Father's Day
Crack! The sound of bat on ball resounded throughout the stadium. An intuition became embedded in my brain.
It is a foul ball. It is mine.
In more than 30 years of major, minor, Pee Wee, Bronco, high school, Babe Ruth and college baseball games I had never been anywhere close to snagging a ball from the stands, fair or foul. But this one was going to end up in my pocket, I sensed immediately. I was going to bring it in, by force of will alone if necessary, but I would be going home with that ball at the end of the day.
This ball is mine.
It began climbing into the bright blue New Mexico sky, tracing an arc over the stands on the first-base side where I waited, armed with a hot dog in my right hand, paper dollars and clinking coins, the change from my purchase, in my left.
This ball is mine.
I shifted the money to my left front pocket and swapped the hot dog to the now empty hand. I waited.
Baseball was more than breathing for me for many years. It was my sport, my muse, beyond a reason for being. It was my entire being. In spring, it was the reason to get up. In winter, it was the reason to wait for spring. The cruel `January thaw' of my youth was a time to shag flies at the end of our cul-de-sac, surrounded by piles and mountains of grit-encrusted snow. Those few days of sun provided just enough warmth to bring out glove, bat and ball. Just a taste to keep us going until the earth reawakened to ground balls and pop flies and squeeze plays and stolen bases and hit-and-runs.
Summers were filled with games, and autumn with Jewish holidays, baseball playoffs and the sorrow of the season past. I atoned for my errors and missed pitches and asked for forgiveness and to be inscribed in the book of high averages and quick hands and a strong arm for the year to come.
In gym, I was the prototypical last kid chosen. A lumbering, chubby, weak, clumsy, adolescent, best suited for blocking in football, or providing an obstacle in dodge ball. I spent the entire eighth grade avoiding wrestling. When the gym teacher finally figured out that I had gone a whole year without a match, I was pinned in record time.
In high school, I once managed to spike a volley ball into the face of an unsuspecting young Adonis who seemed twice my height, with a wingspan at least three miles wide. Retribution was swift and merciless and the universe returned to its natural state. The athlete reigned supreme. The upstart was humbled.
This ball is mine.
But when it came time to pick baseball teams, the last was first. Suddenly, I was the one selected early among the sheep. I was among the elite. Chosen. Elect. Selected.
The mantra rolled through my brain as I alone heard dozens of voices combine into one: Keep your eye on the ball. Coaches I had not thought of in years joined the chorus in my brain. It echoed and reformed and reverberated and grew softer, then louder. Faces appeared in my mind's eye and then passed quickly. The Cunninghams, Walt and Ken; Mr. Levine, my brother. Keep your eye on the ball.
In our house, traditional baseball roles were reversed. My father was not a fan of team sports in any way. It was my mother who was the baseball fan. At least, she was the one who had her heart broken by baseball. She was among the legions of Brooklynites who were devastated when their beloved Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in the 1950s.
She never forgave baseball the slight. For years, the mention of the O'Malley family -- the owners of the Dodgers -- would bring a sneer. I always said that my mother wouldn’t go out of her way to spit on Walter O’Malley’s grave. However, if she happened to find herself close to the place of his final reward, I’m not so sure she wouldn’t water the grass.
But when Kirk Gibson hit a ninth-inning homer to win the first game of the 1988 World Series, my mother was right on top of it.
My father did his parental duty and bought my older brother his first baseball glove and taught him to catch and throw. For me, it was my brother, six years my senior, who threw with me in the backyard and talked about planting a foot and keeping your head in the play.
My parents were utterly not sports parents. They believed that we had to want to participate for ourselves, not for their approval. Of course, we would never have signed up for something that required 5 a.m. practices.
Our presence on a team did not automatically require their attendance at every game and every practice. My mother did her one shift a year in the snack bar and let you know she had done it. My father would occasionally appear along the left field fence in the late innings, after dinner. Though I do remember the time we helped paint and repair the stands at the field.
