The Entitled
Copyright
© 2007 by Frank Deford
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That
Night
For HOWIE, IT WAS, at last, neither resignation on the one hand, nor anger on the other. No, it was simply awful, horrible disappointment that tore him apart. That it all must end this way.
No, not this way. Any way it ended would be a calamity, for despair would follow, and Howie understood himself well enough to know that he did not possess the creative resources ever to really overcome that despair.
“I’m a dead man. I know I won’t get outta Baltimore alive.” To Howie, it was not just dramatic hyperbole when he put it this way, over the phone, to Lindsay.
He meant that he would be fired there, in Baltimore. He knew that it had come to that, and with it, the end of his life in baseball, the only existence he had ever known. In that sense, death worked well enough for him. He was, after all, a practical man. Whenever one of his regulars was on the disabled list, all the writers would flutter around him, asking how the team could possibly manage until the wounded star returned.
“I don’t deal with the dead,” Howie would reply. That concluded the discussion. Ask me about the ones who could suit up. You play with what you had. And it was he who was now a dead man.
There was a singular blessing. Because it was so clear-cut, he had, for the short term, found a certain calm within, so by the time he got to Baltimore he was concerned mostly with how, when the inevitable happened, he must display dignity upon his leave-taking. There would be no grousing. He would, in fact, thank the Indians for giving him the opportunity to manage in the major leagues. He would wish the team and the organization well.
There would be no backbiting. Of course, yes, he would, in passing (only in passing, you understand) recall how well the team had done under his aegis his first year on the job. He would not embellish that fact, but he would mention it (in passing) so as to remind everyone that just because Howie Traveler was a busher, he had shown that he could damn well manage a team in the big leagues. He had proved that. It was important to leave the media bastards with that. Especially the talk radio bastards, those who spewed venom for a living, and those amateur venom-spewing bastards who just called in.
When he got to Baltimore and found the time, Howie was going to write down what he wanted to say, and then commit it to memory so that he would display extemporaneous eloquence in his last public appearance.
In the meantime, he tried to pretend that he was not dwelling on what everyone knew. The pallbearers were assembling. Not only the columnists from the Plain Dealer and the Akron Beacon Journal, but, as well, the lead columnist of the Columbus Dispatch had signed onto the press manifest this trip, ready to dress up his obituary on the spot for the enlightenment of central Ohio fans. After all, a road trip offered the kind of timetable general managers preferred for these proceedings. Fire the manager away from home. Let an interim man-ager––in this case, the team’s trusty old reliable, Spencer “Frosty” Westerfield, the bench coach––handle the next series, in Chicago, and then have the new man on hand, prepared to assume command––“take the helm,” as the papers would have it––when the team returned to Cleveland, ready to start fresh, turn a new leaf, salvage the season, restore the damage that he, Howie Traveler, had indisputably done.
Never was anything so pat. So Howie just waited for Moncrief to fly in from Cleveland and fire him. Of course, everybody knows that baseball managers are, as it is written in stone, hired to be fired, but this was cold comfort when you were the manager in question and this was your time to be eighty-sixed.
O’Reilly, one of the newspaper beat men who liked Howie and drank with him sometimes, told him that Diaz was already in Cleveland, working out his deal. Nobody could locate Diaz, but O’Reilly said they knew he was there. This figured. Even when the Indians had hired Howie, the season before last, there had been a lot of speculation that Diaz would get the job instead. Diaz was surely Jay Alcazar’s man, and if Juan Francisco Alcazar, El Jefe––The Chief––could not put out his best for Howie (which this season he evidently chose not to) then it would be just a matter of time before Diaz was brought in. So this is where it stood, Diaz working out the details of his contract, whereupon, that buttoned up, Moncrief would pop over to Baltimore, via Southwest Air, and, with the saddest, most sympathetic expression he could manage to put on, basset-faced, he would tell Howie that he was toast.
