Painting the Corners Again

by Weintraub, Bob;

  The bus took us to the airport on Monday morning after we’d had a late breakfast. I asked Mr. State Department what he thought of the game, and he told me he missed it. He looked up an old friend and they went to a museum and to dinner. It didn’t surprise me. When we passed by the Presidential Palace, I had one more look at the Roadmaster and then put it out of my mind. A couple of weeks later I got a note from the Secretary of Latin American Affairs and he congratulated all of us on a good showing in Cuba. He let me know he was aware we had really won the series the way it was set up because we beat them three out of the first five. He also figured Castro couldn’t hate us all that much since we’d made him a great baseball hero. He was wrong on that one.

  So, like I told you, Emo, when I began this story, fifty years have gone by since we played that game. And now, out of the blue, Castro thinks of me and sends me an anniversary present. If you want to see it, let’s go in the garage. I had the delivery guys put it in there. Watch your step. Here, let me put on the light. Surprise, huh? Now you know what a 1954 Buick Roadmaster Convertible looks like. Beautiful, isn’t it? Imagine how I felt when it arrived. Go ahead, the hood opens easy if you put your fingers where the “BUICK” letters meet the top of the grill and push up. There you go. Yeah, I was shocked myself. Now we both know why this gorgeous automobile sat in front of the Presidential Palace so many years and never moved a foot. Who would’ve ever guessed there was just a big empty space under the hood?

  CATCH ME, CATCH ME

  “Trying to sneak a fastball past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster.”

  —Joe Adcock

  MORE THAN FORTY years have flown by since I last saw Catch Me, Catch Me. I was a member of the Iroquois then, a social and athletic club started by some of us in our early teens who lived on three adjacent streets in town.

  We were one of a handful of clubs whose members spent most of their free time at Franklin Field. Our primary adversaries, from other streets in the same general neighborhood, were the Rangers, Blackhawks, and Devils. We opposed each other regularly in baseball and football, and in the winters when the huge field was intentionally flooded and iced over, some of the teams played hockey. Once in a while a fight broke out during these encounters, but it didn’t cause any more lingering animosity than what already existed simply by virtue of our belonging to one club or another.

  Catch Me, Catch Me, whose real name was Norman, “Normy” to us, had no attachment to any of the clubs. That’s not because he wasn’t a good athlete. Tall, wiry and strong, he had biceps we all envied, and he could throw a baseball or kick a football farther than any of us. He was a pitcher, a left-hander, with easily the best stuff of anyone I knew who played ball at Franklin Field. He tried to get into the Rangers at one time, but the club president, who also pitched most of the team’s games, blackballed him. After that, I guess Catch Me, Catch Me decided to stay independent rather than risk the embarrassment of being rejected again.

  The problem was that until he got to high school, Catch Me, Catch Me didn’t have the chance to pitch in many games. He was much too good for any of the neighborhood clubs playing each other to waive the “no ringers” rule when he was around, except when a team was unable to put nine guys on the field. Even then, he was restricted to an infield or outfield position. The only time he could pitch was in an occasional pickup game when no club’s pride or record was at stake.

  For a while, Normy also got the chance to show his skill on Sunday mornings in the summer when guys in their twenties and thirties got together for a weekly game. He waited patiently until replacements were needed in the late innings for those who had to get home, and was sometimes allowed to finish out the contest on the mound. But that stopped when enough players complained about being embarrassed by a fifteen-year-old kid.

  There were two things that distinguished Catch Me, Catch Me at the field. For one, he was the only player there who wore even part of a baseball uniform. This was years before Little League got started, and it imbued him with a special status. An uncle of his had given him a shirt that said “Tigers” on the front, in orange letters, with the number “19” on the back. Normy told us that his uncle had played minor league ball in the Detroit organization. Soon afterwards, his long, dirty blonde hair could be seen flowing out from beneath the black baseball cap with the Detroit “D” on the brim that he purchased at a Fenway Park souvenir stand.

