Page 20 - Way Out to the Old Ballgame

El Brujo del Beisbol

their miserable lives. He told me I wasn’t getting it. He told me he
had to return the doll, he had to give it back to the old man in order
to straighten things out. He even said he had gotten his father to
bribe Bushmaster to bring the team down to San Trueno. Well, that
was just too ridiculous for me to believe. I didn’t know what was
wrong with Roger, but I told him to forget it. That doll was my lucky
charm. I felt extremely confident having it near me when I pitched,
knowing my streak had started just after I’d gotten it.
He insisted, and started losing his temper. I remembered how he
could fly off the handle, and I pushed him out the room and called
the hotel manager to complain. He wasn’t around the lobby when the
team left for the stadium an hour later.”
“The veterans on the team made some wisecracks about the
facilities when we got there. I mean, it was really run-down and dirty
in the visitors’ locker room. Some of the guys didn’t want to undress
or shower in there. But we showed up on the field, waved our caps to
the crowd, and generally worked up a sweat even before the game
started. The field was in even lousier condition than I remembered.
The grass was just about dead, infield and outfield, and dust was
blowing everywhere. The heat was stifling. I was scheduled to pitch
the first couple of innings, so I got warmed up in the bullpen, feeling
almost as hot and miserable as I had the year before. Then they
played the two national anthems over those old-fashioned metal
loudspeakers and our guys took their at-bats. I sort of noticed some
clouds behind the scoreboard in center field but they were nowhere
near giving us any shade.”
“We scored a couple of runs before the bottom of our order ran
themselves into a triple play. It was amazing, but all of a sudden they
missed the signs they’d been using for months and turned a bases-
loaded situation into a traffic jam at second base on a feeble grounder
I hit to third. I walked out to the mound and took my warm-up
tosses. The humidity had definitely increased, without any decrease in
temperature. But I didn’t feel loose at all. I walked the first batter and
sent him to third on a blown pick-off attempt. The next guy I
recognized from the Relampagos, a scrawny little infielder who
couldn’t hit his weight. He sent my first pitch screaming into the gap

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