Mr. Jones does the slow nod.
“Oh, that asshole!” Mom is now pacing like crazy. “I’m going to kill him, I swear to God I will!”
The Pitcher leans forward and pumps his finger at Mr. Jones.
“So, if that’s someone you want to have in your file so you can throw my wife out of this country, then you better be damn sure he can stand up in court, because I will throw every lawyer I can hire at him.”
Mr. Jones stares at the Pitcher like he just threw a fastball by his nose.
“I see,” Mr. Jones murmurs. He shuts his briefcase. “Well, I still will need your written statement in about a week and half.”
He looks at me and nods gravely.
“I am sorry for your troubles.”
“Sure you are,” the Pitcher says.
Mr. Jones then tries to look at my mom but thinks better of it and walks out the door quickly. Mom’s eyes follow him, and then she watches him pull out of the drive. She turns around and faces me.
“Did Fernando do that to you, Ricky?”
I shrug and mumble.
“Yeah.”
She turns to the Pitcher and says in a cool voice, “I’m going to kill him.”
21
WALTER JOHNSON WAS ONE of the greatest pitchers ever, and he played with the Washington Senators. He went to the World Series against the Giants and in the seventh game held them off to the thirteenth inning. The Senators won, and Walter Johnson led the Victory Parade the next day to the White House. Calvin Coolidge met him there. The Washington Senators never won a championship again. And about right now, I feel like Walter Johnson and the White House is in the distance.
It’s raining, and nobody is stopping the game. Not the coaches and not the ump. We are neck and neck, and I am up to bat and everything is slippery. The bat feels like it could just slide out of my hand like it did with Frankie when he swung hard on an inside fastball and the bat nearly hit the third base coach. I mean, it’s not raining a little, it’s coming down like sideways and the infield is mud soup and our shoes are sucking when we run the baselines and home plate is fast becoming a puddle. But nobody is calling the game.
It happens like that sometimes. You start a game, and then it clouds up and then the rain comes, but nobody thinks to call it because they think it will pass, or nobody sees lightning, or somebody wants to win and get the call when they are ahead. You never really know. Technically, it’s up to the umps, but a lot of times the coaches call the game, too. But we are neck and neck bottom of the eighth, and I sure don’t want the game called because I have been really on.
I have been mowing them down with the old change up and fastball, and Bailey has been riding the bench, which makes me feel really good. And I had two triples and a double. Things are looking up, and I’m thinking maybe my slump is over and this Bailey guy will fade away and my grades will straighten up and I’ll graduate, and Mom won’t get deported and the Pitcher will bet a biopsy that will show his lungs are just fine and the MLB scout will give me a contract. That’s what’s running through my head when I go up to bat and face the Indians pitcher who has been having a lot of trouble.
In fact, I’m amazed they haven’t pulled him, because he looks like one wet dog now. The water is dribbling off the brim of his cap, and it’s in the lights of the field and it’s coming down even harder now. Pitching in a rainstorm is about as bad as batting in a rainstorm. The ball is heavy, and it slips out of your hand and doesn’t spin the way it’s supposed too. And the bat feels heavy and slippery. But the worst thing is the rain makes it hard to see the ball.
You squint down toward the pitcher,, and all you see is lines. And my eyes keep blurring. And this guy isn’t hitting the zone anyway, so I’m thinking I can just take his pitches and probably walk. He’s going into his set, and I really want to wipe my eyes because they are blurry and I move the bat and wait, and usually I can see the ball and track it as it comes in, but he comes forward and it looks like a fastball, but I don’t see it suddenly. Then I do see it and it’s right in front of me, and I don’t have time to turn away as I feel this sharp needle go right through my cheek, and then it’s lights out.
