A Hollywood Ending
It was time to face reality. My effort to pitch again had been a total flop. “It’s over,” I told Petie. “I really thought I could do it. . . .”
We were at home. Petie was sitting beside me, her hand massaging my shoulder. “You did everything you could but I think you’re right,” she said. “It’s time to stop trying to pitch. You’re with another team now and they seem like a nice bunch of guys. Try to forget what’s happened and go have fun playing.”
What helped was having Eric Villatte as a teammate. We’d become good friends over the previous months, in part because Eric could relate to what I’d been going through in trying to make a comeback as a pitcher.
He, too had been pitcher. He’d played for the French National Team, the highest level of baseball in the country, before arm injuries did him in. We also shared a mutual disdain for François, the self-proclaimed Korean Dictator, something Eric never concealed and which resulted in his contract as club trainer being terminated, effective the end of the year. Until then, he’d serve out his time with Team B.
His presence was a big morale-booster for the B squad. Everyone knew they were in the same sack, which made them fiercely supportive of each other. At the same time, the “B-Boys,” as I called them, were an easy-going bunch. No one took himself too seriously.
They played hard but were never shy about laughing or joking around a bit. Their fun-loving spirit, however, was contagious and contributed to a stunt that probably wasn’t one of my greatest ideas.
It happened during a game against the Teddy Bears of Cergy-Pointoise. Just before the start, we gathered in front of our dugout for the usual rah-rah stuff. Normally, we’d form a circle, stick our hands in the middle and chant, “Un, deux, trois, ALLEZ PATRIOTS,” or One, two, three, GO PATRIOTS! That struck me as totally lame.
“Hey guys, listen up,” I said. “Let me teach you a better cheer, a real cheer, and we’ll do it in English. Repeat after me, ‘We’re gonna fuck those bastards!’” The players got it immediately but their accent was a little off and I had to interrupt. “No, no, not ‘fook,’ it’s with an ‘uh.’”
After a couple more tries, they were off and running. In fact, there was no stopping them. They were like little kids who knew they were doing something naughty but excited to be getting away with it.
As their chants reverberated across the field, I glanced toward Petie in the stands. She looked hugely displeased. At that moment, I realized I’d gone too far.
“Hey everyone, that’s it, that’s enough!” I yelled, waving my arms for them to stop. It did no good. The players were having a blast and their chants only grew louder. By now, spectators as well as the Teddy Bears were casting looks toward the Patriots. “Qu’est-ce qu’ils ont dit? What are they saying?” some of them asked. As for Petie, she was now looking daggers at me.
Only when the umpire bellowed that it was time to play ball did the chants mercifully come to a stop.
After all that, the game itself was something of an anti-climax. We won and everyone on the team went home feeling good. Well, almost everyone. For me, the ride home was a bit strained. Petie was still fit to be tied.
“What on earth did you think you were doing?” she demanded. “Did you think you were being cute?”
I remained silent, stared straight ahead and kept on driving.
“And you can wipe that silly smirk off your face. Time to start acting your age.”
I was sixty-four when I joined the Comets. Now, with the Patriots, I was about to turn sixty-seven.
My demotion to the B team had been upsetting but the hurt didn’t last long. The pressure was off. Instead of worrying about pitching, I was playing first base, hitting .300 and thoroughly enjoying myself.
What surprised me was how easy it was to put pitching out of my mind. For as long as I can remember, even from Little League days, pitching had always defined me. It was something I’d been good at and took pride in. Now, as one of the ‘B Boys,’ I rarely thought about it.
What I did think about was the one game that remained before summer break. It was against the Templiers of Senart, the team that clobbered me for ten runs in the first inning a few weeks earlier and forced me to accept a painful truth: that my pitching days were over.
“You know,” I said to Petie, “I still wonder how I could have been so bad, giving up all those runs without recording a single out.”
“It’s in the past,” she said. “Nothing you have to worry about, not today.
It was early Saturday morning and we were en route to the ball park for that final game. It was also the Fourth of July, which had given Petie and idea. “Let’s give the guys a taste of a real American holiday,” she said a day earlier. “I’ll make some brownies and chocolate chip cookies as well as some red, white and blue ribbons for the guys to wear. I think I know where I can buy some peanuts and Cracker Jacks.”
Except for the street cleaners, most of Paris was still asleep as we made our way along the Right Bank of the Seine toward the Bois de Vincennes. Bookstalls along the route were shuttered tight while houseboats on the river rocked gently on their moorings. There was a dream-like quality to it all, as if we were floating.
“In all the years we’ve lived here, I never get tired of looking at this,” I said. “Sometime we should just leave the car at home and walk.”
With the sun beginning to peep over the city’s rooftops, it looked to be a perfect day for baseball. Unfortunately, we wouldn’t be playing at Stade Pershing; François had co-opted it for a game his team was playing. Team B, as a result, was relegated to a scruffy, rock-strewn field called Mortemart. We parked on a grassy curbside before following a footpath down an overgrown embankment toward the diamond.
