With his glove, Bobby pinched the left side of his shirt and pulled it away from his shoulder. He talked to himself, telling himself to take the jitteriness and channel it into his wrist, but keep it loose. Chozen gathered his fingers into a fist and thrust four fingers down. The slider was his worst pitch and Chozen was asking him to throw it from the stretch. Thinking “no,” Bobby nodded “yes.”
With the deep bow of his follow-through, Bobby usually could not see the movement on his pitches. This time he saw it, and it surprised him. The batter swung as the ball broke over the plate. Bobby fielded the chopper two steps to his right, held the runner on second with a quick look, and threw to first for out number two.
Next, Chozen called for a fastball. Bobby felt his entire body relax. He threw faster when he was relaxed. The ball came off his fingers feeling good. He lost sight of it for the split second his head was down on the follow-through. He heard the bat make contact, but it was not solid. That meant the ball had good rotation and rose coming in. Bobby spun around. He didn’t look for the ball. He looked to see which way his outfielders were moving. Hardie Nettles made the easy catch to end the first inning.
Bobby poured a cone of water from the cooler at the dugout’s entrance. He walked to the end of the bench and sat next to Ricardo, who was asleep in the corner, his head propped against his ancient, burnt-brown glove.
Dickie Chozen ambled down the midway of the dugout working on a bag of popcorn. He reached the end and about-faced like a prisoner pacing his cell. A thought stopped him in his tracks and he stepped back. Bobby saw the grin grow on the batboy’s round face. Pretending to be a magician, he showed a piece of popcorn to his audience, then turned to Ricardo. He reached carefully over to place the popcorn in the Cuban’s open mouth.
Bill German reached out and grabbed Dickie’s wrist. “Are you crazy, boy? Don’t you know better than to do that?”
Dickie’s grin widened to a toothy smile. “You mean, before the bets are taken?”
Bill turned loose of Dickie’s arm and ruffled the cap on his head. “That’s my boy. We gonna turn you into a Big Leaguer yet.”
Dickie took off his cap and held it out for the bets.
“I got a nickel says he wakes up,” Leo Tycer said, tossing the coin in.
“A nickel?” Nettles mocked. “I got a quarter says he sucks on it like a sleeping baby on a sugar tit.”
Suddenly the players clustered around Dickie like Mexicans at a cockfight. Some bet his mouth would close on the popcorn. Others said the sleeper would spit it out. “What if he don’t do nothing?” Lamb Daniels pointed out.
Everybody looked around.
“Where’s Rules when you need him?”
“He’s on deck.”
“And I’m in the hole,” Lamb said, “so I’m laying my dime that he don’t do nothing. That is one tired Sambo.”
Dickie dropped the popcorn onto Ricardo’s tongue, and the men waited for things to develop.
“What,” Chozen said, breaking through the silent crowd, “in the dark depths of unholiest Sheol is going on back here?” Dickie slapped his cap on as the sea of players parted for their Moses.
Chozen looked down at the popcorn on Ricardo’s tongue, then at his son’s bag.
“Dickie, you responsible for this?”
Dickie looked sheepishly at his feet, then up at his father. He had been taught to hold a steady gaze when reprimanded. Chozen popped him on the side of the head, knocking his cap askew.
“If you boys,” he said, turning to his players, “would stop clowning around and focus on the game you’re paid to play, we might rise out of the middle ranks.”
A nickel slid out of Dickie’s cap and rang on the cement. Chozen looked at his son. Dickie was trying hard not to cry.
“Son,” the father said, “if I knocked that cap off your head and found what I think I’d find, I’d have to wear your butt out in front of these men.” Chozen accused the team with his eyes. “Y’all know damn well the Pelicans just got fined for betting on their games. Now, I don’t want to see any gambling in this dugout.” He glanced down at Ricardo. “Not even on dumb shit like this.”
He turned and walked away. The men shuffled to their seats. Bill patted Dickie on the shoulder and tightened the cap on the boy’s head.
“Keep the change, sport. You earned it.”
The men looked out at the field, trying to follow their manager’s command to focus on the game.
Cagle took the first pitch to study Wiseman’s southpaw motion. He took the next pitch out of the park for the Lunkers’ first run. Bobby’s teammates erupted from the bench and cheered the Big Chief around the bases. Conserving his energy, Bobby kept his seat and smiled. He glanced at Ricardo to see if the excitement had disturbed him. The worn-out Cuban hadn’t moved. Bobby drew a deep, steady breath, then stood to choose a bat. Bobby hit sixth in the batting order, highest in the league for a pitcher.
From the on-deck circle, Bobby watched Raul Atán work the count full. Bobby hated pitching against batters like Raul, but he loved having them on his side. Batters like Raul chipped off foul balls one after another and rarely swung at bad pitches. By the time they were done, the pitcher’s arm had ten or twelve throws subtracted from its 120-pitch life.
Raul finally sliced a cheap single over first. As Bobby walked to the plate, he figured the pitcher would take his anger out on him, and he plotted how to turn it against him.
