Switch Pitchers

by Norman German

  While Ricardo was pitching the opening game, Dickie Chozen had tied a handful of pigeon feathers together and looped the string over one of the rafters at the end of the dugout. That’s where Ricardo usually set up camp after pitching so he could rest. Ricardo’s heel cleats bit into the bench’s wood to keep his feet off the dugout floor away from rats.

  Ricardo enjoyed watching Bobby throw. Although he no longer tracked his fellow southpaw’s pitches, he continued to study his motion on the mound. Ricardo was hunched in the corner engrossed in Bobby’s performance when Dickie, three spots down, lowered the pigeon feathers in the fourth inning and plopped them onto Ricardo’s shoulder, brushing his ear on the way down.

  Ricardo came unhinged. Crying out, he shot from his seat to the fence, slapping his shoulder and beating the air with his glove. When he heard the laughter and saw the swinging bundle of feathers, he cursed the lesser Chozen, and he meant most of it.

  “Joo little turd! Joo scare the chit out of me! Joo know I no like them god-dam rats.” Ricardo’s shoulders shivered as he thought of the rat crawling on his body. “I teach joo the beautiful Spanish language, and this is what I get?”

  Dickie laughed and apologized. The two playfully swatted at each other and when the commotion died down, Dickie sat next to his mentor.

  “Joo little pipí. Tell me what comes after Julio.”

  “Agosto.”

  “Sí. And it is in agosto that the cane harvest is ended in Cooba. God, that was the month of nightmares for me when I was a little pendejo like joo. Because the rats and the mouses, when I choppit the cane, they crawl over my feet like a furry snake. I still get the chillies when I think of it.” Ricardo shivered in a real demonstration of his feelings about the rodents.

  Ricardo kept a wary eye on his protégé through the fifth, sixth, and seventh innings. He relaxed his vigilance by the eighth, but kept his cleats dug into the wooden bench.

  “Whoa!” Dickie pointed at the base of the dugout. “Look at the size of that rat! Even Houston didn’t have any that big.”

  Ricardo glared at the batboy. Only half kidding, he said, “Joo little mierda, don’t start again that chit with me.”

  Butt-sliding down the bench, Dickie said, “I’m not kidding you, Mr. Ricardo. Look for yourself.”

  Dickie was pointing at one of the weep holes in the cinderblocks where water drained from the dugout on rainy days. Ricardo held his glove up towards Dickie to shield himself from the usual flying projectiles, then looked down at the hole.

  Ricardo saw the rat’s greasy muzzle poking from the hole. The scavenger twitched its nose a few times, then lifted one foot forward, suspending it like a spaniel on point. When the rat stepped through his entryway to search for a snack, Ricardo instinctively threw his glove at the vermin, then launched into hysterical fast motion, picking up and hurling anything handy—gloves, balls, shoes—his body ricocheting from one side of the dugout to the other as he backed away from the slimy creature that was dodging left and right trying to find an exit.

  When the rat disappeared through its escape hatch and Ricardo came to a stop, stuck midway up the fencing like a deranged monkey, no one was laughing. It was the first time most of them had seen temporary insanity. All but two men in the dugout were soothing Ricardo, trying to talk him down from the fence and down from hysteria.

  The two who were not calming him—Bobby and Harry Chozen—were looking at each other, signaling, just by looking, that they had seen Ricardo throwing fast, maniacally fast, with his left hand and then with his right. And the right hand threw faster than the left.

  The men settled Ricardo down and placed him near the entrance to the dugout, then kept a vigilant watch for intruding rats. When the game was over, he was the first one out of the dugout to congratulate Bobby on his win. As the men gathered their gear and headed for the visitor’s clubhouse, Chozen asked Ricardo to stay behind. When only four remained, Dickie gave his father a puzzled look and the manager told his son to go on inside. Then there were three.

  Bobby sat on the bench, massaging his arm. Standing just outside the dugout, Ricardo maintained a healthy distance from rats emerging to forage after the game.

  “Ricardo,” Chozen said. “I know you don’t like rats. I don’t either. But I want you to forget them for a second and look me in the eye.”

  Ricardo turned his nervously scanning eyes from the dark corners of the dugout to his manager.

  “Now, I’m only going to ask you this question once, and I want you to answer me honestly, man to man.”

  “Sí, Mr. Chozen, sir. With joo, I have never not been honest.”

  Chozen nodded and delivered the question. “Can you throw right-handed?”

  “Sí, señor. Of course.” He said it like he was surprised by his manager’s ignorance. Ricardo turned to check Bobby’s reaction.

  Chozen’s face turned to stone. He cuffed Ricardo on the side of his head, and it was not the restrained cuff he laid on Dickie to show disappointment in his son.

  “Have you lost your mind? You could have used that tonight.” Chozen turned and took a step away from Ricardo, then turned back to him. “Do you have any idea what you are?” He said it like a poor man who just stumped his toe on a gold brick.

  Ricardo did not know how to answer his manager. He was still not good at detecting the nuances of sarcasm in his second language.

  Chozen stared at the man who didn’t know what he was, then posed the question whose answer could change any number of lives.

