Gods of Wood and Stone

by Mark Di Ionno

  “Of course, when you were little, I didn’t tell you the rest of the stories. The bad stuff. Orion got blinded for loving the wrong girl. Perseus killed his father-in-law. Hercules murdered his own wife and children. The Greeks didn’t believe in happy endings; they believed in cautionary tales. They knew that the same things that made somebody great could also lead to their downfall. They knew misery was right around the corner for everyone. That’s a fact of life.”

  “That’s kind of messed up,” Michael said.

  “The other thing was this. Orion, Perseus, Hercules, they all did all those heroic things alone, and after they were cheered and worshipped, still ended up alone. The Greeks knew, in life, you mostly go at it alone. You’re not always surrounded by friends or teammates, not forever, anyway. They believed loneliness built character, it was not something to be afraid of. You find your own path, lonesome as it might be, and you don’t take it because someone wants you to, or because there’s a reward in it. You take it because it’s yours. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

  “Are you telling me I shouldn’t go to Moeller? Or I should?”

  “I’m saying you should decide for yourself. I’m saying if the things you love are here—your friends, our community, its history, the landscape, even—stay here. That’s what I did. I chose this life, crazy as it might seem to people, because this is not only what I love, but who I am. I’m saying there’s more to life than sports, believe it or not. All these things you learned when you were little, the stars and the woods and the art, they give . . . texture . . . and context to your life here, in Cooperstown, where you grew up. Sports teach lessons, too, but I want you to think about your world being bigger than a baseball diamond. I want you to seriously consider that before you make a decision.”

  Michael decided to spend the night at the house. He called his mother to tell her, and Horace could hear her voice through the cell phone speaker.

  “Is your dad brainwashing you?”

  Michael smiled up at Horace.

  “No, Mom, he said I should do what I want.”

  That night, Michael quickly fell asleep in his own bed, in his quiet room expunged of electronics. Horace looked in on him, how he filled the twin-sized bed, even curled up. Horace wanted to lie next to him, and pull him close, to hold him like a small child one last time. One last time, before he left. One last time, before he became a young man. His boy. My son. The words came to his lips, and he said them silently. The love he felt—and the fear of losing him—collided at that moment and overwhelmed him. Tears came to his eyes, and he stood there, half in, half out of the doorway, and cried. Only when he could no longer completely muffle his sobs, and the hollowness in his gut drained the warmth from his soul, did he turn away.

  In his own bed, he listened to the June cicadas as they surrounded the house. It was hot and humid, and he lay awake. The air was thick and smothering, and he could feel the plaster walls sweat, like he could feel the poison of despair running through his veins. He repeated his prayer for purpose, his morning mantra now offered in the black night to find some anesthesia in sleep. And again, just as he finally drifted off, he heard the ghostly child whisper—“Dad”—just as he had every night since it first happened.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “So, you want my opinion?” Sal said.

  “Always,” Grudeck replied, truthfully.

  “Okay, let me take a look.”

  Grudeck took the 8 1/2-by-11 yellow envelope and flipped it onto Sal’s desk. It slid across the glass top and stopped when it hit Sal in the gut.

  “So, the bucks stop here,” Sal said, and took three typewritten pages, double-spaced, out of the sheath.

  “Stacy helped me write it,” Grudeck said.

  “How’s that going?”

  “Good,” Grudeck said. “I’m working on her.”

  Sal raised his eyes at him.

  “To what end?”

  “I don’t know, Sallie. Maybe some kind of future.”

  “Want my honest opinion?” Sal asked, without waiting for an answer. “Be careful. You’re a rich man, Joe. She may have the best intentions. You, too. But if the time comes—and I’m not saying it should or shouldn’t—I won’t let you get married without a prenup. This is Jersey, she’ll get half of everything, right down to one of your nuts. Think I’m kidding? I’m not. Worse, you’ll pay her lifetime alimony out of your half. Lifetime. That means forever. Guys like you go broke because of shit like this . . . and you know my old joke about my office.”

  Grudeck had heard it a million times. Sal shared a plain-brick-and-glass-block professional building with a urologist, a marriage counseling group, and a matrimonial law practice.

