The Pitcher 2 Read online

  “I suppose so; basically, you have two weeks to present to me the other side. A story if you will of your life now that will refute Mrs. Payne’s contentions and allow the Department of Immigration to settle your case once and for all.’

  Yeah. The Department of Immigration. No immigration reform here man. What happened to Obama’s plan and pathways to citizenship, and all that crap? They are just busy getting people back to Mexico, and this dude is like something from the Matrix. You know the agents. Mr. Anderson. Mom has on a skirt and high heels and a white blouse with her dangling earrings. She fires back.

  “What, you want me to explain it to you?”

  Mr. Jones shakes his head and laughs lightly.

  “No, no. I prefer a written report. Just tell me the story of your life and your family and give me a picture of your day-to-day,” he says like he’s giving us an award or something.

  Mom mouths day to day and shakes her head.

  “Ricky you will have to write it,” she says almost to her herself.

  I shrug.

  “Yeah. No problem, Mom.”

  I have been burning it down in English, and my teacher Mrs. Shanny says I should write more because I have a real talent. I don’t know. I just write the way I talk, and that’s not hard, because, as you know, I like to talk. So, Mr. Jones picks up his briefcase all shiny and black. And I know what is coming. He had kept looking at the pictures in our living room of the Pitcher winning the series. Mom said the pictures in the garage should be in the living room because they will get moldy. So she put them in different rooms, but the one of the Pitcher jumping into his catcher’s arms is in our living room. And Mr. Jones can’t keep his eyes off it.

  He shakes his head, and looks at the Pitcher.

  “So, you really pitched in a World Series?”

  The Pitcher looks at him with these dull eyes, then nods slowly.

  “Yeah, and you really work for the government?’

  Mr. Jones mouth gets all tight and flat.

  “You people have a good day.”

  Mom pulls open the door for him and Mr. Jones leaves. I watch his car go back down the drive. Some of the neighbors watch, too. You don’t want dudes like that in your drive. Mom and the Pitcher are now sitting on the couch, and they are holding hands like someone just died. I guess someone did if a dream is a someone. Two weeks. We got two weeks to come up with a story that will allow mom to stay in the country.

  And I have to write it.

  Our day to day, huh? Yeah. Right. Well. Here it comes.

  3

  THE FIRST TIME I SAW Bailey Cruise was in March when we were playing an exhibition game against a high school from the other side of town. I had heard about some kid from Texas who was pitching almost a hundred miles an hour. The rap was he was with his family in an apartment but were moving across town to our school district when their house was ready. Right now he was playing for East, which is our rival school.

  It is the bottom of the third, and I have been the starting pitcher on South High Varsity now for two years, and things are going really well. I have a lot on my mind, because midterms just proved what I knew all along that my grades were not so good. The scouts have been hovering like flies. I mean, some smaller college scouts, but MLB scouts, too. The Pitcher says don’t get a big head and that those rock heads don’t know shit from Shinola about baseball. Still, they want to come by the house and have a meeting.

  The Pitcher says that we will see what they have to say. Mom says no way. She says I am going to college because it might not work. I might get hurt, or maybe I’ll lose my ability to pitch, or maybe I might not like it. Then what? Where will I be then without a college degree? She’s talking about a Moneyball scenario. You know, the movie with the Billy Beane deal where he gets drafted and then just can’t perform. It happens. Guys who are outstanding in high school hit the Majors, and for whatever reason, they just don’t have it. Like the one coach in the movie says, “We are told at some point we can’t play the children’s game anymore…we just don’t know when it’s going to happen.”

  And then they slide the check across the table. That is the part I like. Slide that check over, man.

  The Pitcher points out to Mom that he never had a degree and things worked out okay. Mom looks at him with her eyes blazing, you know the look, and says, “I rest my case.” And then stomps out of the garage. I mean, the Pitcher didn’t end up so bad, you know. MLB twenty-five years, and then a house in Florida with a big screen in the garage. I watch that television almost as much as he does. I mean, I’m seventeen now, and we both spit Skoal into a coffee can and even pop a few Good Times together. Don’t tell your mother, he says, and I don’t. She would serve me up, man, if she knew I was popping beers and dipping Skoal, but the garage is our man cave.

