Painting the Corners Again

by Weintraub, Bob;

  Back in the “city of brotherly love,” the team showed no mercy for their Texas brothers in Game Six. Cheered on by their fans, many thousands of whom came dressed in the red and white Phillies colors, they crushed the Rangers 16–3. This time, Diamond pulled Norris out of the game after six innings and let Kyle finish up. The final statistics showed that Norris singled twice in four trips to the plate but left two runners in scoring position by making the final out of the inning each time. He also committed an error on a ground ball hit directly at him. Kyle had two at bats, leading off the seventh inning with a double to center field, and driving in the last Phillies run with a two out single in the eighth inning. He made a sensational play at short on which he dived to catch an errant throw from his second baseman on a potential double play ball and rolled his body over in time to kick the base with his heel for the out.

  After the game, the Texas “ace” told the writers gathered around his locker that six days’ rest after pitching the opening game of the Series was too much and was obviously a mistake. Egged on by some of the questions, he threw his manager under the bus by saying that he wanted to pitch Game Five and had said so back in Texas, but was overruled.

  Diamond didn’t expect to get much sleep that night, and he was right. He was facing the biggest game of his life as a manager, and he couldn’t decide who he should send out to play shortstop. In his heart he wanted it to be Norris because he felt certain the Phillies would win and Norris’s presence in the lineup would give him the chance to fulfill Diamond’s fantasy that his own son was instrumental—was the hero—in winning the World Series. But Diamond knew that having the team beat Texas, that getting Tommy Hancock the championship he coveted was the all important thing, and he realized that his emotions were distracting him from the decision that had to be made on the basis of which player, Norris or Kyle, would best help the team win.

  The players had been told to be at the ballpark at three thirty that afternoon. After finishing breakfast shortly after eleven o’clock, Diamond made up several excuses for getting to the ballpark early, kissed his wife, and reminded her to leave for the game before the traffic got heavy.

  “Good luck, honey,” she said, “and tell Kyle I’ll be rooting as hard as I can for him.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he answered, and left.

  When he entered the clubhouse just after noon, Diamond was surprised to see Luis Cavalho, in uniform, in the room shared by all six of the coaches. “What are you doing here so early?” he asked.

  “I’ve been here since ten o’clock, Jimmy. Kyle was here and I was throwing him some batting practice. Those two hits he had last night were no fluke. I’ve been working with him, and I’m pretty sure we finally figured out his problem. He asked me to come in this morning and let him hit so he could feel more confident about how we fixed his stance. He ripped the ball all over the park, and into the seats too. Feels real good about himself now. I sent him home to get some more rest.”

  “I haven’t decided who starts at short, Luis.”

  Cavalho had been taking some personal items out of his locker and stuffing them into a duffel bag while he spoke to Diamond. He stopped, and looked at his manager.

  “Jimmy, sit down a minute, will ya?”

  Diamond took a deep breath and walked over to the white plastic chair in the corner of the room. He anticipated what Cavalho would tell him and wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. “Okay, I’m sitting,” he said.

  “Jimmy, anything I say to you is said totally with respect. You and I both know I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for you. Maybe I’d be sweating in the sun back in Puerto Rico shoveling some cement into place or carrying lumber up a flight of stairs to my brother-in-law. I’ve had a good life here in the States on account of you and I’ll never forget that.” Cavalho stopped long enough to pick up another chair and bring it closer to where Diamond was sitting. “But if you’re trying to decide who to play at short today, I can give you my two cents worth one of two ways. I can lay out the reasons I think Kyle should be out there or I can just say I think you’d be crazy to give Norris the nod over him. Which’ll it be?”

  “I’ll go with being crazy, Luis. I know every statistic you can throw at me. I’ve gone over all of them in my head a hundred times and was awake most of last night thinking about it. But sometimes every number you can come up with on paper doesn’t add up to the answer. In the end I’ve got to go with what my gut tells me.” He got up and walked to the door. “I’m going into my office to ride the bike a while.”

  “And make sure your gut remembers that Kyle’s your family and he’s got more experience than Norris.”

  Diamond didn’t answer.

  An hour later Diamond came out of his office wearing his uniform and found Cavalho talking to the clubhouse attendant. “Luis, I feel tight as a drum. Get a bag of balls and let’s go outside. I want you to hit me some grounders at short.”

  “We haven’t done that for a while. You sure you’re up to it?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. Just hit them all where I can reach them. It’s not a good day for a heart attack.”

  The workout loosened him up. When it was over, Diamond took a shower and got himself a fresh uniform. Sitting in his office, he made out the lineup card, leaving only the eighth spot in the batting order blank. It would be filled by either Kyle or Norris when he made up his mind.

  At four o’clock, as the players were dressing and relaxing in the clubhouse, Diamond went back out on the field. He liked to watch the empty stadium begin to come alive as the ushers dusted off the seats in anticipation of the fans who would be allowed to come through the gates in an hour, and the grounds crew removed the tarpaulin covering the infield. While he watched, the batting cage was wheeled into place and the Rangers came onto the field at four thirty to take batting practice for the next forty-five minutes. Diamond observed them from the dugout for a while and then returned to the clubhouse to make sure all his players, especially those being cared for by the trainers, were ready to go. At the appropriate time he sent them onto the field for their own batting practice session. He took his place behind the cage to observe their swings and make any comments he thought were helpful. Cavalho stood there also, neither saying a word to the other. Kyle and Norris were the last to take their cuts, both hitting a series of sharp drives to the outfield.