  “One-stop shopping,” Sal said. “First, the wife breaks a guy’s balls, then gets him to change through counseling, then decides he’s not the man she married so she wants a divorce.”

  “All right, all right, we’re a long way from there,” Grudeck said with a laugh, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “First things first. Just read the speech, please.”

  As Sal read, Grudeck picked up the glass-encased World Series ball he’d signed for him two decades before. “To Sal, with love, Joe Grudeck,” it said. Grudeck remembered the incongruity of signing his last name underneath “with love.” On the one hand, it sounded stupid. On the other, he wanted people to know it was authentic, which was dumb in itself because only a blind man could enter Sal’s office and not see he represented Joe Grudeck.

  * * *

  SAL HAD BEEN HIS FATHER’S lawyer; the usual stuff. The mortgage on the Stuyvesant house, his will. Taking care of this and that. They were men of the same generation, Sal a few years older, from Newark’s North Ward, the section of hardheaded Southern Italians who stayed long after the riots. Chuck Grudeck was from the Polish section of Elizabeth, an enclave next to Peterstown, the goomba section where Sylvia D’Angelo grew up.

  When the colleges came after Joey, Chuck Grudeck knew he was in over his head. The NCAA had rules upon rules, and Chuck Grudeck couldn’t figure them out. He was afraid he would screw up and hurt Joey’s chances, so he went to Sal, who figured it all out for him. Grudeck remembered how he folded his hands on his desk and began to rapid-fire the facts, looking alternately at Joey and his father, and calling them “you” as if they were one person.

  “Here’s the deal . . . right now you’re getting letters from all over. Penn State and Boston College want to turn you into a linebacker. Iowa State and Minnesota want you for wrestling. Rutgers will take you for anything. Seton Hall and South Carolina want you for baseball. You have to decide what you want to play. My advice would be baseball, somewhere it’s warm. Wrestling ain’t taking you anywhere, financially, that is. Football can leave you crippled. You get hurt, bye-bye scholarship, and you’re back home, taking night courses at Union County College. Baseball’s easier on the body. You play, you get your education, and in the end, maybe, just maybe, you get drafted.”

  But then came the pro scouts and the Red Sox were first with an offer; a $100,000 signing bonus on top of the minor-league median salary, rather than the minimum.

  Chuck brought it to Sal.

  “I don’t know this stuff,” Sal said, pointing to his Seton Hall law degree on the wall. “I’m a simple town lawyer. Go find him a trustworthy sports agent.”

  “That’s the problem,” Chuck Grudeck said. “Trustworthy.”

  “Okay, let’s think this through. A hundred grand. It’s a lot of money,” Sal said. “So if you want to play baseball, take it. If you don’t, don’t. It’s that simple.”

  “What about his education?” Chuck Grudeck said.

  “Colleges aren’t going anywhere. If things don’t work out in baseball, you can take English 101 in a couple of years. No big deal. Best part is this: You can still wrestle or play football in college even though you’ve been a pro in a different sport. The NCAA allows that.”

  “What about waiting to see what else comes
in from baseball?” Joey asked. The Red Sox wanted him to catch; he wanted to pitch.

  “You can do that, but if nothing else does, the Red Sox may rethink your value,” Sal said. “Here’s how I look at it: right now, they’ve shown good faith, so show good faith back. Makes for a better long-term relationship. But then again, I don’t know nothing about sports.

  “But here’s what I do know. First, it’s a big step but not irretraceable. Nothing is. Second, one hundred grand is a lot of money. It’s twice what your dad makes in a year, right, Chuck? You can invest it and begin to set yourself up for life. Third, if you don’t take this chance, you might regret it forever.”

  Sal’s clear-eyed view helped Joey figure it out. He was ready. He thought about it overnight, then put himself through a little batting cage test just to make sure, then asked Sal to be his agent.

  So Sal went to work, charging only billable hours rather than percentage. The NBA and NFL put caps on agent takes, about 4 percent. But baseball didn’t regulate it, so who knew? And they all took about 15 percent of endorsements. Right up front, Sal said he wouldn’t slice up Grudeck like that, not that Grudeck would have minded. Sal did right by him. When millions started getting made, in salary and endorsements, Sal tried to keep his billable hourly rate, but Grudeck doubled it, then doubled it again. Sal objected.

