Mordecai Brown by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Mordecai Brown

Page 100

by will, seemed to break twice, once out of his hand and again just before it reached the plate. The infielders stayed busy; the outfielders barely moved.

But in the seventh, Brown walked off the mound a little slower. Chance saw it. Everyone saw it. The natural break was there, looming, the invisible line between brilliance and breakdown.

Chance met him at the dugout steps. “You done?”

Brown wiped his brow with the back of his good hand. “Not yet.”

And he wasn’t. He finished the inning, then another, then the ninth. The Cubs won, and the crowd roared, but Brown walked straight to the clubhouse, shoulders heavy, as if carrying the weight of the whole pennant race.

Two days later, Chance asked again. And Brown, impossibly, answered the same way.

Then came the World Series.

Chance doubled down on the gamble. Brown pitched Game 2. Then Game 4. Then Game 6. Every second day, just as he had down the stretch. It was a usage pattern that would have snapped most pitchers clean in half.

But Brown didn’t break.