Chapter 5: Picked Off

Morehead State University baseball stadium

     "Listen up," calls Coach Z standing in the aisle of the charter bus on a three-hour ride to Morehead State University in Eastern Kentucky. "It's the third sign for the hitter, the fourth for the runner." 

"Here we go again," whispers senior left fielder Tony Valenti from the back seat as we cross over the Licking River and enter the western Appalachians where my mother and older siblings were born.

"For you hitters, a thigh touch means take the pitch, a shoulder means swing away, and brim means bunt."

"What’s groin mean?" sniggers Brooklyn-born Valenti low enough that only those of us sitting near can hear, though a bobbing red mustache betrays his silent chuckle.

"For the lead runner, thigh means hold, shoulder's hit-and-run, and brim is steal."

     I was excited to be playing in the blue bowl of a baseball stadium at the college I probably would have gone to had my parents stayed in Eastern Kentucky, but Coach Zerillo's system of signals was a little bewildering. After being given the green light to steal at will in high school, simultaneously watching a coach in the dugout and the pitcher on the mound sounded distracting. 

     In two weeks of college practice Coach Zerilla had already taught me more about base running than I’d learned in ten years of youth and high school baseball. I’d had how-tos on rounding a base at top speed, drawing a throw from an outfielder, taking a long lead off a base, and getting back to that base as efficiently as possible. 

     Most insightful of all was his instruction on reading a pitcher for getting a jump on stealing a base, which I’d previously done by quickness and instinct. For right-handers you could take off for second base when their left shoulder raised, signaling the beginning of a pitch. For lefties you had to leap back if their right foot broke an imaginary plane between pitcher’s mound and first base. These two cues would shave a second or two off the time it took to get from first to second base, and imbued by a former pitcher for the New York Mets organization, I thought I was ready for anything a college pitcher could throw at me.

     "Shit!" I exclaim under my breath when Morehead's right-handed pitcher spins before the windup and catches me leaning into my first college stolen base.

"Damn it Zelmo," Coach Z curses as I slip into the dugout with my head down. "We might need that run you just wasted."

"Sorry Coach," I mumble as my face turns red and I plop onto the far end of the bench.

"Fucking signs," grunts Tony Valenti squatting beside me and hawking a brown stream of chaw juice onto the dirt.