The Great American Novel Read Online Free Page B

that I handed it personally to Mr. Bowie Kuhn, so-called Commissioner of Baseball, and he assured me that it would be tabulated along with the rest by the secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. WELL, MR. BOWIE KUHN IS A LIAR AND THE HALL OF FAME SHOULD BE NAMED THE HALL OF SHAME.
    Of course, the plainclothesgoon they hire especially to keep an eye on me during these annual election day visits greeted our contingent at the Museum door pretending to want to do no more than make us gentlemen at home. “ Well, if it isn’t the senior citizens from over Valhalla way. Welcome, boys.”
    Oh yes, we are treated like royalty at Cooperstown! How they love “the elderly” when they behave like boys! Choir -boys. So long as the only questions we ask have to do with Bock Baker and Lefty Boggs, everything is, as they say over there, “hunky-dory.”
    â€œGreetings, Smitty. Remember me?”
    â€œI remember everything,” I said.
    â€œHow you feeling this year?”
    â€œThe same.”
    â€œWell,” he asked of the pilgrims in my party, “who you boys rooting for?”
    â€œKiner!”
    â€œKeller!”
    â€œBerra!”
    â€œWynn!”
    â€œHow about you, Mr. Smith?”
    â€œGofannon.”
    â€œUh-huh,” said he, without blinking an eye. “What did he bat again lifetime? I seem to have forgotten since you told me last year.”
    â€œBatted .372. Five points more than Cobb. You know that as well as I do. Two thousand two hundred and forty-two regular season games and twenty-seven more in the World Series. Three thousand one hundred and eighty hits. Four hundred and ninety home runs. Sixty-three in 1928. Just go down where you have buried the Patriot League records and you can look it up.”
    â€œDon’t mind Shakespeare,” chortled one of my choirboy companions, “he was born that way. Figment lodged in his imagination. Too deep to operate.”
    Haw-haw all around.
    Here the p.c. goon starts to humor me again. He sure does pride himself on his finesse with crackpots. He wonders if perhaps—oh, ain’t that considerate, that perhaps—if peutêtre I am confusing Luke Gofannon of the—what team is that again?
    â€œThe Ruppert Mundys.”
    â€”Of the Ruppert Mundys with Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees. As I can see from the plaque just down the way a hundred feet, the great first-sacker is already a member of the Hall of Fame and has been since his retirement in 1939.
    â€œLook,” says I, “we went through this song-and-dance last time round. I know Gofannon from Gehrig, and I know Gofannon from Gehringer, and I know Gofannon from Goose Goslin, too. What I want to know is just why do you people persist in this? Why must you bury the truth about the history of this game— of this country? Have you no honor? Have you no conscience? Can you just take the past and flush it away, like so much shit?”
    â€œIs this,” asked those two droopy tits known as our nurse, “is this being ‘a good boy,’ Smitty? Didn’t you promise this year you’d mind your manners, if we let you come along? Didn’t you? ” Meanwhile, she and the bus driver had spun me around on my cane, so that I was no longer addressing the goon, but the glove worn by Neal Ball when he made his unassisted triple play in 1909.
    â€œHands off, you lousy smiling slit.”
    â€œHere here, old-timer,” said the pimply little genius who drives our bus, “is that any way to talk to a lady?”
    â€œTo some ladies it is the only way to talk! That is the way half the Hall of Famers whose kissers you see hanging up in bronze here talked to ladies, you upstate ignoramus! Hands off of me!”
    â€œSmitty,” said the slit, still smiling, “why don’t you act your age?”
    â€œAnd what the hell does that mean?”
    â€œYou know what it means. That you