The Pitcher

by William Hazelgrove

Fernando walks around the patio.

  “Yeah, man. I bet she been thinking about you a long time.” He leans on the table, lowering his voice. “So tell me bro … you think my son has an arm?”

  The Pitcher doesn’t move. It is the question and it’s weird that Fernando asked it. The Pitcher looks up at Fernando and takes out his Marlboros.

  “Yeah …” He nods. “I think he does.”

  Fernando flips around a chair and sits down, leaning forward with his tattoos bulging.

  “You know, I was over here the other night. And somebody threw a baseball, man, and broke the windshield to my Harley.” He leans back and stares at the Pitcher. “You know anything about that?”

  The Pitcher puffs up a cigarette.

  “Maybe a bird flew into it,” he replies.

  Fernando stares at him, then smiles slowly.

  “Yeah man, that’s right.” He laughs. “ A motherf------ bird hit it.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he says, clapping his lighter shut.

  “Right, man. Right.” Fernando nods slowly. “You wouldn’t know. You’re just the weird dude across the street that used to be an MLB pitcher, right?” He turns to Mom, speaking in a low voice. “And now Maria has her whore dress on with her son all pimped up to be the perfect Mexican family, right?”

  Mom points toward the street.

  “Get the hell out of here!”

  He shakes his head.

  “Oh, baby. I just got here. I don’t want to blow it for you, man, but since I worked with Ricky and developed his arm, I figure I have some say, you know.”

  “You never worked with me,” I mutter, surprising myself.

  Fernando stares at me, his eyes narrowing. My heart is pounding, but I know how Fernando rolls. He wants to take all the credit for anything good. He wants to take credit for something Mom did.

  “Oh I get it, bro,” he nods slowly. “Yeah, you the man now, huh?” He gets in my face, his whiskey breath like gasoline. “Figure you got your game on now and your little arm, and you can say anything to your dad who worked his ass off with you on your pitching!”

  I don’t know. I should just roll with it, but I can’t take Fernando saying he worked on my pitching. So I give him my death stare, you know, and say real loud, “You never did anything with me!”

  My heart is jacking up and down, because Fernando looks like he wants to kill me. He leans closer and I can feel him breathing like a dog about to bite.

  “What’d you say, you little shit?”

  I meet his dark glittery eyes. My heart is about out of my chest. Boom Boom Boom.

  “I said … you never worked with me … Mom did!”

  Fernando backs up and nods with this weird little smile.

  “Sure, man. Right. You figure you get yourself an MLB coach, man, and you go all the way, huh?” He shakes his head. “Forget about your Mom who was a f------ loser when I met her.”

  “You’re the loser!” I shout.

  Fernando jumps up and grabs me by the collar. My feet leave the ground and he starts spitting his whiskey breath all over me.

  “Oh you the big man now, huh?! Think you got something over me? I’ll kick your motherf------ ass!”

  Then he falls and I hit the patio. I look up and the Pitcher is standing with his chair, holding it like a bat. Fernando is on his knees and coughing. I mean our patio furniture is iron and heavy, but the Pitcher holds the chair like it’s nothing. Fernando stands, grabbing his back and staring at him.

  “You’re dead,” Fernando croaks.

  “Anytime, rockhead,” the Pitcher says coolly.

  Mom grabs her purse and whips out the rolled hundred bucks. It’s like the money no one will take, but I know Fernando will take it.

  “Here!” She shoves the money in his hand. “Take it and get out, asshole!”

  Fernando holds the money, then puts it in his pocket.

  “Yeah, man,” he growls, glaring at Mom. “He’s going to blame your dumb Mexican ass when he finds out he’s just like everybody else.”

  He looks at the Pitcher.

  “I’ll see you again, cabrón.”

  And then Fernando kicks back the patio door. I don’t breathe until I hear his Harley rumble alive and whine down the street. Then it is just quiet. Mom is standing there like she has a terrible headache. Our little table with the candles looks like a crime scene. Mom looks at the Pitcher.

