Sam didn't have much to say. He admitted he wasn't going all out in practice. He said the dust-up with his teammate had started out as a joke. He said it was hard for him to support his teammates when he wasn't contributing himself.
"I just get frustrated," he said.
"Sam, I know you're not comfortable with being a captain," said Siciliano. "But if we're going to win a state championship, you being a captain gives us a better chance. You need to be one of the senior leaders. We've been doing this for four years."
God bless Sis. He gave Sam another chance. He was angry that Sam had talked to players about having his captaincy stripped, but he figured out a way around the problem.
"In two weeks, Sam, I'm going to call the team together after a win. I'm going to say, 'Sam and I had a problem. But we worked on it. Some of you may have been told he lost his captaincy. What do you guys think? Should Sam be a captain?' We'll leave it up to your teammates."
It was more than fair. Sam was on probation. It was up to him to patch things with his teammates. And they would get to pass judgment on his new efforts.
Coach and Sam shook hands and agreed on this course of action. I said little. Then Sis said, "I'm looking forward to the game against Waltham Monday morning [vacation week]."
I asked Coach what time Sam was to be at the field. He said 9:30. Then Sam said, "Want me to meet you and Tom at the Knotty Pine at seven?"
We thanked Sis and were on our way. I told Sam I didn't want to talk about it anymore, except to say that I knew he wasn't wild about being a captain, but the idea of losing the title in this manner was unacceptable. I reminded him that at the high school level, the best players are always captain. If not, it usually means the kid is a jerk.
"Think of how it would have looked if Gurley hadn't been captain of basketball, or if Big Nate hadn't been captain at Wellesley last year. You'd wonder what was wrong with the kid."
In my view, he had shamed the entire family, tainted some of the good work done by his sisters years before him. I followed four older siblings to Groton High School and more was expected of me because of what they had done there. More was given, too. It was easier for me because of the high school lives they had lived. Same for Sam. Teachers and coaches loved his sisters, and that was a reflection of his parents, too. Now he was undoing some of their good work. Going back in time, I know what would have been the reaction of Bemis Bag sales engineer Bill Shaughnessy. He never would have known what happened because he was not a hands-on sports parent like me and he didn't have moles at the school like I had in Kate. But had he ever learned of such a transgression, it would have been the end of baseball for me. And there would not have been a lot of discussion about it. "Too late, Danny. I don't think we need baseball for you anymore!'
Back in 1971, the feisty Albane knew how to be a good teammate. Nobody got more frustrated than Al. He was a talented athlete but somewhat miscast on a baseball diamond. We used to call him "shortstop without a glove," as in "sheriff without a gun," because he seemed to be able to field the position without using any leather. He'd let ground balls bounce off his chest, pick them up, and throw out the runner. At home plate, he took Reggie Jacksonesque cuts at just about every pitch, and when he went down swinging, it was like watching a mechanized corkscrew go into the top of a wine bottle. But he didn't take the game, or himself, too seriously. In the spring of 1971, we had a flossy sophomore infielder, Bobby Perreault, who clearly was going to be an outstanding player in a year or two, but struggled when he faced varsity pitching for the first time. In April, when Bobby was in the throes of a monster slump, Albane performed one of his grunt-filled, dust-swirling strikeouts, walked back to our bench, sat down next to Bobby, turned to the kid, and said, "I hope you know I did that just to make you feel good!"
Now that's what I call leadership.
Sam and I went to Fenway on Easter Sunday, the day after he'd lost his "C." He knew I was pissed. Little was said in the car on the way to the ballpark. He took the bus home alone while I worked. We had a family dinner that night, and Sam was dispatched to Harvard Stadium to pick up Sarah, who was coming in on a bus back from New Haven. She'd gotten a pinch hit against Yale and was hitting .375 (3-8) in limited duty. I loved that. Sam's sister was playing D-I softball and she was outhitting her big-shot, bad-boy brother. I broke his chops about it a few times while we were breaking bread.
