The Might Have Been (3 page)

Day after day, he arrived at the ballpark and chased down fly balls during batting practice until it was his turn in the cage, where he took his cuts, ten swings and out for someone else, then back to the outfield to chase down more flies until game time, when he sat at the end of the bench, waiting and waiting, ashamed that, after the last out, as he filed into the locker room with his teammates, his uniform was pristine save for the powder from the husks of the sunflower
seeds he ate compulsively, while theirs were stained with dirt and grass, knees torn, where he took a shower he didn’t need and then went outside where the kids pestered them all for autographs—the stars, the regulars, even Edward Everett, who had done nothing that would make anyone want him to scrawl his name on a scorecard or a baseball. And so when he signed, he did it quickly, not meeting any of the kids in the eye, his mark a kind of lie, the kids asking him because they had no idea who most of them were, just that they were coming out of the right door, their hair damp, pushing through the swarming flock of children toward the team bus.

Then, in Montreal, he got his opportunity.

There had been problems getting into the city from Philadelphia late Thursday night; the Olympics were going on, and the airport was chaotic, long lines at the customs desk and confusion at the baggage claim. One of Edward Everett’s teammates had made a derogatory remark about French-Canadian efficiency and the already irritated official had made them all open their carry-on bags so that he could inspect them, counting, in a deliberate way, cigarette packs and confiscating pill bottles from one of Edward Everett’s teammates, who argued, honestly but in vain, that they were natural dietary supplements.

They didn’t check into their hotel until after four in the morning and, as a result, were out of sync by game time. They dropped pop flies in the infield, botched coverage on stolen base attempts, only winning because Montreal was even more inept than they.

On Saturday then, a twelve-fifteen game, the Skipper decided to give half the regular starting lineup the day off and started Edward Everett in right field, leading off.

It was a miserable day, windy, raining throughout the morning. The teams couldn’t take fielding practice because the grounds crew kept the field covered, and Edward Everett feared they would cancel the game, that his chance would come and go, and his entire career would add up to nothing: a single sacrifice bunt that didn’t count as an at-bat, a batting average that wouldn’t rate expression in numbers, because even to have an average of .000, he had to have at least one unsuccessful official time at-bat. But no, there was a benign God,
because at a few minutes to one according to the scoreboard clock in right field, he stepped to the plate to begin the game.

The atmosphere in the park was entirely different from that in St. Louis for his first plate appearance. The Expos were a bad ball club and, with the poor weather and the Olympics in the same city, the crowd was sparse, perhaps fewer than a thousand people scattered throughout the stands, many huddled under blankets and plastic rain gear against the unseasonably cool weather.

“You going to hit or watch the people?” the umpire snapped. Edward Everett realized he’d been lost in the moment and stepped to the plate. On the mound, the pitcher bent from his waist and looked in for his sign from the catcher. He was in his forties, a left-hander with a round belly and a plump face. As Edward Everett set himself, he remembered that he’d had the pitcher’s baseball card when he himself was a grade school boy. The pitcher had been with the Braves then, something of a stud with a fastball that sometimes hit 100 miles an hour. He’d once had what Edward Everett’s mother would call “matinee idol looks,” but now, a bloated, almost fuzzy version of his younger self, he was in the game only because a poor team needed bodies to fill out the roster.

Edward Everett took the first pitch, a good one on the inside that he could have driven hard, but the third base coach had given him the “take” sign—one pitch to get used to the idea of being there; one pitch to remind himself that he shouldn’t be thinking about who was on the mound and who he once was; one pitch to remind himself to
breathe
, see the ball, hit the ball.

The second pitch came in even better than the first. Behind him, Edward Everett could hear the catcher groan, his gear clicking as if he were adjusting for a pitch not going where he expected it, a breaking ball that hung on the outside, fat and inviting, and he swung and hit it not quite perfectly but well enough, a line drive that hooked down the right field line and skipped on the wet grass to the fence.

Edward Everett flung his bat aside and made the dash to first, where the coach was windmilling his arms, yelling, “Go go go go,” and he made the turn to second base, just a bit too wide, he thought. As he approached the base, he glanced toward the third base coach,
who was signaling, “Come to me, come to me,” and Edward Everett did, coming in standing up, a triple. In the stands a handful of fans applauded, Cardinals fans, and the coach gave him a smack on the butt. Then the coach was yelling to the pitcher, “First hit, first hit,” and the pitcher obligingly tossed the ball toward the dugout, where it rolled in: his first trophy.

