Throw Like a Woman

by Susan Petrone

  They were late getting to the game because Brenda had to stop at a Taco Bell and get the boys something to eat or she knew she’d spend the entire game listening to Jon’s plaintive voice from the bleachers whining that he was hungry. Food also seemed to be one of the few things that placated Andy, who was growing so fast Brenda sometimes thought he must be taking human growth hormone on the side.

  When they got to the field, Brenda left Adele and the boys to their own devices and ran to the dugout as fast as she could. She got a “Where the hell have you been?” from Carl, who had been stalling turning in the roster to the scorekeeper, then she said hi to the rest of the team and sat down on the bench.

  Bob plopped down next to her as he pulled on his batting gloves. “Hey B. How’s it going?”

  “Okay. Running a little late. My boys and my mom came to watch the game tonight,” she added, as though that was the reason for her tardiness. She wouldn’t confess to anyone that in the ten minutes she was home to change her clothes and pick up the boys, she had also thrown on a bit of makeup.

  “Your kids are here?” Bob asked, turning around. “Where are they?”

  Brenda turned to look. “My mom and Jon are over there behind the backstop—Jon likes to stand behind the umpire so he can watch the pitches—and Andy is sitting in the top row of the bleachers.”

  “Sandy blond hair?”

  “Yes, with the mp3 player permanently attached.”

  “You have a nice-looking family.”

  “Thanks. So when is Charisse coming to a game? I want to meet her and Brittany.”

  “Soon. Charisse wants to wait until it’s a little warmer before we have the baby out at night . . .”

  Bob was interrupted by a petite blond standing at the end of the dugout who looked as though she was ready for her close-up. In a stage whisper she said, “Hi, Brenda? I’m Kathi O’Leary. I’m so happy to meet you.”

  “Oh Lord, the interview,” Brenda mumbled.

  “Is that Kathi O’Leary from Channel 3?” Bob said. “Wow. You get around, B.”

  Brenda burned with embarrassment as the rest of the dugout and the opposing team’s infield glanced over at O’Leary and her entourage of two cameramen. Brenda didn’t realize that the second guy wasn’t holding a camera but a radar gun until she had extricated herself from the dugout and led Kathi O’Leary about forty feet away.

  “Hi,” Brenda said. She knew she should add a nicety, but felt disingenuous saying, “Nice to meet you.” “Glad you’re here” would also be a lie. She opted for politely stating the obvious: “Well, you made it.” She could feel the eyes of everyone who wasn’t actively involved in the game watching her and O’Leary.

  “We sure are,” Kathi O’Leary said with a huge smile. “I’m so glad to finally meet you. I must have watched that YouTube video of you a thousand times. It’s just so impressive.”

  “Thank you,” Brenda replied.

  “Let me introduce my cameraman, Rick,” Kathi said, motioning to the broad-shouldered, dark-haired guy who was holding the camera. Rick nodded to her. He looked as though he was expending an awful lot of energy holding his stomach in and his chest out. “And this is Alan,” she said, motioning to a reedy, nerdy African American guy who was wearing a short-sleeved shirt buttoned all the way to the top. “He’s going to be running the radar gun.”

  “You brought a radar gun?”

  “Well of course. How else are we going to measure your pitch speed?” Kathi replied in a bubbly tone that made Brenda feel like a kindergartner.

  Of course it made sense for them to bring a radar gun, Brenda just hadn’t thought about it. She had alternately been trying not to think about the interview at all or praying for a rainout or a raging warehouse fire that would draw O’Leary and her crew away. But Kathi O’Leary was there, in the flesh. And so was the TV camera and the radar gun.

  Drawn by the sight of Kathi O’Leary and the camera, Adele and Jon came over. Andy stayed firmly perched on the top bleacher. Brenda turned at the sound of her mother’s and Jon’s voices. “I can’t believe you got me into this,” she muttered to her mother.