The next day was Marathon Monday, and the Newton Tigers were home for the fourth straight game. The game started at eleven. Sam was there a couple of hours early.
Howard L. Ferguson Field is a fairly typical high school baseball field. It's about 340 feet down the line in both directions and it abuts a lacrosse field on one side and tennis courts on the other. When a pop-up drifts out of play on the first base side, those playing tennis are always at risk. The baseball players have taken to yelling "Tennis!" whenever a ball is bound for the hard courts, and the tennis players respond by holding their racquets over their heads. Incredibly, in four years of watching dozens of fouls plop onto the courts, I have never seen a tennis player hit by a baseball.
Newton beat Waltham 4–0 on Patriots Day. Sam hit an RBI double and appeared to be engaged with his teammates. Sis called that night and told me, "It was a 180-degree turnaround. I wish I could address that captain thing right now, but I'd better wait a couple of days."
I thanked him and told him I'd appreciated how he'd handled Sam at the meeting at his house.
"Glad to hear you say that," the coach said. "I was afraid you were going to be mad at me."
When I heard him say that, I realized that in 2006, a coach of a high school team no doubt routinely has parents rushing to the defense of their children after punishment is handed out. Baby boomer parents take their job seriously and a misbehaving kid can be a commentary on the quality of home instruction. Therefore, coaches who sanction ballplayers often incur the wrath of Mom or Dad. It couldn't possibly be junior's fault.
Not me. I know my kids, and I like to think I can read the intent of veteran schoolteachers and coaches. It has rarely been my instinct to defend Sam when I'm told he's screwing up. If that makes Sam feel like he's not being backed up, too bad. He's going to have teachers and bosses that he doesn't like—maybe even a tough father-in-law. God forbid he ever had to serve in the armed forces, where folks with higher ranks sometimes abuse those under their command just for the sport of it. Our kids have to learn to get along with the authority figures, and watching Mom and Dad blame the coach sends a terrible message.
Vacation week was uneventful, thank God. No 3 A.M. taxis. No late night phone calls. No more complaints from teachers or coaches. Sam would yell upstairs when he came home after midnight. Some nights I was already asleep and didn't hear him, but when I got up for the nightly old-man trip to pee at 3 A.M., I'd look out the window and feel a sense of relief when I saw the hunter-green Acura in the driveway. He was home, downstairs, in bed. Whew.
As we held our breath en route to the finish line, I remembered the incredible independence I'd been granted in the spring of my senior year. I cracked open the ancient diary and there it was: on Friday, May 7, 1971, my parents left for Germany, turning over the house to their 17-year-old high school senior. I'd like to say the freedom resulted in some kind of Risky Business wildness, but in truth, there were no parties at our home on Hollis Street, and I was never tempted to break into Mom and Dad's liquor cabinet, where a bottle of Seagram's stood next to halfgallons of Chardonnay. Dad's cans of Miller High Life, which he drank only when watching the Red Sox after doing lawn work, also went untouched. The ever-cooler-than-me Heather Stoddart visited a couple of times, but the big event was when she made me a TV dinner. It was nothing like Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay, and there was no Ivy League representative to eventually tell my dad, "Princeton can use a guy like Danny." Sure, I invited the guys over a couple of times, but our pathetic, innocent fun primarily consisted of watching the Red Sox, then staying up late for Johnny Carson. I went to school
every day, played baseball every afternoon, and kept track of my batting average, just as Sam would thirty-five years later. I worked my shifts at Johnson's and watched the Sox (in black and white) whenever they were on TV. Good thing there was no SportsCenter in those days. It would have been hard to get any work done.
The idea of leaving Sam by himself at home for two weeks—especially in the spring of his senior year—was unthinkable.
