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            The Cal Bears huddled around Coach George Wolfman.  Their hands clapped in unison and the sound reached my ears as they broke into two lines of trotting uniforms, one pouring into the dugout and the other rolling onto the first base line where they waited to be announced over the PA system.

I had a good view of the Evans Diamond stands from the left field bullpen.  I looked for Candy.  She wasn’t there.

After the announcements, Andy Dangerfield, Cal's starting pitcher, jogged towards the mound from the right field bullpen.  After throwing only two pitches, he nodded to the umpire that he was ready.

            To look at him, you wouldn’t think he could throw a fast ball 98 miles an hour.  He was just less than six feet tall and weighed about 160 pounds. 

            Our second baseman, Clint Mackateer, led off.  He was a little red headed guy, 5’ 7” and not stocky, but he always got a piece of the ball, and he ran the forty in 4.4.  He was right handed, and stood in the middle of the box, legs wide apart, so that his left foot barely moved forward when he swung the bat.

            Dangerfield twisted his mouth into a faintly disdainful smile, wound up languidly and threw a fastball.  Mackateer didn’t even move his hands.  When the ball hit the catcher’s glove, it cracked like the report from a rifle.  The umpire raised his right hand without saying a word and clicked the little plastic dial into the one position. 

            Mackateer backed out of the box and stretched his neck so that his face pointed to the sky and the blood vessels on his neck stood out like cords.  When he looked back to earth, his face was chalk-white and there was fear in his eyes. 

            Dangerfield glanced over at the Cal dugout, as if he were asking Wolfman if it was OK for him to throw the ball so hard at such a little guy.  The coach nodded, Dangerfield raised his knee and threw another strike, faster than the first.  From the way the catcher leaned to catch the ball, I knew that it was the same outside, waist-high fast ball that he had thrown a moment before.  

            When the umpire raised his right hand to indicate the second strike, Mackateer placed the end of his bat on the outside corner of the plate, and dragged it across very slowly, as if he were performing an incantation.  Almost before he could raise the bat over his shoulder, the same fastball blew past him, and he stood there frozen, taking the third strike. 

            O’Toole, the third baseman was on deck.  Even from the left field bullpen, 200 feet away, I heard Mackateer say, as he passed O'Toole on the way to the plate, “That dude’s throwin flames.”

            O’Toole, a stocky, second generation Irishman of 185 pounds, went down like a windmill, on three fast balls.  Every pitch was right down the middle, and it was clear that Dangerfield didn’t respect him at all.

            Al Simms, our lanky, 6’5” left fielder, strutted up to the plate, holding his bat high in the air with one hand, gripping the bat just below the label.  The muscles on his black forearm rippled under satiny skin.  He glared menacingly at Dangerfield, who ignored him regally while he smoothed out some dirt near the bottom of the mound. 

            Simms was our power hitter and he wasn’t afraid of pitchers.  He swung at a knee-high fast ball, like a golfer, and his eyes never left Dangerfield’s.  When the catcher tossed the ball back, Simms’ eyes were blazing with an emotion I hadn’t seen before. 

            The second pitch was an off-speed pitch.  It was about a foot outside.  Simms swung at it like he was chopping wood, and missed by two feet.  A Cal player yelled,  “Take this guy out to the woodpile Andy!” 

            Dangerfield hardly paused, lifted his knee and threw the next pitch in the same place, about 100 miles an hour.  Simms lunged, pathetically. 

            The catcher knew where the ball was supposed to go but it got away from him anyway and rolled to the backstop.  He threw his mask high into the air, wheeled around and found the ball almost immediately.  To show off his arm, he rifled the ball to first base and beat Simms by five steps.

            By the end of the fourth inning, Dangerfield had struck out 12 batters with exactly 36 pitches, and none of them were curve balls. 

            Cal had knocked all of our pitchers out of the box, except for the Old Man and me.  They had scored 13 runs.   When the Old Man, Shawn Taylor, finally got them out, in the bottom of the fifth, with the help of an acrobatic catch in left field by Simms, the coach motioned for me to warm up.  He sent McClenden to warm me up because he was the last batter out in the previous inning.

            McClenden said, “All I’ve got to say Bradford, is I hope your knuckle ball is moving.”

            “Don’t worry, McClenden, I’ve got a secret weapon.” 

            The Cal baseball team was ranked 12th in the nation, and it was rumored that the Yankees had offered Dangerfield a hundred thousand-dollar contract, which he had turned down so that he could play out his eligibility with Cal. 

            I thought my secret weapon was Zen but the truth was that I just didn’t give a damn about baseball anymore.  Zen had sharpened my concentration, which wasn’t nothing as Satchel Page said once, and it taught me to give a fuck about not giving a fuck, which is a koan for the critics. 

