by KD Casey
“Turns out,” Zach says, “buying a bunch of stuff doesn’t mean you can cook.”
“You have eggs, at least.” Eugenio cracks each one against the flat of the counter before dispensing them into a bowl, then adds a splash of soy milk, with some disgust, and a heavier pat of cream cheese. The mixture gets poured into a buttered skillet. It’s a sequence he did a thousand times in Oakland with Zach milling around his kitchen, half-awake and distracted. Now Zach watches him like if he looks away, Eugenio will vanish like the steam rising from the pan.
Out on the balcony, it’s a Miami morning, hot, air thick with water, streets congested with traffic. They sit, drinking coffee, eating eggs. “You have—” Zach touches the side of his neck, the stubble burn there “—a couple of them.”
“You worried someone’s going to say something.”
“No. Well, they might, but I’m not worried.” Zach’s phone flashes an alert, and it’s not the counselor’s office calling back, just a reminder that he set before drifting to sleep, Eugenio beside him, warm and steadily breathing.
He pulls up his email. There’s one from Stephanie he hasn’t answered, a list of questions for their upcoming interview so that he can prepare his responses—about what he’s willing to share and what he isn’t—about his hearing. Thx, he writes, these look fine.
He navigates to the one his agent sent a few days ago, about if he wants to stay in Miami for another season or opt out and try his luck elsewhere. Next to him, Eugenio is drinking his coffee, staring at the ocean, a mark from Zach’s teeth on his neck.
And Zach counts off on his fingers, beginning with his first full year, counting and recounting, and reaching the same conclusion—that it’s been seven seasons, not enough to qualify for his full pension, which he gets at ten. Considers what it would take to have three years of a long-distance relationship, if he’s in one city and Eugenio is in another. If that’s something Eugenio would even want.
But he can’t endure another year here, suffering in good weather, sinking slowly toward his retirement. It’s possible that no other team will want him. That walking away would mean being done in the league, the kind of unheralded career that happens to most guys lucky enough to play.
That if he answers honestly when teams ask, Is there anything about you we should know about you? their contract offers will be rescinded when he says he’s gay. A conversation that seems both impossible and necessary.
I’m going to opt out, he writes, and then hits Send.
“Something important?” Eugenio asks.
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
They play the last game of the series, Zach behind the plate for Miami and Eugenio for New York. Zach hits a single in the fourth, draws a walk in the sixth, and steals a few strikes from an umpire who clearly wants to get the hell out of the city, and is happy to expedite the game. Eugenio hits twice, both ringing doubles, and after the game, a reporter sticks his phone in Zach’s face, asking him why he thinks Miami has so much trouble with the Gothams. Like Miami doesn’t have trouble with the Federals or the Constitution or the Bravos or every other team in the division or affiliated ball.
“Morales always seems to enjoy it here,” the reporter says.
“Yeah, well,” Zach says, “some guys just got your number. That’s baseball.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Miami’s general manager calls Zach early in the morning, seven hours and two minutes after the trade deadline.
“Fuck.” Zach scrambles as his phone flashes at him, vibrations sending it hopping across the surface of his nightstand. “Hello?” and then, “Can we switch to video?”
Over FaceTime, their GM looks like most other front office executives—like he’d wear a suit and Oxford shirt to a school picnic. He’s saying something that’s hard to track, the volume on Zach’s phone turned down, Zach bleary.
Zach holds up a hand, retrieving his hearing aid from its case and putting it in, wincing as his hearing adjusts to the ambient early-morning noise in his apartment. “Okay, let’s try this again.”
“You’ve been traded,” the GM says, “to New York.”
New York. And there’s the initial screech of surprise and then the slow realization of what that means: To play in a city that breathes baseball. One with packed stadiums and definite opinions and Eugenio sitting next to him on the bench.
“New York?” Zach repeats, still processing. “Uh, I didn’t think the Gothams needed another catcher.”
“Not the Gothams—the other team. Plays in the Bronx? Wears pinstripes? Maybe you’ve heard of them?”
Zach blinks a few times. Because that’s not just the big leagues, but the biggest baseball stage in the world, the other New York team its winningest franchise. “I’m going to the Union?”
“They’ve chartered you a plane.” The GM rolls his eyes at the Union’s famous lavishness. Which Zach is apparently going to be the recipient of. “It leaves this afternoon.”
Zach feels around for what he’s supposed to say in these circumstances, especially since, when he hit free agency, the GM in Oakland shook his hand, wished him luck in future endeavors, and made it clear he shouldn’t come around looking for a contract. “It’s, uh, been a real privilege to play for the team.”
“Save it for the press conference. We’re getting a top-100 prospect back for you, so consider that thanks enough.” And then disconnects the call, leaving Zach staring at the screen.
He gets a text message telling him to read his email, which contains a long set of instructions that must be boilerplate—that the team will assign someone to help him break his lease if he wants. That a moving company will come and pack for him and put his stuff in storage or ship it to him when he settles in New York. That they’ll send him his personal effects from the clubhouse, like he’s getting out of a night in a holding cell and not going to play for another team.
