"Last week. It's terminal, just a few months, maybe weeks."
"I'm so sorry," she says.
"Have you seen him?" Clarence asks.
"No, I'm going down tomorrow. As I said, we're not close, not close at all. Never have been. He left the family when his baseball career flamed out and soon remarried. He's not a nice person, Clarence, not the kind of guy you'd want to spend time with."
"I believe that. I read a story about him years ago. After baseball, he tried to make it as a golfer, but that went nowhere. Seems like he was selling real estate in the Orlando area and not doing very well. He was still adamant that he did not throw at Joe, but the writer was skeptical. I guess we're all skeptical."
"You should be," I say.
"Why is that?"
I wipe my mouth with a linen napkin. "Because he threw at Joe. I know he did. He's denied it for thirty years, but I know the truth."
There is a long pause as we pick at our food and listen to the whirling of the old ceiling fan just above us. Finally, Clarence lifts his lemon gin and gulps down an ounce. He licks his lips, smacks them, and says, "You have no idea how excited we were, how much it meant to this town and especially to the family. After producing so many great players, a Castle had finally hit the big time."
"I wish I could say I'm sorry."
"You can't. Besides, it was thirty years ago."
"A long time," Fay observes as she looks down at the river. A long time, maybe, but never to be forgotten.
"I don't suppose you were there," Clarence says.
"Indeed I was. August 24, 1973. Shea Stadium."
Chapter Twelve
My father was in a foul mood when he left the house, alone.
I dropped a few hints about riding to the stadium with him, but he wasn't listening. The New York papers were relentlessly hyping the game, and one writer, my father's loudest critic, described the matchup as "a contrast between youth and age. Warren Tracey, age thirty-four and over the hill, versus Joe Castle, the brightest young star baseball has seen since the arrival of Mickey Mantle in 1951."
Jill was away at a camp in the Catskills. I cajoled my mother into taking an early train to the city. I wanted to watch batting practice and, more important, get my first live look at Joe Castle. We stepped off the subway at 4:30, two and a half hours before the first pitch, and the atmosphere outside Shea Stadium was electric. I was surprised at the number of Cubs fans, most of them wearing white jerseys with the Number 15 across the back. Some were families who were well behaved, but many were young men in packs roaming around like street gangs, yelling, drinking beer, looking for trouble. They found it. New York fans are far from shy and seldom back down from a challenge. I saw the police break up three fights before we passed through the turnstiles. "Disgusting," my mother said. It would be her last trip to the ballpark.
Shea held fifty-five thousand, and it was already two-thirds full when we settled into our seats. The Cubs were taking batting practice, and there was a swarm around the cage at home plate. Ron Santo, Billy Williams, Jose Cardenal, and Rick Monday were in one group, and as they rotated through, I searched the outfield until I saw him. As he turned to chase a fly ball, I saw the name Castle across the back of his royal blue hitting jersey. He caught the ball near the right field foul line, and a thousand kids screamed for his autograph. He smiled and waved and jogged back to a group of Cubs loitering in right center, probably talking about the women up in the outfield bleachers.
By then, I had read many descriptions of Joe Castle. In high school, some scouts had worried that he was too thin. He weighed 170 pounds when he was eighteen, and this had bothered a few of the experts. However, his father had been quoted as saying, "He's not even shaving yet. Let the boy grow up." And he was right. In the minors, Joe had filled out, thanks to a combination of nature and hours in the weight room. He had broad shoulders and a thirty-three-inch waist. He wore his game pants tight, and one article in the Tribune gossiped about the avalanche of provocative mail he was getting from women across the country.
As I watched, he seemed to glide across the outfield as the bats cracked and baseballs flew everywhere. I saw my father in the Mets dugout, sitting alone, going through his pregame ritual. It was far too early for him to head to the bull pen and begin stretching. Odd, though, that he was in the dugout. Usually, at two hours and counting, he was in the locker room getting a massage from a trainer. With ninety minutes to go, he put on his uniform. At seventy-five minutes, he left the locker room, walked through the dugout, and headed for the bull pen, head down, refusing to look at the opposing dugout. The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Baseball players, and especially pitchers, are fanatics about their rituals. My father was three and one in his last six starts and four days earlier had pitched perhaps his best game in the last five years. Why would he change things?
My mother bought me a souvenir program, then some ice cream, and I chatted with the fans around me. Eventually, Joe drifted to the Cubs dugout opposite where we were sitting. He got his bats, put on his helmet, and began limbering up. To get away from the stands, he stayed close to the batting cage. When it was his turn, he jumped in, bunted a few, then began spraying the ball to all fields. Bodies moved closer to the cage. Photographers were scrambling into position and clicking away. In his second round, he cranked it up, and the balls went deeper and deeper. He unloaded in his third round, from both sides of the plate, and hit five straight bombs into the bleachers, where hundreds of kids scrambled to get the souvenirs. The Cubs fans were screaming with each shot, and I would have cheered too, but I was in the Mets section; plus, my father was the opposing pitcher, and it did not seem appropriate.
When he walked to the mound in the top of the first, the fans gave him a rowdy welcome. There was not an empty seat in the stadium, and for over an hour the Cubs and Mets fans had been yelling back and forth. When Rick Monday lined to short on the first pitch, the stadium roared again. Two pitches later, Glenn Beckert popped out to right field, and Warren Tracey was cruising.
The announcer said: "Now batting and playing first base, Number 15, Joe Castle."
I took a deep breath and began chewing my fingernails. I wanted to watch, then I wanted to close my eyes and just listen. My mother patted my knee. I envied her apathy. At that crucial moment in my life, in the life of her husband, in the lives of countless Mets and Cubs fans across the country, at that wonderfully supercharged moment in the history of baseball, my mother could not have cared less what happened next.
Not surprisingly, the first pitch was high and tight. Joe, batting left-handed, ducked but did not fall; nor did he glare at my father. It was a simple brushback. Welcome to New York. The second pitch was a called strike that looked low, but Joe did not react. The third pitch was a fastball that he slapped into the stands near us. The fourth pitch was low and inside. The fifth pitch was a changeup that fooled Joe, but he managed to foul it off.
I was holding my breath with each pitch. I was praying for a strikeout, and I was praying for a home run. Why couldn't I have both? A strikeout now for my father, a home run later for Joe, back and forth? In baseball, you always get another chance, right? I pondered these things between pitches, a complete nervous wreck.
The sixth pitch was a curve that bounced in the dirt. Three balls, two strikes. Billy Williams on deck. Shea Stadium rocking. The Cubs ten games in first place. The Mets ten games back but winning. My father versus my hero.