The Pitcher

by William Hazelgrove

  The Pitcher ashes his cigarette and settles back into the La-Z-Boy. Mom stands up from the refrigerator and rolls out her hand.

  “Look, if you want to live in your garage and get drunk and puke, that’s your business.”

  “That’s right, it is.”

  “But when it involves my kid, then it concerns me,” she continues, covering the crucifix on her shoulder she usually keeps hidden.

  “Maybe I ain’t your coach then.”

  Bam! Just like that. Like the time Jimmy punched me in the stomach and I couldn’t breathe for a full minute. Mom looks at me and our eyes meet.

  “Ricky, wait for me outside,” she orders.

  I go to the side of the garage where she can’t see me.

  “ So you’re going to leave him just like that? These tryouts are in two weeks!”

  “He has an arm but he’s gotta work at it.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “What?”

  “Did you tell him what to work on?”

  “Look …” Then I can’t hear him for a moment. “… never a coach. I’d appreciate it if you left now; I got a hell of a headache.”

  “Do you know he came over to see you last night? He pitched in Badger Stadium.” Mom pauses, her voice breaking. “He wanted to talk to you, but you were passed out on your goddamn floor, drunk.”

  “You ever hear of a pitcher named Grover Cleveland?”

  I lean in and Mom is staring at him.

  “No.”

  The Pitcher picks up his Skoal and fattens his lip. “Grover pitched for the Cardinals and was a drunk. He was forty. In the second game of the World Series he had to go out and pitch against the Yankees. Tony Lazzeri and everybody couldn’t figure out this old washed-up guy could strike out Lazzeri. But he did. He fanned him. ”

  Mom leans forward.

  “What is your point?”

  The Pitcher leans back and looks up at her.

  “My point is that they asked him how he felt, winning the game, and Grover said if he had blown it, the same guys would have called him a bum who called him a hero. He said he had nothing to prove to anybody.” He pauses. “I don’t have nothin’ to prove either … to you or anybody else.”

  I close my eyes. The moon no longer beams down on someone going to make the high school team. It shines on a Mexican kid who doesn’t have a chance. I look again and Mom is wiping her eyes.

  “You are his coach!”

  “Lady … you don’t want a coach … you’re looking for a father.”

  “Bullshit. Who helped you when you needed it? ”

  “Nobody helped me. I helped me.”

  “What about your father?’

  The Pitcher looks up at her.

  “He was a drunken bum who only came back to steal our clothes and our money.”

  “I would think you’d understand then.”

  “I don’t owe nobody nothing.”

  Mom steps close, punching the air with her finger.

  “I’m going to tell you what you are going to do, because apparently nobody ever has. You are going to sober up and help a boy with his dream. I expect you back at that field tomorrow morning and if you don’t come back, I will come over here and personally kick your ass!”

  And then Mom walks out the garage and across the street. I follow her and she goes straight into her bedroom and slams the door. I stand in the kitchen and stare at the medical bills on the table. I know she’s been trying to find someone who will see her without insurance. And now she has this to worry about.

  I walk back to her room.

  “Hey ... Mom?”

  I’m about to knock when I hear her crying. I stand there not moving, with my head against the door. It breaks your heart, man, to hear your mom cry like that.

  20

  SO I’M BACK ON THE bench waiting for the Pitcher, with the birds in the trees and the sun creeping over the infield. It’s already warm and Mom is smoking. She looks at her watch every few minutes and makes these ticking noises. She looks across the field a couple times, but I know he isn’t coming. Like the Pitcher said to me once, It’s your game and nobody else’s. So he must have figured it was his game and that’s why I know he isn’t coming.

  “Let’s go,” Mom says, standing up. We start across the field and she puts her hand on my shoulder. “We don’t need him.”

