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Excerpt from the transcript for Today in Sports with Charlie Bannister, ESPN, September 10:
Charlie: Those of you who tuned in to watch the Indians-White Sox game last night might have thought you accidentally tuned into the WWE. A dispute between Chicago’s Ben Morris and Cleveland’s Fred Pasquela and Dave McGall turned into a bench-clearing brawl. Apparently McGall and Morris fought in retaliation for Morris’s alleged spiking of Pasquela, which took place in retaliation for Jorge Ochoa allegedly throwing at Morris. It’s all very complicated and sounds suspiciously like how most Central European wars are started. Let’s hope the two teams sign a peace accord before they meet again later this month. The fight clearly put some gas in Chicago’s testosterone tank, as they beat Cleveland 3-1.
Chapter Twenty-Two
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The morning after the fight, Brenda felt hung over and groggy, and her stomach burned. She would have called it indigestion, but she hadn’t eaten anything after the game. She lay in bed, staring at a single crack in the off-white hotel room ceiling. It seemed easier to will the crack to expand through brain power alone than it was to get up, get dressed, and face another game against another team in another city and another stadium of screaming fans. Having felt genuine, pure anger the previous night, the thought of mustering up an adrenaline burst of rage from memories of her divorce or thoughts of child abusers or war felt grotesquely false. She was tired, plain and simple.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” she said aloud and let her own words linger in the room with her for a while, trying them on for size. What would happen if she quit? If she decided to retire from baseball that very morning? There were clauses in her contract about being unable to play due to injury. An injury meant she wouldn’t be able to play, and right now, her spirit felt injured. There’s no crying in baseball, she thought. And no mental health days, either.
“I need to get up. I need to get up,” Brenda said. In the first weeks after Ed moved out, she had often started her days saying those very words, reminding herself that the boys needed her. But the boys were a couple hundred miles away right now, and so were Adele and Robin and everyone else she loved.
She glanced at the clock on the night table. It was 10:45. The boys were at school. She could call and leave a message and say what? After all her talk to them against violence and fighting, she felt like a hypocrite for having jumped into a fist fight herself. Her phone was on the nightstand. She called Robin and got her voicemail. Of course, she was at work. Brenda didn’t leave a message.
The need to talk to someone who knew her and cared about her was growing. She scrolled through recent incoming calls and saw Charlie Bannister’s number. Since their date, they had exchanged a couple of brief emails and he had sent Brenda her first text message. There was perhaps the beginning of a friendship there. She spent two nervous rings wondering if he was there and whether she really ought to be calling him or whether she ought to just deal with this herself. He answered on the third ring.
“Good morning, Brenda,” he said.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m sorry to call you so early.”
“It’s not early, and hearing your voice just made my morning.”
This almost made her smile, but she was too tired to smile and hold the phone to her ear at the same time. “Do you have a minute?” she asked.
“Of course. Is there anything wrong?”
“Not really.” She sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Did you get hurt during the fight? Because if you did, I’ll head over to Chicago right now and start taking names and bashing heads.”
There was something familiar and comforting about the way Charlie said this, as though long ago she had asked him to take on the role of bodyguard and he had happily accepted. With someone else, it might have seemed overbearing, but Charlie made it sound matter-of-fact and sincere. Brenda momentarily pondered whether Charlie or Harry Tagiashi would come out the winner in a fair fight. Not that she wanted or needed anyone to protect her. It was just nice knowing that someone found the idea of protecting her appealing.
“That won’t be necessary,” she replied. Calling Charlie suddenly seemed like a silly idea. They had been on one date. What made her think that he would understand or care what crisis of confidence she was having? “Look, I’m sorry to have bothered you. I just called to say hi—nothing important.”
Charlie was silent for a moment. She could faintly hear him breathing on the other end of the line. “Okay,” he said finally, but it was clear he didn’t think everything was okay. “Hey, did you know I’m doing the show from LA next week? I’ll be there when you’re there. Would you like to have dinner on Monday? That’s a day off for you, right?”
“I think so. I’m impressed that you know my schedule better than I do. I just show up when they say the bus will be there.” She almost regretted saying this—it felt too revealing. But there was something about Charlie Bannister that made her want to reveal herself to him, even though doing so seemed daunting and a little frightening.
“Yeah, being on the road is tough,” Charlie said. “Did I tell you I spent two seasons doing the play-by-play for the Brewers AA club? That was radio, so the only good thing was that no one could see the bags under my eyes. It’s tiring, I know.”
Brenda lay back on her bed and stretched out. “You have no idea,” she said. She pushed aside the thought that she was lying on a bed half-naked talking to Charlie Bannister. After all, it wasn’t as though he was lying next to her. She only had his voice, a rounded, warm baritone, telling her that he understood tired and worn out and not wanting to do anything anymore. She closed her eyes and listened.
