The Only Rule Is It Has to Work

by Ben Lindbergh

  The baseball field is the one place in the yard that is completely desegregated, free of fault lines. Elsewhere, we see guys walking in pairs and groups, and they’re always same-race packages; there’s an Asian section over by the pull-up bars, there are the Hispanic dudes playing guitar or lifting weights, there are all-black basketball teams running fast breaks and all-white jogging groups doing laps through our outfield. But on the diamond there has been no sorting done at all. It is the loosest scene you can imagine, and within an inning the buttholes untighten, though presumably the guns remain cocked somewhere out of sight.

  Will Price scores on a T. J. Gavlik single, the throw rolls unaccounted for toward home plate, and from the dugout a fed-up San Quentin All-Star yells, “Ain’t anybody gonna cut that?” Andrew Parker hits a towering home run that looks for a moment like it’ll clear Mount Tamalpais off in the distance. “These guys been bragging for a month that they were going to beat you,” a prisoner tells us with a laugh and some schadenfreude. Alarms go off every half hour or so, and all the players stop, midplay, and sit down on the ground; we sit, and they tell us, “Y’all don’t gotta do that. Just us.” Theo puts on a uniform and takes a spot in the lineup. (He fouls out.) Sean Boisson takes a spot in the lineup. (“Mercy! We got a guy in Haggar pants up here!” a fan yells.) I take a spot in the lineup, swinging so wildly on 1-2 that I fall straight backward like the last domino. Ben takes a spot in the lineup, fouling two off before getting punched out on a fastball eight inches outside. “That’s a Rembrandt!”

  We all shake hands, umps and fans and players, and we all tell each other how we’re not that different after all, and we also do the math when they tell us how long they’re in here and deduce which ones probably killed somebody. “Beat the shit out of those San Rafael fuckers,” they tell us, because everybody hates those San Rafael fuckers. We walk out of the yard in twilight, a trumpet in the distance singing sadly, the yard depopulated to just a couple dozen prisoners. Then we go to In-N-Out, where Will Price will get to experience California’s main attraction. “I’m ready for this,” he says, filling four ketchup cups for one order of fries, and I stare at those ketchups lined up in a row and I finally see the same excesses that Fehlandt sees. Eat fries and be merry, Will, for tomorrow we make cuts.

  * * *

  Everybody takes it a different way. Caleb Natov, the kid Fehlandt fought to draft with our second pick after the tryout, looks like he just woke from a hypnotic trance, like he’s wondering how he managed to almost play professional baseball in the first place. “Well,” he says slowly, “thanks for having me.” We never see him again.

  Jesse Garcia, the pitcher who fought back from cancer to keep his pro career going, now fights back tears. “I told myself before I came up here if I don’t do it here I’m done,” he says, as Theo and Fehlandt choke back their own heaves. “So…” he trails off.

  Billy Gonzalez, the Puerto Rican catcher signed before Isaac Wenrich fell into our laps, hardly says a word—just agrees with the situation as presented to him. His handshake at departure is almost painfully hard.

  And then Will Price. Ultimately, we all agree that Will needs to go. While we haven’t seen the same loud tools from Mark Hurley, Mark has outplayed Will with a simple swing, outstanding instincts in drills, and that run-into-the-fence mentality. His teammates like him. We figure Will can perform in this league, but whether it’s his fault or Fehlandt’s, he has shown no persistent attitude improvement. He told a teammate—one of Fehlandt’s best friends on the team, even—that he wanted to punch the manager. Maybe Fehlandt is his own self-fulfilling prophecy, but everything he said Will would do on Monday has come true by Friday. The whole team is against him, and Ben and I aren’t big enough believers to insist that he stay.

  “It was a tough decision,” Theo tells Will, “but we’re gonna have to go another direction this season. We think you’ve got the tools of a baseball player, and there’s a spot for you in this game.”

  “I gotcha.”

  “Thanks for coming out—”

  He’s slumped way back in his chair, legs crossed at the ankles, neck cocked back, and he turns to Fehlandt. “Why?”

