Chapter 19

At breakfast with Bill, Josie couldn't resist alluding to the remarks he had made the day before about not letting our bedroom gymnastics interfere with today's tryout. "He slept, undisturbed, for eight and a half hours," she reported.

Bill caught the implication immediately. "Hmmm. I left you two twelve hours ago. What about those other three-plus hours?"

Josie could only laugh.

"If anybody's interested," I said, "I'm just fine this morning ... I could drop down and give you -- oh, maybe twenty push-ups."

"You've probably done a sufficiency of push-ups already," Bill said.

The guy had never had much of a fastball, but nobody could say he wasn't quick.

We all somewhat gratefully dropped the subject of sex-before-tryouts and enjoyed a healthy but hearty breakfast. Josie then excused herself and left well ahead of us for the ballpark, or perhaps for her own recently neglected hotel room.

Discretion, you know.

"How are the nerves?" Bill asked over his third coffee,

after she was gone.

"I'm good," I said. "Really. Woke up this morning, said to myself, 'What the hell? What's the worst thing could happen?'"

"That's a good attitude," Bill said.

"Then I thought, well, the worst thing could happen is, I get picked up by the Giants. I am solvent for the first time in ... well, in my life, really. And I'm playing in some Double A California dreamland like San Jose ... Tough duty!

"And later, I maybe get promoted to Fresno. Probably there would be some fellow orange-growers from Naranjero territory out there, cheering me on. Some migrant workers who will remember me from my days with Hermosillo."

"Your thoughts seem to be wandering kind of far afield this morning, aren't they?"

"Jeez, Bill, I don't think I slept an hour! Josie may have slept for almost ten hours -- she wasn't lying about leaving me alone for most of the night -- but I'm afraid I was wide-awake."

"Don't worry about it. You probably slept more than you think."

"Nope. I thought, more than I slept. It's crossroads-time, Bill. Fork in the road. What's Yogi supposed to have said? 'When you come to a fork in the road, take it?' That's your boy Freddie: about to get forked."

"Do you feel tired?" Bill asked.

"From not sleeping? No. No, I think the adrenalin is already flowing. Anyway I rested, for hours, from the neck down. It was just my runaway ruminations that kept me awake, if not alert."

"Maybe you should have ignored my advice, awakened Josie, and just ... started your workout early."

"You figure I'd have slept, after exhausting myself with sex? I think I did sleep, there, for a little while. After. But only for a little while. I was awake again before midnight. My mind was racing."

"Well, you can come back this afternoon and sleep out the day if you want to. All you need is enough energy to get through this morning, and maybe lunch, after."

"I'm feeling excellent. Maybe it's all just an illusion, but I feel like I could throw a baseball through a wall."

"Good feeling, isn't it? ... I used to get that feeling. Might have got my fastball up to, oh, eighty-eight miles an hour, on those days."

"Respectable," I said. "At least in the olden days, when you were pitching."

"Funny part was," Bill said, ignoring the dig, "I could also throw eighty-eight on days when my arm felt like it was going to fall off. That old 'through the wall' feeling was just that -- a feeling. Didn't mean anything at all."

"What's Flanagan like? Josie says he's a mild, even-tempered guy. A 'sweetheart, ' I think she called him."

"I don't know him well," Bill said, "although I guess our playing careers overlapped a little. Don't think I ever pitched against him, head-to-head. If I did, the memory doesn't stand out. I'm sure Josie has had more opportunity to see him, as he is today. But here's something, Freddie: Flanagan's been through some turbulence with the Orioles. A few years back, he was the top guy -- their general manager, although they called the job something else.

"And then he shared the top job for awhile, with another guy, and then with another different guy after that. All this was back when the Orioles were hurting. Long string of losing seasons.

"Then finally the ownership brings in still another new guy -- Andy MacPhail -- and Flanagan gets retained, with a fancy title, but now, for the first time in years, it's clear that he's only Number Two. He's not the boss, he's not sharing the front office with another equal. He's Avis, and this MacPhail guy is Hertz, and there's no doubt about it.