In my dream Mom is in the hospital, and I’m holding her hand again. Don’t leave, Ricky, she says. Don’t go. I won’t, Mom, I say. We are barely hanging on again and don’t have a penny to our name, and Mom is real sick and looks like she’s going to die, and I’m telling her we won the game again and the Pitcher is standing there with his head down and we are all really sad. But then Mom is out of the bed, and now I’m in the bed, and she’s holding my hand and telling me to come on back and that I have to wake up. And she is looking at me real worried the way she did a hundred times before whenever I had problems in school and the teachers told her I would never graduate and Mom was like, “No, he will graduate, and he will have his moment to shine,” and she is telling me again I can do whatever I want. I just have to wake up and do it.
And I do, and she is by the bed with the Pitcher staring down at me, and they look terrible. Like they had just seen the worst thing in the world. And this doctor dude is looking in my eyes with a light, and these nurses are sticking me with all sorts of things, and Mom is crying like crazy now. They said I was out for like fifteen minutes, and now the room is moving, and it’s like I can hear a siren, and I realize then we are inside an ambulance and the Pitcher is gone, or maybe he was never there, but the doctor or paramedic dude is talking to me.
“Hi, Ricky. Can you say hello?”
“Hello,” I say.
I mean, I have one hell of a headache, and my cheek is pounding. And Mom’s tears are falling on me, and she is cursing.
“Why didn’t they call that game!”
Except she is cursing a blue streak, and I shut my eyes because the pain, man, is intense. And so I’m going to go back to sleep for a little bit. It turns out the baseball dented my cheek. Yeah. I now have a dent in my cheek and a concussion. They said they could reconstruct my cheek or could just let it go, and after a while nobody will notice. So I go with that and end up at home with painkillers after the Pitcher whistled in the hospital room and said, “Now that is a shiner.” Yeah. I mean, I look like I was in some kind of a car wreck. My eyes are black and blue,, and my cheek is purple, and my face is swollen. The worst thing is I have to wear a mask now when I bat.
I look like the Phantom of the Opera dude.
Worse than all that, Bailey is now the pitcher.
22
BRANCH RICKEY STARTED THE farm system because he didn’t want to have to pay for players. He decided to develop them. Soon he had eight hundred players in the system, and his team, the St. Louis Cardinals, started to win. Soon every team in the league adopted his system, and Minor League ball was born. Some guys moved up, and some guys didn’t. You knew you weren’t going to make it after a while. The way I knew I was out of it now and Bailey had taken my spot.
I took painkillers for three days. Vicodin. They put me up with the ceiling fan turning around and around. The whooshing noise of the fan became whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. I went into another world. Sometimes I just watched the fan and listened to it like the ocean. Then I was outside the Pitcher’s garage all those years ago listening to his ballgames. A pitcher who won the World Series was in there, and all I had to do was talk to him and learn the secret. The whole world is a full count against you, kid. I knew what he meant, because I was watching Bailey Hutchinson talking to Jigger Hix.
Jigger is talking to and then sliding a check across the table. But this is what the Chicago Cubs think about you. It was Moneyball all over, and Bailey is sitting there with his helmet on fire just burning up. Smoke is filling the room, and I can’t see anyone anymore. Mom yells at me to put out the fire, but I can’t. Christine sends me a text. Breaking up with you. I am not going to prom. Jigger Hix laughs loudly. We all will be told when we can play the children’s game anymore; we don’t know when.
I know I can’t play the game anymore because t
he rain is coming down, and Mom and I are fighting with Fernando. He is coming for some money and he just hit Mom, and the Pitcher has his bat out and he and Fernando are fighting it out while Mom and I watch. There is nothing we can do about it, and Bailey is just burning them down on the mound. How could anyone pitch that fast? It was amazing. Maybe he was on steroids. But who could see for all the smoke? Now Es is yelling with her mouth moving and her head jiving.
“I would never go to prom with you if you were the last person on earth, Ricky Hernandez. You hurt me. You hurt me.”
