Still Pitching (16 page)

Yeah, he sensed it all right. But he misread it. He waved Levy away. Maybe this was Sullivan's obtuse way of atoning for the Jew remark, by allowing me to stay on
his
pitcher's mound.

“Get back in the box, Rubin,” he snapped.

“No Coach,” I said

“What?”

“You grab a bat, Coach.”

A frozen moment. Was I really doing this?

Sullivan looked at me, then he looked at the guys in the bleachers and laughed out loud. We all knew he was going to do it. He ripped off his windbreaker and took a couple of practice cuts, his biceps rippling. He bowed at the waist when muffled cheers rose up from the third base side. Did it ever occur to Big Tom that they might be cheering against him? Or that maybe they were just morbidly curious to see what would happen? Anyhow, he was smiling that crooked ass grin of his. The players in the bleachers spilled into foul territory, inching closer to the backstop.

He stepped into the box and took a few swings.

Ok Coach, I'm thinking. You're gonna get just what you asked for.

I was ready to play me some chin music. Chin music, where the ball whistles as it buzzes just underneath the batter's throat. Before I went into my windup, Whalen took two steps up the first base line. He was sure I was going to throw the pitch-out. Can't blame him. It's what he would have done. It's what anyone in his right mind would have done. Sullivan must have thought so too, that's why he was still grinning.

It was the smirk that did it. Screw chin music, I'm gonna' take his fucking head off.

As I brought both arms over my head, I saw Ortiz streaking from third toward home. In that split second I realized that this really was happening. When Big Tom squared to bunt, I zeroed in on the black line on the inside corner of the plate. Calm down, I told myself. Brush him back. Just let him know you're here.

That's what my head was saying, but when I started my motion I lifted my eyes from the plate and locked them on the bill of Sullivan's cap. That shit-eating grin was still on his face. I pushed hard off the rubber, and cut loose. I watched the ball tailing in, in, in, right toward Sullivan's head. But he didn't back off, not even an inch. Maybe he didn't believe I could throw hard enough to hurt him.

I yelled, “HEAD'S UP,” tucked my chin into my chest and shut my eyes. I heard a dull thud. I opened my eyes just in time to see his cap fly off his head. And as I watched him crumble, feet splayed in the dirt, I felt sick to my stomach.

Stunned players surrounded the fallen Sullivan, not knowing what to do. With leaden strides, I joined them, growing a little more lucid. Rubin shot me a “Man, you are dead meat” look, and I thought about suspension from school. Jail even. But the coach sat up. Jesus, was he lucky. Was I lucky. I must have clipped him right on the bill of the cap. Why was I so surprised? It was the target I was aiming at.

Sighs escaped as one breath. Legs and arms unraveled. Players backed away. Slowly, Big Tom lifted himself up and brushed the dirt off the seat of his pants. He shook his head like a wet cocker spaniel who'd just taken a dip in the ocean. Then he wobbled to the bleachers, looking like a young girl testing out her mother's high-heeled shoes.

Before I could collect my thoughts, Sullivan's voice boomed out: “All right, here we go again. Ortiz, hustle back to third, Rubin, up to bat, Steinberg, get your butt back on the hill. Suicide squeeze, same play as before. This time I know we will get it right, won't we ladies?”

He'd caught me by surprise again. I should have known that he'd have to get the last word. But I couldn't—wouldn't—jump through his hoops. Not this time. I resigned myself to my fate. I took a deep breath, bowed my head, and slowly walked back toward the mound—all the time knowing exactly where I was headed. When I got to the rubber, I kept going. At second base, I pushed off the bag with my right foot and started to sprint. I was unbuttoning my shirt, and as I passed our center fielder, Ducky Warshauer, I tossed my cap and uniform jersey right at him. Ducky stared at me like I'd just gone Section Eight. When I stepped onto the concrete walkway outside the locker room, I heard the metallic clack, clack, clack of my spikes on the concrete floor. I opened the door and inhaled the familiar perfume of chlorine, Oil of Wintergreen, and stale sweat socks. For a moment I thought about going back out there; instead I headed straight for the shower and pushed the lever as far to the right as it would go. As the needle spray bit into my shoulders, I watched the steam rise up to surround me.

