And like before, I got suspended for three days. When it rains, it pours, right? At least this time I could drive myself home.
29
BABE RUTH WAS SUSPENDED for six weeks in 1922 for barnstorming in the off season. Then he was suspended two more times for arguing with umpires, cursing, and throwing dirt on them. He was at the top of his career. He didn’t change and continued drinking and womanizing. I am not the Babe, so I ‘m not sure how being suspended is going to go over.
The Pitcher is in the garage when I pull up.
I sit in the car and check out the raccoon in the rearview mirror. That would be me. Fortunately, Eric just landed a couple on my jaw that did nothing. I breathe heavy, glad Mom isn’t home. I walk into the garage, which is all the way open, which is kind of weird. The Pitcher is standing and looking for something on a shelf. The stitches from the other night look like railroad tracks on his forehead. I asked him later how he knew Fernando wouldn’t shoot him, and he just shrugged and said he didn’t.
He turns from the shelf and frowns at me.
“School out early or something?
“Yeah…or something.”
The Pitcher puffs on a cigarette and squints.
“Yeah…”
“Yeah. I got suspended,” I mutter.
The Pitcher nods slowly and shrugs.
“Good. I thought maybe you got in trouble or something.”
I slump down in the La-Z-Boy and stare at the dark television.
“What’d they suspend you for?”
“Fighting.”
“Hmmm.” He sits down and cracks open a beer, then drinks. I am waiting for the other shoe to fall. He sets the beer down and gestures with his cigarette. “Oh…you going out for the boxing team?”
“Maybe.”
“I mean, I figure since you aren’t on the baseball team anymore and you like boxing so much.”
He clicks on the television to a ballgame. It was a college game, and it meant nothing to me.
“The guy was an asshole.”
“The world is full of assholes, so you better bone up on your right hook.”
“Well, he was an asshole.”
The Pitcher frowns again and stares at the game.
“That’s good. I thought you punched him because he was such a nice guy. “
I rub the arm of the chair.
“He took a bite of my cupcake,” I explain.
“Huh.” He ashes his cigarette and picks up a puck of Skoal.
“Well, that’s a good reason to get suspended for three days. “
“Yeah.”
Shortstop groans on his side and looks up at a passing car.
“How can this Bailey kid pitch so fast?”
The Pitcher shrugs
“I dunno. Must have a fast arm.”
‘He pitches faster than me.”
The Pitcher gestures behind him.
“And there’s a guy over the next hill who throws a hundred. It don’t mean nothing if you don’t use the noodle. I told you that. Lot of fast pitchers out there.”
I breathe heavy and close my eyes. The world feels like it’s tilting away.
‘He has a letter of intent from the Cubs.”
“So what. That and a nickel won’t even get you a cup of coffee,” The Pitcher grumbles.
“Still. It’s something.”
“Bull.” The Pitcher spits into an old can. “He has a fast arm so they are keeping an eye on him, but that don’t mean they are going to draft him. They want the whole package.”
“Well, they don’t want me now,”
“Yeah. Probably not after you quit.”
I turn on him, feeling stung.
“I quit because they were going to play Bailey!”
The Pitcher ashes his cigarette on the floor
“Well, that’s a hell of a good reason. Do you know how many times I would had to quit if I quit every time they played some Johnny come lately rock-head in my position?”
“No.”
“Plenty, rock-head. There is always somebody after your spot. This kid got lucky and you got beaned, and then you quit. You played his gamed and not yours. After I told you a hundred times, you gotta play your own game.”
I frown.
“What do you mean, he got lucky?”
The Pitcher swigs his beer and spits into a Skoal can.
“He comes in and fans you with some fast balls and you get the jitters, and then you get beaned and then you get mad and quit. Another guy would have never quit. He would have fought for his position instead of getting mad like some kid whose toy just got taken. “
I jump up in the chair.
“He’s faster than me!”
“Yeah. That’s what he wants you to think.”
“You saw him! He pitchers faster and bats it out of the park every time!”
The Pitcher shrugs.
“Maybe he’s on a streak; like you think you’re in a slump, maybe he’s on a hot streak”
I stare at him and start to feel like I had been played. The helmet with the flames. The pickup truck. The taunting “Mex.” Taking Christine.
“The guy throws fricking fireballs. Nobody pitches like that,” I mumble.
“Only one other guy I know. “
I stare at him.
“Who?”
The Pitcher leans back in his chair.
“Just a guy who used to pitch.”
“What happened to him?”
The Pitcher stubs his cigarette, looking down.
“He got mad and quit because some guy conned him into thinking he had lost it.”
I felt my face burning up now. “Yeah, what happened to him then?”
The Pitcher turns and looks me in the eye.
“Not a damn thing.”
