Bottom of the 33rd

by Dan Barry

  If Drew had rattled off the birthplaces of each player, rather than their names, he would have sung an anthem of the Americas. Leading off for Rochester: Tulsa, Oklahoma, followed by Brooklyn, New York; Havre de Grace, Maryland; Tucumcari, New Mexico; Trion, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Mobile, Alabama; Uvalde, Texas; South Gate, California; and pitching, Richmond, Virginia. And for Pawtucket, leading off: Summerfield, Florida, followed by Arcadia, California; Jackson, Mississippi; Southington, Connecticut; Norfolk, Virginia; Omaha, Nebraska; Brunswick, Georgia; Worcester, Massachusetts; San Cristobal, Dominican Republic; and pitching, Huntsville, Alabama. From the mill towns of New England to the suburbs of the Pacific Coast; from the housing projects of the Midwest to the sugarcane fields of the Caribbean: a ballad of bus fumes and ambition.

  The Rochester team emerges from the dugout to create nine red-and-white disruptions on the dark green field. Among them, the starting pitcher, Larry Jones, once a prince of Florida athletics; he was an All-American wide receiver at Seminole High School who played both football and baseball at Florida State University before deciding to concentrate on pitching. The Baltimore Orioles signed him to a contract for a modest amount in 1977, but the money didn’t matter; he would have paid them for the chance. He has not forgotten his first week in rookie ball, in Bluefield, West Virginia, when the manager invited the latest crop of would-be Baltimore stars to take a good look at one another and remember: Less than 3 percent of those who sign professional baseball contracts ever reach the major leagues.

  Jones was twenty-two then, tall and powerfully built, with a record of sustained athletic achievement and a fastball that arrived at more than 90 miles an hour; he felt confident that he would be among the chosen few to ascend. But here he is now, four years older, a veteran of minor-league suspicions and doubts. He thinks that his manager is more interested in internal politics than in player development. He thinks that one Baltimore executive in particular is the worst man he has ever met. He thinks—no, he knows—that the meter is running; that athletes don’t get better with age. Every spring training, when the best minor-league players vie for those few remaining spots on the major-league roster, he has a brief audience with Earl Weaver, the cranky Baltimore Orioles manager, whose message, in effect, is always the same: You’re going back to Triple-A. Keep doing what you’re doing. If anybody gets hurt, maybe you’ll get a chance.

  In other words, Jonesy, be realistic. The Baltimore Orioles have the finest pitching staff in Major League Baseball: Dennis Martinez; Scott McGregor; Mike Flanagan, a Cy Young Award winner; Steve Stone, another Cy Young Award winner; and Jim Palmer, the winner of three Cy Young awards, which means that he was voted the best pitcher in the American League three times. Face it, Jonesy. This is a business. You’re a living, breathing insurance policy, in case one of these All Stars gets injured.

  So what do you think Jones and all his fellow pitchers in Rochester are secretly hoping for, beyond the desire to see their teammates and good buddies get lit up—knocked out of the game—every time they take the mound? It is so awful to think that you don’t even want to say it aloud, but this is what they wish: That the elbow on the storied right arm of future Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer swells like a Florida grapefruit. That he gets injured. That the injury leads to an urgent message to pack up and head to Baltimore. That one night, maybe in New York, maybe Kansas City (and that would be all right, too), Weaver will grunt the name of the night’s starting pitcher:

  Jones.

  Now starting. In Pawtucket. Jonesy.

  He needs just eleven pitches. Groundout to second; groundout to first; line out to second. Done.

  Drew, the Rochester broadcaster, has tried to describe the weather conditions, but his words fall short: “A cool and windy night here in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the wind blowing right in from center field. No threat of rain; however, it is a very chilly night….”

  Chilly? Though the thermometer reads 45 degrees, the April night air carries an early December bluster with a January bite. Football weather, for Christ’s sake. But a veteran Rochester pitcher who knows a thing or two, a Missouri farm boy named Steve Luebber, has an idea. He has played in the major leagues; in fact, he once came within one pitch—one pitch—of a rare no-hitter. Of course, that near feat means absolutely nothing now, as he finds himself thirty-one years old, back in the minor leagues, and relegated to the open-air visitors’ bullpen along the first-base line, where pitchers sit with their hands clenched in warm-up jackets. Still, he has an idea.

