The Kid from Tomkinsville by John R. Tunis

In Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, he mentions The Kid from Tomkinsville as a favorite read of the main character when he was a kid among his baseball playing buddies in New Jersey. Never having heard of it, I assumed that Roth had invented the book along with the rest of his novel. But learning it’s an actual book, published in 1940, I was curious to read it. I found a copy at the Los Angeles Central Library a few blocks from my apartment. They keep it in the Children’s Literature department, which is a lovely old room at the back of the library I had never visited. Though Tunis meant his novel for adults we’d probably consider it Young Adult fiction today. It wasn’t on the shelf but the attendant quickly retrieved a copy from the stacks.

The story has much in common with the baseball content of Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, except that it’s just baseball: no murder, no illegal gambling, no sex, in fact there’s hardly even a woman in the book. What you get is two complete seasons of baseball: from spring training in one season to the national league pennant in the next. Apparently, Tunis went on to write a series of follow-up books including one that follows this about the World Series, which this novel leads up to but doesn’t include.

There are two main characters: Roy Tucker, “The Kid” of the title, a nineteen year-old rookie pitcher from a small town in Connecticut; and a veteran catcher, thirty-eight year-old Dave Leonard who takes the Kid under his wing. We meet the Kid first. He works on his grandma’s farm in the morning and at the drugstore in town in the afternoons. As he boards the train to go down to Florida for spring training, he’s already feeling lonesome. And we meet Dave Leonard, dropped off at the station by his wife (a different town), worried that he might be aging into his last season and not sure how he will support his family if he can no longer play ball.

As in The Natural, the novel begins with a train ride. The train travels down the east coast and ends up in Clearwater, Florida for spring training. We meet more players. There’s “Gabby Gus” the shortstop, who is also the manager of the team. (I didn’t know that managers ever played on the teams, but apparently they did). There’s “Razzle-Dazzle” Nugent, a pitcher who is kind of a “Bump Bailey” character from The Natural. And we meet Jim Casey, the sportswriter, who appears throughout the novel just as Max Mercy does in The Natural. I suppose all these similar types just show the commonalities of the baseball world rather than any purposeful borrowing by Malamud from Tunis. Tunis himself says in a note at the beginning of the book that “the author wishes to state that all the characters in this book were drawn from real life.” And there’s Roy’s roommate, another rookie named Harry Street who has a real talent.

The veteran Dave Leonard gives the Kid some advice on how to hold the ball when he pitches. Later, when the Kid is discouraged after a bad outing in a practice game, Dave comes to his hotel room and gives him a little lecture about “courage.”

The Kid earns a spot on the team, the Dodgers. This is sometime in the 30s when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn. A month and a half in they let old Dave Leonard go and the Kid wonders how he’s going to survive without his mentor. In Dave’s final game, the Kid throws a no-hitter. The detailed play-by-play of several ball games described in the novel is really thrilling: this one the best of all.

Razzle throws a great game against Pittsburgh and Gabby, the manager, allows Razzle a few beers after the game to relax. Thoroughly drunk, Razzle comes in to the Kid’s hotel room and starts hassling him. Razzle throws a chair through the window, and then nearly throws the Kid out the window, too, tenth story, until teammates are able to force the hotel room door open and restrain him. Razzle is fined and suspended for a month.

After a great game a few weeks later the team is rough-housing in the locker room. The Kid gets jostled in the shower, falls, and injures his shoulder. When examined, they discover the injury is such that he’ll heal but never pitch again. And then, just as the Kid is ready to accept the news, the team gets another blow, Gabby Gus is killed in a car accident. This opens up the manager spot and the team brings back Dave Leonard. They bring back Harry Street, too, who had been playing in Dallas, to play the shortstop position that had been Gabby’s. Dave keeps the Kid on the roster, switching from pitcher to pinch hitter. Dave gives the Kid a little advice on how to hold the bat the way he did earlier on how to hold the ball. But Roy fails at a crucial moment, is ready to give up, and Dave comes in to give him another pep talk.

At that point, the end of Chapter 15, the book takes a break without clearly telling the outcome of the season. It’s implied that the Dodgers end in the cellar. Chapter 16 finds Roy back in Tomkinsville with his grandma, working on the farm and at his old job at the drugstore. But he’s also set up a little system with a ball on a string so he can practice his hitting. He diligently follows Dave’s advice. The chapter ends with the postman delivering a letter that calls him up for another season. Chapter 17 continues the story back in Clearwater for another spring training.

This second season is told quicker than the first. Roy starts out on a streak of homers, then goes into a slump. “By this time the whole club was in a slump. From second they went down to third place and within a game and a half of fourth. Dave shook up the batting order, putting the Kid back to fifth and shoving Babe Stansworth into the second spot. But the jinx was riding” (p. 303). Dave finally gives the Kid the advice he needs to get out of his slump: play for the team, not for his own pride.

Dave’s expert coaching inspires the team to move up steadily until at the final game they’re just a half-game behind the Giants and playing them for the win. It’s a wild and exciting game. Roy makes several great plays, but it’s a whole team effort. Grandma listens on the radio back in Tomkinsville. Here’s the scene as described by Jim Casey the sportswriter:

“…finally nosed out the Giants to enter the Series next week by a score of four to three in fourteen innings. Led by their brilliant youngster, ‘Bad News Tucker,’ they went ahead in the fourth, were caught and passed in the eighth, tied the game on a foolhardy bit of baserunning in the ninth, and finally won it by Tucker’s leap into the right field fence to spike Murphy’s homer in the last of the fourteenth” (p. 354-355).

That final leap presages the run into the outfield wall that kills Bump Bailey in The Natural. The Kid ends the novel injured, but, as Casey reports: “Right now they don’t know the extent of Tucker’s injuries and whether or not he’ll be able to play for the Dodgers in the World Series next week” (p. 355). Then there’s a final line that will also be echoed in The Natural when Roy Hobbs/Parsifal ends the drought for the Knights: “There was a clap of thunder. Rain descended upon the Polo Grounds” (p. 355)

It’s pretty great stuff.