CHAPTER SEVEN
Previous Next TABLE OF CONTENTS
Constance awoke from where she was propped against Rap. An indentation creased her cheek where her face had rested against a fold in his shirt. Her eyes barely peered from beneath their covers. "Are we still here?" She mumbled from under her stupor. She teetered to a stand and said, "I think I'm going to bed."
Kidd said his goodnight, hoping she wasn't putting to rest the remainder of the evening. When she had first closed her eyes he had slumped down in the chair and slowed his breathing, thinking that any inhibitions existing in Rap would likewise take a little snooze. But if avowal was clothed in a different tone, Kidd never detected the costume change. Rap had continued, seeming to be driven only by Kidd's wide white orbs. As she shuffled out of the room, Kidd's eyes whined at her heels, appreciating her more once her absence became immediate.
Rap had ceased his dialoque. It occurred to Kidd that Connie might be the support that Rap dare not proceed without. Or perhaps she was as she said, the one to keep the tale on the telling and without her he would wander to far afield. As long as Rap continued to talk, Kidd's ignorance of Connie was a secondary concern. His energies were already extended in dealing with Rap. But the quiet scoured Kidd's thoughts until he became contented with the reflection that the two were indelibly linked, that her story was his. He recognized that in a period of greater contemplation he might recoil from such a position but in the deep dusk of the silent night the thought held a certain romantic appeal.
Kidd was well aware of the mixed feelings that accompanied the presence of a female. He knew how he felt when he was with one of his dates. He didn't shy from those impulses. Indeed, he welcomed them. But at other times he was confused and baffled. He thought of his neice who he had known since she was a baby crawling across his knees, then later coming to him as a playmate who could fix her world but not be protected from it. Her cuddling hands, little giggles, and direct teasing stares provoked sentiments that he could not fully understand and lacking a firm grasp on their identity he chose not to consider them while continuing to bask in the young girl's presence. But there was more. His neighbor was a woman several years his senior. During the last couple of years he had come to rely on her understanding of the complexities and intricacies surrounding personal relationships. To talk with her was like being in a world apart from everything else he had known. When his friends had been present as he exchanged greetings with her, they had ribbed him and given him advice about what he should do with her. Not that he hadn't considered the possibilities, but theirs was a relationship that he treasured for what it contained and perhaps, he thought, for what it did not.
Other feelings surfaced at other times and although they were seldom articulated well, their grasp surrounded him. A cousin of his had told him once in confidence: "When I paddle into the surf I don't want to see any girls in the lineup. They're alright on the beach, but not in the water. Maybe on small days they can come out and play around, that's alright, it's a free ocean. But on sizeable days I want only like-minded guys in the water. Guys who stand apart from others if for no other reason than their willingness to paddle out. It's different out there, almost quiet. I don't mean it's noisless. There's the snarl of the crest and the concussive blast of the break and the chatter of the glass and the turmoil in the globlets of water thrown from the fins. But sometimes in the trough of set waves you see nothing but the looming hill before you and hear your own working breath and the aching in your arms pulling just to get over and you feel the isolation that comes with the territory. I don't want to compromise that world."
Rap and Kidd sat in silence. Kidd feared venturing into Rap's meditative path even to prod the narration lest he obscure or eclipse Rap's line of vision.
It was Connie's voice that rattled off the wall, "Now you can tell him what your coaches use to say about women."
Rap suppressed a chuckle. He conspiratorially raised his eyebrows. "A woman will ruin a good ball player. You no doubt have heard the same advice passed along by one of your coaches as a great generational doctrine. When I was young it always struck me in the funny bone and I'd get the usual, 'What do you think is so amusing, maybe you'd like to tell the whole team?' In truth, I wanted to explain the futility of his caveat, it was like screaming 'he's going' after the runner was standing on second. Those of us who didn't understand his warnings sat mute not comprehending, those who understood sat silent dreaming and wishing for ruin.
