Pitching to Giraffes

By Tom Puszykowski

John Light, desperate to escape his introverted ways and more fully experience life, reluctantly goes out for his college baseball team in 1969. An unintended change in mechanics soon makes him his team's best pitcher. Major League scouts are coming around. But at the same time, an awakening appreciation and involvement with the cultural and political landscape weakens his engagement with baseball, and he is distracted by a need to legitimize his moral commitment by actively participating in the counterculture's quest to demand a better world.

His team needs his help. They are chasing a championship over their arrogant rivals, but lingering past mistakes and hijinks threaten to undermine their goal. Their coach is organized and well-meaning but seems a fish out of water trying to corral their antics.

A student activist with militant connections offers John the action he desperately seeks to legitimize his commitment, but at a cost. John grapples with the complications of losing oneself in a just cause.

As the season counts down to its climactic final game, John, his girl friend, and several friends and teammates confront decisions that dig deep into who they are and who they want to be. This warm-hearted novel expands beyond baseball to explore how we determine the right thing to do and why we should do it.

"Pitching to Giraffes is a compelling novel with fascinating social and political commentary...I enjoyed the perfectly rendered first-person voice, the beautiful prose, and the complex setting." --Readers' Favorite 5 stars

"Puszykowski is an adept writer, particularly about baseball." --"Kirkus Review"

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350956603

Tom Puszykowski

The author played college baseball 1968 through 1972 and was enthusiastically engaged in the life-changing excitement and turmoil that flourished through those years.

Book preview

Tryouts

First off, I wouldn’t have gone out for baseball in college except this guy in the dorm wanted to and asked me to go along. My limited success in summer leagues and junior varsity brandishing a big-breaking curveball to unsophisticated hitters was fun, but I never really thought that it could lead to anything special. I rode the bench junior year. Our senior season was cancelled due to a failed school tax. Truth is, as a college freshman in 1969 I went to tryouts more from a need to belong to something than from confidence in my baseball skills.

At tryouts, I went unnoticed, lost in a scramble of sixty guys all dressed in gym shorts, tee shirts, and tennis shoes. I felt like a high school freshman mistakenly assigned to a senior gym class.

At practice, the coach told all of us pitchers to try throwing from the mound as we would from the outfield, which, he said, would reveal our natural motion. We fooled with throwing that way and let it go. At least I thought I had.

Then, it was like magic, I swear. At the next practice, my pitching affected my catcher strangely. He fidgeted, then spoke to the guys next to him. I was confused, thought maybe they were mocking me. He held up his index finger to me and jogged off. He came back with the coach. The coach watched me throw five pitches. What the coach saw, I came to realize, was a change in my mechanics that I hadn’t been aware I’d made. That change increased the speed and movement of my fastball to a level that set me apart. I finished throwing, ran some sprints, and headed to the showers.

Suddenly, the coach was there talking to me.

You threw different today, John. Dropped your arm a little.

I did? I fumbled around, holding my gym shorts clumsily in front of my jockstrap.

I don’t see a problem. The fastball was really popping.

Really? Thank you.

I can’t promise you innings, but you have a place on the team. It’s up to you what you make of it. But we can at least get you in shape for summer ball.

Thank you. Thank you.

Small encouragement, you might think, but I was so pumped I stood in the shower with water splashing on my face, and my hands spanking my thighs until they were red and stinging. I’d made the team. I belonged to something.

You’d think with this emergent talent, I’d have a clear incentive for developing and maximizing my ability in pursuit of my childhood fantasy of playing Major League Baseball.

I would’ve expected that, too, but—well, I can’t explain it very well, but I can tell what happened.

Chapter 1

I Just Can’t Help Believing

In 1972 there was still time to believe.

Even the baseball season, which began for us in February, promised to be an outstanding year, an opportunity to redeem lost chances and unfulfilled promise. Fifteen letter winners from last year’s 19-8 team showed up at one of the lecture rooms in Kirkpatrick Field House at 7 P.M. for the first meeting. Outside, a light snow fell on campus in Sivia, a small city in western Michigan.

I approached the meeting alone, slowing to feign interest in a bulletin board while I gathered myself to enter the room. When I heard the thump of the main door closing, I took a breath and slipped inside.

