Still Pitching (24 page)

I packed two years of frustration and rage into those two innings. If this was going to be it for me, I wanted to show that peckerhead what a mistake he'd made by passing me over. So I bore down and concentrated like it was the last game of the World Series. I snapped off curve balls and sinkers; I changed speeds and mixed locations. I got all six hitters in a row, easy outs.

It was exhilarating to be out there. I wanted those two innings to last forever. When it was over, I was so high that I craved the varsity letter more than ever. I had goddamn earned it. Once I got it, I could walk away from the whole thing. Clean break, nothing more to prove to him—or to myself.

As it turned out, we were eliminated again in the borough finals, by the same team, Bryant, and the same pitcher, Don Large, who'd beaten us the previous year. For the first time since I'd joined the team, Kerchman didn't yell at us on the trip home or make a locker room speech. He just went into his office and cracked the door.

I was relieved—and strangely elated—that this awful season was over. I couldn't wait to turn in my uniform and get the hell out of there. But when I passed by his office, Mr K was still sitting in his chair staring at the wall. It was more than just a playoff defeat to him. He was losing two All-City pitchers and two All-Queens seniors from a squad that had won three straight league championships. Next year he'd be starting again from scratch. It was absolutely nuts, but my first impulse was to feel sorry for
him
.

The mood at the banquet
was subdued. Still, it was a prestigious event. Kerchman had invited two previous Kelly Award winners to make the customary inspirational speeches. When I listened to them delivering the old rah-rah, I remembered how good it felt to pitch those last few innings. Mike Hausig won the Kelly Award, and Berman and Gartner shared the
Long Island Press
MVP trophy. Next year those guys would be gone. No matter, I'd made up my mind to pack it in.

Then, just as I expected, Koslan received his varsity letter. That sealed it. I knew I was next. When Kerchman shook my hand and handed me a minor letter my stomach turned over and I had to bite my lower lip hard to keep from crying. My knees were so wobbly I don't know how I made it back to my seat. I couldn't recall a single detail from the rest of the evening. I didn't even wait for my father and brother to take me home. For hours I wandered around the neighborhood, hearing the same script over and over in my head. How could I have let him do this to me? Why didn't I throw the fucking letter right back in his face?

At one point, I found myself wandering barefoot on the beach, my suit pants rolled up to my knees. I took the letter out of my jacket and scaled it like a seashell into the Atlantic. I felt a pang of relief when it disappeared into the black sea. That night, and for three nights following, I didn't sleep for more than a few hours at a time. Nobody in my family could console me.

The last week of school
I sat in the back of my classes hiding behind a book. I ducked into empty corridors when I saw teammates and acquaintances coming toward me. At noon I ate lunch alone in an empty classroom. And I cut out as soon as the three o'clock bell rang.

I thought about possible reasons why Kerchman might have denied me the letter. Was this a punishment of some sort? Or was it another ploy? Could he have known somehow that the minute I got the letter I'd be history? I obsessed over it for days. But it didn't matter what the reasons were. I'd have to have my head examined to go back for more. I was done with him and with baseball once and for all.

My father knew how badly I was hurting inside. He wanted me to go back and play next year, but to his credit, he didn't try to dissuade me. His silence was a dead giveaway, though. In his universe, there was no such thing as cutting your losses.

To my mother though, it was a no-brainer.

“Now you can get on with your own life,” she told me.

Right, mom. And just what life would that be? Baseball was my life.

When school ended in June
, I still couldn't escape my melancholic thoughts. Five years of practice and striving and what did I have to show for it? Zilch. Bupkis. A big, fat goose egg. The question now was how to fill the void.

To keep my mind occupied, I signed up for
two
summer teams—one in the local Rec League, and the O'Connell Post American Legion squad, a hand-picked all-star team composed of the best seventeen and eighteen year olds on the peninsula. Playing Legion ball was a step up in competition from high school. If I was good enough to make this team, then why in the hell wasn't I good enough for Kerchman?

