One Shot at Forever (24 page)

As the week wore on, Shartzer's hand continued to swell. Concerned, his parents took him to a local doctor, who confirmed what Steve already knew: His hand was out of commission. Treatment was discussed but Shartzer would have none of it. “What are you going to do, rub out a broken bone?” he asked.

The way he saw it, since the injury was on his nonthrowing hand it was irrelevant. He'd be fine to pitch, and could make do in the field. Hitting might be a challenge, but one he was certain he could overcome. After all, he had no other choice.

Across town, another member of the Ironmen dealt with a different diagnosis. All week, Brian Snitker had kept tabs on his father, who remained under observation at St. Mary's hospital. The heart attack had occurred on the night of the Bloomington game. While the kids rode back on the bus, Dick Snitker drove the same road in the family station wagon, his wife, Catherine, beside him and Brian's two younger sisters, Angela and Andrea, in the backseat.

Halfway back to Macon, Dick had complained of shooting pains in his arms. Upon returning home, he'd gone straight to bed while Catherine called their doctor, who hurried to the Snitkers' two-story house on West Hight Street in southwest Macon. Upstairs he found Dick Snitker lying in bed, looking pale but claiming to be just fine. He just had some chest pain, that was all. The doctor disagreed: “We need to get you to a hospital, Dick.”

The next morning, Dick Snitker got the news. He'd suffered a minor heart attack and would need to stay in the hospital for a week, maybe longer.

Dick was not pleased. Over the course of the season, the Snitkers had grown especially close to the team. With the rare exception of when Dick was on the road for work, they'd attended every game, and their home had become the Ironmen's unofficial hangout. Almost every evening, Brian brought home teammates to eat his mom's cooking—spaghetti one night, fried chicken and fresh corn from the Wells farm the next. It got so the boys didn't even knock on the Snitker front door, they just ambled in. Stu Arnold even said “Hi, Mom, hi, Dad!”

While the boys came for Catherine's dinners, the baseball parents came for the company. Dick was personable and took entertaining seriously, as any man who's worked for Jim Beam and Pabst might. His refrigerator was always thick with beer and one wall of his garage constituted both his work inventory and the largest liquor cabinet in central Illinois. Over two seasons' worth of drinks and meals, the Snitkers had come to view the players and their parents as one big extended family. The fact that Dick had helped engineer Sweet's return to coaching only cemented the bond.

And now the doctors were telling Dick that he had to stay in the hospital during the tournament. Even though his own son would be playing. Even though only eight teams in the entire state of Illinois made it. Even though no one in their right mind ever expected a team from Macon to go this far.

At 5
P.M
. on Tuesday, the eve of the Ironmen's trip to Peoria, the phone rang at the Heneberry house. When Betty Heneberry answered, she looked surprised. She told the caller to hold on, then walked to the backyard, where John and Dean Otta were playing a lazy game of catch.

“It's for you, John.”

John tossed the ball to Dean and jogged in, expecting to hear one of his cousins from Decatur on the other end of the line. But when he picked up the phone, he heard not a Heneberry but the scratchy voice of an adult.

“John, this is Joe Cook from the Decatur
Herald & Review
. I'd like to talk to you about the state tournament.”

Heneberry froze. He'd played three sports at Macon for the better part of four years, but this was the first time anyone from a newspaper had wanted to talk to him. Hell, not even the
Ironmen Scene
had interviewed him. He had, he realized, no idea what to say. Should he try to sound like the athletes he read about in the paper? Should he mimic Shartzer, whom he'd seen interviewed once or twice? Or should he just answer the questions to the best of his ability?

After a moment of indecision, he settled on the final strategy. So when Cook asked, “Do you think you can play with the bigger schools up at state?” John answered as honestly as he could. And when Cook followed that up with, “You mean you think you can win the state championship?” John answered that one best he could, too.

Then Heneberry hung up and walked back out to the yard, confident he'd acquitted himself well.

The following day, the Ironmen walked out of the Macon High gym toward the bus and, to their surprise, found a receiving line waiting for them. One teacher after another clasped their hands and patted them on the back, wishing them good luck. Then came a row of administrators, each as serious as the next, hands extended. Dale Otta remembers being taken aback, because the administrators
never
shook their hands. He felt like he was going off to war.

One by one, they climbed up into the bus. At the wheel was Phiz Adams, a honest-to-goodness actual bus driver. As he pulled the bus onto 51 headed north, it was joined by a succession of cars. From the air, it must have looked like a motorcade. Otta looked out the rear window, marveling at the sight. There was Bob Shartzer's white Ford Fairlane and Britton's sedan and Bob Taylor's car, his son Scott wedged into the backseat. Ironmen flags ruffled out windows, horns honked. It looked like an entire town just got married.

From Macon, the bus headed through Decatur and then continued northwest toward Peoria, cutting through a landscape of fledgling cornfields. On the drive, the boys talked about the teams they might face and bragged about the suitcases they'd brought, for this was the first time many would stay overnight at a hotel. With some prodding, Jeff Glan stood up and did his best imitation of Burns imitating Patton. Then, it was on to reciting lines from a speech by legendary University of Illinois football coach Ray Eliot.

“If you think you're beaten, you are,” Glan bellowed, addressing the back of the bus. “If you think you dare not, you don't. If you'd like to win but think you can't, it's almost a cinch that you won't.”

Glan paused, looked around, raised the volume. “Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the fellow who wins is the fellow who thinks he can. It's all a state of mind.”

