Magic Time

McCracken and his team were at last catching on that Roger was little more than a journeyman pitcher with a lot of guile. He had a screwball that floated up to the plate like a powder puff, only to break in on the batter’s hands at the last instant, usually resulting in a polite pop-up to the pitcher or shortstop. His fastball was nothing, and, knowing that, he usually threw it out of the strike zone. But his change-up was a beauty, like carrying the ball to the plate. Roger’s pitching motion never changed an iota; a hitter would be finished his swing and on his way to the bench, shaking his head, by the time the ball reached the catcher.

The seventh went scoreless.

We got a run in the eighth on a double and a single, but McCracken’s team got two in the bottom, aided again by Byron’s misjudgment of a fly ball.

It was obvious that Roger was tired. His face was streaked with sweat and grime, he took off his cap after almost every pitch. To compound matters, we went out on four pitches in the top of the ninth, allowing Roger only about two minutes’ rest.

With our team leading 7–6, the first batter in the last of the ninth hit a clean single up the middle. The next sacrificed him to second. (I managed to cover first on the sacrifice – my greatest fear was that I would botch that play.) The third batter swung very late on a change-up and sent the ball like a bullet just to the inside of first. Lindy Travis lunged for the ball and, by accident, it ended up in his glove. He threw from a sitting position to Roger, covering the base, for the second out. The base runner advanced to third.

McCracken was at the plate. As he dug in he sent a steady stream of words toward the mound. Though I couldn’t hear, I knew he was baiting Roger. Well, if we lost, there would at least be enough profits from the concessions to pay my employees off and buy Roger a bus ticket for somewhere not too far away. All I hoped was that the ball wouldn’t be hit to me.

McCracken, even though he was right-handed, hammered one down the right-field line on a 2–2 count. Byron actually ran in a step or two before he judged it properly; then he ran frantically down the line, his back to the plate. The ball nearly hit him on the head as it plunked onto the soft grass a foot outside the foul line.

Roger delivered a fastball in the strike zone.

It was, of course, the last pitch McCracken was expecting. Roger had thrown nothing but junk the whole game, using his fastball only as a set-up pitch, always, like McCracken, throwing it out of the strike zone.

McCracken swung just late enough to send a gentle fly to right-center. The center fielder waved Byron off and clasped the ball for the final out.

At our bench Roger wiped his face and hair with a towel.

‘You get the rest of the gate receipts and the concession money,’ he said. ‘One of McCracken’s men will count it with you.’

‘You didn’t bet against us, did you?’

‘Of course not. I bet it all on us. Which, incidentally, will increase your profits considerably. Even after I take my percentage.’

‘What if we’d lost?’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve left a town on foot with people throwing things at me.’

Roger collected his winnings from the mayor, and stuffed the envelopes and stacks of bills into his equipment bag. He settled his debts, then bought the entire team supper, plus unlimited ice cream, at the Springtime Café. He tipped Mrs. Grover twenty dollars.

Later, while Byron and I again turned our backs, he opened the safe and stuffed it full of bills.

‘I’ll be on the road before daylight,’ he said. He gave Byron and me an extra twenty each. At bedtime we said our goodbyes.

Though I was dead tired, I forced myself to only half sleep; I jumped awake every time the old house creaked in the night, and I was up and at the window as soon as I heard Roger’s step on the stairs.

As I suspected, he did not leave immediately, but took the gardening tools from the trunk and hoisted them to his shoulder, careful not to let them rattle. There had been a heavy thunderstorm about ten o’clock and the air was pure and sweet as spring water.

I was waiting by the Caddy when Roger returned, clothes soiled, his shoes ruined by mud.

‘You been in a fight, or what?’

‘I suspect you know where I’ve been,’ he said, keeping his voice low. He deposited the tools into the trunk.

‘I know a little about distances,’ I said.

‘When did you suspect?’

‘I measured your practice field out by the lumberyard. Sixty-one feet from the rubber to the plate. No wonder your arm’s big as a telephone pole.’