"A drizzle was beading its way down onto the field and we were in the clubhouse waiting to see if the rain might let up enough to continue play. As the time passed, the liklihood grew that the field was going to be too mucked up to use and realizing we had a day off, we were letting our game faces slowly take on the big red noses of clowns.
"All things being equal, women have ruined more good ball players." It was the solemn pronouncement of our third base coach, the man we referred to as Tweedle-dum.
"What about the rest of us, coach?"
A voice from the back shouted, "In your case Gloverman, it couldn't hurt."
I breathed a loud, "Whew."
The coach continued, daunted, but willing to brave ahead.
"Look at Spermazoa there." Everyone turned towards Sperma and gave him the evil eye. "You know the team lawyer had to settle another eternity suit. Don't you have any moral rectumtude? Haven't you ever heard of love? You have to have responsibility. You can't just recreate all over the place. What are you going to do with the little buggers. You know they grow up and run wild in the streets of our municipelvities."
"Coach, I never sleep with anyone I'm not in love with."
The team found that somewhat amusing and in their low key way they were rattling the lockers and thundering the roof. But Spermazoa was my roomie and I knew he was basically a sincere guy and that he spent a number of nights with women who had an equal depth of sincerity even if it was somewhat temporal. As his face reddened and his fingers curled into his palms, he looked kind of uncomfortable and not at all like someone bragging about his conquests.
"Reminds me of a girl I use to know," I said.
Again everyone hooted, this time even Spermazoa. He was one of the premeire stars of the league and he attracted followers and local endorsements like fans on a hot afternoon to the beer line. He was fully aware that a close examination of his face brought many descriptions to the tongue, but not a one of them was "good looking" and this left him baffled by the attention. He had told me he couldn't buy a date in high school, and when he was in the early stages of his career he couldn't get a girl to give him an area code let alone a whole phone number. As he hit his stride it seemed his looks handsomed up at the same rate as his batting average and salary. This produced a curious pattern in his relationships. As soon as it crossed his mind that his date was more interested in the label than the grain of the wood, he dumped them. And the louder his name was pronounced around the league, the more conspicuous was the engraving of his autograph across the bat barrel.
The coach was still trying to press his message but as the locker room became more jocular, he threw up his hands in surrender and gave up further lecturing. He retired to the manager's office where he and the first base coach stuffed pizza in their mouth and argued like two sumo wrestlers stomach to stomach about which had more taste, a rare steak or one fully cooked. It was a debate that was carried on best with a full mouth.
Unlike the coaches, our locker room discussions had no limit except the wide breadth of our intellectual reach.
"Pussy. That's what all this wet weather reminds me of. Sweet, loving, moist pussy."
Willy leaned forward directly in front of him and scanned his face.
"What's with you?"
"You know," Willy said, "with that scraggly moustache and matching goatee and when you tilt your head like that, you kind of look like a snatch." Everyone was looking and agreeing.
"Well don't be getting any funny ideas."
"I wouldn't trust him. Where there's a hole, there's Willy's dick waiting to plug it."
"Yeh Willy, what's with you anyway? I thought you were married."
"I got married but I didn't get my dick shot off. And what's marriage good for, except to have someone to cheat on? Besides she's got the baby and that's what she wants and I've got mine, if you know what I mean?"
There was much clamouring and hullabaloo ringing off the ceiling but it was mixed in with some deep-lined eyebrows contemplating the sagacity in his maxim.
"There's some good things to say about marriage."
"Oh yeh?"
"But just right now I can't think of any."
Then everyone started razzing on Boffer, a notorious hustler, who had at least one girl in every town in which we played and was always on the lookout for more. When a pretty girl walked into the room his head seemed to raise like an antenae, his eyes got wide, his nostrils flared, and his mind focused only on the girl's form trying to pick up her signals.
"Look, I'm a religious man. God made all those beautiful temples for me to worship at: tall, short, slim, plump, and I have a candle that can set on all their altars."
"Oh boy. Let us pray."
