Over at first I see to my surprise that Chad Akers hasn’t taken much of a lead. So I slide step toward home and throw the ball hard—chin music. I don’t want to hit Hine and give him first base, but I want to send a message: You better fucking not dig in on me. The fastball also gives my catcher a chance of throwing Akers out if he tries to steal second and, if it’s a hit-and-run, doesn’t give Hine much chance to get a solid piece of the ball. Hine returns the message with a glare. Ball one. I keep the same cadence on the next pitch but throw to first, not a great pick-off move but just to say, I know you’re there. When I get the ball back, I hold it until Hine steps out of the box. Baseball is considered a slow game, but there is so much going on that most spectators don’t see—trying to break the batter’s rhythm and timing, get his legs heavy, and not letting a runner get a good jump.
At the plate, Hine hasn’t dug in, and I know he’ll be anxious. I slide step fast just after coming to a complete stop and throw one fine screwball. It’s a bit faster than the others, and the bottom falls out of it, like it’s a sinker, but it’s also moving away. He swings and lofts a fly ball to right for the first out. The path he takes back to the dugout brings him right by the mound—maybe he’s testing me to see if I’ll talk crap to him. I do not.
Third baseman Johnny Knott is up. He’s hitting .412 against us, but he’s kept his mouth shut during the pregame hollering and shouting about me pitching. He comes across as quiet and all business. I’m still hoping for a ground ball, a quick double play, and getting out of the inning on the fewest pitches possible. I turn and point my glove to Brito at short, the message being, If I get a comebacker, get ready for the throw. Brito points back: We’re good. Akins hasn’t budged from first, and I concentrate on Knott, who strikes out on a screwball away. Holy crap, I think. My stuff is really breaking today. Two down.
Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” blares as Marc Fink strolls to the plate. Well, he can afford to stroll—he’s hitting .421 against us. At six feet three, 220 pounds, Fink is another of the RedHawks’ power hitters, a lefty. He’s a loudmouthed, in-your-face type of guy. With two out and the number four hitter up, Akers is likely to try to steal second. If he gets thrown out, no big deal because the RedHawks get to start off the next inning with Fink’s power. And better yet, if Akers steals second, Fink has a chance to even the score with a base hit. I think about keeping Akers close and not giving anything good to Fink. I throw to first base twice in a row, both better pick-off moves but not my best. I hold the ball as long as I can before testing Fink with a straight change-up. He swings so hard I’m surprised the bat doesn’t break when it hits the ball. He catches only a piece of the ball—if he had connected, it would have landed on the highway behind the stadium. Instead he skies a deep fly ball, and I turn and watch our center fielder glove it. Cool. So far, no drama. No runs, one hit, no errors, one left on base.
As we head for the dugout, the guys coming in behind me slap my back instead of my butt because people are looking, though I wouldn’t care if they treated me just like any other player. They’re saying, “Good job.” I find a place far down the bench, put on my jacket, and focus on the game. Fans wonder why pitchers sit alone, unlike the position players, who interact on the bench. I have a bias about this: A hitter can go three-for-ten and be a success. But if a pitcher makes a costly mistake on two out of a hundred pitches, that can mean failure. To get a better edge, while I’m on the bench I analyze the batters for any clue to their weaknesses. When I’m pitching I am on the verge of insanity, taking the stress and converting it into energy and a laser focus. I’ve been honing these habits since age eleven in the Little League playoffs, but in truth I have been this way ever since I first played ball in my family’s front yard. I look down at the splinter that’s worked its way into my thigh through my uniform. It reminds me that you always have to watch your moves, a smart choice when your first diamond’s second base was a lemon tree, with its thorny trunk.
1980, La Mirada, California. Beginnings. The first time I left home for baseball, I was about five years old. It was a short trip. When you walked into our front yard you saw that where other families had a garden, Dad had staked out a baseball diamond. First base was a tree with an old tire hanging from a branch, where we liked to swing when we weren’t playing ball. Second base was the lemon tree; and another tree served as third. To be safe you had to grab the tree trunks and hold on (like the stakes used in the nineteenth-century game of town ball). But home plate was real—I don’t know where Dad found it—with six-inch metal spikes that he hammered into the ground, like he meant it to stay there forever.