Wild Bill, a rather small outfielder who never lacked energy, greeted me looking serious. What did you do, man, fall in the snow?

I looked down my body, coat to shoes. No snow anywhere.

Hey, you gotta look at yourself to know whether or not you fell?

He laughed, and I laughed along with him, seeking a clever response. None came, so I slouched to the back of the room, nodding to greetings from players.

Grab some pine, Light, called Tommy Beamon, our second baseman.

Lookin’ good, John, said Tom Baldwin, our shortstop, lifting his hand. I slapped his palm, maybe a little too hard.

Kool-Aid, big and chubby as ever, saluted me, grinning. I slid into a chair with a desktop attached, leaving my coat on even though the room was warm. Kool-Aid turned around and said, Hey, man, gettin’ any?

The green chalkboard that ran the full length of the front wall had been washed but was left streaked.

I watched the other guys, bothered by a grating irritation above the roof of my mouth which had begun on my way here after I sneezed while eating some beef jerky. I worried now that I’d maybe popped something.

The other players jostled around, sharing raunchy stories. I laughed, often out loud. My ease and fluency with others came and went. Much like my talking when sometimes I’d get so uptight that my larynx tightened and wouldn’t let air through regularly, forcing me to manipulate airflow through enlistment of my diaphragm and abdominal muscles. Plus, I’d trick my larynx with alternative word choice and speech rhythms. That’s tiring and often nauseating. It’s called stuttering. I know. It cost me five years in speech class, an unmonitored effort taught by an overwhelmed yet well-meaning speech teacher who came to the school twice a week. The embarrassment and frustration fed an ambition in me to prove I was more than what this affliction seemed to limit me to. We were good people in that class, broken in an open way, hard for others to understand.

My speech is better now. I don’t know why. I mention it only to say it and move on.

Tom Baldwin came back and sat next to me.

This year we do it, he said. Am I right?

You’re right, I said, trying fruitlessly to match his intensity.

Yeah? He looked me in the eyes.

Yeah.

No excuses, just bring it. Like never before. I’m serious. Are you there?

I am.

Alright, then. We need you, big time. Countin’ on it.

He raised his hand, and we slapped five. He flashed a fist of solidarity and went back to his seat taking small, quick steps.

The irritation above my mouth moved forward toward my nose. I felt a more palpable nature to it now. I silently forced air from my throat to my nose, creating pressure by pushing my tongue against the roof of my mouth. To my repugnance, my nose gave birth to a huge chunk of beef jerky. Man! I dropped my head and hoped to hell no one saw it.

Right then, into our reunion stepped our coach, wearing a red Wrencher College blazer. He wasn’t overweight but had an older-person look. His waist was too high, or maybe just his pants were. I don’t know. His hair was dark, and his round, cherubic face looked younger than it was: Coach Fred Fragen.

Terry Wilkins, our idea-fertile centerfielder, had hung the nickname Shcoach on him, claiming to hear a little extra sh sound swishing around whenever Coach pronounced ch words as in, Punsh that outside pitsh to left, Terry. Punsh it to left.

Hi, men. Ready to go? Shcoach beamed at us, standing at the front of the room. Can you believe ball season is here already? Jeesh. I’m glad to see you all here.

His head bobbed around, taking in the whole room. He clapped and rubbed his hands and waved them like he was signing for the deaf.

We got a lot to cover, men. Let’s get going so we can get through everything and get you guys back to studying.

Or in Kool-Aids case, eating, said Tommy Beamon.

Bone straight, said Kool-Aid.

Tommy lifted his hands, palms up, in puzzlement.

Kool-Aid shrugged. Hey, I don’t run a perfect mouth.

We want to be sure the lines of communication stay open, Shcoach, well, Coach said. I want you to be able to come to me if you have a problem or something you need to talk about.

How about new uniforms?

And women trainers.

Coach grinned. Now, guys.

Coach thought he was approachable. The reality was more like where a parent says, If you have questions about sex or things changing with your body, just ask. I’m sure he wanted to be approachable.

Everyone gets a full chance with me. There are no jobs sewn up. We’ll take a fresh look at everyone and …

Heads shook. Eyes rolled.