Dick put in, "I don't know if I'd make a religious experience out of it but women are certainly a welcome diversion. I think without women I'd die."
"Or at least develop a large right arm from beating off."
Bob Boffer kept his watch on the coach's office as he spoke, "I'd like someone to fill me in on the Tweedles' daughters.
Nothing more than pronounced snickers were emitted until someone volunteered, "They don't have the same uncanny family resemblance as their fathers. They don't look like they're related at all. And they sure don't act like it." Those that knew agreed.
"Patty's the one you want to get to know. She's the friendly one. She can be real accomodating. Good ole Patty Partsweet."
"Yeh, she's like a goddam hotel, guys going in and out of her all night."
"And the other one?"
"Seems friendly enough when you talk to her but no way. She's welded together or some kind of lezbo."
"So no one goes out with her?"
A semblance of silence lingered and then vanished. "I wouldn't say that. Moorehead has guys sniffing round."
That was as far as the interrogative journeyed because the third base coach came back into the room. He picked us up where he left us off and began to shovel full the room with his advice.
"You young fellows need a stabalizing influence. You need a homely kind of life. Find yourself a good woman and take the bowels of matrimony."
Among the voices of protestations there was one in agreement. "All I know is that when I got married my batting average went up."
"Pretty hard to strike out with your wife, uh Mr. Schlong?"
"I'm more focused now that I'm settled. I'm not wasting my energy worrying about women. My career is hers and she contributes everything to its success."
"You're not wasting energy because you've got less of it to waste. Women take away your strength. Ask any boxer. They don't fool around before a fight. If you lie down with pussy you're gonna wake up purring."
"And if you go to sleep with elephants, you wake up squished."
"And if you go to sleep with fruits. You wake up with a hole in the seat of your underwear."
"Yeh and if you go to sleep with your wife, at least you can sleep soundly."
"Yeh, marriage is for safe sleepers."
"Alright, alright." the coach was having second
thoughts about triggering the onslaught of our wit and he held up his hands to stop its crawl. "You just remember, if you don't respect yourself, no one will. You should act like you've got the best two tickets in the house for the last game of the most exciting World Series ever played and one of the seats is up for bid. You're gonna want to command the highest price you can get. You should show some kind of class and not stand in the parking lot like some two-bit scalper and give away the ticket."
Lothario had a serious countenance smeared across his face. "I'm figuring we might get a greater return by selling a large number of regular season seats. There's only one real question and that's a marketing decision. Do we price our item so that we only need sell one or do we make our profit by turning a large number over? Of course dealing in quantity means we have to have a product that creates a demand. On the other hand there's something to be said for one of a ..."
"Jesus Christ, Lothario, shut up. Forget about the tickets. I'm sorry I brought it up."
Peter came in from the dugout. He was on a hitting streak and may have been the only one in the locker room that didn't want the day off. "I just saw their third baseman checking to see if it's still raining. Puddles all around, it's coming down good enough so you can see it, and what does he do? He sticks his hand out of the dugout to feel the rain."
"No one ever said you had to be smart to play baseball."
I heard Boffer next to me say, "Or have good taste. Have you ever seen his wife. Geez, a real bagger. She's so ugly I wouldn't screw her with your dick. I don't know what he sees in her but it sure ain't her beauty."
Tweedle-dee found his way into the room and told us the game was called and wanted to know who wanted to take him to lunch. The team dressed and straggled out of the clubhouse into the unexpected sunshine. The rain had let up and the clouds had burned off before a quarter of an hour had passed after the cancellation of the game.
Filing out with me was Youngpud. Youngpud was a young player filled with the potential of youth. He was in thought but it was near the surface and as we walked, I waited for it to slosh out of him. He broke the silence, "Rap, were you married when you first began playing ball?"
By the frown lines on his face, I guessed a smart-ass answer about being in the third grade when I started playing ball probably wasn't called for, so I answered him.
"Do you ever wonder if you hadn't been married how much better you might be. I mean, I come home and my wife doesn't understand the pressures of the game. She has no perspective. She only knows that the faucet is dripping."
