Still Pitching

by Michael Steinberg

  By the time school started, then, I was anxious to get my first look at this pugnacious coach. So, the weekend after classes began I collared Ira and Billy, my old Ebbets comrades, and off we went to the first home football game.

  “You’re not gonna like what you see,” Ira said, as we walked from the bus stop to the high school.

  “The guy’s an animal,” Billy added.

  On game days, the atmosphere outside the high school field was like a carnival. Vendors hawked everything from hot dogs, popcorn, and peanuts, to red and blue “Rockaway High” pennants and pom-poms, to souvenirs etched with representations of the school mascot, a miniature seahorse. In the bleachers, students and parents chanted “Let’s go Seahorses,” while the cheerleaders bounced up and down in their white wool sweaters and short scarlet and blue pleated skirts. There was a hushed moment just before the football team sprinted out on the field. Most of the guys on the team were only a few years older than me. But in their scarlet helmets and full gear the red and white clad players looked like Roman gladiators. Though I didn’t care much for football, I couldn’t help but think about how exhilarated I would feel to charge out of the locker room with the rest of the team, while everyone in the stands—parents, teachers, local bigwigs, and students—were all on their feet applauding and yelling.

  Once we settled in, I scanned the field and spotted Kerchman standing in front of the team bench on the opposite sideline. He was in his late thirties, maybe 5' 8″, and heavyset, wearing a chocolate brown porkpie hat and a rumpled tweed topcoat. You could hear him yelling above the band and the crowd noise. During the game he’d sometimes hurl his hat to the ground and scream obscenities at a player who screwed up. He reacted to missed blocks, fumbles, broken plays—whatever derailed the game plan he’d engineered in his head. A couple of times I saw him grab offending players by the shoulder pads and shake them until their heads bobbed like they were on a swivel. In the middle of the second quarter he grabbed Stuie Schneider, a Jewish halfback, by the jersey and cuffed him with vicious open-handed helmet slaps.

  Billy was right. Why would anyone in his right mind want to play for such a monster? Then, I spotted the pitcher’s mound just to the right of the south goal posts. In less than an instant, I’d floated free of the razz-ma-tazz. In my daydream fantasy I imagined myself standing on that mound in a Rockaway High uniform. My parents, brother, friends, and a make-believe girlfriend were all in the stands watching. The cheerleaders were chanting my name as I toed the rubber, went into my windup, and got ready to snap off a sharp, dipping sinker.

  After the game Billy and Ira declared that they’d seen enough, thank you very much. But I wasn’t done observing this contentious coach. His ferocious intensity frightened and fascinated me. So I went back alone to the rest of the home games.

  In November I announced to Ira and Billy that I was going to try out for baseball next year. They told me I was crazy to even think about it. But they didn’t understand. It wasn’t a matter of simply wanting to play ball. I’d long since convinced myself that I had to make this team.

  Ever since their resurgence, I’d linked my fortunes with the Dodgers. For the past two seasons Brooklyn had made it back to the World Series. Despite losing again to the Yankees, I thought it was a hopeful sign. But in September of ‘54 the team faltered down the stretch and finished second behind the Giants.

  I told all my tormentors that the Dodgers simply had had an off year. Snider, Reese, Hodges, and Furillo had less than outstanding seasons. The always dependable Roy Campanella injured his hand and hit only 207. Plus, the smooth fielding third baseman Billy Cox and longtime ace lefty Preacher Roe were nearing the end of their careers.

  What did them in, though, was the collapse of the pitching staff. Don Newcombe, just back from the service, won only nine games. Carl Erskine had arm problems and finished 18-15. My only comfort was that for the first time since 1948 the Yankees didn’t win the American League pennant.

  Like most self-proclaimed baseball experts, I predicted that Cleveland would beat the Giants handily. After all, the Indians had won 111 games during the regular season—the second highest total in baseball history. Early Wynn, Bob Lemon, Mike Garcia, and an aging Bob Feller formed the best starting staff in baseball. And Ray Narleski and Don Mossi were among the league’s top relief pitchers.

