The Year the Yankees Won the Pennant

I was sitting at my Desk in the bowels of the State Department when the intercom crackled and the sepulchral tones of Walter Watts poisoned the morning calm.

"Monroe," he said, in a voice of infinite regret, "I must see you immediately."

This news failed to kindle any fires of enthusiasm within me. My interviews with Watts were usually conducted under a cloud of mutual acrimony. Apparently I did not embody for him everything that was true and beautiful in the Foreign Service, and I certainly didn't consider him the very model of a modern major-domo in statesmanship. He was, however, among the mighty horde that comprised my superiors, and if he wanted to see me, I was not left with much in the way of choice.

Mentally reviewing all possible transgressions committed within the past fortnight, I arose and threaded my way through an armada of desks and dolls to the corridor, and thence proceeded at a brisk pace in a westerly direction until I arrived at the tall green door that bore the legend: Walter Watts, undersecretary of state for Eurasian affairs.

I rapped smartly and entered. It was a large office, crammed with fertile vegetation. Framed by two luxuriant palm trees, Watts appraised me across a vast barren desk. With his bald head and sloping shoulders he looked like a nine-pin fatalistically resigned to being converted into a spare.

"Ah, Monroe," he sighed. "It was good of you to come."

"Yes, sir," I said, sliding into a modified parade rest. "If it's about that cocktail party at the Chilean Embassy, I swear to God I didn't know she was Secretary Hadley's daughter. Naturally, things would never have reached the stage they did if---"

"Stop." He raked a fistful of fingers across his brow. "I don't know anything about that. What's more, I don't want to know anything about it. Sit down."

I sat, mashing a eucalyptus branch and staining my trousers. Undersecretary Watts plucked a pipe from its caddy and carefully ignited a loathsome blend. He was a very cautious man. He acted as though he were under the perpetual surveillance of Candid Camera. "Tell me," he said slowly, "do you know much about baseball?"

In the State Department it never pays to admit ignorance on any subject. "Quite a good bit," I said. "Matter of fact, I used to play second base in high school." (True enough—though they used to call me the Ancient Mariner—the guy who stoppeth one of three.) "Just what do you want to know, Mr. Undersecretary?"

He studied me for a prolonged moment. "Quinn is in Cairo," he murmured. "And young Fletcher left last week for Thailand. I'm afraid that you're the only one left." His face had the helpless appeal of a CARE poster.

"You can count on me, sir."

"Well, we shall see. We shall see." Pulling open a drawer, he removed a thick brown envelope and placed it upon the desk. "I want you to listen very carefully to what I have to say, Monroe. Please make an effort to concentrate."

"I'm all ears, Mr. Watts."

"God knows that's true." He nuzzled his pipe and began to speak in the tranquilizing tones that had lulled two generations of uncivil servants. "Here's the situation—the background, as it were. Two summers ago, in July of 1961, the boys in C.I.A. first began to suspect that a highly secretive project was being undertaken in the vastness of northern Russia. A small Siberian village called Rompsk had been sealed off from the outer world by a complex of barbed wire and turf pillboxes. Naturally, the initial surmise was that the military intended the testing of a nuclear device, most probably of the underground variety. But no one was really sure. Our agents over there did their damnedest to find out what was going on, but to no avail. For two years the clandestine activity at Rompsk remained a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

"Well put, sir," I acknowledged. "I doubt if Churchill himself could have phrased it better."

With teeth grating audibly against his pipestem, Watts pressed on. "Only now is it becoming clear precisely what those rascals are up to over there. I'm sure you'll find this information to be both extraordinary and totally unexpected." He fumbled through the dossier and withdrew two typewritten sheets of paper. "On Tuesday last, Chairman Khrushchev made a long speech before the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The bulk of his speech contained the usual polemics about corn and hog production—nothing new there. However, in one of his extemporaneous asides he made the following puzzling statement: 'Our hogs,' he said, 'are superior to Capitalistic hogs, even as our tractors, and our television sets, and our baseball players.' "

"I don't get it," I said.

