The Only Rule Is It Has to Work

by Ben Lindbergh

  * * *

  A time-lapse photo montage of me through this season would show the following:

  1. I gradually get fifteen pounds fatter.

  2. My hair and beard grow unreasonably long.

  3. I change my pants twice.

  If Ben’s weird quirk is that he eats cold beans out of a can, mine is that I don’t change my clothes. For the first month of the season, I wear the rust-brown corduroys from spring training and a black Stompers hoodie. The zipper breaks on the corduroys, so for the second month of the season I wear the gray Target chinos that I had to buy for our San Quentin visit and a black Stompers hoodie. The chinos get stained by a broken pen in my pocket, so for the last month of the season I wear beige corduroys and the black Stompers hoodie. I haven’t shaved since spring training, nor have I cut my hair.

  “Why?” Ben asks me one day.

  I relate an encounter I had with the movie director Wes Anderson, who told me at a press junket that he keeps his characters in the same clothes day after day so that it becomes a sort of a uniform, signifying the roles they are playing. When they change clothes, then, it becomes a moment of intention and impact, a shift in plot or emotion. My pants give me power.

  If this sounds entirely too cute, fine, but we learn it’s how baseball thinks, too. All season, we observe the subtextual meaning of a shave. Early in the year, when Jeff Conley was struggling to live up to his preseason “I’m the ace of the Stompers” pickup line, he shaved his beard but left a goofy mustache. The team loved it, and big-bearded Isaac and I briefly fantasized about getting everybody with a beard to match him. Jeff pitched his best game of the year that night. The ’stache was a star! (Nobody else followed suit. He looked really goofy.) Schwieger, struggling in July, showed up with a close-cropped haircut and smooth face. Sean Conroy, after a bad outing in early August, shaved his beard down, exposing cheeks bright enough to light a room. He called this “enacting positive change” (or something like that). And, when we’re in the middle of our August swoon, somebody arranges for a barber to come and give everybody shape-ups. When Gonzo misses his window with the barber, he downgrades his happiness survey that day to a 3, just as he did the time he ate too much Taco Bell.

  Hair matters. Change matters. Two days after we’re swept by Vallejo, I get my hair cut short and shave my beard, leaving a creepy mustache as a callback to the Conley start. We’re going to San Rafael for a three-game weekend series to end the regular season. We’re in a virtual tie with the Pacifics, so whoever wins two out of three in this series is going to win best overall record and host the championship game.

  I’m trying to create a moment of intention and impact, a shift in plot or emotion. I want it to be striking, because Theo and I have decided that I’m going to deliver a “Burn the ships” speech. As I practice it over and over again in front of the mirror, I can’t help but notice how stupid I look.

  * * *

  I pause before I speak. I make eye contact with the players I trust the most. They settle me. I breathe deep, then pause one more time and start.

  “There’s a story,” I say, “that major league managers all tell their players these days.” I go slowly. I speak too fast when I speak in front of people. I spoke way too fast in spring training, and during all the pregame shift speeches. But I’m going slow now. After every clause. I take a pause. To hit my marks. To keep my meter.

  “It goes like this: When the explorer Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico, with plans to defeat the Aztecs and colonize the New World, he ordered his ships be burnt. This way his men would have no way to flee. The only direction they could go was forward. The only option was victory. History says it worked, but I hate this story. This is a story about a leader who didn’t trust his men, didn’t think they would be loyal and fight on their own, couldn’t do the job unless some manager at the top took away their agency.

  “Cortés was selfish as fuck.

  “Cortés, to me, is the Pacifics, telling other leagues’ managers that their players aren’t good enough to move up, keeping them all stuck here.

  “That’s not us. That’s not our team.

  “We want to do everything we can to get you guys out of here, and we pay for that. We’ve lost a lot of good players because of it. But we’re not going to be Cortés. Cortés was a bad guy.

  “There’s a different story I like a lot more. It’s about a guy named Hugh Glass.