  “Oh, don’t be such a spoilsport. Be proud,” her mother whispered back and then moved in to shake Kathi O’Leary’s well-manicured hand. Brenda noticed that she had scarlet, almost slutty red nail polish. It figured somebody like O’Leary would think that shade made her look like a bad girl. Brenda glanced down at her nails and realized they hadn’t seen nail polish since her cousin’s wedding two years ago. What’s more, she had dried Taco Bell salsa under the nail of her left index finger. She put her glove on.

  The good thing about having her mother and Jon there was that she was able to sneak back to the dugout. If Brenda had felt isolated from the rest of the team before, having a TV crew there to interview her didn’t help matters. The guys hardly said a word to her. Maybe Andy was right—maybe she should have just joined a women’s softball team.

  The news crew taped the first two innings of the game from the bleachers, then Kathi O’Leary came to the edge of the dugout at the top of the third inning and asked of no one in particular if Brenda was going to be playing that day.

  Every person in the dugout stopped—whether they were rooting around for their batting gloves or grabbing a drink of Gatorade or tying a cleat or talking about the last out, they all stopped. As one person, they looked at Kathi O’Leary and then turned to Carl. Since physically melting into the ground and disappearing was not an option, Brenda just said, “That’s our manager’s decision.”

  Carl took a few steps toward the end of the dugout where O’Leary was standing and planted himself in the middle of his players. “Brenda’s short relief,” he said. “If we need her, she’ll go in. I can’t tell you what will happen during the rest of the game.”

  “Okay,” Kathi O’Leary said. “I understand. It’s just that we’re on kind of a tight schedule here.”

  “If we need her, she’ll go in,” Carl repeated.

  The rest of the team was still watching this exchange, as were the opposing team’s first baseman and the infield umpire. The home plate ump called “Batter up,” but Gary, who was supposed to be leading off that inning, was standing just behind Carl’s left shoulder. From the look on his face, it was quite possible that Kathi O’Leary’s choice of nail polish was more effective than Brenda had first thought. He looked positively mesmerized.

  “Batter up!” the home plate ump yelled again.

  Brenda could almost see the little lightbulb go off over Kathi O’Leary’s head. “Why don’t I interview you and Brenda now, while your team is batting? Then we won’t be disturbing anyone.”

  To her surprise, Carl said, “Sure. Come on, Brenda. Let’s go get interviewed.”

  “If you want to sort of round things out by talking to a couple of Brenda’s teammates, I’ll be happy to do it,” Gary said to Kathi.

  “Strike one!” the home plate ump yelled.

  “Gary, you’re up, man,” somebody said.

  Gary looked around as though he had momentarily forgotten they were in the middle of a game. “Was that strike one for me?” he asked. “Can he do that?”

  “Yes,” Brenda said. The Roy Hobbs league played by Major League Baseball rules and she had read everything pertaining to pitchers, batters, and base runners before her first game. “He can do that. Go bat.”

  In the ensuring movement of bodies in the narrow dugout, Gary went to bat and Brenda and Carl went to the open area behind the bleachers so Kathi O’Leary could interview them. Adele and Jon came around again, but O’Leary made them stand off to the side. “This is Brenda’s turn to shine,” she said with that big, unnerving smile. “You have a lovely family,” she said to Brenda. “Little Jon is so sweet, and your mom is just a riot. But I couldn’t get Andy to talk to me,” she added in a faux scolding voice that was deliberately loud enough for Andy to hear (
and which he might have heard had he not had his ear buds firmly in place and his mp3 player blasting).

  “Yeah, well, Andy’s his own man,” Brenda said with a smile. “I’m not going to force him to do anything he doesn’t want to do.” She heard Carl give a faux little cough but refused to acknowledge it.

  “Oh, you’re such a good mom,” Kathi said. Then without even taking a breath, she said, “Let’s get straight into the interview. Rick, roll it and keep it rolling. We’ll cut it later.”

  Rick hoisted the camera to his shoulder. The infamous little red light went on, and butterflies simultaneously seemed to erupt in Brenda’s stomach. “Anytime you’re ready, Kath,” Rick said.

