A BASEBALL YARN

         My cousin Billy really wants to be a pitcher. He has been working at it for years. They wouldn't let him pitch in Little League so he settled for the outfield, but when he got to the junior high level he thought he was ready to pitch. He had practiced on the back lot every day using me as his catcher. Actually I had other things to do but he made me get out there and work with him.

         I admit he was pretty good but of course in the back lot there were no hitters facing him. My job was to catch what he threw and be the ump, calling balls and strikes.

         He promised to buy me a house when he hits the big leagues and I mean to hold him to it. By now I deserve it.

         By the time he was sixteen, he had a pretty good repertoire of stuff and a good eye for finding the edge of the plate. I have to say, he was a very good pitcher even if he is my favorite cousin. Along with talent and some carefully practiced skills I knew, and I guess he knew too, he had a lot of attitude. You need attitude to succeed but a little goes a long ways, don't you know. He could get ticked if you criticized, but I still did. I want that house!

         I warned him there is no place in baseball or anywhere else for a loose cannon, and he admitted that was true, but admitting it and overcoming it were two different things.

         That season he tried out as a pitcher and got the position. According to the rules he could throw only 60 pitches and then be relieved no matter if he was on a roll. That did not sit well with Billy. He complained that the other pitchers on his team did not have the desire or the determination he did. He could hand over a nice lead to one of the other guys and then sit in the dugout and watch the lead melt away. To him it was not 'just a game.' He was a passionate winner and a hard loser.

         In that league they had the practice of putting the best players on the weaker teams and Billy deplored this. He also had problems with catchers who called for the wrong pitch at the wrong rime and they had a problem with him shaking them off. If he could have played all nine positions at once he probably would have been satisfied. I swear there were times I wanted to kick him myself.

         On the high school team it was different. Still he had no patience with teammates who did not have the single-minded devotion to the game that he had. and who weren't giving the percentage he required of himself.

         As a result his pitching was maybe an eight or nine but his attitude was more like a two. Something had to change.

         So that brings me to the day when Billy took the mound wearing his gleaming home team whites and ready for all comers. The game was against the Nottingham Sox and promised to be a good one. The first inning was three up and three down and Billy expected no less of himself.

         He sent the Sox back to their dugout one by one and did not allow a base runner. He was not playing a game. His fangs were showing. I could see it coming; maybe he could, too.

         Two innings later not one Sox had reached first. The Carthage Cubs had three runs and it looked like a win. Coming to bat to lead off the fourth was Margie Spaulding. She was as Billy said, 'too good for a girl.' Don't get me wrong. Billy is sixteen and likes girls, but not to play against. Not when they can hit like Margie.

         Margie had an attitude too. Billy said it himself, "if she was a dude she would be a good player." But standing to the left of the plate glowering at him with a face full of bubble gum, Billy thought she was out of place.

         He shook off the catcher twice and then they agreed on something. Billy let fly his best pitch. His expression said, there, hit that if you think you're so good!

         There is a sound. There is no way to describe it, but we all know what it is. It is the sound when the fat of the bat meets the ball in just that certain way. The moment we heard the sound we knew. Billy stood helpless while Margie's line drive went over his head, still climbing. All Billy could do was stand there while Margie ran around the bases. She didn't have to hurry and she didn't. As she crossed the plate everybody was hollering and her teammates came out to welcome her home.

         Billy's mouth was still hanging open. The chagrin of it was a thousand times worse because it was a girl that did it to him, and ten thousand times worse than that because it was Margie.

         The wheels came off after that. Billy was grateful to be taken out of the game. By then there were Sox on all three bases and the top of their order coming up. Billy slunk away like a whipped puppy.

         Yes, he had it coming but I still felt bad for him. It was a valuable lesson he had to learn if he was going to be anything at all in this game, but just the same he was hurt and humiliated and angry with himself. That's a bad kind of mad.

         Margie had popped his balloon in front of all those people.