The nightmare had followed me all through high school and even half way through college. It was always the same, time after time. In my mind’s eye, I see myself sitting on the bench of the Sacred Cross’s Parochial Grammar School’s baseball team. We’re locked in mortal combat with our archrivals, the Black Knights of Saint George’s pre-prep prep school from the other side of town. For eighth graders, they were the most devastating hitting machine since the legendary Murder’s Row of the 1927 New York Yankees! Every batter they had that year was a potential ‘Joe D’ or Reggie Jackson. During the regular season they had torn our pitching to shreds, driving us down 11-2 and 14-1. It was true humiliation of nearly biblical proportions! Our only two defeats that year had been at the hands of the rampaging stickmen from Saint George. Not even three Novenas from Sister Clements had helped against the Jesuit-driven marauders. And here we were again, fighting them for the championship.
I see myself in the late June heat twisting uncomfortably in those old woolen uniforms. It’s the top of the fourth and our catcher, Bernie (The Behemoth) Wilson, had just popped a two run triple, giving us the lead. Benny was our team ‘ringer’. He was actually an Episcopalian black kid I had played with all my life on those empty sandlots us kids had claimed as stadiums through those sweltering Newark summers. I had talked Brother McReedy into scouting him when word got out that just about every team in the league had been bringing in Protestants, Jews, Hindus, Mormons, Muslims and just about any denomination they could get their hands on to bolster their line-up. It wasn’t looked upon as cheating. Rather, it was like having a dependable farm system. Technically, it had been justified to the Archbishop (a wicked second baseman for Seton Hall back in the day) as Missionary Work!
But back in those early days of the 1960s, while the religious barrier had been smashed, the color barrier had never really been breached. Bernie stood alone as the New Jersey Parochial League’s own Jackie Robinson. It had never occurred to me that Benny was anything other than a good catcher…and my friend.
It hadn’t any easier for Bernie that year than it had been for me. Jimmy Abbot, the Yankee’s one-handed Ace, hadn’t even been born yet, so the idea of a pitcher who had to throw and catch with the same hand wasn’t even qualified as an abstraction. Having to go for physical therapy almost every afternoon that we had a game hadn’t done much to earn me acceptance with the team. I was an empty uniform taking away from a real player. But I could pitch like the devil! Bernie had seen me on the sandlots mow down batter after batter with an exceptional fastball that came from using the same arm for almost everything. Unlike other guys my age, I had a nasty curve ball that always broke in the opposite direction it was supposed to. Brother McReedy said it was the way I twisted my body for balance on release that spun the ball off at a weird angle.
Bernie and I liked Brother McReedy. When asked who the Holy Trinity were, he usually replied “Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio!” without hesitation. And he knew I could pitch—and Bernie could catch.
Bernie is sitting next to me, putting his pads on to step behind the plate. Brother McReedy is looking at a blister on our starter’s thumb. I see me sitting there, head hung low. I hadn’t pitched an inning all season, having missed most of the games. Hell, I’d barely made practices—and the ones I’d made consisted mainly of throwing flies to the outfielders as Brother worked with his starters. With all the chips on the table, there was no reason to put an untried player in the game. But as I sit there, counting the lace holes in my cleats, a shadow begins flickering back and forth in front of my face. I look up to see Bernie pointing furiously at me and Brother McReedy, hands on hips, is staring at me so intently I’m certain he’s looking right in my soul! I see the thumb on the hand of the giant old cleric waving me to the mound and I hear Bernie hiss “yesss”, from behind his mask.
As I stand on the mound, taking my warm-ups, I watch the first three innings again in my mind. We’d been lucky. They'd already had seven runners on base and only two diving catches in the outfield, and Bernie’s great blocking of the plate in the bottom of the third had kept them off the scoreboard. The runner from Saint George’s had slid in, spike’s flashing, and caught Bernie at the top of his shin guard. Despite the pain he felt on impact, the leg refused to buckle. Bernie went ‘even-Steven’ on the runner’s butt by backhanding him with the ball and then pasting one up the third base line to throw out the charging runner trying to advance to third. It was a “pro” play, no doubt about it.
