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........................................| 19 This is the part he hates. The pressure on the mound? That comes with the job description. Going after the three toughest outs in the game as a closer? Brad Baker can deal with that. Hadn’t he proved it? He was recently named the 2004 Southern League (Double-A) Pitcher of the Year, going 2–1 with thirty saves and a 1.57 ERA; then he absolutely blew away hitters in the last month during his first ever call-up to Triple-A. That is why he is here in spring training in Peoria, Arizona, on a major league forty-man roster for the first time in his seven years as a pro.1 He can stand the heat. But having to perform at “Padre Idol” before a hooting crew of veterans? That is something else altogether. For a shy young man who loves to wait in a tree stand with his bow and arrow during the first snowfall, or sit for hours in an ice shack on the Harriman Reservoir in Vermont with his fishing line plunging through an augered hole, this is something to dread. Every night he calls his young wife, Ashley, back home in Massachusetts and pleads for advice about what to sing. Ultimately they settle on Big & Rich’s “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.” Feeling like an idiot, he goes over to WalMart and buys some boots, a cowboy hat, a flannel shirt, and a couple of plastic pistols. The next morning he heads to the ballpark, heart pounding. All things considered, he would much rather face Barry Bonds with the bases loaded. ● Bradley Donald Baker has an appealingly wholesome face. His thick brown eyebrows and long, almost delicate lashes guard hazel eyes that look earnest. His shy smile reveals prominent cheekbones and big, very white teeth. He is reserved, faintly uncomfortable in his skin, unfailingly polite. For the first few years of his professional career, he referred to reporters as “sir.” His first minor league pitching coach, Herm Starrette, once told him, “If I had a son, I’d like him to be like you. If I had a daughter, I’d want you to be the guy ringing the doorbell.” At first glance Brad’s story appears to have been torn from Norman Rockwell’s sketchbook. He grew up in the rural town of Leyden, Massachusetts , just below the Vermont border. Leyden has no stores or streetlights. 2 Can’t Miss Peoria, Arizona 20 | chapter 2 There is a cemetery with lichen-covered stones dating back to the early 1800s, a single covered bridge above the Green River, and, according to the 2000 census, 772 residents, 758 of them “White alone.” Three modest homes sit at the top of what the locals call Baker Hill, a plateau with views of more than thirty mountaintops in three states. At one end stands the home that Jim Baker built out of hardwoods from the adjacent forest. Jim and his wife, Vicki, raised three children here, Brad, Colby, and Jill. Fishing poles fill a bucket on the porch. The living room walls are lined with deer racks and a bear pelt, a black one with huge teeth. Brad felled the bear with a single shot at age thirteen. Across the large front lawn sits the home of Brad’s grandparents, Donald and Irene. Donald is a lifelong smoker, and he can be gruff when he drinks too much, but Brad has always sensed his softer side. Retired from his days working railroad construction, Donald now walks to his part-time job as a janitor at the Pearl Rhodes Elementary School, going down the hill by the pasture where he keeps Holsteins as pets. Irene is a devout woman, the mother hen, committed to her family, the Bible, and baseball. When she is not serving up her legendary pancake breakfasts, she is often following Brad’s career, clipping articles and tuning in to the webcast of games. Last August, when Brad got promoted to Triple-A in Portland, Oregon, the games wouldn’t start until 10 p.m. in the East, and since Brad is a closer, he typically wouldn’t come in until after midnight. Irene would root for a Portland lead in a close game, waiting for the magic words from Rich Burk on Sunny KKAD, 1550 on your AM dial: “Now warming up for the Beavers, Brad Baker.” That’s when she would take out her tape recorder. Between these two houses...

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