by Mike Murphey
When he struck out the game’s first hitter, he tapped his toes. He repeated the gesture after his second strikeout, and a howl arose from CSM’s dugout. They perceived the gesture as a hot-dog move—showing them up. They vowed revenge.
Conor made it a point to tap his toes each time he dismissed a CSM hitter via strikeout. He tapped fifteen times that afternoon. The day unfolded as one of those dreams in which everything fell into place. He threw nine innings, using a hundred and seven pitches. Eighty of them, according to Brad, strikes. He allowed one hit.
A.J. punctuated the game with a second home run in the eighth as the Oaks won 3-0.
Brad and Conor drove home together. Brad walked straight to the kitchen carrying his scorebook, where he reconstructed the game almost pitch-by-pitch for Hugh.
After he’d showered and changed, Conor found them still seated at the table.
“Good job,” Hugh said.
“Thanks. I’m sorry about the car. I’ll be more careful with my money. I promise.”
“I should do something for them,” Conor told A.J. and Brad. “My dad won’t be happy if I spend more money, but I need to do something. A trip, maybe?”
The three lounged in Conor’s yard, site of a thousand whiffle ball games, the home field of their childhood, sharing a final afternoon before Conor left for Idaho.
“Well,” Brad said, “you know how your dad feels about Hawaii.”
“Hawaii? I’ve never heard him talk about Hawaii.”
“Really?” Brad said. “He’s told me all about it. Some of his buddies were there during the war, and they talked about how nice it was. He’s told me several times he wanted to take your mom there.”
“Hawaii? Okay. How can we put something together?”
“You’re leaving,” A.J. said. “Brad and I will make the arrangements.”
Hugh and Nadine departed that July for a two-week dream vacation. The first day at the beach Nadine noticed a lump on Hugh’s back. By the end of the second week, the lump had grown larger.
nine
Idaho Falls Russets
Rookie Baseball
1976
A young man greeted Conor with extended hand and a face so black it reflected the glow of the 40-watt motel desk lamp. His broad smile revealed pearl-like jewels set in an ebony frame.
“Hey,” drawled a high-pitched voice from the back roads of Mississippi, “I’m Goodrum Martin, and I guess we’re roommates. I gotta warn ya’ though, I ain’t never lived with no white boy.”
“Um . . . hi. I’m Conor . . . Nash. And . . . I’m not sure I got your first name?”
“Goodrum.” His smile glowed again. “I’m from a little place where po-leese used to come lookin’ whenever somethin’ happened. So, my Daddy named me Goodrum, ’cause good rum is hard to find.”
Conor laughed.
“I play infield, second base mostly.” Goodrum made a show of looking Conor up and down. “You’re too skinny to be anything other than a second-baseman or a pitcher.”
“Pitcher. You’ve got second base to yourself.”
Goodrum sat on one of two single beds. It sagged under his weight. “Conor, huh? What your folks call you?”
“Well, they call me Conor. A lot of friends call me Connie. Which always pisses off my dad. He says if he wanted to give me a girl’s name, he’d have named me Sue.”
Goodrum threw back his head and offered a laugh from deep in his chest. “Yeah, like the song. Well, I can’t go tellin’ folks my roommate’s a Connie. We call you . . . let’s see . . . we call you the Conman. That’s your baseball name.”
Minor leaguers roomed at the Bonneville Hotel, a former Idaho Falls gem now gone to seed. It offered a variety of rooming plans, ranging from one hour to monthly. Conor and Goodrum shared a room featuring war-surplus twin beds, a bathroom with curling linoleum tile, and two bed-side lamps. The single bit of décor was a framed photo of Spiro Agnew.
When Conor peeled back heavy drapes, the sunlight worked its way through a set of bars fixed to the exterior window frame, protecting a view of an alley.
I’ll tell you, Rita, Idaho Falls, Idaho, a land of flat prairie, distant mountains, Sunday blue laws and Mormon churches, represented quite an adjustment for a twenty-year-old raised in a San Francisco suburb.