Sam hosted a team dinner the night before the Tigers played Walpole at the end of vacation week. It was the ultimate boy bonding event—barbeque, Red Sox on the plasma, and no parents. The definition of lame would be parents who hang around during a high school team dinner. It's especially creepy if you are a dad and your daughter has the softball team over for grub. Middle-aged men are invisible to teenage girls, and there is nothing any dad can say or do that will make him appear cool. Any attempt at coolness is guaranteed to embarrass his daughter. Better to make yourself scarce. This was easily accomplished in April 2006 because Marilou and I were both working the night Sam invited his teammates to eat. Kate stopped by and made sure the boys didn't blow up the house with the propane grill, and when the last of the teammates left, Sam looked at his mom—who had just gotten home from work—and said, "That went well." He'd even cleaned up. What a guy. I saw it as another step toward erasing the disgrace of his lost captaincy.
Newton North suffered its first loss the next day. Sam struck out twice and walked three times and was putting his uniform in the washing machine before the sun went down. A quarter of the season was gone, and he was hitting .214 (3-14) with a whopping nine walks in five games. The good news was that the team was winning and he didn't seem to be pressing. A year earlier, this would have been a disaster, because he'd have been worried about his statistics and impressing the college coaches and scouts.
I went to bed after midnight on the last Saturday of Sam's vacation and when I got up for the nightly 3 A.M. trip to the bathroom, I noticed no Acura in the driveway. I went downstairs and Sam's bed was empty.
"He was here at one in the morning when I went to bed," Marilou offered as I woke her with the news.
She called his cell.
"Sam, where are you?...Can you come right home?"
She hung up the phone and said, "He said he's driving around."
I left Marilou in the kitchen to wait for our son. She'd been the specialist for these post-midnight confessions.
Sam came into the house a few minutes later and I did my best to listen from my third-floor nest.
"I just needed to get some fresh air," he said, sounding completely sober and measured. "When I'm not doing good in baseball, it feels like nothing else is going right. It's frustrating for me. Right now, I just want senior year to be over. Everything seems stupid. I just want to get on to BC."
They talked for an hour and a half, winding up on the second floor, where Sam played his mom some of his favorite music. He was still into anything by Warren Zevon ("My Ride's Here" was a new favorite) and Cat Stevens's "Sad Lisa."
Sam went to bed at 5 A.M. and slept until one in the afternoon. He was working on a new stance when I finally saw him vertical again.
"I've been landing on my front foot too soon," he said. "I think that's why I haven't been swinging so much. It's probably going to be a while until I start hitting now that I'm using this new stance."
There is such a thing as a prescription for failure. You can even make your excuses ahead of time. Sam was setting himself up, and sure enough, on the first day back from vacation he went 0-4 with three strikeouts in a victory over Framingham. I could hardly believe my eyes. He took five pitches in his first at-bat, swinging at none, and getting called out on strikes. After a harmless fly to center, he went up two more times and struck out awkwardly both times. The big-shot, D-I recruit was failing miserably. It reminded me of his freshman year, when he was called up to varsity and struggled against the older kids. He went 4-22 that year, with a whopping twelve strikeouts. Now he was the oldest kid and had the big reputation, and he was doing even worse. He had willed himself into a slump.
"Well, that was kind of rough," I said when he got into the car after the game (Kate was using a car for her softball team, so Sam was riding with his parents again, and this seemed somehow to be contributing to his return to freshman year in every way).
"I'm 1-14 with five strikeouts in my last four games," he said.
"Sam, we've been over this. You've talked yourself into this. You've got to stop worrying about stats and awards. Just forget all that and be a team guy. I know it's hard for you, but the team is winning and you're doing nothing. Think of how good you guys will be when you start to hit. And you will hit. You don't lose it overnight. This seems like a lot, but it's a small sampling. A few games. And until today, you didn't really look bad. Stop thinking about it so much. Try to remember what it is you love about the game—how much you love hitting—and it'll come back to you."
We didn't talk much after that. I left him alone, except to offer to watch a Twilight Zone episode with him while he ate dinner. He was going to have to figure this out on his own. But it was tearing me up, too. There's an old expression that a parent is only as happy as his or her saddest child, and I knew we had one unhappy guy living in Teenage Wasteland. It's completely stupid and trivial in the scheme of life, but five strikeouts in two days and a .166 batting average (3-18) can do that when your whole world is baseball. I reminded myself not to tease Sam anymore about getting outslugged by his Harvard sister. He didn't need that.
