by Emily Nemens
The new stadium is a hulking shadow lit by the occasional exit sign. Through the gates he can see a broad concourse, the spotless counters of vendors who have yet to move in. There’s no good view of left field—but he tries to imagine it as he circles the stadium. Big, small? Of all the corners of the field, left is the most malleable, the easiest to shorten or stretch per the site plan. It annoys Michael that while the infield and its dimensions are sacred—the ninety-foot base path; the sixty feet, six inches from the rubber to home; the ninety-five feet between the mound and the grass line—his domain can be doubled or halved, depending on street grids and how many seats some owner is trying to fit. Look at the Green Monster—only 310 to the wall—while the deep part of the old Yankee Stadium was 457. (Another reason Michael admired Joe: in 1937 he hit forty-six home runs in that stadium, even with its farther-than-far left-center wall.) The Lions’ Culver City home, a nondescript, moderately nostalgic stadium built in the nineties, has a gigantic left, which is part of why they invested in Goodyear. That man has strong legs and an arm like a rocket launcher.
The first ring of practice fields is dark, but there is a glow beyond them, and he hears something that sounds like a bat making contact. He walks toward the noise. The lights, hanging just inside the upper net, cast webbed shadows onto the paved approach, with a bigger, batter-shaped shadow spilling onto the walkway. Thwunk. The next ball is spit out of the machine. The shadow batter swings, a swing Michael recognizes instantly as Jason Goodyear’s. Decisive, graceful. Certain.
The left fielder makes solid contact and sends a line drive into the dark of the cage’s far net. The hit would’ve been a stand-up double, maybe a triple with Jason’s speed—he’s fast, and not afraid to use it. Another pitch, another line drive, this one angling slightly more to the right. He makes it look so easy, Michael thinks. The machine isn’t flaming at ninety-five, but these balls aren’t under eighty, either. A third, another notch over. He is doing it on purpose, Michael realizes, hitting clockwise across the cage, like a minute hand ticking around the hour. He knows Jason is obsessive about his swing, poring over tape of opposing pitchers and his own performance, asking for advice from everyone, Michael included. But this is something else.
When the bucket is done, Jason sets his bat against the net. It is then that he sees Michael’s shadow in the darkness.
“Who’s there?” The player tenses. It isn’t a genius move to leave yourself so exposed, no one for a half mile in any direction. What would happen if trouble came around? Run for the casino? But men don’t think that way, of their vulnerabilities. Michael knows he never did.
“It’s Coach Taylor.” He steps out of the shadows, shows his palms.
The player’s posture relaxes, and his mouth splits into a crooked smile. He is good-looking, a Tom Cruise smile and Paul Newman eyes. Heartthrob, that’s what Michael’s daughters called him, and he remembers the collective sob that happened around the country when Jason’s secret wedding to that kindergarten teacher was revealed. Clean cut, too—no visible tattoos, no billboards in his skivvies, no cursing when he strikes out—just a tight-lipped huff and he’s right back to the dugout, so that Audrey and Helen’s type like him, too. Even if the holier-than-thou bit gets old (his teammates call him “Goody Two-shoes” behind his back), this is a solid man. “Hey, Coach. Thought I had the place to myself tonight.”
“Me, too.” Michael steps closer. “You’re to camp early. Before pitchers and catchers even.” He’d heard that Jason’s Arizona house had a batting cage built into the backyard, but maybe he’d heard wrong.
Jason shrugs. “Needed a change of scenery, wanted to see this new stadium they’ve been hollering about. How about you?”
“Audrey and I always try to get down here early. A bit of calm before the storm, you know?” Or the storm before the storm, Michael thinks, remembering the wrecked kitchen, the empty garage.
“I hear that.” Jason inspects his hands, the handle of the bat. “How’d I look?”
“Good, as always. Your step is a little shorter than normal, but you probably knew that.”
Jason contemplates this, nods. “And how are the girls?”
“Fine. Just saw Katie and her four up in Wisconsin.”
