Called Up  

Five feet. Four inches. I scribbled the benchmark on the door of my bedroom closet. I was still a good head away, but if I could just make it to five feet four inches I’d be okay. 

Five-four was the height of Freddie "the Flea" Patek—shortstop for the Kansas City Royals. They were my favorite team that year—largely because I idolized Freddie. Mom even embroidered me a Royals ball cap, which Donna Bridgewater, the school bully, tossed into the girls’ toilet the first day I wore it to school.

Like most other boys, my summers were all about baseball. I (like Freddie) played shortstop for the Blue Barons. We were in the minor league of our neighborhood’s little league, but at least I was in the infield. One Saturday, a stellar (albeit lucky) catch netted me a quarter from the ump. I spent it on a Tiger’s Blood snow cone—not exactly the Cy Young award, but gratifying nonetheless.

When I wasn’t practicing or playing, I was preparing. I’d spend an entire afternoon seasoning my glove with linseed oil. My brother Mark said it was good for the leather. I was actually doing it to loosen it up. My hands, which were the size of silver-dollar pancakes, could barely squeeze it shut. It had so far only been used as a barricade to keep grounders from going between my legs.

I also won an aluminum bat that year for selling the most candy bars door-to-door and it was also the summer I for all intents and purposes lived at Derks Field. Mark and I were the Seventies equivalent of mall rats—ball rats, I guess you could say. We’d buy a ticket to just about every home game, but rarely stayed in our seats. We’d sneak to the box seats behind home plate and get kicked out by the ushers. We ran around the stadium, scaling the concrete stairs like peanut salesmen on uppers.

The Salt Lake Angels were the AAA farm team of the California Angels. It was there we got our first glimpses of future big leaguers like Mickey Rivers, Rudy Meoli, even Tommy Lasorda, who was then coach of the Albuquerque Dukes. Once a year, the California Angels would roll into town for an exhibition game. (I still have an autographed Nolan Ryan card that I’m thinking about passing down to my nephew, but with its Ebay value going the way it is, he may have to settle for an autographed Dick Lange.)

Mark and I had the run of the park. We’d taunt the program barkers, try to get hired on as underage concessionaires, then run up to the broadcast booth where Augie Navarro was calling the play-by play. He’d whack his pencil on the desk, and in his deadpan drone announce "Marcano grounds out to third."

After the games, we became stage door Johnnies and waited outside the locker room door in hopes of scoring some autographs. We’d usually nab one or two, if we could get to the players before their wives or girlfriends did. It was sort of disheartening to watch these gods turn into regular guys when they changed from their crisp white uniforms into street duds, we knew they really weren’t like that; their real lives were on the field.

The best part of the game was hanging out at the bullpen. I’d lean over the concrete wall, like I did at the lion pit at Hogle Zoo. That’s where I became friends with some of the relief pitchers. Mark would be at the dugout groveling for broken bats, so this allowed me some quality one-on-one time with the guys.

I don’t know just what it was we talked about—probably nothing—which makes me think I was probably a distraction from their warm-ups—but the players knew me by name, and didn’t seem put off by my starry-eyed chatter. I’d watch, mesmerized at the speed of the fast balls and loved to hear the "thhhuk!" of the ball as it slapped into the catcher’s mitt. I missed most of the actual game, watching instead this high-speed game of catch. 

Of all of them those summers, Bruce Heinbechner was my idol. He was a long, lanky relief pitcher who was the nicest guy on the roster. Beyond cool. Beyond heroic. He was superhuman. And, at the last game of the season, he gave me a brand new ball. 

No dings, no stains, not even an autograph—perfectly white cowhide. I couldn’t take my eyes off it as I rode home in Mom’s Impala, tracing the stitching with my finger as we drove through the streets of Poplar Grove.

Fall hit, and the world series got underway. Donna McGuire prowled the neighborhood with her twenty-five cent grid sheet. We always bought a dollar’s worth, and waited anxiously by the phone until she’d call us with our scores. I never won one.

When winter came, Mark and I would look through old Derks Field programs in anticipation of the next season. We also had a dice game that would recreate an actual game using real player stats and abilities. I was always the Royals. Mark was always the Angels. My Freddie Patek versus his Jerry Remy.

When spring rolled around, we’d scan the sports pages to see who was being traded, who was on the injured list. There was never the politics of holding out for more, or wanting to be traded. It was all about who could hit, and whose fastball would be the first to break 100 mph.

I opened the paper one morning and was hit with my own curve ball: Bruce Heinbechner had been killed in a car crash while at spring training in Houston. Not just killed. Decapitated.

I’d seen cowboys and Indians shoot ‘em up and cried at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows. Mark and I had analyzed Roberto Clemente’s plane crash and even buried Gil Hodges’ trading card in our garden when he died, but this one hit home. This was personal. Bruce was the first person I actually knew to die. He was my friend, not just a bunch of stats with a stick of gum attached. I pictured the mass of twisted metal. It was a sports car—a convertible. The image of his headless body slapped into my mind with a "thhhuk!" His confident, smiling face replaced with terrorized eyes and a wide-open mouth. 

My head sank. I headed to my room. Take me out, coach.

The ball he gave to me was on my nightstand with my two other treasures, a pinewood derby car and freckle king trophy.  I held it up and stared at it like a red-headed Hamlet.  

Bruce. Decapitated. 

The papers said he was going to be the hottest rookie reliever in the majors. They also had it that he was probably showing off his car’s horsepower when he crashed. All I knew for sure is that Bruce Heinbechner was a superstar who was still grounded enough to befriend a little kid.

I stood under the pencil mark on my door—still short. But something was different. I had grown. I could feel the pain of it.