His eyes were firebrands, steadily aglow beneath the gently sloped brim of his Cincinnati Reds hat. I’m not sure how, but even when he laughed, they smoldered, fixed and focused. Lou Pinella’s eyes held a certain desire, a desire I couldn’t fully understand back then.
***
Hollings told Lou we practiced until 5:30.
“Swing by at like 5:45 or so,” Hollings said to him over the phone. “We can start at 6,” Hollings added. “Just have a little talk with the team.”
But Lou, being Lou, strolled up behind the backstop at 4:30 and smoked two-and-a-half cigarettes as he watched us work. He never said a word, only nodded occasionally. His lips moved every now and again as he silently talked to himself, broke down and analyzed what he saw. I suppose someone like Lou Pinella just couldn’t help himself. He never interceded, though, never uttered a single word aloud.
We played harder, hustled a little more because Lou was there. His presence was suddenly, immediately important to all of us.
***
After showers, we met Lou in the clubhouse. He and Hollings sat at a folding table. We gathered round, and Hollings whistled.
“Fellas,” Hollings barked. “Hey, fellas,” he repeated. “We got a guest—a special guest,” he smiled. “You know him—or,” he added, “you should.” He motioned to Lou, who raised his palm in a sort-of wave. “But seriously,” Hollings continued, “it’s a real pleasure to have Lou here, and even though he’s busy as hell, he came out today. Of course,” Hollings laughed, “he almost took off after seeing you fellas swing. Goodness,” he chided. “But he stayed and he’s here.” Hollings shook his head. “He stayed and he’s got some things to say if you’re willing. So here’s Lou.”
We nodded and clapped as Lou stood and glanced around the room.
I don’t know what Hollings Dietrich asked Lou Pinella to say, and I have no idea what he expected, but what we got is something I hope I’ll never forget.
***
“Hollings,” Lou said, “thanks for having me. I always appreciate opportunities like this.” He took off his cap, turned it in his hands and stared at the logo. Then, he put it back on.
Lou talked slowly at first, introduced himself a bit. Then he gathered some steam, his voice a low, patient thunderstorm.
“I got to watch you fellas today.” He paused and cleared his throat. “It was pretty good. Solid fundamentals, nice execution. But,” he said as his eyes once again roved the room, “each and every one of you has more, more inside, more,” he added, “in the tank. The question,” he asked, “is who has the guts to figure out how to get to that little bit extra, that little bit you always leave untapped at the bottom of the tank?”
He stopped and waited. Lou Pinella stood motionless, wrapped in an awful silence, and he waited. He waited for an answer to a question we figured wasn’t a real question because it was one that we’d never dared to ask ourselves.
Finally, though, Lou continued, and the silence, so oppressive and uncomfortable moments earlier, seemed to evaporate. But silences like that don’t simply evaporate. As Lou talked about hitting, I felt bothered, out-of-sorts. A few folks grew restless. A couple of them—Turner and Rodgers, I think—shifted around and made some noise.
At first, Pinella worked to ignore them.
Then he got a little fiery. He talked about respect and responsibility. But by then, Rodgers’ and Turner’s restlessness had spread, and it was in that moment that those firebrand eyes began to ignite. Lou could’ve exploded, but he didn’t. I watched him refuse to lose control. It would’ve been easy for him. Too easy, perhaps. I watched him work to keep himself between the lines he’d explicitly drawn for no one but himself, lines I imagined, that he swore to never, ever cross.
And as I watched him and considered the balance Pinella employed, he did something I never could’ve expected: Lou Pinella sunk to one knee then the next as he untied and took off both of his shoes.
He stood there for a moment, shoeless. The room grew deadly quiet and still, and we stared as Pinella swayed side to side in his white-socked feet.
“When I was 25—probably 10 or so years older than you fellas—,” Pinella said finally, “I was with Kansas City.” His eyes darted around the room. “It was Spring Training—Fort Meyers—and me and five or six others were in the outfield—in right—working on glove-side pivots to second.” He paused. “My shoes just wouldn’t work.” He smiled and laughed a little, mostly to himself. “They were biting at my heels, and worse, you know, pinching the part here,” he pointed toward his insteps, then toward his big toes. “I couldn’t stand it, so I just took ‘em off.” Pinella cleared his throat and continued. “Brent Stephens was hitting fungoes. He had this beat-up black bat on his shoulder, must’ve been like four feet long,” Pinella recalled. “At that point, Stephens had been in baseball for 27 years: 12 as a player and a decade-and-a-half as an outfield coach. He stood there, me like this with no fuckin’ shoes on, and shook his head. Must’ve thought I was crazy. Hell,” he added, “maybe I was.” He laughed. “Pretty sure I still might be.”
A few us let out apprehensive chuckles.
“But here’s the thing,” Lou continued, “Stephens wasn’t going to hit me the ball, not with me in my socked feet.” He smiled into the floor. “No way I was having that,” he followed. “I yelled to him, ‘C’mon! Let’s go!’ I don’t think Stephens knew what to do with me, so he did the easiest thing: He hit me the ball, and I cut it off on a single hop, made the pivot, and threw a seed to second, all in my goddamned socks.”
He paused and glanced around the room yet again.
“I must’ve fielded about a dozen balls out there in my fuckin’ socks. But I didn’t care,” he said. “I still don’t.”
He stopped, took a long breath, and continued. It was almost as if he was talking to himself, unaware of the rest of us.
“But I did care about baseball. I cared so fuckin’ much. I still do. I knew I had to notch up. I had to find something, something I didn’t even know I had. It’s funny,” he said, “in the moment, I didn’t think anything about taking off my shoes. My feet hurt and I couldn’t play, couldn’t notch up. So I did it. I took my shoes off, and then—after I’d done it—I realized how crazy it must’ve seemed.” He smiled broadly. “But after that, it was easy. Something shifted. I never let myself doubt what I was doing in the moment. I just kind of made up my mind: never again,” he continued. “Never again would I waste time fucking around doubting myself. I just went with it. What I realized,” he added, “was that there was nothing I could do. The doubts never helped, never added anything, so why give ‘em any time?” He shook his head. “Why, I thought, would I give any of my precious energy to to that sort of bullshit?”
***
I had so many questions, but I couldn’t ask any of them. I just watched and listened and tried like hell to pay attention since what Lou said seemed so strange and perfect, so out-of-place that if I’d have seen it in a movie or read it in a book, I’d have figured it was pivotal, far too important to ignore or misconstrue.
***
I’ve taken my shoes off tens of thousands of times, but I’ve never really taken my shoes off for anything.
Tommy Vollman is a writer, musician, and painter. For many years, he was a baseball player. He has written a number of things, published a bit, recorded a few records, and toured a lot. Tommy’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the “Best of the Net” anthology. His stories and nonfiction have appeared in The Southwest Review, Two Cities Review, Hobart, The Southeast Review, Palaver, and Per Contra. He has some black-ink tattoos on both of his arms. Tommy really likes A. Moonlight Graham, Kurt Vonnegut, Two Cow Garage, Tillie Olsen, Willy Vlautin, and Albert Camus. He's working on a short story collection and has a new record, Youth or Something Beautiful. He currently teaches English at Milwaukee Area Technical College and prefers to write with pens poached from hotel room cleaning carts.
www.tommy-vollman.com
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