The Prospect, Eliot Parker [free ebooks for android .TXT] 📗

great pride in maintaining a good playing surface for the baseball teams. Each afternoon (or in this case evening) the grounds crew would generously water the playing surface and cut patterns of light and dark stripes in the grass on the baseball field. The effect was created by a combination of reel mowers with rollers laying the grass in different directions and the reflection of sunlight of the blades of grass. Where the pattern is a lighter shade of green, sunlight is reflecting of the leaf blade surface. Where it’s darker green, the sunlight is reflecting off only the tips of the grass blades.
Shane watched the men and simultaneously looked at the large mountain resting behind the center field wall. The mountain looked dark and majestic since the sun went down, almost as if it was protecting Clark Field and all its history. The pitcher snapped his head around and quickly followed the same path as his manager; running down the steep concrete steps across the dugout platform and down the narrow hallway into the locker room.

************

When Shane came out of the darkness, he saw most of his teammates frantically changing clothes, cleaning out their lockers, and scurrying back and forth . The locker room reminded Shane of what a prison cell in a federal penitentiary must resemble.
Five rows of floor space featuring approximately ten small lockers, with a long, wobbly wooden bench nailed to the floor in front of each row of lockers. There were no windows in the locker room, just a large fan that sat near the entrance covered with dust. The rusty showers and sinks were in the right rear corner of the locker room. Unfortunately, there were only three sinks and three showers for the entire team, so patience was indeed a necessary virtue. The walls were cream colored, and like the seats on the main concourse, were chipped and in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint.
Shane shifted his feet and walked towards the last row of the lockers. He approached the first locker in the row and immediately slammed his glove against the mental door of his locker and flopped down heavily on the bench. As his bottom hit the wood, the bench swayed back and forth.
A loud deep voice suddenly echoed throughout the locker room. “Hey loser…hey pretty boy…hello, anyone listening?” Shane turned to face the nasally voice he heard penetrating his right eardrum.
“The next time I tell you to throw a curveball fucker, you had better do what you are told and throw a fucking curveball. If you don’t, your ass is mine!”
Once Shane turned towards the voice, his face winced in frustration. The derogatory remarks came from Jason “Biggie” Rowan, the starting catcher for the Sheaville Loggers. Biggie was a three year veteran of the team, which in minor league baseball can be a curse as much as a blessing. Biggie was well liked by most of the team, primarily because he watched out for players he liked, spoke his mind, and put up with zero foolishness from anyone. Most of that came from going up in several housing projects in New Jersey. His upbringing was never openly discussed, but instead was an understood cause for his style of communicating. Not to mention, at 6’7, 228 pounds, nobody ever questioned anything he did not said, much less question his background.
Shane decided to reply to Biggie’s remarks. “Yea…yea, I gotcha,” moaned Shane as he began to remove his uniform. His shoulder was throbbing and his fingertips were slightly numb. After throwing 102 pitches, he figured understood the source of discomfort.
“I know you one of the best chances we have this year to win the division, but you keep throwing dog shit on full counts punk and we are never going to win nothing! This is supposed to be our year!” Biggie shouted. He slowly stood up and marched to the end of the row of lockers to speak with Shane face to face. His comments and movements did little to squelch the surrounding commotion in the room.
By now, Shane had removed his entire uniform and was standing alone next to his locker in a pair of red and white boxer shorts splattered with red checks. As he turned to place his socks and cleats in his locker, Shane caught a glimpse of his approaching teammate from the corner of his left eye. Biggie’s movements created a large shadow that devoured the locker room.
Shane was forced to look up to see the large catcher. Biggie reached down with his right hand and sunk his fingers into Shane’s left shoulder. Reacting out of instinct, Shane aggressively swiped Biggie’s arm to the side and jerked his head to the side. Sweat was pouring from the young pitchers face as his senses became overstimulated with the anticipation of what Biggie might do and as well as the temperature in the locker room combined with the stench of sweat.
“You made your point,” Shane said coolly. “I screwed up out there today, but it was just one game and we have 112 more to play before the season is over. We will play those chumps from Charleston at least four more times this year.” Shane was essentially repeating what Walter had told him a few minutes ago and he knew it and was quite proud of himself for being able to recall Mann’s speech.
Biggie eyed Shane and smirked. “Must be that Pennsylvania ‘tude. Your awfully cocky for someone who has played only one game in the minors sissy boy.” Biggie attempted to lift his left hand and pat Shane on the cheek. Instead, Shane took a step backwards and Biggie’s palm missed his face. Suddenly, Biggie’s smirk became a scowl and he carefully eyed the pitcher from head to toe.
Biggie Rowan knew, that despite his size, Shane was not a pushover. Shane’s neck neck was thin, yet his shoulders were broad and his arms were long and muscular from the shoulder blade to the forearm. He was 6-3 and weighed 205 pounds. His hands were rough and chapped, and his fingers were long and thin. His pectorals swelled outward from his chest cavity and his nipples were flat and bright pink. His abdomen muscles were tight and toned. In fact, when Shane was shirtless and he spoke, the muscles flexed and twisted as he spoke. His waist was small, yet his thigh muscles were large and his calf muscles stuck out three inches from the back of his legs. His nose was pointed and his lips were thick and rosy red. His skin color was tanned as well as smooth and without blemishes.
Biggie began retreating slowly backwards. Shane’s eyes were fixed tightly on the catcher. His lips were pressed tightly against his mouth and his fists were clinched, just in case. Biggie hands and fingers were small thick and his legs were long and powerful. Shane new that Biggie could easily handle him if a physical encounter ensued.
“We are going to have some fun together this year rookie,” Biggie snarled as he reached his locker at the end of the row. “You and I are going to hang.” He pointed his index finger directly towards Shane. “I am going to be watching you, fucker!”
Biggie slammed the metal door to his locker, grabbed his bag of bats, and stormed out.
Shane now found himself alone in the locker room. He figured the game had been over for an hour now. Shane sighed and began reassembling his locker and folding his uniform.

