Chapter 12

Friday night, one short week after my departure from St. Paul for the big, most-expenses-paid week with my sweetie, that little detour into paradise had become nothing but a memory, and I was back in Bill Bowman's ex-farmhouse on the outskirts of Minneapolis.

But I was eager to get started. Bill and I had worked together a lot during August as the Saints' season wound down, but it had been work sessions broken up by road trips and hampered by distractions. I had been trying to follow Bill's instructions while remaining loyal (and available) to the ball club. It had only been Carlos Ortega's steadfast cooperation that had made my working with Bowman even practicable.

Now, however, while I remained technically under contract with the St. Paul Saints, that minor league entity was dormant for the coming winter. My only real remaining duty was to myself. With Bill Bowman's help, I hoped to become a complete pitcher: a marketable baseball commodity. A prospect.

Betsy Ellenbergen had resumed her college studies at the University of Minnesota, but, somewhat to my surprise, she was present at the University Field House for the majority of our sessions there. The pattern Bill and I settled into was three days a week working out at the field house -- Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Betsy was there, still serving as my catcher, on every Saturday and on most of the weekdays as well. When she wasn't there, Bill caught me himself, or occasionally recruited a member of one of the Gophers' intramural baseball teams to do so. He paid the young men to show up and catch for me. As far as I could tell, Betsy was doing it gratis.

"I hope you're keeping good records, all this free help I'm getting from you and Betsy," I told him. "I want to pay you back someday."

"I have faith that you will, at that," Bill said. "But you had best be keeping your own records, if you're of a mind to pay us back some day. Don't be expecting to receive an itemized bill."

He was right, of course. His remarks had embarrassed me. From that day forward, I did, indeed, keep my own records. I noted also the names and contributions of the young men who showed up on occasion to help with my workouts.

Bill also introduced me to a trainer -- employed by the university's athletic department -- and I had several skull sessions with him, listening careful to his best advice about physical conditioning. He wasn't an expert on pitchers' physical needs, or even on baseball players as a class, but he knew his stuff about the basic things I should be doing to prepare myself for a career as an athlete.

Bill could himself teach me the intricacies of conditioning a pitcher, or at least what had worked for him. He expressed frequent amazement at my stamina and the durability of my arm. "You don't ever be shy about telling me, if you're having any kind of trouble with your arm," he said at one point. "I know I've been bragging on you, some, about how durable you are and all... But if that changes -- even a little bit -- well, you have to say so. It's very important. We need to know if you're feeling the least bit of wear and tear."

I promised I'd speak up if I felt the slightest twinge. But the fact was, although I got physically tired, my arm never seemed to get sore. Bill was right: I had a rubber arm.

On the days other than my every-other-day pitching schedule, I engaged in some running and light workouts designed to assure that I maintained the best possible physical conditioning all winter long, and to try to build size and muscle and weight. Initially, most of the running was done outdoors in the open areas around Bill's house. As the weather grew cooler, I knew outdoor running in Minnesota would be impossible, and I'd have to go into the field house every day. For now, however, the weather was great.

Only three weeks into this regimen, my pitching coach opened up to me a little on our drive back to his place from the field house. "It's really coming along, Freddie. I mean, you're really showing me something! You're doing well, and it's coming along fast. Your control of the fastball is much improved, and you're starting to be able to make your other pitches behave, too."

"I... I'm glad to hear you say something that positive," I told him. "I mean, I don't expect you to fall all over yourself with praising me all the time, but you gotta understand, the only way I can really measure how well it's going is if you give me some feedback. Jeez, Bill, you can be kind of a stone face sometimes, you know?"

He chuckled. "That's your biggest problem as a pitcher, Freddie. You need a stone face of your own. You don't look nearly fierce enough, standing out there looking in toward the plate."

"It's just an act," I told him. "In real life, I'm your basic white-bread version of Bob Gibson -- mean and nasty. I just put on this phony milquetoast display out on the mound to fool the hitters."

"Well, it's working," Bill said, laughing.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­--

Bill had to take a trip out of state the last week of September. It was one of those Hot Stove League things, where old ballplayers are invited to show up and make a little speech, and then spend a couple of hours telling war stories to a group of fans with long memories. It was a reliable source of income for former players, although as far as I could make out, Bill Bowman wasn't exactly hurting for spare change.

I talked about it briefly with Betsy, and got her take on it. "He doesn't really need the money; he does it mostly because he just enjoys schmoozing with the fans," she said.

We had met that day at the field house for my pitching session -- sans Bill -- for the first time ever. "Good of you to come out and help me, even with Bill not here," I told her. "I'm keeping good records. Some day, I hope to pay you back -- both of you -- for all this help."

"Aw, shucks, it ain't nuthin'," Betsy said with mock folksiness. "I like helping you -- 'specially since you stopped worrying you were going to break something on me with your fastball."

"I gotta admit, I was scared to throw hard to you for a long time," I said. "Call me a sexist, but it's just that you look so small and defenseless, back there behind the plate."

"You're a sexist," she said.

Well, I had told her to call me one. But she was smiling when she said it. "Maybe by now you're ready to recognize that I'm a real grownup," Betsy said.

