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 workingfull-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 inthe 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
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 inthe 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
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