Walking home, I replayed
the whole scenario. I did it, I told myself, because he provoked me. What else could I have done? It was a knee-jerk response.

All weekend, I brooded about the incident. Should I take what was left of my uniform to his office? Nope, all that would do is let him know he'd won. Ok, I'll wait for him to ask for it. But what if he doesn't? Will I lose my nerve and give in?

Sunday night, seven thirty, he called me at home. Ten minutes later I was back in that stifling office, the steam pipes hissing and banging away. Sullivan was sitting at his desk, head down, shuffling papers. He made me wait for about two minutes. Didn't even look up. When he knew I couldn't take the tension any longer, he said matter-of-factly—as if nothing had ever happened—“I'll see you at practice on Saturday.”

Without taking his eyes off his papers, he handed me a paper bag with my cap and jersey inside and said, “Get your nasty butt out of here, kid. I got work to do.”

Of course I went back
. That's what you do when you're fourteen and your identity is wrapped up in being a ballplayer. I had a pretty good season too. Rubin also made the team, but he sat the bench for most of the summer.

We didn't win the state title, but we did make it to the final game in Cooperstown. We got bombed that day, but my father and brother got to see me pitch a few good relief innings at Doubleday Field.

While I was on the mound that summer I'd hear Sullivan razzing us from the bench. I always listened closely, curious to see how far he'd push me. But whatever else he yelled, I never heard him say “Jew boy” or “candy ass sugar baby” again.

I'd survived Sullivan. The last hurdle would be Coach Kerchman. And, as I later found out, Big Tom did indeed invite Kerchman to scout me that summer. He just never took the trouble to tell me about it.

All summer I'd been looking
forward to high school with mixed anticipation. The competition for teams, grades, and recognition would be a lot tougher. But how could it be worse than junior high? Maybe high school would be a fresh start. I was cautiously pinning my hopes on two long shots: making the varsity baseball team and the school newspaper staff.

The first setback came a week before school began. All incoming freshmen were notified that the entire school would be going on double session. The freshman class would attend school in the afternoon, while the sophomores, juniors, and seniors went in the morning.

It meant that all freshmen were excluded from participation in every after school organization, including cheerleading and all five sports—football, baseball, basketball, tennis, and swimming. We'd even miss out on the hazing rituals that would certify us as bona fide high school freshmen.

It was another crushing disappointment. The newspaper and baseball would be on hold for at least another year. The only consolation was that I'd have more time to prepare for Kerchman.

All the jock wanna-bes
in the neighborhood knew the Kerchman stories by heart. We'd been privy to them as far back as seventh grade. In his first three years at the high school “Mr. K” had become a local legend. Since he arrived in the fall of ‘51, the football team had won two Queens championships, and the baseball team had gotten as far as the city championship semifinals. During that time, people in the Rockaways—kids, parents, teachers, local merchants, and newspaper reporters—began to take notice. As I'd learned for myself back in sixth grade, winning teams have a way of galvanizing communities, especially in New York, where neighborhoods are marked according to who commands the “turf.”

If you believed the buzz on the playgrounds, Mr. K was an obsessed man. Max Bernstein, a reserve end on the football team, regaled us with stories about the coach's fiery locker room speeches. The way Max told it, before each new season Kerchman would gather the team around him in the boy's shower and give them a spiel about his old college days at Syracuse, where under coach Biggie Munn he was a one-hundred-sixty-pound offensive guard and defensive tackle. Kerchman also made it a point to let everyone know that just after the war he'd had a tryout with the New York football Giants, and that he'd made it to the last cut. He always finished up by saying that he did it all “on a little talent, a big heart, and a whole lot of guts.”

Like Tom Sullivan, Mr. K had a reputation for hazing his Jewish players, the difference being that Kerchman himself was a Jew. The story goes that because he grew up in poverty he believed, like Sullivan did, that the Jewish boys from suburban neighborhoods like Neponsit and Belle Harbor were too soft. But where Sullivan was a flat-out bigot, Kerchman was convinced in his own perverse way that it was his mission to toughen us up.