  “I am so sorry ...”

  He has his hands on the back of the chair. She just trails off, because really, there is nothing to say. We are just the poor dumbass Mexican family to him now. There is no way he’s going to coach me. Everything we had worked for just crashed. It’s like one of those bad ESPN dinners where the player walks off and never comes back.

  The Pitcher looks down.

  “Listen …” He pauses and I don’t like the feeling. “I was going to tell you and the boy earlier … something has come up and I have other commitments now. I figured I’d wait until you made me dinner to tell you. So now you don’t feel you owe me anything for the lessons.”

  He says it like he just put the last brick in a wall. I feel like someone has just pulled my chair out from under me. I want to go back to when they were doing the tango and everything was good. Mom sits back in her chair and looks at him.

  “Your commitments just came up?”

  “Yeah,” he says, looking at the table.

  And we can both tell he is lying. It is like he just shut down or something. But I know what it is. He figures drinking beer in his garage is better than being in a hot field with some Mexican kid with a psycho dad. But I feel bad, man. It’s like being cut from a team. It’s like being cut from my dream. But Mom … she’s pissed.

  “So you are just going to quit on him?”

  The Pitcher frowns and shifts his legs.

  “I wouldn’t put it like that.”

  “Really?’ Mom stares at him, her eyes snapping. “You are quitting on a boy when he needs you most and you don’t call that quitting?”

  The Pitcher breathes heavily .

  “Ms. ...”

  “Hernandez … Call me Maria.”

  “Maria … I don’t mind giving your son my time for the last few weeks,” he begins. “But I’m really not a coach. Hell, I don’t even coach men anymore who pay five grand to pretend that they are a major leaguer and wear a uniform and run around a diamond.”

  “I’m not talking about men in fantasy camps,” Mom snaps. “I am talking about my son, who has a chance to play on the high school team! He has a dream and he has a gift. And I’m going to do everything in my power to see that he gets his dream.”

  The Pitcher shrugs.

  “If he works at it he might get some control. But he has some basic problems that I—”

  “Of course he has problems,” Mom nearly screams. “That’s why he can’t control the ball!”

  The Pitcher shakes his head.

  “Listen, I was a pitcher. I was never a coach and the problems he has are going to take a lot more time to solve than I have.”

  “Oh, I see,” Mom says, nodding. “So you quit because you can’t just show him some pitches and have him perform them perfectly?”

  “That ain’t it—”

  “It’s alright, Mom,” I blurt out. “It’s alright. I’ll be fine.” I really want her to quit begging. “I learned some stuff I can use,” I say, shrugging.

  Mom just stares at me because she knows I’m lying.

  “The tryouts are a month away,” she says to the Pitcher.

  He doesn’t speak for a moment.

  “Thanks for the dinner,” he says quietly, then starts toward the gate.

  It’s the high school team walking away under the moon. Baseball is going to end on this patio on this night. Then Mom starts crying. I mean sniffling and wiping her eyes. She just can’t help it. The Pitcher reaches the gate and stops.

  “Look … if you work with him and he remembers some of the things—”

&
nbsp; “Bullshit,” Mom says, her voice breaking. “I’m not a pitcher!”

  I see his back raise up and I hear his breath.

  “Shit,” he mutters.

  He turns around slowly and looks at Mom.

  “A change-up, Ms. Hernandez …”

  Mom wipes her eyes and looks at him.

  “… is the difference between what’s expected and what actually happens.”

  The Pitcher pauses, then looks at me.

  “Eight o’clock at the field. Don’t be late.”

  Then he just pushes open the patio door and walks off.

  15

  PITCHING IS NOT A NATURAL act. Pitching requires your arm and shoulder to go to a point where they will break down. You ever watch a guy like Bobby Jenks pitch a one-hundred-and-one fastball? You watch him and you know what pitching is all about. I think about that while I throw those rocks, because I feel like my arm is about to blow apart. I manage to hit the tree a few times and even start to get a rhythm where I hear the rock hit the wood. I throw rocks for three more days and then the Pitcher shows up with his mitt.