"Explain to her that you're tired and call a plumber."
"That does no good. She wants to know why I expended all my energy at the game and none remains for her. How do you tell her that baseball is what you do and everything else comes later."
"There's always the off season."
"That's a real battle with us. She likes to ice skate and of course I don't dare.
"I can't even remember why I thought it would be a good idea to take her for my wife. We just seemed to become a hot item. I think I thought she was the prize of the county. That I couldn't find no better thing no matter what I became or how much money I had."
My words puffed in my cheeks. I couldn't free them, too afraid what they might reveal to him and to me.
He'd left something in his locker so he mercifully left me alone as he ran back, but before he went he said, "You know, I spent more time making sure I had a compatible roomie than I did in picking a wife. More time trying to figure where the lines were drawn. Less time assuming how those lines crossed."
Connie was out cruising through her errands and was going to drop by and pick me up. But she was not expecting the game to be cut short, so I had some time to dawdle with. I went into the stands.
"What are you doing up here? I almost didn't recognize you without your cap." The voice was coming up the aisle, "You played good second base today."
"Short," I mumbled. I finally recognized her as Youngpud's wife.
"Oh yeh, short. To tell you the truth, I can't spot anybody but my husband anyhow. He looked good today, didn't he?"
I couldn't very well deny it to her face, not that she would hear me, nor could I affirm it since he'd gone hitless. "I hope I haven't missed him. I had to take one of the kids to the bathroom so I hope he hasn't gone by me.
"I heard Wink is gone. I really liked his wife, I'm going to miss her in the stands. Such a shame, losing friends like that."
"I guess management feels we're a stronger team this way."
"The same thing happened last year with another player. We had just been through the season with them and then they're let go." Before she continued too far she was ready to defer to me. "I suppose you know better than I about these things."
I had nothing I could manage to say.
"I quess I have to be ready to follow my husband into the next town."
"Don't worry, he won't go anywhere this year."
"I hope not. I finally feel settled in our apartment. I'd better get going and find him. Say hello to Constance for me. Oh, by the way, I missed the last inning. We did win, didn't we?" she said as she headed away not seeming to really care about the answer.
I shook my head.
I had expected her to be none too bright and she hadn't disappointed me. Imagine not knowing the score.
Here she was talking about everything except the game. Small wonder Youngpud feared that his best years were being taken from him.
The stadium was dressed for a game that wasn't played and it looked like a table setting for a dinner date who didn't show. The mood was somewhat depressing so I got up and wandered through the parking lot gate and was unconsciously pulled towards a park containing baseball diamonds which were filled with the uniforms of little league kids.
Some people like to fish because you can do nothing and still be doing something. But, for me, that doing nothing was nothing compared to the doing nothing standing behind the plate protected by a backstop. I stayed to watch.
Maybe it was the wait for Connie or watching the fumbling play on the field that brought to the surface long submerged recollections. I leaned my palms against the fence and into my memory poured the games I use to watch Connie and her friends play. It wasn't exacty basketball, but it had a basketball in it. Connie was a forward so she was one of three on the team who was allowed to shoot the ball. Her other three non-shooting teammates stood on the other side of the halfcourt mark waiting to defend, no one was permitted to cross the half line. No player was allowed more than three dribbles so it took the whole team to move the ball. When the whistle blew a foul, the offender lowered her head and looked as though she was going to cry. A foul was a violation against the natural order of things.
They were goofy, giggling and covering their mouths, sighing collectively at bad plays, and heaping praise on good ones. I was somewhat in ire of their misunderstanding of the game. They made the game look silly.
Connie was a good shot but she refused to go to the hoop, passing the ball around to her teammates instead, and letting them put it up.
I tried to coach her from the sidelines but she only waved me off. I felt annoyed that she wouldn't take my advice, I mean I knew more than she about the game. Worse, after the game both teams were laughing and jubilant. Looking at them, I couldn't tell who won. This too rose my dander. They didn't seem to have an inkling of what the sport was about.
