3 Tales From the Grand Old Game
[Fiction]
By
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Copyright 2011 by Austin Gisriel
Austin is also the author of Safe at Home: A Season in the Valley, the story of the 2009 New Market Rebels, as well as Their Glorious Summer.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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[Meet the man who was the inspiration for Max McGowan.]
"Well, what do we do now?" asked Joe as he looked at his friends Johnny and Frank who were seated to his left and right, respectively, at a table in the lounge of Mac and Bob's Restaurant in Salem, Virginia.
"We go to Indiana, of course, just like we promised Max we would," answered Johnny.
They both looked at Frank, who nodded solemnly. "Indiana," he replied.
Then all three men turned and gazed at Max, or more accurately, at the gold-plated urn with a baseball on top, which sat on the table in front of the fourth chair and contained the ashes of the late Max McGowan.
"Gonna miss old Max," said Joe.
"We all will," said Johnny.
Frank nodded solemnly.
"Here you go, gentlemen!" interrupted the waitress, cheerily setting down a beer in front of each man. "That's a neat trophy. Are you guys with the Red Sox?"
"That's not a trophy; it's an urghh!—"
Johnny's swift kick to Joe's shin turned urn into ughh!
"No, we're not with the Sox. It's a trophy for a friend of ours," said Frank to the waitress, who, oblivious to Joe's pain and most everything else in the world except for who needed another cold one, left with a vow to check on them soon.
"What'd ya do that for?" asked Joe as he rubbed his shin.
"I'm pretty sure that having Max in here, given his condition and all, is a violation of the health code, you dolt," replied Johnny.
"Oh."
The three friends took off their Salem Red Sox hats, which they had worn to Max's funeral service just an hour before and covered their hearts. Frank raised his beer, and Joe and Johnny did the same.
"To Max," said Frank.
"TO MAX!" They clinked their mugs together and then each, in turn, clinked the urn.
The three men loved baseball. They loved talking about it and learning about it and telling stories about it. They could wax ecstatic when a batter bunted toward the third baseman with a man on first and the catcher hustled down to third to cover the bag. And if Salem was losing 10-0, but such a play had occurred they went home satisfied that they had seen something worthwhile, something . . . artistic.
In the 6th inning of a game four years back, while lamenting the disappearance of the complete game, a small, white-haired man sitting in front of them turned and said, "One night in Maynard, Indiana, this was 1954 . . . no 1955. I was managing in the Old Mac League, and I went out to remove my pitcher—his name was Dave Coleman—with two outs in the 8th inning. I could tell he wasn't happy to see me, and when I got to the mound, he said, 'Max, if you try to take this ball from me, I'm gonna have to kill you.' I looked at him for a second and noticed that he wasn't smiling. So, I slapped him on the butt and said, 'Go get 'em big boy!' And I went back into the dugout. He got the next guy to pop out and struck out the side in the 9th."
That night, a three-way conversation now became a four-way conversation, which, in turn, became a four-year friendship. Nine innings usually proved an inadequate amount of time to talk baseball, so the four men would often stop by Mac and Bob's after the game to continue the conversation and listen to Max tell stories. It seemed as if Max had been everywhere and knew everyone.
One night in Mac and Bob's, for example, a crowd suddenly surrounded someone at the bar, and the encircled celebrity turned out to be Roger Clemens. He was in town watching his son Koby play for Salem, back when the team was known as the Avalanche and was a Houston Astros affiliate. Max rose from the table, excused himself, and made his way through—or as Frank thought while watching him disappear into the humanity—under the crowd. Fifteen minutes later, Max was pulling up a chair for Clemens at their table. The former pitcher talked some baseball for about 10 minutes before paying for another beer for everyone and then leaving.
"One of Clemens' first pitching coaches in Boston's system used to play for me when I coached at Colorado State," explained Max. "We got to talking a little bit, and Roger was happy to get away from the crowd."
