Thursday, 30 October 2014

In Appalachian Foothills, a Howl for an M.V.P. and Native Son


HUDSON, N.C. — Just before midnight Wednesday, I walked up a darkened driveway to a brick home along a rural lane. A linebacker-size man with a shaved pate swung open the door, peered at me and loosed a soft, celebratory howl.
“Wooooooooooo.”
The man, Kevin Bumgarner, trundled back into his living room, waving at me to follow. He eased into his recliner, where he’d spent the last three hours in the highest of high anxiety, watching as the San Francisco Giants beat the Kansas City Royals and claimed the World Series title.
He had more than a normal rooting interest. His son, Madison, the best postseason pitcher on the planet, plays for the Giants. And on this night, Madison had pitched five innings and earned the save.
“I didn’t know if he had enough left tonight,” Kevin said. “But I did know that boy would try to steal a steak off the devil’s plate.”To Kevin’s left was his baseball shrine, centered on a big photograph of Madison making a fist to himself after getting a big out. On the television, Madison was accepting the World Series Most Valuable Player award.
A day earlier, I’d rolled up unannounced to this house, which lies somewhere to the east of Granite Falls, in the Appalachian foothills. It was just before the start of Game 6, and I began to jabber that I was a reporter too far from home and. ...
Kevin waved me in then as if he were expecting me. “I’m amazed you found us,” he said over his shoulder. “You ever seen so much of nothing?”
In the off-season, Madison lives with his wife, Ali, a few miles away, across Gunpowder Creek on a 140-acre farm in Dudley Shoals. (As a wedding gift, Madison gave Ali a cow.) He grew up in a log cabin that Kevin built with his own hands.
“Here’s the secret to living in a log house: You got to love the color brown,” Kevin said. “But you can hang a picture anywhere.”
The back roads here dip through wooded hollows and rise to offer vistas of the blue Appalachians. This is the area known still as Bumtown, and for a straightforward reason: The mailboxes offer a whole lot of Bumgarners.
There’s a Bumgarner Lane, a Bumgarner Oil and a Bumgarner Septic Tank. Walk into the Granite Falls town office, and a secretary is a Bumgarner.
A cemetery sits across the road from Kevin’s home, chockablock with tombstones. There are Clyde and Lula, Annie Mae and William Pinckney and Etta, Delia and Creed. Some lived for eight decades, others for only a few precious years.
All shared the surname Bumgarner.
The Bumgarners began arriving from southwest Germany a couple of hundred years ago. Just down the road from Kevin’s house was once a one-room Bumtown Elementary School.
“Not all the Bumgarners are cousins, but most are,” Kevin said. “It’s not like we’re inbred.” He gave a slantwise smile, looking out of the corner of his eye. “It’s not that bad.”
Earlier that day, I had driven by South Caldwell High School. This is where Madison came to flower, his Spartans winning the state championship. Coach Jeff Parham was in right field. He tends the field year round the way a gardener tends to prized hydrangeas.
Parham has cropped hair, muscular shoulders and the crow lines of a man who spends most afternoons in the sun.
The field, he said, has no cheap hits in it. It’s 341 feet down the line and 358 to center.
Today, Madison Bumgarner is known for a rocking chair motion, a 95-mile-per-hour fastball and a cutter that slides across the strike zone like a greased marble. But in high school, he was also a swatter, one of four batters known as the Bomb Crew.
“See that?” Parham said, pointing beyond the outfield fence. “Madison hit 10 home runs over that pole and those pine trees.”
He broke into a grin as he talked of that team. “Lots of people don’t like to hear this” — he leaned in as if to tell a delicious secret — “but Madison’s team, we had scuffles at practice. Fights! They were very competitive boys.
“And we had the big boy.”
Parham made a throwing motion. “Ssssss” — he made a sound like a 737 taking off — “pop! Ssssss-pop!”
Once, Bumgarner hit 97 m.p.h. in the seventh inning.
“I said, ‘That all you got?’ ” Parham recalled. “He put on his hat and looks at me and says, ‘No, sir.’ ”
Then he hit 98.
