Throw Like a Woman

by Susan Petrone

  Doug Stone was at his locker, and when he saw her, he chuckled. “You’ve outdone yourself this time, B.”

  Brenda was about to respond when she heard Pasquela’s voice ring through the locker room. “Hey, Haversham!” he yelled, standing up. “I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m right here,” Brenda replied. She gave a quick glance around the now-silent room. Every player in the room was watching them. No coaches, no trainers, no media were around. For half a second, this worried her, then she relaxed. Better to have it out with players only.

  Pasquela picked up the two pictures and walked over to the table where she stood. He put them down on the table saying, “You gotta lot of balls hanging these up in here.”

  Brenda looked down at the two pictures. One was the picture she put in her duffel bag long ago of one of her teammates exposing himself from the waist down. From Pasquela’s reaction, she figured it must have been him. She had turned the picture into a cartoon character, with the erect penis as the long, Pinocchio-like nose of a silly face. For not having drawn anything in ages, she thought it was pretty good. The other was her sports bra ad. She had attached a new Post-It note that read: “Don’t lie, you know you love me.” She thought pairing the photos together like that was pretty funny. “You’ve got a lot of balls putting those pictures in my locker room,” she said.

  She and Pasquela stood eye to eye, and Brenda felt a surge of misguided self-confidence. If she were a man, he would have hit her. She stood her ground with her heart in her throat. Every other player in the room was watching their confrontation, and she wondered how much it would hurt if Pasquela actually slugged her. For a long, long second all she could hear was her own heart pounding in her ears, then McGall started singing.

  The collective focus of the room turned to McGall, who was jumping up and down on the circular leather couch in front of the television while he sang “Who has big balls?” to the tune of “Who Wears Short Shorts?” And just as quickly as the locker room had become quiet and tense, it shifted back to its standard noise and controlled chaos.

  Brenda and Pasquela remained glaring at each other. The moment of potential violence had passed, but the pictures were still lying on the table. Brenda wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t need to be friends with him; she just wanted a truce. She picked up the naked-from-the-waist-down cartoon and ripped it in half. Then ripped it in half again, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it on the table.

  Pasquela pondered this for a moment, then nodded. He picked up the picture of her sports bra ad, ripped it in half and crumpled the pieces into a ball. McGall was still standing on the couch but was now expounding on the shortcomings of metal relative to punk like a music critic turned street preacher. Pasquela took both balled-up pieces of paper and threw them at McGall, yelling, “Hey McGall! I got your balls right here.”

  He walked away, heading toward his locker, without saying anything to Brenda. She didn’t mind. That battle was over. Now that it was, she realized how shaken she was.

  “He wouldn’t have really hit you,” a deep voice next to her said. She hadn’t noticed that Art Groggins had come over to where she was still standing, her right hand clutching the table as though she’d fall over if she didn’t. Groggins’ presence made her relax her grip. He lowered his voice. “Pasquela can be a lazy little shit sometimes, but he wouldn’t have hit you.”

  As always, Brenda was keenly aware of the constant stream of motion on the periphery of their conversation that seemed at odds with anyone’s ability to talk privately. But Charlie was right—everyone else in the locker room was generally too preoccupied with himself to pay attention to anything else. “Why not? He wouldn’t hit a woman?”

  “He wouldn’t hit a woman, but he’d hit another ballplayer,” Groggins said pointedly, then added: “But other ballplayers have friends. A lot of people in here have your back, Haversham. Me included.”

  “Thanks, Art,” Brenda said, almost overwhelmed with gratitude.

  “By the way, you’re a good artist,” Groggins said and walked away.

  Brenda watched him go and surveyed the rest of the locker room. McGall, Landers, Teeset, and some others were now watching some inane DVD and laughing like little boys. Anthony Fleetwood was sitting by his locker, Bible in hand, saying a quick prayer as he always did before a game. Doug Stone was sitting facing his locker in his quiet pre-game meditation ritual. Groggins had gone over to the corner and was stretching. Ochoa was doing more of his crazy yoga poses. Sparks, Cipriani, and Bandkins, in an attempt to meld sabermetrics with dating, were arguing about which supermodel had the highest Total Replacement Hotness. Hodges, who was starting that night, was silently psyching himself into The Zone.

  She felt somewhat displaced and apart from the action, then she noticed Francisco Jimenez sitting in front of his locker, leaning back and watching the show just like she was. He gave her a little nod and a smile, and she nodded back. They were both just hanging out, doing nothing, and that was okay. She was their teammate.

  When they went into the dugout at the top of the game, she didn’t feel out of place. And when she went out to the bullpen after the first inning, she didn’t feel that she was hiding out there.

