Free Suitors of Spring, The: The Solitary Art of Pitching, from Seaver to Sain to Dalkowski (Summer Game Books Baseball Classics) by Pat Jordan Page A

that’s been my problem, too. I should have been in the majors by now, as a coach or manager or something. I’d sure as hell rather be there than where I am. But there are some things you can’t explain, I guess.”
    Red Davis began his playing career as an infielder with Greensburg of the Pennsylvania State League in 1935. Like so many ballplayers during the late Thirties, he worked his way to the major leagues in the early Forties only to be drafted and serve his best playing years overseas. When he returned to the States in 1945, he was 30 years old and no longer a prospect. Red played for three more years as an organization man with Dallas of the Texas League before he finally decided to become a minor league manager in 1948. That same year he married Estelle Nicholas of Fort Worth, a girl he had met during his playing days. After their marriage they moved to over 15 cities, from Portland, Oreg., to Waterbury, Conn., while waiting for him to be offered the major league job that never came. Like so many baseball wives, Mrs. Davis absorbed so much baseball during those 21 years that she finds it impossible today to stray far in her conversation from talk of her husband’s profession.
    On the night of Waterbury’s last home game before the trip to Elmira, Estelle Nicholas Davis, a skittish little woman with a high puff of white hair, stood in the darkened runway under the stands and waited for her husband to emerge from the locker room after the game. The ball park had emptied quickly of its 300 or so fans, and now, at close to midnight, only a few scouts and the wives of some of the players remained. Mrs. Davis smiled at three of these women, who stood off by themselves, and they returned her greeting. Then she continued her conversation with a tall, tweedy man named Buddy Kerr.
    “Oh, yes,” she was saying in a high, Blanche DuBois voice, “I root for all of Red’s old boys. I’ve always rooted for Willie McCovey and little Marichal ever since Red had them. But Marichal is having such a bad year, isn’t he? I feel so bad for him.”
    Kerr stooped over and said something to Mrs. Davis and she smiled.
    “Oh, the hip’s coming along just fine. You know, I had this terrible accident last year. But it’s coming along fine. I certainly wouldn’t let a little thing like that stop me, now, would I? I’m still the same as ever. By the way, did you notice the crowd tonight? Do you think they’ll draw here? I do hope they draw or else they’ll have to pack up and move elsewhere.”
    A few minutes later, when her husband emerged from the locker room, Estelle Davis took his arm, said goodnight to Buddy Kerr and the three wives, and left the ball park.
    Of the three remaining wives, one was a heavily made-up blonde clutching a gray toy poodle; another was a well-built brunette in a lavender pants suit; and the third was a slender, athletic-looking girl in a plain green dress. The blonde and the brunette were in their early 20s and the athletic-looking girl was close to 30, although she actually looked younger than the others because of her short, boyish haircut and because she wore little makeup to mar her fine, straight features. The blonde and the brunette were talking animatedly to each other about the poodle, which they both referred to as “Baby” and which seemed quite used to being the topic of conversation. The girl in the green dress, however, said little. She stood slightly apart from the others, and only smiled faintly now and then, as if she, too, was used to her role—the third party in a two-party conversation—and not only did it not cause her any anxiety, but was actually much to her preference. Three years ago the girl in the green dress had become Mrs. Elwood Bernard Huyke, and in that span of time she had adjusted nicely to being the wife of a perennial minor league baseball player.
    When Woody Huyke finally decided to get married at the age of 30, he wondered whether he would ever be able to find