Throw Like a Woman

by Susan Petrone

  “Hey Pasquela,” she yelled. “Look, they named an exit after your batting average.” A dozen heads on her side of the bus looked left. There was more laughter, which drowned out Pasquela’s weak reply.

  Next to her, Teeset was leaning against the window, laughing into his huge, oven-mitt-like hand. She knew he had grown up on a ranch, and sitting next to him, the term “corn-fed” invariably came to mind. He was a big kid. “You’re brave,” he said quietly. “I don’t know that I’d have the nerve to say that to one of the veterans.”

  “Just because they’ve been here a few seasons doesn’t mean they have the right to treat the rookies like dirt. Or anyone else.”

  “I don’t mind it too much,” Teeset said sheepishly. “It’s baseball tradition to give the rookies a hard time.” He stared out the window for a moment, looking uncomfortable. Brenda couldn’t remember how old he was. Twenty-three? Half the guys on the team looked like they should be in high school. “But I don’t blame you for getting mad,” he said, still keeping his voice low. “They’ve already been a lot harder on you than they have on me, and I’ve been here all season.”

  “Do you think so?” Brenda asked.

  “Well, I seen them with the magazine ads you did, and Cipriani had about ten boxes of tampons in his locker that one day, so I knew it probably had something to do with you.”

  “What have they done to you?”

  “The usual. Making me carry their bags and or putting Vaseline in my shoes, dumb insults. The first road trip I had to use this pink Hello Kitty backpack. Stuff like that. There was one thing they did that was just plain mean though.” He paused, as though waiting to see if Brenda wanted to hear what he had to say. She nodded for him to go on. Frankly, Teeset had the slightest twang to his voice that made it a delight to listen to him talk. “My mom’s a really good seamstress. She does side work making prom dresses and stuff for people. It’s extra money, and there isn’t much else to do on the ranch in the winter.”

  “Where is your family’s ranch?”

  “Just outside of Mitchell, South Dakota. My dad’s a cattle rancher. Anyhow, she made me a suit that was the most beautiful piece of clothing I’ve ever had. She sent it with me to spring training for luck, and it worked, because I made the Opening Day roster. It was a really nice summer suit, and I decided to wear it on our first road trip of the season—you know, they have the dress code when we’re traveling as a team, so I thought I’d do it up right. It was in my locker and at the end of the game, I go to my locker and somebody had cut the sleeves off the jacket and cut the pants into shorts. And Cipriani and Pasquela and Hodges were all laughing like hyenas and saying, ‘Oh, why are you so upset? You can just go buy another one,’ like I had blown my first big league paycheck on the suit. They didn’t know that my mom had spent hours making it for me.”

  “Those fucking assholes,” Brenda said, the words sliding quietly out of her mouth like a snake about to strike.

  Teeset looked shocked. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman swear like that.”

  “Get used to it, son,” she replied.

  •◊•

  Whatever push of adrenaline Brenda was riding when she arrived at the ballpark had dissipated by the time she got the call in the bullpen. Julio Ochoa, the Indians’ starter, had been lit up almost from the get-go, giving up six runs in four innings. Brenda came in for the fifth and sixth innings and gave up two more runs on five hits and two walks. Meanwhile, the Indians’ bats were largely silent, and they were down 8-2 when Brenda left the game. To make matters worse, things seemed to get better when Cipriani came in. He gave up a couple of hits but no runs (the only bright spot for Brenda was that she had managed two strikeouts during her two innings and Cipriani had only one). Cipriani pitched scoreless seventh and eighth innings, the Indians had two big innings and pulled ahead 9-8, then Jimenez shut down the Rangers in the ninth. Brenda was glad that Teeset ended up being the hero with a game-winning three-run homer but was embarrassed that she had done nothing to contribute to the win.

  After the game, she figured the media would want to talk to Teeset and hoped for some relative calm in her locker room (a little-used handicapped bathroom down the hall from the visitors’ locker room). Instead, she found a mangle of media people, all asking her thoughts on the protest outside Ranger Stadium.

