Fifteen Sports Stories

His eyes remote, his face bleak, P. J. Lace sat high in the stands behind home plate. His solid hands rested on meaty thighs and he was as wide and hard as a man of fifty can be. He sat and mourned his son. He mourned a little death that had occurred within his son.

Johnny Lace was on the mound. He should have exuded the confidence of a big leaguer in exile among the bush leagues. But there was no confidence in him. P. J. Lace, watching from afar, could see the taut nervousness, the deep-drawn lines parenthesizing the tightened lips.

The count was two and two on the batter. It was the top half of the sixth and the team for which Johnny was pitching, the Bay City Sailors, were in front over the Jamiston Jets by a score of one to nothing.

The first batter had undercut the hall for a that looped back over second base. The green second baseman had been slow to move and the ball had brushed the tip of his gloved fingers, which put a runner on first and an error on the board.

The second batter, the head of the Jets’ batting order, was a lined, tough, seasoned veteran whose fading legs had bumped him down the ladder. He was in his second year with the Jets and he knew how to crowd a shaky pitcher. He moved in on the plate and casually pulled back his head to let a high one on the inside go by for a ball.

With the count three and two, Johnny had poured one in low and on the outside, putting himself in a hole with a man on first and second and none out.

With two and two on the third batter, Johnny seemed to lose smoothness of motion. He was as jerky and erratic as a man on strings. He was taking too long a time for the pitch.

P. J. felt the tension infect him and he leaned forward a little further. His wide palms were damp and the blunt fingernails cut with steady pressure.

The man at the plate waited. In the first inning he had hit a long line drive and had been cheated out of a good base hit by a youngster in left field with legs like an antelope.

The pitch came down the alley, the batter stepped into it, and P. J. saw the white flash of the ball before the sharp crack of the impact reached him. The runner pumped toward first, his head turned so that he could watch the flight of the ball. As he rounded first he settled down to a pleased jog-trot. The three men crossed home plate. The Sailor rooters began the usual jeer. The catcher and two other infield men came out to the box, stood and spat and talked and didn’t look Johnny Lace in the face.

The pitch to the fourth batter was good. It broke sharply, cut the heart of the plate. The second pitch slanted across the inside corner for the second called strike.

The jeers of the crowd faded a little. The batter managed to tag the third pitch for a steaming ground ball halfway between the third baseman and the shortstop. The shortstop made a hopeless try for it. The outfielder came in fast enough to field the ball smoothly to second, holding the runner up on first.

Once again Johnny Lace tightened up. The jeers were renewed. He walked the fourth batter. After he had given a ball and a wild pitch to the fifth batter there was a conference at the mound. Johnny walked slowly out of the infield, his spikes scuffing the dust as he crossed the baseline. The pitcher who had been warming up came out.

P. J. Lace yanked his Panama a bit more firmly on his head, stood- up and moved into the aisle, and out of the park.

His long black sedan was parked in the open pasture by the fence. He drove slowly and thoughtfully back to the small city where he was registered in the only presentable hotel.

When Johnny Lace walked into the hotel room, his father was apalled at the changes which had occurred during the past year. Johnny was still tall, lean, bronzed, with the big hands and square powerful wrists of a pitcher.

But his gray eyes had a whipped look and there was bitterness in his face.

They were awkward with each other.

“You watch the game, dad?” The brief handshake over, Johnny turned toward the hotel window.

“Ah... yes, son. I saw the game.”

Johnny’s laugh was short and bitter. “I’m really in there, aren’t I?”

P. J. stood beside his son, put one hand on Johnny’s shoulder. Johnny shrugged it off, moved a bit away. Johnny said, “I can feel it in the air. The confidential approach. This is just a game, after all. Give it up and come back with me. I’ll find you a nice soft slot in one of my mills and you be the owner’s son and build up a good golf game.”

P. J. grinned ruefully. “I had something like that in mind,” he admitted.

Johnny was suddenly both serious and pleading. “Can’t you see? I’ve got to lick it. Once it’s licked I can quit with honor., But if they drive me out I’ll always carry it around with me.”

