Ricky
A baseball story—but not really
“I’m gonna change your life.”
Mac instantly recognized the voice and turned in his seat, his attention momentarily diverted from the lukewarm scrambled eggs he’d just been served. Freddy crossed the distance between the diner door, with its tin bell still tinkling, to the chair across from Mac with a quickness that belied his more than 71 years and multiple knee surgeries.
Mac feigned a sour face and said, “uh huh. I’m happy with my life, no thanks,” as Freddy sat down and mouthed the word coffee while he pantomimed the act of sipping from a cup—pinky extended—at one of the waitresses.
“You’re funny sometimes, Mac, just not today.” The waitress arrived with a clean, white, porcelain cup for Freddy and a fresh pot of coffee and absentmindedly poured while asking if there was anything else she could get either of them.
“No thank you, sugar,” Mac replied and, with a wink, the waitress turned to take care of her other tables. Mac turned his attention back to Freddy who had already added Equal and cream and was taking his first sip. “What?” Mac said.
“Well, you remember I told you I was going to go take a look at what’s going on over at the college?” Time wasted, in Mac’s opinion, but he was inclined to indulge his friend’s whims from time to time. Freddy continued, “I went over there yesterday afternoon and I saw something, a kid, that I think you gotta go see.”
Mac had been here so many times before. “Okay, tell me about him.” He had been skeptical of Freddy’s attempt to find anyone worth a serious look at the county college but he respected and trusted his longtime friend as a competent “baseball man.”
“What position’s he playing?”
“He’s not on the team.” Before Mac could say anything—he’d already leaned back in his chair and looked ready to end the conversation right there—Freddy pressed on. “Mac, he’s the coach’s son. He’s not enrolled at the school, but I saw him practicing with the team. The kid is really good.”
Mac settled back down to listen to the rest of the story. “How old is he?” Freddy knew that Mac was interested again.
“I don’t know for sure, but he looks to be, I don’t know, maybe eighteen, nineteen.”
“Shitty student?” Mac asked, wondering why the boy wasn’t enrolled.
“Not exactly.”
“So what’s the story?” He was getting impatient.
“Mac, the kid’s got learning difficulties.”
“He’s slow then,” Mac replied.
“Not exactly,” Freddy said again.
“All right, Freddy, what the hell?”
“He’s autistic.”
Mac leaned back in his chair, looked up at the diner’s soot and grease-stained ceiling and let out a breath though puffed cheeks. Then he looked straight back at Freddy and said, “Fred, what the hell are you talking about? He’s retarded; what are you thinking?”
Freddy looked his boss in the eye and said firmly, with the very slight but unconcealed tone of someone who’s been offended, “he’s not retarded, Mac. He’s autistic. It’s not the same thing.”
Mac realized that he’d said something wrong. He quickly put his hands up and lowered his head in a gesture of apology and said, “sorry, I know that. I’m sorry. But Fred, my point is still a fair one; how the hell do you think we’re going to sign some autistic kid who can’t even manage to attend school to play baseball in the St. Louis Cardinals’ organization?”
“Just come and see him, Mac, please. I promise you, you’ll be impressed.”
Mac sat quietly, looking into Freddy’s eyes, trying to figure out if this was really happening. He looked down at his, now cold, eggs and decided. He had enough trust in Freddy to overcome whatever doubts—and they were substantial—he might have.
John “Mac” McCarthy, was a head regional scout for Major League Baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals. Frederick “Freddy” Elkins was one of the Cardinals’ talent scouts that worked Mac’s region and reported to Mac. The two men had known each other since Freddy had found young John McCarthy playing shortstop for an American Legion team in Clearwater, Florida. At the time, Mac was what baseball guys call a “five tool player.” That meant that he could hit for high average and power, had superior baserunning skills and speed and good throwing and fielding ability. Freddy also noted in his report that “the kid” had an amazing instinct for making the right move on the field or on the base paths in almost any game situation. After being selected in the first round of Major League Baseball’s amateur draft and talking things over with his parents, Mac signed a contract to play minor league ball in the Cardinals’ system and chase the dream.
He did will enough to get called up to play with the big league team in September of his third year in the minors. He performed well and impressed the Cardinals’ manager and coaching staff who told him that he’d be getting an invitation to Spring training the next season with a legitimate chance to make the the major league squad.
