Switch Pitchers

by Norman German

  “This birth,” the old man continued, “it takes time.” He paused and watched the mother dusting off her child. “Sometimes it takes a woman to help.”

  After Hemingway swung for a second strike, some of his teammates called for a bunt.

  With one foot out of the batter’s box, Hemingway scowled at his dugout. “For Christ-sake,” he cried out with scorn, “you don’t bunt in a situation like this.” He swung his bat angrily back and forth. “No man bunts,” he accused. “Ever. You swing away. And if you don’t clear the fence, you by-damn die trying.”

  Hemingway took a vicious swing at the next pitch. If he had been Duke Snider, or Roberto had been a Little Leaguer, the poor isleños would still be searching for their only good ball.

  Beside me, the old man laughed. “And sometimes,” he said, looking at me, “only God can deliver the baby.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “How is it you know Hemingway?”

  The old man’s eyes lit up. “Of course, I am the driver of his boat,” he said, the cigar dancing in his mouth. When he pulled it, his lips on that side remained open in the shape of the cigar while the other half collapsed inside a toothless cave. Proudly, he thumped the cigar against his chest. “Yo soy el capitain del Pilar. I deliver this great lanzador peetcher, Roberto Alemán, over the water from Cooba.” He gave a little flourish in the air with his cigar. “Like I said it. Sometimes it takes help.”

  He reinstalled the chubby cigar, then thrust his hand out to me and gave mine a vigorous shake. “I am Gregorio Fuentes, the old man of the sea of the book small but great that will come from Hemingway in time.”

  I said, “Mucho gusto, señor,” and I meant it. “I’m Dewey Griggs.”

  In the bottom of the fifth, the Wreckers’ shortstop cracked a hot grounder to third that clipped a rooster and allowed the runner to reach first. Hemingway came screaming across the field. “Fowl ball! Fowl ball! Any fool knows when a ball hits a chicken it’s a fowl ball!”

  The break in the action gave me some time to reflect on the fastest pitcher who had ever lived. His speed, in fact, had so entranced me that I forgot to ask the obvious question. Hoping it might encourage the old man to speak more freely, I leaned over and asked him in Spanish why Roberto had left Cuba. Then I readied my pencil to record his historic reply.

  The old man waved a hand over my page to stop me. “It is best not to write anything down,” he said, “for the coming revolution is cierto to hold it against you.” He looked at me with his world-weary eyes. “It is now all opposition in Cooba.” He paused, gathering the strength to say it. “Politiquería!” He spat the word as if it were the worst he knew. “Comprende?” He held his hands together in the shape of a ship’s bow and made forward-chopping thrusts. “No driving force one way. No together-working. No winning baseball team.”

  Donovan struck out the next batter swinging, and the runner got caught in a hotbox trying to steal second. The infielders closed the gap with three exchanges of the ball, then Hemingway tagged his back and knocked him on all-fours. After watching the rundown, the old man lamented, “One man alone, he got no bloody chance in this world.”

  “I understand,” I mused. “One of the founding fathers in our own Revolution said something similar: ‘We must all hang together, or we will all hang separately.’”

  I was hoping this gesture of togetherness would seal our friendship. I could see the old man trying to work through Benjamin Franklin’s sentence, but he didn’t catch the double meaning of “hang.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and stared at me blankly. “Cualquiera,” he said. “It is a saying I cannot understand.”

  Roberto held us scoreless in the top of the seventh. The bright side of this bad news was that we could win with the solo Havana Home Run if Normie Roy held the Wreckers scoreless in the bottom of the seventh. Normie was the goofiest of Mr. Perini’s experiments. He never seemed freshly shaven and that called attention to a bald, cueball-sized Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down when he talked. It didn’t help, either, that his right eye wandered off to the northeast while he was looking at you. Still, he had potential—no real speed to brag about, but a murderous slider and a couple of other decent pitches.

  One thing, though, I warned him about. His name. I told him to pick a nickname like The Badger or something equally threatening. “Listen to me, Normie,” I pleaded, “because I’m telling you, with a name like yours you’ll get no respect on the mound. Then one night in a dark bar over a smoky card game, someone’s gonna kick the shit out of you for it.”

  Normie had three good pitches in his arsenal, but of course he picked out his fastball and threw it three times to strike out the first batter. The count went to 3-and-0 on the second batter, so he had to throw a strike, which he did, but I could see him rubbing his arm after the throw. Then he threw back-to-back singles to put men on the corners with only one out. Normie looked toward the dugout for help. Acting as the pitching coach, Manville waved Sam Jethroe in from left field as he trotted out to the mound.

  Sam hadn’t pitched since high school but, God, what an arm that black man had. Last season, one of the rookie pitchers who didn’t last a year for us was throwing some weak stuff in batting practice and Sam kept calling for more speed because he didn’t see the point in swinging at something he wouldn’t get in a game. He reached out and grabbed the next pitch barehanded, dropped his bat, took a skip and a step, then launched the ball towards the left-field fence because to him, I suppose, that was home. When the baseball cleared the fence, anyone in the park could see it would have made it over the center-field wall. His arm was that good.