“I’ve thought of that. But maybe you’re taking too much out of yourself trying to lick it.”

It had been very different four years before. Johnny had come out of an Ivy League college with an impressive string of victories. It had been pretty well determined that after school he would go into the family business. But the scouts were clustering around to sign him up and it had seemed a good thing to spend a few years on a professional ball club. After all, there had been plenty of time. Johnny had been just twenty when he got out of college.

Paul Lace remembered taking the time off travel over to Massachusetts and see Johnny starring on the farm team of the club that had signed him up. That first year his won-and-lost record had been impressive.

And the following year Johnny had graduated into the big leagues — a capable kid, popular with his team mates, a reliable performer on the team’s pitching staff.

There had been no reasonable way to explain it. During the season he had knocked out of the box a few times on off days. He had taken it with good grace.

It happened in the third game of the Series. Johnny’s team had taken the League pennant, was conceded a good chance to take the Series. They lost the first game. The manager threw in the top man of his pitching staff and lost the second Series game at 2–0. He had tagged Johnny Lace to pitch, and win, the third game.

There was no logical reason for the way Johnny reacted. There may have been emotional reasons. The Series is big time. Fast, hard, rough, dangerous big time. The boys don’t fool. The crowd doesn’t fool. It is hair-trigger baseball and a large boo for the boy who pulls a dummy play.

And, in front of nearly eighty thousand people, with an additional twenty million listening in, Johnny Lace was knocked off the mound in the first half of the first inning. The manager left him in as long as he could, but when the earned runs reached four, he had to snatch him out of there. They lost that game and the Series.

A boy plays hard, plays with all the guts and courage and energy he can muster. And it isn’t good enough. Something happens to him. Something that isn’t pretty. It happened to Johnny Lace.

Oddly enough, the manager didn’t catch it in all its implications until the actual schedule started the following season. Up until that time he hadn’t censured Johnny. He thought of it as just a bad guess. Series fever. Too bad. But nothing to get excited about.

And then, as Johnny started to pitch in the second season, it became obvious that he could hold his own until somehow two men managed to get on base. Then the Series situation was duplicated in Johnny’s mind and he lost the fine edge of precision necessary to continue pitching. The fat pitches over the heart of the plate were murdered, and the other men were walked and Johnny Lace was thumbed out of the game.

After the fifth time it happened Johnny was sent down to a Class A farm league. He lasted two months.

When Paul Lace spoke in quiet fashion of Johnny’s taking too much out of himself in the process of fighting this weakness of his, the young man’s face became the face of a stranger.

He said coldly, with hard emphasis, “It’s my problem. Stay out of it! If I have to slide all the way down to sandlot ball with industrial teams, I’ll do so.”

“But what will it get you?”

Johnny smiled. “You might call it self-respect.”

He walked to the door, shut it softly behind him. Alone in the room, Paul Lace sat on the edge of the bed, his face impassive. What had started out to be a game, something that would be good for his son, had turned into an intricate trap with sharpened teeth. Paul Lace was tired. He had burdens that needed sharing. There was nothing left for him but to return to his offices, alone. Johnny Lace had to work out his problem on his own.

There was meager consolation in the fact that maybe a lesser man would have stopped trying to lick the bugbear of tension. Paul Lace knew that his son had inherited enough of his own stubbornness so that he would go on and on, fighting what might be a hopeless battle. Other men have battled psychic tension, breaking themselves in the process.

One prominent golf professional, after blowing up on the course in tournament after tournament, finally put a bullet in his head. There was a man who was a genius at chess. At last he began, in tournaments, to make childish moves that resulted in quick defeat. He could not overcome this tendency. He sits in a small room in an institution with a chess board in front of him. He has moved one pawn across the board so many times that it has worn a groove in the hard wood. He never speaks.

Paul Lace felt the chill breath of fear as he thought of what this endless battle might do to his son. Already there was a strangeness about Johnny. He sat in the darkness of his room, his big hands clenched, his brows drawn into a knotted line that shadowed his eyes.

The good-natured banter in the dressing room of the Bay City Sailors stopped abruptly when Johnny Lace came in and walked over to his locker. The green tin door banged.