"Neither did we," Watts growled. "Neither did we—until yesterday, when the Soviet ambassador delivered to Secretary Rusk a short caustic note which clarified all. Monroe, the Russians have given us a challenge. Incredible as it may seem, they want to play the winner of our World Series."

I mulled this over for a moment. "They do, eh?"

Watts sighed. "It's always such a privilege to watch your intellect at work," he said. "Yes, they do. You see, at Rompsk, behind those barbed-wire barricades, the Russians have been practicing baseball. For twenty-four solid months they have been hitting, running, throwing and sliding. They now feel that they are ready for competition."

"If they're foolish enough to think that," I said, "then let's take them on. We'll clobber them."

"Yes, that was the reaction in the higher echelons. It was felt, too, that the Soviets have a semantic point. 'If you call it a World Series,' they say, 'then prove it—let the contest be between world powers.' I tried to point out to our people the considerable dangers involved in agreeing to such a match—namely, what if they beat us at our own game? We would, of course, be an international laughingstock."

"Not very likely," I snapped, for the moment letting my hot Latin blood gain the upper hand.

"History will be the judge of that," said Watts quietly. "In any case, the Russians have invited us to send an emissary to Rompsk to have a look at their team, and to act as liaison if we agree to invite them to this country. Monroe"—he hesitated, then with an effort girded his loins—"Monroe, as of now, you are our man in Rompsk."

I accepted the honor with a modest blanching of features and a small sickly smile. "I've been in the bull pen a long time, sir," I said. "You just give me the ball and I'll pitch my heart out."

Contrary to my expectations, he did not jot down this gem for use in his memoirs. "Never mind all that," he snarled. "Remember this—for the time being your mission will be strictly hush-hush. We will place heavy reliance upon your recommendations. Try to use your head, and to behave in a manner that will reflect credit upon your family name." Somehow Watts had got it into his head that I was a direct descendant of the fifth U.S. President, a fallacy that I had never sought to correct.

"Don't worry," I soothed him. "Great-Great-Granddad will be proud of me. Instinctive diplomacy is a family asset."

"Oh?" he murmured, scenting a kill. "I would have thought all your assets were liquid."

I departed, helpless with mirth. Watts has a grand sense of humor.

That night I filled my valise to the brim with traveling togs, and then set out to say farewell to my most ardent admirer, a delightful Southern-fried chick yclept Marilyn Plimsall. Marilyn was well set up in more ways than one, for her father was none other than Boondock Plimsall, Dallas oilman and international connoisseur of cash. She and I had been seeing quite a bit of each other of late. I was well satisfied with the arrangement, for there seemed little danger of matrimonial entrapment. Here again, my name was a distinct aid: no gal, I reasoned, would hastily court the moniker of Marilyn Monroe.

She met me at her Georgetown portal, gowned in a muumuu and bearing twin libations of Courvoisier. "When do you leave?" she asked, after bestowing a filibustering kiss.

"At dawn," I replied, sinking wearily to the couch.

"Can you—can you tell me about it?" Her hair was a golden waterfall; tiny lines of care furrowed her pristine brow. I took her hand.

"Top Secret," I said cryptically. "You'll read about it someday, perhaps. If all goes well."

"But you will come back?"

I laughed, briefly. "Some do. Some don't." Gazing into her martini eyes, I shrugged philosophically. "That's the way it is—to catch the big ones you've got to use bait."

"Oh, Dick! I'm worried! Please don't take any chances."

"Life is a lottery."

"Then let's make tonight a night to remember." I read the roll call in her eyes and did not abstain.

• • •

As my jet sprang caterwauling through the next dawn's early light, I reflected briefly upon the task that lay before me. Lord knows, it seemed uncomplicated enough—I merely had to ascertain whether or not the Russkie team was lousy enough for us to risk playing them. Clearly, for the nonce I could do no more than rest myself for the trials of an uncertain future. With this bit of rationalization, I veiled my eyes and snoozed as we arced above the snowy parapets of the world, awakening long enough to pluck ambrosial highballs from the chaste grasp of a goddess in airline mufti, then drifting again back into sleep (to dream, of course, of fly-by-night affairs).