  But the Giants stunned everyone by sweeping the Indians in four straight. Their success, coupled with the Dodgers’ setback, seemed like another disastrous omen. First the double session, now this.

  The split session had forced us all back on the same old alliances and rivalries we’d formed since grade school. At first I felt like I was back in sixth grade, marking time and waiting for my real life to begin.

  Mornings, the guys in the clique reverted to playing pickup basketball in Pearlman’s driveway. When the clique was a man or two short, I’d sometimes get a last minute invitation to come over and fill in. And while the weather was still mild, I’d get up a stickball game with Mike Rubin.

  In the meantime, I revived my old friendship with Peter Desimone. In the last couple of years Peter had evolved into even more of a hipster than he used to be. He frequented the downtown coffee houses, attending readings by Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac—“Zen Buddhists,” Peter said, who were writing “some pretty far-out stuff.”

  I’d always been aware of how different Peter was from the rest of us. In the five years I’d known him, I never saw him attend a dance, mixer, or a sports event. But he was part of a small coterie, a group of faux Bohemians that included Sarah and Rita, the yearbook editors who’d rejected my Holden Caulfield knockoff two years ago. On weekends, they’d go down to the Village Gate or the Vanguard where they’d listen to “hard boppers” like Miles Davis, Dizzie Gillespie, and a “super hip piano player” with the exotic name of Thelonius Monk. There were times when I would have loved to tag along with them. But with those two girls around, I didn’t have the nerve to invite myself.

  It was all so confusing. I desperately wanted to be an insider, but I didn’t fit with the clique or with Peter’s avant-garde crowd. Where, then, did I belong?

  Right after Halloween I started gathering information about all the after school organizations. Among those I quickly crossed off my list were the automotive, chess, rifle, math, visual aid, and science clubs. I also wasn’t drawn to Hebrew culture, photography, language, and modern dance—all of which would have been relatively easy to join. The one that gave me some pause was the creative writing club. That was until I found out that Rita and Sarah were in charge.

  The organizations I wanted to belong to were the yearbook (The Dolphin) and the newspaper (The Chat?) editorial staffs, plus, Arista (the honor society), the G.O. council, and the senior play committee. To get into any of those you had to be invited or nominated. But how would that happen if nobody knew who I was?

  With summer league baseball still so far off, music became my temporary refuge. By Thanksgiving I was tuning in again to Jazzbo Collins’s late night show. I convinced myself that by listening to jazz I was cultivating an esoteric taste. In school I’d casually refer to “Miles,” “Diz,” “Bird,” and “Monk,” the way I used to mention baseball players.

  On Saturday mornings I’d listen to Martin Block’s Make Believe Ballroom on WNEW. That’s where I discovered Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Nat “King” Cole. It was also my first exposure to Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart, the Gershwins, and Johnny Mercer. Their songs conjured up visions of a cosmopolitan, “uptown” milieu, so opposed in values and style to the downtown Bohemian lifestyle. At different times, in different moods, I was attracted to one or the other—sometimes to both simultaneously.

  But when it came right down to it, jazz and standards were aimed more at well-heeled adults and Ivy League college types than at adolescents like me.

  On a Friday night in late November, I was lying in bed half listening to Jazzbo Collins. The only light in the room was the orange-yellow glow on the dial of my pl
astic Philco. During a commercial break, I turned the dial, randomly scanning other stations. When I hit 1010 WINS, I perked up. The music coming out of the tiny speaker was unlike anything I’d heard. It wasn’t pop and it wasn’t jazz. Above the four-part harmony, a lead singer was crooning in a plaintive, almost pleading baritone. He sounded like an adolescent boy lamenting a lost or unattainable love. The music—piano, drums, and upright base—and the harmonies were simplistic. The lyrics were corny, even trite. But they seemed so familiar, so personal—the kinds of embarrassing things you’d always wanted to say to a girl you had a crush on.

  The song was “Earth Angel” by The Penguins. The program was Alan Freed’s Moondog Show. Freed, who sounded like a hyper used car salesman, kept calling the music rock and roll, a term I’d never heard before.