Once there was a basketball coach named Cholly Eckman, and when he got a call from the owner, who told him he was “going to make a change in your department,” Cholly said “fine.” Then, as Cholly recalled, it ruefully occurred to him that he was the only one in his department.
Nowadays, though, what general managers tell managers when they fire them is that: “We have decided to go in another direction.” Unsaid: that direction will be up, whereas you, you dumb sonuvabitch, have been taking us in a direction that is most assuredly down.
So now, Howie put on the best smile he could manage, of the sort he assayed when he had to take a staged photograph at a charity auction or some such thing. “I wish I could think to say something really clever and wise-ass when Moncrief tells me that,” he said.
He had arrived in Baltimore and was eating dinner (as best he could) with his daughter.
“Don’t, Daddy,” Lindsay said. “Just be classy, like always. Everybody with any sense knows it’s not your fault. Go out with style, and that’ll help you get another chance.”
Howie took his hand off his Old Grandad, reached over and laid it on hers. Lindsay was his only daughter, only family now, really. How adorable it was of her, how thoughtful, that she had come up from Washington, where she worked as a lawyer for some arcane House subcommittee, to see him. She had just showed up, knowing what an incredibly difficult time he was going through. She had been standing there when Howie came out of the clubhouse after the game tonight. The Indians had beaten the Orioles, 6-4. Alcazar had gone three-for-five, with a monstrous home run and then a two-run double in the ninth that won the game. He’d been dogging it all season, it seemed, but now that he knew Howie was shit-canned, he was suddenly a hitting fool again.
And then there was Lindsay, standing outside the clubhouse. Howie almost cried. Funny, too. He didn’t instantly recognize her, for she was there, amidst a covey of other women, who were there to consort with his ballplayers. Howie could forget sometimes that Lindsay was a grown woman now, and more than that: as pretty (well, almost so) as the sort of women ballplayers would take out on the road. Lindsay Traveler had more style, though, than those sort of women. Howie didn’t himself necessarily possess style––for one thing, to his eternal despair, his legs were too short, and he had a lumpy face––but he recognized style when he was within its penumbra.
Somehow, Lindsay––she, a lousy minor league ballplayer’s daughter––had learned to dress in that way chic ladies of fashion do, with the ability to choose clothes that manage to work so perfectly that they count twice––once for how they look and then again because they proclaim to the world: this lady knows what’s best, what’s right, what’s stylish, so don’t even try to put one over on her.
Howie just wished she would let her hair grow longer, have it tumbling down, the way she did when she was younger. That was his only real complaint with her.
“No, honey,” he said to her now. “Guys like me just get the one shot.”
“Maybe not,” Lindsay said.
“Nah, and now I’m pegged, too. Traveler can’t get along with the big star. I’m old school. A hard ass. I thought he could work with me, and he did last year, but––“ Howie shrugged. He didn’t want to go over it anymore. These last few days, he had constantly had to talk with the writers about the possibility of his getting fired, and everybody else avoided him, so, effectively, for some time now, he hadn’t talked about anything else. So he asked Lindsay about her job and her iffy boyfriend and anything else he could think of, so he didn’t have to talk about himself getting fired. He also asked: “How’s your mother?” and Lindsay told him, obliquely. Howie said to give her his best, and Lindsay said of course she would.
Thank God, Lindsay hadn’t gotten his stumpy legs. She could stand with the best of them. She had her mother’s wonderful green eyes, too. This occurred to Howie now. Also, better boobs. This was a terrible thing to pay attention to, your own daughter’s boobs, but it did cross his mind––but only relatively, you understand, only as they compared to his ex-wife’s boobs. He went back to focusing on her eyes.
Then there was no more to say, and so he called for the check. They had gone to a restaurant in Little Italy, which was just far enough away from the hotel, at the Inner Harbor, and far enough off the beaten track that nobody was liable to find him there. “Are you sure you wanna drive back to Washington?” he asked. “I think the couch pulls out.” Managers got suites. So, alone among the Cleveland players, did Alcazar. It was in his latest contract. Not enough he got seventeen and a half million a year, he got perks too. He had incentive clauses. Excuse me, Howie thought: seventeen-five with five zeroes wasn’t incentive enough?
