Imperfect: An Improbable Life (13 page)

I could hit a fastball. The idea of my swing was to get the bat heading on a plane toward the ball, which was possible even without a sure grip or great front-side strength. When I started seeing better breaking balls as I got older, those adjustments were difficult. I couldn’t manipulate the bat that way. But I believed I could hit and pestered every coach I ever had to give me the chance.

Besides, ballplayers pitched and had a position and hit. I wanted to be a ballplayer. I
was
a ballplayer. So, when Holec sat me down after my junior year for another talk, I figured it would be about developing another pitch during the Connie Mack season, or getting stronger, or taking care of my arm.

“Jim,” he said, “any thoughts about playing football?”

Football?

“Your dad was a heckuva player,” he said. “You’re a good athlete. We need a backup quarterback.”

Quarterback?

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never played organized tackle.”

“Think it over,” he said. “Practice starts first week of August.”

Connie Mack ball was about as cool as it comes. We had home and road uniforms, along with jackets that looked impressive at parties. Players came from all over the county, some headed to college programs. It was my first experience with and against such high-end competition. We won a lot of games and I made a lot of friends. The
season went for most of the summer, so I was hardly thinking of anything else when the phone rang one morning.

“It’s Coach Holec,” the voice said.

“Hey, Coach,” I said.

“It’s the first day of football practice.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Get your butt out here.”

So I became a backup quarterback and a punter, practicing every day and playing occasionally when the starting quarterback was hurt, holding secret desires to quit and never come back, but drawn to the romance of game night and a loud, passionate locker room that was so unlike baseball.

Again, the simplest tasks took time. The exchange from center required thought, as did a handoff to the left, when the back of my hand—not the ball—would face the running back. For the snap, my left hand was the top hand, placed deep—and rather intimately—under center. I’d lean right so my right forearm was low enough to guide the ball to my left hand. My center was extremely patient. For the backhanded handoff, I’d grip the ball close to a pointed end and offer it up like an ice-cream cone. I could throw, though. I could always throw.

These were the skills I took to the sidelines every Friday night, where I would appear quite prepared while watching my teammates win football games. I punted right-footed, an incongruity I tried not to give too much thought to.

That team led with its skill players, with Division I types at quarterback (Randy Levels) and both offensive ends (Terence Greene, the basketball player, and David Burks). The following fall, Greene would play basketball for Ray Meyer at DePaul University. Burks
went to Wisconsin to play football. Levels became the quarterback at Central Michigan. I folded in, ran the coming opponent’s plays in practice, took just enough first-team snaps in case calamity struck, and generally acted like the guy on loan from the baseball team.

We played our games at Atwood Stadium, an iconic brick-and-mortar structure in downtown Flint that lit up for football every Friday night. It reeked of six decades of football games and of history; in that U-shaped stadium, more than 20,000 people turned out for President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 and, twenty-four years later, 13,000 attended Senator John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign stop. My dad played there. In Flint, everybody’s dad played there.

We won often. And we followed the football routine of preparation, preparation, preparation, game. Football for me did not carry the personal consequences of baseball, beyond the usual comfort of inclusion. And winning, of course. My expectations were lower. I did not consider perfection, never mind demand it. The guys were fun, the games were fun, and I did what I could.

With the playoffs one regular-season game away, the practice routine began to change. I was getting more repetitions with the first team. There seemed a greater urgency to have me ready. As the team grew more curious, the head coach, Joe Eufinger, announced before a practice that Levels, our quarterback, would not play. He was academically ineligible. Like that, the season had found me. I was excited and reasonably optimistic. Even so, a stomachache developed Monday afternoon and hung around all week.

In my first start, a conservative game plan beat Flint Northern, our bitter rival, 43–14. Due to a quirk in the Flint school system, my math and science classes were on the Northern campus. I knew a few of the Northern players. In honor of my start at quarterback that
night, some went to school wearing tube socks over their right hands and forearms. It bothered me, and the win tasted particularly good. I leaned on Greene and Burkes, along with tailback Ken Franklin and fullback Daryl Gilliam. I dutifully ran the plays that came in from the sidelines, mostly stayed behind our offensive line, and once rolled left and scored a two-point conversion. I needed time on the field to establish that I could stay out of the way of a win, and we needed an eighth win to continue the season.

It came, easily, and I’d begun to feel the rhythm of the game. The state playoffs opened the following week against perennially talented Midland, who had beaten us in the regular season with a stout defense and a relentless ground game, our only loss. And we’d be without our starting quarterback.

On a Saturday afternoon, Atwood Stadium was near full. Dad was up there, halfway to the press box, near the left-side 40-yard line. He sat with Mom and Chad amid a cluster of other parents. They huddled under ponchos and umbrellas, shivering against a cold rain.

As a boy Dad had sat in those stands for the biggest Friday night games. During halftimes he’d meet the other boys on the lawn outside the open end of the stadium. They’d choose sides for skeleton games of tackle, adopting the names of the players from Central or Northern or whoever was playing that night. Years later, St. Matt’s won some big football games on that field. Dad knew the place well. In the minutes before game time, I could almost feel his anxiety for me. He knew I was nervous. The team had played well to get there and I didn’t want to be the reason we lost. There was more: I hoped that whatever came Dad would be proud of me. Around Flint, carrying the name Abbott meant hearing a lot about Mike Abbott, the two-way football player and three-sport star. Though he’d say he identified first with basketball, which I’d washed out of three years
before, I thought of him as a football player. He was tough like that. He talked more like a football player and related to the game in ways that he didn’t to baseball.

