by Mike Murphey
The Conman
Mike Murphey and Keith Comstock
Published by Acorn Publishing, LLC, 2019.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE CONMAN
First edition. November 11, 2019.
Copyright © 2019 Mike Murphey and Keith Comstock.
ISBN: 978-1947392519
Written by Mike Murphey and Keith Comstock.
The Conman is dedicated to the memory of Dave Henderson, an extraordinary baseball player, and even better human being. Oh, man, Hendu, do we ever miss that smile!
index_split_000.html
the
conman
(What follows is based on a true story.)
by
Mike Murphey
with Keith Comstock
FROM THE TINY ACORN…
GROWS THE MIGHTY OAK
This is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
THE CONMAN. Copyright © 2019 Mike Murphey.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America. For information, address
Acorn Publishing, LLC, 3943 Irvine Blvd. Ste. 218, Irvine, CA 92602
www.acornpublishingllc.com
Edited by Laura Taylor
Cover design by Damonza
Interior design by Debra Cranfield Kennedy
Anti-Piracy Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from the author.
ISBN-13: 978-1-947392-65-6 (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 978-1-947392-64-9 (paperback)
◇ ◇ ◇
The Conman is dedicated to
the memory of Dave Henderson,
an extraordinary baseball player,
and even better human being.
Oh, man, Hendu,
do we ever miss that smile!
. . . there’s a reason for living way down in the valley
that only the mountain knows.
—John Henry Bosworth
NOEL STOOKEY
one
Phoenix, Arizona
October 1992
Failure can be an acute condition, perhaps even chronic, but quitting—quitting is fatal.
Conor Nash believed this to his marrow.
No stranger to failure, Conor had been released from professional baseball contracts ten times. He’d been released by major league teams. He’d been released by minor league affiliates. He’d been released in five countries encompassing three continents. He wasn’t sure how to count Puerto Rico. And, technically, that release occurred in an aircraft somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. He’d had a contract when the plane took off. When it landed, they told him, “Go home.”
And Venezuela, well, they weren’t satisfied with just releasing him. A pissed-off dictator banned him from the entire country.
Hope remained, though, and ultimately, he’d kept his vow. Conor Nash pitched in the major leagues. So, why did this champagne bottle clutched in his left hand cast a pall that felt like death?
Fat Brad Grady could have helped him sort through these confusing emotions. Brad loved debating the nuance of words, and he and Conor argued the semantics often enough. Where Conor saw a razor-sharp line distinguishing fail and quit, Brad found a middle ground he defined as surrender to reality or honorable retreat. Brad’s intellect would help make sense of Conor’s present struggle. Brad wasn’t available, though, was he? Conor closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to slough off the guilty anger he still confronted when he thought of Brad.
Conor set the champagne atop a flat red rock beside one of those damned jumping cactus plants. He bent forward, hands on knees. Everything around him conveyed hostile intent. Towering saguaro, their spines like nails, prickly pears, sharp-edged Spanish Daggers. The cholla cacti were the worst, with needles that seemed to leap from the plant if you got too close.
Maybe he hadn’t thought this through.
This was an occasion, and he would not visit a host of family, friends and adversaries dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt. Cowboy boots, jeans and a knit polo were proving inappropriate, though, for scaling Camelback Mountain.
He squinted into the glare of afternoon sun and saw a pair of young women making their way down. They wore cargo shorts. Sweat-soaked tank tops seemed plastered to their skin. Their hiking boots bit into the steep slant of red rock and sand surface.
Conor shaded his eyes, stood straight and did his best to look ten years younger.
“Hi,” he said.
They smiled politely and passed without comment.
Conor was not a womanizer. He’d put that behind him when he married Kate fifteen years ago. Still, if those women knew they’d been greeted by a genuine major league baseball player, they wouldn’t just hurry on their way, would they?
Then, he amended his thought. Ex-major league ballplayer.
Other hikers—all the traffic seemed to be headed down—offered curious glances at his clothing and champagne bottle. A few wished him success on his climb. He thought it a happy coincidence they were leaving. After all, he sought solitude at the camel’s hump.
Retrieving the bottle, he craned his neck toward the summit. Damn. He didn’t remember the fucking mountain being this steep. A half dozen more steps and the slick soles of his cowboy boots betrayed him again. He caught himself with his free hand, protecting his champagne. Breaking the bottle after all these years would be catastrophic.
French. Moët-Chandon. Purchased for twenty-five dollars at an Idaho Falls liquor store during the summer of 1976. Conor hadn’t a clue whether brand and vintage qualified as good, bad or indifferent. They’d been four minor league baseball players. Kids really. The last man standing pact was Conor’s idea. The player remaining when the other three had officially retired from their playing careers got to drink the champagne. Sports Illustrated published a story about this pact when Kenny Shrom passed the bottle to Conor as the1989 season ended.
