Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [18]
I explained that Marty Stone had signed me to a personal services contract and that I was trying out for his team and that if I made the roster I would work for Stone, not San Francisco, and that I understood the big-league Giants had no obligation to promote me to their club, and blah, blah, blah. It took nearly five minutes for me to say those few words; Haller kept injecting “Oh, yeah?” between every syllable. When I finished, he stared at me and chewed his lip for a good long while before replying in a voice that scraped my scalp, it sounded so harsh, “Well, we’ll just have to see about that.”
Ten minutes later a clubhouse boy stopped at my locker to say I could not suit up for practice that day. Instead, Ethan Blackaby, the Phoenix general manager, had already arranged for me to work out with the Arizona State college team. Marty came down before I left and told me to stay in shape throwing batting practice until he straightened everything out with Haller.
I pitched against the collegians in an intra squad game that very afternoon. Sportswriters ranked Arizona State as a national baseball power, and I could see why; nearly every hitter showed major-league potential. One player stood out, a tall, skinny kid with thick wrists, long muscled arms, and a bat so quick I did not dare throw him a fastball for fear he might hit a laser back up the middle and leave nothing of me behind but a grease smudge and a pair of smoking spikes.
My best bet was a breaking pitch outside. Soon as this hitter fouled it off, he massaged my ears with a few friendly profanities—nothing out of line for a baseball diamond—and said, “Is that all you got, old man? Why don’t you challenge someone?” He laughed to let me in on the joke, but the age reference stung. I dropped down to throw him a hard sidearm sinker. It ran across home plate and veered inside to jam him right above the bat handle. He dropped to one knee trying to swat it and hit a floppy line drive to second base for an out. “Son of a bitch,” the batter yelled. He walked in circles and shook his hands to get the feeling back into his fingers. Before leaving the field, the batter smiled and touched the bill of his cap. A ballplayer’s salute.
He seemed surprised I could still run the ball in on him with so much oomph. That encouraged me. If my sinker could bore in on a stud with a lightning swing toting an aluminum bat, I could probably still jam most major-league sluggers. I did not find out the player’s name until after the game. It was Barry.
Bonds.
Yeah, that one.
Three days passed before Haller permitted me to return to the Giants’ camp. Once my arm shaped up, Phoenix manager Jim Lefebvre put me in a game. The hitters smacked my pitches as though I had served them up on a batting tee. My arm felt strong, but I threw too hard, trying to impress Haller and the Giants’ coaching staff. Every sinker lacked tempo and hovered too long over the heart of home plate.
When you rush your delivery—as I did that afternoon to increase my velocity—it is difficult to finish your pitches. Your foot lands too soon. Your arm lags behind the rest of your pitching motion, and you cannot get your body on top of the ball to make the sinker sink. You work against yourself. I usually remedied that by lengthening my stride two inches while raising my arm higher over my head, but I could not get synchronized. The top of my body spun at 45 rpm while the bottom rotated at 78. I surrendered three runs in less than an inning.
Despite my poor performance, Lefebvre continued to use me in games. I did not surrender another run over my next nine innings. When Lefebvre called me into his office three weeks into camp, I assumed he wanted to discuss my role with his club. Instead, the manager explained that the front office had decided to fully commit to a youth movement. Phoenix no longer required my services.
Gee, they’d known my age when we arrived in Arizona. No one had said anything then. Had the last three weeks pushed me over the limit? An apologetic Marty Stone met me outside the clubhouse