After the season, back in Clearwater for the winter, he decided—to show off or for the hell of it, he can’t really remember why anymore—to play in a pick up softball game with a group of his old friends and former high school teammates. He played right field that day and two innings into the game he nailed a runner trying to stretch from first to third on a base hit down the line in right with a hard, perfect throw to the third baseman. He finished the game and never told anybody about the pop that he’d felt in his arm on that throw or the nearly crippling pain that followed the next day and lingered for a few weeks before finally subsiding.
The next Spring it became apparent to everyone on the Cardinals’ coaching staff, even to Mac himself, that something was wrong. The team doctor (a general practitioner, sports medicine hadn’t yet been invented) called it a “sore arm.” They tried all of the usual treatments and therapies for a while and Mac tried to grind it out and get back what he once had in the minor leagues for another season and a half before he realized that the dream was over.
But he loved the game and managed to stay in it as a talent scout for the same organization that had given him his shot.
So now here he was riding along to the local community college with his long-time friend and colleague, in the older man’s Volkswagen, to see…he didn’t know what. At least, he figured, he’d have a good story to tell.
They arrived at the team’s ball field in time to catch the last twenty minutes of batting practice to which neither of them paid much attention. After BP was over, Freddy caught the attention of the manager, a tall, husky man with very close cropped hair underneath his baseball cap and motioned for him to come over to where he and Mac were standing just in front of the bleachers on the first base side of the field. The manager jogged over, shook Freddy’s hand and held it out to Mac and said, “my name’s Dale Harper, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Ricky’s real excited, Mr. McCarthy.”
“Call me Mac, skipper.”
After the introductions and a few perfunctory and diplomatic niceties about the team’s hitting from the old scout and his boss, Dale called over to his son, Ricky, who was playing long toss with one of the school’s players.
Mac watched as Ricky, tall and lean but solid, with red hair and a “sweet” (as Mac would later put it) face full of freckles, tucked his mitt under his arm and jogged over to where he and the other two men stood. His father put his arm around Ricky’s shoulders and said, “Ricky, this here is Mr. McCarthy.” Ricky stiffly held out his hand the way his father taught him and said flatly, “pleased to meet you Mr. McCarthy, my name is Richard Harper.” Mac shook the boy’s hand. He noted that the kid had looked him in the chest rather than the eyes when greeting him and that his grip was firm and strong. Mac answered, “likewise, Richard” and then turned back to Ricky’s father and said, “let’s see what he’s got.”
“We don’t have a gun. It’s broken and the school hasn’t bought a replacement yet,” Dale said, apologizing for the lack of a radar gun with which to measure pitch velocity.
“So he’s a pitcher?” Mac looked at Freddy with a touch of surprise before realizing that he’d become so distracted by learning that Ricky was autistic that he’d never bothered to ask Freddy anything more about him.
“Um yeah,” Dale replied, unsure of what was silently transpiring between the other two men.
Mac recovered quickly. “That’s not a problem, skipper. I can pretty much tell just from looking and listening.” Then Mac had a thought. “Tell you what, give me a mitt and I’ll catch him myself. It’ll give me a better feel for his stuff.”
Dale smiled widely and brought Mac a catcher’s mitt from the equipment bag inside the first base dugout. He then put his arm around Ricky’s shoulders again and the two of them walked out to the pitcher’s mound. Mac slipped the mitt onto his left hand and assumed the position behind home plate, his knees protesting mildly as he squatted.
After a few seconds, Dale called out in the direction of home plate, “he’s already loose, Mac, so whenever you’re ready.” Mac cranked his free hand over and over signaling that he was ready and that Ricky could start his pitching motion. The he waited. Ricky stood on the mound, his right food wedged against the pitching rubber, bent forward at the waist with his glove hand, the left hand, on his knee and his right hand rolling the ball around in his fingers behind his back. Mac signaled again with his free hand, but Ricky didn’t move. Dale finally broke the impasse: “I’m sorry, Mac, I forgot to tell you. He’s waiting for a sign. The usual: one for the fastball, two for the curve and so on.”