            Naturally, I was very far from Zen when I thought,  “If my knuckleball can be brought down from the sky by Cal, I will retreat into the bliss of a Kamikaze pilot falling into the Pacific ocean in a blaze of black and yellow smoke, missing the flight deck of the U.S.S. Intrepid by a mile.  And if it can’t be brought down, I will be beyond pride, taking the praise of my teammates with detachment, careful not even to let my indifference show.”

            My fast ball wasn’t fast by Big League standards, but it had once been timed at 92 miles per hour and that was fast enough to strike out most high school players.  The coach wasn’t impressed with my fastball because my control had been erratic.  He hadn’t noticed that for the last two or three weeks, my control had been almost perfect, except when it failed completely.

            “McClenden, you’re going to have to be on your toes,” I said.  I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.  I wound up and threw my first knuckleball, saying to myself, “Za-Zen” as the ball left my hand.

            “God damn!  It’s moving,” he said.  The ball bounced off his glove.

            I remembered him lying on his back after the ball had careened off his glove and hit him on the forehead.  I yelled, “You need a bigger glove, McClenden.”

            “I don’t have a bigger glove, Bradford.”

            I threw another knuckleball.  It glanced off his glove again and hopped on the green grass behind him.  I yelled after him,  “We’ve got to ask the Cal bench, McClenden.  They might have a large glove.”

            He caught up with the ball and threw it back in a high arc.  His voice carried through the dry air,  “Shit.  What makes you think they’re going to give us an oversize catcher’s glove?”

            “This is just a practice game.  They’re beating the hell out of us and we aren’t even in their league.”   He stared at me, sullenly. 

            I said, “Remember what happened last week?  Go on.  Ask em.  I’ll wait.”

            “Gee thanks.  You’ll wait.”  He looked at the Cal bench, which was about 250 feet away, on the other side of the field, and his lip curled into a sneer.  This was one of the few times I had been called into a game as a relief pitcher and he didn’t like the idea of taking orders from me.  “All right.”  He threw his glove high in the air over his shoulder and broke into a smile 

Mackateer had just struck out, again, ending the inning, and McClendon jogged across the diamond, crossing over the edge of the pitcher’s mound towards the first base dugout.  The second string catcher rummaged in a big white canvas bag and, after what seemed a very long time, produced a large, new, orange-yellow glove.  He threw it into the air and McClenden spiked it with his left hand. 

            Standing on the pitcher’s mound, I imagined that I had entered the “suchness” of Zen because I saw myself standing on a little ant hill on planet earth, wheeling through space and I didn’t give a damn about anything, especially baseball.

            Warming up on the pitcher's mound, the knuckle ball hit the oversize glove exactly where I wanted and I simply noted the fact.  I remembered the no hitters I had pitched in high school but there was no pride in the memory, I was simply reminding myself that I had a chance of pitching a good game.

            Andy Dangerfield was the first batter up.  He had a reputation of being a lousy hitter.  I cleared my mind, wound up, and threw my first pitch.  I said, to myself, “Za-Zen,” and watched the ball flutter in the air.  He chopped the air with his bat.  Twisted around himself, a smile pulled up the corners of his mouth. 

            Without bothering to conceal it, I reared back and threw a fast ball.  He watched it all the way to McClenden’s big yellow glove.  I saw his lips mouth the words,  “Stick to your knuckle ball Bradford.”  I floated another knuckle ball past him, and it was obvious that he had no intention of swinging his bat.  He just watched it and nodded his head in approval as it passed by.  The umpire stuck his right thumb into the air, and Dangerfield turned and walked back to the dugout.  He made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, giving me the OK sign. 

            I looked into the almost empty stands and saw three gray heads huddled together. Scouts.  I looked for Candy but she wasn’t there.  I cleared my mind.

            Their leadoff batter was up.  I didn’t know anything about him except that he had already hit two doubles.  He was large and stocky, and I recognized him as the third baseman.  His face was relaxed and I could see that he didn’t respect me at all. 

            I called McClenden to the mound.  “This guy will swing at anything,” I said.  “If my control is working, I want to waste two pitches on him.  The first one will be a shoulder high fastball, right over the plate.  The second one will be a fastball, about six inches outside.  After the first pitch, throw the ball back as fast as you can and if he doesn’t move out of the box and he isn’t looking at me, I’m going to do a very quick windup and throw the second pitch right down the middle.”

            A malicious glint came into McClenden’s eyes.  “I’ll be waiting,” he said and trotted back to the plate.

            I wound up, chanted Za-Zen, and threw the ball high and down the middle.  He swung for the fences and missed.  A voice from the Cal bench said,  “Martin, keep your eye on the ball, not the fence.”

