Plunking Reggie Jackson Read online

  His bed and study desk were in the bedroom, which was also spacious. When he got mail, his mother left it on the study desk. Today there were three letters. Two were from college athletic departments—Indiana University and Murray State, specifically. Coley opened them and glanced at them ever so briefly before tossing them. He was still getting letters from colleges even though he had already signed a national letter of intent with Bradley. It was the reality of mailing lists that once your name was on them, they never seemed to take you off.

  The third letter was from the Royals’ complex in Fort Myers, Florida. It was signed by a player development representative named Bobby Esau. Esau’s letter said he planned to be in Coley’s region in about a month, looking at prospects. He hoped to see Coley pitch and wondered if they might be able to get together for a visit.

  After he read through the letter a second time, Coley decided to keep it. This wasn’t the first letter he’d received from a big-league organization, not by a long shot; but some of them were only form letters, not worth saving. He knew that player development representative was just a la-di-da name for talent scout.

  Coley looked at the textbooks in the center of his study desk, stacked with the values survey he was supposed to do for human dynamics. They weren’t in this prominent position by accident. His mother had placed them, just as purposefully as she had placed the mail. She had been urging him to take this homework along on the Florida trip so as to make some productive use of his free time. In his mind’s eye he pictured Mrs. Alvarez seated behind her desk and staring at him with that arched eyebrow.

  Right after that he thought of Bree, the girl in the library. He remembered her pale skin and her reddish hair.

  He nuked two ham-and-cheese sandwiches in the microwave, then took them, along with a twenty-ounce Pepsi, out onto the deck to eat. The sun couldn’t seem to drive the temperature above the 45-degree mark. He could only hope it would warm up by the time they got back from Tampa.

  Illinois weather in early spring was often nasty for baseball, which was why Coley had wanted to sign a letter of intent with Southern Cal or Arizona or Florida. He hated to pitch in cold weather.

  And those were only a few of the warm-climate schools that had offered him a scholarship. His father had nixed those options, even though they were prestige opportunities with the potential to maximize any baseball player’s development and market value. Coley knew why—if he was that far away from home, his father’s level of control would be reduced. If Dad was a father in the first place, he was an agent in the here and now.

  He devoured his second sandwich nearly as rapidly as the first. Washing it down with the Pepsi, he walked clear back to the bull pen, where next to the mound there were two dozen baseballs in a plastic milk crate covered with a yellow poncho. Most of the balls were old, but some were in decent shape.

  With no glove and the wrong shoes, he took one of the balls and stood on the mound in the stretch position. He wasn’t sure if he intended to throw the ball or not. He stared at the rigid Reggie Jackson, dug in fearlessly, bat at the ready position. As he stood by himself in this spot it was only natural for Coley to think of Patrick.

  Patrick was dead now, and had been for four years. The mementos in the shrine room would never—could never—change. But if that was the glory in it, it was also death; the things that could never change.

  It was Patrick who’d shown him how to plunk Reggie Jackson so you could get a gong sound. Even then Patrick had a major-league arm, so it took more than simply hitting the statue in the right spot, you had to have some serious velocity as well. Coley remembered Patrick’s demonstration clearly—how if you hit the statue just beneath its bronze rib cage, in precisely the right spot, there was a hollow resonance that produced a mellifluous gonging tone. It was sort of like tapping a wine glass with a spoon in just the right location.

  It had taken Patrick six or eight pitches to plunk the statue just right. Other times, when he hit the shoulder or the kneecap or the elbow, there was a tinnier sound. Sort of a clink or tank, like a plucked guitar string when it isn’t held down clean along the fret. It wasn’t the same as the real thing.

  “Won’t Dad be pissed if he knows you’re hitting the statue on purpose?” Coley remembered asking.

  “Who gives a shit?” Patrick had replied.

  Since Coley was only twelve at the time, he hadn’t been strong enough to deliver the heat; not enough velocity. Even when he hit the statue squarely, he only got one of the clinks or a thin kind of pink. No gong. But Big Brother had encouraged him by saying, “Don’t worry, your day will come.”

