Chapter 3

Spring training was a blast. I finally felt like I was getting my shot, and that the past three low-pay, low-recognition years might bear some fruit. I came to camp in shape and ready to kick ass, and that's what happened. I hit so well there was no way in Hell the Orioles could decide not to take me back to Baltimore with them for the start of the season.

Four weeks into the regular schedule, I was on fire. Still no long ball, but my average was attracting attention all over the league. I filled in at second base on occasion, but mostly I was the designated hitter.

Lots of guys manage to keep the average up over .400 in April. It's not unheard of.

I was hitting .476 on May 1. It might not have been unheard of, but it was pretty damned unusual. Worse than that, I was giving people fits at the plate. Once, in a game against Toronto, their starter was ahead of us, 6-4 in the sixth inning, but he was starting to tire. There were two out and nobody on when it was my turn at bat. I told Paul I was going to finish him.

"Can't hit a three-run homer with nobody on," Paul said, smiling.

"Can't hit a homer at all," I said. "But I'm going to finish him, anyway."

I started fouling off pitches, deliberately. The count on me was no balls, two strikes, and it stayed that way for 14 more pitches -- every one of them a souvenir for the fans along the first and third base lines. On pitch number 17, which would have been a ball, outside and low -- I singled over the second baseman.

As I stood on first, the Toronto manager came and got his weary pitcher.

Another thing I loved doing was crossing up the opposition's defense. During the first two weeks of the season, I deliberately hit everything to left field. I'd pull ground-rule doubles down the foul line, bouncing them into the stands after they landed, barely fair, behind third base. I'd whip ground singles between third and short. Everything I hit was "pulled" -- if anything I hit could really be called a pull hit.

Word quickly got around the league and, just as I expected, soon they were doing infield "shifts" on me. Boston stationed its left fielder in close, right behind third, almost flat on the foul line. They moved the shortstop into the gap, and moved both their second baseman and center fielder far over on the wrong side of second base. They were well-prepared to snag anything I could make contact with. They had really cut down on my options on the third-base side.

Even the right fielder was pulled way over toward center. So I just punched the next pitch over the first baseman's head and made what was probably the shortest-distance double anybody had hit that season.

If I'd have had any kind of punch at all, it would have gone for a triple.

That elaborate little trick could probably only be pulled once, but it sure livened things up at the time. After that, I would just scatter my hits all over the field, and the "shift" strategy quickly disappeared.

Pitchers really didn't like me much, and I can't blame them. I deliberately aggravated opposing pitchers by making them work, extra-hard, before punching their best stuff over their infield for ugly little hits. Sure, they were pros, and they knew it was all in the game, but a lot of them still took it kinda personal.

So I got thrown at -- a lot -- and had to start wearing a big elbow protector on my left arm to catch some of the tight stuff I couldn't avoid. I guess that, for the same reason I couldn't move very quickly around second base, I also wasn't too good at getting out of the way of brush-back pitches.

That first-avoidance step is the hardest.

On May 11, in Minnesota, I took a fastball on the left cheekbone that put me down for the count.

When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed. Nothing hurt, but I could tell, immediately, that I was doing all my seeing with my right eye only. My left eye was either blind or blocked.

My right eye saw something awfully nice, though. A gorgeous red-haired cupcake in candy stripes. "You the nurse?" I asked her.