Calico Joe

My mother bought me a souvenir program, then some ice cream, and I chatted with the fans around me. Eventually, Joe drifted to the Cubs dugout opposite where we were sitting. He got his bats, put on his helmet, and began limbering up. To get away from the stands, he stayed close to the batting cage. When it was his turn, he jumped in, bunted a few, then began spraying the ball to all fields. Bodies moved closer to the cage. Photographers were scrambling into position and clicking away. In his second round, he cranked it up, and the balls went deeper and deeper. He unloaded in his third round, from both sides of the plate, and hit five straight bombs into the bleachers, where hundreds of kids scrambled to get the souvenirs. The Cubs fans were screaming with each shot, and I would have cheered too, but I was in the Mets section; plus, my father was the opposing pitcher, and it did not seem appropriate.

When he walked to the mound in the top of the first, the fans gave him a rowdy welcome. There was not an empty seat in the stadium, and for over an hour the Cubs and Mets fans had been yelling back and forth. When Rick Monday lined to short on the first pitch, the stadium roared again. Two pitches later, Glenn Beckert popped out to right field, and Warren Tracey was cruising.

The announcer said: “Now batting and playing first base, Number 15, Joe Castle.”

I took a deep breath and began chewing my fingernails. I wanted to watch, then I wanted to close my eyes and just listen. My mother patted my knee. I envied her apathy. At that crucial moment in my life, in the life of her husband, in the lives of countless Mets and Cubs fans across the country, at that wonderfully supercharged moment in the history of baseball, my mother could not have cared less what happened next.

Not surprisingly, the first pitch was high and tight. Joe, batting left-handed, ducked but did not fall; nor did he glare at my father. It was a simple brushback. Welcome to New York. The second pitch was a called strike that looked low, but Joe did not react. The third pitch was a fastball that he slapped into the stands near us. The fourth pitch was low and inside. The fifth pitch was a changeup that fooled Joe, but he managed to foul it off.

I was holding my breath with each pitch. I was praying for a strikeout, and I was praying for a home run. Why couldn’t I have both? A strikeout now for my father, a home run later for Joe, back and forth? In baseball, you always get another chance, right? I pondered these things between pitches, a complete nervous wreck.

The sixth pitch was a curve that bounced in the dirt. Three balls, two strikes. Billy Williams on deck. Shea Stadium rocking. The Cubs ten games in first place. The Mets ten games back but winning. My father versus my hero.

Joe fouled off the next eight pitches as the at bat turned into a dramatic duel, with neither player yielding an inch. Warren Tracey was not about to walk him. Joe Castle was not about to strike out. The fifteenth pitch was a fastball that looked low, but at the last second Joe whipped his bat around, scooped the ball up, and launched it to right center, where it cleared the wall by thirty feet. For some reason, when I knew the ball was gone, I looked back at the mound and watched my father. He never took his eyes off Joe as he rounded first, and when the ball cleared the fence, Joe gave himself a quick pump of the fist, as if to say, “All right!” It was nothing cocky or out of line, nothing meant to show up the pitcher.

But I knew my father, and I knew it was trouble.

The home run was Joe’s twenty-first home run in thirty-eight games, and it would be his last.

The score was tied 1–1 when Joe walked to the plate in the top of the third with two outs and no one on. The first pitch was a fastball outside, and when I saw it, I knew what would happen next. The second pitch was just like the first, hard and a foot off the plate. I wanted to stand and scream, “Look out, Joe!” but I couldn’t move. As my father stood on the mound and looked in at Jerry Grote, my heart froze and I couldn’t breathe. I managed to say to my mother, “He’s gonna hit him.”