  Another memory associated with Patrick was as embarrassing and frustrating as it was vivid. He recalled the time Patrick was home for a weekend in June, between his tour of duty in the instructional league and the date he was to report to the Mets’ complex in Tampa. Along with Mom and Dad, Patrick had come out to watch Coley’s PONY League game at Washington Park.

  Coley had been playing first base that day, which wasn’t his usual position. He didn’t like it. In the sixth inning a guy named Leon Tibbs came out of the baseline in a rundown play. His hard plastic cleats slammed into Coley’s wrist and knocked the ball out of his glove. Tibbs was safe, while Coley had to scramble after the loose ball, which was rolling into foul territory. He got it in time to make sure Tibbs didn’t advance, but then he sat square on his butt and began massaging his sore wrist. The ump called time.

  Coley knew he had pain, but he also knew that the only real injury was to his pride. It was the humiliation of coughing up the ball in a tough-guy collision. He was content to sit there for a few moments and absorb any sympathy that the spectators might be inclined to spend on his condition. From the corner of his eye Coley was able to watch his family’s reactions.

  His mother made a steeple of her two index fingers while she chewed at her nails.

  His father stood up abruptly to leave, by way of the exit behind the bleachers.

  “Get up,” he heard Patrick say. “For Christ’s sake, get up.”

  After the game, by the time Coley got home, he had forgotten about the incident. The entire game, for that matter. He was sitting in the family room with an ice pack on his wrist, watching MTV and eating from a bag of Fritos.

  That was when Patrick had entered the room and told him to get on his feet. Big Brother was wearing his Nike spikes and carrying his glove.

  “What for?” asked Coley.

  “We’re gonna throw.”

  “We’re gonna throw?”

  “I’m gonna throw. You’re gonna catch.”

  “My wrist hurts,” protested Coley. “Besides, I’m tired.”

  “You ain’t that tired and you can kiss off that little boo-boo on your wrist. Get up.”

  Patrick was tough. God, he was so mentally tough. Patrick had led him to the bull pen, where he stationed him behind home plate right after giving him the catcher’s mitt. Standing on the pitcher’s mound, Patrick warmed up only briefly before he started humming fastballs. Coley took them in the crouch, the motionless Reggie Jackson looming above his right shoulder.

  Patrick threw harder and harder. He kept them in the strike zone, but so far inside at times Coley was afraid the ball might nick the statue, which would make catching it like a foul tip. Patrick kept the ball in the 90 to 92 mph range. Coley was flinching each time, but he was making the catches just the same. He might have quit at any time, but it was the principle of the thing, to show his big brother what he was made of, never mind that Patrick’s deliveries were power pitches even by big-league standards.

  At the time, he was only thirteen years old, fourteen at the most. Humiliated but determined, Coley had tears running down his face. Fiercely, he tried throwing the ball back at Patrick each time as hard as he could, as if to do unto his big brother what was being done unto him, knowing all the while what a foolish attempt it was. By the time Patrick said they were done, Coley’s hand was burning so hot he had forgotten all about th
e sore wrist.

  The way Coley remembered that ordeal, his only consolation was that neither of his parents was there to watch it. Whatever agenda there was, it was exclusively between him and Patrick.

  His mother’s voice returned him to the present. She was standing on the deck, holding the cordless phone. She called to him, “The phone’s for you.”

  Coley walked to the deck, where his mother was holding the phone. “Are you packed yet?” she asked him.

  “Not yet.”

  “You need to get your things packed as soon as possible.”

  “Okay, okay.” He took the phone and discovered it was his friend Rico.

  “Bring that new bat you’ve got, that thirty-two.”

  “You want me to bring that bat to Florida?”

  “Bring it,” replied Rico. “I love that bat.”

  “A bat’s a bat, Rico. Besides, I’ve got enough stuff to pack without draggin’ a bat along.”

