Donald (Skip) Hays Hits for the Cycle In The Dixie Association

Charles Chappell

i n a recent issue of Aethlon Robert Hamblin ingeniously employs a pitching

metaphor as a means of precisely interpreting the dazzling array of experi­ ments in narration characteristic of the fiction ofW. P. Kinsella, author of Shoeless Joe, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, and sundry hardball short stories. Hamblin clearly admires Kinsella's array of literary pitches, such as the author's "curve ball, that spin of distortion that fiction puts upon straight fact" (4). But Hamblin reserves his most lavish critical praise for Kinsella's adroit use of a figurative forkball (also called a split-fingered ), citing an episode from the story "How I got My Nickname" in which "a detail that appears on the surface to be a fact (fastball) turns on closer inspection to be a fiction (curve)—in other words, a split-fingered fastball" (9). Hamblin's trenchant analysis of Kinsella's primary talents as a writer—the achievements of "indirection, subtlety, deception, and suspense" (1)—links these talents with analagous skills displayed in ballparks around the U. S. A. by baseball's most accomplished pitchers. By the end of his article, Rapid Robert Hamblin has presented a cogent argument for naming Kinsella the Cy Young Award winner of literary mound aces. Hamblin's concept of an author as a pitcher also triggers a question in the cluttered brain cells of a devoted fan of baseball narratives. If Kinsella is the dominating authorial hurler of his genre and era, what writer is worthy of grabbing a bat and facing this forkball artist? Could Bernard (Buntin' Bemie) Malamud borrow Roy Hobbs's magic bat"Wonderboy" and stand a chance at the plate against wily W. P.? How about Fast Philip Roth, suiting up with some of his mistreated and scatter-hitting Ruppert Mundys from The Great American 50 Aethlon XI:2 / Spring 1994

Novel? Must we journey all the way back to "Earnest" Ernie L. Thayer in the preceding century and allow him to atone for Casey's historic failure by his bravely stepping in to face Kinsella's assorted arm speeds and junk balls? A scouting expedition through recent baseball literature eventually leads to the discovery of one Donald (Skip) Hays, novelist, editor, and professor of creative writing at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, as the literary batter most capable of hypothetically getting his share of hits against the superior pitching of Kinsella.1 In his one rowdy and invigorating baseball novel, The Dixie Association, Hays manages to pull off a daring feat highly unusual in any literary genre: he includes within one set of book covers four interrelated but distinct narratives, or separate dimensions of meaning. Read­ ers of the novel can comprehend the initial level of meaning and be rewarded with intellectually and emotionally satisfying reading experiences. But if such readers become aware that a second level of significance exists, then a third, and then a fourth, they will be more bountifully rewarded and perhaps will more fully appreciate Hays's signal achievement in this his first published book. Slugging Skip Hays, then, pulls off in The Dixie Association that feat rare both in the art of playing actual baseball and in the act of creating a work of baseball literature: he hits for the cycle, with his symbolic , , , and home representing the four separate but interrelated narrative levels found in the novel. Because of Hays's demonstrated prowess at the authorial home plate, the prospect of his against Kinsella looms as the literary hitting-pitching duel of the decade.2 SINGLE In the inaugural issue of Aethlon (then entitled Arete), critic Michael Oriard defines a "good sports novel" as one which fulfills three criteria: the book is "deeply about the sport itself"; the players of the sport "are particular kinds of people whose necessary concerns and activities touch their culture in impor­ tant ways"; and the book "exploits the potential inherent" in its specific sport (14). On its primary level, as a ringing line-drive two-hop single to the , The Dixie Association is to its essential core a novel about baseball, a book that irrefutably fulfills the first and third of Oriard's criteria. The Dixie Association recounts the adventures during one full season of the Arkansas Reds, a Class AA team playing out of Little Rock. A pulsating pennant race that is decided in the final of the concluding game of the year provides momentum for the novel's plot and furnishes hours of pleasurable suspense for readers. Donald Hays has written about the game played between the foul lines as only a veteran hardball player credibly could. A native of the Arkansas border country near Van Buren, Hays played baseball during the summer months as he grew up and was a member of his college's varsity squad.3 After he had decided to try tobecome a novelist, Hays lived near the Ozark Mountains town of Mountainburg and played on a local amateur team made Chappell / Donald (Skip) Hayes 51 up of "truck drivers, insurance salesmen, old hippies, and just about every kind of character you can imagine," including "a shortstop who had served two terms in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary— The only thing that all of us had in common was that we liked to play baseball and were willing to go almost anywhere to do that" (Chappell and Crowder 60). This colorful group of proletarians and misfits eventually provided Hays with the inspiration and the core material for his first novel: "I looked around for a while for material for another novel, and suddenly realized, 'Why, you dummy! You've been playing on a baseball team full of wonderful characters, and somehow or the other this is the material for your novel. You got to just find a way to use that'" (59-60). Hays soon decided that "the strongest and best voice I could use" (60) as narrator for the novel would be one of the ballplayers who becomes intimately involved in the on-field strategy and tension of each game and in the drama of the pennant race, so the author invented Hog Durham, modeling him in part on the ex-convict teammate from Oklahoma.I * 4 Durham is released early from a sentence for armed robbery so that he can join the Arkansas Reds, play first base, and bat in the clean-up slot. As chief storyteller, Hog Durham fills this colorful novel with bawdy witticisms, irreverent invective, and probing self­ analysis. But author Hays manages to the single of his cycle with Hog by using this narrator as the repository and chief communicator of an insider's wealth of baseball knowledge. Hog Durham describes several episodes in which his keen powers of observation allow him to outsmart a pitcher. For example, during a pivoted game with the league opponent Selma Americans, Durham spots a revealing tendency telegraphed by the opposing pitcher, and he reaps the benefits:

