For Love of the Game by Michael Shaara Page A

To be so good … as good as he is.”
    “Ah, that he is. Oh, lady, isn’t he
somethin’
? You sit there watchin’ him and everybody gets still, because he’s in a class by himself and everybody knows it, he’s on his way.… Because you know what I feel? That little kid back there is gonna make us so proud … so proud.… And he wins… you see him come home so happy. I hope to God.…”
    Mom turned to check her sleeping son: Billy closed his eyes. She thought him asleep, tucked a blanket round him, put a warm touch to his forehead. He was never to forget that moment in the backseat, those words up front from Mom and Pop, from whom there had come a gentle childhood. Mom worried, Pop cursed … and they loved him. Chapel sitting on the bench in the dark felt a surge of emotion, opened his eyes. Goin’ Home, Goin’ Home.… But they’re not there anymore.
    Nobody’s home anymore.
    Carol’s goin’ home.
    Carol’s gettin’ married.
    He saw a Hawk batter strike out. Shucks. This here team … doesn’t hit much. At all.
    Game is: nothing—nothing.
    Gus was tapping him: time to go.
    Gonna win this one. Gonna give ’em hell today. If only the folks … but maybe they know. Gee, if only they could be there, somewhere.
    Out at the mound he tried to clear the memory of Mom and Pop. Focus on the hitter. Go to music: yes: Copland, then, word by word, a song from Neil Diamond. It went on automatically as he stood there in deep concentration, the music flowing by as a stream beside him, keeping him company all the way down to the end of the game,would be always there unless there was a tough situation … if men began to get on base, but there was nothing tough at all this day. Down they went like dominoes—but one man hit a fly ball to center, longest ball of the game, but high, not far, and slowly adrift: Johnson wandered over lazily and tucked it in. So Chapel went back and bore down, and all the while, in harmony with the pitching:
    You had reasons a-plenty for a-goin’
This I know, this I know,
For the weeds had been steadily growin’—
Please don’t go, please don’t go. (Strike three!)
Are you goin’ away with no word of farewell
Will there be not a trace left behind?
Well I could have loved you better
Didn’t mean to be unkind,
And you know, that was the last thing
on my mind …
    Billy eased back, went to the sinker, got the last man on a high hopper to second. Back off the mound.…
        … a good song. Lesson too late for the learning. I am, I said. Fella used to love Neil Diamond, too, was Old John, Big John, the Poor Man’s John, the ancient owner of the Hawks who’d owned the team when Billy was born: there he sat with hisfeet up on the desk, as usual and natural, smoking that cloudy pipe, blowin’ the damned smoke in all directions all over the room, wearing a spotted tie, loose, as always, wandering around the field always in a white and spotted shirt. Springtime. Old John said: “Roberto. I must tell you … the Plan.”
    He had the custom, whenever he used those sacred words, “The Plan,” of pausing first and turning his head first left, then right, making sure he was not to be overheard. He’d gotten it from an old movie. He said: “The highest tab any player gets in this game this year, so far as I know, is.…” He gave a number. He did the same thing every year. Then he’d say: “I can at least match it. How’s that?”
    Chapel would say, “Fine,” and they would drink on it, and so was the contract formed every year, from the first year on, for fifteen years. Chapel did not get an agent. Baseball was changing, but he did not change with it. He had his talk with the Old Man every year and the lawyers drew it up as instructed. Sometimes the Old Man would say wistfully, “Roberto, old kid, why don’t you sometimes just argue a little? I mean, even a
little
. Hell, you could push for more, just a little, probably. You know that.”
    And Chapel would