IT WAS A COUPLE of weeks into March before real spring started setting in, and playing ball became more of a part of everybody’s days. Partly because of the weather, and partly because of the daily reports coming up from Florida. It was becoming obvious to the world. Fred Lynn was special. The Gold Dust Twins were special. And the 1975 Red Sox were going to be something we would remember for the rest of our lives.
If I wasn’t playing baseball I was watching it. And if I wasn’t watching it in the real world I was watching it in my head. Napoleon and I had played so much repetitive two-man baseball, we were getting to know each other’s game as well as we knew our own. He was beginning to learn how I would set him up with a couple of off-speed junky pitches, then try to sneak the third past him with a short-delivery fastball. We would go to the frozen field down off the parkway, or more often the defrosting, muddy field, with a duffel bag full of bruised, scarred, or waterlogged balls, and take turns emptying the bag on each other. I loved to hit still, and if I could there would be days when I never surrendered the bat to him, and I know that would have been fine with Napoleon too. Because he loved to throw.
He certainly loved to throw.
Napoleon Charlie Ellis could throw a baseball.
But I couldn’t do that because that was not the plan. We could not be the Gold Dust Twins if we did not have well-rounded skills. People were already making fun of Jim Rice’s fielding ability down there in Winter Haven, as if being able to hit a baseball from Florida to Georgia was not enough, and I was not going to let that happen to Napoleon.
Fred Lynn could do everything, though. It was awesome.
Besides, we did ourselves so much good with our constant hit-and-pitch routine. I could see it every time out, as Napoleon’s stroke got smoother, stronger, more controlled. I didn’t have to guide him as much anymore but there were still occasions when I would step down off the mound and sidle up next to him, showing him one small fine adjustment or another. Only there was this progression happening where with each attempt, I would find him a little stiffer, a little less pliable than before until, by the last time I tried to help him, he had changed from the Gumby poseable figure I started out with into a bronze statue. His stance was his stance, and as I tried to get the tiniest of changes out of him, we locked into this struggle of will and muscle, Napoleon holding stubbornly steady, me trying to bend his left arm slightly... Napoleon stiffening... me bending... until... the bat fell away completely, I grabbed his shirt, he gave me a headlock... and the two of us toppled into the sloppy soupy mush of the batter’s box.
We wrestled there for a few seconds, not to establish who was going to beat the other, certainly not to settle the batting-stance question, but to make sure neither of us got back up with one single patch of unmudded clothes.
And the laughing made it even harder to get back up on our feet. We sat there for a few seconds.
“There,” I said. “Much better.”
I got up and headed back to the mound calmly.
“Next time,” Napoleon called, “I’ll come visit you out there and show you how to pitch.”
“Hah. That’ll be the day,” I said.
But really, I knew he very well could. I could swear that every day his fastball gained one more mile per hour.
He was already the hardest thrower I had ever seen.
“I have to tell you something, Richard,” he said as we went through our routine, combing the outfield together to gather up the balls for the next guy to pitch. We were playing till we dropped that day, and nobody was complaining but the balls. I had pitched a full bag already to Napoleon, and he had just finished doing the same for me. When we gathered up this bunch, we would start the whole thing over again. “I thought today was the day. I thought today you were not going to keep up.”
I stopped right there in my tracks, ankle deep in grassy mud. “You thought I...?” I pulled one of the balls back out of the bag, held it up between us like that guy with the skull in Hamlet. “You know what this is? You know who I am?”
“Yes, I know you both,” he said dryly. “But I have been feeling so strong these last few days, as if the ball is simply going to go faster and faster every time. You know that feeling?”
Did I know it? I had often wondered if I would ever hear anyone else say what I thought so many times before. This was how I figured parents feel when their kids graduate or are born or get married or something. I nodded and went back to picking up balls.
“But every time, you catch up. You learn. You make yourself hit the ball when it appears that you are falling behind.”
I looked at him again, and spoke as seriously as I could. “I really want to hit that ball.”
“Yes. I can see that.”
“Thanks. You make me better.” I felt I couldn’t come up with any higher praise than that. Or any greater thanks.
“You actually do intend to play baseball for all your life, don’t you, Richard.”
We had now collected all the balls and were walking back toward the infield. We almost never spoke anymore when we were hitting, so this was our moment. I grew to like this bit very much. It would have been my favorite part of the entire drill, if hitting and pitching weren’t the other parts.
“Of course I’m going to play pro ball. The only people who don’t want to are the people who can’t. And you’re coming with me. We’re the Gold Dust Twins, remember. Only we’ll have to think up a different name by then.”
We were both standing on the mound. Napoleon had both feet on the rubber, as he would be if he was looking for the sign from the catcher. I was in front of him, on the home plate side, with the duffel bag slung over my shoulder. Because it was my turn to pitch.
He shook his head at me.
“What, no?” I asked. “Oh, listen, don’t worry. You are good enough, I know this stuff. And hey, even if you were borderline, I’d do that thing like in Bang the Drum Slowly... you know, put in my contract, wherever I go, my buddy goes.”
He continued to shake his head, but added the words. “Thank you very much, Richard. I’m glad you would do that for me. But that’s not it. The difference is not that you can play and I cannot. The difference is that you want to.”
I dropped the bag of balls at my feet. I swear I had never considered this, that Napoleon Charlie Ellis wouldn’t want to play baseball for life. That anybody wouldn’t. How could this be true? How could somebody with Napoleon’s ability not want to spend his life playing ball? He had the feeling, I was sure I had heard it, just minutes before, when he was describing the feeling of getting better and better with every pitch, of getting better than yourself, of getting better than everybody else. I knew he was feeling it because he was describing what I had always felt like nobody else was ever able to describe. I knew it before that, even just by watching him play, by watching him improve faster than I could have imagined. Because he was made for this game.
He could not be right. If he was still a little short of full commitment to the game the idea the life of baseball, it wasn’t because it wasn’t in there. It was because I had just not finished the job of helping him along.
I couldn’t imagine it any other way.
“You can’t really be serious,” I said, because if I tried to say it all, I would sound crazy.
He shrugged. “Yes, I can. I like playing here and now, though. I like that very much. And I am happy if I am helping you get better and closer to your dream. But that is it. The rest, that is your dream. It is not mine.”
He didn’t even look sorry.
“You’re not joking, by any chance, Napoleon?”
He stomped down off the mound, right up to me, and gave me a good stiff shove in the chest before blowing by me on the way to the plate. “I hope to love something as insanely as you do baseball, Richard Riley Moncreif. Because if I do, whatever it is I will be the world’s greatest at it.” He picked up the Adirondack.
I picked up the glove and slipped it onto my hand. If I coated my hand in raw pizza dough, it would not mold to me any closer than this glove that I had lived with, literally slept with, breaking it in under my mattress with a ball stuck in the web.
I picked up a ball, aimed it at Napoleon. “Ah, you’ll change your mind. I know you will.”
I threw him the straight hard one that he could hit a mile.
He hit it a mile.
I watched the ball every inch of the way, with my arms stretched wide, the scent of mud and grass in my nose, water in my shoes, and cool wind on my face.
No matter what he thought, Napoleon Charlie Ellis was a baseball player.