One Shot at Forever (9 page)

Now he relied on the curveball the way most kids did their heater. Packing the ball back in his hand, he delivered it from a seventy-degree angle, holding the pitch out from his body to get more torque. He could throw curves early in the count, late in the count, or when he needed a strikeout. When he was going good, he could even aim for specific spots in Dean Otta's glove. Most of the time, the pitch did what he wanted. When it didn't—well, hence his reputation as a notoriously poor batting practice pitcher. If he spun one up there and it didn't break, it usually ended up popping the batter. Already, Mike Atteberry had dislocated the middle finger on his left hand during batting practice while smacking down a Heneberry breaking ball that never broke.

They were all snapping today, though. On the sideline, Sweet watched, rapt. By the time Heneberry racked up his twelfth strikeout of the game in the seventh inning, Sweet was a believer. Not only had Heneberry allowed only two hits in shutting out Maroa 5–0, he'd done so in what Sweet considered an exquisitely entertaining manner. As the game went on, the Maroa boys had become increasingly agitated, cursing after each strikeout.
“He ain't got shit!”
one muttered on his return to the dugout. Sweet thought this so wonderful that, some time later, he bestowed upon Heneberry an unofficial nickname:
Ain't Got Shit
. To Sweet, it not only summed up the boy but, in some respects, the whole team.

By mid-April, Macon boasted an impressive 5–1 record but that wasn't what caught the attention of Joe Cook. Rather, he was more interested in how the Ironmen had won those games.

As preps writer for the Decatur
Herald & Review
, Cook covered
roughly one hundred schools
, from Lincoln in the north all the way down to Alney and Greenville in the south. He knew most every highway and back road in central Illinois and was always on the lookout for potential feature stories. Upon glancing at Macon's schedule, he suspected he'd found one. He checked the box scores, then checked them again and came to the same stunning conclusion: Not only were the Ironmen undefeated through four conference games, but they had yet to give up a run. What's more, in six games total, Macon had yet to allow an earned run, period.
Forty-two innings and a 0.00 team ERA
. Even in an area where it seemed every team had an ace, this was a remarkable feat, especially coming from a school with little to no baseball history.

Cook picked up the phone and called Macon High, whereupon he asked to speak to the baseball coach, a man by the name of L. C. Sweet. This was a story he needed to hear.

The next morning, the residents of Macon opened up their papers to see a headline in the sports section that read “How Sweet It Is.” The article, which filled a good quarter of the page, mentioned Tomlinson, Heneberry, and the Ottas, as well as a boy identified as “sophomore John Shartzer,” a mistake Steve Shartzer proceeded to take as a personal affront.

A full half of the piece, however, was devoted to Macon's first-year coach, whom Cook depicted as a quirky, candid, fun-loving “bachelor in his mid-twenties” who “got the baseball job by forfeit.” Sweet was quoted as saying, “I wasn't too excited about doing [the job] at first, but it's been a very enjoyable season.” When asked about his coaching acumen, Sweet deferred to the boys' talent. As for his own priorities, said Sweet, “I'm still an English teacher first.”

This may have been true, but baseball coach was becoming an awfully close second.

In one game after another, Macon prevailed. The boys crushed Niantic 10–0, Moweaqua 9–2, and prevailed 4–2 over archrival Mt. Zion, a team the Ironmen hadn't beaten in years. Sweet's boys were bordering on dominant.

By now, the team had fallen into a loose rhythm, egged on by Sweet, who not only spent a good chunk of practice joking with the boys but nearly all of it on the field. At first, the players weren't quite sure what to make of it; coaches were supposed to stand on the side, with a whistle, chewing them out. But here was Sweet, taking his cuts, running in the outfield, and throwing batting practice most every day. And what a BP pitcher he was. Heneberry remembers it as, “like having a pitching machine.” Even though some of the balls were torn up, with the stitching loose and the cover flapping, Sweet had tremendous control. If you needed confidence, he could groove one. If you had trouble with outside pitches, he put one fastball after another on the outside corner. And if you got too cocky, as Heneberry says, “He could gun you down.”

