Not Only Ain’t It Over, It’s Barely Begun

I am standing at the plate in a crouch, fanning the hot air slowly with my bat, my gaze locked on the pitcher. He’s a fireballer out of Georgia whose fastball races bullets.

The roar of the crowd is rolling thunder that pounds in waves against the field, but so intense is my concentration that to me there’s only a vacant silence, like a movie without sound.

The count is 3 and 2, and there’s a man on second. It’s the bottom of the ninth, we’re behind by a run. Did I say it’s the final game of a tied World Series?

I see the pitcher lean forward. He spits, shakes his head, spits again, winds up, rears back and plunges forward. The ball leaves his hand like a rifle shot, screaming toward me at 110 miles an hour. The crowd is on its feet, 100,000 mouths agape, 200,000 eyes staring. . . .

I swing.

*

Good morning. I’m looking out my window at a day as soft and sweet as a sunrise in heaven. As you read this, it might be raining, but I write for the moment, not the future, and this moment is glorious.

Fantasy is my acknowledgment of spring, the drifting mind that floats to magical places. Today it’s baseball, because baseball is spring, and on a recent day my mind was filled with the sport of tranquillity.

Like Walter Mitty, I am a child of fantasy, the boy in the man who runs through vacant lots, skips pebbles in a stream and lies on the sunny hillsides of memory, forming figures out of clouds.

But today, this moment, I’m baseball, gazing out at a sky as blue as a starlet’s eyes, and I am at last hearing the rolling thunder of the crowd as the ball and the bat connect. . . .

Whack!

*

Phil Pote’s the one who got me daydreaming about being at bat, about spring, about winning.

He’s a scout down here for the Seattle Mariners. A ball field in Griffith Park is named after him because of his work as a coach and teacher for the kids who live in the inner city.

Pote campaigned for years and helped raise money for a field at Southwest College, the only high-quality baseball diamond in South-Central, because he believes in youth and its future.

At 64, Pote’s been with baseball for half a century and still loves it. He sees it as a blue-collar sport, a game for anyone to play, and while there may have been times when he’s bristled at the in-your-face attitude of its moneyed superstars, they aren’t The Game, only the moment.

I sat with Pote one day at his namesake field and watched the L.A. City College Cubs play the East L.A. College Huskies. It was a day of muted sunlight, but the green of the field still glistened like a blanket of emeralds in the hazy afternoon.

“Every career starts with a scout,” Pote was saying, talking to me but watching the kids on the diamond. He’s an easygoing guy in dark glasses and trademark Panama hat. His laugh is infectious, his commitment deep.

Pote is looking for the kind of talent that fills his head with trumpets. He’s looking for power, speed, a throwing arm and grace. For Athleticism.

“Even if a kid strikes out, you can tell if he’s got poise,” Pote says. He can feel talent, the way Mozart felt music or Shakespeare words.

After a high school and college coaching career, Pote became a scout in 1969 and attends 600 games a year in Southern California, looking for the kid with star quality. He’s gotten maybe 20 into the majors.

He sees baseball as a peaceful counterpoint to violence in a chaotic age. “Life ought to be like baseball,” he says. “Safe or out, fair or foul, right or wrong.”

Pote is a guy who cares. He’s trying to establish a President’s Council on Youth and has been to Washington three times proposing, demanding, wheedling. He prints tracts, writes letters and endlessly quotes the kinds of statistics that say the kids need us and we’ve got to act fast.

He’s won some response in D.C., but not enough. Bill Clinton ought to listen to this guy. He knows baseball. He knows kids.

*

Pote, spring and a buttery sunlight have set me adrift. Walter Mitty faced a firing squad and said, “To hell with the blindfold.” I face a fantasy left-hander out of Savannah and say, “Pitch to me, baby. . . . “

The ball seeks the sun the way a rocket seeks the stars, blasting upward from the bat in a trajectory as straight and clean as a razor slash. I watch it go and then, flinging the bat toward the bullpen, I head for first.

I’m an Olympian taking a victory lap, with a stride that’s proud and easy. The rolling thunder of the crowd becomes a crescendo, and the very sky trembles at the roar as the ball shoots upward past the moon and sun and stars to the very edges of imagination. . . .

Naturally, we won the game. Now I think I’ll take a nap.

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com