I lean forward on the mound as the batter enters the box. Bernie flashes me ‘old number one’ and I nod. I kick and my body falls forward, and as the ball slides off my fingers, I know it’s a strike. I see the Umpire shoot a finger out as the ball whistles by the batter at the letters and pops solidly into Bernie’s mitt. The second pitch is even faster but the ball begins to drop towards the bottom of the strike zone. The batter jumps at it, trying to golf it out of the park. He misses. Again I hear the Ump shout “Steee-rike!” From the corner of my eye, in the nearly empty stands I see an old man in a battered baseball cap elbowing another old-timer who is chewing vigorously on the stub of a cigar that looks as old as he is. Nodding approvingly at both of them is an old Chinese gent.
I don’t need to see Bernie’s next signal to know what he wants me to throw. I can see it in his eyes, peering with Grendel-like intensity through the catcher’s mask. Back on the sandlots, I had caught him with it again and again. Instead of coming over my head, my arm whips sideways like a snake striking at a victim, sending the ball at the batter with a frightening hiss. I put so much behind it I nearly lose my balance and tumble off the mound. The ball flies with demon speed, cork-screwing towards the boy in the box. He panics and jumps out of the batter’s box, but Bernie’s mitt never moves from the center of the plate, and the ball tears into the pocket with a sharp crack. The Umpire freezes for a second and then I hear, “Threeee! Yer out!”
From the corner of my eye, I notice that attendance has grown by one. A tall, thin, elderly colored man (as the popular press called African Americans back then) is standing next to the already cheering collection of ancient fanatics, clapping wildly. I figure he knows Bernie.
I blow through the fourth like a hurricane, striking out all three batters. The fifth, sixth, and seventh are much the same. By the time we reach the bottom of the eighth, I’ve posted 10 K’s and haven’t allowed a runner on base. Mighty Saint George hasn’t gotten a ball out of the infield since the third inning.
I feel unbelievably good! Like nothing I’ve known, before or since. In the top of the seventh, I lead off the inning. I fake a bunt and it draws the infield in. On the next pitch, a shoulder high curve that didn’t, I throw everything I have into the ball, and tag it for shipment. When the dust clears, I’m standing on second, having beaten the throw. The crowd of four goes wild! Two batters later, Bernie puts one over the centerfield fence and the kid after him, whose name I can’t recall, A-Rod’s one. I’m now sitting on a 5/zip lead. All is good in the world.
But in the eighth, I start to struggle. Since no one but Bernie has ever seen me pitch, nobody notices but him. He’s cut off my curve ball, which has started sailing dangerously close to right-handed batters faces. He’s got me throwing nothing but fastballs. I blow by the first batter, but it takes a full count to do it. The second batter I face plugs into my first offering and sends it screaming up the third base line. Only a desperate leap by the third baseman prevents the ball from applying for a passport and rolling all the way to Mexico. The third out is a fly ball that has my centerfielder pressed against the fence.
As I wait through our half of the ninth, my arm is starting to throb at the shoulder. Bernie turns to me and says the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. “A pitcher’s got to know when his game is over.” He says it and looks at me as if he’s waiting for a logical response, but I have none. I’ve waited too long to get in to take myself out. I turn away. I find myself looking at the antique gathering in the stands. The old black guy is looking at me kind of funny. I know he knows I’m fried. I begin to recount my lace holes.
My warm-up pitches for the crucial ninth inning are a disaster. Half of them fall short of the plate and the rest sail everywhere but through the strike zone. The Saint George batters notice—like sharks notice blood in the water. Bernie keeps looking over to Brother McReedy, but the Archbishop who, for no known reason, has come down to watch the game is busily talking at him. I’m getting a funny feeling in my stomach.
