Night Game (2 page)

The sun had broken through the clouds since I went inside, and it was warm enough for me to shed my sweater. The players were out of their meeting, gathered in small groups by the equipment racks outside the clubhouse door. There was a lot of shoving and laughter as they renewed old friendships after the winter. Even if you didn’t know which were the new kids—the rookies and minor leaguers—at their first big camp, it was easy to spot them. They were the ones trying to look cool. It was the same every year, but each kid thought he was the only one who felt like wetting his pants.

I was behind Lucy as she wiggled her way toward the manager’s office. The reaction was predictable. Rookie jaws dropped, and the veterans leered in a knowing way. Stinger Swain, the third baseman, held his cupped hands in front of his chest and quacked. His buddy Goober Grabowski doubled over laughing. It takes so little to amuse some of these tiny minds.

“Something wrong with your hands, Stinger?” I asked him on the way by. “They’re looking awfully crippled. You might not make it past the first cut with hands like those.”

He turned them so they were cupped towards my chest.

“Come find out for yourself, honey.”

“Don’t start, Stinger. We’ve got a long season to get through,” I said, pushing past him.

“Fucking broads,” he said, half to himself. “Can’t go nowhere in this game anymore without tripping over gash.”

I pretended I hadn’t heard him. It’s easier that way. As I said, it’s a long season. I don’t have to go looking for aggravation, especially from Stinger Swain. I thought I caught a couple of sympathetic looks from other players as I went through the clubhouse door, but it might have been a trick of the light.

I stopped just inside the locker room and looked around. A clubhouse kid was whistling while setting out lunch on the big worktable in the middle of the room: soup, cold cuts, loaves of bread. The players’ street clothes were hung in their lockers, fighting for space with golf bags and fishing rods. Joe Kelsey was sitting on the stool in front of his, talking to Tiny Washington, who looked out of place in street clothes. He also looked enormous. He obviously hadn’t been worrying about his diet in the first few months of retirement. I went to say hello.

“Is this an interview in progress?” I teased. Washington had retired at the end of the previous season, after seventeen major-league seasons at first base and one not very productive one as designated hitter. His new job was colour commentary for the Canadian cable sports network. It was going to be interesting to see if the team missed his leadership. He was always good at setting an example, especially for the younger black players.

“Just shootin’ the breeze,” he rumbled, sticking out his huge hand for me to shake. “Catching up on my man’s life.”

“You can’t do that anymore, Tiny. You’re one of us now.”

He recoiled in mock horror. Kelsey and I laughed.

“Man, I’m glad you reminded me,” Joe said. “I was treating him like a human being. I gotta remember to watch myself from now on.”

“Good to see you, Joe,” I said, shaking his hand. “Did you winter well?”

“Just fine.”

“How’s Sandy?”

“Things are still going good,” he said.

Sandy Montgomery is Joe’s lover, a San Francisco lawyer whose support helped Joe go public with his homosexuality the season before. It was rough the first time around the league, but Joe answered the hecklers in the best way possible. He hit .312 on the season, with 37 home runs, 113 runs batted in, and 42 stolen bases, and would have been the league’s most valuable player if the Titans had finished better than they did.

This doesn’t mean that he is accepted warmly by his peers. Baseball is a time-warp into the fifties, after all, and the likes of Stinger Swain will never accept him, but enough teammates jumped the hurdle to make things livable. The fact that they had known and liked him for a long time before he came out made it easier.

Joe, also called Preacher from the days when the born-agains still accepted him as their chapel leader, is one of my favourite players. One outcast appreciates another, for one thing, but that’s not all. He had practically saved the life of someone very dear to me the year before. T.C., the eleven-year-old son of Sally Parkes, my best friend and downstairs tenant in Toronto, was next on the hit list of a serial killer the tabloids called The Daylight Stalker.

Joe and Sandy were with me when I realized that the boy was in danger, and the three of us managed to rescue him and hold the killer until the police arrived.

“Catch any crooks lately, Kate?” Tiny was smiling when he asked the question. My freelance detecting is a bit of a joke around the team.

“I’ve done my best to avoid it,” I said.

“Leave that up to Andy,” Joe said.

Andy, otherwise known as Staff Sergeant Munro of the Metropolitan Toronto Homicide Squad, is the man I have lived with for almost a year. We met over another murder we were both investigating: his was the cop’s angle, mine the reporter’s .

