***In Honor Of The Centennial Of The Birth Of Bernard Malamud-  Slim Jenkins’ Dream- Take Three

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

…He, Slim Jenkins, now twenty years old, long, tall, wiry rather than bulkily built like many a slugger, did not know when he had picked up his grandmother’s household broom, had taken it outside and ball-less  begun to swing that instrument into the fierce Indiana farmland winds. Probably when he was five and had seen the Cosgrove Hens, the farm team for the Chicago Cubs, come to town and whip, severely whip an All-Star team of his Evansville neighbors and swore, swore as much as a five- year old could that he would someday avenge that humiliating defeat if he had to do it single-handedly. And so he had started with all the fierce determination of a five year old to do it right with what was at hand. (Little did he know as poor as they were that Grandma had many a fierce ruining fight with Grandpa over Slim’s ruining a perfectly good broom. And maybe that is where Slim got his own fierceness from) Yes, he swung that broom, that faux Louisville Slugger of his dreams. That was what he called the handle from the first swings, no fiery superstition nicknames like Wonderboy or the Bomb just Louisville Slugger as expected from a no-nonsense, no frills world, for all it was worth. At first, if anybody had been looking and they were not out in the toiling farmlands of summer too busy to look up for boyish inspections,   slapdash as one would expect from an ageless farm boy. Slim had picked up that slap-dashery from watching the farm hands carrying on the merciless fall harvest where every blade was whacked to perdition, no prisoners taken.

Later, later Slim had seen balls, not baseballs, Grandpa’s homemade pellets thrown at high speed at him to be swished at by a real bat. (Grandma had “won” that battle and Grandpa sent to Sear& Roebuck for a bat for Slim after he noticed that he had good moves at the bat for his age). Later still, later after he had taken his, maybe ten thousandth swing, when he was seven, just turn seven that summer of his decision he would hoist that bat to his shoulders from the left side for he believed, fervently believed that his life entailed an ability to hit baseballs from both sides (left or right, right or left depending on his mood and the day) and make a memory of where the ball would land in Wrigley Field. Yes by then he had the bug, the dirt farmer’s son and grandson bug to get that hell out of dirt-rich Indiana and make himself the king of diamonds just like the Babe, just like Joe, just like the Kid.

And so Slim whiled away his childhood, becoming strong, farm boy harvest strong, practicing every day after school (and on some school hooky days all day fro as good as he was at the diamond he resisted “book learning with that same fierceness) and always wondering where that damn ball would land in Wrigley Field, although he had never seen the field. All he knew, after catching up with the National League standings printed weekly in the Evansville Gazette, was that they needed help and that he was destined to be the savior of the club and bring back the gold ring that every Hoosier around would be willing to pay big money just to peek at, although he had determined not change for that privilege. At about twelve he began to get picked for pick-up games over in Emmetsville by the bigger boys who saw the power of his wrists, the steadiness of his eyes and his ability to hit their fast balls and change-ups. (A “scout” for the Cosgrove Hens had even made a small note in his notebook to watch out for him as he came up.)  

In the fall of his sixteenth year, after leaving school the previous spring (he had had enough of “book-learning” school he had called it too young to be wise to school of life thoughts) Slim headed to Indianapolis to find a job in a factory, the Sims Steel Plating plant, to support himself and to get himself ready to try-out off for the Indianapolis Wolves, the big step farm team for the Cubs. And so his new life started as Slim proved very competent at his place of work welding everything in sight and mixing it up with other guys at night in the pick-up games that each factory sponsored as part of an informal industrial league among the working stiffs of the town. He also began to tentatively hang around the barrooms after the games to toss down a few with the boys and to ogle the girls who hung out there looking for prospects. Slim could never quite figure whether it was marriage prospects or baseball prospects they were looking for as he was too shy and backward to ask.

It was in that industrial league that a scout for the Cubs, maybe working off a note from that Cosgrove scout it was never clear, noticed Slim’s power, his ability to lay off bad pitches and to drop balls into spots when nobody could caught them. One day the scout showed up at Slim’s workplace, walked to his machine, with an offer for him to go to Florida that following spring and try-out with the Cubs. Slim was as happy as he had been since he first started swinging old grandma’s broom (grandma now deceased). One night in early February just before he headed south for his try-out in order to celebrate his good luck Slim’s factory mates and a couple of others went to Jimmy Slatton’s Lounge over on Fourth Street for a party.

It was there that he met Maggie Mason, Maggie of his dreams, Maggie of his now awakening sexual desires. Maggie, petite, pretty if not beautiful, and a rabid baseball fan hung out at Jimmy’s because that is where the baseball players were. Maggie had a reputation (earned as it turned out) of “putting out” for the next best thing in baseball that was being touted. Slim was unaware of that hard fact as he was unaware that night that Maggie had drawn a bee-line to toward him once she entered the lounge having been informed by a girlfriend, a girlfriend who had a boy who knew Slim and his good fortune. Slim, still shy and backward like some awkward farm boy was easy pickings as she brushed up against him, started talking her baby, baby, sweet talk to him, plied him with her be my sweet walking daddy line and so succumbed to her without a fight really. A few more drinks and they left for more private spots.

A couple of days later after they emerged from the Daisy Day Motel Inn Slim gathered himself to get ready to head south but his mind was not on baseball, not at all. He was enflamed by her ways, by her touch, by her moves. So if you look up the baseball books, maybe look closely at who did, or did not play for the Cubs in the red scare Cold War 1950s night you will find no Samuel “Slim” Jenkins cracking any stats. You will, if you are privy to such information, find a Slim Jenkins who has just celebrated his 25^th year in the employ of the Sims Steel Plating Company and who has listed himself as single. As for Maggie Mason, last anybody heard she was serving them off the arm in a Decatur hash-house. Yes, Maggie of his…