A False Spring

When we assembled at our respective diamonds, a roll call was taken by the managers and the morning workouts began. Only the injured players did not take part. They were given red armbands and sent to Diamond No. 5, where they amused themselves as best they could. The rest of us went through light calisthenics and then infield and outfield drills, the pitchers covering first base and fielding bunts. Finally there was batting practice. All four major diamonds were awhirl with activity, orchestrated in a surprisingly efficient manner considering the number of players involved.

A pitcher delivers the ball. The batter swings and lofts a fly to center field. A coach to the batter's right hits a ground ball to the shortstop. A coach to the batter's left hits a ground ball to the second baseman. As the grounders intersect, the centerfielder catches the fly and tosses it to the player backing up the pitcher behind the mound. The two infielders gobble up their grounders and lob the balls in parabolas over the pitcher's head on the way back to the coaches. The pitcher has already begun his windup; the process is repeated the rest of the morning.

Other players went to one of the batting cages next to the locker room or to one of the warmup mounds in front of the cages. The cages resembled those in a zoo except that their bars were strands of rope woven into a net. When a batter hit a ball into the net it fell harmlessly to the ground. The balls were delivered by a mechanical pitching machine whose arm never tired, never suffered pulled muscles, delivered a ball with a clank every 10 seconds. Facing Iron Mike, a batter needed to get himself in a certain rhythmic groove, because if he did not he found fastballs buzzing past him as he fiddled with his stance.

Always available for advice was Johnny Mize, the camp's batting instructor. Mize had been a huge and powerful home-run hitter for the Cardinals, Giants and Yankees in his playing days, but now, in his late 40s, he was simply a big man running to fat. His face was blazing red and so swollen that his tiny eyes were barely visible. He could be seen always in the same pose—half sitting on an upright bat, half standing. It was the kind of pose one sees on the fairways at Augusta during Masters week; old men in caps sitting on their portable seats before folding them up and venturing on to the next hole. Whenever a player asked Mize for advice he grumbled a few words sullenly and fell silent. He did not rise until the bell was rung for lunch.

The camp's pitching coach was Walter (Boom-Boom) Beck. He, too, was a big man, but unlike Mize he was more gentle than morose. He was given his nickname because of the frequency with which batters had boomed line drives off his serves. During his 12 seasons in the majors, between 1924 and 1945, Boom-Boom had records like 12-20, 2-6, 7-14 and 1-9. His earned run average varied from 9.88 to 7.42 to 4.75 to 2.68. Whenever he talked about pitching it was to extol the virtues of Walter Johnson, Rube Waddell, Chief Bender and Christy Mathewson. He wandered about camp smiling at everyone. He would stop for a chat as you worked from one of the warmup mounds. He would toss off a few bits of advice and then, always in reverential tones, impart to you the secret of Mathewson's success. "The fadeaway," he would say. "He mastered the fadeaway." Then with a nod and a wink he drifted off to another mound. He never saw you begin practicing the fadeaway, never saw you bouncing balls in the dirt, becoming frustrated in your attempt to master such an esoteric pitch (a change-of-speed screwball) when, as yet, you could not control a simple fastball. But he meant no harm. He was just passing a pleasant spring. He wore a Braves uniform. He never for a moment thought that young pitchers like me took him seriously. He did not take himself seriously. Everyone knew that. One day when I called him Mr. Beck, he grinned, threw a beefy arm around my shoulder and said, "Call me Boom-Boom, son." He liked his nickname! But I did take him seriously. In those days I took all adults seriously, had this unshakable belief they were always right, always had one's best interests at heart. When they appeared foolish to my eyes, I questioned my sight.

One later spring when it was all slipping away there at Waycross, I decided to seek out Boom-Boom. Be with you in a minute, son. I began throwing from a mound. It was noon. The diamonds were shadowless. The sun was so hot and white it bleached the sky. The grass was pale yellow and the red clay pink. Sweat burned my cheeks. I threw and waited for Boom-Boom. Panic rose. Finally, he appeared. Smiling. He put his hand on my shoulder. What's the matter, son? My hot pleas melted his smile like wax. He pulled his hand from my shoulder as if burned. He stepped back. Then his smile re-formed. Relax, son. He gave me advice. I tried to master it, failed, tried again, failed, began my motion a third time, caught Boom-Boom's eyes wandering to the next mound. The ball bounced in the dirt. I screamed a blasphemy. Flung my glove high into the air. We both looked up, our faces shadowed by the dark speck suspended in a blazing white sky. It came down on top of the batting cage. Boom-Boom stared at it. He blinked. Then he looked around and, on every diamond, he saw umpires, players, managers, scouts, all stilled in midmotion, heads turned toward us. Boom-Boom looked at me, aflame, and raised his hands, palms out, in front of his eyes. Don't you worry, son, you'll get the hang of it. He began backing away. You keep practicing. I'll get back to you in a bit.

That was the last time Boom-Boom and I talked that spring. One day I passed the rotunda and thought I saw him hurrying around to the other side.

At noon we ate lunch outside in the shade of the dressing room: milk, consomm� in paper cups, a Hershey bar, an apple, an orange. Then we went back to the diamonds for the afternoon's games. We played a game every afternoon for the first three weeks, and after that we played one in the morning, too. By the end of the spring we had played about 40 games. The various teams played one another; for example, Austin against Jacksonville, Cedar Rapids against Boise, Davenport against Wellsville. Occasionally another major league organization would bring one of its better minor league teams to Waycross to play either Austin or Jacksonville. One day a farm team of the Minnesota Twins came to camp. Its star, a 19-year-old Cuban refugee named Tony Oliva, already had a reputation for being a "pure" hitter. Players drifted away from their diamonds to watch Oliva hit against the best pitchers in camp. He went 7 for 9 in a doubleheader, hitting nothing but line drives.

Those drives left the infield seven feet off the ground and rose so fast they were over the heads of our outfielders before they could turn around. Oliva batted with a knock-kneed stance. As he waited for a pitch his weight rested on his front foot. He lunged at the ball. It was all wrong, the watching players agreed. You are supposed to keep your weight on the back foot. Someone grabbed a bat, assumed a stance behind the screen and demonstrated. Oliva stepped into the batter's box again and lined the first pitch six inches over the head of the pitcher, who dived to the ground.

All the games were played before a sparse but potent audience of managers, coaches, scouts and executives. Most of them sat in deck chairs behind the home-plate screens of each diamond. The most influential of them sat or stood on top of the rotunda, commanding a view of all five diamonds. My first impression of Waycross was that there were so many players in camp I would never be noticed. But when I saw that rotunda and the men on top of it, their arms pointing, I realized that not only would I be noticed but my every move would be watched.