Throw Like a Woman

by Susan Petrone

  “It’s one thing to get the answering machine, it’s another to get the woman herself.”

  She wasn’t entirely fond of the familiar way he addressed her, and yet she found herself doing the same thing, speaking to him as though he were a long-lost friend instead of a stranger. He was too charming by half. Without thinking about it, she shifted the gym bag with her glove, hat, and cleats in it from her right hand to her left so it wouldn’t bump into him, but kept walking. “Look, I apologize for not returning your calls,” she said. “But honestly, I’m not interested in representation. I thought if I didn’t call you back you’d realize that.”

  “I figured as much,” David replied, sounding completely unfazed. “But when an athlete has as much earning potential as you do, I don’t let a few unreturned phone calls get me down.”

  Brenda snorted back a laugh. “I think my earning potential peaked a few years back. Unless you have an opening for a graphic designer with outdated skills, I think I’ve plateaued.” They were at her car. Good old Molly, who was overdue for an oil change and tire rotation, was waiting right where Brenda had left her. “Look, it’s flattering that you came all the way to Cleveland from wherever . . .”

  “From Cleveland. I’m with Stratagem Management—we’re based here.”

  “Oh. Well, it’s still flattering that you took the time to come down here and watch my game, but I’m not interested in representation.”

  “Why not?” David asked. “You don’t feel like making some serious money in endorsements or playing in the big leagues?”

  “Playing in the big leagues? Are you out of your mind?”

  “No, I’m not. I want you to think about something, Brenda. Your video on YouTube . . .”

  “It’s not my video—I didn’t post it.”

  “Fair enough. The latest video of you pitching has now been viewed 1.5 million times on YouTube in three weeks. The petition on SignBrenda.com has received over two hundred thousand signatures in one week. You have been clocked throwing a baseball ninety-three miles per hour and have clearly captured the public’s attention, and yet you say your earning potential has plateaued and that you aren’t interested in representation. So Brenda, I need to ask you something.” In a move reminiscent of a lover lying back on a bed covered in rose petals, David leaned against the dusty blue minivan and asked: “Are you out of your mind?”

  •◊•

  Excerpt from the transcript for Today in Sports with Charlie Bannister, ESPN, June 25:

  Charlie: The Tigers are still sitting pretty atop the American League Central division, but it’s too early to rule out the White Sox, who’ve been tearing it up in divisional play. The Indians made a rare show of strength today, with a solid 9-3 trouncing of the Boston Red Sox. The team has showed signs of life lately, and they might be able to salvage the season if they can fill in some of the holes in the bullpen. [Holds up sign reading “SignBrenda.com.”] I’ve been told by the powers that be that I, quote, “am not permitted to use this show as a platform to lobby for women in baseball,” end quote. So I’m not going to mention any names. And I’m not lobbying for women in baseball—I’m just lobbying to give an unknown pitcher a chance.

  Chapter Six

  •◊•

  The idea of a woman—any woman—playing for a major league baseball team was so improbable that having the first woman in the MLB be an overweight forty-year-old with no track record would simply add to the allure. And the allure could sell a whole lot of tickets and merchandise. At least this was the rationale given to Brenda by David Samuels. She didn’t appreciate him stating out loud that she was overweight when it was really just her hips.

  “That’s part of your charm,” he said. “You’re accessible—you’re an everywoman with a killer fastball.” They were sitting in Samuels’s lush office in a reflective glass building on East Ninth Street in downtown Cleveland. From his window, Brenda could see Lake Erie, looking cool and alluring just a few blocks away. She wondered if David ever took a moment just to sit and gaze at what a gorgeous view he had.

  Brenda had asked Adele to come with her. The thought of bringing a lawyer felt too much like she was actually planning on signing, and that thought still seemed a little ridiculous. The whole thing felt a bit like a game. Adele kept telling her that it wasn’t a game, that this was serious business.

  “If he’s right,” Adele said, as though they weren’t sitting on David’s oversized leather chairs in his corner office flanked by two walls of windows with him sitting right in front of them, “then you could make some big money doing endorsements. You could pay off the house and give the boys their college funds and make sure you have something for retirement. You’d have some security.”

  “Your mother is both right and wrong,” David said. He leaned on the edge of his massive oak desk. “You could make some serious money doing endorsements, but this really is all a game. And I know how to play it so that you and I both win.”

  “How?”

  “If you agree to representation, you won’t just be represented by me, you’ll have all the resources of Stratagem behind you. We will help you maximize your earning potential and establish you, Brenda Haversham, as a unique brand. Which won’t be hard, because there aren’t any other women playing baseball at your level.”

  “My level? I play in a rec league.”

  “But she’s very good, isn’t she?” Adele said.

  “Mom, please.”

  Adele turned her shocking red hair to her daughter and raised her right index finger for the infamous Adele Puchall finger wag, which was legendary at the Slovak National House on East 185th Street. “I watch baseball too, Brenda. And you’re very, very good.”

