The Might-Have-Been

by Joe Schuster

  Two weeks later, without telling anyone, Edward Everett went to the tryout camp.

  Chapter Thirteen

  By nine in the morning, the field for the tryout was cluttered with players tossing baseballs back and forth, well more than a hundred balls arcing across the blue sky. Edward Everett was playing catch with a kid who appeared to be seventeen or eighteen, a skinny blond-haired boy who wore a cheap souvenir Cleveland Indians batting helmet perched on his head. He had little ability: his throws sometimes sailed over Edward Everett’s head, sometimes bounced three-quarters of the way to him. One caught another player on the ankle, sending him to the turf in pain. “Sorry; sorry,” the kid said. Once, chasing another errant throw, Edward Everett noticed two of the scouts—a short, burly man in his sixties with a crew cut, and a trim younger man with curly hair—pointing in his direction, the younger man making a note on a clipboard.

  Everywhere was a mix of the talented and the inept. Perhaps twenty yards from Edward Everett and the blond-headed kid, two players in Ohio University jerseys played catch and even in the cacophony of balls smacking leather, Edward Everett could hear the sizzle of their throws. Near them, two stocky men who might have been in their thirties made lollipop tosses, dropping more balls than they caught.

  Finally, the burly coach called for the players to stop warming, directing them to line up against the outfield wall. Edward Everett tried to move away from the blond boy but he stuck to him like a lost puppy, following him so closely that several times he kicked the heels of Edward Everett’s cleats.

  “You been to one of these before?” he asked when they reached the outfield wall and were waiting for whatever came next.

  “No,” Edward Everett said, not really wanting to talk to the kid. He had bad breath, smelling of cigarettes and garlic, and was missing his left upper canine.

  What he said was not precisely true. When he was the kid’s age, he’d been invited to a scouting combine workout at Crosley Field in Cincinnati: Edward Everett and seventy-five other ballplayers throwing, fielding and hitting while scouts from a dozen teams clicked stopwatches and made notes on index cards in advance of the professional draft. They were all talented, all of them all-state, all-American, all-everything and they were all going to be drafted—the only question was by whom and how high.

  Edward Everett had done well. At one point, he was in the cage, taking his ten swings. When he finished—everything off his bat a line drive—one of the scouts asked him if he’d stay in for another twenty pitches. “It’s no fair,” the next hitter complained. He was a squat catcher from Nebraska who couldn’t hit much—his defense and arm were his strengths—but Edward Everett got back into the cage. The scout waved off the bullpen coach who’d been doing the pitching and replaced him with a right-hander from the Reds who had just come off the disabled list and had been doing some throwing on the side; he’d gone after Edward Everett as if he were in a crucial spot in a game. The first pitch came up and in at Edward Everett, who ducked back to keep from getting hit. The second was down and away, but Edward Everett was expecting it: up-and-in followed by down-and-away was part of the baseball dance men had been doing for a century, and he stepped into it and drove it to center field. Sliders, curveballs, changeups, tailing fastballs: Edward Everett hit nearly all of them; the next to last, a curve that held up in the strike zone, he sent over the screen above the left field wall.

  When he finished, he was drenched in sweat, his arms shaking from so many consecutive swings. He looked to the scout, who just went back to making tiny symbols on his clipboard. “Asshole,” the catcher from Nebraska said, stepping into the box.

  It was enough to get the Cardinals to take him in the fourth round, whereas before he might have gone later in the draft; enough that he got a three-thousand-dollar bonus just to sign the contract—enough that he drove to his high school graduation in a new Thunderbird two-door hardtop in Green Fire.

  “I told my mom I’d buy her a house if I got signed,” the kid in the souvenir helmet said. Edward Everett looked closely at him to see if he was serious. He really was a boy, Edward Everett realized and felt sorry for him: to be so clueless as to think he had a chance for a contract.

  “What we gonna do next?” another player asked. He was short, his belly hung over his belt and he hadn’t shaved in two or three days.

