National Treasures

by Ryan McCord

CHAPTER 2 VERMONT’S FINEST, THE TRAVELERS

  At a 7-11 newspaper rack early the next morning, James just stands there in disbelief. The message couldn’t be any clearer; he is not going to become a newspaper reporter anytime soon.

  The telltale headline on the front of The Wall Street Journal reads, “New York Times Layoffs on the Table for 2010”.

  Actually, James doesn’t do much thinking about the issue. It doesn’t help that he can’t think clearly right now anyways because 1.) It’s 6:09 AM and he hasn’t had his coffee yet, let alone brush his teeth or comb his hair, and 2.) He has that damn Rick Astley song stuck in his head, “The only love I ever knew, every time I think of you, my heart starts achin’, my hands keep shakin’, and you know, you know, you know…”

  So naturally he is a little distracted and a little more annoyed. How exactly does that happen, he thought, staring out the window in front of him. “I haven’t even heard a sample of that song since I was at my cousin’s wedding seven years ago.”

  “Come to think of it,” he continues to mull. “Why was that song playing at the wedding, anyways?”

  Today is Thursday, and James had been reading the Wall Street Journal at the field all week, but not today. I’m going to get some coffee, a banana, a granola bar, and some bandits for fishing, he decides.

  I can’t think about the state of the newspaper industry today. I can’t think about how I now have thousands more to compete with for a job while they go ahead and stamp The New York Times to their resume. What’s my highlight? Vegas blogging?...all right, that’s enough. That blog was a great slice of American sports writing. You know what? When I leave this 7-11, I leave the negativity next to the stack of Wall Street Journals at the door.

  And he was able to do just that. But he was still allowing the article to galvanize outlandish ideas regarding his professional future for a good hour.

  Maybe I should go to trade school, he thought. Carpentry. Or maybe I’ll just become a farmhand out in the middle of the palouse somewhere. I wonder if my old man knows any farmers that could use some full time workers? I’m over this whole rat race bullshit anymore. Just work during the day, drink beer next to the fire at night with my dogs living amongst the snow-covered palouse landscape. It would be a retarded Rockwell painting, I know. I’ll be a 30-year-old senior citizen turning into a marshmallow by 7 pm every winter’s night. Just I and my dog, my beer, my color TV, and my fire. Cougar games on Saturday. No cares. Ha!

  Along the way to Gerry’s place, he notices that many of the neighbors not only show support for the stars and stripes up on the flagpoles of each respective front yard, but a second flag is often hanging directly underneath displaying a NASCAR driver’s last name, number and colors.

  James glances at the truck’s clock; it’s 6:15 on the money. Gerry is not outside.

  This activates the tongue-in-cheek side of James’ persona.

  Gerry G isn’t ready, huh? Was I supposed to set the clock back an hour last night?

  This doesn’t annoy James in the least bit, though. He won’t even give Gerry friendly flack for being late. And the principle reason why Gerry’s tardiness doesn’t bother him is because he knows just how hard his buddy has been working this spring.

  Eight-hour days for minor leaguers at spring training include intense conditioning and instructional drills ran by boobs dressed as coaches who are always looking to turn even the minutia’s of the game into a mad science. Typically, each player will also participate in two scrimmages (the away games can consist of up to 50 mile bus trips, whether its to Kissimmee to play the Comets or Vero Beach to play the Travelers), all under the high Florida sun paired with the sticky nuisance of humidity.

  Because of Gerry’s insight, James always knew that the average pro ballplayer slaved for a heck of a lot less than fans give them credit for. And now he was able to see it firsthand, for an extended period of time. For the pro ballplayer who has yet to receive The Call, the passage of each season is a sticky ascertainment: Most will trek through an all too familiar desert with an all too familiar treasure map with the endpoint reading BIG LEAGUES. At Every 100 paces it seems, an oasis will surface. Or does it resurface? Either way, it always manages to have you and a teammate assigned to room 509 at the Red Roof. The Sizzler is on one side, a bar on the other, and in the motel's parking lot rests your travel bus equipped with an old driver who always seems to be going eight hours to Binghamton.

  Knowing that Gerry was only beginning to venture towards the vaunted blur of continuum for an endeavor that so often gives the participant back nothing more than another hardscrabble season in the minors, James is honored to be his driver for the spring.