The Idaho Falls Russets, a team named for a potato, represented the minor league ladder’s lowest rung. And against all odds, three of the four pact members climbed from that first step to the majors. Mark Brouhard arrived first. He played a half-dozen seasons in Milwaukee, punctuated by a year with the Yakult Swallows, before Kenny took charge of the bottle. Kenny pitched for Minnesota and Cleveland until injury robbed him of 1988. His comeback the next season failed in El Paso.
Initially, the bottle sat on Conor’s garage shelf, subjected to a quiet indignity of shared space with wrenches, bicycle tires and motor oil. Then Kate pointed out it should probably be refrigerated. So, he made room at the back of his garage ice box. It loomed like a grim reaper each time he opened the fridge to grab a beer. It also fed a sullen, brooding hostility that took seed following Conor’s final shoulder surgery.
Since second grade, Conor Nash had lived with a single purpose: to be a big-league pitcher. Even through high school, adults and friends indulged him with smiles and chuckles and, “Yes, but what if you don’t make the majors? What’s your back-up plan?”
The only adult who might have swayed him from his path had been his father. Hugh Nash cast an enormous presence. A brawler, he litera
lly fought his way into a leadership role with the Teamsters at the Port of Oakland.
“Conor, I know what I’m supposed to tell you,” Hugh told his second-born son one grey fall Bay Area afternoon. Hugh had conceded he would not beat lung cancer, and that his five sons would make their way into the adult world without him. He called each boy individually into the living room of the two-story house on Melendy Drive in San Carlos, California, to address their futures.
“Even though you had a good year in Idaho, there’s a long, tough road ahead,” he told Conor. A deep, rasping cough forced a pause.
Conor made it a point not to wince or show concern, though he imagined what a painful fire the coughing built in his father’s lungs. Hugh’s failing body still held an iron will, and Conor refused to acknowledge the cancer. As his cough subsided, Hugh drank from a glass of water, gathering himself.
“No matter what the scouts said, only something like four or five percent of kids drafted ever make the majors,” Hugh continued. “So, I’m supposed to say find something to fall back on, maybe school during the off-season, or see if I can hook you up driving a truck or working the docks.”
Hugh shook his head.
“I’m supposed to say, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Conor, I’ve watched you try to change a tire. Son, you’ve only got one basket. That’s it. If you have a fallback plan, that’s just what you’ll do—fall back. Since you were seven years old, you’ve aimed yourself like an arrow at one goal, and I’ve never seen anyone so focused, so single-minded. For the other boys, that would be a weakness. Not you. That’s your strength.”
And now, on an October afternoon sixteen years later, Conor climbed Camelback Mountain. Along with the bottle of champagne, he carried his father, his best friends—A.J., Basil, Brad—his brothers, his wife and children, a whole community of people who had celebrated his successes and commiserated over his shortcomings, teammates and coaches, both friend and foe. All who had shaped him for better or for worse.
He intended to sit atop a mountain overlooking Phoenix, drink his champagne, and reflect on people, places and events—try and understand what would become of Conor Nash now.
He honestly didn’t know, though, whether he was attending a party or a funeral.
two
San Carlos, California
1961
Conor fell in love the first time he stood on a pitchers’ mound. At age seven, the initial attraction had nothing to do with throwing the ball, or even the game itself. Pencil marks climbing his bedroom door frame placed him at four feet even. He weighed either forty or forty-one pounds, depending on what he ate for breakfast. The mound made him taller than everyone else.
The San Carlos Farm League, entry-level play with teams comprised of seven and eight-year-olds, served as his introduction to baseball. His older brother, Sam, coached the Braves. Sam brought all the experience and wisdom of a nine-year-old to the job.
“Conor, you’re our pitcher,” Sam announced the first day of practice.
“I wanna be the pitcher,” said Stevie Bullock, the biggest kid there.
“No, you’re our left fielder,” Sam ordered.
“I don’t wanna be left fielder. I wanna pitch.”
“Don’t you know anything?” Sam said with a note of menace. “Who’s the best pitcher in the world?”
“Saaandy Koooufax!” shouted a unanimous chorus of tiny baseball fans seated cross-legged on the grass before Sam.
“Right,” Sam said. “And Sandy Koufax isn’t right-handed, is he? No, he’s left-handed. So, the best pitchers are left-handed. What are you, Stevie?”
Stevie’s defiance melted into downcast defeat. “Right-handed,” he said, staring at the ground.
“And Conor’s left-handed. He’s our pitcher.”
Besides making him taller, Conor liked pitching because no one could do anything until he threw the ball. They all waited for him. What really hooked him, though? When he threw it, most kids couldn’t hit it.
Sam’s Sandy Koufax reference inspired Conor to pay attention when Sandy’s Dodgers came north to play his beloved Giants. While the seven-year-old enemy hurlers awkwardly did their best to guide the ball toward the vicinity of the strike zone with careful lobs, Conor did what Sandy did. He started with a high leg kick aimed at first base, dropped low and arched his back so his right knee nearly scraped the ground, then drove toward the plate, unleashing a thirty -four or thirty-five mile-an-hour fastball that either baffled or terrified most second-graders.
