It's the last season for the local nine in the Metrodome, and a local sportswriter, Tom Powers, has an enjoyable column about the most eccentric Twins ever to play under the fluttery roof. Perhaps Luis Castillo, the current Mets 2nd baseman who is sporting a batting average north of .300, has the highest profile of the honorees. According to Powers, Castillo once sent a clubhouse attendant to an ATM to withdraw some cash for him. The fellow returned with the money and a statement showing a remaining balance well into seven figures.
This reminds me of Suicide Alexander's World Series bank book. Alexander figures prominently in Mark Harris's It Looked Like Forever, the last installment of the Henry Wiggen tetralogy. After his team won the World Series in 1950, Alexander deposited $500,000 in what we then called a passbook savings account. He never touched the money and enjoyed displaying the book to friends and acquaintances. After the initial deposit, the only entries were for interest accruals. By 1971, the present time of the novel, his balance stood at $1,095,561.60. I think those who are good at math will tell you that over those twenty years he was getting about a 3.5% return.
It is not just ballplayers, fictional and otherwise, who exhibit odd financial habits. In Home Before Dark, Susan Cheever reveals that her father John barely eked out a living during the years that he was publishing in The New Yorker some of the best short fiction ever written by an American. Then, in the mid-1960s, he had a windfall. Back then, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insured deposits in a single bank up to $10,000. According to his daughter, Cheever had about $9500 in every bank in Westchester County.
By the way, if you are interested in Cheever, Home Before Dark is an interesting book that can be read in perhaps two long coffee-shop sessions. And It Looked Like Forever is less familiar than it ought to be. I think it is the most enjoyable novel in the Wiggen tetralogy, though of course The Southpaw and Bang the Drum Slowly are more well known. In the first chapter, at a funeral, Wiggen observes a ballplayer paying a lot of attention to a wealthy older woman, and
it occurred to me now and again that she might of took him to bed with her. Why not? He was only 30 years younger than her, and the older I grew the more I become aware of things that would of formerly surprised me.
It's only one of many enjoyable moments. The education of Henry Wiggen is over and now he's teaching us. Harris was a Boswell scholar, and I've always thought of the mature Wiggen as a kind of subliterate Dr. Johnson, a genius of common sense.
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