Hours later, as we roller-coasted down a cloud bank into a drab Moscow morn, I lurched into a state of modified wakefulness, two-blocked my tie, and ran an electric razor around the ragged edges of my chin. As the plane touched down and rolled to a stop I wondered who, if anyone, would be at the airport to greet (continued on page 122)Yankees(continued from page 78) me. Halfway between my seat and the ramp I found out.

A girl came striding down the aisle toward me, a bit of un-Cominform pastry flanked by two burly ruffians. She halted and gave me a searching look. "You are Monroe of the Foreign Service?" (It has a nice ring, don't you think?)

"The same," I said. "My friends call me Dick."

"I am Sonya Kabalevskaya Kunyaeva," she said, or words to that effect. "I have been assigned as your interpreter. Welcome to Russia. You will take no photographs. You will follow me."

One of the Moscow mules hefted my luggage and we dismounted from the 707 and headed toward a smaller, svelter jet. Three officious gentlemen in shiny serge stood glaring at me with an urge-to-purge malevolence. Sonya spoke to them and they glumly stepped aside, allowing us to board the other plane.

"The flight to Rompsk is of four hours' duration," she said, lashing her hips down with a safety belt. "In the meantime, I will be happy to answer your questions."

I had plenty of questions, all of them concerning Sonya Kabalevskaya Kunyaeva. She was a petite Ninotchka doll, swaddled in a stiff gray sackcloth that classified her secrets to a depressing degree. But not even Communism could defeminize that Christmas Eve face. Her lips were like a caviar hors d'oeuvre, her hair dark as a Tchaikovsky coda, and in her Volga eyes I saw a does-she-or-doesn't-she look that gave me sweet intimations of immorality. She liquefied my knees with one cobweb flick of her lashes.

"Tell me," I said, "what is there to do in Rompsk, when the sun has set and it is time to forget the worries of the day?"

"In Rompsk," she replied calmly, "one watches instructional baseball films, attends hot-stove cells to discuss strategy, and reads training manuals."

"It sounds like one gay mad whirl."

"The project was not designed for pleasure," she said, crisp as a ten-ruble note. "Perhaps that is why things have gone so well. Originally, you see, the learning of the baseball game was set forth in a Five Year Plan—it was thought it would take at least that long. But by diligence and sacrifice we have produced the best team in the world after only two years. It is now no longer necessary to prepare."

"Just where did you find the players?" I asked. "Are they all Cuban exports?"

"Ours is a vast land," she said, "and there is obviously no shortage of athletes. It was not difficult to recruit a squad."

"Maybe not. But I'll be plenty surprised if they can dig the game after such a short time."

She smiled. "At Rompsk," she said, "there are many surprises."

Sonya was right. I was astounded by their setup.

We landed in a landscape of flat forbidding browns and grays, and were met by a belching Black Maria of a limousine. We boarded it and were spirited through a shabby frontier town and betwixt the barbed sentried gates of which Watts had spoken. Inside, we passed a cluster of low wooden barracks. The September air was decidedly nippy.

"Kind of bracing for baseball, isn't it?" I remarked. "I don't quite see how they can practice all year round."

"Look there," she said, and pointed. Ahead I saw two vast mounds rising from the ground, twin ice-cream scoops of polished aluminum set close together like some Freudian dream. "I'll be damned," I said. "You've got all-weather stadiums."

"Playing fields, not stadiums," she amended. "There are no spectators here. The one on the right houses our farm club. To the left—there is our major league."

We parked by the latter obese structure and entered a small rounded door. Inside I halted, engulfed by a flood of sensation. The enclosed arena was brilliantly lighted; neon blazed from above upon emerald grass and cavorting white-uniformed figures. Sounds reverberated from the arching walls in a cacophony at once strange and familiar: hoarse shouts, ice-cracking reports of ball on bat, plopping fusillades of mitted drives. There must have been close to fifty players, all going at it hammer and sickle.

