III. District Playoffs: Ramblewood 7, Mt. Verdant 4

III. District Playoffs: Ramblewood 7, Mt. Verdant 4

When I walked out to the mound in the bottom of the third inning, the boys had already given me a 2-0 lead to work with, but for some reason, I did a double take and noticed the three zeros running down the Mt. Verdant line. No runs, no hits, no errors. It took a minute to register and when I thought back through all the batters I’d faced in the first two innings, I realized that we hadn’t given up a hit. No matter, I told myself. There was still a lot of baseball left to be played.

In the bottom of the fourth, when I walked out to pitch, I checked the scoreboard again and still saw no runs, no hits. The same was true in the fifth and the sixth. By then, we were up 5-0 and the catcher and third basemen met me at the mound.

“You okay Davidson?” the catcher, Ryan Jefferies asked.

“Yep,” I shrugged my shoulders. “Never better.”

“Okay,” Jefferies responded. “Keep it down and low.” Not a word about the potential no-hitter. This is how it goes in baseball. No one says a word for fear of goosing fate right in the ribs.

And with that brief conference, we resumed the game. The first Mt. Verdant batter of the sixth was their first basemen, the number four hitter and the one guy on their team who could really smack the ball. I showed him the fastball, a four-seamer down low and gave it to him as hard as I could throw it.

“Ball one!” the umpire signaled.

Jefferies gave the sign for the curve, but I shook my head, wanting to try another fastball. This time, I backed off just a little and sent my two-seam fastball high and inside, jamming the batter right on the hands.

It worked. He took a cut and splintered his bat issuing a soft rolling foul just outside the first base line.

This time, when Jefferies called for the curve, I nodded.

“Strike two!” A swing and a miss.

Now for the slider. I waited for the call from the catcher, came to a set position, then wound up and snapped the slider about as perfectly as I had ever thrown the pitch. “Strike three!” Another swing and miss.

But Mt. Verdant had the luxury of having another guy, their third baseman who could also jack the ball pretty hard. They had him in the number five spot, and while he couldn’t hit as hard or as far as their first baseman, he was a much smarter hitter, one who was more than willing to sit back and wait for his pitch.

In fact, he watched a nice fastball sail by for strike one to begin the at bat. I didn’t want him to think that I was scared of throwing it again; so I worked it just a little lower and out on the corner.

“Ball!” The batter just stood there watching the second pitch rush by on its way to the catcher’s mitt.

Time for the curve, but he was on to that as well, ball two. Then I missed with another fastball, for ball three. Jefferies was asking for the slider, but I shook him off and waited for the sign to bring the fastball again. Instead, he repeated the signal for the slider.

“Trust your catcher,” Mantle had said. “He’s calling the game for a reason.”

I rolled the ball in my fingertips, positioning it for the slider, wound up and fired it towards home, snapping it perfectly without coming around on it.

“Strike!” the umpire called. The Mt. Verdant third baseman shook his head in disbelief. He’d expected a curve. More specifically, he’d expected me to miss with a curve, but the slider caught the corner of the plate. Full count.

The third baseman fouled the next two pitches off. Fastballs, both of them, one at seven, one just between where the seven and the eight would have been. The count was still three and two, and my humble bid for a no hitter seemed like it had met its match. But without a pause, Jefferies called for the slider again. We had the batter on the ropes. He was swinging just to stay alive, anything to keep the at bat going. So why not try to get him out with a slider?

With a heavy sigh, I came to a standstill before starting my wind up, then took a moment to stare past the batter and into the catcher’s open glove. If anything, I willed the next pitch by the batter, forced it to be the thing I wanted it to be in my mind. Then I stepped into my throwing motion, raising my left leg and cradling the ball in my glove. All of that momentum coiled into a jagged scar upon the mound. Opening up my stance, I pressed forward with my left leg, brought my arm out and over my body, snapping the ball out of my fingertips and sending it down range like some revolving projectile, breaking laterally and floating softly down, down and down.

I missed it, but not by much, and the hitter, already thinking he needed to swing to stay alive, did exactly what his instincts told him to do. He unfurled his arms and stroked the very place where he thought that ball was going to be.

Except it wasn’t. The slider faded just as the third baseman’s bat moved through it. There was a grunt and a whoosh and strike three call! Two down. The sixth inning was mine!