Sweet pitched because he enjoyed it but also for strategic reasons. Whereas most teams in the area employed their starting pitchers to throw batting practice, Sweet tried to dissuade his from doing so. “What's the point of that,” he said to Heneberry and Shartzer. “Why would I want you to learn to throw the ball so guys can hit it?”

So instead it was Sweet up on the mound, throwing sometimes an hour a day, possessed of a seemingly rubber arm. The fielders got practice in live game situations; the hitters got to face pitching from someone who'd competed at the semipro level; and Sweet got to play ball. “It was amazing,” says Heneberry, “how much better we got.”

There was only one cardinal sin during practice: getting too serious. “Gentlemen,” Sweet said whenever this occurred, “we are here after school because we are no longer in school. This is the fun part.” If that didn't work, he had other means. Once, when he sensed the kids getting too testy, he went into his windup and, upon swiveling, turned and mooned the boys.

Day by day, the players became more accustomed to both Sweet's unconventional approach and his seemingly limitless confidence in them. During games, they took off running whenever they wanted, often with great success. They bunted when they saw an opportunity and pitched out when it seemed prudent. Instead of deputizing a parent to be the first base coach, or bringing in an assistant, Sweet named Heneberry to the job. He did this in part because Heneberry was a part-time player but also because he knew the responsibility would boost the boy's confidence, which Sweet saw as the ultimate goal of much that he did. During games, no matter how bad Tomlinson, Shartzer, or Heneberry looked on the mound, Sweet left them in. “You'll work through it,” he said. Or, if they appeared tight, he pulled them aside between innings and asked them why they played baseball. If the boys looked back at him blankly, he smiled and said, “Because it's fun!” And then, without discussing strategy, he walked away.

Shartzer in particular was warming to Sweet's methods. If the new coach had come in and said, “Drop down and give me twenty,” Shartzer's response would have been, “You pitch this ball. I do more pushups and sit-ups at home when I'm done than you do all week. Don't give me that.”

But Sweet felt like more a mentor than an authority figure. Despite his laissez-faire attitude, he also struck Shartzer as a man who knew baseball, respected the game, and understood that coaching was about discovery, not dictates. “Try holding the bat in your fingertips so you're quicker and stronger and they can't throw it by you on the inner half of the plate,” Sweet told him. Or, “When you're hitting, pretend you're on the mound. What would you be throwing here? Why? Then be ready for it.”

The proof, as Shartzer liked to say, was in the goddamn pudding: The team was piling up victories. Winning games was one thing, though. Gaining respect was another.

By May 9, when the Ironmen hosted Argenta, they were 10–2 and on the verge of the postseason. It was a gusty afternoon and the wind blew northeast, out toward left field, giving wings to any ball pulled down the line. It was Heneberry's turn on the mound, and after three innings he was already in a 4–1 hole. Then, in the top of the fourth, a tall, muscular Argenta player named Mike Ferrill stepped to the plate with two men on. It was one of those days when Heneberry's off-speed pitches were wandering, held up even further by the wind. After sending a couple breaking balls into the dirt, Heneberry had no choice but to pitch to Ferrill. He left one up in the zone and Ferrill sized it up and reared back. The impact of bat on ball made the kind of booming, resonant crash little boys dream about when hitting imaginary home runs in their backyards. Said Heneberry: “Oh shit.”

The ball gained elevation as it went, soaring above the infield, over the discus pockmarks, and past the running track before finally touching down on the football field, which doubled as deep, deep center. It traveled so far that the Argenta base runners slowed to a leisurely trot as they rounded third base. And so it was that Denny Hill, an Argenta outfielder, sauntered in to touch home plate and, as he did, turned toward the Macon bench and, loud enough for all to hear, posed a question.

“They found that ball yet?”

