A Cup of Coffee with the Cardinals

the big scene came the day before I was to leave: it floated up there like a hanging curve ball--the kind a batter just can't resist

It's winter now and a long way from baseball. And I'm 41 and it all happened ten years ago, so, in a sense, it really doesn't make much difference. Dad's dead now, died seven years ago. Notice how I say "Dad," that familiar, intimate term. It brings to mind one of those scenes from a sentimental movie where the white-haired father has his arm around the shoulders of his 12-year-old son as they stroll along the riverbank. It seems clear that the father is telling his son something of great importance, something about honesty, or ethics, or maybe even love. I wonder if anyone ever does anything like that with his (continued on page 185) Coffee with the Cardinals (continued from page 141) father. I never did. He was never an easy man to talk to. Yet I did call him Dad, as if we had shared that scene on the riverbank. We really talked only once and that was for just an instant ten years ago. After that, he lived for nearly three years, but Mom says he wasn't his old self. I tell myself that he must have realized we went wrong and it took something out of him, but then, I have a vivid imagination. What probably happened was that he knew he'd never stay off the booze and decided to have a good time during those days he had left. There I go again, saying he knew this or decided that. He wasn't like that. I am. He never seemed to analyze anything or to comprehend the implications of anything. He just acted. In a way, I envy him. I guess what finally happened to him was that his liver gave out, he got old and he died. It may be as simple as that.

Anyway, on that day that Mom called about Dad, I was 31 years old and pitching with Tulsa in the Cardinal organization. Tulsa is Triple A, but 31 is pretty old if you haven't made the majors. I had had "a cup of coffee" with the Cardinals the year before. I had been up with them for less than a month at the end of the season, but I could never swallow the lump and kept hanging my curve ball. I worked out with the Cardinals in spring training the following year, but they sent me to Tulsa when the season started. In spite of the fact that I was 31 and still in the minors, things were looking pretty good, as if I might get another shot with the big team. At Tulsa, I was coached by Wild Bill Hocick, who used to be with the White Sox. He helped me with two things. First, he helped me change my motion and develop a really nice change-up, which gave me confidence. Then he taught me something that was hard for me to learn. He taught me to throw at the batter. I didn't want to do that. Once, in high school, one of my teammates had been hit in the head during batting practice and had almost died. And even though he lived, his coordination was never quite the same. So I couldn't bring myself to throw at the batter. But Wild Bill told me I'd never make the majors without doing it, that they were digging in against me, that it was part of the game and that major-leaguers knew that it was part of the game. I wanted to make the majors, so I let Wild Bill convince me. When I thought a batter was digging in, I would throw at his chin. On left-handers, it wasn't so bad, but on right-handers, the ball would slide in and they had to go down in a hurry. It wasn't a month after I began brushing them back before the word was out and no one dug in anymore. I was doing the intimidating. Don't let anyone kid you, almost all hitters, even the best, are afraid of getting hit.

By early August, when I got the phone call about Dad, I was 15 and 6 with a 3.14 ERA. So, you see, I was ready. I would get the nod any day. The Cardinals were contenders and could use another arm in the stretch.

The call from Mom came on a Sunday night just after I had beat Denver 5--3. They had gotten two of their runs in the top of the seventh with two out when Susman, our shortstop, booted one, and Denver's center fielder had skied a fastball out of the park. I got the last batter on the change-up.

I was staying with a family in town and when I got back to my room late that night after dinner and a movie, there was a message that I should call my mother. My stomach fluttered as I called. She never called long distance unless something was wrong. As soon as she answered, I knew just how bad it was because of the way her voice trembled. "It's your father, Roger. We had to rush him to Jewish Hospital this morning." She paused to hold back a sob. "I don't know if he's going to make it this time, Roger." I knew then that it was his drinking. He'd been in the hospital twice before and the doctor had told him no more booze, that his liver was shot. He had stopped for about six months but then, on his birthday, had gone on a two-day drunk. Ever since, it had been off and on. He'd lay off for a month or two, but then he'd be back at it. Luckily, he had a well-established sporting-goods store in St. Louis that pretty much ran itself, so it didn't make a lot of difference if he didn't show up. I asked Mom to be specific about how bad it was this time and she said, "He was on one of his binges Friday afternoon. He had lunch with Harry Diamond and started drinking. Harry called to warn me and say he was sorry. Dad got home about one Saturday morning and slept in your room, the way he's been doing when he comes home like that--if he comes home at all. We didn't talk about it Saturday morning, but then, Saturday afternoon, he was watching the Cardinal game when I heard him cry out. At first I thought he was just mad about the game. You know how he gets. But after I thought a second, I knew it was different."

