The New York Read Free

Ishmael. You’re going to tell everything you saw and heard and did when George Bremenhaven declared a one-man revolution and seized his team back from the bloodthirsty, bloodsucking, scum bag agents and players and unions and showed he could win the pennant on his own terms.”
    It’s true I spent three years at Arizona State before I got into the minors and I did officially major in English, although it was mostly fooling around. I knew who Ishmael was, but I didn’t know then that George was really planning something and not just spouting off. So I just opened the door of the skybox and said, “S’long, George.”
    â€œRyan, there isn’t a team that is going to give you a better offer.”
    â€œSure there is,” I said, as if I believed it.
    â€œI need you next year,” he said.
    I just looked at him.
    â€œSix hundred thousand. But the proviso is you don’t tell anyone what you’re getting, not anyone.”
    â€œGeorge, my agent will know and the union will know, all kinds of people get information.”
    â€œNot if you don’t tell them.”
    â€œSix hundred fifty," I said.
    â€œSix and a quarter,” he said.
    I couldn’t believe it. I thought this time next week I’d be selling Buick Regals for a three-hundred-dollar-a-week draw and now the old crocodile was giving me one more ride on the merry-go-round. I thought I should call Sid and just check it out with him, but Sid hadn’t been returning my calls promptly like he did when I was twenty-nine and burning up the league with the lowest ERA in baseball. Damn, I was beginning to think like George and that was a scary thought. Fuck Sid.
    â€œDraw the contract,” I said.
    â€œWhere will you be in the morning?” he said.
    â€œI was gonna be in Texas,” I said.
    â€œFuck Texas. Texas’ll wait. And while you’re waiting, practice up on your Spanish.”
    â€œWhy?” I asked.
    â€œBecause, Ryan, I gotta have one ballplayer who speaks English,” George said.
    That didn’t make any sense to me at the time. I thought George was going off the deep end again, jumping into a martini and swimming his crazy old way from rim to rim.
    I wanted to just stare at him like the cold-blooded old reliever I am, but I couldn’t.
    â€œWhat are you talking about, George?” I finally said.
    And those Gila eyes twinkled at me and that Gila tongue darted out and stabbed a fly.
    â€œCuba,” he said, like that explained everything.

2
    For a couple of days after that, I didn’t hear a word from George, although he’d said he’d call me as soon as the contract was ready. It’s like waiting for the check that’s always in the mail.
    I called him a couple of times and got his private secretary, Miss Viola Foster. She was nice on the phone, but she said Mr. Bremenhaven was away on business in Washington. She would tell him I called; I believed her. George was just doing one of his disappearing things and it annoyed heck out of me. It also annoyed me that I was sticking around New York, taking it, because of the thought of working another year for just a $25,000 salary cut.
    I even believed George was down in Washington, D.C. on business, other business, not baseball business.
    The trouble was that Washington didn’t have a baseball team, and that Baltimore was the closest city in the playoffs. I watched some of the games on television at night with a six-pack of MGD close at hand. I thought about George. Every owner worth his weight in gold — and they all are, no matter how they poor-mouth —- was at one or the other playoff game. Baseball owners have a weird social life, like umpires. Owners can’t fraternize with anyone except other owners and they jump at any chance to hang out with the other guys in the Owners’ Club. Umpires stick together because they don’t fraternize with ballplayers and they need someone to eat