  “We run and then do fielding drills,” one of the players in an Ohio University jersey said. Close-up, Edward Everett could see that he and the other player from Ohio University were identical twins; the only marked difference was that one had a scar that ran from his chin up toward the left corner of his mouth. “We were at Riverfront day before yesterday with the Reds and I think they run these things pretty much alike.”

  “What about hitting?” asked the unshaven player. He mimed swinging at a pitch, but the motion seemed more like someone chopping weeds than swinging at a baseball.

  “They make a first cut after the running and the fielding and then the ones they still want to look at get to hit,” said the twin with the scar.

  “Oh, man,” a player in what was clearly a brand-new Indians souvenir hat said. “I can’t field worth crap but I can hit the hell out of a baseball.”

  “All right, all right,” the stocky coach called out, clapping a hand against the back of his clipboard to get their attention. “We’re gonna do some running. Everybody but the pitchers. You pitchers head on over to the home bullpen to do some throwing. Everyone else line up by number.”

  Perhaps a third of the players trooped to the right field bullpen and, as the rest lined up, Edward Everett tried to appraise them. Number thirty-two was a grossly overweight man who might be in his thirties, his Stroh’s T-shirt taut across his torso. Number forty was nearly seven feet, with long arms that dangled loosely from his shoulders; he had a nervous tic, his hands constantly in motion, tugging at his hair, scratching his ears. Number twenty-two was, Edward Everett realized with surprise, middle-aged. When he took off his frayed Indians hat to wipe his brow, his curly hair was thin and graying. Putting it back on, he gave Edward Everett a grin.

  “I’m forty-six,” he said, winking.

  “But—”

  “They aren’t going to sign me,” he said, laughing. “But how could I pass up a chance to come out here?” He touched the padded wall beside them tenderly. “I called in sick.” He held up his palms alongside each other, imitating a balance scale: Left hand higher: “Sit at my desk, listening to an asshole from Toledo bitch about a broken office chair.” Right hand higher. “Come to the ballpark where Bob Lemon and Lou Boudreau played.” He dropped his hands. “Easy peasy.” He pulled a sheet of paper out of his jeans pocket and unfolded it. It was the same information letter the team had sent to Edward Everett when he called about the tryout; the only difference was the name and address. “I’m going to frame this. Tell my grandkids I had a tryout with the Indians.”

  Edward Everett understood then that the team had handed out invitations to anyone who asked, the day as much a public relations gimmick as a search for players for the organization, and he wondered how many others had come down as if it were an amusement park. Instead of roller coasters and Ferris wheels, there was a romp in the outfield grass. The customer service clerk. The fat guy in the Stroh’s shirt. The kid in the cracked souvenir helmet. It made him angry: so much wasted time for people on a lark.

  When it was his turn to run, he lined up beside the customer service clerk.

  “You could use a sundial to time me,” the clerk shouted to the two scouts at the finish line holding stopwatches. He pounded his chest, coughing. “Two packs a day.”

  “Ready,” said the scout beside them. “Go.”

  Edward Everett was off at the word. He had babied his knee in his training runs, not so much worrying that it would fail but expecting it, thinking with each step, Is this the moment? Is this the moment? As he ran across the outfield grass in Cleveland Stadium, it struck him that he despised his knee. Fuck you, he thou
ght. Go ahead and give way. Once, when he was eight and his father was hitting ground balls to him at the Little League field, teaching him to play, a ball hit a pebble in front of him and bounced up, driving his lip back against his teeth, drawing blood. Edward Everett fell to the ground, curling up. “Little baby,” his father taunted, then hit another ground ball toward him, and it slammed against his stomach. Edward Everett staggered to his feet and his father hit another ground ball toward him; he snagged it and hurled it back at his father in a rage, surprising his father, who threw his hand up, blocking his face, and the ball ticked off the tip of his middle finger, tearing the nail partway off. He thought his father would punish him, but he merely sucked on his finger and gave him a wink, as if Edward Everett had learned something.

