Ed called on Monday night at 11:28. The boys had long ago gone to bed, and Brenda was reading in her room. “Did you know you’re on ESPN?” he said, without even saying hello.
“Ed? What are you talking about?” she asked. Ed never called except about the boys, and even then he didn’t always call when he was supposed to.
“Well, you’re off now. It was a short video.”
Brenda almost dropped the phone. “Wait . . . the video’s on ESPN?”
“So that really was you? It looked like you from behind.”
“Yes, it was me.”
“How’d you manage to break the radar gun?”
“I didn’t break the radar gun. I threw a baseball eighty-two miles an hour. Now tell me why the video was on ESPN.”
“It was just on Today in Sports with Charlie Bannister. I guess it’s his oddity of the day.”
“Thanks a lot, Ed.” Brenda sighed, trying not to let his little digs hit their mark. “What time should I tell the boys you’ll be picking them up on Saturday?”
“It’s only Monday. I haven’t thought about Saturday yet.”
“It’s just like you to not plan ahead.” She hadn’t wanted to get into it with him, and the moment she said it, she felt like a shrew, but there it was.
“Why do you feel this need to control everything?” he said.
“I’m not trying to control everything. I just want to know what time you’ll be coming to get them.”
“I don’t know. Um . . . ten o’clock, like I always do.”
“Thank you. I need to go now, Ed. Thanks for letting me know about the video.”
“Anytime, sweetheart,” Ed said, as though she still was his sweetheart and nothing had changed.
Brenda replayed the phone call in her head as she tried to fall asleep. It never ceased to amaze her how Ed seemed completely unfazed by the divorce. He didn’t seem to have spent any time grieving the end of their marriage or worrying about what effect it was having on the boys or wondering if he was still a worthwhile person. But in the phone call, he had sounded a little peeved. And he had kept taking little jabs at her. She realized that after sixteen years, she had finally succeeded in making Ed jealous.
•◊•
Thanks to Charlie Bannister, within two weeks the video had a total of 562,483 views. People at work started calling her an Internet celebrity (which Brenda had always thought was the worst kind of celebrity to be). Jon was in awe of his mother’s fame and would share it with anyone who’d listen, much to Brenda’s embarrassment. Even Andy seemed a little impressed. He didn’t say anything, but one evening she was downstairs doing laundry and poked her head into the rec room where he was surfing the Internet. He was watching the video of Brenda pitching.
The whole thing might have been fun to someone else, but to Brenda, it felt precarious. Lightning games had started to attract spectators—not many, maybe a dozen people in addition to the regular motley assortment of wives, girlfriends, children, and buddies with bad knees who couldn’t play anymore. But these new people were there to see her, to watch this oddity of physiology play baseball.
After the games, the team always went out for a beer or two. The first few games, Brenda declined, because she was either going out with Robin and Dan or because she just wanted to get home. After playing with the Lightning for a month, Gary and Bob finally convinced her to go out with the team. She went, figuring that Andy and Jon would be done with school in another week, and Jon had said he wanted to come and watch his mom play. Since she wasn’t going to be bringing her children to a bar, this might be her last chance to go out with the team.
A place called Players seemed to be the hangout for all the teams in the Roy Hobbs league. It was located in the kind of sprawling strip mall off a six-lane road that can only be found in a newer suburb. Tiny inner-ring South Euclid on the other side of town where Brenda lived seemed crowded and aged in comparison to this behemoth avenue.
She found a parking spot and, with a small sense of trepidation, went into Players. It featured a square bar in the center of a cavern-like room, with booths and tables on all sides. The number of televisions mounted on the walls and above the bar seemed roughly equivalent to the number of channels available on Brenda’s basic cable. The entire place was decorated with old photos, hats, framed jerseys, and other sports memorabilia that everyone thinks should be worth something but would never actually buy.
The Lightning had taken over one side of the bar, and the thicket of gray jerseys was a welcoming sight. Bob, Carl, and Gary were sitting in one of the booths and called for her to join them. She noticed that they seemed to be the only unattached guys on the team. Everyone else seemed to have a girlfriend or a wife with him.
She knew Bob was married with an infant daughter—they had shared that much conversation sitting in the dugout. That left Carl, Gary, and her as the single ones on the team. Yippee, she thought. Robin and her mom would occasionally suggest she start dating again, but there never seemed enough time for it. You had to go out and meet people, which was itself a challenge, and learn their life history and see if you clicked. It just seemed like a huge investment of time for something that probably wouldn’t work out. Derek at work used a fair amount of company time emailing women he met through online dating services. He even had a small notebook in which he wrote down the vital statistics and basic biography of each woman as he got to know her, so he wouldn’t screw up any burgeoning relationship by asking, for instance, if she had spent Easter with her parents when the woman in question had previously informed him that her father was dead and her estranged mother lived in Alaska. Thus far, Brenda hadn’t observed that Derek had had much luck in getting a girlfriend.
So no, she wasn’t interested in dating at the moment. Not that this was a date. It was just the team going out for a beer. And it was probably just coincidence that Bob and Gary were on one side of the booth and it was the spot next to Carl that happened to be free.