  “But I love that bat,” his friend repeated. “You just bring it, and I’ll take it off your hands. I’ll take it on the plane, I’ll take it to the hotel. It won’t be no trouble for you at all, I’ll take full responsibility.”

  “I’ll bring it if I can find it,” said Coley.

  “You can find it.”

  Coley tried to remember where he’d put it. If it was in that disorderly pile of equipment downstairs, he might have to hunt forever. “I’ll bring it if I can find it,” he said again.

  After he hung up the phone, he went directly downstairs, where he started some lifting. Flat on his back, he commenced a series of bench presses at 190 pounds.

  He was on his twelfth rep when his father came down. He hadn’t heard him enter the house.

  When Coley’s father saw him lifting, he said, “Good for you.” Coley put the bar in the cradle for a brief rest but didn’t release his grip on it.

  “Are you ready for Florida?” his father asked.

  “I’m ready.”

  “God, I wish I could go with you. I wish I didn’t have these meetings.”

  Coley turned his head. His old man was removing his sport coat and loosening his tie. Ben Burke was a handsome man; everybody said so, and it was true. He was graying at the temples, but tall and lean. He even kept a year-round tan by regular visits to his health and fitness club. Coley tried to imagine how he might feel about him if he’d never met him before, if he were seeing him for the first time.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “I heard you,” Coley answered. “You wish you could go on the trip with us. You’d like to be a chaperone and a coach.”

  “So? Whatta you think?”

  “I think it’d be nice if you could go,” Coley lied. In fact, it was a massive relief to him that Ben Burke wouldn’t be anywhere near on this trip. The only time baseball was any fun was when he could play the game out from under his father’s scrutiny.

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant, what do you think of your great good luck that you’re on a high school baseball team that gets to spend spring vacation in Tampa?”

  “I think it’s great.”

  “Well, think about it. How many teams get an opportunity like you guys are getting?”

  “Not many,” Coley said. He turned his head back and stared up at the bar. He grabbed it again, wiggling his fingers to secure the right grip. His father was cuing him for another thank-you. He had put up most of the money for their airline tickets, but how many words of gratitude did he need? Hadn’t Coach Mason already thanked him a thousand times?

  “I got a letter from Bobby Esau,” said Ben. “I thought you might want to see it.”

  “I got one too.”

  His dad shrugged. “Oh, well, take a look at this one anyway. Maybe it’s the same, maybe it’s different.”

  “Okay.” Coley lifted the weights from their cradle and started a second series of slow bench presses. He inhaled and exhaled explosively each time he returned the bar to his chest.

  “Now, when you’re down in Florida,” his father said, “I want you to concentrate hard on that front shoulder. Don’t let it fly open, okay?”

  This was his father’s real reason for coming down in the first place. The pitching mechanics lecture. Coley had wondered how long it would take him to get around to it. Would it be the only lecture from his father’s collection, or would he have to listen to the I don’t want to hear any report that you were batting right-handed one? Or maybe the I put up big bucks for this trip you guys are taking, I figure I’ve earned the right to lay down a few guidelines.

  “Okay,” Coley finally said, without taking his eyes from the weight bar.

  “We haven’t made all these videotapes for nothing, and we haven’t studied them for nothing.”

  “I know.” Up, down, up, down, breathing in and out fiercely at the conclusion of each repetition.

  “It’s not the kind of flaw that you can correct overnight. And it sure as hell won’t correct itself. You have to keep your concentration at all times.”

  Up, down. Up, down. Coley had heard it all a hundred times before. Or was it a thousand? But Coley was only listening with half his brain. He was staring straight up at the undressed form of Cindy Crawford and, in his imagination, trying to superimpose Bree Madison’s face on it. He found it was easier thought than done. “Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled.

  “I do worry about it, because it’s important. Great pitchers aren’t just made out of arm speed and physical talent. They combine that with the mental part—concentration and knowledge of pitching mechanics.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Coley muttered. “That’s what us great pitchers do.” It was scarcely more than a whisper, because if his father heard him, there would probably be a big-time quarrel.