He watched the first throw graze the outside corner. The umpire called it a ball. “Well,” Bobby thought, “at least he’s equally unfair to both teams.” Wiseman rocked back and double-pumped, so Bobby knew a javelin fastball was on its way. Leo Tycer, standing off third as the base coach, had given Bobby the “swing away” sign. Bobby had a sweet, level swing without much power, but he often made good contact and dropped balls between outfielders coming in and infielders hustling back.
Bobby swung away, realizing too late he had been fooled by a fellow southpaw thinking one move ahead of him. Trying to slow his bat to meet the changeup, he hit a Sad Sack dribbler down the third-base line. The third baseman barehanded the ball and looked to second, then threw to first for the sure out. Bobby wasn’t as happy as he would have been with a solid single that drove Scoop to third, but he was happy for not hitting into a double play.
“Good job,” Chozen said when Bobby approached the dugout. “Okay, Ziggy, drive Scoop home!” Chozen clapped his hands.
To Zig Emory, a nervous batter, Double-A was an impenetrable ceiling. He had been hit so many times that he bailed at the least threatening curve. On the third pitch, Emory slapped a fly to shallow left that was snow-coned by the shortstop to end the Lunkers’ half of the second inning.
Bobby set up the first two batters with pretended wildness that rocked them back on their heels, then used their fear to set them down. For his revenge, Emory caught the shortstop’s line drive over third base for the last out.
The Lunkers left two men stranded to end their half of the third. In the bottom half, the Roughnecks’ second baseman, Henry Schroeder, yanked the first pitch, a hanging curve, all the way to the left-field fence, where Charlie Harper spoiled his home run with a leaping catch.
Bobby took off his cap and swabbed his forehead on his sleeve. While the ball was coming in, Chozen ran out to the hill.
“My fault, Bobby. We got away with that one. Just settle down. We’ll be all right.”
The next batter was Hockenbury. Or Hickenberry. Bobby almost never remembered first names. A large-eared man of obscure origin, Hockbarry had played outfield for the Roughnecks since there had been a Gulf Coast League. Chozen settled into his crouch and called for a fastball away. Bobby shook off the signal. Chozen jabbed three fingers down. Bobby didn’t see much point in throwing a changeup before setting it up with a fastball, so Chozen signaled for a slider. Bobby didn’t feel he was ready for a slider this early in the inning. He stepped off the rubber and knocked his right heel on the mound, then shrugged his le
ft shoulder twice. When he leaned over to take a new sign, Chozen showed one finger. Bobby shook it off.
“Time,” Chozen called to the ump.
Out at the mound, he said, “Bobby, what are you doing?”
“Don’t you remember this guy?”
Harry looked over his shoulder. “Sure. He’s played a weak center field for Beaumont since God rested on the seventh day.”
“And he hits outside fastballs,” Bobby said. “Remember our second exhibition game in March? He drove a first-pitch outside fastball into deep right for a triple.”
It was not that Bobby studied hitters. He simply never forgot their strengths or weaknesses once he faced them a few times. In Chozen’s long career, Bobby German was the only pitcher, Majors or Minors, who knew more about the batters’ habits than he did.
“Bobby,” Chozen said.
“What?”
“Why didn’t you stay in college? If I had a memory like yours, I’d be a fat cat holding a stogie with soft fingers instead of an old catcher gripping a bat with these.” He turned his right palm up to Bobby, dirt worked deep into the calluses, some of them cracked and scabbed over with dried blood. “Now. What do you suggest?”
“How about the curve?”
“You mean the hanging curve that almost crucified holy Harper on the fence?”
“No,” Bobby said. “Just a curve. Without the hang.”
“You ready to throw one?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
Chozen turned and waddled to the plate. Bobby threw the curve. It didn’t hang. Hockbarry topped it for a groundout to short. The next batter went down swinging.
The game fell into a rhythm in the fourth. Three up, three down on routine grounders and fly balls. The score remained 1-0, Lunkers.
In the bottom half of the fifth, it happened.
Bobby’s fastball was heating up. He fanned Duke Spencer, the Roughnecks’ leadoff man, with two inside fastballs and an outside change.
Chozen signaled for a fastball against Chuck Key-9, the first baseman. A Coushatta Indian with a bat he called the Big Potato, he had a bobcat’s yellow eyes set in an oversized head. His friends called him the Big Kahuna. Bobby remembered him from the West Texas–New Mexico League. He was playing left field for the Borger Oilers then, so Bobby guessed the years had taken a step or two from his Native American speed. Key-9 was a pull hitter who ate inside fastballs like a kid gobbling popcorn.
Chozen tapped his left thigh. Inside fastball. The thought flickered through Bobby’s mind that he should wave it off. But his arm felt better than it had since he had risen to Double-A three years ago. The extra day’s rest from the Cubans’ arrival had put some zip back in his fastball.
His last thought before winding up was, If you’re not ready to challenge a rusty old hitter from the bush leagues, you need to hang up your spikes and go fishing.
When Bobby released the ball with a sharp downward snap, he remembered the feeling. He hadn’t felt it in five years. He fell toward home with an easy stride. When he planted his foot, he felt the forward motion of his body stop, then all the strength of his legs travel up through his torso. He drove his upper body down, trailing his arm and, farther back, his hand. His body’s torque whipped his arm around, transferring all of its speed to his fingertips. When he released, he felt the pop. The controlled violence of his body exploded through his fingertips into the ball.