II
A minor league baseball team is affiliated with a major league team and any minor league team has two main goals: the development and preparation of young players for the big leagues and the forging of a successful local business. Although there are some baseball stars that are drafted or signed to contracts and go straight to the majors, they are the exception to the rule. The majority of players play at least one minor league season. Occasionally, exceptional players whirl through the minor leagues in one season and end up in the majors the following season.
The first recognized minor league was the Northwestern League, which was organized in 1882. In 1883, the Northwestern League, the National League and the American Association signed an agreement that bound the clubs to honor the contracts of players on reserve lists, to recognize each other’s suspensions and expulsions, to establish territorial rights and to form arbitration committee to settle disputes. The next National Agreement, which came on the heels of the American Association’s collapse in 1892, established minor league classifications for the first time and awarded major league teams the right to draft minor league players at fixed prices. Briefly, organized baseball was confined to the northeast quadrant of the country, expanding to the South in 1885, to the upper Midwest in 1886, to California in 1887, Texas in 1888 and the Pacific Northwest in 1890. By 1963, 90 percent of the minor league clubs were major league affiliates and the overall number of minor clubs was down. But that had changed by the 1980s, when minor league baseball exploded, topping 20 million in attendance in 1987 for the first time since the 1950s. Harlan Shea understood these practices, and helped found the Sheaville Loggers.
One man, Harlan Shea, contributed to the storied history of minor league baseball.
Sheaville, like most of West Virginia, is located in the Appalachian Highlands and has some of the most rugged land in the United States. The state has no large areas of level ground, except the strips of valley land along the larger rivers. Mountain chains cover the eastern section of the state. Steep hills and narrow valleys make up the region west of the mountains.
The state’s rough land has sometimes caused difficulties for West Virginians. Much of the ground is too steep and rocky for farming. Highways, railroads, and airports are hard to build and floods from mountain streams often threaten valley settlements. However, Sheaville was blessed with valuable hardwood trees that grow on the slopes of hillsides overlooking small narrow valley lands.
But Sheaville is the small town most minor league players hope they never experience. Because of their often-remote locations and size, many minor league players, especially those from larger cities, view small town life as if it’s the threshold of hell itself. However, athletes who commit to playing minor league baseball understand living in small towns as a right of passage. One advantage of small town life lie in the people that make the town thrive. For Sheaville, 2,000 men, women, and children bore the responsibility.
Many of the current residents of Sheaville are decedents of the original founders. By the early part of the twentieth century, industrial companies were looking to exploit timber from the West Virginia mountains in order to clear land for mining. The slogan used back in those days became a household motto for companies who tried to lure workers the West Virginia mountain community: “where there are trees there is money.” Sheaville’s history saw times when the community housed 65,000 people from all across the United States. Each day and night, the men would march through town at all hours to the logging yard on the outskirts of town. Dozens of trucks came from the larger cities all around the state, including Charleston, Huntington, Parkersburg and Wheeling. The trucks would load up the timber, take it back to the larger West Virginia cities where the timber would be weighed and driven to other states across America. However, once the trees began to disappear, so did the jobs and so did many of the workers and their families.
Sheaville’s town founder, Harlan Shea, first convinced the companies and workers to move to West Virginia. West Virginia could be