‘You figure on telling McCracken?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t lie for me. Do what you have to do, it’s okay. Just wait until morning. Also, remember that cheating is making your opponent do something you don’t have to do. We both pitched from the same distance. It was just that I’m used to that distance, and it took him a while to adjust.’

‘I’m not going to turn you in,’ I said.

Roger picked a chunk of mud off one of the tools and threw it on the street. He began to fiddle with the combination of the safe.

‘I’m not planning on blackmail.’

‘I appreciate talent when I see it. I’ve been working this scam for ten years. I’ve lost an occasional game, but no one’s ever cottoned onto my edge. I must be getting careless.’

He took about an inch of bills off the top of one of the piles and handed them to me.

‘You really don’t need to. Money can’t buy what I want.’

‘Which is?’

‘I want this girl to like me just the way I am.’

‘No, money can’t do that. But it’ll buy a hell of a lot of ice cream, and pay your college tuition for a semester or two.’ His face broke into that grin that could charm a bone from a hungry dog.

‘It’s all a matter of distances,’ Roger said from inside the Caddy. The sun was about to rise. The oranges and pinks of the sky touched the shimmering surface of the white Cadillac. ‘Chicago to Memphis is 537 miles. I’ll have a late breakfast at Perkins’ Cake and Steak on Elvis Presley Boulevard.’

Roger smiled again, reached his right hand up and out the window to shake my hand.

‘Maybe we’ll run into each other again, Mike. Be cool. Life’s all a matter of distances. Make them work for you.’

The window purred up and the car eased away, gravel crunching under the wide tires.

2

One Road Runs Straight

SIX

My dad must have said it a thousand times. ‘For a lead-off batter, a walk is as good as a hit. A walk and a stolen base is as good as a double.’ I can still hear those words echoing in my eight-year-old ears. It didn’t matter that I was never a power hitter, as long as I learned the strike zone, which I did.

I learned to bunt, both for a base hit, and in order to sacrifice a runner along. The hardest thing, when I was a kid, was to hit the ball on the ground up the middle. The assumption was that just making contact would earn me a certain number of base hits, and I was so fast I was almost impossible to double up on a ground ball. But, oh how hard that was to do, for every kid has fantasies of blasting the ball out of the park, of hitting a blue darter like a lightning bolt off the outfield fence.

The only time I tried to hit the ball in the air was when a sacrifice fly was called for. I never tried for home runs or extra base hits, controlling my desire to be a hero in return for making a solid contribution.

In the evenings Dad and I would practice in the back yard. Dad would lay down a towel, white as a patch of snow, up the third-base line where a perfect bunt would come to rest, good not only for a sacrifice but often a base hit. Dad would pitch to me while I practiced bunting.

‘Pretend the towel is the mother and the ball is the baby, and it’s your job to reunite the two,’ Dad would shout.

Other times he’d yell, ‘Suicide squeeze!’ and drill in a high hard one that I was somehow supposed to lay down.

A hundred pitches minimum every evening, at ever-increasing speed, while I tried to get the ball down in the dirt so it would end up on the towel, while I pictured myself streaking safely across first, the runner in front of me perhaps taking an extra base when the hurried throw to first went wild.

Then there’d be another hundred pitches while I tried to rap the ball straight up the middle on the ground, controlling my urge to belt the ball about four hundred feet, because Dad’s pitches looked like white balloons floating toward me.

‘Take the sure thing,’ he’d say. ‘Don’t try to be a hero, hit the ball on the ground for a single. You’ve only got warning-track power at best, so don’t waste your life hitting routine flies to the outfield.’

Following that we’d take a break for orange juice or lemonade. Then there’d be another hundred pitches, which I practiced hitting to the right side, behind the runner, trying for a base hit, but willing to give myself up in order to advance the base runner.

‘The three-four-five men are the power hitters,’ Dad always said. ‘Let them do their job. Your only worry is to get on base or, if you can’t, at least advance the runners.’

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