30
BABE RUTH CALLED HIS SHOT in Chicago. He was up and had two strikes, and then he just pointed to centerfield and then hit the longest home run ever seen in Chicago. Some people never believed he called it; others swear he did. When asked if he called it by a reporter, the Babe shrugged and said, “Well, you guys said I did, so it must be true.” Like I said before, you either believe or you don’t. Right now I don’t believe in much, and maybe that’s why the Pitcher woke me early the next day.
“Get up.”
That’s all the Pitcher said to me. I figured it was three days of snooze time, but Mom said it was three days of homework, and I was putting that off as long as possible. So when I opened my eyes and the Pitcher is standing by the bed with his old Tigers hat on and his glove and in some dirty ripped shorts from like 1925, I knew something was up.
“What?” I ask groggily.
“C’mon. Practice starts in ten minutes, and I ain’t waiting all day for you.”
I sit up and blink. I really want to go back to sleep.
“Hey man…I’m suspended… remember?”
The Pitcher looks down at me.
“Yeah. So I figure you got nothing better to do.”
I shut my eyes and fall back.
“I’m tired,” I mutter.
“And grab the rocks…rock-head.”
I open my eyes again and stare at this crazy man.
‘What!”
“You heard me, rock-head. Get the two buckets and put them in the back of my station wagon. “
I feel like this pinch between my eyes. I never wanted to throw those rocks again. I mean, a couple of times I had picked up the bucket just to remember what it was like…but no, I did not want to go back to those days.
“I am not throwing rocks again!”
He stares down at me and raises his eyebrows.
“You obviously didn’t learn a damn thing the first time, so I figure we better start from the beginning again. Get the rocks.”
I groan and fall back to my pillow.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, ten minutes or you’re walking.”
And now we’re back at Redling Field with the two buckets of rocks. Can you be
lieve it? I can’t. I mean, I never thought I would throw another rock again, but here we are. The Pitcher is smoking and hacking and spitting, and we are just outside the baseball field. The birds are singing, and the morning is on half the field and it’s kind of peaceful and it’s weird, because it doesn’t feel like any time has passed. The Pitcher looks at me.
“So,” I say.
He gestures to the dirty white buckets.
“So pick up a rock.”
I look down at the squat buckets piled high with rocks.
“This is so stupid,” I mutter.
He pipes up a cigarette and stares at me.
“Oh, yeah. Getting suspended is stupid. Getting in fights is stupid. Quitting your team is stupid. So I think you should be real comfortable with stupid things like throwing rocks.”
“Almost as stupid as smoking when you might have cancer.”
“Almost.”
I swear and shake my head and pick up a rock.
“Alright, let’s see you hit that tree.”
I stare at him and frown and then stand up. My mouth drops open, and I look across the field. That same tree is there from three years before. I mean this was really all a bad dream.
“Wait a minute, you don’t mean. You don’t mean that—“
“That’s right, rock-head. Yeah, the one you could never hit before.”
I stare across the field at the tree that is bigger now, but still looks like it’s a million miles away.
“Go ahead. I’ll bet you still can’t hit it.”
I close my eyes. My life was getting weirder every minute. One minute, I am the man on the baseball team, and now I’m back to trying to hit a tree with a rock.
“Alright.”
I pick up a flat one and hold it lightly in my hand. I look at the Pitcher, but he just motions across the field. “Go on. I’ll bet that Bailey kid could hit it.”
“My ass,” I say. Now I’m pissed.
I draw back and let fly and, of course, I throw wide. The Pitcher looks at me.
“Yeah. Some things never change. You just can’t hit a tree with a rock, can you, rock-head?”
I throw five more rocks and don’t even come close.
“Alright. Let’s see you hit it.”
The Pitcher stares at me, then turns and stares at the tree. He shuts one eye and seems like he’s measuring the distance or something. He turns to me.
“I hit it, then you run around this field three times.”
“Sure. You’re on.”
I hate running, but I know he is not going to hit it. I mean, the Pitcher just isn’t what he was three years ago. He picks up a rock from the bucket and squints at the tree. He puts his cigarette in his mouth and leans back. He pauses and takes a breath, then throws the rock. It arcs up high like a black dot and then sails down and pings against the tree with a crack that goes across the park. The Pitcher takes the cigarette from his mouth and gestures across the field.
“How in the hell did you hit that?” I cry out.
“Because I know how to pitch. Now get running, rock-head.”
Yeah, I still hate running. And every time the Pitcher hits the tree or the backstop or a sign or a bird or a plane, I have to run. And it’s hot. And we keep at it for the next three days, because the Pitcher says I have forgotten everything he had taught me and so we are starting over from scratch. Every time I finish the bucket, the Pitcher just nods like he did all those years before and says three words:
“Get the rocks. “
God. I hate those rocks.