I kept studying Shelton and I saw that whenever he needed an out , he'd either cut the ball or scuff it. That was the pitch he used on both Cantwell and me. It's easy enough to throw. You just hold the ball in your hand with the cut or scuffed side opposite to the way you want it to break. Then you throw it like a half-assed fastball and it'll break anywhere from four to eight inches. It's hard as hell to hit because you can't pick up the spin on it the way you can with a curve or . I figured the smart thing for me to do would be to lay off that pitch until I had two strikes on me. That worked when I led off the fifth. Shelton threw me one that jumped in at me and I took it for a strike, but then he fed me a regular curve, just off the outside comer but up a little, and I stuck it in the gap in right-center. The ball took a righteous hop off the fence and I rolled into third, winded and proud. (178-179) 52 Aethlon XI:2 / Spring 1994

Later in the same game Hog lures Shelton and Talmadge, the opposing battery, into a costly miscalculation:

When I got back into the box, I crowded the plate more than I usually do and leaned forward just enough to make Talmadge think I was concentrating on the outside comer. They fell for it. Shelton threw me a pitch almost identical to the one he'd started me off with. I stepped in the bucket, saw the pitch start to break, felt my power travel from legs to hips to shoulders to hands, and head down, eyes wide, saw the perfect instant, hickory on horsehide, and heard the sharp, clear crack It was out of the park, about thirty feet or so to the fair side of the left-field pole, before I left the box. (182)

Veteran ballplayer Skip Hays provides veteran ballplayer Hog Durham with insights about fielding to complement the first baseman's wisdom about hitting. Noting that a "medium hop" is the "toughest kind" of ball to field consistently, Hog points out that "the medium hops will handcuff you if you don't keep your head down, make a quick adjustment with your hands, and keep your body from flinching" (159). Hog's analysis of the difficulties of hitting an expertly pitched (334, 383,384) or a classic spitter (63, 180, 363) demonstrates a baseball afficionado's insight into the mentally gruelling core of the game itself: the battle of minds between the pitcher and the batter. Hog's summary of his crafty retaliation for a sleazy violation of baseball etiquette provides a final example of hardball as viewed from the playing field itself. During the season's concluding , once more against arch-rival Selma, Joe Talmadge of the Americans purposely spikes Reds ace junkballer Emesto Guerrero on the "right calf, tendon, and heel," drawing copious "blood on the back of his leg" and ending his rotation on the pitcher's mound (372). Durham has to be restrained from punching out Talmadge, but early in the final game of the series Hog succeeds in gaining revenge for the Reds:

They pulled the suicide squeeze and got the run. Talmadge bunted it hard down the first-base line. By the time I picked it up, Bilbo was across the plate and Talmadge was bearing down on me. I would've just had time to step out of the base path and throw to Acribar covering first. But I didn't do that. I braced myself, squatted, came up underTalmadge, tagged him hard on the nuts, and flipped him up over my shoulders.. . . I walked over to him, looked down, and said, "Nice lick, Big Time." (381)

