Throw Like a Woman

by Susan Petrone

  “Of course,” she replied, and made a mental note to remember to put a ponytail holder and an extra pair of socks in her bag before she left. As she walked down the driveway with Andy and Jon, she asked, “Do you two have everything you need for the day? Homework? Lunch?”

  “Yep, got everything,” Jon said. Andy just nodded with a bored “Uh-huh.”

  “Grandma will be coming over around 5:00. Try not to set the house on fire between the time you get home from school and the time she gets here.”

  “We won’t,” Jon said.

  “And you’ll be playing baseball,” Andy said. He said “playing baseball” in a sarcastic, sing-songy voice. Brenda pretended not to notice.

  “You’ll do good,” Jon said. “I know it. Don’t be scared, okay? Coach always says ‘It’s just a game.’”

  “If it’s just a game, why do you cry every time you strike out?” Andy said.

  “Shut up. I do not!”

  “Come on, guys. Don’t start the day fighting,” Brenda said, keeping herself solidly in between the two boys in case Jon started throwing punches. They reached the end of the driveway and turned to walk to the corner. The school bus was due any minute.

  “Did you send in the registration form for the sports camp this summer?” Andy asked.

  Brenda paused, trying to keep the first words to pop into her mind—‘Oh crap’—from being the first words to pop out of her mouth. “I’m mailing it today,” she said, as though the form was completed, an unbounceable check written, and both sitting in an already addressed and stamped envelope.

  “The deadline’s tomorrow.”

  “It’ll get there.”

  “What happens if it doesn’t get there in time?” Jon asked. “I want to go to the camp.”

  “It’ll be fine. You’re both doing the sports camp.” Inwardly, she knew they had to do the sports camp because there was no way they were staying home alone all day every day all summer long. Last summer, Ed had still been in the house and she had been home. Now here it was, a year later, and life was completely different.

  Brenda gave Jon a big hug good-bye as the school bus came down the street. She reached for Andy but he pulled away, so she just patted him on the back. It was as though he had turned into a teenager overnight. When the boys got on the bus, Jon waved. Andy didn’t.

  Brenda went back to the house and grabbed the sports camp registration form, an envelope, and a stamp. She’d fill it out and mail it at lunch. She was going to have to write a rubber check for the registration and hope Ed’s child support payment wouldn’t be late. Writing bad checks didn’t seem like the most auspicious way to start the day.

  She didn’t tell anyone at work that she was playing baseball that night. Robin had said she wanted to go and watch, but Brenda asked her to wait a week or two, “Just until I establish myself a bit.”

  “Establish schmablish. I’ll be there for moral support, but I’ll act like I don’t know you.”

  Feeling like one raw, dangling nerve with a baseball glove attached, she arrived at the field after work. It was in a municipal park in a far west exurb that was seemingly able to spend more lavishly on one park than Brenda’s inner-ring suburb was able to spend on one of its schools. The park had four softball and two baseball fields, plus a picnic area, a playground, and a rubber-paved jogging track around the entire perimeter. It was a far cry from soggy old Quarry Park.

  She saw half a dozen guys in full baseball regalia—black baseball pants, socks pulled up, real spikes, and gray jerseys with gold lettering—standing by the cars at the end of the parking lot closest to the fields. A couple of the guys glanced over at her car when she pulled in. She didn’t see Carl, but she had parked clear at the other end of the lot. She moved the front seat back as far as it would go and put on her black sweatpants (she wondered if she’d have to invest in baseball pants as well as cleats or if she could get away with the sweats) and put her jersey on over her long-sleeved T-shirt. April night games could get very cold. She put on her sneakers and that was it. She was dressed. It was time to get out of the car.

  As she walked across the parking lot to the group of men in Lightning jerseys, she felt their eyes watching her. She glanced down at her billowing jersey. Carl had laughed when she asked if he had any small jerseys—they were all large or extra-large. She didn’t tuck it in—the elastic on the sweatpants was kind of old and it always made her look chunky if she tucked her shirt in. After two kids, she knew her stomach would never be flat again, but she still looked pretty good from the waist up. It was just her hips and thighs that made her feel like a parade balloon.

