Still Pitching

by Michael Steinberg

  But it was all just child’s play compared to the hazing I’d endure when I finally committed myself to joining the group.

  First, I had to swipe a True Detective from Art’s without getting caught. That wasn’t the hard part, though. Art had been in business for so long that he knew my cousins, grandfather, mother, and aunt by their first names. To him, I was the nice kid in the group—the one who he once said was “too decent to cheat and steal.”

  I suspected he knew what I’d done, but he never called me on it, which made me feel even worse. In fact, the minute I was out the door I wanted to go right back in and hand the magazine to him. But it was too late.

  Stealing the magazine was just the beginning. It wasn’t long before all five of them were egging me on. Manny offered me a few reefers. All it did was make me dizzy. Shapiro challenged me to steal a pretzel from Gino’s candy store under the El. Goldman bet me a buck I couldn’t swipe a dozen Trojans and Ramses from the pharmacy stockroom. I did it all. But when Larry Rabin told me to pinch my father’s French deck, I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know what a French deck was.

  “Everyone’s father has a French deck,” Manny said. “Look in his dresser drawer. It’ll be under the socks or underwear.”

  That night, Peter Desimone told me what a French deck was.

  “No way,” I said. “Not my father.”

  Turns out that Manny was right. I found it in the bedroom dresser. How in the world did he know?

  When I first saw the blurred black-and-white images on those playing cards, I felt lightheaded, almost punchy. Waves of pleasure surged through me. I was giddy. My stomach felt all fluttery. I was amazed that my father actually possessed stuff like this. I wondered if my mother knew about it. For days afterward, I snuck back into their bedroom to peek at those pictures. I couldn’t get the images out of my head. I had wet dreams every night.

  When I brought the deck to the rec room, Manny used it as an occasion to choreograph a circle jerk. He ordered everyone to strip down to his socks while he held up the cards. I hated this ritual. It was so public. I dreaded every second. I wondered what this had to do with learning how to impress girls.

  Still, it was all new territory for me. The more approval I got from the group, the more reckless I became. I even felt a secret thrill whenever I got away with those little transgressions.

  Acting on my own, I brought a palm sized roulette wheel to school, and I began to take bets at lunch and recess. It wasn’t long before knots of seventh and eight grade boys would be huddled around me as I knelt down next to the handball court wall and spun the wheel. To my surprise, the guys from the clique even participated. Winning the pot didn’t mean a thing to me. What I loved was being the center of attention.

  It was mid February and I was spending almost every night hanging around with the group. As a result, my midterm grades were conspicuously lower than they had been in the fall. I was also starting to get into trouble. In early March, a teacher on recess duty caught me running the roulette game. I was sure that Mr. Sanders would give me after school detention or else suspend me from classes. But I had a clean record, so I got a month’s probation and a warning to keep my nose clean.

  When my parents found out, my mother of course wanted to ground me. But my father intervened.

  “Let him make his own mistakes, Stell,” he said. “He’ll learn the hard way—just like I did.”

  It didn’t take long for that prediction to come true. In early March, the softball coach, Mr. Barrows, caught me smoking in the boys’ john. My punishment was to take ten laps around the school building—at recess, with everybody watching.

  Barrows was determined to make an example out of me. I was in good shape, I figured. I’d been running on the beach all summer. Maybe I could do this. The junior high was a city block long, and several blocks deep. It was freezing cold, and after a single lap the pain in my lungs was so sharp I couldn’t catch my breath. With everybody watching and Barrows riding behind me on a bicycle, I made it through a lap and a half before I almost collapsed from fatigue.

  It was another warning signal. But this one got my attention.

  Getting caught was a good excuse for me to quit smoking. I was relieved, in fact, that someone had finally stopped me. Still, I wish it would have been anyone except Coach Barrows. Softball tryouts were less than two weeks away. I was worried that he’d hold this against me. But even if he didn’t, I knew I had to start setting some boundaries. The one thing that was more important than the group’s approval was playing ball.

