Bullet Bob, Polecat Depew, and the Bloop Single
Bullet Bob, Polecat Depew, and the Bloop Single
Darel La Prade
For my father, who passed on his love of the game.
Sonny Depew takes the framed picture down from the nail above the toilet, and angling it to eliminate the glare of the electric light, he studies the autograph: “To ‘Polecat’ Depew, a man with a sweet swing! – Yours, Bob Feller.” The ink is starting to smear. Should he move the picture elsewhere in the house? Out of the bathroom to prevent more damage from moisture? No, best to keep it here, over the toilet, the spot where he’ll see it most often. An old man has always got to go. Sonny zips his fly. And he hangs the picture back on the wall.
On his front porch, nudging his cane-bottom rocker with his toe, Sonny listens to the splash and tinkle of the creek that runs along the border of his property. In the dim light, a pair of mourning doves, cooing like a faraway memory, keep time with the distant wail of a whippoorwill. Once the sun rises, Sonny wants to walk down the road to the bridge that crosses the creek and try his luck. Maybe on his way he’ll find an early apple that fell to the ground.
Sonny’s older grandson, Travis, gave him the picture, after a trip to spring training. The boy and his younger brother, Evan, went with their father, Sonny Two, down south to the Grapefruit League to take in a dozen games in eight days. How many years ago had that been? Sonny can’t exactly recall. For some reason he knows that on their first day there, Sonny Two and the boys went to Baseball City to see the Braves take on the Royals, and then, for a nightcap, the three of them went to see Cleveland play the Detroit Tigers over in Lakeland. The Tigers won the game, but, of course, Cleveland with its all-star line-up ran away with the season, topping the Tigers by twenty-seven-and-a-half games, and winning the Central Division, before losing the league championship to the Yanks.
Sonny reshapes the bill of his threadbare ball cap before pulling it down to shade his eyes from the sun. He still can recite Cleveland’s line-up by heart: Diaz behind the plate, Thome at first, Alomar at second, Fryman at third, Vizquel at short, Ramirez in left, Lofton in center, Justice in right, and Baines as the DH. Why did the year escape him? Why could he recall the line-up but no longer recall the year?
He remembers more: that on that first night in Florida, as Sonny Two and the boys mixed with the crowd milling outside Joker Marchant Field, Travis overheard someone say that Bob Feller had set up a booth behind the visitors’ dugout where he was signing autographs and taking donations for his museum. Without a second thought, telling neither his father nor his little brother, Travis bolted through the crowd to find Bullet Bob. When Sonny Two and Evan finally caught up with him, Travis was clutching the photograph, five dollars in the hole for the donation he stuffed in the museum jar on the table. Even before his father could make a fuss, the boy said, “Look what I got for Sonny.”
Leaning against the rail of the bridge, peeling and slicing his apple with a folding knife, Sonny keeps his eye glued on a red-and-white bobber that floats in a placid pocket next to the creek bank. He feeds himself an apple slice from the edge of his blade, hoping for fresh fried bream for breakfast. And as the water in the main channel of the stream chases after itself, vanishing irretrievably into the woods, it recurs to Sonny that once a long time ago he’d been young. At least he’s pretty sure that once he’d been young, and although he can’t quite remember what that was like, he knows he doesn’t miss it. Because he enjoys being old. He likes sitting in his cane-bottom rocking chair on the front porch of his house. He likes watching the sunrise. He likes eating apples from his trees, and he likes fishing from the bridge that crosses the creek that runs along the border of his property.
But just the same, he misses his wife, Betsy – though at the moment, the thing he remembers best about her is how she always waited for him after every home game he played for the Virginians, the local semi-pro team. And the other thing he misses is playing baseball. Sometimes he misses his wife more, but then sometimes, it’s baseball he misses most.
A sudden tug bends the tip of his rod down then lets go. Sonny takes up the slack, slowly, winding in the line until it’s just taut, and in a flash of clarity he remembers the last time he’d played catch. In the summer fifteen years ago. There it is – 1999 – that was the year: the year Cleveland won, and, he realizes, the same year he lost Betsy, on Valentine’s Day. And after the funeral, during the summer, before Cleveland clinched, the boy visited, and they tossed a ball back and forth on the flat patch behind the house. Travis brought his own glove and a special ball, a souvenir fouled off into the stands at a spring training game, but before they could play, the boy had to hunt for Sonny’s beat-up, old Ball Hawk mitt before finally finding it on the top shelf of the hall closet. Sonny tried to show him how to throw a knuckler, but Travis’s hand wasn’t big enough to grip the ball right.