“Funny, that’s what he says, too,” I said. “In this case, I even listen.”

“Only in this, I bet,” Tiny said.

“He wouldn’t know what to do if I agreed with him all the time,” I laughed. “Are you coming to the big meeting with the new skipper, Tiny?”

“I have to start sometime, I guess.” he said. “Catch you later, Preacher.”

We headed towards the manager’s office, which had one entrance in the clubhouse, and another outside.

“I don’t know what to ask,” Tiny said. “I feel like a damn fool.”

“That’s good. You won’t stand out in the crowd,” I said. “You know the dumb-assed questions most reporters ask. You’ve been answering them for eighteen years.”

“True enough,” Tiny said. “But all anybody ever asked me was what pitch I hit.”

“Being a reporter’s no different from being a player,” I said. “We just have to remember to stay within ourselves and give 110 percent every day.”

We were laughing as we entered the room, and everybody turned and stared at us. Olliphant sat at his desk with his uniform jacket on, arms crossed over his chest. His cap was on the desk in front of him, and even his grey, crew-cut hair bristled with hostility. The body language was unmistakable: “Go away. I don’t want you here.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Are we interrupting something?”

“No, Ms. Henry,” Olliphant said, emphasizing the dreaded feminist syllable so much that he sounded like a bee. “We were waiting for you to join us.”

Since the two available chairs were already occupied, I leaned against the doorframe and opened my notebook.

“Maybe you could tell us about your meeting with the players,” I said to Olliphant.

“That’s confidential,” he said, glowering. His face was lopsided, scarred by the traffic accident that had ended his career. He had been drunk. He also had one glass eye, and I kept forgetting which one to look into when we spoke. The real one wasn’t perceptibly more animated.

“Maybe you could just give us the gist of what you talked about,” I said.

“We discussed my expectations for the coming season.”

“Which are?”

“That we win the World Series,” he said.

Interviewing this guy was going to be a lot of fun.

“That would be quite a comeback,” Sanderson said. “They barely finished fifth in their division last year, and it was a weak division.”

“I’m aware of where they finished,” Olliphant said. “I also know that they were twenty-three games out of first. I’ve brought teams back from farther than that.”

“You’ve been in the National League for the last five years,” Keith Jarvis reminded him. “Is that going to make your job more difficult?”

“I can read scouting reports,” he said. “I have six weeks to get to know my players before the bell rings. I’ll know then what this team is really made of.”

“What kind of a camp are you going to run?” I asked, as if I didn’t know already. “Red’s were pretty loosey-goosey.”

“So I’ve heard,” Olliphant said, smiling for the first time. I guess it was a smile, anyway. It might have been gas.

“I think it is safe to say that my players will be working a little harder than they are used to,” he continued. “Anyone that doesn’t care to exert himself will find it expensive.”

“Have you fined anyone yet?” Lucy asked.

“That’s between me and the players.”

Tiny and I exchanged a look. There were going to be a few unhappy campers this spring training.

“In what ways is your camp going to differ from previous Titan camps?” asked Sanderson.

I printed “MORE ATTENTION TO FUNDAMENTALS” on my pad and showed it to Tiny.

“We’re going to get right back to basics,” Olliphant said. “From what I have seen and heard about this team, we have to pay more attention to good, sound, fundamental baseball.”

Tiny stifled a smile.

“I’m talking about fielding, bunting, base running, and outfielders hitting the cut-off man. I’m going to take this team back to A-ball until they get it right.”

“Don’t you think the veterans know how to do those things?” Sanderson ventured.

“If they did, they wouldn’t have finished twenty-three games out of first,” Olliphant said.

“But still, you must expect some resistance from guys who have been to five or six training camps already,” Sanderson persisted, looking for an inflammatory quote. He got it.

“I don’t care if a guy’s been to twenty camps. If he won’t hustle his butt for me, he’ll be out of here on it.”

“Workouts start tomorrow?” Jarvis asked.

“This afternoon,” Olliphant said. “They just got here. Why should they have a day off?”

“What about their physicals?” I asked. “Aren’t they scheduled for this afternoon?”

“We’re going to do them in shifts. Doc has the schedule. Is that all the questions?”

“Just one more,” said Lucy Cartwright, nervously. “Who do you think are the promising rookies?”

The male reporters snickered. Olliphant stared at her coldly for a moment, as if debating whether the question deserved a response. I cringed on her behalf.

