The Youngest Hero

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  I had not yet stepped into the box against the steel monster. I was waiting for final adjustments and lots of time. That would come at Christmas break when I would have almost three weeks to take my cuts or, I hoped not, my lumps.

  25

  The Chicago snow came as what the local TV newspeople called a lake-effect dump during the first week of December. They predicted minor flurries followed by Indian summer days that would clear the white stuff, but the city was frozen nearly to a halt till March.

  One day the sun would melt the drifts to slush, making people on the side streets hope for plows to clear them with the same enthusiasm that streets in the Loop and the expressways were cleared. But as evening fell, so would more snow, and everything reverted to the way it was. Soon even those sunny days became rare. Little flags on long metal rods were attached to fire hydrants so they could be found in the snow. People took to attaching the same to their car antennae so other motorists could see them at corners over the five- and six-foot piles and drifts.

  I found it depressing. Walking was treacherous. The wait for the buses seemed interminable. The shipping charge for Elgin’s pitching machine had eaten most of my coat money, so I chose a pair of cheap boots and a shawl to wear between my sweater and my old coat.

  I kind of liked the snow. I had never seen it before, and I liked running and jumping in it, climbing the piles, making snowmen with my friends. There was no fastpitch in this weather. Our “field” had to be flat from the pitcher and outfielders on one side of the street to the hitter on the other. But snowdrifts and parked cars blocked ours. I had found one of my rubber-coated baseballs and adjusted the pitching machine to see what it would do with the ball. I changed only the distance between the two pitching wheels. I didn’t want to mess with the trajectory, because it had taken me too long to adjust it for the golf balls. Though I was interested in the baseball, I wasn’t about to adjust the whole machine for one ball I would have to retrieve and toss back into the container every time.

  Mostly I was curious to know if the machine only seemed superfast because it had been throwing golf balls, or if it was malfunctioning. I wasn’t sure I would know, except to compare it to what I remembered seeing at batting ranges.

  One night after dinner I fired up the machine and fed the ball into the pitching wheels. Even though the ball hit the floor about three feet in front of the wall, instead of right in the strike zone as the golf balls had been doing, the machine put the same spin on it. The baseball flashed toward the wall, spinning and sweeping to the right. When it hit the floor and then the wall, it bounced high toward the light and blasted into the canvas at the far end, dropping to the floor.

  There had to be something wrong with the machine. It was throwing the ball faster than I had ever seen and faster than I could have imagined. As I reset the wheels to accept the golf balls, I thought of all the reasons I should not be able to hit them:

  They would come in faster than it was possible to react.

  The machine itself was a third closer to the hitter than it was designed for, even if it had been throwing at normal speed.

  There was no clue as to the rhythm of the deliveries, as there was when you could watch a pitcher wind up. I would have to learn to anticipate each pitch by watching the tilting of the trough.

  The room was dark at both ends. I would see the pitch better when it passed under the light than I would when it left the machine or reached the plate.

  The balls were small. They were white, except for their rings of color.

  The backdrop I had installed to keep the balls from attacking me from every angle was white.

  The bat was skinny, like a fastpitch bat, but heavy, almost like a weighted on-deck bat.

  Why did I think I even had a chance of getting the bat on the ball?

  Still, I couldn’t think of any reasons not to try it.

  I dumped the entire basket of golf balls into the container. With all of them in there, I could turn on the machine and run to the batter’s box in time to set myself and take a practice swing before the first pitch came.

  Before turning it on, I untied my shoes and pulled up my socks, then tied my shoes again, firm and tight. I loosened my belt and tucked my shirt in till I felt comfortable. I put on my batting helmet and shoved it all the way down, banging the top with my fists until it was snug.

  I swung the bat above my head and stretched it across my shoulders. I was as nervous as if I was facing the toughest pitcher ever. Daddy always told me to think only about looking for my pitch, having a plan, and attacking the ball. I was to work for bat speed and confidence, not just trying to get the bat on the ball. That seemed impossible now.

  As I put my fingers on the switch, I tried to talk myself out of this. Was I sure the machine had not shifted? Would it start throwing several balls every few seconds, despite my adjustments? Would I be hit, drop to the floor, and be unable to get out of the way of the rest of the balls? I told myself this was no time for more excuses. I had forced myself to become a better-than-average player for my age by doing the tough things, working on the fundamentals, running longer, working harder. Anybody could get along on his talent, but I was Elgin Woodell, son of a man who had almost made the Pittsburgh Pirates.

  I flipped the switch and ran to the other end of the room, desperate to get in the box and stay there. The machine whirred as I went, and I stepped in right-handed. I could almost feel the ball smacking me in the rear end as I hurried past the plate and got set. I tingled from my seat to the back of my head.

  “You’ll learn to hit the off-speed stuff,” Daddy always told me. “The curves, the changes, the sliders—they say that’s what separates the big leaguer from the amateur, but don’t you believe it. The day comes when you hope a guy throws you junk because it’s the only thing you can catch up with. What really separates the men from the boys is that drop-dead, freight-train fastball that’s in on you and dancin before you can move. That’s the pitch you dream about. That’s the career-ender, right there. Show me a man who can stand in there against a big-league fastball and I’ll show you a man who can hit a curve in his sleep.”

