Still Pitching (10 page)

I'd always wanted to approach Cindy and tell her how I felt. But every time I was around her, I got dry mouth. If I tried to speak, nothing came out. In time, I convinced myself that she was simply out of my league. By junior high, I'd even convinced myself that she was beyond all of our reaches. That is, until I heard Manny's story.

Weeks afterwards, I was still tormented by the image of the two of them lying on an army blanket, going at it hot and heavy under the boardwalk. I was too scared to ask him how far they went. Part of me wanted to know, and part of me wanted to avoid the anger and self-loathing I'd feel if my fears were confirmed.

It perplexed me that girls like Cindy and the smart, rich girls from the Five Towns fell for guys like Manny—guys who didn't give a damn about them. But that's what I was here to find out, wasn't it? I decided it was time to join up. If they'd have me, that is.

I launched my campaign
by trying to persuade my father to buy me a leather jacket.

“Why do you want to look like those hoodlums?” my mother asked.

She didn't get it. But my father did. I know he didn't approve, but he never nagged at me the way my mother did. He'd grown up in the streets, and he knew how important this was to me. So, he proposed a compromise. He'd get me the jacket if I agreed to work two Sundays a month at the pharmacy to help pay for it.

To my father the notion of working for your allowance was almost a given. So far I'd managed to avoid it, mostly because of my mother's intervention. Now, I had no choice but to agree.

My job at Neiman's was to deliver prescriptions on my bicycle. I hated it. To avoid having to pedal for blocks against the cutting ocean wind, I did everything I could to make myself useful around the store. I soda jerked, worked in the stockroom, even sold cosmetics to the women. But when I did have to deliver a prescription, I'd go out of my way to make sure I didn't ride past Art's. What would those guys think if they saw me riding a bicycle? Especially now that Manny was driving them around town in his father's DeSoto coupe.

Once I got the leather jacket
, I started wearing tight Levi's and boots, and styling my hair in a DA and pompadour. In the schoolyard, in classes, and at lunch I was always stealing glances at the popular girls—hoping they'd notice my new look. So far though, nothing had changed. As usual, it only made me try harder.

I tried to imitate the things the guys did. But none of it felt right. I was lousy at pool because I couldn't get the hang of how to hold the cue stick. And I couldn't bluff convincingly at poker because my eyes and grimaces always gave me away.

If you expect to fail, that's usually what happens. I'd learned at least that much as an athlete. In jock lingo, you “choked” or “took the big apple” if you didn't come through under pressure.

When I was younger, I had a tendency to tighten up whenever I knew people were watching me. I remember blowing two potentially game-winning foul shots in a Jewish Community League game. I was so rattled by the crowd that I lost my concentration. That's exactly the kind of thing that would happen in Manny's basement. Just by razzing me, the guys could goad me into scratching a pool shot or misplaying a poker hand.

But it was all just child's play compared to the hazing I'd endure when I finally committed myself to joining the group.

First, I had to swipe a
True Detective
from Art's without getting caught. That wasn't the hard part, though. Art had been in business for so long that he knew my cousins, grandfather, mother, and aunt by their first names. To him, I was the nice kid in the group—the one who he once said was “too decent to cheat and steal.”

I suspected he knew what I'd done, but he never called me on it, which made me feel even worse. In fact, the minute I was out the door I wanted to go right back in and hand the magazine to him. But it was too late.

Stealing the magazine was just the beginning. It wasn't long before all five of them were egging me on. Manny offered me a few reefers. All it did was make me dizzy. Shapiro challenged me to steal a pretzel from Gino's candy store under the El. Goldman bet me a buck I couldn't swipe a dozen Trojans and Ramses from the pharmacy stockroom. I did it all. But when Larry Rabin told me to pinch my father's French deck, I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn't know what a French deck was.

“Everyone's father has a French deck,” Manny said. “Look in his dresser drawer. It'll be under the socks or underwear.”

That night, Peter Desimone told me what a French deck was.

“No way,” I said. “Not my father.”

