Later that evening, over a very large margarita, Robin would say something about inauspicious beginnings being the best kind of beginning because there is nowhere to go but up. Brenda would have liked to agree, but giving up a home run on her very first pitch as a professional baseball player was not how she wanted to start her career.
•◊•
18 July Direct message from @CABannister:
@BrendaHav Sorry your first night out was rough. It’ll get better.
Chapter Eleven
•◊•
After the home run, Brenda gave up a walk. Thankfully, the next batter grounded into a double play and she then recorded her first strikeout to get out of the inning, but she knew all anyone would remember was that first pitch home run. As she walked into the dugout at the end of the inning, Scott said, “Well, you got out of it” as she walked by him.
“Yeah,” Brenda replied blankly. She took a seat on the dugout as far away from Scott as possible.
Huge Adam’s Apple Guy sat down next to her. Brenda recalled that his name was Jason. She was pretty sure he was a reserve infielder. “Coming from Scotty, that’s actually high praise,” he said.
“Thanks.”
He didn’t say anything else, and neither did she. She just stayed out of the way and watched the game. As soon as it was over, she fled to Scott’s office, changed her clothes, and got out of the clubhouse as fast as she could. Her family was waiting for her outside the players’ entrance. Jon came running up and gave her a huge hug that almost knocked her over. He was definitely going through a growth spurt. “That was so cool how you struck that guy out. That was a great pitch. SWING and a miss! You’re out!” he babbled.
Brenda tried to smile, accepted the hugs and the congratulations from the people she loved best, but wanted nothing more than to run away. The sight of that first pitch sailing over the left field fence kept running through her mind.
“Are you up for a celebration?” Adele asked.
Brenda looked at her dear, sweet, understanding mother. “Honestly?”
Adele nodded. “Understood.” She turned to the boys. “Jon and Andy, let’s get you home.”
“I want to stay with Mom!” Jon protested.
“It’s past your bedtime, sweetie,” Brenda said, giving him a hug. She glanced over at Andy, who had been hanging back with Lindsey, away from everyone else. “And getting close to yours.” Andy just shrugged.
Robin put an arm around Brenda. “Jon, Andy. I’m sorry to say that I’m stealing your mother for the rest of the evening.” Even though it was clear that Andy, at least, was ambivalent about what time she came home, being stolen away by her best friend still sounded really good at that moment. She and Robin managed to extricate themselves from their families and ended up at Don Tequila, a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant near Brenda’s house that had great food and cheap drinks. Brenda loved it for the chairs, tables, and booths, which were decorated front and back with brightly colored paintings of flowers, shining suns, burros, and other iconic scenes of Mexican rural life.
Brenda had been too nervous to eat anything before the game, but now she was ravenous and ordered a couple of spinach and cheese enchiladas. “The spinach helps to assuage the guilt of eating a big meal at 11:00 p.m.,” she rationalized.
“Absolutely. The spinach balances out the cheese. And the chips. And the alcohol,” Robin added.
“Be nice to me. I have to go back and play this stupid game again tomorrow, and then I have to get my picture taken wearing a sports bra.”
Robin leaned her elbows on the booth table and rested her chin in her hands, her pale blue eyes focused entirely on Brenda. “If it’s a stupid game, why are you playing it?” she asked.
“What else am I going to do? There’s no other job I could do that would pay me as much as I’m getting in endorsements.”
“I understand the financial incentive. But if you truly believe it’s a stupid game and you don’t want to play it, then don’t. You’ve shown that a woman can get signed by a major league club, you’ve helped open a new door for other women. That’s huge. If you don’t want to continue, don’t. Go back to graphic design. Go back to drawing.”
Brenda sighed. “I haven’t drawn in so long . . . I don’t think like that anymore. You know what I mean? I don’t think in pictures anymore. I’m so, so proud of you for doing your art and bringing art to other people. I’m glad one of us stayed with it.” She picked up a tortilla chip from the bowl and held it out in the palm of her hand. “The last couple times I picked up a drawing pencil, my hand felt like this,” and she crushed the chip in her hand. “Clumsy. No nuance, no subtlety. There’s nothing there anymore.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Robin said. “So I guess now you’re stuck with being a ground-breaking female icon.”
“Who gave up a home run on her very first professional pitch.”
Robin shrugged. “It happens.”
“It happened to me.”
“But then you did fine. Double play ball, you struck out the last batter . . . You did more than fine. Let it go.”
“I’ll try,” Brenda replied. But as she took a hefty sip of her margarita, she knew she wouldn’t be able to.
She and Robin hadn’t stayed out too late, but Brenda still showed up for Sunday’s game feeling hungover and worn out. Saying good-bye to the boys hadn’t helped. She was about to embark on an eight-day road trip and had never been away from the boys for that long. Andy feigned nonchalance, but Jon suddenly didn’t like the idea of his mother going out of town and made a stink. Talking him out of his tantrum took an extra fifteen minutes and almost made her late for her bullpen session with Stu.