Sonya touched my arm. "Now do you doubt?" she asked.

"It looks like the real McCoy," I admitted. "With a couple of exceptions." I was staring at a flanneled madonna of shot-put girth who was prancing through infield drill.

"She plays the third base," Sonya explained. "Here there is equal opportunity. Come, you must meet the manager, Comrade Belgrade."

We approached a wizened pappy type who was busily belting fungos to a cell block of left fielders. His head was as wrinkled as a stewed apple, hairless save for the two brows that were like the pale curls of dust that congregate beneath a bed. (My bed, anyway.) He extended a claw in greeting. "Glad to see you, old man," he said.

"You speak English," I observed shrewdly.

"Oh, yes. Learned the game in the States, you know. Harvard, '27. I'm sure you want to see the lads in action. Have a seat and we'll give you an exhibition match." So saying, he mouthed a silver whistle and blew three tremendous blasts. Instantly the players stopped their activity and padded off the field into two separate groups. Another whistle blast, and nine men took the field (eight, really, plus the female third-sacker). Sonya and I took seats on a bench beside Belgrade and watched as the contest began.

Now, a fair portion of my youth had been spent soaking up Vitamin D in the bleachers of Fenway Park and, like most Americans, I felt I had, at the very least, a masterful understanding of the game. There's an embryonic Casey Stengel in us all. So as the Russkie players had their innings, I had every confidence that I was gaining an accurate picture of their ability. They were clearly well-coordinated athletes, and they played a steady competent brand of ball. They executed all the plays and ran and slid and threw with ballet grace.

They were good, no mistake about it. But something was missing.

It was almost undefinable. But it seemed to me that their marvelous precision was somehow mechanical. They lacked the split-second zestful instincts of the player who has been going at it from the age of six on. By the end of the fifth inning I was quite sure that even our Washington club could take them.

Sonya was watching me with a den-mother's pride. She leaned close and whispered, "What will you tell your State Department?"

I did not answer. I had just noticed a huge Neanderthal figure hunched on the players' bench on the far side of the diamond. "Who's that big ape over there?" I asked. "Why isn't he playing?"

"That is Pavlov." She studied her ankles. "He is ... he is not feeling well. Is that not so, Comrade Belgrade?"

"Sore arm," Belgrade said quickly. "Good Lord, don't pay any attention to him. He's really monstrously poor."

I was not so sure. He made Moose Skowron look like a choirboy. But I turned again to the game and began to compose in my mind the message I would soon be sending to Watts.

I wrote it out that night in the drafty barrack cubicle they had allotted me, doing my best not to be too explicit. Red play sure-fire turkey, I penned. Strongly recommend stateside tryout.

For two days there was no answer. Then Watts replied in a rather windy cable of his own. The United States Government had officially accepted the Soviet challenge. A team of twenty-five players, together with requisite officials, coaches, et al., were invited to America forthwith, to await the outcome of our own World Series. The Russian team was to play the winner in a two-out-of-three series. I was to remain with the Russians in my capacity as liaison.

All of this was welcome news to me. Rompsk was not exactly the Place Pigalle. I sped to Sonya's well-camouflaged side and showed her the message; she smiled, and passed the word on to the appropriate local commissars. The wheels were beginning to turn. And so were some of my own.

"Look, Sonya," I said, "I know it's against the rules. God knows, you've made it clear it's against the rules. But" —I gave her my I'm-all-alone-and-seven-thousand-miles-from-home look—"I was wondering if maybe you couldn't possibly kind of slip up to my lodgings for a short vodka snort. To celebrate, and all."

"Well ... all right," she said. "But just this once."

In my drab cell I tendered her a glass and proposed a toast. "To the improvement of relations," I said. "I have always found them to be absolutely essential."

She sipped somberly. "What is a surefire turkey?"

