by Mike Lupica
It was during dessert that his mom said, “I’m sorry things haven’t been going as well for you as you must have hoped they would.”
“Wow,” he said. “Ain’t that the truth?”
“I know you said everybody’s off duty tonight,” she said. “So we can drop this if you like and talk about something else.”
Hank looked at Brian. “Your mom is a lot nicer than most sportswriters.”
“Whoa,” Brian said, “not so fast,” and everybody laughed.
When the table was quiet again, Hank said, “Maybe my expectations for myself were overly high coming in. But I never thought I’d sink this low, to tell you the truth.”
“Your batting average, you mean?” Liz Dudley said.
“I mean everything.”
There was another silence at the dining room table now, feeling to Brian like the longest one of the night, until his mom said, “If I make up one more small pot of coffee, would you have some with me, Hank?”
“Love some.”
Brian’s mom said, “So why don’t you two go into the living room while I clean up and get the coffee going.”
“Please let me help,” Hank said.
“Go,” she said. “Both of you. If I continue to monopolize the conversation, I am going to hear it from my son when you leave.”
Brian said, “We could sit in the den if you want, and watch some of Sunday Night Baseball.”
“No, thank you,” Hank said. “I’ve had enough baseball for one day.”
So they sat in the living room, Hank on the couch, Brian across from him in one of the formal chairs he hardly ever sat in. They weren’t in the ballpark world now. Just Brian’s world.
“I didn’t think my mom would start talking baseball,” Brian said.
“It’s fine.”
“But you just said you were baseballed out today.”
In a soft voice then, one Brian almost didn’t recognize, Hank Bishop said, “I don’t know if I can still do it.”
Brian said, “Not true.”
“Yeah, kid,” Hank said, “I’m afraid it is.”
“You’ll come out of this,” Brian said. “I know you will. You hit a great pitch today your last time up. The guy was sure he had you set up inside, and you stayed right with him anyway, went the other way.”
“I guessed right.”
“You’ve guessed right a lot in your life.”
“Mostly when I was still the Bishop of Baseball.”
“You still are.”
From the kitchen they both heard Brian’s mom call out, “Five minutes more, I promise. Try not to miss me too much.”
“We’re fine,” Hank said.
“You can’t give up now,” Brian said. “You’ve come back from . . . You’ve come too far, is all I’m sayin’.” Brian grinned. “And I know you say you don’t care about the 500, but you’re right there. And once you hit number 500, you’ll probably hit six in a week. Isn’t that the way it always happens when you bust out of a slump?”
Hank leaned forward, big hands on his knees. “I told you this before. It was never about 500. It wasn’t even about playing in a World Series, as much as I’d love to do that.”
“You will.”
Brian looked past Hank, toward the door to the kitchen. Not wanting his mom to come back. Not yet.
Not right now.
Hank shook his head. “Why am I talking about this with you?”
Brian just came out with the truth then, as plainly as he could.
“Because I’m still the biggest fan you’ve got,” he said.
“After everything I’ve done.”
“Yeah,” Brian said. “After everything you’ve done.”
“Amazing,” he said. “The way people stay with you.”
“So if it isn’t 500 home runs and it isn’t the Series, then why did you come back?”
“Because I had something to prove.”
Brian took a deep breath, let it out, said, “You mean to the people who said you were all about steroids.”
Hank stared at Brian now, almost as if they both knew it was his turn to tell the truth.
“No,” he said. “Believe it or not, it was never about them, either. I came back because I had to prove something to myself.”
By the time his mom and Hank had finished with their coffee, it was nine thirty. Hank thanked Liz Dudley again, told her it was the nicest night he’d had all season.
Brian’s mom said her goodbye in the living room, said she’d let Brian walk Hank out to his car.
“Maybe I could buy you dinner sometime?” Hank said.
You. Brian knew Hank wasn’t including him, that Hank Bishop was asking his mom out on a date.
“I’d like that a lot,” she said.
Brian and Hank walked outside.
“Well, kid, I’ll see you at the ballpark.” Then Hank opened his car door.
“Wait,” Brian said.
Hank turned, hand still on the door handle, maybe hearing the urgency in Brian’s voice.
“Wait?”
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Brian said. “Something I should have told you the other night in the cage. And if I don’t tell you now . . .”
His words drifted away into the night air.
“Kid, we both know I’m not a patient guy. So tell me already.”
“You’re . . . You’re not the same hitter,” Brian said.
It actually made Hank Bishop laugh. “Now there’s a bombshell,” he said.
“No,” Brian said. His face felt hot, as hot as his words had come out. “I tried to tell you the other night, but then you told me about all the dopey batting tips people have been giving you. So I chickened out.”
Hank gently closed the car door, the two of them standing on the sidewalk. He shook his head, like he was trying to be patient. “Brian,” he said. “Son. I know you know a lot about baseball. I get that. I do. But you’re not a batting coach.”
“You gotta hear me out,” Brian said, his words echoing up and down the empty street. “I’ve been watching you my whole life. And I’ve felt like something was different for a while and then the other day I was sure of it. So when I got home, I watched my Bishop of Baseball video for like the nine-thousandth time. And . . . and then I knew what it was for sure. You’re holding your hands too high and it’s made your swing different.”
