Throw Like a Woman

by Susan Petrone

  When Andy had taken his first steps and gone from baby to toddler, Brenda had almost wanted to cry. But now, watching him take his first steps from boy to thoughtful young man, Brenda found that watching the transformation made her happier than she thought it would. He was discovering the complexities and gray areas of life, but it didn’t seem to trouble or perplex him, instead, he seemed to enjoy the intellectual challenge of figuring out why the world operated as it did.

  Brenda had discovered that all the home stands flew by and all the road trips seemed to last two months. Tampa Bay came in after the Boston series, and Brenda did a bit better against them the second time, getting two strikeouts against the two batters she faced on Saturday night. And then it was Sunday morning again, and she had to pack for a two-week road trip that would take her to Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Oakland.

  This would be the longest road trip yet. Adele brought the boys to the game on Sunday afternoon so they could say good-bye. Brenda didn’t go in that game, which was fine with her. The stomach pains that had begun earlier in the season had only gotten worse, and she had fiery heartburn for hours after every outing, no matter what she ate. Most days it seemed easier not to eat, or to have just a glass of milk.

  After the game, the players had a few minutes to say good-bye to their families in the players’ parking lot before the bus left to take them to the airport. It was a ritual that Brenda had gone through a few times now, but it hadn’t gotten easier. She looked around at her teammates and their families. How had they gotten used to not seeing their husbands and fathers for eight months of the year? This was an impossible lifestyle, yet here was Doug Stone and his wife and two daughters having a big family hug; there was old Art Groggins and his wife kissing good-bye; there was Pasquela and his wife and toddler son getting in one last hug, all of them seemingly unfazed by yet another departure. The guys who weren’t married, like Teeset and Panidopolous and Cipriani, were already on the bus, waiting to go. Had they all become so inured to the continual rhythm of arrivals and departures that it no longer bothered them or were they just numb until the off-season?

  Brenda looked at her family standing in front of her. Jon hadn’t seemed too upset by the earlier road trips, but the prospect of having Brenda gone for two weeks right at the start of school was troubling him. Although his tantrums seemed to have eased off over the summer, she saw the familiar hint of red creeping across his face and knew that Adele was going to have to contend with some tears when they got home.

  She pulled Jon close in a huge hug. “Good-bye, sweetie. I’ll see you in two weeks. I promise I will call every day. And you have my cell number—you can call me anytime you need to.”

  Jon’s face was buried in her shoulder, and he didn’t look up as he whispered, “I know.”

  “And we’ll have a picnic when I come back, okay?”

  “Okay,” came Jon’s quiet answer.

  “Andy, come here, sweetie,” Brenda said, reaching to pull him into the hug. Andy held back a bit. Brenda didn’t push him. This line between man and boy, macho and tender was difficult for both of them to maneuver. She saw the same thing in the locker room or on the bus with the guys whose eyes got slightly teary when they talked about their kids and the next minute were telling a dirty joke to offset any display of emotion.

  She took half a step back so she could see both boys’ faces. “Look, I don’t like leaving you, but this is my job now. I’m sorry I’ll be gone for so long, but you’re in great hands with your grandma.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Andy said. As he said this, he put an arm around Jon’s skinny shoulder. Brenda had no idea that her older son could be that gentle with his brother.

  “I know you will.” She picked up the bag of books, scouting reports, and the team iPad that she always carried on buses and planes. “Now I have to go. I love you all so much, and I’ll see you in a couple weeks.”

  “Mom, wait a second,” Andy said. “I have something for you.”

  This stopped Brenda in mid-step. Andy wasn’t the type to give gifts. She watched him pull his Gismo out of his jeans pocket and hand it to her. “Here,” he said. “You need this more than I do.”

  Brenda was stunned. Why was he giving back his birthday gift? He had been in the basement half the week downloading music for it. “Andy, thank you, but I don’t understand. I thought you really wanted a new mp3 player.” she said.