"A species of game," I replied nimbly. "Baseball, for example. Actually, it's a great compliment."

"Ah." She prowled the room, making lovely flanking movements. "What is the name of the team that we will meet?"

"The last I heard the Yankees were leading by fourteen games. The best guess is that they'll meet Milwaukee in the Series. Then, of course, you people will play the winner."

"Who will that be?"

"Well, you see, nobody knows yet. But the smart money is always on the Yanks."

She shook her murky mane. "Yanks and money—how childish you all are. When will you learn that our system is best?"

"I'd like to embrace your system," I said, edging toward her. "If you'd just give me half a chance."

"Nyet!" Her mouth was a croquet wicket of displeasure. "Thank you for the vodka. I must go."

I threw my hands above my head. "Why am I so repulsive to you?"

"You just aren't my type," she said thoughtfully. "For one thing, you are too happy. I like men who are sad and melancholy. Men who are Russian."

She should have seen me after she left. I was Russian right down to my marrow.

• • •

On the third day of October a huge TU-4 snarled out of the Western sky and shoehorned into the Rompsk aerodrome. I hailed its appearance with happy bleats of joy. The good Spartan life had not had a precisely narcotic effect upon me—you can watch baseball practice for only so long. Abstinence had made my heart grow fonder for the small soft pleasures of home. Like, for example, Marilyn.

I was a bit taken aback to see the lumbering figure of Pavlov among our boarding party. "How about that guy?" I asked Sonya. "I thought he was supposed to be a loser."

"Oh, he tries so hard," she said. "Comrade Belgrade is going to give him another chance. Now, why don't you stop worrying and relax? It will be a long flight."

It was all of that, especially in view of the fact that the Commie craft bore no portable potables. Sad to relate, I was unable to highball it home.

For me, our arrival in New York was a little like awakening from a monkish slumber and finding that I had sleepwalked my way onto the podium of the Democratic National Convention. I was in no manner prepared for the trumpet blasts of publicity that hailed the advent of the Russian squad. They and I trundled down the ramp into a seething maelstrom of reporters and lensmen, TV jockeys and frock-coated UN emissaries. Mid the ghostly pulse of flashbulbs, I spotted Watts clawing his way toward me, pursued by a brace of baying scribes. He grabbed my arm and hauled me beneath the obscurity of a wing.

"Evening, sir," I shouted in his shell-like ear. "You needn't have gone to all this bother."

"It's mushroomed!" he replied hoarsely. "By heaven, I've never seen anything like it. Captured the imagination of the world. Peiping has even sent observers. Nothing like it since K unshod himself in the General Assembly." Tiny droplets irrigated his lowering brow. "Listen, Monroe, we've got to win this one. It's a bloody goldfish bowl. For your sake and mine they better be pretty damn horrible."

"No sweat," I said, mopping my own forehead With a large handkerchief. "How's the Series going?"

"The Series? I don't know. The Yankees took the first two. It's in Milwaukee now. Listen." He impaled my arm with his fingers. "Tell them they can work out in the Stadium the next few days. Ed Sullivan wants them for Sunday. My God, do you realize they're going to carry these games on the Voice of America?"

"Be calm," I counseled, sagging against a wheel. I pondered the situation for a moment. "Sir, I wonder if you would care to join me for—"

"A drink? A most splendid suggestion." In the crucible of international diplomacy, Undersecretary Watts had come of age.

As soon as I reached my hotel I put through a call to Washington, or, more precisely, to the chicquest body politic therein. "Marilyn?" I said. "Your Richard is back."

"I know," she purred. "I saw it all on TV. Who was that bouncy comrade you followed out the door?"

"A mere steppe child, love."

"With her sugar daddy."

"No, I've been faithful." This with the sad resignation of truth. "Listen, sweetie, how about joining me in my hour of need? I crave moral support."

"Ha! Well, don't worry. Daddy is flying up there from Dallas tomorrow and he promised to stop and pick me up. He's quite a sportsman, you know—wouldn't miss this for the world." She paused. "We are going to win, aren't we?"