The fastball ran in on Key-9’s fists and jammed his swing. Bobby heard the shattering contact. When his trail leg came around and squared him in fielding position, he raised both hands to protect himself from the projectile rocketing at him. With his glove, he swatted the barrel of the broken bat away and stepped through a shower of white splinters to look for the baseball.
Chozen scrambled for the ball and grabbed it before it rolled foul down the third-base line. After throwing Key-9 out, Chozen passed in front of the mound and hit his chest protector to adjust it after the throw.
“Did you see that,” Bobby demanded.
Chozen didn’t have to ask. He knew what Bobby meant. Chozen nodded. “That was almost Little Rock.”
“Almost, my ass. That was Little Rock.”
Chozen chuckled. “Maybe so, Bobby. Maybe so. That fireballing Cuban’s got my radar scrambled.”
* * *
When Bobby came in from the inning, Ricardo was all over him like a sleepy Chihuahua jump-started by a lightning bolt.
“Mr. Bobby, that was the fastest fasbol I have ever seed.”
Ricardo acted out the shattering of the bat and Bobby’s reaction as he protected himself from the splinters. Amused, Bobby sat on the bench and watched the show. He was pleased with the throw itself. The broken bat was nothing to him and he tried to explain to Ricardo what had really happened.
“It wasn’t the speed of the ball that broke the Big Potato. It was the ball riding in on the neck of the bat and jamming the Big Papoose’s swing.”
Ricardo’s eyes enlarged. “Don’t joo believe that. That is the fastest ever I have seed a pitcher t’row.”
“That was nowhere near the speed your brother throws,” Cyrus said.
“Have joo ever that fast t’rowed, Mr. Peanut Butter?”
“I’m not a fastball pitcher,” Cyrus said. “I’m a nibbler.”
“Then joo don’t know the difficality of that pitch, how hard it is to t’row.”
Cyrus returned to his original point. “You think Bobby throws faster than your brother?”
“That I would not know. I have not seed him t’row since he was fifteen.”
“Or since you were fifteen,” Cyrus joked.
Ricardo frowned. “It is all the same.”
“All right, men,” Chozen called. “Listen up! We’ve got eight hits and one run, and even Dickie knows what that means.” He turned to his son.
Dickie Chozen hung his head in shame, shaking it as if the fault were his own. “We’re leaving too many ducks on the pond.”
“That’s right. We’re getting plenty of wood on the ball. Now let’s see if we can move around the bases a little better.”
Lamar Cagle led off the inning with a standup double. Scoop hit a smart grounder to the shortstop, who bobbled the ball, checked the Big Chief at second, and barely beat Scoop to first with the late throw.
Bobby came to the plate with one out and an insurance run on second. As a left-handed batter, he was two steps closer to first than right-handers. Leo Tycer signaled bunt. Bobby was never confident about the drag bunt and decided he would try to poke the ball between first and second with an old-fashioned swinging bunt. The maneuver reminded him of golfing—an easy swing to lay the ball up on the green. On an 0-and-2 pitch, he slow-swung and met the ball in front of the plate. It rolled between first and second, pulling basemen off their positions. Wiseman ran to cover first.
The second baseman one-handed the slow roller and flipped it to his pitcher. Wiseman, who outweighed Bobby by fifty pounds, hit him like a fullback busting through the line, sprawling the lesser southpaw in the dust.
Ricardo went berserk in the dugout. With cleats and fingers, he stuck himself to the fence like a monkey, shaking the links against the metal posts.
“Don’t joo do that to Lucky Strikes, hijo de puta! I kick joo in the ass.”
Bobby picked himself up. While looking out to third to make sure he had advanced Cagle, he leaned to one side to work his ribs back in place.
Wiseman shot Ricardo a scornful look. “Where’d j’all pick up the cheerleader, German?” Wiseman spit a stream of tobacco juice in the dust. “Shit, teach him to dance to an organ grinder, you could sell him to the circus.”
Bobby forced a laugh, reminding himself that the season ran through September.
As Zig Emory made his long adjustment in the batter’s box, the players started placing low-voiced bets, no money, on how many times the home-plate umpire would hitch up his pants. Some said five, others seven to ten. Dickie Chozen eased down to the other side
of the dugout. Bobby stretched and took deep breaths. Since he had nothing to lose, Bill German bet on twelve hitches, hoping for a long at-bat.
Mr. Five-by-Five hitched up twice while Ziggy was settling in, and there was a quick argument about whether those should count or not. As it turned out, Emory swung at the first pitch, the center fielder caught the third out, and nobody won the sterile bet.
Throwing his warm-up pitches, Bobby checked the on-deck circle. Schroeder would be the toughest batter, followed by Hickenberry. Or Hockenbury. Then Sadaris. The little weasel, Bobby thought. DP Sadaris, they called him, for his tendency to hit into double plays. He had Class C talent, at best, so Bobby thought he must have come from a rich family with connections.
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