Thought I hated the degrading football jobs, watching Kerchman in action continued to engage me. In his pregame pep talks he invoked the names of past Far Rockaway football heroes, and he preached impassioned sermons on the value of courage, character, loyalty, and team play. His scrimmages were grueling tests of fortitude and stamina. When players didn’t follow orders, he’d single them out for public ridicule. His favorite victim, it seemed, was poor Stuie Schneider, our best halfback.
At one practice session, it was getting late and everyone’s butts were dragging. On a drop-back pass play, Stuie brush blocked Harold Zimmerman, the oncoming defensive tackle. Harold and Stuie were good friends. Neither wanted to injure the other, especially in a meaningless scrimmage. But Kerchman was on to them. He stopped play and walked right up to them. He sighed and rolled his eyes—clearly playing to the crowd.
“Let’s see what you’ve learned this year Schneider,” he said.
Without pads or a helmet, the coach took a three-point stance on the defensive line and came charging right at Stuie. My encounter with Sullivan had put me wise to this tactic. We all held our collective breath. As scared as Stuie was, he knew what the stakes were. So he stayed low, dug his cleats into the turf, and proceeded to knock Kerchman right on his butt. Everyone, I bet, was inwardly cheering. We all looked down at the ground and pawed the dirt with our cleats, waiting to see what the coach would do. I was pretty sure what was coming next. Stuie had played right into Kerchman’s hands. Did coaches talk to each other about stuff like this? Or was it just business as usual to them?
Just as I’d thought, Mr. K got up and clapped Stuie warmly on the shoulder pads.
“That’s the way to hit son,” he said.
Then he turned to the rest of the squad. “This is football, not cheerleading practice,” he said. “You make the man pay.”
It didn’t take long to grasp what Kerchman was trying to teach us. In a late season game against St. Francis Prep, Stevie Berman, our star quarterback, was picking their secondary apart with his passing game. When we lined up offensively, their guys tried to unnerve Stevie by calling him “dirty Jew,” and “kike,” and chanting in unison, “the Jews killed Christ, the Jews killed Christ.” We’d heard it all before—in the streets and on the playgrounds. It only made our linemen block harder.
By the end of the first quarter we were ahead by three touchdowns, and everyone could sense a fight brewing. Sure enough, on the next offensive series their nose tackle deliberately broke Stevie’s leg as he lay pinned at the bottom of a pile-up. It’s a chicken-shit maneuver because it’s so easy to execute. Before the ref can unscramble the pile-up, you just grab the guy’s leg and twist.
There’s a kind of perverse, unspoken ethic at work here. It’s agreed upon that taunts and racial slurs are part of the game. But when you deliberately take out an opposing player, especially the quarterback, it’s a declaration of war. As hard-nosed as Kerchman was, he’d never allow one of his own players to pull a stunt like that. But now that it had happened, he knew what had to be done.
As we carried Stevie off on a stretcher, Mr. K squeezed his hand and said, “Don’t you worry pal, we’ll get them back for this.” As if that was going to do Stevie any good.
Leon Cholakis, our 275-pound, all-city tackle lived for moments like this. I winced at the thought, but we all knew what was coming. Cholakis had been waiting all game for Coach to turn him loose. Kerchman nodded in Leon’s direction, and on the first play of the next offensive series, Cholakis hurled himself full-force on their prone quarterback. Even on the far sidelines, you could hear the guy’s collarbone snap. It was a clean break. When they carried the guy off, I had to turn my head away. The refs of course tossed Leon out of the game.
By now, things had gotten way out of hand. The crowd was yelling obscenities at us, students were throwing glass bottles out on the field, and fistfights were breaking out all over the bleachers. The South Arverne Boys Club, a Rockaway street gang, was mobilizing behind the stands in preparation for a sure rumble.
I wondered how we were going to get out of there alive. But Kerchman was way ahead of me. He quickly dispatched Krause and me to the locker room.
“Krause, find out how we can get the hell out of here the back way,” he said. “Then, report back to me.”