"If we don't," I sighed, "there's a promising career ahead of me in the shoeshine game."

I passed the next few days in a state of moderately controlled panic while we awaited the outcome of the games in Milwaukee. Afternoons I took Marilyn and her father, Boondock Plimsall, to Yankee Stadium, where we sat in pale October sunlight watching the Russians work out. There I introduced them to Sonya and Comrade Belgrade. As we turned to leave, the Russian girl put her hand on my arm and, her voice lowered, said, "Tell me quickly, who is that man over there? The short one with the tragic eyes."

"That's Walter Watts," I said. "Why?"

"Ah, what a face!" she murmured. "What superb misery ..."

Mr. Plimsall seemed to enjoy himself enormously at the practice sessions. He was a large rotund man with oil derricks hand-painted upon his silk ties. "Look at 'em!" he would direct us gleefully. "The nasty little nit-pickers. Rotten Commie bushers. Why, we'll skin 'em alive!"

On the second afternoon as we sat watching, I was startled to see Pavlov emerge from the dugout and shuffle out to the pitcher's warm-up mound. A heavily padded catcher squatted to receive him. "Get a load of this," Plimsall chortled. "A Stone Age hood if I ever saw one." Pavlov uncoiled his left arm lazily, and then brought it past his head in an accelerating whiplash motion. The ball banged like a firecracker in the catcher's glove.

"Seems to have a bit of speed there," Plimsall remarked.

Pavlov threw again. I don't think any of us really saw the ball—just a microscopic confetti twinkle of white. The catcher's anguished grunt was clearly audible above the impact of horsehide on leather.

Plimsall kneaded his suddenly slack jaw. "Well," he said at last, "I suppose we can always pray for rain."

By this time Watts was at my side, frothing merrily at the mouth. "What about him?" he bellowed. "You never mentioned him!"

"I think he pitches batting practice," I said weakly. But it was no good. Pavlov was obviously an authentic titan, a Michelangelo in the chuckers' trade. We could but contemplate him with awe.

That night with Marilyn I was so nervous I almost proposed. Funny how tension affects a man.

• • •

The Yanks took two straight from the Braves on their home field and, having stashed away that series, four games to nought, winged back to Gotham, lusting for further profit with honor in their own country. The first game of what the News termed the Summit Series was played on a Friday afternoon beneath immaculate wind-dusted skies.

It was, of course, a sellout. Seventy thousand fans glutted the stands, and the press boxes were almost as crowded as a press-club bar. "The eyes of the world are upon us," Watts said, with his gift for the inventive phrase, and it looked as though he were right. The happy mediums of mass communication all were there, typewriters cocked, cameras poised, ready to flash the outcome to an expectant globe.

I sat far back in the grandstand with Marilyn. We both cheered as the Yankees took the field. Unfortunately, it was the last cause for celebration that afternoon. P. Pavlov, pitcher, saw to that.

The outcome was never in doubt. In the fifth Mantle beat out a bunt and in the seventh Richardson hit a chip shot over the shortstop's head. That was the sum and substance of the New York attack. Pavlov's principle was not especially complicated—he just reared back and fired the ball with incredible speed. Against his howitzer heaves even a ticked foul became something of a moral victory.

The Russians, for their part, were not particularly aggressive toward Jim Coates at the plate. But what they did was sufficient. The buxom lady third-sacker whaled a slider into the right-field bleachers in the first, and back-to-back doubles in the ninth brought in an insurance tally. Then, as the great crowd pleaded for a last-ditch rally, Pavlov struck out the side with nine strokes of lightning.

That night Watts summoned me to his hotel room. He was in a rather disagreeable mood. "Monroe," he snarled, thrusting a stack of papers under my nose, "for the record, I want you to know that I hold you personally responsible for what's happening to your country."

I glanced at the headlines, Rompsk reds romp 2–0, they cried, with just a touch of hysteria. Left-winger vetoes Yanks. K Hails Soviet supremacy.

