Johnny at the bat
rogerWILLIAMS rwilliams@florida-weekly.com

Way back on March 2, in the middle of an afternoon that seemed too gentle ever to presage the thundering baseball tensions of October, a highly-touted Japanese pitcher making more money than any other billion or so average American immigrants in history, took the mound for the Boston Red Sox, at City of Palms Park.

It was the first time ever for Daisuke Matsuzaka, A.K.A. Dice-K, who is now about to pitch in his first World Series.

Then he threw a fastball, another first as a professional in an American game on American soil.

Just before it happened, I was watching the photographers work the moment. I was also trying to decide whether to buy large quantities of cheaply made American beer at enormous expense to help the Sox jump start their season, or whether to continue driving my contemporary life: a low-mileage, fuel-efficient, economy model powered by general sobriety, occasional restraint and infrequent excess.

If I chose the beer, fantasizing that I somehow shared in Dice-K's wealth and maybe even in his importance - since I also shared his team's ambitions, now being realized this week - I would thus bankrupt my family. I figured I could accomplish that after buying only about two cups (on his $103 million contract, Dice-K could probably afford three or four cups of crappy American beer, and even a couple of hot dogs at City of Palms Park.)

Following that moment of camaraderie, of course (imagine it: me and the Sox, brothers in the diamond industry) I would probably drive home joyously drunk and stupidly certain of an imminent World Series conquest, simultaneously risking arrest, incarceration and execution.

Meanwhile, quipped with lenses the size of light anti-tank weapons, the shooters (as pro photographers like to call themselves) worked hard to capture the most expensive player in baseball history throwing his very first pitch.

On the one hand, the Japanese cameramen moved like a well-disciplined rifle squad, shifting suddenly this way or that, en masse. They trotted one way, then they trotted back the other, pausing to shoot as one. Nobody pushed ahead of anybody else.

The Americans, meanwhile (whose shooters included females, of all things), seemed to go any which way, independently jockeying for position.

Thus we had cultural stereotypes working right along with the national game, which is one of my favorite things.

While all that was taking place, a Boston College student and ballplayer named Johnny Ayers managed to walk quietly to the plate. Johnny was playing not only before a crowd of about 6,000 at the City of Palms Park downtown, but before a live New England television audience. And by the time the day was out in the eastern or western hemispheres, he would also appear before hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide, along with who knows how many in the next world.

In spite of that immense pressure, somehow, young Johnny took up a position bravely facing the paragon of baseball gods, without fainting.

Do you think you could do that? I mean, what if you had to face Dice-K and his $103 million contract, not to mention what Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy described the next day as "that hesitation at the top of the windup," and "breaking pitches that seemed to defy the laws of gravity."

What would you do?

There's a very good chance you might faint, like I would. Or you might mutter a couple of Hail Marys, and then faint. You might even manage just to walk away, or run away, or slink away - all of them perfectly understandable reactions.

Or maybe you'd be a Johnny Ayers. Johnny didn't screw around in the batter's box. He didn't scratch, he didn't spit, and he didn't step out and sigh heavily. He didn't even look over his left shoulder at the crowd, as if trying to remember the names of 300 girlfriends poised there on his every glance.

Instead, Johnny stood firmly at the plate, relying on that classic, by-the-book American batting style: He spread his feet about shoulder width in the newly raked dirt. He bent his knees slightly. He cocked his bat so that the line of his left arm paralleled his shoulders and the ground. He lifted his right elbow high enough to continue that line, meanwhile gripping his bat at a 90-degree angle, so it pointed straight up at the blue sky like a rocket on the pad, awaiting ignition.

When Dice-K threw his first pitch, the young Johnny Ayers hit a long hard shot into left-center field, a natural. The sound of his bat on the ball was so clear you could hear it in downtown Tokyo. The Boston Red Sox outfield, God bless 'em - beefy, slow and coming off a good winter feed - couldn't get anywhere close to the ball. Johnny made second base standing up, for a double (at least I think it was standing up) and shook hands with history.

But whether he actually slid into second or not, Johnny himself is about as stand-up as you can get in baseball. When I called Boston College Monday afternoon to talk to him about that hit, I couldn't. I'd called too late in the day, and he was out on the field at football practice, while simultaneously maintaining a high GPA and trying to graduate in four years, both required of Boston College athletes. The person I talked to in the Athletic Department told me that Johnny gave the ball he hit to his alma mater, for inclusion in its hall of fame.

Somehow that suggests a fatal lack of greed, or perhaps too much character of the kind that I am about to encourage Fort Myers elected officials to ignore. Johnny gave the ball away when it might have been worth thousands, if not much more.

When he hit it, every fan in the world collectively gasped. Then, as one, they thought, "$103 million for THIS? By God, I could have hit that ball, too."

They would have paid good money to prove it, too, and therein lies our chance. The City of Palms seems frequently on the brink of destitution, probably because we drink too much costly beer at City of Palms Park, which we paid too much for in the first place.

So what elected officials need to do - especially since the debt on the stadium remains in the millions - is create the annual Johnny Ayers Moment (JAM), a for-profit event that will end in the Johnny Ayers Reward (JAR).

As you can guess, that will be a chance to hit a ball off Dice-K, Curt Schilling or one of the boys - for a small fee, not too much more than a cup of beer, maybe $1,000 or so.

If Sox management will go along, and if the pitchers will agree to slow down their fastballs to about 10 miles per hour, this cashstrapped town can then pay off the stadium in a single four-week spring season, or two, because hundreds of thousands of fans will line up to become Johnny Ayers.

Just don't let Johnny know.

He's so stand-up that he might try to convince them to give the money to the poor, or something. Then the city would never underwrite the cost of beer at City of Palms Park, where this lovely week began.