Magic Time. W. Kinsella P.

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СКАЧАТЬ me see how easy it was to set up a business operation if you had the capital – that decided me on a career in business.

      Roger let us know he needed a place to stay. Our only hotel had closed up years before, not long after a Ramada Inn opened in a shopping center a few miles down the highway. I was quick to volunteer our home.

      The past few years, since Byron no longer required a babysitter, Dad, Byron, and I had lived harmoniously in what Dad referred to as controlled chaos. We struggled along, sharing the household chores, often on Saturday morning, so that by Friday night we had to push our way into the house, every dish and piece of clothing we owned in need of washing.

      ‘If he can stand it, I guess we can,’ was how Dad answered my suggestion that Roger move into the spare bedroom until the challenge game.

      ‘If you want to check him out first I can arrange it,’ I said.

      ‘I’ve got to start trusting your judgment some time, Son. If this Roger friend of yours steals any of our valuable art work or silverware, you have to pay for it.’

      Our art work and silverware came from Kmart.

      But Dad was happy to have company, and when Roger arrived carrying only his black valise, Dad was at the door to greet him. Roger accepted a beer and they talked baseball for an hour before Dad headed for bed.

      ‘I need to ask you another favor,’ Roger said to me the next morning. ‘I need a place to work out. A private place. I don’t want McCracken or any of his spies to see me pitch before game time.’

      ‘There’s an abandoned ball field behind the factory where Dad works,’ I said. ‘They used to have a team in one of the commercial leagues, but they dropped out about five years ago. It’s pretty overgrown with weeds, but since all you need is the mound and home plate, I think that can be made playable with an hour’s work. And I bet McCracken doesn’t even know it exists.’

      A few minutes with the tools from Roger’s trunk cleared away the weeds, and we embedded a new length of two-by-four in the mound to replace one that was squishy and rotten. We dug a small depression and inset two pieces of wood side by side to form a crude plate, after Roger produced a well-worn tape from his duffel bag. I held one end of the tape on the rubber while he measured to the spot where home plate should be.

      Roger then dug out his glove and a ball. He gave me the glove and tossed a few practice pitches while I crouched behind the newly installed plate. I guess I was expecting Nolan Ryan. After about fifteen pitches I said, with that terrible candor the young consider honesty, ‘You’re not very good.’

      ‘You haven’t seen me with an enemy batter at the plate,’ he replied. ‘I may not look like much, and I’m no Roger Clemens, but I change speeds and keep the hitters off balance: that’s a pitcher’s most important function. If they can’t time your pitch, even if you’re slow as water finding its own level, they can’t hit you. Besides, that ain’t a catcher’s glove, and I wouldn’t want to hurt your hand.’

      ‘Yeah, right,’ I said under my breath.

      Preparations for the big day kept Byron and me running all week. Tuesday night, my dad, Roger, Byron, and I scouted McCracken Construction during a league game in a neighboring town. McCracken was a stocky, barrel-chested man with dirty blond hair. He pitched a three-hitter. Roger made notes on McCracken, and on the batters he would face.

      After the game we discussed strategy.

      I had a difficult time tracking down enough players from my high-school team. Several were working shift for the summer and weren’t certain they would be available. Some were on vacation. We ended up with a third-string catcher, and I had to recruit Byron to play right field. He was not a total loss as a ball player, but he would rather have charted the game on his computer than play.

      ‘I’m gonna have you lead off,’ Roger said to me.

      I alternated between batting second and seventh most of my high-school career. I showed Roger the statistics I kept on our team’s season.

      ‘I prefer being the lead-off man,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’

      ‘I know more than you think,’ said Roger, flashing his disarming grin.

      ‘Look at these stats,’ I said. ‘I steal successfully nine out of ten tries. But my high-school coach doesn’t play a base-stealing game.’

      ‘And you have a high on-base percentage,’ said Roger. ‘You walk a lot. Walks are important. You need patience to walk. I need your help here, because I’m going to put my batters up in the order of their patience.’

      ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘McCracken has great control. I went over his stats in back issues of the local paper. They don’t always print box scores but the ones I could find show McCracken only walks 2.1 batters per game and averages 6.4 strikeouts.’

      ‘You don’t miss a trick, do you?’ said Roger. ‘But it’s a strategy, trust me.’ And he smiled once again, his teeth glinting like porcelain.

      We had another practice Friday evening. I’m afraid we didn’t look very good. Byron reported that someone from McCracken’s team was sitting in a pickup truck about three blocks down the street, studying us through binoculars, hoping to get a glimpse of Roger in action.

      Roger did not pitch. Our regular pitcher, Dusty Swan, who I had recruited to play third base because our regular third-base man was in California, threw batting practice.

      ‘I want you guys to lay back and wait for the fastball,’ Roger told us. ‘McCracken’s got a killer curve, a mean slider, a big-league change-up you can break your back on. But his fastball’s nothing. He uses it to set up his other pitches. If we can keep from swinging at anything outside the strike zone, he’ll give up lots of walks. Then he’ll have to throw the fastball and, when he does, we’ll hammer it.’

      Though Roger’s strategy went against McCracken’s statistics, it was Roger’s game, and Roger’s money was bet on it.

      All that week, in the afternoons, Roger Cash worked out at the abandoned ball field behind the lumberyard. Sometimes I acted as his catcher, but more often he employed Walt Swan, a brother to Dusty. He paid Walt five dollars cash after every workout.

      In the evenings, accompanied by his trusty road atlas, he played the mileage game in every bar in the area. Dad heard at work that Roger was picking up several hundred dollars in winnings each night.

      ‘It’s also a way for me to become known real quickly,’ Roger said. ‘It will help assure a good turnout for the game on Sunday.’

      By the end of his third evening in town he had a very pretty brunette on his arm. She had a pleasant laugh, a crooked smile, and pale brown, almond-shaped eyes. She was a cocktail waitress at Hot Mama’s on the outskirts of town. Her name was Jacqueline, and she spent the rest of the nights that week in Roger’s room, except the night before the big game.

      ‘Do you have any objection, Gil,’ Roger asked my dad our first night at supper, ‘to my having occasional female company in my room?’

      Dad looked up from his chicken-fried steak.

      ‘You can bring a goat to your room as far as I’m concerned,’ he said, ‘as long СКАЧАТЬ