Head Down, E-book, H
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Head Down
by Stephen King
Stephen King - Head Down
author's note: I am breaking in here, Constant Reader, to make you aware that this
is not a story but an essay -- almost a diary It originally appeared in The New
Yorker in the spring of 1990
S.K.
Head down! Keep your head down!"
It is far from the most difficult feat in sports, but anyone who has ever tried to
do it will tell you that it's tough enough: using a round bat to hit a round ball
squarely on the button. Tough enough so that the handful of men who do it well
become rich, famous, and idolized: the Jose Cansecos, the Mike Greenwells, the Kevin
Mitchells. For thousands of boys (and not a few girls), their faces, not the face of
Axl Rose or Bobby Brown, are the ones that matter; their posters hold the positions
of honor on bedroom walls and locker doors. Today Ron St. Pierre is teaching some of
these boys -- boys who will represent Bangor West Side in District 3 Little League
tournament play -- how to put the round bat on the round ball. Right now he's
working with a kid named Fred Moore while my son, Owen, stands nearby, watching
closely. He's due in St. Pierre's hot seat next. Owen is broad-shouldered and
heavily built, like his old man; Fred looks almost painfully slim in his bright
green jersey. And he is not making good contact.
"Head down, Fred!" St. Pierre shouts. He is halfway between the mound and home plate
at one of the two Little League fields behind the Coke plant in Bangor; Fred is
almost all the way to the backstop. The day is a hot one, but if the heat bothers
either Fred or St. Pierre it does not show. They are intent on what they are doing.
"Keep it down!" St. Pierre shouts again, and unloads a fat pitch.
Fred chips under it. There is that chinky aluminum-on-cowhide sound -- the sound of
someone hitting a tin cup with a spoon. The ball hits the backstop, rebounds, almost
bonks him on the helmet. Both of them laugh, and then St. Pierre gets another ball
from the red plastic bucket beside him.
"Get ready, Freddy!" he yells. "Head down!"
Maine's District 3 is so large that it is split in two. The Penobscot County teams
make up half the division; the teams from Aroostook and Washington counties make up
the other half. Ail-Star kids are selected by merit and drawn from all existing
district Little League teams. The dozen teams in District 3 play in simultaneous
tournaments. Near the end of July, the two teams left will play off, best two out of
three, to decide the district champ. That team represents District 3 in State
Championship play, and it has been a long time -- eighteen years -- since a Bangor
team made it into the state tourney.
This year, the State Championship games will be played in Old Town, where they make
the canoes. Four of the five teams that play there will go back home. The fifth will
go on to represent Maine in the Eastern Regional Tournament, this year to be held in
Bristol, Connecticut. Beyond that, of course, is Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where
the Little League World Series happens. The Bangor West players rarely seem to think
of such dizzy heights; they will be happy just to beat Millinocket, their
first-round opponent in the Penobscot County race. Coaches, however, are allowed to
dream -- are, in fact, almost obligated to dream.
This time Fred, who is the team joker, does get his head down. He hits a weak
grounder on the wrong side of the first-base line, foul by about six feet.
"Look," St. Pierre says, taking another ball. He holds it up. It J is scuffed,
dirty, and grass-stained. It is nevertheless a baseball, and Fred eyes it
respectfully. "I'm going to show you a-trick. Where's the ball?"
"In your hand," Fred says.
Saint, as Dave Mansfield, the team's head coach, calls him, drops it into his glove.
"Now?"
"In your glove."
Saint turns sideways; his pitching hand creeps into his glove. "Now?"
"In your hand. I think."
"You're right. So watch my hand. Watch my hand, Fred Moore, and wait for the ball to
come out in it. You're looking for the ball. Nothing else. Just the ball. I should
just be a blur to you. Why would you want to see me, anyway? Do you care if I'm
smiling? No. You're waiting to see how I'll come -- sidearm or three-quarters or
Page 1
Stephen King - Head Down
over the top. Are you waiting?''
Fred nods.
"Are you watching?"
Fred nods again.
"O.K.," St. Pierre says, and goes into his short-arm batting-practice motion again.