  It was after eight in the evening by the time his mother returned from showing a house on the East Side. When she came down, Coley was in the process of packing his duffel bag, the big blue one with the silver Nike swoosh. She was still wearing the company blazer.

  She’d made a stop at Von Maur’s to buy him a handsome leather travel kit with rigid partitions that made places for toothpaste, deodorant, shaving lotion, and the like. She’d already put a new razor and a bottle of Tylenol in one of the small compartments.

  “Thanks, Ma. It’s real nice.” He was in the process of trying to force the aluminum bat into the duffel bag, but it was too long.

  “Why are you taking that bat?”

  “Rico wants it. He asked me to bring it.”

  “Your team doesn’t have bats now?”

  “The team has lots of bats. He’s just crazy about this one. Don’t ask me why.”

  “I can’t believe you’re going to take that thing on the plane with you.”

  “I’m not going to carry it on,” Coley explained, “it’ll go in the cargo section with the rest of the equipment.”

  “It would seem to me that a bat is a bat,” his mother declared.

  “Yeah, me too. But it doesn’t seem that way to Rico. Anyway, it’s no skin off my ass; if he wants it so bad, I’ll bring it along.”

  “Please watch your language, Coley. You’re not in the locker room yet.”

  “Sorry.” Weren’t those the same exact words Mrs. Alvarez had used? “What did you want to tell me?”

  “What makes you think I have something to tell you?”

  “I can just tell, Ma. You think I don’t know when you’ve got something on your mind?” He was trying to zip up his duffel bag. The bat was not going to fit inside.

  “All right, I do have something.” She sat on the edge of the bed, then straightened her skirt and the hem of her blazer before she said, “I want you to behave yourself.”

  “In Tampa, you mean.”

  “In Tampa, I mean. I want you to behave yourself and set a good example for the younger boys.”

  “I’ll behave myself,” Coley assured her. He looked down. He knew where she was going with this; he only hoped she wouldn’t reach her destination. “
I always behave myself,” Coley said. And it was true. An academic underachiever he might be, but the closest thing he had to a reckless lifestyle habit was the occasional beer he drank on the deck of their house. No substance abuse or other manner of antisocial habits. Coley’s idea of nightlife was staying up till 2 A.M. to watch basketball games telecast from the West Coast. In his room.

  “You’re the captain,” his mother persisted. “You need to set an example.”

  Coley chuckled with a sliver of contempt. “I’ll set an example, Ma. You have nothin’ to worry about. But as for bein’ captain of the team, nobody’s impressed with that. No scout or recruiter in the country cares who’s captain.”

  “I’m impressed. Is that okay? I’m impressed. You were elected captain by your teammates. It might not excite the New York Yankees, but it pleases me.”

  “Okay, okay. I told you not to worry.”

  She looked him straight in the eye. “I have the right to worry, Coley. The last time I sent a son to Florida to play baseball, he came home in a coffin.”

  There. She had to take it to the bottom line. She had to bring up Patrick’s death, and she had to do it right before his bon voyage. Coley was almost annoyed with her; she could have stopped before taking it to the limit.

  Almost annoyed. But he had seen her caught in the middle too many times. “This is different, Ma. This isn’t the big leagues.”

  Her eyes were lowered now. He heard her say, “It might be different, but it’s still baseball, and it’s still Florida.”

  All he could think of was to repeat himself. “Yeah, but this is different.” He resisted the urge to reach out and touch the back of her hand; physical modes of affection were not part of the family tradition.

  His mother didn’t cry. When she lifted her face to look again directly at him, her eyes were glistening, but no tears. “You say it’s different and I hope you’re right.”

  “This is a high school team with coaches and chaperones. It’s not nearly the same thing as spring training camp for a major-league team.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she repeated. “But I’ve earned the right, Coley. I helped Patrick pack his things too.”