“LORD IN HEAVEN, HAVE MERCY ON ME! AN ANGEL! AN ANGEL!”
“don’t be a jerk!” said the angel, flapping around, “I’m no angel. I just want to help the Blues. I been a Blues fan ever since I can remember.”
“all right. come on down. let’s talk business,” said Henderson.
the angel, or whatever it was, flew on down and landed in a chair. the Bull ripped off the shoes and stockings of whatever it was and started kissing its feet.
Henderson leaned over and in a very disgusted manner spit into the Bull’s face: “fuck off, you subnormal freak! anything I hate is such sloppy sentimentality!”
the Bull wiped off his face and left very quietly.
Henderson flipped through the desk drawers.
“shit, I thought I had me some contract papers in here somewhere!”
meanwhile, while looking for the contract papers he found another pint and opened that. he looked at the kid while ripping off the cellophane:
“tell me, can you hit an inside curve? outside? how about the slider?”
“god damned if I know,” said the guy with the wings, “I been hiding out. all I know is what I read in the papers and see on TV but I’ve always been a Blues fan and I’ve felt very sorry for you this season.”
“you been hidin’ out? where? a guy with wings can’t hide out in an elevator in the Bronx! what’s your hype? how’ve you made it?”
“Mr. Henderson, I don’t want to bore you with all the details.”
“by the way, what’s your name, kid?”
“Jimmy. Jimmy Crispin. J.C. for short.”
“hey, kid, what the fuck you tryin’ to do, get funny with me?”
“oh no, Mr. Henderson.”
“then shake hands!”
they shook.
“god damn, your hands is sure COLD! you had anything to eat lately?”
“I had some french fries and beer with chicken about 4 p.m.”
“have a drink, kid.”
Henderson turned to me. “Bailey?”
“yeh?”
“I want the full friggin’ ballteam down on that field at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. no exceptions. I think we’ve got the biggest thing since the a-bomb. now let’s all get outa here and get some sleep. you got a place to sleep, kid?”
“sure,” said J.C. then he flew down the stairway and left us there.
we had the park locked tight. nobody in there but the ballteam. and with their hangovers and looking at the guy with the wings they thought it was some publicity gag. or a practice for one. they put the team on the field and the kid at the plate. but you should have been there to see those bloodshot eyes OPEN when the kid tapped a roller down the 3rd base line and FLEW to first base! then he touched down and before the 3rd base man could let go of the ball the kid flew on down to 2nd base.
everybody just kind of swayed in the early 10 p.m. sunlight. playing for a team like the Blues you figured you were crazy anyway but this was something else.
then as the pitcher got ready to throw to the batboy who we had put at the plate, J.C. flew on down to third base! he jetted on down! you couldn’t even see the wings, even if you had had time for two alka seltzers that morning. and by the time the ball got to the plate, this thing had flown in and touched home plate.
we found the kid could play the whole outfield. his flying speed was tremendous! we just brought in the two other outfielders and put them in the infield. that gave us two shortstops and two second basemen. and as bad as we were, we were hell.
that night would be our first league game with Jimmy Crispin in the outfield.
first thing I did when I got in was to phone Bugsy Malone.
“Bugsy, what are the odds against the Blues finishing first?”
“ain’t no odds. the bet is off the board. no damn fool would bet the Blues even at 10,000 to one.”
“what’ll you give me?”
“are you serious?”
“yeah.”
“250 to one. you wanna bet a dollar, is that it?”
“one grand.”
“one grand! now wait a minute! let me call you back in two hours.”
the phone rang in an hour and forty-five minutes. “all right, I’ll take you. I can always use a grand. somehow.”
“thanks, Bugsy.”
“you’re welcome.”
that first night game, I’ll never forget it. they thought we were pulling some laugh stunt to get the crowds in but when they saw Jimmy Crispin rise into the sky and pull down an obvious home run that would have cleared the left centerfield fence by ten feet, then the game was on. Bugsy had flown down to check things out and I watched him in his box seat. when J.C. flew up to grab that one Bugsy’s five dollar cigar dropped out of his mouth. but there was nothing in the rulebook that said a man with wings couldn’t play baseball so we had them by the balls. and how. we took that game easy. Crispin scored 4 times. they couldn’t hit anything out of our infield and anything in the outfield was a sure out.
and the games that followed. how the crowds came in. it was enough to drive them mad to see a man flying in the sky but the fact that we were 25 games out and with such little time left was also what kept them coming. the crowd loves to see a man get off the deck. the Blues were driving. it was the miracle of the times.
LIFE came to interview Jimmy. TIME. LIFE. LOOK. he told them nothing. “I just want to see the Blues win the pennant,” he said.
but it was still tough, mathematically, and like a storybook ending it came down to the last game of the season, tied with the Bengals for first place and playing the Bengals, and winner take all. we hadn’t lost a game since Jimmy joined the team. and I was pretty close to $250,000.00. what a manager I was!
we were in the office just before that last night game, old man Henderson and I. and we heard the noise on the stairway, and then a guy fell through the door, drunk. J.C. his wings were gone. just stumps.
“they sawed off my motherfucking wings, the rats! they put this woman on me in the hotel room. what a woman! what a broad! man, they loaded my drinks! I got on top of this cunt and they began SAWING MY WINGS OFF. I couldn’t move! I couldn’t even get my nuts! what a FARCE! and all the time, this guy smoking a cigar, laughing and cackling in the background … — oh god, what a beautiful woman, and I couldn’t get it … — oh, shit …”
“well, baby, you aren’t the first guy a woman has fucked-up. is there any bleeding?” asked Henderson.
“no, it’s just bone, a bone-thing, but I’m so sad, I’ve let you fellows down, I’ve let the Blues down, I feel terrible, terrible, terrible.”
they felt terrible? I was out 250 grand.
I finished the pint on the desk. J.C. was too drunk to play, wings or no wings. Henderson just put his head down on the desk and began crying. I found his luger in the bottom drawer. I put it into my coat and went out of the tower and down into the reserve section. I took the box right behind Bugsy Malone and some beautiful woman he was sitting with. it was Henderson’s box and Henderson was drinking himself to death with a dead angel. he wouldn’t need that box. and the team wouldn’t need me. I’d phoned down to the dugout and told them to turn