I. The Coach in the Hay Meadow

This is part one of a "serial novella" I'm posting over on the Creator and the Catalyst forum as part of their monthly writing challenge.... 

I. The Coach in the Hay Meadow

Even though he grew up right in the heart of “Cowboy Country”, my dad’s favorite sport was baseball. He had several old Rawlings baseball gloves, a collection of dusty team pennants and a stack of shoe boxes filled with baseball cards up in the attic. My grandmother told me his favorite players were Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams. I don’t know why a man who grew up in the small town of Ramblewood, Texas eighty miles east of Dallas liked a couple of players on teams that played so far back east – New York and Boston, or why he was so fixated on a couple of guys from generations long gone, but that’s what she said. I never got to ask him about it myself. He died in 1991, during the first gulf war, one of the 149 American soldiers killed there, fighting the terrorists before that phrase took on its larger meaning. My mom never received any official details, but a neighbor’s cousin relayed word back through an old family friend that he died with honor. Shot in the chest by some unknown Iraqi with an AK-47.

In April of 1997, I was a junior in high school, seventeen years old and a pretty good starting pitcher for the Ramblewood Wranglers high school baseball team. My mom said that dad would have been proud of that last bit. Grandma agreed. I still hadn’t decided if I really even liked baseball on my own, or if it was something I did to try and connect with the man I barely knew. Life has a way of tricking people like that sometimes. But anyway, my science teacher, Mr. Thomas, the guy that got stuck running the baseball program at our school said I had a pretty good fastball, an erratic curve and the stamina to make them work for six good innings every four or five days.

“Davidson,” he’d shout with a wad of chewing tobacco in his right cheek, “Go on out there and do what you do. We’ll try to get some runs for you.”

That was all the guidance I got, and for the most part, it was all I needed. We cruised to a big lead in our district that year and by the time school was getting close to being done and the weather was really starting to warm up, people in our small town were talking about the state playoffs.

Anyway, the day before a game, they’d give us time off from practice just to make sure everyone one was fresh for when it really counted. As springtime set in, I used those afternoons to drive the tractor through the pastures south and west of our small farmhouse, cutting the early hay and rolling it into big round bales. When that was done, I’d go out behind the barn to practice a little ball.

Just before my sophomore year, I had nailed an old tire to the back side of the barn, then put an old bleached board directly underneath it to stand in for home plate. When I practiced, I grabbed a bucket filled with eleven old baseballs that had collected around the yard over the years and I pounded each one of them into the hole in the middle of that tire.

Wham! A fastball down and low. I always liked to show them the heater first. It let the hitter know that I could throw hard. Wham! Another fastball inside. I wanted to scare them off the plate and show them I wasn’t afraid to use the fastball over and over as my main pitch.

Whoop! Then I gave them a curve. They probably figured it’d be something different, but half the batters I faced thought that maybe I was country dumb enough to try the fastball again. By this point in the count, I was usually up one and two, a ball and two strikes. I might miss with one of the fast balls, but they’d always swing on my curve.

So the question became, what did I want to throw next?

“Go back to the fastball,” a voice coming around the side of the barn suggested.

Why not? It was what I usually did anyway.

Wham! The pitch thumped the side of the barn, right in the middle of the tire.

“That one’s out of here,” the voice said. “You threw it right down the middle of the plate.”

“But that’s my out pitch,” I answered.

“Not if you throw it like that, it’s not.”

The man finished his walk from around the side of the barn and came up beside me in the field.

“Your old tire’s a good idea,” he offered, “But you never want to throw it right in the middle.”

He was wearing a white short sleeved button down shirt and some kind of beige slacks, carefully polished loafers and a shiny patent leather belt. All of it was out of place for a town like Ramblewood.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The center of the tire represents the middle of the plate,” he said, “You get that, right?”

I nodded.

“Well think of it like a clock,” he added. “The center’s where the hands would be attached, and you want to keep the ball down low. So aim for the rubber where five or seven would be. Not six, ‘cause that would be too far down low and a called ball. And not up at nine, because that’s a home run ball for a right handed hitter. Just paint the corners, five and seven.”

With that in mind, I hurled a fastball at the seven spot on the old tire. Thump!

“That’s it!” the man said. “You got him on a called strike. He thought you were too far down and out, but you delivered it right at the knees and on the corner of the plate.”

I smiled and said thank you.

“So who you got next?” the man motioned to my little stack of baseball cards laying in the dirt.

“What do you mean?” I hadn’t realized the cards were still there by the old stained powder bag.