  For weeks afterward I gathered all the information about this music that I could. Some disc jockeys called it R&B, others referred to it as doo-wop or “neighborhood street-corner” music. The music was an urban hybrid form derived from traditional black American blues. But clearly it was aimed at middle-class white teenagers like me. Even then I knew that rock and roll had something to do with girls and sex. I could sense that this music could open up whole new vistas to me.

  The State Diner was the gathering place for most of the school’s shakers and movers. I’d been so removed from the social scene that on Friday night of final’s week I decided to go to the diner and see it all for myself. I couldn’t bring myself to go alone, so I invited Mike Rubin to come along.

  The diner was located in Far Rockaway on Beach Channel Drive and Bayswater Avenue, just beneath the El station. The parking lot was packed with choppers, hot rods, and assorted junkers from all over town. I could see silhouettes moving behind the drawn window blinds, and above the rumble of the Manhattan E-train, muffled strains of jukebox tunes drifted out into the lot. As Mike and I stepped into the alcove we inhaled the aroma of French fries and greasy hamburgers sizzling on the open grill. To the left was a pullout cigarette machine, to the right, bubble shaped pie and cake containers sat on the Formica counter right next to the glass encased menu that offered BLTs, grilled cheese sandwiches, burgers, fries, tuna and egg salad sandwiches, malts, egg creams, cokes, shakes, and the all-night special—two eggs any style with hash browns and toast.

  Directly behind the counter were the stainless steel mixers and the sputtering grill; to the right, rows of red upholstered booths with red Formica tabletops. Each tabletop had an accordion shaped “Seeburg” jukebox that sat right next to the window, right between the creamers and the condiment trays. Above the noisy chatter and the clink of silverware and plates, jukeboxes blared out songs like Sinatra’s “Young at Heart,” “Sh-Boom” by the Crewcuts, the Hilltoppers’ “Till Then,” and “The Little Shoemaker” by the Gaylords.

  If you were a freshman, you knew to sit in the back. As soon as we spotted an open table, we threaded our way down the narrow aisle. Peering through the haze of smoke, we squeezed past the sweaty crush of guys and girls who stood between the booths and the counter preening and showing off.

  Before we were even seated, the waitress appeared. She was wearing a shapeless pale yellow dress, a smudged white apron, and scuffed gym shoes. She tapped her pencil, snapped her gum, and scribbled down our orders. Then she sashayed away.

  Mike and I looked around the long, narrow room to see who was with who. The diner’s fixed hierarchy reminded me of the junior high school bus. The greasers and hoods still acted the same way. They flicked their cigarette butts on the floor and draped their muddy boots across the tables. One of them yelled to a passing waitress, “Hey cupcake, I need a refill over here.” Others made loud, crude remarks to the girls who were with them. But no one in the diner even bothered to turn around and stare at them. Somewhere between eighth grade and freshman year, they’d lost their aura.

  Two tables in front of them were the preppies; current and future class officers, newspaper and yearbook editors, and honor society leaders. I also recognized some of the popular girls from grade school and junior high.

  The old clique—Mandel, Klein, Nathanson, and Pearlman—sat between the greasers and the preppies. It was odd not to see them being the center of attention. Still, it was just a matter of time before they’d be the preppies’ heirs apparent.

  But not even the preppies were the top dogs here. The acknowledged royalty—the varsity athletes and cheerleaders—always held court at the three booths closest to the front door. Football heroes like “Moose” Imbrianni, Leon Cholakis, and Angelo Labrizzi all wore standard jock threads; red and blue letter jackets with tan leather sleeves, V-necked sweaters with white undershirts, tight jeans, and black Converse high-top sneakers. The cheerleaders were dressed in tight skirts and form-fitting blouses. Each one was wearing her boyfriend’s oversized white cardigan letter sweater.

  All evening, I noticed that everyone in the diner would periodically glance over at the front tables. But the athletes and cheerleaders never let on that they were aware they were being scrutinized.

  By the time we left I was almost dizzy with envy. On the bus ride home I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. I knew I’d never be satisfied until I was a part of that exalted group.

  On a chilly March afternoon I cut seventh period Biology to go watch baseball practice. It had been on my mind for weeks.

