From the Journal of the Ghosts GM: Pt. 1
Saturday, April 2, 2011
“Nii-what?”
“Niihama-shi.”
She glowered at me. “Where the hell’s that?”
“
“Where the hell’s that?”
I glowered at her. She knew damn well where Japan was but was making a point. She’d moved around with me so much, so many crappy little towns as I bounced from team to team, trying to hang on first as a player, then a manager. Now the big call had finally come and it was half a world away.
“It’s the GM position, Tina. In the majors.”
“I don’t know how you can call anything in
“I’ll be running a big league squad. It’ll be my team.”
She bit down on her lower lip, holding back any assortment of names she could have called me. She held back because she knew all too well what it meant.
I was 19 years old when I signed my first pro contract, the day after graduating high school in 1983. While my parents gawked at the dollars involved, I could not quite grasp the logo at the top of the contract. The Yankees. The absolute pinnacle: The New York Yankees. I rushed my signature, afraid they’d change their mind.
They sent me upstate to a little college town called Oneonta for their single-A squad in the New York Penn League.
The park seated about 400 and the locals didn’t bother learning our names since few of use would stay more than a season. The locker room had rats and the stands wobbled perceptibly. High school girls lined up after the games to get our signatures, blushing as they handed us their pens, some slipping us phone numbers.
I was a big guy even at 19, nearing 200 pounds, so they plunked me down at first base and hoped I wouldn’t drop too many throws from third. The manager, Livesey, with a bulbous nose reddened from years of cheap bourbon, batted me clean up.
In my first game, in my first at bat, I smashed that first pitch over the right field fence. The pitcher, perhaps also in his pro debut, looked as if the ball had struck him in his gut. In my second at bat, with a different pitcher, I did the same, this time to left, driving in a runner. It was hard containing my grin, until Livesey sneered at me.
By the fifth game I had hit seven home runs and word quickly filtered through the town to get over to the park; a star was in the making, he’d soon be up in double-A. I tried my best to stay calm, but when I called home I found my parents giddy with delight. The girls outside the park were asking specifically for my signature now, and the clubhouse boy separated my bats from the others so as not to risk disturbing my run.
In that sixth game of my professional baseball career, as the sun settled down below the Catskill Mountains, I powered two more over the fence in my first two at bats. Touching the plate that second time, I heard adults in the stands chanting my name, and found myself struggling for a breath.
I was walked in my third at bat, semi-intentionally perhaps, the MR offering nothing close to the zone.
But for my fourth trip the closer for the Erie Cardinals was on the mound, and he quickly got ahead as I fouled off two. Then, at 0-and-2, he snuck one inside, down low. It curved and fluttered and dipped and seemed to mock me as I flailed at it. In an instant the Cards were walking off the field. I stood briefly at the plate, pondering the pitch, then glanced at the reliever. He was still on the mound, grinning broadly at me as if to say, “Well there, now we have the answer.”
That night after the game, I tried to forget about that pitch. I had hit 9 home runs in six professional games and my teammates were now talking openly that I’d be gone soon, up to double-A if not higher. They took me out clubbing, each fighting to buy me drinks, urging me to remember them when I was up in the bigs.
I learned later that immediately after the game, Livesey had closed his office door and called
The guys and I closed two bars that night, and then some girls from the state University told us about an off-campus party that was still going. They danced around us in that house, pouring us drinks, singing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and asking which one of us was the soon-to-be major league stud. One girl pulled me upstairs and switched off the lights. All I could see was the closer’s knowing smile.
And on the seventh day, a great contingent of the New York Yankees front office flew in to the Oneonta airfield on one of Mr. Steinbrenner‘s smaller jets, then huddled in the stands as we took the field.
–TO BE CONTINUED–