  We reach home and I notice his garage door is all the way down. I would have settled for just hearing his ballgame. So then things just sort of go back to normal. Mom and I watch a lot of sport movies. We watch Rudy, The Natural, and Field of Dreams. We watch Billy Elliot. Mom loves movies where the characters win after having everything stacked against them. Eventually the Pitcher’s garage goes back up and Shortstop sleeps on the drive. Joey and I throw stuff under the garage again. Joey says I should throw an M-80 under his garage for the way he quit on me. I don’t know.

  The tryouts are getting closer and everyone wants playing time. Devin puts me in when he gets in tight spots. Mrs. Payne talks to him and then boom, I come right back out. They want me to just go away, and I think that’s why they left the team. It happened when we were playing the Yankees. They had been blasting Eric’s fastball out of the park. I didn’t think Devin was going to do anything, but then he did something amazing. He pulled Eric and put me in.

  Mrs. Payne came charging into the dugout. Mom told me the rest.

  “I want to know why Eric is sitting down while he’s pitching!”

  Devin turned to his wife and frowned.

  “Beth, they were hitting on Eric! I had to do something.”

  Mrs. Payne stood in the dugout with her hair pulled back and her eyes bulging.

  “Oh, give me a break! Eric happens to get a few hits and you yank him because his pushy Mexican mother harps on you so much!”

  Mom said Devin turned bright red then.

  “I couldn’t keep him in—” he sputtered. “We were going to lose the game!”

  Ms. Payne shook her finger.

  “Get Eric back out there or we are leaving the team.”

  That’s when the whole leaving the team thing started. I didn’t know you could leave your own team, but in league ball, man, anything can happen. Devin just stared at her.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Ms. Payne stepped up close, her brow pimpled with sweat, her face sunburned from thousands of baseball games. “Put Eric back in there or we are going to Tri City. My son is the starting pitcher or we leave!”

  She said it like a law and Devin gestured wildly to the field. Mom said he paced back and forth in the dugout, trying to explain why I had to keep pitching. But Mrs. Payne just kept shaking her head, telling him that Eric had to pitch or that was it.

  “We can’t do that now, Beth,” he exploded, shaking his head. “The tournament is coming up!”

  Mrs. Payne crossed her arms.

  “Pull him out now or I am going to get Eric and we are leaving!”

  Mom said Devin started wavering then and she had to say something.

  “You can’t pull him, Devin.”

  That’s when Mrs. Payne got in her face.

  “Yes he can, he is the head coach, and he can do anything he wants! You people think you can have anything you want,” she shouted and started throwing gloves, bats, balls, kicking the dirt. “That’s it! Eric! Get your bag. We’re leaving!”

  Eric looked up from the bench and stared at his mother.

  “Mom—”

  “I know what is best! GET YOUR BAT BAG!”

  Eric grabbed his bag and Mrs. Payne sneered at Mom in this low voice.

  “You people will be hearing from the league commissioner, because I have a little surprise for you!”

  And then Eric and his mother stomped out of the dugout. Mom said Devin stared at them, then shrugged and handed her the clipboard. And that’s how the Paynes left the team and that’s how Mom became the coach of the Marauders.

  Crazy, right?

  Bu
t that’s baseball.

  21

  I’M READING JOE TORRE’S THE Yankee Years when Mom walks in. It’s been taking me a while, but all books take a long time with me. I’m reading about how Roger Clemens got ready to pitch. He would put himself in a whirlpool at the highest possible temperature, then when he was lobster red, he had a trainer rub super-hot liniment on his groin. He would start snorting like a bull and then he said he was ready to pitch. I mean, come on. Would a guy really do that before a game? But Joe Torre’s and Clemens’s trainer swear by it.

  Mom and I haven’t really talked about what happened at the game. I mean her being the coach and all. I was excited because she could play me more, but Mom doesn’t roll that way. She doesn’t play coach’s ball and favor her kid over everyone else. She wants to make sure everyone gets a chance. If anything, she plays me less to not show any favoritism.

  “What are you up to there, champ?”

  “Just reading.”