  When she reached her new teammates, she introduced herself, adding, “Carl Fleishman recruited me.” She tried to sound casual but confident, like she was an established baseball entity instead of a green rookie who hadn’t played ball with anyone over the age of twelve in more than a decade.

  “Right,” one of the guys said. “I saw your picture in the paper. Can you really throw eighty-two miles an hour?” He looked a bit older than most of the players. Maybe in his very early fifties with one of those goatees guys his age often grow to mask a double chin. Somewhere in her memory banks, Brenda remembered that was called a Vandyke and not a goatee because there was no separation between the moustache and the beard. That didn’t seem like an appropriate contribution to the conversation.

  “That’s what the speed clock said,” she replied, hoping she didn’t sound coy or like a jerk.

  The guy smiled and nodded. “I’m Gary. Nice to meet you.” Brenda shook hands all around. All of the guys said hello and mumbled some niceties, but she could tell most of them were skeptical. She tried to focus on learning her teammates’ names and not thinking about the fact that very soon she was going to have to pitch to real adult men who would be far less forgiving of bad pitches than Andy and Jon were.

  Gary asked her if she wanted to throw, so she warmed up with him, just playing an easy game of catch. It felt good. The baseball seemed to fit the size and shape of her hand better than a big, ungainly softball ever did.

  She heard someone yell “Hey Carl! Are we home or away today?” and recognized Carl’s compact, squareish form stretching over by the dugout as he called back, “Away.” Brenda gave a little half wave but focused on Gary’s throws. He kept chucking the ball hard, head-high, as though daring her to throw it back with equal force. After a few more throws, she told Gary her arm felt good and that she needed to talk to Carl. As she walked behind the line of other players playing catch, she heard a voice say in a stage whisper: “Well?” and heard Gary’s reply: “She’s got nothing,” and felt a tingle in her stomach, not from nerves, but from anger. She had something. She wasn’t sure yet what it was, but she knew it was something.

  She walked the last few steps to the dugout with a new focus, and when Carl introduced her to Bob, a hulking guy with a mocha brown complexion and a kind smile, she made sure to give a firmer grip to her handshake.

  “Bob’s the catcher because he has the youngest knees on the team,” Carl joked.

  “Just aged out of the open division this winter. Now I gotta play with the old guys. Looks like you and me are the babies on this team, Brenda,” Bob said.

  Brenda tried not to let his good nature ruin her newfound bad mood. They quickly went over the signs, then she trotted out to the mound and turned to face Bob, whose body dwarfed his catcher’s mitt, making her target look very small indeed.

  There were eleven other players on the team, and all of them now stopped to watch Brenda throw her first pitch as a member of the Lightning. They were standing along the first and third baselines or in the dugout, and they were all watching her. She tried not to look around, tried to focus only on the catcher’s mitt, looking for Ed’s face in its deep pocket. Bob held down one finger. Her right hand felt numb as she ran her fingers over the ball, as though the seams were a bastardized f
orm of Braille that she was trying desperately to read. She knew what she had to do, knew she had to focus, but somehow her body wasn’t cooperating.

  Bob punched his hand into his glove once and shouted an encouraging, “Right in here, B!” She nodded, thought too much about what she was doing, and threw. After what seemed like five minutes, the ball hit the catcher’s mitt. She heard a couple of snorts from the other players.

  “What’s with the Peggy Lee fastball?” Carl called. He looked a little worried. She was there on his word and didn’t want to make him look bad. Hell, she didn’t want to make herself look bad.

  Someone off to her left sang a snippet from “Is That All There Is?”

  “No, that’s not all there is,” she mumbled to herself. She could feel the anger starting to bubble a little more wildly inside her. She focused on it, feeling the anger rush through her body until she swore her toes were tingling with adrenaline.

  Bob held down two fingers and then three, both of which Brenda shook off. Then he held down all four fingers and wiggled them, which wasn’t even a sign they had talked about. Brenda shook her head. There were grumbles from the peanut gallery, as those watching started telling her to throw something.

