Chapter 15

Hernando Escobar was a stocky, swarthy man who looked every bit as old as the forty-six years Manuel, the manager, had attributed to him.

But he still moved like an athlete, and his confidence was evident in everything he said or did. His handshake was strong and sincere, and he sounded as if he meant it when he told me he was looking forward to working with me.

"Manuel, he has tol' me about you," he said. "About, like you don't know from peetching. He say how you need to learn ... everytheeng ... about being the peetcher. But he say hees fren, Beel Bowman, believe you are a peetcher. That ees good enough for Manuel, and what ees good, for Manuel, well, eet's good for me, too."

"Well. Thanks."

"Course, when I see what you got, I weel judge for myself. Sometime, even Manuel, you know? He can be full of sheet, like anybody. Not so much, as most people. But, hey, eet can hoppen, you know?"

"Not this time," I told him, with more confidence than I really felt. "From you, I need to learn how to be a pitcher. In game situations. I am very much a novice, it is true. But I can throw. I have a slider that is getting better. I have a change-up. And I throw hard."

"No curve ball? Not no curve ball at all?"

"No. Bill says the curve ball should wait. He says that for now, I use the slider, the change. He says it will be enough."

"Hmmmm. Well, why don't we see? C'mon, lez see what chu got."

I was determined, in that first practice session with Hernando Escobar, not to extend myself to impress him. I took my sweet time warming up, showing nothing except that I could reach him with my warm-up tosses.

"You slow, to getting heat up?" he asked me, finally.

"No. No, I can get ready to pitch pretty quickly."

"You ready now?"

"Sure," I told him, as if I'd been waiting for him to lose patience all along.

I started throwing in earnest. Hernando said nothing for a long time. I was throwing easy, but all fastballs, trying to hit his glove wherever he held it. I thought I wasn't doing badly.

"Pretty guud fast ball," he said finally. "Show me now the slider." He held his catcher's mitt low and left of the plate, where it would be an inside pitch to a right-handed hitter.

"You want me to throw it there?" I hollered from the pitcher's mound.

"You can not do eet?" he said.

"I don't throw it so much, to left-handed hitters," I said.

"Thees ees for the right-handers," Hernando said. "You throwing eet to me, eenside, here. You throwing eet right at the heeter, but you bend eet, like to here. Can you do that?"

"I don't know," I told him. "I never tried it. Maybe it won't break that much."

"You try eet. Throw your slider, but aiming for here -- eenside and low. You are throwing eet for a strike -- or eet's hokay eef maybe eet's low, but over the plate -- but on the eenside. Hokay? Go 'head. Try eet!"

I tried to adjust my way of throwing a slider so that it bent into the plate from the right-side batter's box, instead of starting over the plate and bending outside and low, as was normal for the pitch. My throw came reasonably close to Hernando's target.

"Not so bad," he said. "Mebbie a leetle too close to the heeter. Mebbie he bail, on that one. We don't wan' him to bail. We don't want to heet the bostard, neither! But we wan' heez knees, Frederico! We wan' heez knees to be like spaghetti, you know? So he will sweeng over the ball. Or he weel freeze op, and do nudding, you know?"

"What about the lefty hitters?" I asked him.

"Some of those guys, you mebbie throw heem the slider too. The reg'lar one, low and eenside to the lefties. Some of them, you no can pull eet, that treek. To some of them, eet will be like a balloon, you know? But I know wheech ones can heet eet, and wheech ones, weel geet all focked up, trying to heet eet. And after a while, Frederico, you weel know wheech ones, also."

Now Hernando wanted to sample my change-up, and again, I threw it several times before he said anything at all. Then he told me to vary the pitches, all three of them, responding to his simple signals from behind the plate, and aiming each time for the target he gave me with his mitt.

By now, the fast one was coming in as hard as I could throw it, although I stuck to Bill Bowman Rule Number One -- I didn't alter my throwing motion in any way, in an attempt to throw it harder.

After a long while, Hernando signaled me to stop.

"Sheet, mon, you going to fock some people op! You got good stoff, Frederico! Sheet! We gonna have us some focking fon!"