  “Joey, first off, you already made me rich. Second, it’s your talent. I’m just the guy who walks in the door first, makes the deal, then makes sure the taxes are paid on the way out.”

  “I’m not just paying you for the deals,” Grudeck would say. “I’m paying you for the trust. And the advice.”

  Even before Chuck Grudeck died, Sal had become the commonsense, no-bullshit voice of moderation and maturity in Grudeck’s life; he made no decisions without him. Even while his father was still alive, there was no one else Grudeck could count on for the truth.

  Sal promised him that, day one.

  “The one thing I won’t be is a sycophant,” Sal said, and then explained what sycophant meant.

  Above the cherry leather couch in Sal’s office were three pictures: the famous one of Grudeck over the prone McCombs; Grudeck and Sal on the field at Fenway sometime in the late ’90s; and Grudeck and Sal at Winter Haven, third year in, after he signed his first contract with the big club.

  * * *

  NOW, AS SAL RAN HIS INDEX finger over the lines of Grudeck’s speech, Grudeck studied the pictures. There was Sal, mid-forties, in the Winter Haven picture, with a comb-over of still-black hair, wearing a white cabana-boy shirt, open wide at the neck, over a pair of Bermuda shorts. There was Grudeck, lean, barely out of his teens, in practice pants and navy-blue RED SOX T-shirt, hair a little long, brushed across his forehead. Sal was smiling. Grudeck was squinting in the sun. Both were somewhere they’d never dreamed of. Sal, the local lawyer, had just made a deal with the owner of a storied major league team. Grudeck was penciled in as starting catcher on the same spring training field where Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski played.

  But there he was, face contorted almost into a grimace. He thought about what Stacy said about no joy. Maybe she was right. He tried to remember how he felt at that moment. He wasn’t thrilled, that he knew. He wasn’t nervous, either. He felt . . . competitive. Like he had something to prove, and there was no doubt he would prove it. Confidently competitive. That was it. Different than arrogance. Arrogance was feeling you were entitled to succeed. For Grudeck, there was always this chip on his shoulder, an innate fire to prove himself.

  No joy?

  She was probably right.

  Who had time for joy?

  Grudeck shifted in his chair, which matched the couch. The decorative brass upholstery nails created mounds of cushion and pockets of none, and Grudeck’s hips began to seize. He stood to stop the spasms, and Sal looked up from the speech.

  “What? You in a hurry? Because we got a lot to talk about,” Sal said, waving the papers at him.

  “No, just stretching. You ought to buy more comfortable chairs,” he said.

  “Nah, that way I keep my billable hours to resemble real hours. Otherwise, people come in and bullshit all day. Speaking of . . . let me finish reading.”

  Grudeck watched Sal go through the speech and thought how little he changed. Yes, Sal’s hair was grayer and thinner, the comb-over more obvious, the face a little doughier, and the bargain-store sport coats, usually mauve or some kind of brown plaid, were replaced by charcoal-gray or navy tailored suits. Grudeck’s “billable hours” did that. But no matter how you dressed him, he was pretty much the same old Sal. Trim. Clear eyes. Quick hands, always gesturing, and a quick mouth, to the point. No bullshit. Speaking of . . . Sal was frowning. He shook his head, not demonstratively but like an internal reflex.

  “What?” Grudeck said.

  “I’m still reading.”

  Next he made a few clicking sounds with his mouth. Clear disapproval.

  “All right, what??” Grudeck said.

  “You want my honest opinion?’’

  “Yes.”

  “Honest opinion?’’

  “C’mon, Sallie.”

  “Okay. Sit down.”

  Grudeck obeyed.

  “It doesn’t feel right, Joe,” Sal said. “Scratch that. It feels bad. I mean, really, Joe, what the fuck is this: No joy in Mudville?”

  “I want to tell the truth.”

