Departures

At Shakey’s afterward, Pete got a pitcher of Bud and set it in front of Michael. “You got a choice, Flush,” he said, as threatening as you can be with a big grin on your face.”Tell me you’ll be back next week, and you can drink it. Otherwise I’ll pour it over your stupid head.’

“When do we play?” Michael said. We all cheered. It got pretty drunk out. That’s an advantage early games have-they give you more time to party afterward. I remember asking Michael what he did.

He thought about it. It took a few seconds; he had nothing against beer. Finally he said, “Some of this, some of that. I spend a lot of time looking.”

I backed off in a hurry.” Say no more.” I’d been unemployed not too long before that. A bad feeling.

By the next game, I had that miserable sling off, thank God-ever try to bathe in one? I’m glad I wear a beard. Shaving left-handed is something I’d sooner not think about. I was still combing my hair that way, though. The arm wasn’t ready for anything serious. It twinged whenever I lifted it higher than my shoulder.

We had enough people there this time, and Wes made Michael a DH. He was awful shaky in the field. He knew it, too, and didn’t say boo. But in warm-ups he put on another hitting show. He looked terrible up there, but he wasn’t making any outs.

Wes threw his hands in the air. “All right, I’m convinced!” He batted Flush third. It worked, too. He was up three times, got three more cheap but effective hits, and we won again. Not only that, for once Snafu kept their act together for a whole game and knocked off the Tomcats, so we were tied with them again. Even the postgame pizza wasn’t as greasy as usual. A fine week.

I was up for the next game. We had some momentum, we were going against another weak team-a gang called the Mother Truckers-and I was well enough to play. My arm still grumbled, but I could use it. To make sure I didn’t hurt it again, I went through warm-ups doing just what I would have done anyway: throwing knuckleballs.

Typical of me to have my one baseball talent be absolutely useless. What good is someone who can throw a knuckler only with a slow-pitch ball? But I’ve got a mean one, if I say so myself. And a knuckleball is the easiest thing in the world on your arm. Look at Hoyt Wilhelm or Phil Niekro or Charlie Hough-big leaguers all, well into their forties.

A knuckleball comes up to the plate (or to whoever’s trying to catch it) with about as much oomph as a marshmallow. But if you’ve thrown it right, you’ve killed almost all the spin on the thing, and every tiny little air current can have fun with it as if flies.

If you’re a batter, it’s like a drunken moth heading your way. It’ll dance. It’ll float. It’ll shimmy. The best one I ever threw seemed to stub its toe halfway there, and hop on one leg the rest of the way. Marvelous fun. Hitters have no idea what it’ll do next. That’s fair; neither does the guy who threw it. Catchers hate it-they can’t handle it, either.

Trouble is, sometimes it doesn’t knuckle. Then it might as well be batting practice. Think of a hanging curve, only more so.

Tonight, though, playing catch with Pete, I had a good one. He caught it the first time I threw it, barely; it looked like a scoop of ice cream sitting right at the top of his glove. “Damn thing has the staggers,” he said, and fired it back to me harder than I can throw even when my arm’s fine. My mitt popped. My hand started burning.

But I had my revenge. Pete’s a pretty fair ballplayer. He caught most of what I threw, lunging and stabbing and guessing which way the rabbit would hop. But he dropped a couple, missed one clean and had to chase it, and took one right in the leg. It’s hard to hurt anybody with a knuckler, especially with a slow-pitch ball, but he did the Stanislavsky routine, yelling and bouncing up and down and generally malting an ass of himself.

When he was done with that nonsense, he flipped the ball to Michael, who was next to him loosening up with Ted. “Here, Flush,” he said, “trade places with me. This bastard”-which was the nicest thing he’d called me since I plunked him-“throws like you hit.”

One of Michael’s gingery eyebrows went up. “Really?” he said, and threw me the ball. He was better than he’d been a couple of weeks before, starting to get his whole arm into it.

But with that funky old glove he was still using, he couldn’t have hung on to the first knuckler I gave him if he were Johnny Bench. I was proud of it. It wobbled seven different ways, and the last one caught him right in the chest.

He picked up the ball and looked at it as if it’d taken a bite out of him. “Do that again,” he said, like he didn’t believe what he’d seen. He couldn’t’ve picked a better way to flatter me. The next one wasn’t as good. It only broke once, but down and away, and zigged under his glove and past him.

He ran after it hard and burned it back to me-mustard on it. If he ever learned to throw right, he’d have a good arm. “How do you do that?” he said.