  “From my perspective, I didn’t see any adjustments. I’ll give this for example: I’m pitching you in BP and I’m pitching you away and you’re trying to pull everything. I see you get up on the plate so I bust you in, get up in your kitchen, and then you get off the plate and I go back away and you try to pull it again. Like—”

  “So I got cut because of BP?”

  “No, that’s what—”

  “That’s what you just—”

  “Timeouttimeouttimeout.”

  “That’s what you’re saying—”

  “Hold on hold on. Why you got such an attitude?”

  “Because I just got cut! I’m supposed to be happy?”

  “You asked me a question and I’m trying to share with you my opinion and that was part of it.”

  “BP!”

  Theo jumps in: “There was a lot of—”

  “I made adjustments in the game.”

  “How’d you make adjustments in the game?” Fehlandt fires back. “Tell me. How many times did I say to the guys, your first at-bat in a game, your first time seeing a pitcher, why would you swing at the first pitch? How many pitches you see in your two at-bats today?”

  “Two.” One of them he hit for a home run, but he doesn’t mention this.

  “Two pitches. Exactly. If you’re trying to prepare yourself for a season, a good hitter’s not gonna swing at the first pitch. You’re trying to see as many pitches as possible.”

  Will growls.

  “And on top of that, the attitude. Since you brought it out in this meeting I’m gonna bring it out in this meeting. You’re a rookie and you backtalk me. You can’t even own up to how you’re acting. Everybody on the team is telling me the same thing, and you’re in here smiling and laughing—”

  “Did everybody on the team say I was not good enough to be on the team?”

  “It’s not about that, bro. You think I want a cancer?”

  “You cut the worst players—”

  “DO I WANT A CANCER?”

  “Ask them if they would want to be on the field with me.”

  “I already have; you think I didn’t do that?”

  “They said no?”

  Fehlandt scoffs. “Yeah! They did. You’re a rookie. That’s just part of knowing your place. You gotta know your role and be quiet. I shouldn’t even know you’re out there. You gotta bust your ass and you gotta be quiet.”

  “I did bust my ass!”

  “But you gotta be quiet.”

  “Was I not good enough?”

  “I said you have skills but you’re raw as shit.”

  “I’m twenty-one years old!”

  “You act like you’re twelve,” Theo says.

  “So the three outfielders you kept were better than me?”

  Fehlandt has had enough. “You know what’s hilarious, bro?” he says. “I knew exactly to a T what you were gonna say and how this meeting was gonna go, because I played with a million dudes just like you. All right, dude? I’m just being honest with you, dude, your attitude—I could have scripted out this meeting. I knew exactly what this meeting was gonna be. Oh, those other outfielders are better than me? They’re proven. They played professionally. They know how to act.”

  Will growls again. “It’s cool, though,” he says. He walks out of the room, no handshakes for anyone. He walks down the hall toward the main entrance, then abruptly turns around and reenters the conference room.

  “How’m I getting home?” he asks.

  7

  TAKING THE FIELD

  On Sunday, May 31, the evening before Opening Day, the Stompers gather at Rossi’s, a combination beer/dance hall in an especially sleepy section of Sonoma with no streetlights or sidewalks, where the frontage on every block looks like it’s gone too long without a lawn mower. They’re here for the “F
irst Pitch Party,” which the event’s flyer describes as an opportunity to “Mix and mingle with Sonoma’s hometown pro baseball players!” Guests will get autographs, live music, and face time with Rawhide, the bull-like mascot that will always be Theo Fightmaster’s finest free-agent signing: Theo picked up the $10,000 mascot costume for free after the local hockey team that commissioned it folded.

  Sam and I arrive separately but enter Rossi’s side by side. We’re still in the “uneasy nod” stage with most of the nonspreadsheet players, who recognize us as emissaries of the team but still aren’t sure what part we’ll play in their lives, even after Sam’s stirring spring training address. If pressed, they could probably identify us as a single entity, “BenandSam,” but they’d have a hard time telling which is which. And as of today, the team’s unspoken-but-sensed power structure has changed. In camp, the players were only aspiring Stompers, temporary nobodies with the potential to be pros. We were the gatekeepers, wielding the power to decide which wannabes would be baseballers and which would have to return to their girlfriends and families and confess that they hadn’t made the cut. But by surviving the spring training wringer, the players have instantly leapfrogged us in Sonoma status. We may be semi-well-known on the Internet, but in person we pale in comparison to the town’s only professional athletes, who have almost no chance of making the majors but much more of a chance than anyone else in the area. Most of them haven’t played a game in Sonoma, but when they’re wearing their jerseys, they’re instantly local celebrities, catnip for kids with outstretched Sharpies and starstruck, uplifted eyes.

