No way of knowing. And, as the years pass, I find I like it better that way. I couldn’t tell you why, but I do.
New Stories
Almost Perfect
He was already at the ballpark when I got there, and that was unusual for Tommy. Of course he was scheduled to pitch that afternoon, going up against the Bobcats in the last game of a three-game home stand, but even when he pitched he tended to show up a lot closer to game time. He’d make it in time to warm up properly, and he’d generally be there for the batting practice that Hairston makes his pitchers take along with everybody else, seeing as our league has escaped the goddam designated hitter rule. But he was basically a last-minute kind of guy, and I’m the opposite, like most catchers. So it was a surprise to walk in and see him already suited up.
But not a big surprise, because Tommy Willis was a southpaw, and it’s true what you’ve heard about them. Pud Hairston was a pitcher himself for twelve years and has been a pitching coach for better than twenty, and he swears they’re all knuckleballs, meaning you never know which way they’re going to break. I don’t know why it should be true, why you can predict a man’ll have a wild hair on the basis of which arm he uses to throw the ball, or why it only seems to work that way with pitchers, while a left-handed outfielder or first baseman will be as regular as the next person, or at least the next ballplayer. A southpaw has an edge against left-handed batters and gives up the same edge to righties, and I can see why that would be, same as I or anybody else can see why he’d have an advantage throwing over to first. But what has all of this got to do with what goes on in his head? That makes no sense to me, but I’ve known enough of them and caught enough of them to be able to swear it’s true.
I said he was early for a change, and he grinned that lazy grin of his. “Gotta get them Bobcats,” he said. We went out and threw a few, and then he put on a jacket and sat down while I went and took my turn in the cage. I love batting practice. You just stand there and you hit. I’d do it all day if they let me.
Around the time the ground crew got to smoothing out the base paths, I checked the stands and spotted my wife sitting where she generally did. I waved, but she was deep in conversation with Sally Peres and didn’t see me. There were rumors that we were looking to trade Reynaldo Peres, and for Kathy’s sake I hoped they weren’t true, as Sally was her closest friend among the wives. (Other hand, if I was the general manager, Peres would have been gone by now. He’s always behind in the count, and that means every hitter’s a struggle for him.)
“I don’t see Colleen,” I said to Tommy, and he said she wasn’t coming.
“She gets tired of baseball,” he said.
Anybody’ll tire of baseball from time to time, even the men who play it, and I can see how a wife could get sick of it, especially if she wasn’t too crazy about hanging out with the other wives. And the TV cameras pan those rows all the time, so you have to make sure you look interested, and that the camera doesn’t catch you yawning, or picking your nose. Kathy doesn’t come to every home game, not by any means. Still, a pitcher doesn’t start but one game in five, so when he’s up his wife’s usually there to see him.
I didn’t say anything, and he said, “Hard to believe. I mean, how could a human being get tired of baseball? But she does. She even gets tired of the Bobcats.”
They were the defending world champions, and a good bet to repeat this year, and our attendance was never higher than when they came to town. So his remark was natural enough, but it had a little extra on it, and I wondered about that. But not for any length of time. We were just minutes away from the first pitch, which he’d be throwing and I’d be catching, and I was more interested in whether his fastball had a little extra on it, and how his curve was breaking.
Introductions went like they always do, with cheers for us and boos for the Bobcats, with the loudest round of boos for Wade Bemis. He had two strikes against him, as far as our fans were concerned. Number one, he was hitting .341, and neck and neck with Clipper DeYoung of the Orioles in the home-run race. Number two, he played for us for four years, jumping to the Bobcats as a free agent. That’s fans for you. The better you are, the more they hate you, and it goes double if you used to play for their team. It never made sense to me, but there’s not much about fans that does.
After Bemis was introduced, the boos dropped to a more cordial level, and Pud Hairston came over and asked how Tommy was throwing. “He should be fine,” I told him.
But we both knew you could never tell for sure. Not until the game got started, and even then you might not know right away.
Early on, I thought fine was the one thing Tommy wasn’t going to be that day. His first three pitches to their leadoff batter, Jeff Coleman, were all off the plate, all in the same spot, and each one a little farther from being a strike than the one before it. I was calling for inside pitches, and he was missing away, and that’s not a good sign. The next one was right down the middle, with Coleman taking all the way. If I’d been coaching the Bobcats I’d have had him take the next pitch, too, the way Tommy had started him off 3–0, but he swung at a bad pitch and popped to short.
Tommy went to 3–1 on the second batter. The biggest mistake a pitcher can make is to get behind in the count, and that’s especially true for a hard-throwing kid like Tommy, who can have a problem with control. His next pitch caught the corner. The batter lined the next one, really got good wood on it, but it went straight into the third baseman’s glove like it had eyes.
Tommy started the next hitter off with two balls, the second one in the dirt, and I dug it out and walked it back to the mound. Bemis was in the on-deck circle, looking eager, and he’d be batting from the right-hand side of the plate today, since Tommy was a southpaw. His on-base average was about the same lefty or righty, but he had more power as a right-hander.
“Let’s get this guy,” I told Tommy.
“Piece of pie,” he said.
He’d say that, piece of pie, where other people’d say piece of cake. Other hand, he’d say something was easy as cake. I was never sure if he got the expressions mixed up accidentally or on purpose.
I went back and gave the sign — the hitter was McGinley, their left fielder, and the book on him was give him nothing but fastballs. The next two were straight heat, right where I wanted them, outside and down. The next pitch was in the same place, and I thought it got the corner, but it was ball three. The next one was down and in, probably off the plate but too close to take, and McGinley got a piece of it, but I got my glove up and held on to it, and we were out of the inning.
We went down one-two-three, with two of our outs coming on the first pitch. There was just enough time for Pud to ask me how Tommy was throwing. I said I thought he was settling in. Pud said he hoped so.
Wade Bemis led off, and he did everything but tip his hat to the fans who booed him. He stood in there like he was waiting for someone to take his picture, and maybe he was. Bemis likes to crowd the plate, and the only way to get him out is to pitch him inside. Tommy almost hit him with the first pitch. Bemis went into the dirt to get away from it, and he had a smug look on his face as he brushed off his uniform. I called for heat and Tommy gave it to him. Bemis took it for strike one, swung at the next one and missed it, and looked silly swinging at a splitter that bounced on the plate.