Fielder's Choice

By Kevin Smith

Timmy Burke is growing up in Boston in the last year of Nixon's reign. The neighborhood bully is giving him the eye , he's going through puberty , and his Dad can't stop drinking. A good deed gets him access to the Red Sox dugout where he befriends a Cuban slugger who has a supernatural aura. A mobster's son sees the baseball player , Manuelito Santos , as a way out of his gambling debts. The parish priest who dated Timmy's Mom in high school debates God's logic and mercy over Bushmill's and Budweiser with the Jewish baseball scout who discovered Santos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Smith
• Release date: Mar 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370998791

Kevin Smith

I was born when Winston tasted good , like a cigarette should. We ran across a baseball field with my Dad to watch Jack Kennedy's motorcade . We were offered protection underneath our desks from Soviet warheads. A couple of years later, the motorcade made the fatal mistake of slowing to a crawl in Dallas . They got him. They. Anyway, I grew up a normal ,conflicted youth. I had the ability to go so deeply into a book, that it was real, it was a variation of the fugue state I entered when playing sports. The British Invasion blew my mind and saved me. Every few years they cook up a new excuse to slaughter young men and civilians. This one they called Vietnam. I thank God that I got a high number in the lottery and I thank and honor those who went and those who didn't return. The conflicted kid , became a conflicted adult . Fifteen years later , the grace of God pulled me from a booze and drug laced spiral. I married a sweet , sweet woman and we were blessed with a beautiful boy and a beautiful girl. I lucked out and ended up as a conductor on the railroad. Twenty-eight years and out. Now , I want to wrassle all those fragments of stories that have spun through my brain for years.

Book preview

FIELDER’S CHOICE

by

Kevin Smith

Published by Kevin Smith at Smashwords

Copyright 2018 Kevin Smith

Smashwords Edition

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be re-distributed to others for commercial or non-commercial use.

Preface

America’s national pastime provides the backdrop for this story. A game of sweat, new cowhide, scripted interruptions and boredom. It’s also a game of angles, percentages, and masses of numerical data screaming to be compiled, contrasted, and compared. A significant sub-set of baseball fans are data crunchers, others enjoy the game from the other end of the spectrum; the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, the ball snapping hard in the catcher’s mitt.

To appease the statisticians, let me state that the Boston Red Sox did not win the 1973 American League East title. That honor went to Baltimore. Boston finished 8 games out, the Yankees 17. In New England that’s a successful season.

In 1996 my brother-in-law Don gave us an Apple Imac tray loading computer. In a burst of enthusiasm, I outlined the premise for this story on that machine and there it sat for another 20 years. And as one thing leads to another, hockey and tapdancing and life would not be denied. Lately, though, some events coalesced to give me another shot at it.

A disclaimer, or two. Real events of those early Seventies are intertwined with wholly imagined people and places in this story. And time fogs up our memories and maybe that’s for the best. But the ballplayers in this book, are the real thing. I read of their exploits while eating my Wheaties, years later we would listen to Ned Martin’s radio account of the game on Dave Johnson’s porch, smoking Kools while lawnmowers droned down the block. A gaggle of girls might pass on the quiet street, in a Doppler shift of giggles. We would feign disinterest and perk up our ears. Grownup concerns lurked, but we ignored them. And, hey, the tying run is on second and Petrocelli’s coming up!

A lot of these ballplayers were just names on the airwaves, but I looked up to them. I’d like to wish them all well. And, I hope nothing I’ve written is taken the wrong way.

Lastly, I’d like to thank Betty Smith. She could have had a great career as a writer. But she raised five kids instead. Thanks, Mom.

This book is dedicated to Jim Abbott, who left us too soon. He was a good guy who had the best baseball card collection in Connecticut. Hey, Abbott!

Chapter One

Claudio listened, eyes closed, for the sound of the old priest embracing mortal sin. His good right hand cradled the Polaroid camera. Purchased to record the bishop's visit two years earlier, it was now used to market the children of the orphanage to would be adoptive parents in America. At fourteen, Claudio was both the oldest and the least likely candidate for adoption. In every aspect save one he was a flawless specimen, tall for his years, broad-shouldered and slim. His the face the Renaissance masters envisioned when they painted or sculpted their angels and saints. As if Nature had shuddered at her own perfection, she had bequeathed him a misshapen lump of tissue instead of a left hand.

This was the real reason he had not been adopted. He learned this early, watching the cow-eyed American wives pretending to ignore it. For a split second he would see the horror in their eyes then the mask would be pulled back over their features. The father candidates were no better, though they covered their discomfort with much backslapping and bonhomie. He knew that some of the village women made the Sign of the Cross behind his back. He didn't blame them. They were superstitious peasants. How else explain their reverence for that piece of shit inside the rectory who called himself a man of God?