Dad was barely in his mid-thirties. As I approached adulthood, not all that many years after he’d gotten there, our relationship was complex. He was effusive in his affection for Chad and me. He told us he loved us unconditionally and we believed him. He established rules and fundamental values, left us to our lives outside the house, enjoyed the victories and soothed the failures. When I disappointed him, I was filled with remorse. When I brought home a good report card or pitched well in front of him, I sought his praise. I looked forward to those moments and wanted him to be proud.

Dad seemed to be in a continuous search, however, for something. Sometimes it wouldn’t be at home. He’d fight with Mom and leave. We figured he’d be back and he always did return eventually. But in the meantime we’d all be a little raw. Mom wasn’t the same, the house was quieter, and my thoughts were never far from the driveway, which I’d stare at, wondering when Dad’s car would pull in. There were times I resented the way he treated Mom, and how his disappearances distressed her. I was protective of her, not him. By my senior year at Central, their relationship seemed to be in a tumultuous place, and I secretly wished my athletic achievements would somehow bring them together and then keep them together. I hoped our house would be more peaceful. My desire for them to be together was even stronger than my yearning for his approval. On a rainy fall night at Atwood Stadium, they were together. We were all together. It felt good.

The game was hyped all week. From the talk around school, stories in
The Flint Journal
, and the mood at practices, the buildup was unlike anything I’d seen. Coach Eufinger was a large, gravelly-voiced,
well-regarded man who’d played offensive and defensive tackle at Central and then at Purdue. As that might suggest, he favored a running game. He’d adjusted to the speed and talent of our receivers, however, so our offense leaned toward the wide open, which had grown on him. He loved this team, as it was so rich in senior talent and character. He delivered an even speech about doing our jobs, trusting our teammates, and leaving it all out there, and then the senior captains began to shout. The locker room was as Spartan as they come, adorned with little more than hooks and benches. But it was filled with uncommon friendship and trust. For an afternoon and for this generation, these were the faces of Central, the black ones and the white ones, the true colors of Central. The fear of my early days there, and the scars of that stairwell whipping and others like it, had been replaced by admiration and a common cause. I wondered if everyone felt the same. I hoped they did. I joined in the chorus of camaraderie, and when our captains bolted for the door, we chased them onto the sodden artificial turf.

The following two and a half hours were surreal. Everything went right. Every play cut through the Midland defense. Every ball I threw found a receiver, and every receiver found a seam to the end zone. Accurate passes found their targets. Inaccurate passes found other friendly hands. Four went for touchdowns.

Near the end, we led, 26–20. The ball was deep in our territory. We needed only to punt the ball away to win. I stood twelve yards behind the snapper, wiping my hands on my pants against the rain. On the sideline, Coach Eufinger grinned and thought,
Here we are, a play from going to the state semifinals, it’s pouring rain, the ball is soaking wet, and my punter has one hand. It’s beautiful
. His faith in me was remarkable. I took the snap waist-high, swung my leg, and watched the ball fly away. We were going to the state semis.

From the field I watched my parents leave the stands. They’d go out to celebrate with the other parents. Tired and cold, I went home. The kitchen was dark. When I turned on the light, on the breakfast nook table was a page of notebook paper, and on that a few words of Dad’s half-printed, half-cursive handwriting. I held the note to the light. It read:

Proud of you son.

             —Dad

He believed he’d seen me approach manhood that afternoon, when the playing field was something other than a diamond, and the game was something other than baseball, and the odds were long. He knew I was a little afraid. Those days he’d sent me back into the world weren’t so easy on him, either. He was afraid, too. Now I’d gone out on my own, nodded, leaned in to take an uneasy snap, and helped win a game he knew everything about.

The following Saturday, we’d play Ann Arbor Pioneer in East Lansing. The winner would play in the Pontiac Superdome for the state title. Network television came to town to do a Thanksgiving Day story on the one-handed quarterback from Flint. It was a heady week, and then I threw six interceptions, all that had gone right against Midland went wrong against Pioneer, and we lost. And that was the end of football for me.

CHAPTER 8

I
n the dugout, I held the previous three outs in my hand. It might have looked like a paper cup half filled with water, but to me it was an inning gone by. I’d taken to marking my innings with cups, the first inning turned upside down on the shelf behind me, the second on top of that, the third soon to be stacked on those. My navy Yankees jacket zipped to my collarbone and a white towel draped around my neck, I studied the water in that cup, considered the dugout stairs covered in green outdoor carpeting, mulled the various liquids that pooled on the dugout floor.

Maldonado had been fooled on the last pitch in the top of the third inning, swinging over a curveball, trying not to at the last instant, flipping the bat away with disgust. In my head I held on to that release point, the feel of the ball rolling out of my hand, and waited for the fourth inning when all the runs I’d need arrived.

Bob Milacki, a big, thick right-hander, had started for the Indians and hadn’t given up a hit through two innings. After spending most of the season pitching for the Indians’ Triple-A team in Charlotte, Milacki was making his first big-league start in almost a year, when
along came one of those innings that leaves a pitcher feeling terribly helpless.

To begin with, he walked Mike Gallego. Randy Velarde popped up a bunt that Milacki’s catcher, Ortiz, made a terrific play on, diving down the third-base line for the out. Wade Boggs—being Wade Boggs—hooked a fastball and turned a good pitch away into a single to right field. It put runners at first and second, one out, for Dion James, a left-handed hitter who was having one of his better seasons but had one hit in his last eleven at-bats. He banged a 3-and-1 fastball through Milacki’s legs and into center field, which should have scored Gallego and only Gallego, but instead scored everyone, including James.