  James grabs his toothbrush and toothpaste out of the glove compartment and subsequently makes his way towards the house, turns on a faucet near the garage, and proceeds to get in a quick clean and rinse. Momentarily, with his back turned towards the front door, he is kindly patted on the head by Gerry, who’s in good spirits but clearly looking inflicted by a combination of the early morning emergence along with late spring training bodily wear and tear. The only good thing he has to look forward to at this point, simply, is closure concerning his immediate future.

  “Well I slept about as well as a POW last night,” Gerry grumbles in initiating the dialogue for the brief morning commute.

  “Wrist, knee, back, hip?” James asks.

  “Got a text from Ditter around 3:15,” Gerry says dejectedly. “Released.”

  “Oh man. So he was hammered or couldn’t sleep?”

  “No he was sober. Sometimes that’s how they do it here. They called him at three and told him to be in by 4 AM to clean his things out. He’s flying out early this afternoon. He was my roommate in rookie ball. One of my best friends in baseball. I’m no pro at goodbyes but if there was ever a time that warrants a face to face sendoff, I mean.”

  James doesn’t know what to say right now. He learns something new about the game each morning when the two drive to the field before each begins his respective day. Today was no different. The only other guy he knew that got called to clean out his work locker at that kind of hour was a cashier at a corner store in Queens. His name is Dale. He stole Playboys and sold cigarettes without the required NY state stamp on them. Ditter was hitting .301.

  James then suitably reminds Gerry that while the temptation to get upset or mourn about this is certainly justifiable, it has to wait.

  “Unless you go cliché and hit a homerun for the guy,” James half jokes.

  “No, your right,” Gerry nods. “Each area my anatomy has to offer right now is running on passion, and I’m emotionally vulnerable because of it. I gotta find an escape you know?

  “If the competitive zone sends the athlete, you know, signals for a free download trial offer…then I’m getting them today.”

  That’s when it hit him.

  “Today is Game 7 of the World Series,” Gerry avows. “I’m either going to win or go home today.”

  James offers Gerry a closed fist and states, “Gerry Baseball.”

  Gerry follows with a fist pump and utters, “Your boy,” before making his exit.

  At this point, it was only 6:25. James notes to himself that his favorite sports talk radio show is on the air in 35 minutes, and compulsively decides to go park in the grass lot behind field number four to get his sports fix for the day via AM radio. By the show’s first commercial break at 7:25, James was making up for Gerry’s recent bedtime misfortune by taking his own morning siesta.

  Because of the fast rising Florida sun and consequential mercury in the thermostat, James manages to break out of his slumber at 9:40 as a result of being too warm.

  Gerry G’s game starts in twenty minutes, he thought.

  So he rolls his windows up to a crack, pockets his keys, throws on his Presidents cap and sunglasses, then exits the vehicle and notices the scruffy guy in the vehicle next to him is puffing on a marijuana cigarette. James couldn’t smell the pot yet
. He could just tell by the way the guy was lipping the narrow white object as if it were a straw drawing from a triple thick chocolate shake.

  The guy happens to look up as well, quasi startled, perhaps more because he learns someone was actually in James’s truck. But James keeps his cool and just gives the guy in the Hummer a casual head nod skywards as if to say, “Don’t sweat it.”

  While James makes his way to the back end of the truck to open the canopy latch, it occurs to him that he had been reclined out of the guy’s sight.

  Now he knows the Hummer door is open as Peter Frampton’s famous live recording of “Do You Feel Like We Do,” pours from out of the vehicle. Distracted and a little nervous now, James forgot what he was looking for in the back of his truck.

  “Hey is that a bed back there?” the guy prompts excitedly with a raspy voice.

  James is a little tense, but with some guise from his black shades, appears unfazed. “Yeah. I’m here watching a buddy of mine the thrifty way.”

  “You don’t happen to be buddies with Gerry G do ya?” the guy asks while pointing towards James’s Washington plates.

  “Yeah, you know him?”

  “I’m Benny King, his old host Dad from Vermont. I come down here every year for vacation and catch a few of his games while I’m at it.”

  “Yes, I heard about you,” James reaches for a handshake. “You’re the guy who taught him how to Bar-B-Que. I’m James.”

