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

People who didn't know any better had assumed that because of his
background, money, and education he would grow to be one of the ones
who told others what it was necessary for them to do, but George was
coming to realize, with a surge of panic, that he was not special. His
moment of communion with Babe Ruth had been a delusion, because
Ruth was another type of man. Perhaps Ruth was used by the teams that
bought and sold him, but inside Ruth was some compulsion that drove
him to be larger than the uses to which he was put, so that in the end he
deformed those uses, remade the game itself.

George, talented though he had seemed, had no such size. The vital
force that had animated his grandfather George Herbert Walker, after
whom he was named, the longing after mystery that had impelled the
metaphysical poet George Herbert, after whom that grandfather had been
named, had diminished into a pitiful trickle in George Herbert Walker
Bush. No volcanic forces surged inside him. When he listened late in the
night, all he could hear of his soul was a thin keening, a buzz like a bug
trapped in a jar. Let me go, let me go, it whined. Love me. Admire me. I
pray to God and dad and the president and Mr. Griffith to make me a
success.

That old man at the ball park was wrong. It was not enough, not nearly
enough, just to be there. He wanted to be somebody. What good was it
just to stand on first base in the World Series if you came away from it a
laughingstock? To have your father call you not because you were a hero
but only to remind you once again what a failure you are.
 "I'll be damned if I go see him," George muttered to the empty room.

THREE
President Nixon called Lavagetto in the middle of the night with a
suggestion for the batting order in the second game. "Put Bush in the
number-five slot," Nixon said.

Lavagetto wondered how he was supposed to tell the President of the
United States that he was out of his mind. "Yessir, Mr. President."

"See, that way you get another right-handed batter at the top of the
order."

Lavagetto considered pointing out to the president that the Giants were
pitching a right hander in game two. "Yessir, Mr. President," Lavagetto
said. His wife was awake now, looking at him with irritation from her side
of the bed. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, "Go to sleep."

"Who is it at this hour?"

"The President of the United States."

"Uh-huh."