  “Come on, Brenda. We don’t have much practice time,” Carl called.

  “Keep your jersey on, Carl,” Brenda mumbled. She looked down and kicked around some dirt on the mound. When she looked up, it was as though someone had suddenly flicked on the Christmas lights: the imaginary golden lines running from her hand to the catcher’s mitt were illuminated, and Ed’s smirking face now seemed to be floating in Bob’s mitt. He held down one finger. Brenda nodded. This time, she didn’t think, she just threw a screaming four-seamer. The thwump the ball made as it hit the catcher’s mitt was loud and sure. Brenda heard someone say, “HEL-lo!”

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Bob said as he threw the ball back. Brenda threw a dozen or so more pitches. Her curve was on, and the sinker appeared to drop about half a foot just before it hit the plate. She was feeling good, but not too good. Carl hustled her off the mound the minute some members of the opposing team showed up, saying that he wanted to keep his “secret weapon” secret as long as possible.

  Sometime during the first inning, Brenda noticed Robin and her husband, Dan, in the bleachers behind the dugout. She caught Robin’s eye and gave a quick wave. Robin nudged Dan, and they both waved but didn’t call her name, thankfully. It was weird enough being the only woman on the field side of the fence. The other team and those watching the game kept stealing glances at her. Carl might as well have put a big target on the back of her jersey.

  “What do you care what other people think?” she murmured quietly. She kept that silent mantra going until the seventh inning. With the Lightning down by three, Carl told her to go in. She wondered if Carl thought it was safest to send her in when they were down so she couldn’t blow a lead. “Be cool, Brenda,” Bob said to her as they rose to take the field. “We know what you have. Just get in there and throw strikes.”

  “I’ll try,” Brenda replied. When she took the mound, Robin and Dan cheered loudly. A couple of warm-up pitches took the edge off her embarrassment. Then the manager of the opposing team walked over and started talking to the home plate umpire. The infield umpire joined in, and then Carl. She couldn’t hear the discussion, but instinctively knew it was about her. Sure enough, after a couple of minutes, Carl waved her in to join the conversation.

  As she got closer, she could hear the opposing team’s manager, a squat, round-shouldered sixty-something with a red knobby nose, saying, “It’s unprecedented.”

  “There isn’t anything against it in the rules, Hank,” the home plate umpire said. “How old are you dear?” he asked Brenda. If he hadn’t had the look of a once-tall now-stoop-shouldered, kindly grandfather, she would have taken offense at being called “dear.”

  “I turned forty in January,” she replied.

  “She’s over thirty-eight, Hank,” Carl said, “and that’s all the rules say. They don’t mention sex.”

  Brenda had to stop herself from saying, “Gender.” The issue here was gender. Sex was something she vaguely remembered as having brought about her two children.

  “When did you put her on the roster?” the opposing manager asked.

  “I added her to the online roster last Sunday night. Right before the deadline.”

  Brenda briefly caught Carl’s eye. He had added her name to the roster before she had said she wanted to play. That was an unexpected vote of confidence. The manager tried every argument possible to prevent Brenda from playing. His nose went from red to a deep purple, and the way his jowls were flapping, she half-expected them to stir up a dust storm in the infield. There wasn’t any rule against women playing in the Roy Hobbs league—Brenda had checked the rules online herself—there was just the assumption that only men would play.

  Finally, Hank talked himself out, and the ump called “Play ball.” Brenda trotted back out to the mound. Robin and Dan cheered again, and this time, some of the girlfriends and wives who were watching clapped a little too. The extra support from an unexpected quarter was kind of nice. The infielders had gathered at second base to chat during the interlude, while the outfielders just plopped down in the grass to wait it out. Brenda waited for her fielders to go back to their positions, then turned to face her first batter.

  He was interchangeable with most athletic guys in their early forties—long arms, long legs, and a chest broad enough so you could read the full team name, “Loco Leprechauns,” in white letters on his Kelly green jersey. Brenda gave a quick glance down at her too-big jersey. She’d have to stuff her sports bra in order for the word “Lightning” to be fully legible across her chest. The fact that Mother Nature had given her wide hips and no chest helped the anger to start growing again. So did the cocky way the batter came up to the plate, glancing at Brenda and shaking his head with an “I-can’t-believe-this-crap” grin before taking his stance.