That was the same day the boy gave Sonny the autographed picture of Bob Feller. Travis told Sonny that he’d asked Mr. Feller for something a little special. His grandfather, as Travis had explained it all to Mr. Feller, batted against him in a sandlot game, when they were both in the Navy, at the Great Lakes Training Station. Sonny, known in his playing days as Polecat Depew, had spoiled Mr. Feller’s bid for a no-hitter in the top of the eighth inning by fighting off an inside fastball for a bloop single into left that sailed just beyond the glove of the third baseman.
Sonny and Sonny Two repeated the story so often that Travis and Evan came to believe they’d been born with the memory, the scene picture-perfect in their minds: on a chilly spring day, dark low-hanging clouds moving in from Lake Michigan blotted out the sun, making it difficult to see, especially with Bullet Bob on the mound. Feller’s fastball wasn’t just fast, it was a fuzzy blur, Sonny would say, as he’d pretend to stand at the plate with his bat on his shoulder. And once the ball left Feller’s hand it didn’t go in a straight line but would zigzag and scoot around. Sonny would imitate choking up on his imaginary bat, stepping closer to crowd the plate. Two strikes, two outs, and no hits. All you could see as Feller completed his windup was the sole of his cleats, kicked high in the air, then a tiny whizzing pill headed right down the pike.
“Not claiming I got good wood on it,” Sonny would add. “I hit it off the handle, but I knew I got enough of it to drop it on the grass in left.”
“Why, I bet old Bob was a disappointed feller,” Sonny Two would chime in at this point. “You breaking up his no-hitter.”
“He couldn’t believe ol’ Polecat from Penola County got on top of that fastball of his,” Sonny says out loud, leaning on the bridge rail, adjusting his cap in the sun, and shaking one hand then the other, as if he could still feel the sting of the vibrating bat. The red-and-white bobber disappears beneath the water’s surface, and still telling himself the story, Sonny sets the hook and reels in the pan-sized bream. “Feller,” he says, “hung his head, then tipped his hat. He sure did.”
Three days later, when the mail-lady, Mrs. Blaylock, came up the porch steps to make her delivery, she found Sonny sitting stiff as a doornail in his rocking chair.
Travis and Evan flipped a coin to see who would deliver the eulogy, and Travis called heads, but the coin came up tails. So it was Travis’s go, and he didn’t know if he had it in him to do it. When he confesses his apprehensions to Sonny Two, his father assures him it would only be a gathering of family and friends, and that to make it easier Travis should talk about something he and old Sonny shared in common.
* * *
The little sanctuary in the First Baptist Church of Salem is filled to the gills. The pews are packed. Certainly a far larger crowd than Travis ever expected. From the dais, gazing out at the mourners, he recognizes only a few people. Four pallbearers and the funeral director, Luther Diggans, all wearing shiny black suits, sit front and center. Then, several rows behind Mr. Diggans, Travis encounters a strikingly familiar figure. An elderly lady with a pale oval face, her long white hair pinned primly over her ears. The half veil on her black pillbox hat somewhat obscures her eyes and brow. But Travis is positive her eyes are a deep, gentle blue and that wrinkles crisscross her rounded forehead. She could be the spitting image of Grandma Betsy. Maybe a great aunt he’s never met? Or is it just the light, streaming through the stained glass windows, that’s playing a trick on him?
Sonny lies in an open coffin in front of the pulpit on a bier below the dais. He’s dressed in what he called his Sunday-go-to-meeting suit. His eyes are shut, his big hands crossed on his chest, his hair carefully combed, though Travis wonders why he is bareheaded. Where is the old, dingy baseball cap he wore every day, the one embroidered with a “V” for Virginians? He looks undressed without it.
“. . . death hath no dominion over him,” the preacher intones in an imposing voice. He closes his Bible and, turning, nods to Travis, and he and the preacher exchange places. Travis nervously grips the sides of the pulpit, leaning on it with all his weight, as if the pulpit is lighter than air, and he must hold it down to keep it from floating away.
“Y’all all knew my grandfather, I know,” he begins, his words trembling. “I’m Travis, by the way.” He raises his eyes and gazes at the old woman with the oval face. Even from under her veil he can feel her eyes are fixed on him, and taking a deep breath, he decides to speak directly to her.
“Some of you probably knew Sonny better than others. But one thing I bet none of you knew is that when he was a kid he spent countless hours in the gravel pit at Delincourt Lake hitting pebbles with a handle he sawed off a broom. He’d pick up a rock,” Travis says, “and he’d toss it in the air in front of him, and then swing the stick with both hands and hit the rock into the lake. He told me and my brother Evan he hit rocks with a broomstick for hours on end.”
