GPS (14 page)

Well, they’d gotten the introduction right, Jeff thought to himself as he peered down to his left from his first base line seat toward the St. Lucie Mets on-deck circle, where El Gobernador was looking hopefully up at his bat one last time before making his first-ever stroll to the plate in High-A baseball. As a former college coach used to say to Jeff’s lackluster UConn squads in the dugout while one of their own strode to the plate, the man certainly looked good in the uniform, but the rest was up to question.

It had already been an evening of unexpected events, which had become the norm of late when Jeff did his baseball travels. As fate had it, Ascondo’s debut waited until the bottom of the sixth inning Monday night, and might not have happened at all if St. Lucie manager Lindsey Reno had his say. Reno had seen the highlights of that torn hamstring in the Mets-Dodgers game the previous week and thought it to be a godsend. He knew it was a chance to get the switch-hitting Lacey off his bench and into the action finally, while simultaneously getting hothead Romero Martinez out of his hair for the time being.

Despite what the Sandy Morinos and other big heads in Mets player personnel thought about how the hierarchy was stacked when it came to the organization’s outfielders, Reno and Lacey had developed a chemistry with one another in spring training and the veteran minor league skipper was delighted to at least be starting the season with him in St. Lucie. The arrival of Felix Ascondo with his goddamn Grimace costume and yackety-yack music was a reminder of everything the 67-year-old Reno had begun to detest about baseball. The one-time Oklahoma ranch hand could no more communicate with Ascondo, he figured, than go clothes shopping with him, and he most certainly didn’t care to fit him into his lineup. Hadn’t planned on it either.

Jeff sat up straight to analyze Felix’s swing. He wasn’t just heeding the earlier warnings of the outfielder, either. This thing had actually become exciting since he’d arrived at the stadium, early for once.

He quickly stole a glance up to the press box. There, in the back, stood none other than Sandy Morino, who just so happened to miss his afternoon flight to LaGuardia that Monday, forcing him to stay in town for the night and attend a certain game in the Florida State League, where he would just so happen to see a certain player for himself. For the first time all night that Jeff had seen, Sandy was giving his full attention to the game on the field and not the one flashing to his left on the flatscreen TV, the one on which ESPN was showing the Mets down 4-1 to the Braves in the fifth inning.

Reno was a field boss and Morino was a suit in the organization, so there was no question who held the clout in the current pissing contest between the two, and by the sixth inning, things finally gave way. That was because in the bottom of the fifth inning, not long after the 0-for-1 Lacey became the 0-for-2 Lacey after bouncing into a double play, a call came down to the St. Lucie dugout from upstairs, a voice calmly asking on the other end, “Why is our friend Felix still in the dugout?” He wasn’t for much longer.

Ascondo was the buzz word throughout the Mets organization, at least for that April night, and Sandy had the outfielder in his plans for certain. Movin’ up or movin’ out. It seemed almost cruel to Jeff now, as Ascondo — looking positively dapper in the white St. Lucie No. 39 jersey — dug in from the right side against Lakeland’s galoot of a left-hander, Simon Alexander. For all of the scouting, coaching, film-studying, critiquing, training and retooling of swings that went on in baseball, so much of it always came down to things like this, little one-night auditions when all the big guns could be in town at once. Even Ascondo’s lunatic agent had made it in time for the game, and paced the floor behind Sandy in the press box, never separating his cell phone from his face the entire night up to this point.

Everything the boy from Santo Domingo had ever done in baseball — swing after swing after swing, day after day after day — had been about playing for the Mets. It was a dream like anyone else’s, really, in that it was his and his only, illustrated in a very particular way. The dream for Felix Ascondo always took place in Shea Stadium and he was always playing for the home team. Now the dream rested on a single game, it seemed, and it wasn’t even clear whether Ascondo’s brief appearance — be it good or bad — would keep him with New York or finalize his trade elsewhere.

Right before everything had started to fall apart for Jeff, he felt like he had helped put Felix’s dream on its proper course by getting him into the organization. Now he wondered if he was helping to dismantle it.

