Switch Pitchers

by Norman German

  Numb from the line drive, Bobby hung a curve over the whitest part of the plate that loaded the bases with a dribbler down the third-base line.

  For the next two pitches, the pain in Bobby’s chest camouflaged the pain in his shoulder. It felt good not to feel the shoulder pain, but the hit to his chest threw off his delivery and the count was suddenly 2-and-0. Chozen called fastball and Bobby threw one for the first strike. The pain in his shoulder took his breath away. He felt like he was dragging his arm up the mound.

  Chozen called time and jogged out to his pitcher.

  “You’re hurting, aren’t you, Bobby?”

  “Just a little hitch.”

  Coming from Bobby, Chozen knew what that meant.

  “Elbow or shoulder?”

  “Shoulder.”

  “Same place?”

  Bobby looked into the empty blackness over the left-field lights and nodded.

  “Shit,” Chozen said. He saw his hopes for the championship slipping away. “Well,” he said after a while of not knowing what to say, “we couldn’t have gotten this far without the ambidextrous sideshow freak.”

  Bobby nodded at the attempted consolation.

  “What the hell,” Chozen said. “It’s just a game. Let’s see what happens if you throw changeups for your fastball and a change off that for your changeup, okay?”

  He turned toward home, then remembered something and jogged back to the mound.

  “Just avoid your sunset sinker.”

  The pain had dulled Bobby’s mind. He didn’t recall having a pitch called the sunset sinker. “What’s that?”

  Chozen slapped him with his mitt. “Throw a sinker and the last thing you’ll see is the ball sinking over the sunset in center field.”

  Then Bobby remembered the jest. It was something Chozen used to say in Little Rock when it was funny because there was no chance of it happening.

  While Chozen waddled back to his position like an oversized baby dragging a full diaper, Bobby scanned the bleachers on both sides of the ballpark. Fans for both teams were moving their lips in silent prayers to the same God, praying for the miracle—the strikeout or the hit—that would win their team the pennant. Some had their hands raised with fingers crossed. A few were making doubly sure by crossing their arms over their chests. Suddenly, the whole scene looked ridiculous. Nations fought, people starved, millions were diseased. Yet here they were, praying for a Double-A team to win a pennant. Bobby wondered to himself, “What would they win, really?”

  “Play ball!”

  The umpire’s bark brought Bobby back to where he was—on a bump of red dirt in an untidy ballpark of this small industrial town. With all the enthusiasm of a ditch-digger, he turned to do the job he was paid for.

  After the long delay, the ump held up his hands to remind everybody the count was 2-and-0. Bobby took his position and looked down the barrel of the strike zone for the signal that would end his misery one way or another. He waved off the fastball. Didn’t want the pain. He didn’t like the slider. The curve was appealing. He thought about it for a second before waving it off.

  The umpire stepped away and called “time.”

  “Harry, you tell your pitcher to throw or I’ll call a balk and end this game right now.”

  When they got down to business again, Bobby fished with an outside curve for a swinging strike one. He tried again with the same pitch, but the batter wasn’t biting this time. The count was 3-and-1.

  Bobby thought of walking the batter and wiping the slate clean for another, but he wanted to end the nightmare as quickly as possible.

  He watched Chozen go through all his signals, then rotate through them again, and still Bobby was staring as if he were waiting for the ultimate signal, the sign that didn’t exist that would make his whole life come together like a well-stitched baseball.

  Bobby saw the umpire look toward third to remind him of the runner he was about to balk home. He went into his windup and threw a fastball that felt like it ripped his arm off. The batter was taking all the way. Strike two. Full count. Lunkers ahead by one.

  One pitch. That’s all he needed. He just didn’t know if he had it in him. After the pain of the last throw, a wave of sweat poured from his body. Stalling for time, he circled around the back of the mound, coughed, and picked up the rosin bag. He looked into the stands at the fluttering agitation of fanaticism. In the third row of the home grandstands, he saw a rectangle of stillness shaped like a strike zone, framed by a flurry of waving arms.

  Irene, and Earl, and Darnell.

  Earl was holding Darnell high up on his arm, almost lifting him off the ground. Bobby could feel Darnell’s pain because it was his own. The umpire called for the pitch, and Bobby stepped up on the mound. He took his position to throw from a stretch. With sweat running in his eyes and his arm hanging from his side, he looked for the signal. Chozen seemed out of focus.

  Bobby leaned over further, but as hard as he tried, as hard as he looked and squinted, he just could not see anything there. He decided to finish with his best pitch, even if it killed him. He drew his right foot in and raised both hands to his chest. When he came to rest, he looked in the stands. Still holding Darnell, Earl was turned away from the boy and yelling in deadly silence at Irene, clutching her, too, by the arm.

  Bobby knew then what was wrong with his world and why it was out of balance. The fuzzy border around the picture suddenly made everything clear to him. He needed to get the game over as quickly as possible and get down to the business of living.