He texts his parents, his agent, Morgan, Aviva and Eitan, the Miami group-chat, the Oakland group-chat, Womack. Stephanie, saying he probably needs to talk with her.
Johnson, who sent him a picture of his college graduation a few weeks before, Sara Maria holding their daughter, Johnson’s wrist enclosed in a brace from surgery. Congrats! Johnson writes, adding an excessive number of exclamation points and a request for Zach’s mailing address. My mom is doing graduation announcements. It’s accompanied by an eye-roll emoji, like Johnson isn’t twenty-five and married with a newborn. They want to have a party sometime in the offseason.
Lmk when, Zach says.
Probably December or January, Johnson replies. I think they’re inviting the whole town. In case you want to bring someone. And it’s too early and Zach is too frantic to consider what someone means in this instance, especially since he didn’t bring anyone to their wedding. Especially when the only someone he wants to bring is in the city that he’s moving to. Today.
He texts Eugenio, starting and stopping a few times. Because what can he say that can be reduced to a text? That his heart is racing, from the adrenaline that accompanies a trade. That he finally unpacked in Miami, and now has to box it up again. That he didn’t expect to see Eugenio until September when the Swordfish play the Gothams. Now each second feels impossibly long, even as his mind spins with what he has to do in the next few hours. Traded to the Union, he writes, will be in NYC tonight.
News of the trade hits social media, because there’s an avalanche of notifications and alerts after that, enough that Zach puts his phone on airplane mode and starts packing. He goes through his apartment, contemplating what he should sell, what he should store, what he should take with him. Which is how he ends up on the tarmac walking to his plane, duffel bag over one shoulder, holding an aloe plant.
The flight is less than three hours, one that begins over the clear blue Florida ocean before heading north. The flight attendant keeps him in coffee and offers champagne, which
he declines. He rests with his face on the cool glass window, wondering if they’ll wake him before they touch down. If someone will come to greet him at the airport or if he’ll need to figure out New York transportation.
His phone is buzzing with notifications, Union social media tagging him, a bad photo manipulation of himself in a pinstriped uniform from the league’s “spicy” Twitter account, a farewell message from Miami. He fires up his real Twitter and Insta, the ones he only posts on with a review from team social media—or if they draft it for him, more often—and writes how grateful he is to the city and to Swordfish fans. He wishes the Union prospect who’s taking a flight in the opposite direction, from the stratosphere of the Bronx to Florida swampland, all the best in his new baseball endeavors.
His parents text a long message, one they sign at the end like it’s an email, about driving up and getting him settled and who they know in New York. Another from Aviva that’s mostly emojis and firework gifs.
One from Morgan that’s similar, except he responds, asking for the dates for this year’s qualifiers for the Women’s Baseball World Cup. She tells him it’s in Colombia in November, up on the Caribbean coast.
Thanks, he writes, and gets a string of question marks back. Just thinking about something.
He gets a call from a number labeled Todd Miami. The flight attendant, seated across the plane, is ensconced in a large hardcover book. He accepts the call. It’s the counselor, whose name is Henry, returning his voice mail.
It takes some doing to switch to FaceTime. “I wanted to set up an appointment,” Zach says.
“Sure, when can you come in?”
“It’s sort of complicated. I just found out I’m moving to New York for, um, work. And I was wondering if video appointments are a possibility since I’m on the road a lot.”
Over video, Henry looks different from his pictures online—he has a lip piercing, the edge of a tattoo showing at his collar. When he goes to adjust the camera, Zach can see he’s wearing a rainbow bracelet, a set of rings. He asks for Zach’s availability for the next week.
“I was sort of hoping to talk later today? It’s kind of a specific situation. And I’m on a company flight right now.”
“If it’s an emergency, a hotline might be a better fit.”
“It’s urgent but not an emergency. And I’ll pay cash. Or bank transfer. Whatever. Just send me the rates.”
Henry looks at him, and Zach waits for a, “Hey, aren’t you that guy who—” before Henry asks if that night works and says he’ll send instructions for how to log in to a video conference app for their appointment.
When he hangs up, there’s a text from Eugenio waiting, another in an increasing thread of them. Out west on a road trip. Be back in a few days.
And Zach considers what he would have written years ago, something cryptic enough to be “just buddies” in case someone got ahold of one of their phones or their texts got leaked. Something bland, passive. Uncaring.
Can’t wait to see you, Zach says.
* * *
Union Stadium, better known as the Bronx Battleground, sits with its back to the Harlem River, an open horseshoe challenging the city. It’s not the original ballpark, the one built in the ’20s, but a replica, plunked down adjacent to the former one, which was demolished into a set of youth fields surrounding the stadium. A hitters’ park, though spacious enough at its centerfield lines to not give anything away cheaply. A roofless megachurch where the baseball faithful come daily to pray.
And Zach stands in it, looking up the way that tourists do at Manhattan skyscrapers.
“Nice, huh?” The Union sent a handler, Maritza, to meet him at the airport and help him negotiate his belongings into a town car. She’s standing next to him out on the field, Union Stadium’s infamous wind blowing her hair, which is as curly as Aviva’s and secured back in a ponytail. A few defiant strands of it come loose, and she peels them from her lipstick.