  Over the past few months, I’d gradually become aware that I’d lost sight of my original intent. Nothing we’d done lately had anything to do with girls. So what was I sticking around for?

  The other thing that brought me to my senses was a plan Manny and Stuie had hatched a week after I got caught smoking. They planned to hot wire a car and take us all on a joy ride in the Riis Park parking lot right before Memorial Day weekend. It was something I wanted absolutely no part in. Stealing a car was a hell of a lot different from swiping dirty magazines and pretzel sticks.

  Manny sensed that not everyone was enthusiastic about this caper. So to make certain that none of us had an excuse, one night he fished a penknife out of his shirt pocket.

  “Blood brothers,” he said. He held the gleaming blade up.

  You had to hand it to him. He knew just how to control us.

  We passed the knife around the circle, and one-by-one we jabbed our thumbs with the blade until droplets of blood bubbled up to the skin’s surface. We pressed our thumbs together and the pact was sealed.

  I pretended to go along with it—at least for the moment. Why risk it now? Memorial Day was almost a month away. When the time came, I’d find a way out.

  In early April, Mike Rubin and I had already started playing catch outdoors. We hadn’t seen much of one another that year, but I knew Mike had to be struggling in school as much as I was. Playing softball would be a safe haven for us both. It seemed urgent that we make the team.

  All of the home games would be played in the schoolyard—on a concrete surface. To simulate those conditions we spent hours after school and on weekends hitting fungos and ground balls to one another on the still-frozen turf at Riis Park. We worked out no matter how cold the weather was.

  As tryouts got closer, I kept wondering if Barrows would still have it in for me. But I needn’t have worried. Mike and I were the only two from the sixth grade team who came out for seventh grade softball.

  I knew going in that the team didn’t have the budget to travel. We had to settle instead for playing a home “exhibition” schedule against every team in the Peninsula League. Evidently, this was small potatoes to the guys in the clique. That’s why they didn’t bother coming out for the team. They were gearing up, Pearlman told me, for the big prize—PAL (Police Athletic League) tryouts in June.

  What was the deal with those guys anyway? I wondered if they were even going to invite me to their workouts and practices. Last year, I was team captain. Now, I was back to being a nonentity. Their attitude infuriated me. I’d told myself that I’d do everything in my power to make them regret this.

  Under normal conditions, Rubin and I would have had to sweat it out just to make the seventh grade team. But all the best players from the surrounding neighborhoods were guys that Barrows couldn’t count on. Some had after school jobs; others just wanted to hang out with their gangs. The two of us had experience; and we wanted to play. Besides, we never missed a practice.

  I couldn’t have asked for a better situation. Most of the guys who Barrows was forced to recruit were inexperienced and relatively unskilled. He couldn’t afford to lose Mike or me—not if he wanted to field a decent team. So, in spite of my obvious limitations, he let me play shortstop.

  In time, Barrows did manage to convince some of the better neighborhood players to join up. To get back at the clique, I implored Zeidner and Brownstein to help us out. I was ecstatic when the
y said yes.

  Since our games didn’t count in the league standings, there would be very little pressure on us to win. But that’s not how Barrows saw it. He was lobbying for more money and support, and he wanted to convince the head honchos that the softball team deserved to compete in the Peninsula League. So all spring, he never let up on us. To him, every game mattered.

  Every team is a reflection of its coach’s attitude. Because Barrows had something to prove, we all did. That season then, we evolved into a scrappy, determined bunch. We ambushed a lot of good teams. In fact, by the end, we won more games than even Barrows had expected.

  The whole situation worked to my advantage. I liked being on a team of underdogs. Plus, I knew I didn’t have to keep proving myself every game. For the first time I could relax and concentrate on playing.

