The Setup Man

by T. T. Monday

  I don’t know exactly what happens next, whether it is an honest slip or what, but I plant the pitch square in the big man’s back. He drops his bat, flexes his still-massive shoulders, shakes his head. As he trots to first, I think I see him smile.

  And that’s it for me. Skipper walks slowly from the dugout. He steps carefully over the foul line. The organ plays something cheerful—no “Kashmir” now.

  “Maybe you were right,” Skipper says as I hand him the ball.

  “Yeah,” I say, “I don’t know what happened.”

  “Sure you don’t,” he says.

  Skipper raises his right hand, and Malachy Garcia races in from the bullpen.

  12

  So my career as a side-of-the-bus man is over before it starts. After the game, I am surprised to find that even though I never wanted to be the closer, the failure stings. It was a humiliating performance, and I wasn’t lying to Skipper: I don’t know what happened. Just because I don’t want to be the closer doesn’t mean I like giving up runs.

  I have been in this position before. I never wanted to be a husband until I ruined my marriage. Okay, maybe “ruined” is too strong a word. The official line is that Ginny and I married too early. We have come to accept this explanation for the sake of simplicity (and also because it comes with a ready-made lesson for our daughter), but what actually happened is much more complicated. We met in college at Cal State Fullerton. Our age certainly contributed to our demise as a couple, but maybe more important was the fact that Ginny never graduated. After I got my signing bonus from the Bay Dogs, she decided it was senseless to keep dragging herself to lectures and labs. She had been majoring in leisure studies, which is a ridiculous name for a major but was actually the most efficient path to achieving her ambition of running a nature camp for needy children. It was hard to escape the name, though: if she was going for a degree in leisure, why not just drop out and start practicing? My signing bonus made that possible. We bought a small house near her parents in Culver City, and Ginny stopped taking the pill. It had always given her headaches, and, really, what was the point? Her mother had gone through menopause at forty and warned Ginny and her sisters not to wait to have children. So, when she missed her first period three months later (I was by that point playing rookie ball in the Arizona League, flying her in once a month to take the edge off), we decided to go for it. We got married after a day game in Vegas, and when the season was over, I returned home a married man.

  I became resentful nearly right away. Here I was, twenty-two years old, locked down for life. During the season, it had been exciting having a steady girl. We met in hotel rooms, hotel bars, rental cars. The foreign players on the team especially envied my situation—their girls could never get visas to visit them in the States. I felt lucky. But when I got home to Culver City, it felt like something else: Ginny and her mother had painted the second bedroom yellow (we were not going to find out the sex of the child) and dolled it up with furnishings—bassinets and changing tables and musical mobiles and diaper cans and wet-wipe warmers—that I knew existed but thought I would not own until much later in life.

  Of course, when Izzy was born, I loved the hell out of her. But I was always on the road. Every time I saw her, she was another couple months older. She had a new word, a new tooth, a new friend at playgroup. Ginny changed quickly, too. At first she embraced the mom thing like nothing else, becoming the leader of Izzy’s playgroup, hatching plans with some of the other moms for a line of sexy lace nursing bras. But Ginny is just as restless as me, and none of it stuck. By the time Isabel turned one, Ginny was talking about going back to school, but we had no one to watch the baby. Ginny’s mom was still working full-time, and we couldn’t afford a nanny. (I was earning a minor-league salary, the bonus money spent long ago on the house and the conjugal visits.) I asked her to wait a bit longer. Frustrated and angry, she began drinking to pass the time. Even worse than the drinking, she began to think of me as the cause of her stalled ambition. I couldn’t defend myself, because I was playing ball seven nights a week on the other side of the country. I had moved up to double-A, playing home games in Richmond, Virginia. For a player aged twenty-three and a half, double-A was not bad. I could see a path to the majors in a year or two. But I was not allowed to feel any pride. My phone, my e-mail, my voice mail—all were filled to capacity with bile from my wife, three time zones away, drunk, with a screaming baby in the background. It started to affect my concentration on the mound. The pitching coach suggested that I “mute” her. (“Worked for me in the Marine Corps,” he said, “and it was my fucking life on the line there, not a game in the double-A standings.”) I took his advice and stopped returning Ginny’s calls. At first the volume of messages increased, but then it slackened off. My pitching improved, and by the end of the summer I had been called up to triple-A—the last step before the big leagues.