  As Diamond headed back to the dugout, Hancock and Sherman came onto the field through a door along the first base line.

  “Well, Jimmy, here we are,” Hancock said. “This is everything we worked for, starting last Thanksgiving. I know you and the players are going to bring us the championship. But good luck, and have a great ballgame.”

  “That goes for me too,” Sherman said.

  “Thanks, Tommy. Thanks, Gary. We’ll bust our butts to win.”

  The stadium was already mostly full. Several members of the grounds crew were busy laying down the foul lines and batter’s box with white chalk while two others were raking the dirt around the mound. Diamond looked over to the section of the grandstand where the players’ wives sat and saw Katherine studying her program. In the hour that had just passed, he found himself leaning toward starting Kyle at shortstop just for the experience factor and hoping Norris would be able to enter the game at some point and do something to win it. As he was about to step down into the dugout, Diamond heard his name called and saw a stadium usher coming toward him.

  “Mr. Diamond,” he said, “I was asked to give you this envelope by a woman on the third base side. She said it was important, and the woman with her showed me a Phillies ID.”

  Diamond took the envelope and thanked the usher. He went into the dugout, sat down and opened it. Inside was a note on personal stationary he immediately recognized as Heather’s from the initials “HN” at the top. It read:

  “Dear Jimmy,

  I’ll be watching the game tonight and I wish you good luck. I know how much it means to you. We have a flight home early tomorrow morning, but I
want to see you before I go. I’ll wait for you in the lounge at the players’ entrance after the game.

  Love, Heather”

  She’s here to see our son, Diamond thought immediately. Then it occurred to him that he had never even considered the idea that Heather might be at the ballpark for any of the previous six games. And especially those played in Texas if, as he had assumed, there was a good chance she was living there. But maybe, if she attended, she was afraid of upsetting him with any talk about their Matthew while the Series was still ongoing. Tonight it would all be over, and she had come from wherever she lived to see the game. In that case, how could he not start Norris? It was true that Kyle was steadier in the field than Norris, and maybe the Phillies pitchers felt more comfortable with him out there, but the ability to score runs counted also, and Norris was hitting .375 to Kyle’s .250. When you came right down to it, the two shortstops were pretty much equal in talent and Kyle’s experience was not that much greater than Norris’s. Neither had seemed phased by playing in the post season, including the World Series with all the pressure that mounted game by game. And Cavalho had pointed out to him—twice he recalled—that Kyle was family. Well, his own son was closer family than his stepson, even though he had known him for only three months. When Diamond brought the lineup card out to the umpires at home plate, Norris was listed at shortstop, batting eighth.

  Game Seven pitted the Phillies’ losing pitcher from Game Three, who had given Texas six runs in five innings, against the Rangers’ hurler from Game Two who was battered around through five plus innings in his team’s 14–7 win. The game was scoreless for the first five innings, and it was clear that this time both pitchers had brought their best stuff to the mound.

  In the sixth inning, Norris failed to get the ball thrown to him by his second baseman out of his glove quickly enough to complete a double play at first. The misplay extended the inning, and apparently upset Philadelphia’s pitcher who gave up four consecutive hits before getting the third out. His lapse resulted in Texas putting three runs on the scoreboard before it was over. The Phillies fought back, scoring single runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings to tie the score, the last one driven in by Norris’s clutch double off the right field fence. The stadium crowd was back in the game, standing and cheering for their heroes.

  Diamond brought his closer in to pitch the ninth, gambling on getting a scoreless half inning out of him and counting on the team’s momentum to find a way to win the game in their own at bats. With two outs, the closer walked the next Ranger on a very close 3–2 pitch. When the umpire’s right hand didn’t go up, the pitcher kicked at the dirt on the mound to show his disagreement. That prompted the umpire to remove his mask, step in front of the plate and holler something out to the mound. Diamond ran onto the field, made sure his player didn’t say another word and told him the team couldn’t afford to lose him to an argument. On the first pitch to the next Texas hitter, the runner on first stole second on what looked like a bad call to the entire Philadelphia bench. Diamond ran out again and disputed the call until he himself was warned that he’d be thrown out of the game if he persisted in arguing.

  On the steal, the Texas cleanup hitter, whose home run had defeated the Phillies in Game Four, took a called strike at the plate. Cavalho suggested to Diamond that he be given an intentional walk to set up a force play at any base. But Diamond was aware that the player had gone hitless in his last seven at-bats, and preferred pitching to him rather than to the on-deck hitter who already had singled twice in the game. He called for time and made a slow trip out to the mound where he reminded his closer that the batter was a notorious low ball hitter. He also passed the word to his second base combination to keep the base runner from getting a good lead.