Just as my new manager had suggested, I met William Bradley, the Canadian left fielder, and made arrangements to share an apartment in Hermosillo with him. Just as I had in St. Paul, I rented the place sight unseen. The price was right (low) and Bradley seemed to be a nice-enough guy. At least we could speak English at home.

My road roomie was to be Hernando Escobar himself. I didn't have to ask. He suggested it immediately. He had been rooming with the club's bench coach and second-in-command, a man named Ernesto Martinez.

"Ernesto ees hokay guy," Hernando told me, "bot he's theeze releegious-not, you know? He all the time talking about the focking Bible 'n sheet, you know? Sometimes, eet can geet on my focking nerves, mon!"

"It's fine by me," I told him. "Manuel suggested that we room together on the road."

"I going to teaching you, all the focking time, mon! All the time, we going to talk about theeze game. About peetching. You going to be a mean motherfocker, Frederico. I going to make you un asesino, whatchu call un assasseen! ... A keeler!"

It took a minute for me to process that one. He was going to make me into a killer ... An assassin. Well, OK. "I am in your capable hands, Hernando!"

"Focking-A, Freddie! You do like I telling you, you gonna be in the beeg leagues, some day soon! Hey, bot there's one theeng we gotta talk about. Sometime, on the road treeps, you know? I peek op these yong gurls. You know?"

"You want to know if I'll get lost, if you bring a woman back to the room?"

"Si. Yas. I want to know that."

"These young girls ... How young are they?"

"Oh no no no no! Not like dot! Beeg gurls, I'm talking. Not the leedle ninas! You theenk I'm the Dirty ol' Man, Freddie? No no no no no!"

"OK," I said, smiling. "You pick up a girl, I will inspect her, check her teeth, make sure she's old enough for an old fucker like you. If she's legal, I will get lost, just like that!"

"You don' to worry. She be legal, each times. Mebbie she give you some, too, you wan'."

"No, I have my own girl, back home. If she comes down here, maybe you will have to be the one, gets lost."

"Only after I check her teeth for you, making sure she eez old enough!"

"That will be OK, Hernando ... Only, I will not offer for her to give you some, too. I am sorry about that."

"Eez hokay, Freddie. I have three wives. When I have the wives, I no geeve them over to odder guys, neither!"

"You have three wives?"

"Oh, no, no! Not now, amigo ... An' not the three all together-together, you know? Not the same time, I have all of them."

"Well, that's a relief. The way they're paying us down here, I wouldn't want to try to support even one!"

I barely had time to move my suitcase to William Bradley's pad before we were opening at home Saturday night. The stadium was packed to capacity with enthusiastic fans. I was wishing my teammates had name tags on their jerseys because I'd only had the briefest of introductions to them, and wasn't that good with names anyway. Especially mostly Spanish names.

But Hernando was attentive to my needs as a newcomer, and he introduced me to my fellow denizens of the bullpen. I didn't get all the names straight the first time around, but I tried to be ingratiating and to let them know I was making an effort to blend in.

Unfortunately for me, Hernando Escobar, despite his age, was the starting catcher. My bullpen catcher, it turned out, would be whichever of the pitchers had appeared in a game most recently. Since it was the season opener, and I was the newest and greenest of the relief pitchers, I figured the bullpen catcher that night might well turn out to be me.

Where was Betsy Ellenbergen when you really needed her?

Well, our opener turned out to be a laugher, with the home team beating up badly on the visitors from Navojoa. We'd play them again in our home park on Sunday, and then we'd be in their town for two games on Wednesday and Thursday. Looks like the home-and-home games with Navojoa were going to be gotten over with early in the season.

Anyway, our starting pitcher stayed in until the sixth inning and left the game with a six-run lead. I wasn't called upon to warm up his successor, and I didn't see action in the game.

Maybe Sunday.

On Sunday, things were decidedly different on the field of play. The boys from Navojoa, who had looked sickly the night before, suddenly sprouted massive muscle groups and started pounding on the kid who was our alleged number two starter. He was pulled in the third inning with Navojoa ahead, 7-2.