  “What protest?” Brenda asked.

  “The anti-Haversham protest out front,” said the reporter closest to her, a man with vaguely Asian features and short, spikey black hair. He was backed up by a cameraman; Brenda had already spent enough time dealing with the media to know that they would keep the cameras rolling indefinitely and edit at their whim. She had quickly learned to be polite while saying as little as possible.

  “I didn’t see the protest, so it would be impossible for me to comment,” Brenda replied and squeezed into her locker room. She was pretty sure the door closed on the guy’s foot.

  It wasn’t until she was back in her room at the hotel that she saw footage of the protest. She had the television tuned to one of the local channels while she got ready for bed and suddenly, there it was: a group of thirty or so people (primarily men) standing around holding signs that read, “Go back to softball” or “Pitch me some dinner” or simply her last name with a line through it.

  “Are you kidding me?” she said to the television.

  The news reporter on the scene was the same guy she had spoken to outside her locker room. He had managed to corner one of the leaders of the protest, a pasty-looking man in his early sixties who was standing by something that at first looked like a giant rotisserie. As the camera panned out, she saw that the pasty man was turning a handle attached to a homemade coffin, in which lay a dummy dressed in a gray suit and wearing eyeglasses. When the man turned a crank sticking out of the end of the coffin, the dummy somewhat clumsily flipped over.

  The reporter asked the protester a couple of basic questions, but Brenda didn’t pay attention to the answers. She was too riveted by the almost grotesque contraption that was at the heart of the protest. But then the camera zoomed in on the man’s hand holding the crank and the protest leader said, “This here represents Ford Frick, baseball commissioner from 1951 to 1965. He banned women from professional baseball in 1952 to prevent teams from using them as publicity stunts. We’re pretty sure if Ford Frick could see the hijinks the Cleveland team has gotten into with this Haversham woman, he’d be turning over in his grave.”

  The reporter did an admirable job of swallowing a laugh. “So this is Ford Frick rolling over in his grave. Very clever.”

  Brenda couldn’t tell if the protestors meant for the Ford Frick contraption to be serious or ironic, but it was definitely an attention getter. The news station showed a few seconds of the protesters shouting, “No women in baseball!” and a hastily assembled group of counter-protesters shouting, “Let her play!” Then the segment was over and the station cut back to the studio, where a female and male anchor, both of whom seemed to use the same hair coloring and styling products, commented that “It looks like it was a crazy night down there at Rangers Stadium.”

  “You can say that again,” Brenda said as she turned off the television. She went to sleep and was awakened late the next morning by the ringing of her cell phone. The phone showed a Manhattan area code and a number she didn’t recognize, so she ignored it. Instead, she called home, hoping it was still early enough to catch the boys before they went off on some Saturday activity. Adele answered on the first ring. “Ahoj,” her mother said.

  “Do you always answer my phone in Slovak?” Brenda asked.

  “I only answered in Slovak because I knew it would be you, but that isn’t a bad idea. It would be an easy way to cut out all the junk calls.”

  “I just wanted to check in. How are Andy and Jon?” Brenda settled down on one of the double beds. Having a hotel room to herself was one of the few perks to be
ing the only female on the team.

  “They’re wonderful.”

  “Really?”

  “They’re my grandsons. Of course they’re wonderful.”

  “Are they around? I’d love to talk to them.”

  “They’re with Ed,” her mother replied. “This is his weekend, remember?”

  “Oh, right. Of course,” Brenda said. Of course the boys would still have their weekend days with Ed while she was gone. It wasn’t as though the world stopped just because she had a road trip. But it felt strange to know that Andy and Jon were out at some unknown place and she was fifteen hundred miles away. “How late was Ed today?” she asked.

  “Ten minutes early. And he picked them up at 9:00.”

  “Really?”

  “I couldn’t believe it either,” Adele replied. “Eh, maybe he’s trying to be a good father. Stranger things have happened.”

