Mordecai Brown by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Mordecai Brown

Page 43

before the crowds arrived. The wooden grandstand creaked in the breeze, the outfield grass still held the cool of the night, and the infield dirt carried the faint, sweet smell of the previous day’s chalk.

On one July morning, with the Cubs already running away with the league, Brown walked through the players’ entrance and found Frank Chance sitting alone on the dugout bench, elbows on his knees, staring out at the empty field. Chance wasn’t a brooder, but he had a habit of thinking in stillness, like a man listening for something beneath the noise.

“You’re early,” Chance said without looking up.

“Fourth day,” Brown replied. “Arm wakes me up before the sun does.”

Chance gave a small grin. “Good. We’ll need you sharp. Giants are in one of their moods.”

That was all he said. Chance never gave speeches when a sentence would do.

Brown went through his warmup routine slowly, feeling the ball roll off the two good fingers and the two twisted ones. Some days the grip felt like a puzzle he had to solve anew. But that