And now I ‘m watching everyone graduate in blue gowns and caps, but there is one seat open, and Mom is crying and crying because I am not there. And I want to tell her I am sorry, because I feel so bad about not doing my schoolwork and making her do it and she is getting sick again and the Pitcher is laying in the hospital dying and Bailey Hutchinson just laughs and laughs.
This went on for three days.
23
GROVER CLEVELAND ALEXANDER WAS hungover and forty and playing for the St. Louis Cardinals after the Cubs let him go. They were down by two, and the bases were loaded against New York. The Cardinals coach called in Grover against their big hitter. Grover said he was going to pitch fast and inside, but Cardinals Manager Hornsby told him not to. Grover threw an inside curve, then an inside fastball. Then Grover went outside and struck him out. He kept the Yankees from scoring the next two innings and won the series.
I desperately need a win.
Mom and I are on the porch. I had quit taking the painkillers and come back to earth. We are sitting on the porch like we used to, and I’m still in my pajamas. Mom is smoking quietly, watching the Pitcher’s old house across the street, where someone else had moved in. The garage had been dark, and then while we are sitting there, the garage lit up and the door went up a quarter. I stare at the light and Mom stares, and we both look at our own garage where the Pitcher had been watching a game. Neither of us said a word for a long time until Mom turns toward me.
“You know my dream used to be for you to make the high school team,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“But you did that, and then my dream became for you not to play baseball, Ricky. “
“Well, you got your dream,” I mutter.
“No,” Mom says. “Not this way.”
I nod silently. Since I quit the painkillers, we had fought over my homework, and it had become like the old days. We hit each other with every fastball we could, and then we both cried. Mom couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t do my work to graduate, and neither did I. I really didn’t. But every time I started, I fell asleep. I had already accepted that I wouldn’t graduate.
Mom squints and stares at the Pitcher’s old garage.
“My dream, Ricky, is to see you graduate. My dream is to see you in a cap and gown walk down the aisle with your other classmates and be able to decide what you want to do and have the world open to you.”
She is staring at me, and I look down and nod. I mean, I feel real bad because Mom has gotten me through every single grade. I would have flunked out long ago if it wasn’t for her. I couldn’t even read in first grade, and Mom got Hooked On Phonics and we worked every night, and then I could read. I know I told you that before, but it’s true. Everything I am, she is responsible for, and that includes baseball. So I feel like crawling underground because her eyes are wet again.
“Ricky. I didn’t graduate high school.”
And it’s my turn to be shocked. I just stare at her, and she has this funny look, and I realize then she is embarrassed. And man, she should not be, you know. She has nothing to be embarrassed about. But I can tell she is.
“It’s not a big deal, Mom,” I say.
“Yes. Yes, it is a big deal. Graduating high school is an accomplishment. I dropped out because it was too hard and nobody could help me. But you have to graduate, Ricky. You have to do it for everyone in our family. You will be the first, and then you will go to college. That is my new dream for you.”
I shake my head and look down.
“Mom, I don’t know.”
She nods like she used to nod about me making the baseball team.
“You will, Ricky. You can do anything you want if you believe you can. I know you might play baseball, but first you have to graduate college. I won’t worry about you then.”
Then she gets real quiet and leans forward and looks at me.
“Jack and I won’t be around forever,” she says quietly.
I stare at her.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think Jack is sick, and Lupus doesn’t go away. It goes into remission. My point is you must plan for the future now. You have to struggle to be the best you can be now, Ricky. I won’t be around to push you along one day.”
Now I am freaking. Mom is talking like she could die any minute, and the Pitcher hasn’t sounded too good lately, and he still hasn’t gone in for the biopsy. I look down, and Mom sits by me and rubs my shoulders.
“Remember how we used to do this? How after games we would sit together at McDonald’s and Dairy Queen, and I would rub your shoulders because you were sore?”
I bite my lip and nod.
“Yeah, Mom.”
I mean, I’m trying to keep it together because I feel like everything is slipping away. I lean against Mom, and I can feel how thin she is, and I don’t want to think about her words, but I feel like she could just go away any minute.
