I had always dreamed of playing before a packed stadium. But now, with at least five times the people who had ever seen me play riveted on me alone, I was embarrassed and self-conscious. I had heard of having butterflies. Mine were moths.
I had taken a ball with me to warm up the infielders. How strange, throwing grounders to someone like Luis Sanchez, the shortstop I’d idolized and had met only in spring training. I was aware of every move, and nothing seemed natural. Did I look as awkward as I felt?
That nervousness subsided when Brave starter Roger Densing threw his last warm-up toss and Ken Clark rifled the ball to second. I rolled my ball toward the dugout and watched the others throw the game ball around before delivering it back to the mound.
Clark had reminded me that I should care as much about the signal as the pitcher, “because you’ll start to learn where the ball is going off the bat if you know what we’re throwing the guy.”
I found myself hoping for a routine grounder to second so I could receive a nice, easy throw. That was the wrong attitude. I should hope for a big-league line drive right at my feet, and I should be prepared to go on automatic pilot and prove I belonged.
Maybe it had all been a fluke. What if I made a fool of myself?
Big, bearded Roger Densing was the oldest Brave, a veteran of eleven years. He’d won a Cy Young, and though his fastball had slowed into the high eighties, he was still intimidating, even to me.
Clark called for a fastball in, and the leadoff hitter skied a high pop to third. I was relieved I had not been in on the play but wished the Braves used a throw-around routine after the out that included the first baseman. I needed something to get my mind off myself and into the game. Clark jogged to the mound and motioned me to join him.
I sprinted over, embarrassed, knowing I looked like a Little Leaguer doing that. I looked expectantly at Clark, but he was looking at Densing, who turned and glared at me. He didn’t make it obvious to the crowd or the TV cameras, but when he spoke softly in a gravelly voice, I heard him well.
“Who was coverin first on that play?” he said.
I didn’t know what to say. “Well, I—”
“Runner was doggin it to first base. That ball drops, we still get him if our first baseman’s covering. You were five feet away and watchin the play. He drops it, you try to get back, you’re a small target anyway, he throws it away, and they’d have a guy in scoring position.”
Wow, he thought of all that just now?
The ump started toward us to tell us to move it along. Clark backed away, slowing him. Densing continued.
“How do you think I’ve lasted this long? I don’t care if you’re three years old and the best thing that’s come along since quiche on a stick. Do the little things right. We’re throwin this guy low and away four straight times if we have to. He hates to walk so he’s gonna put one of those in play, and it’s probably gonna come to the right side. You’re gonna be in on a play, Rook, so get your butt in the game.”
My face burned as I hurried back. Now I was too close to the grass. Clark was waving me back. But what if they bunted? I didn’t care. I would just obey. Roger Densing had blamed me for having a runner in scoring position, and nobody had reached base! Guys were sure hard to please at this level.
First pitch, hard and down, off the outside corner. Batter swings. Ball is between first and second. I had broken to my right on the swing, aware of shrill young people in the crowd, watching their youngest hero going after the ball. From the corner of my eye I see the second baseman won’t reach it.
I bend and reach, still on the dead run. The ball is in my glove. Densing is all arms and belly, angling to cover first. Just like him to do it right. I pivot, plant, and fire, leading Densing by a step. The big pitcher catches up to the throw as he draws parallel with the bag and beats the runner.
I’m smacked hard on the seat by the second baseman and suddenly become aware of the delirious standing crowd. This was a play they had seen the left-handed Gerry Snyder make in his sleep. But who knew the rookie would be up to it?
Ken Clark had followed the runner down the line, and as he took the ball from Densing they both stopped and jabbed index fingers at me as if to say, “That play was yours, buddy, and it was big-league!” I could have done a cartwheel.
With two outs the third hitter sent a grounder to short. Luis looked the ball into his glove, then came up searching not for my glove but my eyes. It was as if the shortstop were saying, “See how easy we make it for you here,” and I knew the joy of taking a long, hard throw straight to the glove. This was going to be fun!
I tossed the ball to the first-base umpire, who said, “Nice inning, Rook.”
