Long Shot (6 page)

By then, golf was starting to rub me the wrong way. Literally. Needless to say, I had to do a lot of walking with the golf bag over my shoulder. The trouble was, I’d started to develop serious acne. It showed up on my face, of course—Dad accused me of eating too much sugar and called me “pimple puss”—but one day I got home after stomping around for nine holes with
that strap irritating me, and when I checked to see what the problem was I found nasty pimples all over my upper back. Before long, the pimples developed into that disgusting cystic acne and became keloids, almost like boils. I still have the scars around my shoulders.

Years later, when I was playing professional baseball, I had the same sort of reaction when the strap of the chest protector rubbed against my shoulder and back. At that point, the team trainer offered to get me Accutane, but I declined because I’d read that it caused pain in the joints. I knew the ultimate solution was simply to outgrow the problem and cope with it in the meantime, which wasn’t encouraging: there are people in my family who’ve dealt with acne into their fifties. In high school, I took tetracycline, but that didn’t make it any less irritating when I carried my golf bag.

Golf was a fall sport at my high school, and with the troubles it was giving me, I’d much rather have been playing football. Truthfully, I always wanted to play football. Never could. The
coaches
even wanted me to play, because I was big and had a good arm, but my dad simply wouldn’t let me. I had started pestering him about it long before high school. He told me, “The time you’d give to practicing football, you get in that goddamn cage and you hit!”

As far as he was concerned, nothing was going to interfere with me playing baseball. He wouldn’t let me get my driver’s license until I was seventeen, because, of course, he didn’t want me straying too far from my pitching machine. Way back in grade school, he wouldn’t even let me play
the trombone.

Schuylkill Elementary had a nice little band, and I’ve always been interested in music. The director was a cool guy named Alan Philo, who played the guitar and rode a motorcycle, and as soon as our class became eligible for the band I talked my mom into attending Mr. Philo’s parents meeting at the start of the school year. When she found out that a trombone cost two hundred dollars, she took that information straight to my dad, whose response was, “No, no,
no
!” I’m sure the two hundred dollars had something to do with it, but maybe, in his divine sort of wisdom, Dad knew I might stick with it and didn’t care to watch me grow into another musician out of work. I won’t say that I hold it against him; but I truly wanted to read music and learn music and
play
music, and he crushed all of that.

(Having brought up the ban on the band, however, I’d be remiss not to add that my dad, as rigid as he was on occasion, was extremely sensitive and affectionate. I don’t feel like I was really deprived of anything growing up . . . other than the trombone, that is.)

Eventually my fascination with music took a different form. I distinctly remember listening to my first AC/DC record in the seventh grade—it was
T.N.T.
—and something happened; a hole inside me filled up. Right away, I drew “AC/DC” on all my schoolbooks, which at least gave them a purpose. A ninth grader noticed what I’d doodled and said, “Dude! Cool!” He was an art guy, so he grabbed my book and sketched in a few other little designs. I thought, man, look at me, I’m being accepted by a ninth grader! Baseball had never done that for me.

Shortly thereafter, I heard an AC/DC interview on the radio and taped it, along with some songs (“T.N.T.,” “Highway to Hell,” and a few others), on a little cassette tape recorder. There was no turning back. I must have had a hundred heavy-metal cassettes by the time I was in high school. I’d found the music that suited my personality—brought out my aggressive side. On the way to a game, I’d blast AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, and Twisted Sister, among others, and it would send me into a frenzy.

A guy I played baseball with was one of the people who stoked my interest in heavy metal. Tony Roberts could really pick it—the baseball and guitar, both. (His sister, Kari, was on our varsity golf team and always played with a plug of Red Man in her mouth.) Tony later performed in a band with Peter Criss—the drummer for Kiss—which was ironic, because I was such a fan that I once had a friend paint my face like Peter Criss’s. We used my mom’s makeup.

Besides Tony, there were a few kids at school who, during lunchtime, would join me at the black-T-shirt table and discuss Black Sabbath. A hippie girl on my block had an electric guitar, and I’d go over there and fool with it. (Maybe it’s just an excuse, but I think my hands were too big for the guitar.) Then there was Uncle Joe, my mom’s younger brother. He lived with my grandma, had a nice stereo with big speakers, and loved his rock ’n’ roll. Uncle Joe was a Led Zeppelin guy. Also Boston. The Steve Miller Band. He’d stick in “Rockin’ Me,” put a funky hat on my head, and I’d play along with a tennis racquet in front of the mirror.