  The workouts were closed to anyone who wasn’t affiliated with the team, so I stood outside the field huddled in a windbreaker, straining to see through the chain link fence. My heart leapt the second I saw the team’s uniforms. They were exact replicas of the Brooklyn Dodger’s uniforms. In place of the traditional blue scripted Dodgers was the word Rockaway, and stitched just beneath the high school’s name were small red felt numbers. I knew immediately where those uniforms came from. In August of ‘51 the Dodgers had little red numbers placed on all their uniforms—in anticipation of the team’s appearance in the World Series. But that was before Bobby Thomson hit “the shot heard ‘round the world.” Everyone knows the rest of that story.

  It took a little digging for me to find out how the high school got those uniforms. In the fall of ‘51, the school’s administration decided that Far Rockaway would have to cancel its ‘52 baseball season because they couldn’t afford uniforms and equipment. The rumor goes that the Dodger brass donated the tainted uniforms to the high school. Everyone made out on that one. The Dodger organization took public credit for its philanthropic gesture, and the high school team got to keep on playing.

  As I stood outside the ball field that cold afternoon, I promised myself that I’d endure whatever hardships it would take to earn one of those uniforms.

  I stayed sharp that summer by pitching in the Rockaway Beach Teener League—a loosely organized conglomerate of local teams whose talent at best was pretty uneven. I was the number two starter on my team, but I knew I’d need to challenge myself by pitching against higher caliber teams.

  The Coney Island league fielded some of the best teams in the city, developing some of the best high school players in the city—including Lafayette’s great pitcher Sandy Koufax, Manual Training’s Joe Pepitone, Frank and Joe Torre from St. Francis Prep, and Tommy Davis, the former basketball and baseball star from Boy’s High. Koufax, of course, became a Dodger Hall of Famer; Pepitone had a colorful and turbulent career with the Yankees; Tommy Davis played with the Los Angeles Dodgers; Frank Torre was with the Milwaukee Braves, and his brother Joe played for years with the Cardinals and Phils before becoming a Yankee manager.

  In midseason I managed to catch on as a backup starter with one of the more average teams in the league. I didn’t get to pitch a lot, but when I did get an inning or two I could see how tough this level of competition was. Almost every player in the league was a starter on his high school team. Even my mediocre team was a notch better than any I’d ever played on. That summer I earned every out that I got.

  Always the salesman, my father continually preached to us that “It’s not
what you know, but who you know.” One of his pinochle partners was Al Seidman, an attorney who back in his college days pitched for the University of Michigan and later in the low minor leagues. My father asked Al to give me some pitching advice. Al agreed, and in midsummer I began working out with him in his backyard.

  Al was a grey haired, distinguished looking man in his late forties. He had a little bit of a paunch, but he possessed all the loose-limbed mannerisms of an ex-pitcher. A gentle, soft-spoken man, he reminded me of my grandfather Hymie and of coach Bleutrich. After a while, I even started calling him “Uncle Al.”

  Al tutored me with great patience. To him, pitching was an art and a craft; he had a firm grasp of the “inner game” that goes on between pitcher and batter. Al also knew that I didn’t have the size or power to dominate hitters. But he recognized my intelligence and willingness to work hard. In post-workout conversations, he’d dope out specific strategies to help me outthink the hitters.

  “There’s a fine line between throwing a pitch over the plate and making a pitch look like a strike,” he said. “You want it to look like a strike for as long as you can. By the time the hitter commits, the ball’s already a hair outside the strike zone.”

  I’d always had an intuitive grasp of baseball strategy. And what I didn’t know, I’d learned from studying big league players and managers. Most everything Al told me made sense. He saw that I had a good sinker, so he kept reminding me to keep the ball between the batter’s belt buckle and his knees. He also taught me how to throw the curveball at three different speeds to three different locations. I’d figured some of this out on my own, the hard way. But his confirmation gave me even more permission to trust my instincts.

  The other person my father schmoozed that summer was Gail Sloane, our neighbor from across the street. Gail was an attractive woman in her mid thirties. She had strawberry blond hair and an hourglass figure. Some of the kids on the block bragged about hiding in the bushes and spying on her when she sunbathed in the backyard.