Every page of The Dixie Association narrates thought, speech, and action related Chappell / Donald (Skip) Hayes 53 directly or tangentially to the game of baseball, and readers in search of Oriard's "good sports novel" need look no further than this volume if they are primarily interested in immersing themselves in a narrative that exploits, in the positive definition of that term, the potential intellectual and emotional pleasures of vicarious participation in numerous exciting baseball contests and in a bitterly fought pennant race. Some fans of baseball fiction will be content, then, with allowing Hays to have a day of going one for four, as Skip's single provides sufficient sporting satisfaction. But other readers will be on the alert for the two-bagger. DOUBLE The Dixie Association exists as a baseball novel that is also interwoven with statements and episodes of political and social commentary. In answer to the question "Do you think of yourself as a political novelist?" Hays once replied, "Well, yes, I guess so. But what I'm really interested in are character and language. And the characters who interest me most tend to be outsiders, people who will not or cannot conform—at least, not in the usual sense— I'm interested in characters who have set—or are trying to set—themselves free from the politics of conformity" (Chappell and Crowder 68). The primary targets of the social satire in The Dixie Association are the people and institutions that exist primarily to suppress the forms of expression and action of other people who refuse to conform to rigid rules of conduct. Hog Durham is the novel's most blatant violator of the "politics of conformity," with his besmirched resume listing legally documented accom­ plishments as cattle rustler, armed robber, and thief. But the Arkansas Reds as a team constitute an all-star assemblage of ethnically diverse rebels, miscre­ ants, and old-fashioned rounders. As Hog explains at one p o in t,b a se b a ll is the misfit's game'" (306). Playing for the Reds are, among others, Jeremiah Eversole, a 46-year-old spitballer who is half-San Bias Indian from Panama, half-WASP, and 100 per cent contemptuous observer of mainstream American society; Susan Pankhurst, the first woman to play men's professional baseball; several young Black prospects; a deaf Cajun; two Cuban exiles; two Cuban followers of Castro; a Jew; a Cherokee; and Genghis Mohammed, Junior, about whose refusal to eat pork Durham q u e stio n s, .. how can a man let religion stand between him and barbecued spareribs?"' (191). The Reds are managed by defrocked college professor Lefty Marks, a dedicated practitioner of doctri­ naire socialism who houses his band of merry outlaws in a commune where everyone shares chores, who takes votes on important team decisions, and who devotes his time between seasons to the stewardship of a cooperative agricultural syndicate in south Arkansas. Lefty's relentless idealism is best expressed by his response to a 's statement that life is not fair: "'Not yet.' And Lefty said it without laughing" (64). Lefty, Hog, and the other Reds must struggle to win baseball games while 54 Aethlon XI:2 / Spring 1994 simultaneously combatting bigotry, an often hostile press and public, and sundry nefarious attempts to destroy their unique experiment in sports socialism. The forces of conformity and the voices of the establishment time and again suffer from the satirical sting of Hays's pen and Hog's tongue. Early in the novel, as Durham tries to join the Reds at the ballpark, he is detained by a group of female fundamentalist pickets:

They were all around me screeching that damn hymn in my ears, their faces twisted up with the glory of the moment and years of religious suffering. The Lord keeps shitting on them that lack the sense to wipe it off. They get used to it and mistake it for the answer to their prayers. (26)

Hog detests all right-wing religious zealots, particularly the televangelist Dr. J. Raymond Whiteside, whom Hog describes as

ringleader of the Christian Caucus, pastor of the Holy Light Baptist Church whose Sunday morning services were televised nationwide to millions of frothing crusaders, and founder of Vigilance Mountain Baptist College, a fully accredited spawn­ ing pool for pastors, missionaries, youth directors, song leaders, and other censors. (192)

Vigilance Mountain Baptist College turns out to be a fundamentalist fortress, the sight of which is unsettling to Hog the ex-con: "Miles of chain link topped with barbed wire fenced the place off from the world. An armed, uniformed security guard waved us through the main gate" (279). The young scholars at V. M. B. C. terrify the consciousness of the quintessentially rebellious Hog:

The students we saw clipping along between buildings looked like Mormons, short-haired boys in slacks, short-sleeve white shirts, and ties, clear-skinned girls in prim skirts and wrinkle- proof blouses they buttoned to their chins. The boys looked like they might have to spend the best part of their lives resisting faggothood. The girls looked like they might have willed away all their pubic hair. (280)

