Still Pitching

by Michael Steinberg

  My only real problem that spring was Silverstone. He’d won five of the six games he pitched. But I’d saved three of them, and he resented me for it. Mark hated sharing the limelight, especially with a former flunky. Every time I came in to relieve him, he took it as a personal insult. He’d yell stuff like, “You better not blow my game, peckerhead.” Or, “Keep it low, jerk-off. I don’t want my E.R.A. getting screwed because you can’t keep the fucking ball in the park.”

  One home run off me in ten games, and I can’t keep the ball in the park? I wonder if he thought these lines up beforehand. It’s true that Mark could rattle a corpse. But two years of taking shit from Kerchman had taught me how to shake those taunts off and keep pitching. Maybe all that hazing was a deliberate part of his design, after all.

  The following day against Jackson, Kerchman put me in again. Seventh inning, and Coan was pitching with a one-run lead. They had the bases loaded and no outs. Otto Agostinelli was up. Otto was a six-foot-four free swinger who led the league in home runs and strikeouts. My favorite kind of hitter. For reasons I’ll never understand, Kerchman waited until Coan went all the way down to three nothing on Agostinelli before he yanked him and brought me in. It was an impossible situation.

  “You’ve got a run to give,” he said. “But that’s all.”

  It was a strange comment. Maybe Kerchman was trying to take some of the pressure off me. But I wasn’t thinking tie. I wanted to win it now.

  Kerchman spat a plug of tobacco juice and tossed me the ball.

  With a three-nothing count, I thought that even Otto would be under orders to take the first two pitches. So I threw him two strikes, gut shots with nothing on them. I saw him grimace on the second one. He wanted that pitch back, for good reason. Even I could have hit that sucker. With the count full, I knew I had a chance. He’d be looking for another cripple right down the middle. You never want to let a free swinger extend his arms. So on the three-two pitch, I gambled and jammed him with a middle-in slider that should have been ball four. He swung, thank god, and tapped it off the handle. A weak ground ball to me. Easy force at home. One gone.

  There’s a kind of seesaw head game that goes on between a new pitcher and opposing hitters. At first, you’ve got to establish yourself as somebody to be reckoned with. Because from the moment you start warming up, their bench will be all over you, yelling stuff like “come-on cream puff, show me what you got,” among other less polite remarks about your mother and your origin of birth. But once you get that first out, the momentum shifts. The pressure is now on them. That’s when hitters begin to tighten up. Each one knows that he has to come through or it’s all over.

  Those are the kinds of situations a relief pitcher thrives on. If you can stay ahead of the hitters, you’re in command. I was super careful not to groove anything. The next guy hit a hump-back liner to second base. No damage there. Then the last hitter slapped a hard one hopper to Davey Cohen at third. I exhaled, thinking the game was over. We’d gotten through it again. But instead of stepping on the bag for the easy force out, Cohen panicked and threw the ball high and wide to first. My heart was in my throat. The ball looked like it was headed for the bleachers. But Dickie Webb saved our asses again. He jumped, backhanded the errant throw, and came down on the bag two steps ahead of the runner.

  On the bus trip home, I wanted to sink back in my seat and savor what we’d accomplished over the last two days, but I didn’t have that luxury. We were tied with Van Buren, and the winner of tomorrow’s game would advance to the borough finals.

  There was so much tension at home that I stayed in my room as often as possible. It also didn’t help that Julie brought up the move almost every time we talked.

  The ball games had distracted me, and writing the column also took my mind off the situation. But the night before the last game I found the rejection letters from Trinity and Columbia on my bedroom desk. I’d secretly believed all along that I wouldn’t fit in at either school. Still, I was devastated by the news. The letters were as impersonal and off-putting as the Dodgers’ October press release. And the timing didn’t help either. I never should have opened them before the season ended.

  I felt worse the next morning when I found out that the four guys in the clique, in addition to Silverstone, had all been accepted at Ivy League schools. Two of them, in fact, were going to Columbia. Their grades weren’t any better than mine. Was it legacy? Family money? An inside string that someone pulled? It was just one more reason why I desperately wanted this season to keep going.

