Imperfect: An Improbable Life (17 page)

The locals had taken to calling my name in broken English on the streets, and it was strange to be recognized so far from home. I’d had difficulty getting back to the hotel after pitching. The sidewalk outside our clubhouse and narrow street that led away from the old stadium were nearly impassable because of the people who’d massed there. They shouted and grabbed hold of my jersey, and the security guards pushed back, and eventually a small path cleared for Fraser and me to squeeze through. The bus then led a slow parade of Cubans through the streets toward the team hotel.

Life and baseball, for all of us, had taken a dramatic turn.

A
FEW WEEKS
earlier we’d walked into a large room with high ceilings and several rows of bunk beds, the bachelors officers’ quarters at Naval Air Station Memphis. The 3,800-acre base was actually in Millington, Tennessee, about forty miles north of Memphis, and a long way from Cape Cod, where I’d planned on pitching for the summer. For a Northern boy, the South’s sweetened tea, fried food, and slower pace were a charming diversion.

The facilities there included a baseball diamond and room enough to board about forty of us invited by USA Baseball. Those of us who made it through the cuts would form the core of a team that would represent the country in the 1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis,
the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea, and, soon, before any of that, the seven-game exhibition series in Cuba.

I’d just finished my sophomore season at Michigan. One of the benefits of staying in one place for a decent period of time—the east end of Flint, Central High, then Michigan—was the routine. New environments meant old questions, old awkwardness, old reminders. I knew everyone was watching. I knew their curiosity. Eventually, if I stayed around long enough, my disability would be forgotten, or at least become familiar enough to have lost its appeal as a conversation subject.

But that would take time.

Pretty soon I’d be Jim or Jimmy or Abby. But, first, I knew, I had to be the one-handed pitcher, play that for a while. They’d stick out their right hands and I’d grab on with my left, establish that. Then we’d go play ball, establish that. I’d laugh at the jokes, make a few myself, be one of the guys, establish that. Usually it was enough. But that doesn’t mean that it happened quickly enough for me.

Tino Martinez was there from the University of Tampa; Ty Griffin from Georgia Tech; Dave Silvestri from the University of Missouri; Gregg Olson from Auburn; Mike Fiore from Miami; Pat Combs from Baylor; Ted Wood from the University of New Orleans; Scott Servais from Creighton; Ed Sprague from Stanford; Scott Livingstone from Texas A&M; Frank Thomas from Clemson; the one-handed guy from Michigan.

That summer in southwest Tennessee was hot, presumably like all summers in southwest Tennessee. We were holed up on the Navy base, practicing twice a day, sleeping on bunks, and getting vanned into town for meals. We ate at a restaurant called Old Timers, over and over. The theme was railroads; a miniature train buzzed around
on an overhead track in the main dining room. Old Millington was in black-and-white photos on the walls.

The few working fans seemed only to force more hot air into our barracks. We shared one pay phone. The television received only local channels through a rabbit-ears antenna, so during our breaks we watched the only thing that was on: Oliver North testifying before a joint congressional committee investigating the Iran-Contra scandal.

It might not sound like much, but I loved it.

I was meeting and playing against some of the best college players in the country, players I’d only read and heard about. I was fitting in. I was pitching well. For the first time, I thought maybe I could compete against anyone and have the same chance to play professionally.

And while we were all griping about the humidity, and the food, and the conditions, and the tedium of the workouts, we also were drawing together, maybe what USA Baseball and Coach Fraser had in mind. In only a few weeks, we would be sent to Havana, Cuba, to play a team widely believed to be among the best on earth—even considering the U.S. major leagues. We had a long way to go in a short time, because there was potential for intimidation and embarrassment in Cuba, where Castro demanded hardball superiority and generally got it.

“Guys, they’re not that good,” Fraser would growl through a curled lip. “They’d probably only finish fourth in the AL East this year.”

Fraser was a character like Tommy Lasorda was a character, equal parts baseball man, pitchman, and grandfather.

Team USA left for Havana in mid-July. We flew into Miami, where in a special area of the Miami airport we boarded a government-sponsored
charter. We were greeted on the plane by officials from state departments of the United States and Cuba. It was all very formal, more so than we’d expected, and the short flight through the darkness to the communist nation didn’t foster the usual levels of goofing around. We were all a little nervous.

The great Cuban players awaited, along with a team that many compared to the near unbeatable Russian hockey teams of earlier generations. Beyond the baseball, we wondered what the hotel would be like, the food, the water, the people. It would be daunting enough to play the Cubans on a neutral field, but this would be on their turf, before their countrymen, and their president. For some among them, there would be not just the baseball result, but a commentary on the two governments and their people. We were a bunch of college kids, so it seemed a lot to carry. We arrived at night to a tedious customs process. Cuban officers kept us at the airport for what seemed to be three or four hours. They checked every pocket of every person, every compartment of every suitcase. There were, I’d say, forty of us in the traveling party. And one by one we’d gather up our clothes and gear, repack them, and drag it all across the tarmac to the bus, where we’d watch the next guy go through the same laborious pat-down, all while press photographers rushed us, lighting the tarmac with their flashbulbs. They took a keen interest in me, too keen for it to have been about baseball. I slid my right hand into my jacket pocket and tried to seem friendly.