  Chicago came out swinging, scoring three runs in the first while Cleveland went down 1-2-3. Each time Ben Morris came up to bat, the stadium filled with boos. In the fourth inning, Hodges threw a pitch that Morris apparently thought was too far inside; he stepped out of the box, bat to his side, and glared at the mound. To his credit, Hodges didn’t flinch. The face-off only last a few seconds, but it had enough shades of their last encounter with the White Sox to make both benches stand up. When Morris grounded out to second, Brenda couldn’t help but say, “Serves you right, asshole.”

  Sparks was sitting in his usual spot near her on the bench and snickered. “You kiss your mother with that mouth, Haversham?”

  “No, I kiss your mother, Sparks,” Brenda said.

  Sparks snorted a laugh, but that was it for conversation in the bullpen. The game was too tense, too important for goofing around.

  Hodges was one of those pitchers who typically started off strong then would fall apart in the fifth or sixth inning. Tonight, however, he had his worst inning early on and then calmed down. The Indians scored in the third and fourth innings, and by the seventh inning, were up 4-3. Munson pulled Hodges and sent Sparks in for the eighth. Brenda was tense until Sparks got the third out with no runs scored. Jimenez, the closer, would go in for the ninth and that would be the ballgame. Brenda wasn’t sure how she felt about not playing that night. A win was a win—it guaranteed them a spot in the playoffs, but part of her wanted to bring home a win, not just watch it.

  At the top of the ninth, Jimenez went out to the mound and the stadium went crazy. He was the hero who had sent the Indians to the playoffs three seasons before. Now it was his turn to do it again. Brenda felt like a kid as she watched him take his warm-up pitches. Andy, Jon, and Adele were off in the family section somewhere along the third base line. She was glad the boys had the chance to see the game.

  Jimenez was facing Burt, Parker, and Holmes. When he struck out Burt to lead off the ninth, the noise from the crowd was so loud Brenda could feel it seeping up through the concrete and into her legs. It was as intoxicating as the scent of boiled hot dogs. Parker flied out to Bandkins in deep right, and the noise somehow increased. Brenda and the rest of the bullpen were on their feet, watching and waiting for the win. Then the bottom fell out.

  Holmes, the top of the order, drew out a twelve-pitch at-bat, fouling off ball after ball before knocking out a base hit to left center.

  The noise in the stadium quieted down considerably, but Earl kept saying, “He’ll get out of it.” The base hit seemed to take away some of Jimenez’s confidence. Tagiashi was up next and fouled off three or four balls before drawing a walk and putting the go ahead run on base.

 
; “He looks tired,” Cipriani said. “Look how long he’s taking between pitches.”

  “And he’s rushing his motion,” Earl said.

  Brenda watched as Jimenez threw his first pitch to Weymouth, the next batter. She didn’t see what Earl was talking about, but she did on the second pitch. It appeared that Jimenez was throwing the ball with his chest instead of his arm, as though he couldn’t get enough power with his arm.

  The bullpen phone rang and every head turned as Earl answered it. Cipriani turned to Brenda but didn’t say anything. Brenda held his gaze for a moment then turned back to Earl, who was hanging up the phone.

  “Haversham. Start throwing,” he said. “And hurry it up.”

  Brenda grabbed her glove and went behind the bench to where Bridges was just putting on his catcher’s mask.

  “Let’s do this,” he said.

  She took a deep breath and said, “Okay.” She stood facing Bridges, aware of the fans who were now looking over the bullpen wall at her, aware of her heart pounding and her legs and arms shaking. “You can do this. You can do this,” she said to herself and willed her nerves to calm down. She had only thrown two easy warm-up pitches, not even enough to loosen her arm, when she heard a collective groan from the crowd. Jimenez had walked the bases loaded.

  “Haversham! You’re in.”

  She walked back to the bullpen dugout. Cipriani was leaning against the bullpen railing, singing his own version of “She’s A Lady.” He stopped singing and smiled at her. “I needed a word that rhymed with ‘bunt,’” he said.

  Enough. “I’m not a lady, Cipriani,” Brenda said. “I’m a ballplayer. Deal with it.”

  Cipriani looked at her, as though judging the depths of her soul. “Fair enough.”

  “And that isn’t my theme song anyway.” She could hear the first wavy, reverberating chords of The Smiths “How Soon Is Now?” begin to play over the PA system as her name was announced. “That’s my theme song,” she added over her shoulder and began the long walk out to the mound.

  When she finally told the PA announcer what song she wanted played when she came into a game, she hadn’t counted on how it would make her feel. Hearing a song she hated had always made her want to rip things apart. Hearing a song she loved made her want to create. Johnny Marr’s keening guitar and Morrissey’s plaintive crooning carried her across the field. The song wouldn’t help her find the anger today, but it did pump her up, and she felt the familiar jumble of emotions and energy coursing through her veins.