The next batter grounded out on an early fastball. It was time to start thinking seriously about what was happening. Mt. Verdant sent the bottom of its order out in the seventh, and we sent them back to the dugout, one, two and three. At this point, Ramblewood was up 7-0 and there were only six outs remaining. I took the mound and opened the eighth inning with a driving four-seam fastball, hard and down low for ball one. That’s when the trouble started.

The next pitch, one of my erratic curves grounded out in the dirt between the catcher’s mitt and the back of the batter’s box. Ball two. Jefferies called for another slider after that, and while it missed horribly, hanging out over the plate like a ball on a tee, the batter swung under it for a strike. After another fast ball low and a second missed curve, the leadoff hitter for the Mt. Verdant Broncos flipped his bat towards the bat boy and trotted down the line for a charity trip to first base.

The second man up in the eighth inning grounded out to short. The ball skipped and wobbled just enough to rob the chance at a double play. And then for some reason, the shortstop rifled the ball over to first rather than flipping it to second to get the runner moving into scoring position.

The third batter pounced on my fastball for a double down the third base line, advancing the runner on second to third. Two men in scoring position and the Mt. Verdant first baseman, their “clean-up” hitter was headed to the plate again.

I knew this guy would bite on my slider; so I gave him one of those first. He swung so hard that I swear I almost felt the breeze out on the mound. Immediately, the catcher, Jefferies called for another one. Stepping back, I tried to settle down and focus on delivering the pitch.

It missed, but just barely and his swing grazed the side of the ball chopping it down and foul for strike two. This time, the catcher called for a curve. The first baseman watched it sail by for a called strike, the ball catching the corner of the plate and bottom inch of the strike zone. Strike three!

Two outs, two men on and the one person I feared most in the Mt. Verdant line-up stepped into the batter’s box.

Their third baseman smiled as he choked the bat and came to a ready position. Jefferies gave the sign for another slider, but I shook my head. I wanted this guy to see my fastball. I wanted this guy to see the very best fastball I ever threw. Waiting for the sign, I took a deep breath, leaned forward and stretched the right side of my back. After the catcher relented on my choice for a pitch, I positioned my fingers on the ball, brought the glove up to my chin and started my wind up.

Something caught my attention in the stands. A guy who looked an awful lot like Roberto Clemente was sitting on the home side, next to a fellow who very closely resembled Mickey Mantle. Finishing my leg kick, I brought my arm through the pitch, down and hard, the ball sailing from my fingers and rolling through the air towards the waiting third baseman.

Almost immediately, I saw the sides of his dark green jersey come to life. He was swinging and he was doing so with a confidence that let me know right away that he knew what pitch was coming to him.

Crack! The bat hit the ball right in the middle of the barrel, a sound both solid and full of meaning. When a bat makes good solid contact with a ball like that, then the little round chunk of leather is going to go a long way before coming back down again. This time, it was over the fence and out of the park. Ramblewood 7, Mt. Verdant 3.

Mr. Peterson pulled me after the home run. He didn’t say much, other than it was time. I’d given up the no-hitter and pitched way too far into the game. In one sense, I agreed, but I still threw my glove against the back wall of the dugout and said several words that I normally try not to use. Mt. Verdant only scored one more run. We won 7-4 and advanced to the regional playoffs. The rest of the team celebrated with high fives and fizzing sodas, splashing 7-Up and ginger ale all over each other like they saw the major leaguers do with champagne.

That night, when I got home, Mantle and Gehrig, Clemente and a guy who looked a lot like Don Drysdale were waiting for me out by the barn.

“Good game, kid,” Mantle said, offering an outstretched hand.

I shook it and shrugged my shoulders. “Would’ve been nice to get the no-hitter.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, “But a win’s a win.”

“But you don’t understand,” I countered. “This is my only chance to do all of this. The team’s get better and better from here on out. Most likely, I won’t ever get a shot at a no-hitter again.”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Gehrig said. “Only one game matters.”

I tried to avoid his eyes, because I knew he was right.

“Only one game matters,” he repeated, “And that’s the next one.”

I thought he was going to say the last one, or maybe even the championship game, something like that. I was wrong and that made the understanding hit me harder than it would have otherwise. I kicked at the dirt and scuffed my shoe in the grass.

“So you missed a few pitches today,” Drysdale said. “We all have. That’s what tomorrow’s for.”

