One Shot at Forever (23 page)

Cooper must have been tiring by now. Still, he unleashed another heater, and Shartzer got around on this one. The ball soared to the bottom of the left field fence. Otta tore around third to score and now, suddenly, the Ironmen had a 3–2 lead. In the stands, the Macon fans yelled, louder than Sweet had ever heard them. In the front row, Bob Shartzer and Dwight Glan couldn't believe it.
Six outs to go
.

After another scoreless inning from both teams it came down to this: the bottom of the seventh. Three outs for state.

Would Sweet call on Shartzer? Behind the backstop, a man wearing slacks and a short-sleeved button-down shirt and carrying a pencil and notebook watched and wondered. After two years of covering Macon over the phone, Joe Cook was only now seeing the Ironmen in person. Looking out at Sweet wearing what appeared to be a tie-dyed hat, he finally understood the grumblings. Ever since the end of the 1970 season, when Macon began winning, Cook had heard Decatur coaches complaining about Sweet. A conservative group, they thought it ridiculous that he allowed his players to have long hair, and more ridiculous that Sweet himself had it. “He's just a hippie with a bunch of farm boys,” they told Cook. And at first, Cook had nodded along. Now, though, he wasn't so sure. After following Macon's route through the playoffs, and watching the team in action, he thought maybe the hippie coach knew more than he let on.

In this situation, though, Cook thought Sweet had to go to his ace. After all, Bloomington had already done so—what was stopping the Ironmen from doing the same? What's more, while Macon batted in the top of the seventh, Sweet had sent Shartzer down the right field line to warm up. Surely the coach would bring him in now, with so much at stake.

Instead, with a pat on the shoulder, Sweet sent Heneberry back out to the mound. Sweet didn't need to say anything; he knew he'd already sent the most powerful message he could. He'd warmed up Shartzer.

In two seasons under Sweet, Shartzer had never relieved Heneberry, just as Heneberry had never relieved Shartzer. Some boys might have itched to enter the game in the late innings, to ride in for the chance at glory, but that's not how it worked with the Ironmen, or with Shartzer and Heneberry. Each took pride in finishing what they started, and pushed the other to do the same.

Now Shartzer walked over to the mound and looked his friend in the eye. “Goddamit, suck it up and get this done,” he said to Heneberry “I don't need to come in and do your job, just like you didn't come in and do mine.”

Heneberry nodded. This is how the boys had talked to each other for years. When Shartzer got in trouble in the past, it was Heneberry who sidled over to the mound. “Sharrrrk, your goddam fastball looks like a beach ball coming in there,” he'd say. To which Shartzer would retort, “Good, you skinny bastard, I'm going to throw it in and let them pull it right at you.” And of course Heneberry would then smile and said, “Yeah, baby, send it my way.”

This was different, though. This wasn't some podunk game on a crappy field against a bunch of farm boys. This was a chance to go to state. Still, Shartzer was right. This was no time for overthinking.
Just suck it up and get this done
.

Bloomington sent up the top of its order in the seventh. Heneberry responded with a fusillade of curveballs. Down went lead-off hitter Brian Burd.
Just suck it up and get it done
.

Then, solid contact. Bloomington had a man on second base.
Shit
.

Up strode Cooper. Heneberry heard Bob Shartzer's voice in his head. He knew what he was supposed to do: Pitch around him. Instead, Heneberry unleashed a big, beautiful curveball. Strike one!

Cooper had been ahead of the pitch but he was too good a hitter not to adjust.
No way I can get three in a row by him
, Heneberry thought. He looked in and, behind the plate, Dean Otta was doing something unusual. Between his legs, Otta had put down two fingers. He was calling a pitch.

Heneberry shook him off. Again, Otta put down two fingers.
Throw the curve
. Again, Heneberry shook him off.

And so, with a man in scoring position, Heneberry came set and threw a fastball right down the pipe. Cooper wasn't fooled. He reared back and swung for the fences. There was a loud
crack
. Heneberry felt sick to his stomach. Only, instead of soaring over his head, the ball shot into the backstop. Cooper had been dead on it and barely missed the pitch, fouling it straight back.

Now Heneberry knew what to do. This is what he'd spent all those afternoons in the backyard preparing for. At 0–2, he knew Cooper would expect him to waste a pitch. Heneberry looked over at Sweet. Sweet nodded back at him.

In the back of his mind, Heneberry heard Bob Shartzer:
Don't pitch to him
. In the front of his mind, unavoidable, he heard Steve Shartzer, who was standing near third and of a different mind than his father. “Finish him right now, Goose!” Steve yelled. “Finish this big bastard off!”

Heneberry kicked and delivered. The ball hung and then dropped out of the sky. Cooper unleashed a mighty swing.
Strike three!

Behind the Macon bench, Jack Heneberry nodded and clapped. All his boy needed was one more out for state.

On the Bloomington bench, the players watched as Abfalder walked to the plate. A different thought no doubt ran through their minds:
One big swing and we're headed to state
.

Heneberry started out nibbling at the edge of the plate again and soon it was 2–2.
One strike away
. With a runner in scoring position, Heneberry didn't want to take any chances; he had to end it on a strikeout. He went to his best pitch, a curveball that would tail inside to the left-handed Abfalder.

Heneberry rocked, kicked, and fired. The ball tailed, just as it was supposed to. Only Abfalder did something he wasn't supposed to. With an inside-out swing, he pulled the ball, crushing it on the ground toward right field. At first base, Glan dove but couldn't get a glove on the ball. Heneberry's heart sank. Once the ball got to the outfield, the Bloomington runner, already on the move, would score. He'd been one strike away and blown it.

