PROLOGUE
Near Odessa, Texas
Stu Domato's car was a trash heap rolling through a desert
wasteland. Under blackening skies, it was about the only vehicle
on the road--a big Lincoln, cobalt blue, missing not only the
hood ornament but also two hubcaps and the right rear taillight,
busted out during a wreck in Altoona. The paint was pitted and caked
with the dust and dead insects of untold thousands of unwashed
miles.
Inside was worse: a stinking pit littered with scuffed
baseballs, paper cups, newspapers, three-ring notebooks and empty
bags stained with the grease of onion rings and chili dogs. The
only things of any value were a Boston Red Sox warm-up jacket,
two fungo bats, a battered catcher's mitt with new black leather
stitching, a Carl Yastrzemski fielder's glove--a castoff from Yaz
himself, back in '71--and a portable radar gun.
Domato's heavy face twisted in a frown. He was lost. On the
map spread across the steering wheel he could see the west Texas
hellholes of Midland and Odessa, now behind him, and Pecos,
which lay ahead. But, dammit, the map did not seem to show the
latticework of tiny backroads that would deliver him to Lyndon B.
Johnson High School and its evening ball game with arch-rival
Alamo Academy.
The game itself meant nothing to Domato. He had seen close
to ninety-thousand of them, seemed like, in forty-six states and
U.S. territories. He was a scout, out combing the God-forsaken
hinterland for talent. That had been his sole purpose in life for
forty years, a span in which his wife had left him and his two
children had grown to adulthood without him. He had sold his
three-bedroom home in Brookline and cut the tethers that normally
tie a man to the mainstream, becoming an aimless toad with watery
gray eyes, close-cropped black hair, and a single consuming
mission: to find that one transcendent ballplayer that would
justify all the lonely years of struggle and heartache.
Domato kept going because he could never know when fate might
intervene, when he might discover that young kid with the fire of
Cobb, the arm of Clemente, the speed and power of Mantle. At the
moment, his slender hopes--the odds were always astronomical
against him--were pinned on a reed-thin prospect named Troy
Gregson, an eighteen-year-old, who played right-field for
Johnson. If Gregson was like most of them, he would amount to
nothing, bouncing around a few years in the obscurity of the
minor leagues, if he got a contract at all. But right now, in
high school, he was batting .459, and so the grapevine was abuzz
with the word of what the kid might do some day, how he had all
the tools to become the next Kent "The Raven" Ravinovich, or the
next Ted Williams. That was all the incentive a Red Sox scout
needed to come have a look.
Domato crumpled the map in disgust. Forks of distant
lightning had begun to tear through the blackness. Dreading the
possibility of a rain-out, which might condemn him to these parts
for days, he pulled into a ramshackle Shell station a few miles
from Pecos and asked for directions. The attendant, a slight Cuban,
told him there was a school up the road; he had no idea if it
was Johnson.
A dozen more miles and Domato at last found the tall arc
lights of a ball diamond. Quite a few cars filled the lot. That
was sometimes the case when a team boasted a great star; it
bolstered his flagging spirits.
Parking on the edge of the gravelly dirt, Domato walked to
the bleachers and saw that the game already was in progress. The
blue-trimmed uniforms of the home team shone brilliantly under
the lights. A batter in gray and green waggled his bat under the
expectant gaze of a few hundred spectators, then unleashed a
mighty rip. A roar rose up as the catcher coolly flipped the ball
back to the pitcher.
"How's Gregson doing tonight?" Domato asked, sidling up to
an elderly booster watching from behind the backstop.
"Who?"
"Troy Gregson. Johnson's right-fielder."
"Johnson?" The old man's eyes pinched in surprise behind
thick glasses. "This is St. Jude. St. Jude High School. We're
whupping St. Ignacious. No Johnson in this league."
Domato cursed. "Jesus Christ, I'm looking for Lyndon Johnson
High School. Where is Johnson High?"
"Can't say I know," the old man said, turning his gaze back
to the field. "But if you got some time to watch some baseball,
this here's a real treat."
The pop of the catcher's mitt, followed by the umpire's cry,
"Thaaa-reeeeeeee!" formed an exclamation point to the old man's
comment. The crowd roared, and several spectators hollered
exhortations to the pitcher.
"That's eight in a row," the old man said.
"Eight?"
"Eight strikeouts. He's got a streak this year of sixteen.
Might break it tonight, the way he's a-throwin'."
Domato looked again at the field. The kid on the mound was
tall, at least six-feet-four, with long arms and legs and a
blacksmith's powerful shoulders. He lurched into a windup, the
left leg kicking high overhead, as high and smooth as Juan
Marichal himself, and he let go a curveball that hissed like a
Texas rattler.
Arching backward, the batter let his lumber drop as the
pitch bit the air and snapped over the inside corner.
"Steeeeee-riiiiiike one!"
"Je-SUS!" Domato stared out with sudden interest. "Who is
that kid?"
"Kane. Ron Kane." The old man turned and flashed a gap-tooth
grin. "Not a bad arm, eh? And he bats clean-up, got some power--
Christ, you can't hardly believe it."
Domato watched the rangy youth kick the leg skyward and come
over the top with a fastball. It sizzled and struck the catcher's
mitt with a sound like a cherry bomb.