Working with a coach while other players were around had a different dynamic. No one was overtly watching them, but still, as other players were on the field either doing laps or throwing or stretching, she noticed more heads turning her way and staying turned a little longer than necessary.
She didn’t go into the game that night, just hung out in the bullpen with the other relief pitchers and tried to stay out of the way. Farnhurst gave her the silent treatment, which was fine; Brenda preferred to ignore him right back. The other players had varying degrees of coolness toward her—a few said hello, but that was about it. It was like being invisible.
Invisible or not, Brenda knew she didn’t want the rest of the team to see her get in a car when they were looking at a nine-hour bus ride. How could she become part of the team when she wasn’t even traveling with them? True, she’d join them tomorrow night, but she was flying and would spend the night in a comfortable hotel room in Manhattan, not pulling into a budget motel in the wee hours of the morning.
The one advantage to changing apart from the rest of the team was her proximity to the exit. The manager’s office was just outside the locker room. When the game was over, she changed quickly and found Scott waiting outside his office as she was getting ready to leave.
“So you’re out of here,” he said not as a question but not quite as an accepted fact either.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I’ll fly into Davenport tomorrow evening and rejoin the team there before the game.” He didn’t say anything. “My agent arranged this,” she added feebly.
“A lot of these boys would kill to have an agent like yours,” Scott replied.
“I understand that. I know that I’m lucky.” Really, what was else there to say? They both knew why she had the endorsement, why she was disappearing for twenty-four hours. She was an attraction who sold tickets. When he said, “Okay, get out of here,” it didn’t even sound that mean. Maybe I’m growing on him, she thought.
Robin was waiting to drive her to the airport, and Brenda just threw her duffel bag into the car, hopped in, and said, “Hit it.”
“In a hurry much?” Robin asked as she put the car in gear.
“No. I
don’t want anybody to see me.”
“I think they might notice that you aren’t there.”
“But it feels weird not getting on the bus with everybody else.” Brenda leaned back and closed her eyes. If she let herself, she might almost relax for a minute. “I hardly feel like part of the team as it is. This just looks like preferential treatment.”
“You have another gig. It’s just bad timing,” Robin replied. “Idiot” She glanced quickly at Brenda. “Not you. The car in front of us.”
“I know.” Having been friends for more than twenty years, Brenda was so used to Robin’s car-chase style of driving that she no longer needed to spend half the ride with her eyes shut.
“Chances are you won’t be with the team that long anyway. The going odds are that you’ll be called up before the end of the season.”
It took Brenda a second to realize that Robin wasn’t joking. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Robin sighed. “Sweetie, do you ever . . . I don’t know, look at the Internet? Read the Sports section of the paper? You are a recurring topic of conversation.”
Inwardly, Brenda had suspected as much, but she had made a point of not reading about herself since she signed the contract. “My self-esteem is precarious enough. Why would I want to read what some troll has to say about me?”
“It’s not all bad. There are plenty of people out there who support women in baseball. When you get into your hotel tonight, do some ‘net surfing.”
“I don’t have a computer with me.”
“And you’re a sweet old-fashioned girl who refuses to get a smart phone . . . Well rest assured you’re getting kind of famous.” She gave Brenda a pointed glance. “Whether you like it or not.”
“I like it not,” Brenda replied.
The flight into New York felt like a replay of her trip two weeks earlier—a car and driver and a nice hotel in mid-town. She called the boys when she got in and tried not to worry too much about the photo shoot the next day or what the rest of the team thought of her or whether Jon and Andy missed her. She didn’t get much sleep and had to be up far earlier than she would have liked. There wasn’t even time to enjoy the hotel room—she was packed, out the door, and in a cab by 7:00 the next morning.
The photo shoot was much like the first one. There were any number of people scurrying around setting up lights and a green screen. Brenda felt like one more prop as she was dressed (almost dressed), coifed, and made up. They put her in baseball pants and cleats and the sports bra. No jersey. She had to admit, it was a comfortable bra. The photographer, Ken, handed her a brand-new baseball mitt and a baseball. He was one of those guys who are so impossibly thin that Brenda thought he could probably wear Jon’s pants.
“Now I want you to just pretend that you’re on the mound and forget that we’re all here.”
“I’ll do my best,” Brenda said.
“You’re going to have to stop covering your chest with your arms,” he said.
“Right. You know, I don’t think I’ve had my picture taken in my underwear since I was about two . . .” Brenda said feebly. Ken didn’t laugh.
Once she was standing under the lights, she realized she really did have to stop covering her chest with her arms and actually pose for the pictures. With a deep breath, she put the mitt on. “Am I in the right spot?”
“Move two inches to your right,” Ken said. With the camera held directly in front of his face, it was like listening to a disembodied voice giving her direction. “Good, good. And go into the wind-up . . . Great . . .”
Brenda overheard someone say, “We’ll have to do some airbrushing to fill out the cleavage for the final product” and someone else respond, “Of course.” The comment made her grip the ball a little tighter, and she had to remind herself not to release it. She knew she should let the comment go, that they weren’t meaning to be insulting, that her body, to them, was merely an image for an advertisement. The thought didn’t make her feel much better.