The rules aided his effectiveness.
In Farm League baseball, adults wisely instilled an aggressive rather than passive approach to hitting. Many second graders figured out that standing and waiting for the inevitable four balls was the easiest way to get on base. So, league rules forbade walking. A batter either struck out, or he put the ball in play.
Thus, Conor reared back and threw for all he was worth, unpenalized while his opponents ducked and dodged for their very lives. Conor felt invincible, like one of the Old Testament characters nuns told him about in Sunday School, or maybe Superman, throwing lightning bolts at sinners who scrabbled below. Hitters quickly realized that, if they flailed at anything even approximately near the strike zone, they could retreat to the safety of the dugout.
Sam’s nine-year-old concept of pitching instruction—remarkably similar to the approach of many professional pitching coaches, Conor later came to understand—was telling him to throw strikes.
“Hey, lame-o, throw strikes!” Sam yelled from the dugout.
Adult Farm League supervisors counseled Sam that he should not yell at his players or call them names.
“I don’t yell at them except for my brother,” Sam told them, “and I yell at him all the time, anyway. He’s used to it.”
The season’s third game offered Conor an epiphany. He tugged at Sam’s arm, breaking his characteristic silence. “Remember what you said t . . . t . . . to me last inning?”
“Yeah. I said ‘Hey, ya little snotweasel, throw strikes!’”
“Why?”
“Why, what?” Sam asked.
“If I throw it where they can reach it, somebody might hit it.”
“Because, lame-o, in real baseball you have to throw strikes. Or else you walk people. Sandy Koufax doesn’t walk people.”
Hmmmmm. Made sense.
Thus, at the age of seven, Conor began a life-long process of determined self-instruction.
He got a baseball, drew a box on a brick wall at his elementary school, and practiced throwing strikes. And, having added strikes to his repertoire, he led the Braves to the 1961 San Carlos Farm League pennant. He was hooked. His life’s destiny might as well have been tattooed on his skinny seven-year-old bicep.
“Hey, Dad, know what I’m guh . . . gonna be when I guh . . . guh . . . grow up?”
“Yeah. A gas station attendant. You told me last week.”
“No. I’m guh . . . gonna be a pitcher.”
For the rest of his childhood, his answer remained the same. An adult would ask, “What are your plans?”
“I’m guh . . . gonna be a major league pitcher.”
An indulgent smile, maybe a chuckle, then, “Yeah, but really. What will you do for a living? If baseball doesn’t work out?”
Conor only regarded them curiously and wondered to himself, why wouldn’t it work out?
October 1992
Cradling his bottle of champagne like a newborn, Conor found the natural bench at Camelback’s summit just as he remembered. He sat, gently placing the bottle at his feet. Eyes closed, he leaned back and simply breathed while waiting for his heart to forgive him. He pulled the tail of his shirt from his jeans and dabbed at sweat dripping into his eyes. He faced west. A descending sun began to tint a covey of billowing, wandering clouds the colors of the desert. A breeze wound its way through the few cactus plants and grasses that somehow maintained footholds in the granite peak. Despite the heat, this breath of wind raised chill bumps along
his arms as it brushed a sheen of perspiration.
He drank in the beauty below—rich greens of golf courses and baseball diamonds dotting the Phoenix cityscape, browns and reds and tans of the desert, sharply defined lines and curves of streets and freeways dissecting the urban palette.
Okay, now what?
Just as his choice of clothing proved ill-suited, so, perhaps, was his mental preparation. His plan to climb, drink, remember and reflect, which seemed perfectly sound at the mountain’s base, now struck him as vague.
Recollection could be an exercise in chaos, his focus careening from place to place, event to event, like a marble bouncing in a pinball machine. Similarly, reflection required a disciplined order, or all his emotions might bleed together, allowing no individual incident of influence or support or betrayal its proper due.
And besides, he only had one bottle of champagne.
Raised in the Catholic Church, Conor easily related to concepts of saints and guilt and confession. At the age of five, he spilled a can of Drano into his eyes. Doctors feared he would be blinded. His eyes were ultimately saved, but he left the hospital with a persistent stutter that plagued him through adolescence. So, he considered divine intervention as a kind of heavenly quid pro quo in which miracle is balanced by affliction.
Conor listened to the desert—the voice of a mockingbird, the rustle of unseen creatures through weeds and bushes that clung to their arid existence—then explained himself to the mountain.
I’ve settled on a belief I was granted my life’s baseball journey because of a wish I made in a tunnel. Which raised a question. Who could grant such a wish? Maybe a saint? My childhood priest, though, told me baseball has no patron saint. Father McCray called my attention to Saint Sebastian, the patron of athletes. But any theology assigning baseball and soccer to the same level of paradise made no sense to me.