  The balls were tumbling, then rolling smooth but loud in the container. I had reached the box quicker than I expected. I took a couple of practice swings while trying to position myself where I could reach the ball with the bat but where I wouldn’t get drilled.

  I was as close to the back wall as I could be without hitting it with my bat, and I was as far from the plate as I could be without being out of the box. If I couldn’t reach the first few pitches, I decided, I would just creep in until I could. I had fifty-seven pitches’ worth of adjusting available.

  The trough tilted back, picked up a few balls, and tilted forward. I saw and heard the cream-colored pitching wheels whine into action. The first pitch would be at top speed, I decided. The mechanism was working. The wheels had reached their maximum rpms before the ball was fed through.

  I heard the phfft! and the whoosh! but hardly saw the pitch before crack! it slammed the wall behind me, whoosh! it flashed to the other end of the room, thwack! it smacked into the canvas and then bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, roll.

  I had not even flinched. There was no swing, no half swing, no step, no thought except, Don’t let that thing hit you. I could tell from the sound that the ball had come through the strike zone but that I probably would not have been able to reach it if I had swung at the perfect time. I was tensed and ready because the next pitch would follow the first by just a second or so, enough time for me to pull my bat back and get set after each hit—if I ever hit one.

  I squinted and told myself to at least watch the flight of the ball this time. I heard the first two sounds almost simultaneously, cocked my head and bat, almost stepped, and peeled my eyes. I saw the blur, heard the bang off the wall, and watched the ball fly to the other end. I had just about enough time to appreciate my own handiwork with the canvas and wonder if I would hit any of the balls, before the sounds came
again and another blur hit the wall.

  I had hardly stepped, still hadn’t swung, and was almost as amused as I was scared. For the briefest instant, every few seconds, the brute seemed connected to the wall by a flash of white. The ring of color on each ball disappeared in flight, and I wondered if my mind and my eyes would ever adjust. If they did not or could not, I would be forced to modify the machine and find some baseballs.

  But as the flashes kept banging and I noticed that the streak was whiter near the machine and a dirty gray as it left the light and flew past me, I realized that I might be hundreds or even thousands of pitches away from actually making contact. Yet somewhere deep inside me was the feeling that if I could somehow catch on to this, master it, practice it, it could make me as a ballplayer.

  What I did not know then and could not have realized was that I was facing an inanimate, brainless, muscle-less, tireless thing that threw a ball tinier and harder than a baseball from less than two-thirds the major-league distance at a speed of more than one hundred and thirteen miles an hour.

  After about the tenth pitch, I made up my mind to start swinging, even if I was a half second behind. Which I was. I stepped and swung at waist level, regardless where the pitch was, and tried to pick up the cadence so I would at least be stepping and swinging in rhythm with the machine, even if I wasn’t making contact.

  I stepped and swung, stepped and swung, stepped and swung. Not hard, not overpowering, not much bat speed. I quickly came to the place where all I wanted was to get lucky, to hit a foul tip, to dribble one away.

  Step and swing.

  Step and swing.

  Step and swing.

  Step and swing.

  Miss.

  Miss.

  Miss.

  Miss.

  Step and swing.

  Miss.

  Thirty, forty pitches into it, I felt anger and frustration rise in me. I started swinging harder and faster, telling myself that I could and I would catch up with a pitch. I seemed to be swinging through a couple of them, convinced it was only a matter of time now. But then my timing would leave me and I felt as if I was swinging after the ball had already hit the wall.

  The room was filling with golf balls, some rolling lazily almost back to the batter’s box. I would have to do something about that, maybe drape a blanket or extend a rope across the floor to stop those so I didn’t have to worry about stepping on them.

  I was determined to keep my head down, my swing level, my step the right distance.

  “Perfect practice makes perfect,” my dad’s advice rang in my ears. “No matter what the drill—running, hitting, fielding, throwing—you do it right every time. Even if you swing and miss, make sure your mechanics are right, that you’re puttin in your mind’s computer a perfect picture of how it oughta be done.”

  I imagined that I was hitting line drives with every swing, but I couldn’t beat back the truth. I was missing, missing, missing, not even coming close. I guessed there were about ten balls left when I squared around.

  I am going to make the ball hit this bat at least once, I told myself. At least once.

  Strangely, squaring around allowed me to pick up the flight of the ball better. Man! That thing was moving! I carefully stuck my bat out and kept it level. The pitch was high. I followed it, keeping the skinny, aluminum bat steady.

  No dice.

  I tried it again, and again. Just a few pitches left now. I just had to touch one, foul one off, get something on it, anything.

  26

  But I didn’t. I was just enough afraid of the slamming golf balls to keep me a few inches from touching them with my outstretched bat, even to bunt.

  My anger and frustration exploded. I was madder than I had ever been. All the work, all the adjusting, all the waiting and anticipation, and I hadn’t even been able to bunt or foul off or even tip one of the fifty-seven pitches.

