By Jackson Ellis
This article originally ran in print in Zisk! Magazine
The Red Sox-Angels game out in California had just
ended after a 12-inning pitchers' duel. Jon turned up the volume on the TV as
highlights flashed across the screen, scattering colors around the otherwise
dark room. He lay in the twin bed with the paisley, flowery hotel blanket
pulled up to his armpits, and his farmer-tanned arms flopped out on top of the
covers, the only part of his body exposed below the neck. It was so frigid in
the air-conditioned room he could see his breath.
"Ha!—Ha ha! The Sox lost!" he shouted with
glee. He looked over at Sean, who was in the other bed dozing off. Jon whipped
a pillow at his head.
"Hey, bitch. Wake up. Your team lost."
"What." Sean blinked open his right eye and looked at
the clock. The left half of his face was sunken into the down pillow. "Jesus
Christ, Jon, it's almost 2:30. What the hell do you want?"
"I said, Boston lost today."
"Fantastic," he said dryly. "Who threw?"
"Wakefield, but you know, he tossed a pretty good
game. Didn't even give up a run till the sixth and then he just got hammered.
You never know what you're gonna get with him when he throws. You just never
know with knuckleballers."
"That can happen to anyone. Shit. Did the Yanks lose?"
"No, they buried the A's, like, 12-1 or something. Clemens got
the win," he added with a big grin and a single nod of the head.
"Dammit. What are the Sox now, five games back?"
"Yeah, and they could have pulled ahead of Oakland in
the Wild Card standing if they'd won."
"Pssh. Five games back and it's only April. What a shit
day."
A low roll of thunder rumbled in the distance like a
vast empty stomach in the sky. Rain had drizzled all day and now it began to
pour in thick sheets. Wind whipped fat droplets against the room window, a soft
percussion that lulled Sean back into a calm trance.
"There's that black cloud that follows us everywhere!"
shouted Jon suddenly, sitting up and pointing emphatically out the window. "God is pissing on our team."
"Oh, there is no god," mumbled Sean, half-asleep. Jon
slumped back down, his energy defeated again. He looked at the sportscast on
TV. They were showing the Mets and the Dodgers brawling.
---
With the club far out of contention, Sean and Jon
knew this trip to Maryland would be it—the final games of their college
careers, at least, on the road. The following weekend would bring Monmouth up
to the Connecticut shore for a pair of meaningless matches, and that would be
that. While the top teams of the Northern and Southern divisions would spend
the month of May competing for the league crown and a trip to the championship
series in Omaha, Sean and Jon would be out looking for jobs. They'd be relieved
to hang up their Bears caps; grateful to put their final miserable season in
the books.
"I can't believe that in four years we never made it
to the playoffs, not once," Jon said while riding south on the chartered bus.
They were somewhere between Newark and the Delaware Bridge, and had been
sitting silently side-by-side for nearly 45 minutes. "Fucking bullshit, man!
That's four years of bad coaching! We should've made it, at least once. We had talent. I swear, ballplayers
come to this school to die—fucking coaches. It's like, like—" and
he shook his head and shifted in his seat. He had a tendency to work himself up
from a thoughtful lull to a frenetic fit in a matter of seconds.
"I
don't care," said Sean, without looking up from his book. "Look around the bus,
look at these assholes. It's a few less weeks that we need to be around them."
He meticulously folded a page corner and slapped his book shut.
"Hmm."
Jon looked down and shook his head again. He shifted in his seat. "Yeah."
Jon thought about his freshman year when he led the
team in appearances and had a modestly handsome ERA that hovered about 4.00.
Not great by most standards, but not too shabby for a young, scrawny walk-on at
a Division I school. He was proud, but his inability to reproduce those numbers
in the next three years—whatever the reason might have been—made
him frustrated beyond any measure. Tough as he was, his dignity was as fragile
as an egg. Sean thought they should sew "Dumpty" on the back of his jersey.
Jon and Sean had enjoyed a few sparse moments of
success, but many more long afternoons on the bench, lingering in a nervous
state between impatience and contentedness, chewing seeds and sharing stories
of high school championships and little league no-hitters. They both enjoyed
those tranquil moments in spite of it all: the losses, failures and
frustrations; in spite of Jon's anger and Sean's cynical repugnance for teammates
and opponents, coaches and umpires.
"Well, I can't wait for summer ball!"
exclaimed Jon, jamming a calloused fingertip into the worn plush seat in front
of him. "We'll finish .500 and it'll be just like winning the World fuckin'
Series. I'll bet you and me pick up half the team's wins, just between the two
of us. It's gonna be great."
"Yeah,
just like last year," said Sean. He felt a searing pain like an electric shock
in his elbow as the bus rumbled through a rough patch of potholes. "I hope it's like last year."
It was frigid in Maryland—even colder than the
frosty Connecticut they'd left behind. The first game of the weekend was a
single nine-inning battle on Saturday against Baltimore, and the teams
struggled through late-inning rainstorms, patches of black mud, and sudden
chills that often come with spring baseball—one minute it's a bearable 55
degrees, the next a 35-degree wind is whipping into the tobacco-stained dugout,
swirling dust about like dirty snow. Baltimore handled the Bears with ease,
dropping them by a lopsided score of 17-4. Sean and Jon both were handed mop-up
duties. Jon tossed two-and-a-third innings and surrendered the last five
Baltimore runs. Sean notched the last two outs in the bottom of the eighth
before the Knights sent them packing to the Holiday Inn, but not until a
bases-clearing double allowed the three runners Jon had stranded to cross the
plate.
Baltimore's pitcher pumped his fist as he fanned the
final batter in the top of the ninth on a curve in the dirt. The win sealed
their place atop the Southern division. As the teams packed up their gear, a
cheery voiced announced over the loudspeaker:
"Please
be sure to join us tomorrow at 12:30 for a double-header between the 5-32 Bears
and your Division Champion Knights!"
The
two clubs lined up and shook hands. Sean stared blankly, saying nothing,
checking out girls stretching in the stands, the oriole on the backstop, his
cleats scuffling dust.
Jon
walked ahead of him; "Good game, good game, nice job, yep, guhgame," he said to
each player. After the last pleasantry he turned to walk back to the dugout. He
adjusted the ice pack wrapped about his shoulder.
Ý