This time Fred drives the ball with real authority: a hard sinking liner to right
field.
"All right!" Saint cries. "That's all right, Fred Moore!" He wipes sweat off his
forehead. "Next batter!"
Dave Mansfield, a heavy, bearded man who comes to the park wearing aviator
sunglasses and an open-neck College World Series shirt (it's a good-luck charm),
brings a paper sack to the Bangor West-Millinocket game. It contains sixteen
pennants, in various colors. bangor, each one says, the word flanked by a lobster on
one side and a pine tree on the other. As each Bangor West player is announced on
loudspeakers that have been wired to the chain-link backstop, he takes a pennant
from the bag Dave holds out, runs across the infield, and hands it to his opposite
number.
Dave is a loud, restless man who happens to love baseball and the kids who play it
at this level. He believes there are two purposes to All-Star Little League: to have
fun and to win. Both are important, he says, but the most important thing is to keep
them in the right order. The pennants are not a sly gambit to unnerve the opposition
but just for fun. Dave knows that the boys on both teams will remember this game,
and he wants each of the Millinocket kids to have a souvenir. It's as simple as
that.
The Millinocket players seem surprised by the gesture, and they don't know exactly
what to do with the pennants as someone's tape player begins to warble out the Anita
Bryant version of "The Star-Spangled Banner." The Millinocket catcher, almost buried
beneath his gear, solves the problem in unique fashion: he holds his Bangor pennant
over his heart.
With the amenities taken care of, Bangor West administers a brisk and thorough
trouncing; the final score is Bangor West 18, Millinocket 7. The loss does not
devalue the souvenirs, however; when Millinocket departs on the team bus, the
visitors' dugout is empty save for a few Dixie cups and Popsicle sticks. The
pennants -- every single one of them -- are gone.
"Cut two!" Neil Waterman, Bangor West's field coach, shouts. "Cut two, cut two!"
It's the day after the Millinocket game. Everyone on the team is still showing up
for practice, but it's early yet. Attrition will set in. That is a given: parents
are not always willing to give up summer plans so their kids can play Little League
after the regular, May-June season is over, and sometimes the kids themselves tire
of the constant grind of practice. Some would rather be riding their bikes, trying
to hang ten on their skateboards, or just hanging around the community pool and
checking out the girls.
"Cut two!" Waterman yells. He is a small, compact man in khaki shorts and a Joe
Coach crewcut. In real life he is a teacher and a college basketball coach, but this
summer he is trying to teach these boys that baseball has more in common with chess
than many would ever have believed. Know your play, he tells them over and over
again. Know who it is you're backing up. Most important of all, know who your cut
man is in every situation, and be able to hit him. He works patiently at showing
them the truth that hides at the center of the game: that it is played more in the
mind than with the body.
Ryan Larrobino, Bangor West's center fielder, fires a bullet to Casey Kinney at
second base. Casey tags an invisible runner, pivots, and throws another bullet to
home, where J. J. Fiddler takes the throw and tosses the ball back to Waterman.
"Double-play ball!" Waterman shouts, and hits one to Matt Kinney (not related to
Casey). Matt is playing shortstop at practice today. The ball takes a funny hop and
appears to be on its way to left center. Matt knocks it down, picks it up, and feeds
to Casey at second; Casey pivots and throws to Mike Arnold, who is on first. Mike
feeds it home to J.J.
"All right!" Waterman shouts. "Good job, Matt Kinney! Good job! One-two-one! You're
covering, Mike Pelkey!" The two names. Always the two names, to avoid confusion. The
team is lousy with Matts, Mikes, and guys named Kinney.
The throws are executed flawlessly. Mike Pelkey, Bangor West's number two pitcher,
is right where he's supposed to be, covering first. It's a move he doesn't always
Page 2
Stephen King - Head Down
remember to make, but this time he does. He grins and trots back to the mound as
Neil Waterman gets ready to hit the next combination.
"This is the best Little League All-Star team I've seen in years," Dave Mansfield
says some days after Bangor West's trouncing of Millinocket. He dumps a load of
sunflower seeds into his mouth and begins to chew them. He spits hulls casually as
he talks. "I don't think they can be beaten -- at least not in this division."