Lefty Marks shares his first baseman's contempt for hypocritical men of the cloth, once introducing a prominent Arkansas minister in this manner: "'This is the Reverend G. Forrest Bushrod, pastor of the First Baptist Church and Investment Corporation out at Scavenger Heights. He is also lifetime chair­ man of the Little Rock Interdemoninational Alliance of Ordained Vigilantes'" (32). Chappell / Donald (Skip) Hayes 55

The American prison system, an Arkansas establishment newpaper's sports department, and conservative politicians also serve as representatives of the middle American approach to contemporary life that is repugnant to the renegade streak in Hog Durham. When Hog joins the Reds, he becomes an object of curiosity to the local media celebrity reporters:

I got considerable attention from them on account of my record. No matter what they asked me—what I'd done, what I'd learned, was I grateful—I told them the same thing. I figured I had an obligation. I told them that the prisons I'd been in were filled with poor whites, blacks, and, in Oklahoma, Indians. I told them that the guards were stupid, fat, and vicious, and, that as far as I could see, that was the way the system wanted them. (190)

The sports pages of the Arkansas Chronicle, Little Rock's principal newspaper in the novel, exist primarily to promote the Razorback football teams of the University of Arkansas. The paper's baseball reporter "would've had trouble interesting readers in an orgy at the Vatican" (200-201), and its venerable sports editor, Wilbur Haney, pays only one visit to the Reds's clubhouse," ... saying nothing, just trying to look moral and wise—which can be a job of work when all you know of morality and wisdom is what you've managed to pick up while kneeling before the coaches at the University of Arkansas" (201). Hog reserves a special sneer for right-wing politicians, skewering them with revelations of their greed, chicanery, fraud, and rampant hypocrisy, all of which are usually achieved in concert with denizens of the religious right such as the Reverends Whiteside and Bushrod. Author Hays also sprinkles the narrative with a series of characters whose names call to mind first history's most monstrous tyrant, then two brutal suppressors of civil rights in the American South, and finally a substantial list of mid-century Southern segre­ gationists. The Republican candidate for the U. S. Senate, who ineptly campaigns during a Reds home game, is one "John P. Schicklgruber." During the 1930's some journalists in Vienna who were opponents of Adolph Hitler used "Schicklgruber," a surname belonging to Hitler's paternal side, as a means of evoking the stigma of a rumored illegitimate birth in the family's past (Shirer 23). The manager of the Selma Americans, Bull Cox, resembles in name and behavior the ruthless Bull Conner, sheriff of Birmingham, Alabama, during the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960's, a bigot famous for maliciously turning high-pressure hoses on peaceful demonstrators. The owner-manager of the Plaquemine Pirates, one Pumpsie Narvaez, closely mirrors the temperament and tactics of the despotic Leander Perez, longtime political czar of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. Finally, the line-up of the Selma Americans consists of players, arch-conservative zealots all, whose 56 Aethlon XI:2 / Spring 1994 names resemble those of many of the South's most fervent diehards and Dixiecrats.

Selma Americans Southern Segregationists

Jimmy Stennis U. S. Senator James Stennis of Mississippi

Iron Joe Talmadge U. S. Senator Herman Talmadge of Georgia

Ricky Russell U. S. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia

Tree Folsom Governor James (Big Jim, or Kissing Jim) Folsom of Alabama

Punch Lurleen Governor Lurleen Wallace of Alabama, wife of George Wallace, longtime governor of the same state

Pick Maddox Governor Lester Maddox of Georgia, former owner of the Pickrick Restaurant in Atlanta and distributor of axe-handles to be used in hammering the skulls of rebellious blacks.

Axe Heflin U. S. Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama; the name "Axe" also evokes Maddox again.

Bimbo Helms U. S. Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina

Jigs Thurmond U. S. Senator of South Carolina; he served as governor of his state before his ascension to the Senate.

