Switch Pitchers

by Norman German

  Twenty feet away, he introduced me.

  “Joo mus’ be Señor Greegs, no?”

  “No,” I said, letting him know I was annoyed. “I’m Mister Griggs, and you’re an hour late. And I’m not a catcher, I’m a scout. So if you want to pitch in the big leagues, take my advice and be on time from now on.”

  Giving me the loose, lopsided smile of a retarded child, Nemesio cocked his head and inspected me. He took off his tattered cap. With the hand holding it, he scratched the back of his head. “No, señor, I not an hour late. I Ricardo Alemán.”

  Hell, I thought, it’s not enough I get a smart-ass. No, I’ve got to go and get a late smart-ass. To stall for time and regain my composure, I took out my handkerchief and swabbed my face. I wanted to walk away from this idiot man-child, but Mr. Perini would be happy if I could land the big fish, and the only way to do that was to throw this stinking pogy into the hold with him.

  “You call yourself Ricardo,” I said. “I thought Roberto and Nemesio were twins. But if your name’s Ricardo, I’ve got triplets on my hands.”

  Nemesio’s smile exposed his large white, perfect teeth.

  “No, Meester. Me and my bro-ther are only the twins. My mother she unname me from Ricardo when I have three years when she learn Nemesio give béisbol to Cooba.”

  “She renamed you when you were three.”

  “Sí. Pero I not like. Roberto call me Nemesio to make fun. Not funny. Me llama Ricardo,” he emphasized by poking a thumb against his chest.

  I shook my head. “Okay, then,” I said, “Ricardo it is,” thinking, A pogy by any other name would smell as bad. I tossed him a new ball, which he inspected as if it were the Hope Diamond while I strapped on the equipment again. Ricardo’s glove looked like something hanging from Babe Ruth’s hand in pictures from the early twenties—like a big dead brown starfish. It would be better to catch barehanded than be hindered by one of those contraptions.

  Keeping my angry silence, I waved Ricardo toward the field. We started close together and exchanged a couple of dozen warm-up throws, backing up till we had fifty feet between us. He seemed pretty ordinary to me, but you never know what kind of change will come over a man when you elevate him fifteen inches onto a pitcher’s mound.

  I was already streaming sweat when I squatted behind the plate. “Okay,” I said, “in this heat, you should be loose by now. Show me what you got.”

  Ricardo looked worried. He had nothing of his brother’s confidence. He eyed me from the mound like he was pitching from second base and wasn’t sure he could throw that far. He chopped at the mound with his cleats, digging the hole by the rubber into a long trench. When he stepped behind the rubber, he had regrown his Simple Simon smile.

  He toed the rubber with his left foot and went into a lazy windup. Then he fell awkwardly into the trench and followed through with a three-quarter arm delivery right in the basket. It wasn’t fast, but the accuracy surprised me. He threw half a dozen more like that, his arm dropping a few degrees each time until he was finally throwing with a genuine sidearm motion.

  “Good control,” I said as a peace offering.

  “Sí,” Ricardo said. “I have striked out twenty and four batters in one game.”

  “Not with this stuff,” I said behind the mask, then called out, “Okay, you should be plenty ready by now. Let’s see your fastball.”

  The smile slid off Ricardo’s face and he scowled down at me. He took three steps toward the plate and shook the ball. “What joo t’ink I been t’row? That iss my fasbol.”

  I shook my head. “Okay, okay,” I said. “Let’s see your drop.”

  Walking to the rubber, Ricardo angrily slapped the ball into the palm of his glove. He looked down at me from the mound, composed himself and went into his routine windup, falling off the rubber into the trench. He leaned back so far I thought he had lost his balance, but when he came overhand with the drop motion, I could see, with his torso parallel to the ground, that it was still a sidearm delivery.

  The ball came in just below his fastball speed, and I had a split second to think he didn’t have much of a drop. Then the bottom fell out of the ball, which hit behind the plate and bounced under my glove, hitting me right next to my own ballpark, and I regretted not wearing a cup. I chased the ball to the backstop and returned it to Ricardo.

  As his glove snatched the ball out of the air, Ricardo asked, “Joo wanna see again the drop?”

  “No,” I called. “That was enough to let me know you can throw the drop. What else have you got?”

  “Well, Señor Meester.” He gripped the baseball between the thumb and palm of the glove, then counted his pitches by pulling on the glove’s fingers. “I t’row de change. I t’row de knuckle. I t’row de fadeaway screwball. I t’row de eephus pitch.” When he ran out of fingers, he looked up at me. “Y claro, I got de curve.”

  “You’re just a regular gumball machine, no?”

  He looked at me suspiciously. “I no know what that mean.”

  “Never mind,” I said. “Let’s skip the eephus and go to the fadeaway, all right? Left-handed batter. Cut it in for a strike on the outside corner.”

  Ricardo moved over to the right edge of the rubber. At the end of his delivery, he planted his right foot toward the third-base side of the mound. Until he did it, I didn’t think an effective pitch could be thrown from that angle.