“You’ve got to get back out there and go again,” Clemente added in his thick Hispanic accent.

“Before we’re done,” Mantle said, slapping me on the shoulder, “You’re going to play in the best game on earth.”

“Now knock it off with that hang dog look,” Gehrig concluded.

They were all clichés, and yet every single one of them was right.

CONTINUED...

 

II. The Slider and "The Iron Horse"

II. The Slider and “The Iron Horse”

“But you’re Mickey Mantle,” I said again, almost trying to work it out in my own mind more than anything. “Mickey Mantle, my dad’s favorite player!”

“Listen kid,” Mantle showed the slightest irritation. “We don’t have much time. Your dad sent me to help you out here; so let’s work on that fastball.”

“You know my dad?”

“Guy like me meets a lot of people on the other side,” he said. “Hard to say how well I know any of them. But yeah, you could say I know your dad. He sent me here to give you a couple of tips on some things that can maybe help you become a better ballplayer.”

I have to stop here for a minute, because the memory takes me back to a place in time when I was vulnerable. That summer, we almost lost the farm, and to say that makes it sound like another sad farmer’s story, like maybe the farm didn’t need saving and the laws of economics should have been allowed to prevail. But that’s not a fair assessment at all.

The first couple of years after the Gulf War were the hardest emotionally, but there was some government money and that helped keep things above the water line. Then in 1993, my mom met a guy at the county fair and they dated a while before deciding to tell me they were getting married. Alex was his name. He bought me lots of baseball cards and tried to talk about the game with me, but he always smelled like sour beer and cheap cigars; so I never warmed up to him. Anyway, after a couple of years, Alex just left. No word on why or where, he was just gone. My mother cried a lot when dad died, but I don’t think she shed one tear when she woke up and found her side of the bed empty one morning in 1995.

This being Texas and all, we soon found a Mexican family looking for work and needing a place to stay. They moved into the old carriage house between the barn and the main house and over the course of one long sweltering summer, the father, a thick man named Rodrigo Montoya pieced the farm back together. I befriended his kids, Jaime and Rolanda and taught them to ride the horses, how to put out hay for the cows. We even played an odd kind of three-way baseball with one of us batting, another pitching and the third one covering the section of infield where we always seemed to chop our grounders.

Over time, the Montoyas became like a surrogate family. We invited them into the main house for meals, and honestly, Senora Montoya was a much better cook than my own mom. Still, they swapped recipes, the list of ingredients in mom’s fried chicken batter for the Montoya family secret to making enchiladas verdes. The Davidson family apple pecan pie recipe for a lesson in making carnitas de puercas. In time, Rodrigo’s mother came to live with them, and the cooking got even better. Fresh handmade tamales, camarones a la diabla, and a molé sauce that a guy could sit and eat on corn tortillas all afternoon.

We knew they were illegals, but most of the Hispanics in Texas are as well. This was a desperate time and mom needed more help than I could give; so we made our deal and tried to find some peace about it. Then one day in February of 1997, close to the start of baseball season, the folks from immigration services raided the local Mexican restaurant. Seventeen people were deported that day, including Rodrigo’s wife, Alba and his daughter, Rolanda. I came home that afternoon and found Rodrigo sitting with my mother in the kitchen. He was apologizing and she was crying. The rest of the Montoya family was gone by dinner time the next day.

A couple of months later, my mother caught me in the kitchen before practice.

“You know that I’m going to need your help around the farm this summer,” my mom said.

“Yes ma’am.”

“That means you may have to miss a baseball game or two.”

“But mom!” I shouted at her, not meaning to raise my voice, but not ready to concede after one sentence.

She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and sat down and the table, looking up at me with her hands out in front of her, a pleading gesture if ever there was one.

“I’m sorry,” I answered her expression. “It’s just that I know we’re going to the state playoffs this year. I can feel it. This team –“

“Do you know how much money we have in savings?”

She said ‘we’ and it touched me then and gets me to still; ‘we’, as in, we’re in this together, just you and me, kid. But I looked away, not because I didn’t care how much money she had managed to save. Even at seventeen years old, I knew it was the end to any further discussion. No money, no mortgage payment. No payment, no farm, and no farm meant no place to stay for either one of us.

“You won’t have to miss many,” mom continued. “It’s spring and the farm won’t need as much work until summer really sets in.”

