CHAPTER 10

After a while, I insinuated myself into a pepper game going on behind home plate. Backed up against the stands were Bob Friend, the Pittsburgh pitcher, and Richie Ashburn and Frank Robinson, both outfielders. The three of them stood abreast, fielding the grounders and lobbing the ball out about forty feet to Ernie Banks, the Chicago shortstop, who would flop his bat out loosely and chop the ball back to each of them in turn. I went and stood next to Friend, wondering if their pepper game was as exclusive as the warm-up had been earlier. But as soon as I set myself, Banks sent a grounder skidding across the grass at me. It popped cleanly into my glove, and I straightened and tossed the ball back for him to chop toward Robinson at the far end of the line.

Friend, next to me, glanced over. He’d had a fine year with the Pirates, winning twenty-two games, and he was one of the players I was looking forward to talking to. He said: “Well, how are you comin’ along? Enjoying yourself?”

“It’s all a little new,” I said. “I don’t feel at home, or anything like that.”

“Well, I’ll tell you something,” Friend said. He stopped and fielded a grounder. “This is my first time in this park—being in the other league and all—and I don’t feel all that much at home either.”

It was a comforting thing to hear. I was put at ease, and I found I could truly enjoy the pepper game. But as soon as I was put at ease, and felt at home, I found it almost impossible to talk to Friend. I began to envelop myself in the fiction of actually being a ballplayer. I knew that with the first question I asked, I would be marked for what I really was: an observer, a writer, an outsider. So I stubbornly refused to betray the image of myself as a ballplayer by asking questions, and I began to strengthen the fiction as the afternoon progressed by adopting a number of curious mannerisms I associated with ballplaying: my voice took on a vague, tough timbre—somewhat Southern cracker in tone—and the few sentences I spoke were cryptic yet muffled; I created a strange, sloping, farmer’s walk; once I found myself leaning forward on my knee, spiked shoe up on the batting-cage wheel, chin cupped in hand, squinting darkly toward center field like a brooding manager; I was sorely tempted to try a stick of gum, despite my dislike of the stuff, in order to get the jaws moving professionally. Sometimes I just moved the jaws anyway, chewing on the corner of the tongue.

The trouble with the role was that my responsibilities as a writer were eclipsed. I never wrote down any notes. I rarely asked questions. There was Friend, a foot or so away, and yet I could ask none of the questions I had planned to put to him. After our first exchange of pleasantries we remained silent. He would have been interesting to talk to. He is an affable and intelligent citizen, I had been told, the player representative of the Pirates, a Purdue graduate, and a student both of the piano and the investment business which he works in during the off-season. He has a round, pleasant face, unnaturally pale compared to the cowboy-rough appearance of most ballplayers, but with a serious mien you wouldn’t be surprised to find behind a rolltop desk at One Wall Street. Yet he is easygoing enough to have a reputation of top prankster on his club, being considered an artist among his teammates in the practice of “lighting shoelaces,” which I suppose is a variety of hotfoot. It would have been particularly interesting to hear Friend talk about nerves. When he first came up to the major leagues the tension bothered him and he fidgeted through his pitching assignments with his face drawn haggard, his fingers twitching at his cap, at the rosin bag, and he peered bleakly at his teammates from the confines of the pitcher’s mound as if he’d been imprisoned in a cage. His teammates tagged him with a Runyonesque nickname. Nervous Nervous, they called him, Nervous Nervous Friend.

But of course I didn’t ask him about that or any of the other things. I continued chewing on the corner of my tongue and concentrated on the pepper game. At one point I was tempted to tell him what the batboy told me Junior Gilliam of the Dodgers had said, the only small talk I had to offer, but I didn’t. So we stood mutely in the pleasant sun, occasionally bending for the grounders that would skip across the grass from Banks’s bat.

I wasn’t the only one who had a problem in communication. Just behind us, his face pressed against the wire screen, was a youngster with his fielder’s mitt and also an autograph book. He’d started at the far end of our quartet. “Hey, Robinson,” you could hear him piping. “Hey, sign, hey, Frank.”