“Four, wow. Any more coming?”
“I hope not.” They laugh at that.
Jason nods to the bag over Michael’s shoulder. “You want in?”
Michael waves the notion away. “No rush. I could watch that swing all night.”
“I was just finishing.” Jason ducks into the shadows, and Michael can hear him dropping balls into the bucket. “What speed?”
Michael thinks briefly about telling him to set the pitching machine at seventy-five, eighty miles per hour, something a big-leaguer could respect. But then says an honest number. “Fifty-five.”
“You got it.” Jason adjusts the machine, then walks to home plate. “Good to see you, Coach.” The men shake. “My best to the family.”
“Thanks, Jason. And to yours.” Michael thinks he sees an unpleasantness flash across the younger man’s face, but then it is gone. “See you around.” The ballplayer walks into the darkness, in the direction of the blinking casino.
* * *
There’s something cathartic about swinging a piece of wood at a hurtling knot of leather and yarn. The sting that happens in your palms when you connect, the ball bending ever so slightly at the collision. The reverberations of that rubber center that run up your arms, plugging into your shoulders with a little zing. The sound of it.
As he swings he thinks about what Joe DiMaggio would do with all of this, the wrecked house and the lonely stadium and the desert night blowing cold all of a sudden. His mind drifts to that famous profile in Esquire. Late sixties, written after Joe’d been retired for maybe fifteen years. Some writer tracked him down in San Fran, ran him off the end of the wharf practically, played a game of cat and mouse with Joe in his own flipping restaurant. The snook even talked his way into breakfast with DiMaggio’s sister at their dead parents’ house. But Joe, he stayed classy, like you’d expect out of a guy who always dressed in pressed slacks and a nice silk tie, who drove a Cadillac as soon as his contract with Dodge was done. The whole long article, through all the provocation, Joe never did say a bad thing about Marilyn and only got close to throwing a drink in the guy’s face. What’d Joe do? He’d keep it together. Michael takes another swing.
In that same article, they talked about Yankee spring training, where Joe served as batting coach. There was a time when you couldn’t get me out of there, Joe said of the cages, eyeing them wearily. It gives Michael a small swell of pride to remember that bit, to think how he still feels compelled to swing, capable of it. Not that he is better than Joe, but that he has this one thing, and no one can talk him out of it. Not Audrey, worried about his back; not the management, wanting to start fresh with someone who thinks coaching is math; not Jason, too polite to say fifty-five is a little-boy speed. Or maybe, old-man speed. He slaps another ball into the far net.
Michael goes for an hour, feeling good and sore at the end. Walking back through the lot he recognizes Jason’s beat-up Jeep, but the left fielder is nowhere to be seen. Why the guy, who pulls down $15 million a year—more than that with sponsorships—still drives a muddy car from the nineties is a mystery. But thinking about cars makes him ache for the Caddy all over again, so he gets in his borrowed Honda and drives away.
* * *
When Michael enters the pool house, Audrey scowls at the bag over his shoulder. As anticipated, she isn’t happy to discover he’s been at the cages—he’s thrown out his back a couple of times in the past few years, mostly by doing stupid stuff with the grandkids, and the doctor says big swings might exacerbate the injury. But she also knows better than to give him an earful when he is in a foul mood. Helen has left him a sandwich on the nightstand.
“I know, honey. I was careful,” he lies as he drops the bats in the corner. He sits on the edge of the bed a
nd starts eating in huge, chomping bites. Halfway in, Michael realizes he’s not eaten since breakfast.
“You talk to the insurance guy?”
He nods, mouth full.
Audrey watches her husband, concern knitting her brow. “You know, we could hire someone to clean up the place. Professionals, so you can focus on the season.” The season. The first few weeks of spring are Michael’s busiest time of year—more than during the Stallions’ season opener in April or anytime down the stretch—because no matter if guys are playing in the Caribbean or mastering their video games all winter, in the first weeks of spring they have to get recalibrated to major league pitching. On day one of workouts everyone wants a piece of Michael Taylor—he understands the mechanics of a swing better than any slo-mo camera or instant replay. A guru, they call him in the clubhouse.
