Out of My League

by Dirk Hayhurst

  My brother fired first. “What the hell do you want me to do, just not be sick?”

  “I want you to act like a man for once, Mr. Alcoholics Anonymous.”

  “A man? You mean like you, sitting around all day feeling sorry for yourself and being useless?” The cavalier, almost mocking way the words were delivered drove the insult in deep.

  “Brak, shut up! Go upstairs and shut up,” Mom pleaded.

  It was too late. It wasn’t that my father’s fuse was short; it was that there was no fuse at all. “Fuck you! You hear me,” Dad screamed. “Fuck you, you worthless son of a bitch, I should have shot your drunk ass when I had the chance. You worthless, you—” He couldn’t hold it together long enough to speak anymore.

  “Sam, calm down,” my mom pleaded. “I can handle this.”

  “You should have shot yourself, you mean,” grandstanded my brother.

  Dad burst into a maelstrom of incoherent cussing and threats. He wanted to attack my brother, nearly foaming at the mouth to kill him. Then, when he couldn’t negotiate the steps with his poor balance, the other side came; the pain and the frustration of being crippled and powerless hit and he wanted to kill himself. He screamed it all out, then fell down gulping for breath as though he might have a heart attack. My mom tried to help him up, but he lashed out at her with “Get away from me, you enabling bitch!” Then he grabbed his head and sobbed like a man destroyed.

  I felt like I was dying inside. Like everything I hoped for, had worked so hard to keep balanced this off-season—my whole career in fact—was now burning down around me, and all I could do was sit and wait for the flames to take me with them. My eyes had collected tears but I didn’t notice until Bonnie squeezed me, pulling me back from the nightmare. I was instantly horrified that I’d kept her here to witness this. I wiped a hand across my face and escorted her out the door.

  Trudging through the snow to Bonnie’s car, I had no words. All I could do was stare into her face, embarrassed and remorseful that this was my home.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

  But it was, and I knew it. It was my family, and Bonnie’s forgiveness was nullified by that undeniable fact. I shook my head. “I’m so sorry,” I said again, almost robotically.

  “It’s okay,” she repeated, wrapping her arms around my waist. “I want you to be okay.”

  “How are you still here right now? How are you not running for your life?”

  “Why would I run?”

  “Because I can’t think of one single good reason for you to stay.”

  “How about because I want to be here with you?” she said, and let me go to look at me, to make sure I could see that promise in her eyes again.

  My mother flung the house door open and marched into the snow, pill bottles in one hand and a wad of bills in the other. Behind her came my father. He heaved with the same loss of control he showed in the house, his face flushed and wet. He still had no shoes or pants on. The nerve damage he’d received from his tumble off the roof so many years back rendered his feet numb to the cold. Even so, going the way he was, it was unlikely he would have noticed.

  “You should go,” I said to Bonnie.

  “You want me to leave you here?”

  “I’ll be alright.” I kissed Bonnie good-bye, tucked her into her car, and shut the door. She backed out and drove off slowly down the road. I stayed, turning to face my parents.

  “We ain’t got the money, Pat!” my father continued as my mother cleaned snow off her car.

  “It’s always about the money, Sam. Money, money, money! There’s never going to be enough of it, so get used to it!”

  “There would be if you’d stop being such a goddamn idiot with it.”

  At this my mom threw her hands up as if she were appealing to an invisible jury, as if she were saying she’d done all she could but it was no use, Your Honor.

  “How dare you, you hypocritical bastard? You spend whatever you want on tools and comic books to make yourself feel good and I don’t say a word, and when I go to get Brak some pills to keep him employed, to make sure he’s out of the house at least eight hours a day, you throw this tantrum. He’s right, you have lost your mind. If you’re so concerned about this, then take it, I’m leaving.” On that, she threw the wad of bills at Dad, got into her car, and backed out past me, over the same tire tracks Bonnie had just made.