Coach was tough to figure out. He claimed he didn’t want to start freshmen, but then would give preferential treatment to one. He’d blow hot and cold with some guys, changing with each batting practice performance. I never saw any malice in him. I’ve never played on a sports team that didn’t have grumbling over playing time.

Hey, Kool-Aid, Steve West, our athletic catcher, said from the right. You know how it feels to have to take a piss really bad?

Yeah.

Feel me, will ya, and see if I have to.

Seriously, men, Coach said over the laughter, it’s important to have rules to achieve our best effort. I’m talking about things like swearing. Jeesh. He lowered his head and shook it, then brought his grimacing face back up slowly. I don’t like to hear it. We’re representing Wrencher College, and that’s a big responsibility.

Pretty much every guy in the room muttered an obscenity under his breath, then looked around and laughed.

The same goes for smoking and drinking to excess. That’s not good for you as ballplayers, and it’s not the image of fine young men we want to project. Conduct yourself with pride and respect, and treat others the same way.

Nobody took Coach seriously when he gushed about values. There was nothing in particular anyone disagreed with, but the whole package seemed so out of touch with the real world.

I knew exactly how that felt. College was a huge wake-up for me, sudden after an incomprehensible sleep, as I tried to align my own moral package with the real world.

We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, Coach said, but, you know, Ted Williams said many times …

Ted Williams was Coach’s guru. The man worked hard at coaching. We gave him that. The thing is, though, he was better attuned to general advice than to the smaller details that might benefit a player as well.

Udo’s put some work in, Tommy Beamon said about our left fielder who had noticeably bulked up since last year. Damn, man.

Udo stood and flexed his biceps for everyone to see.

We have to think about having a philosophy, men. We need that both as ballplayers and as people. We need to develop our conscience about what we’re doing at all times, on and off the field.

The idea of philosophy made sense to me. Every year Coach made us fill out cards asking for our philosophy about certain things. I took it seriously.

Mostly what he got were gems like Eat, drink, and find Mary, and Wild Bill’s All the meat around a pig’s ass is pork. Terry Wilkins’ goal in life, we found out, was to find a piece of driftwood that looked like Mickey Mantle.

For all the sense Coach made, he sounded like a 1950s guidance class pamphlet. We considered ourselves way past that. One thing he said, though, stuck in my mind. Of all the attributes a person might have, the only one we can unqualifiedly wish for every person to have in unlimited quantity is goodwill. I liked that.

Finally, men, with you returning ballplayers and some promising new players we expect to help us, we have a good squad. A dum good squad. If we work together and support each other, we can go a long way. You guys know what’s right. You’ve been around and know what it takes to be successful. I’m putting it on you to do what you need to do to make this the best team it can be. Maybe this is the year we win it all. Heck, I know it is.

He nodded in an exaggerated manner, inviting us to nod along with him. No one really did, except maybe Tom Baldwin.

We need to create a system, Coach went on. Everyone has his place within that system. The system works for the betterment of us all. We work dum hard to make it go.

That made some sense, until it occurred to me that in books and movies, systems bog everybody down, weakened as they are by bureaucracy, ambition, or stale ideology. The heroes reject the system, stay true to their own values, and achieve success. So what is it?

It’s up to you, men. You can do it.

As a team we wanted to win the league championship. Wrencher was a small state school with a poor athletic tradition, too often just a break in some other team’s schedule. Sometimes even our own students mocked us.

Douglass College, a rich kid’s private business school, won the baseball championship almost every year. They also had a lock on the arrogant assholes award. The previous year they acted as though we didn’t belong on the field with them. When our chance against them came, we didn’t play up to our ability—again—and they taunted us. We were certain we’d turn things around this year.

In the four years since Coach had taken over the program, our play had improved each year. During my freshman year, the highlight was when big Roger Griffith smacked a long foul fly to left that landed near the sewage disposal plant. I don’t remember him ever hitting one fair. Our expectations rose steadily each year until we finally thought we legitimately had a shot at the championship this year.

Chapter 2

Bad Moon Rising

After the meeting, Terry Wilkens and Ed Schramkey caught me and said, Let’s go. Bar.