After another deep breath, Travis glances down at Sonny’s corpse, at his big hands and carefully combed hair, then he looks back at the old woman. “I know you’re wondering why Sonny did this,” Travis says. “He did it to improve his hand-eye coordination so that he could become a better batter and make the baseball team.”
Travis releases his grip on the pulpit, relieved it doesn’t float away.
“Sonny, you see, believed you had to be dedicated to your own improvement if you want to achieve anything in this life. That’s lesson number one baseball teaches you. Sonny told Evan and me again and again: hard work beats talent, if talent fails to work hard.” In the fractured light, Travis sees the old woman’s smiling.
“He taught us other lessons he learned from playing baseball,” Travis says, “and he told us these amazing stories about the game, about the players, and his own exploits on the field.” Removing a note card from his inside coat pocket, Travis positions it in front of him and peering at the dates he jotted down yesterday while at the library he’s jolted by a shocking conclusion that for the first time suddenly leaps into his mind. He leans forward on the pulpit again, gripping it more fiercely than ever, wishing it would float away and carry him with it. Travis coughs to clear his throat, searching for his voice. “Well,” he finally manages, “another thing you might not know about Sonny is he never had a favorite team. And hardly any favorite players. He always rooted for the underdog. Life’s more fun that way, Sonny would say, if the losers unexpectedly become winners. But if your team’s in last place and loses, well, it’s what you thought, anyhow. Either way – win or lose – you’re never disappointed rooting for an underdog. Lesson number two, according to Sonny: pull for the underdog.”
Contrasting pinpricks of color from the stained glass windows glisten like fairy dust on the old lady’s shoulders. Travis believes she can read his mind, that she grasps his predicament: the dates don’t add up. Keep going, she seems to say to him vicariously, don’t stop.
And so he doesn’t stop: “Sonny used to tell us a story about Johnny Blanchard and Zorro,” Travis says. “Zorro was the nickname players gave Zoilo Versalles, the starting shortstop for the Twins in 1965. And Blanchard? A third-string catcher for the Yankees, known as a one-season wonder.
“It was opening day. Sonny’s in Minnesota for a reunion with some old Navy buddies, and they went to see the Yankees play the Twins. The Twins made it all the way to the World Series that year. And Zorro, the team’s spark plug, won the Most Valuable Player award at the end of the season. But poor Johnny Blanchard only played a dozen more games for the Yanks before being released. He made brief stops at a couple other clubs that season, then hung up his spikes for good.”
Travis pauses to peek at the note card, and the dates, juxtaposed before him—(Feller) 1941 to 1945 and (Sonny) 1948 to 1952—contradict the truth he believes he knew. His throat closes again. The two of them were never in the service at the same time. Travis clears his throat. Everybody in the church is waiting for him to continue, and then, as if from miles away, he hears himself say:
“The Yanks were losing, and the game was down to their last out, at least that’s the way Sonny usually told it, when Blanchard was sent to the plate as a pinch hitter. It was a 2-1 count, and Johnny hit this vicious low line drive that sped so fast through the air that it struck Zorro in the chest, knocking him on his backside even before he could lift his glove to react. You should have seen it, Sonny would say: Blanchard hit that ball so hard it left a trail of blue smoke behind it. Lesson number three. Keep your eye on the ball and swing hard: good things will happen.” Travis flips over the index card, as if determined to deny reality, placing it face down, to hide the proof. What should he say now? Just keep going, whispers her voice in his head. Make it up if you must—isn’t that what Sonny would do?
“Sonny enlisted for a four-year hitch in the Navy in 1948,” Travis says, nodding at the old woman in secret acquiescence. “He was nineteen. And before he shipped off to Korea, he went to boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station where, as time allowed, he played second base and batted leadoff for the Naval Station Bluejackets.”
Clenching the sides of the pulpit for support, Travis then diverges from what he’d planned to say. “Sonny ran into some really good players in that sandlot league, but not as many as there were during World War II, when big stars like Stan Musial, Jackie Robinson, Bill Dickey and Pee Wee Reese all served in the Navy and as part of their service played a little ball.”
Travis lowers his eyes to Sonny’s perfectly still corpse, with its carefully combed hair. “And just yesterday, while working on what I wanted to tell you,” Travis says, “I ran across something I didn’t know: another big star and the very first Major Leaguer to sign up after Pearl Harbor was Mr. Bob Feller. He joined for a four-year hitch. In 1941.”