“You’re going to graduate, Ricky Hernandez, and be the first. You can do it.”
“Yeah, I know, Mom,” I say, wiping my eyes quickly.
We just sit there together on the porch and listen to the crickets and watch it get dark. Mom smokes, and the light under the garage glows like some kind of star from long ago.
24
TY COBB SAW BASEBALL as war. He ended up with a .367 batting average and almost beat a man to death who taunted him. The Pitcher and I are back in Redling Field, and I feel like we have just returned to a battlefield. It looks smaller to me now. The backstop seems like something for kids, and the bench is short and more faded. The baselines have faded, and the bases are just the metal rivets. Home plate is covered in sandy red dirt, and the fence is rusted. The trees are bigger, and I try and pick out the tree the Pitcher had me hit four years ago. There is a haze over the field, and a few birds sing in the trees as I walk up to the plate and look at the Pitcher with the mask on my face.
“Alright, let’s just see how you treat this,” he says.
It was his idea to go to the field and get me out of the house. I had hit a low funk because the local papers are all about Bailey Hutchinson, the new fireball from Texas. He won the last three games for South, and the coach and everybody had jumped on the shiny new Bailey wagon. I even wondered if he put the kid up to it who beaned me.
But right now I’m staring down the Pitcher as he winds up and slides one past my chin. And I flinch. I mean, I step back from the ball and want to crawl out of the batter’s box.
“Yeah, that’s what I figured,” he says picking up another ball from a bucket.
It happens all the time. Guys get hit, and they are never the same. I didn’t think it would happen to me, and I look for that other kid so cocky from before. He had it all against him then, too, but he didn’t step back. The Pitcher throws another one in there, and I blink. It’s like I can feel the ball hitting me, and I swing late. Three more come in the same way, and each time I feel this paralysis. I can’t move for a second, and it’s in that second that you have to swing. The Pitcher finishes with his bucket of balls and lights a cigarette.
He then walks in from the mound and guns a finger at me.
“We got a problem.”
He says for me to go back to the plate. I go back and stand there while he sets himself again.
“Shut your eyes,” he calls out.
“What?”
“Shut your eyes, rock-head.”
I shut my eyes and hold the ba
t, which feels really weird.
“When I tell you to swing, then you swing. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
“What!”
“Yeah,” I shout.
I stand there in the dark with the bat on my shoulder. I can hear the birds and a plane and a dog and then a mower. Then I hear nothing but the whiz of the ball through the air.
“SWING!”
I swing and feel the ball go through the bat and open my eyes. The ball flies over the Pitcher’s head. He holds up another ball.
“Shut your eyes again,” he says.
I shut my eyes and wait. I can hear his windup and the creak of his glove and then the ball cutting the warm morning air. “SWING!” And then the ball connects again with the bat and takes off. We watch the pill land far out there in the outfield, and the Pitcher holds up another ball. We do this until Mom brings lunch. We sit in the field on a sheet and eat the fajitas out of tin foil. The Pitcher and Mom laugh and talk, and I sit eating silently, and we are a family again.
“After this, Ricky, you have homework,” Mom says cleaning up lunch.
“Yeah. I know,” I grumble.
The Pitcher sits quiet except when he coughs and hacks into the grass. Mom said he still hasn’t gone to the doctor. When we finish eating, we go back to the field, except this time I pitch. I throw my fastball, a sinker, a curve and a changeup. The Pitcher stands slowly and nods slowly.
“You are ready for the Texan,” is all he says.
25
DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION most people couldn’t afford the fifty cents to get in. Those that ate at the park made the five-cent hotdog their only meal for the day. Attendance fell off, and the National Past Time became endangered. Who cared about baseball when you were hungry or sick? Or when hard times had come back the same way Fernando has come back? There were just bigger problems. And now one of those bigger problems is banging on the door.
The Pitcher 2 Page 8