Chapter 1

I had only been in the Gwinnett Braves’ ballpark in Lawrenceville, Georgia for two days when Mel Newhouse, the club’s manager, gave me the nickname I’ll never live down.

“Jesus!” Newhouse yelled, dropping his fungo bat in disgust, “you’re the worst fucking fielder I’ve ever seen beyond the level of Little League!”

“Sorry,” I said, weakly.

“The Jackson guys warned me you couldn’t catch a fucking cold,” Newhouse fumed, “but I thought it was just an exaggeration.”

“Well, I’m a designated hitter,” I told him. “I never claimed I was a good defensive guy.”

Newhouse just snorted at me like a small bull. “Last year the Double-A coaches told the Braves they thought they could train you. Looks like they were wrong.”

“Everybody always thinks they can make me a better fielder,” I told Newhouse. “And I’ve tried. But, damn it, I just haven’t been able to improve much. I’m just a DH. Always have been.”

“Well, you’ve now arrived in Triple-A ball with a National League club. You can be a designated hitter here, in Gwinnett, but the big club ain’t gonna want to have a guy on their bench who can’t catch a ground ball or throw out a runner.”

“My arm’s pretty strong,” I told him.

“Oh, you can throw long, I’ll give you that,” Newhouse said, “but you can’t throw straight! You’re the damnedest piece of work I ever saw! Yesterday, in batting practice, you looked like a primo fucking player. A real prospect! I got all excited, thought I had me a ballplayer. But you can’t field for shit! Where did they play you in the Southern League?”

“I told you. I was the DH – full time ... and I hit 319 for last season, with 23 homers.”

“Well, the Atlanta Fucking Braves ain’t got no DH, kid. If you can’t play defense, you won’t be worth shit in the National League.”

Well, hell, I knew that. I wasn’t stupid. I’d heard all this before. I had accepted – long before anyone else had – that I was a truly awful gloveman. Why a National League club had drafted me in the first place, I would never understand!

But it was the same everywhere they sent me – Class A, Double-A ball in Jackson, Miss., and now here in Lawrenceville, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. I had been elevated to the Gwinnett (County) Braves in the International League. Triple-A ball, gateway to the Majors. I would be their Designated Hitter, just as I had been everywhere I had ever been assigned to play.

At each stage of my career, all the way back to high school, there had been somebody – sometimes whole groups of somebodies – who were absolutely certain that my defensive abilities could be improved under their skilled tutelage. I figured out, early-on, that they’d be disappointed after just a short while. Each time, until they eventually gave up on teaching me to play second base or left field, I would give it my very best shot.

Hell, I always hoped that they’d turn out to be right. My attitude was that I was completely coachable. But I was afraid I already knew how it would turn out.