The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories Read Free Page A

manager, McGarry, you’d be able to whip stuff like this into shape.”
    McGarry stared at him like a scientist looking through a microscope at a bug. “I couldn’t whip stuff like that into shape,” he said, “if they were eggs and I was an electric mixer. You’re the general manager of the club. Why don’t you give me some ballplayers?”
    “You’d know what to do with them?” Beasley asked. “Twenty games out of fourth place and the only big average we’ve got is a manager with the widest mouth in either league. Maybe you’d better get reminded that when the Brooklyn Dodgers win one game we gotta call it a streak! Buddy boy,” he said menacingly, “when contract time comes around, you don’t have to.” His cigar went out and he took out a match and lit it. Then he looked up toward home plate where a pitcher was warming up. “How’s Fletcher doing?” he asked.
    “Are you kidding?” Mouth spat thirty-seven feet off to the left. “Last week he pitched four innings and allowed only six runs. That makes him our most valuable player of the month!”
    The dugout phone rang and Beasley went over to pick it up. “Dugout,” he said into the receiver. “What? Who?” He cupped his hand over the phone and looked over at Mouth. “You wanta look at a pitcher?” he asked.
    “Are you kidding?” Mouth answered.
    Beasley talked back into the phone. “Send him down,” he said. He hung up the receiver and walked back over to Mouth. “He’s a lefty,” he announced.
    “Lefty Shmefty,” Mouth said. “If he’s got more than one arm and less than four—he’s for us!” He cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled out toward the field. “Hey, Monk!”
    The catcher behind home plate rose from his squat and looked back over toward the dugout. “Yeah?”
    “Fletcher can quit now,” Mouth called to him. “I’ve got a new boy coming down. Catch him for a while.”
    “Check,” the catcher said. Then he turned toward the pitcher.
    “Okay, Fletch. Go shower up.”
    Beasley walked back over to sit on the bench in the dugout. “You got the line-up for tonight?” he asked the manager.
    “Working on it,” Mouth said.
    “Who starts?”
    “You mean pitcher? I just feel them one by one. Whoever’s warm goes to the mound.” He spat again and put his foot back up on the parapet, staring out at the field. Once again he yelled out toward his ballplayers. “Chavez, stop already with the calisthenics.”
    He watched disgustedly as the three men stopped jumping up and down and the old man sitting on the ground looked relieved. Chavez thumbed them off the field and turned back toward the bench and shrugged a what-the-hell-can-I-do-with-things-like-this kind of shrug.
    Mouth took out a handkerchief and wiped his face. He walked up the steps of the dugout and saw the sign sticking in the ground which read: “Brooklyn Dodgers—tryouts today.” He pulled back his right foot and followed through with a vicious kick which sent the sign skittering along the ground. Then he went over to the third-base line, picked up a piece of grass and chewed it thoughtfully. Beasley left the dugout to join McGarry. He kneeled down alongside of him and picked up another piece of grass and began to chew. They knelt and lunched together until McGarry spit out his piece of grass and glared at Beasley.
    “You know something, Beasley?” he inquired. “We are so deep in the cellar that our roster now includes an infield, an outfield and a furnace! And you know whose fault that is?”
    Beasley spit out his own piece of grass and said, “You tell me!”
    “It ain’t mine,” McGarry said defensively. “It just happens to be my luck to wind up with a baseball organization whose farm system consists of two silos and a McCormick reaper. The only thing I get sent up to me each spring is a wheat crop.”
    “McGarry,” Beasley stated definitely, “if you had material, would you really know what to do with it? You ain’t no Joe