Glancing around the bus, Sweet thought about how close the boys had become. A few rows behind him, Heneberry did the same. As one of only five seniors, he felt the weight of the trip more than most. Sitting there, watching endless green rows of soybeans slide past, he thought about how he'd probably never wear a uniform again. He thought about how much he loved the boys around him, this team, and being a baseball player. He thought about how when he hung up his uniform it would be time to go get a job, and how some of his older friends were already talking about draft numbers for the war. And, as he had before the season, he thought of how it was, as he says, “my last time to be a kid.”

A more majestic sight they'd never seen.

It was as if Phiz Adams had pulled that old yellow bus off the highway and right into the driveway of Shangri-La. The façade towered over them, lights shining down, a peaked turret piercing the sky.
J
UMER
'S C
ASTLE
L
ODGE
, it said. All David Wells could do was stare.

Wells had grown up on a farm near Macon where electricity was sporadic and hot water nonexistent. He'd never been to a city like Peoria. To say Jumer's blew his mind would be an understatement. It was not only the first hotel he'd ever checked into, it was one of the grandest buildings he'd ever entered.

Even the handful of Macon boys who'd stayed in hotels were in awe, for Jumer's was not a hotel so much as an experience. Opened a year earlier, it featured Bavarian architecture, high-class service, and all manner of unusual antiques. A giant stuffed black bear, arms upraised and teeth bared, greeted visitors in the lounge. Uniformed members of the hotel's four hundred employees hustled by. Hallways led off in seemingly every direction, leading to the hotel's 168 rooms. Sweet had to hand it to Britton and the rest of the administration—they'd finally come up big for the baseball team. By the end of the tournament, Macon High's coffers would cover $653.50 in lodging, meals, and other expenses at Jumer's.

The Ironmen arrived at 5
P.M
. At six, Wells was still in the shower, reveling in the exotic stream of warm water. Meanwhile, the Otta twins explored the grounds, for neither had ever spent a night in a hotel. Trusner stood in the gift shop, horrified by the prices it was charging for seemingly mundane items such as a comb or a bag of peanuts. Nearby, Sweet found his own Shangri-La in the large, roomy bar where, he'd received word, the coach's drinks would be paid for by the school.

Eight miles down the road,
seven baseball teams gathered
at 7
P.M
. at the Heritage House, a buffet-style restaurant. Quincy was there, as were Nashville and Rockford West, along with Waukegan, Piasa Southwestern, Kankakee Eastridge, and, for the second year in a row, Lane Tech High of Chicago. Dozens of baseball players wearing blazers and ties filed into a large room and took their seats, quietly sizing each other up. Peoria mayor E. Michael O'Brien welcomed the boys, then turned the microphone over to the tournament managers and, finally, featured speaker Johnny Klippstein, a former big league pitcher who now scouted for the Tigers. Dinner was served, speeches were made. The boys fidgeted in their seats.

Off to the side, one table was conspicuously empty.

The
welcome banquet was only
one of numerous scheduled tournament events. There was a barbecue Thursday night after the games and, for the players, a continuous loop of World Series highlights at the Holiday Inn. The Illinois High School Baseball Coaches Association was holding an annual golf tournament and a smoker. For the press, there was a reception at the Ramada. And of course there were all manner of unofficial parties. For many, the tournament was as much a social event as a sporting one, and coaches and fans came from around the state just to be part of all the activities.

Sweet intended to participate in as few as possible. He didn't see any reason to intimidate the boys right off the bat. He knew the other teams would be full of tall, talented kids. He knew they'd have two dozen players each. He knew they'd wear nice clothes and talk about big-city things and past appearances in the sectionals and at state. He didn't see much his boys could gain from that experience.

That's why he'd booked Jumer's Castle Lodge instead of the preferred tournament hotels. Here, the boys could stay in their bubble. Here they could maintain their optimism. And here, Sweet could drink beers at the bar without having to talk to any hard-ass coaches who would undoubtedly question his hair, experience, and acumen. It seemed an easy decision.

While the other boys checked out the swimming pool and played cards, Shartzer gripped the bed in his room. His breath came in short bursts. His face was red, his eyes watered. He tried to force air down his throat.

The coughing fits began when he was a boy. When he was six years old, his parents carted him to a top hospital in St. Louis. “Your son has a bad case of asthma,” the doctors said.

It seemed unfair to Steve. His whole life revolved around sports, around being the strongest, the most indomitable. And here he was, felled by a stupid cough. The attacks hit at the worst times. He could be on the mound or at a football game, and then, suddenly, he felt like he was suffocating.

When Primatene Mist came out in 1963, it was a godsend, and as he'd gotten older the attacks became less frequent. By high school, he was sure he'd grown out of it. Yet every once in a while the asthma flared up. Sometimes it was dust, or the humidity.

After what seemed like hours, the air trickled back in. Slowly, he regained his wind. And then, moments later, it was sucked right back out again. By the time he rolled out of bed in the morning, Shartzer had slept only three hours.

Mark Miller walked in at breakfast, grimaced, and handed a copy of the Decatur
Herald & Review
to John Heneberry.

John unfolded the sports page and scanned it until he saw Joe Cook's mugshot, the lank brown hair combed over his forehead. The headline on his column read “Macon Players Supremely Confident.” John began to read:

Heneberry finished reading, then looked back up to see Miller shaking his head. “I can't believe you said that, John.”