Pitch Out

The next time you go to a baseball game, watch the pitcher very carefully. He may not even be there. He may be trying to win a game in another world.


Excerpt
I am not one of the vast majority of Americans who think Wysniewski will hit 65 homers next year, nor do I think Borden of the Phillies will pitch 30 wins. Nor am I possessed of that wild urge most American males have at about five-thirty to rush out and get the late-score extras. Baseball can be relegated to Limbo and I wouldn't bother asking what leagues play there.
But comes the first week in October and my editor gives me the bad news. Sports wants my services, and would I oblige? Well, you could say no, and go back to the divorce courts if you want to . . . Me? I just never can get up the courage to say I want to.
Ed Marcy's the sports editor of the Herald-Times. It's Ed's opinion all other sports are something to fill the pages with only until baseball lifts its hydra-leagued head in the winter training months. Then ho to the palm trees and hi to the desert land and may the best team win, so long as that team is the Yankees. But if they don't — look out!
Ed is our number one Yankee fan.
Ask Ed who's in the cabinet and he'll tell you what a great pitcher Babe Ruth was; ask him how the economy of New York has been hurt by the tax-revision law of last year and he'll tell you what a great manager Casey Stengel was back in the Fifties. Ed has a ready answer for everything. "Give me the good old days, sir, when baseball was baseball and not the game of aim-for-the-fence it has become…"
And this is the man who was to be my boss for the next few eventful days. Might as well face it.
He's a little bit of a guy behind a big desk in an office that seems constructed entirely of framed, autographed pictures of sports celebrities.
"Hello, Ed," I said as I carefully removed a half-dozen framed, autographed pictures of sports celebrities from a chair. I sat down gingerly, hoping there were no pictures concealed beneath the upholstery.
Marcy's gaze, somberly chilling, seemed fixed on a spot above and to the right of my left ear. "Hayden," he said, "you stink!"