  There were games that spring when I volunteered to move over to second base just so Ronnie Zeidner could play short. But for the most part I continued to work hard at becoming better at the position. I practiced in between games and carefully studied Pee Wee Reese, Alvin Dark, and Phil Rizzuto, the three great New York shortstops. By the end of the season, I’d become a pretty decent middle infielder.

  Softball had taken up so much time that I spent fewer and fewer evenings with Manny’s group. With ball games and practices to occupy me, I began to see them in a different light. They seemed aimless and irresponsible. No goals or commitments. Clearly, I was ready to cut my ties with them.

  I was contemplating just how to break the news to the group when, just before Memorial Day weekend, Manny informed us that the car heist was a go. It would happen on Friday evening. I was cornered. I’d forgotten about it, and now there was no time to think up an excuse. Ok, maybe I owed them this one last commitment. I didn’t want it to look like I was chickening out or being disloyal. After all, they did take me in when no one else would have me.

  By the time I found out that Stuie had stolen Myron Kerns’s Cadillac, I was in the back seat sandwiched between Rabin and Shapiro, with Goldman practically sitting on my lap. They’d all been drinking and getting high all afternoon. You could smell it on their breath.

  As soon as we got to the Riis Park parking lot Manny floored the gas pedal, and within seconds we were going almost a hundred miles an hour. I was terrified. I was sure we were going to die. That’s when we heard the sirens. The cops were right on our tail.

  Big surprise, right? What were those guys thinking when they hotwired Kerns’s Caddy? He was on the town board, for Christ sake. What’s more, he knew my father from the Temple Men’s Club. How could I have ever been so stupid? I deserved whatever I was going to get.

  Squad cars came at us from all directions. You’d have thought we’d kidnapped someone, or robbed a bank. Manny hit the brakes hard, and we all pitched forward. The cops jumped out of their cars, pointed their guns at the sky, and began shooting straight up. It was a scare tactic. I don’t know if I was more frightened or relieved to see them.

  The desk sergeant booked and finger printed us at the precinct station. Then two cops put us all in a cell while the sergeant called our parents. Over the next hour, someone from each family showed up to make bail. But no one came to get me. After they’d all left, I was alone. When I yelled for help, the sergeant came down and informed me that my father had indeed paid the bail bond. But he’d requested that I be held overnight. It was just like him to do something like that.

  All night my stomach didn’t stop churning. My mind couldn’t stop racing. It wasn’t fair. I got suckered into this, and those guys were home, sleeping in their own beds. I imagined all the worst scenarios. What if this goes on my record? How about college? Will it be in the Wave? Suppose Barrows finds out? Will he let me play again?

  The next morning, my father came to get me. Once we were in the car I braced myself for the lecture. He certainly wasn’t happy about this, but all he said was that since I was only an accessory to a misdemeanor, the charges would probably be waved. Myron Kerns wouldn’t press charges, he said, so long as the six families agreed to make sure that we never met together again as a group. I wondered just how much of this deal had been brokered by my father?

  For the rest of the ride home, neither of us said anything. But I was doing a lot of thinking. It was probably just as hard for my father to let me sit in jail overnight as it was for me to endure the punishment.

  I never saw any of those guys again. But I did find out later that Manny’s parents had sent him away—to an upstate military academy. Stuie Issacs transferred to Andover, a rich kid’s prep school in Massachusetts. Larry Ramis was sent to a junior high for delinquent students. And Goldman was killed the next fall in a motorcycle accident. I never found out what became of Shapiro, and I didn’t try.

  I had already begun to move on.

  6

  If you were a competitive athlete, your fate was in the hands of three formidable coaches: Patrolman Joe Bleutrich ran the PAL basketball and baseball teams; Tom Sullivan, the junior high Phys Ed and Hygiene teacher, coached the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) baseball and Peninsula League football teams; and Jack Kerchman was the high school football and baseball coach.