  I finished out the season with the triple-A Riverside Iguanas, posting an earned-run average in the low twos and putting together a twenty-five-inning scoreless streak (just luck, really). I started listening to the buzz, heard talk of trades in which I was mentioned in the same breath as major-league players I had watched on TV. I came home a conquering hero, dick swinging like an elephant’s trunk.

  And my key did not open the front door.

  Since then I have learned that very few marriages survive the minor leagues. What Ginny and I went through—rather, what I put us through—is second only to military deployments in the number of divorces it provokes. The combination of uncertainty and estrangement is tough on even the strongest bonds. For the tenuous union between Ginny and me, it was death.

  I made the big-league club midway through the next season, bouncing back and forth between Riverside and San José several times (just as I described to Díaz). The following spring, I made the opening-day pitching staff, and I have never looked back.

  Never about baseball, that is. I have tried to be as clear-eyed as possible about my marriage. I try never to forget that I probably would have stalled out in Virginia if I had not blocked out my wife. She was desperate, raising a baby by herself, feeling trapped and isolated. She needed me, but I was on the other side of the country with my own set of problems. Ultimately, I made a choice. Part of me still cannot believe I did it, because there was no guarantee I would regain my confidence on the mound. I might just as easily have lost both my wife and my career. I consider myself lucky that one of the two panned out.

  So, yeah, I realize that I will probably regret blowing my chance to be the closer. But in the decade since my divorce, I have learned not to put all my eggs in one basket, even if doing so means a broken heart. And a second job hunting down blackmailers.

  The beat writers want a word with me after the game. Besides the usual shit about how it felt to blow the game, they want me to expand on the comments in Buzzy’s interview montage.

  “Hey, Johnny—what does that mean, you hate waiting around?”

  “It means I’ve got to get out of here, guys.”

  “Sure, Johnny, but give us a sentence at least. What does it mean that you’re not that kind of guy?”

  “Whatever I meant when I said those words, it’s not what they mean now. You know how it is, fellas, they cut and paste like scrapbookers up there.”

  “I can’t use that, Johnny. Gimme something else.”

  “How about this: Johnny Adcock says he’s glad to be a setup man.”

  I grab my coat, unplug my phone from the charger. There is a missed call from Marcus.

  “Really, guys. Tomorrow.”

  “Fine, Johnny, okay …” The reporters’ attention fizzles away from me like a fuse. “Hey,” I hear one of them say, “where is that new kid, the backup catcher? I have been meaning to get some color on him.…”

  13

  The next morning, three days after Frankie Herrera’s death, his funeral is held in a dark and dour Catholic church in Los Gatos, a tony suburb in the foothills southwest of San José. A house he
re runs about two million dollars. I’m pretty sure Los Gatos was chosen because it’s the home of the Eberhardts, the family that owns the Bay Dogs. Frankie Herrera had no family in the Bay Area—his people are all in southern California—but if he did, Los Gatos is the last place I’d expect to find them.

  The widow Herrera is in the front pew, flanked by her twin sons. She’s wearing a tight-fitting black skirt suit and a veil. The pew also contains an older couple I assume are her parents, or maybe her in-laws. The Bay Dogs contingent fills most of the other seats. All the players are in attendance, along with the coaches, front-office staff, and various members of the Eberhardt family. Rumor has it that the Eberhardt fortune dates back to the gold rush, but I have always thought ladies’ footwear is a more likely bet. The current scion is Richard L. Eberhardt, a spoiled but ultimately benign middle-aged child—a Californian Prince Charles. Mr. Eberhardt sits next to his latest wife, a twenty-eight-year-old blonde named (I kid you not) Laura Ashley. From the looks of it, they’ve been busy: Ms. Ashley is sporting a baby bump.

