Plunking Reggie Jackson (4 page)

“It's what you said, but you're still full of it. You have to be technical.”

“How'm I bein' technical?”

“Well, it's just one big body of water, right? And Florida just sticks out in the middle of it. Am I right?”

“Goddamit, Quintero, havin' a freshman roommate is one thing, but there's no way we can get behind a hick. You understand?”

“You just have to be technical,” Jamie repeated. Quintero was the only freshman on the trip, but he was a good player and a good kid. Coley liked him.

Let them argue about the ocean
, Coley thought. By this time he was on the balcony, listening to their quarrel from a distance and with only a portion of his brain. He only knew how free he felt. He was going to pitch in paradise tomorrow, and his father was nowhere around.

He looked to the west, where the silvery water was visible in slivers between the hotels and parking lots in the late-afternoon sun. When Jamie and Rico came out to join him, he said, “If you want the whole truth, what we're lookin' at is Tampa Bay.”

“Say what?” asked Rico.

“This is Tampa Bay. The Gulf of Mexico is farther out. I doubt if we can see it from here.”

Rico attempted to save face by saying, “Okay, Tampa Bay, but it's like part of the gulf, okay? I mean, it's all part of the same thing.”

“It's all part of the same thing,” Coley said, still staring at the multitude of sailboats docked along a distant marina.

“So you ain't so smart after all, huh?” Jamie said to Rico.

“Piss off. It's all part of the same thing.”

Before supper the coaches took the team—all eighteen members—for a stroll along the beach. Coley and Rico waded in the edge of the clear surf and tossed tiny shells across the surface of the active waves in a fruitless attempt to make them skip.

“I got a letter from the coach at Eastern,” Rico was saying. It wasn't easy to understand him since his mouth was half full of a Snickers bar.

“What did you say?” Coley asked him.

“I said, I got a letter from the coach at Eastern.”

“And?”

“He says they can't make any promises about a ride,” Rico replied.

Coley shrugged. He dropped down to try and sidearm another of the tiny shells, the same way he might drop down to intimidate a left-handed batter. “It's early, bro; it's only the first of March.”

“He also says they might offer me a
half
ride.”

“That's not unusual for baseball scholarships. You know that.”

“It doesn't do me any good to know it.”

“Can you get that crap out of your mouth?” Coley asked him. “I can't understand what you're sayin'.” He sidearmed another shell but watched it turn over like a feather in the stiff sea breeze.

Rico swallowed the last of his candy before he said, “It doesn't do me any good. Not a half scholarship. You know I can't afford it without a full ride.”

“And I'm tellin' you, it's too early to worry. We've got the whole season for scouts and coaches to watch us play.”

“Yeah. Easy for you to say. You can get any scholarship you want.”

That was true. Coley was a coveted commodity among the network of college and professional scouts. But he said again, “There's still plenty of time, Rico. You never can tell what might come along. There'll be scouts from Eastern, Western, ISU, the U of I, all over the place.”

Rico was stubborn, though. He said, “What everybody wants is power. Power pitchers, power hitters. That's what everybody is lookin' for.”

“Not everybody.” Since Rico was only five feet nine and 145 pounds, Coley could understand his apprehension. “If that's all people wanted, there wouldn't be any place in the big leagues for guys like Mickey Morandini or Joe McEwing.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I mean it. It's not just power that wins games. You just keep doin' the things you're good at—fielding, moving runners along, hitting the ball to all fields. Gettin' on base as often as you do. There's plenty of coaches smart enough to figure that out.”

“If you say so.” His friend was breaking open another candy bar.

“You can even get full rides in junior college now.”

“You can?”

“You bet. And that can lead to Division One scholarships and even pro contracts. Chill out on this thing.”

“You sure know a lot about this shit,” said Rico, taking a bite.

“I ought to. I've lived with Patrick and my old man my whole life. It's just too bad there's no academic credit for it. I might actually get an A in something. Know what I'm sayin'?”

