Chapter Three
The game
"What's the skinny on Elbow Lake's pitcher?"
"Oh, sorry Butch, I keep forgetting you're our money catcher from Erdahl. Three dollars a game isn't it? They call him "Fire Ball," but Irby's his last name. He's home for the summer from Moorehead State Teachers College up by Fargo. Don't think I've ever heard any other name-just heard Fire Ball Irby."
"That's what he throws, yeah?"
"Irby only has two pitches-fast and faster and players around call his real fast one "the whistler." Claims it makes a noise in the air. Beefsteak Filson catches him, and the man claims the only way he can stop from having a sore hand all week is to poke a piece of raw meat inside his mitt. Also, players claim he throws so hard that he pitches batting practice for his team from second base. They also claim Irby throws so hard the ball does not fall off coming to the plate and batters swings underneath his pitches. That is if they can get the bat around fast enough. Most can't and most don't dig in up there either. Markle on third told me a batter could get killed up there. He's just fast enough and wild enough to test your courage with every pitch."
"What's he doing pitching in this league then? Why don't the scouts hear about him?"
"They have a game next Sunday at Morris; and the Minneapolis Millers, a triple-A team, called down two days ago to do just that."
"Hey, I got to go. Harry's waving me out to warm up Nelson."
The two Evansville players drifted away to get ready for the game. Harry Peterman, that's my dad, came over to give the game balls to the umpires. That was the cue for my brothers to entertain the crowd. Richard, we call Bud, picks up an old ragged ball and walks to the mound. Orlie, who was really named Arlie but someone made a mistake typing his birth certificate, crawls into the catchers gear. Richard, age ten, and Orlie, age eleven, prepare to entertain the crowd as the pitcher and catcher. They throw a dozen times back and forth with the crowd laughing, and then Nelson walks out to the mound to pitch. Orlie gives the gear to Butch. My brothers return to sit in the sun and enjoy a cool north breeze on the grassy bank with Mom, Neal, Harriet, and I.
Each team quickly gets a run in the first inning, before the game settles down to a long pitchers duel. The sun was hot but the northwest cool breeze gradually quickened all afternoon, drifts gradually more to the north, and pleased the folks watching baseball at its best. Neither pitcher made any mistakes that resulted in any gift runs. In the ninth inning it is still one to one when our team came to bat. Burt Markle, our third baseman, only got a foul ball before striking out. Martin Sperry, our speedy center fielder hits a home run distance ball just foul down the left field line and smashed another one foul to break the windshield of Tom Rown's Packard parked next our black 1936 Ford. Sperry tried but his pop-up behind first base ended his at bat.
Our last chance was my father, Harry Peterman, playing second base and managing. Before he threw out his arm as a pitcher Dad had tried out once for the Millers. He learned to bat from the left side because he was a step closer to first when he hit the ball, but he threw right. Dad claimed that left side batters have about a 20 percent point advantage in batting average by beating out a few more infield-hits in a season.
The crowd was yelling "Harry, Harry, Harry," as Fire Ball Irby went into his delivery. Dad took the first pitch on the outside for a strike. The second pitch made him jump back and fall down out of the way of a high inside hard one just where his head had been a moment ago.
The crowd gasped, and they loudly booed the knock-down pitch. Dad picked himself up, bushed himself off, and took his time getting back in the batters box. His bat pounds his shoes to knock the dirt out of his cleats, and he looked long and hard at Irby. Then, slowly he stepped back into the box making a show of digging in each foot, almost daring him to do that again.
A quiet settled on the crowd thinking extra innings. As the catcher gave the sign, Irby made a show of shaking off two, but everyone sitting on the banks knew it was going to be his whistler. The only question was where?
The Evansville ball diamond was cut into the hillside to make a flat field and beyond the home run left field fence was a flat narrow strip. Beyond that was a narrow strip of slough between the playground and U.S. Highway 82. The field was the best around for the fans for they all could sit on the grassy bank with a good view of the game. We were sitting behind the Evansville players on the bank just about where Mom said I got hit by a foul ball when I was just a crawler. The ball hit the ground first and bounced into me. Mom said I rolled down the bank and tried to keep the ball. She claims I cried when she threw it back in.
A nodding Irby coiled up his tall six foot six body and threw the ball in his sidearm whip delivery. It seemed to me the ball came out from third base and roared in at the plate right at Dad's belly. His bat whipped around and there was a crack. When I heard it I knew it was gone. There's no other sound in the world like the crack of a sure home run. We all watched the ball as Dad raced toward first. The crowd cheered. The ball sailed up over the left field snow fence, over the narrow strip, over the narrow slough, and bounced high off the concrete on Highway 82 to splash in the slough on the other side of the road.
Dad trotted around the bases as the crowd sat in silence. They were shocked at the distance. No one had ever even hit one into the slough in the air before. It seemed strange to sit surrounded by more than fifty people, maybe even a hundred, without a sound. They should have been yelling and laughing in joy for they had won the game two to one, but the distance the ball flew seemed to take all their words away. The crowd was still silent as the team met my father to shake his hand after crossing home plate with the winning run.
Later on the way home in our Lizzie, that's what Dad called his '36 Ford, he said, "I didn't catch up to that one. My bat was a little slow and pushed it to left field and up into the wind. It was the wind that gave it carry." That was his explanation and he never made another, but I think Fire Ball's whistler had something to do with it.
Addscript: Thirty years or so later my brother Bud was in Ashby talking to an old man about baseball in the old days when all the little towns had baseball teams. The old man got excited when he found out that Harry was Bud's father for he had been there that day. Bud told me that the old man went on and on about how far that home run traveled and two other old men arrived who had also been there that day. The old man had the others tell Bud about it. It was a hit that was remembered and talked about even thirty years later.