At third base, Shartzer's face reddened; as he saw it, he was the only one allowed to make fun of his teammates. He took three quick steps toward Hill and pointed his finger. “Don't you ever do that again, fat boy,” he yelled. “Because the next time you're going to face me.” Then, for the rest of the inning, Shartzer muttered under his breath, stockpiling anger. By the time he came to the plate the following inning, he was practically twitching. He crushed one to center and stretched it to a double. From his perch on second base, Shartzer turned and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey, you find that ball yet?” he yelled, a refrain he would continue to utter after every Macon hit and, as it turned out, every time he saw Ferrill or Hill for years afterward.

Energized, the Ironmen bats came alive. They cut the score to 8–6 and then, with the bases loaded and two outs, Heneberry came to the plate, hitting ninth as usual. The Argenta pitcher threw the first two balls off the plate to start out 2–0. This did not sit well with his coach.

Slamming the scorebook into the fence, the coach marched out to the mound.

“This guy couldn't hit it if you put it on a tee. Just throw it over the damn plate!”

And so the Argenta pitcher did. Remembering what Denny Hill had said earlier, Heneberry reached back and swung with everything his bony arms could manage. He met the pitch head-on and yanked it down the left field line. The ball sailed over the infield, then instead of alighting, as most of Heneberry's hits did, it kept soaring. In three years of games and batting practice, Heneberry had never come within twenty feet of hitting one to the running track. Now he watched as the ball flew over it and rolled onto the football field. Only his slow feet kept him from a home run, and he coasted into third with a stand-up, three-run triple. It was the farthest he had ever, or would ever, hit a baseball.

If Sweet had harbored any concerns about his team's confidence or resilience, they were put to rest. By the end of the game, Macon had erased a six-run deficit to win 13–9.

Wins like this didn't exactly lead to baseball fever, but people in Macon were becoming increasingly curious about the Ironmen. With each victory a new headline appeared in the
Herald & Review:
“Macon Scores Fifth Shutout in Meridian”; “Another Shutout for Macon”; “Macon Clips Moweaqua.” New faces began to appear at games. There were uncles and brothers and curious townsfolk but also, on occasion and much to the boys' delight, the occasional teenage girl. Sometimes there were up to thirty or forty fans, though the core still consisted of the baseball parents: Bob Shartzer, along with Dwight and Maxine Glan; the Arnolds; the Snitkers; Ernie Miller; and Jack Heneberry, always alone because his wife, Betty, became too nervous at games to watch her son.

On occasion, even school board members stopped by. And the more the Ironmen won, the more ambivalence some felt about Sweet. Maconites may not have agreed with his political or religious beliefs, or liked his teaching curriculum, but baseball was a common language. He couldn't be all bad if he had the boys playing so well.

By mid-May, the Ironmen were 13–2 and Meridian Conference champions. Heading into the district title game they were also, amazingly, the favorites.

Winning the conference was impressive for a school like Macon, but the feat was tempered by the level of competition. Most of the other schools in the area were also rural outposts, with enrollments between 200 and 450. Few had large budgets or extensive rosters, and most played on fields that, like Macon's, bore only a passing resemblance to a proper baseball diamond. There was one exception though: Mt. Zion.

Ten miles northeast of Macon, Mt. Zion was a thriving suburb of Decatur with a population of roughly twenty-five hundred. As commuters moved in, the town had continued to grow. As a result, over the years the rivalry between Macon and Mt. Zion had become increasingly lopsided. Mt. Zion's team was deeper, its uniforms nicer, and its town more affluent. The team played on a handsome field with fences and combed dirt base paths. All this filtered down to the players, who acted, as Dale Otta remembers it, “Like they were higher class than us.”

So on Friday, May 15, when Doug Tomlinson pitched seven innings and Shartzer knocked in two runs with a fifth inning double to power Macon past Mt. Zion 5–3 for the district title, it was a cathartic victory for the Ironmen. More important, it was also a sign that Macon wasn't merely a good team in a weak conference but perhaps a good team, period.
That the Mt. Zion players left the field cursing
, unable to believe they'd lost to Macon again—twice in one season!—made the win all the sweeter.

Within hours, the news spread around town, from Claire's to the Country Manor and then, by telephone, up to Elwin and down to neighboring Moweaqua: The Ironmen were
headed to the regionals
.