Tige Hancey, third base, said, “The atomic kid! You know why he’s the atomic kid?”

In true end-man fashion, Barletini, left field, asked, “No. Why is Lace the atomic kid?”

“Because he can blow up with the biggest bang in the business.”

It got a laugh. Johnny Lace, stripped to the waist, walked over to where Tige was lacing his shoes. His fists were clenched. Tige ignored him. Johnny stood, the flat muscles across his shoulders tight, and then something seemed to go out of him. He went back to his locker.

Tige called after him, “Give us a break today, Lace. Let ’em hit it over the fence. Then we don’t have to work so hard.”

Johnny was surprised that he had been slated to pitch. He had read in the expression on the manager’s face that he was due for another drop down the ladder. Soon they would be trading him for a sack of peanuts. He had expected to sit in the dugout until the deal had been completed and he could pack up and leave.

He felt the deep cold dread as he knew that he would have to go out there onto the mound and wait for that moment when his muscles stopped obeying him. The feeling of blowing-up was so familiar. Rigid neck muscles. Cold sweat on his palms. A taut breathlessness. At those moments the batter seemed to tower over him, to wave a bat as big as a telegraph pole. And the plate looked the size of a dime. The yells of derision from the stands would be like the scratch of fingernails on a blackboard. And he would feel as alone as a man can feel. Alone and completely helpless.

With wooden arm and sodden hand he would throw the leaden ball down to where the huge bat would connect and drive it at his head.

But it was one more chance to try to lick the thing.

As he walked out toward the bullpen, Shorty Gordon, the catcher, slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Today you don’t blow, kid.”

Johnny didn’t trust himself to answer.

The Middletown Roamers were leading the league. During his first year in the big leagues, when they were comparing to Feller, Johnny could have mowed them down with a fair chance at a no-hitter.

The stands were filling slowly and the sun was hot and bright. He fired a few down the line to Shorty, smiling wryly at the amount of stuff he could muster when there was no batter there. A blazing fast ball, a floater that went in with so little spin he could count the stitches all the way to the plate, a curve that he could either slant in a slow fade, or break sharply across the inside or outside corner.

The Roamers were up first. The Sailors took their field positions. Johnny dusted his hands, wiped them on his pants, wound his big fingers on the ball.

First batter up. Shorty wanted them close and high. Wind-up. Left foot high, arm back. Throw with back, shoulders, the ball speeding down. Right where he wanted it. A called strike.

Next pitch the floater, also high and close. The batter, fooled, tried to hold back his swing, stretched, pulled a dribbler off to Johnny’s right. The shortstop pounced on it and the throw to first beat the runner by ten feet.

Shorty wanted them fed low to the second batter. The first pitch was too low, Shorty snatching it out of the dust with a quick lift that didn’t fool the umpire. The second pitch was a called strike down the middle. The third pitch was one that cut the outside corner and the batter swung hard and missed. The batter hit the next pitched ball, overcutting it so that it dropped dead in front of the plate. Shorty whipped it to first in ample time. The count on the third batter went to three and two. Johnny poured on the coal and sped one right down the middle. The batter flung his bat away in sheer disgust.

The Sailors got a man on first, sacrificed him to second and the third batter hit into a double play to make it a short inning.

Johnny Lace, feeling competent, feeling the tension well under control, mowed down the next two men that faced him. The third man was out on a pop fly that fell directly into the second baseman’s hands.

In the bottom half of the second Hancey caught one and bounced it off the left-field fence. The fielder got too anxious on his throw to the infield and Hancey made it all the way around, sliding in to beat the ball.

Johnny Lace walked out to the mound to pitch to the seventh man to face him. Somewhere, deep inside him, he could feel the tension mounting and he forced it back, forced himself to breathe deeply, to relax.

But the count went to three and two and the tension fluttered angry wings. It put him off just enough so that the sixth pitch was wild, the batter jogging to first, taking a long lead toward second.