Sam was surprisingly calm the next couple of days. Humbled, even. Perhaps it was Buddha. He helped his mother clean the basement without complaint. He didn't bitch and moan about not having any wheels while Kate used the Acura to commute to her softball practices from Boston University. He didn't even bother to wash his uniform. The hitless white number 24 just lay there on the floor of his junky room. I couldn't figure out whether Sam had taken my advice or just given up.
Two days after the disastrous game, Newton traveled to Norwood for its first road game of the season. It was cold and windy and the game was played on top of a hill that had a graveyard behind the backstop. Ball yards and bone yards are often aligned. Happy sounds for eternal rest, no?
Sam snapped out of it against Norwood with a couple of hits. He was locked in again. And he was smiling. After the game, before Sam boarded the team bus, I told him to meet me at the Golden Star for dinner and to bring as many teammates as he wanted.
An hour later, Big Nick Wolfe and Sam, dirty and sweating, still wearing their white uniforms with the orange and black trim, joined me in our traditional corner booth at the Star. When Marilou arrived from work, we had a foursome. We rehashed the game, talked about Newton's extraordinary pitching, and the boys informed us that they already had prom dates. Softball second baseman, Emily, Sam's stunning date from junior year, had asked him to the senior prom. He said he'd be needing a tux. Kate later suggested the orange model that Jim Carrey wore in Dumb and Dumber.
The dark, dank Star was always good for these kinds of moments. We'd been going there since before any of the kids were born, and a lot of family folklore unfolded in the corner booth. We'd had discussions about figure skating, summer family trips, Kate's cancer treatment, the merits of Titanic, SAT prep, and coaches who didn't let all the kids play. Birthdays and anniversaries were celebrated there, and usually we had kids still in uniform. That's why it was such a blow when I went to use the phone booth in the gloomy barroom and one of the regulars told me, "This place is closing Sunday."
Shocking, but true. I confirmed it with Vinnie, one of the Chinese owners. Due to a lease issue, they were shutting down on Sunday night, April 30. The bar regulars were already planning a Friday night wake. A couple of them jokingly (I think) said they were planning an occupation, which had been done with some success recently by loyal parishioners who refused to leave their churches after they were scheduled to be closed by the archdioceses.
For th
e Shaughnessys, news that the Star was closing was like the death of a family pet. The Star was part of our history. We were losing a place where we had gathered, a place where things had happened. Given that traditional family dinners hardly exist in our time, it's not an exaggeration to say that the Shaughnessys had almost as many all-inclusive family dinners at the Star than we had in our house in the eighteen years since Sam rounded out the clan.
Sam called Sarah on her cell phone to tell his sister the bad news.
"No fucking way!" we heard as Sam pulled the phone away from his ear.
"Sarah, language!" said Marilou.
Kate was similarly outraged and saddened. We made plans to return to the Star repeatedly for the final four days. We planned to ask Vinnie about buying some dishes or other Star mementos. Kate suggested we take home the corner booth and have clinical psychologist Dr. Marilou Shaughnessy use it for the waiting area of her soon-to-be-built home office.
Hmmm. Interesting idea. We could re-create our family booth from the Golden Star—sort of like Kramer assembling the set of the Merv Griffin Show in his Manhattan apartment.
A few days later, North played Braintree, the same team they'd beaten one year earlier on Sam's walkoff homer the day of Michael's wake. The Tigers won again, beating the Wamps (love those New England Indian names) 7–3. Sam went 2-3 with a double and two more walks. He was up to .304 from .166 in just two games. He was back and he hadn't even washed his uniform.
We went to the Golden Star after the Braintree game and again every night until it closed. After rediscovering his stroke, Sam discovered scallion pancakes.
Senior Year Page 17