The Youngest Hero (25 page)

“What did Chico say?”

“Same thing. When a guy on your own team thinks you make the game too long, you start seeing what they’re saying.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Quit, I guess.”

“Do they really want that?”

“I think they do.”

“You still have friends at school, right?”

He nodded.

“I think the fastpitch has been hurting my basement practice,” he said.

“Really? You’re having a tough time adjustin?”

“Yeah. But you know what, Momma? I have a new goal, and it’s real important to me. I want to start hitting the golf balls
off the pitching machine the same way I can hit fastpitch.”

I shook my head. “Lofty goal.”

“I mean it,” he said. “I’m gonna work like crazy till I can do that. Think what that’s going to make baseball pitching seem
like to me.”

A
s a returning player, I didn’t have to try out for my baseball team that spring. I watched, though, and was surprised by how
big and slow the ball looked. I still hadn’t been able to test whether hitting a baseball would be easier because of my pitching
machine.

I wasn’t really playing fastpitch anymore. Once in a while Chico would show me off, but nobody wanted me unless I could be
on their team. I quit showing up for the games and they quit asking me. It was a game I had finally mastered.

From then until the first day of practice with the Tigers, I spent every spare moment in the basement, either working on my
fielding or standing in against the machine. I experimented by changing the speed of the wheels and getting the thing to throw
pitches that broke in and out, up and down. I even rigged it to throw all the pitches in the dirt to see which were hittable
and which I should take.

The best I had ever done in a one-hundred-and-fourteen-pitch stretch, fifty-seven from each side of the plate, was to hit
three pitches solidly from each side and foul off more than a dozen. The greatest part of that was about midway through the
left-hand batting segment when I smashed two solid line drives
and what would have been a clear pop-up on three straight pitches.

I had stepped and driven the ball, quickly moved back into position and done it again, and recoiled in time to get a good
part of the fungo bat on the tiny ball. The rush was almost like what I had felt when I realized I could hit fastpitch. I
wanted to drive and drive and drive the ball off the machine some day.

Next I stood in the middle of the room and threw as hard as I could in all four directions, diving and jumping to catch the
balls off the walls. Sometimes I did this for more than an hour at a time. I sweat through my clothes. After a few weeks,
I was used to it and didn’t ache the next day. I got to where I looked forward to the workout. I never missed a day.

My twelfth birthday passed with no word from my father. Momma gave me a few dollars and took me out for a fast-food meal.

“Sometimes I wonder, El,” she said, “if you’re not in better shape than most of these kids just because you don’t eat this
junk all the time.”

“Oh, Momma,” I said, “it’s only because I work out. Who do you know who plays ball as much as I do?”

She shook her head. “Who’d have ever thought you’d have your own place to play in this city?”

The Tigers’ first practice was set for a Saturday late in April. It was still blustery and wet, but I couldn’t wait. I badgered
my mother into taking me to the library just before closing the night before. I checked out a book on hitting like a big leaguer.

“Can I read till I fall asleep?” I asked her.

“You may never fall asleep. Lights out at eleven, no matter what.”

The next morning I was so eager I could hardly stand it. I was starved for competition, for the real thing. I hung around
in the infield, filling in for whoever was hitting. I wondered why Mr. Rollins’s assistants were throwing so slowly.

“Is that all the faster you’ll be pitching?” I asked.

Fred, an assistant coach, turned. “This is the first day back for us too, Elgin. We don’t want to wake up with no arms tomorrow.
I can crank it up a little for you, but your eye and timing will be off too. We’re just loosening up, seeing where everyone
is.”

When it was my turn to hit, Fred was still throwing easy. The first pitch down the middle. Batting left-handed, I swung viciously
and dribbled it off the tip of the bat foul down the third-base line.

“See?” Fred said, “Your timing is off. Just swing easily and make contact.”

The next pitch was over the outside corner. I hammered it so hard foul down the first-base line that players waiting to hit
had to scatter.

“See? You’re way out front. You been playing fastpitch?”

“Not for a long time, Coach.”