And then from out of nowhere darted the form of Mark Miller. To this day, Heneberry has no idea how his friend covered that much ground. Out of respect for Abfalder's power, Miller had played the slugger exceptionally deep, standing on the edge of the outfield grass. Now, moving to his left, he speared the ball in short right as if snagging a passing bullet. Turning to throw to first, he encountered one small issue: No one was there. Glan lay prone where his dive had taken him, a plume of dust encircling his head. Meanwhile Heneberry, caught up in the moment, was standing like a statue on the mound.
He'd forgotten to cover the base
.
All the while, Abfalder steamed down the line. With no other choice, Miller sprinted toward first.

For the second time in the game, the two were on a collision course. Abfalder lunged. Miller leapt. Years later, Shartzer would call the sequence “one of the top three plays I've ever been on the field for.” Considering Shartzer's career, that would count as high praise indeed.

By the slimmest of margins, Miller beat Abfalder to the bag, then slipped past him. Then, like a running back seeing daylight, Miller kept right on going as chaos erupted around him, sprinting through a hole in the fence all the way to the team bus.

Heneberry followed, running as hard as he could, the roar of the Macon fans trailing him. Vaulting up the bus stairs, Heneberry saw Miller, who was standing in the aisle grinning, the ball still gripped in his right hand. Miller lifted it up and stuffed it into Heneberry's right hand while grabbing his friend's shoulder. “State, baby, state!” he shouted.

Back on the diamond, the Macon fans were going nuts. Students rushed the field, swarming around Sweet. Parents walloped each other on the back, legs still shaky from the back-and-forth drama. Dick Jacobs, a Macon Little League coach, turned to his fifty-eight-year-old father, Myrtle. “Dad,” Dick said.
“You got any more of those heart pills?”

His father looked at him, surprised. “Why?”

“I think I need one.”

On the Bloomington bench, coach Bob Spahn slumped, disbelieving. Macon had finished with only four hits but still managed to win. On the field, the remaining Ironmen leapt and hugged and woo-hooed as only sixteen-year-old boys can. All except Shartzer, that is. He stood gripping his left wrist and grimacing. The injury had occurred in the fifth inning. After his RBI double, Shartzer tried to score on a single to the outfield. Halfway down the line, he realized he wasn't going to beat the throw. So he did what any super-competitive athlete would: He tried to vault the catcher.

Hurtling through the air, Shartzer had turned in an attempt to reach back and touch home plate. Before he could, he was tagged out. Then, milliseconds later, he'd landed and felt a sharp pain. In breaking his fall he'd
fractured a bone
in his left hand.

There was no time to worry about that, though. Out of the seven hundred high schools in Illinois, Macon was one of only eight that were now headed to Peoria.

It was a bus ride they'd remember the rest of their years. Shartzer sat in the back, hand clenched to his side, whooping like a pirate. Sweet was right there with him. The boys clapped, laughed, and roared. And then, somewhere along the hour-long drive, Stu started singing.

In a bus full of giddy boys, the sound cut through the air, high and pure. Stu was the lead in all the plays and sang in choir. Decades later, his son would front a rock band, his voice just as sweet and melodic as his father's.

They all recognized it instantly: the first song from
Jesus Christ Superstar
. Within seconds, Stu had company. First it was Jeff Glan, his voice almost as pure as Stu's. And then the rest of the boys joined.

It was their song now. So when the line “You really do believe this talk of God is true” came on, the boys instead sang, “You really do believe this talk of state is true.” And instead of, “When do we ride into Jerusalem?”, the boys sang “When do we ride into Peoria?” Soon, they were joined by the tape player, situated in the middle of the bus as always, where Trusner was in charge of operating it. When “King Herod's Song” came on, Shartzer yelled “Take it away, Sam!” and Trusner leapt into the aisle to play the meanest air piano you've ever seen. And on it went, the bus rumbling through the gloaming of an Illinois spring night, a chorus of voices rising from the open windows. In the midst of it all, a dark-haired man who'd never intended to be a baseball coach closed his eyes for a moment and smiled.

16

News travels fast in a town the size of Macon. By the time the players returned it seemed everyone knew:
The Ironmen were going to state!
Meetings were interrupted, card games stopped middeal. A small cheer went up at the Country Manor when the news was announced. This was big—
real
big. Macon was the kind of town where, when the fire siren on the water tower went off, it was common to see a good portion of the townspeople grabbing their kids, hopping in their cars, and following the fire trucks to witness the blaze themselves, even if it was the middle of the night. Usually, the height of excitement every year was the Macon Playday, held every summer in the small park across from Wiles Grocery Store and featuring food booths, Dunk the Dummy, a parade, and a Little Miss Macon baby contest. But going to state? As Jack Stringer would later say, “That was the most exciting thing to hit Macon that anyone could remember.”

The team had nearly a week to savor the feeling before leaving for the tournament the following Wednesday. On Sunday, the Decatur
Herald & Review
named Steve Shartzer the area Player of the Year. His stats were impressive, even by high school standards: a .412 batting average with forty-seven RBIs in nineteen games. As a pitcher he was 8–1 with a 1.74 ERA and eighty-one strikeouts in sixty-one innings. The Coach of the Year came as more of a surprise to some, especially the old coaches in Decatur. His name was Lynn Sweet and, according to the
Herald & Review
, his mod style was “a topic of conversation.”

Sweet marveled at how popular he'd suddenly become. All those parents who'd disapproved of his methods, all the school board members who thought him too rebellious, too wild, too different? Now they patted him on the back. “Good luck at state!” they yelled in his ear. “Way to go L.C.!” they roared while offering to buy him beers at the same bars they'd chastised him for frequenting only months earlier. A different type of man might have taken the opportunity to turn a cold shoulder, to exact verbal revenge. Sweet? He accepted the congratulations and patted back. He drank the beers and bought the next round.