"There's still hope," I said. "I've been in touch with Comrade Belgrade, and he says that Pavlov definitely will not pitch tomorrow."

"Maybe not," Watts said grimly. "But he sure as hell will be back for the third game. If there's any need to play it."

There was. That next day Manager Houk sent Whitey Ford into the breach and the antique southpaw responded with a nifty four-hit shutout. The Yanks devoured a succession of mediocre Russkie hurlers and won going away, to the catchy tune of 12–0. But Free World elation was dampened considerably by Belgrade's postgame pronouncement. "Tomorrow," he said through an iron curtain of cigar smoke, "tomorrow it will be Pavlov's day."

Shortly thereafter Watts was swinging from my lapels. "Do something," he hissed. "You got us into this mess. Now you can, by God, get us out. And I don't care how."

Oh, it was easy enough to say. But what could I do? Adrift in thought, I hardly noticed as Sonya oozed between us. "Come, Walter," she crooned, "it has been a hard day for you. You must rest."

"All right," he grunted. Arm in arm they shuffled for the exit, she regarding his mournful face with an almost worshipful expression. But I had no time to reflect upon the quixotic quality of quail—something had to be done, and done fast.

The solution came to me that night at dinner. Like all the great ideas of Western man, it was awesome in its simplicity.

Plimsall père, his daughter and I were dining together, indulging in the light-hearted banter that is common along death row. "Say what you will about their political philosophy," Plimsall observed, as he gnashed his way through a chunk of French bread, "you got to admit those fellows play a damn good brand of ball."

"I admit it," I said.

"As a matter of fact," he added, "it may be a wee bit unpatriotic of me to say so, but I wouldn't mind having a little old ball club like that for my very own. No sir, I surely wouldn't."

There it was! In an instant the great plan crystallized in my brain, and I was clutching his arm in excitement. "Do you mean that?" I cried.

"I never say anything I don't mean. What's wrong with you, anyway?" Both he and Marilyn were staring at me with unalloyed bewilderment.

"Expansion!" I whispered. "Expansion. And there isn't a moment to lose."

In all modesty, I believe I can say that those next few hectic hours comprise one of the more glorious chapters in the annals of the Foreign Service. And Walter Watts, I will admit, was nothing short of magnificent when his country called.

I phoned him as soon as we had left the restaurant. "Mr. Undersecretary," I said, "can you get hold of Sonya?"

"I can," he replied, somewhat sheepishly. "Why?"

"I'm calling from Plimsall's suite in the Plaza," I explained. "Sir, we have a plan. Do you think you can persuade Sonya to come over here with Pavlov and as many of the other first-stringers as she can muster?"

"Wait a minute." I heard muffled conversation, and then Watts came back on. "She says it will be dangerous. But she says that for me—well, she says she'll try. What's your game, Monroe?"

"Defection," I said, and cradled the phone.

A half-hour later Watts, Sonya and nine husky Russkies were darkening our door. "You understand it was not easy," Sonya said nervously. "I told the security guards it was for more publicity. We were not followed. What is it you want?"

"I want you to translate for Mr. Plimsall. He has a proposition which may interest your team."

Plimsall was seated on a couch. He squinted toward the ceiling and began to speak softly. "Boys and girls," he said, "baseball is a pretty big game here in the old U. S. of A. We take it serious. Fellow like Mantle, he gets maybe eighty thousand a year. Just for whackin' a ball around. That's a mess of rubles, gang. A bit more than you presently make, I'll wager."

Sonya translated. The Russians stirred and regarded him with interest.

"Now, it seems to me that you might want to take advantage of the opportunities to be found in our fair land. For a long time I've been hankerin' after my own club. Down Dallas, Texas, way." He lidded his eyes dreamily. "Fine country down there. The thing is, I'd be right pleased if you'd sign up to play for me. We could call ourselves the Gushers. I always thought that was a pretty name. Way I see it, you and me, we need each other. What do you say? Will you help make an old man's dream come true?"

