Drafted

Drafted

By Vic Larson

The man I call Coach Crass was a savagely competitive sports attorney who counted Major League All-Stars among his clients. Five of us were meeting to create teams from a list of sixth-graders signed up to play little league baseball. Crass called it a player draft. Was this normal or was our wealthy host already gaming the system?

By the summer of 2001 I had gotten to know the four other father-coaches through school, church, and sports as our sons grew up together. We arrived at the Crass estate, parking in the expansive driveway, nervously keeping our distance from the red Maserati on display outside one of four garage doors. Inside, we sat in stunned silence around a massive mahogany table in a lower-level conference room. Our host had just commented on his wife’s insatiable sexual appetite. It was the first of his many unsettling remarks.

I disliked him immediately, and vowed that by the end of the season my team would beat his—but I also believed that eleven-year-old boys should learn and have fun. And to demonstrate my sincerity, I selected some of the worst athletes in the sixth grade.

Crass marveled at my accommodating nature. Several times I caught him staring at me, perhaps wondering what I was up to. He continued his crude commentary about young mothers and potential players.

“Do you know Tommy Farrell’s mother? She’s hot but crazy. She’ll be your worst nightmare. I’ll take him if you guys don’t want him,” he said.

Tommy was the best athlete in our small town.

“Michael Gross is as dense as Sakrete, and not even five feet tall.”

“Give him to me,” I said. I later discovered, despite his small stature, that Mikey had an arm like a rocket launcher. He just had trouble focusing.

The eventual teams were evenly balanced, with two exceptions. Several of Crass’s choices would go on to play college ball. I went home with a roster for the Bad News Bears.

On my way out his front door I thanked him for hosting and offered to shake hands. He was already in mid-turn, closing the door with one hand, the other on his phone.

Crass snagged New York team jerseys with no discussion. We were given the Cardinals. As luck would have it, our first opponents were the Yankees. Crass bought his players equipment bags and matching batting gloves. We dumped used equipment from dusty canvas.

Crass’s son was the junior version of his old man, a prima donna being groomed as a pitcher. Crass counted the kid’s pitches and tracked innings played each week, a limit most coaches didn’t know. Junior could throw the ball around seventy-five miles per hour but was notoriously wild. I motioned him over to an available mound.

“I’ll warm you up,” I said, grabbing a dusty catcher’s mitt.

He sauntered toward the mound, sighing, as if inconvenienced.

“I have to warn you, I’ll be throwing some heat,” he said.

“That’s fine,” I said, crouching behind the plate. I motioned with my four fingers like Neo in The Matrix inviting Agent Smith to bring it. It was foolish not to wear catcher’s gear.

I’m not sure when a baseball begins to generate sound as it shreds air, but after much fussing with his stance and kicking dirt with his toe, Junior eventually unleashed a pitch that reached me long before I expected it. It moved up and down on its way, hissed like a snake, and fortunately landed in the pocket of my glove.

I didn’t flinch or say “Wow!” I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Instead, I said,“That all you got?” and tossed the ball back.

“Play Ball!” shouted the umpire. I was saved.

We left our first matchup humiliated, and in one case, injured. Bobby Sellers took a glancing line drive to his head that knocked him down, dazed and fighting back tears on the way to the bench. Junior hit several players in the head. Batting helmets prevented emergency room visits. Tim Anderson dove for a line drive about a half-second late and spat dirt for two innings. The extremely agile Anderson later honed this skill, mastering diving catches from which he sprang to his feet and rocketed a ball to either first or second, his long blonde hair whipping from side to side like a dog’s ears. It was his superpower.

Our fielders played too deep, so frightened of line drives that pop flies dropped in front of them as hits. The outfield hoped that the infield would make the outs, which seldom happened.

We lost seventeen to zero. I called midweek practices.

Strengths emerged as the season progressed. We had several competent pitchers, my son Eric among them. Sellers, a stocky, good-natured fellow like his father, had a surprising lack of fear considering the early season blow to his somewhat square head. He was a marvel behind home plate. Catcher’s gear was his shield of invincibility.

By the end of the season we were last in the standings. But we’d gained confidence, ready to take on anyone. Except the Yankees. The boys looked downhearted. We huddled.

“We’re gonna do something different,” I began. “No changing positions.”

The boys looked uncertain, but I had their attention.

“Dennis, you’re at first.” Alan Dennis was obsessed with baseball. He wore a complete uniform and imitated players he watched on television.

