The Natural

Fowler, a southpaw, was in a nasty mood. He didn’t like having his ears burned by Pop, called a showboat in front of the other men, and then shoved into batting practice the day after he had pitched. Fowler was twenty-three but looked thirty. He was built rangy, with very light hair and eyelashes, and small blue eyes. As a pitcher he had the stuff and knew it, but all season long he had been erratic and did a great amount of griping. He was palsy with Bump, who as a rule had no friends.

When Roy came up with Wonderboy, he hugged the plate too close to suit Fowler, who was in there anyway only to help the batters find their timing. In a

Pop shrieked, “Cut that out, you blasted fool.” Fowler mumbled something about the ball slipping. Yet he wanted to make Roy look silly and burned the next one in. Roy swung and the ball sailed over the right field fence. Red-faced, Fowler tried a hard, sharp-breaking curve. Roy caught it at the end of his bat and pulled it into the left field stands.

“Try this one, grandpa.” Fowler flung a stiff-wrist knuckler that hung in the air without spin before it took a sudden dip, but Roy scooped it up with the stick and lifted it twenty rows up into the center field stands. Then he quit. Fowler was scowling at his feet. Everybody else stared at Roy.

Pop called out, “Lemme see that bat, son.”

Both he and Red examined it, hefting it and rubbing along the grain with their fingers.

“Where’d you get it?” Pop asked.

Roy cleared his throat. He said he had made it himself.

“Did you brand this name Wonderboy on it?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s it mean?”

“I made it long ago,” Roy said, “when I was a kid. I wanted it to be a very good bat and that’s why I gave it that name.”

“A bat’s cheap to buy,” Red said.

“I know it but this tree near the river where I lived was split by lightning. I liked the wood inside of it so I cut me out a bat. Hadn’t used it much until I played semipro ball, but I always kept it oiled with sweet oil and boned it so it wouldn’t chip.”

“Sure is white. Did you bleach the wood?”

“No, that’s the true color.”

“How long ago d’you make it?” Pop asked.

“A long time — I don’t remember.”

“Whyn’t you get into the game then?”

Roy couldn’t answer for a minute. “I sorta got sidetracked.”

But Pop was all smiles. “Red’ll measure and weigh it. If there’s no filler and it meets specifications you’ll be allowed to use it.”

“There’s nothing in it but wood.”

Red clapped him on the back. “I feel it in my bones that you will have luck with it.” He said to Pop, “Maybe we can start Roy in the line-up soon?”

Pop said they would see how it worked out.

But he sent Roy out to left field and Earl hit fungos to him all over the lot. Roy ran them down well. He took one shot over his shoulder and two caroming off the wall below the stands. His throwing was quick, strong, and bull’s eye.

When Bump got around to his turn in the cage, though he did not as a rule exert himself in practice, he now whammed five of Fowler’s fast pitches into the stands. Then he trotted out to his regular spot in the sun field and Earl hit him some long flies, all of which he ran for and caught with gusto, even those that went close to the wall, which was unusual for him because he didn’t like to go too near it.

Practice picked up. The men worked faster and harder than they had in a long time. Pop suddenly felt so good, tears came to his eyes and he had to blow his nose.

In the clubhouse about an hour and a half before game time, the boys were sitting around in their underwear after showers. They were bulling, working crossword puzzles, shaving and writing letters. Two were playing checkers, surrounded by a circle of others, and the rest were drinking soda, looking at the Sporting News, or just resting their eyes. Though they tried to hide it they were all nervous, always glancing up whenever someone came into the room. Roy couldn’t make sense of it.

Red took him around to meet some of the boys and Roy spoke a few words to Dave Olson, the squat catcher, also to the shy Mexican center fielder, Juan Flores, and to Gabby Laslow, who patrolled right field. They sidestepped Bump, sitting in front of his locker with a bath towel around his rump, as he worked a red thread across the yellowed foot of a sanitary sock.

“Changes that thread from sock to sock every day,” Red said in a low voice. “Claims it keeps him hitting.”

As the players began to get into clean uniforms, Pop, wearing halfmoon specs, stepped out of his office. He read aloud the batting order, then flipping through his dog-eared, yellowpaged notebook he read the names of the players opposing them and reminded them how the pitchers were to pitch and the fielders field them. This information was scribbled all over the book and Pop had to thumb around a lot before he had covered everybody. Roy then expected him to lay on with a blistering mustard plaster for all, but he only glanced anxiously at the door and urged them all to be on their toes and for gosh sakes get some runs.

Just as Pop finished his pep talk the door squeaked open and a short and tubby man in a green suit peeked in. Seeing they were ready, he straightened up and entered briskly, carrying a briefcase in his hand. He beamed at the players and without a word from anybody they moved chairs and benches and arranged themselves in rows before him. Roy joined the rest, expecting to hear some kind of talk. Only Pop and the coaches sat behind the man, and Dizzy lounged, half openmouthed, at the door leading to the hall.

“What’s the act?” Roy asked Olson.

“It’s Doc Knobb.” The catcher looked sleepy.

“What’s he do?”

“Pacifies us.”

The players were attentive, sitting as if they were going to have their pictures snapped. The nervousness Roy had sensed among them was all but gone. They looked like men whose worries had been lifted, and even Bump gave forth a soft grunt of contentment.

The doctor removed his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “Got to hurry today,” he told Pop, “got a polo team to cheer up in Brooklyn.”

He smiled at the men and then spoke so softly, at first they couldn’t hear him. When he raised his voice it exuded calm.

“Now, men,” he purred, “all of you relax and let me have your complete attention. Don’t think of a thing but me.” He laughed, brushed a spot off his pants, and continued. “You know what my purpose is. You’re familiar with that. It’s to help you get rid of the fears and personal inferiorities that tie you into knots and keep you from being aces in this game. Who are the Pirates? Not supermen, only mortals. What have they got that you haven’t got? I can’t think of a thing, absolutely not one. It’s the attitude that’s licking you — your own, not the Pirates’. What do you mean to yourselves? Are you a flock of bats flying around in a coffin, or the sun shining calmly on a blue lake? Are you sardines being swallowed up in the sea, or the whale that does the swallowing? That’s why I’m here, to help you answer that question in the affirmative, to help you by mesmerism and autosuggestion, meaning you do the suggesting, not I. I only assist by making you receptive to your own basic thoughts. If you think you are wi

His voice was soft, lulling, peaceful. He had raised his pudgy arms and with stubby fingers was making ripples on a vast calm sea. Already Olson was gently Snoring. Flores, with the tip of his tongue protruding, Bump, and some of the other players were fast asleep. Pop looked on, absorbed.