by Chris Lynch
“No it won’t, because I will not be getting in any cage, Richard.”
I knew there would be this initial slow period, an introductory phase. This was new to him, after all, this was foreign. But it was baseball. Even though Napoleon wasn’t a regular player, I knew he had to be familiar with the game. And once familiar, well, like I said, this was baseball.
“You gotta love it,” I said.
“No, actually. I don’t got ta.”
It was possible I was being mocked. But I’d have to let that slide because there were bigger issues at hand.
“Can you just trust me, Napoleon? Please? If you just give it a chance I am certain you are going to agree that baseball is it.”
He paused, politely. Then spoke. “Cricket.”
He couldn’t have been serious, or if he was it was simply out of misinformation or improper training or some other form of messing up somebody did to the guy when he was supposed to be taught the critical fundamentals of life like crossing at the lights, four basic food groups, and baseball.
I paused long enough to let him gather his thoughts more properly. “Cricket,” he repeated.
Right. What was I doing? Let him eat cricket.
“Okay,” I said slowly, “look at it this way. You could spend your time playing one-man cricket, which I don’t know the game but I figure is not a lot of fun, or you could take a shot at a game that you can play with lots of the guys.”
Napoleon looked at me very seriously. He appeared to be choosing his words carefully, but when they came out they didn’t sound all that carefully chosen. “From what I can see, Richard, I can’t imagine why I would want to play with the guys.” The way he snorted those words, the guys, it sounded as if he had a rocket of blue cheese crammed up his nose.
“You see there,” I said, pointing at a spot on his chest, as if I was identifying there. “There you go. There you go being impossible. You could try, you know. You could just... try.”
“Try,” he echoed.
“Try.”
“Why?”
Why. There’s one for you. Why indeed? What was I doing? So what if I knew baseball was the key to life? That didn’t mean he had to know it. So what if Napoleon Charlie Ellis seemed to be orbiting me for whatever reason since he showed up? That didn’t make him my responsibility. As long as I had a field of live bodies around me in a game of baseball I never cared much whose bodies they were. So what difference did it make now?
My world was a pretty tight diamond-shaped thing before, first-second-third-home, and that worked fine for me. So if Napoleon didn’t want to try, then fine. If he didn’t want to get along, then fine. That was his right. He didn’t want to change his way and I didn’t want to change mine. Fine. We really didn’t need to do this. We didn’t need anything.
“You gonna play ball with me, or what?” I snapped.
“Yes I am,” he snapped.
When we had paid our money and taken up residence in the cage, I decided the best thing I could do for my man to start him out was to lead by example. I handed Napoleon the bucket of balls and nodded toward the pitching machine.
“See what I’m doing here with my feet, Napoleon?” I asked. He was staring at me, but not at my feet.
“How did we decide that you would go first?”
“What? Of course I’m going first. I’m leading by example.”
“I know how to swing a bat.”
“Ya, but I’m going to show you the right way.”
I could see his one eyebrow go way up higher than the other and disappear under his shiny red batter’s helmet. “You mean you are going to show me your way.”
“Right,” I said. “The right way.” This time I didn’t look at him long enough to give him a chance to be difficult. If we were going to do this right, I was going to have to let a lot of Napoleon’s stuff just pass me by. Later, when he was great, he’d thank me for it. I looked down and began scratching in the dirt with my feet like a bull about to charge.
“Why do you do that thing with your feet like a chicken?”
I stood back out of the box. “Like a bull, Napoleon. I do it like a bull, not like a chicken. And I do it to get a good firm grip of the earth beneath me.”
“I see. Without it you will slip off the earth, is that it?”
Clearly it was time to block out the taunting and concentrate on the important business of addressing the ball. One of the many critical skills you learn from baseball is to focus on the job no matter what kind of nonsense people are talking at you.
There is no room in the game for the junk parts of life. That’s why the game is better than life.
My feet planted like oak roots, my helmet screwed down tight, my hands gripping the handle of my thirty-ounce bat tight enough to control it, loose enough to maintain the right feel. The heel of my left hand was flush up against the butt of the bat handle. I don’t like to choke up. You are lost in the universe if you’re choking up, and if you don’t know where you are in the universe how can you ever expect to hit a well-thrown ball? If you feel like you need to choke up you should just move to a smaller bat. Bat’s too heavy, then you’re too cocky. You embarrass yourself. Bat’s too light, you got no confidence. You embarrass yourself. And if there is no bat small enough for you then you aren’t ready to play so sit down for another year or two.
I have always taken the time to select the bat I could really hit with.
I was by now staring hard at the machine just the same as if it were a real flesh-and-bone pitcher. Searching for its eyes. It was humming, ready. I could not wait. From my hair to my fingertips to my clenching solar plexus to my twitching thighs, I was ready for this, like the first pitch of the World Series.
Like every pitch.
“Okay,” I called, “start feeding balls into that slot in back.” Napoleon did, and started it all coming.
Sling, it came. Hopping, spinning, straight. I felt what was almost a laugh come up out of me as I went after it, because I was so excited, and because the pitch was so fat and easy.