Ballplayers rarely stop their pregame schedule to sign autographs, but he was persistent. Down the line he came. “Hey, Richie, hey, Richie Ashburn,” he said, but everyone remained aloof, silent, moodily intent on the pepper game. When he came to Friend, next to me, he said, “Hey, Friend, come on, Bobby,” with no luck, of course, and then it was my turn. He paused for a long time. You could hear him puzzling, the crisp sound of his scorecard being inspected for a clue as to my identity, and finally, the wire screen creaking as he leaned against it, he said slowly, “Hey, mister.”

I heard Friend chuckle.

“Hey, mister!” the youngster repeated. He rattled the pages of his autograph book, but I took my cue from the others and didn’t budge. I felt a kinship with him, though—both of us outsiders peering in, ignored, in limbo—but I continued to stare stolidly out at Banks.

That was the only time that day on the playing field that I wasn’t referred to as “kid.” As a spectator in the stands they call me “chief,” as in “Hey, chief, pass the peanuts down to the guy in the hat.” But on the playing field it was “kid.” I never heard anyone else called “kid,” except for the players whose first names were Billy—Martin, and Pierce of the Chicago White Sox. It was a term reserved, apparently, for the outsiders, or the newcomers—and, knowing that, it was galling to hear. The ballplayers called each other “boy” or “baby”—often tacking the appellative to the given name as in “Jimmie-baby” or “Gil-boy.” “Baby” was the most affectionate usage, either drawn out long, bay-bee, or pronounced short, so that it sounded French, as if you were enunciating the initials of Brigitte Bardot. That was the way you usually heard it: “How t’go, bé-bé.” The baby is ubiquitous. In Italy, in the leagues starting up there, the holler-cry from the shortstops is Va bene, baby, va bene. But for me that day it was always “kid.”

When the pepper game broke up (it seemed to break up without anyone saying anything, automatically, as if instinctively the ballplayers knew when to move on to the next phase of the pregame schedule), I wandered idly over to the batting cage. Harvey Kuenn, then playing for the Tigers, was batting—striding forward from a stance deep in the batter’s box that reminded you of the photos of Rogers Hornsby, the rear foot pulled away from the plate, and he lined the pitches out sharply. It was about Kuenn that Casey Stengel once said: “If the guy was hurt, his team might be hurt, but the pitching all over the league will improve.” When he’d finished his batting he came over and stood nearby. I looked at him and he said, “They tell me you’re goin’ to pitch.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Just enough to see what it’s all about.”

He leaned on his bat, and after a while he said: “You want to hit?”

“Sure,” I said. “Damn right.”

“Wait’ll the guy gets out of there,” he said, nodding at the cage, “then you go on in.”

He handed me his bat. “Remember,” he said. “Keep the trademark—the label there—facing up.”

“Sure,” I said—with a twinge of disappointment that he’d thought me so unknowledgeable as not to know this first principle of batting. I hoped no one standing around had overheard.

In the batting cage was Rocky Colavito. Deep in right you could hear the youngsters waiting with their gloves calling at him to pull one in the stands out there, and then you’d hear him grunt as he applied his power to try to satisfy them. He hit some majestic drives, the ball going away from you fast, suddenly as limber and small as a golf ball against the distant clifflike stands, and you weren’t quite so eager to bat seeing the distances he could reach. After each drive, Colavito arches his back, as if an insect was bothering him between the shoulder blades, and then he readjusts his feet in his wide stance, points his bat at the pitcher, and he’s ready. He’s a handsome player, the idol then of Cleveland, now of Detroit, with dark slack good looks and the pouting mouth of a rock-and-roll singer. When he finally finished batting he stepped out of the cage and removed his cap, perhaps to mop the sweat from his brow, perhaps to display his hair which is as composed and sleek as a bullfighter’s.

Harvey Kuenn said: “OK, kid… go ahead in there. Keep the trademark facin’ up.”