  The other thing setting him apart was that he always carried two baseball gloves with him. One was his own, a regular fielder’s mitt for a lefty. The second was a catcher’s glove for a right-hander because most of us threw that way. Whenever he saw someone he knew, he extended the catcher’s glove and virtually pleaded, “Catch me, catch me.” Two of Normy’s upper teeth on the same side of his mouth were chipped in the same place, giving him almost a smile within a smile whenever he spoke. He was prepared for rejection, which was the usual result. Most of us were afraid to try and catch him without a mask, chest protector and shin pads. But if he detected even the slightest hesitation, he pounced.

  “You’ve got to see what my new fast ball can do, it’s amazing,” he would say, or, “I’ve been working on a curve that can drop two feet.” At that point he had all but put the catcher’s glove on the other person’s hand, still imploring, “Come on, catch me, catch me, just for a while.” That’s how he acquired his nickname.

  It was hard for me to turn him down, despite knowing that I was going to be nervous and straining on every pitch. It didn’t matter that he always announced what he would throw next. His was the fastest baseball I’d ever catch from that sixty-foot, six-inch distance he immediately marked off with the roll of measuring tape he always carried in his pocket.

  There was also the realization that if I didn’t react quickly enough to a pitch that broke at the last second or landed in the dirt in front of me, I could easily get hurt. The well-padded catcher’s glove would take care of my hand, but there was no protection anywhere else. Still, Normy had made it clear to everyone that he was going to be a major league pitcher some day, and what he could do on the mound with a baseball was overwhelming enough to convince me he’d reach his goal. There was always the thought in the back of my mind that someday I’d be able to brag that I caught his pitches when we were kids.

  Things improved dramatically for Catch Me, Catch Me when he got to high school. Although the rules didn’t allow him to play for the varsity in his freshman year, he performed better than any other pitcher in the intra-squad games held during the tryouts. The freshman team played a fourteen-game schedule. Normy started eight of those games, completed seven and won them all. He averaged fifteen strikeouts each time out. I was the third baseman on that team, and it was because of me that everyone else got into the habit of calling him Catch Me, Catch Me, and rhythmically shouting the name every time he got two strikes on an opposing batter.

  In our sophomore year, Catch Me, Catch Me was the star of the team. He had grown taller and broader, and a weightlifting program gave him more strength in his shoulders. There was greater velocity on every pitch he threw, and he quickly established himself as the ace of the pitching staff. The varsity played two games against each of the other nine teams in our high school division. Normy got the chance to face all of them and to pitch twice against our archrivals from Mattapan. For the second year in a row he went undefeated and maintained his fifteen strikeouts per game average. Until the final game of the season, he pitched at least eight innings every time he took the mound. His fame spread quickly around school, and the ten rows of stands on the first base side of the baseball field were usually filled with friends shouting his nickname whenever he played.

  The first meeting with Mattapan, at our field, fell in the middle of the schedule. It was a squeaker all the way. Both Catch Me, Catch Me and the pitcher for the visitors had each allowed just one hit going into the last half of the ninth inning. Normy was a terrible hitter, but with one out he somehow connected on a long dr
ive to right center field that split the outfielders. He raced around the bases, past a teammate coaching at third who froze in indecision, neither waving him on nor signaling him to stop, and scored the only run of the game after a collision at home caused the catcher to drop the ball.

  The sound of “Catch Me, Catch Me” from our bench and from the bleachers behind us accompanied him all the way. Watching him run 360 feet at full speed, Mr. Levine, the school’s track coach, decided on the spot that there was a place for Catch Me, Catch Me on his team. Normy told me later that the coach had all but ordered him to come out for indoor track in the fall. Little did he know he’d also be running track during the next baseball season.

  It happened that suddenly. The last game of the year was the rematch with Mattapan. Normy found himself dueling the same pitcher he had beaten earlier with his home run. In five innings he had already notched nine strikeouts and was leading by the one run we had just given him, courtesy of my double, in the top of the sixth inning.