  Van Buren had waxed us the first time, 8-1. I never even got up to throw. Their pitcher, Joe Sabbaritto, was one of the top prospects in the city. Scouts were comparing his fastball to the Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax, back when Koufax was pitching for Layfayette High. And their three and four hitters, McNab and Schumacher, were one-two in the borough. If we could beat this team, we’d have really earned the title.

  The next afternoon we traveled by bus to Alley Pond park in Douglaston—the longest road trip we’d ever taken. For the last thirty minutes of the ride Mr. K gave us the old rah-rah speeches, citing former players who always performed at their best under pressure. As a rule, those speeches never got to me. But this game might be it for us. So I took it all in.

  For the first two innings, Sabbaritto was throwing over ninety miles an hour. But he couldn’t find the plate, and when he did, his catcher couldn’t hold onto the ball. Kerchman knew that if this guy ever found his rhythm, we’d never hit the ball in fair territory again. So we took advantage of every opportunity we got. By the end of the second inning, we’d scratched out five runs on walks, passed balls, bunts, misplays, and stolen bases. We had them rattled. But in the third inning Sabbaritto found the groove and he shut us down. Struck out eight of the next nine hitters.

  Meanwhile, they kept pecking away at the lead. When it was 5-3 I was aching to get in there. I finally came in to relieve Makrides in the sixth inning. We were ahead 5-4. Two out and two men on. McNab, a lefty, was up. He’d already gotten two hits off Makrides. This was a perfect spot for Silverstone, I thought. Lefty versus lefty, and Schumaker, another lefty, was coming up. Besides, Mark hadn’t pitched for the last two days.

  My arm was so sore that my warm-up pitches had nothing on them, plus I didn’t have my head in the game yet. I should have stepped off the rubber and taken a second to think. Instead I tried to sneak one past him. I rushed the pitch, hoping to get it down and away. But it was middle-in, up in the letters—right in McNab’s wheel-house. He turned on it and hit a hard single to right. Tie ball game. How could I have done it? It was the worst pitch at the worst possible time. Now it was my game to win or lose. I hoped I had the stamina to keep going.

  For the next five innings Sabbaritto got even stronger, striking out batter after batter. In my two at bats I struck out looking each time. Sabbaritto was throwing so hard that his fastball looked like an aspirin tablet as it buzzed past your chin.

  The pressure from the last two days was taking its toll on me. I was tired, my arm throbbed on every pitch, and my control was off. Van Buren had men on base each inning. But somehow I’d managed to stagger through it without giving up the winning run. I’d gotten by for five innings on adrenaline overload, concentration, and fear.

  From the sixth inning on, there was a strange sense of inevitability about this game. We all felt it. There was very little chatter on the bench. Even Mr. K was subdued, almost as if he’d been hypnotized by what Sabbaritto was doing out there. We were in a tie game with the league title on the line, yet it felt like we were ten runs down.

  It was an effort to go out there every inning knowing that unless Sabbaritto had another sudden wild streak, we probably wouldn’t score again. But I had to block those thoughts out and just take it one pitch, one hitter, one inning at a time. After the first three extra innings, I created my own private game-within-a-game. If we weren’t going to score again, I wanted to see just how long I could make the game last. It was a weirdly exh
ilarating sensation. Each batter I retired felt like a major accomplishment.

  By the twelfth, I was so exhausted that the ball felt like a ten-pound shot put. I was almost pushing it up to the plate, grunting on every pitch. There were moments when I felt so arm-weary I was sure I couldn’t throw another pitch. But I couldn’t let anyone see how depleted I was—especially not my teammates. The moment I gave into the fatigue, the game would be over. I turned and looked at the four infielders. Like me, they were glassy-eyed and frazzled. Yet for the past six innings they’d been making the plays. I had to keep going. I called on every trick, every little piece of psychology I’d learned—including shutting my mind off and going on automatic pilot. At this point, it was a test of wills, an endurance contest.