With a lot of teeth-gritting, she made it through the photo shoot, but they finished later than expected. She didn’t have time to change—just threw on her shirt, grabbed her duffel bag, and ran out the door. Up till now, having a car and driver had felt pretentious, but now Brenda was incredibly grateful to be able to step into a car and hightail it to LaGuardia. It wasn’t until they were on the road to the airport that Brenda realized she was still wearing the baseball pants from the photo shoot. And the bra. The latter could stay, but the former needed to go.
“Excuse me,” she said to the driver. “Is there a screen or something you can put up?”
“No, ma’am,” he replied. “Only the limos have those. Sorry.”
“Okay. Well, you might not want to look in the back seat for a minute.” A summer’s worth of Lightning games had given her plenty of practice in changing her clothes in a car, and she managed to ditch the baseball pants and put on her jeans before the driver even seemed aware he had a half-naked passenger.
She got to the airport and through security with just enough time to kill to make it seem like all that hurrying hadn’t even been necessary. She had to look at her ticket twice to make sure she was at the right gate. The flight was to Moline, Illinois, and she had a moment where she thought maybe she should get a smartphone so she could do things like figure out how to get from Moline to Davenport. When the flight finally landed in Moline in the late afternoon, Brenda realized that the hour time difference was perhaps the only thing that would keep her from being late to the ballpark.
A fifty-five dollar cab ride got her from the airport to Modern Woodmen Park in Davenport, home of the Quad Cities River Bandits. The charming U-shaped brick front of the park looked to be from the 1930s, and Brenda wondered how much was original and how much was new. There wasn’t enough time to ask about the name or to admire the view of the Mississippi River, on whose banks the ballpark was built. Duffel bag in hand, she paid the cab driver and ran into the players’ entrance. First pitch was at 7:05 and it was now 6:15. She should have been at the ballpark more than an hour ago.
Once inside, she found herself in a long, somewhat dank hall that seemed to run the length of the main stadium structure. She went to the right and had only jogged a hundred feet or so down the hall when she saw a sign on a brown steel door that read “Visitors’ Clubhouse.” Bracing herself for Scott’s anger, she opened the door and walked in.
The clubhouse had a similar layout to Classic Park. To her right was the visiting manager’s office, to her left were double doors leading to the locker room. Stuart was standing in the doorway to the office, and Brenda heard her name.
“I’m here. I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said quickly.
“Hey, Brenda,” Stu said with a slight smile. “Glad you got here in one piece.”
Scott came to the door of his office and glared at her.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t have time to change. I came straight from the airport.”
“Then get changed and get warmed. The bus broke down and nobody got any sleep last night, so unless Brody pitches a complete game—”
“Which he won’t,” Stu interjected.
“I’ll probably need to send you in tonight.”
Brenda tried not to look scared or worried. “Great,” she said with far more enthusiasm than necessary. She scurried into the office, changed as fast as possible, and did some stretching before going out to the field. Most of the other players were already off the field by this time, and the ballpark was filling up fast. It was an old-style park, with a wide U-shaped main concourse and bleachers and grass for the outfield seating. Far out in left field, something tall and green caught her eye. It looked like a garden, although what a garden would be doing in the left field bleachers of a minor league ballpark was anyone’s guess.
It wasn’t until Brenda was hanging out in the visitors’ dugout with the rest of t
he Captains, waiting for the home team River Bandits to be introduced, that she realized it was cornfield, a little tiny cornfield growing just beyond the left field wall. As each member of the River Bandits’ starting lineup was introduced, he walked out of the cornfield and trotted across the field, accompanied by the cheers of the crowd
Brenda couldn’t help herself. “Oh my God, that’s so cool,” she exclaimed. “Very Field of Dreams.” It was loud enough in the ballpark that the only person who heard her was Jason and his Adam’s apple.
“I find it rather over the top,” he murmured and half-turned his head to look at her. “Then again, just about everything in the minors is kind of over the top,” he added.
It was hard to tell if that last comment was a dig at her or not. Jason was one of the few players on the Captains to have spoken more than two words to her, but that didn’t necessarily mean he liked having her around. She had six innings to ponder whether Jason was being rude and whether any of these guys would ever cut her a break. It was a high-scoring game—by the top of the seventh, the Captains were up 9-8, but every time they scored, the River Bandits answered.
Brenda was sitting in the bullpen along the first base line with the rest of the Captains’ relievers. Everybody looked worn out, and Farnhurst kept complaining about how tired he was and how that bus ride the night before had “just sucked.”
“I know. We were all there,” Stu said. Brenda was grateful that he didn’t look at her when he said this. “Lucky for you, Scott wants to put in Haversham this inning.”
Brenda felt seven pairs of eyes flick from the game and over to her. She shrugged with shoulders that felt like rubber. She wasn’t even sure she could feel her right arm. All she could think about was the home run she had given up in her first game and the look the rest of the team had given her as she walked back to the dugout afterward. Like she was an idiot and a failure.
Throw Like a Woman Page 14