  She and her mother talked for a bit longer. There was so much Brenda wanted to say about her worries and feeling out of place and wondering if she had made a mistake in pursuing baseball, but somehow the words didn’t come out. She had dumped enough responsibility on her mom—she didn’t think it was fair to dump her worries and fears on Adele too.

  Almost as soon as she hung up with her mother, the cell phone rang again. It was the same Manhattan number as before. Curious, she answered it.

  “Hi, Brenda,” a friendly voice said. “It’s Charlie.”

  It took her a second to realize that Charlie was Charlie Bannister. They had talked online here and there, but this was the first actual conversation she’d had with him since the interview. “Hi,” she said, trying to sound neutral. She kind of liked talking on Twitter with him but wasn’t sure she needed more than one hundred forty characters of him at a time. What the hell did he want? Another interview? “What can I do for you? Is there something wrong?” she asked.

  “No, no emergencies or anything like that,” Charlie replied, and she thought she detected a momentary hint of embarrassment in his voice. “I just heard about the protest and wanted to check in with you and make sure that you were all right.”

  “I’m fine,” Brenda replied.

  “I figured you were, but you know, crowds can get ugly and ugly people can get even uglier when they’re in a crowd, and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. Anything bad, I mean.”

  Every time Brenda had heard Charlie speak prior to this, the words just seemed to spin out of his mouth, uncoiling like a silk ribbon. But now he was stammering and sounded so earnest and sincere that when Brenda said, “Thank you,” she tried to sound a little friendlier.

  “You’re welcome. Hey, um, I noticed that the Indians are going to be playing in Baltimore in a couple weeks. I’m actually going to be in the area around that time. Would you maybe want to get together for lunch when we’re both in town?”

  This was different. She almost said something about him having just interviewed her, but she knew he wasn’t asking for another interview. This sounded like a date.

  She briefly considered Charlie Bannister. He was not conventionally attractive—his features and his body had a certain roundness to them, giving him a boyish look. But his eyes twinkled and he had a great smile. And while she estimated his height at around five ten, he carried himself with the self-assurance of a six-foot-four home-run hitter. He didn’t swagger. His confidence didn’t stem from his physicality; it clearly bubbled forth from a deeper well. Having lunch with a man who was obviously comfortable in his own skin might not be a bad way to kill a couple hours before a ballgame.

  “That would be nice,” Brenda said. “Nice” sounded like the proper adjective. “Great” might give him the impression that she was seriously interested, while “fine” sounded as though his company would be merely adequate. “Nice” seemed about right.

  They settled on a Wednesday, which was in the middle of the Baltimore series, giving Brenda nearly two weeks to question whether she actually wanted to go out with him. Living in the midst of a bunch of men, there was no one to talk with about this. Adele and Robin would just say it was high time she showed an interest in someone other than Ed.

  The protesters were out again for the remaining two games in Texas. Brenda didn’t go in during the second game, which the Indians lost, but she struck out two batters in the bottom of the eighth and helped the Indians get a win during the rubber match on Sunday. Watching the Rangers bat two days in a row helped Brenda key into their batters’ strengths and weaknesses. Studying video on the iPad helped, but it was no substitute for the real thing.

  As expected, her comments to Cipriani and Pasquela on the bus didn’t go unanswered. After the second game in Texas, she found a sweat-stained jock cup in her locker room. It was a wonder how anyone managed to get in there to leave it. Outside of game time, when she was in the dugout or the bullpen, she was in her locker room (or whatever space was designated as her locker room), only venturing into the team locker room when necessary for team meetings.

  The cup was right in the middle of her locker cubby. She grabbed some paper towels to pick it up and noticed that there was something thickly wet sitting in the cup part.

  “I’m going to pretend it’s spit . . . I’m going to pretend it’s mucus . . .” Brenda muttered to herself as she quickly wrapped the cup in the paper towels and threw it in the trash can. She threw a few more bunched-up paper towels into the trash can to hide the cup then scrubbed her hands twice.

