by Carl Deuker
Even though the season had fallen apart, I still had one game circled on my schedule: Laurelhurst High, the defending city champions. They’d lost in the state playoffs to Tacoma’s Jesuit High, but only because Jesuit had a pitcher named Fergus Hart that the Seattle Times said might be the next Clayton Kershaw.
Laurelhurst had a future major-leaguer of its own, a center fielder named Ian Thurman. Thurman had been all-league as a freshman and all-state as a sophomore, and he had a good chance to be Washington State Player of the Year as a junior if Laurelhurst could beat Fergus Hart and take the state title.
Websites that covered high school sports posted articles and stats on Thurman. After lunch, I went to the computer lab and pored over them. I knew his height, his weight, how many pounds he could bench-press, how fast he ran the fifty-yard dash. His coach, an old guy named Pop Vereen who’d been at Laurelhurst for a million years, said that Thurman was the best high school player he’d ever coached. Top baseball colleges were recruiting him, and a major-league team was sure to draft him, probably in the first round.
Ian Thurman was such a big star that even when the lowly North Central High Eagles played Laurelhurst a Seattle Times writer would be there, and so would major-league scouts. They’d come to see Thurman, but if I could dominate, then one scout from one team might write my name down in his notebook, and that team might someday give me a chance to prove myself in their minor-league system. That’s all I wanted: a chance.
I couldn’t do it alone, though. I needed the guys behind me to play the way they had early in the season. I thought about calling a team meeting, pictured myself standing tall on a bench, rallying the guys to give it their best shot: We play hard and smart, and we can beat these guys!
Then I reran the film, the second time seeing how it would actually play out. We p-p-play hard and s-s-smart, and we c-c-can b-beat these g-g-guys.
Six
Money is tight around our house, so Antonio and I both have jobs. He works at Home Depot watering plants; I work at the Aurora Driving Range, which is directly behind the trailer park. Mr. Matsui, the range pro, hired me when I was fifteen, and I’ve worked there ever since. I drive a John Deere Gator with a metal cage around me so I don’t get conked in the head by golf balls. The Gator has roller arms that gather up the golf balls and spit them into attached metal baskets. When the baskets are full, I dump the balls into a chute that leads to a ball dispenser, starting the cycle again.
I have a driver’s license, but I almost never get a chance to drive my mom’s Corolla, so tooling around in the utility vehicle is almost fun. There’s nothing fun about refilling the ball dispensers, though. A single golf ball doesn’t weigh much, but lifting basket after basket over your head makes your muscles burn. Still, I push myself to heave those baskets high. More arm strength means more miles per hour on the fastball.
When I finished work on the Friday night before the Laurelhurst game, Antonio wasn’t at the back fence with Garrett, which was great. Instead, he was waiting for me by the entrance to Jet City. “The guys are going to a movie at Oak Tree. Eight thirty. You in?”
I always play catch the night before a game because I want my arm to be a little tired when I take the mound. If I’m too rested, I overthrow and I’m wild. For years, Antonio had been my partner. Since he’d started hanging with Garrett, Mr. Leskov, the grizzled old guy who runs the community center, had taken his place.
“Come on, Laz,” Antonio said after I’d turned him down. “The movie is supposed to be hot. Lots of nice-looking girls. Nicer looking than Leskov.”
“C-C-C-C—”
Antonio waited. He always did.
“C-Couldn’t we go tomorrow night? After the game?”
He shook his head. “The guys are going tonight.”
At eight, while Antonio and the rest of them were walking to Oak Tree Cinema, I was playing catch with Mr. Leskov on the grass under the parking lot lights. The baseball went back and forth. Finally Leskov caught one of my throws and held the ball. “We stop now,” he called out. “You have good pitches in your game tomorrow. You strike three those boys.”
Seven
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened. Somebody—or a couple of somebodies—sneaked jugs of wine into the movie theater, and the wine got passed around.
The movie was one of those Girls Go Crazy films. Every time one of the girls took off her top, the guys stomped their feet, whistled, and hollered. They made such a racket that the manager turned on the lights and told them to hold it down.