Baseball is a small world, but it was now an emptier one for the three friends. There would be no more stories of managing the Maynard Frontiersmen of the Old Mac League or of coaching at Colorado State or Green Mountain University or Roanoke College. There would be no more "Max-ims," a term that Johnny had dubbed the funny lines that Max repeated almost as often as his stories.
Joe, Johnny, and Frank had all the Max-ims and all the stories memorized, of course. You couldn't have spent that much time with Max McGowan without having memorized these pearls, whether you wanted to or not. And it was worth listening to Max, even if he was telling the same story for the 20th time, for this might be the telling that would jog loose an untold memory of a play or a player, and the boys could paint in one more tiny section on the grand canvas that they admired so much. In fact, Frank had printed a booklet that he entitled The Book of Max-ims and in which he had recorded all of their old friend's sayings, jokes, and baseball tips. They had given it to Max for his birthday only five months before.
"I love it here in Indiana!" exclaimed Joe, raising his glass once more. This was one of Max's favorite lines, a non sequitur, really, that he used to conclude a story that usually had no conclusion. Johnny and Frank repeated the line and laughed, but the trio soon fell silent.
In fact, Indiana seemed to have been Max's favorite place. He told many stories from his days in Maynard. He told of winning the Old Mac League pennant in 1955 and how he had dated Miss Indiana who was from Maynard and how the bars closed at midnight in town, but out in the countryside at the Cornpatch Roadhouse, the sun rose before the party ever ended.
"What exactly are we going to do when we get to Maynard?" asked Joe.
"Scatter Max's ashes, just like we promised him," answered Johnny.
"Just like that? We're going to drive 500 miles, or whatever it is, dump his ashes at Frontiersman Field, and then turn around and come home?"
"Scatter—not 'dump.'"
Frank tilted back his hat. "Joe's right. We need to have some kind of ceremony."
The three friends fell silent for a moment.
"We should play the National Anthem . . ."
"We should play ball. You know, a little infield, a little BP. We can't go to a ballpark and not play, and I don't know of a better way to honor Max . . ."
"We should have some kind of uniform . . ."
"This is going to take some planning."
Plan they did, and within a month they were ready to leave Salem and head to Maynard, Indiana. They would take one detour along the way, stopping by the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory, a trip that the four of them had talked about taking, but never did.
"It only seems appropriate that we stop there," Joe commented.
Finally, the morning of their departure arrived. Frank strapped Max's urn into the back seat of his van, threw his suitcase and baseball glove into the back, and drove to Johnny's house. Johnny loaded his suitcase and threw in the ball bucket and, placing Frank's glove in a bat bag, he loaded that as well.
"I hope Joe came up with something good for these uniforms," said Johnny.
"He was real excited and wanted to surprise us, so I guess we'll find out in a few minutes."
They arrived at Joe's house, and he threw his suitcase in the back and placed his glove inside the bat bag. Then he ran inside and came out with two gift bags that were decorated with baseball players from the 1890s.
Frank and Johnny opened the bags and pulled out a navy blue hat with a scripted red M underneath of which was a genuine white baseball jersey with Maynard written in navy blue outlined in red.
"Where did you get these?!"
"Had 'em made special," answered a triumphant Joe. "I went online and found a website about the Old Mac League. There was this one photo of the 1955 Champion Frontiersman, and based on that and the team colors that were listed, I went to Specialty Uniforms and Clothing in Roanoke and had 'em made."
Frank and Johnny were quite impressed; so impressed that it was now agreed that a complete uniform was necessary. Therefore, their first stop was at Dick's Sporting Goods in Charleston, West Virginia, in order to complete their ceremonial ensemble. They purchased pants and belts, but were disgusted to find that Dick's did not carry stirrups, so they had to go with solid baseball socks.
"Do you think we should get spikes, too?" asked Joe.
After a brief deliberation, it was agreed that spikes were not necessary to pay appropriate homage to Max.
