Chapter 16

Now that I had spent some time in Sandy's real Magic Box, I quickly found that all my troubles as a hitter were over. The seven-game home stand with the Yankees and Indians was an artistic triumph, both for the Orioles and for me. No hitting streak to speak of -- I took a collar in the first game against Cleveland -- but I had hit well throughout both series.

My average kept climbing. It was July now. Time for batting averages to start wearing down.

Nope. I was hitting .419 when we left town for New York. We'd be there for Independence Day and July 5, and then would go back to play four against Boston at home before the All-Star Break. After that, we'd be flying out to Seattle.

The press was starting to notice me a little bit. The Boston writers were particularly interested, because of Ted Williams' being the last guy to hit over .400, more than sixty years back. The writers were already discussing the fact that I'd maintained my over- .400 average with the season half completed.

Nobody was all that excited about it just yet, however. The consensus was I was just a banjo-hitting fluke. Another circuit around the league and the pitchers would figure me out and cut me down to size.

The All-Star Game that year was in Detroit, and although I didn't get voted in as a starter, I was invited to participate all the same. Our rookie pitcher, Shiggie Nomura, was also selected, and Miguel Tejada, the only Oriole selected for the starting lineup, was the shortstop for the American League.

Sandy and I were enjoying the glow of our newly minted romance, and that was proving to be better therapy for me than any professional shrink could hope to provide. Sandy didn't always come to the games, even at home, but she was there far more often than not. I had made the comforting discovery that, whether or not she was in the stands, I could hit.

I had a succession of brief hitting streaks -- one of them ran seven games -- but on the rare occasions when I was held hitless, I didn't react to it as negatively as I had in the recent past. The bean-ball crisis, apparently, was over.

At the All-Star Game, I got up to bat twice and flied out to left both times. I had hoped to make a better impression on national television, but, hey, you can't always get what you want.

I did get one thing I wanted, though. Sandy agreed to accompany me to Detroit for the game and for the pre-game festivities the night before. We both had a great time watching the home run hitting contest. Needless to say, I was not one of the participants.

Sandy and I spent the entire All-Star break together in Detroit -- much of it in bed in a first-rate hotel -- before she flew back to Baltimore and I departed for a four-game series in Seattle.

We continued to win and to contend for the Division title, and my hitting was steady. I was well over .400 and holding there. One of the tricky things about hitting .400 for a season is, you're never going to be able to sustain yourself, at a comfortable level, over the .400 mark. Sure, back in college I had hit much higher than that, but this was the big leagues, and it just wasn't going to happen. The pitchers were too smart, too talented, too aggressive.

So, although I reached .424 at one point, I couldn't make it go any higher. July wore on, the schedule was unforgiving, and even a 2-for-5 night at the plate meant, at the .424 level, a slight statistical drop in my season average.

That created a certain amount of pressure.

We were in St. Pete on July 22, opening a three-game series against the Devil Rays. I went oh-for-five for the night, dropping about eleven points on my season average in one feel swoop. It didn't feel good.

Back at the hotel in downtown St. Pete, I called Sandy to cry on her shoulder.

"Did you hear the game?"

"Yeah. On the computer." Sandy liked to listen to out-of-town games on the computer. She'd tune into the opposing team's broadcasts and pick up on the announcers' attitudes toward me. I had learned, from Sandy, that there was a growing negativism about me being voiced by several broadcasters around the League.

"The Tampa guys were saying mean things about you tonight," Sandy said.

"Yeah? Seems like they could have gotten by, just telling the truth. I took the collar."

"One of them said it wasn't right, a designated hitter leading the league in batting average."

"I didn't know there were any rules against that."

"He said it was OK for a DH to be a slugger, or an RBI guy," Sandy said, "but a singles hitter like you? It just didn't 'feel right, ' he said."

"Didn't feel right."

"Yeah."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"