A Brand New Ballgame

by Declan Rhodes

  “Chase misses you. I thought you should know.”

  I leaned back in my seat on the boat and observed my fellow passengers. They were all laughing and chatting except for the boy that confronted me. He was still glancing at me periodically with a frown on his face.

  I typed a response into my phone. It read:

  “I miss all of you.”

  When the ride came to an end, and we climbed out of the boat, I stepped up to the boy again. I asked, “Do you like baseball?”

  He grinned. “Yeah, I do. I’m a catcher.”

  I said, “I coach for the RoadRunners. I’m the new batting coach.”

  The boy smiled from ear to ear. “See, Dad! I was right. I knew I saw him on TV. They talked about you during the game last night. They showed a picture on the screen.”

  When I finally returned home for the night, I punched Chase’s number into my phone. He answered on the second ring and shouted, “Yes!” into the phone.

  “Yes? Yes, what? And hi, it’s good to hear your voice.”

  “Weren’t you going to ask if I wanted to get back together?”

  I said, “Actually, I was going to ask if you’d seen my boyfriend anywhere. I miss him.”

  17

  Chase

  I owed my sister Celia a huge hug the next time I saw her. Without her encouragement, there was a good chance Aaron and I would still be at odds. She called me as soon as she heard they selected me to be on the All-Star squad.

  She said, “You don’t sound like a guy who just found out he’s an All-Star.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I am pretty down. Aaron and I broke up.”

  I heard the sound of utter disbelief coming through the phone. Celia asked, “You broke up with Aaron? I thought you said you loved him.”

  I groaned. “It was stupid. It was ugly, and now he’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Don’t you read the sports news? I thought you said you read about me in the news.”

  “I watch the games,” said Celia. “I don’t think they talk about assistant batting coaches during the game broadcasts. Did he do something important?”

  I tried adopting my announcer’s voice and said, “The Charlotte Yellowjackets lost their assistant batting coach yesterday. They fired him without cause, and San Antonio snatched him up quicker than you can blink.” I sighed. I was too upset. I couldn’t speak with the enthusiasm that sports announcing demanded.

  “He’s in San Antonio?”

  “Yep. It’s a promotion. He’s head batting coach there.”

  “Does he like it there?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him.”

  I heard Celia take a deep breath. She said, “I’ll try and be respectful and all, but what the hell is wrong with you, little brother? Didn’t you say you loved him? If that’s true, you can’t just let him go so easily.”

  “I do love him. It didn’t stop when he left. I can’t get him off my mind.”

  “So what are you doing sitting on your butt not going after him? I’m going to hang up now because you have work to do. If you don’t try and patch it up, I’m coming out there to Charlotte, and you know that won’t be pretty.”

  I laughed weakly and started to respond, but she hung up the phone as promised. Twenty minutes later, Eric called me and asked, “Where did your sister get my phone number?”

  I said, “Oh, I gave it to her for emergency purposes. Did she call you?”

  He sounded evasive as he said, “Oh, yeah, um she called because she’s concerned about her little brother. I told her you’re okay. I promised to let her know if you took a turn for the worse. I think she’s feeling better now.”

  Giving my best friend a call was enough. I didn’t know that Celia started plotting with Eric and encouraged him to send a text message to Aaron. I was sitting in my apartment trying to decide how to work on getting back together when Aaron called.

  I didn’t have anything to say but, “Yes!”

  The reconciliation call kicked off a series of calls every night before bed. Sometimes the calls were just newsy chit-chat. A few of them were a little more erotic than that. Two days before the All-Star game, Aaron said, “I’m going to see you in a couple of days.”

  The excitement rose in my voice as I asked, “You’re coming to the game?”

  “Teams of wild horses couldn’t keep me away. I have to see my boyfriend on his big day.”

  “Aw, damn. I agreed to room with Mo. I had no idea that you would be there.”

  “I’m staying by myself. Unfortunately, my room is more than half an hour out of town because I was so late getting my reservation. Do you mind if we don’t get there until after midnight?”

  “I’ll happily stay up all night. You know that. I don’t fly back to Charlotte until 11:00 a.m.”

  “Mine leaves at 10:00.”

  I said, “Then we’ve got about eight hours together. That’s plenty of time.”

  “That’s what you think.” Aaron laughed wickedly as he said, “Goodnight,” and, “I love you.”

  I agreed to an interview with a local Charlotte newspaper the day of the last Yellowjackets game before the All-Star break. They told me they were particularly interested in talking about how my parents and coaches encouraged me while I was growing up. I did my best to be helpful for the media people who treated me well. We arranged a meeting at the stadium an hour before I planned to show up for batting practice.

  The reporter was a young woman with a severe expression on her face. I tried to lighten the atmosphere by telling her about getting pranked by Eric in the locker room, but she was all business. She had her goals for the interview, and I wasn’t likely to sway her. She said, “Let’s talk about your career. It is impressive, and I’m sure that’s what my readers want to read.”

