“If I don’t practice, how will I ever make the team?”
“That’s your problem,” she said. “Instead of enjoying yourself, you worry too much about impressing those dreadful coaches.”
She was right. I’d been so driven to make one team or another that I’d sacrificed just about everything else.
Over the past few months, I’d started to feel a little bit better about myself. Last year I’d grown a couple of inches, bulked up, and even lost a lot of my baby fat. When I looked in the mirror, I no longer saw a short, chubby, homely kid. Maybe it was time to start coming out of my shell.
What first drew me out was a series of unexpected postcards from Ronnie Zeidner and Rob Brownstein. I’d envied those guys from as far back as sixth grade. They had it all: money, popularity, and athletic ability. Both were already starting on the varsity baseball and basketball teams at Poly Prep and Woodmere Academy. And I’d recently heard that they were part of an exclusive crowd of guys who were hosting wild parties in their parents’ plush Manhattan apartments.
Ever since I’d read The Catcher in the Rye I’d been ambivalent about that whole milieu. Like Holden Caulfied, I’d always resented the spoiled rich guys he calls “phony bastards”—the preppies who paraded their entitlement. Yet, I couldn’t help but wonder what it was like to be a part of that scene. Lately I’d even been thinking about someday attending Columbia, so I could hobnob with the Ivy League types and urbane Barnard coeds. It was a universe that seemed so far beyond my means.
I was reminded of all this when I started receiving those postcards. Both guys were junior counselors at a sleep-away camp in the Adirondacks. On the front of the cards were color photos of rustic-looking cabins surrounded by impossibly blue lakes and abundant woods. Scribbled on the back were descriptions of lazy afternoon swims and moonlit canoe rides over to the girls’ camp, where Ronnie and Rob would romance their counterparts. Or so they claimed.
If that wasn’t enough to fire my imagination, the lyrics to summer love songs like “In the Still of the Night,” “You’re a Thousand Miles Away,” and “The Great Pretender” were continual reminders of what I longed for and didn’t have. Even thirteen-year-old Frankie Lymon was crooning about why fools fall in love.
It had been two years since my mortifying encounter with Karen. Since then, I’d dated only one girl, Carole Wertheimer; and she was strictly a platonic friend.
We’d known each other since our Hebrew school days. Our parents were officers in the Temple. Initially they tried to play matchmaker, but that only made the two of us more self-conscious.
We each had a secret crush on the other, but, neither of us wanted to risk declaring our real feelings for fear that the other wouldn’t reciprocate.
So we settled into a routine where Carole would listen to my litany of complaints about girls. I tried to do the same for her whenever she asked for advice on boys. God knows I was no authority on that subject. Lately I’d been whining so much about not being able to get a date that Carole offered to set me up with Donna Kaufman, a girl who used to baby-sit for her kid brother. When I cross-examined Carole, all she’d tell me is “You’ll like her. She’s different.”
Thinking about a blind date is like preparing to pitch against a team you’ve never faced. You rehearse your repertoire; you worry about how you’ll match up; and you wonder if you’ll be able to get it together enough to keep your composure. In both instances you have to be prepared for your game plan to go wrong and be ready to make split second adjustments—all of which came a lot easier to me when I was pitching than when I was dealing with girls.
As it turned out, Donna was just as Carole had predicted. She was attractive in a Bohemian sort of way—dark disheveled long hair, no makeup, and a little portly. She wore all black and liked jazz, modern art, and poetry. Her demeanor attracted and intimidated me. In some ways, she reminded me of Sarah and Rita, the old yearbook editors. It’s too bad Peter Desimone wasn’t interested in girls; Donna would have been a perfect match for him.
I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot, so I took Carole’s advice. I spent the evening asking Donna about herself. But I wasn’t doing it only because I was coached. Donna was fascinating in her own right. She was almost two years younger than me, but she seemed more mature than most of the girls who were my own age. Listening to her, I could tell that she went her own way and didn’t cozy up to any of the popular kids in junior high. She was a more cerebral but less glamorous version of my fantasy goddess, Cindy Levine.
