Dan Velacruz, New York Times
5
“You’re fidgeting, Ty.”
“And you’re drinking too much.”
“It’s coffee.”
“It’s not good for you. I’ve got juice in the fridge that I pressed this morning.”
“I’d rather have coffee.”
“Is it the kale you don’t like? I can do it with just spinach and carrots.”
“Stop changing the subject from your fidgeting.”
“I’m not. I could try adding kiwi. That’s what I do for Duncan.”
“He’s not coming here, Ty.”
“Who?”
“Don’t play stupid. It’s not attractive.”
“He might come here. The Dodgers can’t keep him after this. And you know we should have gotten him straight out of the—”
“He’s not coming. You know the reputation we keep. His bullshit isn’t going to fly here.”
“Maybe he’ll change. Maybe it was a one-time thing. It might not even be true; you know how the media spins things.”
“Good. Then they’ll have no reason to trade him.”
“How can you not want him on our team? He’s Chase Stern.”
“I have a teenage daughter. That’s the only reason I need.”
“I’m, like, five years younger than him.”
“You’re not that dumb, Ty.”
“You know he’d be good for the team. Admit that.”
“He’s not coming here, so it’s a moot point.”
“We need him. Especially with Douglas’s sprain. And Corten is a few years from retiring. And—”
“Ty. Stop. Finish that damn essay you’ve been staring at for two hours.”
“Pour out that coffee, and I’ll do my essay.”
“Do your essay, or I’ll tan your hide.”
“I don’t think you’re allowed to tan my hide anymore. I think that stops at, like, age eight.”
“I’m pouring it out, okay? Now shut up.”
“Thank you, but I finished the essay. Sent it in fifteen minutes ago.”
“Damn you.”
“I love you too.”
6
“This is bullshit.” Chase leaned back in his seat and tossed a plastic pen, watching it flip through the air before catching it.
“Can you get your shoe off my desk?” Floyd Hardin, his agent, moved around his heavy desk and swatted at Chase’s tennis shoe. “I need you to focus.”
“I’m focused. Dodgers don’t want me anymore. So what? I’m sick of you Californians and your damn sunshine. You told me this was temporary, anyway. You know what I really want.” He sat up, rolling the pen through his fingers before sticking it in the edge of his mouth.
“Yeah, the Yankees. And you haven’t let me forget it. But they didn’t need you then, and now…” Floyd raised his hands, the action showcasing the three World Series rings he’d probably picked up at Sotheby’s. “You’re not giving me a lot to work with, Chase.”
“I’ve got the best stats in the league. What the hell else do you need?”
“You know their club as well as anyone, Chase. They like players who are clean. No drugs, no skeletons, no drama.” He leaned over and tapped the front page of the paper, Chase’s photo front and center. “Not this.”
“They need me,” he said stubbornly. “And I’m not signing with anyone else.”
“It’s not your decision. You’re getting traded. It’s up to the Dodgers where you go next. I’ve tried to talk to the Yankees, but they aren’t biting. According to their camp, you’re out.”
“They said that?” Chase scowled, stopping his chew on the end of the pen and pulling it from his mouth.
“Yes. But my guy at CAA says Milwaukee might be making a big play. Have a blockbuster deal they’re fronting.”
“I won’t do it. Milwaukee? Fuck that.”
“Once again…” the man said slowly. “You. Don’t. Have. A. Choice.”
“I’ll refuse to play. Error my ass off.”
“And you’ll get black-balled and never play for a major league team again. Including the Yankees.” He crossed his arms over his chest and watched Chase.
Chase tilted his head back and groaned, his eyes searching the ceiling. “All this over a shitty lay,” he said quietly.
“Learned your lesson?”
“With women?” he laughed, a hard and bitter sound. “Sure.”
“You had a million Los Angeles women to choose from. I don’t expect you to be celibate. Just think next time you feel like unzipping your pants.”
He stood, lifting a baseball cap and pulling it on. “You think, too, Floyd. Get me in pinstripes, or I’ll find an agent who can.”
7
Packed over a six-month season, there were 162 baseball games every year. That was 162 times players warmed up, 162 times they walked onto a field and risked their career with swings, steals, and plays. Eighty-one times we stepped off a bus and onto an opponent’s dirt. Eighty-odd times we dealt with opponents’ fans, their jeers, their shitty locker rooms, the cloud of contempt that surrounded a visiting team. Especially when that visiting team was the greatest ball club in the world, the team every player wanted to be on, every fan wanted to secretly root for. It could be hell being a Yankee. But then we had home games. Times in the magic, an entire city’s energy swirled in the air—the love strong, powerful, and coursing through our boys’ lungs, fifty thousand souls storming to their feet for no purpose other than to celebrate our awesomeness.
It was one hell of a schedule. Exhausting by the time it ended. And that tally didn’t include the playoffs—an extra twenty games to cap off the season. The most emotional games all year, each win celebrated in full fashion, assuming we got there. Assuming we pulled a constant stream of Wins.
But then again … we were the Yankees. Did I need to dignify any other possibility?
I sat in a corner of the equipment manager’s office and stared at a page in my biology textbook, the chapter on Population Ecology. Boring stuff. I doodled a flower in the right margin of the page, then stopped. Refocused and read the paragraph again. This office was the worst place to study: absolutely empty and quiet, especially this time of day. An hour before the team arrived, my freak of a father the only player in these halls. Everything was already set for the game, the balls mudded this morning, uniforms delivered from the cleaners and hanging in lockers, our food deliveries still three hours out. It was a tomb, which was why Dad loved to stick me in there. Good for biology, bad for my entertainment. I wrote down a few notes, reading over the sentences a few times to make them stick, then turned back to the book.