“I’ll work every night after school,” I said, not realizing what I was committing myself to and in the moment, not remembering that I had practice a lot of those nights.

“It’s going to take more than that,” she said.

“At least let me just make it to the games,” I begged. “I can miss some practices, but the team....” I started to say how the team needed me, but realized how ephemeral a baseball season was in the broader scheme of things.

“We can try to accommodate the games when you pitch,” she said shaking her head lightly, “And I’ll call Mr. Peterson to explain our situation.”

In the end, we also decided it would be my last season. We just had to make it through May. The playoffs were held during the first week in June and for the rest of the summer, I could work morning to night to put things back in order.

The next night, after I finished an hour’s worth of chores, I grabbed my glove and the old bucket of balls to go out and throw a few before the sun set.

I had just loosened up my arm with a few stretches and some long tosses from across the pasture when I saw Mickey Mantle walking across the field with another guy. For the briefest second, I thought it was my dad, but the sun was blaring behind them, reducing their faces to darkened silhouettes in the bright light.

When they came under the shade of the oak tree next to the barn, I recognized the newcomer from the picture on his baseball card.

“Hey kid,” Mantle started to introduce his friend. “This here’s –“

“I know who you are!” I shouted, “You’re Lou Gehrig! ‘The Iron Horse’.”

“This here’s Henry,” Mantle said, shaking his head. Gehrig extended his hand and I shook it heartily, beaming from ear to cheek as I did.

“Charles says you have some kind of curve,” Gehrig said.

“But he needs another good pitch,” Mantle opined. “Or else they’ll sit and wait for the fastball, take their chances that he’ll miss with the curve.”

“What about a ‘snapper’?” Gehrig offered. “That thing that Gibson up in St. Louis threw. It kind of sits between a fastball and a curve, breaks across and down.”

“You mean a slider?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Mantle agreed, “Did you see Guidry’s in ’78?”

“But you can’t come around on it,” Gehrig continued. “You’ve got to kind of snap it to get the movement, but not too much or then it’s a curve ball that’ll hang and miss every time. Might as well be throwing batting practice if that happens.”

Mantle showed me the grip, two fingers together over the top on one seam while Gehrig moved down by the tire at the edge of the yard.

“I want to see how this thing breaks,” he called back.

I wound up and tried to fling the ball the way I thought it was supposed to go. It missed like a bad softball, up and out over the plate with no real momentum on it.

Gehrig mimed the motion of smacking through the ball and lofting it over the fence in deep center.

“You kinda came around on it,” Mantle laughed, “But then you caught yourself and left it flat. Henry hit that one all the way to China.”

Looking down, I kicked at the dirt on the mound and sort of looked away.

“Hey,” Mantle said, “It was one pitch. Don’t worry about it. Get your focus back and give me another.”

Reaching down into the bucket, I gripped the next ball and rolled my shoulders a bit before going to the wind up. For a minute, it all seemed too surreal. The ghost of Mickey Mantle was standing behind me, had just encouraged me to try a slider like the one Bob Gibson threw, and Lou Gehrig was standing down by the barn waiting to see if I could get it to break.

“Wait a minute,” I stopped and asked the question that occurred to me as I was standing and getting ready to try the slider again. “Bob Gibson is still alive. I saw him on TV just the other day. That means…” It took me a minute to work it all out. “You guys still watch baseball?”

“Well yeah,” Mantle answered, “You can take the kid out of the game,…”

“But you can’t take the game out of the man,” Gehrig finished.

“And you wouldn’t believe some of the games we get into,” Mantle added.

“Ruth, Campanella, Clemente,” Gehrig agreed. “We got some guys to hit around with.”

“And none of ‘em can hit much off Young,” Mantle said. “It’s like that guy invented baseball or something. He’s got this incredible fastball, and he can put it anywhere he wants. That’s control.”

“I don’t get it,” I said after thinking about it all for a minute. “You guys can be up there playing with some of the greatest players who ever played the game, and…”

“We don’t see many youngsters on the other side,” Gehrig explained.

“And the ones we do get to meet,” Mantle finished the thought for him. “Well a lot of times, they don’t care about baseball anymore.”

“Don’t get us wrong,” Gehrig continued, “It’s a nice place and all.”

“The nicest!” Mantle agreed.

“But sometimes we see a kid who’s got a heckuva fastball,” Gehrig said, “A pretty good curve and the desire to really do something special. Well that combination’s always a winner.”