  Mom looks at my picture of No. 27 Juan Marichal, his left leg vertical and his arm coiling like a slingshot. That dude could hurl, man. He’d come over the top with a four-seam fastball that could bust in at one hundred miles an hour. I’ve watched videos of him on YouTube. He threw so hard he’d skid in the grass after the pitch. If I had been a kid in the sixties, he’d a been my main man.

  Mom looks at the trophies we’ve won over the years and the pictures of my in-house ball teams. She’s in every one of them. I still have the tickets from Wrigley Field tacked on my bulletin board from the games. She stares for a moment, then turns. I feel something bad coming the way she clasps her hands, her eyes taking my temperature.

  “How’s the book?”

  I look down with my finger on the Roger Clemens liniment on balls part.

  “Good.”

  I thought she might say something about the crazy e-mail from Mrs. Payne. She had sent this e-mail about how the Marauders were the worst team in the league. “And to use the pushy tactics of the oppressed minority player is just BS … clearly benching the starting pitcher to placate certain coaches screaming about Mexican rights when the rights of hard working white Americans are being trampled on. My son has been the victim of reverse discrimination and I intend to register complaints with the baseball commissioner. This isn’t over … not by a long shot.”

  Mom says Mrs. Payne has really lost her mind. There is a link called Americanstokeepillegalsout.com where you can see if someone is here illegally. I got kind of a chill when I saw the link. Like there are people out there hunting for us.

  “I’m sorry that Mr. Langford is not going to coach you anymore, Ricky,” she begins, looking at me.

  I put the book down and shrug.

  “Yeah … that’s alright.”

  “I think we just have to be thankful he coached you when he did. We’ll find someone else,” Mom says, trying to put the mom-spin on it. But I don’t see how that’s going to happen. I hear Mom crying to Grandma about not being able to pay her medical bills. We get these calls all the time from these guys asking for money. And Grandma cries because she thinks they are going to send her back to Mexico. It’s like those old movies where the Germans are hauling people off to concentration camps or something.

  “That’s cool. I’ll get on the team anyway,” I say, because I figure she has enough to worry about.

  Mom’s eyes get wet.

  “I’m proud of you for that attitude, Ricky.” She then stands and pulls back her hair, scratching the corner of her mouth. “I want you to know … there is a rumor that Eric is playing for Tri City.”

  I stare at her. “ How could Eric manage to get on the Tri City team this late?”

  “It’s just what I heard.”

  “That has to be BS, Mom.”

  Mom’s face turns red and then I know, man. I just know. Worse than that, the freshman coach’s kid plays for Tri City!

  “Don’t tell me he’s pitching for them?”

  Mom stands there tight-lipped.

  “Eric is pitching for Tri City! Nobody at the end of the season comes in and becomes a starting pitcher, Mom!”

  She just stands there with her eyes telling me it’s true. Tri City is the best league team in Jacksonville. It’s Gino’s team. Practically everybody who’s on Tri City makes the high school team. We might even face Tri City in the final tournament at the high school field.

  “Let’s just concentrate on getting you ready for the tryouts,” Mom says. “We can’t worry about things we can’t control.”

  I stare at her.

  “But Mom, what if we end up playing Tri City?”

  “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “Oh man, I am screwed,” I wail, covering my eyes.

  There is no way I can get around this one. With Eric pitching for Tri City and me without a coach, I might as well not go to the tryouts. He is going to sail from pitching for Tri City right to pitching on the freshman team. It is that simple.

  “Let’s just see what happens, Ricky,” Mom says quietly, walking to the door.

  “Mom!”

  She turns around by the door.

  “Do you think … I mean, man, do you think … there’s any chance the Pitcher might still coach me?”

  Mom breathes heavily.

  “There’s always a chance, Ricky.”

  I listen to her go down the hall, then stare at The Yankee Years and think of Roger Clemens. Go ahead. Put the hottest liniment in the world on my groin. Just let me make the high school team. Straight up. I won’t even cry.

