by Chris Lynch
Vinnie was a guy who did not waste his few words. When he said, “Crash course,” it was a gesture of sincerity. After an hour, I was no more prepared to catch a game of baseball than I had been when I first woke up that morning. But I was well prepared to get pelted by baseballs.
“Block the plate, kid. If nothing else, remember that blocking the plate is the bottom line of your job. You don’t let the ball get by you, and you don’t let a runner cross the plate without a rumble. Whoever or whatever tries to get across, you use... that body of yours to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
By now Vinnie and I had established a relationship where we could be frank with each other without jeopardizing our friendship.
“Now see, that doesn’t make any sense to me at all. All my life I’ve been taught to get out of the way of speeding hard things that might kill me, and you think I’m going to start doing the whole opposite thing now?”
He whistled the ball off my chest protector. “Yes I do,” he said.
The balls bounced off my shin pads—god, I learned to love those shin pads—off my mask, off my unprotected shoulders, and occasionally off my glove. Against my better judgment I learned to aim my body at the ball when I saw it coming, to the point where better than fifty percent of the balls didn’t get by. I got a lot better at it when I realized it was much more exhausting to chase the ball to the backstop every time than to just let it thunk into me.
“Fine, you’re ready,” Vinnie said when his arm started to tire and yet another of my throws landed softly in the turf six feet short of the mound.
“That’s it?” I asked, gratefully stripping the mask from my baking face. “You going to throw me batting practice now? I can’t hit, either, you know.”
“Did you bat earlier?”
“Three pitches. Five counting the two that hit me. I thought maybe you’d show me more.”
He looked at me as if I’d just asked him to cook me dinner. “What are you, joking? You had to learn to catch so you didn’t hold up the game. Hitting? Just take your cuts and get the hell outta the way.”
“Sounds good to me, Coach,” I said as I settled my face in under the Gatorade cooler that sat on the bench. I opened my mouth and the spigot and let it pour in. Vinnie started walking back to the big field to carry forth the lie that I was ready to play ball.
The real pitcher, even though he was just a kid, threw a lot harder than Vinnie did. His name was Smoke. I don’t imagine that was his real name, but we never got deep enough into conversation to talk about it. Mostly we talked in signs.
I wiggled my fingers between my legs. One down for fastball, two for curve. First pitch I signaled number two. He threw a fastball so hard it took my glove off and carried it back to the umpire.
I signaled two again. Fastball. I couldn’t even catch up with it. Bounced off my shin pads.
I signaled two again.
“Time out,” Smoke called. Play was halted, and he waved me to the mound for a conference. “What the hell are you doing with your fingers down there?”
“I’m calling the game. Those are the signs, one finger for fastball, two for curve.”
“I got a sign for you,” he said, and gave me one. One finger, up. Rotating. “You’re a friggin’ backstop, kid. Don’t tell me what to throw.”
I slunk back to my station, the one cool thing about catching ripped away from me. There was nothing left but the sweat and facelessness the padding gave me, and all that work. Next to pitcher, catcher is the only one who works all the time. Catch the ball, throw the ball, block the ball, throw the ball. Even on foul balls I had to jump up, throw the mask, search the sky for the ball. Invariably, I was the last one to pick up on it, and everyone would be back in position waiting for me while I wandered around clueless like Robert De Niro near the end of Bang the Drum Slowly.
I was exhausted by the second inning. Fortunately, nobody could hit Smoke, so there weren’t many base runners to worry about. Just a couple of guys he hit on purpose. Both of them stole second, then third, one of my throws to second being so lame that Smoke caught it.
My glove hand was so pink and raw and swollen from Smoke’s perfectly placed fastballs that I couldn’t have missed if I wanted to.
In the third inning I got to hit. No, that’s a lie. In the third inning, I got to stand in the box with a bat on my shoulder. Fastball. Pop! in the glove. Steee-rike one. Fastball. Steee-rike two. I dug in. I was going to swing at this thing at least once. I couldn’t react quickly enough, so I had to anticipate, not wait for the ball. He wound up, came over the top, and as soon as he let go of the ball, I started my swing.