  She had had no time to prepare in the bullpen. Now, as she stood on the mound, Brenda searched for the anger. It was there. It was always there, bubbling just below the surface. She looked at Johnny Gonzalez’s catcher’s mitt sitting sixty feet and six inches away and tried to imagine Ed’s face in its deep, creased pocket. But she threw a warm-up pitch to an Ed who was saying, “I’m sorry.”

  She tried imagining Charlie’s face in the glove, but he hadn’t disappointed her and she hadn’t sabotaged a good thing.

  She tried Pasquela, but could only see him yelling to McGall, “I’ve got your balls right here!” as she threw another anemic warm-up. She tried Cipriani, but his face would only repeat the words, “Fair enough” and nothing else.

  Brenda was getting scared. She closed her eyes and let the noise of the sold-out crowd inhabit her ears and her head. Then she heard them. Some boos. Some jeers. Even a “Get out of baseball!”

  The Frickers. Yes. They were always around and never failed to piss her off. She opened her eyes and took her first real look at the crowd. There was a group on the second level between first base and home plate. A couple of them were holding big placards that read, “No Women in Baseball.” “Fuck you,” Brenda muttered to the sign. Then she noticed two men a bit farther down who were holding a banner over the railing that read, “IroNy Shitts.”

  Brenda did a double-take. She squinted at the sign. If she looked closely, she could see that it was supposed to read, “Iron My Shirts,” but the sign maker had bunched up the “n” and the “m” and written a lower-case “r” that looked like a “t.” For all intents and purposes, the sign read, “IroNy Shitts.”

  And that’s when Brenda laughed. For the first time all summer, she laughed.

  She heard McGall’s voice say, “Hey, Big Balls! What’s the hold up?” and saw that he had joined her on the mound. Brenda was still laughing and could barely spit out the words, “Irony shits.”

  “What?” McGall looked around for a second and then saw the banner too. His donkey laugh was as melodious as the sound of wood hitting horsehide. “That’s awesome, but dude, you’ve gotta pitch.”

  Brenda suddenly became aware of the 42,000 people sitting in the stands watching her. She saw Munson standing with one foot on the top step of the dugout. She saw Jorge Racino and his .376 batting average standing by the batter’s box, waiting. And she had nothing. “Oh crap. I can’t do this,” she said.

  “Sure you can. Just do what you always do,” McGall said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Then do something else,” he said as he trotted back to his position.

  Brenda heard the umpire yell, “Batter up” and watched Racino step into the batter’s box. He was broad and muscular and swirled the bat in a circle above his shoulder three times before each pitch. For some reason, Brenda found this quirk delightful. She couldn’t stop smiling. As she stared down the alley at Gonzalez’s mitt, Brenda realized she wasn’t angry. Not at all. And yet she felt a great surge of energy and adrenaline running through her body. Her limbs and fingers and toes were tingling; even her hair felt electrified. She stared at her target and saw the familiar golden lines leading from her hand to the catcher’s mitt, saw the rectangle demarcating the strike zone. As she threw the first pitch down that golden tunnel, she marveled at what she was feeling. She thought it might be joy.

  •◊•

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

  Charlie: Good evening, I’m Charlie Bannister and welcome to my last night as the host of Today in Sports.

  Howie: Good evening, I’m Howie Wojinski, and welcome to my first night as the host of Today in Sports.

  Charlie: Howie, your first day is Monday. This is still my show. And the powers that be told me that because it’s my last show, I can say anything I want.

  Howie: And . . . ?

  Charlie: Anything I want.

  Howie: I’ll miss your droll sense of humor. I hope it comes out in your writing.

  Charlie: It does indeed, but you’ll have to wait until next spring to buy my book of essays. And you’ll have to wait about two years to read the graphic novel I’m working on with pitcher Brenda Haversham. I’ll bet you didn’t know she could draw, Howie. In the meantime, you can read me in Sports Illustrated, which I’ve joined as a senior writer. And no, just because I’m a senior writer doesn’t mean I’m old.

  Howie: You are just full of witty one-liners this evening.

  Charlie: Howie, I’m full of witty one-liners and excitement and anticipation. I’m about to embark on a grand adventure. I’m going back to my first love, which is writing, and I’m moving back to my home state. I’m helping to start a series of baseball clinics for girls. Even though you won’t see me on Today in Sports every night, I’ll still be around and very very busy.

  Howie: So you’re not really retiring.

  Charlie: No. Who said I was retiring?

  Howie: Barney, the new intern.

  Charlie: His name is Justin.

  Howie: But he always wears purple, so I call him Barney.

  Charlie: Howie, it’s just not the same when you do it. [pause] Call him Justin.

  About the Author

  •◊•

  Susan Petrone lives with one husband, one child, and two dogs in Cleveland, Ohio. In addition to writing f
iction, she blogs about her beloved Cleveland Indians at itspronouncedlajaway.com. Her best pitch is a breaking ball.