“Hey B,” Bob said. “Glad you finally made it out with us.”
“Thanks. Glad I made it too,” she replied. “Although I can’t stay late. The kids are waiting at home.”
“I hear you,” Bob said. “This is my one night out a week. Charisse goes out with her girlfriends on Mondays and I get baseball night.”
“Who’s with your kids when you’re playing ball, Brenda?” Gary asked.
“My mother comes over to make them dinner and see they get their homework done and don’t stay up all night watching TV or beating the crap out of each other.”
“What did they think about you being on ESPN?” Carl asked. “Andy didn’t say anything about it at practice.”
“Jon thinks it’s cool. Andy is embarrassed,” she replied. “Honestly, it’s not that big a deal.”
“Yes, it is,” Carl said. “Charlie Bannister is the number one sportscaster in the country.”
“Charlie’s the man,” Bob said. “Probably the only sports anchor who isn’t a moron.”
Brenda used to watch Today in Sports once in a while when Ed was still in the house, but typically only during baseball season. Bannister was a slightly chubby, boyish-faced African-American guy in his mid-forties. He had always struck Brenda as being wittier and more entertaining than the average sportscaster, but she hadn’t realized that he was such a big deal or had such high ratings. Carl, Gary, and Bob spent most of the evening letting her know exactly how big a deal he was, what his approximate ratings were, and estimating how many people had seen the video of Brenda pitching on his show.
The thought of several million people watching the video was unnerving. It was one thing for it to get 562,483 views online (not that she was counting). That didn’t necessarily equate to 562,483 different people. Brenda tried not to worry too much about what other people thought, but this wasn’t just some random person in the grocery store or a couple of skinny k
ids in the car next to hers. This was 4.9 million people, predominantly male, sitting there watching their favorite sports show and then suddenly being confronted with her—the high showgirl-like kick in her windup, the minimal makeup—doing something most of the world couldn’t do. What did they think?
She had a lot to ponder on the long drive home: several million strangers watching her pitch and the mythical ten pounds added by the camera, plus Carl had flirted with her. There had been some moments during the evening when he had held her gaze a bit too long or rested his knee against hers for a moment under the table or gently nudged her shoulder with his while making a joke. Then there was the whole business of walking her to her car and suggesting that they carpool out to games, since they both lived in South Euclid and the games were played way the heck over in Westlake on the other side of town. She shrugged off the suggestion with some lame excuse about work schedules and office locations.
It would be convenient to date someone she already saw three times a week at Little League and Lightning games. “Convenient or overkill,” Brenda muttered. Carl was a good guy, but there was no spark when she was with him. Why even start going down that road with someone who didn’t make you feel more alive? Carl, she decided, was destined to be some other woman’s good guy. When she finally pulled into her own garage and looked at the ever-growing mileage on her eight-year-old Honda minivan, she patted it on the dashboard. “I need you to hang in there, Molly,” she said. “I don’t think you and I are going to be carpooling with Carl anytime soon.”
•◊•
Excerpt from the transcript for Today in Sports with Charlie Bannister, ESPN, May 26:
Charlie: It used to be that locker rooms had an underground black market for PEDS. This season, you could make a tidy profit selling ulnar collateral ligaments. Last week, the Brewers sent pitcher Frank Barnes to the DL, and now relief pitcher Roberto Pena of the Indians is down for the count. Both pitchers are having the ubiquitous Tommy John surgery and will almost certainly miss the rest of the season. Barnes’ loss won’t hurt the Brewers too much, since they still have one of the deepest bullpens in either league, but for Cleveland . . . well, we’ll see you next year, guys. With the loss of their only reliable stopper, the Indians have a hole at short relief that’s bigger than an elephant’s outhouse.
Chapter Four
•◊•
Brenda took vacation time for the week between the end of school and the beginning of summer camp. The check to the camp did not bounce. Jon went off the high diving board at Bexley Park for the first time; Andy actually seemed to have slightly lessened in his resistance to having a mother who could throw harder than his Little league coach; and said coach hadn’t flirted with her in two weeks. Plus, her fastball was getting guys out on a regular basis. It seemed like the summer might go well.
They had a cookout late in the week. In addition to Adele, Robin came over with Dan and their fifteen-year-old daughter Lindsey. Andy declared he was going to man the grill. Brenda noticed he puffed himself up a bit when Lindsey was around. She and Robin tried not to giggle too much about it.
At one point, Andy was having trouble flipping all the burgers and dogs and dropped a hot dog on the ground. Brenda and Robin were relaxing together, chatting and watching Lindsey show Adele how to play Fruit Ninjas on her smartphone, and listening to the grandmother and teenager talk about books and boys. Dan and Jon were noodling around with the basketball. When Jon yelled, “Andy, you dropped my hot dog!” Brenda stood up, but Dan intervened.
“I’ve got it,” he said. Dan went over to the grill and managed to stop an argument between the boys before it happened. Then he showed Andy and Jon a couple of what he called “Master Griller” tricks. “For male ears only!” Dan said with a flourish.
