Read The Natural for Free Online Page B

before he got himself chucked out of this.”
    Pop’s face burned. “Don’t mention that ape man to me — getting hisself bounced out of the game the only time we had runners on the bases when he come up.”
    “I’d’ve thrown him out too if I was the ump and he slid dry ice down my pants.”
    “I’d like to stuff him with ice. I never saw such a disgusting screwball for practical jokes.”
    Pop scratched violently under his loosely bandaged fingers. “And to top it off I have to go catch athlete’s foot on my hands. Now ain’t that one for the books? Everybody I have ever heard of have got it on their feet but I have to go and get it on both of my hands and be itchy and bandaged in this goshdarn hot weather. No wonder I am always asking myself is life worth the living of it.”
    “Tough,” Red said. “He’s passed Feeber, bases loaded.” Pop fumed. “My best pitcher and he blows up every time I put him against a first place team. Yank him.”
    The coach, a lean and freckled man, got nimbly up on the dugout steps and signaled to the bullpen in right field. He sauntered out to the mound just as somebody in street clothes came up the stairs of the tunnel leading from the clubhouse and asked the player at the end of the bench, “Who’s Fisher?” The player jerked his thumb toward the opposite side of the dugout, and the man, dragging a large, beat-up valise and a bassoon case, treaded his way to Pop.
    When Pop saw him coming he exclaimed, “Oh, my eight-foot uncle, what have we got here, the Salvation Army band?”
    The man set his things on the floor and sat down on a concrete step, facing Pop. He beheld an old geezer of sixty-five with watery blue eyes, a thin red neck and a bitter mouth, who looked like a lost banana in the overgrown baseball suit he wore, especially his skinny legs in loose blue-and-white stockings.
    And Pop saw a tall, husky, dark-bearded fellow with old eyes but not bad features. His face was strong-boned, if a trifle meaty, and his mouth seemed pleasant though its expression was grim. For his bulk he looked lithe, and he appeared calmer than he felt, for although he was sitting here on this step he was still in motion. He was traveling (on the train that never stopped). His self, his mind, raced on and he felt he hadn’t stopped going wherever he was going because he hadn’t yet arrived. Where hadn’t he arrived? Here. But now it was time to calm down, ease up on the old scooter, sit still and be quiet, though the inside of him was still streaming through towns and cities, across forests and fields, over long years.
    “The only music I make,” he answered Pop, patting the bassoon case, “is with my bat.” Searching through the pockets of his frayed and baggy suit, worn to threads at the knees and elbows, he located a folded letter that he reached over to the manager. “I’m your new left fielder, Roy Hobbs.”
    “My what!” Pop exploded.
    “It says in the letter.”
    Red, who had returned from the mound, took the letter, unfolded it, and handed it to Pop. He read it in a single swoop then shook his head in disbelief.
    “Scotty Carson sent you?”
    “That’s right.”
    “He must be daffy.”
    Roy wet his dry lips.
    Pop shot him a shrewd look. “You’re thirty-five if you’re a day.”
    “Thirty-four, but I’m good for ten years.”
    “Thirty-four — Holy Jupiter, mister, you belong in an old man’s home, not baseball.”
    The players along the bench were looking at him. Roy licked his lips.
    “Where’d he pick you up?” Pop asked.
    “I was with the Oomoo Oilers.”
    “In what league?”
    “They’re semipros.”
    “Ever been in organized baseball?”
    “I only recently got back in the game.”
    “What do you mean got back?”
    “Used to play in high school.”
    Pop snorted. “Well, it’s a helluva mess.” He slapped the letter with the back of his fingers. “Scotty signed him and the Judge okayed it. Neither of them consulted me. They can’t do