  “Hugh Glass was a frontiersman in the 1800s, before the West had been settled. He went to the coldest parts of the country, to North Dakota and Montana, where the Indians were violent and the winters were cruel and the grizzly bears were everywhere. In 1823, he surprised one of those grizzly bears, and she charged at him, threw him to the ground, mauled him, and left him near death. The party he was with was sure he would die, so they left him. Only two men stayed behind, to dig his grave, and to bury him. But after they were attacked by Indians they fled, too. They took his rifle, his knife, and all his supplies. Hugh Glass woke up abandoned. He had no food or supplies. His wounds were festering. They were so deep you could see his exposed ribs. He was two hundred miles from another American.

  “Glass could have given up. Instead, he looked around and said fuck it, because Glass knew one thing: There is no such thing as almost dead. There is dead, and there is alive, and if you’re alive you have a chance.

  “He set his own broken leg and began crawling. To prevent gangrene, he laid his wounded back on a rotting log and let maggots eat away his dead flesh. With no weapons, he still managed to drive two wolves from a dead bison and ate the meat. He fixed his eyes on an isolated mountain far off in the distance and crawled toward it. It took him six weeks. He survived mostly on roots.

  “We know this story because he lived. And we know it because people remember. Records get left and stories get told. Your story will get told. Baseball men in major league front offices will know it and scouts will know it. People you know will know it, and people you meet in the future will find out about it. Everything the world remembers about you as baseball players is happening right now.

  “Right now, we get to decide whether they’re going to remember a team that got frustrated, that felt abandoned, that gave up and let San Rafael be the heroes; or whether they’re going to remember a team that said Fuck no, patched themselves up, and made themselves the heroes.

  “There’s always a part where the hero looks defeated. Always. Every story has it. Where you guys are now is not new and it’s not unusual; it’s the starting point for every third-act turnaround that this world has ever known.

  “A couple days ago, I was listening to a tape recording of our dugout during the third game of the season. That was the game when we fell behind five runs in the first, and then we were down 9-2 in the fifth. The amazing thing about that recording was how loud our dugout was; we were talking, we were encouraging, we were rattling the other team. We sounded like a team that knew it was going to win. You might be thinking, yeah, we had Feh in the dugout, and Feh brought that energy. And it was Feh that I heard on that tape. But it was also Baps. It was Gonzo. It was Schwieger. It was Sean Conroy. It was Kristian. It was Moch. And even though I didn’t hear him, I’m sure that Hurley was there doing his death stare the whole time, freaking Pittsburg out with how intense he was. It was Hurley who singled in the tenth, stole third, and scored on a wild pitch to win that game 10-9.

  “You guys have this in you. I swear to you, I see it, Theo sees it, Yoshi sees it, and everybody’s going to see it. When you go out there today, you just need to see it yourself. I want to hear that dugout that’s confident, that never stops talking. I don’t care if you’re a rookie, I don’t care if you’re new, I don’t care if you’re hitting .200, I don’t care if you’re scared: I need to hear you today, and every day for the rest of this season. Don’t worry if you sound stupid. The only rule is it has to work. So let’s do this.”

  * * *

  This: Win two out of three in San Rafael. Just two out of th
ree. Anybody can beat anybody two out of three, and I feel good about how this series lines up. Game 1, on Friday, will be Schwieg, who enters with that 7.18 ERA. But something has changed in Schwieg. He has spent the whole season trying to shave down that awful ERA—if he could just go 2.00 from here on out then it would get under 5, then 4, and so on—but every time a runner got on base or came home to score it was like a punch in his gut; the frustration of falling short of each new goal had turned him sour. Today, finally, he doesn’t have to think about that ERA. It isn’t going to be salvaged. There is no incremental goal, no pace he has to stay on. He’s a boxer who has lost all eleven rounds but can still win this with a knockout. He’s calm in a way I haven’t seen since spring training.

  I believe in Schwieg.

  Game 2, on Saturday, will be Paulino, who has two modes: shutout or disaster. His last start was a disaster, but in six of his fifteen starts he’s allowed one run or no runs. We don’t have the offense to score six against the Pacifics, who will be starting their ace in that game, but we can score two.

  Game 3, on Sunday, if best overall record is still in play, will be Sean. The Pacifics will be using their worst starter, who is recovering from mono to boot. If we get there, Sean against that guy is a massive mismatch.