“Stein-berg, as soon as we know where to go, alert the bus driver where to pull up. Then let Krause know. Wait for us. We’ll be there in five minutes.”
By the time the St. Francis fans had spilled out on the field—some of them brandishing rusty tire irons and duct taped zip guns—our team had already snuck out through the basement boiler room door. We made it to the bus before anyone could figure out where we’d gone.
On the ride back to school I felt nauseous and dizzy. But a piece of me was grateful to Kerchman for protecting us. And for having the presence to get us out of there.
By the end of ‘55, rock and roll had become part of most every urban teenager’s identity. It validated our deepest passions and anxieties. For me, in particular, it was a retreat from all the ongoing disappointments and frustrations.
Vocal groups like the Moonglows, the Platters, and the Flamingos were expanding and refining the doo-wop sound—crooning songs about unfulfilled longing and unrequited love (our teenage anthem). At the same time, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino were raising the stakes. Songs like “No Particular Place to Go,” “Maybelline,” “Blueberry Hill,” “Rip it Up,” and “Havin’ Me Some Fun Tonight” lyricized our yearnings and curiosities about sex and lust.
In response, parents, the media, politicians, teachers, and spiritual leaders actively campaigned against the music, calling it “lewd,” “anarchistic,” “scandalous,” “offensive,” and “distasteful.” Which of course only increased the music’s currency with us. Rock and roll had given teenagers a voice and a common language. We were beginning to think of it as our own personal music.
Alan Freed was now the most visible disc jockey in the country. Teenagers lined up for hours to buy tickets to Freed’s live stage shows at the Brooklyn Fox and Paramount. The first time I went, I watched with envy as kids my own age danced in the aisles, screamed, and sang along while Chuck Berry did the “duck walk,” or Jerry Lee Lewis set his piano on fire. When the teenage heartthrob acts like Pat Boone were on, the girls shrieked at the top of their voices and jumped up and down in their seats, skirts flying above their knees. I could feel my whole body pulsing with desire. They looked exactly like the wholesome, pony-tailed girls in my classes—the pretty, popular ones I’d been day dreaming about since junior high—the girls who only let you get to first or second base.
Even at basement make-out parties, I’d never seen anything as openly uninhibited as this was. For the first time it dawned on me that those girls had the same kinds of desires as I did. Watching them gyrate to the beat of the music reminded me of the erotic jolt I felt at football games whenever the cheerleaders and boosters screamed and jumped up down as they rooted the team on.
Now more than ever, I wanted to be a part of the State Diner jock clique.
At the season-ending banquet in December, Kerchman announced the names of the players who’d won individual awards. It was no surprise that Cholakis won the John Kelly Award, the gold medal that traditionally went to the team’s inspirational leader and most valuable player. But when I walked up to the podium, I could see that Kerchman was holding a varsity letter in his hand. As he handed it to me, he shook my hand and said, “Nice job, son, see you in the spring.”
It would have been a breach of decorum for me to wear a varsity football letter. But Kerchman’s gesture disarmed me, and my baseball hopes soared.
11
On February fifteenth, more than 100 jittery dreamers turned out for baseball tryouts in the dingy, grey high school gym. No surprise there. Far Rockaway was the only high school on the peninsula, which meant that Kerchman always had his pick of the best athletes. More than 250 had tried out for foo
tball last fall.
On the first day Kerchman announced that he had ten spots to fill. Two would be pitchers. Then tryouts began. Standing less than twenty yards away, Mr. K swatted rubber-covered batting-range baseballs at would-be infielders. When he ripped a hard grounder, the rubber-coated ball would skip off the basketball court’s polished wooden surface and spin crazily across the floor. If the fielder missed the ball, it would rocket into the gym’s brick wall with a loud “thwack,” then ricochet back. The terrified rookies, myself among them, watched from the oval running track above the gym, while Imbrianni, Hausig, Berman, and Gartner—the veterans who’d already survived this ritual—got to stand right behind the coach, horsing around and heckling the newcomers. While I watched the drill, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of ordeal Kerchman had devised for the new pitchers.