  “Your mother is right again,” David said. “I’ve watched you play. I’ve watched all the available footage of you pitching—including the footage that didn’t air on the news. Whether you know it or not, you’ve been scouted by several teams and their reports were all favorable. You’re the real deal. I wouldn’t have wasted my time tracking you down if you weren’t. I’ll be honest with you, Brenda . . .”

  “Have you been dishonest up until now?”

  She got the finger wag again for this. “Be nice.”

  “It’s okay, Adele,” David soothed. Brenda marveled at how quickly he was able to turn her mother into an ally. “Brenda’s right to be skeptical. Look, my job is to help my clients. As your agent, Stratagem takes fifteen percent—I get seven percent of that. So it’s in my best interest for you to succeed. I know we can get you some good endorsements, but we have to act fast. Your popularity is going to peak by the end of the year. Now if we somehow manage to break the Major League gender barrier, all bets are off. They’d most likely start you off with a low base salary and a ton of incentives, but your endorsement potential would skyrocket. Is this making sense to you?”

  “Perfect sense. You want me to do my dancing bear act as a pseudo-celebrity and make as much cash as possible before I become yesterday’s news.”

  “Unless we get you a contract with a team.”

  “Yes, you’ll get me a contract with the Indians, and tomorrow I’ll wake up and suddenly be five foot ten and built like a supermodel.” Suddenly, it all felt like too much—too sleazy, too much like prostitution. She turned to Adele. “Mom, let’s get out of here while I still have some principles.”

  “If that’s how you really feel,” Adele said, “then let’s go. But please tell me which of your principles is being compromised here. Will your dignity somehow be compromised by being the first woman to play major league baseball? Or is it being a good role model for young women that compromises your principles? I’m just checking.”

  Brenda hated it when her mother made a good point. She had always called herself a feminist. Wouldn’t a feminist say it was high time a woman played major league baseball? If she were honest with herself, it was easier to say she w
as acting on principle than to say that she was scared. But what would be worse—staying in a job she didn’t like or doing something big, something different? So what if she had to put up with unwanted attention from strangers and rude comments from the small minded and the feeling of being on display. It would be worth it to take care of Andy and Jon on her own, to not live paycheck to paycheck or worry whether she could afford small extras for the boys. Ed only had to pay alimony for four more years. And the boys seemed to get more expensive as they got older. Then there was the house, which was going to need a new roof soon and had a leaky basement and a sinking foundation. It would take more than an entire year’s salary to fix everything wrong with the house. She could put up with a lot to give Andy and Jon big, juicy college funds, a paid-off mortgage on a sturdy house, and a sense of security. And playing baseball beat the hell out of data entry.

  She took a deep breath and said, “Okay. I’ll sign.”

  “You won’t regret this,” David said.

  “I sure hope not.”

  •◊•

  David called Brenda at work two days later.

  “I really can’t talk now,” Brenda said. “I’m kind of behind on some work and they rate us on our number of keystrokes.” All around her, she could hear the gentle click-click-click of dozens of fingers doing the same frantic dance hers did every day. “Can I call you back?”

  “This won’t take long,” David purred. “I just wanted to tell you that I’ve finalized your first endorsement deal. You’re going to do some print ads for this new line of moisturizer with sunblock. It’s called Fountain. They said you already had nice skin, by the way. It’s not a huge contract, but they think your image will go over big with sporty, active moms. They’re going to run the ads in a few women’s magazines and online. You need to fly out to New York on Monday morning for an afternoon photo shoot. You fly back on Tuesday.”

  Brenda felt like someone had just taken her desk chair and spun her around a dozen times. She could barely say, “Wow, that’s great news.” And once she had spoken, she could swear she heard three or four fewer hands typing. The cubicle walls were supposed to deaden sound, but that didn’t stop everyone in the cube farm from listening in on any conversation that might be juicy.

  “This is only the beginning,” David said.

  Talking to David about not having enough vacation time accrued to take Monday and Tuesday off was futile. She managed to beg two days off, got Adele to stay with the boys for the night, and found herself on a plane on Monday at 6:00 a.m.

  Whenever she and Ed and the boys had gone on vacation, they had always driven because it was cheaper than buying four airline tickets. Brenda almost couldn’t remember the last time she had flown, and she had never flown first class. It seemed like a first class ticket for an hour and a half trip would be a waste of money, but as she settled back in a seat that was easily as comfortable as the living room recliner, she reconsidered that theory.

  She was met by a driver at the airport and taken directly to the photo shoot. There was a hair person, a makeup person, a lighting person, an art director, a photographer, and a few assorted assistants who kept asking her if they could get her some lunch or something to drink. Having so many people ask what they could do for her was a far cry from single parenting. Then she sat down in the makeup chair. The hairdresser was an impossibly thin woman in her late thirties with a jet black pageboy haircut who looked as though the world would end if a hair were ever out of place. She gingerly held up the end of the ponytail holding back Brenda’s shoulder-length, dark blonde hair and said to the art director, “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Should I have left it down?” Brenda said. “I wasn’t sure.”

