[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Listen to Hogan think:Pity them—the Dodgers.Pity them.Without Koufax they are a rabble.They are three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae without Leonidas; they are the Continentals at Valley Forge without Washington; they are the Union at Vicksburg without Grant.Pity them, I must.They are shattered and demoralized and bankrupt before I lift my bat.Look at Parker at First.Much too close to the bag.I can pull to the right and leave him naked.And there is Willie Davis in center—way out on the track.He knows I have power.A decent lad, full of humility, with a modicum of talent.But he’s an opponent nevertheless—frail, as they all are—but still the opposition.So I can bloop it over Second and let it drop a hundred feet in front of him.It’s no trick, really.Not when I know how I’ll be pitched to.The left-hander is the new kid out of Spokane.He knows of my awesome control of the bat and he can do nothing but fastball me.So I already know how I’m to be pitched to.There is Hunt playing too far back.I can drag it along Third and leave him with a ham omelet all over his face while I squeeze the run in.There are so many possibilities.And all of them relatively simple.I feel a sadness sweeping over me.God, I wish there were opponents left.Men of mettle, worthy of combat—deserving of competition.The smile flickers and fades.The bat hovers higher over his shoulder.All that can be heard in the vast stadium is the wheezing, fluctuating breath of the nervous left-hander on the mound as he quickly checks the three runners on the base paths and prepares to face his Armageddon.It’s hopeless and he knows it’s hopeless.That is Hogan there.Invincibility stares at him from Home Plate.A wave of panic washes over him, carrying away what little vestige remains of strength and talent.That’s Hogan at the Plate.Hogan who bats.480.Hogan who steals bases with frightening ease.Hogan who pulls a ball left or right with precision that is almost mystical.Hogan whose power is so legendary that whole teams seem to collapse when he picks up a bat.Hogan.It is an unspoken battle cry that sweeps silently across Shea Stadium where fifty thousand human beings know with certainty that more history is being made in front of their eyes.Hogan will bring back the pennant to New York for the first time in over a decade.He can outthink and outplay any man in the sport.Hogan, Hogan, Hogan.God loves the boroughs, else why was Hogan born?The platinum orb of moon stares down, from its sky perch on Shea Stadium, and the figure of Albert Patrick Hogan standing at Home Plate.The stillness is unearthly.The vast multitiered place of battle is also a place of sound—but where is the roar of the crowd? Where is the screaming, raw excitement of fifty thousand faithful? Suddenly there is a whisper of noise.But only an errant wind.Another sound—this the distant throaty roar of Pratt-Whitney engines from an aircraft heading toward Kennedy Airport miles away, and the occasional rise and fall of traffic hum on the parkway that runs past Shea Stadium.The New York Mets are playing at St.Louis that night, the Los Angeles Dodgers have an off day and they’re out on the West Coast.There is no one in Shea Stadium except Albert Patrick Hogan.Other men—those lesser men—are at home and hearth.But Hogan, Hogan is no dreamless suburbanite.Hogan is no plodding, dull, faceless component of the times.Hogan has verve and imagination.Hogan has dreams.He rises to his full five feet six inches, hitches up his little potbelly, swings at an invisible ball thrown by an invisible left-hander, then watches with his piggish, myopic little oyster eyes a nonexistent trajectory of an imaginary white pellet disappearing over the center field fence.Now Albert Patrick Hogan starts to run around the base paths, ears cocked to the phantom screams of the phantom crowd calling his name.He rounds Third, breathing heavily—ancient Schlitz beer sloshing around inside the flab-covered recesses of his fifty-eight-year-old insides, then continues to chug toward Home Plate.He tips his cap to these invisible wraiths who scream his name, thanking him in roaring tribute for having belted one for God and Country, the City of New York and the Beloved Mets.He is not Albert Patrick Hogan, a fifty-eight-year-old schlep who sells hot dogs at Shea Stadium.He is Hogan.The mighty Hogan.The incomparable Hogan.“Hogan, Hogan, Hogan.” The soundless voices scream out from evanescent throats—and Hogan wears a humble and gentle smile.“Hogan—schmuck! You’re some kind of a friggin’ nut—you know that? A nut! How many times I gotta tell you that you ain’t allowed in here when the team’s not playin’? How many times, schmuck, huh?” The voice is that of Bull Walsh, one of the stadium guards who wears a badge and has no imagination and is one of the lesser men.He shines his flashlight through the wire mesh of the screen behind Home Plate and has just finished watching Hogan point toward the center field fence—the spot where he would park the pitch.He has then watched him run around the base paths like some ungainly farm animal with a hernia.“Schmuck,” Walsh calls out again.“Off the field.You hear me? I mean, off the field—like now!”The grandeur dissolves.The crowd noises fade off into the night.The cheering multitude disappears and becomes fifty thousand empty seats.The billion-candle-powered incandescent lights over the field go black.There is only the moon and Albert Patrick Hogan—sparse, bony shoulders slumped as he turns disconsolately to the dream-killer with the badge.The ecstasy departs with the batting average, the eagle eyes and the humble smile of the Adonis forced by circumstance to leave Mount Olympus and pit his mammoth strengths against tiny mortal man.The real Hogan now stands up.This is “Fats” Hogan—the nickname he has collected with the rest of the flotsam of his life.He is a heavy-breathing, spindle-shanked, florid-faced little man who sells hot dogs up and down the aisles of the Third Base bleacher side of Shea Stadium.He has been doing this since they built the place, and before that at the Polo Grounds—thirty years in all.Thirty years of pushing knobby knees and dead-flat feet up and down the concrete steps, the big metal box riding hard on his protruding gut, the leather strap rubbing angry indentations into the back of his lobster-red sunburned neck: a Humpty Dumpty gnome, visible but never seen.He’s omniscient.He blends with the green infield, the white shirts, whatever the color of the sky.He’s an accoutrement.Like a men’s room sign or a seat number.“Get your Honey-Gee red hots on a Spaulding roll,” he calls out, while his perpetually bent back protests in concert with the rest of his tired limbs.Thirty years for Hogan [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]