  Bob extended one finger, signaling it to be low and inside. She saw the lines leading from her hand to her target, and then, as easily and on the mark as throwing a balled-up pair of socks down the laundry chute, she threw.

  She would not soon forget the expression on the batter’s face after he had swung and missed the ball by a mile, but she still had to get the guy out. It only took three more pitches. The Loco Leprechauns’ dugout was eerily silent as the batter skulked back to the bench, as though they weren’t sure they had witnessed one of their own striking out to some woman none of them had ever seen before. It was only after she got the second guy to ground out and the third one to pop up that Brenda allowed herself to smile. This time, when Robin and Dan cheered, it wasn’t so embarrassing.

  •◊•

  Excerpt from the transcript for Today in Sports with Charlie Bannister, ESPN, May 4:

  Charlie: Before I sign off today, I feel compelled to share one of the most impressive things I’ve seen in a long time. Our great intern, Ziggy—actually his name is Al but he’s got a round head—Ziggy came across this amazing video on YouTube. This was supposedly taken on the concourse before an Indians game and is reported to be undoctored and genuine. I’m not going to say anything else except that, if this is real, it’s nice to know there’s at least one decent pitcher in Cleveland.

  Chapter Three

  •◊•

  A week later, Brenda was sitting at her desk thinking about the previous evening’s game—her second for the Lightning. She had come in at the top of the eighth, fanned two, allowed only one hit, and no runs. Her arm was a little sore and her stomach was still a bit upset, but she chalked that up to residual nerves.

  She was trying to work when an email popped up from her coworker, Derek. The subject line read: “You need to take a look at this,” and had a link to a YouTube video. When Brenda clicked on it, she was shocked to see video of herself i
n the pitching cage on the day she threw 82 mph. It had clearly been taken with a cellphone and only got the last two pitches, but it showed her going into the full windup, throwing, and the pitch speed. Sadly, it was titled “Chubby Mom Throws Heat.” The comments (184 of them) ranged from “You go, sister!” to “Impossible” to “Who rigged the radar?” It had been viewed 112,806 times.

  Brenda stared at the computer monitor, scrolling through the comments, unable to comprehend that 184 people had actually felt compelled to share their thoughts about her pitching. She tried to visualize 112,806 people sitting in front of 112,806 computers watching the video. That would fill up two and a half average-sized baseball stadiums. “Who are all these people . . . ?” she murmured.

  At least a few of them were Andy’s friends. They’d sent him the link, which set him off.

  “I can’t believe it’s on YouTube. Make them take it off,” he said that night after dinner. It was a Friday, and since Brenda hadn’t been with the boys the previous night, she suggested they all stay in and have a family movie night. Andy nixed the movie Jon wanted as being for “little kids,” then laid into his mother about the video.

  “I didn’t put it on there. I can’t make them take it off.” Brenda said. “Trust me—I’m not crazy about having it up there either.”

  “Have you tried? Have you contacted the site administrator and asked him to remove the offending video?”

  “No, I haven’t. And why are you speaking like a cease and desist email?”

  Her joke fell flat. “How many more people are going to see it before they take it down?”

  “I don’t know, Andy.”

  “I bet a million,” Jon said. “Nobody else’s mom can pitch like that. It’s cool.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” Andy said and went into his room. He stayed there the rest of the night while Brenda and Jon watched some Pixar computer-animated movie. Brenda found it hard to concentrate on the movie; her thoughts kept creeping back to the YouTube video. How was it possible that 112,806 people had watched that thirty-two-second clip? Who were these people and didn’t they have anything better to do than watch videos of strangers on the Internet? Maybe 112 obsessives had just watched it a thousand times each. By the end of the weekend, Jon had probably contributed a hundred views on his own. Brenda surreptitiously checked the video’s progress over the week and on Monday at work and watched as the number of views slowly increased.