“Yes!” he ran down the baseline, channeling Albert Pujols behind the bag.

“Sellers, catcher. Gear up.”

“Ok coach!”

I looked at Eric. He looked up at me expectantly.

“Can you pitch the whole game?” I asked.

He smiled and trotted to the mound. I hadn’t pitched him all week, saving him for this.

“Gray, Anderson, Bergland. Third, Short, Second,” I continued.

The Cardinals took the field. Crass strutted in his dugout, spitting sunflower seeds at his players.

Crass took notice when we finished the third inning up one to nothing. He studied the field, fingers threaded through the dugout’s chain link. He yelled something at his assistant and spat. The Cardinals were playing position.

We scored again in the bottom of the fourth, and struck out the Yankees side in the fifth. The first Yankee batter in the sixth went down swinging. Crass called time out and sauntered over to me.

“How many innings has he pitched this week?” he asked, gesturing toward the mound.

“Who, him?” I said, winking at Eric, who twisted the ball in his glove.

“Yeah, how many?”

“Let me see,” I said. I traced innings with my pen and then jabbed the ballpoint into my clipboard like an exclamation point.

“Now I remember. None.”

His look was fierce, but he had nothing. He turned in disgust, spat, and strolled back to his dugout. He knew he’d been suckered.

A change in batting order brought the best Yankee hitters to the plate.

“Ready in the field!” I shouted. Gross was literally picking dandelions in center field.

“Mikey, you good?” I said to the smallest member of our team. He looked up and dropped the yellow flowers.

The second batter crowded the plate and leaned into a pitch. He rubbed his shoulder where the ball struck, but grinned as he took first.

The first strike took the next batter by surprise. On the second pitch, his bat flew down the third base line. Kevin Gray, nicknamed “Scarecrow” due to his long legs, made a comical leap away from the tumbling stick. Our team laughed in the field.

“Guys!” I shouted, shaking my head.

The third pitch left the bat with a loud crack. A screaming grounder headed between third and second. Anderson dove, snagged the ball on a shallow bounce, leapt to his feet and fired it to Brian Bergland, crouching at second with one foot on the bag. He pivoted and fired the ball to Dennis at first with major league accuracy.

“You’re out!” yelled the Ump at first, motioning the same result to second base.

A cheer went up in the bleachers from the Cardinals’ parents. Crass, mouth agape, threw a glove against the dugout wall. The sides were retired.

The Yankees put a man on base in the seventh and advanced him to second. With one out, the next batter crushed a low inside pitch to deep center field. Mikey Gross, the dandelion picker, tracked it to the fence and made the catch. The man on second tagged and rounded third as Mikey hesitated, gauged the distance, then launched the ball toward Sellers at home.

In the seconds that missile was in the air, time slowed. I glanced at home, at the runner, at Gross, arm frozen in air, and at the arcing ball, flying with purpose, its trajectory taking it over the heads of our infielders like some perfect physics experiment, into the waiting glove of our invincible catcher who tagged the runner and held onto the ball despite a cloud of dust and flailing spikes.

“YOU’RE OUT!” yelled the ump. It was a beautiful thing.

This is not one of those baseball stories that ends in the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded with a full count and two outs. But our victory was just as sweet. We held our opponents to one run and scored one more of our own. When they were least expecting it, we beat the Yankees three to one.

The boys ran to the mound after the final pitch and melded into a bouncing, shouting red molecule. A standing ovation from parents on both teams paid tribute to our achievement. We let the victory linger a bit. It felt like a World Series win.

After a lineup and player parade, with “good game” exchanged like young gentlemen, we packed our equipment and sipped juice boxes in the dugout. The boys were jubilant. Sadly, Crass refused to shake my hand, and I overheard an exchange as he walked away.

“I hope he enjoyed the win. We let ‘em have it,” he said to a father of one of the boys on his team.

“That’s bullshit Crass!” he replied. “They had you for lunch!’

My goal was achieved. We beat the Yankees, the dream team. I smiled and tipped my cap in appreciation to the commenting father. And though I agree that winning isn’t everything, sometimes it’s not the things you get that are your reward, it’s the things you don’t. I must say, that handshake I was refused was the best one I never got.

Vic Larson began writing as a journalist at the University of Illinois. He spent his career as a senior writer and then manager in a Fortune 100 marketing department near Chicago. He now lives in Florida where he writes poetry, fiction, essays and movie reviews.