Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [70]
15
THE ROAD THROUGH VINALES
After waking to the thrilling sight of the Cuban coun-tryside, I stumbled back to bed, still woozy from all those toxic Cristals consumed the night before. Slept so late, my ride to our first game arrived and then left when no one could rouse me from bed.
Cristals will do that to you. The Cuban brew trickles down your gullet smoothly, with no more initial kick than an unusually potent Sprite. Don’t let that fool you. Imbibe two six-packs of the stuff and you marinate your gray matter in formaldehyde. When I finally stumbled into the lobby, our concierge offered to call a cab. I declined. Throughout my baseball career, I have maintained a ritual of walking or jogging to whatever stadium my team played in. It’s my way of getting a feel for a town, to see how it is laid out, and to meet its people.
A bellhop kindly scribbled directions to the ballpark on a napkin. “Just follow the stream outside,” he said, “and you will reach the center of town in half an hour.” I took to the road resembling an overgrown Huck Finn, with my baseball cap on backward and a glove dangling from the bat slung over my shoulder.
The concierge had not prepared me for such an arduous hike. That stream flowed beside a dirt walking path for only a few hundred yards before turning into a large overgrown pasture smelling of alfalfa and mildew that proved as easy to negotiate as a minefield. I had to dodge livestock, leap over steaming cow patties, elude wild dog packs, and crawl under barbed wire fences for a good mile or so before reaching the bridge that crossed into urban Vinales.
I dragged myself into the ballpark just in time for the top of the second inning. Our team was playing Pinar del Dio, the newly crowned Occidental League senior champions. Eight hundred diehards sat in the rickety wooden stands, and they cheered our opposing team’s pitcher as if he were a matador poised for the kill. His name was Lazlo, and he had once reigned as Cuba’s premier power arm, a pitcher who in his heyday could match 100-mph fastballs with Nolan Ryan.
Lazlo was fifty-five years old and carried 240 solid pounds on his six-foot-four frame. His pitching mechanics looked perfect. At the start of his delivery, Lazlo lifted his left foot up until all his weight rested on his right leg. He pushed off the mound toward home plate while his right arm buggy-whipped straight over the top. A long, balanced stride kept his hips down low to the ground, loading his entire mass behind every pitch he threw.
You do not need a radar gun to know if someone is throwing hard. Your ears will tell you. A catcher’s mitt emits a flaccid, spongy thump when it receives a pitch light on velocity. A high-caliber fastball, though, will make tough leather scream. I had heard the whack of Lazlo’s pitches from outside the ballpark and immediately knew we were in trouble.
Lazlo served his nasty stuff to one of the most gifted catchers any of us had ever seen. This receiver—I never did learn his name—displayed such perfect balance, he could crouch on the very tips of his toes while warming up his pitchers and catch their heaviest tosses without the slightest recoil. His reflexes appeared so sharp, his feet so quick, he would pounce on bunts and come out of the chute throwing to nail runners at second. Base stealers looked helpless against him. The catcher could throw line drives to second from his knees while hardly bringing his arm back. Just a flick of the wrist would send the ball zipping across the diamond. Of course, we knew that only from watching him throw the ball around the infield. Our team put so few runners on base, we seldom found the opportunity to challenge his arm.
None of us could tell whether the catcher called a good game. There was nothing tricky about his pitch selection. He just let Lazlo rear back to deliver a fastball that appeared smooth and straight as it approached the plate, a real hitter’s pitch—until it suddenly swerved late six inches or more to either side. Lazlo brought it home at 86 miles