  On the other side of the chain-link fence, where civilians dwell, kids are begging for any kind of artifact touched by someone who actually plays baseball for a living. All right, all right, Luebber tells them. Let’s make a deal. I’ll trade you baseballs for any wood you can find.

  Wood for baseballs? To the children of Pawtucket, this tall and courtly ballplayer with hangdog eyes must seem like the thickest rube. Before long there comes tumbling over the divide a bonfire’s worth of twigs, branches, lumber, even slats from a white picket fence.

  From a picket fence? Are these kids ripping apart some old lady’s garden? Luebber doesn’t ask. He just pays for the delivery with scuffedup baseballs. Soon he has a fire burning in one of the fifty-five-gallon drums used as garbage cans, fueled by paper, broken bats, and whatever else these Pawtucket kids have culled from their deforestation project. The game has just begun, but already the Rochester pitchers need a fire to warm their precious hands and moods, its flames lighting up a corner of this Depression-era ballpark like some Dead End Kids spud party along New York’s East River. If I had the wings of an angel, over these prison walls I’d fly….

  These earliest innings follow ordinary baseball time, unfolding with a familiar leisure occasionally interrupted by intimations of drama. Glance down at your program, consider the advertised merits of the $3.99 steak special at the East Side Checker Club (“Includes Soup, Salad, Potato, Vegetable and Bread and Butter”), and look up to find that you’ve misplaced the top half of the 2nd inning: groundout; pop out; fly out. Or become mesmerized by the wink and flicker of light near the visitors’ bullpen along the first-base line, wonder whether you see fire coming out of a barrel, say to yourself that yes, yes, that is a fire, then return your gaze to the field, only to see players wearing red caps running in and players wearing blue caps running out, the bottom half of the second done: strikeout, groundout, groundout.

  In the bottom of the 3rd inning, two singles allow the Red Sox to move a runner to third base, where he watches two teammates strike out before a third grounds out to end the threat. In the bottom of the 4th inning, Chico Walker, the twenty-three-year-old Red Sox left fielder who hit a home run during his brief first visit to the major leagues last year, something that can never be taken from him, hits a baseball deep, deep to center field. It dies of exhaustion at the warning track. But up in the press box, Mike Scandura, the earnest young reporter for the Pawtucket Evening Times, who is dutifully recording every pitch in his C. S. Peterson’s Scoremaster simplified Baseball Score Book, considers this hard-hit ball a possible indication of things to come. He jots: “370 drive into the wind.”

  In the top of the 5th inning, Chris Bourjos, the left fielder for the Red Wings, stands at the ready in the batter’s box. He appeared in 13 games with the San Francisco Giants last year, a fact worthy of boast, but the boast will end by the Bay; his major-league career is over, though two more years of standby in the minors await him. He is the nephew, by the way, of Otto “Dutch” Denning, a bit major-league player whose name resonates mostly because of a great story he used to tell about himself. In 1943, while playing subpar baseball for the Cleveland Indians, Denning was summoned by the team’s player-manager, Lou Boudreau, a future member of the Hall of Fame.

  Boudreau: How’d you like to see Niagara Falls—for free?

  Denning: I’d like that.

  Boudreau: Good, because we’re sending you to Buffalo.

  Now the nephew of Otto Denning swings at a
1–2 pitch and sends the ball high, higher, and short, maybe sixty feet from home plate. Parks, the pitcher, knows well enough to get out of the way, as Wade Boggs, the third baseman, and Dave Koza, the first baseman, stutter toward the ball and each other, their heads tilted impossibly back, the two of them similar enough in appearance to be brothers. Both have darkish hair cropping from under their blue Pawtucket caps. Both have full mustaches. Both have powerful builds. Both have Boston hopes.

  Tracking that plummeting white dot in the wind, their eyes are so locked on heaven that neither sees the other coming. Two minor-league unknowns, destined to collide.

  Dave Koza (11), quarterback for the Whites, is about to kick a 30-yard field goal and score the last three points for his team….

  August 30, 1971

  The 27–0 score was helped along when Dave Koza intercepted a pass and ran it back for the first touchdown….