For someone so young, she was awfully opinionated. She was adamant about letting me know that she wasn’t a sports fan or a follower of rock and roll. Rock and roll was, as she phrased it, “juvenile music.” And about baseball, she said, “Why does it matter that a team of professional athletes wins or loses a game?”
Donna also disapproved of my obsession with being popular. One time when I was complaining about the snobbishness of the clique, she called my bluff.
“Why do you want to impress people you don’t respect or have anything in common with?” she asked.
I didn’t like being put down, but she did force me to examine myself more honestly. In her way, Donna suggested that I might be a more interesting guy if I worried less about baseball and popularity and began paying attention to more important things.
To the casual fan the ‘56 baseball season was business as usual. The Dodgers and Yankees won their respective pennant races. For the fifth time in nine years, they played each other in the World Series. The Yankees won it in seven games, the highlight of course being Don Larsen’s perfect game—still the only one in Series history.
More disturbing were the rumors that the Dodgers might soon be leaving Brooklyn. As far back as a year before, Dodger owner Walter O’Malley had publicly hinted that if the city didn’t provide the team with a new stadium, he would consider moving the Dodgers out of New York. Giant owner Horace Stoneham quickly followed suit. He was quoted as saying that if the Dodgers left Brooklyn, he’d move the Giants elsewhere as well.
The two owners had been complaining for years that their ballparks were old and in disrepair, that the neighborhoods around Ebbets and the Polo Grounds were deteriorating, that attendance had been decreasing steadily, and that they were losing money—an all too familiar owner’s litany, as the following four decades would demonstrate.
To back up his threat, O’Malley sold Ebbets Field to a developer in the summer of ‘55. This past season he scheduled seven Dodger “home” games in Jersey City. And in December he sold Jackie Robinson’s contract to, of all teams, the Giants.
I was too absorbed in my own struggles to understand the implications of these transactions. But in some obscure corner of my mind, I sensed that both the Dodgers’ fate and my own were about to be irrevocably altered.
I wasn’t planning on being an assistant football manager in the fall. But on the first day of practice Kerchman cornered me in the boys’ john. Without so much as a “Hello, did you have a good summer?” he informed me that this year I’d be the liaison between him, the players, and the head manager. How he even knew I was in the bathroom is a mystery to me.
“Look at this as a promotion, Stein-berg,” he said, while I stood at the latrine fumbling with my zipper.
This was the first time Kerchman had ever sought me out for anything. If I had any hope of pitching in the spring, there was no way I could turn him down.
That season, my junior year, I had a much easier time of it. Mostly I worked with the head manager, Krause, and I delegated all the grunt work to the assistant managers. On game days I stood behind the bench and kept the stats.
I found that I liked being behind the scenes managing things. Plus, my “promotion” included an unexpected perk. My charge was to write up the highlights of each game and phone my “story” in to several newspaper sports desks.
Five of them, the World Telegraph and Sun, Journal American, Daily News, and Daily Mirror, ran composite summaries of the games. But the New York
Times, Herald Tribune, and Long Island Press not only printed my game summaries almost verbatim, but a couple of times they even gave me a byline.
The first time I saw my name in the New York papers I ran out and bought three copies of each one. I clipped the articles and pasted them into a scrapbook alongside my sixth grade columns. Soon after the first two stories appeared, the editor of our local paper, The Wave, asked me to write a 600-word weekly article on the remaining six games.
I took full advantage of the moment. On the long bus ride to school I boasted to anyone who’d listen that I was a “stringer” for the Times and Herald Tribune, which of course was a slight exaggeration—in the same way that making it past first base with a girl could be construed as having sex.
At the football banquet I got another major letter that I couldn’t wear. But this year I was determined to pitch enough innings to earn my varsity baseball letter. For months I’d been envisioning myself sitting at the State Diner jock table, bantering with the other letter winners and their cheerleader girlfriends. As soon as we were back from Christmas break, then, I started throwing indoors with Bob Milner, our second-string catcher.