The Cubans had invited us down, but clearly weren’t ready to trust us. A few days later, when Castro came to greet us, they’d even secured the bats.

Years later, when I was pitching for the California Angels, I’d hear from Castro again. He wanted an autographed baseball.

CHAPTER 10

M
ost of my life when I wound up and threw a baseball it started out straight, but as it neared its destination it would move—sometimes hard, sometimes slightly—from left to right, as if drawn by a magnet. For all I knew the first ball I ever tossed to my dad did the same thing, as did the first ball I threw at the brick wall outside my house, as did the ball that counted for my first strikeout in Little League.

Baseball people called it a cut fastball, or a cutter. Through high school the ball would drift right, almost imperceptibly. At Michigan, purely by accident, I came upon a grip that felt good in my hand and would be considered quite unorthodox. The ball cut even more. I’d never seen anyone pitch with that particular grip. As a matter of fact, I never would. Occasionally I would show a fellow pitcher how I held the ball. Almost without fail he would stare for a while, mimic the grip, and hand the ball back, as if I were crazy.

It worked for me. And on good, warm days I could crank it up into the mid-90s. Another element: because I had to hood my glove over my right hand, I could not hide the ball or my grip. Even if the
hitter couldn’t necessarily see my hand on the ball, he was about the only one in the ballpark who couldn’t, and it would have been simple enough for him to find out. Ballplayers find their ways. For one, that’s what teammates are for.

So, rather than grope at the ball, changing grips, going to different pitches, sometimes it was easier—and more effective—to simply locate the cutter. For me, it was the most natural thing. I’d throw it as hard as I could, keep my front shoulder closed and finish as far out in front as I could, and watch it go. It was a good pitch in college, and an even better pitch in the big leagues, where the bats were wooden and prone to splintering.

I’d learned and developed other pitches along the way—the curveball, the changeup, the slider—but nothing was quite so comfortable as the cutter, and as I pitched into the fifth inning against the Indians, their hitters were still looking for it. The righties, especially, were opening up early, trying to get the thick part of the bat to the ball before the ball got to the thin part of the bat. So, they pulled my off-speed pitches foul, or hit them off the ends of their bats, generally toward my guys.

We’d drawn to within two games of the AL East–leading Blue Jays, the rain was holding off, and we were beating the Indians, so the crowd was happy and lively. The people in the stands were as pleased that we were winning as I was. Well, maybe.

Of course, I wasn’t perfect. I’d walked Lofton in the first inning, Milligan in the second and, now, leading off the fifth inning, Milligan again, on four pitches. There are few things more annoying than holding a lead and walking the leadoff hitter, particularly one who’d bat .190 against me in his career. But I missed away a couple times, threw the 2-and-0 pitch too far inside and to the backstop, then missed inside again.

That brought Manny Ramirez, who—wisely, given the events of the first hitter of the inning—took the first pitch. It was a curveball and it nicked the outside corner for a strike. He then swung through a cutter up in the zone, so I’m ahead, 0 and 2. After I bounced a curveball for ball one, I think Ramirez saw another curveball coming, because he crushed it.

Randy Velarde, at shortstop, had just enough time to lean a little left and get his glove in front of his belt buckle. The ball was hit so hard Milligan couldn’t tell if Velarde caught it in the air or it had bounced. So, while Milligan’s instincts carried him a little toward second, then a little toward first, then back to second again, his legs checked out. While Velarde flipped to Gallego, who made the relay to first, Milligan finally gathered himself and took a few steps backward toward right field, surrendering the double play.

Fifteen years later, asked about the Saturday afternoon game against the Yankees with so many of his friends and relatives in the stands, Ramirez would shrug and say, “We hit some balls hard.”

That might have been the ball he remembered.

Maldonado, who so concerned Nokes, ended the inning by flying to Dion James in left field on the eighth pitch of the at-bat.

I was five innings in. Into what, I didn’t know. But, we were ahead. I’d gotten fifteen outs without any major crises. The stack of cups was growing.

CHAPTER 11

T
he dark and dusty tunnel beneath the Indianapolis Motor Speedway led to a short flight of stairs, which led to light. Behind me, 676 men and women shuffled through the darkness.

I held their flag.

Ours was the last nation to be announced, and after a long wait we were summoned by a gentleman’s nod and wave. As we began to advance on the light, the volunteer workers among us at the 10th Pan American Games began a chant of “USA! USA!,” urging us forward, when finally a great voice announced our arrival to the 70,000 whose eyes were on the mouth of the tunnel.

“Los Estados Unidos,” the man bellowed across the racetrack.

The people stood with a roar, honoring the flag. In the late-summer heat, goose bumps rose against my white suit, which long before had become soaked with sweat.

I turned to wave to the crowd. My parents were up there somewhere. So were George H. W. Bush, the vice president, and Juan Antonio Samaranch, the International Olympic Committee President. I searched for Mom and Dad, in vain.

Days before, to my astonishment, I’d been chosen to lead the American contingent down the straightaway, along the banked turns, and into the field with the other competing nations. As the host country, we’d appeared thirty-eighth and last, and to great anticipation. The Cubans, whom we were getting to know quite well, stood not far away.