The Youngest Hero (22 page)

I took a different approach with the machine this time. I dumped the balls in and turned it on, staying behind the machine
for the first few pitches to study the trajectory. By now I knew exactly where the ball would fly off the wall and where to
walk to stay away from it.

When I was ready, I walked to the other end while the machine delivered pitches. They came within three feet of me. I wondered
if I was being foolish. I knew guys who had been hit in batting cages because the machine threw a wild pitch right at them.
I prayed this one would never do that.

I stepped into the box and took my normal swing for the second
dozen or so pitches. As I expected, I didn’t come close. Now I crouched low and held the bat in my left hand from the lefty
side of the plate, stretching it out horizontally in the direction of the pitches, which swept away from me over the outside
corner. I could tell I was within a half inch of touching a few.

Finally, I reached far enough and held the bat level enough so that a pitch ticked the end of it on the top side and skipped
back to the left off the wall. It cracked into my helmet, hit the wall and helmet again before I went down, and I found myself
in the righty batter’s box with the machine seeming to take aim.

I was not hurt, just stunned by a buzz in my head, but I knew I had to get out of there. When I tried to step, I slipped,
so I lay flat on the ground and felt a pitch miss me by a foot. I tried to get up and move to the other side again, but I
was too panicky and didn’t get traction and had to spread-eagle myself again. Eventually I was able to roll out of the way.

There were still a dozen or so balls left in the machine, so I got back into position. If I could tip one, maybe I could get
more of the bat on another. I missed several, but the second to last pitch hit the top side of the bat about six inches off
the end, hit the wall, and slammed into my side, just under the shoulder and above the rib cage in a fleshy area that seared
with pain.

I hit the deck again, this time in the lefty box. I knew I was out of danger of being struck with a pitch, but I wondered
how stupid a guy could be.

How many times was I gonna do this before I learned that fouling off a pitch like that made it bounce off the wall and try
to kill me?

The last pitch sailed past me, hit the wall, and flew to the other end. Maybe because of where I was on the floor, maybe due
to having been hit in the hand, the head, and the side, I was able to see this one. I finally decided that it was because
I was on the floor, looking up into the dim light in the center of the room, and the ball was silhouetted before it.

Whatever the reason, I was fascinated by it. The pitch, as were all the others, was a screamer. It wasn’t as if I could see
it in slow motion, I decided, but because I had been watching hundreds
of pitches already, I was able to break this one down as it came. I was aware of it snaking its way from the container to
the trough, the tilt of the trough toward the wheels, the wheels grabbing and shaping themselves around it, seeming to mash
it between them before slinging it out. It spun wildly and darted more than a foot and a half from left to right as it traveled
less than forty feet to the wall. It swept past where a left-hand hitter would stand, breaking over the outside corner.

I had seen it all the way. I longed for the day when I had developed my eye-hand coordination, bat speed, and strength to
where I could not only swing at that pitch at the right instant but also be able to hit it. I wasn’t thinking about just getting
my bat on it. I wanted, as I always planned, to attack the pitch, hit it with authority, drive it somewhere.

I had seen Chipper Jones turning with that ferocious power stroke on Randy Johnson and actually pulling a fastball in the
high nineties into the upper deck in left field. That was the way I wanted to hit. Not just spraying the ball, but turning
on it, driving it, sending it to the gaps or to the seats, no matter what it had on it when it left the mound. I slowly gathered
up the balls, occasionally reaching to rub the sore spot on my side. That would be another bruise. I was sure glad I had invested
in the batting helmet. The question now was, did I need a piece of canvas on the batting wall too, so when I did start fouling
off pitches I wouldn’t hurt myself?

I decided against it. I imagined foul balls and missed balls hitting a tarp and dropping at my feet. I couldn’t imagine rigging
up some sophisticated device to keep the balls from rolling forward and tripping me. That would be all I needed: to be sent
to the floor while swinging at a demon pitch. I’d be killed for sure.

Something nagged at me as I retrieved the balls. Had this been a perfect practice? I had swung hundreds of times, and always
tried to do it right. I had stood in against unbelievable pitching, and though I was frustrated at not hitting, it was certainly
understandable that I hadn’t.

But had it been profitable? I decided not. When the balls were in the basket, I dumped them in the container in the machine
and left the machine off. I dug out my rubber-coated baseball and stood by the machine. For the next half hour I threw against
the far wall, aiming at tiny spots in the strike zone and fielding the ball as it came back to me.

When I threw the ball high, it came back in two or three bounces. When I threw it waist-high off the wall, it came back as
a skipping grounder. When I threw it low, it skittered along the floor, hardly bouncing. I worked up a gigantic sweat and
concentrated ferociously. When I wanted a liner, soft or hard depending on how I threw it, I made the ball bounce on the floor
just before hitting the wall. The harder I threw, the harder it came back.

There was little challenge in catching balls you threw yourself, but I was a perfectionist. I wanted to cleanly field a hundred
in a row, every time with my left leg forward, head down, glove down, butt down. The glove was like a vacuum cleaner, my dad
had said. There was only one right way to do it.

“Lots of guys can bend at the waist and spear a ball one-handed,” my dad had said. “They might even have a big gun of an arm
and be able to throw the guy out at first. But that’s the wrong way to do it. Do it right, same way every time. Head down,
glove down, butt down, left foot forward. Move to the ball, keep the hands and arms relaxed and out front. Play the ball;
don’t let it play you. Gather it in, pulling both hands across your body to the right as you take one step and make a crisp,
hard throw all in one motion.”