  Crandall threw the ball out to Jethroe as he was coming in. This gave Sam a chance to uncork a few long ones and limber up his arm. Sam had thrown four times before reaching the mound. He got in eight more quick ones before signaling he was ready, then Crandall jogged to the mound for a short conference. I imagine he told Sam to put what he could on the ball and let the fielders take care of the rest. Sure enough, the next batter got under the ball for an infield fly, while the last topped it for a fielder’s choice.

  And that was the game, the Wreckers going down 1-0 to a visiting team half composed of native islanders.

  I prophesied to myself that Roberto Alemán would not lose many more games for the rest of his career. And that set me to thinking about his twin brother as the fans and players mingled on the field. Where was he? Why didn’t he play in the game, or at least come to watch it?

  The old man hadn’t budged. He was patiently gazing out at the field, waiting for Hemingway. As he chugged on the remainder of his cigar, it sent up a chain of smoke signals.

  “Señor.” I leaned over. “What about Roberto’s brother—Nemesio is his name? Do you know anything about him?”

  Fuentes solemnly studied the soggy end of his cigar until coming to a well-considered conclusion. He worked his tongue and lips around as if he had tasted something foul.

  “I also deliver him, mi amigo.” He touched my arm with concern as if to warn me against a mistake I was about to make. “I deliver him, pero he are not so good as his bro-thair.” He worked the cigar back into its slot, then looked at me and winked. “Plus, his English is no stinking good.”

  Chapter 2

  THE players and fanaticos were scattering to all parts of the compass in the fading light, Hemingway at the center of the largest gaggle. Roberto, the loser, laughing and making large motions with his hands, entertained a smaller gathering. I joined onto his group as it strolled past the bleachers. When an opening in the conversation presented itself, I raised my voice.

  “Would you allow me the honor of buying the winner a drink?”

  All the agitation of revelry stopped with the revelers’ footsteps. Everyone turned to look at the rude stranger who had spoken English. Roberto was the only one smiling.

  “You have made the mistake, señor. I am the loser in this game tonight.”

  “Ah,” I said, holding up one finger and conti
nuing to “talk largely” in the Spanish way. “There are times when the loser can be the greater winner by the way he loses. Tonight is such a night.”

  The smile on his face grew, and as he began walking he spoke. “I take my drinks at Sloppy Joe’s. It is the bar of the great Hemingway that he made famous half of my life ago.”

  I kept pace for a while, feeling the group’s anticipation of what I would say. I knew my words should be weighty and forever memorable.

  “Baseball has shrines, too,” I said. “And the largest belong to its pitchers. Listen to me, Roberto Alemán. In half your lifetime again, the great Hemingway will travel many hard miles to worship at your shrine.”

  Such a somberness came over the group as only hispánicos displaced from their homes can feel. With perfect timing and a true countryman’s love for the theatrical gesture, Roberto, dead serious, lifted an imaginary goblet. “May he live so long.”

  Roberto’s devotees erupted in excited chatter, talking to each other and to Roberto and, as always in such matters, talking mostly to give themselves a voice to be heard by their own ears.

  When we turned the corner onto Duval Street, Roberto’s friends sheared off, understanding their role in this momentous occasion of the pitcher’s life.

  Entering Sloppy Joe’s was like stepping into a storybook. A tall man would have to dodge the slow blades of the fans stirring the cigar smoke before he wedged in at the massive mahogany bar dominating the room. Roberto and I worked our way to the corner of the bar, where patrons caressed its voluptuous curve. As we propped our forearms on the rounded edge, Big Skinner, huge and black, stepped off the storybook page, flipped his towel onto his shoulder, and looked at us with sleepy eyes.

  “Cuba Libre,” I said designedly. Roberto looked at me and nodded.

  “Anis del Toro,” he said to Big Skinner. Then, to me, “It helps with the—how do you say, hombre-ness.”

  “Virility,” I suggested. I put my arm around him although, because of the crowd, he seemed no closer than before. “Roberto, you speak English well, my friend, but if you prefer Spanish, I can manage if you keep it simple.”

  “No, English is good,” he said. “I have educated myself since a small boy to prepare for my life of baseball in America. In fact, in America I will only speak the Spanish to God and to umpires.”

  Watching Big Skinner slowly pour the Anis, I gave some thought to what Roberto had said. “Why will you speak Spanish only to God and to umpires?”

  Roberto slapped my chest with the back of his hand. “So One can understand me and the other cannot.” He burst out laughing and dug a thumb in my side.

  Our drinks delivered and paid for, we turned around and leaned against the bar. Hemingway’s trophy marlin leapt across the opposite wall. Roberto took a sip of his drink, then lifted it to the huge billfish. “He carry me across from Cuba to Key West, just like Harry Morgan.” Looking at me, “Have you read the book of the God-blessed and God-damned Harry Morgan?”

  “To Have and Have Not,” I said.

  “Yes, I was reading it on the boat of Hemingway, the great Pilar, and it I have now finished.” He paused, then recited dramatically, “‘One man alone ain’t got no bloody chance.’” He looked at me and raised his glass. “To the great Hemingway.” Our glasses touched. We drank and looked at the blue marlin. After a noisy silence, Roberto said to the fish, “If you will let me pitch for Miami or Tampa, sir, that is my dream.”