We were the last group to tryout. Kerchman placed eight of us in a line across the width of the basketball floor. We each had our own catcher and one varsity hitter to pitch to. There were no nets or batting cages to separate us. No pitching screens to protect us. Kerchman and his veterans stood in safety, up on the running track, and when he blew his whistle all the pitchers simultaneously threw to the hitters. It was rough enough trying to concentrate on throwing strikes to varsity hitters, but as soon as you let go with a pitch, line drives and ground balls went whizzing past you. It was a scene right out of a Keystone Kops movie.
The drill, of course, was designed to unnerve us. Our job was to screen out everything else and concentrate on each pitch we threw.
That night, my arm was so sore that I slept with a heating pad wrapped around it. Every hour or so I’d get up and wander around the house, wondering if I should even bother going back the next day. But when the sun rose I was eager to get right back at it.
By the last day my arm throbbed with pain every time I threw a pitch. I had no zip left. I was sure I’d never make the cut. I tried to prepare myself for the worst. At home and in school I brooded and moped around, continually reassuring myself that I’d done the best I could under the circumstances. I slept in fits and starts. Late at night, a persistent voice would wake me up. “Who would you be without baseball?” it said. “If you don’t make it, what will become of you?”
Two days later Kerchman posted the final squad list. One spot was sure to go to Mark Silverstone, a cocky, Jewish lefthander from Neponsit. I disliked him, yet I envied his arrogance. The first time I went over to his house he pulled a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince off his bookshelf and pointed with pride to a sentence that read, “It’s better to be feared than loved.” It couldn’t have epitomized our differences better. Was he serving me some sort of notice?
A former prep school kid with a chip on his shoulder, Mark was handsome, a good athlete, a ladies’ man, and an honor student.
Silverstone kissed no one’s ass. He was a lot like Kerchman in that way. Either you dealt with him on his terms or he simply ignored you.
My hands were shaking as I scanned the alphabetically listed names. Right below “Silverstone” was “Steinberg.” At first I thought there must be another Steinberg, and when I read my first name I was too stunned to even speak. My first impulse was to telephone everyone I knew.
I was still a little wobbly when I went over to the equipment cage to pick up my uniform. I could barely wait to hold that Dodger jersey in my hands. Lenny Stromeyer, the student manager, scanned his list and abruptly informed me that “batting practice pitchers don’t get uniforms.” Nor, he said, did they travel to road games with the rest of the team. Then came the kicker: “At home games,” Lenny said, “your job is to stand at the entrance behind the backstop and chase the foul balls that are hit out of the park.”
He was openly gloating—letting me know in no uncertain terms who had more status than who around here. But who the hell was fat Lenny to be telling me this stuff? My gut burned. A batting practice pitcher? A ball chaser? I wanted to march right into Kerchman’s office and protest. But I had to remind myself that he’d cut at least three or four pitchers who clearly had more talent than I did. I wondered what that was all about.
On the bus ride home I kept telling myself that at least I’d made the team. I remembered my PAL season and how surprised Bleutrich was by my progress. Maybe the same thing would happen again.
When I pitched outdoor batting practice Kerchman was always egging me on.
“That’s the way to do it, Stein-berg. Nothing fancy, just throw it right down the pipe,” he’d say.
At first, I mistook his remarks for encouragement. But they were nothing of the sort. This was his way of reminding me of my role—that is, to be cannon fodder for the hitters. It was the varsity players’ confidence he was concerned with, not mine.
In the beginning, most of the veterans teased me because I wore my old VFW uniform at practice.
“Are you with this team, rook?” our catcher, Mike Hausig, yelled out.
“Hey water boy, toss a big fat one up here,” Imbrianni said.
“What’s VFW stand for, anyway?” Frannie Cooper asked. A beer bellied pitcher, Cooper was the team’s self-appointed buffoon. Before I could reply, he looked at the rest of the guys and said, “Personally, I think VFW means ‘Virgins fuck wimps.’” Then he laughed.