Coley could hear Coach Mason hollering at them from farther down the beach. It was time to leave. The coach was going to hold a team meeting back at the hotel immediately after supper.

Coley pitched the first game of their opening doubleheader at 1 P.M. the following afternoon. The careless liberation he felt on the mound, under the warm Tampa sun but out from under the vigilant scrutiny of his father, turned out to be a curse as well as a blessing.

Loose and free, and with a comforting sweat drenching his uniform shirt, he consistently overpowered the hitters from Tampa's Hamilton High. He was not at all what the players from the host school had anticipated, although they had probably been warned to expect a pitcher with a major-league arm as well as a major-league future. What Florida schools expected from the occasional northern visitor was a team of wannabes on vacation, a sitting duck whose development lagged far behind their own.

But what Hamilton High got, in this first game at any rate, was Coley Burke. On his good days Coley could throw his fastball at 92 to 94 mph. On his better days he could throw it at that velocity and spot it in the strike zone. He could throw it up and in, just off the plate, or down and away, four to six inches out of the strike zone. Under these conditions there were very few high school batters who could deal with him.

On his best days he had all of the above, plus control of his slider, which he threw at about 86 mph. The slider, which had a nasty bite, usually snaked out of the strike zone at the knees.

This was one of his best days, even though the northern climate he had left behind had limited him to inside-the-gym throwing. Most of the Hamilton batters, when they swung at his slider at all, managed only a feeble wave of the bat, which amounted to little more than an indecisive lunge. An excuse-me effort. It was a devastating strikeout pitch, although when Coley had control of the fastball, he usually didn't need an additional strikeout pitch. And on this day he had full command of the number one.

Before the game Coach Mason had warned him not to push himself, since it was the first time he'd pitched under game conditions. So Coley was content to stay with the fastball, keeping it down in the strike zone, or if he threw it up, to keep it at least as high as the letters. It was a great sucker pitch, a fastball with some pop that was up high in the strike zone.

The only hit Hamilton High could manage came in the fourth inning when their shortstop, a guy named Olivares, hit a chopper—a swinging bunt—that stayed fair down the third-base line, then beat it out. Then Coley forgot to pitch from the stretch; as soon as he started his windup, Olivares stole second base easily. When the next batter hit a chopper to third, Kershaw, who was playing deep, had to charge it; his low throw short-hopped the first baseman. Not only was the runner safe, but Olivares advanced to third. Coley watched from the mound as the first baseman, Ricky Huff, juggled the throw and had to come off the bag. Olivares rounded third and bluffed toward home plate, but Ricky walked straight at him, holding the ball, until he chased him back.

Coach Mason called time and approached the mound. The coach was an easygoing old guy, but he wouldn't tolerate a pattern of mental errors. He asked Coley if he was tired.

“Hell no, why would I be tired?” Coley asked.

“There's a runner on second and the third baseman throws to first. What do you do?”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot to back up third.”

“You back up third,” the coach confirmed. “You don't stand on the mound watching the game like a spectator.”

“Yeah, I forgot.”

“You also forgot you had a runner on first. You pitched from the windup. What's the matter with you?”

“Nothin's the matter,” Coley answered quickly, although he knew immediately that the same free sense of disengagement, of being
out from under
, was undermining his concentration.

“If you think your stuff is so overpowering you don't need to pay attention to fundamentals, you'd better rethink.”

“I don't think that,” said Coley. “This is more or less like practice, Coach. When we have a real game back home, I'll have my head in it.”

But Mason was shaking his head even before Coley finished the sentence. “Sorry, but that's not how it works. You ain't in the big leagues yet; this is not spring training, even if we
are
in Florida. But even if it
was
, you play the way you practice. If you don't concentrate now, you don't concentrate when you think it counts.”

It wasn't the first time Coley had heard this axiom, not by a long shot. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Jesus Christ, Coach, I might as well have the old man down here with me.” It wasn't true, though. Ben Burke and Coach Mason might have been on the same page as far as the
letter
of the pitching law was concerned, but not the spirit. The old coach settled for firm and disciplined, while Coley's dad delivered reproaches with unequivocal passion.