  Then I asked him to throw his fadeaway to a right-handed batter, coming in on the outside corner and crossing the plate outside the strike zone. He moved over to the left end of the rubber. In his windup, he twisted to look at second base, then spun his body like a tornado before whiplashing the ball home.

  Every pitch he threw was delivered from a different part of the rubber with its own peculiar windup. With each one, he looked like he couldn’t have been more uncomfortable, yet they all came in right on target.

  In a mixture of Spanish and English, Ricardo, his new confidence suddenly and inexplicably deflated, said he would be more accurate if he had a batter standing at the plate.

  “I pitch against the batter, see?—not the receptor. And when I not pitch, I play also the campo corto, how you say?—the stop short.”

  “Shortstop.”

  Ricardo put his hands on his hips like a frustrated child. “That no make no sense. He stop short the ball, no?”

  The fact is, I wasn’t sure why they were called shortstops, so I made up something. “They’re called shortstops because it’s a position played by pipsqueaks like Pee Wee Reese.”

  “What that? Peepsqueak?”

  “Short. Little.” I held my thumb and forefinger an inch apart and showed it to him. “Pequeño.”

  “I not little, and I a shortstop.”

  His logic was beginning to annoy me, and I wondered how twins could be so different.

  “All right, then. When you’re not pitching, you can be a tallstop, but right now you’re a pitcher, so let’s see your knuckle ball.”

  Oddly—if anything he did could be called odd, since everything was odd—he walked to the back of the mound and approached the rubber with something that looked like reverence. He carefully placed both shoes on the rubber, aligning them just right, then bent forward at the waist, but straight-backed, like Hirohito kowtowing to MacArthur. His elbows almost touching, he lifted both arms over his head. The motion looked somehow vulgar, like a showgirl slipping out of her chemise. When he followed through with a straight overhand delivery, he looked like a parody of a pitcher.

  A knuckleball, even thrown by a nut—maybe especially thrown by a nut—can be an irksome little varmint. Attempting to catch it is like trying to swat a kamikaze bee buzzing your head. It looks easy, but the knuckleball makes a fool out of the catcher as often as the batter. There’s something mesmerizing about the perfect stillness of the red stitches. It comes at you looking like a volleyball, so you think you’re going to pull it over the left-field fence, but you’re more likely to pull a muscle from over-swinging and not making co
ntact.

  It was about average, as knuckleballs go, but I was not used to seeing them from behind the plate. Plus, Ricardo’s change from sidearm to overhand surprised me, and I ended up getting thunked in the facemask with the first one.

  None of his junk would have been topnotch big-league stuff from a righty, but Ricardo was a southpaw. Plus, even a medium-speed high-and-in fastball after a knee-locking knuckler will fool major league bats for a season or two—until they get used to the sequence and the rhythm.

  Suddenly realizing this, I didn’t feel so bad about signing Ricardo to get to Roberto. I’d seen enough and had enough, so I waved him off the mound into a shady dugout. There, I told him to come with Roberto to the Casa Marina Hotel at noon and sign their contracts.

  “Roberto he work in the day.” As I shucked the equipment, Ricardo rubbernecked to see if I would pull the contract from a hidden pocket. “I sign now. He sign later.”

  “The contract’s in my room. Can you come up now?”

  “Sí,” he said, rising from the bench without offering to help me carry the equipment.

  As he was walking away, I said, “Ricardo.”

  He turned. “Sí?”

  I thrust the mask and chest protector into his arms. I tucked the shin guards under one of my arms, the mitt under the other.

  Ricardo had clutched the pad and mask awkwardly and never shifted his grip during the two-block walk. Like a kid strolling down a carnival midway, Ricardo looked at the cars and storefronts and red-gold roosters as if seeing them for the first time even though he had been on the island a month.

  “I sign two papers,” he stated absent-mindedly but matter-of-factly.

  “No, you can only sign yours. Roberto has to sign his by himself.”

  “I sign one for my pitcher and one for my campo corto.”

  It took me a second to understand his meaning. When I did, I laughed. “No, Ricardo. Major League pitchers don’t play other positions. They only pitch.”

  Continuing to walk in his jangling way, the straps of the chest protector slapping about him, Ricardo looked at me. “I can work other jobs between my pitch days?”

  Ricardo was truly like a child, not at all like Roberto. “No, Ricardo. Part of your job involves recording pitches in a notebook, un cuaderno. On your rest days.”

  He frowned at this revelation but said nothing until he had turned it over in his mind. “I get paid for not working?”

  “Yes, something like that. Your work is tracking the pitches and learning the batters, what to throw them and what to avoid.”

  “How much?”

  “Five hundred dollars a month for the first year. More if you make it to the Majors.”

  “Yanqui dollars?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Por supuesto.”

  At the hotel, I pulled the paper from a zippered compartment in my suitcase. I led Ricardo to the small desk and sat him down. I placed the pen in his hand and pointed to the line. “Right here,” I said. He looked at the line for a while, then handed the pen back to me.

  “Escribe, por favor.”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t sign it for you. You have to sign it yourself.”

  “I cannot sign the name. I no know how to escribir. Escribe ‘Ricardo Alemán,’ then I follow.”

