He turns to watch the ball exit the park, a moment internalized, reticent, reclusive. Still, all these years later, it comes as a surprise launching optimism and expectancy into the obscurity of night, confidence along for the ride. The knock of good wood, of the batter getting all of it reverberates like a rifle report. It echoes through the air, through the stands—through his head. Seconds lengthen. They try him, balancing somewhere between smear and mockery. The ball lands mercifully, ricochets across lengths of steel bleachers. A solitary fan chases it down.

He holds his hat by the cap, scratches his forehead and looks in, seeking a new ball from the ump. It is all he can do, all he’s left with. Well, that, and a silent inner cursing. He has been here before, knows the routine. Most nights you can just move on, like a professional; stitch it up, avoid a late-inning hemorrhage. There are so few times in a career when a pitch is so pivotal that a game, a series—a season—rides such expectation to the plate. He has been there too; like a tour of duty, he’s been there and back.

He peers in, shakes off a breaking ball, wanting still to bring it hard, wanting to challenge these guys. A deep breath fails to erase the ride his last pitch took. “Hung it in the wheelhouse,” silent self-criticism. “Rebound Manny, cap-bill in, he’ll never catch up to it; let’s set this guy up: fish-in-a-barrel.” Another deep breath. He winds, delivers. It is telegraphed, no motion, somewhat sluggish and right down the heart of the plate. It’s laced into the gap for a double. Cut off at short. He stabs at the ball’s return, angrily; kicks dirt, hits up the rosin bag. The pitching coach ambles to the mound.

“You’re hanging ’em Manny; pushing everything, breaking stuff comin’ out without rotation. You look labored, no snap. How’s that elbow?”

“That ain’t it.”

“Well, your gonna have to go away before you bust these guys, ’cause they’re all sitting inner-half in. Gonna have to set ’em up: in, then out, then throw the sinkers.”

“I know, I know, been hanging everything, trying too hard is all.”

“It’s the eighth, Manny, we’re looking at this thing getting away. Now make ’em chase it, you’re not going to overpower these guys. Alright? Alright. Go get ’em, Manny!”

The meeting is broken up: coach back to the dugout, umpire and catcher back to the plate. Alone again. Digging at dirt. He works the ball, thinks about that one pivotal pitch. Years have failed to let it go. It’s a weight. It haunts him.

“Alright,” he thinks, “just let him call ’em, then place it.” He pitches from the stretch. An aggressive lead at second. He looks out, seems distracted—and not by the runner. It flashes through his head, working over his focus, transporting him . . . late October, three years and ten months ago . . . He shakes the recollection loose, has to step off. Works the ball. The rosin bag. Boos call out, jeers; the uncivil scorn of the opponents’ faithful. He steps back, lines up the rubber, looks in. One finger, two, one circling. He sets, casts a look towards second, a second look. He delivers, overcompensates, chokes a curve that travels 58 feet before bouncing over the catcher’s glove, off his shoulder, skittering all the way to the backstop. He wipes off sweat, calls for the ball, looks at the runner now on third . . . it flashes through his mind . . . He tries to push it from his mind. He moves dirt, looks in. A fastball inside, a gesture to keep it up. He delivers. It is lazy, no pop, not the dreaded 100 mph rocket of old . . . Machine-Gun Manny Martin. The name alone used to strike guys out. A commentator for Game of the Week once said, “Martin can strike a batter out in the on-deck circle, has them convinced before the first pitch.” But that was 1995. It is nearing the end of the 2000 season, his second tour of Double AA after coming off the DL. A fastball is roped into right, another run in. It’s a four run eighth, the score now 6 – 2. The coach calls time, motions to the bullpen for the right-hander on his way to the mound.

“We’re gonna have ourselves a look at that elbow, Manny; go get it iced down.”

He gives up the ball and heads for the dugout. On such a night, in such a setting, it’s a walk to the gallows: the longest walk one can make. Each step proves a challenge greater than the last. Your will drains through the soles of your cleats, tunnel-vision, the taunting mocking crowd filtered to a low drone . . . It runs in his head like a video clip: October 22, 1996. The longest walk he’d ever made.

He can still recall the silence of 50,000 fans as he’d walked to the dugout on that night, how malevolent and shrill the silence had seemed. He remembers wishing for someone to yell, to yell at him if nothing else. But it was silent: as if 50,000 voices had fallen suddenly mute, stolen away, shocked into a monasterial speechless vow. He remembers how he’d seemed cut off at the knees, how walking had been taken over as by instinct—as if a defense-mechanism—spiriting him away, numb. To this day, he can’t recall walking up the tunnel. It was the 6th game of the World Series, ninth inning. A world championship was three outs away and the team had been dominant, seemingly destined. They had won Game 1 at home, a convincing 8 – 2 win, had lost an 11 inning, 4.5 hour marathon in Game 2, 4 – 3, and lost a classic duel in Game 3, 1 – 0. And though the first pitch of Game 4 viewed the momentum in their opponent’s dugout, home-field optimism was soon routed out. Games 4 and 5 were blow-outs, on-the-road no less: 11 – 2 and 10 – 1. Even their starting pitcher had tripled in Game 5. And so, coming home for Game 6 it all seemed a lock. And going into the top of the ninth on the night of October 22nd, his team leading 5 – 1, few but the cynical or clairvoyant had any reason to doubt that victory was imminent, but a few dream-drunk minutes away. . . . Manny has to take a deep breath in recalling that night. Years later, it still does no good.