Turns out that Manny was right. I found it in the bedroom dresser. How in the world did he know?

When I first saw the blurred black-and-white images on those playing cards, I felt lightheaded, almost punchy. Waves of pleasure surged through me. I was giddy. My stomach felt all fluttery. I was amazed that my father actually possessed stuff like this. I wondered if my mother knew about it. For days afterward, I snuck back into their bedroom to peek at those pictures. I couldn't get the images out of my head. I had wet dreams every night.

When I brought the deck to the rec room, Manny used it as an occasion to choreograph a circle jerk. He ordered everyone to strip down to his socks while he held up the cards. I hated this ritual. It was so public. I dreaded every second. I wondered what this had to do with learning how to impress girls.

Still, it was all new territory for me. The more approval I got from the group, the more reckless I became. I even felt a secret thrill whenever I got away with those little transgressions.

Acting on my own, I brought a palm sized roulette wheel to school, and I began to take bets at lunch and recess. It wasn't long before knots of seventh and eight grade boys would be huddled around me as I knelt down next to the handball court wall and spun the wheel. To my surprise, the guys from the clique even participated. Winning the pot didn't mean a thing to me. What I loved was being the center of attention.

It was mid February
and I was spending almost every night hanging around with the group. As a result, my midterm grades were conspicuously lower than they had been in the fall. I was also starting to get into trouble. In early March, a teacher on recess duty caught me running the roulette game. I was sure that Mr. Sanders would give me after school detention or else suspend me from classes. But I had a clean record, so I got a month's probation and a warning to keep my nose clean.

When my parents found out, my mother of course wanted to ground me. But my father intervened.

“Let him make his own mistakes, Stell,” he said. “He'll learn the hard way—just like I did.”

It didn't take long for that prediction to come true. In early March, the softball coach, Mr. Barrows, caught me smoking in the boys' john. My punishment was to take ten laps around the school building—at recess, with everybody watching.

Barrows was determined to make an example out of me. I was in good shape, I figured. I'd been running on the beach all summer. Maybe I could do this. The junior high was a city block long, and several blocks deep. It was freezing cold, and after a single lap the pain in my lungs was so sharp I couldn't catch my breath. With everybody watching and Barrows riding behind me on a bicycle, I made it through a lap and a half before I almost collapsed from fatigue.

It was another warning signal. But this one got my attention.

Getting caught was a good excuse for me to quit smoking. I was relieved, in fact, that someone had finally stopped me. Still, I wish it would have been anyone except Coach Barrows. Softball tryouts were less than two weeks away. I was worried that he'd hold this against me. But even if he didn't, I knew I had to start setting some boundaries. The one thing that was more important than the group's approval was playing ball.

Over the past few months
, I'd gradually become aware that I'd lost sight of my original intent. Nothing we'd done lately had anything to do with girls. So what was I sticking around for?

The other thing that brought me to my senses was a plan Manny and Stuie had hatched a week after I got caught smoking. They planned to hot wire a car and take us all on a joy ride in the Riis Park parking lot right before Memorial Day weekend. It was something I wanted absolutely no part in. Stealing a car was a hell of a lot different from swiping dirty magazines and pretzel sticks.

Manny sensed that not everyone was enthusiastic about this caper. So to make certain that none of us had an excuse, one night he fished a penknife out of his shirt pocket.

“Blood brothers,” he said. He held the gleaming blade up.

You had to hand it to him. He knew just how to control us.

We passed the knife around the circle, and one-by-one we jabbed our thumbs with the blade until droplets of blood bubbled up to the skin's surface. We pressed our thumbs together and the pact was sealed.

I pretended to go along with it—at least for the moment. Why risk it now? Memorial Day was almost a month away. When the time came, I'd find a way out.

In early April
, Mike Rubin and I had already started playing catch outdoors. We hadn't seen much of one another that year, but I knew Mike had to be struggling in school as much as I was. Playing softball would be a safe haven for us both. It seemed urgent that we make the team.

