excerpt
Witherspoon, if only the soldier had listened, was from Renfrew
Heights in Vancouver’s East End, one of the best young chuckers the
scouts had ever seen. But the Double A Tennessee Smokies released
him after his final start. Toomanywalks. The pitching coach said that if
he improved his control with the affiliate in Nueva Rosita, and if he
ditched the attitude, the parent club would give him another look in the
spring. To a fella like Pete Witherspoon, hormones and testosterone
blasting inside like fireworks, them were two very big ifs.
A month into his first season with the Tamales, a game against
Pueblo, Wild Man Witherspoon, as he was known, was cruising
along with a two-hitter. The radar gun was clocking his fastball in
the mid-90s, and the señoritas in the right field bleachers were
chanting his name.
On a called third strike, his tenth K of the game, he felt something
pop inside his pitching shoulder. The team doctor supposed that
with rest and a little luck he could be back by opening day.
– You’re still young, said the man players suspected of being a
veterinarian. Sometimes these injuries heal themselves. If not,
there’s a surgeon up north who . . .
Witherspoon called home.
– Maybe it’s time to try something else, son, his father said. You
tried your best.
The familiar voice sounded like it was from another galaxy, so far
from the despair of Nueva Rosita. He thought he could hear his
mother nagging about the cost of the collect call.
He closed his eyes and summoned a picture of the backyard: the
sheet of plywood where he’d scratched out a target, the dirt pitching
mound, the streets of his childhood at dusk.
But returning to the Project wasn’t on his itinerary. At least not
yet. Witherspoon had purchased a plane ticket the day previous, an
extravagance for a minor-league budget. Originally he’d been planning
to hitchhike to Puerto Angel, a little place on the coast the other
players were always going on about. Before making a decision about
the shoulder, he thought he’d have some fun.
But then folks staying at the same hotel in Oaxaca had warned
that the hills west of town were the playground of guerillas and
banditos, and that one was often blamed for the actions of the
other …
Libros Libertad 