"So then what happens? The Orioles start winning. They've had five or six winning seasons now, and three Division titles or wild cards, and two World Series, one of which they won. And all of this under MacPhail's watch."

"I can see how that would make Flanagan feel," I said.

"But Flanagan, before MacPhail even got there, had a hand in hiring their current manager, Paul Warren. He did that back when he was sharing the top job with another old pitcher, Jim Beattie. It was Beattie and Flanagan who brought Warren on board, and after that, the club started to get turned around."

"So. Does he get any credit for all that? I mean, Warren's been a big part of it, right? The club's revival?"

Bill thought about it before replying. "The big owner, Peter Angelos, seems to really love Mike Flanagan. I mean, all the changes they made, Flanagan was the only front-office survivor, long-term. And, sure, Paul Warren is seen as the best thing to happen to the Orioles on the field since Earl Weaver. But figuring out who's to blame for failure and who should get credit for success? It's not easy, Freddie. Plenty to go around, both good and bad."

"But what about now?" I asked. "What's he like, after all this time? Is he the cautious type? Is he likely to want to take a flyer on me as a prospect?"

"My best guess is, David Hooks has already paved the way for you. All you gotta do today is not screw up unduly. Not throw one over the backstop or something. And don't worry about the money. We're still talking chump-change here, Freddie, as far as these guys are concerned. The eighty-five grand the Giants are offering? All that's going to mean to Flanagan is that somebody already thinks maybe you can pitch a little. That's tenth-round draft choice money, son, even if you throw in the compensation the club that signs you will have to pay to the St. Paul Saints."

"What are you going to ask them for, Bill, if they decide they want me to sign?"

"I won't name a figure."

"You're thinking they already know what the market is?"

"Oh, they'll know about your two pending offers. And I think they'll extrapolate a little. They know we're still shopping you around. They probably know exactly who has talked to me, and who hasn't -- maybe even who is still planning to give me a call."

"Regular CIA, isn't it?"

"There are spies everywhere," Bill agreed.

Josie hadn't been kidding about the royal treatment. When we got to the Orioles' training facility, Dewey Wainwright and Dave Hooks were literally standing at the entrance ramp as we entered the stadium. Both had wide smiles on their faces. If I had an Orioles cheering section, this was it.

We shook hands all around. Wainwright wouldn't let go of my hand. "Goddamn, Freddie! When I told you to go out and try to be a pitcher, I didn't expect to see you back this soon!"

"Not a biggie," I told him, laughing. "This is a simple game: You throw the ball. You catch the ball. You hit the ball ... OK, not me -- I don't hit the ball much. But I can catch it, and throw it."

"He can sure-to-God throw it," Dave said.

David Hooks' comfortable, open, enthusiastic support was heartening. I felt some of the tension draining out of my body.

I could do this.

We had just gotten onto the playing surface and were surveying the bullpen pitcher's mound when Mike Flanagan appeared. He went straight for Bill Bowman and shook his hand. "You remember that game in the Dome when you and I squared off during the '79 season?"

I saw Bill's face fall. He'd already told me he didn't think he'd ever pitched against Flanagan, head-to-head. How would Flanagan feel if Bill told him he had no memory of the event?

"You won 23 games that year," Bill said, "won the Cy Young Award!"

I thought that was a pretty smooth save on Bill's part.

Flanagan beamed. "Never before, and never again, either," he said. "Seventy-nine was my big year ... But you! You were an old fart by then! Must have been your last year in the league, or close to it. I think it was late August, and you had, maybe, seven or eight wins for the season. And I was going for number twenty that day! And you, you old junk-baller, you whipped me!"

"All those free-swinging sluggers the Orioles had back then, they couldn't hit the slop I was dealing them. Was kinda fun, though, watching them flail away at it!"

Bill looked over at me with an expression that said he still didn't remember a damned thing about the alleged encounter with Flanagan, but he could certainly speak in generalities about what it had been like, pitching against the Orioles in those times.

Glory days for the Birds, those had been. Although they'd lost, four games to three, in a painful World Series encounter with an inspired bunch of underdog Pittsburgh Pirates.

