Free Murder at Fenway Park by Troy Soos Page A

hesitation. “Not a chance. Ain’t one guy on that team who’ll give Cobb the time of day. They sure as hell ain’t gonna lose their jobs for him.”
    On Saturday afternoon, Neal was proved wrong. With Ban Johnson still not giving in to the Tigers’ demands that Cobb be reinstated, the team carried out its threat. The Tigers went on strike, refusing to play Philadelphia.
    The Tiger management was prepared: to avoid paying a fine to the league for failing to field a team, nine local amateurs were recruited to represent Detroit. In the farce that followed, the Athletics hitters fattened up their batting averages, teeing off for twenty-four runs against the sham “Tigers.”
    An outraged Ban Johnson canceled the Tigers next game.
    To me, the world seemed to have gone slightly crazy. Baseball players on strike? In support of Ty Cobb?
    I played poorly in our Saturday game at Fenway, my head filled with a perplexing jumble of bewilderments. The baseball world was the one that had always made sense to me. I understood the game and every nuance of its strategies. And, until now, I knew what ball players thought and felt. Even under suspicion of murder, I had been able to find a small haven of stability on the baseball field. But with Ball-dom now beginning to resemble Oz, I could find no respite anywhere.
    The Sox were scheduled to leave for a western road trip on Sunday. This would mean two weeks without seeing Peggy, a separation I didn’t look forward to right now. Even if no romance would bloom, I still felt a need for her friendship.
    After the game, I decided that I had to talk to Peggy and tell her all that had happened.
    I rushed to the theater, and ran up to Peggy at the ticket booth. “I really need to talk to you tonight. I have to leave for a road trip in the morning. Can I come back here after the show is over?”
    Peggy looked taken aback, but she nodded and said, “Yes, certainly.”
    “Okay, great. I’ll be back later.” With that, I bolted from the theater.
    I returned two hours later, after eating a fast supper and packing my bags. A chilly drizzle had begun outside, so instead of leaving the theater for a walk, we stayed inside, sitting next to each other in two front-row chairs.
    I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, staring blankly at the stark white screen in front of me. By not looking at Peggy, I was less self-conscious, and the words poured out of me in an uninterrupted torrent.
    I quickly recounted the off-season I had spent playing winter ball and pickup games. To help excuse my failure to write, I tried to make my activities since last fall sound especially hectic.
    With a deep breath, I proceeded to detail my arrival at Fenway Park, the horrid experience of finding the body, the questioning by the police captain, Bob Tyler’s warning not to talk, and the nearly unremitted distress and confusion I felt ever since I came across the murdered man. I told her, too, of the death of Red Corriden, and my suspicion that the killings might be related, possibly part of a series.
    Finally, I turned my head to look into Peggy’s eyes, and confessed, “I don’t know what to make of all this. I just know I feel terrible. I feel I have to find out what happened—or what’s happening. But the police think I’m a suspect, so if I start asking questions they may think I’m trying to cover myself somehow.”
    Peggy looked thoughtful, not at all shocked, as she absorbed all I said. She seemed to take my strange tale in stride, and I admired—and envied—her composure. After minutes of silence, she spoke slowly and calmly, “Well, first off, I don’t think you’re in any real trouble. If the police considered you a suspect, I doubt they’d leave you alone. They would have questioned you again by now.”
    “Maybe Tyler has the police holding off. He told me the day after it happened that he didn’t believe I had anything to do with it. And he did seem to have a lot of influence over the cops who were