  When Bobby German lifted his right leg and dropped it, putting everything he had, all the strength of his legs and twisting torso and whiplash arm, into the ball, anyone—the ump, the batter, the fans—anyone could see that it was the best pitch he had ever thrown. Because it landed right on the dime-sized spot he was aiming for, just above the left eyebrow of Earl Self.

  Chapter 26

  THE errant pitch, ruled a ball, walked in the tying run.

  “The round ball hit that fan square in the forehead,” Judge Carlton said, rapping his gavel. “And that’s my ruling.”

  After Chozen replaced Bobby with Lamar Cagle, two runs quickly crossed the plate. The Lunkers could not dredge up anything in the bottom of the ninth and lost the game, 8-6.

  Before the game ended, Bobby had reached his hotel room. He did not see the point in icing his shoulder down and instead drank the rest of the Hadacol, then topped it off with a pint of straight Old Crow before midnight.

  When he awoke the next morning at ten, he retrieved his mail at the front desk: one official letter stamped AIR MAIL and a phone message on hotel stationery.

  The letter’s return address—Boston Braves, Minor League Operations—betrayed its contents. The single page would be headed OFFICIAL NOTICE OF DISPOSITION OF PLAYER’S CONTRACT AND SERVICES. The important line would be typed in crooked letters with a weak ribbon: Your contract has this date been assigned outright to the _______________ Club of the ______________________ League.

  During Bobby’s eight years in professional baseball, he had received twenty of these letters, moving him around as often as four times a year. This one, he knew, would either keep him in Lake Charles as the team moved up to Triple-A or send him to Boston for a mediocre season plagued with injuries. Bobby slid the envelope into his back pocket and read the note in the clerk’s handwriting.

  “Tonight at 9. Meet me at the Ferris wheel.”

  Bobby looked up at Clarence. “Who left this message?”

  “She said you’d know. I tried to get her name, Mr. Bobby, but that’s all she’d say.”

  That evening, Bobby watched the sun set from the top of the Calcasieu River Bridge. He pulled the unopened letter from the Braves out of his back pocket. Running his finger inside the flap of the envelope, he tore open the letter. He did not want to read it, did not want to know whether he had been sold downriver or up. He had to open it so he could wad the sheet into the shape of a baseball.

  As he
balled up the paper, Bobby German thought of how much he had given to baseball and how much the game had given him. It gave him another half-dozen years of adolescent brotherhood with Bill after thinking he had lost him forever. It gave him Irene. It was his fault, more or less, that he lost her. All things considered, baseball had been a good life. Ahead was only more arm trouble and endless frustration. It was time to move on.

  He started his windup on the pitcher’s mound of the bridge, then, anticipating how much pain the release would cost him, paused. He shifted his stance a hundred and eighty degrees and moved the wad to his right hand. He went through the entire motion once, then gathered himself again on the invisible rubber. His last throw was awkward but effective. The ball of paper sailed into the night and dropped out of sight.

  Bobby stepped to the rail and peered into the darkness below. He held the envelope over the side and dropped it. He liked the way it fluttered down, then cut like a slider as a draft shot it under the bridge.

  During the few minutes it took to perform the ritual, Bobby felt nothing. He had made up his mind about his baseball career even before he had received the letter. Throwing the notice off the bridge was just a way to pass the time until nine o’clock. When he turned to look at the carnival lights, he felt his heart swell and the blood drain from his face. It was time.

  * * *

  Walking through the loose sand the short distance to the midway, Bobby began to sweat. He had wanted a drink all afternoon, but, even more, he wanted to be clear-headed when he saw Irene. He walked with his head down to avoid recognition. He did not want his fans to feel bad twice by having to find the right words for consolation while disguising their own disappointment or anger.

  Irene was not at the Ferris wheel when Bobby arrived. He shuffled around, dodging small groups, looking up when the danger had passed to scan for Irene. He looked at his watch. He had been waiting fifteen minutes. Perhaps Irene had changed her mind or couldn’t get away from Earl. From behind him came a woman’s voice. “Bobby?”

  He turned to see Irene with a green scarf around her head, her idea of a disguise. He had imagined how it would be. They would stop in their tracks and gaze at each other longingly, then rush forward and embrace without speaking. Then they would hold and hold and hold each other, sealing their love for a lifetime.

  When he was almost within reach, he lifted his left hand to touch her face and felt one twinge of pain in his shoulder and another in his heart as he saw the expression on her face. He touched her face lightly, she dropped her eyes, and he withdrew his hand.

  “I wanted to see you,” she said. “I have to tell you some things.”

  When she lifted her eyes and looked at him, Bobby’s stomach went queasy.

  “First,” she began, as if it were going to be a long recital of woe, “I needed to let you know that Earl is planning to take you to court. For assault and battery.”