I was all-in with the music but wouldn’t describe myself as a Hessian metalhead, per se; more like a combo metalhead/jock, with a tendency toward cut-rate bling. Before rap even came along, I was throwing so many gold chains around my neck that the kids in high school called me Mr. T. There’s actually a picture of me in the yearbook where I’ve got the poofy hair and I’m wearing a concert T-shirt and a pile of chains. And I didn’t stop there. From day to day, I’d put on an Italian horn, a crucifix, my dad’s dog tag, anything shiny. Strange as it sounds, I was kind of taking after my
father in that respect. He was usually sporting a gold chain and a pinky ring, for starters.

I guess my mom was softened by the fact that I shared my dad’s look and her brother’s interest. Somewhat surprisingly, she allowed me to take the train from Devon through Philly to the Spectrum to see all those eighties groups: Judas Priest, Ratt, Dio, Kiss, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi. That was both my release and my social life. I rejected a lot of the traditional social protocols at the time—wasn’t a prom and homecoming kind of guy, and definitely wasn’t into the high school hierarchy. On the other hand, I didn’t push the envelope, either. We partied in the Spectrum parking lot and I drank a few beers here and there, but I honestly never felt the need to smoke pot or get involved with any experimental drugs. One time at a Kiss concert, somebody passed me a joint and I took a drag. That was it. I’d been infused with a certain code of conduct, I suppose, that kept me from going too far.

For one thing, Dad was always preaching about moderation. He was furious when I came home drunk one night. But I’d have to say that it was mostly my mom’s influence that kept me from crossing the line. She was the one who carted five boys to church every Sunday and set the example by practicing her Catholicism on a daily basis.

It was something of a dichotomy for me, growing up as a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic and loving heavy metal like I did. Some of the more controversial bands, like Iron Maiden and Slayer—I’d guess that I’ve been to nearly a dozen Slayer concerts—were called out by Christian groups, and that wasn’t lost on me. But my purpose in listening to that music was not to rebel against God and religion.

I just loved the power of it. Heavy metal was good for me.

• • •

As soon as every baseball season was over, my dad would take us down to a condo we had in Wildwood, New Jersey, on the southern tip of the state. We called it the Jersey Sho-wa.

The next town over, Cape May, is historic and picturesque, but Wildwood’s style was unpretentious and very much Jerseyesque, with cheap motels and a carnival boardwalk where you could win stuffed animals and gorge yourself on cotton candy and tubs of fries. For me, it was one of the best times of the year, mostly because the pressure was off. Dad would drive us there and then head back home to work during the week. We’d spend all day at the pool or beach. Once a week, after dinner, we’d walk to a little restaurant down the street for a sundae—which, of course, we couldn’t have done if Dad had been with us. Then we’d watch Yankees and Mets games, with all
their great announcers: Bill White, Phil Rizzuto, Ralph Kiner, Bob Murphy, Lindsey Nelson. For some reason, I actually preferred the Mets. The Schaefer beer commercials. Joe Torre, as a player-manager, sending himself up to pinch-hit.

Dad would arrive on Friday afternoon, and the first thing he’d say to me was, “Let’s go.” I’d grab a bat, we’d find a field, and he’d pitch to me. There was a dumpy, sandy field up by the beach and a beautiful, manicured Little League diamond that nobody was allowed on. We were able to use the fancy field after the director saw me hitting there one day and decided he wanted some of his players to come by and watch; but we’d usually end up on the dumpy one, which I didn’t mind because I could hit the ball out to the street. If I did, my dad would snarl at me to get back to the backstop so it wouldn’t happen again. When it rained, we played under the walkway.

My father was a lefty, and I figure that had something to do with why I always crushed left-handers. I loved to hit off him. I just loved to
hit
, period. I couldn’t get enough, and my dad was happy to take full advantage of that. If my brothers came along with us, it was mainly to shag balls. Dad would throw each of them ten pitches, then give me a hundred. Amazingly, they never rebelled. Back home, on the pretense of taking the kids to visit his mother in Jeffersonville, he’d drop off my brothers at her house, drive me over to a local field, and pitch to me until his arm wore out. When we returned to Phoenixville, my mother was always surprised that we’d had such a nice, long visit.

