Baseball dreamers speak of naturals in the game.  Johnny Mitchum was a natural.  Rescued from the obscure sandlots and pastures of rural Missouri and supplanted to the city lights of St. Louis, young Johnny Mitchum, affectionately nicknamed 'Rube', ascended to stardom in  his first season, carrying the Cardinals through the playoffs en route to the Championship.  He only got better in succeeding seasons, posting numbers that placed him among the upper echelon of baseball royalty.  Yet the brightest star often casts the darkest shadow.  As Johnny Mitchum is pulled toward greatness, other forces work against him in a battle with horrific and agonizing consequences.

One Crack of the Bat

Without heroes,

we are all plain people

and don’t know

how far we can go.

                --Bernard Malamud

I don’t know if steroids are going to help you in baseball.

I just don’t believe it.  I don’t believe steroids can help

eye-hand coordination and technically hit a baseball.

                --Barry Bonds



If I should fall from grace with God
Where no doctor can relieve me
If I'm buried 'neath the sod
But the angels won't receive me
Let me go down in the mud
where the rivers all run dry.
  
                --Shane MacGowan

          

Johnny "Rube" Mitchum  #11  CF

BATTING Regular Season Career Stats
AGE▲	TEAM▲	G▼	AB▼	R▼	H▼	TB▼	2B▼	3B▼	HR▼	RBI▼	BB▼	SO▼	SB▼	CS▼	AVG▼	OBP▼
20	STL	101	407	59	110	176	27	9	7	45	21	41	12	9	.270	.306
21	STL	157	611	112	191	313	43	14	17	107	69	37	39	7	.313	.382
22	STL	162	559	135	211	381	51	19	27	131	133	27	47	4	.377	.497
23*	STL	161	568	139	205	404	59	19	34	143	137	36	49	5	.361	.485
24*	STL	162	578	142	221	445	63	16	43	161	141	42	44	2	.383	.503
25+	STL	131	427	107	167	347	55	13	33	117	139	30	37	3	.391	.541
Career	STL	874	3150	694	1105	2066	298	90	161	704	640	213	228	30	.351	.460

-Italics indicates batting title

-* indicates MVP honors

-+ posthumously

BATTING World Series Career Stats
AGE▲	TEAM▲	G▼	AB▼	R▼	H▼	TB▼	2B▼	3B▼	HR▼	RBI▼	BB▼	SO▼	SB▼	CS▼	AVG▼	OBP▼
20(W)	STL	7	37	9	15	35	6	1	4	12	2	0	5	0	.405	.436
23(W)	STL	5	19	8	7	13	1	1	1	4	8	2	2	0	.368	.556
24(L)	STL	7	25	8	7	16	3	0	2	8	13	5	4	0	.280	.526
Career	STL	19	81	25	29	64	10	2	7	24	23	7	11	0	.358	.500

    

     Johnny Mitchum came to bat for the last time of his major league career in the bottom half of the sixth inning.  He was twenty-five years old.
     The dog days of August were nearly exhausted, the summer heat wave sweltering the entire continent, from the choked-off bay breezes in San Francisco to the hovering shroud of thick, blackened dust blanketing the streets of Baltimore.  Street vendors in New York City sold $2 hotdogs and $7 bags of ice.  By and large, baseball fans had retreated from the ballparks, instead taking shelter in local taverns or resigning themselves to the plush couches of their sitting rooms.  The players were largely left alone to parole the majestic village green diamonds of the ballparks with little more than the cameras’ eyes cataloguing their movements.  Such was not the case in St. Louis when Johnny Mitchum rose steady from a knee in the on-deck circle and approached the plate.  
     Every seat was filled, every inch of standing room railing over-slung with sweat-dripping forearms.  Their hero was 0-2 on the day.  But they knew he could not be shut down a third time.  Not by the same pitcher.  Not in the same game.  Something remarkable was going to happen.  
     The crowd burst into raucous applause following the one out walk bringing Mitchum up to bat, and as was their custom, came to a unified silence when their hero dug his right foot defiantly into the very front of the batter’s box.  No fastball could be thrown by him, and he was not one to wait patiently for a ball to break.  The crowd inhaled in unison as the opposing pitcher came set in the stretch.  They held their collective burning breaths as the pitcher kicked up, descended forward, and released the ball.  Any fan with a decent view of the plate knew the ball would catch too much of it.  Mitchum brought his hands up and back ever so slightly, shifted his weight with the baseball and brought the bat through the zone.  His hips turned on a perfect swivel, bringing his hands through the zone, guiding the bat with a perfect, slightly upturned swing.  The unified exhale of 46,129 people could not dull the crack that pierced a hole through the air. 
     Hit on a line, the ball split the center and right fielders, colliding with the wall on two quick hops and was sent tumbling along the warning track toward right center.  Mitchum cut first base with expert precision, his loping, graceful stride accelerating to full speed half-way to second.  Somehow, when Johnny Mitchum ran the bases, through some god-like grace of synchronicity, his cleats never kicked up dirt.  Only a perfect throw could prevent a triple, and the only player on the field capable of such a feat slid safely into third base.  The game was tied.  The crowd was rabid. 
     Johnny Mitchum strode out to center field amid the undulating cheers of the crowd, now snapped to life following his game tying triple.  The seats flanking center field were the hottest tickets in the ballpark, even more so than those behind home plate, offering the closest look at baseball’s current demigod wreaking his havoc on opposing pitchers.  
     To watch Mitchum patrol centerfield was an experience in equine-like grace and purity.  Unlike Willie Mays, who commanded the position more with speed and agility, Mitchum covered seemingly limitless ground through intellect and anticipation.  He rarely made a move left or right before the pitch was thrown.  He knew the tendencies of each batter, the pitch to be thrown, and the likelihood of the man on the mound to hit the target.  Balls hit to the gap more often than not died in his glove.  Very few doubles were hit against the Cardinals, as the left and right fielders had the luxury of always playing the lines; they were of no use in the alleys.  In response to a writer the following season, Cardinal right fielder Al Snow quipped, “seems I’ve gotta relearn how to move to my right.  No more free passes out here.” 
     After the first batter of the inning grounded to third, the fans packing the outfield bleachers witnessed something they had never seen before.  As the pitcher started his wind-up, Mitchum’s glove slid from his hand and landed idly at his feet.  He made no move for it.  The crowd focused on him with idle curiosity, a smattering of hoots and cackles sent towards center field.  Mitchum stood motionless for two more pitches.  Then his right knee buckled and gave, his legs folding as he fell Indian-style on the grass, his head bowed as though in meditation.  A few uncomfortable laughs escaped some of the centerfield spectators, a few confused exclamations.  And then there was silence. 

***

     All the booths were full at Melinda’s corner diner the following morning.  The space buzzed with the constant chatter of patrons, drowning out the clanking of glassware, shuffling of plates and flatware.  Everybody in the diner seemed to be speaking at once.  For the first time since the onset of summer, nobody spoke of the heat.
     “It’s a damn shame, you know.  And so young,” a bearded man at the diner counter said to the room more so than any one particular person.  “They say he’ll live at least.”

     The slender, young waitress behind the counter filled the man’s cup with the orange-handled carafe.

     “Who ever heard of a man so young having a stroke?” she asked, a look of concern drawing sharp lines across the smoothness of her face.