  September 6, 1971

  The ball apparently just can’t keep up with speedster Dave Koza, who led his team to victory over the Bulldogs. A 6–1 senior, Koza gunned in 19 points for the Blazers in their 11th victory….

  February 28, 1972

  Triple winner was Dave Koza, shown above with his discus throw of 148 feet 5 inches for 1st place. He also took first in the triple jump (39 ft. 10 in.) and the long jump (20 ft.)….

  May 11, 1972

  The history of Torrington, Wyoming, turns brittle by the year in the narrow basement of its newspaper, the Torrington Telegram. There, stacked against the wall, near some dusty coffee cups and a winter glove missing its right-hand mate, reside bound copies of the newspaper; the years captured within are printed on their spines. The newspapers, browning and drying like late-autumn leaves, reach back a century to tell the bit-by-bit transformation of a nowhere place of a railroad way station, eighty-four miles north of Cheyenne, into a proud and vital agricultural center, with sugar beets, corn, winter wheat, cattle, and fifty-eight hundred residents. By Wyoming standards, a city.

  Open any volume from the early 1970s, release that first whiff of the paper-crumbling past, and journey back to the time-frozen stock shows and 4-H competitions, the summer headlines (“First Snake Bite Happens Monday”) and great Thanksgiving deals down at Gibson Discount, where Cat Stevens’s Tea for the Tillerman album can be had for just $3.97. A woman named Julia is writing her gentle “Scoopin ’n’ Snoopin” gossip column (“Hello Folks! Have I ever got a ‘goodie’ for you this time…”), and the Hill Top Kar-Vu Drive-In Theatre is doing its best to keep citizens apprised of cultural trends by featuring such fare as The Young Graduates (“The ‘Hot Pants’ Generation is Loose”).

  And with every turn of a yellowing page, it seems, another story is trumpeting the athletic exploits of the hometown hero, Dave Koza. Here he is, leading the high school football team to an undefeated season as its quarterback, defensive back, and kicker. Here he is, photographed falling backward after scoring 2 of his 21 points in another basketball victory. Here he is, on graduation day, receiving the football award, the basketball award, and the track award. Koza, Koza, Koza, and the only reason he isn’t receiving an award for baseball—his best sport—is that the high schools don’t play baseball. Blame it on the late spring, or maybe the lack of local interest.

  This posed a problem for the family. When Dave Koza was ten years old, his father—an affable retired navy veteran, fond of his drink—moved the family from Florida to his home state of Wyoming. They settled in Torrington, where young Dave struggled to understand a community that did not offer organized baseball to adolescent boys. He did not shy from informing his parents that he wanted to go back to Florida—back to baseball.

  His understanding father, Gene, found a vacant lot beside the Safe-way grocery store, planted four poles, unrolled some chicken wire, and laid out a regulation-size Little League field. With that, organized baseball for young boys came to Torrington, allowing Dave to demonstrate his almost preternatural skills for people other than his parents and brothers. One night, while taking in the previews before a show down at the Wyoming movie theater, his parents saw an advertisement for the Chandler Baseball Camp and thought: Dave. After learning that a session at the camp would cost $175—$175 that they did not have—the Kozas asked for help from several merchants in town, many of whom were appreciative of Gene Koza’s efforts to start a local Little League program.

  Soon, Dave Koza, all of eleven, was traveling eight hundred miles to Chandler, Oklahoma, to a place that so many other boys would only know through the small advertisements that occasionally appeared in the back of Baseball Digest:

  BASEBALL CAMP FOR BOYS 8 THRU 18

  Three Weeks Intensive Training.

  See Our Brochure Before Deciding.

  Write, TOM BELCHER, Baseball Camp, Chandler, Okla.

  This was a military-style baseball camp; no swimming pool, no tennis courts, no air-conditioning to counter the oppressive Oklahoma heat. For eleven hours a day, these Pee Wees and Midgets, Preps and Minors ran baseball drills; practiced bunts, slides, and hitting the cutoff; played baseball games—and then drilled some more. Before lights out in the stuffy cabins at ten, they gathered in the mess hall to watch film footage of nothing but baseball; black-and-white clips from a World Series one night, an instructional film on fielding the next.