She spent their ride in from the airport reading him his schedule. Today it’s a set of meetings with Union management, with the coaching staff, with the trainers and catching coordinator, and when he expressed surprise at the number of meetings and their efficiency in arranging them, she just said, “Oh, right, you played for Miami.”
She shows him a picture of the hotel room they booked him as if he’ll find fault with it. It’s lavish by any standard, but probably palatial by New York ones, all navy upholstery and complicated floor tile in the bathroom; she assures him his aloe plant is already there.
It’s an off-day, and there are a few players around, the team’s starting catcher not among them or their backup catcher, who they put on waivers to make roster space for Zach. A couple members of their starting rotation are out in the bullpen, getting work in. And Zach spent enough of the flight thinking about what his life would be like in New York compared with Miami that it almost escaped him that he’ll be calling games for the Union down the stretch and through September. October, if he’s lucky. November, if he’s really lucky.
Maritza delivers him to his stall, a set of jerseys hanging in it with his number. “We assumed you’d want to keep it.”
“Thanks.” Even though he picked it at more or less random when the Swordfish asked him during his long drive east. “For the tour and stuff.”
“No problem. Welcome to the Big Show.” She walks away while he’s still laughing.
From there, it’s another few meetings and a meandering tour of the training facilities. The ones in Miami were nice, but he thinks about the ones in Oakland, which had water damage over the ceiling tiles, a dark brown stain that started in one corner. By the end of the season, players were taking bets on how far it would spread. The ones where he worked out next to Eugenio, going back and forth on how to approach teams’ opposing hitters, Eugenio’s big laugh filling the space between them.
When he looks up, the ceiling is as clean as good teeth, and the room is quiet save whatever’s playing on the stereo.
The hotel they have him in is as lush as it looked in the pictures. The bed is large and just the right springiness. He tries to sleep in the afternoon light, seconds ticking down to getting on a call with Henry, then one with Stephanie right after. Henry sent paperwork and rates. Zach reads through them, even the fine print, lingering on the term confidentiality.
He looks up the Gothams’ schedule. Eugenio will be back in three days, an eternity and not enough time for Zach to figure out what to say. That they’re in the same city. That Zach came to New York with one bag and a plant and no expectations.
He wonders what it’ll be like—if Eugenio will feel the same kind of pull toward him that Zach feels now, like magnets held apart by the thinnest of barriers, or if he’ll tell Zach he needs space, time. If anything will be different save the uniform Zach pulls on each day and the stadium he plays in.
He contemplates it as he orders room service, as he stands under the precipitation of the waterfall shower long enough that he’s almost late to calling Henry.
“Hi,” he says, when Henry logs on, “sorry for all the subterfuge earlier. It’s a complicated situation. Thank you for agreeing to this at the last minute.”
“Usually with clients, I get to know them in order to establish trust. It sounds like your circumstances are more exigent.”
“You could say that. I need to tell the New York Union baseball team that I’m gay. Tomorrow.”
Henry blinks, an extended blink.
“To be clear, I play for the New York Union. As a catcher. It’s not, like, something in the abstract.”
“Why tomorrow?”
“I have a meeting with their PR people.”
“Okay. Is New York the first team you’ve played for?”
“No, the third. The fifth or sixth if you count playing in the minor leagues.”
“And you’ve told your other teams?”
/> Zach shakes his head.
“So, why tomorrow?”
“Could you hold on for a second?” Zach was in enough of a rush to get on the call that he didn’t put his hearing aid in. He retrieves it from its case and sets it in the shell of his ear. “I’m also hard of hearing.”
“Is there a better way for us to communicate?”
“Just don’t put your hands in front of your face, if that’s okay. And I just got traded, so I’m meeting with Union PR tomorrow.”
“I didn’t ask when the meeting was, Zach. I asked why tomorrow is different for you.”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’m getting that sense. Who else are you out to?”
“Counting you?”
And Henry laughs. “If we’re still on one-handed counting, then that’s a separate conversation. One that’s probably not achievable before tomorrow.”
“Yeah, probably not.” Zach lets out a deflating breath. Outside, it’s still summer enough to be light out, though the sun is beginning to fade. “I don’t want to tell everyone. Like that’d be front-page-of-the-newspaper stuff. But I feel like I need to tell someone.”
“You told me at the beginning of this conversation. So that’s your someone for today, if that helps.”
“It kind of does.” Because Zach just said it, easily, readily, in the cushy safety of his high-rise hotel room. Something that would be much harder in a meeting with Union PR. “I haven’t told many other people. Including my family.”
“Do you have a relationship with them?”
“Yeah, probably too much of one.”
“We’ll unpack that one later. Hold on.” Henry turns off the camera and audio for a minute leaving Zach to look at his icon—the same picture that was online: clean-cut, businesslike. Straight. He appears back on screen, holding a mug of tea. “Sorry about that. I was going to ask if you were out to your family.”
“I want to be.” Though his stomach drops as he says it. “I just don’t think I’m ready for that conversation.”