They didn’t.
People watching other movies in the cineplex complained. The manager turned on the lights again and told them to leave.
They didn’t.
The manager called the cops. As the cops rousted the guys out, they found the wine. Nobody owned up, so the cops gave every kid a Minor in Possession citation and drove them home.
I was in my room listening to the Mariners game when the police knocked on the door of our trailer. Antonio wasn’t drunk and he hadn’t copped an attitude, and the officer told my mom that.
“What happens next?” she asked when she saw the citation.
“Juvenile court, then a class on drug and alcohol abuse. Your boy stays out of trouble, and they’ll wipe this off his record. He doesn’t, they won’t.”
Saturday morning, when I came out from my room, Antonio was eating cereal at the kitchen table, his face glum. As I moved to join him, Mom’s cell, which was sitting on the kitchen table, started ringing. Coach Kellogg’s name popped onto the screen. Antonio and I looked at each other, unsure what to do. Before we had to decide, Mom’s bedroom door burst open. She grabbed the phone and took it to the sofa. We stopped eating and listened.
Kellogg did most of the talking. All Mom said was, “Yes . . . Yes . . . That doesn’t seem fair . . . If there’s no choice, there’s no choice . . . I’ll tell him.”
After she cut the connection, she glared at Antonio, then turned to me. “Laz, that was your coach. He knows about last night. Your brother and the rest of them are off the team. League rules. Your coach says he won’t have enough players to field a team, so he’ll have to forfeit all the remaining games. Your season is over.” Her eyes returned to Antonio. She started to say something, but stopped.
After I finished my cereal, I walked the gravel roads of Jet City, kicking at rocks, my head pounding, my guts empty. Sure, I still had my senior year, but I’d be a no-name senior pitching on a terrible team, and when my senior year ended, I’d be just another guy who pitched a little in high school.
* * *
I followed every game of the state playoffs, even though it was like picking at a scab. Laurelhurst made it to the quarterfinals before getting shut out—again—by Jesuit High’s Fergus Hart. The Seattle Times article said it was the seventeenth time Pop Vereen, their coach, had taken a Laurelhurst team into the state playoffs and the seventeenth time they’d been knocked out, making him the winningest losing coach in high school baseball history. Jesuit went on to capture the state championship for the third straight year, and Fergus Hart, not Ian Thurman, was Washington Player of the Year.
Eight
Select baseball teams cost money, so that was never happening for me or anybody from North Central. But every summer, Mr. Leskov rounded up enough guys to field a sandlot team, wrangled a local sporting goods store into donating T-shirts and a few bats and balls, and then called coaches of real teams to arrange games.
Considering the way the school season had fizzled, I didn’t think Mr. Leskov would be able to put together a summer team. “I’m not sure any g-guys will want to p-play,” I told him.
He waved his hands above his head. “Don’t worry, Laz. We’ll get a team together. You and me.”
North Central Community Center has a basketball court, a swimming pool, tennis courts, a weight room, a video room, a TV room, foosball, Ping-Pong tables, and fields for soccer and baseball. It’s the best thing in North Central, and it’s
where kids who want to stay out of trouble hang out.
Mr. Leskov quickly signed up Dawit and a handful of other guys who’d played on the North Central team. We needed more players, though, so Mr. Leskov and I walked around, badgering guys who barely spoke English into signing up to play a game they barely understood. Actually, it was Mr. Leskov who did the badgering. He knew about my stutter, so he had me stand next to him holding the sign-up sheet. “What else are you going to do?” he demanded of random kids. Then he pointed a finger at himself and tapped it hard against his chest. “You see me, old white man with funny Russian accent? But I was once young buck like you. Trouble call for me like it calls for you. You play baseball, then no drugs, no drinking, no getting girlfriend with baby. Here, put your name down. Baseball is America.”
Eventually, six more guys did.
“And your brother, right?” Mr. Leskov said as he wrote Antonio’s name at the bottom.
“Yeah, my b-brother,” I answered, even though I hadn’t asked him yet.
“Okay,” Mr. Leskov said. “Now—let’s arrange the games.”