She paused for a long time and I could hear the clock chiming in their living room. Then she went on, "I went into the living room and he was bent over in his lounger, holding his stomach. At first he didn't answer me when I talked to him--he just stayed bent over. I kept shouting, 'Mike, Mike, Mike,' and finally he straightened up. His face was all white and sweaty. He said he had a bad pain in his stomach but that it was passing, that maybe it was gas."

Mom stopped then and started to cry. I tried to calm her down and finally she went on. "Oh, God, Roger, it didn't stop. He kept getting them and they got worse. I gave him some Pepto-Bismol, but it didn't help at all. I tried to get him to call the doctor, but you know how he is. The pains went on all day and I was about to go nuts. Then, last night, he went into the bathroom and I heard him screaming for me." She caught her breath and I held mine. "I went in there and saw there was blood all over the toilet and even on the floor." She was crying hard now but managed to go on, "When the bleeding let up a little, I called an ambulance and they took him to Jewish."

"What'd they say there?" I asked, afraid to know.

"They stopped the bleeding, or it just stopped, or something. Oh, God, I don't know. Dr. Fischer says it's his drinking. That he's injured his organs. That the blood is from his pancreas and he doesn't know if Dad is going to make it this time. He says it's touch and go."

"How is he now?" I asked, my own voice trembling.

"Oh, he's out of his head now. He's seeing things and all that."

"Seeing things?"

"Yes, yes, animals and things on the wall. He thinks things are after him. The d.t.s. He's been getting them the last year or so. I didn't want to tell you."

I told her I would get there as soon as I could and hung up. I thought for a moment and then woke up Wild Bill with a phone call. He understood and told me to head for home but to try to make it back for my turn in the rotation. I checked with the airport, but there wasn't a flight to St. Louis until almost noon the next day, so even though I was bushed after pitching a full game and it was past 11, I decided I would drive. I couldn't do that now, but ten years ago I didn't think much of it.

The drive from Tulsa to St. Louis takes about seven hours and some of it is through beautiful country, especially the Ozarks in southern Missouri, but most of my driving was at night and I was more interested in my own thoughts than in the landscape. I was driving a Sting Ray convertible then. I drive a VW now, and that tells you something. The Sting Ray was taking most of my money, but that was all right, because I didn't have anything else to spend it on. I didn't have a girl like most of the guys did, and I drank very little even then. Maybe it was because of my conditioning program or maybe it was because I saw what it was doing to Dad.

Even with the top down, it was still hot crossing eastern Oklahoma and southern Missouri during August, but it was nice to look up at the stars and be alone to think. Playing ball, it seems like you're never alone. There's always practice, a game, the locker room, those terrible trips on the bus with the guys playing grab ass. It's all right when you're 19, but by the time you're 30, it starts to wear thin. The practical jokes on the bus are what get to you. Things like a couple of guys seeing if they can light the gas of their farts. That and other intellectual pursuits. So I was happy to be alone. But I dreaded seeing Dad in the hospital. The last time he had been sick was during the winter when I was living in St. Louis and going to school. He wouldn't admit how sick he really was. I told him to stop the tough-guy crap, but he wouldn't listen. Too many James Cagney movies. He sat there in bed, looking so healthy that I almost believed there wasn't anything wrong with him. His full white hair was nicely brushed and his face was tanned from his days on the golf course. Only his rheumy eyes gave him away. He would laugh and say in his gravelly voice with its touch of Irish lilt, "Those doctors don't know shit about this. Your great-grandpa drank until his dying day and he lasted until he was eighty. You don't go until your time comes."

