The Southpaw Read Free Page A

mother in their short time together come a greater southpaw yet, which was me. I believe that some day I will be counted amongst the immortals and have my statue in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. Connie Mack says Lefty Grove was the greatest, and maybe so, and some say Mathewson and some say Walter Johnson, some say Bobby Feller and some say Satchel Paige.
    Yet you will see some writers that say that on my best days I am better and faster than any, and I believe them. You got to believe. Pop says you got to believe in yourself and know every time you pitch that ball that it is the best pitch ever throwed.
    Another thing Pop says is, “Hank, never feel sorry for yourself. You will have good days and bad days. Keep thinking, keep learning, keep throwing, and you will have twice as many good days as bad.” Pop himself has followed his own rule. He never feels sorry for himself. He is really a pretty happy fellow. He is crazy about kids and gets a big bang out of driving the bus, and he likes to work for Aaron, for he admires Aaron. Such spare time as he has got you can usually find him hanging in Borelli’s. He keeps busy. If he ain’t monkeying with the school bus he is under the hood of his old 32 Moors. He is in love with that crazy car. Myself I own a 50 Moors Special. Right at this moment it happens to be sitting out in the yard, its Evva-life battery deader then hell. It been sitting there since after the Series last October, and it can sit there 80 years more for all of me.
    1 other person I had better mention fairly quick is Holly Webster, Aaron’s niece, now Mrs. Henry W. Wiggen by marriage. However, there was a number of stormy brawls before it come to pass.
    So Pop is actually moved out of the house now, and over with Aaron, and Holly is moved in over here. I kid Aaron and tell him I have got the best of the swap by far. We kid back and forth a hell of a lot.
    That’s it. Those are the folks and also the end of the chapter. Holly says try and write up 1 thing and 1 thing only in every chapter and don’t be wandering all over the lot, and then, when the subject is covered, break it off and begin another.

Chapter 2
    The earliest thing I remember was Sundays in summer, going out in the morning with Pop to look at the sky. If it looked like a good day he would twirl his arm around a few times, and he would say, “Son, I am going to pitch 3-hit baseball today,” or if there was a little nip in the air he would say he would pitch a 7-hitter. Pop was a good hot-weather pitcher. He was great in any weather, but better in hot, and we would go back in the house for breakfast. Then he would lay down until lunch. He would eat only very light. Pop says a hungry ballplayer makes the best 1.
    After lunch he would change to his suit. It was gray, and the stockings were gray with scarlet stripes, and the letters across his shirt were scarlet, but small, because it is hard to say all the letters in Perkinsville on a shirt, and there was a white “P” on his cap. The rest of the cap was scarlet. Then he would say, “Hank, my glove,” and that was me. I always carried Pop’s glove, and I was proud to do it. Sometimes he would let me oil it. It had that leathery oily smell which is 1 of the best smells I know. Then he would get his shoes, and sometimes he would let me carry them, though not always. His shoes had a steel toeplate on the left 1 because that was the foot he dug around with on the mound when he was pitching, to make the mound just right. When you are pitching everything has got to be just right. The spikes on the shoes were bright and silver, not all run down like you see on seedy ballplayers that don’t care how they keep themself up. Every year Pop bought new shoes, which is what any self-respecting ballplayer will do.
    You have noticed how these straggley semi-pro clubs wear run-down shoes. But not Pop. Nor me. I have saw players that wore shoes 3 and 4 years, and they never amounted to much.
    Then we