We went into his cramped office at the community center. For two hours I searched the Internet for the names of teams who played in leagues like American Legion or Babe Ruth or Northwest Premier Baseball. When I found a telephone number, Mr. Leskov would call. Other coaches tried to say no, but he was like a dog with a bone. “We’ll play at your field!” he shouted into the phone. “One innings, four innings, ten innings. You choose. Just name the date and time and we’ll be there.”
When he had sixteen games scheduled, he turned to me, half-moons of sweat around his armpits. “Enough?”
I bumped knuckles with him. “Yeah. Enough.”
He slapped the table as he got to his feet. “We win them all! You strike three everyone, and we win them all!”
That night at dinner I told Antonio I’d signed him up for the team. He groaned, but Mom stepped in. “Why wouldn’t you play?”
“I’ve got my job at Home Depot.”
“Two hours in the morning watering plants? What are you going to do with the rest of your day?”
“I don’t know. Just hang out.”
“At the back fence with Garrett Diehl? He’s way older than you.” She paused. “What goes on there anyway?”
Antonio flashed me a look. “Nothing goes on there.”
“Yeah? Well, in my experience a bunch of teenage boys doing nothing usually ends up as something.” She paused. “You get a full-time job and you can drop baseball. Until then, you play.”
Nine
Thirteen guys sounds like plenty for a baseball team, but signing your name to a piece of paper isn’t the same as showing up. Most of the guys on the team lived in Jet City, and in Jet City you never really know what’s coming next.
Once in a while it’s good stuff. Somebody appears who has been gone for months or years. A mom, a dad, a sister, a brother. Maybe from jail, maybe from across town, maybe from across the world. When that happens, music blasts from the lucky trailer and people celebrate.
Sometimes it’s bad stuff. A man goes after his wife, or two brothers get into it, or somebody steals something. Police cars show up, gravel flying, sirens wailing. The cops handcuff the guy and haul him to jail. Every once in a while it’s a she who gets cuffed.
Even when there are no police, there’s still alcohol and drugs and girls selling themselves on Aurora Avenue. And there’s the uncertainty. You have a neighbor one day, and the next, they’re gone. So thirteen players isn’t really thirteen.
I just hoped it would be nine.
* * *
On the day of our first summer game, Mr. Leskov—driving the community center van—pulled up in front of our trailer and honked. I grabbed my glove and hurried out the door, Antonio trailing behind.
Once we were inside the van, Pushkin, Leskov’s black lab, jumped on Antonio and licked his face. “Look what I got,” Mr. Leskov said, shoving a black plastic bag at me that was filled with bright orange T-shirts. “Uniforms. There’s even one for Pushkin.”
Leskov had the addresses of the guys on a sheet of yellow paper. I read them to him, and he cruised around, trying to corral guys who had signed up. When we got ten, Leskov punched an address into his GPS and we were off. As he drove, Antonio passed out orange T-shirts to the guys while I patched together a lineup.
I could see from Leskov’s GPS that our opponent practiced on a field near Husky Stadium. As we pulled into the parking lot, I couldn’t believe all the gear they had—a pitching machine, batting nets, a speed gun. And that was the stuff that was out. A bunch of bulging mesh bags emblazoned with the words SEATTLE MARAUDERS sat along the sideline.
We milled around in the parking lot while Mr. Leskov talked to their coach. Leskov pointed at us and then pointed to his clipboard.
“Their coach forgot all about the game,” Antonio snickered. “A buck says we don’t play.”
Right then, Leskov waved us forward. As we headed toward the infield, I could see some of the guys on the other team smile at our orange T-shirts, ratty jeans, and old sneakers.
I kept my eyes forward and my back straight. I picked one guy to stare at. He had a cocky way of standing and a smug grin on his face. As we neared the baseball diamond, I kept staring—only now I could feel my pulse in my ears.
The kid smirking at me was Ian Thurman.
Ten
“Four innings,” Mr. Leskov said when we circled around him. “Five minutes to loosen muscles, and then we play.”
I’ve never needed more than a dozen throws to get warm. With the adrenaline rush from seeing Ian Thurman, I was ready after six.