     “I’ve heard it happens.  There was that fireballer down in Houston some years back,” the man replied.  He stared into his coffee cup, his eyes vacant.  He tugged his worn, paint-dusted Cardinals cap a bit lower to his brow.  “You know ol’ Johnny Boy was on pace to hit seventy doubles?  No man’s ever done that before”

     “Nor will one ever,” added a man just seated at the end of the counter.  “Might’ve hit .400 too.  Sure would’ve been nice to see that his last year here.  Instead we just gotta wonder.  Could’ves and should’ves.  The plight of the baseball fan, you know?”

     The bearded man looked down the counter, eyeing the source of that all-too-familiar tone of cynicism that afflicts too many modern baseball fans.

     “I think he would’ve signed with us for less.  This is a good town for him; he ain’t got the head for a major market,” he said.

     “You may be right, friend,” the man replied. “’Bout ol’ Johnny Rube.  To him I don’t think it matters a bit where and for how much he plays, but ya know Schiester Reischer sure as shit cares.  You remember Gantry and Portrova as well as I do.  Same ol’ story.”

     The bearded man took a long pull from his coffee, shifted the egg whites on his plate.

     “Yeah well, they chose to walk away, take their talents elsewhere.”  He raised his cup to the man cowering over the end of the counter.

     “Here’s to hoping our Johnny Boy has the same opportunity.  A man that talented deserves the ability to walk…anywhere he chooses.”

     The man at the end of the bar raised his glass in accord.

     “’Tis a damn shame,” he added and then drained his iced tea.

***

     A nurse, in her late twenties, petite and sporting a charming out-of-fashion bob haircut, peeked her head into the hospital room.

     “Johnny…there’s someone here to see you.”

     The only light in the room came from a small bedside lamp, gold with a green shade, like the ones lining tellers’ desks at an archaic city bank.

     “I see you got your lamp.”

     She moved with grace into the room, her small sneakered feet squealing against the polished linoleum tiling.  Her short, plump frame absorbed the dim light awkwardly, projecting a sharp, fractured shadow across the bedside.  Johnny Mitchum rolled his head to face her.

     “ Yes, ma’am.  They did.  Thank you kindly,” he said, the words catching a bit in the back of his throat.

     “Now, Johnny, if you insist I not call you Mr. Mitchum, then I insist you call me Betsy.  Ma’am doesn’t sound right coming from you anyhow.  Now, you have a visitor.”

     “I don’t want to see him right now.  I got no more to say to him today.  I’m tired.  Please, tell him I’m not fit.”

     “It’s not Mr. Reischer, Johnny.  Says his name is Ben.  Says you might want to see him.”

     “Ben…oh do let him come in.  And he’d love a glass of juice if you’d be so kind.  It doesn’t matter what color.”

     “Surely, sweetie.  Anything for you?”

     “No ma’…no, thank you Betsy.”  He scratched at the IV needle taped to his arm.  “My arm’s drunk enough for my mouth, you see.”

     Old Ben Morgan pushed through the door moments after Nurse Betsy departed.  He was dressed as he always was, faded khaki pants, the cuffs beginning to fray.  A button-down plaid, well worn, the sleeves rolled to the elbows.  The breast pocket cradling a pack of Kents tight over his heart.  This was his 73^rd summer, his 41^st as clubhouse manager of the Cardinals.  The years had pulled his face closer to the earth in a benevolent hang-dog expression.  A faded red and blue Cardinals cap covered his bald liver spot head, the same hat, some had said, that was issued him his first year on the job.  One could believe it.

     “How’s today then, Pup?” he asked as he sidled up to the bed.  ‘Pup’ was the moniker Old Ben gave to most rookies.  As he put it “I calls them Pup ‘till they’ve scraped the last bits ah they mommas from behind they ears.”  Johnny liked the name, so it had stuck.

     “I have to turn onto one side to flip the light on and off, Ben.”

     “You should get that pretty little lady to do it for you,” Ben replied, a toothy grin tightening his loose flesh.

     Johnny’s face turned to grin, then quickly fell.

     “In my dreams alls I see are fastballs I can’t swing at.  I just stand there, twisting my front foot.  Hoping for four balls.”

     “You’re a long way from looking at fastballs, Pup.  You gotta long way to go, but we’ll get you there.  You’ll get a chance to make your dreams come true again.”

     “They tell me season after next.  I lose the whole year.”

     “Yup.  But it’ll feel good when you get there, pup.  You hungry?”

     Old Ben leaned to a crouch, squeezing a hand into his pants pocket.  He produced a mangled and greasy ball and tossed it onto Johnny’s lap.

     “I figured they didn’t feed you any Bar-B-Que in here.  We gotta keep your weight up, you know.”

     Johnny unwrapped the sandwich and devoured half in one voracious bite.  Old Ben grinned, pulled a toothpick from his pocket and began rotating it along his teeth.  The door cracked open and Nurse Betsy poked her bobbed head in.

     “I have your juice.  Will apple do alright?”

     “Why yes, young lady.  Apple will do mighty fine.  Thank you.”

After handing the glass to Ben, she looked to Johnny who smiled big at her, a hunk of coleslaw dangling from his chin.  She let out a kind laugh.

     “You two boys let me know if you need anything else,” she said as she walked out the door. 
     Johnny swallowed the rest of the sandwich and turned to Ben.

     “I get to go home, day after tomorrow, they tell me.”

     “You ain’t got no home, pup.  You gotta room with a view.”

     “Home enough for me, Ben.”

     “When you get yourself settled, you call me over and we’ll pop in a Western show.  What’d you say?”

     “One with Randolph Scott!?”

     “Sure, pup.  Sure thing.”

***

***

     “Are you ready, Johnny?”  Nurse Betsy pushed through the door, followed by a portly, thick-shouldered man.  Neither was dressed in uniform, Nurse Betsy wearing a neat pantsuit of navy blue and a lavender blouse, the orderly in jeans and a three-button polo. 

     “Yes, Miss Betsy.  I am.”

     Johnny Mitchum was sitting upright, his legs hanging over the side of the bed.  He was dressed in a brown, tweed suit, the kind accustomed to benevolent sitcom fathers or young, altruistic professors.  Despite his rural upbringing, the fashion of the miniscule town of Doolittle, Missouri being that of labor washed denim and sun-bleached plaid, Johnny Mitchum always wore suits.  And despite his escalating salaries, they were always second-hand, the discarded relics of ad-men and insurance agents, the clothing respectable men donned in speakeasies and track meets in a bygone era.  To Johnny, he looked respectable, put-together, like a man worthy of trust and good fortune.  To everybody else he looked like an ice-cream faced boy, playing dress-up.  Today was no different.  The suit hung slack from his wiry body.  He didn’t have a tailor.  His hair combed and slicked to an archaic perfection.

     “Alright, Johnny.  Let us help you,” the nurse said, her arms outstretched.

     “No.  I can do it.  I’ve been practicing.”

     Johnny extended his right leg and caught the footrest of the wheelchair with the toe of his loafer and pulled it against the bed.  He then lifted his legs back onto the bed, rotating himself slowly to face the opposite direction.  He grabbed the armrest firmly with his relatively strong right arm, slinging his slack left elbow onto the other armrest.  Feeling his left arm solid on the chair, he shifted his weight to the left side of his body, bracing himself with his good right arm.  He slowly, and without a grunt of pain, eased himself into the chair, his legs tucked close to his abdomen in a fetal position.  He straightened himself as he exhaled a deep well of breath.

     “I don’t believe it, Johnny,” the nurse said.

     “Oh it’s nothing special.  I can’t move my left much, but I can flex with my right.  And my middle works fine enough.  There ain’t a lot for a man to do in here when he ain’t much for reading.”

