Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football by Rich Cohen Read Free Book Online Page B

fastball as Halas was thinking fastball. He swung from the heels, the bat whipping across the plate. Crack. The sort of contact that vibrates through your entire body. The hands know it’s gone before the brain—the flash of lightning that precedes the thunder. The Yankees were on their feet, hooting as Marquard kicked the dirt and the ball vanished. That night, Yankees manager Miller Huggins took Halas aside: Pack your bags, son. We’re taking you to New York . Halas was given a standard rookie contract: $400 a month, plus a $500 signing bonus.
    Halas’s single season of pro baseball reads in the record book as a joke, the answer to a trivia question. In the course of twelve games, he came to the plate twenty-two times and got two hits. His career batting average was .091. In later years, friends would speak of the day he faced Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators, one of the game’s great pitchers. Halas hit two long flies off Johnson, which, had they been fair, would’ve been home runs. Harry Caray, the Cubs’ announcer, had a term for such near misses: “long strikes.” Halas struck out in eight of twenty-two plate appearances. Because of his fastball prowess, he was soon facing nothing but spitters, changeups, and curves. By June, he was dreaming of a foul tip, a taste of the ball. He was valued for the fire he brought to the cause. He was a respected bench jockey, the name given to players who excelled in the art of heckling.
    One afternoon at the Polo Grounds, in New York, Halas went after Ty Cobb. Halas considered Cobb a model, a man with a surfeit of zipperoo. (To become an adult, you must kill your parents.) Every time Cobb came to the plate, Halas moved to the top dugout step. He stood there, calling Cobb a dog, a cocksucker, a cheap piece of nothing, a motherfucker. Cobb finally flung down his bat and stormed over. Halas froze. There stood his hero, eyes wild. “Punk, I’ll see you after the game. Don’t forget, punk!”
    Halas stayed in the locker room after all the other players had left. He lingered in his street clothes, waiting for the trainer to turn off the lights. He hoped Cobb would be gone, but there he was, fists at his side, standing in the tunnel. He made a motion like he was going to crack Halas, but held out his hand instead, saying, “I like your spirit kid, but don’t overdo it.” Halas walked Cobb back to his hotel, a jaunt down Broadway in the fading gloom of old Manhattan, talking all the way. “Direct your energy positively,” said Cobb. “Don’t waste yourself being negative.” They remained friends the rest of their lives. I have a picture of them taken years later, old men in Bermuda shorts, in the sun, the entire history of American sports.
    Halas hurt his hip in June, jammed it sliding into third. On an off day, he went to see a doctor known as Bonesetter Reese. The ensuing treatment bothered Halas for the rest of his life; he would eventually need to have that hip replaced. The injury did not improve his chances of staying in the majors. He had a crushing plate appearance against the Chicago White Sox. This was the team later known as the Black Sox; with the participation of Shoeless Joe Jackson, Happy Felsch, Chick Gandil, Lefty Williams, and four others, they would throw the 1919 World Series. Halas faced them at Comiskey Park, a few miles from the apartment where he grew up. It was a homecoming—his friends and family were in the stands. Halas badly wanted to perform, get some wood on the ball. But Eddie Cicotte, who would post an astounding 1.82 ERA that season, was on the mound for the Sox. Halas had determination and hustle, but Cicotte had a wicked knuckleball. In football, hustling can make all the difference, but when you’re hitting a baseball, all the effort in the world won’t help. In baseball, effort is the enemy of contact. On one pitch, Halas watched as the knuckler dipped and dived in for a strike. On another, he looked like a man trying to