All of the home games would be played in the schoolyard—on a concrete surface. To simulate those conditions we spent hours after school and on weekends hitting fungos and ground balls to one another on the still-frozen turf at Riis Park. We worked out no matter how cold the weather was.

As tryouts got closer, I kept wondering if Barrows would still have it in for me. But I needn't have worried. Mike and I were the only two from the sixth grade team who came out for seventh grade softball.

I knew going in that the team didn't have the budget to travel. We had to settle instead for playing a home “exhibition” schedule against every team in the Peninsula League. Evidently, this was small potatoes to the guys in the clique. That's why they didn't bother coming out for the team. They were gearing up, Pearlman told me, for the big prize—PAL (Police Athletic League) tryouts in June.

What was the deal with those guys anyway? I wondered if they were even going to invite me to their workouts and practices. Last year, I was team captain. Now, I was back to being a nonentity. Their attitude infuriated me. I'd told myself that I'd do everything in my power to make them regret this.

Under normal conditions, Rubin and I would have had to sweat it out just to make the seventh grade team. But all the best players from the surrounding neighborhoods were guys that Barrows couldn't count on. Some had after school jobs; others just wanted to hang out with their gangs. The two of us had experience; and we wanted to play. Besides, we never missed a practice.

I couldn't have asked for a better situation. Most of the guys who Barrows was forced to recruit were inexperienced and relatively unskilled. He couldn't afford to lose Mike or me—not if he wanted to field a decent team. So, in spite of my obvious limitations, he let me play shortstop.

In time, Barrows did manage to convince some of the better neighborhood players to join up. To get back at the clique, I implored Zeidner and Brownstein to help us out. I was ecstatic when they said yes.

Since our games didn't count in the league standings, there would be very little pressure on us to win. But that's not how Barrows saw it. He was lobbying for more money and support, and he wanted to convince the head honchos that the softball team deserved to compete in the Peninsula League. So all spring, he never let up on us. To him, every game mattered.

Every team is a reflection of its coach's attitude. Because Barrows had something to prove, we all did. That season then, we evolved into a scrappy, determined bunch. We ambushed a lot of good teams. In fact, by the end, we won more games than even Barrows had expected.

The whole situation worked to my advantage. I liked being on a team of underdogs. Plus, I knew I didn't have to keep proving myself every game. For the first time I could relax and concentrate on playing.

There were games that spring when I volunteered to move over to second base just so Ronnie Zeidner could play short. But for the most part I continued to work hard at becoming better at the position. I practiced in between games and carefully studied Pee Wee Reese, Alvin Dark, and Phil Rizzuto, the three great New York shortstops. By the end of the season, I'd become a pretty decent middle infielder.

Softball had taken up
so much time that I spent fewer and fewer evenings with Manny's group. With ball games and practices to occupy me, I began to see them in a different light. They seemed aimless and irresponsible. No goals or commitments. Clearly, I was ready to cut my ties with them.

I was contemplating just how to break the news to the group when, just before Memorial Day weekend, Manny informed us that the car heist was a go. It would happen on Friday evening. I was cornered. I'd forgotten about it, and now there was no time to think up an excuse. Ok, maybe I owed them this one last commitment. I didn't want it to look like I was chickening out or being disloyal. After all, they did take me in when no one else would have me.

By the time I found out that Stuie had stolen Myron Kerns's Cadillac, I was in the back seat sandwiched between Rabin and Shapiro, with Goldman practically sitting on my lap. They'd all been drinking and getting high all afternoon. You could smell it on their breath.

As soon as we got to the Riis Park parking lot Manny floored the gas pedal, and within seconds we were going almost a hundred miles an hour. I was terrified. I was sure we were going to die. That's when we heard the sirens. The cops were right on our tail.

Big surprise, right? What were those guys thinking when they hotwired Kerns's Caddy? He was on the town board, for Christ sake. What's more, he knew my father from the Temple Men's Club. How could I have ever been so stupid? I deserved whatever I was going to get.