Suitors of Spring, The: The Solitary Art of Pitching, from Seaver to Sain to Dalkowski (Summer Game Books Baseball Classics) Read Online Free PDF Page B

possibility of their own imminent failures.
    Dalkowski could only have succeeded if he had tempered his blazing speed with control and discipline—in short, had compromised his fastball, because with control inevitably comes a loss of speed. His wildness can be considered a refusal to give up any of his speed, even in the hope of gaining control and big-league glory. Instead, Dalkowski settled for those isolated, pure, distilled moments of private success attributable solely to talent. And those moments could never be dimmed, because their purity was inherent in his talent. That he never won a major league game, never became a star, is not important to young ballplayers who hold him in such reverence. All that matters is that once, just once, Steve Dalkowski threw a fastball so hard that Ted Williams never even saw it. No one else can claim that.
     

An Old Hand with a Prospect
    Woody Huyke, smiling, blows Bazooka bubbles as he walks with quick pigeon-toed steps away from home plate. His shin guards click between his legs and his chest protector rises and falls against his chest as he moves. His gray flannel uniform is darkened with sweat. His cap is still on backwards, and his oval, olive-skinned face is streaked with red dirt and sweat and the lighter outline of his mask, which he carries tucked under his left armpit. Two swollen fingers, taped together, stick out from the fat, round catcher’s mitt on his left hand.
    When Woody Huyke reaches the visiting team’s dugout he turns slightly to shake the hand of a tall, impassive Negro who has just walked in from the pitcher’s mound. Woody says something in Spanish and Silvano Quezada smiles. The rest of the Waterbury Pirates’ baseball team arrive simultaneously from their positions, and they in turn slap Huyke and Quezada on the back before disappearing into the dugout.
    A voice from the dugout calls out, “Nice going, you old goat.” Both Huyke and Quezada smile. The remark could have been directed at either of the two men, who claim to represent the oldest living battery in the Eastern League. Together they have played 25 years of minor league baseball. Their combined ages is somewhere near 70. “That’s 70 years that are known,” Huyke will say with a raised eyebrow. “God only knows how old Quezada is. He is ageless. Me, I am a mere boy in comparison.” Soon Woody Huyke will be 34.
    Before Huyke disappears into the dugout he pauses on the top step, rests his elbows on the tar-paper roof and scans the Elmira, N.Y., ball park. It is a chipped and sagging wooden structure with a high tier of roofed stands rising directly behind home plate and lower exposed stands lining each foul line. The outfield, which is nothing more than intermittent clumps of grass, is bordered by a high wooden fence painted with the faded advertisements of banks and gas stations and restaurants.
    On this hot, muggy July afternoon there are less than 100 fans scattered throughout the ball park. The largest group consists of seven or eight heavily made-up young women seated directly behind the home-plate screen. These are the wives of the Elmira baseball players. Throughout the game they have chattered amiably, like colorful magpies, and now that it is over they seem not even to have noticed, for they are still chattering. Woody looks at the girls and the few old men sleeping high in the shade of the home-plate stands and the young boys fooling in the third-base bleachers and he shakes his head. Then he steps backward onto the field and, still facing the empty stands, says with just a trace of a Spanish accent, “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your wonderful applause.” And he bows. It is the graceful and profuse bow of a conquering matador. He pulls off his cap with a flourish and sweeps it across his chest as he bows so deeply from the waist that his face almost touches the ground. And then Woody Huyke, too, disappears into the visiting team’s dugout.
    Woody Huyke is