  So we need Zen Schwieger or Ace Paulino to show up. Just one. We’ve mastered shiftwork: I now simply write out the opposing lineup on an index card and assign a number to each batter: 0 means no shift; 1 means a strong shade; 2 means a heavy shift; and 3 means the full, extreme shift, where we give up as much of the opposite side of the infield as we possibly can. I give that card to Tommy Lyons, and before every batter he walks in front of the dugout and holds up a finger. The whole infield sees it and moves. If they don’t move enough, Tommy calls out to them. Everybody listens to Tommy, who has feel.

  We’re even shifting in the outfield. Jeremy Williams, who sprays grounders everywhere, almost never pulls a fly ball but has big power to right field, so we move all the outfielders thirty feet to their left. Maikel Jova has power to left but only dunks bloopers into right, so the right fielder moves in an extra thirty feet. And then there’s Jake Taylor, who has a special shift designated for him: a four-man outfield. If the five-man infield worked so well, we figure, we might as well try the reverse. Taylor pulls every ground ball to the left side, and typically for a hitter like that we would pull everybody over that way, with the second baseman right up the middle. But Taylor doesn’t even hit balls up the middle; it’s all pull. And with two men on that side of the infield, defenses have had no problem getting him out when he does: He is hitting .133 on grounders, with none of those outs going to the second baseman. If two infielders and a first baseman are essentially holding him to a .133 average on grounders, we can gamble by moving the last infielder to the outfield, where Taylor’s power makes it hard to cover the entire field.

  Yes, we know he might simply poke a little single almost anywhere on the infield, but by this point everybody is content with that possibility. Taylor is crushing us, and we have come to appreciate that any player trying to beat the shift usually looks bad for a couple at-bats, then gets frustrated and gives up. If Taylor tries, we’ll consider it a win. We will do it only in situations where an extra-base hit is far more damaging than a single: with nobody on base with one out in the inning, or with nobody in scoring position and two outs in the inning.

  Our scouting reports on opposing hitters have found a balance between stupid simple and wordy. We’ve spent three months hearing how our guys talk about opposing hitters—what sorts of things they find noteworthy—and observing which of our reports get ignored and which get implemented. The report I tuck into the lockers of all our pitchers and catchers before the series shows the Pacifics’ hitters ranked by strength against fastballs vs. strength against off-speed pitches; by how aggressive they are, as measured by overall swing rate and out-of-zone swing rate; and by tendency to pull the ball.

  As for our own offense, we’re pessimistic, though in retrospect it’s not obvious why: In the ten games after Isaac Wenrich left, we averaged 5.7 runs, and in the four games between Matt Hibbert’s last game and the first game of the final series, we averaged 7.5. Maybe we’re worried about the same things everyone else is—our lack of an obvious power source, a lineup almost completely cored since Opening Day—or maybe we are intimidated by San Rafael’s pitching staff, which has reloaded in the season’s final month. For that, though, we also have a plan: The Pacifics’ Friday and Saturday night starters are extremely predictable on the first pitch or when behind in the count—the former has thrown seventy-five consecutive fastballs in such situations—but extremely scary when ahead in the count, with putaway sliders that send front hips spinning. We also know that they know that we are the most patient team in the league, working walks and hit-by-pitches and getting into the other team’s bullpen. The latter accomplishment will be worthless in this series, as San Rafael has a deep, well-rested, and all-hands-on-deck pen. So we are going to go up to the plate and ambush every good fastball we see. For a team that our managers have kept grounded in such counts all season, this is like getting the keys to Dad’s car.

  After midnight Thursday, I tweet, “We need to win two out of three to win best record in the regular season. We’re going to sweep.” Two minutes later, I follow up with another: “But I know how baseball works, so I’m going to delete that prediction now.” I do.

  * * *

  Schwieger pitches beautifully in game 1, throwing fastballs down and in to right-handed batters with so much movement that Andrew Parker struggles to glove them. He allows a run in the second on a double and a couple of productive outs, then holds the Pacifics scoreless through the next five innings. He comes into the dugout after each half inning fired up, and screams encouragement to the offense. I’m there with him. After months of keeping quiet and knowing my place, I’m done caring whether I look silly. The team needs to hear from its dugout, and I am in its dugout, so I scream on every pitch. “Aaaaaat-a-boyyy!” I blend in nicely: The dugout is louder than it has been in any game since Fehlandt was still here.