Schramkey suggested a townie bar, Blacky’s, recalling a sign there last spring welcoming ball teams.

They may not welcome you, Wilkens said. From what I hear ‘bout you and Andrea, you ain’t got your team anymore.

I’m hanging fine.

Wilkens was lithe and athletic, with straight blond hair that bounced around his head as a single unit, unlike my own clumps and waves that wanted little to do with each other.

He pushed through the bar door and called to the bartender, We need beer. Whatta ya got in a fire-brewed Bohemian?

Ain’t got it. We got Blatz.

The bartender looked in his early sixties, with a round face, a belt-lapping gut and no ass. He frowned and curled his upper lip at us as we sat at the bar, Schramkey on the left of Wilkens, me on his right.

A television perched high in the corner behind the bar. We learned from a customer’s shoutout that the bartender’s name was Wally.

"Can we ditch Sanford and Son and see if the hockey game is on?" Wilkens asked as our pitcher arrived.

Wally curled his lip again, but he got up on a stool with a grunt and switched to the game.

Take a gulp of beer every time the puck crosses the red line, Wilkens said to us, then said to Wally, Can we get the sound up a little?

Wally stood right there showing no sign of hearing anything.

Two old-timers sat at the bar, smoking. One wore suspenders. Schramkey said of them, They looked at us like we were side dishes someone brought ‘em that they hadn’t ordered. Two couples in their fifties played Euchre at a table. Two guys in flannel shirts, early thirties, sat in the corner. One had a full black beard. The sleeves had been cut off his shirt.

Wilkens celebrated a nifty backhand goal on the screen. The old-timers shook their head. He took a heavy swig of beer and held the glass out, saying, Oh, yeah. Give me a beer that takes a little turf down with it.

Wally glared at him.

A half hour later, spilled beer and empty peanut wrappers littered the counter in front of us, along with a crumpled Stewart submarine sandwich wrapper. Wilkens had ordered the sandwich, and when Wally heated it in the little silver oven in front of the liquor bottles, he burnt it a little. On purpose, Schramkey said. Wilkens laughed at the possibility.

I was trying to balance a straw on my glass. Wilkens leaned into me without looking away from the screen.

Whatcha ‘spose Shcoach wants to see us about tomorrow?

Maybe he wants help painting the baseballs white.

We laughed. A year ago, to save money, Coach actually broke out a bag of old baseballs painted white. At first we were like, great, new balls. But they turned out to be so slick they flew out of control all over the gym. They vanished in two nights, unmentioned.

What a quasi, optional idea that was, said Wilkens.

He placed his hands on the bar and swung his gaze around the room.

Someday I’m gettin’ me a bar like this.

Wonderful, said Schramkey. You gonna learn to shit through your mouth?

Huh?

I mean, after you lose your ass.

We both looked at him. Big-boned and sad-eyed, downright not athletic-looking, Ed was a third-year player and a fellow pharmacy student. He was well read, with a cynicism that gave him a depth I envied.

My uncle bought a bar, he said, full of good intentions and the vast knowledge he picked up working thirty years at an automobile plant.

He whistled in a descending pitch and pointed down.

He didn’t get it, ya know?

He fill the drafts to the top? Wilkens said.

Naw, he played it straight. Trouble was, he expected everyone else to.

And? I said.

His bartender gave away booze. Vendors hosed him. The waitress sold dope.

Ya gotta love this country. Wilkens raised his glass in salute.

"My uncle had his own story how to build success for his bar. The employees nodded along, but it wasn’t their story and gave them no reason to resist their own interests over his. Took a lot of work, but he fixed it. Hardened him, though, like business does. I wouldn’t have thought it. He calls it the boodle game, people grabbing all they can for themselves. Politicians gobble up boodle, then make laws banning it from the little guy. The little guy knows this and goes, ‘Kiss my ass.’ So now, he and the rep split the first third from the pool table and jukebox before they start counting for the books. Or a little Kesslers makes its way into the Canadian Club bottle. And he makes damn sure the help toes the line.

That’s why Shcoach can’t get us to a championship, Schramkey said.

Wilkens and I looked at him. He flashed us peace signs.