He wishes that reputation could help him with the front office and the L.A. job, which has come up twice now since he retired from play. Hell, the last time the batting coach position was open he flew himself to Southern California to make an appeal to the management. When Stephen Smith said no, easy as a pitcher shaking off some call he didn’t like—and without even the pretense of conferring with the rest of the ownership—it was as if Michael’d gotten sent down all over again.
Audrey doesn’t say more, just watches him eat. When he is finished, has hardly swallowed the last bite, she takes his hand in hers. Her fingers skim over the bracelet and knead into the meat of his palm, where his calluses are red. She presses along the lines of the metatarsals, over and around the joints of each knuckle. Usually, a minute of this kind of rubbing works like a charm, relaxes him into a better place. Not tonight: the joints won’t give against her thumbs.
“That’s fine, Audrey,” Michael says after a minute more. He slips his hand out of hers and closes it into a fist.
* * *
The phone bill, thick as a Sears catalog, is waiting for Michael the next morning. Somebody liked calling 900 numbers, one in particular. Wondering what would merit $600 of conversation over the course of a week, Michael dials the number listed on the bill and, in the time it takes to say, Hello, who is this, gets an earful of smut that sends his diastolic pressure up by twenty points. The monthly water bill is three times what it is when the grass is alive and they have the pool pumping, a house full of grandkids visiting for spring break.
That day and the next Michael scrubs and sprays, Cloroxes the bathrooms so the whole house smells like the county pool. Saturday he drags the mattresses to the curb and starts ripping up carpet. Sunday he picks out new beds and box springs at Macy’s. Monday he gets out the touch-up paint (he keeps cans in the garage) and spackles the strange dents in the drywall.
He checks in daily with the precinct. No news on the home invasion—though in his impatience Michael has bleached and buffed away any possible fingerprints—and not one lead on the Cadillac. The cops seem certain the car is in California, cruising around L.A. in swapped plates. Folks in Los Angeles have no problem buying a hot car, they explain. No one bothers to hypothesize about the fate of Audrey’s Camry.
* * *
The insurance assessor finally visits. He takes a quick glance at the curbside trash heap, flips through Michael’s photos from the disposable cameras, then spends fifteen minutes opening cupboards and looking under furniture, knocking on freshly painted walls. He punches some numbers into his phone, scribbles a few angry-seeming notes on his clipboard, then cuts Michael a check for only slightly more than what he spent at the hardware store that first day.
“What about the mattresses? And the carpet, it’s destroyed. Did you see what they did to the pool?”
The assessor keeps a straight face, saying, “Market value. You’ve had that carpet for ten years, sir.” He glances at his paperwork. “The mattress, twenty. Have you heard of depreciation, sir?” It’s all Michael can do to not hit him in the nose.
That afternoon they go to visit the Johnstons at their new retirement home, which Michael finds dispiriting despite the cheery paint and big, sunlit windows. He has seen plenty of men age, generations of players go from kids to men to men too old to play (in one interview, Joe had called it “the pressures of age”), but this—the walkers and wheelchairs, the hunched and frail remnants of masculinity—is different. He’s still not entirely forgiven Dave and Betty for leaving the neighborhood, but to see them now, Betty looking as feeble as a twig, Dave’s wobbly hand supporting her elbow as they walk, he can’t find it in him to stay mad.
* * *
Michael keeps going to the cage at night. Sometimes Jason is there, always just wrapping up, some nights the place is empty, lit like a stage awaiting his entrance. Hitting does something good for his head, clears it out after he gets so damn hot thinking about what’s happened to their home. Focusing on that small sphere rushing toward him, creaming the thing, sending it sailing into the net, where it stops and hangs for a second, jostling around the mesh fabric before falling—Michael likes that. His hands, burning where the knob of the bat bites the heel of his palm: that feels great. The ritual cools him off before he goes back to Audrey and their friends. With them he has to act like everything is fine, like he isn’t seething mad. Like he isn’t still pissed about how the recession knocked them flat, not angry at how the Lions are trying to force him to retire, not aggrieved at how his kids, all of them over thirty, still can’t find their bootstraps, much less give them a good yank in the upward direction.
