Be the One

by April Smith

  She turns into the lobby of the management offices, past the gold pantheon for the World Series Championship of 1988, through an inner door and down a bright blue corridor, cheered by the low-tech nature of this high-bucks biz. If it were the season, the game would be playing—not on big-screen TV monitors, but on cheap transistor radios on secretaries’ desks—multiplied a dozen times, small and urgent. Phones would be ringing and people would be going about their business, but everybody would be staked to the outcome of the same event, like bookkeepers at NASA listening to the launch of Apollo 13.

  Dulce Rodríguez swivels away from her desk and heads for the copy machine, papers in hand. She is always meticulously feminine—denim dress, stockings and heels—always doing four tasks at once.

  “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  Dulce’s English is softened by the muffled consonants of a Spanish speaker born in Guatemala. A pair of barrettes pull brown wavy hair off her face, which, like her name, is soft and sweet, structured on the broad cheekbones and flattened nose of the Maya.

  “Hey, I bought something for Jasmine.”

  “Why?” asks Dulce. “You already gave her a Christmas present.”

  “You said she was having trouble in math, so I got her one of those computer games. This is for Rosa,” handing Dulce a stuffed kitten. “So she doesn’t get jealous.”

  Dulce takes the gifts, shaking her head.

  “You are too good. Thank you.”

  “I don’t have kids, might as well spoil yours.”

  Dulce’s back is to her. Two moments pass. Two copies spit out of the machine.

  “Raymond around?”

  “On the phone.” The door to the scouting director’s office is closed. “Want to see Travis?”

  “No, thanks.”

  As they walk back Dulce says, “I’m sure Travis wants to see you,” and smiles suggestively, still young and naive enough to believe Cassidy and her supervisor could be a match.

  On Dulce’s desk, beside snapshots of her daughers in confirmation dresses, is a collection can for victims of Hurricane Gordon, wrapped with a photo of a little boy with the dazed stare of a survivor, standing near a house that looks as if it had been bombed flat.

  Cassidy slips a fiver into the slot. Every time she comes to the office she feels compelled to make another contribution. She’d had a taste of the hurricane when she was in the Dominican, caught in a downpour that hit the windshield with the force of a fire hose. Two days after she left, the thing ate the island alive—winds like a buzz saw, floods, mud slides, whole villages swept out to sea. Across the Caribbean, they said, a thousand were dead.

  The can is heavy with money.

  “Has Alberto heard anything more from home?” Cassidy asks casually.

  “He doesn’t talk about it.”

  “How’s he making the adjustment to your house?”

  “Okay, except my son keeps asking why ‘the Dodger’ leaves poopy toilet paper in the bathroom wastebasket.”

  “What’s up with that?”

  “They have tiny pipes in the DR. You don’t flush toilet paper there—”

  Cassidy rubs beneath her bangs. Maybe everything is okay. If Alberto were receiving threatening calls, if hooligans were waiting outside in cars, Dulce would not be talking about plumbing.

  “That’s it?”

  “We’re working on the toilet paper.”

  The door to Raymond’s office opens.

  A pause as the winds shift around the boss.

  “Cassidy Sanderson is here,” Dulce announces although Cassidy is standing right there.

  “Have a seat,” Raymond says. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Thanks,” says Cassidy, and stiffly walks into the Cell.

  Raymond Woods has been with the club twelve years and there is nothing on his desk. Nothing on the bookshelves nor on top of the credenza. He keeps it all in his head—stats, reports, rankings, strengths and weaknesses of all the top prospects. Sometimes you’ll see him staring at a single sheet of yellow paper and it’s scary. All he has in the office (maybe all you need in life) is a great view of the ball field through an ample window behind his desk. Swivel. Bam. And there you are, in ballpark space. Cassidy knows every angle on the game, but the first time she saw the field from the executive suite on the club level it took her breath away: the big picture. The way you look at baseball when you own it.

  “Why are you hiding out in here?”

  Startled, Cassidy jumps.