The next hitter grounded out to second, but he’d done his job, hit to the right side of the infield, solid team play, scoring Edward Everett, and when he came into the dugout, some of his teammates clapped him on the back until someone said, “It’s just one, for Christ’s sake,” and he sat down, breathing hard, not from the exertion, but from the excitement, thinking so many things he couldn’t sort them out: there he was in Hoppel’s office at Springfield, listening to the all-but-naked manager tell him he was going up; there he was back at home the next winter telling stories about the season that lay ahead of him now, bright with promise; there he was a dignified old man at the podium at Cooperstown, tearing up as he reminisced about his first hit on a cold and wet July day in Montreal … then someone was tossing a glove at him, saying, “Nap time’s over,” and he realized he’d missed the rest of the inning, when they sent eight men to the plate and scored five runs, the last on a two-run home run by the second baseman.

From then on, the entire team seemed to have come out of its somnolence of the night before. In the second inning, after the pitcher struck out, Edward Everett started things with a single, and he batted again in the fourth, when he doubled. When he came to the plate in the top of the fifth, St. Louis was already up eight–nothing, and there were men on second and third, with two outs. It was raining then as he dug his spikes into the ground, a slow rain at first, large drops plopping like random pebbles kicking up tufts of dirt around the plate, and then, abruptly, more steadily. The crowd had thinned and most of those who remained—were there even five hundred left?—began unfolding umbrellas or dashing up the aisles for cover.

It was yet a different pitcher this time, the third he had faced in his four times at the plate, another refugee from athletic old age
hanging on for the money and the camaraderie that ordinary men didn’t have going to the office and mowing their lawns in the suburbs. This one was Laurel to the first pitcher’s Hardy, tall and skinny. Unlike the first pitcher, who had come up relying on velocity, this one had survived through guile, picking at the edges of the plate, changing speeds. As Edward Everett waited in the box for the first pitch, he was beginning to feel as if he were playing some kind of game underwater. Rain dripped from the brim of his helmet; his jersey was soaked through, the fabric prickling his wet skin; his bat was slick in his hands. Before the pitcher could throw, Edward Everett held his hand up to the umpire
—time
—and the umpire gave it. He stepped out, clamped the handle under his arm, between his sleeve and the body of his jersey, and drew it out again: still damp, but at least not too wet to grip.

“It’s no skin off my ass,” the catcher said, “but the day you’re having? I’d want to make sure the game got through five.”

Edward Everett glanced at the scoreboard: it was the top of the fifth inning, not yet an official game. For it to be official, they would have to finish five full innings, four more outs. He stepped back in, thinking for an instant about making an out intentionally, to move the game just one more step toward counting, but he flicked the idea away as if it were a gnat and set himself, aware that mud was clumped on the bottom of his spikes, that they felt like they weighed another twenty pounds, thinking he ought to knock some of it out so he wasn’t slowed down if he hit the ball, but put that thought aside as well.

The third pitch came in on the outside of the plate, and he hit it, not quite squarely, a high fly ball down the right field line, and he flipped his bat away in disgust, lighting out for first base, thinking maybe the fielder would misplay it in the wind and the rain, thinking if he did, he might be able to get two out of it, but the mud on his cleats made him feel earthbound, a tired man slogging through sludge. He watched the ball arcing through the rain, although he knew he was breaking a rule, let the coach worry about where the ball went, just run, and then improbably, just as the fielder seemed to settle under the ball a few steps in front of the 340-foot sign that
hung on the chain-link fence bordering the field, a gust of wind seemed to push the ball, and it was over the fence, and the first base umpire, who had jogged into the outfield to make the call on the play, was jogging back in, tracing circles with his right hand in the air, signaling a home run. When Edward Everett was back in the dugout, some of his teammates gave him a gruff check, their shoulder to his, knocking him about, and he sat, dripping and incredulous, until someone threw him a towel and he dried off his face and hair, kicking his spikes at the concrete step beneath the bench, knocking out clods of mud.

In the bottom of the fifth, although Montreal tried to stall, the hitters insisting on stepping out after every pitch, to dry their own bats, to call over to the batboy to bring them a rosined rag, and then taking their time to wipe their bat handles, the St. Louis pitcher retired the first two with remarkable efficiency, one on a slow roller back to the mound, the second on a weak line drive to second. In right field, Edward Everett found himself praying,
One more out, one more out
, and then they would call the game, and it would be in the books, eleven–nothing, Edward Everett four-for-four, a cycle, it came to him for the first time: single double triple home run.

