CHAPTER EIGHT

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"C'mon boys, let's get to work. And you Gloverman. Son, this is just what I goddamn mean. You're suppose to be warming up. Instead you're standing around shooting the shit." The coach was making tracks towards us like a bird towards bread crumbs and his voice came out in a shrill caw. "You've got no fucking focus and without fucking focus you've got no goddamn dedication. You've got to be willing to go all the way, to run it out. There's only one way down the baseline. You can't go half-assed. You can't go part way down the line and then decide it isn't for you. You have to go all the way."

There was no denying I was not legging anything out, only moving with extreme caution.

He wasn't yelling as much as scolding. But I was use to it. I was like a wayward child to him. He thought he had to guide me for my own good. "This is typical. You're not set for the game. You have no eye out for the win. You're too busy farting around."

Guiness attempted to slow him down, "Coach, he's helping me find my..."

The coach's right foot punctuated his arrival with a slight but resonant crackle.

"... my contact lens."

Pinball, from his position on his knees with his nose in the grass, said, "Rap, as the coach so exemplifies put your head down, work your ass off, and you can't help but fall forward."

The coach had made a frontal assault on the contact lens but his verbal tirade had managed to outflank the truth. I had lost my ability to see. Not like the coach thought. During the course of a season the ball comes across the plate in varying sizes. Sometimes it only appears, if it can be seen at all, as an interruption of the background color like a single momentary dot of snow on a TV screen. The picture blinks and you've got a strike called. I had hit a stride where I had turned into a telescope lense. The ball seemed to float across the plate big as a fat ripe melon. I couldn't miss it with my eyes closed. And in the field it was the same. The hitters stayed away from my side of the infield. I was like some kind of a black hole where all matter disappeared if it got within my pull. Still, I wasn't seeing.

And I wasn't the only one. Guiness was about to have trouble finding the stadium while standing in the middle of it. He had a string of consecutive errorless games as long as a rosary and he had taken to fingering each inning like he was saying a novena. Three outs, three prayers muttered, and one inning slipped between the fingertips until the collective beads added up to one record that is salvation for an otherwise lackluster career. Guiness had found a way to sneak up on immortal greatness. As soon as his presence became official in a game, he asked for a sub to take his place so he could cut his chances for an error but still record the game as played and keep his streak breathing.

Having only one eye cocked towards home was bound to give a guy standing in left field a perspective at least slightly askew if not downright warped. We watched Guiness squint, blink, and stare fixedly trying to resuscitate his vision. Probably fearing the loss of his good eye, he retired to the dugout for a rest.

"What a great year he's having. You know a Golden Glove is something nobody can take away from you."

Something about Fleetleg brought out my most argumentative self. "Who'd want to take it away, Fleetleg?"

"You know what I mean. It's yours and no one elses. When you get a Golden Glove it's because you're the best fielder at your position and no other reason. It's yours alone."

"God, you ever watch what goes on in the field. Digs positions him perfectly. And look who's standing next to him in center. He probably covers more ground than anyone else in the league."

I was picking up some added help, although I was not entirely sure I wanted everyone convinced that it wasn't individual effort that made a great fielder. Hawk had joined me, "And Rap at short stops anything that's below a ten foot ceiling. And if our pitching was taking him back to the warning track every other hit he'd lose that record pretty damn quick. And I'm not saying I agree, but I heard some talk that he came up awfully short last night on that loop in the seventh."

"Who's spewing that garbage?" No one was giving names. "All I'm saying is that if everyone on the team fielded as well, we'd be a hell of a lot better off." He traced the same path as Guiness when he walked back to the dugout and sat beside him. He wanted to be near that record and I knew how he felt.

If Guiness broke the streak, we'd all be dancing onto the field in celebration of the triumph, coming back into the dugout full of the vigor of our renewed faith in the strength of success. No matter the circumstances of the play. Like Pinball said, "What, they're gonna spell his name wrong just because he didn't play a full game? That's the lesson. If you get into the book, you get the rep."

So we eventually all strolled over to where Guiness sat and inquired about the condition of his vision. Not that he needed both eyes to keep track of his stats. He knew his numbers cold and he knew how they lined up in relation to the rest of us.

I saw Guiness make a quick check of the team's box seats. I knew who he was looking for. That was where the General Manager sat. He frequently arrived late or left early. So one inning you might look and the seat would be empty, the next, there he sat staring out at us. And we always gave a look back. And we always fretted about what he was making his marks over, although for all we knew it could be a crossword puzzle. He had a perennial baby-face that once dropped years from his real age but now made him look like a man with a secret sexual burden very near being unloaded.

Guiness wanted his record and he wanted it before the home crowd and before the GM. I could see Guiness's eyes moving like beads on an abacus calculating the value of his errorless innings. He'd have to face the GM to renew his contract before next season. The GM was no slouch at getting ball players to put their marks on pacts that seemed good at the time. He had begun as a player, worked as a coach, then a scout, and finally been promoted upstairs. His earlier contact with the working stiffs of the league had not tainted him with empathy for their plight. Instead, he had acquired the ability to turn a phrase and to make sure that the turn was in his direction. That skill coupled with his knowledge of the fears and vunerabilities of ball players made him an almost invincible adversary. One who could play the numbers for all their worth.

To Guiness's credit he had learned to parlay those numbers right back at the GM. Guiness could dress his personal statistics in the most seductive gown. Even if you knew better, you'd begin to believe he should be credited with all our wins. While most ball players were waiting to capitalize on one extraordinary season, either by the team with a World Series payoff, or individually with a dramatic salary boost, he had been steadily compounding his stock until he was one of the highest and most overpaid talents in the league.