  She tried to put the jock cup out of her mind, but as she boarded the team bus back to the hotel, she couldn’t help but scan each of her fellow players, wondering who had left it. He would have had to slip out of the dugout, go to the locker room, get the cup (or take it off), and then leave it in her locker room. The thought of one of these guys also taking the time to add his calling card to the cup added a layer of disgust that she didn’t want to contemplate. She figured it was a good thing she never shook hands with any of them.

  •◊•

  Excerpt from the transcript for Today in Sports with Charlie Bannister, ESPN, August 17:

  Charlie: In the American League, the Rangers hosted the Indians over the weekend. The Indians were not polite houseguests, winning two of the three-game series, including a truly beautiful come-from-behind win on Friday on a three-run homer by first baseman Ryan Teeset in the top of the ninth. Outside of Rangers Ballpark, however, it wasn’t as pretty, as fans of ground-breaking rookie pitcher Brenda Haversham clashed with anti-Haversham protesters, who believe she is breaking some sort of ancient code by being allowed to play professional baseball with men. The protesters hung around for the entire series, after which they reportedly went back to their treehouse and held another meeting of the He-Man Women Haters Club.

  Chapter Fifteen

  •◊•

  Brenda read the scouting reports religiously, but she already knew she needed to see a player in action to get an idea of how to pitch to him. Her outings in Texas were polar opposites. While she had gotten shelled on Friday, she had been in charge on the mound on Sunday. Seeing the Rangers lineup for the previous two days definitely helped.

  Through the road trip, Brenda missed Andy and Jon. She found herself waking up in her hotel room, happily expecting to hear the boys talking or laughing or arguing, but instead being greeted by the lonely hum of the room’s air conditioner clicking on. That was it. She called the house every day while she was gone. Jon or Adele always answered and offered animated conversation about what was going on. She was able to get Andy on the phone about half the time, but he still stuck to one-word answers.

  The team came home from the road trip late Sunday night after a quick charter flight from Dallas. Brenda had never been so happy to see beat-up old Molly the Minivan as when the team bus pulled into the players’ parking lot. It was well after midnight by the time she pulled into her own drive. The boys and Adele were waiting for her. Jon and
Adele had even made a little banner that read “Welcome Home” and pasted it along the top row of kitchen cupboards.

  “We’re not going to do it every time you come home,” Jon said with a pointed look at Andy. Clearly the banner had been a point of contention. “But we thought it would be nice after your first road trip.”

  “Thank you so, so much,” Brenda said. She was standing by the kitchen table with one arm around Jon and the other around Adele. Andy was standing in the doorway to the hall, doing his best to look bored. “Thanks for waiting up for me, Andy,” she said.

  “It’s not that late,” he replied.

  She ignored his sarcastic tone and tried to sound positive. “You’re right. I’m just so tired, it feels like it must be later. It was a tough road trip.”

  “You had a bad outing on Friday,” Andy said. She didn’t bother trying to decipher whether he was being sarcastic or sympathetic—she was just happy that he was initiating a conversation.

  “Don’t say that,” Adele said. “It isn’t nice.”

  “It’s okay, Mom. Andy’s right. I’ve got a lot to learn about the opposing teams, and there’s only so much time I can spend watching video of batters.”

  “Do you have to do that tomorrow?” Jon asked.

  “No, tomorrow is for you and Andy. But I do have to go to the stadium early on Tuesday.”

  “Can we come to the game Tuesday night?

  “Sure, but don’t you have a game that night?” Brenda asked.

  “Oh yeah. I forgot,” Jon said. “Can you come and watch us?”

  “I wish I could, sweetie, but I have a game too. I have to work.”

  “Jon left his mitt at Dad’s,” Andy said.

  Brenda felt a familiar lurch in her stomach when she heard this and for half a heartbeat, the idea of them being with their father while she was out of town scared her. She had read that most child abductions are by non-custodial parents. If Ed suddenly decided he wanted the boys to himself, all he would have to do would be to take them when she was out of town.