Right around that same time, I began hearing rumors again that the Dodgers might soon be leaving Brooklyn. Just the thought of it made my stomach churn. It was a double whammy—too much to absorb all at once.

In the spring of ‘57
the newspapers reported that Walter O'Malley had peddled the Dodgers' minor league parks in Fort Worth and Montreal for a million dollars apiece. He assured the fans and press that the money would go toward operating expenses for a proposed new ballpark—a domed stadium in downtown Brooklyn, above the Atlantic Avenue Long Island Railroad station.

At first I thought it was a P.R. stunt—a front office maneuver designed to drum up more interest in the team. Major League baseball teams didn't just up and abandon their cities, especially New York, where baseball was practically a religion.

Why would the Dodgers leave? Why now, right at the height of their success? For the past ten years Brooklyn had had one of the best records in baseball. Only two summers before they'd won their first World Series title. Wasn't this precisely what the head honchos had been aiming at for the past five decades?

And what about the millions of fans who'd suffered through the heartbreak collapse of ‘51? What about the succession of excruciating Series loses to the Yankees? And all of the dog seasons in the 20s, 30s and 40s—when the Dodgers were the sad-sack losers of the National League? How could the team brass ignore the fans' loyalty and devotion? I thought about Donna's warning of a year ago, when she chided me for caring so much “about a team of professional athletes.”

To add still another
piece of bad news to the mix, I learned from my mother that my father's sales commissions had fallen off drastically. Translation: I needed to bring in some money to help out at home. Normally I'd already be working by now. But in the last few weeks I'd been too busy sulking and feeling sorry for myself. There were mornings when I didn't even want to get out of bed.

I supposed I could fall back on Neiman's Pharmacy. But the thought of it was so demoralizing. I was too old to be pedaling my ass all over town for minimum wage and twenty-five cent tips. If I could have driven the pharmacy's car, it might have been another story. But at seventeen you can't drive inside the city limits without a supervising adult, and that would have been even more embarrassing than riding the bike.

I was still pondering what to do, when one night after Legion practice Ronnie Zeidner approached me with a curious proposition. It seems there was a last minute opening for a senior counselor at Grove day camp. One of Zeidner's prep school buddies had just backed out because his parents were sending him on a tour of the French Riviera. There was no irony in Ronnie's voice when he told me about it.

As far back as grade school, Zeidner and Rob Brownstein were the two guys in our neighborhood who commanded the most respect. They were the best athletes in our crowd. Both came from wealthy families. Even before they went to prep school, they carried themselves with an air of assurance and poise, like characters right out of
The Catcher in the Rye
or an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.

My main contact with them was through baseball. That was until I started receiving those camp post cards in which Ronnie and Rob boasted about their escapades with the jc's across the lake. I'd wondered at the time why they were sending them to me. When it came to girls and dating, those guys were lifetimes ahead of me.

While I was throwing hundreds of baseballs at my garage door, spending Saturdays at Ebbets Field, and playing summer league ball, the popular guys were hanging out at the beach, showing off and flirting with girls. At night they went to parties and out on movie and bowling dates. Some were already driving their parents' cars and having sex with their girlfriends—or so the rumors went.

Now that I had some free time, it slowly began to sink in. I was only a year away from college, and I'd never even been in love, and except for a brief fling with Ellen Wiseman in the spring, I'd never had a real girlfriend. What's worse was that my only sexual encounter had been an embarrassing disaster.

Zeidner's offer, then, had come along at just the right time. If I took the day camp job, I'd be around girl counselors all summer. Maybe I could make up for some of that lost time.

The first few days
of camp I hung around on the fringes—just like I used to do at dances and parties. But this time I was sizing up the situation, looking for a safe opening or a welcoming invitation—neither of which were forthcoming. At the daily staff meetings I stood back and watched the coalitions form. God knows, I'd had a lot of practice being on the outside looking in.

