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

around the environs of New York City And when Casey stepped out on the field and headed toward the mound, fifty-seven thousand eight hundred and thirty-three people stood up and applauded as one, and it was only the second baseman who, as he carried the ball over to the pitcher, noticed that there were tears in Casey’s eyes and an expression on his face that made him pause. True, he’d never seen any expression on Casey’s face before, but this one made him stop and look over his shoulder as he went back to his base.
    The umpire shouted, “Play ball,” and the Dodgers began the running stream of chatter that always prefaced the first pitch. Monk, behind the plate, made a signal and then held up his glove as a target. Start with a fast ball he thought. Let them know what they’re up against, jar them a little bit. Confuse them. Unnerve them. That was the way Monk planned his strategy behind the plate. Not that much strategy was needed when Casey was on the mound, but it was always good to show the big guns first. Casey nodded, went into his windup and threw. Twelve seconds later a woman in a third-floor apartment three blocks away had her bedroom window smashed by a baseball that had traveled in the neighborhood of seven hundred feet out of Tebbet’s Field.
    Meanwhile, back at the field, the crowd just sat there silently as the leadoff batter of the New York Giants ambled around the base path heading home to the outstretched hands of several fellow Giants greeting him after his leadoff home run.
    Mouth McGarry at this moment felt that he would never again suffer a stab of depression such as the one that now intruded into his head. He would recall later that his premonition was quite erroneous. He would feel stabs of depressions in innings number two, three and four that would make that first stab of depression seem like the after effect of a Miltown tablet. That’s how bad it got forty-five minutes later, when Casey had allowed nine hits, had walked six men, and thrown two wild pitches, and had muffed a pop fly to the mound, which, McGarry roared to the bench around him, “could have been caught by a palsied Civil War veteran who lost an arm at Gettysburg.”
    In the seventh inning Mouth McGarry took his fifth walk over to the mound and this time didn’t return to the bench till he’d motioned to the bullpen for Casey’s relief—a very eager kid, albeit a nervous one, who chewed tobacco going to the mound and got violently sick as he crossed the third-base line because he swallowed a piece. Coughing hard, he arrived at the mound and took the ball from Mouth McGarry. Casey solemnly shoved his mitt into his hip pocket and took the long walk back toward the showers.
    At ten minutes to midnight the locker room had been emptied. All the players save Casey had gone back to the hotel. Bertram Beasley had left earlier—on a stretcher in the sixth inning. In the locker room were a baseball manager who produced odd grunts from deep within his throat and kept shaking his head back and forth and a kindly white-haired old man who built robots. Casey came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel. He smiled gently at Mouth and then went over to his locker where he proceeded to dress.
    “Well?” Mouth shouted at him. “Well? One minute he’s three Lefty Groves, the next minute he’s the cousin to every New York Giant who ever lived. He’s a tanker. He’s a nothing. All right—you wanna tell me, Casey? You wanna explain? You might start by telling me how one man can throw nine pitched balls and give up four singles, two doubles, a triple and two home runs!”
    The question remained unanswered. Stillman looked toward Casey and said very softly, “Shall I tell him?”
    Casey nodded apologetically.
    Stillman turned toward McGarry “Casey has a heart,” he said quietly.
    Mouth fumed. “So? Casey has a heart! So I know he’s gotta heart! So this ain’t news, prof! Tell me something that is!”
    “The thing is,” Casey