Slowly, I cleared the relics jogging with my remembrances. Through the chain link I fixed my stare at the two young teams.
"She's up again," I heard the voice look down its nose. Though they were behind me, I could clearly see the sneer cutting its diagonal path across the face.
"Didn't she just bat?"
To the plate came a young pre-teen girl. She carried the bat in both arms like a light burden, like she was lugging it to the plate. Something about her hair or the way her feet spread out when she walked but she didn't look like she was going to grow up to be anybody's wet dream. Or maybe it was her spastic ritual of pounding the plate. Of course you never know, but if she ever possessed the kind of haunting grace that grabs at a guy's eye, the emphasis would probably be heavy on the haunting.
Not so much the words as the underlying tone of her teammates taunted her, "C'mon Annie-fannie. Try to get a hit." They dragged out the "try".
The catcher had evidently been injured previously because he was shaking his hand.
"Ice is the best thing. It'll keep the swelling down," Annie said. "I know. I'm always jamming my fingers and I use it all the time." When the pitch came, Annie got the bat off her shoulder but it couldn't really be called getting the bat around on the pitch. More like getting it around on the inning. The catcher dropped the third strike.
"Run Annie-fannie. If you know how." The encouragement came from the bench.
"You can't tell me the softball teams aren't good enough for her, they've got some girls who are down right good girl athletes." One of the moms was commenting.
"I think she's just doing it to be different. The boys tell me she's always like that. Making a big deal out of all sorts of things everyone else lets pass. Kind of a showboat."
The reply was low in a confidential tone, "Well if you ask me, she's not got all that much to show."
They chortled together.
She wasn't the coach's kid or the two behind me would have said something. She obviously wasn't some kind of female protege. So why was she possessed to play boy's baseball?
I went to sit down on the edge of the bleachers. In front of me were two kids popping gum and dressed in their uniforms. It looked as though their game had ended and they had sat down to watch their friends play.
One kid was doing the talking for both of them. I could just overhear him between his blown gum. "The poor guys on her team. What good is it to be a ball player if girls are allowed to play? I don't want to see girls being able to get good. Who wants to be looking up to a girl, you know? Girls change things. You take something like oh, say a spelling bee. It's not that being a spelling bee champion isn't an honor, it's just not the kind of honor that follows your name around or gets you chosen first for a team. If a girl was to become an all-star, not that it could happen, but if it ever did, then being an all-star would be like being a spelling bee champion."
They were laying baseball cards down on the bench between them in some kind of order. What agreed upon order only they knew. "It's safer to leave certain people out. Remember last year when that team won because half our best guys were out sick. No one took their trophy away. Matter of fact the newspaper didn't even mention it." The two tussled over which pile a particular card belonged. "That's just the breaks, the way things are."
The kid didn't have to say more. I heard it again anyway, "And that's why girls shouldn't be on the field with boys." I looked around to make sure I hadn't said it aloud. I knew what the kid was talking about. If there was a way of keeping out any particular group of people, I'd sign the petition and help finger them. I just didn't need the competition. All that passed gas about the best wanting to play the best. Like the kid said, when you win the World Series there's no asterisk in the record books that says the other guy's team was bandaged and hurting or that their star pitcher had been arrested for income tax evasion. There's no asterisk for all those years before Robinson when the old cats played in the Negro league with no hope of reaching the big money. When if they were real good boys, they'd get a pre-season chance of playing the rich white kids in some exhibition. And then they'd have to decide which had the greater price, winning or losing, one moment's glory or continued contact.
Annie's teammates swaggered onto the field in a pack, hitting each other with their hats. Annie didn't follow her team onto the field. She sat on the bench alone looking very content and organizing the bats. She was undoubtedly use to, or at least resigned to, her role as the lowest down chicken in the coop. At school she was probably the one dropping her books and chasing after her papers blowing through the hall. Sneers pecked at her name. Even among the girls, she probably did not go high in a P.E. draft of talent.