He pauses and watches as Mike Arnold breaks toward the plate from first, grabs a
practice bunt, and whirls toward the bag. He cocks his arm back -- then holds the
ball. Mike Pelkey is still on the mound; this time he has forgotten that it is his
job to cover, and the bag is undefended. He flashes Dave a quick guilty glance. Then
he breaks into a sunny grin and gets ready to do it again. Next time he'll do it
right, but will he remember to do it right during a game?
"Of course, we can beat ourselves," Dave says. "That's how it usually happens." And,
raising his voice, he bellows, "Where were you, Mike Pelkey? You're s'posed to be
covering first!"
Mike nods and trots over -- better late than never.
"Brewer," Dave says, and shakes his head. "Brewer at their field. That'll be tough.
Brewer's always tough."
Bangor West does not trounce Brewer, but they win their first "road game" without
any real strain. Matt Kinney, the team's number one pitcher, is in good form. He is
far from overpowering, but his fastball has a sneaky, snaky little hop, and he also
has a modest but effective breaking pitch. Ron St. Pierre is fond of saying that
every Little League pitcher in America thinks he's got a killer curveball. "What
they think is a curve is usually this big lollipop change," he says. "A batter with
a little self-discipline can kill the poor thing."
Matt Kinney's curveball actually curves, however, and tonight he goes the distance
and strikes out eight. Probably more important, he walks only four. Walks are the
bane of a Little League coach's existence. "They kill you," Neil Waterman says. "The
walks kill you every time. Absolutely no exceptions. Sixty per cent of batters
walked score in Little League games." Not in this game: two of the batters Kinney
walks are forced at second; the other two are stranded. Only one Brewer batter gets
a hit: Denise Hewes, the center fielder, singles with one out in the fifth, but she
is forced at second.
After the game is safely in the bag, Matt Kinney, a solemn and almost eerily
self-possessed boy, flashes Dave a rare smile, revealing a set of neat braces. "She
could hit!" he says, almost reverently.
"Wait until you see Hampden," Dave says dryly. "They all
hit."
When the Hampden squad shows up at Bangor West's field, behind the Coke plant, on
July 17th, they quickly prove Dave right. Mike Pelkey has pretty good stuff and
better control than he had against Millinocket, but he isn't much of a mystery to
the Hampden boys. Mike Tardif, a compact kid with an amazingly fast bat, rips
Pelkey's third pitch over the left-field fence, two hundred feet away, for a home
run in the first inning. Hampden adds two more runs in the second, and leads Bangor
West 3-0.
In the third, however, Bangor West breaks loose. Hampden's pitching is good,
Hampden's hitting is awesome, but Hampden's fielding, particularly infielding,
leaves something to be desired. Bangor West puts three hits together with five
errors and two walks to score seven runs. This is how Little League is most often
played, and seven runs should be enough, but they aren't; the opposition chips
stubbornly away, getting two in its half of the third and two more in the fifth.
When Hampden comes up in the bottom of the sixth, it is trailing by only three,
10-7.
Kyle King, a twelve-year-old who started for Hampden this evening and then went to
catcher in the fifth, leads off the bottom of the sixth with a double. Then Mike
Pelkey strikes out Mike Tardif. Mike Wentworth, the new Hampden pitcher, singles to
deep short. King and Wentworth advance on a passed ball, but are forced to hold when
Jeff Carson grounds back to the pitcher. This brings up Josh Jamieson, one of five
Hampden home-run threats, with two on and two out. He represents the tying run.
Mike, although clearly tired, finds a little extra and strikes him out on a one-two
pitch. The game is over.
The kids line up and give each other the custom-ordained high fives, but it's clear
that Mike isn't the only kid who is simply exhausted after the match; with their
Page 3
Stephen King - Head Down
slumped shoulders and lowered heads, they all look like losers. Bangor West is now
3-0 in divisional play, but the win is a fluke, the kind of game that makes Little
League such a nerve-racking experience for spectators, coaches, and the players
themselves. Usually sure-handed in the field, Bangor West has tonight committed
something like nine errors.