“No, Daddy. I’ll go back. I’m taking next week off and goin’ down to the beach in Delaware, so I’ve gotta finish a lot of stuff.”
“Last chance to use your old man’s manager’s suite.”
But she said no again, and dropped him back off at the hotel, where she gave him a big hug. “I’m very proud of you,” Lindsay said, and Howie knew she was starting to cry. She hadn’t cried the whole time, up to now.
“I’m prouder of you,” he replied, reaching across the seat, holding her as best he could, behind the steering wheel. Had he been feeling particularly guilty, he would have added: All you managed without a father. Her whole life, he had been away so much of the time, being a player, being a manager. But he was feeling so down in the dumps right now, there wasn’t space in his battered old mind to review the familiar old guilt, too. He just held his daughter a little tighter, and then pulled away, got out of the car and went through the lobby walking quickly, dead on toward the elevators, looking straight ahead, praying there was nobody there to ask him about whether he’d heard anything new about his own impending demise.
As it turned out soon enough, too bad there hadn’t been somebody there to delay him.
On his floor, he hurried down the hall. And then the door just ahead of him to his right flew open. If only Lindsay had come up with him. If only he’d arrived here a minute earlier or a minute later. Just that, either way. Seconds. The one thing Howie knew, whenever he looked back on it, was that he did not want that door to open before him. But it did, and even before Alcazar came up behind the woman, and grabbed her roughly and slammed the door shut with his foot––almost as quickly as it had opened––for just those split seconds, Howie saw it all clearly. And he remembered exactly what he saw and what he heard. It was not much, but then, after all, it happened so quickly that there was not enough for his vision of it to be blurred.
No, however much Howie was taken by surprise, however much that made him freeze in his steps, it emblazoned the scene in his memory: the woman, pretty (if in no special away) but built rather nicely, her blouse pulled out just a bit from her skirt, her hair out of place some, her face creased with shock as Alcazar’s strong arms came up behind her, wrapped round her waist, yanking her back as she tried to get away, even as his foot reared up and violently slammed the door shut. And that last moment before she disappeared as she caught sight of Howie in the hall and her mouth seemed to open just enough to cry out to him. But there was no sound, just the pretty enough face, aghast, and then the door slamming shut before him.
Howie had paused there, listening, pondering whether he should knock. But he heard nothing––cer-tainly no scream, no struggle––and, at last, he only turned and went down the hall to his suite. There he poured himself another bourbon, a nightcap, but it did-n’t help, for all he could think about was that he hadn’t had the nerve to intrude. It was too late now. Whatever Alcazar was going to do with that woman, he had done it. No, it wasn’t any business of his who his players were screwing, but this seemed to be a different kettle of fish, completely.
Had standing there in the hall like some dummy waiting for a bus given Alcazar the chance to rape her? Had Jay actually done that? Rape? Jay Alcazar––tall, dark and handsome, rich and clever, the veritable idol of millions, who could get most any piece of ass he wanted anywhere on God’s green earth anytime he wanted it––what the hell would he be doing forcing it on some woman? Sure, a stiff dick has no conscience and all that, but . . . But the goddamn door had flown open and she was obviously trying to get away, and Jay had grabbed her roughly and wouldn’t let her escape from him.
There were not many times in his life when Howie felt that he had failed for lack of trying. Failed, yes––of course he had failed. After all, he had failed as a ballplayer; he had failed at the thing he wanted most in the world. But he had tried his damndest. But now, when he was tested by a moment, by that exquisitely raw instant when a man either grabs the grenade and throws it back or dives for his own safety, he had found out who he was. He knew he had failed himself, and, in a very real way, he realized that, above all, he had failed his daughter; he had failed Lindsay, too.
