by Mike Murphey
“No, I showed up a couple of days ago. Alaska’s cold. I told the girls if they can’t find me, they should go to the dugout and ask for you so you can tell them where I’m sitting.”
“Where did you meet these girls?”
“At a club.”
“What kind of club?”
“A strip club.”
“So, they’re strippers.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Everybody has to make a living. I told them you’re on the team. They’re impressed.”
Conor began his pre-game routine, forgetting about strippers.
As the game began, he took note of Basil’s seat a few rows behind home plate. By the fifth inning, a woman occupied the seat next to Basil. When Conor gathered his stuff and headed to the bullpen at the start of the seventh, both seats were empty.
Okay, I’ll be having dinner alone tonight.
“Conman, you’re up,” bullpen coach Norm Sherry called as the Giants took their at-bats during the top of the ninth.
Conor entered the game with a two-run lead. He was halfway through his warm-up pitches when his tunnel vision failed. Every male eye, including his, felt something like the tidal pull of the moon as a pair of women descended the aisle toward the Giants’ dugout.
Their steep platform shoes accentuated legs that seemed to go up forever, merging into the tightest, tiniest cutoff jeans legal in a public setting. They had waspish waists below breasts spilling over the thin line of their tank tops. One blonde, one brunette, their luxuriant hair spilled down their backs.
Conor caught himself just in time to avoid being clocked by the return throw from his catcher. He forced his attention to home plate, executing one more delivery. Now the women stood right behind the row of folding chairs where the manager and coaches sat next to the dugout.
The blonde bent low, riveting the eyes of every player, including Conor, to cleavage rivaling the Grand Canyon among the world’s natural wonders, although natural might be stretching it. She said something to . . .
Oh, no. God, no!
. . . Roger Craig.
Craig stood, fielded a question from the second woman, then pointed at the mound. Conor read Craig’s lips.
He’s right there.
The women waved.
Conor regained sufficient focus to retire the Angels in order. He skipped the post-game receiving line, making straight for the dugout without raising his eyes. He planned to hide in the training room long enough to discourage the strippers from waiting around.
He sat on a training table as the procession of coaches filed past.
“I’m proud of you,” said Bob Lillis.
Next, Don Zimmer. “You’re a better man than I thought. Way to go, kid.”
Norm Sherry. “Are you shitting me?”
Finally, a grave Roger Craig approached, then extended his hand.
“Conman,” he said, “a big part of me wants to say you made this club right here tonight.”
Spring training of 1987 ended with a three-game series against the White Sox in Chicago, where Conor suffered his only failure. He let Chicago load the bases with two outs and a one-run Giants lead. Fly ball to left field where Jeffrey Leonard fought a brutal sun. Tying and winning runs scored on the error.
“Don’t worry about it, Conman,” Craig told him. “We can’t make an official announcement yet but pack your bags for the Bay Bridge Series. You made the team.”
Conor called everyone. His mom cheered. Kate screamed. Half the town—many of them die-hard Giants fans who would rather eat bark than watch a ballgame in Oakland—bought tickets for the first game of the Bay Bridge series at the Coliseum.
Conor drifted to sleep that night comfortable his dream had come true.
They pulled the rug from under him the next day.
Ben Cisco, an assistant general manager, gave him the bad news.
“We’ve decided not to keep a left-hander for the bullpen.”
“Then what was this whole spring about?” Conor demanded.
Just a last-minute decision, Cisco explained. They’d planned to release a veteran who suffered a miserable spring. The money guys, though, decided they’d eat too big a contract. They’d give the veteran a few more opportunities to turn things around. They had no contractual investment in Conor Nash. He could start the season at Phoenix and be available should the veteran falter.
Conor thought he’d become immune to the brutal realities of baseball business. He thought he’d successfully cultivated a cynicism leaving him invulnerable to surprise and disappointment.
This insult, though, broke his heart.
“I . . . I already told people . . .”
“Well, you probably should have waited for the official—”
“Yeah.”