  That same rage, he felt for his knee. Fail, he thought, dashing toward the finish line, his left foot finding a small crease in the ground, his right a clod of dirt, his left a slick spot, his right another crease. Fail, fail, fail. From behind him, he could hear the customer service clerk gasping, but on he ran, waiting for the instant when the ligament in his knee would tear, once and for all, but it held, and he raced past the finish line, dimly aware of the scout clicking the stopwatch and muttering something to the scout beside him, making notes on a clipboard.

  “Man. You was. Fast,” the customer service clerk said, wheezing, doubled over, hands on his knees. “It was like. You was being chased. By a man. With a gun.” He let out another wheeze. “If I die. Tell my kids. I love them.”

  Then there was nothing to do but wait for the other players to finish their runs. He sat in the box seats behind the home bullpen, where the pitchers were throwing, two at a time, side by side. Throughout the box seats, families of some of the players had turned the day into a picnic. They had brought baskets of food, small coolers of Coke and Tab. Not far from where he was, a middle-aged couple sat behind a kid, obviously their son, the mother squeezing his shoulder as he sat with his head bowed, the father with his head turned aside, tapping an index finger alongside his nose in a show of disappointment.

  Out on the field, when it came time for the kid in the cracked souvenir helmet, Edward Everett leaned forward to watch. He found himself hoping that the kid was better than he’d seemed. But almost as soon as the scout shouted, “Go,” it was evident he had no talent. He slipped on his first step and as he ran seemed to be off balance the entire way, a grim look on his face, his plastic helmet bobbing on the top of his head. He reached up to hold it in place, his free arm pumping jerkily. The player running alongside him—maybe twenty, at the camp in a Youngstown State University jersey—raced past him. As the kid in the cracked helmet finished, he made his way toward Edward Everett and plopped down in a seat in the row in front of him.

  “I coulda done better,” he said. “I run a lot at home.” He fished into the front pocket of his jeans and came up with a crumpled pack of Kool cigarettes, pulling one out.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Edward Everett said.

  The kid gave Edward Everett a cockeyed grin and stuffed the pack back into his jeans. “Not a good impression,” he said.

  “No,” Edward Everett said, and pretended to watch the next pair of runners with keen interest. One of them was the seven-foot player. He was awkward, loping more than running, taking long, heavy strides across the outfield grass.

  “I’d give anything to be that tall,” the kid said. Although Edward Everett did not prompt him, he went on. “Shrimp. Punk. Tyke.” He shook his head.

  “I’m going to find something to drink,” Edward Everett said. He pushed himself out of his seat and made his way up the aisle toward the concourse at the top of the steps. There, he found quite a few of the players cooling themselves in the shade of the roof, some lounging against the wall, drinking and smoking cigarettes. A couple, including the overweight man in the Stroh’s T-shirt, shared a can of beer, passing it back and forth.

  “It’s warm,” the man in the Stroh’s shirt said, holding the can up, offering it. “We found it stashed in a stall of the men’s.” Edward Everett shook his head and moved away, not wanting anyone to associate him with their cavalier attitude: he had risked too much to have the scouts discount him because they thought he was there on a whim. He wandered up the ramp. At an outside wall, he stopped, looking down toward Lake Erie. He had once heard that people called Cleveland Stadium “the mistake by the lake,” and from here it was evident why. The stench was nearly overwhelming. What was it? Dying fish? Dying fish mixed with decaying detergents that someone had dumped into the lake?

  He walked on, past the doors to the press boxes on the mezzanine level. One was open and, looking around to see if anyone would stop him, he stepped inside. In it, two tables were bolted to the carpeted floor, fiberglass chairs sitting in front of banks of typewriters. Although the Indians had last played at home two or three days ago, the press box was cluttered with trash. In a paper cup of what was now flat Coke, someone had dropped a cigarette, the paper dissolving, tobacco flecks floating on the surface.

  He sat in a chair, looking at the stadium below him. In the outfield, players continued to do their sprints. The pair out there now was as mismatched as Edward Everett and the customer service clerk: a rotund player who was more walking than running, his arms oddly stiff at his sides, while fifteen yards ahead, a slender Asian kid dashed toward the finish line.