Guiness's clutch for his record and his share of loot, came at a time when the team was slipping in the standings, not a dramatic plunge or a plummet, more like a drifting spiral the way a sheet of paper falls from the top tier, slow and hanging in mid-air, then free-falling until it catches and hangs again only to fall again. We were still near the top and still contending but losing ground, fast.

Digs's mood seemed to sour with each passing loss like a too-ripe lemon. To make matters worse, Tim Zites was umping our game. Digs hated Tim Zites or Dim Sights as he called him. And Dim Sights seemed to have a place to where Digs made him retreat, a cold frightened forest of biting anger. Digs had made his preparation for the game. His tin cup with pencils was placed prominently on the top of the dugout. A red-tipped white cane was resting on the top step. Legend had it that in a previous year he had handed Dim Sights his lineup card printed in Braille.

The coach walked along the bench. "Character, that's what it's all about."

"He wants character, I'll give him Elmer Fudd, the silwy coach," Pinball whispered on the sly.

Digs quit speaking and Pinball straightened with attentiveness as the GM poked his head in the dugout and forced his way past the coach's point. "We need productivity today. You all know I can be very generous to those of you who produce. I don't believe in incentives because winning should be incentive enough. But let's face it, there's only so much contract money to go around and in a competitive situation it goes to the highest bidder and the highest bidder is the one who performs."

After he'd slipped out again, Pinball whispered, "Why doesn't he put some of the money back into the stadium? It's falling to pieces." He scrambled some of the loose cement on the dugout floor with his cleat. "The organization is coming apart from the ground up. The farm system is in shambles, we haven't had a pitcher come up in a decade."

"Maybe he's got to go with those who are going to pay the bills and let the rest pick up what they can from what's left over." I wanted to try for some balance. But it was hard not to notice that the neighborhood kids outside the park hustling tickets were more numerous and looking hungrier and more desperate. "It's his money, I quess he can do with it what he wants."

The coach stood over us. "You two want to add something?"

We shut tight our lips in answer.

Deep down I got irked. The coach shuts up for the big man, we shut up for the coach. Someone was always standing over you commanding a shut-up. And it never ended, not even in the bigs.

"I thought not. You think these people come here to see you screwing around? They come here to see baseball; the best baseball in the world. They come here to see us win."

I didn't have to look up into the stands to see what the coach was talking about. I knew they were filing into the stadium finding their seats by their ticket stubs. I knew their faces. They brought their kids to participate in the same ritual that they had participated in. And they looked onto the field expectantly. They were there to watch us prove the worth of the home team. We were to paint the grass a bright green and the sky bright blue and our faces bright bright and let the victory shake hands with all our rooters and walk right into even the cheap seats and drive home with them in the backseat of their car.

"This game means something to those people. They believe in it. They believe in us and what we represent. And it's your job to give it to them. That's what you're paid for. Don't forget it."

After the coach had moved to the other end of the dugout and I had lifted my head I turned in the direction of the heavy sobs I was hearing. "Kind of chokes you right up, doesn't it."

I knew the coach was right even if I had to grab my glove and move onto the field to prevent him from seeing me almost spit out my fillings laughing. You had to play hard to maintain your position. That's what separates the bigs from the minors. There's always plenty of talent around. Guys who can hit the long ball, throw hard, and have lots of speed. The difference is that up in the bigs everyone plays at a full tilt fierceness. Their so quick no one even sees the reaction, their just there on the ball. So it looks almost easy. What no one sees is the torqued up bundle of nerves that tightens inside the gut every instant of play. For every thrust of the ball, a guy has run over a myriad of possibilities in his mind.

As we moved the ball around the horn, Hawk, the third baseman asked, "Did you see the notice about the new cops in the parking lot? Yeh, they're beefing up security." I took a grounder from the first baseman and pitched it back at him. "That's a good thing if you ask me. Without those guys all hell would break loose. As it is we've got too many scumbags roaming out in the lot. There's so many of them that sooner or later your number comes up and your car gets broken into."

The pitcher was taking the last of his warm-ups and

I looked on, counting his pitches and thinking. Set off by the quest for the record or by Hawk's last remark I thought about the game. It's a game of numbers, of multiple strikes, of multiple outs, of averages and percentages, of constant counting. A game in which the numbers can pile up and obscure the possibilities. A team can be so far back in the late innings that all reasonableness says head for the exits. Yet it's also a game that ain't over till the last one's in the glove. A game that ain't over as long as there's one left because everyone knows it only takes one. One from any source even the least likely. A pitcher can take a lead into the ninth and watch it run away right over the fence. A team can watch an insurmountable lead evaporate. While coaches calculate how to pitch to the top of the lineup, they get beat by the last man in the order. It's the player who's undistinquished during the season who is the hero of the Series. You can play by the numbers, but you only get from them what they're worth.

And as Guiness learned, consecutive numbers can be the hardest to come by. The game began with an attempted bunt caught for an out and a pitch that the batter watched go by for a strikeout. The third batter connected with the ball. On any other day it would have been a routine fly ball. Guiness pounded the pocket in his glove trying to get a fix on it. He was still pounding his glove as it plopped two feet to his right. His scrambled legs betrayed the confusion in his mind. He had just heard his chance for immortality thud a few steps beyond his reach yet his mind was being tortuously pulled between the despair of his loss and the hope that the event would not have to run its most likely course. His denial ran through the alternative scenarios; that the runner would slip and the play be made at first, that the ump would call "no pitch", that no one in the park saw the ball land and if he returned it quick enough it wouldn't be missed. Perhaps that explains the throw.