  So it’s the third inning, and this dude with this blue helmet with orange flames on the side steps up. He is about my size, which is now just under six foot. Growth spurt. Just one day. Pow, and I grow like six inches. I’m tall and lanky and I even beefed up some after pumping iron with Jimmy one summer. I had to be cool not to screw up my arm. I have a goatee that The Pitcher says looks really stupid and Mom said looks cute. I almost cut it off when she said that, but all the Majors League pitchers are growing beards, so I got to have something. Still keep the hair short though, because it’s gotten even hotter in Florida, if you can believe that.

  So I am staring at this guy with the flaming blue sparkly helmet, and his eyes are like the same color as Eric’s. They are like blue diamonds, and with his blond hair and his jaw working out on some gum, he does not look like he is from anywhere around here. I figure I’ll give him a brush back and then a fastball low and inside, and then finish him with, you guessed it, my changeup.

  He turns around and says something to the ump, and that’s when I see his name on the back of the helmet. BAILEY. Come on! What a hotdog, man. I’m amazed the coach even allowed that helmet in the park. It was like a walking advertisement for this guy. So I’m kind of grinning on the mound and look at Coach Hoskins, who shrugs and makes this motion with his hand, which means fastball. I’m going to show BAILEY who is boss.

  So I pick a spot right by his chin. Like the Pitcher says, you gotta have a spot. So I go into my windup and let fly. I’m real smooth now. Like a well-oiled machine. It’s all muscle memory. How fast do I pitch? Ninety-five miles an hour is my best, but I am only getting faster, and I put a lot of heat on this one. Mr. Helmet leans his head back as the ball nips inside. I don’t get the call, but I figure I have unnerved him.

  “Ball!”

  Bailey doesn’t seem too impressed though. He just keeps chewing his gum and hits the plate with his bat a few times and then crouches back down like he’s A-Rod or something. I take the ball back, and it’s a beautiful day in May for Florida. Not too hot with the sand blowing around in the infield, and I’m looking at these two dudes in the stands who don’t look like college scouts. They are in khaki pants with those golf shirts, and they have matching Ray Bans like the Blues Brothers or something. They got MLB written all over them with the little Polo dude on their shirts.

  So it really is my time to smoke the guy with the flaming helmet and put out his fire. I’m bringing the heat now. Right now, it is time to let Mr. Bailey know who the man is.

  I bring in the ball and tilt my hat down low. This is my signal to my team. Juan is like giving me the signal, and I shake off a sinker and he knows where I am going. We know each other now, man, after like a hundred games. It’s like we are one person, and he settles back and waits.

  And just like before, I take my breath. You know, get in the zone. I can hear the wind and the people in the stands and the other team talking trash. Come on, Bailey. Do it, Bailey. You the man, Bailey. Bailey is about to get rocked. I look down from the mound and meet his eyes with his jaw still moving and his bat hovering like an angry bee. Time to go home, Bailey.

  I kick in to my windup and bring my arm over and whipsaw th
e ball down toward home plate, and I know it is going to nip ninety-five. And it is like I am gone for a moment. That is how it is with me. When I hit the zone I am somewhere else, and that is when I hear the crack. A fastball meeting a bat sounds like a rifle shot, and now I am moving my neck and watching that ball go flying straight up and over the back centerfield back fence.

  I am turned around, which is really bad for a pitcher, and stare at that white pill against the blue curtain. Like a Babe Ruth kind of homerun where it just keeps going. My mouth is wagging, and I just stare. You don’t want to be facing the back fence, ever. And now I watch those flames round first and second, then third and then head for home. And here is the thing. This guy is booking! You would never know he hit a homerun. He is running like the ball is right behind him, and those orange flames are a blur as he slides into home and then pops up. It was like some kind of demonstration of how the perfect baseball player should run.