  It is not Raymond in the doorway but her supervisor, Travis Conners.

  “Hey!” she says brightly. “Why don’t you give me a front office?”

  “Take mine—” Travis quips. He barely has a cubbyhole. None of the area scouts has permanent digs, communication is from the road by e-mail, fax or phone. “—along with my body. Anytime.”

  Cassidy wishes she had been alert to the scuffle of his damn cowboy boots.

  She smiles. “Still no takers?”

  “Saving it for you.”

  Cassidy folds her arms. “You’re having a good hair day.”

  Golden hair, long and layered. Flinty eyes in a hard, handsome face.

  “Always.”

  Travis places his right butt-cheek on the edge of Raymond’s desk and poses there, torquing his chest to display the broad shoulders and narrow waist of an ex-pro who has stayed in condition. The body of a ballplayer, thinks Cassidy, the mind of a yenta. He is wearing his usual garb—tight wrangler shirt, tight jeans, with a belt buckle the size of a dinner plate from one of his pals in the Hollywood stuntmen’s union.

  “Why do you want to see Raymond?”

  “We’ve got some trouble with Alberto Cruz.”

  His eyes widen.

  “Not Wonder Boy?”

  “Probably nothing. Just being cautious.”

  “Since when is ‘cautious’ even on your screen?”

  “Why don’t you just let it go?”

  Travis begins rolling up his sleeves, revealing forearm flexors square as two-by-fours.

  “I’m your supervisor. I take the heat.”

  “And the glory.”

  Travis snorts. “Like Gordon and Cappalletti?”

  Cassidy socks him on the shoulder.

  “This is not Gordon and Cappalletti!”

  “Some people feel pretty strongly that you get unfair special consideration around here,” Travis continues smoothly as if the blow were moth-breath. “Smoke Sanderson’s kid. Pedro Pedrillo’s stamp of approval. Whatever.”

  Cassidy’s cheeks are flaming.

  “Whatever, I took the risk. I went down there and signed a hundred-thousand-dollar player for twenty. You should be on your knees.”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  “Asshole.”

  Raymond enters briskly. “Bring me up to speed.”

  He sits behind the mile-wide empty desk.

  Travis says, “Cassidy just called me an asshole.”

  Raymond leans back. His weight makes the chair creak. “All kidding aside.”

  For a non-athlete, Raymond keeps himself in pretty good shape. His height carries him, and the authority of a mustache. His skin is black with a delicate undertone of ultra blue. He recently got a fade haircut which makes no attempt to hide the gray, kind of hip with the Brooks Brothers windbreaker and navy slacks.

  Cassidy pops it quickly: “Someone is threatening to blackmail Alberto Cruz. He’s been receiving letters—”

  “What letters?”

  “Right here.”

  Cassidy hands over the plastic sleeves. Her fingers leave moist marks.

  “Can you read the Spanish? It says, I know what you did. Worry when you see me. There are four notes, all the same. Alberto didn’t keep the envelopes, so unfortunately we don’t have the postmarks, but they come to the stadium. He’s supposed to send ten thousand dollars to a postbox in Nagua by February first.”

  “Or what?”

  “They’ll kill him, I guess.”


  She gives a goofy shrug; it sure sounds lame.

  “Who wants to kill him?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Raymond blows air out the sides of his mouth.

  Travis: “Where the hell is Nagua?”

  “That’s high school geography, you wouldn’t know.”

  “Oh, I’m hurting.”

  Raymond is skimming the notes. “This dude didn’t make it much past first grade.”

  He turns his big, steady face toward Cassidy.

  “What does the boy say?”

  “He doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “You believe him?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  The men exchange a look.

  Raymond: “We could have Pedro check it out.”

  Travis: “We could.”

  Cassidy interrupts, “Cruz is my prospect, guys. Pedro passed him off to me.”

  “We know that,” Raymond says evenly. “I’m thinking Pedro could check it out because Pedro’s already down there.”

  “Right.”

