He said coldly, with hard emphasis, “It’s my problem. Stay out of it! If I have to slide all the way down to sandlot ball with industrial teams, I’ll do so.”
“But what will it get you?”
Johnny smiled. “You might call it self-respect.”
He walked to the door, shut it softly behind him. Alone in the room, Paul Lace sat on the edge of the bed, his face impassive. What had started out to be a game, something that would be good for his son, had turned into an intricate trap with sharpened teeth. Paul Lace was tired. He had burdens that needed sharing. There was nothing left for him but to return to his offices, alone. Johnny Lace had to work out his problem on his own.
There was meager consolation in the fact that maybe a lesser man would have stopped trying to lick the bugbear of tension. Paul Lace knew that his son had inherited enough of his own stubbornness so that he would go on and on, fighting what might be a hopeless battle. Other men have battled psychic tension, breaking themselves in the process.
One prominent golf professional, after blowing up on the course in tournament after tournament, finally put a bullet in his head. There was a man who was a genius at chess. At last he began, in tournaments, to make childish moves that resulted in quick defeat. He could not overcome this tendency. He sits in a small room in an institution with a chess board in front of him. He has moved one pawn across the board so many times that it has worn a groove in the hard wood. He never speaks.
Paul Lace felt the chill breath of fear as he thought of what this endless battle might do to his son. Already there was a strangeness about Johnny. He sat in the darkness of his room, his big hands clenched, his brows drawn into a knotted line that shadowed his eyes.
The good-natured banter in the dressing room of the Bay City Sailors stopped abruptly when Johnny Lace came in and walked over to his locker. The green tin door banged.
Tige Hancey, third base, said, “The atomic kid! You know why he’s the atomic kid?”
In true end-man fashion, Barletini, left field, asked, “No. Why is Lace the atomic kid?”
“Because he can blow up with the biggest bang in the business.”
It got a laugh. Johnny Lace, stripped to the waist, walked over to where Tige was lacing his shoes. His fists were clenched. Tige ignored him. Johnny stood, the flat muscles across his shoulders tight, and then something seemed to go out of him. He went back to his locker.
Tige called after him, “Give us a break today, Lace. Let ’em hit it over the fence. Then we don’t have to work so hard.”
Johnny was surprised that he had been slated to pitch. He had read in the expression on the manager’s face that he was due for another drop down the ladder. Soon they would be trading him for a sack of peanuts. He had expected to sit in the dugout until the deal had been completed and he could pack up and leave.
He felt the deep cold dread as he knew that he would have to go out there onto the mound and wait for that moment when his muscles stopped obeying him. The feeling of blowing-up was so familiar. Rigid neck muscles. Cold sweat on his palms. A taut breathlessness. At those moments the batter seemed to tower over him, to wave a bat as big as a telegraph pole. And the plate looked the size of a dime. The yells of derision from the stands would be like the scratch of fingernails on a blackboard. And he would feel as alone as a man can feel. Alone and completely helpless.
With wooden arm and sodden hand he would throw the leaden ball down to where the huge bat would connect and drive it at his head.
But it was one more chance to try to lick the thing.
As he walked out toward the bullpen, Shorty Gordon, the catcher, slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Today you don’t blow, kid.”
Johnny didn’t trust himself to answer.
The Middletown Roamers were leading the league. During his first year in the big leagues, when they were comparing to Feller, Johnny could have mowed them down with a fair chance at a no-hitter.
The stands were filling slowly and the sun was hot and bright. He fired a few down the line to Shorty, smiling wryly at the amount of stuff he could muster when there was no batter there. A blazing fast ball, a floater that went in with so little spin he could count the stitches all the way to the plate, a curve that he could either slant in a slow fade, or break sharply across the inside or outside corner.
The Roamers were up first. The Sailors took their field positions. Johnny dusted his hands, wiped them on his pants, wound his big fingers on the ball.
First batter up. Shorty wanted them close and high. Wind-up. Left foot high, arm back. Throw with back, shoulders, the ball speeding down. Right where he wanted it. A called strike.
Next pitch the floater, also high and close. The batter, fooled, tried to hold back his swing, stretched, pulled a dribbler off to Johnny’s right. The shortstop pounced on it and the throw to first beat the runner by ten feet.
Shorty wanted them fed low to the second batter. The first pitch was too low, Shorty snatching it out of the dust with a quick lift that didn’t fool the umpire. The second pitch was a called strike down the middle. The third pitch was one that cut the outside corner and the batter swung hard and missed. The batter hit the next pitched ball, overcutting it so that it dropped dead in front of the plate. Shorty whipped it to first in ample time. The count on the third batter went to three and two. Johnny poured on the coal and sped one right down the middle. The batter flung his bat away in sheer disgust.
The Sailors got a man on first, sacrificed him to second and the third batter hit into a double play to make it a short inning.
Johnny Lace, feeling competent, feeling the tension well under control, mowed down the next two men that faced him. The third man was out on a pop fly that fell directly into the second baseman’s hands.
In the bottom half of the second Hancey caught one and bounced it off the left-field fence. The fielder got too anxious on his throw to the infield and Hancey made it all the way around, sliding in to beat the ball.
Johnny Lace walked out to the mound to pitch to the seventh man to face him. Somewhere, deep inside him, he could feel the tension mounting and he forced it back, forced himself to breathe deeply, to relax.
But the count went to three and two and the tension fluttered angry wings. It put him off just enough so that the sixth pitch was wild, the batter jogging to first, taking a long lead toward second.
Johnny felt the presence of the base runner behind him. There was a faint tightness in his back and shoulders. He shrugged it off. After a called strike, the batter slid his hand up the bat and made a perfect bunt. It trickled out toward Johnny. He pounced on it, and, as he whirled and threw, the ball slid out of his fingers too quickly. The first baseman made a good try for it, managing to knock it down, but the sacrifice had turned into a safe hit and with none out, a man roosted on first and another on second.
The tension could no longer be controlled. Johnny couldn’t take a deep breath. The batter who faced him looked enormous. There was a dull roaring in Johnny’s ears and he felt the trickle of cold sweat down his ribs. The ball felt large and too heavy.
He knew that his wind-up was shaky and rigid. The delivery was ragged. The ball, which he had intended to be a fast ball, slid on the sweaty fingers, went wild. By the time Shorty could recover it, the runners had advanced to second and third.
Johnny’s mouth was dry and in his ears was the din of the crowd, the angry yelps, the pleas, “Take the bum outa there!”
He stood very still, watching the batter. The baseline rhubarb was rowdy and confident. The Roamers saw the ball game within their grasp.
The next two pitches were balls. With the count three and nothing, Johnny managed to get one across the corner of the plate. The batter was waiting him out. Johnny walked him on the next pitch to fill the bases.