By the time we were scheduled for our first scrimmage,

I was in a fight for the starting shortstop job with a black

kid named Darrell. Darrell was from Roosevelt School,

and he was kind of what everybody expected a black kid

to be like. He wasn’t a bad kid or anything, though he

had been kicked out of school twice already for fighting,

and rumor had it that the highest mark Darrell had ever

gotten in a class was a D+—and that was in gym. Darrell

was the only person I knew who could make a mean

face that rivaled one of Jonathan’s scowls. Even Jonathan

admitted he’d like to learn some of Darrell’s meanness

techniques. Of course, Jonathan was just putting on an

act, and Darrell wasn’t. Darrell seemed to be mean right

down to the core. He wasn’t too good of a ballplayer,

but he played hard—not out of fun or dedication but, as

Jonathan would say, out of pure oppressed-black-person

meanness.

Darrell had a following. Most of the other black kids

on the team respected him. They weren’t quite sure what

to make of Jonathan, but there were no mysteries about

Darrell. Darrell seemed to be like all the black kids from

Roosevelt School, only a whole lot meaner.

I was beginning to have more and more trouble with

my throwing, and my coach was getting on my case more

and more. Darrell didn’t have my consistency at catching

grounders, but he had a strong and accurate arm. The

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other players started calling him the Rifle, and I was still

the Wrecker. I was having particular troubles with my

coach because he insisted that I learn to throw overarm.

It wasn’t an unreasonable request, and he was the coach,

but I had never really thrown overarm in my whole life.

I didn’t know why. I just naturally threw sidearm. Of

course, when you threw the ball sidearm, a funny thing

happened on the ball’s way over to first base: it sort of

curved a little. It faded out a little over to the right. I’d

always had some trouble controlling my sidearm throws,

but I’d always been able to compensate a little by aiming

over to the left a little more, and then the ball would

fade on over to its target. However, that wasn’t good

enough for the coach. He wanted us to throw overarm.

It was overarm or nothing. So I tried overarm—and I

threw worse. Then I’d sneak in an old familiar sidearm

throw, but I’d forget to compensate for the curve, and

the throw would go sailing away. Then I’d catch hell

from the coach. So I’d try to throw overarm again, and

I’d never know where the heck the ball was going to go.

Then I’d catch more hell. I was getting pretty worried. I

lost all confidence in my throwing, and when someone

lost his confidence, he was going to lose his job, and

he might as well find a seat on the bench, which was

where I was headed. By the first scrimmage, Darrell was

the starting shortstop, and I was on the bench. I really

needed somebody to bolster my confidence, but of course,

Frankie was gone, and I was only left with Jonathan, who

had to try not to be too chummy with me so as not to

antagonize Darrell’s buddies.

Then the coach started to criticize my switch-hitting.

Nobody had ever bothered me before about my switchhitting.

Old Mr. Gonzo had seemed to think it was rather

neat that one of his players was a switch-hitter just like

the Mick, but the JV coach didn’t go for it. He said I was

too young to switch-hit, and besides, I really couldn’t hit

lefty anyway. He was correct about that, but I could still

bunt, and I had learned how to slap the ball to left field.

It looked a little funny, but when I batted lefty, I’d wait

on the ball a real long time to get a good look at it, and

then I’d slap the ball to left field and almost always get a

hit. Lefty hitters were really rare in high school; there were

far more righty hitters than lefties. That was why coaches

always put their worst fielders out in right field. When a

lefty hitter would get up, everybody’d yell, “Lefty! Lefty!”

as if everybody had been suddenly struck with blindness.

Then all the fielders would shift over toward right field—

of course, nobody ever pulled this shift when a righty

batter came up. So whenever I got up to hit lefty, all the

fielders would naturally shift a bit over to right, and I

would slap a little grounder or hit a little blooper to left

and get a sure hit. But that didn’t matter because the

coach didn’t like switch-hitters.

Now, I wasn’t much of a hitter when hitting righty,

but I could swing the bat a little harder, and I didn’t look

as awkward, so the coach told me to work on my righty

hitting. I knew as well as anyone how well I could hit

righty—not well at all. I got a few hits and occasionally

hit a long fly, but in order to be productive at the plate, I

needed to slap a few hits lefty or at least drag a bunt single.

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However, the coach wouldn’t hear of it. I was to learn to

bat righty or nothing—no Mickey Mantle kid stuff up

there in JV. I was to learn to throw overarm and learn to

bat correctly, one way. I’d known things were gonna be

different, but I sure wasn’t prepared for that.

March was a tough month for baseball. We all really

wanted to get out and play since we were sick of winter,

but unfortunately, it could get pretty darn cold and windy

in March. Jonathan referred to the cold wind in March

as the hawk.

“The hawk’s really biting today,” Jonathan would say,

and then we’d try to take batting practice, and our hands

would sting every time we made contact with a pitch. It

kind of made me happy when I swung and missed. I’d

stand up there with the stupid wind swirling around, and

I’d get dirt in my eyes and have to squint, but the coach

would expect the players to be hitting vicious line drives

somehow. It was almost as bad when I got out in the field.

I had enough trouble trying to throw the ball straight

without the wind making things even more difficult.

We had one stretch of cold gray days that I thought

would last forever. There was no sun in sight all week—no

warmth all week. By the end of the week, I was praying

for it to rain or snow so practice would be canceled. I

never thought I’d actually wish for rain to cancel an

opportunity to play baseball, but that was how I felt.

When Friday rolled around, there was a slow, constant

drizzle. It was cold, gray, and wet, and the hawk was

biting but not bad enough for the coach to cancel practice.

 I was sure he never even considered it. So there we were,

standing around, just about freezing to death, with the

coach taking us through his drills. First, we did wind

sprints. Then we did some ridiculous calisthenics. Then

we did some throwing to loosen up our arms, which were

hardly going to warm up because they were half frozen.

Then came infield practice. We had to whip the ball

around, and each time we’d catch a ball, our hands would

sting like crazy. Then we did some batting practice, and of

course, the coach wouldn’t let me switch-hit anymore, so

I had to bat righty all the time. Since I was a pretty lousy

hitter anyway, batting practice was a real ordeal. Things

were different from freshman year all right. This coach

played to win, and his attitude was “Practice, practice,

practice. Work, work, work,” hawk or no hawk.

The number-one worst part of those cold gray March

days was going home alone. After such a lousy practice,

I should have been happy to get out of there and head

home, but I wasn’t. It wasn’t so bad to go back to the

field house, because Jonathan was there, and since he

had to behave himself for almost the whole two hours of

practice, he had a lot of pent-up screwing around in him,

so he’d always think of something stupid to do on the

way back to the field house. But once we got changed and

set out for the walk home, Jonathan went one way, and

I went the other. Since Frankie was gone, I was the only

one from my area of town, and it was a long walk. It was

longer when it was cold, gray, and drizzling and when the

coach had just spent two hours working my butt off and

chewing me out. The walk gave me time to think, but

there wasn’t anything good to think about. When Frankie

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was around, I’d spend the entire walk home listening to

him talk and complain about how he hated the coach,

but he always said not to worry because things would

get better when the weather improved. But when I was

by myself, I had nobody to tell me that I had a chance to

win my position and that the coach didn’t really think I’d

screwed up in practice. When I had to walk home alone

and the sky was gray and the hawk was biting, it could

get sort of sad. And it was about to get worse.