  It doesn’t matter. We have a shot in the first inning, when the Pacifics’ starter, J. R. Bunda, is wild. We get a walk, and then on a 3-1 pitch Baps smokes one to left field. But it’s just a lineout to the left fielder, and after that Bunda settles in with a frustratingly predictable mix: fastballs just off the plate away for (grrrrr) called strikes, then sliders for swinging strikes. Contrary to our plan, we don’t swing at a first pitch until the seventh inning. This used to kill me, when I’d write out a scouting report and we’d lose because the thing I said would happen if you do X happened when they did X. But gradually I understood that (a) execution is really hard and (b) sometimes you have to do X. Just because the guy doesn’t hit changeups well doesn’t mean you can throw him thirty changeups in a row. No matter the scouting report, in every game some baseball happens.

  We have our shot in the seventh when we put two on with nobody out, trailing 1-0. Then we send up Kristian Gayday to bat against a right-handed pitcher, instead of pinch-hitting with a lefty. Kristian crushes lefties and has hit .188/.289/.268 against righties. In another simulation of this season, we might have spent six weeks fighting with our manager over how many at-bats he got against righties, but we had other things to worry about, and for the most part Yoshi platooned him in the second half. But what Yoshi hasn’t done much of is pinch-hitting, and here Kristian gets to bat in the biggest spot of the game against a pitcher he has no chance against. He strikes out looking, and the Pacifics put it away with two in the eighth. Ball game.

  Schwieger was ferocious. He landed the twelfth-round knockout punch, but the other guy didn’t go down. The other guy lives in a big house, too.

  Baseball is a game of failure.

  In game 2, which is now a must-win for us if we want home-field advantage, the Pacifics start Nick DeBarr, their best remaining pitcher (and also their pitching coach), who has carried a n
asty ’stache like mine on his face for the entire damn year. He leads the league in strikeouts. A former Tampa Bay Rays draft pick, he reached Triple-A in the Dodgers system six years back and has been in indy ball ever since.

  The Stompers’ starter is Gregory Paulino, who deserves to be the hero of his own baseball book. Since he showed up on this team, he has been pitifully alone. Before Paulino’s previous start against the Pacifics, Paul Hvozdovic asked if he could help him with anything. Gregory said no, then reconsidered and said, “You could get my family from the Dominican.” After the season we see that on his happiness surveys, he never marked his mood as more than a four out of seven. Spanish-speakers have come and gone, but never native and never Dominican. The only time all year that we’ve seen him interact with somebody from his native country was inside San Quentin, when a prisoner tracked down a Dominican convict and introduced the two. (Gregory looked so happy.) But that’s not the primary cultural gap between him and the rest of the team. Gregory is religious. Lots of guys on the team are religious—chapel is well attended—but Gregory is the one player who lives it. When we talk about the team’s preferred methods of partying, we refer to the smokers, the drinkers, and Gregory. His idea of a good time is taking the bus to the mall on a Saturday, staying all day, and taking the bus back. His idea of a really good time is when his host mom cooks him a bunch of waffles. That’s as good as professional baseball gets for Gregory: Somebody makes you unlimited waffles.

  Our team loves Gregory, loves him even though he refuses to wear the pink thong that the best player of the previous game is required to wear under his uniform, loves him even though he was the one guy who skipped our mandatory team meeting at Town Square because he doesn’t go to bars. But for those reasons, too, he has never been part of the team in the same way. And I admire him more for that. About 5 percent of the reason guys are out here is to make some money. About 10 percent is because they want to win some baseball games. About 40 percent is that maybe they’re going to make the majors, and this is how. But the rest is camaraderie. Being on a baseball team is an invitation to a cool group of guys who will love you, fuck with you, drink with you, teach you, learn from you, remember you, and five years later when they’re on a team that needs a shortstop say, “I played with a guy in Sonoma who I could call.” By staying true to his faith, Gregory gave up that part of the experience. Every game, while the rest of the team was stretching together and making ball talk, Gregory was jogging by himself around the warning track, back and forth, lap after lap, being a baseball player, being devotional, being alone.