Things in school were also beginning to look up. My grades were good, especially in English and History; I’d started thinking about what colleges I’d apply to; I began studying for the junior boards; I was writing sports features for The Chat; and at the end of the term I was accepted into an advanced Journalism class—a class I’d set my sights on since I was a freshman.
Over a hundred students applied for admission, and only twenty-two were selected. Earl Jagust, who taught the class, was one of the most popular and quirky teachers in the school. Jagust, it so happens, was also The Chat’s faculty advisor.
Between baseball and Jagust’s class, I finally had something to hope for. But now that the stakes were raised, I had a lot more to lose as well.
That fall Donna and I saw each other every weekend. By this time our roles had become even more clearly defined. Donna had taken it upon herself to become my intellectual and cultural guru. And, to my benefit, I was a willing accomplice. On alternate weekends she’d escort me downtown to the Village jazz clubs and coffee houses I’d been so curious to see. At the Village Vanguard one Friday night, I sat transfixed, watching Thelonius Monk, his eyes closed, head tilted back, riffing off the melody line of “Straight, No Chaser.” That same night we saw John Coltrane play an extended solo as if he was in a trance. Another time, at the Village Gate, we watched Miles Davis, his eyes bulging, cheeks puffed out, blowing into that shiny gold horn that he tilted straight up to the ceiling, as if to defy the gods. We also saw Gillespie and Coleman Hawkins and the Adderley brothers jamming after hours. In live performance, jazz was far more captivating than I’d ever imagined.
One Saturday night we stumbled out of a jazz club at three A.M.—both of us drunk with elation, our nerve ends still tingling. The only sensation I could compare it to is the unconscious rhythm I’d drift into when I was pitching well. I described for Donna in detail what it was like to be in that “zone.” It’s what jazz musicians call “the groove,” I told her. I don’t think she bought my analogy. It was the baseball comparison that put her off.
Her campaign to educate me included excursions to Upper East Side “art house” theaters where we saw foreign films like The Virgin Spring and The Seventh Seal, which I admit went completely over my head. We went to avant-garde plays like the revival of The Threepenny Opera. Yet, when I suggested we see My Fair Lady, Donna turned up her nose. Maybe the Pygmalion story or, in our case, the reverse Pygmalion story, was too close to home for her.
There was no denying that Donna was a snob. That was part of her appeal. But we were kindred spirits in other ways. Both of us wanted a more exotic existence than the one we were given. For her, it was the Bohemian scene; for me it was becoming a baseball star. Also like me, Donna didn’t talk much about her family. Neither her mother nor her father had a college education. She never invited me to her house, I think because she was ashamed of them.
It was clear when I met her that Donna was already reinventing herself. But I was still groping, still uncertain of who I was. It was inevitable that we’d eventually part company. I didn’t expect it to be so sudden, though. It happened shortly before baseball tryouts began. She told me that she couldn’t bring herself to accept this obsession or my need for recognition.
But I wasn’t ready to give up either one—no matter how gauche or childish they seemed to her.
12
At tryouts in February I practiced with the veterans, easily made the cut, and even got an old hand-me-down uniform. It wasn’t the Dodger uniform I’d hoped for, but at least I was a legitimate member of the team.
I knew I had to wait my turn behind Berman, Gartner, and now Silverstone. But I hadn’t counted on Andrew Makrides or Steve Coan. Both were sophomores, and both were big and strong and threw hard. I sensed I was being passed over, but I pitched batting practice, kept my mouth shut, and waited for my turn to come.
By the end of the preseason, my patience had run out. I was in the bullpen rehearsing what I was going to say to Mr. K when he called me in to pitch the last three innings of our final preseason game. I wasn’t expecting it. Coach, it seemed, had an instinct for knowing just how far he could go with me. I knew if I didn’t show him something special, I might never get another chance.