Higher, higher and higher the ball soared on a background so blue that dots and splashes appeared before the eyes, pixelating the heavens into a thousand million pieces. We stood in shadow under the roof, protected from the desert sun scorching the field and sky. Off to one side, it seemed just beyond the right field fence, the dun and copper mountains rose beyond the sand, then stretched and marched off into the distance.
This ball is mine.
Frank Eufemia, a voice whispered.
What?
Frank Eufemia, the voice repeated.
Concentrate, I thought. Don't get distracted. Keep your eye on the ball and it will be ours. Stay with it. Stay with it.
Frank Eufemia.
Don't give in. Stay focused. My right palm itched, a bead of cold sweat trickled between my shoulder blades.
Frank Eufemia.
And then, I was 13 years old and the most important at-bat of my life was looming. I was going to have to face Frank Eufemia. Again.
Ahab had his white whale. Nixon had Woodward and Bernstein. Patton had Rommel. Hillary has the vast right-wing conspiracy. I have Frank Eufemia, or did, to haunt my dreams.
Many is the night I awoke at 3 a.m. with a shiver amid images of a Cardinals uniform towering over me as I stood at the plate, trying to save my career and my team in one swing.
To understand the importance of that moment, you should know it came at the end of a momentous three years of baseball. When we moved up a division in the Police Athletic League, we were the kids whose birthdays were after the cut-off date. Hence, we were all the youngest kids in the league when we faced our first game.
This was in the days before "mercy" rules, before everyone was special. Was our way better? I think so. At least, we still got to play. A "mercy" rule would end the game pretty damn quickly when the other guys run up a score of 33-0.
We would not win a single game all that long, lonely, hot first season. We finally won a game midway through our second season. But, when boys grow from 10 to 13, strange things happen, and by the time our third and final season as a team rolled around, we were the monsters in the fields of dreams.
I was already at my full adult height and Dom Marino was so big he couldn't wear the pants that came with his uniform. Rival coaches, more than once, muttered about birth certificates and checking records as we came up to bat, just loud enough for us to hear.
Our team, which was the doormat of PAL baseball only moments before, became a swaggering, swearing, spitting, chewing, feared presence on the diamond. A collection of motley men among boys. At least three guys were shaving. Two others had draft notices. Double plays were turned crisply. I could throw a ball on a laser line from right field to third base. It was the rare runner who tested that arm more than once.
Greg Butler, our right-handed first baseman, could stretch at least a mile and a half to bring home an errant throw. Brian Connelly, who had perfected the bunt single as an undersized tyke years before, once almost killed an opposing third baseman. The fielder was creeping forward, expecting the typical `dink' from Brian's bat, when he stepped back and rapped out a sharp liner right at the guy's head. The player survived only by falling flat on his back.
Walt, our coach, finally asked Kevin O’Brien why he threw lefty and batted righty. When we turned him to the other side of the plate, scorching-hot line drives and base hits proliferated.
We appeared and mothers fainted and fathers hid small children. The Braves, they whispered as we arrived on the field. Ohmygawd, it’s the Braves.
That year I actually parked two shots over the fence. There is a special feeling when you hit a home run that is difficult to describe because it feels like ... nothing. When you catch a ball in the sweet spot of the bat and hit it perfectly, you swing right through the ball. There is almost no contact, and certainly no sensation in your hands. I would put my head down, as my coaches taught me, and run as fast as I could to first base, trying to dig out a hit. Rounding first, I would hear cheering and clapping and I would drop into a homerun trot. I was always extra careful to touch all the bases.
Here we were. The end of the third season, ready to claim our place in the sun, when the unthinkable occurred. We finished in a dead heat with the Cardinals. Even. Tied. Kissing our sisters. There would be a one-game playoff to determine which of the two teams would go on to our World Series.
We battled and entered the top of the last inning tied. The exact score is lost to the mists of time, but I remember the next inning in almost every detail. They loaded the bases, two outs. A long fly ball over the centerfielder’s head and two runs scored. The final out.