     The orderly pushed Johnny into the hospital corridor, Nurse Betsy flanking him on the right.  Johnny tried to look straight ahead as each set of eyes populating the hallway turned on the invalid hero.  Johnny turned only to meet the gaze of a young boy, stretched the length of a mobile hospital bed.  The boy’s face was gaunt, his smooth skin a translucent blue, spiderweb veins creeping from the corners of his eyes down to the base of his neck, like the offshoots of a river delta.  The boy’s sunken, glazed over eyes widened.  He made a quick, futile jerk of his head toward Johnny before sinking back into a defeated recline.  The boy worked his lips as if to speak.

     “Hold on a second,” Johnny demanded.  “What’s your name, boy?”

     The boy choked down a consonant, then locked eyes with Johnny and with an earnest and unwavering voice said, “Hurry up, Johnny.  We need you out there.”

     The boy let out a smile, equal parts relief and fatigue flashing across his face.  Then he fell asleep.
     The orderly steered Johnny through a labyrinth of corridors, snaking the wheelchair to a side service entrance used primarily for the delivery of kitchen supplies.
     “Johnny Boy!”  The voice curled around the corner and pulled at the nape of Johnny’s neck.  A flock of geese danced on his grave.
     “Johnny, my boy.  Now you didn’t think I’d leave you hanging today, did you?  The great exodus!!  No hospital can hold you!”  The man slid in between Nurse Betsy and the orderly, his mouth in constant motion, and began massaging Johnny’s neck.
     “No, I ‘spose you wouldn’t leave me hanging, now wouldya Mr. Reischer,” Johnny replied, his posture withdrawing to a slump.  “Lemme ask you, we push open this door and the only thing that greets me is the sun, yes?”
     “Not even that my boy.  It’s grey and quiet.  Not a soul outside.  No reporters, no fans, not even a street merchant.  You know I keep my promises.”
     Johnny leaned forward to shake off Dan Reischer’s hand-stitched tie that had come to rest on the top of Johnny’s head.  Johnny smiled to himself, a bit tickled in the knowledge that his money was not responsible for the purchase of that awful tie--a tie, as his mother would have said, “that was meant to distract a man from looking him in the eye, and seeing a bit of the devil in there.”
     Johnny smiled at Nurse Betsy.  “Thank you, Betsy.  And you too Stanley.  But we’ll let…”
     “I can handle it from here, miss," Dan interrupted.  “Get the door for us, would you big fella?”

     Stanley the Orderly let out a low exhale and winked at Johnny as his agent pushed him out of the grey hospital and into the even greyer haze of day.

***

     The corner suite on the top floor of the Hyatt House hotel Johnny Mitchum had kept for the past four seasons was a welcome site for the beleaguered ballplayer after two weeks of close watch at the hospital.  Despite his surprising recovery and the increased mobility in his extremities, the Cardinals’ medical staff, his owner, and even the Player’s Union had insisted he remain confined to his hospital room with constant supervision.  Johnny preferred his own self-constructed hideaway, which was granted providing the adjacent room be occupied during the day by a physical care taker, whose suite had been converted into a physical therapy space. 
     His room was as he’d left it, a mostly barren space consisting of a bed, chest of drawers, desk, and a television set—a neat row of movies, mostly westerns, lining the top.  Johnny eased himself from the wheelchair, removed his clothes, folding each article neatly before sinking into bed.  Lee Marvin talked a good game as he drifted off to the best sleep he’d had since the blood had dammed up in his neck.
     The baseball season spiraled to its conclusion as its greatest star rehabbed and watched movies in a hotel room, his castle on the hill.  The Cardinals played quality baseball, but slipped in the final two weeks, finishing a distant third place, six games back of first place Cincinnati.  
     Cool breezes from the north finally penetrated the continent, providing much needed relief from the heat and signaling the grandeur of October baseball.  Johnny didn’t watch a single game.  He didn’t read the paper or watch television.  He simply worked and waited.

 ***

     The winter passed like the seeping sap of a gored tree.  The baseball world buzzed with the progress of Johnny Mitchum.  Dan Reischer had done his job, keeping the prognosticators straddling the fence of Johnny Mitchum’s ultimate end or his foreseeable comeback, always keeping him at the forefront of the baseball news.  He had even managed a one-year deal for the free-agent Mitchum.  Positioned to be the highest paid ballplayer in the history of the game just months prior, Johnny now wondered at the foolishness of paying a man not to play.  His father would have had him refuse the check.
     Johnny turned away all visitors, save for Ben, who came each Friday night with a pizza and a western.  The evenings passed almost entirely in silence, Ben in the desk chair drinking beer, Johnny at the foot of the bed obsessively working a stress ball in each hand, a practice he had held since first reading of Ted Williams.  They sat, enjoyed each other’s company, and watched the black and white hats clash on the screen.
     On February 1, two weeks before spring training, Johnny Mitchum sent word that he would be joining the team in Arizona and expected to play by mid-summer.  Despite the positive medical reports, nobody else held his optimism.  The night before his flight to Arizona, Ben rapped his door.  His hands were empty.  He had something on his mind.
     “Shouldn’t you be in Scottsdale by now Ben,” Johnny asked.
     “Let me in, son. I want to talk to you.”
     Johnny opened the door.
     Ben eased into the desk chair in the corner of the room and pulled the remnants of a six-pack from the mini-fridge.  The bat he presented Johnny after his first batting title stood leaning against the wall.  It was hand-crafted by an old friend of his from Pennsylvania ash, like in the old days.  He grabbed it from its resting place and ran his thumb across the three hash marks carved into the barrel, one for each batting crown.  He sat quiet for a few minutes, finished a beer and began speaking as he cracked another.
     “I worry your head is further along than your body, Johnny.  I know the doctors have given you a pass to work out with the team, but I know your competitive fire better than anybody.  You won’t take it slow once you get out there.  You feel too good to take it slow, I know that.”
     “I’ve been taking it slow for six months, Ben.  Doing exactly as they order, working their routine.  I gotta establish my own again.  I feel good, not great.  But I need to play.”
     “Of course you do, pup.  You just need to remember that you can’t push it.  You can’t play at their speed yet.  They are gonna mollycoddle you down there, and you gotta let them.  You’re not gonna want to, I know that as true.  But you gotta let them.  You ain’t close yet.  You don’t take to failure well, and as a ballplayer, that’s a dangerous way to be.  You ain’t failed much on the field, but you gotta lot of failure ahead you.  You can’t go down there expectin’ it to come back to you.”
     “Ben, I know I ain’t playing Opening Day or nothin’.  I just wanna get some work in, see the guys.   I wanna feel the grass under my feet.  I’ve known only carpet for too long.  I wanna rub my hands in the dirt.”  Johnny smiled, his eyes staring off to distant fields of green.
     “That’s all fine, pup.  But I know.  You’re the best ‘cause you work harder and you’re more talented.  And you got that fire in your belly that makes men great.  But you ain’t got the body to burn that fire.  I worry it’ll eat you up when you can’t play with ‘em.”
     “It’s just a game of ball, Ben.  I been swinging every day for a month now.  It feels real good.  I wanna feel the bat hit the ball now.  I wanna work.  I’m ready for it.  I’m gonna play this year, whether it be in May or September.  I ain’t got nothin’ else to do ‘cept work to get back to where I was.”
     “Alright good.  And you will.  Just everyday remind yourself, you ain’t working for tomorrow, you’re working for a year from tomorrow.   It’ll all come back if you let it.”

