One for the Record by George Plimpton

Author:George Plimpton [Plimpton, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

THE FAN

Most of the home runs hit to left field do not reach the stands. They land in the bullpen enclosure. Last season, as Aaron crept toward the record, and each home-run ball became more valuable, the bullpen crew would stand up and fan out along the fence as I watched from above. Maximino Leon struck me as the most intense of them. At each pitch from the faraway mound he went up on his toes like an infielder.

He was the loner on the pitching staff. He could not speak more than a word or so of English. Indeed on one occasion he went to an Atlanta dentist to have a tooth removed and had 19 extracted before he could muster up enough English to complain. But he knows about the home run and its value, and he was always up, when Aaron was at the plate, inching down toward the left-center area, and it always seemed to me that it would be nip and tuck between him and Chief Nok-A-Homa.

Noting Leon’s obvious eagerness, and the more subdued though nonetheless absorbed interest of the other players in the bullpen, who rose and crept along the fence with feigned nonchalance when Aaron came to bat, it was decided by the Braves’ management that the whole procedure ought to be policed—in case in the general scuffle over an Aaron home run landing in the enclosure someone might get hurt, even by a fan toppling on him from the ledge above.

So Ken Silvestri, the bullpen coach, was given the job. He considers himself something of an expert on special balls of this sort—remembering the opening day ceremonies when the “first ball” was tossed into a group rather than to a catcher, as it is now, and if the ball was tossed by a particular luminary, such as President Roosevelt, a melee invariably occurred which often involved violent shoving and spiked ankles. It was a free-for-all, sort of like throwing a bone into a heavily populated kennel.

He decided to spot his bullpen crew (consisting besides himself of two catchers, five relief pitchers—not including Leon, who had been optioned to Richmond in the Braves’ farm system—and Gary Gentry, scheduled to pitch the next day) at intervals along the fence toward center field. Having sent everyone to his position, Silvestri stationed himself under the roof of the shed where the bullpen staff sit for protection from the elements. He was hoping Aaron in his eagerness was going to pull it more down the foul lines than he usually does. In the fourth inning, with Aaron up for the second time, he looked around for the big flexible mitt catchers use to handle knuckleballs and discovered that Gary Gentry, a pitcher what’s more, had swiped it, leaving Silvestri with the regular catcher’s glove, which is not the best piece of equipment to catch a long drive. He was just about to call across and cuss out Gentry when Downing began his windup and threw…

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