Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [87]
Not long after that, I played first base in a game against a team from Chelsea. The second batter up hit a screaming one-hopper that glanced off first at a funky angle to catch me smack on the right eyebrow. Blood dyed my uniform shirt crimson. Several teammates offered to take me to the hospital. My departure would have left us with only eight players on the field, and our club would have lost the game on a forfeit. I remembered how Rollie had stayed to cheer for us after his heart attack; there was no way anyone could remove me from this field. A nurse came from the stands and butterflied my wound with duct tape. I played all nine innings and hit two home runs with blood streaming in my eyes. We won the game. Might not have made it without Rollie’s example spurring me on.
I know that sounds a bit rah-rah, but, on my word, I’d run through a cheesecloth wall for that man.
Most Vermonters root for the Boston Red Sox. Many of them dream of having a son or grandson grow up to play for the home team in Fenway Park. Not too long ago one of these Sox diehards knocked on my front door. He was a tall, powerfully built elderly man with wispy white hair receding at the crown. Liver spots speckled his face. He introduced himself as Bob Sparks, a local who had worked as an athletic trainer at Dartmouth College for over forty years.
We sat in my kitchen, eating Diana’s freshly baked apple pie, while he told me something of himself. His wife had died only two weeks earlier in a rest home; he still could not understand why her health had failed. A cancer operation had recently removed part of his own lung, but he assured us he felt fit as ever. His son, a heart doctor, lived in San Diego. When Bob told me how his boy made more money in one year than he himself had taken home in a lifetime, not a trace of bitterness colored his voice. Only pride.
He recalled working with Jim Beattie and several other future major leaguers while they attended Dartmouth, and asked me to show him the various grips I used to throw my different breaking balls. I had no idea where this was going until he removed a snapshot from his wallet and slid it across the table.
“That’s my grandson, Bill. He’s the top soccer player for his age in all of San Diego, and that’s out of more than four hundred participants. But he’s an even better baseball player. He can field like a pro at any position and has the same swing as Nomar Garciaparra. I came here to see if you can help us get him on the Red Sox.”
The photo depicted a broad-shouldered, light-haired youth about to run from the batter’s box after finishing his swing. A textbook follow-through had propelled his bat behind his back on a perfectly level plane. His right leg had already crossed over to carry him toward first. His body language indicated that his weight had shifted forward just at the point of contact, and I could see how he had kept his shoulder tucked in to generate maximum power. Garciaparra? Hell, he looked like Joe DiMaggio. Only one problem, though—this boy appeared to be no more than twelve years old.
I explained to Bob how major-league rules prohibited teams from signing anyone under eighteen. It would be at least six years before the Red Sox had an opportunity to draft this prodigy. He pondered that a moment and said, “All right, why don’t we do this? I’ll come back just before he graduates high school, and you can call the Red Sox and tell them to give him a look.” We shook hands on