Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [32]
I threw a change to that very spot on the next pitch, and the chief pulled the ball over the left field fence for a home run. He ran around the bases, whooping and stomping his feet in a war dance while the braves high-fived me for hitting his bat. Afterward, the chief shook my hand and presented me with a thirty-pound salmon. I hate surrendering homers and never much cared for anyone besting me in front of a crowd, but deliberately laying that meatball in his wheelhouse that day made me happy. I had made a friend, and, perhaps for the first time in my life, that satisfied me more than winning some mano a mano contest. Guess the Maritimes really can mellow a man.
We returned to Montreal not too long after that episode. Had no choice. The laid-back life may suit accountants or clergymen, but I make my living playing a game in which they keep score.
6
THE UNNATURAL
There was this fellow from Lumsden, Saskatchewan, nicknamed the Beast, don’t know his real handle, but on the day we met he wore his shoulder-length brown hair parted down the middle like a rock star Jesus, a tied-dyed shirt so wildly patterned you lost your balance if you stared at it for more than thirty seconds, prewashed jeans, and vintage cowboy boots. You know the look, like someone who thought Hendrix was still splashing lighter fluid on his guitar in Woodstock. A great guy—the Beast, that is, though I suppose Jimi was a hell of a person as well—and a baseball diehard to boot.
The Beast had seen me pitch many times with the Expos and had followed my career after I left the major leagues. One day he ran into a group of players from the New Brunswick Senior League team, and they told him how I had recently shut them out in a playoff game while pitching for the Moncton Mets.
Now, the Beast had a brother, also a nice guy but his total opposite, a real buttoned-down, bottom-line type and one of Lumsden’s most successful businesspeople. Their town was about to celebrate a holiday, not sure which one exactly, and the locals had scheduled a gala weekend of events culminating in a charity hardball game between the Lumsden Cubs and their archrivals, the Regina something-or-others.
The Beast’s brother—his name will come to me, I swear— wanted to hire a celebrity athlete to stoke interest for the big game, and when the Beast told him how I had beaten that Saskatchewan team, they called to offer me room, board, round-trip air fare, and $600 to represent Lumsden on the mound.
I accepted, not out of financial need, although an extra $600 would come in handy, and not out of any great desire to visit Lumsden, a place friends described as divine. I was not even particularly eager to pitch that weekend, since my arm still felt tender from throwing so much during the previous months.
No, I went for the ducks.
The brothers had told me about this annual duck race that was scheduled for the day before the game. About two hundred ducks wearing numbers would swim against each other down the river that ran alongside the town all the way past the ballpark. To wager on the race, you bought a numbered ticket, and if the number on the duck that crossed the finish line first matched yours, you won a thousand bucks.
The concept fascinated me. How on earth, I wondered, could they ensure that those wild ducks would all head in the right direction, since their natural swimming patterns can be so random? I pictured a starting gate lined with saddled ducks, ridden by mice wearing miniature jockey silks and caps and carrying riding crops. Damn, no way I could miss that!
On the way to Lumsden, we passed through the town of Bigger, Saskatchewan, where a local hunter had recently killed a record-sized white-tailed deer. The deer was a male, which means the biggest buck ever brought down in North America was bagged