Michael Oriard's second criterion of a "good sports novel" stresses the interrelationship of the players of the sport and the societies in which they live. In The Dixie Association the culture surrounding the renegade Reds is generally suspicious of intellectual originality, hostile to non-Caucasian ethnic groups and non-Christian religious beliefs, and resistant to progressive social changes in all forms. Hog Durham senses a kinship to the blue-collar workers and baseball fans who form the novel's vocal majority, but he also knows that his own iconoclastic instincts will forever keep him on the outside of mainstream society, looking in with a consistently skeptical eye:

Sitting there on that bench, I fancied I had some under­ standing of them. And I knew that a part of me would always be Chappell / Donald (Skip) Hayes 57

kindred to them. But I knew too that another part of me—I think it's the best part, I know it's the strongest—would have to fight them for every breath. Because their ceremonies, and everybody else's, have made it a world of cops and robbers. And I'm one of the robbers. (176) TRIPLE The Dixie Association is an authentic baseball novel interlaced with pungent political commentary. But it also possesses a third dimension of meaning, an achievement in sports fiction that is as exciting to observe as is an actual triple in a baseball game. Hays credibly weaves into his politically-charged baseball narrative a lengthy series of tributes to the literature of the modem American South. The author has tapped the rich trove of fiction and poetry of the as the sources for the names and players in his fictional league and also for a colorful Mississippi subplot. Like Hays, the authors of some of the best baseball novels of recent decades have enriched their works by weaving into them a wide variety of literary references. In The Natural, Bernard Malamud uses elements from the King Arthur legends, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and "Casey at the Bat," among other sources, in his tale of Roy Hobbs's foul luck and faulty judgment. In The Great American Novel, Phillip Roth makes a brutish Ernest Hemingway an important character, evokes Herman Melville in the opening sentence—"Call me Smitty" (1), creates a running debate about the relative merits of famous American novels, and includes an episode based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The narrator of W. P Kinsella's Shoeless Joe travels from Iowa to New Hampshire in order to abduct a reclusive J. D. Salinger and take him on an odyssey through baseball history and mythology. In The Dixie Association, Hays appears to have set a modem-era record in using literary allusions, if not for all of baseball fiction, then certainly for books about minor leagues in the South. By alluding so extensively to Southern literature, Hays adds an extra dimension of meaning to the word "Dixie" in his title. In his dual ardor for both baseball and literature, Hays keeps prestigious company not only with leading authors, but also with the late Renaissance scholar and former Yale president A. Bartlett Giamatti who was Commissioner of Baseball at the time of his death. Upon his appointment as president of the , Giamatti commented, "People of letters have always gravitated to sports. I've been a lover of baseball__ I always found it the most satisfying of games outside of literature." ("Ivy Switch" 81). Readers of The Dixie Association, then, find themselves drawn into partici­ pation in a game other than vicarious baseball, an accurate title of which might be "Identify the Southern Literary Allusion." The challenge to play Hays's game-within-a-game is too tempting to resist. So, mighty readers of Aethlon, 58 Aethlon XI:2 / Spring 1994 step to the literary plate and take a few swings at these questions based on the allusions in Hays's book. The answers follow.

I. THE LEAGUE

A. Identify the sources for the names of these teams. 1. Nashville . 2. Asheville Wolves. 3. Oxford Fury. 4. Milledgeville Peacocks.

B. Identify the sources for the names of these players and their teams.

Fugitives 5. Dingo Donaldson. 6. Tate Fathers. 7. Stark Williams. 8. Drew Little. 9. W arner Penn. 10. Billy Potts.

(11-15: a group entry)

11. Cleon Crow. 12. Allie Ransom. 13. Kenyon Eamhart. 14. Bells Whitson. 15. Jarrell Turrett.

Asheville 16. Perk Maxwell. 17. Elmer Jack. 18. Hawkeye Crawley.

Oxford 19. Pop Stone. 20. Boon Lions. 21. Quincey Coldfield. 22. Jumping Joe Easter. 23. Sam Feathers. 24. Popeye Cobb. Chappell / Donald (Skip) Hayes 59

Milledgeville 25. Parker Sash. 26. Mote Haze. 27. Rufus Jimson. 28. Turpin Parrum.

II. THE MISSISSIPPI SUBPLOT

A. Name the sources for these places. 29. Williams County. 30. Old Taylor Road. 31. Mottstown Highway. 32. Spaniard's Bend.

B. Identify the sources for these characters. 33. Jason Commerce. 34. Candy Jo Commerce 35. Colonel Sanders (originally Jefferson Davis) Flemson, also known as Sandy. 36. Jay Gould Flemson. 37. Stephen Gabbard. 38. Sheriff Jim Tom Grimm.

C. Name the novels which are the sources for these events. 39. Mentally retarded Sandy obsessively loves his half-sister Candy, who is alternately promiscuous and repentant. Jason Commerce turns his family home into a hotel and lives in an efficiency apartment above an office. 40. Jay Gould Flemson lives in a mansion, is married to a woman once made pregnant by another man, and constantly fleeces various gullible people out of cash and property. Stephen Gabbard, an idealistic attorney, frequently battles Flemson's unscrupulous fi­ nancial maneuvers in the community.