  “Yeah, I do, but I think you need it more. You’ll understand once you see what I put on it for you.” He turned to Adele and asked if she had the charger. As she handed it to Brenda, Andy added, “You’ll definitely need this too.”

  Her sadness at leaving the boys was tempered by puzzlement and curiosity around the Gismo. She gave everyone one last hug and got on the bus. Andy refused to take the Gismo back, saying she’d understand once she started looking at what was on it. Brenda gripped it tightly in her hands as she got on the bus and found a seat near the back in Rookie Exile.

  Through the bus window, she could see her family standing and talking. Some of the other families, primarily those with very young children, were still waving at the bus even though the windows were tinted and you couldn’t tell from the outside whether anyone inside was even looking at you.

  The Gismo was waiting in her hands, but she’d have plenty of time on the road to explore whatever Andy had put on it. For now, she just wanted one more look at her family. Looking out the window, she saw Adele say something to the boys. Andy nodded, and it looked like he might even be smiling. Jon kind of hung around, staring at the bus. He turned and waved at the bus. Instinctively, Brenda waved back, even though she knew he couldn’t see her.

  •◊•

  Excerpt from the transcript for Today in Sports with Charlie Bannister, ESPN, September 6:

  Charlie: The most interesting series this week is definitely the Indians at the White Sox. The Indians have made a spectacular comeback in the second half, while the White Sox have had an equally spectacular meltdown. With the two teams virtually tied for second place in the AL Central, we’re sure to see some of the best ball of the season with this series. Meanwhile, the rest of the division has settled into two separate and unequal factions. The Tigers are sitting pretty in first, with a comfy three-game lead, and the Twins and Royals are so far back they’ve already been mathematically eliminated from everything but dreaming of next year.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  •◊•

  As the bus pulled away from the parking lot, Brenda turned on the Gismo to see what Andy had downloaded for her. She looked first at the music listings and was surprised to find all of her favorite bands—old songs by the Smiths and the Clash and the Jam plus newer things from the Black Keys and Arcade Fire. Andy never listened to this stuff. He had spent the last week down in the basement going through her old CDs and downloading music and putting it all on the Gismo. For her. Nothing he had ever done for her touched her heart more than this one beautiful, voluntary act of love.

  She sniffed and wiped away a small tear. She had barely noticed that Doug Stone had sat down next to her. “You okay, Brenda?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said quickly. Even though Doug had become something of a friend, she didn’t need to be seen crying in front of anyone on the team. Tears were a sign of femininity, of weakness. Some of her teammates and opponents still seemed to expect weakness from her. They studied her face whenever she gave up a hit or a run, as though waiting for the tears to fall, waiting for her to show that she wasn’t strong enough to play their game. “It’s just that my son downloaded a bunch of my favorite songs on here and gave it to me, and it was just a really sweet thing for him to do.”

  “Aw, what a great kid.” Doug leaned a bit closer so he could see the Gismo. “Those are pretty new. How do you like it? I’ve just had this old iPod for years, but I’ve been thinking of upgrading.”

  “I don’t know. I just g
ot it. But it’s one my thirteen-year-old liked, so it must be pretty good,” Brenda said. Referring to Andy as a thirteen-year-old for the first time made her feel ancient.

  “Do you know what the screen quality is like? I’d love to be able to stream some TV shows and stuff, but I feel guilty doing it on the team iPad.”

  “I don’t know. You’re welcome to look at it for a minute.”

  “Hey, thanks,” Doug said, taking the Gismo from her. Brenda settled back for a moment and closed her eyes. After a few moments, she heard Doug say, “Wow” and jerked back to reality. “Wow what?” she asked.

  Doug handed the Gismo back to her. “It looks like your boy has been busy,” he said. “He’s downloaded video of the starting lineups for the entire road trip.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No. Scroll through it. He’s got Chicago, Detroit, LA, and Oakland. That’s a lot of work. Poor kid probably didn’t have time to download anything else.”