Sonny didn’t move until after Travis mentions the year Feller enlisted, then, rolling over, his body throws off the balance in the coffin, which slides from the bier, and hits the floor with a loud whack that echoes through the church like the sound of a bat that just smacked a smoking line drive up the middle.
Almost all in the audience leap to their feet. Bedlam ensues. A woman, sitting behind Mr. Diggans, stands, shrieks, and faints dead away into the arms of the man next to her. Everyone is gasping and squealing at once. The preacher, in the chair on the dais behind Travis, drops to his knees to pray. And an usher at the rear of the church slams open the doors and charges outside, waving his hands in the air.
The pallbearers rush forward in unison, to put Sonny back in place, but one of them trips over his own feet, stumbles and falls, pulling down a pallbearer on either side. Sonny’s eyes are still shut and his hands remain crossed on his chest. But the slick satin bedding in the coffin causes him to slip halfway out on the floor, and by the time the pallbearers right themselves and scooch Sonny back into his coffin, his meticulously combed hair flops over an ear.
Mr. Diggans’s fleshy face flushes while consulting with the head pallbearer, and, at last, signalling to Travis and the preacher, Mr. Diggans says to them, in an apologetic, appeasing voice, “Don’t worry. The client is definitely deceased.”
“Praise God,” the preacher says. “There for a second I thought we had a much bigger problem.”
“It was a mechanical malfunction, that’s the source of this inconvenient incident,” Mr. Diggans says, and hastily explains that for Sonny’s funeral they tried out their new top-of-the-line bier, a spring-loaded model, made of metal instead of wood. “It’s totally adjustable and can hold all manner of coffins from babies to full grown adults,” Mr. Diggans says. “And my technology expert indicates a spring snapped loose.” Like a chance whiff of cologne, the faint odor of embalming fluid wafts up from Mr. Diggans’s flushed, fleshy cheeks. “Regrettably, that malfunction is what flipped the client onto the floor,” he says. “These things do happen.”
With Sonny once more resting before the dais, his eyes shut, his hands folded and his hair combed, the mourners finally settle back into the pews. But the back doors of the church remain open, as if waiting for the usher to return. And the bright daylight, pouring inside, fills the sanctuary with a warm radiance.
Travis steps back to the pulpit and searches the audience for the elderly lady with the oval face. Once he finds her, in the middle of the soft light, he turns and gazes at Evan and Sonny Two.
“I planned to tell you a story about Sonny and Bob Feller, when Sonny so rudely interrupted me. I’m guessing he interrupted because he just didn’t want me to brag about him getting a base hit off of old Bullet Bob. You see,” Travis says, “Sonny knew that in baseball, no matter how good a hitter you are, and Sonny was a good one, you still fail at least seventy percent of the time. In baseball you have to learn to live with failure. And living with failure makes you humble. That’s Sonny’s lesson number four: humility, he’d say, is good for the soul.” Travis picks up the note card and carefully tears it in two.
“Still, despite Sonny’s objection, I want to tell you about him and Bob Feller. It’s just too good a story to forget.” Travis casts a quick glance at Evan and Sonny Two. “I’m not clear exactly on how it came to be,” Travis says, “but Mr. Feller and Sonny somehow chanced to play against each other while Sonny was in the Navy.” Both his brother and father are nodding. “It was a dark, gray spring day. Bullet Bob was on the mound, working on a no-hitter, when Sonny came back to bat with two outs in the eighth,” Travis says. “Before he knew it Mr. Feller had him in the hole 0-2. And that’s when the old Penola Polecat, from right here in Salem, got on top of Feller’s fastball and scorched a sharp line drive single into left field. And with Sonny dancing off first, Mr. Feller, a future Hall of Famer, turned and tipped his hat to him, a gesture Sonny recalled for the rest of his life.”
As the service ends, Travis looks for the elderly lady with the oval face. People are standing around him, men shake hands, women are hugging. Travis is hoping to tell her he never stopped believing Sonny’s story, when he catches a glimpse of her, already at the church doors. She pauses, smiling knowingly, then steps outside in the light.
Darel La Prade, a lifelong fan of the game, just moved from Delaware to Indianapolis, where he spends his spare time playing pepper with his grandchildren.”
Mark Mosley is a public school 7th grade math teacher. He draws baseball cards when he is not driving his son to baseball or his daughter to gymnastics. His cards can be seen on Twitter @mosley_mark, on Instagram @idrawbaseballcards, and can be purchased at https://idrawbaseballcards.bigcartel.com/
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