Guiness picked up the ball. He whirled. He fired a perfect strike to the center fielder who was still standing in his position squarely in the middle of center. The center fielder is not usually considered to be the cut-off man on a fly ball to left.

At the end of the inning, the coach was on the steps shaking his head, "Too bad Guiness. You gave it a good run, but let's face it, that last play was not the stuff records are made from."

The dugout was appropriately sympathetic. Our right fielder sent out his condolences, "If the runner heads for home and you've got the ball, be sure when you make your throw to me it lands to my left because I want to be able to turn and put the ball into the bullpen." In deference to Guiness most of us looked away or bit our lip to keep away the tears.

Guiness took his seat on the end of the bench and pointed his eyes down and rested his head in his hands and saw what everyone sees. He saw the funeral procession running past his eyes and smelled the dust turning to dust. It's a fine line between success and failure and when you cross to the wrong side, it could be over for you. And if it's over for you, then who's going to take your place. The team would be in serious jeoprady and with the team pitched over the edge what would happen to the league and without the league, baseball was through and as baseball goes, so goes the country and what kind of world would this be without the force of this great country. Too much hung in the balance. Small wonder the stress ran along the ridges of the veins in his hands. He couldn't look up to see the ball skip its crazy path and above that, where the overhang of the dugout obscured, the clouds push each other across an easel blue sky.

It was Canchardt who started things. A pitch came in tight and he had to jump out of the way. No one could really believe the pitcher was throwing at him. Canchardt had been in a month long slump and he was hitting somewhere around .200. But that didn't stop him from charging the mound.

"Hey, they're ganging up on him," the coach hardly needed to prod but he did anyway as our guys flew out of the dugout. He grabbed me and pulled me to my feet. "What the hell are you doing? You don't believe in supporting your team?" He was behind me pushing. One of their team charged like a rhino at me. I sidestepped and the coach ended up with a dance partner. Two back till the coach caught his balance, then one up. I can't say I was too disappointed that the rhino had decided to cut in. I was left free to survey the carnage.

Slowly, I meandered along the perimeters of the brawl taking in the grotesqueness. Faces were in gargoyle friezes. Fists seemed to be beating at the sky. Players were pulled out of the fray only to jump back in. I had no plan to join in. But I had no plan to stay out.

"Put up your dukes and prepare to take a drubbing," I didn't recognize him as friend but the way he had his fists straight out like an old bare knuckler didn't exactly announce him as foe, at least not a formidable one. Since his expression was one of general amusement I felt it safe to hold my ground. "They told me to go out and get a piece of someone. I don't suppose I could borrow an ear off of you just so the fellas would know I'm of the warrior class."

"Sure, you can have an ear. And it would seem you could use an extra pair if you've been listening to crap like that. Let me get us suitable weapons and we can have it out properly." Before he could call me back and tell me he had no intention of having it out with anyone either properly or improperly, I slipped towards the sideline.

Standing on the bottom step at field level was a souvenir vendor. Along with the rest of the fans he too was yelling for blood. Blood is a good thing to yell for at a baseball brawl because it's very unlikely you'll see any. Mostly it's just arms and torsos being hurled at each other. Still, the thirst for blood is no less than at greater battles. "I need a weapon."

He was making ready an array of impressive weaponry. "Take one of these autographed wooden bats. Their miniature but you could still get a good shot in with it. Or how about one of these? It's spring-loaded." He smacked it against his palm. "Whoa, hold on, I've got an idea. Take one of these pennants and wrap a frozen malt inside it and it would be like a hammer. Or maybe we can get the peanut man to give us ammunition for a sling shot and we could use these straps on the carrying case."

I reached into the vendor's basket and pulled out a blow-up plastic bat. "This will do nicely."

He was not impressed with my choice. "That's not going to do much damage."

I ran back to my adversary. "Okay, stand still." I swung the plastic bat at his head. He listened to his natural reaction before he listened to me. So he ducked. I took aim again and again he ducked. After a couple of tries we developed a routine. I swung, he ducked, and the bat wrapped around and wholloped me alongside the head. Then I shook it off and took aim again only to repeat the pantomime. If his teammates hadn't escorted him away when everyone had grown weary of the feud, there was no telling what seriousness I'd have done.

"Is that what you call support, Gloverman?" The coach stuck his chin in my face like his snozz was challenging mine to a wrestle-off. He was flushed with battle and menacing in his erratic movement. He flexed his earnestness so I wouldn't miss the point. "You're letting me down. You're letting the team down. And you're letting the game down. What do you imagine the other team thinks when they see you on the sidelines playing with yourself?" I couldn't imagine. "They think we've lost our will to fight. And you know what that does to them? It makes them fight harder." He was losing steam and beginning to calm. I wanted to look away but he was so damn close my eyes had nowhere to go. "Look son, I don't like this part of the game either but you've got to end it fast once it begins." He lowered his voice and I strained to try and detect any malice in its tone. "Four for four means nothing to me, if we lose. You should know by now that your numbers are not all there is to this game. Without your heart and soul you'll never be a winner and you'll never play on a winner. And this team intends to be a winner. You got me?" It was no use faulting the coach he just wanted to pull me back into the family. He knew that anyone with a name like mine had blood that coarsed baseball. And this made me, in his eyes, a part of his family. And he wasn't about to lose one of his own.

