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“Strike three!”
The ump was very generous with the strike zone on that pitch. Damn near at my ankles! But, he called it a strike and I trodded back to the dugout, where I met the icy cold stare of Niagara Falls Sox manager Jack Gagnon.
It was the top of the fourth of my professional debut. And I had already struck out twice.
“That’s about right,” Gagnon said. “You swing at complete garbage and then watch a perfectly good pitch like that go by. Those Texas pitchers back in high school must have had noodle arms if the likes of you got hits off them.”
Oh, yes, me and the skipper were getting along great. He made sure of that the day I met him.
“I don’t like first round picks,” he had told me. “Sign for all that money and think you can just cruise right on in here and act like you are something special. Like you are too big for this place. Too important. Well, I got news for you, first-rounder. I’ll make damn sure you know where your place is on my team!”
And, so, for the second time in this game, I was in the dugout doing fifty pushups for striking out.
“We’re going to give you some upper body strength there, first-rounder,” he barked with a satisfied smirk.
I didn’t strike out again in that game. I grounded out twice to go 0-for-4. But, we got the win, 2-1 over the Erie Cardinals, when Scott Cooper hit a two-run homer in the top of the eighth.
“Don’t worry about it, first-rounder,” Cooper told me after the game. “Gagnon don’t like much of anybody around here.”
Three days later, Cooper was dealt to the Orioles.
I guess Gagnon heard him.
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