Chapter 18

Be careful what you pray for I was often warned.

Fast Charley Freeman showed up just before we started another round of inter-league play in late July. He looked tanned and healthy. He shook my hand firmly and asked where Buzzy was. He acted as though he had left yesterday. It was rather spooky.

"Where the hell have you been?" I asked as we sat in my small office.

He smiled and adjusted the crease in his trousers. In both ear lobes he now sported glittering stones that I guessed were diamonds. His skin appeared to have been bronzed. When I quit looking at his ear studs and his gold necklace, I said, "I think the Yankees gave Buzzy a job in the minors."

He nodded. His long hair was blonde-streaked, covered his ears and was tied back into a lank, foot-long queue. His once-shaggy beard now neatly hid beneath his long chin in the style favored by Jefferson Davis and only a few others in the last century and a half.

"Ready to go back to work?" I asked, as my brain tried to figure it all out and failed.

He nodded again, displaying the crooked grin that had earned him a lot of money endorsing products from underwear to motorcycles. I am sure he made more from advertisements than I did in salary.

"You better see Mr. Ambrose about your status and your pay."

"All taken care of," he said calmly, looking at something behind me although there was nothing to see except the wall. "I do have an agent, you know, the best."

"All right," I said, in control of my rising temper. "We need the help."

"I am aware of that," he said, unfolding himself to his full six-foot-four. He glided out, leaving the door ajar.

As soon as he left my office, I called Ambrose.

"I know he's back," said the general manager, "I had an e-mail from his agent asking that he be reinstated. Don't use him tonight."

"Where has he been?" I asked. "What's he been doing?"

"I talked to his man out in Hollywood, a very odd sort, only understood half of what he said. Freeman had some sort of surgery, ligament work the man said, from cadavers if I got it right. He re-habed at Pepperdine and made a few TV ads, foreign cars, mostly BMW I think. The agent says he is ready to work."

"Very strange," I said. "Weird. But he looks to be in good shape."

"We'll send Amberson down."

"I won't miss him." I said. "He hasn't thrown a strike this month."

Then I talked to Marvin Marshall, my pitching coach, who had been doing his absolute best to make silk purses out of banana pudding. At my urging, he had each of our pitchers cut down on the variety of his pitches and concentrate on one or two things he did best, for some it was just a fastball and a cut fastball. He had them stop all the fly shagging and do more long throwing. It had helped, but when I called the bull pen, I knew I was as likely to get three walks as I was to get three outs.

All I ever said to a reliever when I handed him the ball was, "Throw strikes." Marvin preached control and good mechanics, but evidently he did not teach either one successfully. I had decided to replace him for the next season and had already put Mr. Ambrose to work looking for a pitching coach. A pitching coach and a stopper.

"Fast Charley is back," I told him.

"I'll be damned," he said, shifting his chaw to the other cheek.

"Starting tomorrow, he's our closer."

"Right," said Marvin. "Where's he been?"

"Hollywood I think. You ask him."

"He never talks to me," said my coach. He spat.

By the time we went to New York as part of our inter-league home-and-home series with the Yankees and the Red Sox, we were only two games behind the slumping Marlins. The Yankees swept us, beat us twenty-five to five in the three-game total. I was embarrassed, and my bullpen was exhausted. They hit everything and everyone, including me. Even Fast Charley could not slow them down.

I had hoped that my son might see one of those games, but he could not get away from work so he was spared viewing the debacle. He said he was working twelve-hour days at eight-fifty an hour and had almost a thousand dollars in the bank. On to Boston we traveled and there we looked like world champions. We took three straight from the high-flying Sox including two shutouts. It was the first time we had ever won three in a row, and the third game was a real rouser, perhaps our best of the year.

Mason Powers started, a determined look on his young face. And he mowed them down like he was using a weed whacker. Even Garciaparra, the Boston shortstop who had been flirting with a .400 average all year, could not get a loud foul off the kid with the thick eye-glasses. His fastball seldom topped 85 mph, but he moved it around and used a two-seamer once in a while that had them swinging futility.

Mason, who had begged me to let him bat in the American League park, led off the third with a Texas League single to center and stood on the bag, smiling proudly. Smith put down a pretty good bunt, and the Boston pitcher made the throw to second in the dirt, a step too late. The next batter popped up so everybody stayed put. When it was two and two on Ramirez, we got away with a double steal, and then Zeke made that effort academic when he blasted a homer into the bleachers in right center. Bigger doubled off the green monster, and Papa Junkins hit a screamer to right that left the Red Sox second baseman face down in the grass, a worm killer some called hits like that. With men on first and third and only one out, their pitcher walked the bases full and was yanked for a reliever. By the time the inning was over we had put up fifteen men and scored ten runs, a new team record. If I had owned a Red Auerbach cigar, I would have lit up.

Fast Charley preserved the kid's shutout without breaking a sweat, striking out three of the last five.

It was the start of a Renaissance for the Nats and for the rest of the month we played good baseball and ended August with a record of sixteen wins, one of which was mine, and only ten losses. I was named 'manager of the month, ' an honor which, with three bucks, will get you coffee at Starbucks. The Florida Marlins, who had also been up and down all year, were only one game ahead of us.

Then, suddenly, like a collision, in all came apart. Zeke had been in a bit of a slump for nearly a week, popping up a lot of pitches he usually roped. Scott Lindale met with him twice to show him the hitch his swing had mysteriously developed. Then for a Sunday game, he was absent. I called his hotel. The phone stayed busy. I hoped he had not decided that drugs might be the answer to his problem, but deep down I feared he was lying on his bed with a needle in his leg and the phone unplugged.

My mind was only half on that day's game but when we got to the eighth with a three to two lead, I did have sense enough to give my rotund knuckle baller the rest of the day off and call in my premier closer after Gregory gave up a hit and a walk to the first two batters. Fast Charley sauntered to the mound and walked the first man he faced on four pitches, none of them close. He glared at the umpire.

"Go tell him to bend his back," I said to Marvin who, as usual, was sitting beside me on the bench, chewing his fingernails.

"Yep, okay, he does look stiff," the old coach said as he levered himself up, asked the ump for time and marched to the mound.

Bigger met him there and Marvin said something to the catcher, got a response and then turned toward Fast Charley Freeman. The pitcher bent down, called the coach a filthy name and pointed toward the dugout. Marvin Marshall went white. He just stood there and trembled. Bigger led him back toward me as I stepped out, wondering what was going on. Charley stood on the mound, arms akimbo, watching with an odd smile on his face.

Marvin looked up at me. His mouth was slack, and I would swear there were tears forming in his eyes. He told me what my number one relief pitcher had called him.

"Go on and sit down," I said, mentally telling myself to practice anger management and breathe deeply. I looked out at Charley who was impatiently pawing at the mound. "You're out of the game," I yelled at him as I got my feet moving. I raised my right arm and slapped my biceps so that Enos would send in a right-hander. I hoped somebody was ready. I really did not care. I think I even stepped on the foul line.