It all came out of him like he’d ripped open a package of words and they were spilling all over the sidewalk between them.
“I haven’t changed my swing in twenty years. My hands are where they’ve always been.”
“No,” Brian insisted, “they’re not. Not by much, but maybe just enough to affect your timing.”
“You’re serious.”
“As a toothache.”
“Where’s this video?” Hank said.
“In my room.”
Hank’s face turned serious. “Let’s go have a look.”
CHAPTER 27
They walked back through the front door, to the great surprise of Brian’s mom. On their way up the stairs, before his mom could say anything, Brian just waved a hand and said, “I forgot to show Hank something.”
Hank smiled at Liz Dudley and shrugged, as if telling her he was just along for the ride.
Brian thought briefly about how he was taking Hank Bishop into what had always been a little bit of a Hank Bishop shrine. But he couldn’t worry about that. He wasn’t going to let any embarrassment about hero worship stop him now that he’d come this far.
When they got to his room, Brian saw that he’d left his laptop on, went into his closet, dragged out a box full of Hank Bishop stuff, grabbed the DVD.
“What else you got in there?” Hank said.
“A lot.”
He was sitting on Brian’s bed. Brian motioned for him to take the chair at his desk.
The video had come out after Hank’s last MVP season, when he’d hit the forty-seven home runs. And in it, around all the interviews
with Hank and his teammates and pitchers and opposing managers, there were all different angles of Hank Bishop’s swing, from the third-base side, first base, from behind home plate, from the camera in center field.
Brian cued it to the night when Hank had hit three home runs at Yankee Stadium and barely missed a fourth, every one of them shot from the camera behind the Yankee dugout, on the first-base side.
Before the first home run, Brian froze the picture.
“Right there. Look how low your hands are,” he said. “See that? You set them right there and they’re, like, locked until you start your swing.”
“Un-pause it,” Hank said, staring at the screen.
Brian did.
The ball shot off Hank’s bat and into the section of center field at the old Yankee Stadium known as The Black.
“Short stroke for a pretty long ball,” he said. Nodding. “Really short. And it’s almost like I’ve got the bat sitting on my right hip.”
Now came the second home run, down the left-field line. “You look totally relaxed,” Brian said.
“In the zone.” Hank nodded again. “I’ve been looking at a lot of old tape on me. Maybe I didn’t go back far enough. I was more worried that my only problem was over-striding.”
The third home run now. Same short stroke. Same result. Another one into The Black. Two in the same game.
“Back it up again,” Hank said.
Brian did.
He wasn’t sure how many times they watched those three home-run swings, and the one that Paul O’Neill of the Yankees pulled back over the right-field wall. But it was a lot.
“This is probably a silly question given that I have my own personal Hall of Fame in your closet, but do you have any film of this year’s swing?”
Brian felt himself blush, but he knew this was no time to hold back. “I have a link on my desktop. Here.” He clicked on the Tigers’ logo and together they watched Hank strike out. Three times in a row.
“Well. I’ll be . . .” was all Hank said. Then he said, “You got some balls and a bat?”
Brian said, “Sure, but . . .”
“Good,” Hank said. “And we’re gonna need a field with lights around here. You got one of those?”
“Few minutes away, in Royal Oak.”
“Now here’s the big question,” Hank said. “Can you pitch?”
Brian laughed. “No!” before he said, “But I know somebody who can.”
“Who?”
“My friend Kenny.”
“One more thing,” Hank said. “We’re gonna need one of those screens to put in front of him.”
“Done,” Brian said, and then leaned down and tapped out Kenny’s screen name, IM-ed him and told him he and Hank Bishop were on their way over to pick him up. They were going over to Royal Oak for some late-night batting practice.
“So we’ve got everything we need?” Hank said.
Brian put up his hand for a high five.
“Of course we do,” he said. “What kind of batboy do you think I am?”
From the backseat of the town car, no traffic to speak of on the short ride to Royal Oak on a Sunday night, Kenny Griffin just kept staring at Hank Bishop.
“If it had been anybody but you,” Kenny said to Brian, “I would have been sure I was getting punked.”
Kenny shook his head, like trying to clear cobwebs away. “Me. Pitching BP. To Hank Bishop.”
From the front seat Hank said, “Look at it this way: You’ll probably get me out the way everybody else is these days.” Hank laughed, but it didn’t sound like a happy laugh. “This shouldn’t take too long. I’ll have both of you home before you know it.”
Kenny Griffin said, “Mr. Bishop, all due respect? I’ve got nothing but time.”
Hank Bishop had some bats in the trunk of his car, saying he always had a couple with him when he left the ballpark, even when he was a kid. Like they were security blankets. Or good-luck charms. Between those bats, the folding pitching screen that Kenny owned, and the two dozen baseballs he and Brian had collected between them, they had everything they needed. Kenny was wearing his spikes and his Sting cap, blue with a white S. Brian had skipped putting his own spikes on, was just wearing a pair of old Nikes, to go with the same outfit he’d worn at dinner.