My head shook "yes" with as much conviction as I could muster. I wanted to get back to the bench because I felt funny standing out there in front of the other guys. It was like being in a police lineup as an extra, you know you didn't do it but it's hard to be that free from guilt to bring the proper level of sincere innocence to the role.

I squeezed into the first gap where the color of the bench showed through and felt the change that had settled into the guys. A hostility pointed out towards the field while the dugout pulsed with a renewed sense of camaraderie. I was left to myself, overlooked as my teammates giddily re-enacted details of the fight. I preferred sitting silent inside the dugout to standing alone outside so I said nothing. But I seethed underneath my quiet. After a fight the game takes on a different perspective, sometimes bitter, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes hostile, sometimes just tense, but always different. And in the rarefied air after the fight, the focus into which the game came changed. And the change made all the difference. Outs didn't matter. Hits didn't matter. The score didn't matter. All that seemed to matter was that the team was not going to "take shit from anyone".

So when the coach said something as innocuous as, "Boys, go get 'em," I ruminated over it. I wasn't his boy. I wasn't anybody's boy. All of us were past the age of boys. And we weren't going to capture the other team and bring them home as slaves. They weren't ever going to be ours no matter what we did. He was clouding up the game. Everyone was clouding up the game. The game was to play baseball better than anyone had ever played it before. I wanted to make my team see that. I wanted to make the other team see that. I wanted to make the people in the stands see that.

I took my place between second and first. The ball popped up high and just foul. Towards the top tier in the stadium the ball headed and I followed it behind third base where I loudly called for the play. I heard my name in response signalling that it was mine. Then I lost it. Funny thing about playing a ball in the sun, if you look straight at it right up into the brightness, you can't see a damn thing. If you get an angle on it and don't go at it face on, you can track the shadow deep into the piercing light, but if you lose it just once, even for the fraction of a second it takes to bat an eyelid, you can't bring it back again into focus. The ball climbed into the sun and stayed there and I couldn't bring it out again even as I sensed its fall.

As I looked up blindly in an already altered state of mind from the aftermath of the previous battle, my normal thought patterns must have been in hysterics. No doubt they saw themselves aboard a sinking Lusitania torpedoed by absurdity. So all but the most brave or most idiodic were abandoning ship and of those that remained, I'm not sure which of the two groups was in command. I knew the ball would come down and I knew about where. And I knew what it would look like to me as it did, not a ball, but brown fuzzy spots before my eyes and me grabbing at as many as I could hoping to get the one with substance while that one with substance dropped out of my reach. Had I sensed the third baseman near me, I might have yelled something and had him take the ball. Instead, working in a situation already scrambled in its happenings I seemed to have decided that a possible remedy was to scramble the execution. Since I knew I wasn't going to bring the ball in with a routine catch, it seemed an extraordinary try was in order. I backed off from where I thought I saw the last fading blur of ball, stuck my arm around my back and pointed my hip at the sky. A catch like this, around the back, although an acquired skill, is not that daring or difficult. On every young team there are at least a couple of guys who have trick catches up their sleeves or in their hip pocket as the case may be. Proficiency is not hard to master. It was a skill that I had plenty of practice at even if that practice was stale and filled with cobwebs. I'd like to think that somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind was the thought that by pulling this old trick off I'd fire the gloves in the rest of the players and renew their interest in the skills of the game. I was wrong. Of course, if I had actually caught the ball, perhaps things might have been different. I picked up the ball near the retaining wall along third base.

Before the crowd had a chance to cat-call and boo, as I was still bending over to pick up the ball, I fixed a stare at a young guy in a wheelchair. The organization sometimes rolls wheelchair-bound ticket payers along the front rail which is better than in the back under the tier where they can't see any action that brings the crowd to their feet. This particular guy had thin kinked up limbs of some kind. But his twisted arms and legs weren't what I saw. It was the full-eyed look of amazement like he had just seen a religious miracle. Of course I didn't know the kid and maybe it was his normal look or maybe he was really thinking "Gad, what a jerk," or maybe his sallow face left him looking wide-eyed but to me he was what I was looking for and I reached out and placed the ball on his lap.

This did nothing to cap off the rising hiss. Even a showboat doesn't toss a game ball into the stands after an error. The stadium's foul breath beat upon the back of my neck with fierce heat. Who's to say it wasn't for the best when I was pulled out before the next pitch, the fans seemed to think so. I had disappointed them by failing and it was like the failure had pointed a light at them. Sometimes this happens. A crowd puts great stock in one of its players and he falls short and they turn on him as if he had just illuminated the futility of their own miserable little toil. If success is not within the grasp of the ones chosen for success, then what chance for the others.

Digs was less than thrilled, "You just don't see it, do you Gloverman? This is a team sport and your theatrics don't mean a goddamn thing. You think you can play this game any way you want without regard for the rest of us, well you're making a mockery of the game."

I was busy racing for comprehension of the enormity of my action. I'd missed a foul ball. Under normal circumstances hardly enough to call for the removal of a player. So it must have been the way I missed it.

My silence pushed him to a breaking point and I watched something snap in his expression. "Get out of my face Gloverman. Hit the showers."

Argument bordered uselessness, so rather than cross the line, I bellied down and crawled off hoping I didn't bleed to death. Maybe a good explanation would come to me. I shuffled down the steps to the locker room. I had just opened my locker and stuffed my glove away when Pinball came in.

"Rap. Skip doesn't want you to go anywhere. He got a call from somebody and then told me to come down here and make sure you meet him in his office after the game."

I nodded.