  “Jesus Christ, Joe. Haven’t you learned this by now: Nobody wants to hear the truth. About anything. They want to be entertained. They want to get away from the shit that scares them: cancer in the food, economy in the shitter, the fucking ice caps melting. And not just that, they want to be part of something. Rotary. Knights of Columbus. Hells Angels. They need a team. So they buy a Yankee hat, or the Cowboys, or the fucking Vancouver Canucks.

  “I’ve been telling you this for years. Merchandise has gone through the roof since you’ve been playing. You know why? People want to belong. Jews wear yarmulkes, Muslims wear skullcaps, and Americans wear baseball hats with somebody’s logo on it. Arabs wear dishdashas, Indians wear dhotis, and Americans wear T-shirts with somebody’s logo on it. Yankees, Notre Dame, Abercrombie, Harley.

  “Sports is the second-safest universal topic of conversation after the weather, so everybody buys in. Everybody wants to sit at the jock table. Same with the sponsors. You’re a millionaire today because Budweiser charges the regular Joe an extra quarter a six-pack to be the official beer of baseball and buys TV time . . . and then here you come, Mr. Not Regular Joe, Mr. Hall of Fame, Mr. Made Twenty-five Million, to piss on all that?”

  “Not piss on it . . . just . . . I don’t know, I’m tired of it all,” Grudeck said. “It’s like a farewell.”

  “You mean a parting shot.” Sal looked back at the speech. “Like this . . . ‘We’ve taken all the joy out of sports.’ Says who? You know what the average fan is gonna say to that? They’ll say, nobody put a gun to your head and said, ‘Play.’ Nobody forced you to sign those big contracts. They’ll say if you hated it—and us—so much, why didn’t you just quit. And you know what? They’ll be right . . .

  “No offense, kid, but you’ve taken all that’s come your way. The money, the girls, the fan worship. You took it all. Now you’re out, and you want to say, ‘This was all wrong.’ It will sound hypocritical. That’s how people will see it: Joe Grudeck got his, now he’s telling us it’s out of control. It’s like these old rock stars who find Jesus: ‘I got stoned all the time, I screwed a million girls, I bought exotic cars and mansions in Hawaii, and now that I’m broke I realize how empty my life was.’ ”

  “Are you done?” Grudeck asked. An uncontrollable, deflated expression of disappointment came across his face. He’d hoped for approval, but instead got this. Sal saw it and softened a little.

  “Look, kid, I know things are screwed up. But is it up to you to fix it?”

  “I don’t know . . . Somebody’s got to tell the truth,” Grudeck said.

  “And tha
t has to be you?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why is the real question,” Sal said. “What does it get you?”

  Sal’s hands were out in front of him and he flicked out a finger with each point he made.

  “Respect? You already got that. From players, from fans, even the media. A clear conscience? That’s between you and God. All these things you say, you think people don’t know?”

  “Maybe they don’t,” Grudeck said.

  “Like what?” Sal said, starting a new finger count. “That Bonds took steroids? That Tyson raped a girl then fought for the title? That the kid from Florida State might have raped a girl and still won the Heisman? Want me to keep going? Nobody cares. Why do you think they call it hero worship?”

  The word rape made Grudeck go cold. The two girls in Syracuse, they got drunk with him, didn’t they? What did they expect?

  Grudeck gathered himself and said, “That’s my point, Sal. Things are broken. Out of control.”

  “Of course they are!” Sal said, keeping his voice patient. “Some of the things in the speech are right.”

  He shuffled the papers looking for certain points.

  “No one can argue about greed. Or bad fan behavior. I even like that line, the beauty of the game has been ruined by loud music and cheap scoreboard entertainment in our stadiums, although I would change ‘beauty’ to a word like serenity. But some of this other stuff—like memorabilia. Jeez, Joe, you’re still doing cash-and-carry autograph shows! You’re booked into a mess of signings around Induction Week alone. All those little stores up in Cooperstown are stocking up on your stuff. Hillerich and Bradsby is making five thousand—five thousand!—‘authentic’ Joe Grudeck souvenir bats to sell online and in Boston and Cooperstown. You get a three-buck slice of every one. This place in Cooperstown ordered five hundred and they’re paying you a grand to sit there and sign the damn things for a couple of hours. You see where I’m going with this? You’ll come across as a hypocrite.”