And it is beautiful, man. No wind. Bright sunshine. The world is in place, and Jigger Hix is in the stands along with Mom, the Pitcher, Es, and Joey and his homeboys with their shaved heads and goatees. Joey holds up a bottle of pills to Bailey and yells.
“Yo, you want some more ‘roids and some blow, man?”
Bailey just stares at him. Then Jigger comes over to the fence and tells me he was here to watch Bailey and me face off.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he says palming a cigar.
And yeah, I’m nervous, but it had to have happened sooner or later. Bailey is nailing the catcher’s glove with rifle shots. Crack. Crack. Crack. Seems like he is pitching one hundred miles an hour, and he looks juiced. His eyes are big, and he stares at me like he wants to kill me. Same way Fernando did when they took him away in the squad car and Mom got off the phone and I didn’t have to press charges for attempted murder, because he violated his parole anyway with the gun.
“What did you say to him to get him so mad?” Mom wants to know
I shrug. “I just told him I wasn’t going to give him any money.”
Mom nods. “And you set up that meeting?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, he is going back to prison for violating his parole,” Mom says.
“Guess some things just work out,” I say.
And now I’m going up to bat, and it is time, you know. I walk up to the batter’s box, and Bailey is grinning and mouths MEX and eyes me like someone about to shoot someone. I take some practice swings, and I see Jigger Hix watching by the fence. Does it get any more real than right now? All I can do is remember what the Pitcher said the day before.
We had been working on the forkball. Think of a meteorite that nobody knows where it will land. That’s the forkball. It feels like my arm is going to tear off every time I throw it, but I want that pitch. It has Bailey written all over it. The Pitcher, he’s hacking blood now that’s bright red on the grass. He spits when he thinks I’m not looking, but I see it.
“My game is all mine,” he says when I tell him again he should go to the doctor.
“I been prodded and poked my whole life. I’m done with all that,” he says.
And then we are sitting on the bench enjoying the breeze, and he tells me about how poor he was in Arkansas and how he only had the rocks to throw. I had heard the story before, but I always liked to listen to it again. Ball players were mostly all poor then. They always had different jobs. The Pitcher had a donut shop for a while and then a bar. Then he had a motorcycle shop.
“You had to because they didn’t pay enough then,” he says.
And then we just sat there. I told him he got a C on his paper about hitting a Home Run in the World Series. My teacher Ms. Zimmer said it wasn’t believable and that it was obvious I didn’t know what hitting a homerun was like. The Pitcher shook his head when I told him that. But now he is hacking like his lungs are coming up. And I know this is not good, and Mom is going crazy because he won’t go see a doctor.
The Pitcher crosses his legs and looks across the field.
“I’ll make you a deal. You get a homerun and strike out this Bailey kid in the playoff, and then I’ll go to the doctor.”
“So you’re not going to go,” I say, looking at him.
He frowns.
“Where’s your goddamn confidence?” he says.
I take the deal, but I don’t feel so good about it right now. I walk into the batter’s box, and in comes the fastballs like bullets. I swing, but there is only air. I am behind. Strike one. Strike Two. Then I catch his fastball for a deep one in center field. It’s gone. I know it is, and I begin tearing up the bases, but the centerfielder makes one of those plays no one can believe and leans over the fence and turns a homer into an out. I stop on second base as Bailey grins and guns his finger at me. I feel like he just shot me because I see the Pitcher by the fence looking pale. He spits, and I don’t want to think about that blood in the dirt.
46
TED WILLIAMS HIT LIKE Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, but he wasn’t loved. Once after the fans had booed him, he vowed never to tip his hat again after a homerun. He didn’t feel he owed the fans anything but hits. He never did either. When you are up, the fans love you, but when you are losing, nobody wants to know you. Like with me right now. It ain’t going good, man. I have loaded them up in the ninth, and Bailey is up. He’s got me for a double and a single, and my fastball is out of gas. We are up by one, but if Bailey gets anything, then we are in trouble.
Bailey is eyeing me and swinging like a wild man. He slams the bat against the plate, and I come back and give him a curve and sinker, and he fouls off. Then he protects, and I rack up three balls pinching the corners. And so we are at full count.
The whole world is a full count against you, right? But you know, you really do have a responsibility to your talent, man, whatever it is and whatever it takes, and the Pitcher is holding up his hands like a peace sign. Yeah. Forkball. Time to go for it. People are standing up, and I can see Jigger Hix, and then I see Es and Mom and the Pitcher. Everybody wants to see what’s going to happen. Bailey is there with his flames on his helmet and his Texas mouth and his blue eyes, and I can see Eric and his boys, and Christine is there and, you know, the whole quilt of my life.