He headed for the dugout, then turned back and said, "Rap, you worked hard to get up here. It may take a little unpleasantness to stay, but it's well worth it. Do what you've got to do." He looked as though he wanted to leave but something was forcing him to hang around, "I use to think that if I played great baseball, I could break the link that held us all in place and that in breaking it, I could free everyone. But then I asked myself, 'What, there's never been any great ballplayers before?'"

Pinball carried a hammer and a stake in his hand and he was swinging at my heart.

I sat blankly looking into my opened locker and tried to understand how a misplayed ball had landed me in such a position of distinction. I'd always thought that the closer I got to the picture, the clearer it should be. But nothing is clearer in the bigs. It's as if I'd been moving closer to a picture that was out of focus because I was too near to begin with. Or it's like you've been climbing these stairs up and up, over and over again, then you get to the bell tower and find all the windows were placed too high for you to look out.

Maybe the coach was right. You can't go half way. You're either in or you're out. You run onto the field and try to pound the nearest person senseless or you don't ever come out of the dugout. There's no other way to play the game but hard. You put your head down and charge. That's how you get as far as possible. And if you're not going to try to take it all the way, then you're letting your team down. It's not just yourself, it's the team. You have to go all the way for the rest of the guys. That's the contract of the team. And to do your best, you keep sight of the lines. There's a line from home to first like there's a line from home to short and short to first. Those are my lines. I'm not suppose to see any of the others because there are some that lead off the field.

I was working myself into a royal blue funk. I just couldn't seem to piece it together. When a guy charges an opponent he's telling him he'll do anything to win even beat the game out of him, at least that's the common perception. When a guy styles a catch, he's saying he's so good that he can pull it off. And as long as he does pull it off no one questions what he is also telling anyone who wants to look close, that other things exist besides just making the play. Other things that coaches and GM's are sworn to discourage.

The blue picture on the clubhouse TV tube glowed out at me as I dressed and I watched my replacement boot a ball that put the winning run on base. The team looked pretty glum coming into the locker room.

"Gloverman, in my office."

He slammed the door behind me.

Inattentiveness had followed me into the coaches office whispering in my ear for distraction. I couldn't even focus on the ranting and the horrific looks bouncing off my chest. Instead, I looked at the wall behind his desk and the parading pictures; the star's record-breaking home run, the cloud of dust at home plate that won the pennant, the congratulating dignitaries, and more hand sucking. I recalled the old man's wall from my first team where two old frames clung quietly to the blistering paint. They weren't even baseball pictures. Well, they were technically baseball, but not the kind of baseball that gawks out of the sports pages and the press releases. One was of two players throwing a ball between them and by the expression and knee-slapping pose, also throwing a great joke. The other was a simple shot of an older veteran showing a rook how to wipe pine tar on a bat. I recalled standing before those photos and wondering where the drama was. Yet of all the baseball photos I've gandered at, those are the two that stir me. Those two frames sitting on the old man's wall. Peculiar, I hadn't given thoughts to him in a long time.

When I could squeeze in a word I tried for a defence.

"I don't care how you try to explain it." He cut me short, "I know how it looked because I saw it. Besides, anyway you want to consider it, you failed to keep your concentration and it cost us the out and eventually the game. If you had made the play, maybe I'd have listened. But that wasn't the case."

The more he raved the more I began to feel the guilt coelesce until I began to blur what I thought had taken place with how it looked through the coach's and other like-minded individual's eyes. I was hoping the event would be trivialized or overlooked but those hopes were losing their lease.

"You cost us that game. Your hotdogging won't be tolerated. This is a team sport and as the team fares so do you. If it succeeds, you succeed. If it fails, you fail."

I didn't think it prudent to point out that what he said was entirely correct, for a coach. He continued by telling me he wanted to believe that I had lost my concentration and wildly stabbed at the ball and not that I had purposely disgraced the team by failing to pull off a schoolboy prank but everything he knew about me pointed to confirming his worst suspicions. He had begun to tell me he had made me a star and was presumably going to tell me that he could unmake me.

The GM burst into the room in mid sentence. His face was red and sucking on a frown, spittle formed on the corners of his mouth. He looked kind of upset. His finger poked at my face accusingly, "Listen mister, you might think you're so much better than the rest of the team but if you're going to play for me, then you'll have to play the game the way I expect it to be played. I hope you appreciate the gravity of the situation. By tampering with the basic premise of the sport, that you will do your best, you called into question the integrity of the game and when you do that, my integrity is questioned. Reporters are coming in. We've called a press conference and you're going to be there and you're going to apologize for your transgression. You're sorry for letting the rest of the team down, for letting me down and for letting the fans down. When you step on the field there's a sacred trust. And you violated that trust by not playing as hard as you should."

The coach started in again, "I've got it on good authority," I assumed the good authority was standing next to him, but I knew that was what they expected me to assume, "that your contract has already been drawn up and it calls for a multi-year package at a substantial salary increase. Believe me you're gonna want to have a chance to sign this thing."

I felt the GM studying my face. Neither a flinch nor a bite at the bait was going to cross my kisser. My mug was going to look as empty as my brain. The coach's words bounced off me like a duck off of cement.

The GM was short and sweet. "I don't think you want to blow this."

"Now you can go and see your teammates and dwell on your mistakes. We'll find the words of remorse for you but you have to come up with the sincerity."

I couldn't get out of the room fast enough.

"Thick in there, hot dog?"

"Thick enough to pad their cells." One of them looked at me with an unamused expression. "Hey, I lost it in the goddamn sun, alright?."