I ran into the cage, settling myself quickly in the batter’s box, not wanting to waste anybody’s time being finicky and I swung at everything the batting-practice pitcher threw. He was Ralph Houk, the Yankee coach, pitching from behind a protective canvas screen, belt high, which he ducks behind at the end of his delivery—not with me up there but when he’s throwing to someone like Mickey Mantle. His job is just to lay the pitches across the plate and I swung viciously at them, hitting two ground balls, high slow hoppers, one down the third-base line, the other down toward first, feeling the bat sting my hands, and then one hard low line drive which bounced just in front of first base and rolled down the line into the right-field corner. It would have gone for a single, I prefer to think, unless the first baseman was playing on the bag. Frankly, I think about that hit occasionally, perhaps too much, since anyone able to heft a bat could have hit those batting-practice tosses. But the circumstances and the surroundings were such that you remember: the ball coming in and stepping forward to lash at it and the clean feel of the solid hit and even if the ball didn’t get out of the infield on the fly you had such a sense of accomplishment that you felt like installing yourself in the batting cage until forcibly removed. Reflections of this sort had to come later, because at the time Ralph Houk picked up another ball and threw down a pitch which I swung at mightily—trying to drive it into the outfield—and missed. The ball smacked into the canvas at the back of the cage, and as I swung around, almost falling down in the batter’s box, I saw Mantle and Bob Cerv leaning on their bats, looking on, waiting, and so I hopped out of there.

I was excited. I hurried over to Kuenn. “Damn,” I said. “That’s damn good fun.”

He shifted his chaw slightly. He said “spray hitter”—meaning the hits had gone to all fields—saying it reflectively and not as a compliment but as a professional appraisal. One had the strange feeling that he filed his evaluation away in some compartment of his mind… that if in the obscure chance I should turn up on an opposing team in the far future he would scratch around and remember and then shift in his defensive position accordingly.

I stood and watched the batting practice only briefly. The distant clock indicated less than fifteen minutes before my scheduled start. I looked hastily for someone to start warming up with. A player wearing a catcher’s mitt was ambling slowly down the line from third base. The mitt was what caught my eye… there wasn’t time to hunt up a scorecard and check to see who he was. I hurried over to a trio of reporters standing by the batting cage—deep in agitated colloquy. I apologized to them for interrupting, and I pointed to the approaching player and said, “Who’s that?”

The reporters were puzzled. One of them thought I was pointing into the deep-left-field stands and he said, “Who’s what?”

“No, no,” I said. “Who’s this coming at us?” lowering my voice then and leaning in toward the reporters like a conspirator as the player loomed up. “Right here,” I whispered as he passed just next to us. He looked up briefly and seeing the four of us staring at him from two or three feet away, he quickened his pace slightly.

“That guy?” one of them whispered.

“That’s Bailey, for chrissake, Ed Bailey of Cincinnati,” said the reporter who’d asked “Who’s what?” He spoke petulantly as if he’d wished the question had tested him more severely. They were all looking at me. I hurried after the retreating catcher.

“Mr. Bailey,” I said. He looked around, but kept walking.

I said in a rush: “I gotta pitch in a little while—a little too complicated to explain why—but I wondered if maybe you’d… well, if you’d warm me up.”

He looked dubious. He said: “Nobody told me nothin’.”

“It’s really OK,” I said.

He didn’t seem assured; he began to stare around for someone to rescue him, I suppose, before he finally shrugged resignedly and together we headed for the plate near the third-base dugout where the visiting team’s starting pitcher warms up before the game.

It was interesting throwing to him. He’s out of a place called Strawberry Plains, Tennessee, a big man, with a florid face, but he moves quickly and easily and pitching to him you felt it was impossible either to fool him, no matter how angry a spin you put on the ball, or to throw anything past him unless you threw the ball off at right angles. His big glove enveloped the ball. It was like throwing into a large mattress. He has the reputation in the National League of being a skillful talker behind the plate, wielding a patter like Yogi Berra’s, the Yankee catcher, which can at its best distract the hitter. Bailey’s special gift is his ability to get to Willie Mays. He makes him giggle shrilly. However, he said nothing to me. When he returned the pitches, the ball came back from him hard and accurate.

Beyond Bailey, behind the wire screen, a small knot of spectators craned to watch the trajectory of every pitch. That was another fine pregame pastime—ranked with watching the fungoes hit—to get behind the catcher during the warm-up and murmur judgment on the assorted flutters and breaks of big-league deliveries. My witnesses had little to exclaim about. I laid the pitches straight at Bailey’s mitt, working easily and trying to get the windup and delivery smooth and effortless.

