Still Pitching

by Michael Steinberg

  When I faced him in that last at bat, it was as if he was reading my mind on every pitch. He had ferocious concentration. He didn’t bite on anything that was even a hair out of the strike zone. He was looking for either a walk or for a pitch he could drive out of the infield. I threw everything in my repertoire. But I deliberately held back the sinker, waiting for just the right spot to throw it.

  I kept changing speeds and rotations, stepping off the rubber to disrupt his rhythm, moving the ball around—up, down, in, out—probing for a weakness. On a 3-2 count he fouled off seven straight pitches—all of them strikes. In the larger scheme of things, the game meant nothing. But I thrived on this kind of challenge. And evidently, so did he.

  One of Yogi Berra’s classic malapropisms is that “Baseball is fifty percent physical and ninety percent mental.” For me, the psychological battle between a smart hitter and a savvy pitcher is the essence of the game. I was determined to outwit Brown. On the thirteenth pitch, I threw a sinker, knee-high, just a hair off the outside corner. It was right where I wanted it: too close to let go, not good enough to hit hard. Most high school hitters would have been too anxious to take that pitch. But he just watched it go by as casually as if he was waiting for a bus. Before the umpire had even yelled “ball four,” he’d already flipped his bat toward the dugout and was trotting toward first base. That’s how cocky and smart he was. I could have sworn that he winked at me as he headed up the line.

  Pitching to Larry Brown that afternoon was just the reminder I needed. Given my limitations, I’d have to cultivate the same mindset and tenacity that great athletes like him possessed.

  By the time we opened our league season, I was aching with anticipation. In the first home game, against Woodrow Wilson, Kerchman started Silverstone. Knowing that two big league scouts were in the stands was all the incentive Mark needed. He pitched beautifully for the first four innings. By the fifth though, he started to leave too many fastballs up—a sure sign that a pitcher is beginning to tire. I started to mentally prepare myself. I studied the Wilson hitters more carefully, looking for tendencies and weaknesses I could exploit.

  In the top of the sixth Kerchman sent me down to the bullpen to get loose. I was ready after a couple dozen pitches. For the past two innings Mark had barely managed to get out of a few tough jams. In the top of the seventh, it was a scoreless tie. Just before Silverstone came out to pitch the inning, Kerchman motioned to the bullpen. As I was walking toward the mound, my stomach churning with anxiety, Mark threw a tantrum. In front of the team, fans, and school officials, he screamed, “I’m throwing a fucking shutout here. The scouts came to see me, not Steinberg.”

  Normally, Mr. K would can a player’s ass for a lot less than that. But Silverstone was our best pitcher, and Kerchman needed him. Bringing me in was the only way he could keep his hotheaded ace in line.

  This was my first important test in a league game. The ball game was on the line, and my father, brother, and Julie were all in the bleachers watching. Add Silverstone’s outburst to it, and I can’t remember feeling more unhinged on a baseball field. I don’t even recall Kerchman handing me the ball.

  I threw my warm ups in a daze, bouncing one pitch in the dirt and throwing another so far off line that it hit the backstop on a fly. I could hardly grip the ball my hands were shaking so badly.

  The first batter was Fletcher Thompson, Wilson’s pitcher and best hitter. I was sure he’d want to look at a few pitches just to get a line on me. To calm myself down, and also get ahead in the count, my first pitch was a gut shot—a letter high fastball that he took a clean rip at. My heart sank the second I heard the crack of the bat. I knew that he’d suckered me. As I watched the ball disappear over the center field fence, I was sure that Silverstone would come charging out to the mound and strangle me. That is, if Kerchman didn’t beat him to it.

  My cheeks burned and my jersey was soaked with flop sweat. How could I have thrown him a fastball? I don’t even have a fastball. Thinking about it tightened me up even more. I walked the next two men on eight pitches. I looked to the bench then to the bullpen for help. Nobody was throwing. Kerchman was going to leave me in there, even if it meant losing the game.