“I remember there was this two-week road trip my first season that was just murder. We had a Friday night game that was postponed after a three-hour delay, a Saturday night game with an hour and a half rain delay, during which I had to keep talking so we wouldn’t have dead air, and then they made up the rainout on Sunday with a double-header. So I didn’t sleep all weekend, and then as soon as the double-header was over, I had to drive six hours in time for the game in Duluth the next day.“
Brenda opened her eyes. “Ugh,” she said.
“The whole way there, I kept asking myself why I was doing this.”
“And what answer did you come up with?”
“I find the scent of boiled hot dogs intoxicating, and the sound of horsehide hitting wood is its own music.”
“Very poetic,” Brenda said.
“It’s the truth. I love the game.”
“I’d like to think that it was that simple, but it’s a lot more difficult for me.” Charlie didn’t say anything for a moment.
“What’s the truth for you?” he asked softly, and there was something about the tone of his voice and the words he used that opened the floodgates.
“The truth is . . . half the guys on the team won’t talk to me. Phil Cipriani and Fred Pasquela seem to think their mission in life is to humiliate me and make me miserable. I still get called “Pork” by bloggers and radio hosts and half the people in the stands even though I think I’ve lost about ten pounds in the last month. Some asshole followed my boys home from summer camp and said horrible things about me to them. My arm feels dead, and there’s a grassroots movement of people who think I’m committing a mortal sin by playing baseball with men. The truth is, this stinks.”
“Holy cow. Are your boys okay?” Charlie asked.
She was glad that was the first thing he asked and reassured him that Andy and Jon were all right. “A little shaken up at the time, but they’re okay.”
“Good. That’s the most important thing. Now, what I want to know is, if that’s really how things are for you, why are you still doing this?”
She wasn’t even embarrassed to say: “I need the money. I have to take care of my family.”
“Th
at’s a fair enough answer, at least to start. But doing things for the money will only get you so far. You know that. I remember your answer to a question I asked at the press conference. You said you used to play ball with your dad but you never said you liked baseball. Maybe this is an obvious question—do you like baseball?”
Brenda didn’t have an answer. She had always enjoyed playing it as a kid with her father. Playing baseball with the boys in the spring was the last time she had felt genuinely connected to both Andy and Jon. The game had momentarily brought them together as a trio, as a family without a father. “I like how the game can bring people together,” she said after a few moments.
“Good, good. That’s a great start,” Charlie said.
“I don’t know if it’s enough to make me get out of bed today,” Brenda said. Saying even this much made her feel very exposed, as though she had just disrobed in front of a stranger.
“Well, for today, focus on the mercenary part if you have to. Pretend that you won’t get paid if you don’t get out of bed. Then I want you to think about what else you like about the game. You can tell me about it when we have dinner in LA.”
“Funny thing, I don’t remember actually saying I’d have dinner with you in LA,” she said slyly, consciously flexing her flirting muscles for the first time in what seemed like years.
“Come on, what else are you going to do in LA? Hang out with Fred Pasquela?”
“You really know how to sweet talk a girl, Charlie.”
“Please say that again.”
“What? You really know how to sweet talk a girl, Charlie?”
“That was the first time I ever heard you say my name. I like it.”
Something in the gentle way he said this made Brenda catch her breath. It was the same way she felt the first time she walked onto the infield at Progressive Field—like a door had been swung open wide just for her.
They talked for a few more minutes, and when Brenda hung up, she felt slightly more hopeful about the day. Then she got to the ballpark and found that someone had taped a photo of her face to the body of a Hustler centerfold and put it in up in the locker room. It was hung up near the front of the room, just behind where Mark would typically stand when he talked to the team before the game. It couldn’t have been up very long, because a few minutes after she entered the room, Art Groggins noticed it. He was standing in front of his locker, one foot on the bench in front of him, doing up his cleats. When he glanced up, Brenda caught his eye and he gave her a polite nod hello. Then his gaze rested on the centerfold. He looked back at Brenda and rolled his eyes, then strode over to the centerfold and ripped it off the wall. “Phil, what the hell is this?” he snapped.
Cipriani was a few lockers away and looked up with an overly innocent face. “What’s what?” he asked.
Groggins walked over to Cipriani, crumpling the centerfold up as he did so. He shoved the balled up paper into Cipriani’s hands and said, “Have a little respect for your teammates.” As he turned away, he muttered, “Asshole,” under his breath.
Brenda felt like she ought to thank Groggins but he didn’t look as though he wanted to be thanked. Groggins was an old-school player, the type who didn’t thump his chest or point to the heavens when he hit a home run but merely circled the bases, doing the job he was being paid to do. His type of play didn’t often come up in highlight reels; he rarely had to dive for a ball because he was always in the right place to catch it before it got there. Brenda got the feeling that doing what needed to be done just came naturally to him.
Later, during the game, she watched from the dugout as Groggins hit a hard grounder to second. It was clear that he was going to be thrown out at first, but he never slowed down, running hard all the way to the bag. Far more than the smell of boiled hot dogs, she found this all-out effort in the face of certain failure to be inspiring. There was a kind of nobility to giving one’s all to an endeavor at which one had no chance of succeeding.