  “How well can you throw right-handed?”

  Ricardo looked at his right hand, then up at Chozen. “Mr. Chozen, sir, I have not thrown with my right hand since a long time, but I think I throw about the same with my right than with my left. From when I was little as I can remember, I choppit the cane with my left hand till it tire, then I choppit the cane with my right. No, never I know what hand I am. I am always both hands. Choppit just as good, throw just as good. Have to fight with both.”

  Ricardo looked down at his hands. They were clenched and ready to fight.

  “Ricardo, look at me.” Ricardo’s eyes locked on Chozen’s. “Man to man, Ricardo, I’m telling you. You’re lying.”

  “I not lie,” Ricardo asserted, stepping forward.

  The men stared at each other. “You are lying. You’re a natural right-hander, just like Roberto. Now, what I want to know is this. Is your right-handed fastball as fast as his?”

  Ricardo’s eyes didn’t move, but his hands clenched tighter.

  “Sí.”

  “Then why don’t you throw it?”

  “I no like to throw it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I no like to throw it because—.” He hated even saying it. When he started the explanation, he ran through it like a disgusting chore he wanted to finish quickly. “I no like to throw it because that is the peetch of my bro-ther.”

  Chapter 19

  SEPTEMBER breezed in on a weak Canadian front with the first hint of fall. The Lunkers were three games out of first with two weeks left in the season.

  Chozen had ordered Ricardo not to tell anyone about his new incentive. But Ricardo, Chozen’s number-two southpaw, now his number-one right-hander, was able to maintain silence no better than a boy with a new glove. Before the team reached Baton Rouge on the bus ride from New Orleans, Ricardo had leaked the news to Bobby.

  In Chozen’s room the night of Ricardo’s rat dance, the manager drafted on hotel stationery an attendance bonus that would apply to the remainder of the season, then double the following year. For every game Ricardo pitched with one hand, then won while pitching relief for himself with the other, he would get ten percent of the gate. Chozen knew the rare spectacle of a switch-pitcher would draw crowds, and, a fair man, he wanted Ricardo to participate in the profits.

  After playing four years for Harry Chozen, Bobby considered him as much a friend as a manager. There was still a professional distance between them, but Bobby always felt he could tal
k frankly with the older man. So Chozen was not surprised when his star southpaw knocked on his office door asking about the Ricardo deal.

  After Chozen’s explanation, Bobby said, “Mr. Slater’s pretty tight. What if he doesn’t agree to the contract?”

  Chozen, relaxed and informal before the question, dropped his feet from the desk and straightened himself in his chair. He set his elbows on the desktop, closed his eyes, and clasped his muscular hands as if he were praying. Opening his eyes, he said, “Bobby, what do you think people would say if they knew a Jew owned this ball club?”

  Bobby was not expecting this surprise. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. He tried again. “Mr. Slater’s Jewish?”

  Chozen burst out laughing.

  “No, Bobby. I am.”

  “I know, but—.” The realization of what Chozen was suggesting came to him slowly. “You own the Lunkers?”

  “Not entirely. But I have a controlling interest.”

  Bobby frowned. It took a while for his brain to reshuffle the old cards.

  “You and Mr. Slater co-own the Lunkers?”

  Chozen nodded grimly, ashamed he had withheld the secret from one of his true friends.

  “I’m sorry I kept that from you, Bobby, but if others knew a Jew owned this ball club, or any part of it, my life would be miserable.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you. Jews own lots of places around town and that doesn’t keep people from doing business with them.”

  Chozen was silent for a while. Finally, he brought his elbows down. He pushed his chair back and pulled open the front drawer of his desk.

  “Do you know where I played college ball, Bobby?”

  “I didn’t even know you went to college.”

  Chozen reached in the drawer and pulled out a picture frame. He looked at it, then reached over the desk and handed it to Bobby.

  Bobby read from a diploma. “The University of Southern California.”

  “In chemistry,” Chozen laughed, holding up his embattled hands. “Can you imagine the devastation I would have caused in a chemistry lab with these?”

  Bobby set the frame on the edge of the desk.

  “People are strange, Bobby. You think you know them. They think they know you. Then they learn one tiny thing about you and they change.”

  “I think you’re being too hard on the fellows. You’re a good manager, and they respect you. I don’t think they’d change just from knowing you’re Jewish.”

  “No,” Chozen said. “Many of them—maybe most of them—already know. But if they knew I was Jewish and owned the team, I’d never hear the end of it.”

  “I still don’t think you’re giving them much credit.”

  “Really? I wish you could have seen your face when I handed you that diploma. You’re still looking at me funny.”

  Bobby knew he was right about that.

  “I’ve fought this my whole life, Bobby. When you’re successful, everybody’s your friend till they find out you’re Jewish. Then you lose half of them. The players would want more money, and if I didn’t come through, they’d call me a stingy Jew. And stinking sounds good with stingy, so they’d throw that in, too. ‘The lousy stinking stingy Jew.’”