Flanagan finally turned to offer his hand to me, and we had a brief exchange. I tried to mumble something about admiring his career as a pitcher, but it came out a little garbled and, probably, sounded insincere.

Hell, I really did admire his pitching career. But my mind was elsewhere. I was trying to get him to admire my pitching career -- such as it was.

We all five stood around looking at each other for a long moment. "Somebody say something," I was thinking.

Finally, Dewey Wainwright, lowest man on the totem pole (not counting me) took charge. "Let's do this thing!" he said.

Paul Warren arrived just then. We were preparing to throw there in the bullpen warm-up area alongside the right field stands, but Paul stopped us. "Let's use the field," he said.

He introduced himself to Bill as we all walked the short distance to the stadium's main pitcher's mound. Paul put his arm around my back and grasped my right shoulder as we slowly made our way there. "It's up to you to uphold the honor of all us good-field, no-hit shortstops," he said.

"I'll do my best," I told him.

"Dave says you got all kinds of good stuff," Warren whispered. "He knows pitchers better than anybody. Better than Dewey, here, or our own pitching coach, Arlie Stone, even."

That remark made me worry about why Arlie Stone was nowhere to be seen during my tryout. Damn!

"Arlie's got family in West Palm," Paul Warren told me. "An uncle who's just been hospitalized. We think it's just something minor, but Arlie went up to see him. Otherwise, he'd have been here."

"We don't need him," Mike Flanagan said. "We all of us here know pitchers. We're all baseball men -- right, Bill?"

"Absolutely!"

Before taking his place behind the plate, Dave Hooks came up to me after all the others had retreated to the sidelines. "You take as long as you need, getting warm," he said. "Don't try to impress anybody. Slow and easy."

The fact was, I was always able to warm up quickly. It was a good way to be, if you wanted to be a middle reliever. Sometimes the circumstances didn't provide you with a lot of extra time to get ready.

But I took Dave's advice, tried to get my heart rate down to something approaching normal, and threw the ball nice and easy.

After a short time, I signaled Dave that I was ready to throw a little harder. "A little harder," he hollered, as if it had been his idea to step up the pace. " ... but not too hard yet."

A few more minutes of that, and I was feeling good. The mound was perfect. That was one of the things I had fretted about, lying next to Josie's sleeping form the previous night. What if they had a lousy mound? What if I came down wrong, maybe in a depression off to the side? What if it just didn't feel right out there?"

It felt fine out there. I remembered what Bill had said. Don't throw the fast one any harder than the motion you use for your other pitches. Don't force it. Look at where Dave Hooks' glove is, and try to hit the damned thing -- only don't aim the ball, throw it! Throw it hard!

I remembered Hernando Escobar's immortal advice: "Trow d'focking boll!"

Soon I was throwing the focking ball as hard as I knew how. Modesty aside, I knew that I was throwing it pretty damned hard.

Dave wanted to see the slider, and I gave him a pretty one. He had to stick his mitt way out to the side of the plate and low to spear it backhand, but it was clear to everyone watching that before it headed for the dirt, it would have looked damned tempting to a right-handed batter.

My change-up was working like a dream. Even Dave shook his head a couple of times when he'd watched it sail in like a balloon and then bounce into his mitt off the dirt just behind the plate.

Just to remind everyone that I had the hummer, Dave called for three fastballs in a row as a close-out to the demonstration of my skills. Following his mitt, I threw fastballs in high, higher, and higher-still, all of them making a satisfying smack as they landed squarely in his big catcher's mitt.

"OK!" Mike Flanagan hollered from somewhere near first base. "OK."

Dave ran out to the mound as if we'd just won the deciding game of the World Series. I had a momentary fear that he was going to leap into my arms, Yogi Berra style. But of course he didn't. He just came to a sudden stop alongside me and said, "You did good."

"How about lunch?" Flanagan said.

Well, the place Mike Flanagan took us for lunch wasn't the stuff of dreams. It was some kind of glorified chain eatery along the lines of Shoney's or Denny's, although the proprietor's name was neither of those. We all trooped in at the height of lunch hour and the place was noisy and crowded.