Answers.

1. The self-designated Fugitive poets and critics, many of whom later became members of the Agrarian movement, were centered at Vanderbilt in the 1920's. 2. The North Carolina hometown of Thomas Wolfe, called Altamont in his fiction. 3. The north-central Mississippi hometown of William Faulkner, author of The Sound and the Fury and other masterpieces. 60 Aethlon XI:2 / Spring 1994

4. The central Georgia hometown of Flannery O'Connor; the birds of her farm and her fiction. 5. Donald Davidson. 6. , author of the novel The Fathers. 7. Stark Young, a fellow townsman of William Faulkner. 8. Andrew Lytle. 9. . 10. "The Ballad of Billie Potts," by Warren. 11-15. taught for years at Kenyon College in Ohio, wrote "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter," and served as mentor for poet Randall Jarrell, author of "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner." 16. Maxwell Perkins, Wolfe's editor at Scribner's 17. Esther Jack, a character based on Wolfe's lady friend Aline Bernstein. 18. Nebraska Crane of You Can't Go Home Again, by Wolfe. 19. Lawyer Phil Stone of Oxford, Faulkner's friend and sometime mentor in the 1920's. 20. Boon Hogganbeck and the dog Lion, both of The Bear, by Faulkner. 21. Quentin Compson (The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom! both by Faulkner), and Goodhue Coldfield (Absalom, Absalom!) 22. Joe Christmas (Light in August, by Faulkner) 23. Sam Fathers (The Bear) 24. Popeye, the villain in Sanctuary, by Faulkner; corncob of the same novel. 25. Parker of "Parker's Back"; George Poker Sash of "A Late Encounter with the Enemy," both by O'Connor. 26. Hazel Motes of Wise Blood, by O'Connor. 27. Rufus Johnson of "The Lame Shall Enter First," by O'Connor. 28. Turpin of "Revelation"; Parrum of Wise Blood, both by O'Connor. 29. County of William Faulkner, Lafayette in actuality but transformed into Yoknapatawpha in his fiction. 30. A curving lane in Oxford that runs in front of Rowan Oak, Faulkner's home. 31. Located south of Jefferson (the town based on Oxford); important in As I Lay Dying and Light in August, both by Faulkner. 32. Frenchman's Bend, one of the locales in The Hamlet by Faulkner. 33. Jason Compson (The Sound and the Fury). 34. Candace (Caddy) Compson, also of The Sound and the Fury. 35. Benjamin Compson, known as Benjy, first named Maury; since Sandy Flemson is a chronic arsonist, he is also based loosely on Abner Snopes of "Bam Burning" by Faulkner. 36. Flem Snopes of the Snopes trilogy (The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion) all by Faulkner. 37. Gavin Stevens (Light in August and the Snopes trilogy). Chappell / Donald (Skip) Hayes 61

38. Percy Grimm (Light in August). 39. The Sound and the Fury. 40. The Snopes trilogy.

Scoring: 40 points possible. 36-40: Superstar. 31-35: Starter. 25-30: Utility infielder. 20-24: Rookie. 19 and below: Prospect.

During a 1987 visit to Hendrix College, Hays disclosed that he originally intended to make The Dixie Association an even more elaborate form of homage to Southern literature. At first he wrote the Oxford sections in a Faulkneresque style, the passages taking place in Asheville in a Wolfeian mode, and the Milledgeville games in a manner imitating O'Connor. But eventually he decided that he would be wiser to remain with Hog as his consistent narrator. Fortunately, the network of Southern literary allusions remains, deeply en­ riching the novel and creating for readers a sense of aesthetic excitement akin to that experienced by the exquisite batter Luke Gofannon of Roth's The Great American Novel when he hits a triple:

"W ell.. . smackin' it, first off. Off the wall, up the alley, down the line, however it goes, it goes with that there crack. Then runnin' like blazes. 'Round first and into second, and the coach down there cryin' out to ya', 'Keep cornin'.' So ya' make the turn at second, and ya' head for third—and now ya' know that throw is cornin', ya' know it is right on your tail. So ya' . Two hunerd and seventy feet of runnin' behind ya', and with all that there momentum, ya' hit it—whack, into the bag. Over he goes. Legs. Arms. Dust. Hell, ya'm ight be in a tornado___Thenya' hear the ump—'!' And y're in there.. . . (251)