  “Mr. Chozen, with all due respect, I really don’t think—”

  “And the fans would say, ‘If he weren’t so Jew-tight, he could buy us out of the middle ranks with some better hitters.’ I’m not even a strong believer, Bobby. That’s the pisser. It’s the worst thing one Jew can say of another—‘He’s a secular Jew.’ So you see, I get it both coming and going.”

  Bobby had seen Chozen worked up many times, over baseball. But he had never heard him speak at length about his problems. In fact, it occurred to him, outside of baseball, he hardly knew his manager at all.

  “And then,” Chozen said, “The Cuban Tweedledee and Tweedledum fell out of the sky into my peaceful, middle-of-the-road ball club. But you know what? I didn’t mind that because I knew Tweedledee would get called up to Wonderland after the All-Star break. Then things would get back to normal. But, no,” Chozen said, looking skyward and pointing. “Whoever’s in charge of this farce had to see what would happen if Tweedledee and Tweedledum all wrapped up in one package dropped from the sky onto my little sandlot.”

  Chozen picked up the diploma, placed it in the drawer, and closed it forcefully.

  “And now here we are,” he said. “Without asking for it, I’ve got a sideshow freak that would make P. T. Barnum drool, yet I’ll be tarred and feathered if I try to make a dime off him.”

  Chapter 20

  THE Lunkers were about to host a double-header in Lake Charles. Then they would spend a week on the cattle drive to Laredo and finish the season against division-leading New Orleans in a three-game home stand.

  Ricardo pitched the opening game of the double-header. Before game time, Chozen briefed Judge Carlton on the switch-pitcher. After the seventh inning, with the Lunkers nursing a 2-1 lead, the PA system crackled with Carlton’s voice.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a surprise for you this afternoon. In the history of Major League baseball, no hurler has ever attempted to pitch in relief of himself by throwing with his opposite hand. Tonight you’ll witness history in the making as our imported lefty, Ricardo Alemán, throws two innings of relief with his right hand. If he can do it successfully, maybe he’ll do it as a Major Leaguer, and you’ll be able to tell your grandkids you were there the first time he tried it.”

  Judge Carlton paused and waited for the thunderous applause that never came. The spectators were baffled. Thinking they had misheard, some asked those next to them what the judge had said. Others assumed he was joking and thought the joke so feeble they didn’t even give him token laughter.

  Carlton himself felt a bit disoriented and wondered whether the joke was on him. He knew Mr. Chozen, though good-natured, was not a joking man. When Ricardo took the mound for his warm-ups, the announcer tried again. “Bats left, throws left. And right. How many pitchers can you say that about, Lunker fans? The answer?—Zero! And that’s my ruling.” The judge’s gavel reverberated through the ballpark. “Now, let’s encourage our able lefty and wish him luck on this unusual feat of athleticism and coordination.”

  A smattering of applause rose from the bleachers. The fans watched Ricardo throw his warm-up pitches. They were not in the range of his brother’s fastball and fell short even of Bobby’s best. But the spectators could clearly see that something unusual was happening. Ricardo looked more natural throwing with his right hand than with his left. His motion had none of the contortions and funny business of his left-handed delivery.

  The coach of the Lafayette Guzzlers ran out to the home-plate umpire. Pointing at the mound, he said to the umpire known as Mr. Five-by-Five, “Can he do that?”

  The umpire patted his back pocket. “Nothing in the rule book says he can’t.”

  The coach turned toward his dugout shaking his head. “Still. It don’t seem right.”

  Ricardo didn’t strike anyone out, but his fielders gave him a three-up, three-down inning by catching a pop foul and a short fly to right, then sending a routine grounder to its final resting place at first.

  Ricardo’s fastball had heated up throughout the eighth inning. He returned to the mound in the ninth, his speed increasing even more.

  “Fraud!” someone yelled from the crowd as the first batter stepped to the plate. “That’s not Ricardo. That’s his twin brother, Roberto. Ya think we’re idiots!?”

  Throughout the inning, from various parts of the grandstands, suspicious ticket holders declared the fix was on. They clearly didn’t appreciate being duped.

  Well, Chozen thought to himself after Ricardo’s first right-handed strikeout was greeted with a chorus of boos, this sure ain’t working out the way I planned it.

  The next batter stepped up, and Chozen gave the fans what, apparently, they didn’t want. He signaled fastball, and Ricardo threw a beauty.

  “Hey, Ro
berto! Why don’t you go back to Little Rock?” The call came from a fan whose voice Chozen recognized. He cheered when the Lunkers were winning and jeered when they were losing. It was like an avocation to him.

  Ricardo’s next pitch was wild, high.

  The fan continued. “Pitcher looks mighty fresh to me!” He whistled. “Hey, pitcher, why don’t you throw one left-handed to prove you’re not Roberto!”

  It was the wrong thing to say, and it was said one time too many.

  Before anyone could stop him, Ricardo had thrown his glove down and charged the man. When the ambidextrous pitcher reached the short fence, he put both hands on the rail and made a pommel-horse leap over and into the bleachers. Three steps up, Ricardo knocked the fan down and started beating on him, first with his right hand, then with his left.