In the distance, we saw a solitary figure sitting in one of the dugouts. It was Eric. There was a cigarette in one hand and a Coke in the other. As we drew closer, it was clear something was bothering him.
Eric rose from the bench, kissed Petie on both cheeks and announced there was a problem.
“You remember that François promised to send over a pitcher to help our team? I nodded, as Eric continued. “He’s changed his mind.” Eric paused to let the words sink in.
“Are you saying. . .” but before I could finish, Eric added, “You’re the only one I have.” He explained that the Dictator had decided to play it safe and hold onto an extra pitcher for a game his A team was playing. “I only found out about it when I got here this morning.”
I shook my head, unsure what to say.
“Can you do it?” pressed Eric. “There’s nobody else.”
And that’s when I totally surprised myself. “Sure, no problem,” I said.
No problem?!! After having my head handed to me on a platter in the previous game? After coming to grips with reality and resolving never to pitch again? What on earth was I thinking? Maybe I wasn’t thinking. All I knew was that whatever doubts I had were suddenly gone and I felt energized, even thrilled.
“No sweat,” I said to Eric. “Let’s do this.”
As I began warming up, Petie approached the other players and pinned a small red, white and blue ribbon on each of their jerseys. “I know your National holiday, Bastille Day, isn’t until the 14th but ours is today,” she said.
As game time drew near, however, Eric discovered there were no game balls. As the home team, the Patriots were required to have a dozen new balls on hand, something François was supposed to take care of. It was also his responsibility to provide enough bats but we’d been given only three, none of which was in decent shape.
Just at that moment, a player from François’ team came running up out of breath. “Here,” he said, holding out the game balls to Eric. He looked embarrassed, and for good reason. “Only four?” Eric asked. He shook his head in disgust.
“Never mind,” I said. “Let’s go!” The Patriots sprinted onto the field as I strode to the mound. I tried to look confident. I wanted my teammates to know they could depend on me, even if I wasn’t so sure myself.
“Frappeur en place! Batter up!” yelled the umpire. As Senart’s lead-off hitter stepped to the plate, Eric, playing shortstop, ran to the mound and gave me a pat on the butt. “Right at ‘em,” he said.
And that’s what I did, sailing through the first three innings without giving up a hit, walk or run. The Patriots, meanwhile, scratched out a couple of runs in the second to take the lead.
By the fourth inning, I was starting to tire and by the fifth I was also growing agitated. I’d walked the first two batters and was now facing Senart’s clean-up hitter. “Son of a bitch, not again,” I moaned. Not only had I lost track of the strike zone but I was also losing my self control.
“Don! Don!” It was Eric. I stepped off the rubber and looked over toward shortstop. “Calme, calme, Don. Reste tranquille.” I struggled to compose myself and turned to face the batter. I struck him out on three pitches.
That, more than anything, set the tone. Although the Templiers pushed across two runs in sixth to tie the score, the Patriots, on the strength of a triple by Eric, added three more in their bottom half to take the lead again. The next two innings were scoreless.
In the final inning, however, with the score 5–2, I was out of gas and running on fumes. I walked the first batter and gave up a single to the next. With runners on first and third and the tying run coming to the plate, Eric called time and ran over to me. “Ca va, Don? You okay? If you want, I can take over.” I shook my head. “No, I’m finishing this.”
The next batter popped to second but the one who followed hit a hard shot toward Eric which he bobbled for an error, allowing the runner on third to score and cutting our lead to 5–3. Runners were now on first and second with the go-ahead coming to the plate. I signalled for time and motioned to the catcher to approach the mound. “I’m too tired to throw anything hard. Let’s try a knuckle ball.” It was something I’d toyed with in practice but not often. Sometimes it worked but most of the time it didn’t.
This time it did. The batter topped the ball into the ground to the third baseman who stepped on the bag for the force out. There were now two outs. One more and we could start celebrating. Unfortunately, I walked the next batter to load the bases.
Inside I was churning. I turned my back to home plate to scan the field. Eric gave me one of those ‘you know what you have to do’ looks. I nodded.
With teammates hollering encouragement, I wound up and threw. Strike one. On the next pitch, the batter, seeing that our third baseman was playing back, laid down a perfect bunt near the third base line. As the runner on third charged toward home plate, I dashed from the mound and grabbed the ball — then tripped, falling hard to the ground. Scrambling to one knee, I fired to first. It was a perfect throw, and just in time.
We had won!
My teammates rushed to the mound, swarming over me in jubilation. Petie was beaming, and so was Eric. “You did it,” he said. “No,” I replied, “we did it.”
The treats Petie had prepared for the team were gone in less than a minute. And when I led the players in Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and when the players reached “. . .buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks,” Petie reached into a bag and pulled out several boxes. It was a revelation, the first time they had ever encountered of Cracker Jacks, much less tasted them. They disappeared as fast as the brownies and chocolate chip cookies.
As everyone packed up to leave, a bit of news arrived: the A team under François had lost. There were more than a few smiles of satisfaction.
“Kind of a nice day, wasn’t it?” I said to Petie on the drive home.
“The best,” she said.
And it happened on the Fourth of July.
— Don