Nature had not skimped either with Claudio in the brains department. No one had ever tested him, but he was Mensa material and then some. Every book he could find he had read, every part of the Mass he knew by heart. He had hidden his true thoughts behind a wall. In every respect the priest spoke glowingly of him. Claudio assisted at Mass each day, was a hero to the younger children and performed every menial task he was given with humility. He had made himself indispensable. The contempt he felt for the priest and his tribe of holy pretenders was banked low behind a servile air. The villagers he forgave, they were ignorant, and the Church valued their ignorance. How else could a soft pig like Father Cellini live a life without labor, fed and housed through the sweat of the people? And be venerated as the mouthpiece of the Almighty?

The sounds coming from the open casement window had the new widow had moved beyond the Rosary into something much more parochial. Claudio had over- heard Father Cellini twisting the Gospel for his own, carnal urges before with a succession of women and young girls from the village. Now it was time for Claudio to dispense the priest's penance.

Striding up the staircase with no pretense at stealth, he flung open the office door, the tableaux much as he had assumed it would be, the fat old sinner was seated on his chair, cassock askew, bony white legs front and center, the widow seated upon him writhing in a most determined way. She did not notice Claudio until he had steadied the camera with his withered stump of a hand and the camera's flash lit the room.

For the love of God, Claudio! sputtered the priest.

Claudio's reply chilled the old man. For the love of Claudio, he said. God has nothing to do with it. You of all people should know that. As she stormed past Claudio the woman stopped just long enough to fork the evil eye at him and spit in his face. The spittle ran down his cheek and baptized him into a new life. And it came to pass, the Holy Catholic Church and the Mafia joined hands to act as his travel agents, destination, Boston, Massachusetts.

Chapter Two

Larry Young roused himself from the peaceful depths of his dream. He expected kitchen noises from downstairs, as his mother made biscuits or potato pancakes. Instead, the bleaching sunlight of a Cuban morning greeted him. One glance in the shimmering glass of the ancient hotel mirror confirmed it. Yesterday a schoolboy, life stretching out to infinite possibility. Now, a sixty something Jewish baseball scout. What lay ahead? No family to speak of. He hoped it wouldn't be the cancer. Please, God, if you exist, not the cancer. He had befriended a little dog once, never again. The vet had stuck his little pal with the uncaring syringe while he held the quivering little mutt. That put paid to the idea of any animal companions for Larry.

Larry rewound the highlights of the previous day. He saw the squat, brown body, the graceful swing, chattering schoolboys trying to chase down the baseballs as they rolled into the sugarcane. So quickly were the baseballs launched off the bat that Larry expected to see a dent or other trauma on the balls. He paid a shoeless outfielder a worn Yankee dollar for one of them and was disappointed to see the normal scuff marks of a well- used baseball. The kind he remembered from his childhood, too dear to lose, hunted down relentlessly after escaping into the woods as a foul ball or a bad throw to first. When the cover disintegrated, the ball got a new cover of tightly wound, electrical tape and would be a backup or a ball to use when the sun was scorching, but the base paths were still lagoons from a cloud burst.

Well, if Larry had his way, his new prospect Manuelito would be launching only pristine, Wilson baseballs into orbit courtesy of Major League Baseball and their new American League designated hitter rule. He would have called the front office last night but wanted no hint of the cervesas he had put away to detract from his report.

He imagined General Manager Richie Katsinkas' face when he saw his guy hit. In his mind the Cuban was already his. In fact, the man hadn't even been extended a contract offer. Nor had the all pervasive Cuban Government been placed in the loop. Not that they would turn down hard currency. After all, they would have Manuelito's friends and family as collateral. Details, thought Larry . Details. The money boys will sort it out. In his experience, the money boys sorted everything out eventually. Then they sealed the deal with a secret Ivy League handshake, and went back to counting their money. As soon as he got dressed and moving, he would send a telegram to the Beacon Hill law offices Richie Katsinkas ruled. After that, a leisurely breakfast and one last trip back to the sugar collective.

Chapter Three

Jimmy Scalese stared out at the whitecaps on the Harbor and considered his problem with the baker. Violence wasn't an avocation with Jimmy like it was with some of his mobster peers. For Jimmy, it was just another tool he had as a businessman, Mornelli was seriously behind to a bookie in Providence but hey, everybody’s human. The problem was that Mornelli had made a drunken scene in one of Jimmy's joints in the neighborhood cursing Jimmy and his family. This guy mistakes kindness for weakness thought Jimmy. I'm going to have to correct that assumption. Jimmy liked to think of himself as a renaissance man of sorts. He liked to think of himself as a student of history and of human nature. He remembered the spring day at St. Francis School When Tommy Jengo and a couple of other sixth graders had broken his balls during recess. Jimmy was reading a book about Harry Houdini. The other kids were playing some kind of mock battle game, the rules of which seemed to be changing on a minute-by-minute basis. Jimmy had stood and without saying a word shattered Tommy's nose. Then he sat down, and pretended to read, though the adrenaline had him shaking. He waited for the rain of fists from the others that never came. Jimmy Scalese had just learned several valuable lessons that would make the man, as they say. One