  Brenda took the Gismo back and started scrolling through everything that Andy had downloaded. Right in front of her was Chicago’s starting lineup: Holmes, Tagiashi, Weymouth, Racino, Fernandez, Kowalski, Morris, Burt, and Parker. She hadn’t yet faced any of these guys, but she and everyone else who followed baseball even a little knew first baseman Jorge Racino. He had one of the highest batting averages in the league and the highest on-base percentage. She started with him. Even watching film of him was intimidating. Whenever he swung the bat, he almost always connected with the ball.

  She watched video on the Gismo all the way to the airport, on the quick flight to Chicago, and in her hotel room that night, using it instead of the team iPad and doing her best to memorize what she was seeing. Her studying seemed to pay off in the first game of the four-game series; she faced Burt and Parker in the eighth, striking out the former and getting the latter to pop out. After the game, Earl complimented her on doing her homework.

  They split the first two games of the series, which was frustrating. The possibility of grabbing the wildcard spot in the playoffs had captured the team’s collective focus. As a Cleveland fan, Brenda was no stranger to disappointment. She had rejoiced when the Indians started fielding competitive teams and cheered for them through all their aborted playoff and World Series bids. As a player, the excitement was different. Joining the Indians when the team was in the basement had removed some pressure—no one expected anything from them. Now that they were flirting with contention, the tension level in the clubhouse reminded Brenda of a squirmy little ferret run amok, nipping at random heels, causing small outbursts of chaos and impatience and occasionally leading to blow-ups.

  Julio Ochoa was scheduled to start the third game in Chicago. Brenda remembered Ed talking about Ochoa when the Indians had signed him as a seventeen-year-old phenom about seven years ago. He was one of the few bright spots in a farm system that hadn’t been able to produce many stars in recent seasons. Ochoa was ridiculously thin, although from what Brenda had seen in the dining room both before and after games, he ingested enough calories each day to feed an entire starting rotation.

  Ochoa’s pre-game ritual included a series of yoga-like stretches that were fascinating to watch. He would plop down in a corner of the field near the bullpen and contort his long, thin limbs into ridiculous poses that alternately resembled a crab, a back-hoe, and a swan. Brenda hadn’t really talked with him that much, but he at least had the habit of smiling and saying hello to her. He seemed like a good guy.

  Ochoa got off to a good start, pitching shut-out ball for the first six innings. The Indians managed to scrape out a single run and were leading 1-0 going into the bottom of the seventh when everything fell apart. Ochoa walked Racino and gave up a double to Fernandez. Then Ray Kowalski, the second baseman, who wasn’t known for having a big bat, hit a three-run homer. Ochoa was clearly frustrated, but Munson left him in. Then the White Sox’s right fielder Ben Morris came to bat. Ochoa lost control of the ball and beaned him in the side. Ochoa didn’t have a reputation for head-hunting. To the Indians, it was merely a bad pitch. Morris thought it was intentional and glared at Ochoa as he took first base. On the next hit ball, a hopper that went straight at Dave McGall, Morris slid hard and broke up the double play, spiking Pasquela in the process.

  Brenda was watching all of this from the bullpen. She cringed when Ochoa beaned Morris. She had yet to hit a batter and wanted to keep it that way. The idea of accidentally hitting someone with a hard little ball traveling ninety miles an hour made her stomach hurt. She didn’t think she could ever do so on purpose. When Morris slid into second, she initially didn’t realize what had happened. She saw Pasquela and Morris exchange heated words, heard Sparks yell, “He spiked him!” and saw both benches and bullpens immediately stand up. While she found it impossible to feel bad that it was Pasquela who had been spiked, her sense of fair play was offended.

