Rick Jasper - Out of Control

Text copyright 2012 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

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Jasper, Rick, 1948
Out of control / by Rick Jasper.
p. cm. (Travel team)
ISBN 9780761383239 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)
[1. BaseballFiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.J32Ou 2012
[Fic]dc23 2011027948

Manufactured in the United States of America
1BP12/31/11

eISBN: 978-0-7613-8733-6 (pdf)

eISBN: 978-1-4677-7091-0 (ePub)

eISBN: 978-1-4677-3060-0 (mobi)

TO MY GRANDMOTHER, WHO
BOUGHT ME MY FIRST GLOVE

The way a team plays as a whole
determines its success. You may have the
greatest bunch of individual stars in the
world, but if they dont play together, the
club wont be worth a dime.

BABE RUTH

CHAPTER

I f you had attended the baseball game between the Las Vegas Roadrunners and the Boise Bulls on that steamy June afternoon, you would have seen something unusual. Both summer travel teams were at the elite level, which is to say that both teams had teenage players under seventeen years old with college or even professional potential. But that afternoon you would have seen something that looked more like a scene from a Little League game.

It began simply enough. The Roadrunners were down by two in the bottom of the eighth inning. Thanks to a walk, they had a runner on first with nobody out: their shortstop, Carlos Trip Costas. Trip was speedy, so the expectation was that he would try to steal second, and indeed he was taking a generous enough lead to draw the attention of the pitcher.

The Bulls pitcher was good enough, or well-coached enough, to expect the steal. But even if he had been unaware, the screaming of one of the Roadrunners fans would have alerted him.

STEAL! STEAL, CARLOS! Jeez, move your butt! This guys got nothing!

A few people in the crowd looked around, but most of the Roadrunners faithful knew without looking that the screamer was Trips father, Julio. Like Trip, they ignored him.

The game slowed down considerably with the next batter, center fielder Danny Manuel. He was a good match for the pitcher; both of them wereto put it nicely in a word often used by sports broadcastersdeliberate. They took their time. The pitcher would fool around with the resin bag, make a couple of throws to first, fool around with his cap, and then again go to the resin bag. Once he was finally ready to pitch, Danny would call time and step out of the batters box.

When a pitch actually managed to occur, Danny would foul it off. The afternoon was warm, the sun was bright, and the sky was a monotonous, cloudless, desert blue. What should have been a tense situation was becoming nap-inducing.

Julio was still awake, though. He was still yelling for the steal. And he was still being ignored, as the attention of the other fans and, as it turned out, some of the players waned. The count drowsed its way to 22, and Danny kept fouling off pitchesover the backstop, tipped into the dirt, down the line, high, low. It was after about seven of these that the Bulls catcher noticed Trips overlong lead.

The next pitch was outside, on the first-base side of the plate. The catcher gunned it to first and Trip, as he admitted later, was caught napping. The first baseman tagged him out, the Roadrunners fans groaned, and Trip headed back to the dugout.

From the seats came an outraged bellow, and suddenly Julio was on the field, heading for his son. What transpired looked like a coach-umpire altercation, with Julio in the role of coach, cursing in Spanish and waving his arms, while Trip stared at him with little expression while trying to walk away. Thats when the shoving started. Julio grabbed the teenager by the shoulder and started shaking him. Trip was four inches taller and pushed his dad away, but Julio kept grabbing him and getting in his face.

What were you thinking? You had that guy! You could steal standing up!

Finally, Trip started backing his dad up, shoving the heels of his hands against Julios chest.

Before things got really ugly, the umpires converged on the two and the Roadrunners bench emptied. The resulting spectacle consisted of a baseball team separating father from son, handing Julio over to security and shielding Trip as they ushered him to the dugout. Trip hadnt said anything to that point, but as his dad was escorted out he turned and yelled, in a voice as impressively loud as Julios, Happy freakin Fathers Day!

When the game finally resumed, Danny flied out. Zack Waddell singled, but he was then thrown out on Nick Cosimos subsequent grounder. The Roadrunners went quietly in the ninth and lost by two. But by then the game itself seemed like a sideshow to the main event. When people left the field that night they were talking not about who won or lost, but about crazy Julio Costas.

My father.

CHAPTER

Y es, my dad is the Julio Costas. Your parents probably have some of his records. Maybe theyve even seen him perform in Vegas, where he pretty much stays now except for when he has TV appearances and recording sessions. He never liked touring, and now he doesnt need to.

Heres a description from Wikipedia: Julio Costas is a Venezuelan singer who has sold over 200 million records worldwide in fourteen languages. He has released forty albums and is one of the top twenty best-selling musical artists in history. He became internationally known in the early 80s as a performer of romantic ballads.

His story is more interesting than that, and hes very fond of telling it, so I know it by heart. Dad was born in the La Dolorita barrio of Caracas. He took me and my brothers on a trip to Caracas once, but we didnt go near La Dolorita. It would have been too dangerous. The dream of the people who live in its violence and dirt is to get out, but the options for escape are limited. Some choose crime. A few with the talent try sports, and that was Dads dream.

Venezuelans are crazy about baseball, the way Brazilians are crazy about soccer, and the amateur leagues there have been attracting major-league scouts for years. The country produced a Hall of Famer in the 50s in Chicago White Sox shortstop Luis Aparicio, plus a lot of other stars along the way. Today you could point to Bobby Abreu or Magglio Ordonez or Carlos Zambrano. Anyway, Dad also had talent. Hes a lefty, and he could pitch.

By the time he was thirteen, baseball scouts had noticed him, but hed also been noticed by a scout of another kind. Dad and a few of his buddies would make extra money singing on downtown street cornerstraditional Latin stuff and songs from movies. One day a music executive named Domingo Villa stopped to listen, and he was sure he heard something special in Dads voice. In two years, with Villa as his agent, Julio Costas had a bestselling album and an international tour, and the two men began to get rich together. Dad left baseball behind. Well, not entirely.