Mordecai Brown by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Mordecai Brown
Page 122
in; only not the way he wanted it. The pitch didn’t bite. It floated. Konetchy fouled it straight back with a grin.
Brown stepped off the mound and rubbed the ball with his good hand. He didn’t look at Konetchy. He didn’t need to. He knew what the grin meant; the league was catching up to him.
So he changed the rhythm.
He held the next pitch an extra beat. Then another. Konetchy shifted his weight. Brown saw it. He threw a fastball that wasn’t fast but sank just enough. Konetchy chopped it into the dirt. Tinker charged, barehanded it, and fired to first.
One out.
Brown exhaled through his nose. The crowd roared. He didn’t smile.
He worked the next two hitters with the same stubborn craft; nothing over the plate twice, nothing at the same speed, nothing that revealed the small truth he carried in his shoulder. He didn’t have the old dominance anymore. But he had something else. He had guile. He had nerve. He had the memory of a thousand innings and the stubbornness of a man who had rebuilt his pitching hand from a childhood accident.
He got out of the inning. Then the next. Then the next.