Hugh bailed from the big city early during the sixties when the culture changed all around him. San Francisco, with its ever more brazen gay population, the rise of the Black Power movement and rampant liberalism, was no place he wanted to raise five sons. So, he moved his family south to San Carlos, a mostly white enclave where civil rights movements and Caesar Chavez were a decade distant. Nobody preached white separatism to us. Race and diversity were simply subjects that didn’t come up.
By the time I got to Idaho, though, I knew racism and baseball no longer mixed. Baseball endured its integration trauma years ahead of the rest of the country. If judging a person on merit rather than skin color is the social ideal, baseball proved to be a garden where that philosophy flourished. Not that minority players had gained a completely level playing field. Blacks and Hispanics could not afford to be average. Those jobs still belonged mostly to white kids. Generally, though, on a baseball diamond ability tended to speak loudest of all. If you were a good player, you were a good player. If you were an asshole, you were not a white asshole or a black asshole. You were just an asshole.
Goodrum made the introductions. He pointed to a big outfielder. “Conman, this is Mark Brouhard.”
“Yeah,” Brouhard said. “I saw your bullpen. For a little guy, you can really bring it.”
Conor grinned.
“Hey, give me a minute,” Brouhard said. “I gotta say hi to a friend.”
As the Lethbridge Expos filed into their dugout, Brouhard called a name and crossed the infield. An Expo met him halfway, and they shook hands. After a few moments of conversation, broken up by a Lethbridge coach, Brouhard returned.
“Richey Cobb,” said Brouhard. “He’s a good guy.”
As it turned out, Miguel Montoya, the Russets’ starting pitcher, didn’t share Brouhard’s opinion of Richey Cobb.
Cobb hit second for the Expos. Montoya buried his best fastball between Cobb’s shoulder blades with his first pitch. Cobb’s batting helmet bounded toward the backstop as he fell to all fours and gathered himself. The Expo trainer trotted toward him when Cobb sprang to his feet and charged, fury glowing like embers in his eyes. Montoya closed the distance by leaping from the mound, meeting Cobb’s challenge.
Conor led the Russets’ bullpen charge to join the battle. He quickly learned if you arrive first to the fray, you find yourself at the bottom of the pile. Being the smallest among three of his four brothers, Conor was no stranger to the bottom of a pile. The pilers to which he was accustomed, though, weren’t chewing tobacco or wearing baseball cleats.
He laid a good three layers deep as he struggled for breath. He could feel his arms and legs and wiggle his toes. He held a clear view of Goodrum flying ninja-like, spikes first, into the melee, and a gush of blood leaping from whoever’s whatever he’d landed on.
Next, he saw Brouhard materialize above him as Mark’s right fist smashed into Richey Cobb’s jaw. Cobb’s face went all smushed and flat before he staggered beyond Conor’s view.
Soon, the fight degenerated to a scrum, everyone holding onto everyone else. Then, like a windup toy slowly running down, the whole thing lost its energy.
Brouhard helped Conor to his feet.
“I thought,” Conor gasped, “you said Richey Cobb was your friend.”
Brouhard appeared puzzled for a moment. “Well,” he said, “I guess not right now, and not right here.”
I’ll never forget what Carlos Estrada said after watching me throw.
“Son, I don’t know how somebody who weighs a hundred and fifty pounds can generate a fastball like yours, but let me tell you, the Good Lord fucked up a helluva’ truck driver when He gave you that arm.”
Carlos was t
he Angels roving pitching instructor. Major League organizations did not yet supply individual pitching coaches to minor league affiliates. Larry Hopp managed the Idaho Falls team. A trainer assisted him, while a third guy served as more of a gofer than anything else. The roving pitching instructor traveled among the affiliates.
Carlos saw me throw a bullpen, grinned a tobacco-stained grin, and fell in love.
“Conman,” he said, “you need to read my book. I wrote it for guys exactly like you.”
His book consisted of a hundred or so type-written pages bound in a three-ring binder saying, fifty different ways, Throw the Shit Out of the Ball. A loving ode to cheese, this journal didn’t reference curve balls or changeups. Throw hard, it preached, and when your back is to the wall, throw harder. Blow the bastards away. Dedicate yourself to the heater. And if anyone gives you crap, hit ’em in the neck. With a fastball.