We lived in La Mirada, a hilly suburb southeast of Los Angeles that was paradise for kids’ sports. All the kids in the neighborhood showed up to play ball in our yard. We’d play until it was dark, and sometimes the next morning you would see aluminum bats and leather mitts scattered on our grass, left out from yesterday’s game. If we got hungry we grabbed an instant snack: the best tangerines you’ve ever tasted from one of the trees in our yard. In our family, we kids were not allowed to stay indoors unless it was raining—and hey, it hardly ever rains in Southern California.
Our porch was littered with empty Budweiser cans, usually crushed, as if Dad had squeezed out the last drop of brew. When he first courted Mom, he arrived to pick her up in a red Corvette. Dad sat there, waiting for her to come out of the house and jump in. This had concerned Mom’s conservative parents, as she was a very naïve seventeen, and so they walked her out to the car. When they looked into the Corvette, I expect that they saw the stuff of a semipro ballplayer: gym bag, sweaty towels, faded baseball caps, and empty beer cans.
Dad was my first and best baseball coach. I think the idea to help me develop my skills began early: when I was an infant, he noticed that I was struggling to feed myself with a spoon—until I picked up the spoon with the other hand, my left hand. Dad said that he immediately thought, Well, left-handed pitchers don’t grow on trees. After I broke a few windows batting on our front-yard diamond, he started taking me to Behringer Athletic Park to work on the fundamentals. Could not have cared less that I was a girl—he worked on my pitching and hitting and fielding as if I were headed to the major leagues. So it felt like a natural move from our front-yard field onto an organized team. I began playing Little Miss Softball at age six and did well. In my second season I was invited to play on an all-star traveling team. That meant weekend tournaments and playing year-round. Being on the field became my second home, but something was missing, and I knew what it was.
When I was eight years old, Dad took me to a ball game at Dodger Stadium. I saw one of the African American players—I want to say it was Dusty Baker, the Los Angeles Dodgers left fielder in 1983—go long, and it sparked something in me. That same summer I was tossing a baseball around in our front yard when I looked—I mean really looked—at the ball in my hand. It was smaller and harder than the one we used in girls’ softball. Besides, pitching underhand, like we did in softball, had never felt quite right. I wanted to pitch overhand, like they did in the big leagues. At night I began to dream of playing in the major leagues. And so began my campaign with Dad to put me into baseball so I could pitch. Finally he said, “Okay. But if you’re going to play with the boys, you are going to wear your hair long, so everyone knows you’re a girl.”
I will always be thankful that he was far ahead of his time in his attitudes toward girls on the diamond. The likely reason for his encouragement goes back to his childhood, given this story he liked to tell: When Dad was in grade school he knew a girl named Judy Emmett. She was always his first pick when he was captain of the team, because Judy happened to be an unbelievably good baseball player. “She helped us to win ballgames. That’s what it was all about,” Dad said. “Winning the game.”
So Dad saw nothing wrong with a girl playing baseball. And he didn’t care what people thought about my playing ball; he just supported my love for the game. Mom felt the same. When I was ten years old, s
he and I went down to the La Mirada Little League sign-ups at Behringer Park, where we joined a line of about fifty people. A lady came up to us and said, “This is the baseball line. Softball sign-ups are at Los Coyotes Park.”
Mom smiled. “I know,” she said. “I’m here to sign my daughter up for baseball.”
You should have seen this woman’s face. It was like she found a roach in her soup. Then she caught herself, gave a fake smile, and said, “Okay, well, if you come back tomorrow at this time, the line will not be as long.”
Mom, being sweet but naïve, said, “Okay, we’ll come back tomorrow when you open. Thank you.”