            McClenden threw the ball back to me quickly, as instructed, and I was happy to see Martin looking at the third base coach.  I wound up immediately and threw the ball down the middle, knowing full well that if my control failed, he wouldn’t be able to get out of the way and might get hurt, badly.  I said, “Za-Zen” and threw the ball, not fast, right down the middle.  He raised his bat and looked at me just as the ball entered the large, yellow glove for a strike.  The Cal bench broke out laughing.  He backed out of the box and looked at me as if I was someone else, and he hadn’t seen me there, standing on the mound.  He looked back at the umpire to make sure that I had taken the proper windup.  The umpire indicated that I had.

            I signaled for McClenden to come out to the mound again.  I told him to call for a fast ball to fool anyone who might be trying to steal signals but that I would waste a knuckleball, over the plate, six inches too high.  

            Martin planted his cleats into the hard dirt, and the confident grin was gone.  McClenden signaled for the fastball.  The knuckleball floated under his chin and he was way out in front of it.  He missed it by a foot.  McClenden dropped the ball but tagged Martin before he could start running for first.

 

            Through the pine trees, I thought I could make out the gray concrete building that was Evans Hall, the greatest mathematics department in the world.  But I knew it wasn’t really possible to see it from there, and I dissolved into quiet laughter.  I was a laughing Buddha and McClenden came out to the mound to find out what was wrong. 

            “Stop laughing man.  You’ll make Dangerfield really mad.  He could hurt us.” 

            “Dangerfield can’t hurt us anymore than he already has.”

            “Pull yourself together Bradford.”

            “I overspelled paradise,” I said.  I looked at him for a sign of recognition but I could see he didn’t know the music of the Rolling Stones.

            “What?”

            “I’ll be all right.  Get out of here.  Go back to the plate.”  He turned and trotted back to the plate.

            My pitching became a mantra to the subtle, dancing muscles in Andy Dangerfield’s face.  He sat in the dugout watching the floating, jerking, hopping insanity that was my knuckleball and he laughed hilariously when my fast balls roared by his baffled teammates. 

            I chanted “Za-Zen” with every pitch and didn’t give a fuck, and the three gray heads gabbled in the stands.

            When I came up to bat for the first time, Dangerfield got something in his eye, and had to go to the dugout.  When he returned to the pitcher’s mound, he looked like a racehorse that had been spooked out of the starting gate.  He seemed ruffled and a little angry.  He blew his first pitch by me.  I laughed silently.  I knew that he would throw the same pitch, as he had done all afternoon, and I, the Ant of the Milky Way, who had a .548 batting average at Piedmont High School, would swing and miss.

            The fastball arrived, and I swung and missed.  I watched myself.  There were no thoughts: I was amused, slightly, and that was all, and the amusement passed like a memory of winter on a summer day. 

            Dangerfield passed a thumb over his lower eyelid, gently, and then bent down and picked up the resin bag.  He massaged it for a moment and threw it to the ground. 

            He threw the same fastball and I heard the crack of the bat, and saw the ball rise into the blue sky.  The familiar surge of pride and energy was there, and I had barely got past first base when I saw the centerfielder leap into the air, make a spectacular catch and bang into the fence.  I struggled with feelings of disappointment, as the Cal outfielders and the trainer ran to centerfield to assist their centerfielder who lay motionless on the grass.  They pried the ball out of his glove and showed it to the umpire who jerked his arm up for the out.

            Dangerfield passed his thumb over his eye again and I pulled myself back into Zen meditation.

            When I sat down on the bench, Simms said,  “You were unlucky, gramps.”  The coach looked across at me with a mixture of fear and respect.  My meditation centered on the stars but all of a sudden the Star Ship Enterprise and Captain Kirk swam into my consciousness and I laughed, silently.  Dangerfield threw a strike past Mackateer.

            “It isn’t funny Bradford.  It’s pathetic,” Robinson, the right fielder, said.

            “You guys take Dangerfield too seriously,” I said.  “Baseball’s just a game.  Dangerfield isn’t a hero.  Make him come to you.”  No one answered and Mackateer struck out for the third time. 

            I shut them out, for the rest of the game, and gave up only one hit.  The next time at bat, I hit two long foul balls and then struck out.

           

            We lost 13-0, and Dangerfield threw a no hitter with 19 strikeouts.

            After the game I was exhilarated and beside myself with pride.

            Dangerfield came over to congratulate me and the Cal coach asked me how much eligibility I had left.  When I told him it was my first year, he asked if I would like to transfer to Cal and I laughed, silently, to myself and didn't answer.  He was offended, so I stopped myself, apologized and lied: I said I would think about it.

            On the bus back to Hayward, I thought of nothing but Candy and Marlo and Anne.  Defeated by my gloomy silence, McClenden finally got up and went to the front of the bus. 

            The lyrics of Parachute Woman raged through my mind, and once again I imagined myself to be an indifferent piece of the Universe.  The truth was, I just didn’t give a damn about baseball anymore. 

            Who is not vanquished in his victory and whose eyes do not darken in the drunken twilight and whose foot does not reel in victory and forget how to stand?