The replacement shortstop sat dejected looking like he was about to cry. "Don't worry about it," one of the team was telling him.

"I only hope I'll get more chances."

Someone else said, "Sure you will. You'll boot

plenty of balls. There's always enough chances to screw up."

Everyone was getting in on it, "Is that right, Rap. If I play enough, will I be able to drop routine fly balls too?"

They were making me feel good, but giving me a good dig also. They weren't about to let me off too easy. The press corps I knew would be much worse.

The team's prepared statement read simply. It wasn't tricky. I could probably handle it. It said that the team was a winner. That I wanted to be considered a winner so I would not do anything that might jeopradize my position with the team and the team's position with the baseball community. It said I was wrong to lose sight of the goals of the game. The team stands for a tradition of excellence and a committment to winning and I was looking forward to contributing to future victories. It all made perfect sense. But I didn't want to think about it, just get it over with.

The TV cameras were loaded and cocked and the news people were making noise in the clubhouse. We were all waiting for an interview with one of the winners to end. I could just hear it above the din. The microphone was being passed back and forth with a fury and when I tuned into the eavesdropping I understood why there was such a chaotic atmosphere. "Your team has won three straight now, are you looking for more?"

"Well, jew know, I hit ball good and it stuck."

"I know you weren't born and raised in the U.S.. How has the adjustment been? Do you still get homesick for your own country?"

"Well, jew know, I sick two, no three, week past. Jew know, heave food, run to toilet all night, but I feel good now. My leg still little sore but I feel good, jew know."

"Some knowledgable baseball men are picking you guys to take the flag. What do you think are your chances?"

"We never take no flag. Some guys, jew know, they take, a ... how you say ... bathroom tools, and I take soap from dish but that's mine to use. But flags, no, we never take flag."

"I understand your wife has just had a baby?"

"Well, jew know, I hit good and it stuck."

I was ushered into the scene with the reporters and the lights struck me first and kind of knocked me off balance. I wanted to try and come in under them but I saw no reason to announce the obvious, that I was going to do some crawling. So I found a hole to look through between the glare. From this vantage I could see the clubhouse TV mumbling in the corner where it sat above the lockers. I didn't think much about it until my figure took its form on the screen. Then I watched myself watching myself. Funny, but I couldn't tell what was real, me or the picture of me. I mean to everyone but me, the picture of me was the real item. Mesmerized by the sight of me, I reached up to scratch my nose to both touch the real me and watch the real me being touched. With great effort I turned back into the lights and resolved not to look again at the TV screen.

The owner started in first and I was taken further aback by the genial conversational tone he had with the media hounds. Geez, you'd have thought he was talking to his next door neighbor about the weather. He didn't come on like some kind of state department recording issuing a prepared statement. No, that was for me. He was Mr. Heartwarmer.

"What happened out there?"

"We lost. And we're not proud of it. We made a couple of stupid mistakes and it cost us the game."

"No. What happened with Gloverman out there?"

"Oh," like he forgot why everyone including myself was standing looking at each other's hair grow. "He's here and can put it better than I but you know ball players like to test the limits."

"Kind of like my three year old."

Everyone laughed, they were all having a jolly good time of it, and even me, I was able to learn what a "shit-eating grin" meant.

"Kind of like that. So sometimes we have to pick them up and set them back on the path. But that's enough from me. Son, why don't you tell them all about it."

Yeh, thanks dad. Baseball lore is filled with resounding quotes. "Say hey. Let's play two." Even "Kill the ump" has a certain majestic ring to it. But "I have nothing brilliant to tell you" will probably not go down in historic memory.

The coach wanted oxygen back into the room so he began to piss on the fire which of course only added to the smoke, "Gloverman's not good with words but he means to tell you that he's sorry for his play."

While the coach was stammering and his words were beading up on his forehead like sweat, I managed a glance at the owner. I looked only once. He was a cool man. He must have had ice cubes for balls. Me, I needed a frost-free brain.

The scribes knew enough to go to the source, "Is that right, Rap? Are you sorry?"

"I'm sorry I didn't catch it."

They were laughing but I couldn't be sure if they weren't pointing and laughing, pointing at me and laughing at me. Someone asked, "You mean you're ready to be traded or ready to quit baseball."

What was being played out finally looked back at me. And I wasn't prepared to stare it in the eye. Sure, that's what it meant. Playing or not playing, apologize or stand mute. I wasn't so damn certain anymore when I got up to the choice. It's like going to the dentist, no matter how much you prepare, when he steps on the pedal and begins to lower the smoking drill into your mouth, you ain't ready for it. I was beginning to blink. I recognized the feeling. Every ball player knows it. Chest pressurized. Short gasps. Muscles stuttering. Your mind struggles against your body each fighting for control. It's called a choke. Different from a misplay where everything works but concentration is dropped, or a pebble hit, or the eye wanders and sets the ball in a place where the hands can't find it or the reach of the body comes up short. No, gagging is different. The mind misfires and it refuses to listen to the spinal column. Reactions diffuse into separate tasks each with its own purpose but none with a coordinated effort. A player doesn't confront his choke, he learns to play through it until the mind is put back in its place. But I had nothing to play through. I was gagging and had no remedy. It was like going downhill with the brakes steaming below you, heating up, and you know there's nothing to stop you but the end of the road. I was frozen in my seat, second guessing the driver.