  With two out in the bottom of the thirteenth, we finally cracked. McNab got to third on a misplayed fly ball. On a two-two count, Schumacher punched a good outside sinker past our drawn in infield for the winning hit. For the last six innings, I’d known it had to end this way—we all did. Still, I was in a daze when it happened. Five years of dreams and struggle, and just like that, it was over. Suddenly, all my energy was gone. As I trudged to the bus, my legs felt rubbery, my forehead was throbbing, and my right arm was on fire.

  On the ride home, no one said a word. I sat at the back of the bus, trying to sort out my emotions. One minute I felt a wave of admiration for everyone who’d been part of this marathon. The next minute, I was empty and dejected because I’d lost the season’s biggest game. Then, intermittently, I’d be overcome by a rush of elation. Despite the outcome, I’d pitched the seven best innings of my life.

  A few days later I realized that we’d gone way beyond even Kerchman’s expectations. He knew it too. At the banquet he gave everyone a varsity letter. While I was chewing on that injustice, Mr. K began to recite the customary platitudes before giving out the awards. The MVP trophy, I knew, was out of the question. It would go to one of the infielders or outfielders—maybe Dickie Webb. But I was a little disappointed that Davey Cohen, one of Kerchman’s football guys, won the most improved player award. What the hell, I thought, I’d already gotten my wish; and I’d had a dream season to boot, hadn’t I?

  Kerchman always saved the John Kelly award for last. Kelly, it seems, was a star football and baseball player in the ‘40s who’d been killed in a car accident. The award traditionally went to a graduating senior, often the number-one starting pitcher.

  I’d heard Mr. K recite the Kelly monologue so many times that I tuned most of it out. Besides, Lenny Stromeyer had leaked it to several of us that the gold medal already had Silverstone’s name engraved on it. We all agreed that Mark was a jerk, but he’d had a great season, and he deserved the award.

  I looked over at Mark, and I could read his mind: with one hand he was slipping the medal around some pretty cheerleader’s neck, with his free hand he was reaching down her blouse to cop a feel. So when Kerchman announced my name and said to that roomful of people, “Mike Steinberg is a kid who’d made the most out of a little bit of talent, a big heart, and a whole lot of guts,” I was too stunned to move.

  Before I could stand up, Mark yelled, “I don’t fucking believe this.” He stuck his middle finger up and stormed out of the restaurant, kicking over empty chairs as he went. Sure he was a bastard and a sore loser, but I half-admired him for giving Kerchman the bird. Last year, in this same banquet room, I’d wanted to stand up and tell Kerchman to take his minor letter and stick it. Instead I let him sweet-talk me into playing. And now, this.

  I don’t recall how I got to the dais, but I remember standing next to Mr. K, my thoughts scrambled, throat so dry I couldn’t swallow. Kerchman had his arm draped around my shoulder, flashbulbs were popping all around me, and everyone was standing and applauding. I squinted through my tears, frantically searching the blurred room for a glimpse of the expressions on the faces of my father and brother.

  The shock of winning the Kelly kept me high for several days. But there was a lot more to come. That weekend, I found out I was chosen third team all-city by the Long Island Daily Press. The next week I received an honorable mention from the Journal American. The biggest surprise of all was when a scout from the Phillies, and another one from the White Sox, offered me a minor league tryout.

  It was all so flattering and tempting. But I knew I wouldn’t accept. The chances of my playing professional ball—even at the lowest level—were just too remote. Even Zeidner, who was far more talented than I was, had lasted less than two days at a Yankee tryout camp.

  To cap it off, on the last day Jagust invited the editorial staff to read his Journalism class’s grades aloud; that weekend, I had a bit part in the senior play that got me a lot of applause and some laughs; and, as the Kelly award winner, I carried the flag at graduation. Except for the dreaded cross-country move, I couldn’t have scripted a more fitting ending. For years I’d tried and failed, worked my ass off, and suffered so much humiliation in the service of my dreams. And now, I’d gotten everything I’d longed for.

  For the moment, it felt like a just vindication. I forgot about the effort and the waiting, the disappointment and pain—even the bitterness and resentment I’d carried. Even if I didn’t fully believe it, I told myself that it was all worth it. That I’d earned it. And that I could not have done it any other way.