  It took me a second to understand him. He wanted me to write his name, which he would copy. I pulled out a sheet of hotel stationery and printed RICARDO ALEMÁN, then returned the pen to him. He marveled at his name for a while, then started practicing on the stationery, drawing each letter several times. I could see this was going to take awhile, so I stepped to the dresser, poured water from the pitcher into the basin, and washed my arms and hands and face.

  When I returned to the desk, he had finished signing the contract. Even after practicing the letters, the handwriting looked like a child’s. Briefly, I wondered how a pitcher with so much control could be so uncoordinated.

  “Bueno,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “De nada,” he said. “I must thank you.”

  I offered my hand and we shook. “Congratulations, Ricardo. If you work hard, you could make it to the Majors in two or three years.”

  “Tracking the peetches.”

  “Yes. Pitch well when you pitch, and track pitches when you’re not pitching.” I slapped him on the shoulder. “Could you please tell Roberto to come in this evening and sign his contract?”

  “Sí,” he said. “We not talk much, but this I will tell him.”

  That evening, I read a paper in the lobby while keeping a lookout for Roberto. He walked in five minutes early, straight-backed and formal, wearing a suit that was tight on his shoulders and short in the arms, but he was clean and neat. His sense of decorum—his politeness and the way he carried himself—elevated him three classes above his twin.

  We exchanged the usual formalities, then walked to my room. He waited to be offered a seat. I twisted the contract to suit his right-handed angle. Without hesitating, he picked up the pen and wrote his name in a fluid calligraphy.

  Chapter 4

  THE next night, I had a troubling dream.

  I was playing in a one-inning baseball game. In the top of the first, Roberto was pitching. He threw a fastball to Ricardo, the catcher. Before the ball reached home, Roberto had run to the plate and positioned himself as batter, then hit a sizzling grounder to short. The catcher sprang from his crouch running and reached shallow left in time to field the ball with a diving stab. He rolled and came up throwing to first. Ricardo ran from short to first to receive his own throw and beat Roberto to the bag.

  After the out, Ricardo passed the ball around the infield: first to third, third to second, second to short, short to pitcher, and he was both thrower and receiver, stitching the infield positions together with the white light of the baseball like the webbing of a cat’s cradle between a child’s outstretched hands.

  The dream shifted to the bottom of the first, no outs, 3-and-0 count, men on first and second. I was the man on second. I looked at the runner on first. It was Hemingway. With his right foot, he was pawing the ground like a bull about to charge.

  Ricardo approached the rubber from the back of the mound. Primly, he aligned his shoes on the rubber. I remembered that his windup for the knuckleball—his elbows almost touching, obscenely lifting both arms over his head like a showgirl—would take some time, so I started for third. I was running fast, but the sand was sliding under my feet and I was getting nowhere. I looked homeward to see Roberto catching and thought it made no sense, that he pitched one half of the inning and caught the other. The fact that no one was in the batter’s box didn’t disturb me at all.

  By the time Ricardo delivered the knuckleball, I was halfway to third running as fast as I could in slow motion. I checked the plate to see the knuckleball fluttering homeward. Out of breath, I stopped and placed my hands on my knees. Ricardo reached the left-handed batter’s box just before the ball crossed the plate and took a heroic cut. His bat looked like it was going to crush the ball, but it leaped coquettishly up like a girl quickly lifting her skirt. The umpire, Dewey Griggs, someone who was both me and not me, called strike one.

  The ball, now a cartoon animation hovering in the strike zone, batted its long eyelashes at Ricardo who, angry and determined, decided to lay his bat carefully on the ball for a sure bunt. He slid his left hand up the bat near the trademark and squared around. When he followed through and poked at the ball, it ducked. The umpire shouted “Strike Two!”

  Furious now, Ricardo turned to his catcher-brother in a plea for help. Roberto, laughing, stood and whispered something in his twin’s ear, then repositioned himself.

  Rested now, I started again for third only to find myself knee-deep in quicksand. In a sweating panic, I looked home in time to see Ricardo bend over and kiss the blushing baseball. When the ball closed her eyes and turned away, Ricardo unleashed a mighty swing that sent it sailing into unoccupied right center field.

  If I could f
ree myself from the quicksand, we would win the game. As I struggled with both hands to work my left leg out, I heard a train whistle blowing like it had a bad cold. I looked in the direction of the sound. It was Hemingway chugging for second with smoke puffing from the button on his cap. Roberto, the catcher, streaked past Hemingway and, in deep right center, leaped, stretched, and snagged the ball.

  Roberto’s legs blurred toward second, where he crossed the bag to force me out, then ran down Hemingway returning to first.

  The unassisted triple-play ended the game in a zero-to-zero tie. Winded and puzzled, still working my way out of the quicksand, I heard the train whistle growing louder. When I looked up, I saw Hemingway steaming towards me, his face an angry smoking red, like I was responsible for all this, his train-whistle cap button snorting like a bull. My heart pounded faster as he approached. When he lowered his head, sharp, glistening horns sprouted from under his cap and pointed right at me. Just before receiving the horn wounds, I was awakened by the moan of a train whistle blending with the rasping cello sound of my own snoring.