It may be the year of the home run in the major leagues, but in the Midwest League it’s the year of the pitcher–and in Kane County of Josh Beckett in particular. Beckett was the first pitcher chosen in last year’s draft–he earned the honor as a hard-throwing Texan in the long and glorious tradition of Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, and Kerry Wood–and he was assigned by the Florida Marlins to the Cougars in the Class A Midwest League for his rookie season of professional baseball. Given the dearth of pitching and the way balls have been flying out of big-league parks, talented young pitchers are the sport’s most precious commodity. Beckett opened the season with a trip to the disabled list to nurse a tender shoulder, but since returning in late May he has been everything advertised. In his first 11 games, 10 of them as a starter, he won only two and lost three, a record no doubt held down because a cautious management has kept him on a low pitch count and removed him early. His other statistics were suitably impressive: a 1.70 earned run average, only 30 hits allowed in 47-plus innings for an opposing batting average of .185, and 49 strikeouts against 13 walks–a ratio of almost four to one.
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If only it had been so simple. With my four-year-old daughter scheduled to begin a week’s stay with her grandparents downstate, I thought that Saturday’s six o’clock game, finished off with scheduled fireworks (a fan favorite that Kane County has aped from the White Sox), would make a perfect start to the trip. Then I’d head south with the girl asleep on the backseat. With the sky overcast and the weather humid but otherwise mild, I packed up the dog too–why not? We could walk him while watching the fireworks and beat the traffic.
With the dog now back there for someone to steal like a bike–why had I trusted those people, total strangers?–Beckett was going to have to be pretty impressive to keep me from constantly checking my watch. Fortunately, he didn’t disappoint. The seats were gone–the attendance would be 12,013–so we bought lawn tickets and sat ourselves down along the right-field line next to the home bull pen, every bit as close to the mound as I’ve stood at Wrigley Field to watch Wood warm up. Beckett came out about 20 minutes before game time. A long, lean, broad-shouldered 20-year-old with buzz-cut hair and a hint of baby fat in his cheeks, he jogged slowly out to center field and stretched against the fence, then sat down by himself to go through the rest of his stretching regimen. That accomplished, he ambled back in and began throwing to his catcher. Everything he did was methodical and slow. Several minutes of lobbing the ball went by before he began to back up to stretch his arm with a game of long toss. Even then he threw easily, not with the long, straight pegs of Wood. When he finally took the mound he threw casually, spinning off a few curves now and then, but he didn’t display the awesome stuff Wood used to have, the sizzling fastball and hissing curve. That’s what’s been missing during Wood’s recovery from Tommy John surgery. Wood is still a very good pitcher but not an awe-inspiring one, and Beckett struck me as the same. Fans watching him warm up didn’t utter the oohs, aahs, and gasps that fans still do at Wrigley when Wood warms up. In fact, they stopped monitoring him entirely when three parachutists dropped in on the field. Such are the distractions of minor league baseball.
Still, the strategy did help move the game along briskly, which was greatly appreciated, as every few minutes I found myself checking my watch and thinking of the dog, who might already be munching a hot dog in the back of some pickup truck headed to Indiana as part of an interstate dog-theft ring. When Beckett left at the start of the seventh we got up and left as well, and I put my daughter on my shoulders to speed us along, crossing the main drag without a hassle this time as the cops must have been on break. We turned the corner down the lane and there the dog was, placid as ever, still under his tree, while the man of the house had returned and was now working in his garden, which was larger by acreage than even his driveway. I gave him a souvenir ball as a token of thanks, and he responded by giving me a huge zucchini and a lovely jalapeno pepper, which he advised me to save for later when I had a beer. We shook hands and said good-bye, though he never did tell me his name. Probably just as well. I wouldn’t want him set upon by readers with dogs they hoped to shield from the cops of the Kane County Forest Preserve District.