  A curious thing about the move west was that all my friends and teammates envied me. Some would be going to schools that were close to home. Some would commute. Some wouldn’t even be attending college. To them, the idea of attending college in L.A. seemed like a big, glamorous adventure.

  I wish I’d had the perspective to see it that way. To me, leaving New York meant that that I’d be starting all over again. I’d be giving up everything I worked so hard to get. Going to Syracuse or Boston U would have been a hard enough adjustment for me, but at least my friends and girlfriend would still be here. And I’d have a roster of accomplishments to build on. It terrified me to think about moving three thousand miles away, especially to a nutty place like L.A., where I knew no one. I’d recently read Day of the Locust and The Last Tycoon—both of which made L.A. seem even more off-putting.

  For the past two months, I’d been trying to think of some kind of scheme that would at least keep me in the east. The partial scholarships at Syracuse and Boston University weren’t nearly enough to cover my tuition and room and board. The only way I’d have even the slightest a chance to influence my father was to come up with more money. My first move was to ask Kerchman to write a letter to the Syracuse athletic department, recommending me for a baseball scholarship. It left me with only one more card to play.

  It was clear that my mother was still bitter over the move. Lately, whenever I argued with my father about it, she took my side. I knew he’d be leaving for L.A. ten days ahead of the rest of the family, so as soon as he left, I told her my plan.

  About a month ago, I’d approached my widowed cousin, Sarah Neiman, with a proposition. Sarah’s husband Abe was one of the coowners of Hymie’s old pharmacy. When he died ten years ago, his share of the pharmacy went to her. Sarah agreed to let me stay in her attic apartment if I worked at the pharmacy and contributed a small sum of rent money. But to do this, I needed my mother’s approval.

  For three weeks she and my father had been turning all my requests down. But now she had to deal with me on her own. I tried to make it seem as if I’d be her proxy here. It was a pretty transparent ploy, but after a week of listening to me whine, beg, and plead, I finally wore her down. It was, at best, a Phyrric victory.

  There were moments that summer when I felt like I was living an independent existence. I slept in Sarah’s attic, I saw Julie at night, and I played for a traveling semi-pro team on weekends. Other times, I felt like I was thirteen again. While most my friends were driving their own cars, I’d was delivering prescriptions on a borrowed old Schwin three-speed—something I vowed I’d never do again.

  I tried to make my father feel guilty for l
etting me down. I complained and protested long distance. I even asked Julie to intervene. In the back of my mind, though, I knew I was only postponing the inevitable.

  On the evenings when I didn’t see Julie I was stuck in Sarah’s hot, stuffy attic room with nothing to do but listen to rock and roll on the radio. It was like I’d regressed back to junior high. One night, almost by instinct, I turned the dial to WOR, where I used to hear Red Barber’s voice broadcasting the Dodger games. I got some DJ instead. That’s when it began to register—no more ball games to listen to late at night; no more Saturday pilgrimages to Ebbets Field; no more bickering at dinner or in the school yards about who’s the best team in New York. The Yankees were the only team left, and I simply couldn’t bring myself to listen to their games. I was getting so wistful that I was even starting to miss Kerchman and all the tsuris he’d caused me.

  Separating from Julie was the scene I’d dreaded most. All summer, our relationship had become more intense and desperate. We talked about how much we’d miss each other, and how we’d look forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. We even discussed the possibility of her coming to visit me in California.

  In the last two months, her parents were much more cordial to me. It was spooky. They’d invite me for dinner and put me up in the guest room on nights that I couldn’t get a ride home. It would have been nice to think that they were beginning to warm up to me. But the truth of course is that it was only a matter of time before they’d be rid of me. Why not take the high ground?

  About a week before I was scheduled to leave, Steve informed me that Julie had a crush on one of the older counselors at camp. He’d heard it of course from Annie. Steve had warned me before that Julie was fickle, that she’d had a different boyfriend for the past three summers. I think he was trying to prepare me for the inevitable break.