  My dad hobbled desperately after the bills before the wind could blow them away. He ended up falling to his knees trying to bend over. Then, on all fours, he crawled after the money, oblivious to the cold and the wife who’d left him.

  Chapter Six

  After years of battling with alcohol addiction, my brother sobered up last season. My winning the championship with the San Antonio Missions was great, but his was the real victory, or so we thought. It was supposed to mark the start of something new and wonderful for our family, but it soon became apparent that things were more complicated than we thought.

  The attention my brother’s redemption garnered made him self-righteous. Since he’d solved his own problem, he thought he could solve all the rest of the family’s problems too. He began with pronouncing judgment over my dad, a man crippled with physical and mental ailments stemming from a horrific fall. My brother demanded my Dad pick up his cross and follow in his footsteps. Anything less, said my brother, was weakness.

  This didn’t go over well with my dad. To him, my brother was a tone-deaf thirty-year-old going on thirteen. His sobriety did not change the fact that he didn’t pay rent, he made messes, he wasted utilities, and he had to be supported, reminded, and motivated to keep jobs. Now my brother, the prodigal son, was forcing answers to things he didn’t comprehend down my father’s throat when every day my dad suffered more than the previous for reasons he could not articulate or control. He was explosive at the drop of a hat, weeping in grocery stores, melting down in restaurants; it was like the fall had infected him with something, and as the days passed, more of my father disappeared into the darkness spreading through him. My brother’s cure was an accelerant. All my dad wanted was for the firstborn to grow up, act his age, and leave him alone as the seconds of his own life ticked away.

  Their frustration with each other grew, and soon the house became a war zone as the pair traded what they hated most about each other, screaming horrible things that made you wonder how anyone could ever call the four of us kindred. As it turned out, my brother was not as perfect as he thought, and without the guise of intoxication to hide behind, there was no doubt all his harsh and cutting words were intentional. Dad, on the other hand, didn’t care about his own life, let alone how the words he screamed would affect the lives of others.

  Mom remained stuck in the middle, trying to hold the pieces together. The normally placid nature she maintained while handling the household drama was ebbing away, and just a few weeks ago she called to tell me she wanted out. She was sick of being the ocean that caught the molten overflow. She was sick of catching love like some food drop for refugees in hostile territory.

  This was my family now, and I remained ever the outsider. I tried my best to distance myself through baseball, but this was always mine, waiting behind the lights of the game for me to return to it. After six years of beating-around-the-bush leagues, I now knew my biggest challenges weren’t in the game of baseball, but what happened in the off-season.

  When my dad finished picking up the money, he retreated to the house. I didn’t follow. I had no place to go and no car to get there, but any place was better than being in my home. I walked aimlessly to the backyard, to a stretch of open acres that rolled out against farmland and a forgotten wooden wall that stood there.

  In my youth, my dad had erected a makeshift pitching target in the center of the backyard using scavenged lumber from my old clubhouse. He painted it with a white square to mark a strike zone. Sixty feet away, staring down at the target, Dad built a pitcher’s mound: a lumpy pile
of shoveled earth formed into a grassy hill with a cinder block for a rubber. I scored many muddy ruts into that mound as I practiced, pretending I was striking out hall of famers. On and on I’d go until I had won the World Series, and the family’s bucket of baseballs had turned into ragged dog toys.

  It had been years since my last innings on Hayhurst Field. I scaled the snow-covered mound once more, kicking off enough powder to find the brick rubber beneath. I scooped a handful of snow, packed it into a ball, and came set. I knew what to do next, the familiar routine of winding and delivering, but I couldn’t move. I just stood there frozen by a memory. For all the grand victories I’d won on that mound, it was the greatest defeat I thought of most.

  Nearly a decade ago, the local newspaper said I was the best chance my high school, Canton South, had of beating the unstoppable powerhouse that was Central Catholic High. In fact, I could remember reading about myself on the day of the game, how the paper said I was a major college prospect and that Central, a private Catholic school known for its shameless recruiting of area studs, would struggle against the publicly educated mighty-righty. All the players on Central’s varsity squad were groomed for college scholarships, and a few were getting interest from pro scouts. It would be the biggest game I’d ever pitch in and the first time I’d ever know the compounding effects of media hype.