The Braves didn’t fare much better against Leverance, the best pitcher in baseball, so I didn’t come up until I led off the bottom of the third. The self-consciousness and nervousness came back in the on-deck circle as I watched the heavy, hard strikes popping the catcher’s glove. As my name was announced I heard the thunderous applause, but when I stepped in left-handed, I was on automatic again.
I ran through my mind the cadence and pace and sheer, unpredictable speed of the machine I had faced that afternoon. Leverance’s first pitch was a straight fastball I should have jumped on. Strike one. Would this guy dare another, just like that one? Of course he would. He wouldn’t suspect a kid could hit his best pitch.
It was on the outside corner and I sent my third-base coach diving out of the way. The crowd laughed, then cheered. Was that the wild, lucky swing of a child? They could think that only until the next one came inside and I did the same to my first-base coach.
Impressive or not, I was down oh-and-two and would not likely see another hittable fastball. I waited, patient, reaching to foul off pitches close enough to be called strikes but not fat enough to drive. Eventually I ran the count full. When Leverance lost me on a pitch at chin level, the crowd was merciless to him.
Densing pushed me to second on a hit-and-run ground out, and Leverance nearly threw the ball into center on a pickoff play that might have caught me. Leadoff man Mike Martinez followed with a double in the gap, and I ran so hard I nearly stumbled twice. How sweet to feel my spikes dig into that plate and score my first big-league run.
When I got to the dugout, no one looked at me. It was as if they hadn’t realized I was back.
“Well,” I said, “one to nothing, huh?”
“Yup,” someone said.
“Yeah?” someone else said. “How’d we score?”
“How’d we score?” I said. “Well, I just did when Martin—“ but then I realized what was going on. Only then did the guys on the bench take turns shaking my hand.
I popped out in the fifth, again to a huge ovation from people who were probably impressed that I was brave enough to even get in the box. When I came to the plate batting righty against a fireballing lefty reliever in the seventh, I was welcomed by the crowd as a new friend.
“All heat,” the previous hitter told me as he trudged to the bench after a strikeout. ‘Just try to get wood on it.”
It had been years since I had simply tried to get my bat on a ball. I wasn’t going to reach out and hope for the best. I was going up there to drive the ball. The first pitch was hard and tight, just off the inside corner. Ball one.
The next should be a fastball on the outside corner. If I was wrong, I might get plunked. If I was right, I would take the pitch to the opposite field.
As I slid into second ahead of the throw from right center-field, I couldn’t remember having rounded first or looking to the third-base coach. I had my first major-league hit. The crowd was up and roaring. Instead of stepping to the plate to resume the game, Roger Densing stood leaning on his bat and let me have my moment.
That one was for you, Dad, I thought, and I knew my dad would be telling me to keep my head in the game. The Braves were up by three, and it was time to try to put this thing away.
Densing called to the pitcher and asked for the ball. He gave it to the batboy, who
was older than I was, and the kid ran it to the dugout.
Densing sacrificed me to third, and I scored when the second baseman erred on Martinez’s grounder. The Braves knocked the reliever out of the box and I batted again in the ninth, forcing a runner at second to finish one-for-three plus a walk and two runs scored.
When I got to my locker I found the ball Roger Densing had removed from the game. The big pitcher had dated it and written: “The first of many.”
I stood in the bowels of the stadium at the players’ exit, waiting with Luke while Mr. Thatcher went in to be at Elgin’s side for the crush of the press. I looked at my husband, my lips pressed to hold back a torrent of emotion. I was grateful that Luke seemed to know there were no words worthy of the occasion.
I was proud as a mother could be, and while I was not naive enough to believe it would be all smooth sailing, I looked forward to the ride.
My man-child had achieved his dream.
Epilogue
That night while reliving the game on the sports news, Miriam heard for the first time what Elgin said after the game.
“I said before that my dad taught me baseball. But it’s my mom who raised me. She did everything she could, on her own, to let me follow my dream. I love you, Momma.”
Roger Densing could have had no idea how prophetic he had been.