I walk the first batter in five pitches. The next batter I face is the beginning of the end of the universe, as I know it. My first pitch is a lame duck that waddles towards the batter like it has all the time in the world. He catches it cleanly on the sweet part of the bat and parks himself on second base. It’s the only hit Saint George’s will get off me all day. On the next pitch, the umpire realizes that I don’t know how to pitch outside of a full windup. On the sand lot, nobody watches your feet as you pitch from the stretch, as there is no pitcher’s rubber to push off against. Unlike organized ball, the sand lot doesn’t recognize a balk! A balk is considered to be a deceptive motion that may confuse a base runner, allowing the pitcher an unfair advantage in a pick-off attempt, and therefore, it is a kind of cheating! The penalty is a sure, swift justice—the runner is allowed to advance to the next base.
I am sinking rapidly into the depths of baseball hell. Brother McReedy, in a burst of Christian charity and uncharacteristic over-confidence, has attempted to get every boy on the team into the game. His remaining two pitchers have already been in and out of right field. There is no one left on the bench and I am drowning. I walk then balk, balk then walk. With only one hit behind them, Saint George has risen from the ashes to stand but two runs down with the bases loaded and nobody out and a pitcher on the mound who’s balking more than a rented mule! I’ve walked and balked in three unearned runs.
I see myself doubled over in the despair only a twelve-year-old pitcher can feel. Brother McReedy is starting to move towards the mound, but Bernie calls time-out and races towards me, waiving him off. Bernie reaches the mound and, lifting his catcher’s mask, faces me. It’s a new experience for him too, and he’s not sure what to say. Finally, he looks up. “You’ve already got the bases loaded, so they can’t steal. Forget the stretch, pitch from the wind-up! Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll hit’em on the ground.” I nod as he turns and walks slowly back to the plate, buying me as much time to calm down as he can.
I almost have a fastball on the next pitch and it manages to nick the inside corner of the plate for a strike. Bernie signals for a change-up on the next pitch. I swallow hard…how much more can I take off the ball? But the batter is fooled. The slow-moving ball throws his timing off and he pops it nearly straight up. It flies up over home plate and hangs there, forty feet in the air. After what seems like centuries, it floats gracefully down into Bernie’s upturned mitt for the first out.
Bernie pulls the same act on the next batter and it gets him too. But the third batter up gets some real wood on the change up and it flies in a straight line at our shortstop who manages to knock it down, but can’t catch it. Picking the ball up, instead of holding it, in a panic he throws it to second base. The runners had all been running on the pitch and the fourth run is on the board. The runner off of second has now rounded third and is barreling down on Bernie. Our second baseman throws a wandering throw to the plate. I watch as Bernie throws his leg into the oncoming runner’s path and stretch to snap at a ball I’m certain is going right over the players’ bench. But, as if an unseen hand guides it, the ball finds the mitt. Bernie throws himself, the mitt and the ball at the charging runner.
They impact like two colliding comets. The runner is stopped dead and Bernie is on top of him. He is bleeding from a cut over the top of his hand, but the ball is still in it. I look wildly at the umpire. He is throwing his arms across his body. The runner is gone! The final score, Sacred Cross 5—Saint George 4!
The fielders all rush past me in jubilant disbelief and mob Bernie. I am in the depths of self-humiliation. Ten strikeouts, four unearned runs on one hit, six walks and 5 balks…three with loaded bases. It is a shame deeper than I have ever known, before or since.
There are tears forming in my eyes as we move towards the buses. Bernie is walking towards me. “Don’t sweat it!” he says. “You never had to pitch from the stretch before! You did good!” I look at him and smile as best I can. Bernie has saved me from the pit.
In the years that followed, I saw those five innings over and over again in my nightmares. They did not go away until the summer of ’69. That year the Mets, for no known reason, climbed from the bottom of the National League, where they had resided in near—perpetuity, to win the pennant and then the World Series. That November I discovered writing and a crazy professor named Stasheff who, with his mid-western morals and growing family, knew I could write and who became a close and life-long friend.
But in December of that very same year, the greatest catcher I’d ever known caught a chunk of shrapnel from incoming in South East Asia, and for reasons I have yet to discover, died.
I never pitched again after those five innings and after December 1969, I never played another inning at any position. The game had lost all meaning.
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