His first and second pitch that October night had been typical: fastball inside corner, 96 mph, fastball right down the middle, 98 mph. 1996 was the third year in a row that Martin had led the league in saves, a mark of 45 making it the second year in a row that he’d led the Majors. When he was on, he was simply un-hittable: 100 mph fastball, a splitter that corkscrewed hitters into the ground and a classic 12 – 6 o’clock overhand breaking ball; three major league pitches from a role that only requires two. He was the most dominant closer the 1990s had yet produced. Rare was the night he was not in complete command. And that October night gave no indication of anything out of the ordinary. He quickly had the number eight hitter in an 0 – 2 count. The announcer had even said, “Martin could tell the batter what’s coming and it probably won’t alter the outcome.” It was vintage Martin. He threw the splitter. A check swing, the anticipant crowd swooning with a great release that had quickly recharged, building again into a chanting roar. He worked the back of the mound, wiping sweat, the rosin bag. He stepped up, moved dirt, his deliberate nature never to be rushed. He peered in, agreed, delivered. And it had hung there. His follow-through he recalls as in slow-motion, a breaking ball that had stayed up, lacking rotation. It was laced into right. It stunned him. In varied locations / sequences, that was his bread-and-butter: fastballs, splitter, curve. He’d nicknamed it: fish-in-a-barrel. But the curve had failed to deliver, lacking rotation, almost half-assed, like a batting practice pitch. Still if he could shut them down, the hit would only be a statistic. He stepped in and went back to work. The crowd, as if sensing their role, stepped things up a notch. The electric air threw sparks. He threw a ball, high and outside. He threw a second ball, low. The third pitch was laced into the left field seats, foul. “I haven’t seen a hitter turn on Martin like that in some time,” the announcer had said. It seems prophetic now. He walked the batter. The next batter singled up the middle. A run came in, 5 – 2. And Manny Martin had strode the back of the mound as if a boxer in his corner after a dispiriting round, searching for reasons behind this nonsense. He looked in to the catcher, stared as if grasping a realization: a situation larger than a potential top of the ninth-inning rally in the most important outing of his life. It was something all-consuming, something that was about to change everything. He stood there, automatic. The crowd swelled, uneasy; but willing to rely on that which they’d come to expect. And he’d walked the next batter. The announcers were lost in their attempts to describe it. A meeting between the pitching coach and catcher at the mound seem labored, confused. The crowd was dumbfounded, the players, the millions watching, the bases loaded. And he threw the next pitch to the backstop. Another run scored. It was 5 – 3, the runners advancing. The bench put in a frantic call to the bullpen. The next pitch was another ball corralled by the catcher, the bullpen warming, surprised, hurried. And Manny had taken off his cap, had wiped sweat. It was a cold night, but he was sweating. Cold-sweating. . . .

Manny Martin had taken a breath before stepping back in. He set into the stretch, looked to third and had delivered. It was right down the middle. A strike called, 98 mph. The crowd was infused, an optimism heady enough to spark reality’s smoldering fuse. Surely their energy, their revitalized chanting and yelling and praying would be enough. And he had felt it, had felt them. He could see through the ruse, the absurdity that’d plated two runners and put two more aboard. He moved dirt. The rosin bag. He’d stepped in and delivered. Strike two, 100 mph. The stadium erupted, an immense pressure, one that’d been building for several minutes, finally gaining its release. He blew into balled fist: the October air cool, crisp, resolute. This was the World Series, his first—the franchise’s first in twenty-one years. He had closed out Game 1, given scoreless service in Games 2 and 3. He was set, the city set to explode with the next step towards their first world championship in forty-eight years. And he’d thrown down the rosin bag and had stepped in. Machine-Gun Manny Martin. He’d wound up and delivered. And it hung there. . . . And that pitch has hung suspended in his mind like a piñata for almost four years now.

The team never seemed to recover from that night, from the deflating three-run, 410-foot blast that gave away their victory and a championship. 6 – 5 was the final score. They lost Game 7 the following night, 6 – 2, as almost an afterthought. The triumphant opponents, going wild in celebration of an impossible improbable comeback, looked to the home crowd like a writhing string of obscenities scrawled across the field, a remote gala amok in cameramen, boom mikes, police and officials. The fans, removed and mute and automatic, filed in an Orwellian-cadence from the stadium confines. It was a bad dream, but there was no waking up. And Manny had sat in the bullpen that night, had sat there well past midnight. He was remembering back to when he was twelve, was a tight-end on his pony league football team, and how he’d dropped a pass in the end-zone with ten seconds to go in a playoff game. His team lost that game. He went home and he had cried that night; and then had woken up the next morning and made a pact with himself to never cry again, to just work harder, to take everything in stride. And there he was, in the bullpen in the early morning hours. Manny had sat there until someone had asked him to leave, tearless blank eyes staring into an abyss of disbelief. It was all a bad bad joke.

Manny walks up the tunnel, is needing to ice down a throbbing elbow. He thinks back to that pivotal pitch. Almost four years past, it might as well have been the last pitch he had thrown. He remembers the stunned silence, recalls the silent hate of 50,000 fans. He remembers thinking what a horrific thing it is to be hated by so many. He barely remembers the manager at the mound, and that followed by the longest walk he’d ever taken. It seemed to never end, each step producing ten more, as if walking up an escalator going down. If he has ever had an out-of-body experience it was on that night, on that walk—watching down as devastation overcame him—watching his will breaking away with every step—watching as he trudged down into a pit of disbelief from which he has yet to emerge.

It has been a string of silent years for Machine-Gun Manny Martin. A series of injuries have not helped. Speculation has it that he played through an elbow condition that October night, that the injury should have put him on the bench. An on-again-off-again DL record since doesn’t help. But it is all silent speculation to Martin. You get the sense he hasn’t heard a word of it. In fact, one wonders if the final sound he ever heard was the crack of a bat generating a game-winning shot on a cold October night 3 years and 10 months ago. One has to wonder ~