"Steeeeee-riiiiiike two!"
"A pheee-nom--no other word for him. Just turned seventeen."
"A junior?" Domato stared as if the old man were crazy.
"Yeah--and didn't play last year. Broken leg. He's just a
baby."
Domato watched the next pitch in flabbergasted silence. The
crowd cheered the ninth strikeout in a row.
"How's his record, this Kane?" Domato asked.
"So far, twelve wins and no one's beat him yet. Games he
don't pitch, he's out there in right. Got range, oh man, and I
told you he can hit--how's the sound of .682 and 19 home runs?"
Domato's mind spun. Podunk baseball was his life--hell, he
knew it better than anyone--and he'd heard not a peep about this
kid.
"What league'd you say this is?"
"Lady of the Light. All Catholic schools."
For a split-second, that became his answer: inferior
competition. But Domato knew many places where Catholic schools
were powerhouses; more important, it was clear this Kane could
put some stuff on the ball. Not even Koufax in his prime--and
Domato remembered him vividly--had achieved quite the degree of
power and torque displayed by this strapping teen.
"I've gotta get the gun," Domato said. He turned and hustled
to the Lincoln, dug the contraption out of the junk in the back,
and checked the battery. By the time he returned to his spot
behind the chain-link, St. Jude was batting, ahead 3-0. A stocky
left-hander punched a single to center and Kane came up, settling
into the box with an ease that was both graceful and menacing,
long, fluid arcs as he primed his swing. He let two pitches go by
before drilling an outside fastball toward the gap in right-
center field. It climbed into the night under the black sky, as
tiny and distant as a star, before falling out of view beyond a
light stanchion.
St. Jude put up three more runs before the inning ended and
Kane moved back to the mound. Domato's pulse quickened as he
leveled the Jugs gun. Fastballs came in as blurs--96, 97, 94, 99
miles per hour. He knew no one on the Sox's major league roster
was capable of such speeds.
"This kid can throw!" Domato gushed to the old man, who
grinned back at him.
"You working for someone?"
"Boston. The Red Sox. I'm a scout."
The old man introduced himself as Conway--just a fan, a
lifelong baseball fan, he said. "Been coming to games 'round here
sixty years. You know, we've had scouts down this way before. It
weren't too many miles from here that old Haywood Rayburn
discovered another pretty fair pitcher by the name of Nolan Ryan.
Maybe you heard of him."
"Yeah, I heard of him," Domato said. His grin vanished and
his mood quickly soured; he did not want to hear about Rayburn,
the strutting ass who had not only gotten Ryan but also stolen
Domato's wife. The emotional wound had been festering for twenty-
nine years.
The two men were silent as they watched Kane ring up his
eleventh strikeout in a row. The crowd cheered lustily at the
batter's late swing.
"Tell you this," Conway said. "This here Kane would be the
find of a lifetime, if he were fit for that type of thing--
playing pro ball."
"What do you mean, if?"
Conway clucked his tongue just as a boom of thunder cracked
across the heavens. "What I'm sayin', hell, Kane's not exactly
hero material. As a person, I mean. Strange duck."
"Strange?" Domato laughed. "Christ, I seen Bo Belinski. I
seen Jimmy Piersall, Kent Ravinovich, Darryl Strawberry. Mike
Marshall-- both Mike Marshalls. My God, I seen 'em all, and
believe me, this day and age, you get lots of strange ducks.
Part of the biz."
"Maybe, I guess so," Conway said. "But this Kane--he's got
an attitude. Been in some trouble. Slipped a snake in Chase
Mallory's window last August."
"Rattlesnake?"
"Rumor was. But no one seen it, and Chase, he don't talk
about it."
Domato watched Kane rack up another strikeout--twelve or
thirteen, he'd lost count. He thought about the shock Chase
Mallory must have experienced, finding that snake, maybe in his
kitchen, or slithering out from beneath the bed. Still, what was
that compared to some of the Raven's antics? Spray-painting Art
Hambrick's Porsche? Rigging up a set of moutaineering ropes to
slip into Farrah Fawcett's hotel suite at three in the morning?
Ravinovich had gone to jail over that one, an incident that
inspired some of the most scathing columns in the history of the
Boston sports pages.
"Let me tell you somethin' about the major leagues," Domato
said brusquely. "These kids, some got rough edges. We work with
'em, guide 'em. Part of our job, seeing they learn some
discipline. Lot of times a kid's better off if he's got a bit of
a mean streak. Last thing you want is a bunch of pansies."
"I guess--but Kane--"
"I'm serious. Think Roger Clemens ain't got that edge? I can
name you a dozen guys--hell, Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson--guys that
got themselves in the Hall of Fame based on having some good-ol'
hard-assed meanness."
Domato watched another fastball scorch the outside corner at
98 m.p.h. "Kane ever got himself in any real trouble? Anything
serious? Jail or anything?"
"Not that I know of." Conway scowled, thinking.
Lightning raked the sky. Kane's next blistering bullet sent
the red digital gauge on the gun to a gaudy 101.
"No, believe me," Domato said assuredly. "A lot of these
kids nowdays, they need guidance. We give it to 'em. They help
us, and we help them."