“You got nine cards there don’t you?” I shrugged my shoulders as he bent to pick them up and rifle through them.

“I figure you’re working your way through a line-up, imagining how you’d throw to each hitter. Am I right?”

I marveled at his perception.

“So you going to tell me who’s next?”

He flipped the card to reveal a picture of Willie Stargell, a first basemen for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the late 1970’s, early 80’s.

“Okay,” the man said, “So Stargell liked it out away from the plate. He wasn’t a chaser, but he was big and could reach out and get to an outside ball if wanted. You’re gonna need to jam him back in tight on the hands. He’s a lefty; so throw it right at eight o’clock.”

I wound up and delivered my fastball just above the nine o’clock spot.

“That’s okay,” the man said. “You won’t always hit your mark. You just don’t want to leave it up and out over the plate. Keep it inside and down low.”

After wiping my brow with my cap, I loosened my shoulders and delivered the pitch again.

“That’s it! Right on the hands, right at the belt buckle.”

I exhaled and made ready to go again.

“If he makes contact with that, it’s a foul ball, or…” his voice trailed off, “A broken bat single that either you or the third baseman throws over to first.”

We looked over across the pasture to where first base would have been and laughed a little at the serious nature of our game.

“Who you got next?”

He flipped the card and revealed a picture of Jose Cruz in a Houston Astros uniform.

“Oh man, now he’s a hitter,” the man said. “Another lefty, so let’s talk about this a minute.”

We backed up and stood off the makeshift mound, staring at the tire some sixty feet away.

“You like to lead with your fastball, but Cruz is a classic fastball hitter. So let’s pitch him backwards. Show him a curve first, but let it miss down and low. Then we’ll give him another, make him think you’re having trouble locating the pitch, that you’ve done your homework and you know he’s a fastball hitter, but you can’t get the curve right.”

I lobbed a curve that ended up tapping the baseboard beneath the tire, a miss.

“Now show him another.”

The curve missed again, but scraped the bottom of the tire as it went by.

“Now he thinks you’re stuck on the curve,” the man said, “So give him a fast ball right on the number seven.”

Whump! I hit the pitch.

“So the count’s two and one,” he said, “We either need a pitch he can ground out or to really stick that curve. Because now he knows you’ve got the fastball.”

“Let’s try the curve,” I said, and I stuck it right where I wanted it.

“Whoa,” the visitor said. “That’s some curve!”

I thanked him again and wiped my brow with my arm, adjusting my hat afterwards.

“Now don’t give him too long to think here,” the man continued. “You know he likes fastballs, but he’s not sure if you can really stick that curve every time. Still, the catcher’s calling for it again. What do you do?”

“Give it to him?”

“If you think you can stick it,” he said, “Then heck yeah, you give it to him. Always trust your catcher. He’s calling the game for a reason. Now let’s see it.”

Whoop! The curve missed for a ball outside.

“That’s why you got to have confidence,” the man said. “You can miss, but make the other guy think you meant to do that. You’re in control. It’s your arm, the catcher’s mind, but don’t forget you’ve got a whole team backing you up. You’re not afraid to put it in play, but you got the stuff to get him swinging too.”

“So try again?”

“Heck yeah,” he said. “The count’s three and one. Right now, he’s wondering if you can do it. He’s going to sit back and watch whatever you throw, thinking it’ll be a free ride to first base.”

I tugged at the bill of my cap, then cinched it down a little, focused on my spot on the tire and wound up for the release.

Wham! Fastball right on the number seven.

“Okay, okay,” the stranger said. “I got it. You only trust your fastball. That’s okay. At least you know that about yourself now.”

We worked through the next couple of baseball cards and their corresponding imaginary batters: Reggie Jackson and Frank Robinson. Then the stranger flipped the next card to reveal an older photograph of an amiable guy in a New York Yankees uniform, a young man with a deep, thoughtful stare and an unruly head of sandy-colored hair.

“This guy,” the stranger said, holding the card out and taking a good look at it. “I guess I know a thing or two about him.”

He turned the card so that its face caught the light from the long amber sunset fading behind us.

“You are him,” I said as I looked back up at the blonde haired, blue-eyed man standing next to me in the hay meadow beside the barn.

He smiled a little and I repeated the same words over again.

“Let’s just say that I was a guy who looked like that once,” Mantle answered.

“But you look just like him,” I checked the baseball card again. “You’re Mickey Mantle.”

“Call me Charles,” he said, “And let’s talk about that fastball some more.”

CONTINUED...