Clutzing through most people's early years is someone who held the world by different handles than the rest of us. A guy in our school was named Finkle. Frank Finkle had a way of laughing that made the birds drop from the sky. But that wasn't what made him a sore thumb. He talked like he had graduated from Harvard but even the teachers found him to be an obnoxious pain. I suppose he wasn't that much more uncoordinated than the most uncoordinated guys in the class but he wore his pants so high he had to unzip his fly to blow his nose. But that guy knew how to hold ground. Maybe it was the years being chest high against the current with the undertow pulling his feet out from under him, but he could stand still in a hurricane that was spittin' half the damn ocean in his face. The school had a rule that all Seniors en masse had to rise and deliver the school song once a week in their homeroom. Probably so at graduation we didn't look like a flock of moron baby birds with our mouths open waiting for dinner. Sometime after the first semester, he quit getting to his feet. Needless to say he wasn't making no kind of musical notes either. Not that he was disrupting the occasion. That would have been easy to take care of. He just wasn't participating. The teacher sensed a breakdown in authority and a breakdown in authority meant that knowledge and culture were out of their rightful place. A danger like that could not go unprovoked. They brought in the big guns. But ol' Frank knew their limits better than they did. They could beat their chest, pontificate, and threaten but they weren't about to push it into Federal Court and leave themselves out on a limb of ridicule with pruning shears in the judges hand. They had a lot more foliage to lose than did little old Frank. So their salvos bounced off him like pepples off a tank. The rabid meatheads of the class had already worked him over and pushed him around. When the authorities punished the whole class it brought out all the rest of the muscle-bound brains. But still Frank Finkle stuck his toes in the sand and grabbed on. In the end, none of us had to sing that stupid song anymore than a few practice rounds right before graduation. And when the class advisor came up with the idea of having the Seniors all recite some tubercular ode to our school it stayed as just an idea. That old Frank Finkle, I couldn't help but wonder what he was currently dug in and holding against.
Annie lined the bats up by size and picked up stray pieces of old lineup cards. Her teammates came in to the dugout and she moved to the end of the bench seldom engaging in any real conversation with the others but there nonetheless. And when they grabbed their fielder's mitts again, she meticulously restacked the bats. While her teammates spent a good deal of the time comparing their sameness, she wore her difference the way a dog carries its prize toy in its mouth, head high and prancing, it may be nothing more than an old sock, but it's his. She could have sat on the bench cheering the fielders, praising her fellow hitters or otherwise ingratiating herself into her teammate's hearts. But she could no more do that than bat a thousand.
She came to the plate as the first batter in the last inning. The game was tied.
"Does she have to be up?" the whine came from the bench.
I knew how he felt. The game was on the line, about to be lost and by a girl. Someone who shouldn't even be on the team to begin with. It was worse than losing a game because an umpire blows a call. At least the ump is a legitimate part of the game.
She turned towards the speaker, then as she moved again to the plate she caught me in her eyes. She had heard what I thought and it was I who turned away from her withering stare. She was going to the plate because it was her turn. The score, it was meaningless next to that resounding truth. It was her turn. Someone had decreed that she could have a turn and she was taking it. And if they hadn't made their decree, she probably would have camped outside their door till they'd do anything to get rid of her. She was undoubtedly kind of a pain in that regards.
I watched her pound the plate again with her bat. What I had taken for a besieging ritual may just as well have been a challenge. She may have looked goofy, she may have looked like she was just there asking all the fellows to take pity on her, but when she pounded that plate she was telling them that she was demanding that they pitch to her. That like it or not she was taking her strikes.
"You know the rules," the words pried out of the coach directed towards his already cowed player.
"But we want to win this game," another little voice said.
The thin tight draw of the coach's lips stared out in agreement.
Previously, during the course of a good catch by the center fielder I had struck up a conversation with the man sitting next to me. He'd asked me which kid was mine and I found out the center fielder was his. He was filled with fatherly pride and it got him into talking with me.