"I didn't sleep all night," Dave mutters at practice the next day. "Damn, we were
outplayed. We should have lost that game."
Two nights later, he has something else to feel gloomy about. He and Ron St. Pierre
make the six-mile trip to Hampden to watch Kyle King and his mates play Brewer. This
is no scouting expedition; Bangor has played both clubs, and both men have copious
notes. What they are really hoping to see, Dave admits, is Brewer getting lucky and
putting Hampden out of the way. It doesn't happen; what they see isn't a baseball
game but gunnery practice.
Josh Jamieson, who struck out in the clutch against Mike Pelkey, clouts a home run
over everything and into the Hampden practice field. Nor is Jamieson alone. Carson
hits one, Wentworth hits one, and Tardif hits a pair. The final score is Hampden 21,
Brewer 9.
On the ride back to Bangor, Dave Mansfield chews a lot of sunflower seeds and says
little. He rouses himself only once, as he wheels his old green Chevy into the
rutted dirt parking lot beside the Coke plant. "We got lucky Tuesday night, and they
know it," he says. "When we go down there Thursday, they'll be waiting for us."
The diamonds, on which the teams of District 3 play out their six-inning dramas all
have the same dimensions, give or take a foot here or an outfield gate there. The
coaches all carry the rulebook in their back pockets, and they put it to frequent
use. Dave likes to say that it never hurts to make sure. The infield is sixty feet
on each side, a square standing on the point that is home plate. The backstop,
according to the rulebook, must be at least twenty feet from home plate, giving both
the catcher and a runner at third a fair chance on a passed ball. The fences are
supposed to be 200 feet from the plate. At Bangor West's field, it's actually about
210 to dead center. And at Hampden, home of power hitters like Tardif and Jamieson,
it's more like 180.
The most inflexible measurement is also the most important: the distance between the
pitcher's rubber and the center of the plate. Forty-six feet -- no more, no less.
When it comes to this one, nobody ever says, "Aw, close enough for government work
-- let it go." Most Little League teams live and die by what happens in the
forty-six feet between those two points.
The fields of District 3 vary considerably in other ways, and a quick look is
usually enough to tell you something about the feel any given community has for the
game. The Bangor West field is in bad shape -- a poor relation that the town
regularly ignores in its recreation budget. The undersurface is a sterile clay that
turns to soup when the weather is wet and to concrete when the weather is dry, as it
has been this summer. Watering has kept most of the outfield reasonably green, but
the infield is hopeless. Scruffy grass grows up the lines, but the area between the
pitcher's rubber and home plate is almost completely bald. The backstop is rusty;
passed balls and wild pitches frequently squirt through a wide gap between the
ground and the chain link. Two large, hilly dunes run through short-right and center
fields. These dunes have actually become a home-team advantage. Bangor West players
learn to play the caroms off them, just as Red Sox left fielders learn to play
caroms off the Green Monster. Visiting fielders, on the other hand, often find
themselves chasing their mistakes all the way to the fence.
Brewer's field, tucked behind the local IGA grocery and a Marden's Discount Store,
has to compete for space with what may be the oldest, rustiest playground equipment
in New England; little brothers and sisters watch the game upside down from the
swings, their heads down and their feet in the sky.
Bob Beal Field in Machias, with its pebble-pocked-skin infield, is probably the
worst of the fields Bangor West will visit this year; Hampden, with its manicured
outfield and neat composition infield, is probably the best. With its picnic area
beyond the center-field fence and a rest-room-equipped snack bar, Hampden's diamond,
behind the local VFW hall, looks like a rich kids' field. But looks can be
deceiving. This team is a combination of kids from Newburgh and Hampden, and
Newburgh is still small farm and dairy country. Many of these kids ride to the games
in old cars with primer paint around the headlights and mufflers held in place by
chicken wire; they wear sunburns they got doing chores, not while they were hanging
Page 4
Stephen King - Head Down
out at the country-club swimming pool. Town kids and country kids. Once they're in
uniform, it doesn't much matter which is which.
