LUDIC LOG

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The first sound in the mornings was the scraping of the chains along the dirty base-paths. Earlier than that, I suppose, there were various cleanings which I was never awake to hear.

There were generally seven of us in the bullpen, and a beastly place it was, with that squat impertinent look of rooms that were never meant to be lived in. Years earlier the place had been an ordinary ballpark, and after the Wrigleys had taken it and fitted it out as their "Palace of Baseball", we had inherited their decades of misuse and squalor, but had never had the wherewithal to correct them. We were therefore warming in what was recognizably, by scent, a urinal. Hanging from the west wall there was a heavy beige fly-strip on which the mosquitos were so thick that it was like fur. And covering most of one wall there was a huge hideous piece of junk, something between a mural and a portrait, of that man, his permanent rictus-grin and oversized spectacles forever glaring down on us, and there was a once-gaudy backboard ringed by the spit-cups of yeas, and two stadium chairs with cracked seats, and one of those old-fashioned telephones which rattled when it rang. The place had been turned into a bullpen by thrusting two squalid benches in among this other wreckage.

My spot was on the right-hand side of the bench nearest the gate. There was another bench across the fence and jammed hard against it (it had to be in that position to allow the door to open) so that I had to sit with my legs crossed, like a woman; if I uncrossed them I kicked another reliever in the shins. He was a veteran named Velasquez, a specialist of sorts and employed as a set-up man for our right-handers. Luckily he usually went in in the sixth inning, so I could uncoil my legs and have a couple of minutes' proper stretch before I went on. On the bench opposite there was a Polish guy who had been injured half the season (he was hit on the ankle by a sharp liner, and the hitter was already to second before anyone noticed what had happened), and had done a rehab stint in the minors for his trouble. He was a big handsome man of thirty, with grizzled hair and a clipped mustache, more like a beat cop than a pitcher, and he would ride the bench till late in the game, spitting out sunflower seeds. The end of the bench was occupied by a succession of mercenaries, hired guns, grizzled veterans and eager young kids from the minors who generally stayed for a couple of series. It was a wide bench and much the best in the pen. I had sat on it myself my first year here, but had been maneuvred out of it to make room for another pitcher. I believe all newcomers spent their first year on the wide bench, which was used, so to speak, as bait. The gate was kept tight shut, with a jerry-rigged wire lock, and in the evening the park stank like a urinal. You did not notice when you were warming up, but if you went out from the pen and ended up in the dugout, the smell hit you in the face with a smack. I never discovered how many urinals the park contained, but strange to say there really were bathrooms, dating back to the Wrigleys' time. Upstairs there were the usual bleachers with the sun beating huge on the shirtless drunks who camped there night and day. It was impenetrable to the himan eye, and on the other side of it was hundred-year-old dust, gathering into some dark subterranean place where it congealed with piss. Partly blocking the fans from the bullpen there was a shapeless mass of wall over which our security man, Mr. Booker, stood permanent watch, festooned in red and blue. He had a big, dark, mournful face. No one knew for certain what was the matter with him; I suspect that his only real trouble was laziness. In front of him there was almost always a line of inebriated fans, forever wanting to curse us, snatch our caps, and toss their cell phones at our heads. I never saw this area completely silent, but I saw it soothed by gluttony at different times. At the bottom there was a layer of old hot dog wrappers stained by yellow mustard; above that a sheet of sickly-sweet spilled beer; above that a sea of chipped green paint; above that a mass of swarming pink flesh, coarse and loud, never changing and seldom dragged away. Generally the bums from day games were still in the bleachers for night games. I used to get to know individual bums by sight and watch their stumbling progress up and down the narrow aisles from day to day.