“The fire already was burning in that boy,” Parham said. “All you had to do was throw a little coal on.”
Ask where people go to watch games here, and you get the same answer: their favorite chair in their living room. Several towns around here are dry.
This is Madison Bumgarner country, which is to say San Francisco Giants rooting is required. In 18 interviews in three towns, I could not find a single fan of the Royals.
Which was how I ended up at Kevin’s house. He had his right knee wrapped in a black brace; he had twisted it in San Francisco, and it still felt as if he’d been shot.
Watching Game 6 did not make him feel better.
That night, Giants starter Jake Peavy struggled, his low-90s fastball arriving flat as a plywood board. Royals hitters ripped him. Kevin, who has worked as a manager for a warehouse, has umpired baseball games for decades. “Major leaguers’ll hit a .22 bullet if it travels straight,” he said.
Kevin acknowledged he could be tough on Madison. “First thing I mentioned after Sunday was, ‘Don’t forget you were 0 for 4,’ ” he said
On Sunday, as it happened, Madison had thrown a four-hit shutout.
Kevin nodded when I mentioned this and said: “I can be hard on him. I’m not proud of it. But he could hit better.”
During the season, Madison lives in a $5,000-a-month condo rental in San Francisco, with a view of the Bay Bridge. The day after the season ends, he hops a flight to Charlotte, N.C., and drives to Dudley Shoals. He has the farm with eight Black Angus cattle. He goes to Pancho Villa’s Mexican restaurant at least once a week. (He gave them an autographed Gigantes jersey that hangs over the door.)
“Last winter we were at dinner there,” Kevin said, “and someone says, ‘Hey, Madison!’ I figured it was autograph time. Then the guy says, ‘I hear you got a new horse!’ ”
Madison loved that.
Madison can be country taciturn. One day, his father called and asked if he wanted to catch lunch. “Something’s come up,” Madison replied.
“I said, ‘Well, congratulations,’ ” Kevin said. “I knew what was up.”
Madison and Ali were married that day. It was the two of them, the preacher, the preacher’s wife and a visiting missionary.
Where, I asked Kevin, did Madison get his name?
It turned out Kevin had been stumped. So he leafed through The Charlotte Observer. “I saw a headline saying the sheriff of Madison County was in trouble,” he said. “I said, ‘That’s it; I like that name Madison.’ ”
There was a moan from the kitchen, where Kevin’s wife, Tracy — Madison’s stepmother — was watching the game. Royals center fielder Lorenzo Cain had singled for a 4-0 Kansas City lead. Kevin sighed.
“That ain’t good; it’s over,” he said.
He was right. Game 6 was an avalanche; the Giants lost, 10-0. He walked me to the door. “I tell Madison, ‘Sometimes you’re the bug, and sometimes you’re the windshield,’ ” he said. “ ‘Sometimes you’re the pigeon, and sometimes you’re the statue.’ ”
He had agreed I could stop by and watch Game 7. A few hours before the game, however, he begged off. “I’m kinda nervous wreck,” he texted.
I showed up after the game. Kevin was near vibrating, having chewed bubble gum with a light beer chaser during the game. We talked baseball and pickup trucks. (Madison won a Chevrolet pickup as part of his M.V.P. award; his father said he already had so many, “I got hopes he might give that one to me.”)
Then Kevin pulled out his phone. He had texted Madison after the eighth inning, and he tried to read it to me. He began to choke up and just handed me the phone.
“OMG. You’re so much more than awesome,” Kevin had written to his son. “To see you work on the mound reminds me of watching you in high school. You are willing yourself to perfection and dragging the team along with you. I couldn’t be more proud of your baseball accomplishments.”
Kevin looked at me. “I knew he wouldn’t read that text before the game was over,” he said, “but I wanted him to know this was what his daddy thought of him.”
Correction: October 30, 2014
A home page photo caption on an earlier version of this article misstated the given name of the father of Madison Bumgarner. He is Kevin Bumgarner, not Michael Bumgarner.
An earlier version of the web summary with this article misstated when a text was sent by Kevin Bumgarner to Madison Bumgarner. It was sent during Game 7, not after the game.
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