I pulled another outside pitch even farther foul, banging it off the bench and sending it skipping back to the mound. Fred
fielded it and put his hands on his hips.

“You’re way out front! You know to go with the pitch! C’mon!”

I wanted to tell him the pitching was too slow, that the baseball looked like a basketball. Probably just to cross me up,
Fred came inside next, and if I hadn’t swung, the pitch would have hit me. It wasn’t unusual to see a self-defense foul, but
no one had ever seen one hit more than two hundred feet. The pitch was a little faster than the one before, so I didn’t have
time to duck.

Players and coaches watched the ball land on a soccer field where spring players stopped and glared at us.

Fred said, “All right, Elgin, I’m ready to throw some heat.”

He wound and fired his best fastball, just below the knees, maybe two inches off the outside corner. I kept my chin down and
eyes steady, and I knew the swing was perfect. The ball cleared the fence in center, easily three hundred feet away.

I stood watching till it stopped rolling. No one said anything. I waited until the ball was found and thrown to him. He held
it up for me to see and threw it again. I hit an opposite-field home run, and Fred went through the same routine. “It’s flying
off your bat like a golf ball.”

My face burned. No way Fred could know what he was saying.

“I’m not that bad a pitcher,” he said. “Hit this out again, and I’ll switch balls on you.”

I did, and Fred did. But still I rocketed line drives, making in-fielders back onto the grass. I cracked a couple off the
fence and hit two more homers.

“Not a bad first batting practice,” Fred said. “Not bad at all.”

After that I played the infield, fielding grounders and liners and pop-ups and firing so hard to first that the first baseman
complained. Some of the guys reminded me how much younger I was than the first baseman.

“Just keep throwing,” the big kid said.

I knew I shouldn’t have, but on the next one-hopper, I placed my fingers across the seams and threw sidearm. The ball swept
across the diamond, looking like it was headed up the line toward second. But to catch it, the first baseman had to cross
his legs and fall into foul territory. I could tell he wanted to cuss me out, but he probably didn’t want to take any more
heat for not being able to catch a throw from a twelve-year-old.

When we ran the bases and took a lap around the football field, I finished way ahead. Mr. Rollins came up when practice was
over.

“It doesn’t surprise me to see you keep improving,” he said. “It’s a little scary to think about how good you could become.
We’ll try you pitching next week and see if we can get any mound work out of you this year.”

To keep from the arm trouble I’d had in the winter, I would have to practice my pitching in the basement. I looked forward
to that season like no other. And I could hardly wait to tell Momma about the first practice.

I
never got a chance to pitch in that league. That first practice was the last time I had any trouble adjusting my timing from
my own BP in the basement to hitting my coaches and teammates. The way I hit astounded everybody.

I was shocked myself. I was still not hitting more than three or four golf balls at a time against the machine, so I didn’t
expect that much improvement in baseball. But during the fourth practice, I bombed a liner back at Coach Fred, just below
his left cheekbone. The crack was heard all over the field. Fred reached for his face with his gloved hand as he went down,
but by the time he hit the ground, he was out. His eyes were open and an ugly raspberry was already showing.

“If that had hit him any higher,” Barry Krass said, “it would have broken his cheekbone.”

“Bet it’s broke anyway,” someone said.

“Out of the way!” Maury Rollins said. He knelt by Fred and rolled him to his back. Rollins pushed Fred’s eyes closed and someone
gasped.

“Gee, he ain’t dead, is he?”

“Shut up!” Rollins said.

I couldn’t drag myself away.

“C’mon, talk to me,” Rollins said, holding Fred’s head in his
hands. He poured water on Fred’s face, making him flinch. Fred coughed and tried to sit up.

He swore. “What happened? I’m all right.”

“No, you’re not,” Rollins said. ‘Just sit there.”

“I’m okay, really.”

“I’m taking you to the emergency room myself,” Rollins said.

“For what? I’m all right.” He tried to stand and fell back to his seat.

Rollins told him what had happened.

“Never saw it,” Fred said. “Nice goin, Woodell.”

I could tell Fred meant it, but I felt terrible. Maybe this golf ball thing was making a hitting monster of me. I didn’t want
to hurt anyone.