I swung as ferociously as I could, throwing myself so wildly off balance and ahead of the ball that I watched from the ground as the pitch floated about a foot outside. “Well, what do you know?” I thought, suspended in another one of life’s fabulous, cruel slo-mo moments. “A curve ball. Imagine that.”
The opposing team hooted me. I looked to my own side of the field to see my team with all their heads down as they took the field, trying not to laugh or get angry. That was embarrassing.
The thing I couldn’t seem to remember was that, with all the equipment on, I was fairly protected from a pitch bouncing up out of the dirt. Out of reflex, I kept turning my face away as I stabbed at it with the glove.
“Cut that out,” I kept hearing Vinnie scream. “Keep your eye on the ball.”
I heard him and I heard him and I heard him, but I just could not get my body to obey. In the fourth inning I paid. Smoke put a real hard one in the dirt, bouncing it right on the plate so that it ricocheted up like a super ball. I closed my eyes and turned my face halfway away as I tried to spear it, but it came up and blasted me.
I don’t know what it sounded like outside my own head, but inside, when the hardball hit my jaw, it didn’t sound any different from when the bat hits the ball. It blew me over backward, and I flopped around, mask and glove flying off in opposite directions.
I heard laughs. Not everyone, but quite a few. Problem was, I got right up. I was rubbing and rubbing at the spot, moving my jaw all around to test it. So since I wasn’t dead, it was funny.
Coach called from the sidelines, “You all right, kid?”
I nodded. He didn’t care. I didn’t care.
But the batter and the umpire came up to me, looked closely at my jaw. Their eyes were big and deep, like real human eyes. They both asked if I was all right, and they meant it. Because they had been close, and they had heard it.
Why do people have to hear the bone smash before they can care?
I went back to work and did all right. I only had a headache. The heat and the squatting and the catching and catching and catching every pitch was beating me down. I drank all the Gatorade they’d allow me between innings. There was always a line at the cooler. When it was my turn, I took my cup to the back of the line and drank while I waited for more. I heard guys around me talking baseball, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I didn’t know baseball. And I couldn’t because I couldn’t talk.
There was, unfortunately, a rally. Just as I had gotten all my gear back on, I had to strip it off again. I put on my helmet and went to the plate.
The first pitch was coming right at me. I bailed out of the batter’s box. The ball bailed the other way. Steee-rike.
The second pitch was coming right at me. I waited a bit longer this time, then fell backward. Like a bowling ball spinning across the lane, the ball went the other way again. Steee-rike two.
I could not, and never would, not if I faced ten thousand of them a day, fathom the curve ball. All I could hope was to outguess it.
The next pitch came my way, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Even when I realized it had a lot more on it than the previous two. It was going to break, it was going to break. I was not going to look foolish again, dammit. Break, ball.
Of course, it never broke. That’s what setting up the batter is all about. As a catcher I was supposed to understand that.
They say that the hardest thing to do in all of sports is to hit a baseball. I say the hardest thing to do is to get out of the way of one after guessing wrong.
The ball caromed off my helmet, back out all the way to the shortstop. Better than if I’d hit it with the bat.
Mostly I was stunned, not hurt. I trotted to first, and was pretty pleased to be there. The first baseman slapped my butt, and I felt a little bit a part of it all.
The next batter hit a rocket into the left centerfield gap. The runner scored from third. The man on second motored all the way around and scored easily.
For twenty seconds or whatever it took, I put more effort into running than I’d ever put into something physical before. The other runners were in, and there was me. I desperately wanted not to kill the rally, but I kept running and running and second base just wouldn’t come any closer. I saw the left fielder wheel and throw toward second. I chugged, feeling all the parts of my body shaking, my hat blowing off. I felt something behind me, the hitter, who was about to run up my back until he realized he had to go back.
