Still Pitching (32 page)

With everything on the line, Mr. K brought me in to pitch to, of all people, Fletcher Thompson—the same guy who'd jacked the homer off me in my first game. Silverstone was a lefty and so was Thompson. By bringing me in, Kerchman was going against one of the most time-honored strategies in baseball. Conventional wisdom dictates that Mark pitch to Thompson and I come in to face the right-handed hitter who was on deck. But it was too late to question it now.

While I was throwing my warm ups, I was thinking “suppose the son of a bitch does it to me again?” From the bench Silverstone screamed, “Walk him, asshole.”

This time, Mark was right. With first base open, it was the obvious thing to do. But Mr. K had a different agenda in mind. He stood on the mound and ordered me to pitch to him.

“Nothing too fat,” he said. The obligatory strategy talk. “If you walk him, make him earn it. Try and get him to fish for one.”

Sure, coach, no sweat, I wanted to say. Why do they even tell you stuff like that?

I knew Thompson would be salivating to get another crack at me. Tease him, I told myself. Keep the ball low and away, out of his kitchen. On a 2-1 sinker that was low and just off the outside corner, Thompson reached out and poked a soft fly ball that started to tail back toward the left field line. Ordinarily it would have been a routine out. But Thompson was a lefty pull hitter and the outfielders were shading him to the right. Our left fielder, Ira Heid, had a long way to come. The ball hung up there just long enough. An instant before it touched the ground, Ira dove and backhanded it at his shoe tops. When the runner at third tagged and headed home, Ira bounced up and threw him out at the plate with a perfect one hopper to Milner. The Old Redhead would have called it a “bang-bang play.”

The game was over and we were still alive. When I got to the bench, Silverstone was livid; and to tell you the truth, I didn't blame him. He'd pitched an almost perfect game for eleven and a third innings; I threw just four pitches and got the game ball and the next day's headline in the
Long Island Daily Press
. Welcome to the club, Mark.

My only real problem
that spring was Silverstone. He'd won five of the six games he pitched. But I'd saved three of them, and he resented me for it. Mark hated sharing the limelight, especially with a former flunky. Every time I came in to relieve him, he took it as a personal insult. He'd yell stuff like, “You better not blow my game, peckerhead.” Or, “Keep it low, jerk-off. I don't want my E.R.A. getting screwed because you can't keep the fucking ball in the park.”

One home run off me in ten games, and I can't keep the ball in the park? I wonder if he thought these lines up beforehand. It's true that Mark could rattle a corpse. But two years of taking shit from Kerchman had taught me how to shake those taunts off and keep pitching. Maybe all that hazing was a deliberate part of his design, after all.

The following day
against Jackson, Kerchman put me in again. Seventh inning, and Coan was pitching with a one-run lead. They had the bases loaded and no outs. Otto Agostinelli was up. Otto was a six-foot-four free swinger who led the league in home runs and strikeouts. My favorite kind of hitter. For reasons I'll never understand, Kerchman waited until Coan went all the way down to three nothing on Agostinelli before he yanked him and brought me in. It was an impossible situation.

“You've got a run to give,” he said. “But that's all.”

It was a strange comment. Maybe Kerchman was trying to take some of the pressure off me. But I wasn't thinking tie. I wanted to win it now.

Kerchman spat a plug of tobacco juice and tossed me the ball.

With a three-nothing count, I thought that even Otto would be under orders to take the first two pitches. So I threw him two strikes, gut shots with nothing on them. I saw him grimace on the second one. He wanted that pitch back, for good reason. Even I could have hit that sucker. With the count full, I knew I had a chance. He'd be looking for another cripple right down the middle. You never want to let a free swinger extend his arms. So on the three-two pitch, I gambled and jammed him with a middle-in slider that should have been ball four. He swung, thank god, and tapped it off the handle. A weak ground ball to me. Easy force at home. One gone.

There's a kind of seesaw head game that goes on between a new pitcher and opposing hitters. At first, you've got to establish yourself as somebody to be reckoned with. Because from the moment you start warming up, their bench will be all over you, yelling stuff like “come-on cream puff, show me what you got,” among other less polite remarks about your mother and your origin of birth. But once you get that first out, the momentum shifts. The pressure is now on them. That's when hitters begin to tighten up. Each one knows that he has to come through or it's all over.