  Because Frankie hadn’t been with the team that long, the eulogy is given by a player who knew him in the minor leagues, a young outfielder named White.

  “Frank Herrera was many guys all at once,” White says. “He was a ballplayer first of all, but he was also a husband, a father, and a businessman.”

  A couple of the guys in my pew snicker at the word “businessman,” even though the speaker hadn’t meant it to be funny. I want to reach over and clock them. Silence is an underrated virtue, but there are a few instances where it is absolutely essential. A funeral, for example. I know very little about Frankie’s life outside baseball, but what I do know suggests he was a selfless and energetic member of his community, both here and in Mexico. He didn’t have to build a baseball field in Sonora. Plenty of athletes make millions and give nothing back.

  The outfielder continues, “After games, on the road, in the middle of the night, Frankie was always there to listen. His friends would do anything for him. And he had friends in every city, it seemed like. Anyone who knew him understood that Frankie loved bringing people together.”

  Another snicker from the assholes in my pew. Look, I get it: “bringing people together” could mean that Frankie enjoyed female companionship. I understand that you can’t say that in front of the guy’s wife, but still I wish these guys had the decency to shut their mouths.

  After a perfectly competent rendition of “Eagle’s Wings” by the church organist, the mourners form a line to pay their respects. The casket is closed—a smart move, given the scene I saw on Highway 92—and propped on a cart before the altar. One by one, we pass before Frankie’s remains. The widow and the twins stand off to the side, receiving condolences. The Latin players make a big show of kneeling and crossing themselves, muttering prayers in Spanish even before they reach the front of the line. When my turn comes, I put my left hand on the casket and bow my head. A few seconds later, I straighten up and walk over to the widow.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “We’re all going to miss him.” I lean in to give her a hug—the polite kind, where you pat the other person’s back and leave room for the Holy Spirit. But as I’m patting, I feel something between my legs. For a minute I think it’s one of the twins horsing around, but then I realize it’s the widow’s hand. She’s cupping my balls. Or maybe grabbing them. I can’t tell if it’s a gesture of flirtation or aggression. I lean back. The look on her face offers no clues. Her wide, dark eyes are intent; her mouth is tight and small. The expression could mean “Let’s fuck” as easily as “I own you.” Sometimes the two go hand in hand. Or balls in hand, as the case may be. I would never sleep with her, but I’m tempted. Six years and two babies since she made that film, and she hasn’t lost a drop of the juice. But even if she’s coming on to me—it’s a funeral, what does she expect?

  “Any progress?” she whispers.

  “Stay tuned,” I say. “It’s early days.”

  This is not the answer she was hoping to hear. She squeezes my nuts.

  “What the—?”

  “Work faster,” she says.

  I understand she’s upset, so I repeat my promise to do everything I can, adding (because she has me by the balls) that I will work as quickly as possible, but that, like her late husband, I am a professional ballplayer with a busy schedule.

  With her other hand, she reaches up and strokes my cheek. “Oh, Adcock,” she whispers, “I know you won’t let us down.” She gives my balls one last tug, then lets them swing free.

  The team has chartered a bus to take us home from the funeral—home being the ballpark, where batting practice awaits. I’m slouched in a rear seat, reading the paper, when the phone rings.

  “You need to get your ass down here,” Marcus says.

  “I’m on the bus,” I say, “but I’ve got my bike at the park. Let me see if I can sneak away for a few minutes.”

  “No—I’m not at the restaurant.”

  “Where are you?”

  “L.A.”

  “L.A.?”

  “Yeah, I found Bam Bam.”

  “No shit, that was fast. How is he?”

  “He’d be a lot better if he wasn’t dead.”

  “How do you know he’s dead?”

  Marcus snorts. “How do I know? Because I just fucking shot him, that’s how.”