  In that split second, all my tension seemed to dissolve. Just knowing that I wasn’t going to get pulled somehow calmed me down. I forgot about the crowd and the home run. I even managed to block out the obscenities that Silverstone was still yelling from the bench. I slowed down and started concentrating on what I knew how to do best: pace the count, keep the ball low, and mix my pitches. I remembered the battle with Larry Brown, and I tried to call up that same mind-set. Once I got my concentration back, I struck out the next two batters and got the last guy on a routine ground ball to second.

  After the inning, nobody on the bench said a word. They didn’t have to. I knew I’d let us all down, especially Coach K. I was too numb to feel anything. It was getting dark, and the plate umpire told both teams that this would be the last at bats. I sat there, empty, waiting for the end. But with two out and nobody on, our first baseman, Dickie Webb, hit a homer off Thompson on a letter-high curve ball that hung. Thompson knew it the minute he let the ball go. You always do. As Dickie rounded the bases, Thompson kicked at the dirt, furious at himself for making such a lame pitch. I knew just how he felt, though at the moment I didn’t have an ounce of pity for him—any more than he had for me when he clocked my first pitch. As Dickie crossed home plate, I was the first one out there to hug him. The game had ended in a tie.

  I was relieved to have gotten off the hook. But later that night it ate away at me that I’d almost blown the game. I wondered if this was it—if I’d ever pitch again for Mr. K. I began to feel that creeping, familiar sense of dread. If I didn’t get another chance to redeem myself, I’d carry my failure and shame for the rest of the season—and for who knows how much longer after that.

  The next game was away, thank God, at Jamaica High. On the bus ride, I sulked quietly at the back. When the game started, I sat on the far end of the bench, watching and taking notes—just in case. We got off to a fiver-un lead. But Makrides lasted only four innings before they tied it up. I looked over at Kerchman. He’d already signaled for Coan to warm up. No surprise there; it was still the middle of the game. Yet the snub stung like a razor nick. We went ahead again, but Coan couldn’t hold the lead. It’s an awful feeling to have to root against your own teammate, but when Jamaica got within a run of us I started getting antsy. I wanted to run up to Kerchman, tug on his sleeve and say, “Put me in coach, I’m ready.” But I just sat and stewed.

  In Jamaica’s half of the fifth, with the score tied and the bases loaded, Kerchman signaled me to warm up. I was going to get a second chance. He walked out to the mound to stall for time while I got loose. When the umpire came out there for the second time, Kerchman summoned me in from the bullpen. Just before he left the mound, he put his arm around my shoulder and said, “You’re my closer. Show me you’ve got the guts I think you have.”

  Then, he gently dropped the ball into my open mitt.

  This time, I didn’t feel the least bit rattled. Part of it had to do with not having to pitch in front of the home crowd. But it was also a different situation from the one I was in a few days ago. When you come into a tight game with men on base, you don’t think the same way as you would when you’re starting an inning off with nobody on and nobody out. You have less time to prepare, which means, less time to worry. I’d have to rely here on instinct and experience. I couldn’t toy with the hitters or play any head games. I had to stay ahead on the count and keep the ball down. I got my three outs without giving up a run—all three on infield grounders. We scored four more times, and won the game 10-6. When it was over, I’d pitched three hitless innings. Nine up, nine down.

  The impact didn’t register until the bus ride home. For the first time, I joined in as we yelled and whistled and hooted out the window at the girls on the street. We loudly sang along as Dion and the Belmonts ha
rmonized “I Wonder Why” on the radio. Everyone on the team—except for Silverstone—signed the game ball for me. I didn’t let Mark’s snub bother me. In my own eyes, and I’m sure in Kerchman’s too, I’d redeemed myself.

  As I walked home in the dark, it began to rain. I slid the grass-stained baseball under my jacket and clutched it to my chest. When I got to my block I was soaking wet, and I was crying, then laughing hysterically, and singing “I Wonder Why” at the top of my voice.

