In his first time out, Ankers had to face Hoey, Charlie Snow, and Muscles. He looked to have just two pitches: a fastball and a fadeaway. Today you’d call a fadeaway a screwball or a scroogie, and it’s not usually a pitch high schoolers master. Somehow, Ankers had. He’d start it off like a speedball, but finger-lip it. Just as it got to a righthand hitter it jerked in and dropped away. With that pitch, he made Hoey and Snow look like amateur-night contestants. They both rolled out to the infield. Musselwhite, though, muscled one to the right-field wall for a triple because Ankers slipped up and threw him a fastball low and inside. Muscles batted left, and that was the perfect pitch for him to cream. Ankers learned from his mistake. From then on, he threw nothing but fadeaways and teaser fastballs.
Jumbo was batting cleanup, but Jumbo couldn’t clean Muscles off third. Ankers kamikazied him with dipsy-doodle junk, mostly fadeaway variations. Jumbo took a couple, fouled off a couple, and ended up missing a pitch-like Muscles, he batted left-that tailed away to the outside corner. This swing dumped him on his rear, a fall that seemed to shake the whole infield. I thought it might take a crane to hoist him up again, but he rolled over to all fours and got slowly to his feet.
The game went on like that. Darius made us B-squad boys look like stooges; Ankers wriggled out of every potential trap with a killer fadeaway. In fact, by the fourth inning, Sloan’d started calling him Fadeaway. It stuck. Ankers became Fadeway for ever after.
Goose eggs stacked up. Noon yawned like an oven. Each time Ankers escaped another A-squad wrecking crew with his shutout unblemished, Mister JayMac waved his regulars onto the field and yelled “Batter up!” at us scrubs. He looked to be steam-cleaning his gear from the inside out.
“We won’t git no rest,” Norm Sudikoff griped, “till the bastid has him a five-alawm heat stroke.”
I wondered about that. Should a rookie like Ankers pitch more than five hard-throwing innings? Come our next CVL game, would us Hellbenders have the bounce of boiled spaghetti? And how many times would Darius make me look like a fool? Coming to my third at bat in the top of the seventh, I’d struck out swinging and a second time counting the stitches on a goofer that’d dropped through the strike zone.
Now I felt semipanicked. Guessing what Darius planned to throw would pickle your brain. Because you couldn’t guess, you had to watch and react. So far I’d watched and reacted a lot less well than I’d just watched.
“It’s the old red-stick wagger,” Hoey welcomed me. “Wave that baton, maestro. Conduct yourself back to the bench.”
I dug in. Darius threw me some chin music for a ball, but the pitch did what he wanted, moved me off the plate. Next, a curve on the outside corner, just beyond my swing, for a called strike. I edged up a little. The next pitch jammed me, a hundred-mile-an-hour bullet. I swung in self-defense. The ball hit my bat handle and nubbed out between Hoey and Curriden on a half dozen skittering hops.
Contact! On my follow-through, the bat’s barrel had splintered like kindling, helicoptered into the outfield, and landed on the grass. My broken bat had gone farther than the ball. I ran with five inches of bat handle in my fist. My hands and forearms stung from the vibes. Hoey made a grab in the hole and threw off-balance to Jumbo. Parris, umpiring at first, signaled me safe, and not one A-squad player yelped, not even Hoey.
Darius came down off the mound and ambled over to take Jumbo’s flip-back. “Danl,” he said, about twenty feet away, “I reckon you could outrun the word God.”
It took me a minute, standing there winded, to realize he’d complimented me.
But not much happened after my scratch hit. Junior struck out, and Dobbs blooped one to Knowles at second.
Sudikoff came up. He had bulk, but Darius owned him. If I wanted to get around the bases, I’d have to shove myself along and hope a passed ball, a wild pitch, or an error on an infield grounder assisted me. But despite his praise, Darius didn’t seem to think I’d steal. He pitched from a full wind-up, not a stretch. It worked because, after his second pitch to Junior, he whipped the return throw from Dunnagin over to Jumbo and nearlybout picked me off.
On his first pitch to Sudikoff, though, I got a decent lead and broke for second the moment Darius twisted into his wind-up. Bless his heart, Sudikoff lunged at an obvious ball, missing it by a foot or better, to help me out, and I did a quick down-and-up slide into second, where Hoey knelt for a throw that never came.
I’d stolen on Darius, not Dunnagin, and when Darius had the ball again, he walked over and peered at me like I was a channel cat with legs.
“Like I say,” he said.
On his next offering to Sudikoff, I edged off second and darted for third as soon as his motion home committed him to throw. I barreled. Sudikoff laid off a low fastball-he’d already swung at one for me-and Dunnagin, uncoiling from his crouch, leapt in front of the plate and fired the ball to Curriden at third.
All my B-squad teammates popped up from our bench to watch me slide. The peg from home had me nailed, but my toe hooking the corner of the base got under Curriden’s tag.
Nutter, coaching third, gave the safe sign. Mister JayMac, out from behind the plate, agreed. A cheer went up from the B-squad bench, the A-squad boys groaned.
Darius sashayed over, loosy-goosy, to get the ball from Reese Curriden. He gave me a smirk. The smirk didn’t seem to be at me, though, but for me. “G, O, D,” Darius said. From then on, he pitched from the stretch. I’d’ve been nuts to try to steal home on him, or on a catcher as smart as Dunnagin. Anyway, I had no chance. Darius got Sudikoff on strikes, the third one a swing a herd of chiropractors could’ve retired to Bermuda on.
Sudikoff flung his bat away. “Pesky damned nigger.”
Darius had to’ve heard him, but he strolled to the A-squad dugout with his back straight and his head up and spoke not a word.
Just about then, I saw somebody in the bleachers behind our dugout: Phoebe Pharram, Mister JayMac’s great-niece.
My first thought-pretending not to see her-was, Did she see my hit? Did she see me steal second? Did she see me slide into third like the great Mike “King” Kelly?
Dumb. Phoebe was jail bait and blood kin to my boss. Why in Cupid’s name would she take a bead on me anyway? “Ichabod,” she’d called me-the high-pockets drip in an old American short story. Besides being a drip, I couldn’t talk. For God’s sake, my nickname was Dumbo.
The game goose-egged on.
But in the bottom of the eighth, Jumbo rambowed one off Fadeaway over the right-field wall, and Fadeaway fell apart, yielding four more quick runs on a series of walks and hits, including a triple by Darius.
Fadeaway slapped his glove against his leg. His face got this weird stove-in look. He began blubbering. Mister JayMac went out to the mound.
“That hulksome galoot!” Fadeaway nodded in at Jumbo. “Him and that biggity damned nigger!”
“Shut up and sit down.” Mister JayMac put Quip Parris in for Fadeaway. Parris retired the next three batters. Darius trotted home on Hoey’s sacrifice fly, though, and at the end of eight full innings the score stood six to zip.
That was the final score, although in the top of the ninth I sent Charlie Snow to the wall for a long out, the best hit ball of the game against Darius.
At the end, Darius shone with sweat. It encased and oiled him. I could see him pitching another nine, eighteen, maybe even twenty-seven innings-without grouse or twinge. Darius shone like a jewel.