  I sat down with her at a table in the Yellowjackets’ press conference room. I thought many of her questions were exceedingly dull, but I did my best to play along. I said, “My high school coach helped shield me from an avalanche of scouts, and, to be honest, the media. That was helpful. I got to concentrate on my playing and not worry about reporters.”

  She frowned. I added, “I don’t say that to talk the media down, but too many people can get in the way.”

  My comment encouraged a slight smile. She said, “That’s why I’m talking to you now instead of on opening day.” She clicked on her recorder and pulled out a pad of paper to take additional notes.

  The rest of the interview seemed to go well until I made a mistake. The reporter was asking innocuous questions about leisure time for a big league player. Somehow, I blurted out a comment that my boyfriend and I used to love walking through the parks together.”

  She looked up. “Can you back up a little bit, Chase. I want to make sure I heard that last comment right.”

  I held my hand to my mouth, and then I said, “I think I was talking about walking through parks. They have some great ones here in Charlotte. You know the players Eric Hinsdale and Javier Gonzalez. We hang out together and sometimes explore the city.”

  She pointed at her pad of paper where she was taking notes. “With a boyfriend.”

  “I didn’t say that. Did I?”

  “Do you want me to play the tape back?”

  I shook my head. “No, and yes, that’s right. I’ve had more than one boyfriend. You can print that if you want to, but I would appreciate some privacy. I’m not sharing any details beyond that.”

  The local reporter was decent to me. I was outed in her article, but it was in a short sentence near the end of the piece. She wrote only, “Chase is one of the few out gay baseball players in the big leagues.”

  I hoped most readers wouldn’t notice the sentence. I was wrong. The newspaper came out in the morning, and by the time my plane was landing in New York City that night, the media was going nuts. Police officers were holding back the crush of reporters at LaGuardia airport when I arrived.

  Three different reporters asked in quic
k succession, “Are the reports true, Chase? Are you gay?”

  I said, “Yes, that’s true,” and I attempted to push my way toward the luggage carousels. I followed closely behind a policeman who helped split the crowd.

  “Are there more gay players that we don’t know about?” asked another.

  I said, “That’s none of my business.”

  They continued to pepper me with common and occasionally ignorant questions. One asked if I thought I was an excellent role model for LGBT youth. I said, “I’m not the first gay player. I wouldn’t expect them to only look at me. There are plenty of LGBT athletes to admire. If they want to play baseball, maybe they will want to follow me like any young player follows his favorite big leaguers.”

  One player asked, “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

  I swept my arm around encompassing the horde. I said, “No one asked me, and I think this is why I didn’t volunteer the information.” Several of them laughed.

  “Who are your boyfriends? Do you have one now?” asked another.

  I gruffly responded, “That ’s my business. If I want the world to know, I’ll tell you. For now, I’m protecting my privacy.”

  Fortunately, they stayed out of my way while I retrieved my luggage. I lost Mo in the crush, and I hailed a taxi solo. The most troublesome question came as I was climbing into the back seat of the cab.

  I heard a scratchy male voice ask, “Is this the reason the Yellowjackets fired Aaron beck? Was he your boyfriend, Chase? The firing was abrupt. Is this the real explanation at last?”

  I slammed the door behind me without answering and gave the driver the address of my hotel.

  18

  Aaron

  When I arrived to take a flight to New York for the All-Star game, the airport in San Antonio was filled with reporters waiting for me. I didn’t know why they wanted to talk to me. I read the newspaper articles about Chase coming out. It sounded like he made a brief comment by accident. I read the original article, and I knew that other reporters embellished the initial report and were starting to spin stories out of control.

  The night before, Chase called me on the phone from his New York hotel in a panic and said, “I didn’t mean to. It just came out. Now they’re all acting crazy. I know now why some people call the media vultures. Some of them are just waiting to pick at my bones. It’s ugly.”

  I reassured him that the buzzing was only temporary. I said, “You’re out now in every way. Isn’t there part of it that feels like a relief? It has to be a good thing in the long run.”

  “I suppose it might when it stops feeling like they’re watching everything that I do except when I go to the bathroom. I’m a little worried someone has cameras planted in there, too. I had Mo help me pile both chairs from our hotel room in front of the door. I know that it’s overkill, but it made me feel a little safer. I had to get away from them.”

  I said, “I’ll be there tomorrow. I love you, Chase, and I’m proud of you. You might have made the statement by accident, but this needed to happen.”

  He grumbled, “I love you, too, but I wish we were on the tropical island with all of the coconuts.”

  It didn’t take long for me to figure out why the reporters were hounding me in San Antonio. One of them said, “There’s a rumor spreading that you were Chase O’Rourke’s boyfriend in Charlotte. Is that true? Is that why the Yellowjackets fired you?”

  I didn’t want to answer the question, and I couldn’t give a complete answer if I tried. I thought about saying, “Yes, we dated,” but I knew that would only make the reporters dig deeper into the firing question.

  I suspected our relationship might have had something to do with losing my job in Charlotte, but I didn’t know for sure. Fanning the fires of speculation sounded a lot like whacking a hornet’s nest with a broomstick. I also thought that it could lead to me earning a negative reputation with the front offices across the league. I wasn’t ready to deal with that kind of fallout.

