Full of confidence, pitcher Ron “Stretch” Tompkins bounded out of the dugout and headed toward the mound at Rickwood. He was a perfect 5–0, and was leading the league in strikeouts, averaging almost one an inning. Sportswriters had voted him the Southern League’s player of the month for May. With a win in the series finale against Asheville, he could extend the Barons’ winning streak to seven and their league lead to four.
He also had another big incentive. Pat Friday, Kansas City’s general manager, had made a trip to Birmingham specifically to see him. To accommodate Friday’s schedule, Sullivan had moved Tompkins up a day in the rotation. With an excellent outing, the tall Californian could be joining Shaky Joe in the big leagues.
For Sullivan, the notion of losing the ace of his pitching staff was unsettling.
When Tompkins ran wind sprints, he looked like a giant stork. At six foot five and 180 pounds, he was all knees and elbows. He threw three-quarters sidearm like Don Drysdale, and when he brought his right arm back behind him and then unfurled it, it was like Lash LaRue’s crackling whip. And he threw the hell out of the ball. (These were the days before the radar gun, so velocity was an estimate.)
Labeled another one of those “can’t miss” prospects as a senior at Chula Vista High just south of San Diego, Tompkins seemed destined to be a star. His father built a regulation pitching mound, complete with a rubber and a home plate sixty feet, six inches away, in their backyard. He also coached all of Ron’s summer-league teams, and had Ron take piano lessons, not only to help him become a more well-rounded young man, but also to help his hand-eye coordination for baseball.
Ron was an average student, not motivated in school, except for sports. He had a sister, but she was six years older, so they weren’t particularly close. They did have something in common, however—they both stuttered. Badly. Embarrassingly. Ron worked hard to overcome it, and in his senior year he even ran for student body vice president and won, giving a speech in front of the entire student body. By comparison, pitching in front of the A’s general manager with a possible trip to the big leagues on the line was a breeze.
Standing on the mound at Rickwood, Tompkins could see Pat Friday sitting right behind home plate. He walked the first hitter on four pitches.
The second hitter lined a double in the gap, scoring the runner, sending Tompkins hustling to back up home. Sullivan called time and walked slowly to the mound.
“You’re rushing your pitches,” he said. “Take your time. Relax.”
Tompkins settled down and retired the side, leaving the runner stranded.
Walking off the mound, he wished he could tell Friday to forget what he saw with those first two hitters and to just judge him on the rest of the game. He also wanted to look to the wives’ section and let his wife, Sherri, know that he’d be okay. She knew a possible trip to The Show was at stake.
They met at Chula Vista High, and Sherri—tall, good-looking, and on track to go to San Diego State—had been with him through all his baseball highs, including when Ron signed a letter of intent to play for Rod Dedeaux, the legendary coach at USC. But then he changed his mind and signed a $20,000 bonus contract with the A’s the day after graduating from high school in 1962. His dad had scheduled the eight interested teams, giving each scout an hour to make his pitch. Four days later, Ron kissed Sherri good-bye and boarded a plane to Florida to start his career. When he walked through the airport at Daytona, he was surprised to find restrooms marked COLOREDS. He’d never paid any attention to the fact that California had its own de facto segregation, a reality that Tommie Reynolds, also from San Diego, would soon explain to him.
In that first pro season, he had an impressive 2.48 ERA, striking out 131 in 122 innings. After the season, he returned to Chula Vista and he and Sherri, now a student at San Diego State, took up where they left off. She went with him when he picked up his brand-new ’62 Corvette, his big purchase from his bonus money. He gave the balance of it to his parents, who bought a family cabin east of San Diego.
In December, Sherri got pregnant. They got married in January. For Ron, it was all happening so fast—seven months earlier, he and Sherri were the prototypical carefree, good-looking Southern California high school sweethearts, walking down center hall to senior comp, double-dating to Oscar’s Drive-In, and making out in the front seat of his ’55 Chevy—and now they were married with a baby on the way. They were both still eighteen. Ron traded in his Corvette for a more family-friendly ’64 Bonneville. And now, twenty-five hundred miles from home, Sherri sat in the stands at Rickwood with her ten-month-old son in her lap and watched Haywood Sullivan come to the mound in the sixth inning and pull her husband from the game, while a few rows down, Pat Friday jotted in his little notebook.
In the clubhouse after winning their seventh straight game—a come-from-behind 7–6 victory—the Barons were whooping it up. But not Tompkins. He’d just had his worst outing—six innings, five earned runs, four walks, and only one strikeout. He’d been wild, falling behind almost every batter. His record was still a perfect 5–0, but he’d bombed miserably in front of Pat Friday. His chances of getting called up had just taken a serious nosedive.
He found little solace in the Barons’ most exciting win of the year—in the bottom of the ninth, Campy had led off with a single, stolen second, and scored on a base hit by Hoss. Tompkins looked up and saw Pat Friday enter the locker room and stop to congratulate Ken Sanders, the winning pitcher, and then shake hands with Campy, who was now hitting .296. After that, he passed right by him and didn’t say a word, disappearing into Sullivan’s office and closing the door behind him.
For Sullivan, it was a good night. His team won its seventh straight game, increasing its league lead to four… and he would not be losing his star pitcher.
Head down, Tompkins was the first to leave the locker room, walking out into the warm evening air, Sherri and his son waiting in the Bonneville.