  I drew the bat back into my normal swinging position and whipped it through the strike zone, letting go of it with both hands when I normally would have pulled the top hand off. The metal bat clanged off the side wall and whirled toward the machine. I hoped it would bang it, but it didn’t. I couldn’t hit anything I wanted to that day, except the wall.

  I wanted to kick something, but everything I looked at was cement or metal or round. I clenched my teeth so tight I gave myself a headache, and as I cooled down, I got the wire basket and gathered up the balls. This time, I decided, I would hit lefty. The balls were moving from left to right across the plate, so I told myself that I needn’t be afraid, even if the pitches seemed to be coming at me.

  As if I can see them at all.

  But from the left side, I could. On the first several I bailed out without swinging. It was one thing, I decided, to tell yourself you didn’t have to be afraid, but it was another to stand in there with only a helmet on. I was grateful to find that the machine was consistent within inches, firing every ball to almost the same spot on the wall. A couple of times I looked back as it hit. Eventually I became aware that the machine jarred itself slightly out of position with each pitch and that I would have to re-adjust it with every two or three buckets of balls.

  After more than twenty pitches, with no better luck than I’d had from the other side, I began wondering why I had made it so difficult for myself. I wondered if I could adjust it to throw the old, torn-up baseball, my bald tennis ball, that box of softballs I’d seen at the secondhand store. Mostly I wondered how my mind could mull over all those things while streaks of light, as if from a laser, blasted off the wall behind me. Concentrate, I told myself. Concentrate.

  I was mad, frustrated, and sweating a half hour later when I had stood in from both sides twice and never touched a pitch with the bat. I wondered if the pitches were catchable, let alone hittable. I got my glove, stood in the left-hand batter’s box, and kept reaching farther and farther, getting closer and closer to each pitch.

  Finally, one touched the web of my glove and the thing almost flew off my hand. The ball seemed harder and heavier than when I hefted it with my hand. What was this? What did speed and movement do to a ball?

  Five more pitches flew past before I touched another with the thumb and got the same sensation, that my glove could come flying off at any second. How my father would ridicule me if he saw me like this!

  “Only sissies step out of the way and catch the ball to the side,” Daddy had always said. “They’re afraid it’s going to hit them or bounce off their gloves and catch them in the nose. You watch me and you watch your pros; we catch the ball right out in front of us. Does it ever skip off and get us in the ribs or the face? Sure. But have you ever seen a guy go to the hospital because he missed a ball in a game of catch? Nah! Maybe hit by a pitch or a big throw by accident, but not from playin catch. Only guy I ever heard of gettin hurt from a ground ball was Tony Kubek when he took one in the neck for the Yankees in the World Series years ago. A Cub got hurt playin catch in front of the dugout, but that was only because he was talkin to somebody and the guy throwin to him didn’t know he had looked away. He turned back just in time to take it in the mouth. Cost him a few teeth, but then he played eight more years. Catch it in front of you, El.”

  But here I was, standing gingerly in the batter’s box, reaching out on tiptoes, hoping to feel what those nasty pitches even felt like. By the end of that basket of balls, I had caught two, but the first had made me overconfident. I reached a little farther for the second, but the machine was just inconsistent enough to bring it a half inch closer to me. I got a bruise just above the palm of my hand and just below my index finger.

  I yanked my hand out of the glove and shook it, waved it, stuck it between my legs, jumped, and hollered.

  “Nice pitch, you—”

  Meanwhile, the machine just kept firing. I decided to try one last basket of balls to see if I could just hold the bat out with one hand, moving it and adjusting it slightly with each pitch, trying to guess where it would be coming. I flexed my left hand
all the while I was picking up balls. I knew, as my father said, that I wouldn’t be going to the hospital, but this was painful, almost like a bone bruise, and it would be a long time healing.

  I took a different approach with the machine this time. I dumped the balls in and turned it on, staying behind the machine for the first few pitches to study the trajectory. By now I knew exactly where the ball would fly off the wall and where to walk to stay away from it.

  When I was ready, I walked to the other end while the machine delivered pitches. They came within three feet of me. I wondered if I was being foolish. I knew guys who had been hit in batting cages because the machine threw a wild pitch right at them. I prayed this one would never do that.

  I stepped into the box and took my normal swing for the second dozen or so pitches. As I expected, I didn’t come close. Now I crouched low and held the bat in my left hand from the lefty side of the plate, stretching it out horizontally in the direction of the pitches, which swept away from me over the outside corner. I could tell I was within a half inch of touching a few.

  Finally, I reached far enough and held the bat level enough so that a pitch ticked the end of it on the top side and skipped back to the left off the wall. It cracked into my helmet, hit the wall and helmet again before I went down, and I found myself in the righty batter’s box with the machine seeming to take aim.

  I was not hurt, just stunned by a buzz in my head, but I knew I had to get out of there. When I tried to step, I slipped, so I lay flat on the ground and felt a pitch miss me by a foot. I tried to get up and move to the other side again, but I was too panicky and didn’t get traction and had to spread-eagle myself again. Eventually I was able to roll out of the way.