The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories by Rod Serling Read Free Book Online Page B

is!”
    “The thing is,” Casey said in his first speech over three sentences since McGarry had met him. “The thing is, Mr. McGarry, I just couldn’t strike out those poor fellahs. I didn’t have it in me to do that—to hurt their feelings. I felt—I felt compassion!” He looked toward Stillman as if for confirmation.
    Stillman nodded. “That’s what he’s got, Mr. McGarry. Compassion. See how he smiles?”
    Casey grinned obediently and most happily, and Stillman returned his smile. “You see, Mr. McGarry,” Stillman continued. “You give a person a heart—particularly someone like Casey, who hasn’t been around long enough to understand things like competitiveness or drive or ego. Well,” he shrugged, “that’s what happens.’’
    Mouth sat down on the bench, unscrewed the bottle of pills and found it was empty. He threw the bottle over his shoulder. “That’s what happens to him ,” he said. “Shall I tell you what happens to me? I go back to being a manager of nine gleeps so old that I gotta rub them down with formaldehyde and revive them in between innings.” He suddenly had a thought and looked up at Casey. “Casey,” he asked, Don’t you feel any of that compassion for the Brooklyn Dodgers?”
    Casey smiled back at him. “I’m sorry, Mr. McGarry,” he said. “It’s just that I can’t strike out fellahs. I can’t bring myself to hurt their careers. Dr. Stillman thinks I should go into social work now. I’d like to help people. Right, Dr. Stillman?”
    “That’s right, Casey,” Stillman answered.
    “Are you going?” Casey asked McGarry as he saw the manager head for the door.
    Mouth nodded.
    “Well good-by, Mr. McGarry,” Casey said. “And thank you for everything.”
    Mouth turned to him. The grin on his face was that of dying humanity all over the world. “Don’t mention it,” he said.
    He sighed deeply and walked out to the warm August evening that awaited him and the black headlines on a newspaper stand just outside the stadium that said, “I told you so” at him, even though the lettering spelled out, “CASEY SHELLED FROM MOUND.” A reporter stood on the corner, a guy McGarry knew slightly.
    “What about it, McGarry?” the reporter asked. “What do you do for pitchers now?”
    Mouth looked at him dully. “I dunno,” he sighed. “I just feel them one by one and whoever’s warm—”
    He walked past the reporter and disappeared into the night, a broken-nosed man with sagging shoulders who thought he heard the rustle of pennants in the night air, and then realized it was three shirts on a clothesline that stretched across two of the adjoining buildings.
     
    From Rod Serling’s closing narration, “The Mighty Casey,”
    The Twilight Zone , scheduled for telecast March 25, 1960,
    CBS Television Network.
     
    A BASEBALL FIELD-LONG ANGLE SHOT
    It is empty and in absolute quiet.
     
    NARRATOR’S VOICE
    Once upon a time there was a major league team called the Brooklyn Dodgers who during the last year of their existence as a ball team wound up in last place and shortly thereafter wound up in oblivion. They are rarely if ever mentioned in these parts again. Rumor has it that a ball club on the West Coast is the residue of what was left of the original ball club.
    (a pause)
    And on occasion in a dark bar off Flatbush Avenue, someone might whisper the name of a certain pitcher with an exceptional left hand. Somebody else will softly murmur the question—whatever happened to the mighty Casey?
    (a pause)
    No, you won’t find any of the answers in the records. Though they are available should anyone be interested by checking under “B” for baseball in The Twilight Zone.
    FADE TO BLACK

 
Escape Clause
     
     
     
    Walter Bedeker lay on his bed waiting for the doctor. He wore a heavy, wool bathrobe over heavy wool pajamas, and had a heavy wool scarf wrapped tightly around his head and knotted under the chin in a giant bow. On the nightstand next to him was a tray