  “Yeah! Fuck Ya! Listen,” Benny responds, his intonation now steadily decreasing. “I got some of Vermont’s finest doobies in my rig if you want to join me?”

  James’ doesn’t have any reservations with herb, its just that he has now been here long enough to develop a daily routine, and sometimes he waffles when asked to jump out of the safety net of his routine. Especially when it’s to get high with a guy he just met. James wishes at times he could live life as carefree as a stoner, but he’s just not wired that way.

  “You know Benny it sounds great,” James shrugs. “But I’ve been asleep the last couple of hours and I really just want to get up and walk around and get some fresh air for right now.”

  James wonders if he can get a little stoned by just looking at a guy like Benny, who is so ripped himself, not to mention amusing to look at and communicate with right now. Benny’s face is decorated with a dark handlebar moustache, which is complemented nicely with a five o’ clock shadow, Harley shades and a Presidents cap. He wears jorts and a black shirt featuring an animated picture of Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy in bed as if they just finished shagging. Miss Piggy is sound asleep, head and hand nestled on Kermit’s chest. Kermit appears totally relaxed, exhaling a puff on a cigarette. The red, white and blue colored lettering underneath reads: Kermit is a Pig F*#$*r!

  “Hey that’s cool,” Benny smiles with his palms out at the sides of his hips. “If I don’t see you in there, you’re welcome to find me back in here during the 7th inning stretch.”

  He then adjusts to a depreciative tone, “I know they don’t fuckin’ have ‘em at minor league games in Spring Training, so I’m making one up!”

  James sort of chuckles in response to Benny’s rain check offer while making his own way towards the action.

  As he gets closer to the action, James looks for Gerry’s number 48 on the nearby field. Sure enough, there’s Gerry stretching near the on-deck circle just beyond the dugout. Almost immediately, James notices that Gerry, atypically wearing eye black today, looks as if he’s already knee deep into the cradle of self-discipline and determination. Sports writers have been known to refer this look of added focus as The Game Face.

  Gerry isn’t here to have fun today, James thought. He’s here to win this game. And they will win because of him, or lose because of him. He hasn’t seen his friend look like this since the game Wazzu got knocked out early in the College World Series their sophomore year.

  James then looked around for a place to sit. Excluding himself and Benny, there weren’t more than seven or eight spectators who appeared to have a vested interest in this game.

  Come to think of it, James thought, there are usually a few white parents and one or two young black wives.

  But he doesn’t see them today. Did their sons or husbands get cut along with Didder this morning? There are a few fans wearing Travelers apparel. There is also a few autograph-collecting super fans and some retired locals just passing through as part of their morning walk routine.

  Then like he always does, James takes a glance up at the shaded spectator tower. It stands at the core of the playing complex, connecting each of the four fields. This is where executives tend to plant themselves during game time.

  But with the first pitch just minutes away, nobody is up there. In fact, nobody is even monitoring the bottom of the stairway. Maybe anybody can go up today, James wonders. He walks over to take a closer look. There isn’t even a posted sign regulating entry to designated individuals.

  I might as well go up here and act casual until someone kicks me out, he thought.

  It wasn’t until the bottom of the sixth inning, with Gerry already having gone 2 for 2 with a triple and a single, that James notices that Gerry wasn’t playing with anybody he recognized other than Robbie Lopez, the popular backup catcher from Sheriden, Wyoming, whom everyone affectionately refers to as “Lopey.” Of the 15 total players dressed for this Presidents split squad, 13 of them had happened to be natives of a Latin American country. Odds suggest that most of these players hail from the Dominican Republic, where the Presidents own a year-round constructive camp in which they sign anybody who wants to drop out of school and commit to baseball for a few thousand dollars and a bunk bed.

  James did not know what all this meant, and for now he didn’t give it much thought either, as Gerry was on deck standing with as much confidence as he’s seen him this Spring.

  Maybe he got some good news today, James thought.

  Then out of the corner of his eye, James notices a pudgy guy waddling his way from the other side of the outfield fence headed towards the parking lot. It’s Benny. He must be getting ready for that seventh-inning stretch a little early.

  A smoke sounds good right now, James thought. But he also knew that he was watching the game from the best spot in the complex. And with Gerry on deck, he didn’t want to take his chances of missing one pitch.