He reached for the other bourbon in the mini-bar, but put it back. No. One was a nightcap; two was escape, a scaredy-cat, a drunk. So he got into bed and hoped that he could sleep, and he did, at last, at least for awhile. But not much. He was wide awake at eight o’clock when the phone rang. It was Moncrief. Well, at least the waiting was over. He even hoped Moncrief would tell him right now, over the phone, that the Indians had decided to go in another direction. For Christ’s sweet sake, he didn’t need a face-to-face to tell him what he already knew. But no, Moncrief didn’t even want to talk about Howie’s job, let alone about making a change in his department.
Instead, it was another urgent matter--what had happened behind the door that had opened and closed in Howie’s face, while he had stood there stunned and lacking.
Howie
WHAT YOU HAVE TO remember, Howie would remind people in whatever organization he was part of at that time, what you have to never forget, is that everybody who made the major leagues used to be a star. Probably from the first day they played the game as kids they could hit a ball or pitch it––or probably even do both––better than everyone else around them. At each level some of the best ones would drop off. They didn’t care enough. They didn’t want to work hard enough. Or there was, perhaps, just one thing they couldn’t manage at this next step up. Usually, for batters, they couldn’t hit a breaking pitch. Or, for pitchers, they couldn’t learn to throw a breaking pitch. At a certain point, it didn’t make any difference whether you could hit a fast ball four hundred-some feet or throw it ninety-some miles-an-hour, because if you couldn’t hit a ball that curved or make a ball curve over the plate, then you were finished.
So a lot of the players who were stars as kids fell by the wayside. But the point was, that the boys who made it had all been hot-shots. “You gotta understand,” Howie would say, “because in a way, all these guys were so good that it frustrates them when they get to a point where somebody is better than they are.” Most old managers, holding forth like that, would have said “fucking better than they are.” But Howie never said fuck, nor variations thereof, and he never said shit. It was not that he was a prude or he had promised his mother this when he went off to play ball. It was just something he had decided himself, after a couple of years in the minors, that if he was going to stay in this all-male jock subculture, he would never be totally beholden to all its habits and mores.
Probably no one ever even noticed that Howie Traveler didn’t ever say fuck or shit. He never substituted anything asinine like “Oh, sugar” when he meant “Oh shit.” And he said hell and goddammit and asshole and prick and sonuvabitch. It even amused some of his players when he screwed up, because then he would often say, “I got my tit caught in a wringer,” which was an expression that had mostly gone the way of white buck shoes.
No, Howie was always and very definitely one of the boys. He reveled in the camaraderie that came with being on a team. He drank whiskey, and, when he was younger, he chased women and chewed tobacco. The latter he had given up for good some years ago. It was found to be as unhealthy as it was ugly and hence had mercifully gone out of style, so that dugouts were no longer little more than live-in cuspidors. The former he had given up most of the time after he got married, to have resumed it, on a select basis, after Suzie left him. Well, he had never been a whoremonger. Howie was, in fact, a man of moderation and some erudition. He read newspapers and the occasional book, and had even made it a point of going to the opera and a concert when his team, visiting New York, played day games there; however, he didn’t enjoy either the one or the other, so he never felt any compunction about not going back. He was simply rather pleased with himself that he had tried it at all. Also, he was pretty damn good at crossword puzzles.
It irritated Howie, though, that outside of baseball nobody much wanted to talk to him about anything except baseball. Yes, yes, he understood that people talked to doctors about their ailments and to preachers about God and to pilots about airplane food, but, still, it pissed him off that everybody just naturally assumed that all he knew and cared about was baseball. As a matter of fact, it occurred to him once in a fit of guilt––rationalization?––that the reason he had cheated on Suzie every now and then wasn’t on account of the sex, but because if he was with a woman instead of some men, she wasn’t going to ask him about squeeze plays and when to go to the bullpen for middle relief.
Well, at least it wasn’t entirely to do with the sex.