  Central beat me like a drum. I felt naked on the mound as run after run scored. The Central kids read the paper, too, and for Catholic school kids they sure talked a lot of shit. They taunted and mocked me, using lines from the newspaper as I struggled to make it through innings. Then their parents, who showed up in luxury cars and dressed in luxury clothes, screamed at me from the stands that I had no business being out there, that I was a waste of their kids’ time. It stung and infuriated me, but the worst part was when the voices of my own teammates started to turn from encouragement to complaint. I can’t remember how long the innings lasted, but it didn’t matter; it’s always too long when your own team is embarrassed by you. Even my dad left before the game was over.

  I hated Central, I hated my teammates, I hated the newspaper, and I hated myself. I didn’t live up to anyone’s expectations, especially my own, and the anger I felt at the people who pronounced judgment over me boiled in my stomach until I could spit fire.

  I came home that evening and went straight to the practice mound and wooden target determined to make things right. Those were the glorious days of youth when I could throw and throw and not have to worry about arm problems. Fixing my issues was as simple as lathering up in a sweat and leaving it all on the mound. But that night, I couldn’t. My arm was fine, but the mound was occupied by another thrower.

  It was my dad who stood on that homemade pile of lumpy earth. I hadn’t seen him there in years, but there he was with the family bucket beside him, a ball in his right hand. He wore no glove; it would have been too hard for him to grip a baseball with his left hand ensnared in a mitt, if he could even get a mitt on. As it was, he had to work the ball into his gnarled fingers. After his accident, his hands wouldn’t work right anymore. The nerve damage had not only deadened their sensitivity, but also caused them to contract and shrivel like wilted flower petals. Still, he persisted, and once he had a hold on the ball, he rocked, took an unsteady step down the mound toward the target, and tossed. The tattered ball popped free, hung in the air for an awkward second, then crashed to the earth below.

  My dad looked upon the ball for a moment, watching it lie lifeless only a few steps from him, then grabbed his fingers and began stretching them, coercing them to function better. He reached back into the bucket, took a new ball, mashed it into his stretched fingers, and repeated the motion. The ball tumbled through the air, crossing the thick grass that swallowed my dad’s Velcro-fastened shoes, and landed with a soft thud a few feet from the target. Over and over he did this, each throw landing in an unpredictable nature until, finally, one ball flew from his hand, crossed the landscape, and thudded into white paint. Nature stopped around my dad. He stood motionless, crooked from the damage to his body yet sturdy like some statue of marble and majesty.

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I’d just witnessed a truly beautiful moment. My dad, robbed of a childhood joy because of a harrowing accident, had just reclaimed a lost piece of himself, a part thought dead when it was he who had tumbled through the air and landed on the ground, not in a soft thud but in a cacophonous blast that accompanied the destruction of life as he knew it. He stared at the target from high atop his throne of sod and dirt, then looked at his own still capable hands. He took the emptied bucket and made his way around the yard, laboriously plucking baseballs from the grass like Easter eggs. After he’d shepherded them home, he once again threaded the bucket handle into the contorted digits and made his return trip to the mound.

  That was when he saw me.

  My dad, standing in his overalls, forehead glistening, froze at the sight of me. He looked surprised to see me standing there, ashamed even. He dropped the bucket and asked, “You need on here?”

  I needed to go into the house and avoid my homework, play video games, call girls, be a teenager. I needed to ask my father if he wanted me to catch him, or collect the stray balls, or if I could simply remain and observe. But I was young, and I was angry.

  “Ya, I want the mound.”

  “Alright then,” said my dad. He stepped off.