Dave is right: the Hampden-Newburgh fans are waiting. Bangor West last won the
District 3 Little League title in 1971; Hampden has never won a title, and many
local fans continue to hope that this will be the year, despite the earlier loss to
Bangor West. For the first time, the Bangor team really feels it is on the road; it
is faced with a large hometown rooting section.
Matt Kinney gets the start. Hampden counters with Kyle King, and the game quickly
shapes up as that rarest and richest of Little League commodities, a genuine
pitchers' duel. At the end of the third inning, the score is Hampden 0, Bangor West
0.
In the bottom of the fourth, Bangor scores two unearned runs when Hampden's infield
comes unglued once more. Owen King, Bangor West's first baseman, comes to bat with
two on and one out. The two Kings, Kyle on the Hampden team and Owen on the Bangor
West team, are not related. You don't need to be told; a single glance is enough.
Kyle King is about five foot three. At six foot two, Owen King towers over him. Size
differences are so extreme in Little League that it's easy to feel disoriented, the
victim of hallucination.
Bangor's King raps a ground ball to short. It's a tailor-made double play, but the
Hampden shortstop does not field it cleanly, and King, shucking his two hundred or
so pounds down to first at top speed, beats the throw. Mike Pelkey and Mike Arnold
scamper home.
Then, in the top of the fifth, Matt Kinney, who has been cruising, hits Chris
Witcomb, number eight in Hampden's order. Brett Johnson, the number nine hitter,
scorches one at Casey Kinney, Bangor West's second baseman. Again, it's a
tailor-made double-play ball, but Casey gives up on it. His hands, which have been
automatically dipping down, freeze about four inches off the ground, and Casey turns
his face away to protect it from a possible bad hop. This is the most common of all
Little League fielding errors, and the most easily understood; it is an act of naked
self-preservation. The stricken look that Casey throws toward Dave and Neil as the
ball squirts through into center field completes this part of the ballet.
"It's O.K., Casey! Next time!" Dave bawls in his gravelly, self-assured Yankee
voice.
"New batter!" Neil shouts, ignoring Casey's look completely. "New batter! Know your
play! We're still ahead! Get an out! Just concentrate on getting an out!"
Casey begins to relax, begins to get back into the game, and then, beyond the
outfield fences, the Hampden Horns begin to blow. Some of them belong to late-model
cars -- Toyotas and Hondas and snappy little Dodge Colts with U.S. out of Central
America and split wood not atoms stickers on the bumpers. But most of the Hampden
Horns reside within older cars and pick-up trucks. Many of the pick-ups have rusty
doors, FM converters wired up beneath the dashboards, and Leer camper caps built
over the truck beds. Who is inside these vehicles, blowing the horns? No one seems
to know -- not for sure. They are not parents or relatives of the Hampden players;
the parents and relatives (plus a generous complement of ice-cream-smeared little
brothers and sisters) are filling the bleachers and lining the fence on the
third-base side of the diamond, where the Hampden dugout is. They may be local guys
just off work -- guys who have stopped to watch some of the game before having a few
brewskis at the VFW hall next door -- or they may be the ghosts of Hampden Little
Leaguers Past, hungry for that long-denied State Championship flag. It seems at
least possible; there is something both eerie and inevitable about the Hampden
Horns. They toot in harmony -- high horns, low horns, a few foghorns powered by
dying batteries. Several Bangor West players look uneasily back toward the sound.
Behind the backstop, a local TV crew is preparing to videotape a story for the
sports final on the eleven o'clock news. This causes a stir among some of the
spectators, but only a few of the players on the Hampden bench seem to notice it.
Matt Kinney certainly doesn't. He is totally intent on the next Hampden batter, Matt
Knaide, who taps one turf shoe with his aluminum Worth bat and then steps into the
batter's box.
The Hampden Horns fall silent. Matt Kinney goes into his windup. Casey Kinney drops
back into position just east of second, glove down. His face says it has no plans to
turn away if the ball is hit to him again. The Hampden runners stand expectantly on
first and second. (There is no leading away from the bag in Little League.) The
spectators along the opposing arms of the diamond watch anxiously. Their
Page 5
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]