I had noticed, long ago and all too well, that she was a grownup. It was her size and femininity that had given me pause during our workouts. "I absolutely recognize that," I told her. "And I'll tell you something else... Those big rugged guys from the school teams that Bill recruits to help out when you're not here? None of them can handle my stuff as well as you do."

She shook off the praise without comment, but I could tell that my little positive declaration had scored with her.

In accordance with Bill's detailed instructions, we engaged in a forty-five-minute session that morning, with me throwing slowly but steadily, and trying out all three of the pitches in my growing repertoire.

"Damn, Freddie!" Betsy hollered out to me at one point, "you're making that slider dance these days! You're not just a thrower anymore, boy. You're starting to look like a pitcher!"

I guess both of us were tossing around the compliments a little more freely in Bill's absence. If my remarks about her superiority as a catcher had pleased her, well, the positive feedback she was giving me wasn't exactly unwelcome, either.

We took a long break (also in accordance with Bill's instructions) and I got us a couple of Cokes from the machine in the outer hallway. The plan was to resume light throwing for another half-hour, after a half-hour break.

"You know, you kind of remind me of my first boyfriend," Betsy said, chugging her Coke.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, he was a little reedy guy, like you. He looked like you could -- you know -- knock him over with a feather."

"I don't know about 'reedy, '" I said, dubiously. "I mean, I know I'm not that big, but I'm up to almost one seventy-five now. As big as I've ever been."

"Oh, you're big enough," she said. "But, I mean, Kevin -- this guy -- he was like you -- thin and rangy. You're right, 'reedy' isn't the right word for you -- or for him, either."

She leaned into me now, and lowered her voice, although there wasn't anyone else around to overhear us. "And, you know, the first time I was with him? Well, damn! He was, like, really big, you know?... Where it counts the most?"

This turn in the conversation was a little bit of a shocker for me. Betsy had always been something of a free spirit around me, but we'd never discussed her sex life before. Then again, we'd never really been alone before, without her grandfather hovering in the immediate vicinity.

She wasn't through discussing penis size. "He was my first. Kevin, I mean. I guess most every girl thinks the first one she sees -- ready for action -- is a big one. But, listen, I've seen a couple or three more since then, and it turns out he really was. Kevin. He really did have a big one!"

"Well, I don't... think it has all that much to do with a man's overall size and weight," I offered.

"No. I guess not... But maybe... Maybe it's a characteristic of you little skinny guys."

"Sorry," I told her. "That's just not the case. Take me, for instance. You can't judge by the size of my hands or my feet -- which are pretty big, by the way. And you can't judge by my being thin and rangy -- like your friend Kevin was."

"I wouldn't mind, maybe doing the judging for myself," Betsy said, with an expression on her face that I won't even try to describe.

"You'd be disappointed," I told her -- truthfully enough.

"Hey, I didn't say size was everything," she said, backtracking. "I mean, you won't catch me saying it doesn't matter, but it's not the whole ball game."

"Let's just don't go there," I said. "You're cute as a goddamned newborn kitten, and this conversation is giving me all sorts of ideas, but let's just nip this in the bud, Betsy."

"Because you're already taken, right?... Josie?"

"That's right. You know Josie pretty well, don't you?"

"Oh, yeah. I mean, we didn't go to the same schools or anything, and she's some older than I am. It's not like we're best friends. But I saw her plenty, growing up. Our families, you know, were pretty close."

"Well, I'm head-over-heels, Betsy. So even if I had a big hammer like your old boyfriend Kevin -- which I don't -- I wouldn't be available for you to try to, you know, do a reenactment of your first time."

"So, OK. I'm sorry I brought it up. But I really like you, Freddie. You're a real guy, you know? Potential. You got potential, and not just as a pitcher, either!"

"Thanks, Babe. How about we toss around a few more, like your granddad said we should?"

She started to get up, but stopped again. "That Josie. She ever does you wrong -- the least bit -- you keep me in mind," Betsy said. "I'm not kidding, neither."

I knew she wasn't kidding. Damn! All through my past season at Aberdeen, and into the early days that past spring with Bowie, I'd been absolutely bereft of female companionship of any kind. If I had been a female, my hymen would have grown back.

But since May, since right at the time the Baysox released me, I had met the girl of my dreams! And now I was getting propositioned by a young woman I'd have given two months pay for any kind of a shot at, less than six months earlier!

It was an embarrassment of riches.

But turning Betsy down wasn't all that difficult. I was only a few days back from Chicago and Detroit -- the two sexiest towns in America -- if any pollster were to call me and ask for an opinion. And as September wore on, I was getting closer and closer to the day when Josie's season with BirdSports would come to an end, and she'd be back in the Twin Cities with me again.

I was so eager to see her I was tempted to root against the Orioles in the post-season playoffs. The sooner their season ended, the sooner Josie would be here with me.

Thank goodness BirdSports specialized heavily in broadcasting Orioles' baseball. The network's off-season cable fare consisted mostly of third-tier college football games, minor-league basketball and dozens of those awful infomercials. Josie, happily, hadn't involved herself in the winter-sports aspects of her employer's activities at any point. Like me, my Josie was strictly baseball.

I was looking forward to a warm winter in Minneapolis.

I picked up a couple of dinky part-time jobs that I could perform around the hours I was devoting to training. The money was minimal but it did a lot for my self-esteem and enabled me to be less than one hundred percent dependent on Bill Bowman for my daily bread.