But, from another point of view, he never got enough of baseball. Howie loved it so. Otherwise he would have left it years ago, when he realized that, even if he had been a star in Little League and high school and college, he was one of those who wasn’t quite good enough. Water found its level for Howie somewhere between Triple A and the majors. It was plain as day. He wasn’t a spectacular outfielder, but he was a right-handed hitter who didn’t have much power. Every scouting report said the same thing.
Howie Traveler had been a prospect. But he turned out to be an almost, a fill-in, a ‘tweener. God, what he would have given just to have been a journeyman. In the vernacular, in fact, he would have given his left nut. He was certain that he could have ascended to that estate, too, if only he had been a left-handed batter. Left-handed athletes are like blondes. They get a second look, even if they don’t deserve it.
The message never seemed clearer than that one time he went to Lincoln Center by himself, determined to try a concert. The first piece was a symphony by Prokefiev. Just Howie’s luck––not a composer he’s heard of, like Beethoven or Mozart or Brahms (the lullabies), but one he can’t even pronounce. It was pretty nice music, though, easy listening, live Muzak. Then, though, a pianist takes the stage, and can you believe this: he plays only with his left hand. First Ravel, then Strauss. Who would believe this? Who would have known that there are actually major works written just for left-handed piano players? Goddamn southpaws always get the edge. Even with pianos.
As it was, Howie spent eight days in the major leagues. That was when he was twenty-seven years old, in the Detroit Tigers system, and the big team suffered a slew of injuries. He played in five games, starting two in left field. He came to bat eleven times and got one hit, a line single up the middle off of Dave McNally of the Orioles, who was a very good lefty. That was a point of pride with Howie; he didn’t get his one major-league hit off a humpty-dumpty. McNally was so good, in fact, he even could have made it as a right-hander.
Unfortunately, though, figure it out: one-for-eleven: an .091 batting average. There in the record books, .091, forever and a day, for as long as men play baseball. Howie would say: “I hit in double figures. If only I woulda been in basketball with double figures, I’da been a star.” It got a laugh, whenever he would use it, such as on the winter dog-and-pony shows Howie would make for the Indians down deep into Ohio, or when he had been a minor-league manager, trying to scare up ticket sales at Rotary Clubs and the like.
But you know what? Three years in a row he hit over .300 in Triple A, at Toledo and Syracuse. The organization didn’t even bother to protect him, though. Right-handed outfielder, not enough power. “If we have a boy,” Howie had told Suzie, with a good degree of seriousness, “I’m going to make him a left-hander. Even better. A pitcher. A lefthanded relief pitcher is worth his weight in gold. There’ll be a spot for him into his forties.” He tried, too, to make Davey a southpaw, but it didn’t take; the boy didn’t have the slightest bit of interest in that alchemy.
Yet for all his complaints that nobody accepted him as anything but a baseball man, Howie knew for a fact that he was truly a full person only when he was around a diamond. And if, despite all the years, the decades that had gone by since he had failed as a player, he still was twinged with the pain of nearly––still, nothing satisfied him so much as to watch the players who did possess the talent he had almost had. Even more, perhaps, than the joy Howie had gotten out of playing the game, he loved watching it being played well. Secretly, he could not even help but be pleased, deep somewhere within his soul, when some magnificent opponent achieved something magnificent––even if it was against his own team. When it came to the game of baseball, Howie was a connoisseur as much as he was a competitor.
Perhaps his favorite part of every day was batting practice, when he would sit in the dugout, talking to the writers and others of the fraternity. Handling the media, public relations––that was as much a part of the manager’s job nowadays as filling out the lineup card. Howie was good at it, too––the kibitzing, telling stories, lying a little, dropping a few benign inside pearls to make the writers think he trusted in their confidence. When the Indians went to the West Coast and the regular newspaper guys from the Cleveland and Akron papers would have a tough time making a deadline, Howie would call them into his office before the game and give them two quotes: one to be inserted if the team won, the other if the Tribe lost. Now whoever would’ve thought of that? The beat guys loved Howie for it.