Read Doc: A Memoir for Free Online Page B

the park, practicing with Gary and the neighborhood kids—but still not as sure of myself as I should have been. I knew I was good. Everyone told me so. But I never really felt like one of the cool kids. I guess you’d say I was socially awkward. I’d spent so much time with my dad and older players, that inevitably meant less time hanging out with kids my own age. My talent was always a stepor two ahead of my comfort and my confidence. When I was fourteen, I finally made it to another youth-baseball World Series, in Gary, Indiana. I moved us into the title game by throwing nine strikeouts against the East Coast champions from Auburn, Maine, then scoring the final run by stealing home. What I remember most was having my first plane ride and being away from home for two weeks.
    All the while, a little tug-of-war was playing out at home. As Dad was working on my baseball, drilling me, quizzing me, Mom was making sure I got my homework done. “I know you want to do baseball,” she said. “But there’s no guarantees. You’ve gotta be able to do other things. You’ve got to get a job. You have to be accountable.”
    By the time I got to Tampa’s Hillsborough High School, some of my slow-growing confidence on the diamond was actually carrying over to the classroom. I loved math and English. History not so much. But with Mom’s nudging, I was getting my work done and earning pretty good grades. And Mom was constantly coming home with job applications for me. Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Busch Gardens, you name it. “Between schoolwork and baseball,” I complained, “I don’t have any time for this, Mom.”
    “Weekends,” she said. “You can make time.”
    I handed the applications to my dad, who made them disappear. And even Mom eventually came around. As I kept practicing and kept getting better, she told me one day: “You need money, you ask for it. Don’t steal. But you got no time for a job. You got to play ball.”
    Dad bought me a 1974 Plymouth Duster. I put spoke hubcaps on it. My friend tinted the windows—badly, but he tried—and I got an extra-long AM antenna to pull in WTMP 1150, “Today’s R&B and Classic Soul.” Thinking about that clunker makes me cringe today, but that car was my high school idea of an excellent ride.
    Even with the car, I didn’t have much luck with girls. My best friend, Troy Davis, and I once picked up two young ladies at a school dance and drove them to a park to make out. When WTMP powered downfor the night, I couldn’t pick up any other music on the dial. The Duster got uncomfortably silent. It didn’t take long for the girls to climb out and join the two dudes parked next to us. They had an in-dash eight-track player. How could we compete with that? Troy and I sat there, dumbfounded, then went back to the dance and completely struck out.
    I had no idea how to act around the opposite sex. One night, I took a girl to eat at Burger King. While we were standing in line, I started talking with another girl, the one working behind the counter. Her name was Carlene Pearson. As she was taking our order, I asked her what time she got off. That was my idea of smooth at the time.
    Hillsborough High, a big public school on North Central Avenue in Tampa’s Seminole Heights neighborhood, had a powerhouse baseball team. The coach, Billy Reed, was considered one of the best in Florida, one of two supercompetitive black baseball coaches in the Tampa area. The school’s baseball stadium is now called Billy Reed Field.
Go Terriers!
But I didn’t go out for the team until my junior year. Again, I was dragging my feet on my way up, and I kept resisting my dad’s idea that I should pitch. I liked pitching. But I also enjoyed getting my uniform dirty, diving for balls in the infield. I liked first base, shortstop—even the outfield. Sometimes, I’d tell Coach Reed that my pitching arm was sore so he’d put me in a different position. He seemed okay with that. We had a lot of talent on