Chapter 3

So they let me out of the hospital with a bunch of ugly stitches in my forehead and a prescription for some painkillers. In case you don’t remember, I got hit in the forehead by a linedrive. Fellers said the ball almost reached the stands after it bounced off my skull. Trouble was I had another problem they didn’t know about; I couldn’t see right, everything was kind of fuzzy and crooked. Double vision they called it when I finally asked a doctor about it.

The team put me on IR which means injured reserve and called up a kid pitcher from Syracuse. Durn kid did good, unfortunately, and the next thing I knew, I was being sent to the Potomac Nats down the road for rehabilitation they said. I still couldn’t see straight, but it was getting better, and only me and Babe knew about it.

Me and Babe, we had spent a lot of our time at home on IR getting back into the baby-making business and that was real strenuous for an injured man, but a lot of fun. I found a motel to stay in down in Woodbridge, Virginia, which is a piss-poor excuse for a town, and told the pitching coach that I was having trouble seeing straight. He nodded and said I’d start on Saturday, a home game in that stadium I can’t spell.

Anyhow, I figured out how to catch the ball that the catcher threw out to me pretty good, but I sure hoped none of the batters was going to bunt because when I looked down I saw two of everything. So I lasted five innings and didn’t embarrass myself and when I sat down next to the manager, he shook my hand and said, “Go pack up your stuff, you’ve been traded. The printout’s in your locker.”

I think my heart stopped. I shook my head and asked, “Traded, traded, really, where?”

“Damn if I know,” he said. “You must a’stepped on somebody’s toes.”

It was Cleveland, the Indians. While I was waiting for a flight, I read up on them and found they were playing about five hundred ball and were near the bottom of their division. But they did need pitching so I guess that’s why they wanted me, that and I worked cheap. I didn’t call home because I didn’t know what to say to Babe. I was either mad or scared, and I wasn’t sure which.

In Cleveland I got into a cab and said, “Ball park.”

‘The Jake,” he said and drove me there. I found the offices and told the girl at the desk who I was. She sent me down the hall to see a feller, I think his name was Mr. Falvey. I waited and then we talked and when he asked if I was healthy, I told him I had double vision but it was getting better. He held up a hand and got on the phone.

So then I flew back to Washington that evening and was back in my own bed before the news shows were on TV. Babe said there wasn’t anything about me on the news. She wiggled under the covers, hugged me, and I forgot all about baseball.

The next week is kind of a blur. I saw a bunch of doctors and had some tests, and I think the Nats shopped me around but got no nibbles so they sent me back down to the Potomac team which was only an hour or so away and doing pretty good, but they played a lot of their games down South

By the time of the Carolina League’s All-Star game which was in late June my record was eight and two, and I had almost a hundred strikeouts and only a couple of dozen walks. And, except when I looked straight down, my eyes had improved a lot, and I could see Ok. But I was getting headaches pretty regular like and that was no fun, gobbling aspirin. So anyhow, instead of pitching in the all-star game, I got called back up to the Bigs, to the team that had lost three in a row for the first time. Babe cried when I told her. She said she had been worried about me.

The old manager sat behind his littered desk and cocked his head and looked at me, squinting his eyes. “You awright?” he asked around the toothpick in his mouth.

“Yessir,” I said, “mostly. Still got a little fuzziness, still get headaches sometimes.”

He nodded. “Spect so. You lucky you ain’ dead.”

“I know.”

“Back in the pen’s where you go, long relief mostly, unnerstan?”

I nodded.

‘Got a curve yet?”

I shook my head.

He nodded. “Use that there slurve or whatever you call it, good pitch, diving away, sloping down like that.” He showed the motion with his big hands.

“Good to be back,” I said.

‘Ain’t it,” he said and grinned. “Know ‘xactly how you feel.” The team, despite a couple of dry spells, was rolling along and beating everybody regularly. Big crowds every night, that helped, but hitting was, well, spotty I guess you’d say, off and on.

I drove home and got reacquainted with my beautiful wife, and we both think that was the day she got pregnant again.

So I wore number 97 again and shook hands with all the guys out in the bullpen including a couple of new faces. I sat by Dan, the pitching coach, the one that has charge of the pen, and we talked for a spell. I told him I didn’t always see hundred percent, and he said I wasn’t getting paid for seeing, fielders would take care of that. We both smiled. It was good to be back, very good. It was a happy team most days even if some big money hitters wasn’t hitting.

I didn’t get in until getaway day, the last game of a series with the Mets, an afternoon game, and by the time they called me the shadows were well out on the field which made life hard for most batters. I breezed through two innings giving up only one scratch hit but then walked the leadoff man in the eighth and got yanked.