I tried to reason with him, but he wouldn't listen. He never seemed to hear anyone but himself and never seemed to realize how what he said would affect people. He always said he was truthful. He'd say, "I tell people the truth and if they don't like it, it's too damned bad. There's nothing wrong with the truth." I thought about that attitude as I drove back to St. Louis and I recalled my first vivid memory of his peculiar way of seeing the world. I had never talked about the incident with anyone or even thought about it, but it was always there in my mind, and that night, driving across Oklahoma and Missouri, I must have gone over it and incidents like it a hundred times. The memory goes like this: I know I was 11, because it was 1946, the winter after the Cardinals had won the world series. I can even name the Cardinal line-up and tell you what everyone's batting average was. Enos Slaughter probably doesn't remember his average for that season, but I do. So I was 11 and had gotten a new glove for Christmas. It was a Marty Marion model made by Rawlings and cost $14, a lot for a glove then. It was supposed to be from both my mom and my dad, but I knew it was really from him. The day after Christmas, it was warm for St. Louis. It must have been in the 40s. I wanted to try out my new glove and talked Dad into going to the empty lot next door. He got the equipment bag out of the basement. It was full of balls, bats and a few old gloves. He was 42 or 43 then but was still playing third base in a city league and coaching the team. I don't know why he was still playing third at his age. His reflexes must have been gone and he would have been a lot better off at second, but, as I said, he was coaching the team.

We walked over to the empty lot with him warning me to warm up slowly, not to throw hard until I was good and warm. I was only half listening, because I was so anxious to hear the ball pop in the "deep well" pocket of my new glove. I was still playing shortstop then, because Marty Marion was the hero of every kid in St. Louis. His range at shortstop was beautiful and if you had ever seen him leap high into the air to spear a line drive, you would love him forever. So I wanted to be another Marty Marion. It wasn't until I was 15 and everyone noticed what a strong arm I had that I began pitching.

At the lot, Dad fished a ball and a glove out of the bag and we played catch at a short distance. The new glove was stiff, even though I had oiled it, but it felt good and I could imagine myself ranging far to my left and right, scooping up ground balls. I was starting to loosen up and fired a couple of balls at my dad. He laughed, told me to take it easy but snapped some back at me so that they popped into the pocket and stung my winter palm. Although the temperature was only in the 40s, it was a clear day with a gentle, warm breeze that promised someday spring would come. After we had played catch for about 20 minutes, Dad took out a bat and said he'd hit me some grounders. At first, I was eager, but after a few, I wasn't sure. The lot was no freshly dragged infield; it was rough and covered with brown winter stubble. Some balls would come true, each hop coming as it should. Then a low ground ball would suddenly hit something and I would get a charity hop, the ball bouncing high into the air so that it was easy to cover. Dad started to hit them a little sharper and kept telling me to keep my head down. One grass cutter took a sudden hop and hit me on the wrist of my glove hand. My wrist and hand went numb and took on that sick, weak feeling. Dad stood smiling, his eyes narrowed against the glint of the winter sun, and told me to shake it off. I did and he started hitting some more grounders, even though I had had enough. I struggled to keep my nose down, but then one took a bad hop and caught my lower lip. It didn't bleed, but it was split, and I could feel it beginning to puff up. I took off my glove and stood pressing my finger against my lip. My dad laughed softly. "That one catch you a little?"

I nodded and tried to smile. I was ready to go back to a game of catch, but he said, "Come on, don't stop now, you'll get ball-shy. Take some more and keep your head down. If you keep your head down and your eye on the ball, you'll never get hurt."

I nodded and reluctantly put the glove on as I leaned over into my infielder's crouch. But I couldn't keep my head down and a couple went through my legs. "Keep your nose down," Dad shouted, and he kept firing them at me. Then one took a crazy hop, but one I could have handled easily if I had had my eye on it. The ball sailed over my left shoulder and went out into the street. I was thankful to have a chance to take a break and go after it. When I picked it up and turned to make the long throw, Dad was putting the equipment back into the bag. Without looking at me, he said, "You'll never be a ballplayer if you're afraid of the ball."

Now, more than 30 years later, I know that he didn't intend to be cruel, that he really didn't understand the effect it would have on me. That kind of thing would never have hurt him. He would take it as the necessary truth, the kind of thing that one would have to admit if he wanted to be a ballplayer. It just never occurred to him how I would take it. And it's not as easy as saying that he should have understood that I was a kid and that you can't treat kids that way. That's part of it, but only part of it. Even now, that kind of thing would hurt me. So we were simply different kinds of people. I know what that kind of thing does to a kid, and it's probably the basic reason. I've never gotten married and had kids. I teach them now, coach them in baseball and teach them history, at the high school level, and that's enough for me.