***

   ***

     When Johnny Mitchum stepped out of the batter’s box after his first session of batting practice in late March, he knew he might never play in the Major Leagues again.  It wasn’t the dozen pitches he had missed that troubled his mind, but the few balls he had hit squarely.  He knew his strength had yet to fully return, but he also knew, all too well, the tales told by a batted ball.  The balls had limped from his bat, followed by a hollow thud pecking the air.  He was weak, yes, but what strength he had regained lacked any life.  He retired to his hotel room, spikes and uniform still on.  He thought to himself that at best he would be back the following season.  If at all.

     It was mid-June when Dan Reischer paid him an unannounced visit. 

     Johnny Mitchum paced the lengths of his hotel rooms, squeezing stress balls in both hands.  He could work his right hand for hours with only the comfortable fatigue creeping up his arm.  His left he could still only manage ten minutes before the arm would fall limp.  His remarkable progress at the outset of his rehabilitation had plateaued. 
     The Cardinals had fallen to 12^th in the league in hitting.  Johnnie could no longer bear to watch his teammates struggle to push runs across.  It was all too clear to him now that he wouldn’t be able to do his part in helping them win the pennant this season.  The television and newspapermen were already calling an end to his career.  Johnny could sense them moving on, noting him as a bright note on a once brilliant past instead of a beacon of light shining toward the future.

     He saw himself back in Doolittle.  Boys were racing home from school and collecting themselves on the rundown, sandy diamond of grass for a pick-up game.  The bills of their caps bent with sharp ridges from the day spent in their back pockets, smashed against blue plastic school chairs. 
     He remembered those days with fondness, three hours before supper would call them all home, often enough time to get in two games if each team’s pitcher could find the plate.  The other kids never resented his superior play, they merely demanded he a play a game for each team.  To keep it fair.  How would they treat him today, going back there, an old man in young man’s clothes, cracking sunflower seeds between his teeth as the sun set behind the ballgame?

     A rap on the hotel room door jerked Johnny from his reverie.  Dan Reischer stood, hands in his pockets, his back arched in defiance.  The peephole stretched his cocksure grin to his temples. 

     “Johnny Boy, open up!  I’ve got good news.”

     Reischer’s visits had been few the last several months.  Johnny had been surprised to find he missed his agent.  His attentiveness, an annoyance in the past, had come to instill hopefulness during his rehabilitation.  Johnny unlatched the door and let the hot air blow in.

     As was his custom, Dan began speaking before extending a greeting.

     “Johnny my boy, have I got something for you.  How are you?  You look good.  You’ve been eating well I see.”

     “It’s starting to come back.  A little more each day, though it’s getting harder rather than easier.  Doc says that’s a good thing.”

     “That’s just it my boy.  It’s gonna get easier for you.  You see I’ve found the solution to your problems.”

     “Oh yah? You solve things so I can play ball.  That’s what you always told me.”

     “And some say you aren’t bright, call you Rube and whatnot.  Funny they can get away with that today.  But you are bright, which is why you’ll listen to me now too.”

     Dan reached to his inner jacket pocket, pulled out a plastic film container and set it upon the table.  Johnny’s eyes fixed on the grey cylinder.

     “What’s that, Dan?  You been taking my picture?”

     Dan’s face broke into its Jack Napier grin, pulling his black eyebrows into the hollows of his eye sockets.  The devilish delight striking from Dan’s eyes turned Johnny’s stomach, forcing a burning swallow.

     “A wise guy too.  That, my boy, is your ticket back to the Show.  Where you were born to be.  Go ahead, open it.”

     Johnny popped the lid and pulled out a small vial, unmarked.

     “What is it, Dan?”

     “Medicine, my boy.  It will help you get strong again.”

     Johnny frowned, letting his head sink.

     “You lied when you said I was bright.  You must not think it if you give me this.”

     “It’s not what you think.  It’s not a steroid.  It’s not on the banned substances list.  It’s a new medicine to help people like you get back to normal, not to make you exceed normal human capabilities.”

     “Then have the doctor give it to me.”

     “Doctors don’t know about it yet.  It was created by an old chum of mine back East, to help rebuild cell tissue for cancer patients, as a potential cure.  It didn’t quite work to that end, of course.  That’ll always be a losing battle.  But for you—“

     “How will it help me Dan?  What will it do to me?”

     “See you are bright, my boy.  Many a man would just take it.  It stimulates your weak cells, causes them to function normally.  It also speeds up amino acid formation, proteins Johnny, what causes you to build muscle.”

     “Sounds like steroids.  I’ve worked too hard for that shame.  I love the game too much.”

     “Of course you love the game, Johnny.  The game is all you’ve got.  But it’s not a steroid, Johnny.  Think of it like Advil, which allows oxygen to enter the brain more easily, curing your pain.  This allows your cells to function normally, like they did before your accident.  Not better.  One year from now the team doctors would prescribe it, because it works and it leaves your system daily.  It’s up to you, pal.  If you want to wait that long.”

     “Baseball’s a game of patience.  And I’m the best at it.”

     “You were the best, Johnny.  You could be again before the end of this year.  Or never.  I leave it to you.  One drop in your eye a day.  Alternate which eye you put it in.  Work out as you have.  You’ll find yourself capable of more each day.”

     “In my eye?  I don’t—“

     “It won’t affect your eyesight, one way or the other.  It’s been proven.  You see, the medicine itself doesn’t make you stronger, like the steroids and HGH.  It’s not cheating.  It simply tells your brain that your body wants to get stronger.  Trust me, my boy.  I want to see you succeed more than any boy in America.”

     “I’ll think about it, Dan.”

     “Good good.  That’s all I ask.”

     Dan had timed his circular pacing perfectly, placing a hand on the door handle as his last word was uttered.  He popped the door open as he said ‘Goodnight’.

     “Dan,” Johnny called after him.  “It could help me play this season?”

     “Absolutely.  Perhaps with enough of the season left to win the division.  Goodnight, my boy” he repeated as he pulled the door shut behind him.

     Johnny sat on the corner of the bed.  He retrieved the stress ball and began working his left hand again, his eyes locked on the nondescript vial shimmering under the lamplight of the bedside table.

***

     Johnny Mitchum returned from the team’s workout facility to find the vial of medicine missing from the bedside table where he had left it.  Panic pulled his chest tight.  He scanned the room.  Everything was as it should be.  He pulled open the table drawers, shuffling through the contents, notes with phone numbers he couldn’t remember, wrapped hard candies.  No film canister.

     He examined every item scattered along the bathroom vanity.  Cortisone, anti-inflammatories, heating balm, vitamins, nothing.  He picked up the phone and called the front desk.“Mr. Mitchum, hello.  So good of you to call.  How can I assist you,” answered the voice.