And it is time for the Pitcher to go see a doctor, and it is time for me to go play baseball. And it is time for me to graduate. So that’s why you pitch, you know. Because it is what you do. And all the rocks I’ve thrown and all the times Fernando has hit me and threatened us and all the times people get over on us because we are Mexicans. And maybe the dude is reading my essay and maybe he’s thinking that people who dream should be in this country, right? Because, I mean, that is what America is about. Dreams, man. Right? Dreamers and dreams. And I am a dream kid, and here comes my dream kid pitch.
And Bailey, he has dreams, too, but he doesn’t play fair. And so here comes the perfect pitch. I pull in and split my fingers on the ball and shove it way down in my palm and kick back and come over the top and jerk down at the last minute, and that weird-ass knuckle ball fast ball starts its journey the way Mom started hers all those years ago when she came here with her dream. She decided my dream was hers, and still that ball is rolling straight along just like me slipping on that graduation gown man that is so slippery and blue and I am walking into the stands at high school with all those other people and that tune is playing and it is kind of sad, you know, because it means something is ending.
And it hits me, as that forkball starts to do its thing, that seventeen years is pretty quick. That Mom and I will go apart now. We have been together all this time, and now something is ending, and we are all lining up in the stadium, man, as Pomp and Circumstance rolls out, because Mom got me through Biology, Econ, Math, Social Studies, and the Pitcher kicked it in for English. Now that that ball is starting to wobble and weave and Bailey is trying to track it, but good luck with that because my track has never been straight, and suddenly I turn around in that stadium. Because we are lined up in our caps and gowns, and I want to see Mom.
And in that sea of blue robes I turn and look into the stadium for her. I mean, I want to see her before I can’t ever see her again, and all I see is all these parents, man, when suddenly this person stands up and starts waving her hands. “Ricky! Ricky! Ricky!” And I wave back, and she shouts across that whole stadium, man. “You did it, Ricky! You did it!” And my eyes, man, just go bad and I can’t see, and Mom yells again. “I love you, Ricky!” and then I yell back, I mean, right in the middle of the ceremony, but I don’t care.
“I love you, Mom!”
And that forkball breaks down in the way God intended, man, in a way no one can ever predict, and Bailey swings for the ball that just isn’t there anymore, and no steroid in the world can help, because the big dog from Texas just struck out, and me, man….me.
I can’t talk anymore because…well….
I graduated from high school, bro
.
47
OKAY. NOW THE MONEYBALL moment. You know the scene where the dudes slide the check. Well, maybe not exactly. We are having a party for Mom at our house. Guess my essay was pretty good, because the government dude said Mom can stay and she’s on track to become a citizen. Actually, it’s my graduation party, and everybody is having a great time when the doorbell rings, and there is Jigger Hix.
“I just wanted to stop by before I caught a plane back to Chicago,” he explains to Mom and me and the Pitcher in the living room. “It is a real honor, sir, to meet you,” he says.
He then turns to Mom.
“Is there somewhere we can all talk?”
But now we are all sitting down at the kitchen table, and Jigger Hix is looking at me, and I’m thinking he is going to like slide a check across the table like in the movie and say “This is what the Chicago Cubs think of you, Ricky.” But he doesn’t do that. He just puts an envelope on the table and looks around the room and says, “I want you to think real hard, Ricky, on what is in this envelope and then give me a call.”
Mom looks like she is about to burst, and even the Pitcher can’t take his eyes off the envelope.
Jigger, who is red faced anyway and looks like he should always have a cigar in his mouth, stands and nods around the room to everyone.
“Well, I look forward to hearing from you folks.”
And then he leaves, and we are all just sitting there. Mom looks at me.
“Well, are you going to open it?”
I pause and stare at the long white envelope that holds my future. I pick it up slowly, and it feels fat. I hold it up to the light, and the Pitcher snorts. I then hold it down and take a deep breath.
“Alright,” I say and thumb open the flap.
I shakily take out the letter.
And begin to read.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to John, Joe, and Leticia, who have kept the pitches coming. And to my son Clay once again for teaching me what pitching and perseverance are all about.
COMING SOON
THE PITCHER 3!
The Pitcher 2 Page 14