As they wound their way across the Alleghenies and into Kentucky's heartland, they retold Max's best stories and talked excitedly about their tour of the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory, which they would take the next morning.
Arriving at the famous bat factory right at 9:00 a.m., they went on the tour and then sampled every treat the museum had to offer. They took turns in the batting cage swinging the Ted Williams model bat. They gawked at the size of Shoeless Joe Jackson's bat. They studied the Babe Ruth statue and noted that Babe's follow-through was very short, the bat finishing next to his right ribcage, rather than behind his head or shoulders the way Max taught. They clutched the miniature bats that were given to each patron upon the conclusion of the tour.
Outside the factory, they started down the Louisville Slugger Walk of Fame, a mile-long stretch along Main Street where bronze replica bats of various baseball greats stood near a bronze home plate on which were listed the achievements of those immortals. For Joe, Johnny, and Frank, "Walk of Fame" became a misnomer as they began to jog and then run, each in his own direction, first to one bronze bat and then another.
"Here's Ty Cobb!"
"Here's Yogi Berra!"
Frank dashed across 6th Street and halted right at the corner. "Hey, here's Mel Ott!"
Joe ran across 6th, and Johnny crossed over from the other side of Main. Mel Ott, the 5'9" left-handed slugger of the New York Giants had been Max's hero growing up. He had told many stories about how as a boy he had watched Ott play in the Polo Grounds.
"The greatest hitter with the worst technique I ever saw," Max would remark. Whenever he said this, however, Max would always explain how Ott's high leg kick required exquisite timing in order to make contact. Then he would laugh and say, "When your blouse says 'New York Giants' across the front, then you can hit like Mel Ott, but when it says '10th Street Tigers,' hit the way I show you!"
"We need for somebody to take a photo of us in front of Mel Ott's bat," said Frank.
"We need for somebody to take a photo of all four of us; I'm gonna go get Max!" said Joe, who raced back down Main Street to the parking lot. Along the way, he had to chase down his hat, which had blown off, the day being quite windy. He could not lose his Maynard hat.
In the meantime, Frank asked a gentleman to take their picture. When Joe returned with the urn, the man looked at it with more than a quizzical glance.
"Friend of yours?" he asked.
Frank explained the situation.
"That's nice," said the man in such a way that it was hard to tell if he was moved or if he had a vague suspicion regarding the sanity of the three men from Salem.
Joe placed the urn on the edge of a planter that provided background decoration, and the three friends gathered around and stuck their miniature bats out toward the gold baseball atop Max's urn. The photos taken, Frank thanked the man, while Joe checked the digital camera to make sure the shots were good. Johnny pulled out his brochure and said "Hey, this thing lists all the guys on this walk and, Frank, Eddie Murray is in the next block! Joe, Mickey Mantle is eight blocks down, and Harmon Killebrew is the block before that!"
They hurried down the street to visit the three bats of their three favorite players. Having done so and after taking each other's photos at each site in turn, they headed back to the van and began the two-and-a-half-hour trek to Maynard, Indiana.
"Stop the van!" yelled Joe, who had been reviewing the digital photos, but whose gaze was now fixed on the seat next to him.
"What's wrong?"
"Do either of you have Max up there with you?"
Frank and Johnny turned around.
"Holy hell, we forgot Max!"
"Where did we leave him?" yelled Johnny, as Frank zipped around a Louisville block and sped the 15 minutes back to the museum.
"Judging from this sequence of photos, I'd say he's still on the planter. Does anyone remember taking him to any of the other bats?"
"No."
Silence permeated the van as Frank drove, and Joe and Johnny directed their psychic energy toward keeping the lights green. Arriving back at the museum, Frank had barely put the van in park when Joe flung open the door and began running down the street. The slowest of the three, Frank and Johnny caught him by 7th Street, and together they shot past the man who had taken their photo arriving simultaneously at the corner of 6th and Main. There was an instant of collective panic as the urn was not immediately visible, but Joe caught a glint of gold among the red and white impatiens that were blowing back and forth. Someone must have knocked it into the flowers. Joe grabbed it and pulled it toward his chest. A catastrophe averted, they walked back to the van and, with great deliberation, strapped Max into the back seat.