     “Hello, sir.  Yes.  Was my room cleaned today?”
     “Of course, Mr. Mitchum.  Is it not to your liking?”
     “I need to speak to the person who cleaned it.  I’ve misplaced something.  Could you send him up?”
     “Of course, sir.  I’ll send her up.  Would you like me or the manager to accompany her?  We’ll be happy to help in any way we can.”
     “No no, thank you.  No fuss, just her.”
     Johnny hung up the phone and waited.  The tail of his shirt, fresh not thirty minutes ago, was heavy with sweat.  He pulled his tie loose from the collar, sat down on the bed, stood back up and began pacing the length of the room.  He knelt to the floor, tracing his fingers along the outline of the bed.  The knock at the door jerked him upright.
     He pressed his eye to the peephole before opening the door.  The maid stood massaging her palms.  She bowed slightly before speaking.
     “How…how can I help you, sir?”  Her accent was thick, but she spoke clearly.
     “Come in please, ma’am.”  Johnny ushered her into the room.  “I left a film canister sitting right here on the table.  Did you see it when you cleaned?”  The panic in his voice caused her a slight shudder.
     “Yes, sir.  I…I threw it away.”  The words caught a bit in her throat.
     “Why would you do that!”  He raised his arm as if to strike.  The maid flinched and held her hands to her face.
     Johnny caught site of himself in the bathroom mirror, leaning over the frightened young woman.  His arm fell slack.  He held his reflection, studying his face.  His hair was wild, a deep crimson spreading across his face.  His eyebrows were wet with perspiration.  For a moment he lost sight of what he was doing, staring at the strange, raving man in the glass.
     He moved to the sink, turned the faucet and splashed the cool water on his face.  He hovered over the basin, pausing to let the water fill his palms and watched it seep through the cracks of his fingers.
     “Sir.  Are you alright?”  The maid inched toward the door.  “Can I go now?  I’m so sorry.  It was garbage, trash.  I made a mistake.”
     “Yes.  No.  I should’ve been—it was not trash.  It was something else.”  His words had a hollow sound.  He spoke them into the drain.  He thought, I can hear my echo in the pipes.  He pulled himself upright.
     “Wait.  Take me to where the trash goes.”  The force of his words pulled her back straight, arms to her side as if called to attention.
     “You mean the dumpster?  Sir, it can’t be worth it.  You’ll never find it.”
     Johnny moved in close, inches away from her face.  “Take me to the dumpster and we’ll leave it at that.”
     Johnny dismissed the maid with a wave of a hand upon reaching the back alley dumpster.  He was relieved to see that it was full.  The sun pierced through the space between buildings.  He could see the fumes rising from the dumpster.  He wiped at the burning in his nose and climbed in.
     Johnny shoveled through the refuse.  His hands, which curled so naturally around the handle of a baseball bat, now worked through layers of soggy trash, searching for the cylinder that could take him out of this hole.  He rotated his body in semi-circles, pushing the discarded muck to the side, creating a whirlpool in the center of the dumpster.  His fingers felt through the artifacts with the same expertise they gripped the stitching of a baseball.
     He could feel his neck burning from the sun.  His stomach turned, sending a wave of acid heat into the back of his throat.  He choked it down, then gave in and spit-up where his hands worked with frantic energy.  Nothing but paper, toilet tissue, coffee grounds, food mash, paper, something sharp that burrowed into his forearm.  And then something soft and solid.
     Johnny pulled back his hand at the familiar touch of flesh.  He thought for a moment of leaving.  Pulling his wet, blackened body from the trash heap.  No.  A man doesn’t come this far to turn away.  I am total commitment.  A job done is done.  They can take me to the big pile out in the country and leave me for the birds before I quit.  Johnny thrust his hands back into the void and found the soft flesh.  A cheekbone.  He traced the outline of an eye socket down the bridge of the nose.  Lips.  There were still lips, wrapped tight around an object clenched between teeth.  He couldn’t remove it.  He felt a familiar cleft in the chin.  There was no body.
     He cradled the head in both hands and pulled it free.  Johnny stood straight up, holding the head to block out the sun.  Johnny looked into his open eyes.  The blue had run out, leaving behind deep obsidian pits.  His skin had gone translucent.  He could see the muscles atrophied and the dead veins.  Clenched between his teeth was the film canister.  Johnny shifted his head and balanced it on the palm of his hand.  He pulled his eyes shut with a finger.  Nobody ever called me handsome.  But my hair is perfect. 
     Johnny turned to see two kids standing in the alley.  They stared at him, mouths open.  One kid wore a Cardinals cap.  The other raised a camera.  The shudder snapped open and shut.

     The blackness of the hotel room was overwhelming.  Johnny sucked in air.  Couldn’t seem to fill his lungs.  The sheets wrapped tight around his body were wet.  He jerked with his knees but couldn’t separate them, his cocoon too tight.  He tried holding his breath.  He held it until little orange flares, like sunbursts began exploding in the deep black of the ceiling.  He let his breath tumble free, setting him coughing as he lurched to the floor.  He unrolled himself across the room.  Dan had said his dreams would be more lucid.  He hadn’t known what that meant.  Johnny stared upward, sucking in and spitting out air until he could count fifty popcorn nodules on the ceiling tiles.  He then flipped on the shower, waiting until the room filled with steam.  He breathed in the thick wetness.  His shoulders loosened.  He worked the knots from his neck.   This had been his 4 am routine for a week now.  Then he grabbed the vial from the vanity, held the dropper above his left eye, watching as the liquid formed a bulb and fell to blur out his vision.

***

The medicine worked quickly, though almost without notice.  Johnny continued his daily exercises, the stretching, three miles on the bike, the exhaustive core work, stretching, weights.  Inside of a week he could feel his body respond.  The pain was still there, but the disparity between what his right and left sides could endure had lessened.  After his third clean drug test, Johnny left behind his guilt.  I’ve worked hard for this.  Harder than anyone.  The game needs you, Johnny, Dan had said.  It is your duty. 

Dan Reischer stood between two of the Cardinals’ minor league hitting coaches, his arms crossed and a toothy grin spread across his face, as Johnny Mitchum lined pitch after pitch back through the box of the batting cage.  That rare crack of wood greeting tightly stitched cowhide, that crack that rings truer and pierces the air with an authority not heard off the bats of mere common ballplayers, that only shakes the spectator maybe once in every generation, was back.

“Boy I love that sound,” one of the coaches said. 

     Dan Reischer, without thought, ran a finger over the wallet in his breast pocket.  “I knew he’d make it back.  My boy Johnny would fight his way back to the field from beneath the wheels of an eighteen-wheeler.  A good corn-pone knows nothing but determination.”

“Johnny.  Hold back on a few.  Drive ‘em to left center,” said the other coach.

     Johnny acknowledged by driving ten straight line drives that would have split the left and center fielders.

“His footwork is a bit off, but that will come in no time.  We’ll get him some minor league at-bats throughout next two weeks, see how he responds.”

Dan stepped in between the two coaches, grabbed the younger one by the elbow.  “He doesn’t need AAA work!  He’s ready to go.  Look at him!”

The older coach, his face and waistband gone loose in his fifty years of service to the game, put a soft hand on Dan’s shoulder.  “Settle, Mr. Reischer.  Our reasons for wanting him back with the club are greater than your’s.  You know your job and do it well, but you need us to do our’s.  We will not throw that boy to the dogs.  He’s worked far too hard and is far too important to our club.  He’ll reacquaint himself with the game and iron the kinks out in the minors.  He’ll go up when he’s ready.”

***

On August 13, just shy a year from the stroke that aimed to end his brilliant young career, Johnny Mitchum was back in professional baseball.  One thousand additional standing-room-only tickets had been offered at Springfield’s Hammons Field, the eager fans gathering, not for a ballgame, but for a glimpse at the hero once feared lost.  The sun was high and hot, the wind blowing out to right center.  Great hitters’ weather.

Johnny took his turn in the batting cage first, as he always did with the big league club.  His teammates for the day, both the young, promising prospects fighting for a spot on the big league club, as well the older, knee-splintered veterans gripping tight to a playing career, halted their pre-game rituals to watch.

