"John Kessel - The Franchise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kessel John)

Florida with high expectations, every April he started the season in
Richmond, in Rochester, in Chattanooga. Just two months earlier he had
considered packing it in and looking for another career. Then a series of
miracles happened.

Chattanooga was the farm team for the Senators, who hadn't won a
pennant since 1933. For fifteen years, under their notoriously cheap
owner, Clark Griffith, they'd been as bad as you could get. But in 1959
their young third baseman, Harmon Killebrew, hit forty-two home runs.
Sluggers Jim Lemon and Roy Sievers had career years. A big Kansas boy
named Bob Allison won rookie of the year in center field. Camilo Pascual
won twenty-two games, struck out 215 men. A kid named Jim Kaat won
seventeen. Everything broke right, including Mickey Mantle's leg. After
hovering a couple of games over .500 through the All Star break, the
Senators got hot in August, won ninety games, and finished one ahead of
the Yankees.

When, late in August, right fielder Albie Pearson got hurt, Lavagetto
switched Sievers to right, and there was George Bush, thirty-five years old,
starting at first base for the American League champions in the 1959
World Series against the New York Giants.

The Giants were heavy favorites. Who would bet against a team that
fielded Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, Felipe Alou, and
pitchers like Johnny Antonelli, the fireballer Toothpick Sam Jones, and
the Franchise, Fidel Castro? If, prior to the series, you'd told George
Herbert Walker Bush the Senators were doomed, he would not have
disagreed with you. After game one he had no reason to think otherwise.

He stood outside the stadium looking for a cab, contemplating his
series recordтАФone game, o for 4, one errorтАФwhen a pale old man in a loud
sports coat spoke to him. "Just be glad you're here," the man said.

The man had watery blue eyes, a sharp face. He was thin enough to look
ill. "I beg your pardon?"

"You're the fellow the Nats called up in September, right? Remember,
even if you never play another inning, at least you were there. You felt the
sun on your back, got dirt on your hands, saw the stands full of people
from down on the field. Not many get even that much."

"The Franchise made me look pretty sick."
 "You have to face him down."

"Easier said than done."

"Don't sayтАФdo."

"Who are you, old man?"