  Five minutes later, after Ramirez popped out to the short stop, lefty-swinging Gerry stepped in the right side of the batter’s box. Incidentally this turns out to be the only minor league at bat of the spring for which the batter himself receives a plate song. It turns out to be the last minute of that very same Frampton classic again. This time it was amplifying with extraordinary force, in turn shattering the fluidity and mood of the game like a fart does in church. Each one of the players sort of flinched, or stepped out of focus for a few seconds as if to collectively say, “That’s some system for a rental, but would you mind?”

  In an apparent display of sportsmanship, and because the bases were empty, the pitcher then drops both his hands to the side and looks to the ground, which gives the impression to the umpire and catcher to reset the signal for the desired pitch.

  The music doesn’t stop. Frampton is wailing away the finishing touches of his guitar solo. Gerry is still in the box. He’s so locked in mentally that he never actually stepped out of the box, let alone call for a time out.

  The Hummer is now backing out of the parking lot, and slowly makes its way toward the exit about 40 yards away, Frampton still killing it.

  Then to the surprise of everyone besides Gerry, the pitcher shortens his normal windup routine to the point where he’s trying to throw a strike by just lunging and firing with as much effort but as little movement as possible. It’s a quick pitch; a tactic rarely used as an attempt to short-circuit the hitter’s fast twitch muscle facility.

  But on a day when every pitch seemed to be coming in a little slower than usual for Gerry G, even this masterfully deceptive pit
ch would not see the catcher’s glove. Gerry’s attention is so competitively glued to the ball that, even as it reaches the halfway point to the plate, he feels comfortable taking time to recognize the supernatural state he is in and goes as far as wondering if it was anything like what Joe Montana experienced in the Super Bowl, driving his team to victory in the last minute like it was against a JV defense. He remembered the great quarterback’s famous line he supposedly uttered by in the huddle during that clutch drive, “Hey, is that John Candy?” He imagined what Joe must have been looking at: Uncle Buck eating popcorn.

  In news beyond the plate, Frampton is now seconds from completing his guitar solo, but Gerry is the only person within a one-mile radius that cannot hear it.

  Now the ball is just about to the plate, and that image of Montana and Candy rapidly dissolves back to the fundamental cognitive process of read and recognition. Only for this rare instance, the ball itself, still with little movement and velocity, now seems to be telepathically delivering the news, “A touch high and a cunt hair outside.” That happens to be Gerry’s hot zone. Every neuron in his sensory system is on alert. He proceeds to drive the ball the opposite way to left field.

  Gerry knew right away he got good wood on the ball. For James’ viewpoint angled from above, it was a Hall of Fame worthy swing, Mantlesque even. Lopey didn’t see it. He was in the middle of skillfully casting a personal best 18 consecutive dime-sized spit shots through an eye-level hole within the chain linked protective fence in front of his seat on the bench. But he heard enough to intuitively rise at the crack of the bat and declare, “Got it, coach!”

  The ball was hit so hard that, like when a novice husky golfer over-swings on his first tee-off, its route began to take a violent slice once it hit the 250 foot range. It shot out towards left center before ultimately clearing the right side of the foul pole by only four feet before actually landing 15 feet past the fence. The players didn’t know what to think. They weren’t sure if they were more in awe of the actual turn of events, or that Gerry G just fooled physics by FedExing a pitch that couldn’t have traveled faster than 80 mph to Disney World.

  To James, it appeared the ball went from bat to landing spot in the same amount of time it takes a teen to text and send “LOL” back to a friend.

  By the time the ball had finished rolling, the crowd applause in “Do You Feel Like We Do” begins their lengthy standing ovation with an uproar.

  Like something out of hypnotism, Gerry joins us back on earth the moment the ball hits the ground. He hears the music now, identifying the source as he reached second base. He’s a little puzzled, but goes on pretending as if the cheering from the Frampton concert was a homerun applause.

  “Clean!” James said to himself in exhilaration turned disbelief. He subsequently curses himself for not taking pictures.

  “Guess you had to be there.”

  That solo blast evens the score at 3-3, giving Gerry three hits and a pair of RBI’s. But even more compellingly, the homer puts him just a single shy of the cycle. If the Presidents could just get two more men on base without surrendering to any double plays, Gerry would be assured another at bat in the bottom of the ninth. And because there are no ties in exhibition, the last out made in the bottom of the ninth spells game over.