“Look, you’ll spend a few weeks in Phoenix and if you pitch well—”
“If I pitch well, what? Then I’ll make the team? Pretty tough to pitch better than I did this spring. Pitching well didn’t make me a Giant.”
“Hey, I know it’s embarrassing to tell people you made it and then say you didn’t. Look, we’ll have you travel for the Bay Bridge series. We’ll get you into a game. And then we’ll announce that something unrelated happened and we had to make an unanticipated move.”
Conor’s stare bored into the man. “Mr. Cisco,” he asked, “have you ever been comfortable lying to your mother?”
Conor flew alone from Chicago to San Francisco. He refused the offer to play in the Bay Bridge series. The Giants granted his request for a few days before reporting to Phoenix. He didn’t exactly hide back in San Carlos, although he spent a lot of time at home.
A.J., Brad and Basil offered encouragement. Just another setback. Big deal. He was pitching as well as he ever had. He’d been through disappointments before. Why stop now?
All valid arguments.
“I’m sick of it,” he told Kate. “If all I needed to do was be good—be better than the other guy—then I’d jump back in. I’d take my chances. Because I am better. But I can’t fight the politics. I don’t have to only be better. If someone’s got a million dollar contract, he can pitch like crap and hang on. I have to be ten times better. We can buy a house. I can get a normal job somewhere, just be a normal guy . . .”
“Well,” Kate interrupted, “I’m not sure you have it in you to be a normal guy, no matter what you do for a living. If you want to quit . . .” She stopped in mid-sentence.
“I was going to say, if you want to quit, okay. But A.J., Basil and Brad are right. You’re pitching as well as you ever have. You may think you can walk away, but I know you. You’d spend the rest of your life saying what if?”
“Kate, I’m serious. I don’t know how much more failure I can stand—”
“It’s not your decision alone,” Kate said, a note of anger touching her voice. “Yes, you’ve had a rough time. But so have I. Did you know once, when were broke and I was pregnant, and you were on a road trip, I only had seven dollars? So, I ate tomato soup and green beans for three days. I took my kids to Japan for two years, following you. I’ve moved so many times . . . If I’m willing to put up with this a while longer, maybe you should be too!”
Conor rarely saw this side of Kate. He found himself balancing somewhere between shock and anger. She softened him with a kiss.
“Jessie has her T-ball game tonight,” she said, “Come and watch. It’s a hoot.”
His five-year old daughter was a Giant. Her blond curls spilled from under the Giants cap that couldn’t remain straight on her head. Her orange t-shirt jersey bunched and drooped over the elastic waistband holding up her white pants. He’d demonstrated how to fold the cuffs under so her orange and black stirrups showed above her shoes.
In truth, Conor wanted to stay home. The lighted four-field complex where Jessie played was three blocks from his mother’s house. The t-ball game would be at one field. Three of his brothers would be playing softball at another. Half the neighborhood would be there.
>
He knew he should go.
Kate was right. The five-year-olds were a study in pure comedy.
Jessie approached the task of hitting with the grim purpose of a soldier heading to combat. From the left-hand batters’ box, she pounded her bat on the ground behind the tee, then hoisted it onto her shoulder. Her tongue protruded from the corner of her mouth. She took one half swing, measuring her bat against the ball perched atop a tee, returned the bat to her shoulder, raised her left knee, Japanese style, and struck. As the ball dribbled toward third base, she ran giggling, her hair flowing in the wind, her t-shirt ballooning behind her. Reaching first base, she paused, assessing the state of the defense, then burst toward second base, little arms churning with effort.
Each time a five-year-old put a ball into play, the carefully ordered defense became a nine-player scrum fraught with arguments over who got to pick up the ball—No, it’s my turn! You threw it last time! —then a careful reconnaissance determining the enemy runner’s progress, and an overthrow followed by another nine-player charge in that direction.