Only about ten pages into Estrada’s soliloquy to dead red, Conor made his professional debut two games into the season, but he’d gotten the gist.
He was called to protect a 3-1 lead with one gone during the eighth.
Conor did not yet know enough about competing at a professional level to be particularly nervous. He felt a few things crawling around his stomach as he warmed up. When he stepped onto the mound, runners at first and second, and took a sign from his catcher, though, he saw the hitter as just another kid like him, and he’d been getting kids like him out his whole life. The last two years had endowed him with supreme confidence and a cockiness bolstering his belief.
He retired all five batters he faced, throwing only fastballs.
Trotting off the field, Conor saw Estrada turn to Hopp and say, “Larry, I think we got ourselves a prospect.”
ten
Lower now the sun began painting clouds in earnest. Conor raised his champagne bottle toward the western sky.
I don’t know if this was you or not, Rita. One thing I’ve always treasured, though, is a gift of appreciation, not only of the spectacular, but the ordinary, everyday beauty of things like sunsets. I know. Most people appreciate sunsets. How many stop to study nuances of color, though, or compare differences between this one and another? Not that I do it every day. I do it, though. And taking time to notice those kinds of things set me apart from most ball players. Leant me an air of eccentricity that helped build the legend of the Conman.
I remember talking with Ken Griffey Junior when we were at Fenway Park. It’s Saturday, I told him. This is the day I smell the grass and eat a hot dog. Why don’t you come with me? He looked at me like he was being set up for some kind of joke.
Bus rides have become a cliché for the hardships of the minors. And the Pioneer League is more spread out than most. Our bus took us to far-flung destinations like Great Falls, Lethbridge, Billings, and Helena. The bench seats seemed dedicated to lower back pain. We had no bathroom. Guys peed into Gatorade bottles and emptied them out the rear door as we rolled along those two-lane highways at fifty miles an hour.
I enjoyed those rides, though. Unless it was too cold, I kept the window next to my seat open. Nothing in San Carlos smelled like the prairie after a rain, or a forest of pines. I’d never seen anything like a full moon hanging above a distant, snow-capped mountain range, or the endless sharp blue of a Montana sky. At Lethbridge, located on a poverty-stricken Indian reservation, I was shocked by lumpy forms of the homeless who camped along the streets. If San Carlos had homeless people, they were well hidden.
I didn’t talk about any of those things with the other guys, though, because you don’t talk about stuff like that when you’re twenty years old and throw a baseball ninety miles an hour. You mostly talk about getting laid, or beer, or rock-n-roll. You don’t express your fears. You simply hide them behind the bravado of outrageous behavior and profanity.
Take the F-bomb, for example. Throughout high school and college, the F-word served as an exceptionally utilitarian baseball declarative, sprinkled almost unconsciously into our language. I assumed I’d heard it exercised in all its forms. I’d personally used it as adjective, verb and noun within a single, concise and alliterative sentence. That fucking fucker is fucked!
In amateur baseball, though, we seldom heard the F-bomb used as an offensive weapon calculated to stun or maim. Or dropped with profusion amounting to carpet bombing. And among high school and college ranks, no one survived an F-bomb lobbed at an umpire.
My manager, Larry Hopp, did it all the time.
The rules permit F-bombing of an umpire all you want, and they can F-bomb you right back, as long as neither of you uses the word as an adjective to describe the other. This is hard-bound baseball tradition, and if nothing else, Larry was a traditionalist.
The most infuriated I ever saw Larry, in fact, was when he F-bombed a home plate ump who refused to respond in kind.
On the diamond in Lethbridge, and after a particularly scathing string of expletives, the umpire stared into the visitor’s dugout and said, “Quit yelling at me, Larry.”
Larry’s jaw dropped so far his chaw fell to the ground. He stormed onto the field. “What the fuck did you say?”
“I said quit yelling at me, Larry.”
