dugout bench as he fills out a lineup card. When he finishes, I can see that I’m not on it. Then he crumples it up, throws it on the ground, and writes a new one with a different batting order. My hopes rise only to be dashed again. He writes one lineup card after another, filling the dugout floor with his rejects, and not writing my name on one of them.
My sense of physical comfort was eventually overrun by a nagging voice in my mind. It was telling me that McGraw was right—I was in trouble.
I tried to figure out how I had gotten into such a confounding mess so quickly. What had I done wrong?
I jumped back to the beginning and quickly reviewed all that had happened.
Six days ago, I’m sitting in the visitors’ dugout of Ebbets Field, wanting nothing more than to get in the game. Then McGraw jerks his thumb at me, and I’m in a movie with Florence Hampton. Miss Hampton drowns, and Karl Landfors shows up to call in a favor: he wants me to investigate her death to protect some politician. Then a hack reporter wants to invent a scandal, so he does a front-page story suggesting I was involved in Miss Hampton’s death. McGraw sees the story and gives me hell . . .
Jeez. As far as I could tell, not only hadn’t I done anything wrong, I hadn’t really done anything at all. Other people had just aimed me where they wanted and pushed me along.
Well, I wasn’t going to be pushed any more. If I was going to get out of trouble, I was going to have to do it myself and set my own direction.
Although in setting my own course, I wasn’t going to aim for any head-on collisions with the more obvious hazards. Having learned from past mistakes, I knew it was wiser to steer around them when I could.
Chief among the obstacles was John McGraw. He wasn’t somebody to cross, especially if he had your career in his hands. Never mind .250, I’d have to be batting over .400 before I could risk going against his orders.
Karl Landfors, on the other hand, had no such power over me. He was in no position to give me orders.
So I decided I would go and see James Bartlett for myself.
By late morning, it was pouring so hard that the afternoon game at the Polo Grounds was sure to be canceled. Confident that I had the day off, I headed down to lower Manhattan with only my straw hat to fend off the raindrops. The only time I ever remembered to buy an umbrella was when it was already raining, and by then I was always too wet for it to help.
After a forty-minute ride on the 6th Avenue El, I arrived at Park Row to find an overabundance of government buildings. I didn’t know which one would house a district attorney’s office. What did government do to need all these buildings and offices, anyway?
I walked around the block. There was elegant old City Hall with its domed clock tower piercing the cloud-covered sky. Behind it was the Tweed Courthouse, named after Tammany Hall’s infamous “Boss” Tweed. On Centre Street was the new Municipal Building, rising forty stories from the imposing colonnade at its base to the statue that crowned its tower.
I figured if Bartlett’s an assistant district attorney, that makes him a lawyer, so the courthouse would be the sensible place for him to be.
I tried the courthouse. That wasn’t it.
Then City Hall. No, that’s for the mayor and the city council.
Finally, the Municipal Building, which I thought was just too damn big to find anything in it. I walked through the pillars of the front court and under the central archway, which allowed Chambers Street to run through it, dividing the building’s ground floor.
In the north entrance hall, I looked over the listings in the lobby directory. There were tax offices, and the Department of Sanitation, and license bureaus for just about everything—liquor, dogs, cabs, marriages, milk. And on the sixteenth floor: the District Attorney’s office.
That’s where my mission came to an end. There was no one named James Bartlett who worked in the
My sense of physical comfort was eventually overrun by a nagging voice in my mind. It was telling me that McGraw was right—I was in trouble.
I tried to figure out how I had gotten into such a confounding mess so quickly. What had I done wrong?
I jumped back to the beginning and quickly reviewed all that had happened.
Six days ago, I’m sitting in the visitors’ dugout of Ebbets Field, wanting nothing more than to get in the game. Then McGraw jerks his thumb at me, and I’m in a movie with Florence Hampton. Miss Hampton drowns, and Karl Landfors shows up to call in a favor: he wants me to investigate her death to protect some politician. Then a hack reporter wants to invent a scandal, so he does a front-page story suggesting I was involved in Miss Hampton’s death. McGraw sees the story and gives me hell . . .
Jeez. As far as I could tell, not only hadn’t I done anything wrong, I hadn’t really done anything at all. Other people had just aimed me where they wanted and pushed me along.
Well, I wasn’t going to be pushed any more. If I was going to get out of trouble, I was going to have to do it myself and set my own direction.
Although in setting my own course, I wasn’t going to aim for any head-on collisions with the more obvious hazards. Having learned from past mistakes, I knew it was wiser to steer around them when I could.
Chief among the obstacles was John McGraw. He wasn’t somebody to cross, especially if he had your career in his hands. Never mind .250, I’d have to be batting over .400 before I could risk going against his orders.
Karl Landfors, on the other hand, had no such power over me. He was in no position to give me orders.
So I decided I would go and see James Bartlett for myself.
By late morning, it was pouring so hard that the afternoon game at the Polo Grounds was sure to be canceled. Confident that I had the day off, I headed down to lower Manhattan with only my straw hat to fend off the raindrops. The only time I ever remembered to buy an umbrella was when it was already raining, and by then I was always too wet for it to help.
After a forty-minute ride on the 6th Avenue El, I arrived at Park Row to find an overabundance of government buildings. I didn’t know which one would house a district attorney’s office. What did government do to need all these buildings and offices, anyway?
I walked around the block. There was elegant old City Hall with its domed clock tower piercing the cloud-covered sky. Behind it was the Tweed Courthouse, named after Tammany Hall’s infamous “Boss” Tweed. On Centre Street was the new Municipal Building, rising forty stories from the imposing colonnade at its base to the statue that crowned its tower.
I figured if Bartlett’s an assistant district attorney, that makes him a lawyer, so the courthouse would be the sensible place for him to be.
I tried the courthouse. That wasn’t it.
Then City Hall. No, that’s for the mayor and the city council.
Finally, the Municipal Building, which I thought was just too damn big to find anything in it. I walked through the pillars of the front court and under the central archway, which allowed Chambers Street to run through it, dividing the building’s ground floor.
In the north entrance hall, I looked over the listings in the lobby directory. There were tax offices, and the Department of Sanitation, and license bureaus for just about everything—liquor, dogs, cabs, marriages, milk. And on the sixteenth floor: the District Attorney’s office.
That’s where my mission came to an end. There was no one named James Bartlett who worked in the
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