Ascondo smartly — cockily, if that was even possible in this case — took the first pitch from Alexander high and outside, backing out of the box almost before the ball struck the catcher’s mitt with a hard, dull thud. He then did his rhythmic routine of head ticks, wristband tugs and the sign of the cross on his chest before once touching the tattoo on the side of his neck with his right index and middle fingers, kissing them and then standing back in, swinging the bat three times and glaring fiercely at the Australian, who stood motionless, spitting.

How ordinary that first trip of the season to Savannah suddenly seemed to Jeff, as he watched Ascondo, quite frankly still amazed that the Dominican had managed to become so much a part of his life again, and so suddenly. If he had just waited out that game in Savannah, watched the kid do his thing for the full nine innings, would any of this other nonsense have even happened? After the game, he would have calmly steered his man past the other scouts and on to the local drinkery, and who knows?

If he had just done his job that night, Jeff would have been making every bit the amount of noise to his people in New York about Ascondo’s brilliant start as the Orioles and Rangers guys were to theirs, wouldn’t he? Well? Perhaps not, Jeff admitted to himself, but he was still unable to shake the thought that if he’d just sat there and filed a report at the end of that one game, talked to Felix and the Savannah manager for just a couple of minutes, then maybe ... maybe Sandy wouldn’t be here watching Ascondo
and
Jeff like a hawk, and maybe the outfielder would be making his FSL debut under much quieter circumstances and with a more certain future.

Now it appeared Jeff would just be another spectator at the game. With Sandy — coffee cup in right hand now — looming above him in the press box, Jeff’s account of things no longer mattered, he figured. But he was an onlooker savvy enough to see that the manager, Reno, had managed to deliver Ascondo into the game with his own middle finger salute to Morino and the Mets, hoping the suits and agents would be on their way back to New York after they did whatever they were set to do.

Knowing he could not blow off the wishes of the bosses to take a first-hand look at the outfielder, especially after Sandy’s personal phone call to the dugout, Reno waited until he saw who got up first in the Flying Tigers’ bullpen during the top of the sixth inning. When he saw the 6-foot-6 Aussie loosening, he didn’t hesitate to throw Ascondo into the fray with two outs and men on first and second in the bottom of the sixth.

Alexander was basically a two-trick pony — he threw a straight fastball and a hard-riding slider — and was the front-end of the Lakeland relief crew. Reno, despite the fact his own club was trailing 3-2 and was set to take on the main cog in of an impressive Tigers bullpen, figured he owed it to the flashy Dominican to present him an immediate challenge. Reno had certainly seen plenty of Ascondo in spring training and found it tough to believe he’d suddenly just given up swinging at high sliders.

With a ball and no strikes, Ascondo leaned over and flailed the bat at a humming, low fastball off the plate, fouling it high over Jeff’s head and well out of the stadium. It was now 1-1 thanks to a pitch the outfielder should have left alone, but it was a swing of the bat that showed Ascondo’s recent propensity for attacking fastballs instead of breaking pitches. He stepped out, feigning interest in the direction of the foul ball, which had long since left the grounds, before spinning to look back into the sparsely populated main stand behind home plate and adjust his helmet.

Alexander stepped off the mound and dug at his cleats for a moment while Ascondo swayed his shoulders to start the pre-pitch ritual again. He twitched, tugged, crossed, touched, kissed, swung and glared. After first shaking off what was likely the fastball Ascondo was hoping for, Alexander nodded with confidence at the second sign from home plate and, looking casually back over his shoulder once more at St. Lucie’s Jonathan Gintner leading innocently off the bag at second, he heaved a slider that dragged itself across the plate in a blur, but broke just off the outside corner.

Ascondo whirled his brown maple bat in motion but then pulled it back with all his might after fully seeing the pitch, knowing already he’d bitten too hard on the very first slider he’d been thrown in High-A. The home plate umpire didn’t mind his attempted check swing, but the appeal to the ump on the first base side — Jeff’s side — went the other way. One ball, two strikes.