The field at Royal Oak was deserted in the night, but the lights were on, the way they always stayed on for a while after the last softball game of the evening had been played. The field looked to Brian the way all empty ball fields did, even ones not maintained as well as this one was:
It looked tremendous.
As they walked toward the pitcher’s mound, Kenny carrying the protective screen he would set up in front of him, Brian heard his friend say, “This is mad cool.”
He stopped and looked at Brian. “Do you think he’ll mind if we take some pictures on my cell when we’re done?” He lowered his voice. “Me and him, I mean.”
Brian said, “I’m sure it won’t be a problem.”
Kenny closed his eyes and said, “Mad, mad cool.”
Brian got behind the plate, warmed up Kenny while Hank did some quick stretching exercises. He was still in his white shirt and jeans, Brian noticing that he at least had rubber-soled shoes on.
“Let’s do this,” Hank said.
He turned to Brian. “You ready to do a little running in the outfield?”
“Yeah, man,” he said, and sprinted out to left-center, imagining that he had his iPod with him, that he was listening to his favorite baseball song, John Fogerty singing, “Centerfield.”
Put me in, Coach, I’m ready to play.
It took Kenny a few throws to get the ball near home plate, Brian able to see from the outfield how nervous his bud was. Finally Kenny took a deep, exaggerated breath, nodded at Hank like he was really ready now. Brian watched as Hank nodded back, his white sleeves rolled up to the elbow, carefully setting his hands, even looking down at them before Kenny delivered the ball.
Kenny poured a fastball down the middle.
Hank missed it.
“Sorry,” Kenny said.
Hank yelled back at him, “Never apologize for throwing a strike. Now throw me another one.”
Kenny threw another fastball, down the middle again. And Hank Bishop, looking as still and sure as he used to, gave this one a ride, Brian knowing the ball was over his head almost as soon as he hit it.
Not only was it over his head as he turned and tried to chase, but he was pretty sure it was still rising.
From the pitcher’s mound, Kenny yelled, “Incoming!”
As the ball landed on the other side of the fence with a loud thud, Brian heard the crack of the bat again, this sound louder than the one right before it. The ball cleared the left-field fence by even more height than the one before.
Not every ball Hank hit that night went as far, but most of them were pure moon shots. Brian didn’t bother to chase them. He just stared in awe as ball after ball soared over his head, like fireworks exploding in the sky. It was like having his own private outfield seat at the All-Star Home Run Derby.
In between pitches, Brian could see Hank tilt his head down just enough to make sure his hands were set right. That’s me, Brian thought, hitting coach to the stars.
When Kenny had thrown the last ball they’d brought along, the three of them just stood where they were, the silence seeming to echo as loudly as the thunderous explosions of maple bat on hardballs that had filled the little ballpark.
Then Hank nodded, just once. “Thanks, guys,” he said.
They were the two most unnecessary words in the English language for Brian and Kenny.
They dropped off Kenny at his front door, Kenny’s mom and dad coming out to thank Hank for including Kenny in a baseball adventure like this.
“Your son’s got quite an arm,” Hank said to them.
Brian had never seen a smile like that on his best bud’s face.
“I’m telling you,” Brian said as they left Kenny’s driveway. “T
his is going to be awesome. I can’t wait until the next Tigers game.”
Hank glanced around him and sighed. “You mean, if I can hit as well against big-league pitching as I can against a fourteen-year-old?”
“You felt like your old self tonight,” Brian said. “Admit it.”
“Yeah,” Hank said. “For a few minutes, I did. Now I’ve just got to do it against someone throwing 95.”
The car pulled up to Brian’s house. Hank got out with him.
“Thank you again,” Hank said.
“I really didn’t do anything,” Brian said.
“You did more than you know,” Hank answered.
“What?”
“Gave me one more person I want to prove something to,” Hank Bishop said. “You.”
CHAPTER 28
So it had come to this:
If everything broke right, Brian was looking at the best week of the summer. Both his summers, actually. The one with the Tigers and the one with the Bloomfield Sting.
Both summers were ending fast now, like Brian was racing through the last few chapters of a really good book, having to slow himself down because he was so eager to get to the good parts.
Hank Bishop had four home games to hit his 500th home run before the Tigers went back on the road for three consecutive series, ending with three games in Seattle against the Mariners. More than anything, Brian wanted to be there when Hank made his own personal history. And at least proved some of what he wanted—needed?—to prove. If he could.
Hank’s average had dipped all the way to .217, and with the Indians holding a one-game lead over the Tigers in the Central Division standings and the Twins having won eight of their last ten to climb just a game behind Detroit, there was talk that the Tigers couldn’t wait much longer for Hank to rediscover his hitting stroke. The Detroit media was calling for the team to acquire a power bat, 500th home run or no.
It wasn’t unrealistic to think the Tigers might release Hank Bishop by the end of this road trip if he didn’t start hitting.
Part two of what Brian wanted to be his own dream week? The Sting had to win their semifinal game against Clarkson on Thursday night and then find a way to win the finals of the North Oakland Baseball Federation against the winner of the Motor City-Birmingham game.