Brenda kept that thought in the back of her mind through the rest of the Detroit series. They had split the Chicago series, but took two of three against first-place Detroit. Around her, she saw her teammates pushing themselves and giving a bit extra. Even guys like Pasquela, who had a reputation for being a little lazy, were hustling on every play. There might be nobility to giving one’s all to a losing effort, but it was more fun to make that same effort and win.
The team arrived in Los Angeles late Sunday night, and Brenda slept in the next morning, grateful for a day without a game. It was getting more and more difficult to work up her anger in order to pitch. Early on, there had been days when she couldn’t wait to throw, as though the anger within her would overflow without that release. Now she had to dig deeper and deeper to find that same rage to fuel her fastball.
She made it through the team workout, throwing lightly and doing calisthenics with the rest of the pitchers. The evening was her own. She called home before the boys went to bed, grateful for the three-hour time difference so she didn’t have to stay up too late herself.
Jon answered, full of stories about fourth grade and eager to know what the weather was like in California. “Is it sunny?” he asked. “It rained here today and we couldn’t go outside at all, not even after lunch. So they let us go in the computer lab and these two kids got into a fight because one of them said that the other kid went on a bad website and the other kid said he didn’t, and then they started arguing and then they started hitting each other. Mrs. Prementine had to break up the fight.”
“Wow,” Brenda said without much enthusiasm. “Did they get in trouble?”
“Yeah, they both got on Red and had to go talk to the principal. And you know what? The kid really did go to a grown-up website, but it was Cleveland.com, which isn’t like a dirty site, it’s just boring stuff. Isn’t that funny?”
“Yep.”
“Are you okay, Mom?” Jon asked in a quiet voice that immediately made Brenda feel guilty.
“I’m fine, sweetie. I just miss you and your brother.”
“Does your arm hurt?”
“No, not really,” Brenda replied.
“Are you having a good time?”
She had to lie. “Yes,” she said.
“You don’t sound like you’re having fun. Dad always says that if it’s not fun, why do it?”
Brenda’s stomach dropped, but she did her best to sound more upbeat. “That sounds like something he’d say. But sometimes you have to do things even if they aren’t fun.”
“Nope, don’t want to,” Jon said, and she could hear him giggling then saying something she couldn’t quite hear. “Andy wants to talk to you.”
“He does?” she asked, and wished she hadn’t sounded so surprised. She said good-bye to Jon and heard the shuffle of the phone being passed. Then she heard Andy say “Hi, Mom” in a voice that had to be a tone or two deeper than it had been the last time they spoke. When had his voice started to change?
“Hi, Andy. It’s good to talk to you,” she said. She deliberately didn’t use a term of endearment—she knew it would only make him cringe.
“I need to talk to you,” Andy said. As he spoke, she could hear his footsteps going down the short hallway and then heard the squeaky door of his bedroom close.
“Okay,” she said, wondering why he needed privacy to talk to her. “What’s up?” She was afraid he was going to bring up the fight in Chicago but instead he said: “Dad asked me if I want to come and live with him.”
A hole the size of Yankee Stadium opened up in Brenda’s stomach. She could feel herself teetering on the edge, head spinning. She caught her breath, willing herself to stay calm. “When did he ask you this?” she said.
“A while ago, before my birthday, but I didn’t want to tell you. He said he’d talk to you about it.”
Brenda inwardly kicked herself for the couple of phone calls from Ed that she ha
d taken perverse pride in not returning. “I’m glad you told me. Do you want to live with him?” she asked, although she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
“I don’t know,” Andy said, and for one moment she heard his voice sound like a little boy again. “I mean, it’d be cool to be around him more, and he really seems like he’s trying to be a good dad and stuff. And now that you’re playing baseball, you’re not around that much and . . . I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been there that much lately.”
“That’s okay. I know you needed to work. And you really want to play baseball, so it’s cool that you’re getting to do something you want to do.”
“Andy, sweetie . . . the only reason I’m playing baseball is so that I can give you and Jon a better future.”
“You mean because you’re making a lot of money now?”
“Kind of. I’ve paid off the house, and we’ll be able to get a lot things fixed, and you and your brother will be able to go to pretty much any college you want and . . . we have some security. But I hate that it keeps me away from the two of you.” There was so much she wanted to say that she just couldn’t say to Andy, not now. Kids were supposed to be carefree, not worried about the future and financial stability. It didn’t seem fair to give him those kinds of worries. “Please know that I love you and Jon more than anything else in this world, and I just want you both to be happy.” She took a deep breath to prepare for the extra effort her words required. “So if you think you’d be happier living mainly with your dad, I’ll support you. I’ll always back you up.”
“Thanks, Mom. I don’t know what I want to do yet.”
“Take your time deciding. And if you decide to move in with your dad and you don’t like it, you can come back.” She tried to sound upbeat when she said this, although inwardly she was praying that Andy would hate living with Ed. She didn’t take time to question whether that wish was right or wrong—it just was.
Throw Like a Woman Page 27