Whiff. I missed it by half a foot, and nearly screwed myself into the ground to boot. The place was like a combination airplane hangar/gym, and all the noises were exaggerated a thousand echoey times since we were the only people there. Like the sound of a swing and a miss, whiffing loudly around the place.
And the sound of the razz.
“That is the right way then? I think I can do that, Richard. I could do that when I was very little. I guess I am what you would call a natural, then.”
I hadn’t yet taught him the razz, so maybe he was a natural. All the more reason to ignore him.
I dug and dug my feet in again, into the batter’s box dirt, the only bit of natural ball field in the place. But just the right bit, the part the hitter makes contact with, feels his way into, connects himself to. With my feet in the dirt I always had the old feeling, that I was where I needed to be, whether I was playing under the lights at night in August, in the sun in June, on the crusted ground of February, or even this indoor weirdness. Feet in the dirt, hands wrapped just so around the bat handle. The rest was just a matter of time.
Humm, sling, on it came, and this time there was no laugh, no urge, no childish lapse of concentration. There was instead the crack. I never felt a thing, as the ball gave itself up to the very meatiest sweet spot way out on the bat barrel, and I did what a hitter is supposed to do. I hit.
The ball hissed as it sailed into the netting about twenty yards from the plate. It felt so good, my attention slipped once more as I stupidly paused to dwell on what had already disappeared into the net, and into the past.
Humm, sling, the next ball was on its way, my way, and I was just getting the bat up off my shoulder by the time the ball went past. Out of instinct, I made a lame wave at the pitch anyway, looking totally foolish and accomplishing less than nothing. It would have been wise to just let it pass, but that kind of wisdom has always come hard to me. I have trouble letting a pitch go by unmole
sted. Even a bad pitch.
“You tell me you have played this game before, is that right?”
Napoleon Charlie Ellis’s rag-the-batter skills were suspiciously well developed. I was going to have to watch him for other surprises.
He was good for me, though. Because that was the last of my breakdowns. For the next ten minutes solid, not a thing got past me. I hit a few squibs, a few fouls, a grounder and a fly ball, but I did not once swing without making contact with that ball. And not a one of those swings was halfway. I had my stroke in place, dropping my right shoulder at just the point of contact, torquing slightly in reverse before uncorking, with the bat on a straight plane the whole way, level to the ground and the roof of the sky. Or in this case, the roof of the roof.
It is really a simple thing, if you pay attention. I often wonder why everyone cannot figure out something so beautifully simple as hitting.
The more I swung, the more controlled and stronger I got. And the quieter Napoleon Charlie Ellis got. I could feel him there behind the machine, and after five years in the Regan Youth League, I had come to know the difference between the various kinds of noise and silence. Some guys will shut up when you’ve got it going just because they begrudge it, and won’t give you the satisfaction. But some are better than that.
“That... was remarkable,” Napoleon said. “You are so aggressive, the way you do that, like you have something personal against the ball.”
“I don’t,” I said, trying not to smile too much though his words felt pretty all right. “I love the ball. I just want to knock the skin off it.”
“And now it is my turn.”
“Yessirree,” I said, and handed him my bat.
He took it, looked at it. Ran his hand up and down the smoothness of it, and checked the inscriptions. Most kids went with Louisville Slugger, but I preferred Adirondack. He balanced it in one hand, then worked the grip. It was obvious that there was a foreignness about the bat to Napoleon, but it was also obvious that he appreciated a fine instrument. You could tell, in the way he was thinking about the feeling of the bat, measuring, stroking, examining it, rather than just grabbing it. He was treating the Adirondack right.
I liked that. Felt something like grateful about it.
“The bat is so different,” he said, smiling in a kind of wonderment. “The cricket bat is flat.”
“Fl—” I shook my head, in a definite wonderment. “How are you supposed to get a good whack at anything with a flat bat? Jeez. I mean it, Napoleon, I think I got to you just in time.”
I was still messing, but it was nearly the point where we had to cross over into serious business. The flat bat and all the other weirdnesses that followed my friend north were interesting, but I really thought I could help him recover from it all just the same.
“Will I show you?” I said carefully. I was careful because, while I might think I know everything in the world about hitting, I also know a guy can be pretty touchy about being shown stuff, when it comes down to it. Particularly when that guy tends to be touchy about just about everything.
“Why don’t I try it myself first.”
Like that. He’s stubborn, okay. I would have said the same thing myself.
First he tried doing what I did in the batter’s box, scuffing and digging first with one shoe, then the other. He didn’t get very far before breaking down in hysterics. “It’s just too silly,” he said, shrugging and letting the bat fall to his side.
I marched right over. “That’s because you are doing a Carlton Fisk,” I said, and went into Fisk’s famously weird and endless preparations of twisting one foot just so, like he was planting a rare delicate tulip bulb, then, about five minutes later, plant the second one. Then he did this sort of wiggle dance with his enormous behind—he wasn’t a fat guy, actually, just a guy with an uncommonly broad backside—then he would look at his bat, as if they had never met before, wave it a couple of times to see if it was loaded. Then he would address the pitcher.
