, and though sparsely attended it had lasted, in surprisingly balmy air, until three in the morning. The waiters were peacefully serving complets, ushering like dance partners their white ceramic pitchers of coffee, tea, or chocolate, and pushing carts laden with fresh croissants and brioches. Without success, the sun shone on the glass and silver jam pots as if to pale their pure reds and yellows.
There was only one record for the Victrola, and the young waiter who swept the tennis court had to play it over and over: Fred Astaire, singing “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” But there were no protests, for everyone had seen him sing it in Shall We Dance, a film that, with French subtitles, was playing at the cinema in Zeebrugge, and the song itself seemed to fit the moment so perfectly as to demand repetition.
MRS. LAWRENCE and her daughter Angelica had come to the edge of the polders, by the sea, because they had heard from a neighbor how beautiful this Belgian seacoast could be, though the neighbor had formed his opinion in the trenches close by, when, in Flanders during the war, his heart being broken, he was prone to seize on even the most insignificant beauty as if it were illuminated by the world’s most golden light.
Even now in a time of peace, it was much like it was then: quiet, deserted, the wind almost constant, the waves never ceasing to greet the shore with a seismic thump and a rush of foam. Even now, twenty years later, horrendously transformed corpses disinterred by the Yser and the Lys and sent to sea would wash back up on the beaches, unidentifiable and grotesque, but not so long ago the beloved of those who, carrying on after two decades, working at a desk, tending the garden, taking a bath, bicycling through well kept streets, would never know how the waters had lifted from the mud their husband, father, or child.
On the polders back from the beach they grew carrots and potatoes, malt, barley, oats, tobacco, flax, and wheat, and a great deal else, in rich and undisturbed tranquillity. At Het Zoute you could get ten days full board and a room overlooking the sea for what you might pay in Brighton for three days in a room above a shopping street, and Mrs. Lawrence and Angelica had six days to go. Then they would get on the Ostend boat and cross the Channel, and then by train to London and cab to Brent, refreshed for the year. It couldn’t have been better.
“How do they make such magnificent croissants?” Angelica asked. Of a perfect figure at nineteen, she could eat as much as she wished and never show it, and with as much blood-red jam.
“It’s the butter,” her mother answered. “They have better butter than we do.”
“Why can’t we import their
butter, then?”
“It’s the water.”
“Whatever it is,” Angelica said, “I like it.”
Suddenly, Mrs. Lawrence, whose face was long and built like a camel’s, went absolutely quiet. Her daughter felt the change.
“Do you know who that is?” Mrs. Lawrence asked with delighted excitement.
“Who what is?”
“The man,” Mrs. Lawrence said in an undertone and, ventriloquist-style, without moving her lips, “to your right. Don’t stare. Just move your eyes.”
“Him?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Sidney Balbion.”
“Who’s that?”
“Have you never heard of Sidney Balbion?” the mother asked. The question sounded like a lyric out of Gilbert and Sullivan.
“Of course not. Who the hell is Sidney Balbion?”
“He’s like Harry Lauder, although not as big, of course, but he’s very good. He’s quite good.”
“Music hall?”
“Yes,” said the mother. “He was most famous during the war.”
“That was more than twenty years ago. That was before I was born.”
“And from time to time he would be billed in London, at the top of the bill. Well, if not at the top of the bill, then second or third, and if not in London then in Slough, where I saw him once.”