But I had a choice. It was clearly printed in the statement the GM had prepared. I could give them what they wanted. They wanted the part of me that had never played professional ball. It had stayed along the sidelines with his glove resting on his hip. He'd watched approvingly as I'd reached around my back to try and stab the foul. It was he who had looked into the eyes of the young boy in the chair and said, "Hello there, I probably will never get to know your name but how'd you like a game ball?" It was he who stood barefoot in right, no uniform, just a bent up old cap shielding him against the sun. It was he who when he came up with a ground ball at short had to lock eyes with the first baseman waiting and imploring for the completion of the play. But he wasn't the best on the team. Sure, I liked him but he couldn't cut it. If he played all the time, I'd have lost a long time ago. So I let him stroll the sidelines. You'd have thought he was too creaky to make any kind of play but he must have been of some worth because they were calling him into the game.

They wanted him to spike the second baseman, to charge the pitcher. To play catcher and nip the ears of the batters. Maybe even to pitch. Yeh, to throw in tight at their heads.

Well, I didn't have an answer to their question. I wanted to play but I didn't want to be killing people along the way, especially not myself.

From the middle of the room came a dear sweet question, "You mean you're going to pay Rap not to play?" The voice sounded very familiar and if I could have seen through the crowd, I would have bet Pinball's face was attached to it, but I was too happy not to be fielding another question to dwell on the thought. I'd let somebody else squirm out an answer.

"We hope it doesn't come to that. Let's face it, Gloverman's had it good up here. He's been able to write his own ticket and with the other personnel in the line-up he's had pretty much a free ride."

Thanks for the MVP vote.

"Regardless of the consequences, we have to do what is best for baseball. Baseball can't take a backseat to any individual's desire to be a star. And if the hunger for victory isn't there, then we can't afford to let the player on the team bus. There's only so many seats and they go to who wants to go all the way with us."

"You've got to get off the bus sometime after the rides up." I don't know where the words came from. I barely recognized the voice. I said it seeing old pictures on a wall. Seeing two guys playing catch and laughing at some joke. Seeing an older player show a younger one something only experience teaches. And I was hearing an old story. But with all the commotion I couldn't remember the details. It was like a joke without a punch line. I wanted everyone to give me a second while I recalled the story, to just be quiet so I could get it into focus. But there was no time. I was getting off the bus. Where? I wasn't sure. Maybe I was getting off in the middle of nowhere but it didn't matter. At that moment I wanted off their bus and off their road.

"We can't conduct business with these outbursts." The press was being moved out of the office and their earlier good nature was turning.

"Hey, what's the story here? Is there an apology or not? What's going to happen to Gloverman? "

"You've got your quotes."

"But where do they lead? What kind of story are we going to make out of all this?"

"They lead out the door gentlemen."

"Do you have another shortstop, are you going to trade Gloverman, is he through with the game?"

When they were gone I stood there in awkward silence glad to see them go but at the same time sorry to see them leave. They had been like a condemn man's last meal of something he never acquired a taste for. When they were out the door, the coach said, "That's it Gloverman. They can do with you what they want," and he left me alone with the owner.

Chill covered his voice, "Listen pal, I learned a long time ago that I couldn't have an employee who didn't want to reap the benefits of our relationship, a man who I could neither punish nor reward." My silence moved him along faster. "You guys all think you're really something. I've seen guys like you come and go. When one gets used up, I get another. But me, I'm still here. I'm still collecting off those base hits you make and those put-outs you compile. That's the real score, pal. We carry you until we can get some kind of return. And you get a chance to play the only real game in town. You get a chance to play in the bigs where people know your name and where you might play long enough to take that name to the bank."

He wasn't telling me anything new. I'd seen that was the way it was. Of course, I never thought it applied to me.

"And if you're a baseball player and that's all you know and you're not in the bigs, then what are you, you're nothing. Without a major league team you're just another ordinary no account."

Their game was the bigs, it was not baseball, it was not the team, it was the bigs. I didn't want to discuss it. I didn't want to comment on it because it was a losing proposition from my end. But if I was going down, I'd go down taking my cuts. "Not exactly no accounts, more like giant debits, uh?"

"The price of doing business." He raised his shoulders but he couldn't shrug it off because he couldn't leave me thinking I had enjoyed an all-expenses-paid vacation on him. "We don't own you. Sure you signed a contract and you can't play anywhere else. But we don't own you. What we do own is the team and you don't have to play baseball."

He couldn't resist adding more, trying to find the breach in my wall, "You just don't want what we have to offer."

I wanted it. I just didn't want all of it. But I wasn't talking either way. He'd worked his whole life for it, the same as I, but because I wasn't slobbering all over myself to tell him how precious it all was, because I wasn't down on my knees in gratitude accepting his offering, you'd have thought I'd slapped him in the face. He looked like he had eaten something bad and his stomach was belching the disagreement back up.

My eyes met his on an even plane. I was no longer looking up for the pat on the back or stooping for the smack on the head. He was right, I was of no use to him anymore. I wasn't buying all that I'd bought before. I didn't want to hear the tales of heroes or covet the shiny medals to be pinned on the chest. I wasn't going to be sent out onto the field, not any field, and not in any uniform.

The owner was terminating the discussion. His tone was cordial but business-like. He might as well have been telling me what he had to eat last night. "Well Gloverman, we're going to cut you loose. That seems to be the best for everyone. Clean out your locker on your way out."

"Cutting loose" was only a figure of speech. He was keeping the rights to any baseball I might play which of course meant I had no right to play the game.

I would have liked to have said something pointed but nothing came to me except, "I don't suppose you'd let me keep the hat for old times sake."

He wasn't letting any of the little emotion he kept stored thaw on his way out of the room.

