Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [53]
“I’m a pitcher, a right-hander,” he told me in his heavy Brooklyn accent while avoiding my eyes, “and I’m also an inventor. I can help your ball club in more ways than one if you give me a chance.” He rattled on, spilling his life story, how he had tried out for numerous teams but never got the break he needed and how he should have made it with the Pittsburgh Pirates and how Whitey Herzog almost hired him for the Kansas City Royals but didn’t for reasons he would explain later and how he had driven over a thousand miles in a Toyota held together by nerve and spit and airplane glue and spent over $500 to get here and how this was his last chance after fifteen years of playing semipro baseball for teams whose names I did not recognize since I only half listened to all of that.
No disrespect meant; I just immediately knew Tom lacked the goods. All that talking gave him away. One minute after he introduced himself, I told him he could pitch to me in the bullpen, show me what he had. He just kept jabbering. I needed no more evidence. Pitchers want to pitch. If you offer one the opportunity to take the mound and he hesitates, insists on first reciting his résumé, he is stalling for a reason— fear of being found out or fear of finding out or both.
We walked to the bullpen. In one hand Tom carried a battered brown leather suitcase covered with stickers from places no sane person would ever want to visit. In the other was a black duffel bag. Stored his gear in that, a baseball glove and a pair of spikes so traveled they curled up at the toes.
Tom’s first pitch hinted that I might have misjudged him. He displayed a pro’s presence on the mound. Smooth, compact windup that allowed him to consistently hit the same release point on pitch after pitch. A nice, relaxed motion. Never muscled the ball. He threw with precision, hitting the target wherever I placed it. One problem: I could have caught him barehanded, his velocity was so spare. He claimed his repertoire included an unhittable screwball. I asked him to throw it. He pleaded for more time to “loosen up.” When he finally unleashed his screwgie, it did drop as it crossed the plate, but only in surrender to gravity. The pitch lacked teeth. He had nothing.
I tried to reject him gently. “Look, you might not be able to pitch on this level, but you can play somewhere this summer. There are lots of semipro teams. . . .”
Tom had heard that before. “I don’t have to start on your regular roster,” he said too eagerly. “Taxi squad would be good enough. Let me throw on the side for a while. When you need a replacement, I’ll be ready.” Taxi squad members received $2,000 a month just to stay in shape in case we lost a player to injury. He lacked the skills to fill even that role, but he sounded so desperate. “We’ll see,” I said.
“All right. Well, thanks for looking at me.” He knew. I started off the field; he would not let me go. “Look,” Tom pleaded, “maybe I can’t pitch for you yet, but I invented this slide, see? Nobody in baseball uses it. If you put me on the taxi squad, I can be an extra coach and teach it to all your players. I guarantee they will never get tagged out again. You’ve got to see this. Let me get my special shoe.”
Tom unzipped his bag. It resembled an ordinary baseball spike except for the long leather flap that extended down from the top of the laces to his shoe tip. “You play third,” he told me, “and I’ll run in from second. I won’t swerve to either side but you still won’t get me.” At the