  She tries to make it sound nonchalant, but they’ve already seen her unease. It is not that she worries Pedro would suddenly claim Alberto Cruz as his own. One of the few Latin American scouts with a National League contract, Pedro is on salary and does not receive a bonus for the boys he signs. For him, giving up Cruz would mainly mean denying himself the sugary, envy-laden fruit of recognition from his peers; over the years he’s gorged on plenty of that.

  Cassidy knows that Pedro gave up Cruz because of some unfinished business with her dad—an honor or a buried debt he did not want to discuss when she’d asked him about it in the Dominican—and that Pedro would not go back on that obligation now. She finds it hard to trust, however, that respect for a friendship in the past would stop anyone else (like Travis) from trying to snatch the prize right out of her hands.

  They sit in silence as Raymond flips through the notes.

  Finally, “It’s in the boy’s favor that he brought these to you.”

  “I thought so.”

  Travis, respectfully, “What’s your gut, Ray?”

  “I think it’s horseshit. Jealous rival. Practical joke. You know how many of these we get a week?”

  “Right.”

  “Let’s keep an eye on it.” Raymond tosses the notes so they slither across the desk. “I’ll pass it along to security.”

  “Great.”

  Travis gets up and stands behind Cassidy, squeezing her shoulders as hard as he can, payback for the hit.

  “Look at these shoulders! Relax!”

  “Thank you. I’m relaxed.”

  He shakes her body, getting as much flexibility out of it as a piece of sheet metal.

  “Don’t worry. Be happy. Give the lady a cigar.”

  Raymond opens a drawer and pulls out a box of illegal Monte Cristos made in Cuba.

  Travis cracks up laughing and Cassidy’s stomach contracts to the size of a lime. The day she left Santo Domingo she had ducked into an indoor market to buy some merengue tapes and cigars. Suddenly the lights had gone out—not unusual in a city half without electricity—and when she had gotten back to LA (sneaking through customs with heart failure) and presented the booty as a gift to Raymond, the illicit, fragrant Cubanos had mysteriously turned into stale tubes of straw. During the blackout, the boxes had been switched.

  “Okay, you guys.”

  Raymond chuckles, “Just a joke.”

  Like shaving cream in a uniform pocket, or shoeblack on the rim of a cap. Harmless locker-room stuff.

  Raymond likes to be seen as playing it loose. On-the-surface loose. He is dealing with a double whammy—being African-American and having come up through management, an ex-marine and college coach with an advanced degree in sports management. He is not, as Cassidy is not, someone who played in the majors, a “baseball man.”

  You would think this would make them allies.

  Dulce sticks her head in. “Travis? Skip O’Donnell’s calling from the road.”

  Travis leaves.

  Cassidy gets up to follow but Raymond prevents her by closing the door.

  “I got another call from Jacinto Rincón.”

  Director of Latin American Operations, oh shit.

  “How is Jacinto?”

  “Pissed. His own scouts, the ones down there beating the bushes every day, want to know what happened with Cruz. Why didn’t they get the tip?”

  “It’s a favor from Pedro. He’s my godfather.”

  “Their perception is Los Angeles is horning in on their territory.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “They think it’s because you’re my girl.”

  “Your girl?”

  “Those were Jacinto’s words: ‘What are you doing, sending your girl down here?’ ”

  Raymond’s eyes hold hers, then look away. Suddenly they are both embarrassed.

  “What else can they think?” he says. “I’ve lost control of my staff?”

  A small bulldozer is crossing the field. Guys are digging around third base.

  Cassidy’s voice drops to a mumble. “I’m sorry if I messed things up for you.”

  “You’re the one whose percentages have been down.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve still got to prove yourself to a lot of people. These threats don’t help—”

  “They’ll go away.”

  “—especially after Gordon and Cappalletti.”

  Gordon and Cappalletti, Gordon and Cappalletti, twin anvils of failure hammered over and over every day since the June draft. Gordon and Cappalletti, Cassidy’s top two high school prospects, both pitchers, both drafted in the first ten rounds—a good percentage that would have gone a long way toward bolstering her credibility as the only woman scout in the majors. Instead she lost both players and wound up skewered on the sports page.