After each play, a host of parents, including Kate, reorganized the group to their defensive positions, explaining patiently if the ball wasn’t hit to them, they must stay and guard their territory. The children swore solemn promises forgotten with the very next batter.
Conor snickered through several innings then walked to the adjacent field where his brothers competed. The Nash boys were the best players, driving slo-pitch lobs into distant darkness, deftly handling anything hit toward them. The men here dug at each other over errors and outs, but laughed like the five-year-olds, anyway.
On a third field, elevens and twelves played. Here, the game stood at the cusp of respectability, players disciplined and drilled on where to go and what to do in any given circumstance. Hits and successful defensive plays remained joyous. Errors, though, elicited self-deprecation, downcast eyes, and apology.
Conor allowed himself to be amazed, once again, at the joy this game engendered in all its forms, at all its levels. And at how intricately it weaved itself into the fabric of his home, his neighborhood, his life.
And, he realized, any one of a hundred people playing here tonight would trade places with me in a heartbeat.
Back at the house, his daughter asleep, Giants cap hanging from her bedpost, he told Kate, “I guess I’m going to Phoenix.”
thirty-two
San Francisco Giants
1987
Conor drank a toast to Candlestick Park and his precious few days as a Giant.
Rita, I played before friends and family, and I never once failed when they were there.
Except for weekends, Mr. Rosen told me I could leave a hundred passes for every home game. On the streets of San Carlos people pointed me out. That’s Conor Nash. He’s a San Francisco Giant!
Hard as it might be, I suffered my demotion to Phoenix without complaint. I behaved as a professional. I did what my manager asked and did it well. By mid-May, the veteran they’d hoped would come around suffered his release, and the Conman became a thirty-one-year-old rookie in the National League.
“Hey, Conman,” the PR guy said as Conor slumped at his locker, “Ralph wants you to do his post-game show. What should I tell him?”
Conor sighed. They were in Cincinnati, and the Reds hadn’t been kind to the Conman. Tonight’s game had been televised nationally—Howard Coselle, Monday Night Baseball. Conor gave up a walk-off home run to Dave Parker. Three nights before, closing the first game of the series, Conor had allowed Parker a game-winning double.
Conor was a favorite of Ralph Barbieri, who hosted the Giants post-game radio broadcast. Barbieri, a gravel-voiced curmudgeon, spared criticism for no one. “I like having you because you’re a stand-up guy,” Barbieri explained to Conor, “and because of the crazy calls we get from your hometown.”
Conor sighed. He wasn’t anxious to be on the radio tonight, but he would not hide from his failure.
“Well, that was a rough one, Conman,” Barbieri said. “We’ll get to that, but right now, we’ve got some phone calls. Okay, caller, you’re on.”
“Hey, Lefty, this is Foo. You remember me, dontcha?”
“Yeah, Foo, I—”
“Okay,” Ralph broke in, “tell us who Foo is.”
“Foo was my catcher at San Carlos High School.”
“Why didn’t you throw Parker the knuckle curve, Lefty? He ain’t never seen nothin’ like your knuckle curve.”
“Um . . . Dave Parker is better than the guys we played against in high school, Foo. I don’t use that pitch anymore.”
“Yeah, and that’s the problem. You gotta throw em’ the knuckle curve.”
“All right, we’ve got a vote for the knuckle curve,” Ralph said. “Here’s another caller.”
“Yeah, that you, Connie?”
Conor shook his head and put his hand over his eyes. “Yes. Why are you calling me, Mike?”
“Who’s Mike?” Ralph asked.
“My brother.”
“Where do you keep the spare key on your car?” Mike asked.
“Why do you want to know—?”
“I kind of lost the other key.”
“My car is supposed to be at the players’ lot at Candlestick Park,” Conor said.
“Yeah, I left something in it. When I got there, I couldn’t find the key. I thought I put it in my pocket. I had to get back to San Carlos, but if you’ll tell me where you hide your spare key, I’ll—”
“Mike, if I tell you where my spare key is over the radio, I think it’s likely someone will come and take my car. Why don’t we leave it like it is until I get home?”