"Does every kid have to play?"
"At least bat. Every kid has to be in the lineup. It's not a bad rule for kids. It makes sure everyone gets a chance. Although chances are kind of relative. The more relatives the better the chances. And chances don't prevent anyone from playing, they just may not play as much. Of course, in practice anything can happen. There was a kid lived on our block when I was growing up whose father hit fungos to him almost everyday after school. Taught him how to get down on a grounder and how to hit from both sides of the plate. For years he was the best ball player anyone had ever seen. Probably would have grown up to be a great player if his father hadn't also taught him how to hate the game.
"I remember when I was young my best friend had to run home and play the violin almost everyday after school. Funny thing is, he was a natural athlete. Not big or anything but real quick. But I guess violin lessons have their good points as well as their bad. On the one hand he got to learn how to play the violin, on the other hand he had to learn how to play the violin.
"Then there's these two brothers that my oldest boy knows. They're about a year apart and seem always to be together. One's all-state and the other has never been able to hit his weight. My boy says that the same guys who tell the players who live on the wrong street that no one gets special treatment and they have to wait their turn, make sure the all-stater's brother has a place on the field."
My ear was hanging pretty low. I'd only asked him about mandatory playing time. And then just as suddenly as his monologue had gushed out, it turned off. I wasn't sure if I was suppose to comment or not but it seemed more natural to let the common bond of the game take its hold. So by the time the girl came to the plate we were both watching in silence.
As she waited for the pitch I watched the restless resignation of her teammates on the bench. They wanted the game. And only she stood in their way. Looking at her they heard their mother's voice telling them they couldn't do something they knew would be really fun. I could see them thinking, "That's why we didn't want girls to play."
But she didn't hear them. She was in a grip at the plate. Locking the muscles of the legs and back was not the best way for a batter to approach a pitched ball but in her case it wasn't going to be technique striking out at the ball, so maybe intensity could knock it out of the infield. At least she wasn't standing on the plate like the six year olds demanding that they get a pass to first. She was taking her chance. She quickly missed her first one.
If at first you don't succeed ... I, along with every other grown-up in the stands knew what followed. If at first you don't succeed, there's probably a good reason for it and you will undoubtedly continue to fail. The second pitch came down the pipe and she lifted the bat off her shoulder. There wasn't thunder. There wasn't an ear-shattering reverberation. There was only a dull thud. But she'd found cowhide. The ball trickled down the line and by the time the third baseman got to it she was standing on the first base sack. I hadn't even noticed that I'd stopped exhaling.
The way she stood with both feet squarely planted in the center of the bag announced to anyone watching that she was standing on foreign territory. The first base coach clapped his hands once and started into fixing her cap, stuffing her hair under it. It wasn't just Annie. He made sure every player on the team wore their uniform with the same degree of correctness. He was fastidious about the way they appeared but he seldom exerted much control over their base running. If they wanted to steal, he let them steal. They tagged up on their own volition. In short, apart from reminding them the number down, he left them to their own devices as long as they looked the way he wanted. The first base coach reasoned that if his players all looked the same and all used the same equipment, then they all had an equal chance of ending up in scoring position. At most, he was no more than a short walk from many of the coaches I had come across. Never mind that anyone who had ever seen two players on the field at the same time knew that the reasoning was stuck out in right field with its finger in its nose.
As play would have it, Annie didn't need anything more than the path to run on. The batter following hit behind her to the first baseman and his only play was to run to the bag for the out.
She stood on second, in the middle of the opposition, alone. Second base is the highest point on a baseball diamond. The player standing on second commands respect. Annie stood on second, a threat, in scoring position. A single brings her home. A long fly to right, to third. The coaches cup their hands and run down the litany of responses. "Okay Annie, now, one down. Tag up on a fly. Take a lead off and watch the play, now. If a grounder goes through the infield, now, you run down to third."
