with three straight fastballs on the hands. Lucky for me, he fouls two back, putting me up in the count, one ball and two strikes. At this point, the crowd wakes up. In the field boxes behind the plate, a few patriots stand up and start clapping. Modigliani calls for the logical next step in our strategy: a pitch on the outside corner. I shake him off. He tries all my pitches—fastball, changeup, slider—asking for each of them outside. Finally, he gives in. He sets up on the inside corner, left knee hidden behind the batter.
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 andstart 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
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 andstart 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
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