“Middle in and pecker high,” Johnny shouted to the pitcher. 

Each pitched ball was met with a piercing crack.  Johnny’s perfect swing sent each ball to nearly the same spot in right center field.  Those not being fought over by the hungry fans in the bleachers, thudded off the padded wall, shagged by bullpen pitchers.

Never has a minor league ballgame been watched with such overzealous enthusiasm.  A media circus worthy of New York spilled out from the small Springfield ballpark.  The game was televised nation-wide, drawing higher ratings than any major league game that day.  Two future Hall of Famers, not set to make the big league roster until the September call-up, combined to go 4-7 at the plate, driving in five runs, though all anyone in attendance noticed was that Johnny Mitchum had scored two of them: one after a walk met with a cacophony of boos from the spectators, the other after a Texas-leaguer.  Johnny Mitchum went 1-4 on the day, with one loud, towering foul ball to jolt the fans to life.  But he had never felt better.

***

The phone rang in Johnny Mitchum’s hotel room just before midnight.  Johnny turned down the volume on the night’s western and answered.

“Hiya old Ben.  How are ya?”

“Well, hello there pup.  Fine fine.  How’d ya know it’s me?  I imagine all sortsa folks been callin’ ya tonight.  Helluva game, pup.  I hear you looked real good.”

“Howard at the desk.  He lets calls from you through, you know that.  I feel great, Ben.  Can’t wait to get out there tomorrow.”

“Saw the highlights.  I tell ya, none of the boys seemed to focus tonight on the field.  Every one of ‘em waiting to hear what you were up to over there.  Hit some ‘em real good.  Got all of us mighty excited.”

“Yeah I sure did.  Just none of ‘em between the lines.  But I felt great up there.  I’m ready to go.  We’re gonna come back and win the pennant.  I hope the boys are ready.”

“Sure sure pup.  They say next week.  Coupla more games for you.  The boys upstairs say all next week is pretty well sold out in hopes of your being here.  I say you’re full of surprises.  Even I doubted ya for a small time.  I guess God’s got different plans for the likes of you.”

“Well, you know I know nothin’ ‘bout that Ben.  But I feel great.  I’m gonna get into one tomorrow.  Maybe two.  It’s a day game.  You gonna watch?”

“In the clubhouse while I get your locker ready.  Already got your seeds.  Say what’s on the screen right now?”

“Burt Lancaster talking sweet to the most beautiful girl I ever did see!”

“It’s always the most beautiful girl you ever did see, pup!”

“I know, Ben.  Ain’t life grand old man?”

“It sure is, pup.  It sure is.”

Johnny Mitchum hung up the phone and watched Burt Lancaster talk his way out from the tip of a gun barrel.  He leaned over the bedside table and pulled open the drawer.  He stared a moment at the vial resting atop the Gideon Bible before sliding the drawer back into place.  He no longer needed help.  Once again, he could play his game on his own.  His eyelids sagged while a gunfight played out as the sun set across the western plains.

***

Johnny Mitchum awoke the next morning to perfection.  On his back, each limb stretched to its respective corner of the bed, his body had a weightless calm, as if he were hovering above the sheets.  He pulled himself together and rose from the mattress.  He felt a spring to the balls of his feet as he paced the length of the hotel room, bouncing with a freedom of movement like he did as a child.  It was as if no space, however cavernous, could contain him.  He dressed and splashed water on his face.  He smiled at the boyish reflection in the mirror.  It’s gonna be a good day at the ballpark.

Johnny didn’t call for his cab, choosing instead to walk to the field.  Rather than crowding the re-emerging star on the sidewalk, the fans and passersby seemed more to fall in line behind, funneling in excited revelry as they marched to the ball field.  It seemed to Johnny the street itself was carrying them to the park. 

It was a perfect day for baseball.  Hot and dry, the few clouds dissipating against the vast blue sky.  Johnny watched them pass across the sun; he imagined their thick cauliflower folds cracking and hissing, like dry splintered kindle in flames.  Let them die.  Bathe me in sunlight.  This is not a day for shadows.

Johnny Mitchum’s first at-bat was a back-and-forth duel of complete domination.  He saw eleven pitches, fouling off eight of them, not because the pitcher was expertly evading his bat, but because Johnny wanted to see him sweat.  Let that second-rate hurler believe in himself a bit before Johnny put him in his place.  Johnny swung late on three consecutive fastballs, splaying souvenirs that were wrestled over along the third-base stands.  The pitcher set to his motion and reached back, finding somewhere in the past a much younger arm, and delivered his best fastball.  Johnny Mitchum turned in a flash of elegant motion and sent the ball into the right field bleachers.  The pitcher stood lifeless in front of the mound, head bowed, defeated.  Johnny took his time around the bases.

His second at-bat Johnny lined the first pitch straight through the box, sending the pitcher careening to the ground.  His third at-bat saw another souvenir launched into the left-center bleachers.  Only on his best days did Johnny Mitchum summon the power to put the ball out opposite field. 

In his final at-bat Johnny decided to show he could still run.  He waited patiently at the plate, shanking a few outside pitches, pulling off a couple inside foul down the right field line.  Then he got what he was looking for.  A pitch at the knees that caught just a splinter too much of the inside part of the plate.  Johnny sent it screaming on a line, splitting the gap between right and center field.  There was no doubt in Johnny’s mind that he had three.  He cut the inside of first base and rounded second without even offering his cursory glance at the outfielder making the throw.  Halfway to third, he set his eyes on the baseman, who moved two steps inside the bag.  Johnny bulled straight for him.  The ball arrived a few steps ahead, caught just down the line toward home plate.  Johnny turned and slid out around the bag, lifting his trailing arms to avoid the swipe tag while in the same motion curling his legs back around to hook the bag.  The umpire motioned safe.  Johnny didn’t call time, didn’t brush himself off.  He had earned that dirt.  He simply stood, in grand stoicism and stared down the pitcher.  I’m gonna steal home if you don’t watch me. 

Johnny Mitchum was back.

***

Johnny’s eyes shot open the following morning to a wash of fierce orange haze.  He attempted to jerk his body upright but lay motionless.  He could feel his eyes open wide, the light from the hotel windows washed away his vision.  There was a hollow pain at the base of his neck, as if a hole had opened up there draining him.  He reached to the pain but couldn’t lift his arm, only dragging it a few inches across the sheets.  He closed his eyes.  Breathe, he told himself.  You aren’t awake yet. 

He opened his eyes again.  The orange blaze burning his pupils had washed to yellow.  He was able to turn his head to the side, away from the windows.  He could make out the faint contours of the desk.  He choked a few swallows of air, felt his heart thump thump beyond rhythm.  He lay perfectly still, closed his eyes and reopened them.  His vision was creeping back in.  He tried to pull his knees to his chest.  He let loose a guttural growl.  It was as if weights were attached to each toe, fighting against him.  His vision swirled a kaleidoscopic blue purple, and he remembered to exhale.  His legs fell flat again on the bed.  Johnny continued to open and close his eyes, each time a bit more of the room came into focus.  He had managed to extend an arm onto the bedside table, inching its way to the phone. 

He knocked the phone from its cradle, and using the cord, pulled it up the side of the bed.  Using his hand and cheek, Johnny was able to position the receiver against the pillow.  He felt along the dial pad and pressed the speed dial number one.

“Johnny my boy, how the hell are you?  Some game yesterday.”