Another highlight of those great weeks at Wildwood was getting to see my friend Joe Pizzica. His family would vacation there, too, or he’d come down with us. I knew Joe from the all-star baseball teams in Little League, but he’d gone to the Catholic elementary, so we didn’t run around together until high school. He was a lot tighter with the in-crowd than I was. Joe’s buddies included Tony and John John Nattle, and we all played ball with each other, so—this is back in Phoenixville—we’d go over to one of their houses to watch Mike Tyson fights on pay-per-view, or whatever, and drink a little beer. It wasn’t the Ivy League crew.

Other nights, we drove to a secluded place we knew in the nowhere farmland of Chester County, turned on the radio, and just hung out. Got drunk. We called it Ja-Blip. That lasted until Joe kind of blew me off one night. I had a crush on a girl named Kim Jeffries, who was the class president and a friend of his, and I wanted to go out with Kim and chill at Ja-Blip with Joe and those guys. But there was some kind of complication—Kim might have been seeing somebody else at the time, I don’t recall—and Joe said,
“You know what, man? You don’t want to hang out with us.” It was sort of like that scene from
Good Will Hunting
when Ben Affleck tells Matt Damon to just get out of there and move on with his life. He was looking out for me.

I had one other heartthrob in high school—and one other strikeout. Joe was instrumental in that one, as well. Mary Lou Retton.

Actually, we both had crushes on her. This was just after she’d won the gold medal in the 1984 Olympics. I thought it was meant to be—her mother’s Italian, after all. So Joe was over at my house one day and we spent the afternoon figuring out how to call Mary Lou. Somehow we found the number. I didn’t have the guts to dial it, but Joe did, and I guess it threw him off when her mother answered. He was holding the phone out so I could hear, too, and he said, “Hello, is this Mary Lou Retton’s mother?”

She goes, “Yes, who’s calling?”

Joe just looked at me, with huge, terrified eyes, and hung up.

CHAPTER FOUR

A fellow named Joe Godri, who is now the head baseball coach at Villanova, likes to say that he was the guy who blocked me from the Phoenixville High School lineup. Godri was two grades ahead of me, and the position we both played—first base—was his until he graduated.

All the while, however, I had plenty of encouragement from the likes of my dad, my friends, Ted Williams, and—in front of the whole student body—the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. I don’t know if my father was the one who arranged it, but Tommy Lasorda came to our high school to speak at an assembly in the auditorium, and as he was wrapping up he pointed straight at me and said, “And one day, I’m going to sign
him
.”

Afterward, kids came up patting me on the back as though I’d actually
made
it. It was embarrassing, but also significant. That was when I started reading everything I could find about the baseball draft. Obsessing about it, really.

With my goal clarified and my expectations taking flight, I couldn’t wait to start wreaking havoc on the Ches-Mont League. I was six foot two, uncommonly strong, and still plenty awkward—one of the youngest students in the junior class—when our coach, Doc Kennedy, turned me loose as number thirteen in purple and white, finally starting at first base for the Phoenixville Phantoms. I came out hacking.

At Phoenixville, there was no left-field fence, and with my not-blazing speed it was almost impossible to hit a home run in that direction. The situation persuaded me to drive the ball to the opposite field, which came fairly naturally. In right, however, there was a row of trees just inside the fence, and oftentimes the umpires would have to decide whether a long fly ball should be ruled a home run or not when it was cuffed around in the leaves or knocked down by a limb. I still hit twelve homers that year—and three triples, which
should
have been home runs—in eighteen games, and batted .500 with thirty-eight RBIs. My mom saw it all from her Chrysler minivan.

There has long been a misconception that I materialized out of nowhere as a baseball player. The fact is, I had two exceptional high school seasons and was not unknown to the area scouts. My junior year, by some accounts, was one of the greatest high school seasons in the history of Pennsylvania. The rap was that we played in a weak league, but I don’t know about that. Boyertown and Downingtown were much bigger schools than Phoenixville. They had senior classes of almost fifteen hundred students, while ours was just under two hundred.