* * *
The backyard needs more work and they are still deciding between two carpets for the living room, but even if it is a work in progress, Michael is ready to be home. With no word on the cars, and pitchers and catchers a few days away, Michael proceeds with his auto claim. Market value again. The money isn’t enough for another new car, definitely not a Cadillac, but he finds a three-year-old Chrysler 300 in silver that’ll do. For Audrey, he picks out another Camry, light blue again, and a year newer than the first.
Audrey requires some cajoling—Michael assures her the new locks are strong and the alarm is loud—but after ten days with the Walshes, she finally agrees to return to their house. They drive in a caravan, both of them tentative with their new vehicles.
“Oh,” is all Audrey says when she walks in the door. She goes slowly from room to room, opening drawers, peering into closets. “Oh, oh.”
She comes back into the kitchen, where her husband is plating a rotisserie chicken he bought at the Whole Foods. He isn’t a cook, does nothing besides the grill, really, but Michael knows how to pull together a decent meal when he needs to. “There’s salad in the fridge, too.”
“You’ve done good, Mikey,” she says, and smiles. He hands her a glass of wine, no $500 French Bordeaux, but a pinot noir he knows she’ll like. She takes a sip, rolls the liquid on her tongue. “The place needed some freshening up, anyway.”
They eat outside, the moon bright. After picking the chicken clean and finishing off the bottle of wine, Michael and Audrey make love on their new bed. Some things have changed over the past five decades, but many have not—Audrey still likes it when he nibbles on her earlobe; she still coos like a dove. And Michael still thinks of swinging a bat as he thrusts. The almost-gentle warm-up swipes, then the chops with follow-through, their increasing velocity and strength. It leaves them both breathless. He waits until she is soundly asleep, her breath a slight, reassuring whistle, before he retrieves a bat and sets it next to the bed.
* * *
Michael would’ve been fine to ignore his sixty-ninth birthday, but Audrey insists. “We’ve got to celebrate the good stuff, Mikey. Besides, once the team shows up you’ll be gone morning, noon, and night.” She doesn’t point out that it has already been this way.
The Saturday before Valentine’s Day at Don & Charlie’s steakhouse isn’t an easy reservation to come by, but Audrey gets them a nice corner table. The waiter treats them like young lovers, placing a rose on the table “for the lady,” setting down a dish of heart-shaped
butter dollops. Schmaltzy, but Michael doesn’t mind. Audrey looks great in the flickering candlelight: her little black dress, her hair pulled back to the nape of her neck, a touch of pink lipstick, something small and sparkling at her throat. The room is swaying with a romantic string soundtrack. God, Michael loves her.
They start with martinis and get a steak for two, the works. Audrey usually eats like a bird, but this night she eats like a hungry bird, giving her husband the bigger half of the steak but enjoying her own pile of meat, red and oozing. They talk about the team. During the off-season Jimmy Cardozo reupped for some big number. Michael’s still proud of the work he did with the catcher; Jimmy was a dolt at the plate until he met Michael in Salt Lake. Audrey listens attentively, nodding and chewing, chewing and nodding, sipping on her wine. “Oh, look, Mikey,” she says every few minutes, pointing up to some framed sports photo or piece of memorabilia. It is one of the largest private collections in America, hung helter-skelter so something is always popping into view. A big black-and-white photo of Babe Ruth in his home-run stance. A signed Greg Maddux jersey. A pennant from the Brooklyn Dodgers. A whole rack of glinting World Series rings. A picture of Joe in a tailored suit, big shoulders and a tight waist, smiling and shaking the hand of some starched shirt. A shot of Jason Goodyear, holding one of his MVP trophies.