  For a moment, I was puzzled. “You think—?”

  He looked at me, a hint of anger showing in his eyes. “You are not of the Florida International League? I have came to Florida for my break-in with it for a stepping stone.”

  I laughed, realizing he had no idea his fastball had beaten him to the mainland.

  “No, I am with the Boston Braves of the National League.”

  “Holy Madre,” he said, crossing himself. He took a gulp of Anis. “Sir, I did not know. We have a saying in Cuba. Creemos en sueños. We believe in—”

  “—dreams. I know. That’s because you’re young. When you get older, you’ll learn that every dream contains a nightmare, like a scorpion in your honeymoon bed.”

  “With my talent, sir, I can make your Boston a braver team if you will let me to show you.”

  Mr. Perini was not going to believe how little he would pay for the fastest pitcher on earth. I waited awhile to make Roberto think I was thinking.

  “Talent,” I finally said. When Roberto’s eyes locked onto mine, I said it again with disgust. “Talent. You know where talent will get you?”

  Roberto thought for a while, his eyes gazing beyond my left ear at a well-manicured baseball diamond planted in his future. “The May-yors. The May-yor leagues.”

  “Not right away,” I said. “Try A, or maybe Double-A ball. If you’re lucky. Look what talent got your Papa Hemingway. Do you know how many Pulitzer Prizes he’s won, the greatest writer of the twentieth century?”

  Roberto’s eyes glazed over, staring into a past beyond his memory. He had read only the one book, but he must have heard people talk of the others, and they probably had the same effect on him they had on me. When people speak of them—The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls—the titles roll off their tongues like the great baseball names: DiMaggio and Dihigo, Minoso and Mize, Lou Gehrig and Dolf Luque.

  Roberto didn’t want to offend the name of the man who had delivered him out of Cuba, so he made a generous offering. “Three?”

  I shook my head sadly. “None.” I held my thumb and forefinger in the shape of a circle and looked at him through it. “Zero. Cero, comprende? Nada. Nada damn one.”

  Roberto swiveled sideways and challenged, “Jes, but he is making the comeback. You hear him today? ‘The great DiMaggio is himself again.’ You think he wass talking about the Yankee Clipper?” He turned his head and dry-spit on the floor. “Shee-it, he wass talking about himself, mahn.”

  I was surprised by his fierce loyalty. For a moment, it made him forget about his dream and defend his hero, made him lose control of his carefully pronounced English. I chuckled. “Look, Roberto. All I’m saying is that it takes more than talent to get to the top. It’s timing. It’s who you know. It’s patience in refining your talent.”

  “What is this ‘refining’?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Making better.” I rubbed the back of my drink hand. “Polishing. Like to make a stone pretty.”

  “I am not now ready?”

  “Pitching in the Majors is different from pitching in Cuba.” I tried to keep it simple. “The batters are very great. You need work in the minors first.”

  “This minors is better than the Florida International League?”

  “Yes. One less stepping stone.”

  Roberto looked to the giant marlin, the presence of Hemingway, for advice. He took a sip of his Anis and nodded at the fish. He turned and looked me in the eye but said nothing. Following custom, I neither blinked nor looked away. I held my eyes steady until he spoke. “Where then is this paper I must sign? I have heard of it, this paper.”

  “In my room. We can go there now.”

  “We have the one more problem.”

  “What is that?”

  “If you not sign my brother, I not sign.”

  “Roberto, that is another matter.”

  “Same matter. If you not sign Nemesio, I not sign.”

  “I haven’t even seen him pitch.”

  “He works in the night. We try to stay apart. It is a dislike we have.”

  I drew on my Cuba Libre. “If you don’t like your brother, why do you want to help him?”

  Roberto looked at me like I was a fool. “Because he is my brother, hombre.”

  I struggled to keep from shaking my head. “I need to see him pitch, Roberto. But no guarantees, okay?”

  “I will have him go to the field when he retires in the morning.”

  “All right, then,” I said. “Nine o’clock on the dot, okay? En punto, clar
o?”

  Roberto offered his drink and our glasses touched.

  “I hope he will not disappoint me,” I said.

  “No matter,” Roberto said. “If you not sign my brother, I not sign. Tampa or Miami will like us just fine.”

  Chapter 3

  I BROUGHT a full set of catcher’s gear to the ballpark. Even if Nemesio’s fastball came in fifteen miles an hour under Roberto’s, I didn’t want a glancer off the mitt catching me on a shinbone. By 9:15, I had clamped on the shin guards and worked my way into the chest protector. By 9:30, the humidity was rising and I had stripped off the chest protector. Ten minutes later, I made for the shade of an old sea grape tree behind the backstop and popped off the shin guards.

  Just when I was about to give up, a loose-jointed, dusty-looking version of Roberto came jangling up the road. Even a hundred feet distant, I could see he was unkempt, stubble-faced, and sticky—like a kid at the end of a hard day of playing—so I figured he had come straight from work.