by Mike Lupica
Brian felt as if he were eavesdropping, like somehow he shouldn’t be listening to this, so he slid himself closer to the end of the bench, out of sight from home plate.
Hank, his voice loud in the empty park, said, “Rudy, thinking isn’t my problem. That’s one thing I can still do as well as I ever did. Maybe the only thing.”
“Hank, my brother, you got to find a way to relax.”
“Rudy, you don’t understand!” Now Hank’s voice was so loud it was as if it were coming out of the PA system. “I’m running out of time here!”
He was still in his stance, looking uncomfortable, Brian able to see how hard he was gripping the bat, the muscles in his forearms stretched so tightly they reminded Brian of a rubber band about to snap.
The way Hank Bishop had just snapped. It was as if he knew that now, had heard himself in Comerica.
“Few more,” Hank said, lowering his voice.
He took a huge swing at the next pitch Rudy threw, what Coach Johnson called a come-out-your-shoes swing, and popped the ball up behind second.
Amazing, Brian thought.
A guy with 499 home runs in the big leagues and he’s as messed up as I was.
They finished up a few pitches later when Hank finally managed to hit one over the wall out to left.
“Let’s stop on that one,” he said, and Rudy looked relieved. Hank’s blue Franklin batting gloves were dripping wet. He took them off, along with his cap, and he and Rudy sat down in the grass next to home plate. Rudy did most of the talking, occasionally standing up and taking his stance, pointing to his front shoulder, sitting back down.
They finally got up and Rudy told Hank he’d pick up the rest of the balls in the infield, that Hank should get out of the sun now. Hank started walking back toward the dugout. Brian had brought a bottle of Gatorade for himself, but now he came out of the shadows and up the steps and handed it to Hank.
“Thanks,” he said, as if he was almost too worn out to say that.
“Hey,” Brian said, “I never got to thank you.”
“For what?”
“That night in the cage.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
Brian grabbed him a towel now from the stack behind the bench, handed it to him. Hank wiped himself off.
“Because, see, the thing is, the lesson worked,” Brian said. “That’s what I really wanted to thank you for. Got four hits right after that, nearly hit for the cycle, as a matter of fact.”
“I’m sorry,” Hank said. “What?”
“You gave me some pointers,” Brian said, thinking he just hadn’t heard, “and one of my next games, last time up, needing a home run for the cycle, the ball I hit just caught the top of the fence. . . .”
Hank brushed by him now, on his way down the steps, saying, “Not today, kid.”
“I didn’t mean to bother you,” Brian said. “But I just wanted you to know. . . .”
Then Hank was as loud as he had been with Rudy Tavarez, slamming his bat into the bat rack so hard Brian was afraid he might break it.
“What part of not today aren’t you getting?” he said. Then he disappeared down the runway.
CHAPTER 25
The next afternoon Brian and Willie Vazquez were in Equipment Room No. 3 after Brian had made his daily run to McDonald’s.
The Tigers had won the night before, but Hank had sat on the bench, his average sitting with him at .218. Davey Schofield had just posted his lineup for tonight’s game and Brian saw that Hank wouldn’t be playing again, even though the Royals had a righty going.
“Ask you something?” Brian said to Willie.
Finn was helping out over on the visitors’ side, one of the guys having called in sick. So it was just Brian and Willie, no other players having gotten in on today’s order.
Willie smiled, his second Big Mac halfway to his mouth.
“You’re my burger connection,” Willie said. “Ask me anything.”
Brian said, “Why do you think Hank did it?”
Willie put his burger down on the chair he had pulled up next to him and took a sip of Coke.
“Why he did what?” he said.
“You know what I mean,” Brian said. “Why do you think he took the steroids?”
Willie took his time, wiping his hands with a napkin. Taking another sip of Coke. Smiling at Brian now, as if you couldn’t wipe the smile off his face even if the subject was baseball drugs.
“Now, technically,” Willie said, “the Bishop never actually admitted he did do them drugs.”
Brian said, “But not only did Hank test positive, he tested positive after he knew he could get suspended for that. If the test was wrong, if it was one of those false positives, wouldn’t he have said it was all a big mistake?”
Willie said, “You know what’s amazing, little man? How much you got to talk about steroids in this game whether you did anything or not. I always thought that was the worst thing of all, how the innocent got thrown in there with the guilty. How everybody got turned into a suspect. Like it wasn’t guilty or innocent after a while, like it was ‘caught or not caught,’ least in the eyes of the fans.”
Brian said, “You ever try the stuff?”
Willie shook his head. “Nope.”
“Think about it?”
“Everybody thought about it, little man. But I had a big brother got his life all messed up on other kinds of drugs, the worst kind, when I was little. Ended up in jail, even though where they should have sent him was to one of those rehab hospitals. Lordy, when I was growing up, my momma made me more afraid of drugs than of the devil. So I tried to do like the great Hammerin’ Henry Aaron, the real all-time home run champ of the game of baseball.”
“What?”
Willie smiled again and said, “Strongest thing I ever take is chewin’ gum. And these burgers.”
