The Natural

When the July stifle drove her out of her room she appeared in the hotel lobby in black, her hair turned a lighter, golden shade as though some of the fire had burned out of it, and Roy was moved by her appearance. He had imagined how she would look when he saw her again but both the black and red, though predictable, surprised him. They told him with thunderclap quickness what he wanted to be sure of, that she, despite green eyes brimming for Bump, was the one for him, the ever desirable only. Occasionally he reflected what if the red were black and ditto the other way? Here, for example, was this blackhaired dame in red and what about it? He could take her or leave her, though there was a time in his life when a red dress would excite his fancy, but with Memo, flaming above and dark below, there was no choice — he was chosen so why not admit it though it brought pain? He had tried lately to forget her but had a long memory for what he wanted so there was only this to do, wait till she came in out of the rain.

Sometimes it was tough to, even for one used to waiting. Once a hungry desire sent him down to knock at her door but she shut it in his face although he was standing there with his hat in his embarrassed hands. He thought of asking Pop to put in a good word for him — how long was life anyhow? — but something told him to wait. And from other cities, when the team was on the road, he sent her cards, candies, little presents, which were all stuffed in his mailbox when he returned. It took the heart out of him. Yet each morning when she came out of the elevator he would look up at her as she walked by on her high heels, although she never seemed to see him. Then one day she shed black and put on white but still looked as if she were wearing black, so he waited. Only, now, when he looked at her she sometimes glanced at him. He watched her dislike of him fade to something neutral which he slowly became confident he could beat.

“One thing I hafta tell you not to do, son,” Pop said to Roy in the hotel lobby one rainy morning not long after Bump’s funeral, “and that is to blame yourself about what happened to Bump. He had a tough break but it wasn’t your fault.”

“What do you mean my fault?”

Pop looked up. “All I mean to say was he did it himself.”

“Never thought anything but.”

“Some have said maybe it wouldn’t happen if you didn’t join the team, and maybe so, but I believe such things are outside of yours and my control and I wouldn’t want you to worry that you had caused it in any way.”

“I won’t because I didn’t. Bump didn’t have to go to the wall for that shot, did he? We were ahead in runs and the bases were clear. He could’ve taken it when it came off the wall without losing a thing, couldn’t he?”

Pop scratched his baldy. “I guess so.”

“Who are the people who said I did it?”

“Well, nobody exactly. My niece said you coulda wanted it to happen but that don’t mean a thing. She was hysterical then.”

Roy felt uneasy. Had he arranged Bump’s run into the wall? No. Had he wished the guy would drop dead? Only once, after the night with Memo. But he had never consciously hoped he would crack up against the wall. That was none of his doing and he told Pop to tell it to Memo. But Pop was embarrassed now and said to drop the whole thing, it was a lot of foolishness.

Though Roy denied wishing Bump’s fate on him or having been in any way involved in it, he continued to be unwillingly concerned with him even after his death. He was conscious that he was filling Bump’s shoes, not only because he batted in the clean-up slot and fielded in the sun field (often watched his shadow fly across the very spot Bump had dived into) and became, in no time to speak of, one of the leading hitters in the league and at present certainly the most sensational, but also because the crowds made no attempt to separate his identity from Bump’s. To his a

Even Otto Zipp made no effort to distinguish him from his predecessor and used the honker to applaud his doings, though there were some who said the dwarf sounded half-hearted in his honking. And Roy also shared the limelight with Bump on the sports page, where the writers were constantly comparing them for everything under the sun. One of them went so far as to keep a tally of their batting averages — Roy’s total after his first, second, and third weeks of play, as compared with Bump’s at the begi

All this irritated Roy no end until he happened to notice Memo walk into the lobby one night with a paper turned to the sports page. From having read the same paper he knew she had seen a column about Bump and him as batsmen, so he decided there might be some percentage to all these comparisons. He came to feel more kindly to the memory of Bump and thought he was not such a bad egg after all, even if he did go in for too many screwball gags. Thinking back on him, he could sort of understand why Memo had been interested in him, and he felt that, though he was superior to Bump as an athlete, they were both money players, both showmen in the game. He figured it was through these resemblances that Memo would gradually get used to him and then come over all the way, although once she did, it would have to be for Hobbsie himself and not for some ghost by another name.

So he blazed away for her with his golden bat. It was not really golden, it was white, but in the sun it sometimes flashed gold and some of the opposing pitchers complained it shone in their eyes. Stuffy Briggs told Roy to put it away and use some other club but he stood on his rights and wouldn’t. There was a hot rhubarb about that until Roy promised to rub some of the shine off Wonderboy. This he did with a bambone, and though the pitchers shut up, the bat still shone a dull gold. It brought him some wondrous averages in hits, runs, RBI’s and total bases, and for the period of his few weeks in the game he led the league in homers and triples. (He was quoted in an interview as saying his singles were “mistakes.” And he never bunted. “There is no percentage in bunts.” Pop shook his head over that, but Red chuckled and said it was true for a wonderful hitter like Roy.) He also destroyed many short-term records, calling down on his performance tons of newspaper comment. However, his accomplishments were not entirely satisfying to him. He was gnawed by a nagging impatience — so much more to do, so much of the world to win for himself. He felt he had nothing of value yet to show for what he was accomplishing, and in his dreams he still sped over endless miles of monotonous rail toward something he desperately wanted. Memo, he sighed.

Pop couldn’t believe his amazed eyes. “Begi