Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [57]
The next morning Pam and I decided to go shopping. I cleared out the car trunk to make room for all the packages. Stuck in the rear under the jack, I found that taped bat the witches had given me. I was about to toss it in the garbage bin when I noticed the name inscribed across the barrel of that C243 Louisville Slugger.
Tom Brunansky.
Now you know why I do not take the Curse lightly. So here is the advice I would have passed along to Pedro had we spoken. If you want to win a World Series with Boston, grab a yellow pages. Look under W for warlocks and witches. Cross-reference S for sorcerers. Stay away from illusionists; Red Sox fans have seen enough of them over the years. Whomever you hire, make sure he or she removes the entire curse this time. And never, ever screw around with the Babe again. He’ll deck you in the batter’s box every time.
11
REVELATION IN MAINE
In November 1994, I drove to a high school gym in Rockland, Maine, to play in a charity basketball game that pitted several Red Sox alumni, including Rick Miller and Bob Stanley, plus some local talent against members of the town’s fire department. I got there moments before starting time only to discover that half the players had not yet arrived. A snowstorm had stranded many of them on Route 1 near the Shawshank Prison.
With each passing minute the crowd grew more restless, stomping their feet in the bleachers and whistling for the event to begin. As I suited up in the locker room, the promoter poked in his head and asked, “Think you could entertain the spectators with a pitching exhibition until we have enough people to field two teams?” He handed me a glove and ball.
“Great,” I said, “but what are we going to do for a catcher?”
“We’ll pick someone.”
“It’s not an easy position to fill if you really want me to throw with any kind of speed. Could be dangerous.”
“Don’t worry.”
They picked a chunky kid, barely twenty, built low to the ground with dangling simian arms. We moved to the center of the basketball court and stood sixty feet apart. “I used to be a catcher in high school,” he assured me.
He assumed a catcher’s crouch, quite professional-looking, and set up a target with an oversized mitt. The boy did everything right. Until I unleashed my first high fastball and he ignored one of the basics of catching. He forgot to raise his mitt. The pitch crashed right between his eyes and ricocheted some twelve feet into the air. He dropped boneless as a jellyfish and lay spread-eagled on the floor with all the breath gone out of him.
“Jesus,” I yelled, the only voice in the place, “that kid’s dead!” Spectators screamed, several dropped to their knees in prayer. I stood paralyzed. Two men ran to my catcher’s prone body. Before they could reach him, the boy sprang to his feet, a potato-sized knot bulging from his forehead. He blinked at me through glazed eyes, raised his arms up toward the rafters, and ran a victory lap around the gym floor. You could tell he had no idea where he was, but at least he was moving. Later on, a doctor pronounced him fit. The young man had not suffered even a slight concussion.
That was the day I discovered whatever fastball I once had was gone.
12
FLYING WITH THE GOLDEN JET
Bill, would you like to drink some cognac?” Bobby Hull sat next to me in a lounge chair on the back porch of an inn on the northern shore of the St. Lawrence River. Across the water, a bruised moon rose from the cliffs of the Monts Chic-Chocs to cast deep shadows across the yard. I could barely make out Bobby’s face, but whenever his mouth opened, moonglow gleamed off his perfect white teeth.
Sports fans knew Hull as the Golden Jet, perhaps the greatest National Hockey League player of his generation. It was July 1996, and we had seen little of each other since I last appeared as the halftime show with the Hockey