Within a week, Elgin had been moved to sixth in the order. By the end of the season he hit second occasionally, though his speed cost the Braves a few double plays and a few runs. In seventy-two games, Elgin led the Braves in hitting at .310 and filled every stadium in which he played. The Braves finished second, six games back of the Phillies.
The following season, without a home run to his credit, he started the all-star game, led the National League in hitting at .345, and batted second on a Braves team that won the NL East by nine games but lost to the Dodgers in the play-offs four games to one. He was named Most Valuable Player, and only his having had more than 130 at bats the previous season kept him from being named Rookie of the Year.
The Braves drew an unheard of 3.6 million–plus fans that year and would not fall below that mark throughout Elgin’s career. When his three-year deal expired, after he had won the batting crown again (this time at .389, the highest NL batting average in decades), he was considered the best bargain in sports history.
Sportswriters and baseball executives, to the Braves’ distraction, agreed that no price was too high for a phenomenal prodigy who was the best thing that had ever happened to baseball.
Elgin Woodell would dominate baseball as no one had ever dominated a team sport. He made more than two hundred hits in a season nineteen times, including eleven straight, and led the majors in homers nine seasons, including six straight. He had two fifty-one-game hitting streaks and batted over four hundred eight times. Had it not been for an abbreviated season, due to a broken leg at age twenty-six in the middle of his most productive years, he would surely have hit more than a thousand career home runs. From age fourteen through age thirty-three, he was named MVP sixteen out of twenty years, including streaks of four, five, and seven.
When Elgin’s initial three-year pact with the Braves was about to expire, Billy Ray Thatcher negotiated a most unusual deal wherein Elgin was guaranteed to be the highest-paid player in baseball for the next five years. Every time another star’s contract was renegotiated and surpassed his deal, his was to be adjusted within thirty days. One year into that deal, when he became the first player in decades to hit over four hundred, the Braves renegotiated and extended the contract to cover ten years. That was the first of three similar contracts during his career.
When he was nineteen Elgin opened the Woodell Home in Atlanta for otherwise homeless girls, run by Lucas and Miriam Harkness until their retirement.
When Elgin was twenty-three, Billy Ray Thatcher and his wife Shirley died within months of each other.
Twelve years into his career, Elgin married a young woman from the Braves’ public relations department. They had three girls. And a boy.
With more than fifty million copies of his New York Times bestselling Left Behind novels sold, Jerry B. Jenkins is a writer who speaks powerfully to the heart. Now, the author of Hometown Legend (also a Warner Bros. movie) returns with the story of a boy who has been bestowed a gift that presents the challenge of a lifetime, and of the mother determined to help him become…
THE
YOUNGEST
HERO
Miriam Woodell realizes that the hometown hero she married, though charming and athletic, is gripped by a dangerous darkness. She has no choice but to save herself and Elgin, her young son-leaving rural Mississippi for the big, cold city of Chicago.
Strong, resolute, and determined, Miriam struggles to survive. Meanwhile, Elgin pursues a seemingly impossible dream. Fueled by the lessons his father taught him, he plays ball on the concrete streets and even sets up a batting cage in the basement, using a decrepit, malfunctioning pitching machine to teach himself to hit.
By spring, Elgin is ready to find a team. By the end of the summer, everyone will be talking about the eleven-year-old who plays baseball like a high school star—a prodigy on his way to greatness, despite staggering odds.
Yet Elgin must still come to terms with his father, whose life has reached a dead end. With a new man entering Miriam’s life and scouts wooing Elgin, mother and son must learn painful lessons about themselves, about each other, and about the people they are forced to trust.
THE YOUNGEST HERO stands as a legend for our troubled time. The story of a brave young mother, protecting her gifted son during his spectacular rise, becomes a rousing portrait of their unbreakable bond and of the power of faith and love to make even the most improbable dream come true.
JERRY B. JENKINS is a novelist and biographer of many sports superstars (including baseball greats Hank Aaron, Orel Hershiser, and Nolan Ryan). Best known for his New York Times bestselling Left Behind series, Jerry has been profiled in TIME, the New York Times, and USA Today, and featured on Good Morning America and Larry King Live. He and his wife live in Colorado.
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