That night I slept with my mitt under my pillow. But when we showed up at the park the following day, no one was there. Finally we ran into the vice president of the league, who told us that the last day for sign-ups was yesterday. We explained what happened. He was very sorry, but all the teams were filled. I would have to go on a waiting list. Even though I was young, I knew what they had done. I was pissed, and so was Dad. He said he would fix it. He could be a bulldog when he had a mission.
Uh-oh, I thought. What’s he going to do? Dad grew up in the era when, if you had a problem, you duked it out. But after a week went by without a call from the league, he said to me, “Get your stuff. You’re going for a tryout today.”
I grabbed my bat, mitt, and cap and was ready to go in three minutes. Dad hated to wait, and no way was I going to make him mad today. We went down to the field where the minor A division Twins were practicing.
While the players fielded grounders, took batting practice, and ran the bases, he reasoned with the coach, “Hey, I know you guys have an opening, and my child is next on the waiting list. Can she try out for you?”
The coach said, “She?” A couple of other girls were already playing in La Mirada Little League this season, and Dad recalls the coach saying, “Aw, no. Not another one.” This despite the fact that Little League had been open to girls since 1974, the year before I was born.
“Yep,” Dad replied. “Let my daughter take some cuts and pitch for you, and if you’re not blown away by what she can do, then we’ll walk away.”
“Okay,” came the answer. “Let’s see this.”
Dad looked at me. “You’re up. Take some hacks and throw the ball like you do. Go for it.”
I stepped up to the plate, got five pitches, and nailed all of them. After that I pitched and struck out four kids in a row. Right then and there the coach signed me to his team, and I learned my first lesson in how to succeed in baseball: persevere in the face of those who would deny me the chance to play; then be so good that they could not say no. Dad put it this way: “Don’t push your way in, win your way in.”
In my first Little League at bat, I blasted the ball off the center-field fence and, with my long hair flying, steamed into second. Dad remembers that one of the major division coaches on the sidelines wondered aloud who the hippie was that hit that double.
I pitched and played first base and shortstop the whole season. And yeah, I made a lot of trips to first base on pitches that found me rather than the strike zone. What I didn’t know how to protect myself against was the opposition in the stands. Little League parents, especially the moms, absolutely hated to see me strike out their sons, and they didn’t hold back their feelings. The Twins finished the season by winning the La Mirada Little League minor division title. The upper division (the majors), which usually had only eleven- and twelve-year olds, still had two games left. The White Sox of that division called and asked me—aged ten-and-a-half—to move up to their team. Their next game was against the undefeated first-place Pirates. In my first at bat I faced the MVP of the division, a big twelve-year-old right-hander. His first pitch was a fastball to my head. No way was he going to let a girl get a hit off him, so he plunked me. Nowadays parents go nuts when something like this happens, but back then all Dad said was, “Take your base.”
He knew the kid meant to hit me but saw it as a lesson I would have to learn. As I ran to first, I thought, I’m gonna remember that kid.
In my next at bat, same pitcher—smack. I nailed his first pitch, an outside fastball, down the right-field line. I ran my ass off and got a triple. The guys in our dugout were going nuts, jumping up and down and shaking the chain-link fence. The pitcher slammed his mitt down on the mound. We beat the Pirates that day, and on the way home, Dad gave me a few more pearls of advice: “Never let them see that they got to you,” he told me. And don’t ever retaliate by hitting a batter in the head. Hit ’em in the ribs, where they have no protection.”
He was half-kidding, I think. But his message was clear: if you’re going to play hardball with the boys, you better learn how to take the knocks and know how to fight back. He knew from his time playing semipro baseball what it would take for me to survive in the game.
I am surprised Dad wasn’t a drill sergeant in the military, because he raised me like a soldier. When I was ten, he taught how to shoot a BB gun. Our town was still pretty rural back then, and it became a family tradition to sit out by the pool at dusk and shoot BBs at the rats that walked on the power line that led to our roof.