Brian said, “But there was a lot of it going on when you first came up.”
“Course there was.” Willie serious, as serious as Brian had ever seen him. Not smiling now. “I got eyes. I’d see guys who weighed 175 at the end of one season come back and be 225 and look like the Incredible Hulk. And this was even after the real testing kicked in. I’d just say to myself, Now there’s a boy found a way to stay one step ahead of the testers. Or he just found something they got no test for. Yet.”
“But Hank had it all going for him.”
“Let me ask you something,” Willie said. “Alex Rodriguez didn’t have it all going for him? Barry Bonds?”
“That’s my point—guys like that didn’t need it!” Brian said, the force of his voice surprising him.
“See, that’s the thing, though,” Willie said. “They thought they did. Barry Bonds, he thought he had to do it to go past McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Then A-Rod, he must’ve looked at Bonds and said, I got to get past him someday, I better do what he was doing when he hit out 73 that one season. And all of them using that junk must’ve thought nobody would ever present them with no bill.”
Willie picked up his Big Mac again, took a big bite. “I’m just speculating, mind you.”
“You think he can ever be good again without it? Hank, I mean.”
“You don’t give up, do you?”
Brian shook his head. No.
Willie sighed. “I still think Hank Bishop’s got it, somewhere inside him. Question is whether he’s gonna find it before it’s too late.”
Willie got up now, thanked Brian for the food, and said, “Since we quoting all-time greats today, you know what Yogi Berra said one time, right?”
“What?”
“Yogi said it sure gets late early around here,” Willie Vazquez said.
“I wish there was something I could do to help,” Brian said.
Because he did want to help.
“You want to help that man even the way he treats you.”
“Yeah,” Brian said. “I do.”
Willie was at the door. He came back, put his arm around Brian. “You a good man, little man.”
>
Brian wondered if he had the courage to back up that claim, knowing what he now knew. Having seen what he was sure he had seen earlier today.
The Tigers won the last game of the Royals series, completing a sweep, 10-2. Davey had thrown Hank out there in the fifth inning, maybe thinking that on a night when everybody was hitting, it might be contagious. But even against a scrub reliever, Hank struck out twice—the second time looking.
Brian was worried that Hank might break another bat after that one, could see how red his face was after the home-plate ump rung him up on a close pitch for strike three. Even now, though, his season and maybe even his career slipping away, it was as if he knew you couldn’t pitch a fit in a blowout game like this, especially one your team was winning.
So he just walked back to the dugout, handed his bat to Brian, went to the far end of the bench, and sat there alone until the game was over. And when it was over, when all the other players and coaches and Davey Schofield were gone, he went back to work, alone this time, in the indoor batting cage.
Not facing Iron Mike the way Brian had.
Just beating one ball after another off a tee.
Finn was gone by then. Brian’s mom was his ride home tonight and she had already texted him to say she’d be leaving work at the usual time and would meet him outside.
It was when Brian was on his way back from making one last sweep of the dugout that he heard the sounds from the cage and discovered it was Hank. So he hung back out of sight and watched while he went through a bucket of balls.
Brian couldn’t help himself.
“I’ll pick them up for you,” he said in the sudden silence. “If you want.”
“You don’t give up, do you?” Hank said.
“Just doing my job,” Brian said, squeezing out a smile. “Picking up balls is part of it, you know.”
Brian came through the netting then. The two of them picked up balls together. When they were finished, Hank said, “You don’t have to stay.”
“I’m good.”
“Yeah, just like me.”
Hank readjusted his batting gloves, almost like he needed something to do. “Guy I used to play with said to me one time, ‘When you’re young and in a slump, it’s just a slump,’” he said. “ ‘But when you’re old and in a slump, you’re just old.’”
“You’ll get to 500,” Brian said.
“You think that’s what this is about?” he said.
“Well, no,” Brian said, almost like he felt his own words tripping him up. “I mean, yeah, I thought that was part of it.”
“It was never about that,” Hank said in a quiet voice. “Never.”
He went back to driving balls off the tee, taking his time, checking his hands before every swing and setting them behind his right shoulder, setting them high, holding his follow-through sometimes. Brian stood there and felt as if he’d been watching this swing his whole life, as if this were some kind of old Hank Bishop highlight reel come to life.
Yet he knew better.
This swing was different.
Hank Bishop was the one carrying his hands too high, the one with the small hitch in his swing, throwing his timing all out of whack.
Brian was sure of it. He’d noticed it yesterday.
The question was, What was he going to do about it?
Hank valued Brian’s opinion the way he would value a fly’s.
“I’m swinging late even hitting off a stinking tee,” Hank said now.
Okay, Brian thought, now or never. No guts, no glory.
He took a deep breath.
“You know, I’ve been noticing something, watching you.”
Hank turned toward him, hands already cocked in his batting pose. Not looking at Brian in a mean way. Just slowly shaking his head. “Seriously? I’ve gotten advice from everybody, kid. And I mean everybody. You should read my mail. Please don’t you start, I’m begging you.”