Johnny felt the presence of the base runner behind him. There was a faint tightness in his back and shoulders. He shrugged it off. After a called strike, the batter slid his hand up the bat and made a perfect bunt. It trickled out toward Johnny. He pounced on it, and, as he whirled and threw, the ball slid out of his fingers too quickly. The first baseman made a good try for it, managing to knock it down, but the sacrifice had turned into a safe hit and with none out, a man roosted on first and another on second.

The tension could no longer be controlled. Johnny couldn’t take a deep breath. The batter who faced him looked enormous. There was a dull roaring in Johnny’s ears and he felt the trickle of cold sweat down his ribs. The ball felt large and too heavy.

He knew that his wind-up was shaky and rigid. The delivery was ragged. The ball, which he had intended to be a fast ball, slid on the sweaty fingers, went wild. By the time Shorty could recover it, the runners had advanced to second and third.

Johnny’s mouth was dry and in his ears was the din of the crowd, the angry yelps, the pleas, “Take the bum outa there!”

He stood very still, watching the batter. The baseline rhubarb was rowdy and confident. The Roamers saw the ball game within their grasp.

The next two pitches were balls. With the count three and nothing, Johnny managed to get one across the corner of the plate. The batter was waiting him out. Johnny walked him on the next pitch to fill the bases.

He thought, This is my chance. This is the way it always happens. But there seemed to be no way to regain precision, to regain control over leaden muscles.

Perspective was crazy. The batter was too close, the plate too small. The crowd noises had the sound of delirium, reminding him of a childhood operation, of the roar as he went under the anaesthetic.

He made the next batter a present of a medium ball down the alley, right in the groove. He had tried to put stuff on it, but his arm wouldn’t behave. The batter swung hard and the ball, on a vicious slant, went like an arrow between the shortstop and the second baseman. The fielder gathered it in on the second bounce and made a nice throw to second, holding the hitter at first. But two runs scored and there was a runner on first and third with none out.

There was no chance to lick it. It was too late to lick it. They would yank him out. Strange that they didn’t gather ’round and try to stiffen him up.

The next pitch was a ball, and the next was a fat one. The crack of the bat was like a pistol shot. The ball went by Johnny, six feet over his head. The fielder came in fast, misjudged the ball. He tried to reverse and back up, but the ball went over his head. It was a clean triple, scoring two more runs.

Johnny wanted to be taken out. He didn’t want the nightmare of standing out there so desperately alone, while the crowd made mock of him, while the batters hit him at will. He had allowed four runs and still there was none out and a man on third.

He felt as though his right arm was made of brittle sticks. His fingers felt weak and pulpy on the ball. His teeth were clamped so tightly that his jaw ached. Why didn’t they take him out? No one came near him.

He walked the next batter, and the next. The bases were filled. The crowd had begun to chant and stomp their feet.

Johnny felt as though he would faint. He looked through mist toward the dug-out, tried to tell the manager by an awkward gesture that he wanted to be taken out. There was no response.

He beckoned to Shorty. Shorty came slowly out onto the mound.

“I’m... I’m all through, Shorty. I can’t pitch.”

“Brother, you can say that again. But you don’t come out.”

“What!”

“Like I said, you don’t come out. Charlie give everybody the word. Don’t ask me why. Maybe he’s gone nuts. But that’s the way it is. He says you pitch the whole game even if we got a score of a thousand to one. It ain’t baseball, kid. I don’t know what it is. But you stay right there and sweat it out. Maybe the game gets called on account of darkness before this inning is over.”

Johnny couldn’t comprehend. He had the crazy idea that this was one of the nightmares he had about pitching. Yet this was reality.

“They can’t leave me in here. I can’t pitch!”

“Brother, you’re in and according to Charlie, you stay in.”

Shorty Gordon turned and walked back to the plate.

Johnny wondered what would happen if he walked off the field. But be couldn’t do that. He had to be sent out of the game.

The next pitch hit the ground in front of the plate. He managed to get one pitch over the plate before he walked the batter, forcing the run. Somebody hurled an empty pint bottle out of the stands. It hit and slid across the grass toward him. The umpire walked over, picked it up and put it in his coat pocket.

Five runs had scored and still there were none out. He felt as though he were standing in water over his head, trying to throw the ball. He lobbed it in over the plate and the ball was going so slowly that the batter knocked it almost straight up in the air. Shorty caught it for the out.