  The sickness in Bobby’s stomach turned to fire. “You mean for protecting you against his assault. You and Darnell.”

  Irene was about to cry. Frustrated, she looked away. “I never saw your note. He took it from the boy and started yelling at me—something about us planning to meet after the game, but you not being able to make it.”

  Bobby’s focused anger expanded. Somehow, it was the Ophelia situation all over again—a misunderstanding, followed by disaster. His whole life seemed ruled by coincidences designed to ruin him. He was angry at everything and chose to say nothing because nothing he said would change anything.

  Irene sniffed to keep from crying and composed herself. “Second,” she said.

  “No,” Bobby said. “Wait. Tell me this first. Tell me you still love me. Then you can tell me anything you want.”

  She looked up at him and broke down. She leaned her head against his chest, settling her cheek above his heart and hitting him softly with her fist. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why not?” Bobby demanded. “You do. I know you do. You always have. I can feel it.”

  “I think that’s beside the point, given the circumstances,” Irene said. Then she went deeper into her crying.

  Bobby held her. After a while she stepped back and reached for the purse she wasn’t carrying. With no handkerchief to clear up her face, she pulled the knot on the scarf and released it from her hair. She wiped her eyes with it, her tears darkening the green silk.

  “Can’t you see?” she accused, looking down at her stomach, then up at Bobby. “I’m going to have a baby.” She broke down again.

  Bobby hadn’t noticed, but Irene was just showing. His eyes simply never got past her face.

  When Irene recovered, they walked down the midway without speaking, then walked further, outside the aura of carnival lights toward the lake. Their fingers occasionally found each other, and they held hands briefly, then let go, again and again, guiding each other tenderly toward a long future without the other. At the water, they turned toward town and walked until they reached a small sign, white with black print: “Colored Beach.” There, out of a silent respect they were not even aware of, they stopped and leaned against each other, and the talking began.

  They had to say every private thing they would ever say to each other, so they talked slowly and carefully. In a town the size of Lake Charles, they would pass occasionally. They knew that. When they saw each other in the future, Irene said, it would be best not to talk too often or too long. Bobby agreed that encouraging their affection would not be wise.

  At the end, Bobby asked Irene to promise, if she ever found herself single, by death or divorce, to let him know. She would not promise, but Bobby persisted, and she finally nodded, once.

  Epilogue

  BOBBY German’s glove hand jerks up to shield his face and he hollers himself awake.

  Sitting in a plastic chair watching a soundless television on the wall, his youngest asks him in the abbreviated language of father and son, “Nightmare?”

  Coming back to where he is, to who he is, the wrecked veteran nods slightly and smiles. “Line drive.”

  The insomniac sleeps for a while, fitfully, occasionally touching his chest with his pitching hand. He half-wakes in pain, confused.

  “Get Irene,” he says.

  “Irene?” his son asks. “Is that the nurse?” Bobby looks off in the distance. “Daddy, is that your nurse?”

  The fog lifts for a moment and he comes to his senses. “Where’s your mother?”

  “She ran downstairs to get a sandwich in the cafeteria.”

  The old pitcher tries to wait for her, but he falls asleep.

  A minute passes and he calls out.

  “Unh!”

  His son steps to the bed and holds his father’s arm. They have rarely touched since he passed his tenth birthday. His father showed his love in other ways.

  “Dad, are you all right?”

  Bobby opens his eyes. He is not sure who is standing over him. He moves his hand to his heart. “Caught a line drive in the chest.” His eyes roll under his lids and he falls asleep.

  He is pitching his twentieth win in Little Rock. A line drive glances off his side and rips a muscle. With a man on first, he pitches from the stretch. He takes another line drive above his heart. He looks down the valley of the strike zone, hoping his catcher will see his trouble and pull him. Harry Chozen instead shoots one finger down for a fastball, then moves his target to the outside of the plate. Bobby throws the best fastball he has and it comes back to him, boring into his sternum. He calls out again and again at the first pain, the second, the third. The bases are loaded and he looks down. He is bleeding through his uniform.

  His son finally understands it is not a dream. It is a series of heart attacks, and he runs for Dr. Walker.

  Dr. Walker appears quickly, but calm. He moves close to his patient’s ear and speaks, loud and distinct. “Can you hear me, Mr. Bobby?” The doctor knows his patient is far away, so he calls to him again across the great expanse. “Mr. Bobby, can you hear me?”


  The patient comes around and opens his eyes. They are not aligned at first, but he forces them into focus. He looks up and smiles. “Am I gonna make it, Dr. Walker?”

  The doctor thinks about how to phrase his answer, thinks about what his patient needs to hear, for himself and for his family, and then he speaks. “I don’t think so, Mr. Bobby.”

  The patient stares off in the distance with a look that says, “So this is it.” Wanting just a little more time, he shakes off the sign and returns his gaze to the doctor.