“If you mean your dad, we could do worse,” Mason declared. “Without his financial support we wouldn't even be here.”

“I don't wanna hear it,” Coley replied abruptly.

“Okay, then hear this: The score is only four to nothin'. It's only the fourth inning. The game's not over yet. Get your head in the game as well as your arm.”

“Okay, okay.”

Lee Edwards, a three-sport athlete with a Division I future in football, was the next batter. He had a big reputation, which Coley had read about in the morning sports page of the local paper.

Now that there were runners on first and third, Coley worked carefully from the stretch position. He still felt free and strong, even after Coach Mason's reprimand. He threw two strikes over the outside corner, one on the fastball and the second on the slider. Edwards was a good hitter, probably the best on Hamilton's team, but Coley had the count at 0-2.

Coley understood that good hitters, once they got behind in the count, weren't such good hitters anymore. Their confidence was down because they felt tentative. If they got into the guard-the-plate mode, they were more likely to swing at pitches out of the strike zone. Coley wasn't just a talent; he understood the craft of pitching. Years of clinics in the backyard bull pen with his father and his older brother, Patrick, had seen to that.

Coley threw Lee Edwards a too-high fastball, but Lee didn't swing at it. Then he saw Lee crowding the plate, something hitters liked to do when they could get away with it, to force outside pitches. The tape played in Coley's head:
You can't win if you don't pitch inside. The inside of the plate belongs to you, not the hitter. Hitters who are fearless are dangerous, while batters who have reason to be afraid are tentative
.

If there was one aspect of pitching that Coley had refined more than any other, it was how to knock batters off the plate.
You can't win if you don't pitch inside
. He threw Lee Edwards the fastball up and in. It was only eight or ten inches off the plate, but it was exactly where Coley meant it to be. Besides which, it had 93 mph of velocity and it had that tail. Edwards went down in a heap, his helmet flying off like a cork and the bat twirling to the ground near the on-deck circle.

When he got up to dust himself off and recover his equipment, he gave Coley a look. Coley just stared at him. They both understood the rules of engagement.

He struck Lee Edwards out with a change-up so devastating the bat flew out of the batter's hands. It landed next to the home-team dugout.

Chapter Four

That night after supper Coley used the phone card his mother had given him to call home. He made the call from the hotel lobby because the pizza party that was gaining momentum in their room was too noisy.

When his mother answered, she asked how their flight went and what the hotel was like.

“Everything's great, Ma. We've got the sun and the surf. Everything's great.”

“You know I don't like it when you call me Ma. Did you forget anything? Is there anything you need?”

“Take a joke, okay? No, there's nothin' I need. Everything's cool down here. We're in the middle of a pizza party.”

“Pizza parties are fine, but I expect you to help the coaches. Everyone needs to be accounted for. It's a big responsibility to take eighteen high school kids on a trip out of state.”

“Everything's cool, Mom.”

Then his dad picked up on the other phone. He told Coley it was warm enough to be sitting on the deck.

“It's warm enough here to be swimmin' in the ocean,” Coley countered. “In fact, tomorrow we're gettin' some beach time before our first game.”

His father was laughing. “I'm green with envy. Did you pitch today?”

“I pitched. We won the first game, lost the second.”

“But you won the game you were pitching, right?”

“We won the game I pitched.”

“So how'd it go? Give me some details.”

“I was overpowering, Dad. I just blew them away.”

“That sounds great, that sounds great.” His father was chuckling. “Did you shut them out?”

“I shut 'em out. They got one hit.”

“What was the hit?”

“It was real lame. It was just a little dribbler to third. Never got out of the infield.” He was careful to make no mention of forgetting to back up third or being so absentminded he pitched from the windup with a runner on base. “Well, I'll let you go. I just wanted you to know everything is fine.”