  I pick up the blackened glove and put my nose into the leather.

  “You use this when you pitched in the World Series?”

  “Of course I did,” he grumbles, pulling out the bucket. “You ready?”

  I set down the mitt and look at the bucket. My heart sinks.

  “More rocks?” I groan.

  The Pitcher pulls off the lid to a bucket of ... baseballs.

  “You got a problem with that?”

  “No!”

  “Then toss me my glove, rockhead.”

  I throw him his mitt.

  “Now, let’s just play catch,” he says. “Just nice and easy. No hauling it to the moon.”

  He tosses me a baseball and I toss it back. I feel like singing. The sun is shining and we are throwing a baseball! I whip the ball back to him and he tosses it back nice and easy.

  “Alright, take a step back.”

  I step back. The ball sails from the Pitcher, smooth and straight like a train in the air. I try to make mine smooth and straight, but he has to reach for it.

  “What the hell did I just tell you?”

  “What?”

  “Just throw the goddamn ball,” he commands. “You gotta learn to just throw. Just throw the ball.”

  “I am!”

  “No. You ain’t. You’re throwing it like you think you should, like you think the way you’re supposed to pitch. Forget about pitching. You ain’t a pitcher yet. You just gotta throw the ball, you got it?”

  “Yeah,” I mutter, throwing the ball back.

  “There.” He nods. “You didn’t think about it. Now take another step back.”

  We keep throwing and stepping back until we are at opposite ends of the field. The Pitcher throws the ball like a rocket launched from his shoulder. The ball sails out from him like he was doing nothing. I have to throw with everything I have just to reach him. We throw for what seems like a half-hour, then we meet in the middle of the field.

  “Your arm hurt, rockhead?”

  “Yeah,” I say, shrugging. “A little.”

  It hurts a lot, from my shoulder on down, but I’m not going to tell him. To me this is my school. This is my ticket to the freshman high school team and I don’t care if my arm falls off. The Pitcher stuffs Skoal in his lip and spits.

  “Your arm hurts because you’re still pitching like a rockhead. You are trying too hard and overstraining your arm. Look…” He holds the baseball in front of him. “You need to just throw it. You believe that if you strain harder it will make it go faster. That ain’t true. You just have to throw the ball. You are thinking about it way too much. Forget everything you think you know about pitching. Just do what you did with the rocks.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t think. You overthink every goddamn thing. Just throw the goddamn ball.”

  “You think you could show me a change-up sometime?”

  “You don’t need no change-up. I never needed one and neither do you.”

  “Yeah but … if they see my fastball then …”

  “Hey, rockhead.” He rifles the dust with Skoal. “You pinch the corners. You throw one by their chin at ninety miles an hour. Show them who’s boss. You won’t need no change-up,” he says, holding his cigarette to his mouth. “You just worry about throwing strikes, alright?”

  “Yeah alright.”

  “Besides, you gotta throw a lot of crappy balls before you can throw a strike and you throw a lot of crappy balls.”

  I squint up at him.

  “I guess major league pitchers started this way, huh?”

  The Pitcher spits another long brown steak of tobacco juice.

  “Those rockheads don‘t know how to pitch.”

  16

  HEY, I’M GOING TO TELL you about minor league baseball. Minor league teams can be Single A, Double A or Triple A. Triple A is the best and single A is usually for the rookies. The whole minor league thing is called the farm system. Guys play on these teams a few years and either get bumped up to another level or to the majors, or that’s it. It’s also where major leaguers are sent for rehab or if they’re not needed. In Triple A you see guys on their way to the majors and guys on their way down from the majors. What’s coolest is the guys who are trying to make it. The pitchers sit in folding chairs on the side of the field and wait their turn to pitch. They all have on their clean white uniforms and it’s like they are soldiers, waiting to go to war.