Those are the kinds of situations a relief pitcher thrives on. If you can stay ahead of the hitters, you're in command. I was super careful not to groove anything. The next guy hit a hump-back liner to second base. No damage there. Then the last hitter slapped a hard one hopper to Davey Cohen at third. I exhaled, thinking the game was over. We'd gotten through it again. But instead of stepping on the bag for the easy force out, Cohen panicked and threw the ball high and wide to first. My heart was in my throat. The ball looked like it was headed for the bleachers. But Dickie Webb saved our asses again. He jumped, backhanded the errant throw, and came down on the bag two steps ahead of the runner.

On the bus trip home, I wanted to sink back in my seat and savor what we'd accomplished over the last two days, but I didn't have that luxury. We were tied with Van Buren, and the winner of tomorrow's game would advance to the borough finals.

There was so much
tension at home that I stayed in my room as often as possible. It also didn't help that Julie brought up the move almost every time we talked.

The ball games had distracted me, and writing the column also took my mind off the situation. But the night before the last game I found the rejection letters from Trinity and Columbia on my bedroom desk. I'd secretly believed all along that I wouldn't fit in at either school. Still, I was devastated by the news. The letters were as impersonal and off-putting as the Dodgers' October press release. And the timing didn't help either. I never should have opened them before the season ended.

I felt worse the next morning when I found out that the four guys in the clique, in addition to Silverstone, had all been accepted at Ivy League schools. Two of them, in fact, were going to Columbia. Their grades weren't any better than mine. Was it legacy? Family money? An inside string that someone pulled? It was just one more reason why I desperately wanted this season to keep going.

Van Buren had waxed us
the first time, 8-1. I never even got up to throw. Their pitcher, Joe Sabbaritto, was one of the top prospects in the city. Scouts were comparing his fastball to the Dodgers' Sandy Koufax, back when Koufax was pitching for Layfayette High. And their three and four hitters, McNab and Schumacher, were one-two in the borough. If we could beat this team, we'd have really earned the title.

The next afternoon we traveled by bus to Alley Pond park in Douglaston—the longest road trip we'd ever taken. For the last thirty minutes of the ride Mr. K gave us the old rah-rah speeches, citing former players who always performed at their best under pressure. As a rule, those speeches never got to me. But this game might be it for us. So I took it all in.

For the first two innings, Sabbaritto was throwing over ninety miles an hour. But he couldn't find the plate, and when he did, his catcher couldn't hold onto the ball. Kerchman knew that if this guy ever found his rhythm, we'd never hit the ball in fair territory again. So we took advantage of every opportunity we got. By the end of the second inning, we'd scratched out five runs on walks, passed balls, bunts, misplays, and stolen bases. We had them rattled. But in the third inning Sabbaritto found the groove and he shut us down. Struck out eight of the next nine hitters.

Meanwhile, they kept pecking away at the lead. When it was 5-3 I was aching to get in there. I finally came in to relieve Makrides in the sixth inning. We were ahead 5-4. Two out and two men on. McNab, a lefty, was up. He'd already gotten two hits off Makrides. This was a perfect spot for Silverstone, I thought. Lefty versus lefty, and Schumaker, another lefty, was coming up. Besides, Mark hadn't pitched for the last two days.

My arm was so sore that my warm-up pitches had nothing on them, plus I didn't have my head in the game yet. I should have stepped off the rubber and taken a second to think. Instead I tried to sneak one past him. I rushed the pitch, hoping to get it down and away. But it was middle-in, up in the letters—right in McNab's wheel-house. He turned on it and hit a hard single to right. Tie ball game. How could I have done it? It was the worst pitch at the worst possible time. Now it was my game to win or lose. I hoped I had the stamina to keep going.

For the next five innings Sabbaritto got even stronger, striking out batter after batter. In my two at bats I struck out looking each time. Sabbaritto was throwing so hard that his fastball looked like an aspirin tablet as it buzzed past your chin.

