Meeting At The Mound
.....

"As near to the plate and as far from his bat as possible."

The question the young pitcher had asked Gene Rapp when he
came out to the mound was, "Coach, how do you want me to pitch
to Dockery?" Catcher Pandolfo, shortstop Merkley, and second
baseman Kelb had all closed in to join the dirt-circle conflab.
Coach had rubbed his day's growth of stubble and answered his
young pitcher's question with a half-grin,

"As near to the plate and as far from his bat as possible."

Now they stood there, leather-skinned coach and downy-cheeked
pitcher, along with the two glove magicians of the middle infield
and the squeaky-kneed catcher, chuckling over Coach's answer
and waiting for the plate umpire, Hadgett, to come to the mound
to break them up. Coach kept his back to home plate in order to
feign surprise when Hadgett arrived on the scene, which he soon
enough did.

"All right, fellas, let's hurry off now..."

"Did I hear you use the word 'hurry'?," Coach said, spitting out
a squirt of tobacco juice so it landed carefully about four or
five inches from Hadgett's shiny black umpire boots. "Because
'hurry' is the exact word I have been chewin' on for this entire
dadgum inning, Harry."

Having been the plate umpire for the Columbines home games since
the days when Lorena Lovett was still single and filling up
dancehalls all by herself just by saying she was going, Harry
Hadgett knew that Coach Rapp was not happy. With his team already
trailing by six runs in the eighth inning of a must-win or miss
the playoffs game, and the last two batters walking on pitches
that were awfully close to being strikes, and Umpire-In-Chief
Hadgett being paid handsomely by the Sintaluta Columbines Baseball
Club to make sure that awfully close was close enough in key
situations like this, well, Coach Rapp was not happy at all.
His ears were turning a shade of red that had some blue in it.

"Harry, we have two outs. We have had two outs for twenty minutes.
My boy here has thrown some of the prettiest fastballs I've ever
seen in my life, exactly to the spot we called 'em for, and you
have decided to be Scrooge about four months before Christmas!
Corpus dang Christi! I could be down at the Harwood by now with
a cold beer in one hand and the other resting on Sue Monraker's
gorgeously rounded hip, if you'd only done what you're supposed
to do and give the home team its rightful advantage on the outside
corner of the dish! What the hell are we payin' you for?!"

"Gene, the pitches were outside."

"We're all outside! It's a beautiful day in Sintaluta and we're
all outside and we've all about enjoyed it as much as possible
and are sunburned and ready to get t' heck into some shade now.
You like your beer as much as anybody, Harry. I can't believe
you're not gettin' thirsty. Open up that damn shoebox zone of
yours and let's get these boys home to their pimple cream."

The umpire smiled. Coach Rapp had always been funny. The two of
them went back thirty years. Hadgett even had a small scar in his
left eyebrow from a fight they waged over Lorena one night when
she'd worn a slinky white dress that drove everybody crazy out
at Thaxton's Hall. He squinted at the coach a moment.

"You want that beer bad enough, Gene, you could pretend to swear
at me and bump that belly of yours into me..."

Coach Rapp looked at his players. Pandolfo was grinning, while
Kelb and Merkeley elbowed each other in expectation of another
Academy Award performance by the coach. It was only Delisle,
the first-year pitcher, who seemed perplexed by the negotiations,
still taking the game seriously even with the six-run spread.
Coach Rapp winked at the others, then turned back to Hadgett.
He took a step toward the umpire, bumped him belly to belly and,
while jabbing his pointer-finger deep into Hadgett's chest,
growled low enough so no one in the bleachers could hear...

"You fire me outta this ballgame right now, you cheap sumbee,
and I'll be waitin' in the Harwood with a cold one for ya as
soon as you hurry up and call some wide strikes so these boys
can get back to their mirrors and girlfriends and I can get
back to putting my free hand on that sexy Harwood waitress."

Hadgett turned to work the crowd, thrusting his arm in the air
and saying, "You're out of the game!" with a majesterial aplomb
honed by years and years of practice at Joyner Field.

Coach stormed off the diamond, kicking up orange dustclouds
as he went, spitting tobacco juice in five directions, working his
face into a cortorted wronged wrestler's redness, leaving his
young pitcher shaking his head and the other three players
doing their level best to suppress giggles.

The 1,500 folks in the grandstand booed as they always did
when Coach Rapp got the hook from Hadgett. He stormed off in
style. As he entered the dugout, he kept walking into the tunnel,
right through the dressing room after grabbing his coat and keys,
lit a cigarette on his way past the Kiwanis Club hamburger stand,
and was singing I've Got The World On A String by the time
he jumped into his Mercury, dusty spikes still on his feet, hat
off, checkin' his hair in the rearview.

It was 3:25 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. Late summer. The prairie
laying there gasping for water just like everybody else. Like we
all changed into fish and the lakes disappeared. Gene Rapp was
so dry if he cried now the tears would squeak right out of his eyes.
Just six blocks away in the Silver Cloud lounge of the Harwood
Hotel, Sue Monraker cracked open a cold Bohemian beer and set
it on a coaster at the table nearest the cigarette machines. He had
told her, win or lose baby, I'll be there at 3:30 sharp. And, as
Sue Monraker knew all too well, Coach was a man of his word.

DL