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The Southpaw
 About the Book
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Preview
Chapter 1
First off I must tell you something about myself, Henry Wiggen, and where I was born and my folks.
Probably you never been to Perkinsville. How you get there you get an Albany train out of Grand Central Station. About halfway to Albany the conductor comes down the isle mumbling "Perkinsville." Then the train slows and you got to be quick because most of them don´t exactly stop at Perkinsville. They just slow to a creep, and if you´re an old man or woman or if you got a broke leg or something of the sort I don´t know how you get off. Generally there will be no trouble. You just throw your bags clear and you swing down off on the cement platform and you fall away the way the train is going, and then you go back for your bags. Now you are in Perkinsville.
The last time I come by train through Perkinsville it was a rainy night and the platform was slick and I damn near skidded when I hit the cement. You have saw an outfielder start after a fly ball on wet grass and how he skids before his spikes take hold. That was how I skidded on the wet platform. But nothing come of it. It was midnight or after, and it was quiet on the square, and I cut across past the Embassy Theater and down past Borelli´s barber shop where I remember a long time ago they had a big picture of Sad Sam Yale hanging over the coat-hooks. But they have since took down the picture of Sam and put up 1 of me. Now my picture is took down, too, and the space is bare.
Next to Borelli´s is Fred Levine´s cigar store where you can get most any magazine, in particular magazines like "The Baseball Digest" and "Ace Diamond Tales" and such newspapers as "The Sporting News" and 1,000 other things. Then after Fred Levine´s is Mugs O´Brien´s gymnasium, just opposite the statue of Horace Cleves, and on the corner is the Perkinsville Pharmacy.
The way you get out home from Perkinsville is a question. If you own a car like me (a 50 Moors Special) or any other car for all of that, you just drive out the hard-top road 2.7 miles from the square to where you will see a sign saying "Observatory" with an arrow pointing west. This Observatory (star-gazing) is exactly 1 mile west of the highway. It has a big telescope, 1 of the biggest. The Government wanted to use the Observatory during the war, but Aaron turned them down. Aaron rules the whole works under orders from his group of scientists and it can be used only to look at the stars and moon and such. I have saw Mars and Saturn and all the rest through it, and they all look the same except Saturn. I have also saw the moon. Sometimes there will be a squad of professors come down to look at some particular situation in the sky.
Aaron Webster kills me. I was very young when the argument with the Government took place, but I remember there was a good deal of discussion in the papers, not only in Perkinsville but everywhere, Aaron holding fast and finally winning out, and you have got to admire him for that. He is over 80 years old, his face all wrinkled up but otherwise in excellent shape, a gangly man, built like Carl Hubbell, though lighter of course, weighing about 140, mostly bone. If you ever stop at the Observatory he will come right up to you, squinting and looking at you, and tell you his name and pop right out with questions and answers, what do you think of this and that and your politics. It used to be I never liked him much. But you got to get to know him and he will grow on you.
It is partly on account of Aaron that I am lefthanded in the first place. Pop wanted me to be righthanded. Not that Pop had anything against lefthanders because he himself is lefthanded and pitched for a long time for the Perkinsville Scarlets. But Pop wanted me to be righthanded because when you come to think of it a lefthanded baseball player has got 2 strikes on him from the beginning. First off, as everybody knows, a lefthander has got only 5 positions he can play. He can pitch or play first base or 1 of the outfield spots. But he can´t be a catcher or a second baseman or a third baseman or a shortstop, not usually. If you are righthanded you can play anywhere. Then too, even a lefthanded pitcher is considered a sort of a risky proposition because many of them are wild and most hitters are righthanded, and a lefthanded pitcher is supposed to be at a disadvantage against a righthanded batter. So Pop wanted me to start off right in life, and he done what he thought was best at the time, and nobody blamed him.
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