During the drive to St. Louis, I kept going over that incident that had taken place so many years ago. I was amazed that I remembered it so vividly, even though I had never thought about it before. All I knew was that it now seemed important--and I knew why. It looked as if my dad might die and I had never really thought about the eventuality of his death. That may seem hard to believe, but at 31, I had never really thought about the fact that my father was going to die someday. I think it comes from playing ball. It's a game played by overgrown boys and it takes longer for them to grow up. It's true. I've known coaches and managers in their 60s who still acted as if they were in their 20s. It's as if they never think about anything. I guess for them death is as surprising as a high hard one right at your head. Suddenly, you drop to get out of the way, a kind of instinct, instinct sharpened by practice. Yet surely there's an instinct about death, too, but they never sharpen it. Anyway, I had to admit to myself that Dad might die and that things were not right between us. Things hadn't really been right since that day, after Christmas in 1946. I don't think he ever really believed I'd make it. He sort of lost faith in me. He came to my high school games whenever I pitched, but he never came to the basketball games, because I didn't start. I went home after one basketball game and told him I'd gotten to play the last three or four minutes. He told me I should have told the coach to go to hell, that three or four minutes wasn't enough time to get all sweaty and have to take a shower for.

After a stop in Rolla for breakfast, I reached St. Louis about seven in the morning; it was already hot and humid. Without even stopping to clean up, I drove straight to Jewish Hospital. It was too early for visiting hours, but they let me go up to his room. The nurse at the hall desk told me my father was probably asleep and even if he wasn't, he might not be able to recognize me.

There were two beds in the room. Someone was asleep in the bed next to the window and looked like a pile of twisted sheets. Dad was in the bed next to the door. He was asleep or seemed to be. His white hair was brushed straight back and looked thinner than I had remembered it. And he looked tired, but otherwise he was the same, except that his lips were swollen and cracked, as if he were dehydrated. His eyes fluttered open and he looked up at me and smiled. "Roger," he managed to say and reached out a hand. It was his left hand, the one that was larger from being battered by so many baseballs.

"Hey, Dad," I answered. "You missed a good one yesterday. I went all the way against Denver." It was all I could think of to say. It was always the same; baseball was all we ever talked about. Here he was, maybe on his deathbed, and all I could find to talk about was my game against Denver.

He smiled and pointed to his bedside table and after a moment, I figured out that he wanted the washcloth lying there. I wet it and started to put it on his forehead, but he took it and began sucking on it. His eyes fluttered shut again and I stood waiting until he came around. After a few minutes, he looked at me and said hoarsely, "Get my cigarettes out of my pants in the closet, will you, Rog?"

I started for them and then stopped. "Are you supposed to smoke?"

He nodded and smiled slightly--the old charm. "Yeah, it's Ok. They don't care."

But I knew he was lying and laughed. "No, you don't. I know you and your tricks. I'll wait until I hear it's Ok from the nurse."

He accepted that without protest, because he was too weak to argue. After lying quietly for a few minutes, he said, "Look at that, would you?"

"What?" I asked and tried to follow the line of his eyes but couldn't see what he meant.

"Over there," he said and, raising his arm slowly, as if it were weighted, pointed toward the opposite wall.

I shook my head and he said, "The cockroaches. See the damned things. They're all over in here. Damned things were on the sheets last night." I looked where he pointed but saw nothing. Then he laughed. "Oh, you don't get to see them. They're my cockroaches." Then he dozed off and seemed to drop into a deep sleep. I waited for a while and then went out into the hall and found a small waiting room at the end of the corridor. It was air-conditioned and had a series of windows through which the August sunlight filtered. I sat on a sofa and began reading a magazine. After a few minutes, I felt myself begin to doze and I just let it happen.

"Roger. Roger." It was my mother shaking me awake. She looked tired and worried but otherwise much the same. Her hair was still bleached, even though she was in her 50s, and her clothes were those of a younger woman, a bit too tight on her, a bit too streamlined. She sat in a chair next to me. "I just talked to Fischer and he said your father seems to be out of danger." She swallowed and shrugged. "You know, he says something could still go wrong in a case like this, but it looks as if he's out of danger."

After I had gotten some of the particulars, I asked her what had gone wrong this time. She shrugged again. "Nothing really went wrong. It's the same old story. Nothing has to be wrong." She squinted against the sunlight and I got up and closed the blinds.

When I sat down and took her hand, she went on, "We haven't been getting along very well. You know how it is." She wouldn't look at me.

"How what is?" I asked.