The bottom of the last inning. I was the first one at bat. "Go, Larry," I heard from the stands. "Knock one out of there."
Frank Eufemia.
He faced me from the mound. I dug in my feet. I was ready. I was angry. We would not go down as losers. Not after all we had endured.
Whoooooooooooooosh!!!!!!!!!
The ball was a blur. It was in his hands, and then magically it appeared somewhere in front of me, just milliseconds later. I swung. To no discernible effect.
I dug in harder. I pounded the bat on the plate. I was ready.
Whooooooooooooosh!!!!!!!!!
The ball was a spirit, a ghost, an apparition, a flowing river of white and streaks of red that was past me before he finished his motion. I swung, connecting with nothing but air.
I grimaced. I grunted. I felt sweat on my brow, bile in my throat. Give me one to hit, I prayed. Just lay it out over the plate.
Whoooooooooooosh!!!!!!!!!
Faster still. A breeze flew past, a zing of sound. My bat was as effective as a fly swatter against a rhino. Three pitches, three swings. I was done. We were done. The season was done. I would play half of one season the next year and then I was out of organized baseball of any kind.
Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zip. Zilch.
It was all over and Frank Eufemia had killed it.
For years I would remember the sights, the smells, the tastes of that day. In the still moments of the night, in that place where dreams go to die and nightmares go to live, Frank Eufemia would be waiting for me, standing on a pitching mound, a ball in one hand, a glove on the other. A burning, glowing, fiery ball, with wisps of smoke curling around his arm and over his head.
And then it would be flying at my head, 10,000 miles an hour, darting and weaving and I would flail at it with a piece of floppy macaroni six feet long.
It was a difficult time. Especially when he apologized in school the next day. You don't apologize in baseball. Sandy Koufax never apologized. Babe Ruth never said `Sorry,' for knocking one out of the park. Jackie Robinson never, ever made amends for being a better player than most of the white guys who tortured him.
It hurt for a long time. Years. A decade. Until one day.
I was in Battle Creek, Michigan, with more time on my hands than usual so I read the Sunday paper. The whole paper. The real estate ads. The want ads. The merchandise for sale ads. The sports section. The baseball news. The story about the Twins' new young pitching phenom. From Bergenfield, New Jersey.
And suddenly, the curse was lifted. No longer would I awaken in the early hours, waiting to be taken like a lamb to slaughter.
I had faced a major-league fastball. And survived. True, I didn't even foul one off, but I did see it. If only briefly.
Frank would spend a year with the Twins, winning four and losing two. He pitched in 39 games, finishing 21, and amassing a respectable if not spectacular earned run average of 3.79. Thirty major leaguers shared my fate, while 21 waited him out for walks.
But he made it to The Show. And I saw it when.
This ball is mine.
Turning over in the New Mexico sun, the foul ball kept curling ever so slowly to the stands where I stood.
Stay with it, I thought. Stay with it. Keep your eye on the ball.
Picking up speed, the ball grew larger and larger and came closer and closer, tumbling, spinning down as I watched for my chance. Here it comes, I thought, I really am going to get it.
This ball is mine.
And as I stood there, my old outfielder's sense told me that it would be just slightly over my head. It was going to be a near thing, but the ball would pass just out of reach, heading about two rows behind me. It would still be the closest I ever came to a ball in the stands, but not close enough. Just not quite close enough.
I was beyond the years when jumping across concrete stands could be considered with impunity. It was going to pass over my head, barely, but enough.
This ball is mine. Stay with it. Keep your eye on the ball. Don't give up.
Turning as the ball passed over, I watched carefully, as a forest of outstretched arms welcomed the orb. One second, it was there and the next, it had disappeared into the waiting hands.
Then, miraculously, it reappeared. It bounced off someone's head, or out of their hands, but in any event, it was hanging in the air just above my nose, ripe as an orange and ready to be picked.
I plucked it out of the air. Turned around. Showed it to the crowd.
"Nice catch," the hot dog guy said.