  22

  I TAKE THE BALL AND set my hands. This is where the world falls into order. I breathe and kick back high like Satchel Paige and windmill over the top. I know right away I released too early and the ball sails over Mom’s head and rings the backstop. She stands up in her catcher gear and picks the ball up and throws it back. There’s really nothing she can say. I’m just getting worse and worse.

  Mom and I are back to the Internet printouts. I should hold the ball this way for a sinker or that way for a knuckle ball. None of it works, but like I said, Mom isn’t a person who gives up on anything. I keep launching it for the moon. Mom is telling me to square my shoulder and tuck my glove and pick a spot and all the stuff the Pitcher would say. But with Mom it just feels like noise.

  “Don’t talk when I’m pitching!”

  “You need someone to talk to you because you obviously still can’t pitch,” she shouts back, squatting down behind home plate. We are freaking. The tournament is next week and the tryouts are the week after that. Mom is tired from looking for a job and she’s getting sicker.

  “Maria, this is Dr. Aziz, please call me as soon as possible.”

  These messages keep popping up on our phone.

  “Well, the tests came back from the hospital,” the doctor said on the phone with me on the extension. “Your kidneys are not doing well. Because of the lupus your body is attacking them and that accounts for the blood in your urine and I imagine you have abdominal pain as well. We should probably get you into a dialysis program and do further tests.”

  That’s what the doctor said a few weeks ago. I listened in because I know Mom won’t tell me anything. And I want to know why she’s sleeping so much and gets tired when we throw the ball. A lot of times at dinner she leaves her plate full and drinks a Diet Coke and goes out to smoke a cigarette. Then today, the doctor calls again.

  “When your disease takes a turn like this we have to be very careful. We might have to look at a kidney transplant.”

  “Whoa, Whoa, Whoa …”

  Mom is in the kitchen. She’s drinking her Diet Coke and lighting a cigarette and trying to see if I’m around. She lowers her voice.

  “A transplant? No way!”

  Mom doesn’t take anything from anybody. So hearts, lungs, kidneys are not going to happen if they’re coming from somebody else. I could have told the doctor she was wasting her time.

  “The pathology of lupus in this stage is tha
t your body will keep attacking your organs until they fail.”

  “So then, I’m screwed,” Mom says quietly.

  And I feel my face get hot and my eyes start to burn. But the doctor is silent for a moment. “There are new drug therapies we can try, hormone treatments and like I said, we can make up for the inefficiencies of your kidneys with dialysis. But we have to get aggressive right now and stop your body from attacking your organs or it will cause your organs to fail.”

  I feel better. Yeah. They can do something for her. Mom just has to play ball with them.

  “How long, doc?”

  “What?”

  “How long do I have?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I don’t either. Why does she keep talking like that? She should go in there and get help. But Mom is stubborn, in case you haven’t noticed. She has to do things her way.

  “I want to know how many months I have before you stick me in a hospital.”

  I hear her sit down at the kitchen table. I know this doctor is trying to figure her out. The doctor probably has a good family, a husband, a good profession, health insurance. She doesn’t know anything about not having health insurance or being worried about losing your house. Hey, if you’re not poor, then you don’t want to know about being poor.

  “Look, doc, my son has high school baseball tryouts,” Mom continues. “I have to get him ready to pitch and I can’t be spending my time in hospitals going through dialysis and waiting around for a kidney that might never come. I’m going to use the time I have left.” She pauses, her voice breaking. “So … so I just need to know how long I have?”

  The doctor breathes real heavy.

  “Why would you do that to yourself, Maria?”

  Yeah. Why would you? I almost say.

  Mom speaks in this calm voice. “If you could give your boy his dream, wouldn’t you?”

  I hang up. I don’t want to hear anymore. It sounds like she is going to die. So that’s why I call Dr. Aziz back after Mom hangs up. I have to do something. I go outside where the heat is rolling off the street. Mom is watching television. I find the number on the caller ID and hit the redial out in the driveway.