When Fred was finally standing, he moved his lips and jaw and winced. “Wow. Was I out or something?”

“You didn’t know you were out?” Rollins said. “Let me get you to the hospital. That looks nasty.”

“Can I come?” I said.

“Okay, but I can only bring you back to the el, all right?”

I nodded. I could call my mother from the hospital. But somehow getting to ride along didn’t make me feel any better. I tried
to apologize.

“Hey, Champ, it happens,” Fred said. “If I thought you did it on purpose I’d ask you to teach the other guys to hit back up
the middle, right?”

I nodded, wanting to sob. I had seen that ball crash into Coach Fred’s face as if in slow motion. I wondered if I would ever
be able to erase that from my mind.

After Fred was treated, we rode most of the way to the el without talking.

“I have to ask you something,” Coach Rollins said finally, turning to me. “How is it you have so much strength? You’re big
for your age, but you’re not big for this team. You’ve got the tools and I don’t guess I’ve seen as good coordination in a
kid, but what’s giving you this power?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Where’d you learn to hit like that?”

“My dad.”

“He must have been some coach. You hit like you know what you’re doing, and it’s working.”

“I sure hate hitting people.”

“That’s part of the game, part of the risk,” Fred said.

I didn’t hit in the basement that night. I was glad my mother didn’t try to make less of it than I did.

Two nights later everyone watched as usual when it was my turn to hit. I picked the only wood bat in the bag. Mr. Rollins
pitched while Fred joked about hiding behind the backstop. I smiled, but I didn’t think it was funny. I was scared to death
of hitting someone else, especially Rollins.

I swung at about half my usual power. I was lofting easy flares into the outfield, going with the pitches. After a dozen such
hits, Rollins slapped his glove at a throw from the outfield and whirled to face me.

“I can pitch just as slow as you can swing, kid, and then what’ll you have? One wasted batting practice! C’mon, hit the ball!”
The next pitch was outside, but I pulled it to left. Rollins said, “What’re you doing?” I shrugged, fighting tears, and stood
in. By now, everyone was quiet, watching. “I’m going to throw you a fastball, Elgin. I’m going to throw it as close to seventy
miles an hour as an old man can, and I’m gonna split the plate. Normally, you’d drive a pitch like that all the way to tomorrow.
Now, are you gonna hit, or are you gonna be a pansy because you gave somebody an owie? Quit bein a baby!”

I swallowed and dug in, but I couldn’t make myself swing. Rollins shook his head. “Another!” he said, and threw the same pitch.
I checked my swing. “Unbelievable,” he said. “One more and then you can go play on the swings.”

I was more embarrassed than mad, but I knew I’d better swing. If I could just relax, not think about anything, make it automatic—

I felt light, as if I were floating. The pitch was coming and my front foot was off the ground. The bat was back, my hands
feathery on the handle. My weight was back, now moving forward. My front foot touched the ground, my back foot pivoted.

The sound of the bat on the ball brought me back to reality. The sound of the ball on Coach Rollins’s left knee made me burst
into tears. I slammed the bat on the ground as the coach screamed and everyone came running.

Now it was Fred’s turn to help Coach Rollins. I raged. I picked up the bat and ran across a parking lot. Had I heard a bone
break? Had I ruined his knee? I didn’t want to know. I hurried to the corner of the brick school building and swung the bat
as hard as I could, driving the trademark into the bricks. The bat split and the handle snapped back into my chest.

It hurt but I was glad. As I beat the bat to pieces, I imagined I was the target. I would have loved to smash my own head
for hurting people. Why had the coach made me do it? I could hit five hundred in this league without hitting hard line drives.
How could I ever hit again? If I hit a kid in the face or in the head, I could kill someone.

I couldn’t force myself back to the field. No one was trying to move the coach. I ran all the way home, nearly three miles.
I bounded up the steps, carrying only my glove.

My mother waited in the open doorway, her face grave.

I
was sewing Elgin’s tournament shoulder patch onto his new uniform when a message came from Mr. Bravura that I had a phone
call from one of the boys on Elgin’s team.