  14

  After my shaky debut as a closer, Skipper doesn’t owe me any favors. But when was the last time you needed a favor from someone who actually owed you one?

  “My daughter is sick,” I say.

  Skipper is halfway through his customary pregame plate of linguine. Today is Wednesday, which means clam sauce. I wince as he slurps the greasy noodles, pausing every so often to chew a rubbery morsel of gray mollusk.

  “I’m gonna call bullshit here, Adcock.”

  “Skip, I promise—”

  “Spare me. We both know it.”

  Skipper slurps. “But I’ll tell you what,” he says, “let’s make a deal. We go to L.A. the day after tomorrow.”

  “Right. But you know, I keep thinking about Herrera, wondering if he got to say goodbye to his kids—”

  “I talk, then maybe you talk. Got it?”

  I nod.

  “How about this. How about I let you go—I can repeat that disgraceful lie about your daughter if you like, or I can come up with something better—and then you rejoin the club when we get to L.A.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “The catch is that when you come back you quit this pussyfooting and man up to the role I gave you.”

  “You mean being the closer?”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Adcock! What the hell were you doing out there? You may have fooled the frigging Padres, but you didn’t fool me. I know you were trying to throw the game. And let me remind you, that is a capital offense.”

  Skip played for the Reds in the mid-eighties, when Pete Rose was player-manager. He took the lessons of Charlie Hustle very seriously—the bad as well as the good.

  “I wasn’t sandbagging out there, Skip. It was bad luck.”

  “Bad luck, my ass. You don’t want to be our closer, fine. But here’s news for you, Johnny: we don’t always get to do what we want.”

  “I know that, Skip. I wasn’t trying to fail.”

  Skipper finishes the noodles. He tears a hunk of garlic bread from the half-baguette the kitchen provides with his meal. He uses this like a sponge to mop up the oil on his plate.

  “This is the deal I’m offering you,” he says. “Take it or leave it, but there are plenty of arms in the minors perfectly willing to do what they’re told.”

  15

  Half past midnight, my plane touches down at LAX. I turn my phone back on and see that I have a text from Bethany. Two words: Call me.

  Her voice is garbled, which worries me until I remember that she swims two-a-days on Wednesdays. She is back in the pool, talking to me on her waterproof throat mike. She says that because o
f the poor sound quality—it is an early-stage prototype from a company she has funded—she uses the apparatus only on calls where she is expected to speak very little, like board meetings. The fact that she takes my call suggests her news must be important.

  “Hello, Johnny? [Gowmp! Gowmp!] Johnny, can you hear me?”

  “Roger that, deep-sea diver.”

  “Johnny [Grrrrimp!], I went to the San Mateo coroner. [Krrrz-gowmp!] Can you hear me?”

  I try to speak as slowly as I can: “The name, Bethany—tell me the girl’s name. That is all I need.”

  “Yeah, that’s the thing, Johnny. She has lots of names. They ran the prints [Grrrgle grrrgle], and this girl is known as Luisa Valdez, Alejandra Sol, and one more [Gowmp!] that I can’t remember right now. I will e-mail it to you when I get home.”

  “Don’t e-mail anything! Do you hear me? Something has happened.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in L.A.”

  “Why L.A.? [Gowmp!]”

  “Marcus is here.”

  “But you have a game.”

  “It’s okay. Skipper knows. Listen, Bethany, I want you to go home and stay there. As a favor to me.”

  “What happened, Johnny? [Grrrrkle!] Tell me what happened.”

  “Nothing—a guy down here was killed. A pornographer. Nobody important.”

  “Do you know who [Gowmp!] killed him?”

  “I have some idea. So are you going home after this?”

  “Yes [Grrkle grrkle], yes, Daddy.”

  “You know I don’t like it when you call me that.”

  “Sorry. You should come [Gowmp! Gowmp!] and punish me.”

  “I have to go,” I say. “Thanks for going to the morgue.”

  “No problem [Splash!]. It was fun!”