Mac snorted and said softly to himself, “son of a bitch.” Then he put his free hand between his thighs with the index finger pointing straight down indicating that he wanted a fastball. Ricky nodded and started his windup. Mac watched him go into his motion and made a mental note to compliment Dale on teaching his son such good form. No sooner had he completed that thought than Ricky’s right arm was following through after his release and the pitch arrived right in the middle of Mac’s mitt.
The energy of the ball knocked Mac out of his crouch and onto his rear end behind the plate. The sound it made echoed back from the immense tree line beyond the outfield fence. The feeling in Mac’s left hand was something else altogether.
“SON OF A BITCH!” Mac cried out in pain as he shook the mitt off of his hand and let it fall to the ground as the ball rolled out of it. In all his playing days and scouting career, Mac had seen a lot of pitches thrown and he knew immediately that this one had to rank somewhere in the top five for velocity and force even without seeing a radar gun reading. The palm of his hand was already turning bright red as he continued trying to shake the pain out of it.
Dale came halfway to the plate to see if he was okay, but Mac waived him off and said, “I’m fine, skipper, he just got me in the palm and not the webbing. Let’s see another one.” Dale headed back to the area behind the mound. Mac picked up his mitt and threw the baseball back, softly, to Ricky who stood expressionless on the mound. Ricky received the toss and assumed his position once again. Mac, still not fully believing what he’d just seen and felt, crouched down behind the plate again and signaled for the fastball. In a perfect copy of the motion he’d used for the first pitch, Ricky wound up and released another hard throw toward home plate. This time Mac was ready and he caught the ball, which came in just as fast, hard and energetic as the one before, in the webbing between the thumb and forefinger of the catcher’s mitt. Okay, he thought, velocity and arm strength: check. He looked over at Freddy, who acknowledged him with a nod of the head and giant grin and he raised his eyebrows as if to say, “yeah, I’m impressed.”
A bunch of things started going through Mac’s mind. This is crazy, he thought. The kid’s clearly got the stuff, but are you really going to recommend that the Cardinals offer a contract to this big, sweet autistic kid with the freckled, expressionless face and a thunderbolt in his right arm? Really, Mac, are you actually thinking about doing this? Would they have to hire his father too? Would they need to hire therapists and teachers? Will his teammates and coaches, his catcher for Christ’s sake, be able to communicate with him?
Mac turned back toward the mound and yelled, “skipper, I want to see his curveball.” He then positioned himself back behind home plate and squatted. He extended the first two fingers of his right hand, pointing them down between his thighs—the universal sign for curveball—then put his right hand behind his back and waited. Ricky went into his motion—again, an identical copy of every movement Mac had seen during the first two throws—and the ball flew toward the plate. This time, instead of straight in, hard and hot, the ball flew in about 20 miles an hour slower, starting at about eight feet off the ground and then arcing down nearly to Mac’s ankles as it crossed the plate. Holy shit, thought Mac.
He caught the ball just above the dirt behind the side of the plate opposite the kid’s right hand, in front of the left handed batter’s box. He stood up and reflexively tossed the ball back to Ricky. Mac looked over at Freddy and said it out loud. “Holy shit.” Freddy laughed. Hard and loud. Still not wanting to believe his eyes, Mac said, “let’s see him do it again.”
He squatted behind the plate again and watched Dale, who had apparently been providing a bit of coaching to his son while Mac had been turned away, quickly step off the pitching mound. Ricky came set and, after waiting for Mac’s sign, started his windup. This time, however, his motion looked different to Mac. For a second he thought the kid misread the sign and was throwing a different pitch. A slider maybe? But no, it was the curveball. It floated and dipped as big and dramatically as it had just a minute before, but this time to the other side of the plate. What the hell? thought Mac, momentarily confused. Then he saw it. The boy’s baseball glove lying in the dirt next to him on the mound and he realized what had just happened: Ricky wasn’t wearing his glove because he had thrown that pitch with his left hand. Mac fell backwards onto his ass again, but this time because of the shock from his realization. He looked over at Freddy who was covering his face with both hands and was bent slightly forward at the waist like a man praying humbly before his god.
Mac sat there for a moment, looking out at the pitcher’s mound in stunned silence. Then he gathered himself and stood up. Son of a bitch.
“Skipper, would you mind coming over to the car with me? I’ve got some paperwork I think I need you to sign.”