"That's as fast as I've run in a long time," said Joe, who was still breathing somewhat heavily.
"I wonder what our time was?" laughed Johnny.
"You realize," said Frank, "that our mean time would be our urn run average."
This was a joke worthy of Max himself, and it put the men back into a merry mood.
"You should put that in the Book of Max-ims!" hollered Johnny, and now they began to quote from it freely.
"I'm so sharp because I live on the edge of town."
"I'm a lowball hitter and a highball drinker."
"Last year I led the league in stolen gloves."
They crossed the Ohio River on I-275, west of Cincinnati. "I love it here in Indiana!" they exclaimed in unison as though they had rehearsed the moment they would enter Hoosier territory.
Shortly thereafter, they passed a sign that indicated Rockdale was only 10 miles ahead.
"We must be getting close," said Joe, and his friends nodded in agreement.
As they all knew, Rockdale was one of the 6 teams in the Old Mac League, along with Drewersburg, Sharptown, and Maynard in Indiana and Alert and Okeana in western Ohio. Formed in 1927, the league was originally and officially named the Eastern Indiana and Ohio League, and which was referred to as the EIO League. Within weeks of its inception, a letter-writing wag, taking note of the league's abbreviation, referred to it as Old MacDonald's league, in the Maynard Scout. The name stuck, and while the official appellation never changed, no one ever referred to it as anything other than the Old Mac League ever again.
Originally, the Old Mac was an industrial league, then after World War II, it was a semi-pro league, then it became a college summer league, and finally, after the advent of the interstate, which made the major league Reds in Cincinnati quite accessible, it became an increasingly distant memory. The memory lived, however, in men such as Max McGowan and now, secondhand though it might be, it lived in his three friends from Virginia.
At last they arrived in Maynard, and Frank drove to the ballpark at Johnny's direction.
"This place looks awfully new to be Frontiersman Field," said Frank.
"Where's the grandstand that you see in the photos? All they have here are metal bleachers."
"I'm sure that grandstand rotted up years ago; besides, it's the only ballpark in town," retorted Johnny. "I even called the town hall, and the girl said that this had to be it."
They parked the car, but the three men hesitated. Spying a blue cloud on the western horizon, one of them suggested that it looked like it could rain and perhaps they had better wait until morning for the ceremony. That excuse was seized upon, and they left the ballpark and checked in to a local motel. After dinner, they set Max on the chest of drawers next to the television and watched the Reds play the Dodgers.
Joe awoke at 7:00 the next morning, hopped out of bed, and pulled back the curtain. There were puddles in the parking lot, but the sun was shining brightly.
"Beautiful day!"
After breakfast at a diner down the road, they returned to the motel, donned their uniforms, and checked out.
"You fellas have a ballgame today?" asked the young clerk.
"Sort of a team reunion," answered Frank.
They headed to the ballpark and unloaded the bat bag, the ball bucket, the boom box in which was already loaded a CD of the National Anthem, and finally, and with a reverence that they had not shown to it before, they unstrapped the urn from the back seat and placed Max on home plate. They lined up down the third-base line, hats over their hearts, and Frank pushed the button on the boom box. The National Anthem finished, the time had come to say goodbye to Max. They had already decided after a lengthy discussion back at Mac and Bob's to scatter Max first and then play some baseball. Someone was going to come along and play ball after Max had been consigned to Frontiersman Field for all eternity, and it was decided that it may as well be friends of his.
Frank picked up the urn and removed the top with the gold baseball. He looked at Johnny and Joe and said, simply, "I love it here in Indiana," and began sprinkling Max's ashes all around the home-plate circle.