But then after a while I threw Bailey a curveball—a fine wide roundhouse that performed much better than I expected it to: it was thrown fast, off a wrist snap that shook the arm violently, and the ball swept and ducked across the plate at truly appreciable angles—across and down.

I don’t know what the spectators behind the screen had to say about it. But Bailey’s reaction was startling: quickly he reared up from his crouch.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, kid, dammit when y’all throw the hook, lemme know, hey?” His voice was high and disturbed. “Make a sign when y’all goin’ to curve it.” He gestured what he wanted me to do—a twist of the pitching hand—and then he fired the ball back hard, annoyed that I’d crossed him up.

The ball must have stung in the glove, but I hardly noticed. What I’d thrown had been recognized for what it was supposed to be. It was one of the great moments of the afternoon.

“Sure, sure,” I yelled happily down at Bailey. “Absolutely!”

I threw a number of curves after that. The simple ritual of flashing the curve sign (which some pitchers do with a sweep of the glove) was irresistible. It seemed such a professional gesture that one did it timidly at first; but then after a while you got used to it, and the vanity of it, and also you took pride in giving the sign for the simple reason that it indicated a little variety in the repertoire. What the pitch did, or where it went—even if it behaved ignominiously and slithered in the grass—wasn’t finally as meaningful as that preliminary nonchalant gesture of warning the catcher that a pitch was coming down that he’d better be on his toes about.

I warmed for about ten minutes. The arm felt good. Despite the number of times I gave the sign and threw the curve, I never got the big roundhouse to sweep over the plate with the authority of the first time I’d tried it. But I threw it with growing confidence until finally I promised myself that later on I would throw it against a major league batter to see what would happen to it.

I wanted to ask Bailey for a comment on my pitching ability, just on the off chance he might say something that would inspire confidence for the afternoon’s labor. Pitchers need that sort of balm. Christy Mathewson once said, “A pitcher is not a ballplayer,” and what he meant was that a pitcher is a specialist, an artist, with all the accompanying need of consolation and encouragement. Mollycoddling is almost as important to him as the rosin bag. One famous example of a pitcher’s need for recognition was blurted into a microphone during the 1934 World Series by Detroit’s hefty speedballer Schoolboy Rowe, the pitcher Dizzy Dean called pretty near as fast (“With a wind behind him”) as his brother Paul. Rowe had a brilliant Series and following one victory he murmured over the radio to his wife, who was listening at home: “How’m I doing, Edna?” Detroit was playing the famous Gashouse Gang in that Series, and Dizzy Dean and the other St. Louis bench jockeys, including such violent and cackling tongues as Lippy Leo Durocher’s, Pepper Martin’s, K. O. Delancey’s, and Ernie Showboat Orsatti’s, never let Rowe forget that painful little phrase. Thereafter, he was inundated by the steamy chorus of “How’m I doing, Edna?” rising off the Cardinal bench.

In any case, I didn’t ask Bailey for an opinion of my pitching, and he didn’t offer one. After a while I called down to him that I’d had enough, and he turned without a word and went into the dugout.

When he’d gone, I looked out at the scoreboard. The distant clock hands stood almost at 1:30—the time Frank Scott had said we’d start.

It was obvious something was in the wind. The players were off the field, the reporters and photographers gone—the batting cage wheeled away and the groundskeepers sprucing up the pitcher’s mound and around home plate. Both teams were standing by their dugouts. Some of the players seemed puzzled by the change in the pregame schedule. They talked among themselves. I saw a few fingers pointing, and also little quick gestures of the head in my direction to indicate that it was “that guy over there—the guy with the blue cap,” and the eyes looking, and I felt the sweat start to seep in the palms—the fielder’s mitt suddenly uncomfortably clammy and hot.

Then Frank Scott stepped briskly out toward the pitcher’s mound. I watched him. Just across the base paths he wheeled and motioned me to follow him. It was obviously me he wanted.

I said, “Oh, Jesus,” and I walked after him, across the white chalk of the foul lines which I was careful not to step on, and just before we reached the pitcher’s mound he turned and faced me.

“OK,” he said. “You’re on.”

It was exactly 1:30.