  Its founder, Bo Belcher, an irrepressible public relations director for the Oklahoma State Fair, opened the baseball camp in 1958, on rural land that used to be the city dump. By the late 1960s, his son Tom was running the camp, and everyone knew that Tom Belcher had been with the New York Mets—“a stocky right-hander,” the camp’s brochure said, who had starred as an All-American in high school and college before signing a bonus contract with the Mets right there at the camp. The brochure featured a photograph of Belcher in a Mets uniform, along with these words: “Tom was with the Mets for a short time in 1963.”

  That Tom Belcher never appeared in a major-league game now seems beside the point. He played an underwhelming three years in the minor leagues, spent “a short time” with the Mets at their spring training camp in 1963, and, eventually, returned to run his father’s camp, where he taught these true boys of summer the fundamentals of the game, showed them the benefits of dedication, regaled them with Casey Stengel anecdotes, and loomed before them as the personification of the Possible. When Tom Belcher died in 2006, several years after waning demand forced him to close his baseball paradise, legions of former campers mourned.

  But when the camp was in its glory, back in the mid-and late 1960s, a Wyoming boy named Koza thrived. Thanks to a godfather’s beneficence, he returned to the camp when he was twelve, then accepted Tom Belcher’s offer to work as a camp counselor for a few more summers. He cleaned the cabins, raked the fields, and played baseball, baseball, and more baseball, often while wearing a used wool uniform so itchy and stifling that it must have been intended as preparation for greater things; a toughening up for the leagues to come. When his camp sessions ended, he would return to Torrington to star as a pitcher and outfielder in the Babe Ruth and American Legion games, before football season arrived to offer him another field on which to excel.

  By his senior year in high school, Koza had become the official Local Hero, of whom much was expected. He was working in the stock-yard directly across from the high school football field, running calves into the chute, clipping their young horns, then powdering the wounds to stem the bleeding. But everyone knew that Dave Koza wasn’t long for Torrington.

  “He was our All-Everything,” says Paul “Cactus” Covello Jr., Koza’s classmate and friend. “Groomed from the git-go to play baseball.”

  Cactus had enviable connections; his family owned a prominent car dealership. So he and Koza would loop the town, “dragging Main,” in Cactus’s gorgeous car, a 1967 Impala convertible, blue with a white top. They’d prowl Main Street, turn left after the Trail Hotel, hug the railroad tracks, turn into the lot at the Ten Pin Tropics bowling alley—where carhops waited to serve you—and l
inger a while. Then they’d retrace their path and do it all over again, night after night, with an occasional diversion to the Hill Top drive-in just to shake things up. Cactus was proud to hang around with Koza, in part because everyone in town knew that he’d be famous one day. Not that Koza would ever say that, or even think it. He was just one of the guys, though first among them: big and strong, quick as a cat, and exuding the air of one not to be trifled with.

  The Dave Koza baseball odyssey that began with all those day-long trips to the Chandler Baseball Camp continued after high school graduation, when he decided to attend Eastern Oklahoma State College—mostly because the baseball coach at the two-year school was also an instructor at Chandler. He played and pitched well, but if fifty people came to one of his Mountaineers games, thirty of them were scouts following his more talented teammate, Tito Landrum, who would later appear in two World Series. Then, after the end of spring semester, it was on to Colorado Springs, where Koza played semiprofessional ball in exchange for a construction job and a place to live.

  In the late spring of 1974, after a night game in Colorado Springs, Koza was invited by a scout to a Denny’s Restaurant, a familiar setting for minor-league deals of modest order. The scout, Danny Doyle, had played briefly in the major leagues—13 games in 1943 as a weak-hitting catcher for the war-depleted Red Sox—before gaining some renown within the organization as a gifted scout. He had signed the Red Sox pitching star Jim Lonborg, and would one day sign an even greater star, Roger Clemens, but right now he was locked on Dave Koza. Sign now for $15,000, he said.

  Koza was a nineteen-year-old boy. He asked if Doyle would come back to Torrington to meet his parents. But the scout said he was too busy, and needed an answer by midnight, yes or no. After telephoning his parents, the young man reached for the proffered pen and signed his baseball life away to the Boston Red Sox.