But the best thing about being on second was that the choice to run is the players. Too far away for the coach to make immediate demands. The third base coach can't very well yell, "Steal on the next pitch!" So you're out on your own. And this evidently put Annie's third base coach in a fit of discomfort, pacing and hitching his pants and scratching his arms like crazy. He wanted to be right in her ear commenting and evaluating. He didn't want her to twitch without a go-ahead sign from him, undoubtedly more disconcerted by the way Annie paid little regard to him as she surveyed the field. He'd call for her attention. She'd look, then turn back towards the pitcher till he finally got the hint that it didn't matter what he said. The only real conversation was between the pitcher, the catcher, the batter, and Annie. This realization only made him squirm more. He was afraid she was going to take off on the first pitch and be easily thrown out and blow their chance to win.
The first pitch to the batter scuffed the dirt and it careened off the catcher's shin guard. He was up throwing off his mask and thrusting his nose to the ground like a hound on the scent of an escapee. Running on a passed ball that doesn't go back to the backstop is a tricky proposition. "Run," screams from the bleachers and the bench. The legs tug at their restraints. But the arm is mightier than the leg and if the catcher comes up with the ball quick enough, he'll throw a runner out, especially one going to third. However, if the runner hesitates until the catcher spots the ball, then the runner trembles like a scaredy cat spooked by its own shadow and too afraid to make a break for it and the opportunity to advance is lost. Annie was on third by the time the catcher had grasped the ball in his hand.
She dusted the dirt off her thighs and her arms and stuck her helmet back on her head. Her hair sprouted from under the hat. The third base coach wasn't overly concerned with the way she looked. But he was nonetheless making it clear that he was in charge and that she was to follow his directions. He drove home his points by grabbing the bill of Annie's cap and forcing her to look directly into his face. Coaches believe that a look into the whites of their eyes imparts wisdom. As if the viewer couldn't see the glow enraptured with power.
Annie eyed the pitcher and took the lead off the base. The pitch came in and the batter swung, too early. The ball squibbed off the bat spinning recklessly out between the pitcher and the catcher. Annie dutifully waited off the base calculating the direction of the play. The catcher moved from behind the plate to barehand the ball. Either the sight of the unprotected plate triggered Annie to run, or the coach saw the opening and pushed her forward. She came down the line and the catcher turned his attention away from the batter towards her. "Slide" was ricocheting through the air. But Annie didn't slide. She came into the barehand tag standing up. Into the hand that held the ball, the same hand that she'd recommended ice to heal. The weight of her legs banged against the fingers and the ball dropped to the dirt.
Annie had become part of the team. Her teammates were cheering her performance and congratulating themselves on the victory. Of course the base coaches were still upset that their commands were not heeded. They were mumbling that she should have hit the dirt.
"Yeh, she scored, luckily. But she didn't do it like she should have, like I told her." The coaches had come from the right and the left to join the manager in the dugout while their team celebrated in the infield.
The manager said, "She scored didn't she? That's all I care about this afternoon."
"That's not the point. We're here to teach these kids how to play the game correctly. How are they going to learn, if we don't make them perform as we tell them?"
"When they take away the scoreboard, I'll worry only about how they play. Till then ..." he shrugged and tried to look past the coaches.
The topic wasn't going away. "What good does it do if they don't learn baseball? That's our function here: To make baseball players out of these kids."
The manager finally pushed past them, "Okay ,okay, we'll work on it in practice."
Annie for her part seemed overwhelmed by the sudden attention and her face bashfully beamed out from below her skewed cap. Only briefly did she go behind a cloud. Briefly, when she drifted her look back to the catcher. Maybe she intuited the ribbing he was going to take. Not just because he lost the game. But he lost the game to a girl and in a muscle-play at that. Maybe what I saw was not an eclipse, maybe another look that didn't wear well on her.
And maybe it was only the residue of the moisture left from the rain but a brisk chill yawned and stretched out across my spine, settling in. My coaches had all been wrong. It wasn't women, anymore than anyone else, who posed a threat.