  The players are already seated at the restaurant’s long tables when we walk in, so Sam and I, accompanied by my girlfriend, Jessie, sit at a table with Theo; Theo’s wife, Erin; and the Stompers’ new first family, Eric and Lani Gullotta. Eric purchased the Stompers in January from the Marin County outsiders who own the Pacifics (and approved our project, when they still owned the Stompers). He’s a tax attorney on the precipice of forty, a large, gradually softening physical presence who’s also unabashedly boisterous for a pillar of the local community. A Sonoma native and a graduate of Sonoma Valley High, he became a bro at UC–Santa Barbara and still speaks in a Judd Apatow patois, despite his standing as a board member of the Sonoma Chamber of Commerce. As we settle in, he describes in graphic terms what his wife (still seated alongside him) would do if left alone with Gary Oldman, her Hollywood crush. The conversation grows more colorful, and occasionally uncomfortable, from there.

  Behind Eric’s frat-boy façade is an ambitious owner who’d like to turn a profit but also cares deeply about the Stompers’ ties to Sonoma. “There are two types of owners,” Theo told Santa Rosa’s Press Democrat shortly after the franchise sale. “Owners who don’t know anything about their sport and those who realize it.” Eric is the latter. A sponsor and season-ticket holder during the Stompers’ inaugural season, mostly for business purposes, he didn’t buy the team because he loved baseball; he bought it to burnish his ego, to gaze at a busy ballpark and know that his bank account brought a town together.

  When a major league team changes ownership, the new boss talks a big game about signing new players, building a deep farm system, and future-proofing the front office with the latest industry innovations. Indy leagues operate with a smaller scope: When the Stompers changed ownership, Eric told the Sonoma Index-Tribune that “improving the bathrooms is one of our top priorities.” He turned the vacant office next to his practice into a sleek-looking office and team store, an enormous upgrade from the tiny one-room rental where Theo and Tim had squeezed in the previous summer. Eric also unveiled an aggressive plan to enhance the spectator experience at Arnold Field, proposing several upgrades he’s able to implement—a sound system that doesn’t make every announcement sound like a squawk; a mesh screen behind home plate that’s easier on the eyes (and easier on the baseballs, whose scuffs are a constant expense) than the chain-link fence that preceded it; a canopy over the grandstand that repels some of the sunlight; a 6:05 p.m. start time for home games, an hour earlier than before—and some that have to wait for a future season (such as a working replica of the hand-operated Wrigley Field scoreboard). From our perspective, his most progressive decision is allowing our involvement, ceding some control over his new asset to two carpetbaggers.

  He’s also surprisingly good at interacting with athletes fifteen years younger, maybe because his sense of humor is still in its twenties. Two nights earlier, I’d heard Eric address the team at a catered, Stompers-only event. His stone-sober speech was a cross between a commencement address and Luke Wilson’s wedding toast from Old School.

  “I just want to say to you guys that Sonoma is so fucking proud to have you,” Eric began. “People can look around and see a bunch of ballplayers, and I see a fucking team. And I see a team that Sonoma’s ready to get behind. For those of you who don’t know, I was born and raised in this town, so I think of Sonoma as my family. And I think of you guys as my family. And I am so excited to see you guys get out there and beat the shit out of San Rafael, beat the shit out of Vallejo, and beat the shit out of Pittsburg. And if anybody needs anything … see Theo.

  “I was out at the field—it’s magic, man. We’re putting a ton of dough, a ton of energy, and a ton of love into this season, and this city is ready for an amazing season. There’s a ton of buzz. You guys are gonna be gods among these people. You’re gonna have a great time after the game. I just don’t want to hear the stories, because my wife does not want to hear that shit. So just an email, maybe. If you have pictures, I don’t want to see them.” He paused. “High-res only, okay?” The team ate up and drank in every word, along with many beers from the open bar.