  Kathi O’Leary turned to face the camera and started to speak in a voice that was about an octave bouncier than Brenda had ever felt in her life. “Sports fans all over the country have seen a cell phone video of a woman in a pitching cage throwing at near-major-league speed, and they all wondered the same thing: Who is the woman in the video and can she really throw a baseball eighty-two miles an hour? Well, I can tell you that the answer to the first question is standing here with me. As for the second question, we’ll soon find out.” Brenda noticed that O’Leary said “we’ll soon find out” as though she was an actor in an old B-movie. It sounded very much like O’Leary didn’t think Brenda could throw that hard.

  Kathi O’Leary took a step back so she was standing next to Brenda. “It turns out that the mystery pitcher is from right here in Cleveland. America, meet Brenda Haversham of South Euclid. She’s the woman in the video. She’s also a relief pitcher for the Lake Erie Lightning, a recreational team that plays here in Westlake’s Roman Park. Brenda, how long have you been pitching?”

  Brenda had been watching Kathi O’Leary do her spiel and almost forgotten that the whole point of O’Leary’s presence was to talk to her. Now, with O’Leary’s sparkling brown eyes and the business end of the camera trained upon her, she remembered. “Not very long,” she replied. She paused, even though it was clear O’Leary was expecting her to say more, so she added, “A few months.”

  “Did you play in college?”

  “No. I played a lot when I was a kid, with my dad, but that’s about it.”

  There was a long pause, during which Brenda felt conspicuously on display. Kathi O’Leary quickly changed gears and asked Carl how he felt about coaching a woman.

  “It’s no different than coaching anybody else,” Carl said. “I just try to give her the same advice and treat her the same as I would any other player.”

  “Brenda,” Kathi O’Leary said, “when did you first realize what a talented ballplayer you are?”

  “Right now, maybe?” Brenda said with a weak laugh. “Sorry, I’m not that good at talking about myself.”

  “Well if you’d rather let your pitching do the talking, you’re in luck,” Kathi O’Leary said, looking overly happy that Brenda had just given her a segue. “We have Alan here, a volunteer from the Society for American Baseball Research, and he and his radar gun will be tracking every pitch. We’ll be right back with more from Roman Park after these messages.” Kathi O’Leary’s face froze in a huge smile that showed every tooth. Brenda decided it would be impossible for O’Leary’s teeth to get any whiter.

  Rick put down the camera and Kathi O’Leary put down her microphone. Brenda breathed a sigh of relief. “Sorry. I’m a little nervous,” she said.

  “You did fine,” Carl said.

  “You just need to relax and open up a bit,” Kathi O’Leary said. “Let people see the real you.”

  “I’ll try,” Brenda said, adding that she and Carl had better get back to the dugout. As they were walking away, she heard O’Leary say, “Geez, I hope she pitches better than she interviews,” and Rick (or maybe it was Alan) respond with, “That’d be too much to hope for.”

  Carl obviously hadn’t heard this exchange because he just hurried into the dugout and grabbed his glove. Brenda sat on the bench and felt stupid. A ham sandwich would have been more eloquent, she thought in disgust.

  As she watched the game, Brenda thought about life before children, before marriage, before Ed. She had been a talented designer with a clean, bold style that even won a couple of local awards, but that was years ago now. The last time she’d picked up a pencil to sketch an idea, the pencil had felt awkward in her hand and her mind’s eye saw nothing. It seemed her muse had skipped town.

  She’d stopped working when Andy was born, then later Ed kept saying having her home with the boys was more important to him than a second income. She never regretted being a stay-at-home mom, but when Ed left and she needed to find a job, a small part of her wished that she had been able to keep up with all the changes in the industry. Her portfolio was outdated and she didn’t know any of the new design software; she couldn’t find a design job without knowing the software, but she couldn’t afford the time or the cost of any classes to learn it.

  “It always comes back to Ed,” Brenda mumbled, kicking at the ground in front of her.

  “What’d you say, Brenda?” Gary asked.

  Brenda looked up. She had lost track of what was happening in the game and had to sneak a peek at the scoreboard to find out what inning it was (thank God the city of Westlake could afford a good scoreboard). “Nothing,” she replied. “Just talking to myself.”

  “Getting in the zone, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she said in a voice that sounded more confident than she felt. She wondered if other players’ zones were fueled by large doses of adrenaline and anger.