I had been asked to get warm early in the third and, sure enough, I was in the game in relief with two out in the third and Mayos de Navojoa baserunners standing at second and third.

The Mexican public address announcer told the crowd that "Frederico Broom-BAY-loh" was now pitching for the Naranjeros.

Back where I came from, the name was pronounced "BRUM-below," but evidently down here I was going to be "Broom-BAY-loh" instead.

Oh, well. At least I liked the "Frederico" part.

But the crowd didn't pick up on "Frederico." They liked the sound of my last name better. "Broom-BAY-loh!" they hollered, more or less in unison, before I'd even done anything in the game besides take my warm-up pitches from the mound.

All I had to do was get one batter out without letting in any more runs in the third. Easy. Of course, the enemy hitter was a complete stranger to me. Hernando trotted out to the mound.

"Thees focker, he's like nawthing," Hernando told me. "He cannaw heet for sheet, Freddie. Jus' blow heem away, hokay?"

"All fast balls?"

"Unteel I tell you sawmtheeng elze," he said.

I struck the "focker" out with three pitches. Inning over.

Not a bad way to start my career in the Mexican Pacific League.

In the fourth inning, Hernando gave me my first chance to try out the slider and the change, but they were called sparingly, and I never shook him off, no matter what pitch he called for. I got another strike out, a foul-out to first base, and a line-drive fly out to left that my Canadian roomie, William Bradley, snagged with a nice running catch.

Manuel let me stay in for two more innings. Outside of my one start for the Saints, it was the longest stint I'd ever had as a pitcher in competition -- three and a third innings. I'd faced twelve batters, walking one and giving up a double in the fifth. No runs, one hit. Not at all bad. Not bad at all!

Bill Bowman met me in the dugout after I'd been pulled before the start of the seventh inning. "You looked good out there," he said. "Good pitch selection, too. I like your catcher."

"I like him too," I said. "He knows what he's doing."

"You do what he tells you. Let him call all the pitches, for now. But pay attention, Freddie. Try to think with him. Think about why he calls for a particular pitch. You're going to see this same club in a couple of days. Study the hitters. Hell, you won't see them much more after this week, in this short season, but try to generalize, you know? About pitch selection? About types of hitters? Power guys? Guys who hit for average?"

"I'll do what I can, Bill."

"You're doing great!" he said. "Don't be surprised if you get called upon again, next game. There's a Monday open date tomorrow, and then you're down in Ciudad Obregon for the one game. Manuel could call you into that game, too. Certainly you're likely to see action in one of the games in Navojoa, Wednesday-Thursday."

"I'll be ready, Bill. Tonight was no strain at all."

"You threw forty-three pitches," Bowman said, "mostly fastballs. That's a good, long outing for a reliever."

"I've got a rubber arm, remember?"

"Don't take it for granted, Freddie. Take care of yourself."

"I will. And thanks, Bill. Thanks for staying around for this, and for the rest of the week."

"I'm enjoying it, Freddie. And Manuel and I are going to be rooming together for the road trip. It's like old times for me."

"Probably the hotels aren't quite up to major league standard," I said, smiling.

"I wasn't always in the majors," Bill said. "I had my share of the bus leagues. It was hard at the time, I guess, but it's all rosy nostalgia now. This isn't any worse than I experienced, back in the day."

"You want to do a little sightseeing tomorrow? Look around Hermosillo a bit?"

"That sounds good. Let's do it."

It wasn't a school bus that the club took for the short trip to Ciudad Obregon on Tuesday morning, but it was a pretty elderly vehicle. Happily, it was well maintained and well ventilated. The air conditioning (if any) wasn't needed. The November morning in Central Mexico was crisp and clear. If anything, a long-sleeved shirt would have been welcome.

We checked into our humble motel near the ballpark in mid-afternoon, and because it was so early in the season, Manuel had the whole team out on the field, engaging in practice, by three p.m. Game time was seven, and we were going to take an hour off before that to shower and change uniforms, but for the moment, we were going to continue the club's pre-season training regimen.