Throw Like a Woman

by Susan Petrone

  Scott’s voice broke the calm. “Haversham!” She turned around and saw Scott and Stuart waiting to talk to her. Scott reached out his hand. “Good luck to you. You have the stuff to do well.” For a guy as reserved as Scott, that was as personal as he was going to get.

  Brenda shook his hand. “Thank you. I know you weren’t crazy about having me around, but I appreciate that you were always fair to me. You’re a good manager.”

  “Thanks.”

  Stuart, who had been genuinely kind to her since day one, reached out his hand and said, “Good luck, Brenda. Knock ’em dead.”

  “I’ll do my best,” she said. Figuring Stu would go all to pieces if somebody hugged him, she shook his hand with both her hands, touching him twice. He gave her shoulder a gentle tap to even things up. Somehow she doubted she’d find anyone as quietly quirky as Stuart anywhere else in baseball. Then she went to the manager’s office, changed, and gathered up her things. That was it. She was expected to report to Columbus the next day at noon.

  Brenda spent less than a week with the Clippers—barely long enough to learn her teammates’ names. She knew some of them. The Clippers had a handful of players who had been bouncing back and forth between AAA and the majors due to injury or because they couldn’t quite hack the level of play in the majors. Brenda kept her head down and threw strikes. Enough for her to go hitless in 3.1 innings of work over three games. Enough for the Indians to make the call to bring her to The Show.

  Brenda almost expected it. Whenever she was at the ballpark, attendance soared. It didn’t matter if people were cheering or booing, the club sold tickets. The Clippers had just lost a game to the Toledo Mud Hens. Brenda hadn’t gone on in, which was her first clue. At the end of the game, the manager said “good luck” and shook her hand. The two-hour drive up I-71 to Cleveland gave her plenty of time to think. Part of her didn’t want to have to tell the boys and her mom and her friends that she had been called up. It just made things too complicated. She was too scared to want to be congratulated. When she got home, it was nearly two in the morning and the only thing awake in the house was the Internet.

  Tired but not sleepy, Brenda went downstairs to the rec room to check her email and saw a notification that she had 321 new followers on Twitter. “Three hundred twenty-one?” she said. “What the hell?” She had posted exactly one thing on Twitter, and that been in the business center of the motel in Davenport two weeks earlier when she couldn’t fall asleep after a game. She had written: “Just saw a bunch of ballplayers come out of a cornfield in Iowa. Not heaven, just the minor leagues.” That was all, yet people were following her.

  Clearly the news of her call-up was out because her name was trending on Twitter and had provoked some heated discussions. Charlie Bannister (or @CABannister) seemed to be in the thick it. She counted replies to seventeen different people, and in each one Charlie advocated for her right to play. Or at least, the right for a woman to play. He obviously wasn’t defending her specifically, just the principle of giving someone a chance.

  She had a direct message from Charlie that she had never replied to, and here he was fighting the good fight in her name. She sent him a quick message: “Thanks for all the support. It’s much appreciated.”

  A minute later she was surprised to get a direct message back. “No problem,” his reply read. “Glad to see you liked the River Bandits cornfield. It’s pretty cute.”

  She was tempted to write “So are you” but why would she start flirting with Charlie Bannister? She hardly knew the guy. Plus there had to be an unspoken rule about athletes not mixing with journalists. There was just something about him that sometimes made her want to flirt with him. Which was silly.

  Instead she wrote back: “Yes, it is.” And then: “I feel like my call-up just broke the Internet. It isn’t the freaking apocalypse. I’m just playing baseball.”

  Charlie replied: “For some trogs, a female on the ball field is more frightening than a horde of rampaging zombies.”

  Brenda hated the use of “LOL,” but she actually did laugh out loud. She wrote: “Trog?”

  Charlie replied: “I’m too tired to remember how to spell ‘troglodyte.’ Time to sleep. Good night.”

