Free The Southpaw by Mark Harris

whiffed Black on the same curve he had throwed the very first pitch of the game—the exact pitch that Black least expected—and Pop looked at me and winked. Granby popped out, and the pressure was off, or so it seemed, but Fielding walked on a curve that looked good to me and looked the same to Dutch and Sam, and Dutch roared up out of the dugout and give the ump an earful.
    Then the game took up again, Casey Sharpe batting. How careful they worked him! They throwed him a wide curve that he went after and missed. Then Sam throwed him a screw that he give it the go-by, and finally he laced a 2-2 fast ball that was good but not too good on a line into center, and Swanee Wilks took it without moving more then 5 feet.
    Probably no outfielder in baseball knows better how to play hitters then Swanee. He been around a long time. I seen the peanut boy and I shouted, and he tossed me a bag and held out his hand for the money, and I said, “That genius back there has got your money,” and the fellow tossed it to him.
    In the last of that inning, with 2 on, Ugly Jones looped 1 in the lower tier in right, and 3 was in and the game looked just about on ice.
    But Sam got in trouble in the ninth. Dopey Davidson singled, and the crowd that was milling towards the exits slowed down a little, and Felsheimer singled and Dutch Schnell come up out of the dugout and him and Sam and Red and Ugly had a little conference out on the mound, and then Dutch signaled down to the bullpen and a young fellow name of Gordon Wood come slowly across the green, and Sad Sam went slower yet down in the dugout. He got a mighty hand, nobody probably clapping any louder then me. This gives me a laugh now—me standing there and pounding my hands to a pulp over Sam Yale. Another thing that hands me a laugh when I think about it is me sending 2 bucks through the mail about a month afterwards for a collection towards Sam Yale Day when he was give a Buick by the fans. In fact, this never fails to hand me a laugh—a couple thousand clucks making 60 a week throwing their chips on the pile for a fellow like Sam making 60 a day Sundays and holidays averaged out over the whole year, 4 months vacation a year against 2 weeks for the cluck, 4 hours a day against 8 for the cluck.
    Wood warmed up some more with Red, and this stupid fellow said, “There is a kid with a style that will go places.”
    Where has Wood went? I can find no trace of him in the books.
    However, for that 1 inning at least he had what it took, though it struck me whilst he pitched that he had nothing to speak of—a little speed, a little curve, fair control—and I turned and said to Pop, “Why, Pop, pitch for pitch I am the equal of him.”
    “I can see that,” said Pop. “I been thinking the same. But we will give it a little time yet. We must not rush these things. We will give you a couple years yet for flesh to grow on your bones and experience to gather in your head. You are still but 16,” which I was, 17 that July.
    Then we drifted away with the crowds and out of the park and down to Grand Central by subway—the wrong 1 the first time—and home on the train, and dinner on the train, the first time I ever ate dinner on a train. That was a great day for me, when I first seen Moors Stadium and Sam and Dutch and Swanee and George Gonzalez and Scotty Burns and Sunny Jim Trotter, and we talked it over all the way home, and that night I laid in bed and went over it time and again in my mind, play by play and inning by inning.
    In the morning I woke up, and it was like I dreamed a dream so fine that you want to go back and dream it again, and I looked out the window and seen things laying there just like always, and I pounded the window sill until the glass shook, and I said “Thunder, thunder, thunder,” and I knowed that some day I would get up in the morning and it would not be this view a-tall. It would be the big towns, New York and Brooklyn, Cleveland and Chicago, Boston and