Johnny parted his lips to speak.  A globular of spit fizzled from the cracked corner of his mouth followed by the low rumbling of a consonant forming in his throat.

“Da…Mr. Reisch...”

Johnny’s lower back convulsed, turning his stomach.  He coughed out a thin stream of bile.  A strand of mustard-yellow spittle connected his chin to the mouthpiece of the phone.

“Mr. Reischer.  I need help.”  The words folded off his tongue easier as his throat loosened.

“Johnny, you sick or something?”

“Something more.  I feel…caught in a plow.”

“So sleep it off, my boy.  You ain’t gotta play today after getting four hits yesterday.  Take the day off.”

“Mr. Reischer…Dan…It’s inside me.  I can’t move.”

“You’re fine Johnny, my boy.  I’m in Los Angeles right now.  I’ll fly into St. Louis in a coupla…”  There was pause on the other end of the phone.  “Now you took your medicine, yes?”

“No…I was better.”

“Shit Johnny shit.  I told you to talk to me before doing that.  Goddammit fucking rube shit.  How long ago?  When was the last time you took it?”

“Day before yesterday.”

“Okay Okay.  I’ll call the doctor…be on a plane this afternoon.  Take a dose now, will ya?  How could you be so foolish, Johnny?  You’re not a doctor, you’re a ballplayer for chrissakes!  I’ll be there this afternoon.  Just stay put…and don’t call nobody!.  You got that, boy?”

“Yeah.” 

A flash of pain shot through his head.  Johnny let the phone fall to the floor.  He worked his hand, inch by inch up the bedside table until finally, he was able to loop a finger through the brass handle of the drawer.  He worked the drawer by shifting his whole body side to side, gradually pulling the drawer open.  

After several minutes he was able to pull his knees to his chest.  He then set to rotating his body to the left, drawing him to a crouching position.  Each one of his muscles responded, just in slow motion, as if receiving the signal to move from the other end of a canyon with a resulting echo movement.

Johnny paused for several minutes, his hand resting on the drawer handle, his body cowered in an upright fetal position.  He inhaled deep, choked down another rise of bile, and in one push, exhaled and lurched his body forward, burrowing his hand in the drawer.  The weight of his arm pulled the drawer down at an angle.  The Gideon Bible slid to the drawer front, the weight knocking it from it tracks.  The drawer toppled to the floor.  Johnny was able to hold his right eye open enough to see the vial roll across the carpet before coming to rest against the opposite wall.  Johnny let his eyes shut, exhausted, and drifted into a waking sleep, like a fever dream.  He watched the carpet patterns swirl, the yellow and blue geometric designs crashing into one another.  It reminded him of the fireworks shows after Friday night games.  On those nights, he would linger in the dugout, watching the explosions of light flicker across the St. Louis skyline, feeling, for a few fleeting minutes, as a part of the crowd. 

He lay on the bed, motionless, his muscles going slack, and waited.  And he waited.

***

Johnny Mitchum was unconscious when Dan Reischer entered the room, having negotiated a room key from the plucky young receptionist.  He was always selling something, and always closing. 

He found Johnny lying slack on his back upon the bed, the sheets balled up on the floor.  The sight of Johnny’s emaciated frame, which had the day before dug into the batter’s box with such imposing grandeur, froze Reischer at the foot of the bed.  Johnny’s skin had been pulled loose by the weight of his sinking flesh.  It hung taut from his bones, translucent and grey with webs of broken blue veins dancing between the joints.  “Christ, he’s dead.”  Reischer spoke the words out loud as if trying to sell himself on the possibility.  “How the fuck am I supposed to explain this?”  A bead of sweat dripped down Johnny’s forehead, pooling along his eyebrow and cascaded into his eye.  His eyelid jerked, swallowing the moisture.  The rest of Johnny’s body remained still.

“Shit.  Johnny boy.  Johnny boy.  C’mon wake-up my.”  Reischer moved aside the bed, began smacking him lightly across the face.  “C’mon, boy.  Wake-up.  Don’t you do this to me!”  Perhaps for the first time in his life, Dan Reischer began to panic.  He filled a glass with water and began flicking it into Johnny’s face. 

“C’mon wake-up boy.  We can fix this.  Did you take your medicine?  The doctor said it might be alright.”

Dan examined the bedside table, kicked the fallen drawer.  He scanned the carpet and located the vial.  “Shit, alright.”  He pulled the dropper from the vial and leaned over Johnny’s sear-sucked body.

“Alright Dan, Doc said not too much, don’t overcompensate.  Normal dosage.  Body will respond.  OK.  One drop.  Each eye.  Yes.”

Dan pulled open the right eye between his thumb and forefinger.  He wiped the sweat from his face with a jacketed forearm.  He scowled at himself.  “A good suit you jackass.  Fuck it…okay.”  He squeezed the dropper, careful to only let a solitary drop fall.  He paused for a second, took a breath, and then did the same to the left eye.  He returned the dropper to the vial, stood up and watched.

Johnny lay motionless near a minute before his body jerked upright in a flash of rigid motion.  Johnny let out a gravely squeal that sent Dan reeling back against the wall.  His eyes were open, but they bobbed around in his skull, vibrated with his convulsions.  He fell back on the bed, his legs and arms extended rigid toward each corner of the room.  Dan watched as Johnny’s skin began to puff, as if being pumped with air.  He heard a tear like Velcro, and Johnny’s lower right leg snapped inward at the knee.  The skin on Johnny’s thigh snap-hissed as it cracked open, ripping across the bone.  A sound like a breaking locomotive filled the room as the skin across Johnny’s abdomen began to pull across his ribcage.  Dan closed his eyes.  He reopened them to see the skin of Johnny’s bulbous belly begin to shingle.  Dan turned and ran for the door, slamming it shut behind him.

***

Ben’s knees let loose a low, rumbling crunch as he pulled himself upright to shake the young man’s hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, son.  We’re all very excited to have you up.  Those golden legs and all.”

“Thank you, sir.  I’m gonna stick you’ll see.”

“All you gotta do is get on base, hustle and be smart.  Johnny’ll set your legs loose around the bases.  You’ll have all sorts of fun.”

Ben shuffled over to his uniform locker.

“I’ve always taken great pleasure in this little ritual.  Believe it or not, I spend a lotta thought about which number to give you boys.  Been keepin’ tabs of you.  With those legs of your’s, number 1 seems most fitting.  Number one sent round the bases by Johnny’s eleven.  A beautiful site, dontcha think?”

“I like it, sir.  It would be an honor to wear it.”

“Of course, you can’t.  On account of Ozzie.  Always look to those who came before you, pup.  The ghosts can carry you to greatness.

“Yes, sir.”

The boy stood shifting left to right.  Be kind to the Old Man they told him.  He’s sacred around here.  Listen to him.  Respect him.

“You still think there’s a chance Johnny Mitchum will be up with the club for the stretch?”

“Oh most definitely.  The next day or two.  Just you wait, boy.  You think you’ve seen him play.  But you ain’t.  Watching him day to day, it’s a beautiful thing.  Watch him and feel envy.  Keep watching him and you’ll get better yourself.  You’re a lucky one, to be one of Johnny Mitchum’s Redbirds.”

“I hear more than a day or two, what with the oblique.”

“What’s that you say, boy?”

“Oblique strain.  He sat out today’s game.  Didn’t even report to the ballpark.  Must be tough.  Being so close to returning and all.”

Ben’s back straightened.  He began massaging his fingers into the palms of his hands.  He turned to face the kid.