  “Good night,” she wrote back. Brenda went up to the living room and collapsed on the sofa in her clothes. She slept for a few hours, but the sound of Jon screaming her name immediately kicked on the Mommy Instinct. In an instant, she was awake and asked, “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  Jon was dancing around the living room in front of her. “You got called up!” he squealed. “You got called up!” Andy had the television tuned to ESPN, and he and Adele were riveted to a panel discussion about the ramifications of a woman playing at the major league level. Brenda took the obligatory bear hugs from Jon and Adele and even a half-hearted, one-armed hug from Andy. She knew she should be happy, but her heart started pounding and her limbs started tingling just thinking about it.

  After a quiet day that was mostly spent catching up on her sleep, Brenda reported to Progressive Field at 3:30, right when the clubhouse opened. Pulling into the Players’ Parking Lot, she noticed that Molly was the only minivan there. Every other car was smaller, newer, and cleaner. Brenda parked and grabbed her duffel bag. She was embarrassed to see that Jon had written “Now who needs a bath?” in the dust on the passenger side. She wondered how many players had wives or ex-wives who were stuck driving boring mom cars while their husbands or ex-husbands drove the expensive, fun cars.

  Jerry Chimelewski was once again waiting for her in the small reception area at the bottom of the long concrete stairway. “Brenda, welcome to the Indians,” he said, shaking her hand. “We’re really pleased with how you’ve handled yourself the last couple weeks with the Captains and the Clippers, and we think you may be ready for the big leagues.”

  “Thanks. I think I’m ready too,” Brenda replied with more confidence than she felt. She didn’t bother adding, “And you’re selling a lot of tickets and merchandise, right?”

  She and Jerry started walking down the wide tunnel that circled the ballpark. “Follow me. The front office thinks it’s more appropriate if you have a separate locker room. And I think most of the players’ wives do too,” he added with a chuckle.

  He led Brenda into the familiar blue door to the Indians’ clubhouse, past the locker room and manager’s office, and down the hall. They stopped in front of a single steel door painted the same deep blue as the locker room door and marked with a small sign reading “Private.” Brenda wondered what other signs had been rejected. “Women?” “Women’s Locker Room?” “Locker Room Annex?” “Token Female?”

  “Here,” Jerry said as he opened the door. “It used to be an extra storage room, but we’ve converted it into a locker room.” Brenda walked into the room, which was about ten by twelve feet. A single cubbyhole-type locker shared one wall with a built-in shower stall. A chair, a sink, and a toilet completed the room. It wasn’t fancy and it wasn’t big, but it was worlds better than sharing the manager’s office.

  “This is great,” Brenda said. For a minute she felt like she was being shown an apartment by a realtor. There was a small box on the chair with Brenda’s name written on it in marker. Jerry picked it up and handed it to her.

  “This came by messenger from your agent. I believe it’s a new phone.”

  “Thank you,” she said as she took the box. She glanced inside and saw a note that read, “Brenda, Stay in touch. David” and a razor-thin smart phone that she was sure she’d never figure out how to use.

  “I’ll leave you alone so you can get into uniform, and then I’ll show you the shortcut to the bullpen,” Jerry said and left the room.

  Uniform? The white and red uniform hanging in the locker cubby made the reality of where she was and what she was about to do come screaming back. Brenda felt her heart skip a beat. It was just a uniform made out of a cotton-po
lyester blend, but when she picked it up, the fabric felt substantial in her hands, as though the uniform held secrets that it would share the moment she put it on.

  Brenda changed as quickly as her trembling hands would let her. She tried to muster up some angry frustration when she tried to button her jersey, or to get ticked that they had shunted her off to an unused storage room. And she couldn’t. The team had made a locker room for her. They made that investment just for her. It was all a little too amazing.

  She finally managed to get suited up, and as she buttoned the last button on the jersey and tucked it into her pants, she felt transformed. She looked down at herself. “It’s just another outfit,” she muttered. Then she looked up and saw her reflection in the mirror above the sink. “No, it’s a uniform,” she said.