Hey, just sayin’. Someone’s got to bust our balls. Asking nice to practice right or sacrifice for the team ain’t gonna do it. You need some whack behind it.

We all want to win, I said. We’ll bring it this year.

Yeah, right. Look at you. Do you do all you can to take your lanky, long-haired ass to a higher level?

Not really, but—

He held up his hand.

’Nough said. Not really, but. C’mon, man.

No, this year I—

If anyone, man, it ought to be you. You could go on. What’s it Bagley says? Million-dollar arm and a ten-cent brain.

And has pleading, he asked, stopped Wilkens here from trying to pull the outside pitch?

Yeah. I mean, no. I mean, blow me, Wilkens said.

Experience would say, Schramkey said, facing the ceiling, go to left.

Yeah, yeah. I get it.

Well, you’re fixed, said Schramkey. How about the rest of us? What’ll fix us, make us slide harder, play tougher? A team takes on the personality of their coach.

He gave us time to think that through, then nodded.

Yeah, I know. And he ain’t gonna change. So how do we change?

He looked at me. Nothing.

"Right. Do we want to win baseball games or good citizens awards? Look at that Douglass coach, that Gary Aimee guy. Nine years in the minors, not even a cup of coffee in the bigs. You know why he’s got a hard-on. Every game’s his world series. He’s an institution, and you don’t mess with an institution."

He’s a dick, I said.

Sure, but a dick that can get a team ready to win. Then they kick our ass. Doesn’t mean they’re better than us, just means they’re—

Meaner.

Ready to win.

At any cost.

That’s why we play the game.

It’s not why we started playing it.

He looked at Wilkens, then back at me.

They didn’t choke last year. We did.

I knew the deal. No one had said it out loud before.

He misread my face. Aw. C’mon. You know we did. What’s gonna push us past that?

Wilkens slapped our arms and pointed to the TV. He’d been watching a commercial showing a Spanish woman throwing dinner plates at her bewildered husband.

"That, right there. Energy. Combustion, baby. Wild-ass monkeys or something.

You’re right, he said to Schramkey. Either we feel it, or it’s optional, semi, kinda, ya know?

He slapped the counter. The old guys shuddered.

We stop ourselves, he said. We see the prize. Go get it. But like a dog trained to stay out of the living room, there might as well be a wall there. Even if that’s where the bone is, it’s just gonna lie there. We gotta be the guys that go for the bone. Can’t let anything stop us. There’s magic in us we need to spark.

I perked up and said, Yeah, like Bruce Banner with a raging Hulk hidden in us if we could find a way to get it out.

Wally lumbered by with a dirty rag, swatted our elbows off the bar, and said, I gotta clean up some of this shit.

Wilkens said to him, We were hoping to bring in the arts council and get this certified as a collage of Americana. Maybe get a grant.

Wally turned away. I couldn’t make out his mumbled response.

The old-timers were watching us. Wilkens leaned toward them and said, Just sharin’ some laughs with Yuck-Yuck, here.

When he saw a slight smile from one of them, he added, How does the man keep his job?

He never misses a shift, and he doesn’t steal, one replied, poker-faced.

Duly noted, Wilkens said, shoulders hunched and wide-eyed.

He turned back to us. Yeah, yeah, okay. We’re Hulks. We need to get more, but you don’t have to beat it out of people with a stick. He glared at Schramkey. Great players go for the bone and draw it out of others. Guys like Bill Russell or Gordie Howe.

Or Einstein, I said.

Or Hitler, Schramkey added.

Wilkens laughed. You’re right. You are so right.

What about you? Schramkey said to Wilkens. People follow your shit. You take the lead.

No, Bagley, maybe, or Baldwin. That’s in their ballpark.

Schramkey and I looked at him, not giving up on a good idea.

Okay, I tried pulling every pitch, right? Because that’s what I thought good hitters did. Bad idea, so I changed, or tried to, or meant to, or, shit, changed nothing. The idea ain’t doin’ me no good if my body’s not paying attention to it. It’s all absurd. That’s what I know. What have I got to tell anyone else?

Nothing’s absurd, Shramkey said. Look deeper. Absurdity is a peculiarity you can’t rationalize.

Wilkens turned again to the old-timers.

"You guys were in the big