“It’s too early to tell,” he finally said, then got up, put on his cap, picked up his clipboard, and left the room. So much for wide-ranging discussion.

“Guess you’re going to have to do your own scouting this spring, Lucy,” Sanderson said, snapping his gum in what he apparently thought was an extremely manly way.

“You’ve got a filthy mind,” Lucy said, looking as if she might cry.

“Well, at least it doesn’t take penicillin to clean up my
mind
,” Sanderson said. As exit lines, it wasn’t bad. Lucy was rumoured to have shared a disease with half the Phillies minor-league camp a couple of years back. But it was a cheap shot, and not fair, even to Lucy. I hung back after the rest had gone.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“I’m used to it,” she said, then went through the outside door quickly. I hesitated. Normally, my definition of sisterly solidarity doesn’t include ditzy airheads who make a laughingstock of my profession, but if I didn’t support her, there sure as hell wasn’t anyone else around the Titan training camp who would. I followed her out the door.

I don’t know what I expected to see, but Lucy clearly didn’t need my help. She was leaning against the back wall of the clubhouse talking flirtatiously with Glen Milhouse, a rookie catcher, hugging her notebook to her amazing chest like something out of a fifties high-school romance. The girl next door. If you happen to live next door to a bordello.

They were both laughing, and turned, surprised, when I let the door bang behind me. I went around the corner in the opposite direction.

Olliphant hadn’t been kidding. While the pitchers lined up to climb into vans to go to the medical centre, the players were all out on one of the practice diamonds, working on fielding. There were three coaches hitting ground balls to the infielders. Another was standing in foul territory in right field with a bazooka, firing towering pop-ups to the outfielders.

I watched for a moment, paying particular attention to Domingo Avila. He was in left field, and the scouting reports were, unfortunately, all too true. I watched him miss two fly balls in a row. The second one, he turned the wrong way; got his feet tangled, and fell down. The ball fell two feet away. He got up, laughing. I hoped Olliphant wasn’t watching, for the rookie’s sake.

I turned my head at the sound of a commotion by the Titan office and saw that Avila was safe for the time being. Olliphant was yelling at Mary Higgins, the efficient young woman who is in charge of the ground crew.

“When I say the pitcher’s mound is unacceptable, your job is to fix it, not to give me lame excuses. I want it done for tomorrow.”

“Then you’ll have to give me the field back,” she said, standing her ground.

“No, lady, you got it wrong again,” Olliphant said. “Read my lips. We will be practising until six. Then you can have the field.”

“Then I’ll have to bring a crew in on overtime tonight and we’ll have to use the lights. It’s going to be too expensive. If you just give me my field back for half a day, we’ll rebuild it without going over budget.”

“That’s your problem,” he said, turned his back, and strode away. She caught me watching and made a rude sign at his retreating back. I shrugged at her in sympathy.

The catchers were halfway to the batting cages under the palm trees, past the left-field grandstand, with Dummy Doran, the bullpen coach. I followed them. Milhouse trotted past me to catch up, looking worried, juggling his bat, glove, shin guards, mask, and chest protector.

He was noticed.

“Kind of you to join us, Rook,” Dummy said. “You can go first.”

“Thanks, coach,” he said. The veterans exchanged grins.

Doran opened the door of the batting cage and bowed like a maître d’hôtel for Milhouse to join him. As the kid was passing, Doran took the bat from him.

“You won’t be needing this,” he said. “Get on your equipment.”

“I thought we were hitting,” he said.

“Rooks shouldn’t think,” Doran said. “That’s what coaches are for. Now move it!”

He turned and winked at the rest of us, then took up his position next to the pitching machine. Milhouse hustled into the rope mesh and tubular-steel cage, still doing up his chest protector.

“Assume the position!” Doran barked like a drill sergeant. Milhouse hunkered down behind the plate.

Doran held a ball in his hand, poised just above the drive mechanism of the battered blue machine.

“You wearing your cup, Rook!”

Milhouse nodded silently behind his mask and made a surreptitious check with his ungloved hand. Doran fed the ball into the machine, which made a harsh metallic whirring sound before flinging it into the dirt in front of home plate. It bounced off Milhouse’s knee.

He scrambled to retrieve it. The other catchers laughed and yelped.

“That was just a change-up.” said Doran, holding another ball over the drive tube. “Try a fastball.”

I watched for ten minutes. Each pitch took a little bit more arrogance out of the rookie. The other catchers shouted derisive encouragement.

