Chapter 5

The third-to-the-last pre-season game, before we got back to Washington, D.C., for a scheduled meeting with the Orioles at RFK and then another thirty miles north at Camden Yards, was against the Atlanta Braves in Richmond.

We had still won more than we had lost, and Buzzy had trimmed the team down to the guys he wanted to keep plus the players he had to keep because Greeley Jepperson had paid them so much money and given them no-cut contracts. I stayed, I think, partly because I worked cheap and partly because my earned-run-average was the best among the rather motley crew of relievers. I hate to say it, but some of the experienced players who were making more a month than I was in a year, were dogging it, just going through the motions, putting in time and punching the clock, laughing all the way to the bank and being careful not to hurt themselves.

In Florida I had only lost my temper once, well, only once when everybody else knew about it. I was in the bullpen down the right field line, twiddling my thumbs and swatting at bugs, minding my own business on a well-worn, sway-backed bench where splinters could be a problem. Moses McGinty, the highest paid player on the team, came to bat with two on and two out. He flexed his andro-defined muscles, displayed some of his flamboyant tattoos, smiled at his mini-skirted girlfriends in the stands, pushed at his colorful wristbands, tightened his fancy batting gloves, shook down the pants that hung over his shoe tops, nubbed one back to the pitcher and trotted along the base line, tossing his bat in the general direction of the bat boy, and then meandering over toward the dugout and doffing his helmet as the throw arched to first and the umpire languidly raised his fist.

I lost control of myself, lost it completely. I ran at him hard as I could, got in his face, called him every foul name I knew that did not have anything racial in it, accused him of being a fat, lazy, overpaid showboat and a disgrace to the game. I said that if he ever did that again, I would kick his rear end up between his ears. "Run out everything," I yelled at him with a multisyllabic curse. "Every time, you lazy slob, every time, always, run it out!" I yelped as they dragged me away, and he ambled to the dugout and got himself a cup of Gatorade, shaking his head as if he certainly had no idea what I was all excited about.

That had been two weeks ago and the big man who always wore a scowl and a heavy gold necklace had yet to even look at me much less say anything to me. But then he seldom said anything to anybody and refused to even nod hello to the reporters that covered the team for the Post and the Times, Washington's daily newspapers. He generally walked around wearing fancy earphones and a mean look.

I was in the Richmond Braves' sunny outfield shagging flies when Buzzy Harder whistled shrilly and waved me in. He stood near the batting cage looking morose. "How you doing?" he asked when I approached him with sweat dripping off my nose.

"I'm all right," I said, wishing my knees would stop aching. "Feel pretty good."

"You're startin' today," he said. "That Powers kid, the one with them funny glasses, he fell up the dugout steps and cracked open his chin, broke a tooth. They took him for x-rays and some stitches. Stupid kid."

"He's smarter than some," I said since the boy he was talking about had spent two years in the minors and built a good record through double-A. He knew how to pitch, not just throw. And he listened and worked hard. I had talked to him about the need to do something different on the third time through the line-up, and he actually understood the concept.

"Anyhow, go see Johnson; he'll be catching. Gimme at least three good innings, hear? Five'd be better. Wanna rest some people y'know"

I nodded, sought out the big catcher, and he and I sat with the pitching coach, a grizzled old National Leaguer who still chewed Red Man tobacco. We went over the Braves' line up.

"Now don' let that smart-ass bastard beat you," the coach said, meaning the shortstop who had won the batting crown two of the last three years and could show off a World Series' ring if he wanted to, and he often did.

Bigger Johnson and I both nodded and smiled at each other. "Who's behind the plate?" I asked.

"McNally," said my catcher. "He'll be rubbing his big belly on my back, putting his hand on my shoulder. He's awful friendly, works on one knee."

"He used to call the outside one," I said as pitching coach Marvin Marshall flipped pages in his loose-leaf book and spat carelessly into the wind.

"Still does. Just hit the glove." Johnson smacked the middle of his mitt with his huge fist.

"No fast ball strikes," I said. "Let's go up the ladder."

Bigger nodded. This would be the first time he had caught what little I had left, but he knew my assortment of junk. "How come you don't warm up like most guys?"

I smiled at him. "Figured out some time back that I've only got so many pitches in this arm. Saves wear and tear."

"Your arm, my man," he said. "I'll use waggle for the knuckler if you want to throw it."

"How come you're called Bigger?" I asked.

"Daddy named me and my brother both John after his father who had got himself killed in the war. Sort a'like Foreman and his Georges 'cept our middle names are different. I was older and bigger, so." He shrugged a what-can-you-do kind of shrug, and he smiled.

We both leaned back, put our feet up and rested while others worked.

The Braves got three runs off me and the Nats in the first inning, and if it had not been pre-season and a game that meant nothing, Buzzy probably would have yanked me. The infielders botched a double-play ball after I walked the lead-off man on what I considered a bad call, and it kind of went downhill from there, a team effort you might call it. The final two runs came in after McGinty misjudged a ball in right and then loafed after it in the corner, kicked it and missed the cutoff man. I somehow calmed myself, took five deep breaths, imaged a tranquil lake and puffy clouds, then got the eighth batter of the inning to pop up.