I flopped, threw myself at the bag, kicked up a mushroom cloud of dirt as I slid facefirst. It was a mess, but I was there.
“You’re out,” the umpire said matter-of-factly. I was shocked, but apparently I was out by enough distance that the fielders were already trotting off the field when the ump raised his thumb.
It took a long time to get myself out of the dirt. It turned instantly to mud on my face, neck and arms, mixed with the sweat. Guys ran off the field, guys walked or ran on. I trudged slowly, trying to tuck in my shirt as I went, trying to find my hat. When I eventually reached the bench, the coach was strapping on the catcher’s gear.
“You want to call it a day, son?” It was not unkind, the way he said it. But it didn’t seem to come easy either.
“I guess so,” I said.
So I got my wish. The vision of sitting on the bench, kicked back, scratching, spitting, yelling “Hummm baby,” and “No batter up there,” and sipping Gatorade without waiting in line and chewing on sunflower seeds—it was mine now.
It wasn’t ten tons of fun, but it was peaceful and relaxing. I watched the final few innings, but I could not say what went on, who won, if Smoke got his no-hitter. What I could say is that the field had a strong smell of chamomile, coming from a big patch in right field, and that a total of twelve puffy clouds lazed across the front of the sun, and that two of them looked like my old fat dog Sheba, and one looked like a convertible Mustang with an infant at the wheel.
As I filed off the field, thinking this was not the worst thing that could happen to a guy, the coach—now he was the one looking wiped out from catching—called in my direction. But he was talking to Vinnie.
“Vin, put a splint on that kid with the finger. I want him back here tomorrow.”
Mom,
Got transferred to a more gentlemanly sport today, baseball. No contact. Good, right? Couple of bruises anyway, because, well, I’m gifted at that. Some regular hit-in-the-coconut injuries, and some others that I can’t talk about in mixed company. You’d have to be a catcher to understand.
The bonk on the head didn’t hurt much, so don’t worry. You weren’t, were you? Worrying? Oh, good.
Did I mention that I played baseball today? A more gentlemanly sport than football, I think.
My head doesn’t hurt at all. I did get bonked, though.
How’s the wife and kids?
So I hope I can count on your support in November.
I played soccer all day today. I scored many goals. Sheba was there too.
Sincerely,
um,
ah,
hnn.
Chapter 5: Grappling Knight
THE BASEBALL DOOR CLOSED as abruptly as it had opened. New day, new slot, new Elvin. By decree. “Wrestling, Thor? How do you come up with that?”
“There were a lot of casualties the last two days out of wrestling. Slots are open. Besides, it’s the only program that actually has a category with your name on it: Junior Heavyweight.”
“Come on, don’t you have anything else?”
“Sure,” he said, smiling. “I could squeeze you into Swimming Sector, but you gotta wear this.” Out of his breast pocket Thor produced a Lycra Speedo bathing suit, grape with diagonal lime-green lightning bolts. He pulled it down over his fist, and it fit snugly.
“One size fits all,” he said, smirking.
“I should,” I said, sounding almost like I meant it. “It’d serve you all right, to look at me in that thing. I’d wear it to all the meals.”
He continued to hold it out to me.
“Where do I get my wrestling gear?” I moaned.
“At the venue.” He pointed up the hill to the hall.
When I turned to go, I was surprised to feel Thor’s arm on me. He gripped my forearm hard and pulled me back.
“Elvin, I want to give you some advice. You’re a funny kid, and I like you. You don’t take the whole slotting thing seriously, and that’s cool, but for your own sake just try to take it a little more seriously. Try to find a place. I don’t want to say nothing bad about the school now, but it could be a long four years for a guy if he doesn’t have a place. Know?”
He looked so serious, as if he was telling me of a death in the family, that he gave me a chill. I couldn’t answer him, couldn’t really tell if he’d even asked me anything.