The clubhouse phone rang after several minutes of being alone. I hesitated to answer it. If someone was going to yell at me further, I wanted to be yelled at in person. There's something about watching the veins pop out of a person's forehead that takes much of the scare out of a scolding.

It was Connie, "What happened? Are you hurt?"

Her voice tunneled under the front I had erected. I wasn't about to let her throw open the gates, still, a serious breach in the fortress had developed. I told her I was alright.

"When will you be home?"

I told her I didn't know.

"I'll be waiting."

I wondered how much the game meant to her. She could get in free, if that was of any consideration. Sometimes restaurants gave us good tables. Still, if I leveled with myself it didn't seem to matter a whole lot what I did in the game. Aside from staying away from me after a particular bad outing, I might as well have been going off to any old job, except the hours were somewhat irregular. I knew that some of the wives lived and died with each game, once on the field and again when their old man got home. I began to be quietly reassured by Connie's presence. But I stopped the feeling there. I'd spent a lifetime of having guys sacrifice me to second, taking pitches so I could steal, and hitting me home. But they were guys, teammates. Even if it was Connie, or maybe particularly because it was Connie, I couldn't have her getting the save after I loused up an inning.

The process of quelling all my riotous thoughts left me weakened. I knew one good charge would overrun me. I packed and loaded my car and found the ignition by rote. And I began to drive. I wasn't anybody's teammate anymore. I wasn't a shortstop. Hell, I wasn't even a baseball player anymore. I wasn't much of anything. I had nothing to play. No game ahead of me. I didn't exist apart from the game. I was hollowed out, emptied. Stumbling down the road in my steel framed bubble, a shell within a shell. I stayed in the black lane unable to leave the security of its marked path, terrified of rumbling from its hold. It felt as though I'd drift away if I veered from my course or at the least be shaken apart on the unpredictable terrain off the highway. While the earth pushed up the trees and the trees its leaves and men pushed up buildings and pushed up each other, I pushed up nothing. I was without function, without worth. If it was not for the attention it would have called upon my uselessness, I might have slammed the shells against the concrete barriers of the road. If I could have sailed off an incomplete bridge or overpass without the added indignity of a crash, and sailed into disintegration, just disappeared, I would have taken that exit. Instead, I continued to climb hand over hand along the road, the black cable, all that separated me from the bottomless chasm.

Baseball loomed before me as a large gaping pit into which I had poured my life and from which nothing had returned. A pit that I dare not peak over the edge lest one of my contaminated memories reach up and pull me in.

I looked down at the gauges monitoring the life of my car. The fuel level was on "E". The big "E". Everything pointed at me. Everything was reminding me of my failure. At least I could fill the tank of the car. But I had to get off the highway and the prospect sent a twitch down my arms to my hands.

That which I feared confronted me almost immediately. The filling station stood across the street from a park. I had resolved not to look up but I must have heard the bounce on the grass or picked up on the red stitches calling out as they spilled through the air because I lifted my head in time to see a ball come over the fence and stop rolling on my side of the street.

I didn't want to go near it and the kid following it wasn't asking me.

"Get over the fence after it, Lardbutt," I could hear the coach screaming.

"He wouldn't have to, if you'd quit hitting it over his head like some kind of a maniac," it was another voice coming from center field.

"What's that mister?"

He was next to Lardbutt and the coach couldn't hear him but I did, "I said you're a dickhead."

"I want Lardo going after it or you'll both be in trouble," came the scream.

Lardbutt drew my attention. He was a typical right fielder kid, last picked and last played. Athletics represented a childhood obstacle that stopped him cold and robbed him of any reserve he had mustered to confront the world. I could almost see the reddening around the eyes coming into his face.

"C'mon, we'll go over together." The center fielder had one foot hooked into the chain link.

"I said Lard gets the ball. He's the only one that belongs on the fence."

"You'll get in trouble. Maybe he'll let me go around again. Maybe he didn't mean it."

The scream pounded out once more, "What's the matter are you both deaf?"

"He's dumb enough to mean it. Look, this fence is a lot easier to climb than that backstop. I'll give you a boost over and I'll give you a boost back. It'll be easy."

Lard had one leg on the fence, then two. Unfortunately, he was still only three or four inches off the ground.

"That's it, that's it." I'd seen lots of Lardbutts but the other kid, the center fielder, he was something else.

"I said only Lard on the fence."

I was standing over the ball without even realizing I had made any motion towards it. When I stooped down to pick it up I hadn't considered what I was going to do with it. I suppose that in the back of my mind I thought I could shut up the screaming. I stood up with it in my hand and looked out towards the man with the bat and then at the two kids on the fence and I remembered the joke, the one the old coach use to tell, the story I had wanted to remember earlier but couldn't.

One of us would look at those pictures, the two guys sharing a laugh and the vet sharing his knowledge, and the old man would see us looking and say, "Take a long slow gape. Now tell me who won that game? It was..." and he'd rattle off some date, never seeming to be the same twice, and ask again, "Who won?" And we'd say we give up, who won? And he'd say, "Damned if I can remember." And then he'd be the only one in hysterics.

And I finally got it.

The two kids were watching me and I gave them a nod with the ball in my hand and then stuck the ball in my pocket.

"Did you see that?" the center fielder was smiling like a small but great beacon.

"Hey buddy, that's my ball. Where do you think you're going with it?" came the scream.

"Geez, that was great. Did you see that?"

"It won't help. He's got more in his bag and he'll hit another over."

"So. He won't hit that one."

I walked to my car and drove off.

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