Chapter 2

So anyhow, Babe spent that winter teaching me to be a husband on account of I really didn’t know nothing about nothing except throwing a baseball. I learned a lot and enjoyed most of it, especially the bedroom parts. I got pretty good as pleasing my wife, and that’s not bragging. I wasn’t so good about taking out the trash and setting the table, and she gave up on trying to teach me how to use the washing machine.

Since I was in the majors now and making a lot of money with the hope of making much more, we bought a house. The money my wife inherited we put away in government bonds and things that paid long-term interest and were very safe, what she calls secure. “For the kids’ college,” she told me.

“Kids?” I said, looking dumb I suppose.

‘Uh huh, someday, we might have kids.”

“You and me?”

She laughed.

The house costs more than I make, but we got a good mortgage and then we bought some furniture. Babe fetched some pieces from her folk’s house, and I had a few things including a ping-pong table and pretty soon the place was more-or-less furnished. It was a 1950s split-level house that was only about fifteen minutes from where I grew up.

At Christmas-time we bought a tree and some lights, and Babe cooked her first turkey, and my folks and her folks came and ate with us and said how nice everything was. And it was.

So the team offered me a contract that started at one million a year and went up to two-and-a-half million in five years. That is was big pile of money, but I knew that some of the guys were making a lot more, like putting a zero on it more, so I declined and just signed for one year. The GM did not like that, and he told me so. I just nodded and kept my big mouth closed. I told him I had some advice. And I did. Babe said not to sign it. Some guys hire an agent; I don’t need to.

During spring training down in Florida I sure missed Babe, and I tried to learn how to throw a slider and a curve ball. I gave up on the curve but developed a tolerable slider that I didn’t trust much after I saw it hit out of sight a few times. When that kid outfielder from out West nails one, it makes a scary sound, like a whip cracking or a heavy door being slammed shut. I ducked every time and some people laughed while I was spitting dirt.

You know, when you pitch batting practice, which we took turns doing, even the high-priced starters, you have this big screen in front of you, but linedrives can and do get through and more than one guy’s been hit doing that. When the coaches pitch, they’ve learned to throw and duck, but most of us just follow-through like always and there we are fifty feet from balls coming at us around at a hundred miles an hour. How long does it take for a baseball to cover fifty feet at 100 mph?

So after hours of PFP, which means covering first, and bunting practice, which is not fun at all but part of the game and something I am determined to get better at, we started with what they call Grapefruit League games against the other teams that practice down in Florida. And we did pretty good and people started talking about us like they did before, but I don’t think SI’s going to make the same mistake twice. That’s Sports Illustrated in case you don’t know, the magazine that brightens up our February with its swimsuit issue.

I pitched in four or five games, just three innings at a time, and I did Ok and they said I’d be the fifth starter which was fine with me on account of I didn’t like doing the relief jobs which amounted to getting up and throwing and sitting down and waiting before you had to get up and throw some more.

Anyhow, we did good that spring and headed north all smiles and full of hope. That’s how baseball’s supposed to be, fun and full of hope. And we played a couple of games at home, and I got to spend a few nights with my wife. She was glad to see me and we ate hot dogs and beans and spent a lot of time in bed before the real season started. Lord, if I’d known being married was such hard work, I might not have done it. (That’s a joke - ha ha.)

I got my first start down in Atlanta and the first time I got to bat, the coach on third signaled me to bunt on account of nobody was out, and we had men on first and second. So that was a good idea, bunting was. We didn’t have a lot of signals, maybe just four or five for hitters but more for the fielders and some signs for what to do when the other guys bunted, like the wheel play and stuff, but I had learned to look for them on account of just about the only thing that got the coaches and the old manager mad was missing a sign.

Anyways, I got my bat out and squared around and here came the pitch, right at my nose. I think my heart stopped and my lungs shut down, and I ducked and the pitch hit me right on the top of my helmet and bounced clear out into the stands. I fell to my knees, still holding the bat and feeling kind of numb. Then I guess I fainted or passed out.

Anyhow, I woke up in a hard table in the emergency room of the hospital where a guy in white was looking at some gray-blue pictures on a screen. “When you get out of here,” he said to me, helping me to sit up, “you ought to write the helmet maker a nice thank-you letter. It’s a concussion, but not a bad one. You sure have a hard head.”

I nodded. “My Daddy always said that you couldn’t hurt a Baker hitting him in the head.”

‘You might have headaches for a while and don’t be surprised if you throw up, but you’re fine and in a day or two, you can forget this.” He smiled. “At least you can try to.”