  I watch Bailey dust himself off, and he looks over then and grins at me right before he hits all those high fives coming at him. It’s like he said, there is a new sheriff in town. And I feel like Billy Beane, and I am hearing that dude again in Moneyball except this time he is speaking to me. You never know when we are going to be told when you can’t play the children’s game. But we are all told at some point.

  And I watch that sparkly blue flaming helmet float all the way back to the bench. I vowed then to put out those flames any way I can, because this fire could burn down the house I have been working on for three years. And here’s the thing.

  It got worse.

  4

  NOW BAILEY IS ON the mound, and those fire bolts are throwing fastballs like flaming meteorites. Like in The Natural where Roy Hobbs gets shot in Chicago and he disappears and then surfaces ten years later, and everyone is like, where did this dude come from and nobody knows. I can’t understand where a guy with an arm like this has been hiding for the last ten years. And that’s how I feel watching Bailey Cruise on the pitcher’s mound. Where the hell did this guy come from? I’ll tell you. Texas. Bailey Cruise is his name, and he just moved in from Texas. It’s like he is Roy Hobbs. Everyone just stands around with their mouth open, watching him warm up. The ball explodes the catcher’s mitt. Pow! Then again, and again.

  It looks like he is pitching a hundred miles an hour.

  No. Not one hundred, but ninety-two Then ninety-three. Then ninety-four.

  The Pitcher is by the fence, and I walk over to him, and he doesn’t say a thing. He just squints and drops the cigarette below him and stubs it with his tennis shoe.

  “Can you believe this guy?” I say.

  “I believe he is fast and can hit,” he says.

  I turn and make this noise with my mouth hanging open like someone just slipped a joker into a deck of cards.

  “Nice helmet,” the Pitcher says, spitting into the dirt.

  “That is ridiculous. Did you see those stupid fire bolts?”

  The Pitcher nods slowly.

  “Yeah. And you did, too. That’s why they are there.”

  I stare at him.

  “What do you mean?’

  The Pitcher shrugs.

  “He wants you to be staring at those fire bolts while he belts your changeup out of the park. Then you’re playing his game and not your own.”

  He was right, of course, and I was fixated on that sparkly blue flaming helmet.

  “Yeah, I know,” I mutter.

  “You told him what you were going do,” he says, staring at Bailey on the mound. “You telegraphed your delivery the whole way. He’s no fool, and he figured after that brush-back you’d give him something, and you did.”

  I stare at the Pitcher. Like I said, his hair is almost white now. I mean, he is still big and smokes like a hundred cigarettes a day and drinks Good Times, but he limits himself to three a day after Mom made him go to the AA meetings. He spits into the dust again.

  “One thing is for sure. You can’t give a guy like that a straight fast ball.”

  I turn and watch Bailey wind up, and I see a tat up on his right arm. Mom laid down the law a while ago. No tats! The Pitcher has tats, but his are just blue blobs now. He told me to go to the pool and look at all the fat guys with tattoos. He said only pitchers with no talent get tats. I pointed out that a lot of MLB pitchers have tats. “Like I said, only the guys without talents get tats,” he finished.

  But Bailey Cruise has a tat, and stud in his right ear. To me he looks all MLB, man.

  “Just don’t let him get under you with that fastball,” the Pitcher says walking back to sit by Mom.

  “Yeah,” I mutter.

  So it gets bad real fast. Bailey knocks off our two leadoff guys like they never saw a fastball in their life. One. Two. Three. You’re out. I mean, I would like to say he was moving it around and pinching the corners, but they looked like straight fastballs to me. The worst thing is this Bailey guy doesn’t do any of the usual hotdog stuff you see when pitchers nail down the fastballs. He’s like a machine. He just takes the ball from the catch and lets fly again.

  Coach Hoskins walks up to me, and I can see in his eyes that he’s thinking what I am thinking. Something along the lines of what the F…. Mom says I still can’t use the F-bomb, and I said I am almost eighteen and everybody uses it now. “Not around me, they don’t, carbron,” she says. And she is right about that. So no F-word, but maybe one day.

  “Don’t overthink that fast ball. The guys are jumping the gun. Let it come to you,” Coach says, but he looks worried. I mean, I look worried, too.