Lindsey watched her father with the two boys. “Oh yeah, he doesn’t wish he had a son,” she said.
“He loves you,” Brenda, Robin, and Adele said simultaneously. Even Lindsey laughed.
“I used to think the same thing about my Dad,” Brenda said. “I was an only child too. He didn’t say much, but he took me out to play baseball every weekend. We’d see all these fathers and sons out there, and sometimes it felt kind of weird. I didn’t like baseball at first.”
“Then why did you go?” Lindsey asked.
“Because I wanted to be with my Dad.”
“I always thought you liked playing baseball,” Adele said.
“Once I learned what I was doing, I did. And as I got older, I realized that Dad teaching me baseball was no different than you teaching me how to bake or giving me your favorite books to read.”
“You were the only one in high school whose mother encouraged you to read dirty books,” Robin quipped.
“The Unbearable Lightness of Being is not a dirty book,” Adele said. “It is great literature.” Adele Puchall made a point of reading Eastern European authors in an effort to support the varied ancestral homelands that made up the family heritage.
“Just kidding, Adele.”
“Robin, you have always been my favorite troublemaker,” Adele said with a smile.
They were interrupted by Jon announcing that the burgers were ready. Eating outside on an early summer evening seemed to make everyone’s jokes funnier and the food taste better. They had just finished eating when Brenda felt the first raindrops. There was a mad rush to grab plates, bowls, and cups and get everything and everyone inside. In the midst of putting away leftovers and cleaning plates, the phone rang.
Adele was closer to the phone. “Do you want me to get it?” she asked.
“That’s okay. The machine can get it,” Brenda replied as she wrapped up the leftover hamburgers.
After one more ring, the answering machine clicked on. Brenda’s outgoing “We can’t come to the phone right now . . .” message was audible, then a beep. Then even the kids, who had retreated into the living room, heard a relentlessly perky voice leave a message:
“Hi, this is Kathi O’Leary from Action News Channel 3 calling for Brenda Haversham. I’m told that you’re the same remarkable woman who was featured in a video on Today in Sports with Charlie Bannister, pitching eighty-two miles an hour!” (Brenda could almost hear the exclamation point.) “We’d like to come out this Thursday and get some better footage of you in action.” This was followed by Kathi’s copious contact information, which Brenda didn’t hear the first time because the kids walked into the kitchen and Andy asked who the hell that was.
“Please don’t say ‘hell,’ Andy,” Brenda said. She noticed Lindsey gave a little smirk of teenage solidarity at this.
“Sorry. Who the heck was that? She sounds like a cheerleader or something.”
“Close enough. It was Kathi O’Leary from Channel 3. She wants to do an interview with me.”
“Why would she want to interview you?” Andy asked with a look of disdain that only one on the cusp of adolescence could master.
“Because your mother is an unusually talented ballplayer, that’s why,” Dan said.
“She really is, Andy,” Robin added.
With all the adults staring at him, Andy glanced at Lindsey, who kind of shrugged in reply. “Whatever,” he said, and the two older kids went back into the living room.
“Does this mean you’re going to be on TV?” Jon asked.
Brenda was about to say she wasn’t sure, but Adele interrupted her with a loud “Yes. And you can be very proud of your mother for that.”
“I am. Can I go to the game when you’re going to be on TV?”
“I haven’t actually said I’m going to do it,” Brenda protested. “I don’t want to be on the news. I’m just playing baseball in a rec league. I’m pretty sure other women have done the same thing.”
“None of them have pitched the way you can,” Dan said. “Trust me. When Robin and I went to your game a few weeks ago, I was talking to a couple of older guy
s who used to play in the league. They said once in a while they’ve had female players, but none of them had your talent.”
Robin hastened to add: “Actually, they said they had never seen anybody in that league with your talent. Anybody.”
“Mr. Fleishman said the same thing,” Jon said.
“Do the interview,” Robin said. “You might inspire someone.”
“Oh, you would pull out the inspiration card. Fine, I’ll do it.”
Her mother seemed to think that the interview was important enough that the whole family should go to the game. Brenda was content to let Andy spend the evening at home on his own, but Adele was convinced her grandson would spend the evening looking at pornography on the Internet and claimed he’d be better off at the baseball field. Brenda wasn’t sure, but she suspected money had changed hands, because Andy was perfectly amendable to going after talking to his grandmother.
Brenda left work half an hour early so she could stop home to get her mom and the boys. The entire day, the thought of the interview nagged at her. Although she felt that she could never let down her guard entirely, Brenda enjoyed being part of a winning team and being very good at something. It was only an amateur recreational team, but the Roy Hobbs league did have a sprinkling of guys who had played minor league ball or even an undistinguished season or two in the majors once upon a time. None of these guys had ever done anything wrong to her personally, but it was a sure bet that somewhere along the line just about all of them had trampled on some woman’s heart or made a sexist joke or cheated on a wife or girlfriend. There was an indescribable feeling of satisfaction in striking them out.
Throw Like a Woman Page 4