Luke gains a greater thrill from a triple than from a . But a runner must safely reach home base before he can score, and the least stressful route around thebasepaths follows upon a 's flying over fair territory and landing in a spot over an outfield wall. In completing the cycle Donald (Skip) Hays in The Dixie Association also knocks one out of the park. HOME RUN While he narrates his politically topical, allusion-filled baseball adven­ tures during one season's pennant race, Hog Durham undergoes a gradual transformation from cynical, profane solipsist to cautious participant in life 62 Aethlon XI:2 / Spring 1994

outside prison to frightened risk-taker with a woman as well as with the law and finally to full-fledged, mature team hero willing to take his chances on receiving an even break in the of his life's future. Fittingly, Hog ends the novel by smashing a home run that is the most significant round-tripper in his checkered career and also in the short and colorful history of the Arkansas Reds. Like Joe Carter in the 1993 , he ends the season with one epochal right-handed swing of the bat. But Hog's path to this seminal is a twisted and torturous one. When Lefty Marks springs Hog from prison, the first baseman admits that "Right now there's not three people I got much trust in" (17). During his second night out of enforced confinement he deviously manipulates Pansy Puckett, a fetchingly bewildered resident of Lefty's commune, into a night of sex in a cucumber patch (60). His initial intentions consist of playing ball as best he can until he can figure out what to do next, all the while maintaining his distance from any commitments. But slowly he begins to find meaning in the communal activities of the team. While joining in an all-night bus ride and song-fest, he feels himself drawn into the camaraderie of the Reds:

The music and the laughter and the bus cutting through the Mississippi night had given me as sure a feeling of freedom as I'd had in God knows when. It wasn't as exhilarating as that time I drove out of Van Buren in a stolen car with three big sacks of a bank's money riding on a seat beside me. But I'd done that out of desperation, defiance, a need to do something that mattered, one way or another. This singing had nothing of desperation in it, or defiance either, unless you want to say that anything done just for the joy that's in it is an act of defiance. ... (112)

Hog also finds himself becoming deeply fond of Pansy (156), and when he has a chance to jump parole and avoid arrest for a previous crime he decides to "stick it out" with the pennant-chasing Reds who desperately need his bat, fielding, and leadership (161). By August of the pivotal season Hog has totally dedicated himself to the welfare of the Reds, persuading his teammates to accept into full membership first Susan Pankhurst (163) and than a cadre of talented Cuban ballplayers (259). He refuses to join Bullet Bob Turner in defecting to the Selma Americans (272), and eventually he experiences a moment of illuminating self-awareness by realizing that he can function fully as an individual only by belonging to a mutually supportive community, in this case the Reds:

I'd been lucky, I knew, to get that chance—lucky I could hit a hard ball a long ways, lucky the Reds needed somebody who could do just that and were willing to put a convicted thief in the Chappell / Donald (Skip) Hayes 63

lineup, and lucky, too, that through all the years of petty theft and barroom thrills and slammer payments, I'd managed to hold on to just enough sense to recognize not only that, at last and almost in spite of myself, I'd found something to belong to but also that belonging was what mattered, that you might have to start after freedom by breaking away but you couldn't get to it without joining in, that it was a thing of community, that it was not a separation but a union. Lord knows, I told myself there under a shower all the heat had gone out of, that ought to be enough. If a man got that far, what difference could winning make? Up against that a minor-league pennant was just a cheap piece of cloth. In a world the pin­ striped boys were conniving to scrape the life off of and cover with buildings the air can't get into, I'd found a place to breathe and be. Sure, it might all end with the season, 14 games away from gone and not likely to be repeated, but from then on I'd at least know what to look for, at least know that it was possible, at least know that, however much luck had to do with it, it wasn't something you could steal. And if I never found it again, I'd had it once. Just that much was worth being here for. (335-336)

And Hog also develops enough sense to conclude that Pansy's appearance in his life is also an episode of serendipidity that he should celebrate rather than question: "'But maybe I want the same things you do. All I can tell you for sure is that I need you now. I'm not real good at thinking past the next game'" (297). Hog Durham concludes the Dixie Association pennant race, his own emergence from bitter isolation into tempered self-awareness, and author Hays's symbolic completion of hitting for the cycle with the narrative's culminating home run, a monumental blast off a pitch by ex-Red Bullet Bob Turner that carries in its outgoing arc significance far beyond statistics:

The ball came spinning toward home. Spinning. Not much. Just enough to keep it from floating or sinking. And I saw it clear. Spinning. And I moved into it, bat back, head down, weight rolling forward, and then the bat flashing at it, carrying all I had, and then, God Almighty, it was... So Long, Selma, Ole Hog done caught it all. I watched it rise and rise, over wall and screen and Orval Faubus Freeway, and I ran toward first with my fists in the air and the roar came and I saw people coming over the walls and onto the field and I ran on, second and third, and they let me through them so I could make it all the way home.. .. (384)5 64 Aethlon XI:2 / Spring 1994

For once in his lonely and turbulent life, then, Hog Durham does indeed make it all the way home. EPILOGUE According to writer Tim Kurkjian in , the accomplishment of hitting for the cycle in occurs less often than does that of pitching a no-hitter (Kurkjian, "Rare Cycle" 59). Moreover, several of baseball's greatest hitters (for average as well as with power) never hit for the cycle—, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron (Kurkjian, "A Souvenir Quan­ dary" 49). And journeymen and "hold the record for career cycles, with three each: ("Rare Cycle" 59). Slugger Skip Hays, in this immortal series of trips to the literary plate of baseball fiction, succeeds in stinging a sharp single, drilling a double, tearing around the bases to a triple, and hammering a hallelujah home run. Through his prowess at the plate, mighty Skip qualifies to face the multi-talented hurler, W. P. Kinsella. Bottom of the ninth. Tie score. Two outs. Runner on third. Wolfish W. P. hunkers at the apex of the mound, glaring malevolently toward the batter's box as swat-sultan Skip Hays strides from the on-deck circle, digs in his spikes, aims his bat at the mound in silent challenge, draws the bat back, and settles into his upright stance. Kinsella sneers toward heaven and home, expectorates loudly, jiggles the ball hidden inside his glove, and splits his fingers along the seams. The catcher squats, the umpire crouches, and W. P. enters his windup. Hays confidently watches as Kinsella whips the ball toward the plate. Skip smacks W. P.'s split-fingered fastball on a line directly tow ard.. ..

Notes

1. Hayshastoldmethatduringhischildhood he began tobecalled "Skip" by family and and that the nickname has remained with him. When Hays and I first met, he introduced himself as "Skip Hays.” 2. The Dixie Association received a highly favorable review by Craig Hudziak in the Fall 1984 issue of Arete. Moreover, the Winter 1988 issue of the Newsletter of the Sport Literature Association refers in this flattering manner to Hays’s appearance at a meeting of the Association: "Of all the scholarly / recreational activities, however, the evening session at the "Down Home” featuring the reading of Donald Hays from his novel. The Dixie Association, has to be considered the gem." 3. When Hays visited my Southern literature class at Hendrix College in March, 1987, he discussed his days as a player and even demonstrated to my students the proper methods of placing the fingers for a curve, slider, and knuckleball. 4. Hays had published his novel several years before the film Bull Durham made the name "Durham" popular with fans of baseball in the cinema. 5. During his 1987 visit to Hendrix, Hays was asked by one of my students if Bullet Bob Turner, whoordinarily threw , could have deliberately thrown a spinning ball, possibly even a set-up fastball, to his former teammate and friend Hog Durham. Hays's reply: "I am glad that you think Bullet Bob is a complex enough character to allow for that possibility." Chappell / Donald (Skip) Hayes 65

Works Cited

Chappell, Charles and Ashley Bland Crowder. "Donald Hays: A New Political Novelist. An Interview." The Mississippi Quarterly XLIU (Winter 1989-90): 59-68. Hamblin, Robert. "'Magic Realism,' Or, The Split-Fingered Fastball of W. P. Kinsella." ArtWon IX: 2 (Spring 1992): 1-10. Hays, Donald. The Dixie Association. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. "Ivy Switch." Newsweek 23 June 1986: 81. Kinsella, W. P. Shoeless loe. New York: Ballantine Books, 1983. Kurkjian, Tim. "Rare Cycle." Sports Illustrated 6 August 1990: 59. ______. "A Souvenir Quandary." Sports Illustrated 6 May 1991: 49. Malamud, Bernard. The Natural. New York: Avon, 1952. Oriard, Michael. "On the Current Status of Sports Fiction." Arete 1:1 (Fall 1983): 7-20. Roth, Philip. The Great American Novel. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston: 1973. Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Fawcett Books, 1962.