Naturally, I started out tight; my concentration was way off. I walked the first man, got the next on a force play, then gave up a hard-hit double on a sinker that hung. Second and third and one out. I watched Kerchman carefully, looking for a signal of some kind. But he was going to make me pitch my way out of this—or else suffer the damage.
I had to make a fast mental adjustment. So I gambled and walked the next man intentionally. I saw the look on Kerchman’s face. Loading the bases was a risky move, even though it set up a double play situation. But there was another reason I did it. I was buying time for myself. It was the only way I’d get myself to settle down.
After the intentional pass, I slowed my pace and began pitching more deliberately. I remembered Al Seidman’s advice. I repeated it over and over like a reproachful mantra: “Mix up your pitches. Change speeds. Keep the ball down. Make ‘em hit your pitch.” On a two-two count I threw a low, outside breaking ball that the batter reached for and hit into an inning-ending double play—second to short to first.
That’s all it took. Once I got my confidence back, it was like pitching summer league ball. I got through the next two innings without giving up a hit. Even throwing less than my best, I was convinced that I was ready to pitch at this level. But what mattered was that Kerchman believed it too. I knew I’d have to wait a while longer to find that out.
I got my first clue when the league season began. We had another strong team. As expected, Berman and Gartner pitched the important games. Silverstone got an occasional start, and he was first man out of the bullpen. But in the blowouts Makrides and Coan always got to finish. I sat in the bullpen and never even got a call to warm up. It was like I’d never pitched those three preseason innings. To Kerchman I was still invisible.
During the bus trips home, everyone horsed around. Typically after a winning game on the bus home, we’d all be listening to rock and roll on WABC or WINS. The music was cranked up to the threshold of pain, and guys were croaking lyrics from “Don’t Be Cruel” or “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” while others poked their heads out the window, whistling and shouting stupid come-ons to the girls in the street.
Those bus rides were ordeals. There was no place to hide. Harder still was when Kerchman passed the scuffed-up game ball around, which we’d all sign for the winning pitcher. I burned with envy when Silverstone, Makrides, or Coan got one of those balls. And once we reached the high school, I’d have to watch my teammates receiving kudos from the cadre of parents, girlfriends, classmates and, of course, the cheerleaders.
As soon as I got off the bus I’d sneak off under
the cover of darkness. All the way home, I’d admonish myself for not having the guts to quit. Then I’d start thinking about what it would feel like to hold one of those game winning baseballs in my hand.
Whenever baseball went badly, I’d usually pull away from everyone and sulk. I’d walk around school in a perpetual funk and berate myself for allowing those moods to ruin my enjoyment of everything else. But lately I noticed that my sulks didn’t seem to last as long as they used to. I think it was because my social life was picking up. Part of it had to do with the way I looked. I’d been shaving for over a year, and in the last six months I’d grown to what would be my full height, 5’ 7'″. Plus, all those summers of lifting weights and running had gradually transformed me from a rotund, flabby kid to a solid looking, well-proportioned athlete. Buoyed by the physical changes, in mid-spring I began dating Ellen Wiseman, another girl Carole had fixed me up with.
At the same time, I was starting to plan for college. I’d taken the junior boards and had set up a series of campus visits for early fall. I’d narrowed my choices down to four schools—Syracuse, Boston University, Trinity, and Columbia. Mostly, I was flying blind. I didn’t even know if I could afford to go away to college. But my parents encouraged me to apply, on the chance that my grades would be high enough to qualify me for a loan or scholarship.
I picked Trinity College in Hartford because it was a “Little Ivy,” and because the son of one of my father’s pinochle partners went there. Boston University and Syracuse were my “safe” schools. Both, I’d heard, had good journalism programs. I didn’t have much of a chance of getting into Columbia, but I wanted to try for it anyway—because, well, it was Columbia.
On top of all the changes and new distractions, the one thing that consistently took my mind off of Kerchman and baseball was Mr. Jagust’s Journalism class.
Still Pitching Page 16