31
IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION men thumbed their way to Florida to try out for the Major Leagues. They were not after stardom; they were after a job. Some collapsed on the field from exhaustion and starvation. Few made the team. I was like those guys now with few options, and it was like I was trying to make the team all over again. So for the next three days, this old World Series pitcher and this really pissed-off Hispanic teenager went to Redling Field every day.
We get there and the Pitcher always tells me to run like before, and I bitch like before, and then we get down to business with the rocks. But this time, the Pitcher adds a few things. Sometimes he throws a rock across the field and then turns to me.
“Go find it,” he says.
I stare at him still squinting against the morning sun.
“What are you, crazy?”
The Pitcher looks at me with these dull eyes.
“Look, you want to get your spot back from this Texan Bailey kid, or don’t ya?”
“Well...yeah, but I don’t see—”
“Shut up and go find the rock.”
Then he just watches me a while, I fume and stomp across the field and start looking. I look for an hour, and I can’t find the rock or I bring back a different rock. I figure he won’t know the difference.
“That ain’t my rock,” the Pitcher says in the shade, having a cold Good Times and smoking a cigarette and having some Skoal and hacking his guts out. I mean, he hacks and hacks and hacks. I stare at him and shake my head.
“You ought to see a doctor, you know.”
“I ought to do a lot of things.”
And so I keep hunting for the rocks. Then he has me throw and throw and throw. Then he gives me a baseball and tells me to bring the heat. I throw it as hard as I can against the backstop with the ringing off the fence like a church bell in the middle of the day. And then he sits on the bench and smokes like he used to before. He just stares at the field and then turns to me.
“You only got one shot, you know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You got one life, and then it’s just over. One day you’re in front of the whole world, and then you are some guy sitting in his garage. You get that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t blow your shot.”
“I won’t.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright, now go find the rocks.”
We go back to throwing rocks or me throwing every kind of pitch in the world until my arm is on fire. And the Pitcher tells me about all the guys he struck out and how having a fastball is nothing if you didn’t use your brain.
“I told you that before, right? You remember?”
“I know.”
“Oh, yeah. But you forgot.”
“Yeah.”
“You remember the whole world is a full count against you?”
“Yeah.”
“You remember you got to pick a spot?”
“Yeah.”
“You remember it’s your game?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what happened?”
“I forgot.”
“Do you do drugs?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should start.”
And then Mom brings us lunch like before, and we sit in the shade and eat. And I listen to her and the Pitcher talking like before. I shut my eyes and wonder what the rest of the world is doing and how the team is doing and how I lost my position. I wonder what Bailey is doing. Then I wonder about Christine and Es, and I feel bad about treating Es like I did, and I kind of want to call her, and then I think about Fernando who pulls up in his car and watches sometimes and then just drives away.
I think about all these things during these crazy three days, and then the Pitcher shows me something new. I mean, he hasn’t shown me a new pitch in three years. So he calls me to the mound and holds out the ball.
“You ever heard of a forkball?”
I stare at him.
“No.”
The Pitcher pulls on his cigarette. “Guy named Joe Bush of the Red Sox came up with it after World War I. Maybe he got gassed or something because it a weird pitch. I only used it a couple times because it tears up your arm. A lot of guys’ shoulders blow out from this thing. “
He holds up the ball and positions his fingers.
“You open your two fingers like a fork. You jam the ball down in there an
d throw it just like a fastball but at the release point you snap your wrist downward like this.”
I stare at him.
“So what’s it do?”
The Pitcher shrugs.
“All sorts of crazy things. The biggest thing is it tumbles, then drops off the plate when it reaches the catcher’s mitt. It’s almost impossible to predict where it’s going to end up. You don’t know, and the batters don’t know either. But like I said, you throw it like a fastball and sort of twist your wrist down at the end.”
He hands me the ball and spits off the mound.
“Figure you could use something new if you get in a pinch with the Texan.”
32
A LOT OF BASEBALL players didn’t finish high school. The old players were mostly farm boys who either played ball or worked in the fields. You didn’t need a high school education to hit a homerun or throw a spitball. So I am right in there. I have five semester projects due at the end of the week. And worse, I don’t want to do them and don’t know how to do them. I fall asleep, and Mom is trying to do my Econ project, complete with a PowerPoint presentation, and my English paper about a conflict I had last summer, and I’m supposed to study Biology and take a test that is really on the whole semester. And History. Yeah, the origins of World War II. It’s not that I don’t want to do my homework; it’s that I really don’t know how.
So I sleep. And sleep. And sleep. Whenever Mom and I sit down, I get sleepy, and it doesn’t matter how many times I go to Starbucks or how many milkshakes she makes me or how many candy bars I eat or how many times I take short naps. I still want to sleep when it comes to my homework. It’s like the thought of all that work makes me sleepy. Mom says it’s because I am overwhelmed, and sleep lets me escape.
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