  Each coach had a singular trademark. And each asserted his authority in a different way. Ex-players referred to them as “Rockaway’s Holy Trinity.” Bleutrich “the Father,” was inscrutable and reserved; Sullivan, “the Son,” was a ruthless bigot; and Kerchman, “the Holy Ghost, “the most powerful and feared of the three, was a disciplinarian and a tyrant. Each one was in cahoots with the other two. So, if you made the PAL and VFW teams you had a lot better chance of being chosen for the high school varsity. Which was, of course, every jock wannbe’s dream.

  I was a baseball player, so I’d have to contend with all three. That is, if I was lucky enough to get that far. The only other alternatives were to transfer to a private school, or else give up my dream of playing high school baseball, neither of which was a viable option.

  I was hoping that PAL tryouts would be held on the Riis Park diamonds. I’d virtually grown up on those fields. I knew where every pothole and pebble was. And Riis Park was only a mile from our house. Maybe I could convince my father to come out and watch. Instead, Bleutrich chose the high school baseball field—almost five miles away from where I lived.

  Far Rockaway was the only high school on the peninsula. It was also one of the few city schools to have its own football/baseball field. That alone gave it some prestige. Even though I’d never set foot on the field, in my imagination it already was hallowed ground. In the past five years, ever since Kerchman started coaching football and baseball, Far Rockaway had gained a reputation as one of the top sports schools in the city—which of course only added to its mystique. All of us aspirants had dreamed of one day playing on that field.

  Located a few blocks up from the El in Bayswater, the high school was a sprawling three-story white brick building with several annexes. The imposing structure was lodged between a lower-middle-class neighborhood to the west and a cluster of abandoned houses and weed lots to the east.

  The playing field was surrounded on three sides by a twenty-foot-high chain link fence. The first things you saw when you walked through the gate were the football bleachers, the goal posts, and the huge factory-like building looming in the background. As I crossed that threshold, I felt lost and panicky, like I did on the first day of junior high.

  I became even more flustered when I spotted small gatherings of adults and kids in the third base bleachers: family members and friends of the neighborhood guys who were trying out. It reminded me that no one was here to support me.

  At breakfast that morning my mother had diplomatically informed me that my father wouldn’t be able to get out of work in time for the tryouts. She assured me that he really wanted to be there. But her tone of voice betrayed her disappointment. I’m sure it was true, but I still felt like I’d been deserted. I was also miffed that my mother didn’t volunteer to take his place.

 
But that was a minor letdown compared to what I’d soon be up against. All the best baseball players on the Rockaway peninsula had shown up. Fifty of us would compete for fourteen roster spots. And a half dozen were shortstops.

  As a rule, a team’s most versatile infielder is the shortstop. The good ones are acrobatic enough to make the pivot on the double play, they can range far into the hole to their left and right, and they have strong enough arms to throw runners out at first. On most every team from sandlot to the pros, the shortstop is the unofficial infield captain. They’re also expected to be super alert, and they’re responsible for covering second on steals and third on bunts, as well as for being the cut-off man on anything that’s hit to the outfield.

  As withdrawn as I am in social situations, I’ve never been a passive ball player. I like to take charge. On the field, I thrive on being right in the middle of things. In that regard, I’m most at home at shortstop. My main assets are my intelligence, my ability to anticipate, and a strong accurate arm. Because I could size up the hitters, I always knew where to position myself. I’d watch where they stood in the box and observe their stances and mechanics. Did they uppercut or hit down on the ball? Did they have an inside/out or outside/in swing? I also paid close attention to the catcher’s signals and to the location of his glove. Before every pitch, I’d shade the hitters accordingly, depending on whether the catcher’s target was up and in, low and away, low and in, or high and away.

  Still, I knew that I didn’t have the size or quickness to compete with Sammy Silverman, Bobby Frankel, or Larry Moshan, the first three shortstops I watched that day. Add to that mix Mandel and Zeidner—each of whom had grown almost a half a foot since sixth grade—and there already were five shortstops who were better than I was. Still, what else could I do but sit it out and wait my turn.