“Just a little more seriously, that’s all. It’s better for a guy like you, in a big school. You want to have a place. You don’t want to not have a place. Just advice. Okay, Elvin?”
That time, it sounded like a question. “Okay,” I said, because Thor seemed to want to help me. But I didn’t know what I could do with that advice.
When I walked up the steps of the dining hall, under the poor semi-naked Massachusetts Indian that I was staring at more and more, I felt my stomach knot.
“Ah, and in they continue to roll,” the perfect coach announced. In a crowd of a thousand people you would point to this man—hard and energetic and crew cut—and say this guy is a wrestling coach. “The traditional day-three football washouts,” he said, up on his toes and gesturing as he spoke. “Am I right?”
“You are right,” I said. “Except I’m a two-day football washout via a one-day layover in baseball.”
“Catcher!” Coach said, excited by his own savvy.
“Catcher it was,” I said.
“Well, son, I do hope you find a home here with the Grappling Knights. We’d love to have you.”
He was a little corny, but he sounded all right. My stomach briefly unballed. Then I got a load of the grunting, Grappling Knights.
In a weird way it was as if I had made a wish and found it had been granted. When Thor held up that Speedo, one size fits all, I shrank inside, feeling like that was the farthest thing from what I needed now. So instead I wound up with the wrestling squad, whose motto should have been all sizes fit one sport.
It made sense when I saw them. Unlike other sports, I was assigned this one because I fit. The wrestling team had a built-in slot for me—junior heavyweight—just like Thor said. And they have slots for a lot of other freaks too. It was a world defined purely by weight, the first thing that was clearly laid out since I got here.
It was probably rude, the way I stood in the middle of the floor and stared at them before getting too close. But the way they were so relaxed about it, I figured I wasn’t the first. Some of them just flopped, several stretched out their legs and arms, bending and kicking and wind-milling as if they were already at work, battling some invisible opponents. A couple of tight, compact, round-muscled guys did this thing where they locked arms back to back and took turns lifting each other off the floor. They enjoyed it so much, they took the show on the road, lifting, walking, dropping the other guy, then being lifted, walked, dropped, until they made a circuit of the whole hall.
The world of weight. I was merely a junior heavyweight. Which m
eant that above me were two more weight classes: heavyweight and super heavyweight. And for practice purposes they tried to have two of each on hand, which meant this group had several people even bigger than my last club.
Below the heaviest weights were the real athletes: middleweights, junior middleweights, welterweights. These guys were the cat family, coiled, edgy, muscled, with a thin layer of flesh strapped tight over the sinew. They were mean, and could have played with the football or hockey teams if they had wanted to, except those sports didn’t allow the close personal head twisting and leg bending so popular in wrestling. Not to mention, of course, the pinning of another guy by forcing his legs up over his head.
The bottom tier of Grappling Knights was more motley than all the others. Featherweights, bantamweights, flyweights. The titles pretty much say it all: At the Olympic level you might see a tiny guy who is scary and intense and strong, who just happens to be small boned. But in the general population, when they’re just trying to fill the slot of “peanuttiest little guys,” the result is a collection of skeletons, anemics, and leprechauns who might possibly be able to scare the chess team, but also might not.
At the top of the ladder we had an honest-to-god giant. Not a great big guy, but a guy with some kind of gland thing that made his head the same width as his hips and his hands the size of stop signs.
At the bottom we had a dwarf. A very mean, stocky three-foot-nine bantam.
“Here ya go, man,” the coach said brightly, tossing me my one-piece outfit. His name, written in marker across the front of his tight T-shirt, was Coach Wolfe.
I took the outfit into the dressing room/equipment room/kitchen and strapped it on. It was like one of those old-timey bathing suits guys like Charlie Chaplin and The Great Gatsby used to wear, with the squared-off legs and the thin shoulder straps. It was red, of course. I felt naked, shuffling back into the main dining hall, the way the stretchy material clung to the rolling terrain of me and blended with the rosy pinkness of my embarrassed skin tone.