Not wanting to root Ascondo through his at-bat while he was technically still supposed to be critiquing it with his most scrutinizing eye, Jeff instead found himself suddenly thinking about Riley and the fact he still had to come up with an explanation about New Mexico. So much seemed to keep happening so fast, it was shocking to think he was just leaving the desert 48 hours before. Where had Riley been? He thought his continued silence on the matter might have pried another phone call out of her, but not just yet.

He promised himself that when he got home, hopefully tomorrow, he’d call her and try to set something up, though he still had no idea what that would be. If he would have ever gotten that courtyard in order ...

Ascondo managed another foul ball, this one much more of a glancing, survival stab at another borderline fastball on the outside of the plate. While Ascondo didn’t look particularly comfortable with it, he’d gotten a frustrated reaction from Alexander, who seemed to think he had the fresh rookie call-up nailed on his usual out-pitch. It was still 1-2 with two outs and runners on first and second.

Alexander circled the mound, waiting for the home plate ump to fish out a new ball and toss it to him. When he got the new one, he took his time rubbing it down with both hands before scaling the mound again and looking in for the sign. Now, even the half-interested fans could feel the tension as it pulsed on the field and as it oozed from the press box, where now Sandy looked to be frantically trying to give whoever was on the other end of his cell phone the slip so he could watch.

Ascondo stood his ground in the batter’s box waiting for the Aussie to pick a pitch and deliver, almost approaching that uncomfortable second when it’s best to back out of the box and hit the reset button. If there really was a musical undertone to baseball, the crescendo was begging for its release right then, violins holding on, waiting for the big cymbal splash and the massive, unified note that spelled the climax.

Alexander gave the nod, went into his wind-up and let fly with a slider that he aimed dead at Ascondo’s fists. The middle reliever was thinking he’d struck his own big note just then, fully intending to start his strut toward the dugout straight out of his follow-through, just as soon as the swing-happy Dominican waved the bat overtop of the slider as it fell out of his reach for strike three. But this time, Ascondo had seen the slider coming right out of the wind-up. He lowered his hands and turned away from the pitch, making it appear even further inside than it was. Two balls, two strikes.

Tick, tug, cross, touch, kiss, swing, glare.

The violins could wait no longer, and Alexander had run out of patience. With sweat now beading down the back of his neck at a steady drip, drip, drip in the Florida thickness, the lefty scowled at Ascondo for just a few seconds this time, shook off the slider twice to keep Gintner honest behind him, then nodded at the fastball. For a split second in the middle of his wind-up, the Aussie was fixated on erasing that glare off the face of the St. Lucie newcomer, and tried to lean extra hard into the 2-2 payoff pitch, and that’s when he let it steer just a little left, and right over the plate.

As Felix Ascondo, Simon Alexander, Sandy Morino and Jeff Delaney each simultaneously inhaled, the clap of the bat rang out like a gunshot, not a crash cymbal. Ascondo tomahawked the ball down the left field line, sending it hissing past an indifferent Lindsey Reno in the coach’s box and a third base umpire frantically motioning fair ball. Ascondo blazed out of the box. The crowd’s delighted roar defied its tiny numbers when he zoomed around first base in even, pumping strides, as though the Latin music he said was always playing in his brain was actually blaring through the public address system in time with his feet.

Jeff found himself standing in front of his seat as Ascondo tore over second base in a blink without missing a step, the Lakeland left fielder just then picking the ball out of the back left field corner of Tradition Field. Ascondo galloped into third base standing, then leapt straight up into the air once and back onto the bag and clapped his hands together. The triple made it a 4-3 game and left Ascondo and everyone else in the park buzzing with an unexpected jolt of electricity.

It sent Alexander cursing and kicking into the Flying Tigers’ dugout — his night already over — sent Ascondo’s crazy agent and Sandy out the press box door chattering like squirrels into their phones and sent Jeff home from Florida that same night, wondering what he was needed for in the first place. Jeff even caught the tail end of an animated play-by-play call from the visiting Lakeland radio booth well behind him. “Wow!” was all he heard of it.

- 16 -

That scene played over and over in Jeff’s head as he drove somewhere out in the Florida Panhandle and somewhere between Monday night and Tuesday morning. As it did, he started to nod off behind the wheel of the Celica.