“You don’t need to do a Fisk. Do a Yaz instead.” And I showed Napoleon what Captain Carl Yastrzemski did, which was basically stand like a tree with his bat raised as high above his head as he could manage while still facing the pitcher. It was hugely impractical, but it was a kind of monumental thing, like a statue to the art of hitting, and something every kid in Boston tried at least once.
“What about these twins people you keep talking about, Rice and Lynn. Maybe I should do them.”
“Can’t,” I said crisply.
“Why not?”
“Because I am Lynn,” I said.
“Ah. I see. Mr. Rice then?”
I thought about that. It was true that Jim Rice had an ungodly beautiful stroke. It was as if he didn’t even use his arms—great big arms, I might add—but just flicked his wrists. And still, his ball went a mile. This would of course be a great thing to copy. But it was all but impossible, especially for a beginner.
“Can’t be done,” I said with complete authority.
“I see,” he said, nodding. “You mean you can’t do it.”
“I can’t... I...?”
“That’s all right,” Napoleon assured me. “I will watch him on television and teach myself. For now I will improvise.”
I huffed, “I can’t... huh. ...” and went out to the machine.
And he did improvise. Looked almost natural, but a little stiff at the same time, as Napoleon crouched just slightly, leaning over the plate. His hand position was good, the two mitts pressed together and held midchest high. He had a hard concentration look on as he let out a short quick bark to get me to feed the first ball.
He looked so tough. I wanted to throw the ball myself. That’s what always happened when I saw an honest-to-god hitter. I wanted to go after him, to try and beat him, to pay my respect. Right now it made me just want to shove the machine aside and try to strike Napoleon out on my own.
He looked ready.
He looked like he meant business.
I fed the beast and the first pitch came winging his way.
He looked lost.
The first swing—if you could call it that—I saw Napoleon Charlie Ellis take was like an apology in motion. It looked more like he was trying to use that fine piece of ash to kill a beetle at his feet, and I could tell he was embarrassed. But he curled himself right back into his stance. It was early season, even for me, and Napoleon was totally new. He’d get better.
But not in the immediate future, I thought. The only reason his second cut was not worse than his first was that it was impossible to get worse than that first one. Not that he didn’t make the effort. His bat speed improved, but probably more out of anger than confidence. He missed the ball by so much, he may have had his eyes closed. A lot of little kids will do that when they swing their hardest, close their eyes midway through from the effort. I hoped Napoleon Charlie Ellis was not an eye-closer at this late age.
“I could crank the speed down a little,” I said.
I was only trying to help.
Napoleon turned, hands on his hips, and glared at me so hard I thought he was going to come after me with the bat. He held the look long enough for the machine to send two more pitches sailing into the fence. I was still doing my job anyway. Not that it would have made any difference if Napoleon was there to wave at it.
“I do not need it slow,” Napoleon snapped. “I am just having a bit of difficulty seeing the ball as it leaves the machine.”
“A bit?” I said. “I don’t think you could miss worse if the machine was throwing M&M’s.”
Which was not helpful, probably. He glared at me a little harder, then drew his glasses out of their case, out of his shirt pocket.
Back in the box. Digging with one foot, digging with the other. Upright, hands high. Staring down the machine.
Whiff. He missed cleanly. But this was not like before. This looked like he had swung a bat before.
“So this really is your first time. You never played baseball, even once?�
� I asked.
“Never. Cricket,” he said. “This bat feels strange to me.”
The ball came over the plate. He swung late and fouled one off.
“Well, it’s the way a bat should feel,” I said.
“It is very light,” he said.
Excuse me? My bat, light?
He was starting to develop something of a rhythm now, and while he was still mostly missing or fouling pitches, he was at least ready to hit when the ball arrived. And his swing was strong and fluid. Napoleon was an athlete of some kind, that I could tell. Even if he was wasting his body on something as weird as cricket. He could probably learn the game if he wanted to. His swing was nice to watch.
Know what else was nice to watch? His foul balls and dribblers and weak pop-ups. I always loved to see a new player around here, because I love to play so much, and there are never enough players to get up a game on a given day in late August, October, March.
But I also love none of those players being better than me. I cannot help that. I cannot help it. I want to be the best, with loads of other players right behind me. But behind me.
Yet I wanted him to get better. I wanted him to get it. I was looking at Napoleon, and I was seeing a guy who should be a ballplayer. A fine ballplayer.
Napoleon Charlie Ellis’s swing was straightening out into something pretty, and powerful. But he had a funny little balance problem which I was sure came from the oddities of cricket, and which would prevent him from ever hitting a baseball as well as he could.
I fed the machine and watched him grit his teeth. I fed the machine and watched him adjust his eyeglasses. I fed the machine and watched him grip the bat handle harder and throw himself at the ball, and I fed the machine and watched him foul off one pitch after another only to straighten up and get ready to do it again and again.
I began watching his face more than his hands or his balance, and I began to see something familiar. I began to see Napoleon’s approach to the ball, his need to hit the ball at the moment it was there to be hit.
I stopped feeding the machine. I walked around it and walked to Napoleon Charlie Ellis, who stood frozen, eyeing me suspiciously.