We were the visitors, so we batted first. Dawit, who’d come to Seattle from Ethiopia, led off. He had long arms, long legs, and a mischievous gleam in his eyes. Soccer was his passion; baseball was strictly for fun. That made him fearless at the plate. When your bat is loose and quick and you’re an athlete, good things can happen.
The Marauders pitcher went into his wind-up and delivered. Dawit swung and missed, taking such a huge cut that he did a complete three-sixty and fell down, landing on home plate. When he got back to his feet, he raised the bat above his head like some kind of warrior, and everybody laughed, including the Marauders guys.
Dawit got set in the batter’s box; the pitcher delivered. Again Dawit swung, but this time he caught the ball square, rocketing a line drive over the first baseman’s head that landed just fair. Dawit stood at home plate for a beat, watching in delight before he took off.
He should have stopped at second, but we hadn’t thought about base coaches, so he just kept running. The third baseman had the tag down in time, but Dawit’s hard slide caused the ball to pop out of his glove. “Safe!” the umpire yelled, and Dawit stood on the base clapping his hands together as we all cheered like madmen.
Tory Nelson, our catcher, was batting second. He was a stocky guy with good hands and a good eye. Their pitcher, rattled by Dawit’s surprise triple, threw his first two pitches a foot outside. The next two were closer, but they weren’t strikes. Tory trotted down to first as I stepped up to the plate.
Their third baseman was playing back. I wanted to make sure we scored at least one run, so when I got a low fastball on the outside corner, I pushed a bunt past the mound toward second. The second baseman charged, fielded the ball, and threw me out, but Dawit came flying down the line. He didn’t need to slide, but he did, kicking up another cloud of dust and then shouting for joy as he leaped to his feet.
The poor kids in the stupid orange shirts were ahead, 1–0.
The Marauders coach—a tall man with wavy gray-black hair who looked as if he belonged on a yacht—marched out to the mound, said something to the pitcher, and then retreated to the sidelines.
Their pitcher—I learned later his name was Kevin Griffith—rubbed up the baseball and looked toward center field. I knew what he was thinking—that he hadn’t given up anything. A lucky triple on a wild swing, a walk, a
nd a bunt.
Antonio stepped to the plate and took a couple of smooth practice swings. The pitcher stretched, looked back at Tory Nelson leading from second base, and delivered—a fastball right down the middle.
Hit it if you can.
And Antonio could.
He unleashed his short, powerful swing, catching the ball in the sweet spot and driving it into the left center field gap. Nelson scored easily. Antonio wanted the glory of an inside-the-park home run, but the relays from the outfielder to the shortstop and from the shortstop to the catcher were perfect. The catcher put the tag on Antonio, and the umpire’s thumb went up.
After our next hitter, Rafael Rodriguez, struck out to end the inning, the Marauders players charged in, faces set, eager to pound out a bunch of hits, score a slew of runs, and put us in our places.
Their leadoff hitter took slow, measured practice swings, but I could feel his impatience. I started him off with a changeup, and his swing was early. He tried to check, but instead tapped a slow roller toward first. Ivan Burgos, our first baseman, fielded it and stepped on the bag. One pitch; one out.
As the hitter walked back to his dugout, he shook his head, as if his out had been a fluke. His teammates on the bench nodded. But when I struck out the next batter on three pitches, I saw worry on their faces.
Ian Thurman, batting third, strode into the batter’s box. All the Marauders players and coaches were up, expectant. I took a deep breath, exhaled. The matchup I’d wanted had finally come my way.
I rubbed up the baseball as Antonio started the regular chatter: “No hitter. No hitter.” From center field Dawit, picking up on the idea, screamed, “Loser! Loser! Ugly, ugly loser!”
Dawit had had his crazy moments on the school team, so the guys on my team laughed, but the Marauders didn’t think it was funny. Thurman stepped out of the batter’s box, disbelief in his eyes. The umpire—one of the Laurelhurst coaches—came out from behind home plate and glared out to center field. Antonio motioned for Dawit to stop. Dawit shrugged and went quiet.