  16

  My new-found confidence was starting to influence my writing. Naturally, I liked seeing my headshot and byline above my column. And of course I savored the attention it brought me. But I was discovering that what mattered most was the writing itself.

  From the start, Jagust had left me alone to pursue any subject that interested me. In the fall, I started out tentatively, writing standard stuff: impressions of the football team, player profiles, interviews, predictions of how the basketball team would do in the winter. I got my share of compliments, but the columns felt uninspired and routine.

  Right before winter break I decided to try something different. I wrote what amounted to an emotional confession, describing how I felt last October when I heard the news that the Dodgers were leaving Brooklyn. While I was writing the piece I was remembering how angry and insulted I felt about the bland, impersonal statement that the Dodger brass had released. I wanted my column to be just the opposite—passionate and personal. The minute I began the piece, I felt freer, less self-conscious. Soon, the writing seemed to take on a life of its own.

  I followed the Dodger piece with a column on my struggles to become a pitcher. I was worried that both columns were too personal, too self absorbed. Yet there were moments when the words seemed to flow without effort. It was like pitching “in the zone.” A delightful surprise. The same feeling would return whenever I wrote another column.

  It didn’t occur to me then, but those columns represented the union of two dominant passions—my love of writing and my devotion to baseball.

  Ever since the middle of the summer I’d had an unusual run of good fortune. It was like being on an extended hitting streak, and I was beginning to wonder just how long it would continue.

  One evening in mid May, halfway through the baseball season, my father and mother gathered Alan and me and sat us down in the living room. My father then announced that right after my graduation the whole family was moving to Los Angeles. I was stunned.

  Back in the fall, I remember hearing him complain that he was fed up with taking orders from incompetent bosses half his age. He was also worried that his decreasing commissions weren’t nearly enough to pay the household bills. Back then, I wasn’t paying very close attention. I’d heard him say those things so many times before. I’d been so preoccupied that I’d been paying almost no attention to what was going on at home. During football and baseball seasons I’d come home from practice sometimes as late as nine o’clock. I’d wolf down a warmed-over dinner that my mother had left out on the kitchen table, and then try to study for a few hours before bed. The next morning, I’d be up at six and at the bus stop by seven thirty.

  My first thought now was that the timing couldn’t have been worse. Just the day before I’d received two letters—one from Syracuse (Kerchman’s alma mater) and the other from Boston University. Both were acceptances, and both offered partial Journalism scholarships. Those were my two “safe” schools.” The ones I really wanted—Trinity and Columbia—were such long shots. Still, I couldn’t wait to tell everyone, that is, until my father dropped this news on us.

  For years, my father had been struggling with his problems at work. His firm had changed hands twice in the last twelve months. And just this past summer, he’d been told that he had to split his sales territory with a younger, more inexperienced salesman. It cut his commissions in half and forced him to go back to work at the liquor store. The final indignity was when his bosses requested that he break in the new guy.

  Still, in my wildest dreams I never imagined us leaving New York. Not for good, anyway. Did it mean I wouldn’t be going to college? What about my friends? What about Julie? I’d already envisioned the unchaperoned campus visits, the romantic reunions at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

  I tried to comprehend my father’s dilemma. He’d been failing himself and us, he said. This move was an opportunity to change all that. In the last ten days he’d taken out a bank loan, put the house up for sale, and signed a partnership agreement with a former client who’d started up a linen business in California. His partner would run the business, and my father would be the sales rep. He’d be based in Los Angeles, and his territory would be the Pacific Northwest: northern California, Washington, and Oregon.

  I tried again to see it from his point of view. It was an opportune time to stake out this new territory, he explained. A lot of retailers and manufacturers were moving west. If he didn’t take this chance, he said, he might miss his last chance to do something like this.

  I sat there, too numb to protest. Even if I wanted to oppose him, it was too late. My mother, never very flexible to begin with, had been firmly opposed to the move from the minute she’d found out. That was about a month ago. Of all of us, she stood to lose the most. She’d lived here almost all her life. Gone to school here. And her circle of friends were all in the Rockaways. So were my grandfather and aunt. Despite it all, she’d failed to dissuade my father from making this move.