  Mom and I once saw the Florida Badgers, an AA minor league team, for ten bucks in Badger Stadium. It’s a pretty cool stadium, built next to a landfill. Sometimes it smells like garbage, but most nights the wind is going the other way. Anyway, here’s the deal: Today, we are having our game in the same place! I feel my breath leave when I see the diamond with the perfect grass and the infield with no rocks or divots or holes. This is the scene in the movie where the team plays the tournament champs and high school coaches are observing the game.

  Which will be the case!

  Mom and I walk around the field before the game and stare at the empty stands. It is like we are in a coliseum or something. You can just imagine all those people watching you. The lights are on and I feel like I am straight up big leagues. The baselines are like the lines of the highway and the batter’s box is a perfect square. Everything about the place is majors, and me and everybody else think about being here for real one day.

  Then the game starts.

  The announcer’s voice shoots our names into space, man. That’s how it sounds with voices echoing all over the place as they announce players coming to bat and rock music plays between innings. Everyone immediately begins to play up. You play a good team, or play in a really cool stadium, and you play better than you ever did before. We battle neck and neck with the Ft. Meyers Dusters through the first five innings until we pull away and score off a double. Then a triple. Suddenly the Dusters are chasing two.

  Then in the bottom of the sixth, Artie Ravioli digs a grave with three walks. Artie just can’t throw a strike and the Dusters coach give their batters the take sign. They just stand there and don’t swing and get on base with walks. I know how Artie feels. The worst feeling is when you can’t find the zone and the other team knows it. So we watch Artie die out there in the middle of Badger Stadium. That’s when Mom walks up to Devin by the fence.

  “They’re all getting the take sign.”

  He is working the gum in his cheek like it is on fire.

  “Yeah, maybe I should get Eric back in there,” he mutters.

  “But he already pitched!”

  Devin turns, his mirrored sunglasses reflecting the field.

  “We need to get out of this inning, Maria.”

  Just then the batter cracks one deep in left field. We watch as two runners rotate in and we are tied.

  “Devin, we need to make a change,” Mom says again, shaking her head.

  If it wasn
’t for Mom, Devin could give Eric all the pitching time he wants. Mrs. Payne videotaped Devin and Eric on the mound before the game. I’m sure to them this was the future where they pose with their major league son.

  “All the boys deserve a chance to pitch in the stadium,” Mom insists, pulling up her sunglasses on her hat.

  “Hey. This isn’t kindergarten where everyone gets a chance,” he snaps. “This is baseball and the best players have to be fielded!”

  “Oh and that just happens to be your son?”

  “At least I don’t have to dig up some old pitcher to give my kid an edge.”

  “No, you send your kid to every Finish First camp you can find!”

  Devin breathes heavily and stares out at the field where Artie is dying. He grips the mesh of the dugout and lowers his head. “Alright … I might need Eric in tomorrow’s game …” He turns to me, snapping out the words. “Get warmed up, Ricky. I need you to close it down for us.”

  “Sure thing, coach,” I say, jumping up.

  Mom winks. I know she wants me to pitch on that minor league mound in Badger Stadium. I mean, usually our fields are washed out mud pits of hard clay and grass that look like they’ve been burned over. But a real ball field is amazing and it can make all sorts of things happen. Like that movie Field of Dreams, right? It was kind of a weird movie, but baseball fields are magical.

  All you want to do is play on them.

  So I’m on the mound in Badger Stadium and there’ s a warm breeze blowing in. It’s one of the most perfect moments of my life—except I have loaded the bases and we are down by one. The seats surround the field like a cozy old house. The infield is dark green and the baselines are pure white. It would be really cool if I wasn’t losing the game for us. I keep trying to remember something the Pitcher has taught me. Push off your back leg. Use the rubber. Don’t step off sideways. Point your shoulder. Follow through. Tuck your glove. Pitch like you are hitting a man. Pick a spot. None of it is working.

  So I am not surprised to see Mom walking out to the mound. She walks out under the dusty halo of light with her hair curling out the back of her cap. I see a defeated kid in her glasses. He’s looking down and doesn’t look at all like a pitcher to me.