“Suck it up, kid.” said Gloves Gardiner, the man whose job Milhouse was after, with a mean laugh.

“Your turn next,” Doran said.

Gardiner groaned. I walked over to join him.

“The kid’s going to be good,” he said, nodding towards Milhouse.

“In Triple A,” he added. “I’m not ready to hang ’em up yet.”

“I swear to God, you catchers have got to be crazy” I said, watching another fastball bounce off Milhouse’s mask. “I bet you still have bruises left over from last season.”

“You got to be tough,” Gloves said. “That’s what they pay me my vast salary for.”

Gloves, who makes considerably less than most of the prima donna pitchers he coaxes into their best performances, is one of the few players I have ever encountered with something approaching a sense of irony. He is also one of my best sources on the team.

“What do you make of the new manager?” I asked.

“Might be just the thing this team needs,” he said, spitting a brown stream of tobacco just past my right foot. I hate that.

“That’s your quote,” I said. “Off the record, what went on in the meeting?”

He shrugged.

“Not much. All the usual crap about fundamentals. He spent the winter watching tapes of our games and chewed us out for things we did wrong last June.”

“How did the players react?”

“Tried not to laugh, mostly.”

“What else?”

Gloves fiddled with the strap of the mask he held in his hand.

“Quote—no matter what we’ve heard about him, he’s as fair as he is tough and that all he asks is that we play hard for him. He won’t tolerate goofing off. Unquote. Oh, yeah. Anyone who shows up tomorrow with any hair on his face is fined.”

“No beards?”

“No moustaches,” he said, stroking his, “no sideburns, no hair except on the head, and that’s got to be short.”

“I’ve always wondered if you’ve got an upper lip,” I said.

“Tomorrow’s your big chance.”

“You’ll probably look younger,” I teased.

“There’s that,” he said, brightening. “But I might just look uglier.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Gardiner, sir,” said Dummy Doran. “When your press conference is over, perhaps you would care to join me for some fundamental exercises.”

“See you later,” he said, then jogged the few yards to the cage.

“You sure you need me to do this, Dummy? I already did it last year,” he said.

“I want to see if you can still crouch on those old knees of yours,” was the coach’s reply.

I walked over to where Milhouse stood leaning on the cage, sweat streaming down his face, dirt all over his body. He had small beady eyes, a sign of the determination the catcher needs. Or maybe myopia or plain old stupidity.

“That’s a pretty good workout,” I said. He shrugged.

“We haven’t officially met,” I said, sticking out my hand. “I’m Kate Henry, from the Toronto
Planet
.”

He grunted and shook my hand.

“You’re my first woman reporter,” he said.

“Is that a problem for you?”

“Women are never a problem for me,” he said with a leer that just looked stupid on his baby face.

“It’s still early,” I said, and walked away.

Just outside the clubhouse, I stopped to introduce myself to Jack Asher, the designated hitter the Titans had picked up as a free agent. He was big and friendly-looking, but so homely he should be playing for the Detroit Tigers. The year before he had been with Olliphant in San Diego.

“Do you anticipate any problems changing leagues?” I asked.

“My big problem isn’t with the league, it’s with my position. I don’t like the DH.”

“Guys get used to it,” I said. “It’s not as if you won a Gold Glove at first base over there.”

He looked at me, startled.

“With all respect,” I added, straight-faced.

He glared, then laughed.

“As a matter of fact, I was brutal,” he said. “Nice to meet a sportswriter who’s not a suck. But still, I don’t know how to keep my head in the game when I’m sitting on the bench. That worries me.”

“A lot of other guys have adjusted to it really well. Not having to worry about fielding really frees up their hitting. Besides, it could add a year or two to your career. As in a year or two more on the payroll.”

“That’s the kind of talk I like to hear,” Asher said.

“You’ve played for Olliphant before,” I said. “Is he as hard-assed as he seems?”

“Yeah,” he said. “He is. He’s never going to win any popularity contests, but he’s good for a team. And, between you and me, from what I’ve heard, this team could use some of his discipline. And the good news is, he really is fair. If you hustle for him, you’ll be out there every day.”

“What do reporters have to do?” I wondered, half to myself.

“From what I hear, you take some getting used to,” he said. “But they tell me you’re fair, too.”

“I try to be,” I said.

“We’ll see,” he said. “I’ll let you know what I decide.”

“I’ll be holding my breath.”