On the first day of football tryouts, Max said, Kerchman always made the same speech—about the time his Army platoon liberated a concentration camp at the end of World War Two. It was designed to let the Jewish players know just how important he thought it was for them to shape-up. Max also said that at the first practice of each new season Mr. K would order the Jewish boys to scrimmage without helmets and shoulder pads.

Exaggerated or not, those rumors were enough to convince Ronnie Zeidner's and Rob Brownstein's parents to send them to Poly Prep and Woodmere Academy, two private schools that were not above bending the rules when it came to recruiting top athletes. The Kerchman stories spooked me too, but boarding school was not an option. Either I played for him, or I didn't play at all.

By the time school started, then, I was anxious to get my first look at this pugnacious coach. So, the weekend after classes began I collared Ira and Billy, my old Ebbets comrades, and off we went to the first home football game.

“You're not gonna like what you see,” Ira said, as we walked from the bus stop to the high school.

“The guy's an animal,” Billy added.

On game days, the atmosphere
outside the high school field was like a carnival. Vendors hawked everything from hot dogs, popcorn, and peanuts, to red and blue “Rockaway High” pennants and pom-poms, to souvenirs etched with representations of the school mascot, a miniature seahorse. In the bleachers, students and parents chanted “Let's go Seahorses,” while the cheerleaders bounced up and down in their white wool sweaters and short scarlet and blue pleated skirts. There was a hushed moment just before the football team sprinted out on the field. Most of the guys on the team were only a few years older than me. But in their scarlet helmets and full gear the red and white clad players looked like Roman gladiators. Though I didn't care much for football, I couldn't help but think about how exhilarated I would feel to charge out of the locker room with the rest of the team, while everyone in the stands—parents, teachers, local bigwigs, and students—were all on their feet applauding and yelling.

Once we settled in, I scanned the field and spotted Kerchman standing in front of the team bench on the opposite sideline. He was in his late thirties, maybe 5' 8″, and heavyset, wearing a chocolate brown porkpie hat and a rumpled tweed topcoat. You could hear him yelling above the band and the crowd noise. During the game he'd sometimes hurl his hat to the ground and scream obscenities at a player who screwed up. He reacted to missed blocks, fumbles, broken plays—whatever derailed the game plan he'd engineered in his head. A couple of times I saw him grab offending players by the shoulder pads and shake them until their heads bobbed like they were on a swivel. In the middle of the second quarter he grabbed Stuie Schneider, a Jewish halfback, by the jersey and cuffed him with vicious open-handed helmet slaps.

Billy was right. Why would anyone in his right mind want to play for such a monster? Then, I spotted the pitcher's mound just to the right of the south goal posts. In less than an instant, I'd floated free of the razz-ma-tazz. In my daydream fantasy I imagined myself standing on that mound in a Rockaway High uniform. My parents, brother, friends, and a make-believe girlfriend were all in the stands watching. The cheerleaders were chanting my name as I toed the rubber, went into my windup, and got ready to snap off a sharp, dipping sinker.

After the game Billy and Ira declared that they'd seen enough, thank you very much. But I wasn't done observing this contentious coach. His ferocious intensity frightened and fascinated me. So I went back alone to the rest of the home games.

In November I announced to Ira and Billy that I was going to try out for baseball next year. They told me I was crazy to even think about it. But they didn't understand. It wasn't a matter of simply wanting to play ball. I'd long since convinced myself that I
had
to make this team.

Ever since their resurgence
, I'd linked my fortunes with the Dodgers. For the past two seasons Brooklyn had made it back to the World Series. Despite losing again to the Yankees, I thought it was a hopeful sign. But in September of ‘54 the team faltered down the stretch and finished second behind the Giants.

I told all my tormentors that the Dodgers simply had had an off year. Snider, Reese, Hodges, and Furillo had less than outstanding seasons. The always dependable Roy Campanella injured his hand and hit only 207. Plus, the smooth fielding third baseman Billy Cox and longtime ace lefty Preacher Roe were nearing the end of their careers.

What did them in, though, was the collapse of the pitching staff. Don Newcombe, just back from the service, won only nine games. Carl Erskine had arm problems and finished 18-15. My only comfort was that for the first time since 1948 the Yankees didn't win the American League pennant.