As with baseball, order and neatness were preparation for the game of life. No TV unless it was Friday night and Dallas or Los Angeles Lakers basketball was on. It wasn’t until I was ten that I was allowed to watch baseball on TV. I couldn’t play ball until the chores were done. Dad was big on chores. From the age of five on, my Saturday morning chores involved mowing the front lawn, side lawn, and backyard, sweeping the carport, picking up after our German shepherd, Timber, and raking the leaves on our half-acre lot. I had two hours to get everything done, and he timed me. At our house it often felt like we lived on military time.
Dad’s discipline was harsh. As a child, he had been beaten with a belt, so that’s all he knew. So I was either hit, though never on my throwing arm, or had dog poop shoved into my face if I was not done in time, had not done it right, or had broken something around the house. As a kid I couldn’t put words to why he acted this way. It would take me years to understand what alcohol can do to a person. To this day Dad feels horrible about his treatment and has asked my forgiveness many times. Eventually I was able to forgive, though I still struggle to not expect others to give 110 percent all the time. I am even thankful for the discipline I learned, but growing up, never knowing when Dad would flip his angry switch, life could be tough.
Looking back I can see why Dad might have been short on patience. He loved playing baseball—besides pitching he possessed a good bat and good speed. During their courtship, Mom remembers driving with him throughout Southern California and as far north as Visalia, in the San Joaquin Valley, to his Sunday afternoon games. But he was coming off an arm injury, and the next year he was married with a brand-new baby, me. He was twenty years old. He never complained about giving up any dreams he had of continuing in baseball for family life, but I wonder. By the time he was twenty-six, he was the father of three. My sister, Leah, was born when I was five; my brother, Phillip, arrived when I was six.
Another reason for Dad’s harsh discipline came, I think, from his religion. He had been raised Southern Baptist in the “spare the rod, spoil the child” tradition. On Sundays he took me to Calvary Baptist Church in Bellflower, where he had attended services as a child. I did not attend Sunday school there; it was just Dad and me, sitting in the pew together. Week after week I heard the hellfire and brimstone sermons. I learned early on that Dad valued outward appearances, which I’ve come to believe is a common quality among people with a fundamentalist faith. In public Dad was downright charismatic. If I was mowing the yard when a neighbor stopped by, he’d grab the lawnmower and hold it, as if he were doing the work. After the neighbor left, I was back on the job. This ticked me off because I felt that he wasn’t being truthful to who he really was. Meanwhile, Mom stayed home with my brother and sister. She had been raised Roman Catholic and lived her faith in a quiet way that I admired, though she
never preached. Her open-door policy with the neighborhood kids drew them to her whenever they had a problem. She was safe to be with.
I dearly wanted to be a credit to God, but the God of my childhood Southern Baptist church seemed like an angry Old Testament one, bent on punishment. Even when we sang the old hymn “Amazing Grace” the words did not seem to apply to me. I knew I could never measure up. In kindergarten I first sensed that I was different when I developed a serious crush on my female teacher. I also sensed that this sort of feeling was unacceptable at Calvary Baptist Church. So I always tried to stay close to the kindlier Jesus, though for many years it would be the game of baseball that was my god.
Dad’s temper played out on the field. He was always supportive of my playing, though in the hard-nosed way he knew. Every Saturday and Sunday he took me out to Behringer Park to practice. Mom often went along to shag balls in the outfield. We’d start at eight o’clock in the morning and play for hours. In the movie about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of the 1940s and ’50s, A League of Their Own, there’s a classic scene where the manager, played by Tom Hanks, yells at a player who has made an error. When she breaks into tears, he gets mad. “No crying,” he yells in her face. “No crying! Everyone knows—there’s no crying in baseball!”
That could have been Dad. He was big on keeping my head in the game. “Never let ’em see you sweat,” he liked to say. “If someone hits a home run off you, Show No Emotion. If one of your teammates drops a fly ball, Show No Emotion. Later in the game, he could be the one who saves your sorry ass.”
So for me there definitely was no crying in baseball—though there definitely was swearing in baseball. Despite our faithful attendance at Calvary Baptist Church, Dad cussed, and I cussed, and it seemed a normal way to let go of the emotions that streamed through me during a game.
Making My Pitch Page 3