Chapter 1

I wonder if the guy who wrote that song, "Centerfield," ever really got close to a ballpark in his life? I mean, at least after you leave high school or college, ballplayers don't ever find themselves saying "put me in, coach."

First of all, in baseball, it's not the coach, it's the manager. 'Course, you wouldn't say, "Put me in, Manager!" either. Maybe you'd call him by his name. A few dudes actually do call the manager "Skip," although that one -- pretty much like "Coach" -- seems way off-kilter to me.

Anyway, who ever heard of anybody, anywhere, whatever the bosses' name might be, urging him or her to "Put me in?" Where I come from, you show the manager you're ready, and, more importantly, able to play the game. And then, he'll put you in, all right.

Now, the phrase, "put it in," that one has a certain resonance. But I digress.

But, y'know, I still kinda like that song, "Centerfield," even if it's a little off on the terminology. Its tune is exuberant, its lyric reflects the kind of zesty enthusiasm for playing ball that the best players don't have to fake, and, hey -- like the song says -- "I'm ready to play -- Today!..."

... Centerfield.

My name is Zeke (the Streak) Taylor, and I've played centerfield, majors and minors, for the Houston Astros organization for the past eight years -- most of the last six with their big club. I'm not a fringe guy. In five and a half major league seasons, I've averaged .314, 37 homers, 133 ribbies, and 43 stolen bases. I've been on four all-star teams, the last three of them as a starter, and I've got three Gold Gloves for my work, as the more cliché-ridden sportswriters like to say, "patrolling" centerfield.

I didn't get that "Zeke the Streak" nickname for running around naked. I steal bases. I may not be in the Maury Wills/Ricky Henderson class, but I steal bases a lot -- especially for a big power-guy. My friend and teammate, Forrest Whitcomb, says I'm the "fastest white man in baseball."

That's Whitcomb's idea of a joke. See, I ain't a white man -- at least, not by the standards of the U.S. of A. I imagine if you could do DNA tests or some such and determine a person's racial pedigree with any certainty, I actually would be considered a (mostly) white man. Certainly my black ancestors were violated -- more than once -- by the white folks (or maybe my black ancestors were violating the white ones -- who the hell knows?).

But I'm officially "Black" by virtue of being identifiably black in some respects. Kinda like Halle Berry, I guess, only she's a helluva lot cuter than I am.

Anyway, whatever color I am, I can sure as hell outrun Forrest Whitcomb, and he's way blacker than I!

You hear a lot these days about how there aren't that many black men playing in the majors anymore. That's mostly bullshit, because a lot of the Latino players are black (or, like me, partially black), and there's no shortage of Latinos in the Show.

But it's true that the number of born-in-the-USA black men playing the game is down quite a bit. The Brothers tend, these days, to prefer football and basketball. Reportedly, that is because it's a little easier to move from college (or even high school!) to the pros in those sports, if you've got the native ability.

In baseball, progress to the Big Leagues is a lot chancier. No matter who you are, almost, you gotta expect to spend a few years making small bucks and riding beat-up buses in the minor leagues.

No glamour. No big money.

So, OK, maybe it's true that baseball's no longer number one in the hearts and minds of Black youth. That's too bad, but baseball has always been my game. So what if I was the only black starter on my college team? I got a scholarship just as good as the one my basketball-playing brothers got -- and I had a lot less pressure on the field, and a better shot at picking up an actual education (which, by the way, I did).

I also took a chance, in choosing a small college to play ball in. It's in a Division One conference -- but not a well-known one. We didn't show up on ESPN very often, or even on regional sports TV. We only played the big-name colleges a few games a year, and we mostly lost those games.

But I got a better education at that small college than I would have at a baseball factory somewhere. And although I didn't get a big signing bonus, I got drafted, all right -- in the third round.

And whatdaya know? This year, I'm a free agent. The Astros had been really fair. They never shortchanged me at contract time, and they told me, early-on, that they'd like for me to stay -- to re-sign with Houston. I'd kind of liked to have stayed around, myself. It's not like I really had to get the biggest contract available.

But my agent -- a human vulture named Reed Cunningham -- told me that I needed to "test the market." I owed it to the other players, Cunningham said, to make sure I got "full value."

Cunningham may be full of shit and a greedy bastard, but he's my greedy bastard, and I told him to go for it. But I set out some conditions. These were not public conditions, you understand. Not hardly! These conditions were strictly between Reed Cunningham and me, because we didn't want them to have a negative influence on the bidding for my services.

But Cunningham knew I was not kidding. He may be the big-time sports agent, and I may be the presumed-ignorant professional ballplayer, but he had already learned, several times over, that when I tell him something, I mean it.

I told him I wouldn't sign with the Yankees or the Mets because I didn't want to play in New York. And I wouldn't sign with Kansas City or Colorado or Oakland or Florida or Tampa Bay -- or several other clubs, for reasons ranging from not liking the playing conditions in those club's ballparks to just not liking what I'd heard about their management.