“Well, the thing I was gonna get—”
“Mike, this is the Giants’ post-game show. Why don’t we confine our questions to baseball?”
“Okay. Why can’t you get Dave Parker out?”
“And,” said Ralph, “here’s another call.”
“Hi, Conor, this is Sarah Lester, do you remember me?”
“Yes, Sarah, I—”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to bring up that time in high school when . . . well, you know.”
Despite Dave Parker, I was hot. My ERA stood at 2.05. I had two wins and two saves. I’d struck out twenty-one during my fifteen appearances. The Giants were winning, headed toward their first playoff appearance since 1971. Then Mark Davis sought me out as soon as he arrived at Candlestick the afternoon of July third.
“Conman, I think I’m gonna get traded.”
“What? Why would you think that, Mark?”
Davis looked left and right, then said, “I got this call last night, after the game.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Some guy with this gravelly voice, like he smoked twelve packs a day. He says his name is Doc, and he’s the Padres’ traveling secretary. I said, Padres? He said, hasn’t anybody talked to me yet? I said, about what? He said, never mind and hung up.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Conor said. “Sounds like one of the guys is pulling your chain.”
On July fourth, the Giants and Padres pulled off a blockbuster. Maybe that deal was like the tradeoff when I was five, right, Rita? My sight rescued in exchange for the stutter.
To this very day, I haven’t made sense of it. Everybody knew something big was coming. The Giants were seriously good—legitimate World Series contenders—and the trading deadline lurked at month’s end.
The Giants got Kevin Mitchell, Dave Dravecky and Craig Lefferts from the Padres. Heading south down Interstate Five were infielder Chris Brown, pitchers Mark Grant, Mark Davis, and . . . me.
Among every disappointment this game handed me, being traded from the Giants hurt the most.
“Why me?” Conor asked. A desk separated him and Rosen. Roger Craig occupied a chair next to him. “I mean, I’m sure the Padres didn’t tell you they had to have Conor Nash. I must have been a throw-in.”
“You’re still in the big leagues,” Rosen said.
“I threw out lots of names. They said no. When I put your name out there, they said yes. Granted, Mark Davis was the keystone, and they wanted Chris Brown.”
“Do they know about his eyelid?” Conor asked.
Brown had spent time on the disabled list a few weeks earlier with a sprained eyelid. He told the trainers it wouldn’t stop blinking. During that particular training room consultation, Conor lay on a nearby table undergoing his third cortisone shot since spring.
Unfortunately, Conor and the others didn’t drive down the road to San Diego. The Padres were in Montreal. So, four ex-Giants rushed to catch a red-eye that sped them across four time zones during the dark of night, slogged bleary-eyed through customs—the agent was NOT impressed that they were baseball players—then sparred with a French-speaking cab driver, who clearly regarded them as English subversives. They arrived at Olympic Stadium in time to change into their poop-brown Padres jerseys and rush onto the field for the Canadian national anthem.
Conor threw an inconsequential inning late in the game, then retired to the clubhouse in a jet-lagged blur of fatigue and disappointment.
Sitting at his locker, a stubby man who looked a little like Danny DiVito approached him.
“Nash?” the man asked.
“Yeah.”
“Hotel’s out of rooms. You gotta double up with Davis. We’ll get it fixed tomorrow.”
The man handed Conor a room key, then disappeared around the next row of lockers. “Who was that?” Conor asked the guy on the stool next to him.
“Our traveling secretary, John Mattei. Everybody calls him ‘Doc.’”
“Doc?”
“Yeah, he’s a legend in San Diego. Used to be a trainer for the Dodgers. Was the first guy Buzzy Bavasi hired when they started the San Diego franchise. Now, he’s the traveling secretary.”
“I once stole a bus from a trainer named Doc,” Conor said.
Conor and Mark Davis stumbled into the team hotel lobby and gave their names to a French-speaking desk attendant, who handed them room keys with the hint of a smile.