“Guys, I gotta be honest with you,” I started to tell them about the farm, about the whole entire situation with my mom and the season and these being the last few games I’d ever play. But before I could say a word, Mantle slapped me on the shoulder.

“Try that slider again,” he said. “This time remember to snap it, but don’t come around on it.”

He smiled and pointed at the old tire nailed to the side of the barn wall. I looked down towards the makeshift batter’s box and saw Gehrig smiling as well. He motioned with his hands for me to go ahead and give him the pitch. It was then that I realized they already knew about the farm, about the season, everything. It was also the reason why Mantle said there wasn’t much time the night he first walked out to the mound to coach me.

CONTINUED…

 

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...

Seemingly random updates...

This will seem more like a random series of "tweets" instead of a more official update, but wanted to share some good news on multiple fronts.  So here goes...

Finished the write up of my interview with author Alex Bledsoe and sent it over to the editor over at C&C this morning.  Special thanks to Mr. Bledsoe for granting the interview, and for being such a good sport and answering all of my questions!  Check out his new book, Wisp of a Thing!  Out now in hardcover, by Tor Books.

Also... and if I understood this correctly...  I've got another story accepted for publication, well...  after a few minor (okay, fairly major) edits (combining two similar characters, providing a little more closure for a third).  But stay tuned for more on this as it develops...  I'm really excited about this one!

And while I was feeling industrious, I re-wrote some of chapter 22 and finished chapter 23 in the "ghost train" book.

Busy weekend, huh?!

Writing... listening...

...and writing some more.  Mostly while listening to these:

      Ryan Bingham - Mescalito and Tomorrowland

   Elvis Costello - National Ransom

      Rodney Crowell - "Earthbound"

         Joe Henry - Reverie (especially "Odetta")

   Alison Krauss - Lonely Runs Both Ways and Paper Airplane

      Jamey Johnson - Living For a Song:  A Tribute to Hank Cochran

         Lyle Lovett - Joshua, Judges, Ruth and It's Not Big, It's Large (especially "South Texas Girl"
         and "Don't Cry A Tear")

      Wilco - The Whole Love (especially "Dawned on Me" and "Born Alone")

The "ghost train" is moving faster now....

The desert, part two... All kinds of things

Yesterday's update was a bit cryptic...  hee hee...

So I thought I'd be nice and come back today to add some details.  Just a few, however.  Don't want to give the store away.

The "ghost train" trio, that is the three people pursuing the train -- each for their various reasons -- are out in the desert currently.  At least, that's where chapter 21 has them at the moment.  And in terms of an update, that's it....  I've written chapter 22, but have some gaps to fill in with chapter 21 as the latter gets them from the desert to where they end up in chapter 22 (more on that later!).  Anyway...  Sounds a bit contorted, but I think it works.  We'll see....

And...  I'm thinking the action ends around chapter 34 (or so...) which means we're getting awful darn close.  Only 10 - 12 chapters to go!

Finished the autowriter story and sent it in.  It's off in that never never land of editorial review and what not.  Title is "The Anomalists" and it's a little piece -- about 3,000 words -- that spins its yarn around a paranormal television show.  The action occurs when the team of investigators encounters a "real" ghost.  Some of that is relayed through the peculiar view point of an auto writer, who lives a few blocks from the opening scene.  We'll see how it fares in the old marketplace.

Also, "Shirasawa's Rage", the second installment in Shira's trek to find Miyabe is finished and off in a similar editorial never never land.  Sent it to the kind folks at Aphelion; so hopefully she will find a friendly audience and my loyal band of faithful readers will be able to experience the next "chapter" very soon.  Fingers crossed.

And finally... for this edition anyway...  check out "A Fire in August", the abandoned oddity I mentioned in an earlier post.  It's up and waiting to be read over on the Creator and the Catalyst forum now!  Think there's two or three fragments from an attempted fantasy novel posted out there as well.  Truly, one discovers all kinds of things out in the desert.

Out in the desert now...

Out in the desert now...

Chasing the "ghost train" at night, searching for food and water all day.

In between, there are mirages, visions and often, quite vivid dreams.

This one inspired by an Ansel Adams photograph...

Still, such fitful slumber hardly qualifies as rest.

The train's coming.  Not long now.  Hold on tightly.  I hear...   something...  in the distance....