  “How fast you think it’s coming, Coach?’

  Coach Hoskins, who has gotten even bigger in the last few years, raises his hands like a man who has just seen an alien or something. He has this brown hair with snow at his temples and these recessed blue eyes that are like hidden behind Ray-Bans twenty-four seven. He shakes his head slowly.

  “I don’t know…fastest I’ve seen,” he says.

  This does not give me confidence. I look over, and the two MLB guys are standing by the fence with their eyes glued on Bailey Cruise. This has disaster written all over it, and I try and not think that way, which I call the old way. The new way is that everything will work out and go my way. The old way, like back when I was trying to make the high school team, was that nothing will work out and things are only going to get worse. It’s sort of like this black cloud that follows me around, and most of the time it’s so far away I can barely see it. But now I see that cloud, and it is getting bigger.

  “C’mon, Ricky, you can do it!”

  I look over, and my spirits lift. That’s Christine. She is definitely part of the new way. We have been dating for almost a year. She is over by the stands with her girls in my South jacket with her long blond hair and blue eyes, and like I said, she is like something that came when the word got around that MLB scouts were interested in me. I didn’t say anything, but you know how Facebook is, man. One person says it, and, wham, everybody knows. So like suddenly people who never talked to me before are now my friends, and Christine is now dating yours truly.

  “Show that asshole who is boss, Ricky!”

  That’s Jimmy. He is like part of the old way. He is over in his hoody by the stands with some girls with their long black hair flowing back in the wind with pumps and hoop earrings and nose-pins and super red lips and black fingernails. Mexican chicks, you know. Christine is staring at me and gives me a thumbs-up, and she is all down with being the wife of a Major League pitcher. We talk about it all the time and get real excited, but like now she is staring at me with the same sort of what-the-F stare, you know. Like I say, this gum-chomping blue-eyed creature whipping one hundred mile an hour fastballs is all Roy Hobbs, and like I sure wish he would go back to Texas and take his sparkly helmet with the flames with him.

  Because I am up and looking toward the pitcher’s mound, and those weird blue eyes now look like Eric’s. And that is something I hoped I would never see again.

  5


  BALLPARKS DETERMINE WHO A city is. When the Federal League was formed, they gave players the right to free agency. Up until then, everyone was stuck with the reserve clause, which meant a team owned you. The Federal League also gave Chicago Wrigley Field. The Federal League didn’t last, but Wrigley Field did. It’s like from something new came something old. Bailey was like that. Something new that I associated with something old.

  Like the first bad thing you know in a long time. Ever since I made the high school team and the Pitcher married Mom, we had been cruising along. The new way was everywhere. Mom was happy and the Pitcher was happy, and we hung in the garage together and watched ball games, or we went and caught the Marlins. We went to Cooperstown once to check out the Hall of Fame, and sometimes in the airport we would be sitting there and someone would come up to the Pitcher.

  “Hey, aren’t you Jack Langford?’

  And the Pitcher, he would just sit there and look up and nod.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I have your autograph? I saw that game where you smoked Jim Rice.”

  And he would sign autographs for the guy or his kids or his grandkids. He never said much about it, just went back to reading the paper or talking to Mom. I thought it was pretty cool. It’s like he was branded for life, you know. Like whatever he did, people knew he had pitched a World Series game and had been in the Majors for twenty-five years. Even the guys who took our trash every Tuesday called out. “Hey, Mr. Langford, how’s the pitching going?”

  In a way he was world famous even though I lived with him now.

  Or he would get a call for these fantasy camps where he would go and speak to all these guys who paid thousands of dollars to wear a Detroit Tiger uniform and run the bases and basically be Jack Langford for a weekend. And when he spoke, he talked the same way he does when he tells me how to pitch. “Those rock-heads don’t know what they are doing….” But he could have said anything to these guys, because they just hung on every word. And then they would pay him like five grand or something, and the Pitcher would come back home and go sit in his La-Z-Boy with Shortstop and watch ballgames and smoke and drink and spit Skoal.