The pressure from the last two days was taking its toll on me. I was tired, my arm throbbed on every pitch, and my control was off. Van Buren had men on base each inning. But somehow I'd managed to stagger through it without giving up the winning run. I'd gotten by for five innings on adrenaline overload, concentration, and fear.

From the sixth inning on, there was a strange sense of inevitability about this game. We all felt it. There was very little chatter on the bench. Even Mr. K was subdued, almost as if he'd been hypnotized by what Sabbaritto was doing out there. We were in a tie game with the league title on the line, yet it felt like we were ten runs down.

It was an effort to go out there every inning knowing that unless Sabbaritto had another sudden wild streak, we probably wouldn't score again. But I had to block those thoughts out and just take it one pitch, one hitter, one inning at a time. After the first three extra innings, I created my own private game-within-a-game. If we weren't going to score again, I wanted to see just how long I could make the game last. It was a weirdly exhilarating sensation. Each batter I retired felt like a major accomplishment.

By the twelfth, I was so exhausted that the ball felt like a ten-pound shot put. I was almost pushing it up to the plate, grunting on every pitch. There were moments when I felt so arm-weary I was sure I couldn't throw another pitch. But I couldn't let anyone see how depleted I was—especially not my teammates. The moment I gave into the fatigue, the game would be over. I turned and looked at the four infielders. Like me, they were glassy-eyed and frazzled. Yet for the past six innings they'd been making the plays. I had to keep going. I called on every trick, every little piece of psychology I'd learned—including shutting my mind off and going on automatic pilot. At this point, it was a test of wills, an endurance contest.

With two out in the bottom of the thirteenth, we finally cracked. McNab got to third on a misplayed fly ball. On a two-two count, Schumacher punched a good outside sinker past our drawn in infield for the winning hit. For the last six innings, I'd known it had to end this way—we all did. Still, I was in a daze when it happened. Five years of dreams and struggle, and just like that, it was over. Suddenly, all my energy was gone. As I trudged to the bus, my legs felt rubbery, my forehead was throbbing, and my right arm was on fire.

On the ride home, no one said a word. I sat at the back of the bus, trying to sort out my emotions. One minute I felt a wave of admiration for everyone who'd been part of this marathon. The next minute, I was empty and dejected because I'd lost the season's biggest game. Then, intermittently, I'd be overcome by a rush of elation. Despite the outcome, I'd pitched the seven best innings of my life.

A few days later
I realized that we'd gone way beyond even Kerchman's expectations. He knew it too. At the banquet he gave
everyone
a varsity letter. While I was chewing on that injustice, Mr. K began to recite the customary platitudes before giving out the awards. The MVP trophy, I knew, was out of the question. It would go to one of the infielders or outfielders—maybe Dickie Webb. But I was a little disappointed that Davey Cohen, one of Kerchman's football guys, won the most improved player award. What the hell, I thought, I'd already gotten my wish; and I'd had a dream season to boot, hadn't I?

Kerchman always saved the John Kelly award for last. Kelly, it seems, was a star football and baseball player in the ‘40s who'd been killed in a car accident. The award traditionally went to a graduating senior, often the number-one starting pitcher.

I'd heard Mr. K recite the Kelly monologue so many times that I tuned most of it out. Besides, Lenny Stromeyer had leaked it to several of us that the gold medal already had Silverstone's name engraved on it. We all agreed that Mark was a jerk, but he'd had a great season, and he deserved the award.

I looked over at Mark, and I could read his mind: with one hand he was slipping the medal around some pretty cheerleader's neck, with his free hand he was reaching down her blouse to cop a feel. So when Kerchman announced my name and said to that roomful of people, “Mike Steinberg is a kid who'd made the most out of a little bit of talent, a big heart, and a whole lot of guts,” I was too stunned to move.

Before I could stand up, Mark yelled, “I don't fucking believe this.” He stuck his middle finger up and stormed out of the restaurant, kicking over empty chairs as he went. Sure he was a bastard and a sore loser, but I half-admired him for giving Kerchman the bird. Last year, in this same banquet room, I'd wanted to stand up and tell Kerchman to take his minor letter and stick it. Instead I let him sweet-talk me into playing. And now, this.