It didn't take long to see what the pecking order was. At the top of the pyramid were the head counselors—all high school seniors. These guys all went to prep school or Five Towns high schools like Lawrence and Hewlett. Zeidner and Brownstein were easily the top ladies' men. While most of us underlings rode the camp buses to work, they took turns driving matching candy-apple red ‘57 Chevy convertibles that the other guys called “pussy wagons.”

One step below them were the head counselors like me who attended public high schools. The jc's, all fifteen and sixteen-year-old girls, were another notch lower, and at the bottom were the waitresses and kitchen staff—high school freshmen and sophomores. The male counselors all referred to them as “fair game.”

At the top of the girls' food chain were three attractive and classy high school juniors from Woodsburg, the most exclusive village in the Five Towns. They were cheerleaders at Hewlett High, and each one had her own car. Their parents belonged to the Hewlett Yacht Club and to El Patio, a trendy Atlantic Beach cabana club.

I was immediately taken with them. Even in ratty camp T-shirts and cut-offs, blonde and well-tanned Linda Price, Joanne Morse, slender and elegant, and sexy, kinetic Julie Rabin all looked and carried themselves as if they'd just stepped out of a teen fashion magazine. Like Ronnie and Rob, they epitomized the privileged and exclusive milieu I was so ambivalent about.

I couldn't tell which of the three I was most drawn to. They were all prototypes of the unattainable girls I'd been dreaming about since grade school. That they seemed so far out of reach only added to their mystique. How could I even hope to attract their attention?

When I asked Ronnie and Rob what they knew about the three, Rob said, “Don't get your hopes up. They're strictly off limits.”

I should have known better than to ask.

Zeidner and Brownstein loved to parade their entitlement. They'd acknowledge the likes of me, but only so long as I was content to remain in their orbit. If I deferred to them, then every so often they'd allow me brief glimpses into their privileged world—like those post cards, and now this job. Guys like them cultivate devotees, if only to reinforce their own perceived superiority. In my desperate state, I was all too willing to comply.

Come to think of it, I'd always had a tendency to subordinate myself to those who had more power or stature than I did. Back in sixth grade I let Elaine Hirsch and Alice Rosen humiliate me at the Beth El dance. In seventh grade I played disciple to Manny and his boys. And I let those two girls from the yearbook staff intimidate me. A year ago I allowed Donna to dictate the terms of our relationship, and for three years I'd willingly done Kerchman's bidding. The price you pay in that tradeoff is the loss of your integrity. Yet, here I was doing it again.

From the beginning
of summer league I'd channeled my anger and disappointment into pitching. When you think you have nothing left to prove and nothing to lose, it's a lot easier to let go of your restraints. So in those early season Rec games I was more assertive than I'd ever been before. Whenever a hitter crowded the plate, I'd buzz the ball right under his chin. If I sensed any fear, I'd brush him back again and then snap off an outside curve ball or a low slider.

That summer I pitched better than I ever had—especially whenever I faced my now ex-high school teammate Andrew Makrides. It was well known in local jock circles that Makrides was one of the best young pitchers on the peninsula. Coaches and players talked about him as a potential big league prospect. That's why I'd always taken a special pride in out-pitching him. But this time, I had even more incentive. Next season he was certain to be one of Coach Kerchman's top three starters.

In early July, my team, the Wavecrest Democratic Club (a.k.a., “The Donkeys”), beat his team, the Guardians, 2-1, to win the first-half championship. But I didn't see it as a payback or a vindication. Andrew and I always had a mutual admiration for one other. He was one of the few guys on the high school team who'd showed me any respect.

“You were a cool customer out there, Mike,” Andrew said after the game. “Who do you think you are, ‘Sal the Barber'?”

He was teasing me. Sal Maglie had been an old Dodger nemesis. His nickname was “Sal the Barber” because of his penchant for “shaving” the corners of the plate, as well as for brushing hitters back. Maglie was also known as a “gamer.” He was the pitcher who Leo Durocher gave the ball to whenever the Giants needed to win a big game. So I took Andrew's remark as a compliment, of sorts.