  I limit myself to low-key cringing at Eric’s off-color jokes by devoting most of my attention to the players, many of whom have already bonded with the effortless ease of lifelong clubhouse inhabitants. It’s “Chicken Fried Sunday” at Rossi’s, and our finely tuned athletes swallow pitchers of beer and inhale heaping plates of wings. I guiltily think back to podcast episodes in which Sam and I have discussed the obvious advantage that teams could derive by providing their minor league players with healthy meal options. At the major league level, teams provide players with lavish spreads, and no one is priced out of proper nutrition: The average player makes $4 million a year, the poorest player makes more than half a million, and every player gets a daily meal allowance of more than $100 when the team is on the road. But below the big leagues, many players make less than minimum wage, which has led to lawsuits that have crept through the courts—one of which, we find out, was filed by our current second baseman, Sergio Miranda. Faced with a choice between eating healthy and paying their rent, most players forgo the former and opt for fast food.

  In late 2012, our psychologist colleague Russell Carleton estimated in an article for Baseball Prospectus that it would take teams $2 million a year to feed all of their players like high-performance machines—a small sum, relative to the value of a major league franchise. If that expense helped one more prospect per decade pan out, or convinced a single budding star to sign a discounted extension, it would pay for itself.

  Since Russell’s article was published, some teams have adopted his idea, although many still skimp in a shortsighted attempt to cut costs. As I watch our players chow down, I feel frustrated that we have no money to put where our mouths (and, more importantly, our players’ mouths) are. The Stompers are sponsored by Sonoma Market, an upscale grocery store, so the postgame spreads at home are high quality. But before and during games, and often on the road, tubs of peanut butter and jelly and a bunch of bananas are as good as it gets. It’s worse away from the field: Limiting young adults’ junk-food-and-alcohol intake would be a great way to become the bad guys, and even if we wanted to try it, we’d have neither the money nor the manpower to police what players eat. So bring on the beer and fried chicken—the same combination that the Boston Globe cited as a cause of the late-season collapse of the 201
1 Red Sox.

  After everyone gorges, the player introductions begin. Acting as emcee, Tim introduces each player with the aplomb of a part-time pro wrestling announcer (which he is). One by one, he booms out the players’ brief bios, and each subject swaggers toward the front of the room, where he high-fives Rawhide, bumps backsides and fists with the rest of the team, and takes his place in a line of clapping players. Stompers seem to outnumber non-Stompers at Rossi’s, but the fans and host families who have made the trip sound like a larger crowd, reserving their loudest acclaim for returning players such as Joel Carranza, Eric Schwieger, and Matt Hibbert.

  It’s the first time we’ve had a chance to sit back and study the players as a unit, not as names on a whiteboard but as physical beings. “Do we have a good team, Theo?” Sam asks. Theo hems and haws and finally allows that it looks better than last year’s model, which finished in third place with a 42-36 record. We can’t tell if he’s humoring us or truly believes it. And even if he were confident, we wouldn’t be. We don’t know what a good team should look like at this level.

  After the introductions are over, the cover band begins. Tim and Theo head over to Arnold Field to make sure the alcohol is in order for Opening Day, while Sam and I are joined by Yoshi, the Stompers’ bench coach and the primary helper Feh has on the Stompers’ barebones staff. Yoshi is thirty-seven and a baseball lifer. A former independent-league player in both the United States and Japan, he spends much of the year away from his wife and young son in Japan’s Kanagawa Prefecture, coaching wherever he can. Theo hired him after watching him work in the California Winter League, an eight-team circuit that serves as a showcase for higher-level summer leagues. Yoshi’s team, made up mostly of Japanese players, reported to practice earlier and left later than any other club, which explains why he was taken aback by our laid-back spring schedule. He’s highly organized, a disciplined gymgoer, and a complete convert to the importance of preparation. Basically, Bizarro Fehlandt Lentini. (The real Fehlandt Lentini will twice send me frantic pregame texts to say he’s forgotten half his uniform.)