Lennie was no Satchel Paige. But he needed the money. Every penny helped. So he agreed before asking his father, who had doubts because they’d be touring the South, where Lennie’s father was from. Lennard Holden, Sr., had grown up in Mississippi, the grandchild of a man freed by Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation. Or, rather, two years after the Emancipation, when the Confederacy got its teeth kicked in. But, as Lennie’s father liked to tell him, while the Confederacy had lost, the South had not. He’d moved to the North at eighteen and had never considered returning to his homeland. It’s bad down there, he would say. After a few drinks, he might add, Worse than up here, even.
As Lennie stared at the batter, he weighed all the luck he’d been handed that year, good and bad. Tonight fell into the realm of the bad, he decided. Maybe not life-altering bad, like his father’s accident, but there was definitely something hinky going on. Despite the strikeouts, his grip didn’t feel right. All those strikes were the result of his speed; they were all swinging strikeouts, every one of them, most due to the hitter being late on the swing, a couple because Lennie did have a curveball he could pull out of his back pocket when the batter wasn’t expecting it. But those solo home runs, adding up like lesser sins, didn’t sit right with him.
He turned the ball over in his fingers, acting like he was reading the catcher’s signs, but his full concentration on the ball. The seams felt tighter, the ball lighter. He wiped sweat from his forehead, trying to find a new grip that felt like his old grip. Nothing worked. Nothing felt comfortable, normal.
The ump was glaring at him, so Lennie took a deep breath and threw the ball, an off-speed pitch that the batter swung on and missed. The next was a real meatball; Lennie knew it as soon as it left his hand. Long gone into the late afternoon sky.
Go ‘fer home, go ‘fer home.
The next batter swung on the first pitch. It went even further than the last.