  The second out in Mattapan’s half of that inning was his tenth “K” of the contest and the last pitch Catch Me, Catch Me ever made in a baseball game. He screamed as he let the ball go and then fell on the ground in obvious pain. The coaches of both teams ran out to him, comforted him as best they could and sent one of the players to the school to call for an ambulance. We could hear its siren begin to wail many blocks away from where we were, and then watched silently as Normy was lifted into the van on a stretcher. It turned out that he had completely torn his rotator cuff, although we never heard it called that back then. Someone with that injury was always described as having “thrown his arm out.” Catch Me, Catch Me was told never to use his left arm to throw hard again. For the record, we held on to the lead to win that last game and were division champions, but without our star pitcher we were near the bottom of the heap in my junior and senior years.

  Coach Levine found that Normy’s speed and stamina made him a natural miler. He took to the training, and by the middle of the indoor season brought excitement to every race he ran. His nickname seemed even more suited to his new sport. Many of his friends in school began attending the meets, and the cry of “Catch Me, Catch Me” filled the gymnasium whenever he raced the twelve laps around the track in the mile competition.

  Mr. Levine insisted that Normy stay in training during the three-month hiatus between the indoor and outdoor track seasons. Except for school vacation weeks, he reported to the coach after classes every day for the exercises and practice runs that had been scheduled for him. I never heard him complain about it, probably because he could see the steady improvement himself. Track was now the only way he could show off his athletic ability, and he decided to make the most of it.

  By the time the outdoor season began, Normy was the best miler our school had ever produced. His times were fantastic, prompting one of the local newspapers to run his picture above the caption, “Four Minute Miler?” That was a huge exaggeration, of course, since he was usually twenty seconds above that threshold. But in competition he was always so far ahead of the pack that the race was over, for all intents and purposes, when he still had much of the final lap of our quarter mile track to complete.

  The roar of “Catch Me, Catch Me” from the students in the stands and the other athletes in the track’s infield grew louder and louder as each of his races progressed. Then he added a new wrinkle to the excitement. I still recall the first time Normy glanced over his shoulder at his distant pursuers as he was still far from the finish line and hollered a taunting “Catch me, catch me.” We loved it.

  And that became the routine. No one ever came close to beating him during the rest of his high school career. As his times for the mile improved, his following grew larger. The reward for those who encouraged him by shouting his nickname came that moment during the final lap when he signaled his victory by turning his head to those running behind and called out, “Catch me, catch me.”

  I’m certain that the last time I ever saw Normy was at the senior prom. By that time I knew he was soon leaving for the Army in order to satisfy his commitment and save some money before starting college. He was disappointed that the colleges to which he applied for a scholarship to run track had very little financial assistance to offer him. We wished each other well and shook hands on the thought that we’d meet up again at a class reunion. I attended all of them, from the first, held ten years after graduation, to our 40th reunion in May. Catch Me, Catch Me never came to one.

  What brought all this to mind was the story that ran last week in the business section of the Times. Seeing Normy’s name in large bold print caught my eye, and the few details of his past that were included, along with a photograph, assured me that the article was about my old baseball buddy and classmate. The essence of the report was that he had found a unique way to siphon millions of dollars from the Wall Street securities firm where he worked, and had created a software program to alert him immediately if anyone’s suspicion about missing funds led to the checking of certain records. Having apparently discovered that such an investigation was in its initial stage, he took a two-week vacation leave and used it to flee the country with his wife. The only thing authorities now knew for certain was that his flight had landed in Zurich ten days before the incriminating evidence pointed in his direction. It was assumed that the investment firm’s money was resting comfortably in one or more Swiss bank accounts.

  For my part, I could only picture Normy looking out the window of that plane, watching New York City fade further into the distance every second and, with a smile of victory on his face, whispering the words, “Catch me, catch me.”