I repeated the motions over and over and over. My breathing became shallow. I huffed and puffed and sweat some more. Off the
wall, to the glove, you can always come up on a hopper; you can hardly ever get the glove down if you start in the wrong position.
Do it right, every time. Be in a position to whirl and start the double play. Don’t be lazy. Perfect practice makes perfect.

Perfect practice. Perfect practice.

I
had sweet-talked Ricardo Bravura into a second key for the basement. That way, I assured him, I could check on Elgin and
make sure everything was tidy. It also, of course, allowed me to go and find the boy when he had been in the basement too
long. Like now. It was bedtime. When I opened the door and peered down the stairs, I saw him turn from where he was sitting,
on the bottom step with his back to me, and smile. He looked beat.

“What’re you doin with that helmet still on?” I said.

“Just forgot,” he said, pulling it off.

“Have a good workout?”

“In a way.”

“Do any hitting?”

He laughed. “I tried.”

“No luck?”

“That’s for sure. Look at this.” A purple spot had already risen on his palm.

“Did you try to block a pitch? You know what your daddy always said about that: only block it with your hand if it’s comin
at your head or face. Protect those hands.”

“I know, Momma. I was trying to catch a pitch.”

“Bare-handed? A golf ball?”

“Not bare-handed.”

He explained his entire evening.

“So, you got in some good fieldin practice anyway, huh?” I said.

He nodded wearily.

“You need a shower, buddy.”

He nodded again.

“It’s fun to work out alone, Momma. But I don’t know how long I’m gonna be able to stand not hitting the ball.”

“What kinda attitude is that, El? This thing got you beat?”

“Momma, you should see it. I feel like I’m a year away from really hitting the ball.”

I sat next to my son and put my arm around him. He was wet all the way through his sweatshirt.

“Boy, you’re hot.”

“Um-hm. Be careful.”

“Of what now?”

“My side. Look at this.” He lifted his shirt.

“Elgin! I can see the imprint of the dimples from the ball! You got that one battin righty, didn’t you?”

“No. I was hitting lefty and reached out and tipped it. It bounced off the wall and got me.”

“If anybody at school sees your bruises, they’re gonna send the authorities after me for child abuse.”

He laughed. “I’d love to see that!”

“I’ll bet you would. Now get upstairs.”

“I gotta turn that light out.”

“I’ll get it. I promised Ricardo I’d check up on you, anyway.”

He turned and started up the steps and I moved into the batting room.
Tidy
, I thought. I idly flipped the switch on the machine and heard the container begin to turn and the balls begin to roll.

“Momma!” I heard from the stairs. “Take cover! Get out of there now! The machine is loaded!”

I froze, not knowing what to do or where to go. Was I to hit the floor? Hide behind the machine, what? Elgin appeared just
as the first ball was being fed to the spinning wheels. He
raced to me, yelling, “Get down!” and I ducked behind the machine. For the first time, I heard the unusual, violent sounds
of the grab, the pitch, the flight, the wall, the second flight, and the canvas behind me.

“Whew!” was all I could say.

“‘Whew’ is right,” Elgin said. “Lucky for you, they’re all flying that way.”

He reached around and turned off the machine.

“They do go fast, don’t they?” I said, my voice weak.

He laughed. I didn’t know if I could laugh until I saw him. He sat there, smiling, sweating, bruised, tired. I knew he was
frustrated at not having been able to hit the pitches, yet he still seemed excited at having tried. Had anyone ever loved
baseball as much as this boy? I couldn’t imagine.

He was like a newborn calf that wanted to run, a new bud reaching for the sun, a tender shoot eager to sprout and blossom.
For the briefest moment, in the middle of a miserable Chicago winter, I was glad we had moved there.

My bruises turned ugly and were hot and hard to the touch. They stung whenever I brushed against anything. My limbs ached
from the harder and longer than usual workouts, but after a few weeks, I was in shape and could handle them. In fact, I looked
forward to them.

I forced myself to stand in the batter’s box for three buckets of golf balls from each side of the plate before I did my fielding
and throwing work. Though I tipped only one pitch, batting lefty, in several days, I kept swinging and felt I was getting
my timing down. There were times, of course, that I wondered if swinging over or under or ahead or behind thousands of pitches
was doing anything for me. But my chest and back and arms grew stronger.

When I had gone several weeks with just a few tips of the ball from each side, I added something. I began taking one hundred
swings from each side as hard and fast as I could with no
pitches coming. I wore myself out, tore down my muscles and built them up again doing that, hoping to increase my bat speed.
That had to be it, I decided. The only reason I was missing those pitches was because they were so fast and the ball and bat
were so small. I had to learn, to force myself, to catch up with the pitches.

Chico came by one day to complain about the snow and the sad state of the fastpitch area.

“Man, I could use a good game of catch, you know?”

“I hear you, Chico. It gets lonely working out alone.”

“You’re workin out?”

“A little.”

“Where?”

“The hotel.”

I was afraid Chico was going to keep asking questions or suggest that he join me, so I changed the subject.

“Our sidewalk is cleared. Let’s play a little catch.”

“With what?” Chico wanted to know.

“I’ve got a rubber-coated baseball.”

“It’s cold out here, man.”

“We’ll take it easy. I need to throw just like you do.”

Chico ran home for his glove. He returned with a big grin. “My mother and my brother think we’re crazy,” he said.

“We are!” I said, following him out.

We began about twenty feet apart, throwing easily. I knew it wouldn’t show yet, but I felt good and strong. I had wanted to
get into some kind of game or at least throw with someone just to see if my workouts were paying off. The first thing I noticed,
of course, was that the ball looked huge to me, much the way it did when I threw it off the wall after watching more than
three hundred golf balls whiz past me.