But we were close to the ballpark and people like Dave Hooks and Paul Warren were readily recognizable by many of the customers and staff. I wondered if anyone recognized Flanagan and Bowman -- both of whom had enjoyed careers in the game that had far outshone anything Paul Warren had accomplished as a player. Dave Hooks, when all was said and done, might surpass them all as a player. But not yet. Dave was still in the beginning stages of his fine career.

Only Dewey Wainwright, and I, Fearless Freddie Brumbelow, were certain to go unrecognized in public.

There was one of those big circular booths available in a corner of the restaurant -- plenty big enough for the six of us, although awkward to climb into. As the junior among us, it was left to me to do most of the sliding into the center of the booth, making seating easier for the others. I would be captive there until lunch was over, surrounded on both sides by the other five men, all of whom where bigger and bulkier than I.

It was all very low-key and friendly, and we put in our orders for lunch and received our drink orders, all before anything significant was said by anyone.

Then Mike Flanagan seemed to change hats. He'd been Old Pitcher and Baseball Scout back at the ballpark. He'd been Genial Host on the way to the restaurant. Now, suddenly, he became Executive Vice President of the Baltimore Orioles Baseball Club, Inc.

"I heard about the offers you've received from the Giants ... And the Yankees."

He'd lowered his voice an octave when he said "And the Yankees." It was sort of like the way he might have said, " ... the Giants ... And the Taliban."

Bill was both forthright and surprisingly aggressive. "I haven't even asked the Yankees to surpass the Giants' offer yet," he said. "I'm certain they will, when I do."

Bill didn't pronounce "Yankees" like it was a dirty word, the way the Orioles people did. Well, the Twins didn't get stomped on by them nineteen times a year, like the AL East clubs did.

Flanagan promptly agreed. "Yeah, you're right. They'll go a little higher," he said.

It might have been a good time for Flanagan to undercut my performance that morning. Say something disparaging about my pitching. Maybe spot some supposed dangerous flaw in my delivery. Predict future arm trouble. Question my stamina.

All he said was, "That was an impressive performance out there, Freddie."

"Thank you, sir," I choked out. I was twenty-three years old and it sounded as if my voice was changing.

"There's not much doubt we could use you in this organization," he said.

I didn't say anything at all now. I was praying that Bill Bowman wouldn't get too aggressive, maybe piss somebody off or something. I'd never seen Bill Bowman piss anybody off, ever. But I was afraid, anyway.

"What about a curve ball?" Flanagan said. "I didn't see you throw any curves."

Bill took that one. "He hasn't got a curve ball yet. I've been training Freddie since last summer. He's picked up a lot. He's picked up everything I tried to teach him -- real quick. But I haven't encouraged him to learn to throw a curve ball yet. I figured, maybe next winter, after this first full season as a pitcher. That would be soon enough."

"He's got enough weapons already," Dave Hooks chimed in. "He can get people out with that slider. And, Jeez, Mike, he's really quick!"

If Mike Flanagan disapproved of Dave's frankly positive comments, right in the middle of contract negotiations, he didn't show it. He addressed Bill and me directly. "I was very impressed," he said. "I agree with Dave. The curve ball can wait ... There's no reason you can see, is there Bill, why Freddie couldn't eventually throw it effectively?"

"No reason at all," Bill said immediately. "Freddie's got a strong, resilient arm. I don't see him encountering any difficulty at all. I just thought it was too much to ask, too soon."

"OK. Here's where I'm at," Flanagan said. "I know you've been shopping Freddie around. I know you've heard from several clubs, and that you've got nice, solid offers. Maybe you'll be able to hike up the bidding a little bit more, if you try to gut it out for the rest of February."

Flanagan looked around the table at us and was about to resume, but just then our orders arrived, and we spent several minutes squaring away who had asked for what, and getting it all distributed, and fresh coffee poured.

Almost nobody picked up a fork, however. We all knew Flanagan had started to say something, and we all wanted to hear it.