  As Diamond watched, taking a deep breath before every pitch, the hitter fouled off several balls while also looking at three others outside the strike zone and working the count full. On the next pitch, the ball was hit sharply up the middle, past the pitcher’s late attempt to stop it, headed into center field. Norris raced to his left, dived for the ball and got it in the webbing of his glove. He got to his feet as quick as he could, and without setting himself, cocked his arm for the throw to first. Diamond and Cavalho, seeing that the throw would not beat the runner, were shouting at him to hold the ball. But Norris couldn’t hear them over the noise of the crowd and fired it as hard as he could. The ball was too far away for the first baseman to reach, and bounced into the Phillies dugout, allowing the runner on second to score.

  The ballpark was suddenly quiet, as if all the air had been let out of the bag. Everyone realized, even as the third out of the inning was made, that the Phillies had only one chance to score at least one run or their quest for the championship was over.

  Texas brought its closer into the game to nail down the victory. The program listed him at six feet, four inches tall and weighing 247 pounds, but on the mound he looked even bigger. As he began taking his warm-up pitches, the fans started coming to life again, and their cheering and hand-clapping was at full throttle by the time the umpire told the first scheduled hitter to step into the batter’s box. The closer’s task appeared to be significantly enhanced by the fact that the Phillies bottom third of the batting order was due up to the plate.

  There was a loud shout from the crowd as the ball hit by the team’s third baseman rose in the air toward left field, but the announcers in the booth could tell immediately that it wasn’t hit hard enough to leave the ballpark. The left fielder moved back to the warning track and casually gloved the drive with one hand.

  Norris was next. He tried to disrupt the pitcher’s rhythm by stepping out of the batter’s box twice, feigning an eye problem, just as the closer was ready to start his windup. Although he incurred the wrath of the Texas battery, both pitcher and catcher telling him to “get your damn ass in the box,” he succeeded in inducing a walk and a free trip to first base.

  Diamond sent Kyle up as a pinch hitter for the pitcher. Norris sensed that he had unnerved the closer and began dancing off first base, moving his body back and forth as he took his lead. The crowd on that side of the stadium saw what he was doing and tried to further upset the pitcher by shouting some choice epithets at him. When the first two pitches to Kyle were off the plate, giving him the advantage in the count, Norris was certain that his bouncing around affected the pitcher’s concentration and his ability to throw strikes. He also felt that the crowd noise, now more deafening than ever, was helping to rattle the Texas closer. On the next pitch, Norris faked a steal of second base with several steps in that direction, but then had to turn and dive back into first when he heard the word “Back” shouted by the first base coach and saw an attempted pickoff throw coming from the strong-armed catcher. The umpire moved quickly toward the base and was in a good position to see Norris’s outstretched hand inches away from the bag as the fielder brought his glove down on it. After the “Out” call was given, followed immediately by boos and catcalls from all over the park, there was nothing Norris could do but jog off the field with his head down.

  Kyle now stood as the last barrier to a Texas celebration, and the fans, by their near silence, signaled the absence of any hope in a miracle. But on the next pitch, the enormity of Norris’s gaffe was reintroduced to Phillies Nation when Kyle drove the ball on one bounce off the wall in right center field and raced around the bases for a triple. Everyone realized that the hit would have tied the game and put the tying run on third with only one out. The radio and TV broadcasters in the booth tried to stay positive, reminding their listeners that the potential tying run was “only ninety feet away,” and that the team had led the league in comebacks when behind after eight innings. But whatever hopes still survived at that point were crushed for good when the second pinch hitter of the inning dribbled a ball back to the mound and slammed his bat into the ground as the pitcher underhanded a throw to first for the final out.

  Jimmy Diamond knew the agony of defeat from earlier manag
erial assignments and pennant races. He gathered his players together in the clubhouse and told them to take pride in the year they’d had and to look forward to playing their way into another World Series the next season. Then he walked around the room and had short conversations with each of the players in which he thanked them for their individual contributions to the team’s success. He put his arm around Norris’s shoulder and told him he knew how hard he tried to win the game. “That stop you made out there was one of the best I’ve seen. I know how hard it is not to try and finish off a play like that by getting the out. It just takes a little more experience. You’ll get there.”

  Before going into his office to dress, Diamond took Cavalho aside to speak to him.

  “When we’re both older, Luis, with gray hair, we’ll talk about this game and I’ll tell you something you don’t know today. I know how you feel about my decision, and I’m sorry how it worked out, but I think you’ll understand later on.”

  “It’s okay, Jimmy, we’ll do it next year.”

  He wanted to tell Cavalho he’d be managing his own team in the minors next year, but decided to leave word of the promotion to Hancock or Sherman.

  “Yeah, Luis, you’re right. Listen, I’ll see you at the breakup dinner tomorrow night.”

  Diamond could feel the tension building as he walked the long passage from the clubhouse to the lounge at the players’ entrance. It was a large room with a number of plush-looking chairs, two sofas, and a coffee machine, always stocked, that dispensed individual servings in several varieties. It was where wives and girlfriends could wait for players after the game while they showered and dressed. He couldn’t help wondering if Heather had changed so much in twenty-five years that he might not recognize her. And he hoped he wouldn’t see a sign of disappointment or surprise on her face when she first looked at him.