  Cappalletti didn’t sign because at the last minute he opted for an athletic scholarship to Princeton. Fifteen hundred on the SATs, a handsome kid from a well-to-do family in Newport Beach, he was altogether too good to be true. Still, they had a handshake deal and the father unapologetically went back on his word. Why let your son play the game he loves when he could grow up to be an investment banker?

  Not her fault, maybe. But Gordon.

  Gordon’s people (an earnest African-American family from Gardena) pleaded not to sign him before the California State All-Star Game because it would have made him ineligible to play in the last big event of his high school career. Cassidy, not wanting to take that away from the kid, let the signing hang. In the fifth inning of the All-Star Game her boy Gordon tried to be a hero and dove for the bunt in a crushing collision with the catcher that shattered his right wrist. The contract flew off the table like a petal in the wind.

  Two early-round draft picks wasted.

  Raymond Woods is not a screamer, doesn’t have to be: “You never should have let Gordon play in that game.”

  Adding: “You’re too nice.”

  Just a toss-away as he headed down the hall, but in thirty years as a competitive athlete nobody had ever accused Cassidy Sanderson of being nice. Read my clips! she should have shouted.

  Then there was the article in the Los Angeles Times bemoaning the lost art of baseball scouts. “Ivory hunters,” fierce individualists who carried the heart and history of the game across the American Serengeti in their Chevrolet sedans. They knew every nuance of the sport and would lie, cheat and steal to sign a prospect: promise ’em anything and carry cash. Romantic. Colorful. Loners, drinkers, misogynists—gone! Replaced by the national draft. In fact the job has become so downgraded, they’ve even given it to a girl.

  Take a look at Cassidy Sanderson, the writer went on to suggest. Played softball for UCLA, superstar all-American shortstop once named “best defensive player in the world,” goes on to play professional hardball for the all-female Colorado Silver Bullets, retires at age thirty-three and becomes a scout for the forward-thinking Dodgers. Gets
two of her prospects drafted in the first ten rounds and what happens? Unaccountably, she allows them both—Gordon and Cappelletti—to drift away. Couldn’t make the sign. Clearly not a “baseball man.” Another sad example of the corruption of the game.

  “The media loves to pull that horseshit,” Raymond had said. But the heat was on. Being first, being visible, she would pay.

  Gordon and Cappalletti, two bad-luck ghosts who stuck around long past Halloween. She had turned over rocks in schoolyards from hell, logged the miles in the Babe Ruth leagues, amateur ball and area code games, but nobody surfaced outstanding enough to break the spell.

  Until Alberto Cruz.

  “I took a flier going down there, but you approved the sign,” she scolds Raymond. “I tried him out under the worst conditions, the most crapped-up field in history, then I called you, and what did you tell me? You knew I was in Jacinto Rincón’s little kingdom. Did that stop you? What did you say?”

  The playing field had been nothing but a gap in the center of town, as if whatever had been there had atrophied and blown away, leaving dried clay and weeds bordered by scrub jungle of acacia and mesquite. Cassidy stood where the third base line would have been if they’d had a third base. The groundskeepers—two eight-year-olds in swim trunks—set out the bases, which were rags held down by rocks. Cassidy marked off ninety feet with her tape measure, but after second base they ran out of rags. No chance of running out of rocks.

  But this, she knew, was Alberto Cruz’s field of dreams, and felt with him that excruciating pregame rapture as he ceremoniously untwisted a plastic sack (the equipment bag), opening up the most crucial thirty minutes of his life.

  “Check it! We should charge admission.”

  Monroe, the schizoid Dominican street hustler who had driven her to Río Blanco, strutted back and forth, keeping a supercilious eye on the laid-off sugarcane workers who had ambled over to witness the tryout. That morning he had been hawking factory art at tourists; now he was George Steinbrenner.