She stared directly at me, some irritation in her moist eyes. "For God's sake, Roger, you're thirty-one years old. You know what your father is like. It's nothing new. It doesn't get better as he gets older, the way I'd hoped. If anything, it gets worse. I won't have any peace until he's gone." She seemed horrified at her own words and began to sob. I stood up and put my arm around her shoulders. I remember wishing I were back in Tulsa, boarding the bus to start on our road trip. I knew very well about my father, but I didn't like to think about it. His drinking was not his only vice. There had been other women for years and they stayed the same age as he got older. They were my age or a little younger. Once when I was in my early 20s, I had taken my date to the Carrousel Lounge in the Chase Hotel. We were having a drink when my father walked in with a redhead. She was about 25 years old, her body poured into a white evening gown. Half the men in the room turned and looked at her. My father held her there on display for about ten seconds. He, too, looked splendid. His hair was salt and pepper then and perfectly cut and combed. His face and hands were tanned from afternoons on the golf course and he wore a camel's-hair sports jacket that must have cost him over $100 even then, in the mid-Fifties. As he scanned the room in pride, his eyes caught mine for an instant but then flicked on.

He and I didn't speak that evening and my date pretended she hadn't seen him. The next Saturday, on the golf course, we were strolling down the fairway, following one of his excellent drives, when he smiled slightly and said, "Roger, there's something I need to say to you. You're a man now and we can talk."

I knew what it was and stiffened in anticipation, but he didn't notice or didn't care. "I suppose you know, you must have some inkling," he began, "that your mother and I--that our relationship is not everything it should be. She's a good woman in many ways, and Lord knows, she's been a good mother to you, but, well, our relationship has not been complete for years."

He stopped and put his hand on my arm to stop me. "Do you understand, Roger?"

I couldn't look at him, but I nodded and said, "Yes, Dad, I think so."

He cleared his throat and said, "She says she thinks it's silly." He laughed and coughed nervously. Then he started walking again and added, "What can you say to that? What can you say when a woman says it's silly?"

I thought about that day on the golf course as I comforted my mother. What had happened between her and my father? Did she really think sexual relations were silly, or was it simply that way with him? Maybe it was silly with him because it didn't mean anything.

"I know what I said sounds horrible," my mother was saying, "but I don't know how much more I can stand. I don't know why I stay around. It's just," and she sobbed, "it's just that we've been together so long. Almost thirty-five years now." She smiled up at me, her eyes moist, her bleached hair coming loose. "You can't imagine how handsome he was, Roger. Everyone admired him. He smiled and people did what he wanted." Just then, the nurse came into the waiting room and said my father was awake and asking for me.

I stayed with Dad most of that day and did the same the next. He seemed weak and I decided to stay in St. Louis and miss my spot in the pitching rotation. I called Wild Bill and he understood. He told me to try to stay in shape, so every afternoon, I would run four or five miles in Forest Park. The run was good for me psychologically as well as physically, because it gave me a chance to get away from the smell of the hospital and think. I knew one of the reasons I didn't want to leave was that Dad and I seemed to be getting along better now than we ever had. Not that we really talked, but at least he seemed pleased with me and wasn't ever negative. I hoped that before I left, we could talk, that the subject would be something other than baseball or the nurses he thought I should pursue into the linen closet.

Gradually, he got his strength back and in a few days, he was sitting up in bed, joking and sneaking cigarettes whenever the nurse was out of sight. Once, when she caught him, he laughed and teased her about it, but she wouldn't buy it, wouldn't be charmed or kidded, and told him it was against Fischer's orders and she would get into trouble. When she left the room, his smile faded and he said to me, "She must be on the rag, crabby bitch." His smile returned and he winked at me. "You ought to get her on one of these empty beds. That's all she really needs." I wouldn't look at him and went to the window and stared out at the August traffic in St. Louis.

Otherwise, things went well between us. Probably because I was doing so well in Tulsa. Maybe he thought he had been wrong that day on the empty lot, that I was going to make it after all. We both knew it was my last chance, but neither of us ever said it. Again and again, we went over the season. He had me tell him about each game, about what pitch I threw and why. Then he wanted to know about my change-up and about the change in my motion. I felt like a fool demonstrating there in the hospital room while nurses went scurrying by. I could imagine myself in their eyes: a 30ish man with a blond crewcut, over six feet, 180 pounds, pretending I was pitching a baseball, kicking my leg up, hiding the ball behind an imaginary glove, and then pushing off. My dad had me do it a number of times and kept asking me questions. Once, when I was in the middle of my motion, the nurse Dad didn't like came in with some medicine. She glanced at me. There was a man on first and I had just finished my stretch and was glancing toward the runner, that quick flick of the eye before I started my motion toward the plate. She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that suggested she knew something about me that I didn't. Dad began bragging to her. "Roger, my son, is a professional baseball player, and he'll be with the Cardinals soon."