  Brenda watched and waited until the bottom of the sixth. The home team, the Medina County Monsters, were down by two. The Lightning had had a comfortable lead, but their starting pitcher, a lanky forty-five-year-old named Scott who always seemed to want to talk pitching with Brenda, gave up four runs and two walks in the fifth and Carl pulled him. As Brenda trotted out to the mound, she passed by the Monsters’ first base coach, who muttered, “Hey, movie star” as they crossed paths. He was about the same height at Ed, and when he briefly took off his cap to adjust it, she saw that his hair was the same brown as Ed’s. It really did seem to always come back to Ed in one way or another.

  She threw one warm-up pitch, trying to ignore Kathi O’Leary and Rick the cameraman, who had commandeered the field end of the dugout to get a better shot, and the audible smart-aleck comments from the opposite bench, and especially trying to ignore scrawny, milquetoasty Alan and his radar gun. When Bob threw the ball back and set himself up for the next warm-up pitch, she waved him off. She didn’t need any more warming up.

  The first batter stood in—the Monsters’ right fielder, who didn’t even look to be as tall as she was. What he lacked in height he made up for in width. When Brenda first saw him earlier in the game, he struck her as resembling an overgrown dwarf, with stubby legs and arms and a slight waddle to his walk. It was clear that he was on the team because of his bat, not his speed.

  He gave her a cocky, dwarfy grin, and she hated him for it.

  She looked at the catcher’s mitt and saw Ed’s face in the pocket, saw the lines leading from her hand to the mitt. She muttered “Motherfucker” and threw the ball ninety-three miles an hour.

  •◊•

  Excerpt from the transcript for Today in Sports with Charlie Bannister, ESPN, June 19:

  Charlie: Welcome back to Today in Sports. I’m Charlie Bannister. With me, as every Friday, is former major leaguer Howie Wojinski for our weekly look at the world of baseball. Howie, this week, I don’t want to talk about the MLB.

  Howie: You don’t?

  Charlie: Nope, because the big news this week isn’t from the major leagues, it’s from somewhere beyond the Bush Leagues. I’m talking about the woman who was clocked pitching a fastball ninety-three miles an hour. Go to YouTube and search for “fast-pitching mom.” The video is from an NBC affiliate in Cleveland that clocked her throwi
ng ninety-three miles an hour. Something like half a million people have already watched it.

  Howie: Oh that . . .

  Charlie: Ninety-three miles an hour, Howie. Do you know the percentage of human beings who can throw a baseball ninety-three miles an hour?

  Howie: No, what is it?

  Charlie: Very, very small. Miniscule.

  Howie: There are women college softball players who throw that hard. This isn’t such a big deal.

  Charlie: NCAA softball pitchers throw somewhere around seventy to seventy-five miles per hour—it’s the short alley between the mound and the plate that makes it appear faster to the batter. But this woman from Cleveland is throwing major-league-speed pitches. And they’re good pitches—she has control, she has movement, she has nuance. This is astounding.

  Howie: So what do you want me to do about it, Charlie?

  Charlie: I want you to join me in a campaign to urge the Cleveland Indians to sign her as a relief pitcher.

  Howie: [laughs hysterically]

  Charlie: I’m serious.

  Howie: [Makes noise that sounds like “creaaakkkk”] Hey Charlie, you hear that sound? Know what that is? That’s the sound of Ford Frick rolling over in his grave. [laughs again]

  Charlie: Come on, Howie. Come on into the twenty-first century. It’s nice here, we won’t bite. Look, if she can do the job, why not sign her? If it were some unknown young guy throwing ninety-three miles an hour, you’d be all over this. You can’t assume that the only talented, unknown ballplayers in the country are playing in the minor leagues or in college. And you can’t assume they’re all male. Talent shows up anywhere it wants. And right now it’s decided to show up in the form of a woman named Brenda Haversham from Cleveland, Ohio. So what I’m asking you to do—you, Howie, and you, the person sitting there watching this at home—I’m asking you to go to the website that Ziggy the intern set up for me called SignBrenda.com and sign the petition urging the Indians—or another team—to sign her.