  On the table in front of Edward Everett, a sportswriter had left a piece of yellow second sheet in the typewriter platen, three words typed on it and then abandoned as if he was spirited away mid-sentence: “better suited to.” Beside the typewriter lay a mimeographed sheaf of pages from the media relations office, most of it columns of statistics for the Indians and the Detroit Tigers. Edward Everett flipped through it. At the bottom of the statistics for the Tigers was a player with a line that must have looked like his own to sportswriters last summer: a second baseman with whom Edward Everett had once played in A ball at Danville, a baby-faced kid from Oregon who bellowed top-40 hits while he took fielding practice, the kind of player clubhouse attendants sometimes tried to chase off as if he were trying to sneak in to collect autographs. And now he was in the major leagues, his cheerfulness and love for the game condensed to a single typed line, a single at-bat.

  Down on the field, the final runner was at the starting line for his dash. Edward Everett could see most of the other players scattered throughout the grandstand, some there on a lark but others there to get a chance to have their own line on a mimeographed sheet in a press box somewhere. Hoppel had said he was one-in-ten for getting as far as he had; most of the men down on the field would say they’d be satisfied with that: a chance to step to the plate just one time in Pittsburgh or Kansas City in a uniform, under the lights, in front of twenty thousand fans. They were wrong, he thought. Nothing would ever be enough. If he played five years, he’d want six. If he made it ten, he’d want fifteen.

  He thought about Connie and his uncle and how he had deceived them. He had told them he was going to Cleveland but, to each, he had told a different lie—Connie that he was going to a trade show; his uncle, that he and Connie were taking a short vacation. The previous night, before he had gone to sleep, he had called Connie to say good night.

  “I miss you,” she had said. “Two months ago, we weren’t even in each other’s lives and now I’m sitting here on the bed, thinking how it’s going to be empty tonight.”

  He had almost told her the truth then, struck with remorse. Sitting in the press box, he thought of her. It was the last week of school and she would be in her classroom, having a party, cookies and Kool-Aid they’d bought with their own groceries. In part to assuage the guilt he felt because he was withholding from her the information that he was going to the tryout camp, that the life they had discussed might not happen, he’d taken her to a Waldenbooks in Wheeling to buy paperback classic novels that she could pass out to her students to encourage summer reading. “It’s too much,” she’d said when h
e wrote the check, nearly a hundred dollars, as a clerk stacked cartons of Dickens, Austen and Hugo onto a hand truck to wheel out to his car.

  “I’m just trying to help you encourage your students to be better,” he replied. In the press box, he imagined her in her classroom, her students lined up at her desk as she handed each a book when they filed past. She really was a good woman, he thought: most of the students would never open the books, he knew, spending their summers working at the Tastee Freez or the new McDonald’s in St. Martinsville, drinking illegal beer, having sex by the reservoir. The notion struck him: he should pack it in, walk away from the tryout camp, drive back, take up the life into which he had only begun to settle, sell flour, become wealthy like his uncle, marry Connie, be a good father to her son. It would be, he thought, a kind of retribution for the fact that his own son, wherever he was, would not have a father; would, at least, not have him as his father.

  He stood, stretched, started to walk down to the field. There was a slight hitch in his knee. It didn’t hurt, but there was a pop and stiffness. He shouldn’t have sat down; he should have kept moving. As he walked along the concourse, looking out over at the lake, it struck him that, if he could see to the other side of the water, it was Canada—another country, where he had been eleven months earlier. He saw himself crossing into it that first time, waiting in the long line at customs while the officials methodically searched the team’s carry-on bags. He was naïve then, he realized, thinking he was at the start of everything, the road of his life mapped out like one of the AAA TripTiks his mother ordered before a vacation, the path drawn out in dark black arrows pointing in one direction, page after page of the spiral-bound TripTik, leading inevitably to where he planned to end up. He felt a little sorry for the confident self he had been then. That younger him hadn’t seen that the TripTik hadn’t taken into account the detour that lay ahead.