  A part of me admired him for taking such a big risk. It was something my grandfather might have done. But the more I thought about it, the more depressed I became. The move would cost me everything I’d worked so hard to earn. It also bothered me that this was exactly what Julie’s parents had hoped for. That was reason enough to want to stay here.

  What troubled me most, though, was my father’s inflexible stance. He never bothered to consult any of us beforehand. Nor did he ask us, even after the fact, how we felt about it. Almost all of my old coaches operated in the same fashion. I didn’t like it then and I didn’t like it now. What was worse was that my father’s maneuver also reminded me of the arbitrary, impersonal way the Dodgers had treated their fans when they announced their own cross-country move.

  Within a few days, I started to dope out strategies and arguments that I hoped would convince my parents to let me stay here—at least until the summer was over. If I could buy some time, maybe I’d find a way to avoid the move altogether.

  Up until my father’s announcement, it had been a dream season for me. Of the twelve games we’d won, I pitched in ten—winning three, losing one, saving six.

  It still felt strange though, to read my name in newspaper articles, sign an autograph for a neighborhood kid, or hear the cheerleaders chanting “Steinberg, Steinberg, he’s our man. .” But the recognition wasn’t important anymore. Now I needed this season to last as long as it could. And the only way that could happen was for us to get to the city finals.

  With a week left, our rag-tag team was in a four-way tie for first place. Due to a series of early season rain outs, it all came down to consecutive road games against the three other co-leaders: Wilson, Jackson, and Van Buren. If we won all three, we’d make the playoffs. Then, anything was possible.

  The rematch against Wilson was a scoreless tie for ten innings. We’d managed to scratch out a run in the top of the eleventh on a walk, bunt, steal, and sacrifice fly. In the bottom of the inning, Silverstone walked the first two men and gave up a sacrifice bunt. He’d pitched almost eleven innings of one-hit ball, but Wilson now had the tying run on third and the winning run on second. It was crunch time. All we needed were two outs. I’d been up throwing every inning since the fifth.

  With everything on the line, Mr. K brought me in to pitch to, of all people, Fletcher Thompson—the same guy who’d jacked the homer off me in my first game. Silverstone was a lefty and so was Thompson. By bringing me in, Kerchman was going against one of the most time-honored strategies in baseball. Conventional wisdom d
ictates that Mark pitch to Thompson and I come in to face the right-handed hitter who was on deck. But it was too late to question it now.

  While I was throwing my warm ups, I was thinking “suppose the son of a bitch does it to me again?” From the bench Silverstone screamed, “Walk him, asshole.”

  This time, Mark was right. With first base open, it was the obvious thing to do. But Mr. K had a different agenda in mind. He stood on the mound and ordered me to pitch to him.

  “Nothing too fat,” he said. The obligatory strategy talk. “If you walk him, make him earn it. Try and get him to fish for one.”

  Sure, coach, no sweat, I wanted to say. Why do they even tell you stuff like that?

  I knew Thompson would be salivating to get another crack at me. Tease him, I told myself. Keep the ball low and away, out of his kitchen. On a 2-1 sinker that was low and just off the outside corner, Thompson reached out and poked a soft fly ball that started to tail back toward the left field line. Ordinarily it would have been a routine out. But Thompson was a lefty pull hitter and the outfielders were shading him to the right. Our left fielder, Ira Heid, had a long way to come. The ball hung up there just long enough. An instant before it touched the ground, Ira dove and backhanded it at his shoe tops. When the runner at third tagged and headed home, Ira bounced up and threw him out at the plate with a perfect one hopper to Milner. The Old Redhead would have called it a “bang-bang play.”

  The game was over and we were still alive. When I got to the bench, Silverstone was livid; and to tell you the truth, I didn’t blame him. He’d pitched an almost perfect game for eleven and a third innings; I threw just four pitches and got the game ball and the next day’s headline in the Long Island Daily Press. Welcome to the club, Mark.