The next pitch hit the batter on the thigh, forcing the sixth run in. The crowd stomped and whistled. The next batter hit a line drive that smacked into the shortstop’s glove. Two down. Johnny walked the next batter, forcing the seventh run. The next batter reached for one, smashed it far out into right field along the foul line. As it faded foul, the fielder gathered it in for the third out.

Johnny Lace walked in wooden desperation to the manager and said, “Why didn’t you take me out?”

The manager looked at him coldly. “I don’t have to give reasons for what I do.”

“I can’t go back in. You’ll have to send somebody else in.”

“Nobody tells me what to do, Lace. You’ll go back in and you’ll pitch the rest of the game.” His voice was loud enough for the others to hear it. They looked sulky and baffled. It was beyond their experience, seeming to them to be some grotesque way of punishing all of them.

Affected by lethargy, by the sense of having already lost the game to an impossible situation, they quickly accumulated three outs.

Johnny Lace walked back to the mound. He was greeted with a roar of disapproval from the stands.

It was the top of the fourth, the score 7–1. He felt weak and dizzy and afraid. His pitch was an awkward travesty. The batter slammed it for a clean base hit, yelling, “Thanks, pal,” as he took his lead of first.

It was a nightmare. The ball was enormously heavy and the distance to the plate was infinite. He walked two more batters to fill the bases. The tiny bits of control he had retained in the third inning were gone. In desperation he threw with all his strength. The ball whistled down the middle and the batter lofted it into the right-field bleachers to make the score eleven to one, with none out.

Johnny stood in apathy. The ball, thrown out by Shorty, hit him a painful blow on the chest and dropped into the dust at his feet. Two wild pitches and two that hit the ground in front of the plate walked the next batter. The stands had begun to quiet down, realizing that this sort of thing was rare in organized ball.

He walked two more men, filling the bases again. The runners started at the crack of the bat. The ball took a flat bounce, plumped into the shortstop’s glove. He had moved over toward second to take the hit. With the ball he tagged the runner who had started for third, took two quick steps to second base to put out the runner coming in from first and then hurled the ball to first, beating the runner by a stride.

The stands exploded. The shortstop had put himself in the record books with that play. The runner who had crossed home plate from third couldn’t believe that the three outs had been accomplished before he could score.

Johnny Lace walked in from the mound, his spikes scuffing on the grass.

The triple play had done one of those inexplicable things to the spirit of the team. The batters came up to the plate, tense and eager. The first pitch was nailed for a double. The next man up slammed the ball out of the park. The opposition pitcher, momentarily rattled, walked the next man. The Sailors were so far behind that sacrifice hits were out of order. They scored four runs before the Roamers sent in the relief pitcher who retired the side. The score was eleven to five and the Sailors were almost back in the ball game.

Johnny came out to the mound for the top of the fifth. He walked the first two batters and the stands began to rock with the rhythmic stomp of feet.

Johnny knew that he was going to have to stay right there for the rest of the game. He finally realized that the manager meant what he said.

He stood and looked around at the infield, at the dead, unfriendly faces.

And Johnny Lace began to laugh! It started as a chuckle deep in his throat, bubbling up into a series of yelps of laughter that bent him double, that started the tears running down bronzed cheeks.

Shorty came running out. He said, “Pally, if you’re going nuts, maybe you better walk off.”

Gasping, Johnny Lace stood up. He looked down at the batter who stood outside the box knocking the dirt out of his cleats. The batter was normal size. The plate looked big. Johnny Lace tensed his arm, then swung it loosely.

He thumped Shorty on the chest with the back of his left hand and said, “Run back to where you belong, little man. And see if you can handle the stuff I’m going to feed that poor innocent batter.”

Shorty gave him a wide-eyed stare, then grinned and trotted back to home.

Johnny turned and stared at the two runners, who immediately shortened their leads off first and second.

“Relax, you guys!” he yelled. “You’re going to die right there.”

Fear was gone and tension was gone because suddenly there was nothing left to be afraid of. The worst that could happen had happened.

