Calico Joe

My father eventually came home after being released by the Mets, and during the first family dinner he tried to appear upbeat about his future. Supposedly, several teams were interested in him for the 1974 season. Negotiations were under way, deals being offered. We listened and pretended to believe him, but we knew the truth.

In an effort to stay busy, he painted the inside of the garage, installed new gutters, worked on his car, and seemed to be making plans to live there for a long time.

My mother was playing a lot of tennis and secretly looking for a job.

I came home from school one afternoon and, as usual, planned to leave as soon as possible and hustle down the street to the Sabbatinis’. My father was in the den watching television, and when I walked through, he said, “Say, Paul, you got time for a catch? I need to keep my arm loose.”

As bad as I wanted to say no, I couldn’t do it. “Sure.”

I had vowed to never again toss a baseball with my father.

… an open area where we had a small backstop and a wooden home plate. He grabbed me by the arm and said, “First of all, don’t ever ignore me again like that. You hear me? I’m your father and I know a thousand times more baseball than those clowns who call themselves coaches.” I tried to pull away, but he dug in with fingernails. He was getting angrier with each passing second. “You hear me? Don’t ever ignore me again.”

“Yes sir,” I said, but only to keep from getting hit.

He let go and put his finger under my chin. “Look at me,” he snarled. “Look me in the eyes when I’m talking to you. There’s a right way and a wrong way to play this game, and you got it all wrong. Never, I repeat, never let a hitter show you up like that. At any level of the game, I don’t care if you’re eight years old or playing in the World Series, never let a hitter show you up like that. This is how you handle that type of an asshole. Get up there.”

I took the bat and got in a stance at home plate. He backed away, maybe fifty feet. He was wearing his glove, and he had three baseballs in it. I was an eleven-year-old kid, without a batting helmet, facing a pitcher for the Mets, one who was not only angry but in the process of teaching me the crude art of hitting a batter.

“The code says he’s getting hit, okay, so the next time he prances his cocky ass up to the plate, it’s your job to hit him. Same as if one of your guys got plunked, then you gotta protect your team. Are you listening to me?”

“Yes sir.”

“I do it with three pitches. Some guys go right at them and hit them with the first pitch. I don’t do that, because most batters are looking for it on the first pitch. I set them up. My first pitch is a fastball a foot outside.”

He took a windup and threw a fastball a foot outside. It wasn’t full speed, but then I wasn’t fully grown. The pitch looked awfully fast to me.

“Don’t step out!” he growled. “Second pitch, same as the first.” Another windup, another fastball a foot outside.