The third batter was left-handed, someone who didn’t hit for much average but had some power, seventeen home runs already, and Edward Everett drifted back slightly. The rain was falling harder; from two hundred feet behind the infielders, he felt separated from them by a liquid silver curtain that shifted in the wind. At the plate, the hitter stepped out, and even from where he was, Edward Everett could tell he was making some remark to the umpire about the lunacy of playing in such weather, but the umpire gestured him to step back in, and he did.

Because of the wind and the rain and the distance, Edward Everett could see him swing at the one-ball, two-strike pitch, but the sound of the bat striking the ball got swallowed up and came muffled a moment later, and he had no idea how to judge it; he saw a flash of beige arcing toward him and he wondered,
Come in or drop back?
He hesitated, unable to figure its trajectory, watching it push through the rain—was it climbing or falling, climbing or falling?—and then
he picked it up, descending, and he started to run in to catch it, before realizing he had misjudged it. He backpedaled, tripping momentarily over his own feet but keeping his balance, his eye on the ball, until he felt the change in the ground beneath him, grass no more, but clay and cinders, the warning track, and then his back was pressed against the eight-foot-high chain-link fence and he knew if he jumped, he could catch it for what he knew would be the end of the game, five full innings in the books, his cycle safe, not erased by the rain.

He locked his fingers into the chain link to give himself balance for his leap and then he jumped, reaching for the ball, knowing he had gauged the flight of it impeccably, but then he was twisting, falling away from it, one of his spikes caught in the fence, and he was flailing, still reaching for the ball, although he knew it was beyond him, out of the park, and he was falling to the ground, his cleat still caught in the fence, his right knee twisting in a direction he never thought it could go, and still the fence held him, dangling, his shoulder on the wet track, gravity pulling him against his own body, until the fence finally let him go, and he lay there, pain slicing his knee.

Then he was two people: the body lying there, pelted with rain and something else, hail the size of peas, and the self saying to the body,
All right, get up now
, and the body saying
No
. He was laughing, he realized, the body of him was laughing, and the other self was thinking,
You’re in shock, you’re in shock
, and the pain rolled in waves up his leg, into his hip, and then rose higher on his body, seeming to swallow him for the briefest of moments. He blacked out.

Y
ears later, he thought of that moment when he was caught in the chain-link fence in another country as a kind of border defining the geography of his life. There was his self on the far side of the line, the major league ballplayer, and his life on the other side, where he was an exile from the country where he wanted to be.

“You brood about it too much,” his second wife said to him on one of the days when he was more taciturn than usual, a day not long before he came home from a trip and found she’d moved out. “I’m not thinking about what you think I’m thinking about,” he protested, although he was.

He didn’t want to be one of those men whose lives were all about missed opportunities and regret, men like his father, for example, who stayed in the same high school coaching job for more than twenty years but who was haunted by what he saw as his moment of failure, when Woody Hayes invited him to be one of his assistants when he left high school football to coach a bad Denison University team; his father had turned him down because it was too risky: what if he went to Denison and they failed there? He remembered too well the Depression, his own father sullen and unemployed for three and a half years, his family renting out their house to a family who
did have a husband and father with a job, and moving into the basement; his own father sitting in a basement corner staring angrily at the ceiling, grimacing every time the other family made a noise upstairs in what should have been his home, their feet clomping on
his
floors, their scraping a chair across
his
dining room. Worse yet were the days on which the family upstairs had a party: the door opening and closing and opening and closing as they admitted their friends; the explosion of laughter or the high chatter of children. Edward Everett’s father remembered that all too well and didn’t want to become his father, an exile in his own home, and so he said no to Woody Hayes. The first year, when Hayes’ team went two and six, it seemed a shrewd decision, but then Hayes became a coaching god at Ohio State. And so Edward Everett’s father did become his own father, unhappy in his life, waking up on a Saturday morning after yet another loss by his own poor high school football team, sitting in the living room, not wanting to tune in the Ohio State game on the radio but doing so, and then turning it off and then on again, thinking about the country that could have been his life, instead of the one that was: the coach of a mediocre high school team. Until he hung himself from a ceiling joist in his office just off the locker room in the high school.