Just wait till these assholes have to hit against me. Two years of summer league had taught me that big, free-swinging sluggers—like Imbrianni, Hausig, and Cooper—were usually the most impatient hitters. They wanted to crank everything out of the park. So, when Mr. K wasn’t watching, every half dozen pitches or so, I’d sneak in an off-speed slider or a sinking curveball.
Just as I’d figured, most of the big hitters over-swung and either topped the ball or popped it up. But it still didn’t stop them from ribbing me.
“Man, can’t you throw any harder than that?” Imbrianni said. “The fuckin’ ball takes forever to get up to the plate,” Hausig said. To mask his frustration, Imbrianni added, “Yeah, I just got too tired of waiting.”
It’s exactly what I wanted. Maybe it would get Kerchman’s attention, even if it was just to chew me out for not being a pitching machine. But when I looked to Mr. K for some kind of acknowledgment, he’d say things to the hitters, like “What’s with you guys? If you let a little pissant like Stein-berg here make you look like a monkey, what’s gonna happen when you face a really good pitcher?”
I knew what he was doing, but I hated to have to stand there in front of the whole team and take it.
Then there were those afternoons when I’d have to stay late and pitch batting practice to the rest of the scrubs. And I dreaded the miserable Saturday mornings in March when the stiff ocean breezes blew winter’s last snow flurries across still frozen turf. The rest of the team would sit huddled in parkas, while me and Henry Koslan, another scrubbie, threw batting practice. An added indignity was having to listen to the varsity players complain about how hard Mr. K was driving them. Those guys didn’t know how good they had it.
By midseason I was feeling so demoralized that I had to do a heavy psych job on myself just to get to practice. The team was good, I rationalized. They’re on the way to winning the league championship. Imbrianni was leading the borough in hitting and Stevie Berman and Jack Gartner, both still juniors, were two of the best pitchers in the Public School Athletic League. Even Mr. K’s protege, Silverstone, only got to pitch the last few innings of a blowout.
It’s only your first year, I kept telling myself. Remember how long it took the Dodgers to get there. Just hang on and wait your turn.
The worst of it, though, was chasing those goddamn foul balls, while my classmates in the stands ragged on me. It was just like the humiliation I felt as a water boy or stretcher bearer. Couldn’t Kerchman at least have spared me that indignity?
By season’s end, I was just putting in time. We won our last five games and cruised into the playoffs. But just when it seemed we might go all the way, in the borough finals, Berman had his only off game of the season. Bry
ant High eliminated us 4-1. Silverstone told me that on the gloomy bus ride home Kerchman really reamed the guys out—told them that they played like girls. For once, I was happy not to have been there.
The season ended, as always, with the awards banquet. The local media, school bigwigs, and our families all attended. Just as everyone predicted, Imbrianni, a four-year letterman in two sports, won the top prize, the John Kelly Award. I got a minor letter, as expected, and I watched with envy when each member of the “big team”—including that bastard Silverstone—received his varsity R.
For the past three years, summer break had been anything but a vacation. And this year promised to be no different. As soon as school let out, I was running my two miles a day and working out with weights. I was going to Dodger games, playing American Legion and Teener League ball, delivering prescriptions for the pharmacy, and working in a canning factory, lifting heavy boxes of pineapples and peaches. I hated those long, boring days, doing the same repetitious jobs. And on the nights we didn’t play ball, I was too tired to even hang out at Art’s.
“Is it worth it?” I’d ask myself over and over again. Wasn’t vacation a time for having fun? For hanging around at the beach, pursuing a summer romance, going to sleep away camp?
I wanted to blame my family’s circumstances for my hardships. My parents couldn’t afford to send me to camp or give me much of an allowance, so I had to work at menial jobs I didn’t like. The real truth was that I was terrified of looking foolish in front of the other kids on the beach, and of feeling like an outcast at parties. So, I retreated into the familiar world of baseball, the one place where I could walk the walk and talk the talk.
One day I made the mistake of whining to my mother.
“Somehow, you manage to find time to play ball,” she said.
I had to scramble to find a rebuttal.
Still Pitching Page 15