  The entire stadium was booing and jeering as Pasquela and Morris argued. The second base umpire seemed to smooth things out, and for a moment, it looked like the altercation was over. Pasquela went back to his position, but as Morris turned to leave the field, McGall said something to him. The two men started throwing punches, and both dugouts emptied. Brenda watched as the rest of the bullpen ran across the field to the fight. Without thinking, she ran with her teammates.

  There were now two distinct places on the field: the place where people were fighting and the place where people were not fighting. The place where people were not fighting was rapidly depopulating.

  Brenda’s initial reaction was to stay away. In the time it took to take a deep breath, she had run through two syllogisms in her head: I’m a woman. Women don’t fight. Ergo, I don’t fight. Then: This is my team. My team is fighting. Ergo, I have to fight. All around her, her teammates and the opposing team were engaged in hand-to-hand combat. She thought she ought to be scared, but instead felt excitement. The players were throwing punches with wild abandon, taking out their frustration and anger with their entire bodies. It was intoxicating, and she wanted a sip.

  The closest player to her was Harry Tagiashi, the White Sox shortstop. He wasn’t much bigger than she, and he didn’t appear to be fighting anyone, which, in the half a second Brenda had to think, seemed to be key criteria. She charged at him from the side and managed to knock him over through a combination of momentum and surprise.

  “What the hell?” Tagiashi said as he hit the ground. Brenda ignored him and hit him in the side.

  Tagiashi’s face was half on the ground and she heard him yell something about stupid rookies.

  She stopped pummeling. “What?”

  Tagiashi got a good look at who had knocked him down and his eyes opened wide in a combination of shock and annoyance. “Kuso!” he said. “What are you doing?”

  “Fighting you,” Brenda said and laid a punch square in his stomach.

  “Ow!” Tagiashi rolled over and pinned her. “I won’t hit a woman.”

  “It’s okay, I hit you first,” Brenda said, trying to push him off. She managed to get one more swipe in at him and then it appeared as though Tagiashi levitated off of her. She scrambled to her feet and saw six-foot-three Art Groggins dump the five-foot-seven Tagiashi unceremoniously on the ground.

  “What the hell are you doing hitting a woman?” Groggins said.

  Tagiashi was livid. “She charged me!”

  “Get out of here,” Groggins snapped at him, then looked at Brenda. “Haversham, you’re nuts. Get back to the bullpen before you’re ejected.”

  Brenda stood panting, her heart racing and her stomach in knots. Every muscle in her body suddenly felt like mush. She looked around and saw that the fight had pretty much been broken up. The umpires were ordering players back to their dugouts and the two teams’ respective managers and coaches were doing the same. She didn’t see McGall or Morris and figured they must have been ejected. Tagiashi started the trek back to his dugout.


  “I can’t believe I got in a fight,” Brenda said, half to herself, half out loud. “I can’t believe I hit another human being.”

  “Believe it,” Groggins said. “Now come on.” He walked a few yards with her as he returned to centerfield and she returned to the bullpen. Just as their paths diverged, Groggins said, “Haversham, you’re nuts, but you have heart.”

  “Thanks,” Brenda replied.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  After the fight, Brenda sat in the bullpen, seething and flying with adrenaline. She went in as the stopper in the bottom of the eighth, facing Kowalski, who looked overconfident after his big blast and went down swinging. It only took five pitches, but when she saw Kowalski swing and miss for the third strike, she felt only relief. There was nothing left in her arm or her gut to muster for another batter.

  They lost the game and left Chicago immediately after, arriving in Detroit in the middle of the night. As tired as she was, Brenda couldn’t sleep, but instead sat up in her hotel room, replaying the fight over and over again in her head. She hadn’t fought long or hard, but still every muscle seemed to hurt. When she was in the middle of it, she hadn’t thought that she might be hurting another person; she was only focused on how the fighting made her feel—exhilarated. Her anger had come from a new source; she didn’t have to conjure it out of memory. It hadn’t required control or finesse or the call of the catcher. It was all pure, unadulterated fury. She didn’t want to admit that she had enjoyed the release.