Dutch Blue Error
Page 23
“How’s the arm? Is your arm okay?”
“Oh, man, the arm is beautiful. Still got the gas. I can throw the ball nine hundred miles an hour. I can still bend off a yakker that’ll come right back to me. Shit, after I came out of the game I snuck out to the bullpen. Know what? They could’ve propped the glove up on a stick and I would’ve hit the pocket every time. Shit. Perfect. I was fuckin’ perfect.”
“Well, then, it sounds like you’re fine. You’ll get over it. Just one of those things.”
“Naw. I was doin’ that before the game, too. Warming up I was great. Perfect. My head is messed up. Soon as the game starts I’m thinkin’ about my stride, and bending my back, and the hips and the shoulders and cocking the elbow and man it won’t go where I’m aimin’ it at all. I got bit by the Steve Blass bug and there ain’t no cure.”
His next start Eddie threw the first pitch over the middle of the plate, then nine consecutive balls not even close, and Kasko took him out. He didn’t pitch for eleven days. He worked out every day with the bullpen catcher. He threw the ball perfectly. When he next pitched he came into the sixth inning of a game the Red Sox were losing by five runs. He walked a batter and threw the next pitch shoulder high and out over the plate. It disappeared over the center field fence. For a major league pitcher, I knew, that home run pitch was just as wild as any of those that hadn’t been strikes.
Eddie spent the rest of the season back in Pawtucket. The Sox sent Stump Kelly down to work with him. They were even talking about trying a hypnotist. I talked to Eddie on the phone now and then. He said he was throwing the ball as well as ever—except in games. In games he had no control.
While Eddie was in Pawtucket Jan remained in Winchester with Sam and Josie. It was only an hour and a half drive from Pawtucket, but Eddie never made it. Jan said she understood. Eddie needed to work things out. Baseball was his profession. Right now, baseball came first. Eddie didn’t call her, either. Once in a while she phoned him. She told me Eddie was distant and even surly with her.
“He’s drinking a lot, I think,” she confided to me one day. “I think he’s got a real problem, Brady. He doesn’t want to see me. They won’t let him pitch. He just gets dressed every day and throws on the sidelines and takes a shower and goes to that room he’s living in and drinks. Will he get better, do you think?”
“I don’t honestly know. He’s got lots of people rooting for him. He’s young. His arm is still good.”
“But that’s not what I mean,” said Jan, snapping her head to toss her hair away from her face. “I mean, if he can’t pitch anymore will he get better?”
I touched her hand. “I don’t know.”
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Author’s Note
I wish to thank Rick Boyer and Betsy Rapoport again for their critical and spiritual support; my wife, Cindy, for her uncanny editorial eye as well as her tolerance; and my children, Michael, Melissa, and Sarah, for their patience and encouragement.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1984 by William G. Tapply
Cover design by Kathleen Lynch
978-1-4804-2745-7
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