“Johnny Mitchum’s had half a dozen strained muscles, obliques as they like to call them, and he ain’t never missed a game to it.  Simply shortens his swing.  Where’d you hear this that I ain’t?”

“Buzzing around the clubhouse.  They say his agent broke the news.  Nobody’s heard from Johnny.”

“Okay, boy.  But nothing but Johnny himself can keep him down.  Alright Alright.  Let’s get you ready to go.  I’m outta words for today.  Number four I think suits you.  Let’s see you make it mean something.”

***

Ben left the ballpark early for the first time in thirty-three years, the last being for the birth of his youngest boy, now a scout in the Minnesota organization.  He always begrudged him working for the American League.  As he passed through the Arch to hit I-44, Ben sank deep into the car seat, a foreign disquiet teasing the hairs on the back of his neck.  Ben cast a cursory glance in the rearview mirror and watched the popping lights of the cityscape swallow themselves in firefly flickers to grey.  He drove the two hundred and fifteen miles to Springfield in silence.

Ben arrived at Johnny’s hotel shortly after nine.  The streets were quiet, the small town already having retired for the evening.  He picked up a six pack of beer from the corner shop before going into the hotel.  The young man at the front desk gave him no trouble when asking for a key.  Johnny always made sure the hoteliers knew Ben was welcome.  As always, he opted for the stairs instead of the elevator.  A man he believed, when given the choice, should never stand still when can walk. 

He felt his age weighing down on him with each successive flight of stairs to Johnny’s fifth floor room.  Or was it the air was just heavier up here.  He came to Johnny’s room, 511 of course, and knocked knowing full well Johnny would be in no shape to answer.  After particularly bad days at the ballpark, Johnny would wear himself out walking the city streets, cutting through alleys, getting lost and finding his way back to the hotel in the early hours of the morning.  Then he would sit, for an hour or more, in the bathtub letting the hot shower spray steam away the day’s failures.  He would wake up the next morning, late, and be ready to go.

Ben slid the card through the slot.  The mechanized trigger rolled over and the bulb lit green.  And he entered.

“Johnny Boy.  It’s old Ben.”

The room was silent save the quiet buzzing of the television, which sent blue swaths of light clicking across the room.  The shades were open, the lights off.  Ben put a finger to his mustache, bracing his nostrils against the thick, dank smell of rot layering the room.  He flipped the light switch.

“Johnny.  Pup, you—“

The words pulled his tongue to the back of his throat when he caught site of the bed.  The sheets were stained a dark brown; the air having sucked the deep crimson from Johnny’s blood.  There were cuts of flesh strewn across the mattress, like the innards of a rag doll pulled to shreds by a dog.  One large piece hung sinew-stretched from the corner of the bed to the floor.  A pile of glistening fat spread across the carpet, the shiny surface reflecting the images from the television.

Ben held himself erect.  He didn’t move for several seconds.  A strange calm came over him, as if somehow, deep within him, he was prepared for such a scene.  He approached the horror bathing the room before him with the same calm he met every aspect of his life.  He scanned the room.  The trail of dried blood and tissue skirted towards the bathroom.  He followed it one slow step at a time.  He caught site of the vial, resting against the bedside table.  He bent to examine it.  It was about a third full of cloudy liquid.  No doctor name, no patient name.

“Johnny, old boy.  What have you done?”

He walked into the bathroom to find what was left of Johnny Mitchum clinging to the claw foot tub.  His skin had evaporated, what little fatty tissue Johnny had had fallen off.  The muscles, still bright beating red with life, had more than doubled in size, ripping into one another to form a cross-stitch tapestry.  Bones were crushed at the joints, the rapid growth of muscle having consumed ligament and tendon.  Ben pushed a foot against Johnny’s back side.  The muscles contracted, pulling Johnny onto his back, facing Ben.

Ben was shocked to see Johnny’s face more or less intact.  The cheeks were hollowed out.  It appeared his jaw was crushed, but his eyes were there.  He could see him.  A low gurgle, like an echo, or as if it were shouted from the bottom of a well hissed from Johnny’s mouth.  Ben could be barely hear it, though it made him take a quick step back.  The voice came again, along with a movement of Johnny’s arm, looking more like a Redvine, motioning Ben closer.  Ben took a knee and knelt to Johnny, placing his ear to Johnny’s mouth.

“What is it my boy?  What have you done to yourself?”

The voice came with a slow assurance, quiet but clear.

“I knew what I was doing.  But I didn’t know.”

“It’s alright my boy.  It’s alri…”  Ben choked a bit, looking down across Johnny’s midsection; he could see where the abdominal muscles had crushed Johnny’s ribcage, shards of bone jutted through like barbs in a thicket.  “It’s alright, Johnny.  I’m here now.  You’re not alone.”

“Sh…Sh…”

“What is it Johnny?”

“Sh…Shame.  The…game…shame…know better.”

“I know Johnny.  Just relax my boy.  It’ll be over soon.  I promise.”

Ben pulled himself up, using the toilet as support and closed the door behind him.  He closed his eyes and slid down the door to a crouch.  He cupped his hands over his eyes and sobbed.  His mind turned to Johnny his first day up with the club, just twenty years old.  His body lean and pulled tight.  He was skinny but with strong, prominent forearms.  He was never very muscular, but he could bring the bat through the zone with greater speed than anyone Ben had ever seen.  With sheer bat speed he could out power most of the heavy lifters.  One of Ben’s favorite moments was when Johnny, choking up several inches to protect a two strike count, whipped a tumbling sinker into the second deck for a homerun.  The pitcher, a twenty game winner the year before, stood perfectly still in front of the mound, eyeing Johnny with disbelief as he rounded the bases.  In forty-seven at bats since, that pitcher has never thrown Johnny another sinker.

Ben opened his eyes and wiped his face dry with a shirtsleeve.  He walked over to the bedside table, grabbed the vial and placed it in the pocket of his trousers.  His eyes rested on Johnny’s bat.  He picked it up and worked it in his hands.  He ran his fingers along the three incisions.  The handle was worn smooth, though it had never been used in a game.  He felt the weight of it, admired its density.  Such a fine piece of work this is.  They don’t make ‘em like they used to. 
Ben pushed the bathroom door open.  Johnny lay motionless except for the sharp rising of his chest, his compressed lungs fighting through muscle.  “Goodbye, pup.”  Ben raised the bat above his head, took one long last look at the disgraceful travesty piled at his feet and turned his mind to a mid-summer day, the Brewers in town and at the plate.  A long hard fly hit to the canyon between left and center field.  The runners on first and second ran on contact, confident of scoring.  Johnny Mitchum never broke stride or altered direction.  From the crack of the bat, he set out on a perfect course to the ball.  He made the catch over his head, back turned to home plate and seemingly danced along the warning track before firing the ball in to double, and triple off the runners.  Not Ben, nor anybody else, had ever seen that before.  And Ben had been watching near seventy years. 

Ben swallowed a smile at the memory and then smashed Johnny Mitchum’s skull against the bathroom tile.

He pulled a towel from the rack and wiped the bat clean.  He grabbed the remote from the bedside table and his beer from the dresser.  He shuffled over to the desk chair, propped his feet up and cracked a beer.  It was warm, which tasted about right.  He turned up the volume to hear William Holden scowl, “If they move, kill ‘em!”  Ben had never shown this one to Johnny.  He knew it wasn’t the kind of story he liked. 

Copyright 2011 Crumbumbeat  All Rights Reserved.