On the second shelf of the ballplayer’s library were four books that he would have read when he was seventeen years old: Johann Wolfgang Von Goetheʼs Faust, Immanuel Kantʼs A Critique of Pure Reason, Schopenhauerʼs The World as Will and Idea, and Friedrich Nietzscheʼs The Will to Power. On page twelve of his journals, he devised the formula: thing-in-Itself (Kant) + perfect ideal (Plato) + will (Nietzsche) = POWER.

The college scholarship turned out to be a scam. It didnʼt include a dorm room as he had thought. Lodging was down the boulevard about seven blocks from campus in a two-story converted frat house. You gotta be kidding me, he thought after opening the front door. This is unbelievable. The sign above might just as well read: Pass through these Gates of Hell at your own risk -- abandon all hope, those who enter here.

The resistance device, a metal cylinder with a looped rope running through it, was a training aid used by athletes with the intention of strengthening the throwing arm. One end of the rope is attached to a wall-hook while the other end has a handle that a ballplayer grasps while going through the motion of tossing a baseball. The cylinder could be twisted or adjusted to varying degrees of resistance. He had just tossed 273 innings and didnʼt need any further resistance or work from his pitching arm. What he needed was rest. The pitcher had “Dead Arm.”

He didnʼt pitch at State College The 273 innings pitched the previous year had taken its toll. Tendons and ligaments of his pitching arm were overstretched from overuse and it would be eighteen months before heʼd pitch again. Tommy John surgery had not yet been invented. Box scores indicate that he played in the outfield and hit third in the lineup. Late in the season, his team was leading the conference by two full games at 11-1 with seven games remaining on the schedule. At the time, he was leading the Cats in hitting with his .320 average.

The outfielder didnʼt throw the pitch that put the runner into scoring position, or the one that produced the game-winning hit, nor the one that led to an insurance run; however, an angry coach Mallard was waiting for him as he approached the dugout. It was the first and only time that heʼd get his butt chewed out by a baseball coach, and to make matters worse, it came in front of his teammates and fans. He took the abuse without a single word of rebuttal even though his decision to try to stop the winning run from scoring was the right one.

Bad faith is an intentional dishonest act by not fulfilling legal or contractual obligations, misleading another, entering into an agreement without the intention or means to fulfill it, or violating basic standards of honesty in dealing with others. Existential philosophers J.P. Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir often used the act as a philosophical concept to describe the phenomenon in which human beings, while under pressure from social forces, adopt false values and disown their innate freedom, thus acting inauthentically.

The scholarship was a fraud and the ballplayer got faked out by the coachʼs dupery. He walked across campus to the ball field and began grooming the mound, all the while fuming and mulling things over. A whirlwind of rage was brewing before the tempest when an unsuspecting coach Mallard came out of the dugout and started ragging again about the bad throw. They met toe-to-toe, face-to-face, vis-à-vis. Like a storm on the loose, the disgruntled ballplayer hurled the rake aside. I can only imagine the look on his face -- cold-blooded glacial eyes with the lethal fixed stare of a basilisk, king of all deadly serpents; that same look described by Mr. Hughes -- sharp malignant peepers: a leery gaze not unlike one described in Joseph Conradʼs Heart of Darkness -- an immense stare of condemnation and a loathing for all the universe. The outfielder had had enough of Mallardʼs lies and skullduggery ... had enough of his flimflam ... enough of his boondoggle. There would be no absolution this time ... no turning the other cheek ... no taking it on the chin without saying a word. This time, he bellowed, letting it all out. TAKE YOUR BOGUS SCHOLARSHIP AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS YOU TWO-FACED, COLD-BLOODED SON-OF-A-BITCH! I QUIT!

Mallard, the condescending shylock of coaches, turned out to be a zealot. The often Woody Hayes-like State coach was two-faced. It was Matthew who said, Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheepʼs clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. The wolfish coach put on a false front with his silver-tongued oratory and handsome exterior, but underneath it all, existed a vitriolic heart of granite that pumped sulfuric acid through its leaded veins. Like crooked politicians who never intend to make good on their promises, Mallardʼs subterfuge produced a false narrative, lied about it, and then stonewalled till the season was nearly over. Mallard was a ravenous wolf in sheepʼs clothing.

Like an ominous dark cloud looming over Seattle, a stalking umbra of ill fate hovered over the ballplayer where ever he roamed. Did he bring all this calamity upon himself, or were the hands of fate merely playing out her prearranged role? At times, baseball put this philosophical ballplayer in a happy space, but tragedy always seemed to rain on his parade; hence, his up-and-down roller coaster ride of life -- flying high above the clouds one day; only to come crashing down to earth the next. He constantly found himself dodging the shadowy fringes of society and was now quite certain that the gameʼs waters were shark-infested. It was Joltinʼ Joe DiMaggio who said that baseball was no longer a game when the fun was taken away.

There would be no spring training in Florida. Professional baseball was put on hold, if not completely lost. I could only cringe with the thought that something ominous was about to happen. Overcome, ballplayer. Godspeed.

“Nothing, nothing had the least importance, and I knew quite well why...From the dark horizon of my future a sort of slow, persistent breeze had been blowing toward me, all my long life, from the years that were to come. And on its way that breeze had leveled out all the ideas that people tried to foist on me...” (Camus, Albert. The Stranger. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. pp. 152)

HELLCAT (Excerpts)