Free Murder at Ebbets Field by Troy Soos

The Giants’ hung limp next to the left field foul pole.
    I stood on the top step of the Giants’ dugout, absentmindedly tightening the leather lacing on my glove. It was two-thirty on Tuesday afternoon, half an hour before game time for the series finale, and the park was already standing room only. Crackling chatter and guttural shouts from the crowd filled the park with a frenzied din. The Dodger fans were in a blood lust, eager to see Brooklyn sweep a series from the Giants.
    Last evening’s crowd had been restrained, almost somber, in mourning for Florence Hampton. Now the lowered flags seemed to be the only things grieving.
    Across the diamond, the Dodgers’ hunchbacked batboy emerged from the dugout. A hunchback was considered the most powerful good luck charm a baseball club could have, and many teams had them as mascots. Virgil Ewing then stepped out in his catcher’s gear and gave the boy’s hump a rub for luck before going to warm up Sloppy Sutherland. The boy went about his business, lining up the team bats in front of the Brooklyn dugout. With their barrels pointing toward the infield and the Giants’ bats arrayed the same way on our side of the field, they looked like the cannons of two battleships about to fire broadsides at each other.
    I walked out to second base, not so much to inspect the ground as to suggest to John McGraw that I was ready to play that position today. In the locker room, I’d seen that Larry Doyle, our regular second baseman, had a swollen right ankle splotched with angry red scabs where Brooklyn’s Zack Wheat spiked him yesterday. Since the amount of playing time I got depended largely on injuries to the starters, I paid as much attention to my teammates’ pulled hamstrings and split fingers as I did to batting averages and fielding percentages.
    McGraw came up to me as I was kicking the second base bag. “Doyle’s okay to play,” he said in answer to my thoughts. Then he looked to right field where Stengel was again bouncing balls off the flypaper sign. “What’s that crazy sonofabitch doing?” McGraw muttered. “He think the ball’s going to stick to it?”
    Since McGraw had just vetoed my starting hopes, I took some pleasure in correcting him—not something that was done often. “Uh-uh,” I said. “See, he’s throwing at the crease. So he can see how to play it off the wall.”
    McGraw watched a minute more, then conceded I was right, saying, “I’ll be damned.” He gave me a long look, nodded, and marched off to the Giants’ bullpen where Jeff Tesreau was warming up.
    I walked back to the dugout, my head down.
    “Rawlings!”
    I turned to the field to see who was calling me.
    “Rawlings! Mickey Rawlings!”
    The shout wasn’t from the field; it was from the stands in front of me. Somebody was calling me by name! I lifted my head, almost eager for the heckling to start. I didn’t feel at all persecuted. Actually, I felt rather honored.
    But no abuse came. Just my name repeated again, with no hostility in the voice. I looked into the stands, knowing full well that a visiting player shouldn’t acknowledge the crowd and wondering if I was being suckered in by an especially devious heckler.
    Then I saw a black derby near the rail and under it a face that looked like a skull with spectacles. I didn’t feel flattered anymore. This was no obnoxious Dodger fan about to shower me with vile abuse. It was only Karl Landfors.
    He waved to me and I walked up to the rail in front of him.
    “Hey, Karl,” I said. “What are you doing here?” Not the friendliest of greetings, but I’d sooner expect to see Henry Ford driving a Chevrolet than Karl Landfors at a baseball game.
    Landfors looked behind him with exaggerated caution. Then he leaned over the railing and cupped his hands around his mouth, not as a megaphone but to hide what he was saying. “I have the autopsy report,” he whispered.
    “The what?”
    “The autopsy report on Florence Hampton.” He pulled