  •◊•

  Excerpt from the transcript for Today in Sports with Charlie Bannister, ESPN, August 5:

  Charlie: Welcome back to Today in Sports. I’m Charlie Bannister. And the big news today, the Cleveland Indians have called up right-hander Brenda Haversham, making her the first woman ever on a major league roster and the second-oldest rookie ever. The oldest, of course, was Satchel Paige. Not bad company to be in.

  Chapter Thirteen

  •◊•

  Jerry directed her down the tunnel to the bullpen where Earl Donald, the bullpen coach, and Roy Bridges, the bullpen catcher, were waiting for her. She had met them both at her tryout. With his long face and droopy gray moustache to match a shock of salt and pepper hair, Earl reminded Brenda of one of the figures in the background of Rembrandt’s Night Watch, only without the lace collar. She got a “Hello” from Earl and a quiet nod from Roy.

  “Okay,” Earl said. “Let’s see what we need to work on.”

  The transition from “Hello” to throwing was abrupt. Usually she had half an inning or so to find the anger and let it start festering. Now she needed to turn it on like a faucet. Brenda took a few easy warm-up throws. Roy caught the fourth pitch with his bare hand and threw the ball back to her. He didn’t say anything, but she noticed the tiniest shake of his head, as though he couldn’t believe the team had made the colossal mistake of signing her.

  “Let’s stop right there,” Earl said. “What’s going on? Where’s the flamethrower I saw at your tryout?”

  “Sorry. I just need to focus,” Brenda said.

  “Yes, you do,” Earl said calmly. “We want you in short relief. Which means you’re going to be sitting for a couple hours before you throw and there may be games when you have as little as two or three minutes to get ready to go in.” He wasn’t yelling or insulting. She couldn’t muster up any anger at him. She wanted to. Dear God, she wanted to get mad at Earl and throw the hell out of the ball, but he was engaging her intellect, not her emotions. It would have been easier if he had just acted like a jerk and told her she threw like a girl and made a few other disparaging remarks.

  “Okay,” she said, and tried to sound focused but agreeable. She turned back to face Roy, focusing, as always, on the center of the catcher’s mitt.

  “Ed . . .” she muttered.

  “What’d you say?” Earl asked.

  She didn’t respond, just grunted her favorite expletive as she launched the ball as hard as she could at Roy’s mitt. From the way his body reacted to the ball, she could see that the pitch had woken him up.

  “Now that’s more like it. Let’s run through your pitches.” She went through the identical routine. It had worked before, why mess with it? Pair Ed’s name with a swear word and throw. Although it was difficult to see his expression through the catcher’s mask, she was grimly pleased to see that Roy no longer looked bored. Earl stopped her again after about half a dozen pitches.

  “Okay, I don’t want to mess with you too much because whatever you’re doing, it seems to be working. But we need to work on your lead shoulder. You’re throwing it out too early and it makes you drag.”

  “Um, I’m not sure what you mean,” Brenda admitted. “Can you show me? I mean, I’m kind of a visual learner.” She handed him the ball and took a few steps back. Maybe asking was a breach of protocol, but she knew that she learned best when she could watch something done.

  Earl took the ball from her a little awkwardly, almost as though he didn’t want to touch her hand accidentally. Once the ball was firmly in his hand and he had mounted himself next to the bullpen’s pitching rubber, he looked as comfortable as though he were sitting on the sofa in his bathrobe reading the Sunday paper. Moving in slow motion, he demonstrated how Brenda was throwing her left shoulder back before her ball hand had completed its movement.

  “When did you play?” Brenda asked. Again, she wasn’t sure if she was breaking protocol by asking personal questions (or if she was supposed to know Earl’s bio).

  Earl looked surprised that she had asked but replied that he had played in the minors thirty years ago. “But I realized pretty early on that I was a better coach than player,” he added with a small smile. “Now you try it,” Earl said. “Go through your windup very slowly and focus on your left shoulder. You should notice a shift in your balance.”

  Brenda tried not to feel self-conscious as she went through her windup in slow motion. There was something vaguely ridiculous feeling about the exercise—as though she was playing at being a big league pitcher instead of actually being one. Then again, focusing on her own body had never been a favorite pastime.