Even from the dugout, Conor saw his manager glow a beet red.
“Fuck!” Larry screamed. “We are not gonna stand here and talk to each other like a couple of fucking old ladies having a fucking cup of tea!”
The umpire removed his mask. “Larry, go back to your bench and calm down.”
Larry stood for a long moment. The carotid arteries on both sides of his neck throbbed visibly. He’d been struck speechless. With a dumbfounded expression, he plodded away.
By half-inning’s end, though, he’d gathered himself. He told the Russet’s catcher, “Take your time getting your gear on. I’ll warm him up.”
Larry squatted at the plate and nodded for his pitcher to go ahead. His intent, though, was the renewal of his assault at closer range. His F-bombs fell without mercy, to the extent that Larry became distracted by his purpose. He anticipated a curve ball as the pitcher’s final warm-up delivery, glanced at the ump to punctuate his dissertation with one more blast, and a fastball nailed him squarely in the sternum.
Larry gasped, wheezed, croaked, and slowly rolled into a fetal position. Trainers from both teams sprinted to his aid. The umpire arrived at a more leisurely pace. As he bent to ascertain the fallen manager’s condition, Larry managed only a pitiful, final squeak. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.”
“Not that it matters at this point, Larry,” the umpire said as Larry was loaded onto a stretcher bound for the clubhouse, “but you have been officially tossed from this fucking game. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”
The Conman was on a roll, and he grew in Carlos Estrada’s esteem with every outing. As a closer, Conor approached the season’s half-way point with fifteen appearances, a 3.50 ERA and forty strikeouts. When Estrada’s travels returned him to Idaho Falls, he quizzed Conor about his approach to various hitters.
“Okay, Conman, you face this guy in the ninth, how will you handle him?”
“Throw the shit out of the ball.”
Estrada slapped Conor’s back and said to Hopp, “Smartest kid I ever coached.”
When Estrada left for another Angels’ affiliate, Hopp called Conor into his office.
“Yeah, Skip?”
“The organization wants me to give you some starts,” Hopp said. “You’re doing great closing games, but all you need for that is your fastball. Doesn’t give you a chance to develop other pitches.”
Conor grinned. He loved starting.
“I want you to work on your curve in the pen this week. You get the ball next Monday. If you can find a breaking ball, you’ll be moving along pretty quick. You’re tearing up rookie ball. You could close for Quad Cities right now, maybe get to Salinas if they make the playoffs.”
Conor practically floated from Hopp’ office. The timing couldn’t be better. A.J., Basil and Brad intended to fly into Idaho
Falls the following week to watch a couple of games. His parents planned a visit during the next homestand.
Nothing could stop him now.
Basil Doan was on a roll of his own. Although Amanda no longer played a part, Alaska suited him. Amanda left for college in the lower forty-eight at summer’s end. Basil managed to weather the blow, though, because he was making more money than he’d ever imagined.
Amanda’s father had moved to Palmer, Alaska, for work on the pipeline, and he convinced his employer to give Basil a shot as an apprentice welder. The company discovered Basil was an artist with a welding torch. He soon earned nineteen dollars an hour in a part of the world offering few opportunities to squander it.
He bought a small piece of land, a house trailer, and a brand-new Harley Davidson Electra Glide. The braces came off. His pimples dried up. He enjoyed his work, and his body responded by packing on more muscle.
He experienced an epiphany one late summer night when, with the Alaska sun still shining, he rode his Harley to the only bar in Palmer and walked into the restroom to comb his hair. His long blond locks were blown straight back, exposing his ears and forehead with a James Dean kind of muss. He took the comb from his pocket, then reconsidered.
He walked directly to a pay phone and called the Russets’ clubhouse.
“I just looked in a mirror . . .” Basil told Conor.
“Baze? I’m supposed to be getting ready—”
“. . . and you know what?”
“Okay, what?”
“I’m a damn good-looking man.”
His first start went well.
Conor threw five innings adding five K’s to his strikeout total. Although his ERA climbed a little because of the curve ball, everyone was happy with his performance.