Chapter 15

The kid pitcher who seemed to be self-destructive, the one who had cracked his chin open in the pre-season so I got to start a game, the same one that later sprained his ankle sliding home, by the end of June he was winning some ball games and getting well into the seventh or eighth inning regularly. His name was Mason Powers, and he had worked his way up in the Cubs system before we picked him up in the expansion draft. He had four wins and three losses by July 1, our only pitcher with a winning record. He also led the club in strikeouts.

He was a good boy, eager to learn, and Marvin worked with him almost every day. His round, steel-framed glasses bothered me some, but the kid said he could not get used to contacts and that his lenses were shatter-proof. I told him he looked like Harry Potter. He just nodded.

Marvin had drilled into him my dictum, "Get the first pitch over." All he had was a 85-plus fastball and a weak slider, but it was enough because he seldom put the ball over the middle of the plate, and he gave up very few walks, only one or two a game.

He had a good memory, and he concentrated on what he was about to do. Marvin taught him the circle-change, and he soon had confidence in that pitch. I had him do some long-throwing between starts, working up to pitching at 90 feet instead of 60 to strengthen his arm. That's how Leo Mazzone did it down in Atlanta some years back, and he had a lot of guys finishing games.

By the end of June we had twelve new faces on the team since I took the job, and not many names on the lineup card left from opening day. Skeeter Woodruff was now at shortstop and along with hardworking Jojo Peters at second was becoming adept at making the pivot needed for double plays. They both had trouble jumping over sliding runners, and I suspected it would not be long before I had to haul one of them off the field on a stretcher.

Papa Junkins was a steadying influence at first although his range was limited forcing Jojo a bit deeper at times. We had been trying almost everyone at third including Gene Zabdev who begged me not to put him out there again after he made three errors in one game and got a bloody nose out of one grounder. None of our five outfielders was hitting over .250, and they had a bad habit of running into the fences, but we had some good arms and some young legs. I was hopeful. They were now making cutoff throws most of the time even if their throws home still were all over the place.

Bigger Johnson had been working diligently with young Zabdev on plays at the plate as well as on throws to first and to third. We were using him every third or fourth day, especially against left-handers who seemed to be giving Bigger a tough time this season. I felt that catching was where we were soundest as the All-Star break approached. The Yankee manager named Bigger as our one and only All-Star, an honor he told me he would trade for three days of rest. I was surprised Powers did not get the nod, and so was he.

Scott Lindale arrived in mid-June from Palo Alto with his computer programs, his laptop and his wireless TV cameras. He was a lanky young man with a red beard, a pony tail and a serious look who told us he left California early because he had some leave to use up. He wore unironed white shirts and faded Levis day after day, and I wondered if he had a closet full of both items or just one change of clothes. And he never wore socks which I found very odd.

I sicced Mrs. Jepperson's secretary, Lucy Weatherby, on him the first weekend, and she galloped the young man through Georgetown's watering holes and Adams Morgan's multi-cultural dives until the wee hours of the morning and then went apartment hunting with him on Sunday. Andrea Jepperson reported that Lucy thought the man was pretty cool despite being so old. He was twenty-seven.

I called Donna Newby, the SI writer, as I had promised I would, told her my Stanford man was in town and that I had given him her phone number. After that his night life was his own problem.

Lindale set his two small cameras up on the platforms that jutted from the upper stands along the first and third base lines and made tapes of every hitter. By the end of his first week, he had a power-point computer/video report for me with an analysis of all the outfielders' hitting sins. They had many sins, and Lindale was convinced that my regular center fielder was closing his eyes when he swung.