Brian put up his hands, making himself smile, feeling himself actually backing up into the netting as he did. “No,” he said.
“No is right,” Hank said. “No more talk.”
“Got it.”
“Excellent.”
He took about twenty more swings, the swings becoming more and more fierce, his face looking more and more angry, sweat pouring off him at the end the way it had when he’d been taking his BP outside with Rudy.
Brian picked up the balls by himself this time. Hank had had enough for the night.
About fifteen minutes later they were coming out of the elevator together, walking across the lobby and into the cool night air. And the air was cool enough to make Brian think that his summer with the Tigers was beginning to come to an end.
He looked up and saw his mom standing near their car. “I was afraid I was going to have to come in after you,” she said. Then to Hank she said, “Sometimes I’m afraid I’m going to have to use the Jaws of Life to pry him loose from the Tigers.”
“It wasn’t Brian’s fault tonight, Mrs. Dudley,” Hank said. “It was mine.”
“Liz,” she said.
Hank grinned. “We’ve gone over this already, haven’t we?”
“That we have.”
“Your boy was helping me out tonight,” Hank Bishop said. “Little late-night batting practice. Trying to break me out of this horrendous slump I’m in.”
“And did he?” she said. “Help you out of it, I mean.”
I could have, Brian thought. I just didn’t get the chance.
Wimped out, totally.
“I’m not sure anyone can at this point.”
“I can,” Liz Dudley said.
“Excuse me?”
“I know exactly what you need, Mr. Bishop.”
“Hank.”
“Hank,” she said. “What you need is a home-cooked meal away. Far away from baseball. Far, far away.”
No way he says yes, Brian thought.
No way ever.
Please say yes.
“I couldn’t,” Hank said.
“Well, I insist,” she said. “What about after Sunday afternoon’s game?”
Brian stood there waiting, holding his breath, looking from his mom to Hank Bishop, still thinking, No way in this world.
“I accept,” Hank said.
Way.
CHAPTER 26
Sunday afternoon. The Tigers had beaten the Twins 5-1.
Hank even managed a clean single to right his last time up, Brian hoping that it might put him in a better mood for dinner, still worrying he might find some kind of last-minute excuse to beg out.
So in the clubhouse after the game Brian said to him, “My mom just wanted me to check with you, that you’re still coming tonight.”
Hank had already showered and changed by then. “Been a while since I’ve had a home-cooked meal cooked by anybody except me,” he said. “So, yeah, kid, I’m still in.”
Then he said he had to stop by his apartment on his way to Bloomfield Hills and pick something up. Told him to tell his mom not to worry—he’d be there.
“You know,” Finn said in his mom’s car on the way to drop off Brian at home, “I’ve checked my own calendar and I’m actually free tonight.”
“Dude,” Brian said, “if I could, you know I would. But it’s just supposed to be the three of us, Mom’s orders.”
Finn nodded. “I hear you. In our house you break Mom’s orders and even one of those presidential pardons can’t save you.”
From the front seat Finn’s mom said, “I always love it when you talk about me as if I’m not here.”
When they dropped Brian off, Finn made him promise to send texts throughout the evening. Brian laughed and said he’d just set up his laptop in the middle of the table so they could video-chat between courses.
They were eating in the dining room tonight. Brian couldn’t even remember the last time he and his mom had eaten in there. They always ate at the kitchen table when it was just the two of them.
And it had just been the two
of them for a long time.
She had set the table with her best plates and silverware and glasses, even had two candles she said Brian could light when the time came. She had tossed a huge salad, was preparing to throw a couple of steaks on the grill, and had made one of Brian’s favorite desserts, banana cream pie.
Liz Dudley was also wearing a new dress, a blue summer dress she had bought the day before.
“You look awesome, Mom,” Brian said when she came downstairs in it.
She looked down. “It isn’t too much?”
“Too much awesome?”
“I mean, does it look like I’m trying too hard?”
“To do what?” Brian said. He smiled at her.
She smiled back. “Shut up,” she said, heading outside to check on the grill. But she looked happy, as happy and excited as he had seen her in a long time. Brian knew this was more than just dinner for her. It was a little weird, but he had to admit, he got it.
Hank showed up right on time, seven thirty on the nose. Brian and his mom were waiting on the front step as he came up the cobblestone walk with a bottle of wine in his hand.
He handed the wine to Liz Dudley and said, “A little contribution to this fine meal.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
He was wearing a blazer and white button-down shirt and blue jeans and had even shaved, Brian noticed—something he never seemed to do at the ballpark. He somehow always seemed to be three days into growing a beard.
To Brian now he said, “Hey.”
“Hey, Mr. Bishop.”
“We’re both off duty tonight,” he said. “Let’s make it Hank.”
Brian said he was good with that and the three of them went inside. As they did, it occurred to him suddenly that this was actually Hank Bishop and that he was actually inside his house. It was as if Brian was getting the chance to meet him again for the first time. Thinking that if somebody had told him at the start of the summer that a night like this was going to happen—if somebody had ever told him that a night like this was going to happen—he would have laughed.