  “I don’t think leaving it down would have helped much,” the hairdresser said. She removed the ponytail holder and fiddled with Brenda’s hair for a moment. “You swim, don’t you?” she said accusingly.

  “I’ve been going to the pool with my kids,” Brenda replied. “You know, summertime fun . . .”

  “Right . . .” After another minute of fiddling with Brenda’s hair, she announced: “You have a lot of split ends. We’re going to need to trim this.”

  Brenda tried to think of the day as being paid to get a free makeover and haircut, although there were moments when she felt more objectified than pampered as her hair and skin and clothing were fussed over through three different clothing, set, and lighting changes. The haircut turned out to be less drastic than she thought—most of the length was still there, but her hair framed her face better. She hated to admit someone as rude as the hairdresser could be right.

  A car drove her to a midtown hotel called the Bedford, and the driver told her he’d pick her up in the morning to take her to the airport. Once she had checked in and gone up to her room, which turned out to be charming, it was after 5:00. Too early to call home. Just for kicks, she called Robin.

  “I’m in a swanky hotel room that someone else paid for, and I have a fabulous new haircut and more makeup on than I wore to my own wedding,” she said when Robin answered.

  “Sure you aren’t doing a remake of Pretty Woman?” Robin said.

  “While there are some similarities, no.”

  “How did the photo shoot go? I want to hear about it. It’s so crazy cool that you’re there.”

  “I think it went okay. I got a great haircut from a mean hairdresser. It was like a free makeover, except they were paying me to be there, which still kind of blows my mind.”

  “Think of it as getting paid to be your awesome self.”

  “Thank you,” Brenda said. Sometimes her friends said things that were so kind it took away her ability to say much more than “thank you.”

  “So what are you going to do tonight? Go out on the town and show off your fabulous new haircut from the cranky hairdresser?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “I would say ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do . . .’” Robin began.

  “But that still would leave the door wide open for trouble.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ll either go out and have a torrid one-night stand with a guy half my age or stay in and enjoy the novelty of having the remote all to myself. And some uninterrupted reading time.”

  “Tough choice. I’m sure you’ll make the right decision.”

  Brenda ended up taking a walk down Lexington Avenue and getting takeout from an Indian restaurant called Nirvana on the way back. The restaurant was sleek and modern and stylish—the type of place that could make a woman on her own feel self-conscious about everything. But it smelled heavenly, so she sat down at the bar, ordered a Kingfisher and some samosas and dal makhani to go. Sitting at a bar alone felt odd; Brenda could still hear Adele admonishing her and Robin as college students to “Stay out of the bars. No nice man wants a girl who sits in a bar all night.” She smiled and shook her head at the memory.

  “You have a nice smile,” said a voice to her left. She looked over and saw a late thirtyish guy in a gray suit and a buzz cut on the barstool next to her.

  “Thank you,” she said, wondering if he would think she was flirting if she smiled again. He wasn’t all that cute, but the fact he had noted her smile suddenly made her feel self-conscious.

  “Waiting for your husband?” the guy asked. Nothing like being direct.

  “No, just some take out. What about you?”

  “I’m meeting some friends, but I have a habit of being terminally prompt,” he said with a smile. He extended a hand. “I’m George.”

  “Brenda.”

  “Nice to meet you, Brenda. Look, this is going to sound like a lame pick-up line, but haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

  “Probably not. I don’t live here.” It had been so long since she had had a conversation with a stranger that she felt unsure what information to reveal and what not.
What would it matter if she told the guy she lived in Cleveland or that she was in town to do a photo shoot? She and George talked for a few minutes and she could sense his growing interest. How easy would it be to invite him back to the hotel, to give into temptation and be a hedonist for a night? Easy. Really easy.

  The bartender brought over a bag with Brenda’s take out order. She paid him and turned to George. It was now or never. As she looked into this stranger’s eyes, she thought “Not this time.” While there might have been a small sexual spark, she knew it was just as likely to have come from a beer on an empty stomach than a guy she had just met.

  “Well, it was nice meeting you,” she said. “Hope you and your friends have a good night.”

  “Would you care to join us? They’re good people.” George cocked his head slightly and gave her a grin that probably got him a lot of dates.

  “Thank you, but no. I have an early flight.” And that was it. No torrid one-night stand, no night on the town. And Brenda was okay with that. She went back to the hotel, ate a fabulous dinner, read for a while, then watched TV. The quiet, the latitude to watch whatever she wanted, to sit around in the over-sized T-shirt she wore as a nightgown without feeling she had to cover up (or undress) for anyone, the ability to just be on her own without any interruptions felt more decadent than anything she might have done with another person.

  She channel surfed until later than she normally stayed up then switched over to ESPN to check out the score of the Indians game. Ever since the conversation with the guys from the Lightning about Charlie Bannister, she had taken to watching Today in Sports once in a while. She told herself she wasn’t waiting to see if Bannister mentioned her again and that she just liked the show.