Boy's World

Derek Zumsteg

Back to Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Karen looked for the sign as if bored. The prospect was a sensation, a first-rounder, already Top Ten on many lists, a power-hitting third baseman the Royals would inevitably screw up. Steve sipped on a soda and fanned himself with his scorecard as the Jackson heat seemed to eat into his flesh. The hitter waited for Karen with uncharacteristic patience for his age; he was probably better suited to be an Athletic prospect, or even to play for the Astros. Karen delivered something high, and Steve winced at the crack, and the ball was gone, an epic homer that would show up in scouting reports ("impressive power and not done developing!"). Karen didn't seem to react. The hitter stood and started to walk towards first with a long, stomping step, and Karen stared at him.

Steve stood up and yelled from his box seat "Dead man walking!" and the runner looked to the stands. "Run," Steve yelled, "run for your life!"

Karen looked, too, and picked Steve out. She returned to staring at the runner, who broke into a trot.

Karen was eking out a loss again, now behind 3-5, and she tossed the rosin bag back into the dirt harder this time.

Karen hit him with her first pitch his next time up, right in the bicep, and he left the game. So did Karen, the hard way.

"How's Mississippi treating you?"

Karen smiled. She took a drink of iced tea and set it down on her table. She nodded at Steve, put her legs up on the porch railing. "I'm starting to talk all slow-like," she said, and laughed. She sighed and set her iced tea down. "I remember you said this would be tough."

"You're doing well."

"Ah, I don't feel like it." They sat on her porch in the cool evening, the sun just over the horizon, the sky hueing down from blue to black. From inside, some ambient band only Karen knew came out with the dim light of the entryway. "You know what I feel like? I feel like I shouldn't have given up on the andro. I feel like if I could only pitch faster...." she trailed off and stared out into the street.

Steve peeled the label off his beer. "They get you yet for hitting Ryerson?"

Karen laughed and smiled. "Oh yeah. I got eight games for that."

"Do you ever worry that getting suspended interferes with your development?"

"To be totally honest with you, it helps keep my cumulative pitch count down."

Steve toasted his beer to her. "You're bad."

Karen shrugged.

On a 2-1 count, working the outside corner on a Kirby Puckett-esque batter who liked to reach out and line a ball to the outfield, trying to cope with another ump who wasn't calling her curve a strike, Karen tried her slider on the inside corner, didn't get the call, and stared at the ump. Her catcher jumped up and jogged to her, turning her away.

"Don't sweat it," he said, "if he walks, he walks. Let's give him changeups, okay? Low strikes."

Karen nodded.

Karen threw a good changeup, low and in the middle, an obvious strike, and the hitter connected smoothly, an easy double.

Karen bit her lip hard and then yelled "God damn it!" at the top of her lungs. The audience stared, eyes out, and the ump ejected her.

Karen sat on her porch with a Sprite diluted by ice cubes, Nokia cell phone to her ear.

"I got ejected again."

Steve's apartment noise was reduced to a background hum over the connection, and his voice sounded flat, the highs clipped. "Have they talked to you about it yet?"

"No. I think they're deliberately not talking to me, seeing if I work it out myself."

"Will you?"

"Of course I will," Karen said. A mosquito landed on a knuckle. She killed it. "How's stringing?"

"Do you have any idea," Steve asked, the weariness in his voice surviving the multiple hops and encoding, "how hard it is to make the Devil Rays interesting?"

Karen survived her next game, hit for five runs in the first three of six innings, and sat on the bench, her arm in ice. She picked her swear words with care and every five to ten seconds would shout something fulsome and then go back to staring at the field, running down the next word intently.

Callahan, sitting next to her, finally spoke. "Could you stop that? You're scaring everyone."

Karen unprintabled again. "Fine, I'm done."

"Don't worry about it, you'll adjust," he said.

"Please don't talk to me now," Karen said.

Karen sat on her porch with a weak mint julep that evening and let the Nokia on the other seat ring softly, its display lit up with an Orlando number. The phone went dark and Karen closed her eyes and slouched back in her white-painted oak chair.

Karen threw on the side the next day.

Callahan watched her motion and stroked his goatee, one side with thumb, the other with fingers, drawing boxes around his mouth. "Karen, I'm going to tell you something."

"Then tell me."

"I don't think you're going to listen."

"Then don't tell me."

Callahan sighed. "Karen, you're not any worse now than you were before. The level of competition is a lot better. That's all. When you showboat, you're not going to get away with it. You need to be humble."

Karen spat into the turf. "Isn't there some kid with a bad motion who's going to tear his arm up that you could be helping?"