  I did my best to give a non-answer. I said, “Chase and I were colleagues and friends in Charlotte. He’s an outstanding baseball player, and I was happy to be his coach.” My statement didn’t deny our relationship, and it didn’t confirm it either. I added, “That’s all the information I have for you. Now I need to get to my plane.”

  The reporters’ voices became more shrill as they asked, “But were you his lover?”

  Security personnel butted into the standoff and cleared a path for me to proceed to the security check at the San Antonio airport. I was never more relieved to wait in a long security line.

  An older woman standing near me asked, “Were all those reporters after you?”

  I said, “Yes, I think they were.”

  “Who are you? Are you somebody famous?”

  “I’m just a baseball coach. I’m no more important than you are. They think they have a story connected with me, but there is no story there.”

  She whispered in my ear, and I found out that she was likely much more important than me. She was a multi-millionaire and the CEO of a well-known local corporation. She said, “I always try to travel on commercial flights in coach. I think it removes some of the barriers between my employees and me.”

  I escaped the crush of the press by taking a taxi to the Bronx. They could harass the next arrival at LaGuardia, and meanwhile, I planned to hang out in the neighborhood of Yankee stadium until the game later that night. I tried to call Chase. A few minutes after he failed to answer, he sent me a text message. It read:

  “I can’t talk right now. Too much going on. I love you.”

  I smiled when I read the message and then sighed heavily. I sent a message back asking about getting together.

  “How about we get together after the game. I can meet anywhere at any time.”

  I groaned at his response.

  “They’ll follow me.”

  I decided to bury my frustrations in a massive New York City pastrami sandwich. I finished slathering the rye bread with spicy mustard, and I was ready to take the first bite when my cell phone rang. It was Harv on the other end. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  I answered and said, “This better be good. You’re making my pastrami sandwich wait.”

  Harv laughed. He said, “I wouldn’t bug you, but one of my favorite reporters here in San Antonio called me. He wants to do a quick interview with you if that’s at all possible.”

  “Damn, Harv, no. I just escaped the journalistic mob at LaGuardia. I need some me time before the game tonight.”

  Harv wouldn’t take no for an answer. He asked, “Do you trust me, Aaron? This guy is great. He’s sympathetic, and he knows how to cast the best light on his interview subjects. He garners a lot of respect here, and it’s likely in your best interest and the team’s to let him get out ahead of the rest.”

  I stared at the pastrami sandwich. I wanted to enjoy food that was bad for me in silence with no judgment and no questions. Unfortunately, that wasn’t my fate. Harv pushed all of the right buttons. I said, “Okay, I can give him twenty minutes on the phone. That’s all, and I get to eat my lunch first.”

  “I’ll owe you a big Texas-style steak dinner when you get back to San Antonio,” said Harv. “Can I give him this number? Or do you want to place the call?”

  “I’ll trust you on this one. Give him my number, and give me ninety minutes before placing the call. I’ll find somewhere comfortable, and then I’ll talk.”

  I finished up my sandwich, and I found a taxi for a ride down to Brooklyn Bridge Park. If I had to talk to a reporter, at least I could see an iconic view of Manhattan at the same time. I stared at the majesty of the Brooklyn Bridge and took three long, deep breaths. I started to run all of the events of the past few days through my head and then stopped myself. I focused on the bridge again to distract my thoughts. It was a tremendous feat of engineering. I looked at the river and then concentrated on the skyscraping buildings of Manhattan. My nerves began to calm down.

  The c
all was punctual. My phone rang precisely ninety minutes after I hung up from the call with Harv.

  The reporter’s name was Landis, and before I could ask the question, he said, “Yep, my parents are baseball fanatics, and they named me after the judge. Without the great Kenesaw Mountain Landis, we would likely have missed major league baseball as we know it. They named my sister Melissa, and I’ll let you figure that one out on your own.”

  Harv was right about talking to Landis. It was like talking to an old friend. He had encyclopedic knowledge about the game, and he quickly zeroed in on what he wanted to know from me.

  I found myself saying, “I am gay. That part is true, but I’m keeping the details of my personal life to myself. I hope you will respect that.”

  Landis asked, “Why didn’t you come out earlier? There are other out gay players.”

  “I’m not a player. I’m a coach.”

  “Does that make a difference?” asked Landis.

  “I think it does. We’re in a different power position from the players. There have been plenty of closeted players, coaches, and even umpires in the past, but now we’re in a different ballgame. No one knows what the new rules are. What are the rules of engagement between gay coaches and gay players?”

  “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

  I said, “I don’t have a choice. I can’t pretend I’m like a straight man who can walk onto the baseball field and have more than a hundred years of precedent cover my behavior.”

  “Can we talk about your age for a moment?” asked Landis.

  “Of course we can. In fact, I would be happy to change the topic. Age is an easy one for me.”

  “Well, I’ll dispense with the biggest question first. Do you think you’re old enough to have enough life and baseball experience to be a top-level coach? It’s an unprecedented situation. We usually look to guys who have been around the game for decades.”