Sonya hesitated. You could almost hear the dogma fight in her mind. But again she translated his words. Immediately a lively conversation broke out among the athletes. Pavlov was obviously their leader; they addressed their guttural remarks to him, flapping their hands for emphasis. He listened sedately for a moment, then barked an order. In the sudden silence he heaved himself to a window; gazing out at the diamonded night, he spoke.

"He wants to know if Dallas, Texas, is anything like Rompsk," said Sonya.

"Not a bit!" Plimsall cried. "You tell him it's paradise. Not a frostbit tootsie in sight."

At this news a gargantuan smile cleaved Pavlov's face, and the other Russians began to babble happily. The decision had clearly been made. As Marilyn phoned for champagne, Sonya plastered herself against Undersecretary Watts. "Do you know what this means, Wally?" she whispered. "I can stay, too. Now nothing can come between us."

Watts colored and struggled to detach himself. "It means we've got to move, and move fast," he snapped. He glanced at me. "Frick, Giles, Cronin—they're all in town, aren't they?"

"Yes, sir. All the club owners, too."

"Good." He rubbed his hands together, thinking. "We'll have to get in touch with them all, Monroe. Tonight. Ask them up here. Rendezvous with destiny, that sort of thing." He seemed a little tipsy with excitement, but I couldn't much blame him. After all, a moment like that happens only once or twice in a man's career.

The historic meeting that took place at midnight was brief but charged with tension. All the baseball potentates were there, including Commissioner Flick and Presidents Cronin and Giles. They and the assembled club owners listened with taut faces as Watts explained the situation. "I appeal to your patriotism," he concluded. "Let us move forward into the future, unafraid, clasping a newborn Dallas team to our bosom—the proud, triumphant bosom of America. Gentlemen"—his voice was the barest whisper—"gentlemen, the decision is yours."

No more needed to be said. The gathered officials voted on the spot to expand the American League to eleven teams. Within the hour an old man's dream had become reality—the Dallas Gushers were officially in business. Needless to say, they could not meet the Yanks in open competition until the following year.

The news of the defection of the Rompsk nine was, predictably, an immediate international sensation, the implications of which were not lost to the uncommitted nations of the world. From the Russian embassy and from Moscow itself a great howl of protest was raised—but to no avail. The propaganda coup had left them with faces as crimson as their ideology.

Making the best of a nasty situation, the Soviets sent their second-stringers against the New York club in the final game, where they were promptly dispatched with a lovely brutal precision. The Yankees were still undisputed champions of the world.

• • •

Two days later Watts summoned me to his office, where he hailed my arrival with a wintry smile. For the first time in my life I had the impression that my presence was almost endurable for him. "Monroe," he said, "I want you to be the first to know. Sonya and I—well"—he fumbled for the right words—"we're going to be teammates, my boy. In the great game of matrimony."

I started to mint a mot about politics making strange bedfellows, but innate modesty stilled my tongue. "That's great, Mr. Undersecretary," I said.

"I don't want you to think I don't appreciate all you've done," he added with an expansive wave of his hand. "Tell you what—take the rest of the day off. And on top of that, I give you my solemn word that you positively will not be fired at any time during the next six weeks."

I don't care what anybody says—Watts has a heart as big as all outdoors.

I rushed to phone the glad news to Marilyn. "Your Richard has the day off," I chortled. "You are cordially invited to spend same with me. Dress is optional."

"Oh, Dick, I can't," she replied. "I don't know how to tell you this, but—you see, I've found someone else. Someone wonderful. Someone---"

"Who?"

"Peter," she said. "Peter Pavlov."

The world is riddled with disloyalty.

But I am not too disheartened. My attention has been caught of late by a sumptuous frail in the Bureau of the Budget, the sum of whose parts makes a truly extraordinary figure. I plan to give her a seasonal pass as soon as possible. That's one thing I've learned about our National Pastime—you might call it my Monroe doctrine: in scoring, it's not the hits and runs that count, it's the eros.