Callahan hitched his pants up, which brought his belly up and then dropped it again. "Yes," he said, "but I don't want to right now. The sooner you listen to me, the sooner you'll realize what you need to do."

"Get faster," Karen said.

"No," Callahan replied. "It'll come to you." He nodded to the backup catcher and left her.

Karen threw at him and missed.

"Don't do that," Callahan said, not looking as he kept on for the dugout. "You're not supposed to pitch any until tomorrow."

Karen's inning counts went down as she pitched more pitches to more batters, going to full counts and giving up the long balls and singles. She gave up a hit an inning, her strikeouts dropped, and only her walk rate remained decent.

"Even the Brewers," Karen said one night, on a bench in some Texas town, down the street from their hotel, pedestrians staring at her and her cell phone. "Even the Brewers."

"What do you think's going wrong?" Steve asked.

"They're getting hits off me."

"This happened before, remember? What'd you do? You decided to become perfect. And it worked then. Maybe it doesn't work anymore."

Karen held the phone out in front of her and yelled at it: "It's not like that!" A couple on the other side of the street looked at her, startled. Karen waved, brought the phone back.

"You're not perfect. No pitcher strikes everyone out. Will you do me a favor?"

"No."

"Just one game, throw ground-ball pitches. Throw some garbage at them, mix it up with the fastball. See what happens. Don't try and be the greatest pitcher ever, all the time."

"Why not? Is it worth playing if you don't think you're not the greatest?"

"You sound tired. Get some sleep, we'll talk tomorrow."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay." Steve took a long breath, audible over two cell phones and a hundred routers. "I do think you're the greatest, though."

"I know." Karen smiled.

"Okay then."

Karen took Callahan to dinner on his last night of his trip with the team, on her dad's credit card. Callahan ordered early and often. Karen waited to talk until they'd killed the first basket of sourdough bread.

"I need to ask you a sensitive question," Karen said.

"Okay," he said. He dabbed at his mouth with his napkin and settled way back in his chair. "What is it?"

"How do you get ground outs?"

Callahan blinked. "What?"

"I'm serious," Karen said. "I need to know."

"I wish you'd asked me this before."

"I've always thought I'd get by as a strikeout pitcher. I thought I was fast enough and my control was good enough. But it's hard, and it takes a lot of pitches, and just going for strikeouts, I'm starting to get hit a lot."

Callahan smiled. "You're serious about this. Okay." As the next table was served, he sat and looked at Karen and thought. "You read so many stat books, Karen, I guess it never occurred to me you didn't know the pitchers. Greg Maddux throws a fastball that maybe hits ninety. He strikes out less than a guy an inning."

"See, I didn't know that."

"Jamie Moyer's had a great career with a fastball that's lucky to clock at eighty-five. You can be a power pitcher and not strike everybody out. I thought you made that adjustment already. I can't believe you got this far on mistake pitches." He laughed. "We'll head back to the park after this, you can toss some balls."

"I'd squat but I don't have any cartilidge left in my knees. Understand," Callhan said, actually sitting behind home plate, "that you're throwing a ball that's dropping, and the batter's bringing the bat off their shoulder and down, like they're chopping a tree. Next couple of games, I want you to watch, see how different batters take their swings. Do we have film here?"

"Yeah," Karen said.

"Watch film. You like to hit, you know what you ground out on."

"Not really," Karen said. "Hitting's so hard I don't ever feel like I know for sure what happened."

"Give me a breaking ball."

Karen threw a slow breaking pitch.

"You see now?" he said. "It's coming down, dropping, and you're dropping it down more, they have to go way down and then up to hit it in the air."

Karen nodded from the mound. Callahan started laughing.

"What?"

Callahan shook his head. "It's just funny, you...asking for help."

"You're not wearing protective gear."

"Actually, now that I think about it," Callahan said, "it wasn't really that funny. Now throw a slowball." He caught it. "Now where's a batter going to be on that? If they've timed it right, it's a line drive. If they're ahead of it, it's a foul or a pop-up, right?"

Karen nodded.

"Think not only of what you're throwing and what you expect, but where the bat will put the ball if you're right, and if you're wrong."

Karen turned a ball over in her hands. "Oh," she said.

Callahan started to laugh again.

"Shut up," Karen said, and put a breaking pitch off the plate and into his belly.

"You'll be up in August if you work on this," he said. "I promise."

To Chapter Ten

about the author

Derek Zumsteg will be hosting the first of a series of Literary Nights at the local Black Angus. Offer to read a ribald limerick about Derek Jeter.