  I emptied that bucket of balls time and time again, pounding the white square until the sun set and I could no longer make out the target. My dad stayed to watch. He had left after I was pulled from the day’s game, but he stayed then, watching my frustration pour out as I tried to knock the target down. I didn’t get any better, I didn’t fix anything, I just threw wildly in the fog of my defeat.

  “I was horrible today,” I declared to my dad. “Just a huge embarrassment. The paper said I was supposed to be great, but I fell apart and everybody thinks I suck.”

  “That stuff don’t mean anything,” he said. “It happens.”

  “It means everything, Dad! You don’t understand. There were scouts there. I had my chance to get noticed and I blew it. I’m never going to get drafted now!” I rifled another ball into the painted wall. It ricocheted off into dark grass.

  My dad said nothing and his silence angered me. I stared him down from the mound and expected him to give an answer that would fix it all. When it didn’t come, I turned away, utterly dissatisfied with him.

  “I keep reading how good Maddux is,” I said. “I try to be like him but I’m not. He makes it look so easy. All those guys do. If I was as good as them, I’d have whipped Central today.”

  “You think Maddux never struggled?”

  “Not like me.”

  “You’re not Maddux. You’re you,” said my dad.

  “I know. I’m terrible. Thanks a lot, Dad. I’m just saying I wish I could be like great pitchers. They never screw up. Haven’t you ever wanted to be like someone great before?”

  “I have,” he confirmed. “Today I was trying to be like you.”

  “Whatever,” I said, batting the sincerity aside. “No one wants to be like me, I’m awful.” On that, I picked up the ball bucket and walked away, leaving my dad there in the dark.

  I dropped my snowball; it didn’t have any answers, nor did this mound or this broken home. I no longer wanted to pitch in a fantasy World Series, and I didn’t want to strike out the side. I didn’t want to be some glorious hero coming back in victory. I wanted to go back in time and change things. I wanted to be on the roof so many years ago. I wanted to stop my brother from drinking. Then I found myself wanting the house to burn down, praying the ground would open and swallow it all. Make all the pain vanish without a trace, but nothing happened. Nothing ever seemed to change.

  In my moment of contempt, I tried to think of one sure thing I had in my life, and all I could be sure of was that, Double A champion or World Series champion, if I came home to this, it wasn’t worth it. I was ti
red of my life being nothing but a title and a jersey, and it was time I did something to change it.

  Chapter Seven

  Days later, I found myself pacing around the kitchen of my grandma’s house with my cell phone pressed to my head and the dulcet tones of my agent tickling my ear. “We could get you down there for the second half,” he strummed. “There’s usually a big turnover rate around the holidays, and they’re always looking for fresh arms. I could get a guy like you there easy because you can do every role.”

  “I don’t know, Adam,” I mumbled. I sat down and flipped aimlessly through a newspaper circular as he spoke, looking at ads for televisions and their bold slogans of savings and holiday joy. “I just don’t feel comfortable with it.”

  “Look, they’ll put you up someplace nice,” he insisted. “Sometimes it’s even a resort. Think about that, Shizzle, a resort in the middle of winter! And don’t worry about the crime stories; the team owners give you an armed escort for the big games. As long as you don’t go into some dark alley, travel alone, or piss off the natives, you shouldn’t lose any limbs.”

  “Why doesn’t that make me feel confident?”

  “I’m your agent. I have to tell you all the risks, no matter how small.”

  “So you consider making sure I stay with the people who have guns indicative of a small risk? I understand you have to sacrifice for this game, but a player has to draw the line somewhere.”

  “Guys go down there all the time and they come back just fine. You’re smart. You’ll make it out in one piece. Besides, I’m more worried about them blowing your arm out than blowing your head off. That’s the real danger of Winter Ball.”

  I had called my agent asking for a way out of the mess that my off-season was turning into and he gave me one, though going all the way to South America wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. He was my baseball agent, however, and this was his best solution. I’d already spent half my year riding buses through the backwoods of America, so the last thing I wanted was to take another bus through what many players referred to as “The Jungle” during the “rejuvenating” months of my off time.