We had our own history with St. Joe. They’d hit one of our teammates, and I’d charged the mound and tackled their star pitcher, knocking him out. I mean literally knocked unconscious. His dad had stepped up and said it was a fair play. He’d even thanked me for my restraint because I hadn’t pounded his son once I figured out he couldn’t fight back. What added weight to the dad’s assessment was he was the assistant baseball coach at State.
What Jeff had pointed out was that I was in the middle of both incidents. I was just lucky that fights hadn’t broken out. There wasn’t anything I could do to change the past, so I decided to tone everything down, moving forward.
“Off the record, I probably shouldn’t have done it. Between the theme music and my comments, I was partially responsible for it all getting a little dicey.”
“How about on the record?” Jeff asked with a smirk.
“I can’t understand why they were mad at me; it was just baseball.”
“Should I insert how good they were and how God was involved?” Jeff asked.
“It would save us both some time.”
“How bad are you going to beat Waterloo today?”
“I haven’t a clue. I really know nothing about them other than that they’re good enough to have won their regional, and they’re also the Bulldogs.”
“So, does that mean you’re going to win?” Jeff asked.
“Sure, why not?”
◊◊◊
Waterloo had come up in the first inning and scored one run on three hits. It looked like we would need our offense to keep us in this one today. I came out of the dugout, and our crowd became quiet. Dang it! Alan stood up and gave me a dirty look. He had his boom box, and I heard the beginning of
I had my own smirk on my face when Alan suddenly realized my mom was standing next to him. Everyone began to laugh when the music suddenly stopped and he was pulled out of the stands by his ear. He was about to face my mom’s wrath. I reasoned that it couldn’t happen to a better guy.
The Waterloo team didn’t react much. They hadn’t seen our little act of showmanship before.
Their pitcher had a huge windup that I’d watched while they were warming up. He threw all his pitches with the same windup but moved around on the rubber for each type of delivery. When I settled into the batter’s box, I saw him put his foot in position to throw me a curveball. On the release, I saw it was short, and his curve bounced across the plate. If he didn’t get that fixed, it would be a long night for him.
He moved his foot over, and that was his stance for a fastball. The umpire today had done a few of our games, and I remembered he tended to allow high fastballs to be called strikes. So when I saw it was high, I swung and slapped the ball over the third baseman’s head. Coach Herndon, at first, waved me to second. Halfway to second, I looked over at Coach Haskins to see if I needed to slide or if I could stand up for my double. I was shocked when he waved me to third. As I approached third, he put on the brakes and signaled I should slide. I was safe.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It bounced off a fence post, and the outfielder took one in the face. It took him a moment to gather himself,” Coach Haskins related.
That was why we backed each other up in the outfield. The center fielder should have been there to prevent me from taking the extra base. It turned out it would have saved them a run. I scored on a sacrifice fly, which would only have gotten me to third if they’d played defense correctly.
In the next inning, they put two more on us. Before we got up to bat, I told my teammates what to watch for at the plate. Knowing the pitch was a hitter’s dream. Unfortunately, we didn’t capitalize on it. All three of our batters hit the ball at someone.
The game settled down then, and my next two at-bats I’d gotten on. The first was a single, and I died on base. I hit a double my third time up, and advanced to third on a wild pitch, but was left stranded again. It was the bottom of the seventh, and we were trailing 3–1. When I came up, there was a runner on first, and Coach Haskins gave me the sign to swing away. At the same time, Waterloo’s coach came out and signaled for their relief pitcher. I expect he’d seen enough of me hitting his pitcher. I was a little disappointed my guys hadn’t hit him as well as I had. Most of that could be attributed to their superior defense. They’d made some outstanding plays to rob us of hits.