  She had always wanted to be graceful and lithe. For about two weeks when she was seven, she wanted to be a ballerina. At her first ballet class, she saw all the other little girls moving their bodies gently while pretending to be leaves dancing in the breeze and then caught sight of her own sturdy but clunky little body jerking around like a plastic bag in a cyclone. At that moment, Brenda knew graceful and lithe were probably not in her future. In her mind’s eye, she could see how her body should move, could watch it imitate Earl’s easy lean-back-lean-forward motion but found it difficult to make her limbs move the way she knew they should.

  “Try it again,” Earl said. “I know you’re eager to get the ball across the plate, but if you stop leading with that shoulder, you’ll get the ball across more effectively.”

  After a few more minutes of slow motion windups, Brenda felt as though she had the movement down. She had never thought so much about what her body was doing when she pitched, but simply imitated the same motions she had seen dozens of major league pitchers perform and let the anger bubble and boil. Intellectualizing the movement doused the anger so much that when Earl told her to throw at full speed, she was barely able get the ball the full distance to Roy’s catcher’s mitt.

  “Sorry about that,” she mumbled as she took the throw back from Roy.

  “Why are you holding back?” Earl asked. “I expect all of my players to work at one hundred percent during workouts and during games. None of this half-assed stuff. This is not the minor leagues. Put it all together and let’s see what you’ve got.”

  “Okay,” Brenda said. It was embarrassing to be called out as though she wasn’t trying when she was. Finding the anger when she wasn’t angry had seemed artificial, but now she realized it was survival.

  Turning on the anger was getting easier, or maybe it was just starting to bubble closer to the surface. She mumbled Ed’s name in vain and threw. The pitches weren’t her fastest, but they were on target, and Earl said they had good movement. She didn’t allow herself to smile when he said this, just nodded. She had too much work to do to be happy about it.

  After the bullpen session, Jerry gave Brenda scouting reports and an iPad that was preloaded with a proprietary app called On the Ball that allowed her to access video of all MLB batters when the team was on the road. He also showed her the film room so she could study even more batter video. She had so much to learn in such a short time that she focused only on the lineups of the next few teams they’d be facing. She had t
he scouting report in front of her, but reading, for instance, “Has a tendency to chase outside pitches” was one thing. Seeing the placement of the pitch and the twitch of an arm and the split-second expression on the batter’s face as he went for a ball that broke just below the line of his swing was quite another. Brenda had never given that much thought to how a pitcher throws to a particular hitter; she just always assumed it was some combination of fastballs, curveballs, and sinkers or sliders (she noticed there seemed to be an endless supply of names for pitches that moved in one direction or another). As she watched the film, she focused sometimes on the hitter, but found herself looking more and more at the catcher and his signals and where he placed his mitt. No wonder Andy liked catching so much. All this time, she had thought the pitcher controlled the game, but it was the catcher who was the anchor around which everything else revolved.

  By the time she finished in the film room, the visiting Yankees were already taking batting practice and other Indians players were in the clubhouse, going through their pre-game rituals. There was more than an hour to game time. Hanging out in her locker room and reading through scouting reports seemed like the best use of her time.

  The Indians’ clubhouse felt like a rabbit’s warren of hallways, and Brenda got turned around coming back from the film room. There was the manager’s office to her left, and in front of her was the door to the Indians’ locker room, which was probably not a place she needed to be while the guys were changing. She heard voices coming down the corridor behind her and turned around. She recognized Fred Pasquela, the second baseman, and Phil Cipriani, another relief pitcher. Most of the guys on the Lightning seemed to gripe about Pasquela being a lazy ballplayer. Cipriani seemed to be all legs and arms—his windup resembled a windmill moving at high speed—but he walked gracefully, with the smooth gait of a big cat.

  “Hey, pecker checker,” Pasquela said. They were in uniform, and so was she. They were on the same team, but it was clear that was in name only. “I believe your locker room is around the corner.”