The ball felt small and light in his fingers. Neither Shorty nor the bench gave him any signal.

His shoulder and back and arm were as loose and fluid as water.

The left foot came up, slapped down, the arm coming across into the follow-through, all the weight on that left foot, the knuckles of his right hand nearly touching the ground.

The ball was a tiny white marble, whizzing down the middle, suddenly returning to normal size after it rested in the pocket of Shorty’s mitt.

“Steee-rike ONE!”

An incurve that came down, looking wide and wild, breaking back to cut over the outside corner.

“Steee-rike TWO!”

The rhythmic thumping and clapping of hands began to slow down, to die out. The pitch was a floater. The batter nearly broke his back, but the bat had whooshed over the plate before the ball got there.

All of the thumping had stopped and the park was silent.

He fed the next batter two strikes, a ball, and the third strike. And still the silence was unbroken.

Johnny felt twice life size. The two men on base behind him didn’t matter. They weren’t a threat.

He faded a slow-breaking curve across the inside corner, got the second strike on a foul tip of Shorty’s mask, retired the side with a pitch that steamed as it cut the outside corner.

He took an ovation that nearly tore the grass out of the infield. He had suddenly become that darling of American sporting spirit, the underdog who comes back.

His teammates wore wide, foolish grins and slapped him on the back.

“Now we go get those boys,” Charlie said.

Johnny was up, and struck out. The next man hit a clean single. They pushed him all the way around and the fifth inning ended with the score 11-6.

No man reached first in the top half of the sixth. Johnny felt able to throw the ball through the eye of a needle at a hundred feet.

In the bottom half of the sixth the Sailors knocked the second Roamer pitcher off the mound with four healthy base hits that, by heads-up ball, netted three runs.

It stayed 11-9 throughout the seventh.

In the top of the eighth, an error by Hancey at third put a man on first, and a fumbled bunt put two men on base.

Johnny grinned and bore down. He disposed of the next batter in four pitches. The man went down swinging. He forced the next batter to hit an ineffectual pop fly.

With two down the base runner tried to steal third on the pitch. Shorty Gordon flashed one down to Hancey for the third out.

In the bottom of the eighth, the Sailors scored another run. It was scored on a fluke, but it didn’t make the run any less valuable.

With the score 11–10, Johnny Lace fed the first batter one that was a little too good, a shade higher than where he had wanted to place it. His heart was in his mouth and it slowly slid back into position when the left-fielder made an effortless catch looking into the sun.

Alarmed by what might have happened, he tightened down, feeding the next two batters balls that looked just good enough to bite at. They fouled their way into two counts and then went down swinging.

Tige Hancey sat next to Johnny Lace in the dugout. The first Sailor at bat fanned out. The second one slammed a clean base hit into left-center and stretched it to a double, barely beating the throw.

As Hancey stood up, Johnny said, “How about one for the atom kid?”

Hancey walked out in his cocky way, tossed the extra bat aside, braced himself in the box. The Roamer catcher stepped out to the side of the plate. It was smart ball. The tough little third baseman had the second best home-run record.

The pitcher threw the two pitches well outside for two balls. He threw the third one. As it left his hand, Hancey leaned over into the line of the pitch and connected with the ball.

The left-fielder raced back, looking over his shoulder. He went back and back. Then he stopped and put his hands on his hips and watched it soar over the fence.

A wide, heavy-set man of fifty shuffled along with the crowds as the stands emptied. He heard the note of hysteria, of emotional exhaustion in the voices around him. The name of Johnny Lace was on every lip.

Paul Lace smiled. A great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. In another year or two, Johnny would be back with him. A Johnny who would be whole and sane and sound. A confident and victorious Johnny.

There was little chance that the manager would talk. No, the manager would be glad to be labeled a smart man, a bush-league genius. There was a danger that, if it hadn’t worked out, Johnny might hear of it.

And Johnny would have resented the interference.

Johnny would have been annoyed to learn that his father had convinced the manager of the wisdom of keeping Johnny on the mound — regardless. The manager had gambled and won — and had done Paul Lace a priceless favor. A favor which had given him back his son.