Free The Machine by Joe Posnanski Page B

were expected to be routinely awful. Most people were convinced that it would come down to Los Angeles and Cincinnati, and the teams were playing each other seven times in the first eleven days.
    “Good,” Sparky said. “We might as well find out right away which team is best.”
     
    George Foster stared out at the field. It was the fourteenth inning, and he was still on the bench. “I’ve seen more baseball games than any player alive,” he had told reporters. “Why, I even know some of the players personally.” George squeezed a rubber ball again and again. He was twenty-six years old, and he had been beaten up by baseball. Lately he had come to believe he would never get his chance. Foster knew that admitting defeat was the first step on the road to perdition, but what else could he do? He had been with the Reds for four years, and nothing changed. They hardly noticed him. Sparky never even looked his way. Foster read his Bible every day in search of answers. “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.” Yes. The Lord was coming. But how patient could a brother be?
    Sparky thought Foster was weak. Foster knew that. It was funny, really, if you thought about it. Sparky was five-foot-nine, maybe, white hair, wrinkled, tired under the eyes—the guy looked like somebody’s grandfather even though he was just forty-one years old. And Foster was a physical marvel, the very picture of strength. He stood six-foot-one, had a twenty-eight-inch waist, arms roughly as big around as Sparky’s legs. During batting practice, he crushed the longest home runs on the team. Nobody on the team was stronger than George Foster. But Sparky meant something else.
    Sparky, at that moment, was looking up and down the bench but avoiding Foster’s eyes. Foster could not help but feel a bit amused. The April wind chilled the dugout. Charcoal burned on Sparky’s new hibachi grills, and players gathered around to warm their hands. Gray smoke blew out of the dugout; the place smelled like a barbecue pit. Sparky was stuck. It was the fourteenth inning, two outs, the score was tied, and the Reds outfielder Cesar Geronimo was on third base. Sparky wanted to win this game badly, wanted to send his message to the Dodgers. The Reds pitcher was due up, so Sparky had to choose a pinch hitter. He had only two choices. He could send up Doug Flynn, a rookie who had never played in a major league game before. Or he could send up Foster. George studied Sparky’s face; he could see how badly Sparky wanted to go with someone else.
    “Foster,” Sparky finally yelled. “Grab a bat.”
    It was done. George felt his insides shake. George figured that at his age he was not supposed to feel nerves. He had been in the big leagues, on and off, since he was twenty years old, and these jittery moments were for kids. Still, he felt as nervous as he had felt on his first school day in California when he walked into Roosevelt Elementary School and saw that he was the only African American in the class. His family had moved to Hawthorne from Alabama—in Alabama, George did not know any white people. Except, he said, policemen.
    Now those childhood nerves gripped him again. It is just oneat-bat, he told himself. It is just one game. He tried to tell himself that. Only, his mind would not let go. This was not just one at-bat. This was not just one game. This was his career. This was his life. If he could come through here, crack a single up the middle, crush the baseball off the wall, drive home the winning run, give Sparky Anderson the win he so desperately wanted and needed, well, his life might change. He might get to play more. He might convince Sparky that he was not weak, that he could be a star in this game if given the chance.
    And if he failed? Well, he could not fail. Sparky was wrong about him. George was not weak. He was not soft. No, he did not drink or smoke or screw every groupie who loitered around the team hotel. But, George was