She was still irritated with Dad and said, "Oh, really, and where did he leave his tricycle?"

I stood there feeling foolish, my arms dangling at my sides, the same pose I struck when a hitter jumped on one of my pitches and lined it over my head and out of the park. After seeing that Dad took his medication, the nurse hurried out of the room. Dad muttered something under his breath and said, "Don't pay any attention to that little bitch. She's just mad because you won't give her a tumble. I'm going to tell Fischer about her, damn it. She can't get away with that shit."

Anyway, the big scene came the day before I was going to head back to Tulsa. It still doesn't make much sense and it may not seem like much. I don't know what got into me. Things were going well and I had passed over his comments so many times, but this one time I just couldn't let it pass. It floated there like a hanging curve ball, one that looks like a watermelon, and the batter's eyes get bigger and bigger and he starts striding into the ball. We were watching the Cardinals on television. They were in Cincinnati and it was a close game. We were having a good time exchanging comments, sharing the kind of inside information real fans know. It was late in the game and the Cardinals were one down. I think it must have been in the eighth inning. The Cardinals were at bat and had two out with a man on third. He had been hit, stole second, then went to third on a long fly to the right-center-field wall. Skillman, a left-handed hitter, was at the plate and Turrell was on the mound. He, too, was a left-hander with a fastball that smoked and a fairly good curve. That was about all he had, but he was young, 23 or 24, and threw hard. The more trouble he got into, the harder he threw, and the harder he threw, the wilder he got. It was two and two on Skillman. The last pitch had been a fastball that had moved in on him at the letters, moved in so fast that he had to spin and fall to get out of the way. Probably everybody in the park and everybody watching television knew what the next pitch would be. I'm sure Skillman knew. Clearly, the curve was coming, but it was the best one Turrell had thrown all day. It came skidding in close, looking for all the world like another fastball that might slide into the batter. And it was high. Skillman hung in there, but at the very last you could see his shoulders relax and see him go back on his heels, getting ready to make his exit. In that thousandth of a second after he made his move, so did the ball. It snapped down and away from him and caught the inside corner of the plate. The umpire's hand stabbed the air for the called third strike and Skillman turned and walked away without a hint of protest. Turrell hitched up his pants and strode off the mound. I knew how good he felt.

I was smiling at the screen. I can still see myself sitting there smiling when Dad's voice broke in, "You know what happened there?" Still lost in the beauty of what had happened. I didn't respond, but he went on. "He lost his nerve and put his foot in the bucket. He was plain scared. He doesn't have what it takes to make a major-league ballplayer. He never did and he never will. He just doesn't have the guts."

I wasn't angry. I hadn't even had the time to become upset, but I said in a level, cool voice, "What about you?"

He looked at me, that supreme confidence gone for once in his life. "Me?"

"Where are your guts? You're always talking about somebody's guts. About somebody not having what it takes to make it. But where are your guts?"

We sat staring at each other for a moment that seemed a lifetime, and then he looked away and back to the screen, where the crowd was roaring. The Reds' left fielder had hit the first pitch over the center-field wall. Dad laughed and said, "Now, that son of a bitch can hit a ball."

That was it. No more was said about it. We watched the rest of the game and then I left. We even shook hands. On the way out of town. I stopped to say goodbye to Mom, but I didn't tell her what had happened. I've never talked to anyone about it, and even after all this time, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm not sorry. I don't feel any guilt. I honestly don't feel much of anything. But isn't it important that something was finally said--something? Wasn't it good, in a way, to talk honestly for once, to talk about something other than baseball?

I drove back to Tulsa and quickly slipped into my slot in the rotation. I won my next two starts with a three-hit shutout and one that was a laugher, 12--3. In the third inning of my next outing, a line drive caught me on the point of my elbow of my pitching arm. It felt like someone had hit it with a sledge hammer. That winter, they operated on my arm and removed the chipped bone, but the next year, my arm was dead. I laid off for a year and tried again, but I was bombed. My fastball just wouldn't move, which meant the change-up wasn't very effective. So, in the stretch run, I didn't make it, but then, neither did Dad. His liver finally gave out and I went back to the funeral and stood over his coffin, remembering him hitting those sharp ground balls at me on that clear winter day that held promises of spring.

"I was 15 and 6 with a 3.14 ERA. I was ready. I would get the nod any day."