I wasn’t a brilliant girl. Ask me a question about baseball and I’d ace your test. Put a math equation before me and my eyes glazed over. I used to have a tutor. Dad was focused on A’s, thought that was crucial to my success. Three tutors quit before he gave up. Now, I taught myself, scanning in assignments to a home-school company in Jersey. They graded my work and required me to be present for exams four times a year. They also decided, at the end of the year, if I’d learned enough to graduate. It was May. One more month, four finals, and I’d be done with high school forever. I’d ditch my book-bag at home, say sayonara to books, and fully commit my time to the pinstripes.
I already had a contract penned for after graduation. Equipment Staff Assistant Manager. Not the most glamorous title in the world, but it’d keep me on the team bus. I wasn’t really sure what the next step would be. Denise in Marketing had been trying to get me to intern up top with promises of a more permanent job. But I couldn’t imagine breathing in the air of an office and not the field. I couldn’t imagine looking out a window and down onto the action.
My graduation both loomed and beckoned. I was probably the only teenager in the city who didn’t want to grow up.
8
If fans leaving a game looked closely on the subway, they might see Frank Cinns.
Our back-up third baseman pulled on a maintenance shirt and cap and turned invisible. He lived in Manhattan, as did Madden and Tripp, but their deep wallets used drivers to get home. Brooklyn held another five or six, a few preferred the Hamptons, but Dad and I lived in Alpine. Dad liked to drive, and used the twenty-mile trek to clear his mind after a game. I typically fell asleep. Something about the hours of intensity followed by the quiet hum of road … it was my lullaby. That and the nineties country music Dad lived by. A lethal combination to wakefulness, especially at one in the morning. Tonight was even later, an extra-long press junket holding up everything, a litany of questions drilled at every member of the Yankee organization, all regarding the same topic: Chase Stern.
They asked Tripp how he’d react if Chase slept with his wife. Tripp laughed. Fernandez, when asked the same question, broke his pencil in half. Dad didn’t get that question. Even reporters occasionally have tact.
They did ask Dad if he thought Chase would be a good fit for the team. I had straightened in my seat, my eyes on my father, but true to form, he gave little more than a grunt.
Half awake, I stood in bare feet before my bathroom sink, and washed my face. Leaning forward, I examined a zit that hadn’t quite decided to live or die. Once moisturized, I clicked off the light. When we traveled, I typically fell asleep to the TV, lulled to bed by an ESPN reporter. At home, it was nice to have the quiet. I stood on my bed and reached high, turning the window crank, the cool breeze immediate, the sound of the waves soothing. Our home perched on the short edge of a cliff, the crash of water against the rocks constant. Squatting on the bed, I pulled back the top blanket and crawled in, reaching out and flipping the switch beside my headboard, my room going dark.
Twenty-two miles away, in an executive conference room of Yankee Stadium, a printer hummed, spitting out the pages of Chase Stern’s new contract.
9
It wasn’t lost on me that I was sitting in the wrong place. On the other side of the pool, a cluster of teenagers, their music floating over. I had caught bits of their conversations as I’d passed them—once by the food, once in the house. Bits of a foreign language that discussed Adele and parties, Spring Break, and Twitter. I knew most of them, we’d been clubhouse brats together, back when we were eleven or twelve. Then they’d moved on to private schools and new friends, weekends spent somewhere other than the club, my spotting of them less and less, their game seats up in boxes and not in the dugout. It had been a clear parting of ways and now, I was a million miles away. Sitting next to their fathers, chiming in on conversations that would cause them to roll their eyes and itch for an escape.
They were all glued to their phones, clustered together in the cabana. I watched them, half of their heads down, their conversations seamless, despite the constant movement of their thumbs. Maybe having friends was the secret ingredient needed for a phone addiction. I watched Katie Ellis giggle and tried to recall where I’d left mine. Probably the truck. My last sighting of it had been days earlier, no real need for it when I was with Dad.
In the past, he’d tried to push me to join them, had seemed to think that social interaction with them was crucial to my happiness. But over the last few years, he’d thankfully given up. I didn’t want their friendship, certainly didn’t need it. Not when we had absolutely nothing in common.
“Need a drink?” Thomas Grant stopped by my chair, putting a gentle hand on my shoulder.
I looked up with a smile. “Sunkist, please.” I liked the man, the patriarch of the Grant dynasty, which had owned the Yankees for the better part of the century. A man who had taken me under his wing at a young age, a beam crossing his face whenever we met, my future in the Yankee organization all but guaranteed with his fondness for me. And the occasional hints that I should marry his son and live happily ever after as a member of the Grant family? I could handle those.
“You got it.” He squeezed my shoulder and stepped toward the house.
The conversation around me was about a Cleveland Indians trade, and I pushed out my feet, settling deeper into the chair, the warmth of the fire heating my shins, the weather still cool on the Hampton coast. We were at the Grants’ massive Hamptons estate, an impromptu barbeque grown bigger by the inclusion of wives and kids, the four teenagers on the other side of the pool just a small part of the party. Tobey Grant, a sophomore at Harvard and the future king of the Yankee empire, caught my eye, his cup lifting to his face, his gaze holding mine as he took a long sip, then lowered the drink. I looked away, back to the fire. We’d had a thing, once. Two years ago, during spring training. A few stolen kisses in a Hilton hallway, his hand sneaking up my shirt. He’d been my first kiss. It’d been okay, the second time better. I thought it had made us something; he hadn’t. It was really just that simple.
I watched red-hot embers flake off wood and float into the sky. There were times when I loved the idea of dating Tobey, when I warmed to the Grants’ not-so-subtle push of us together. There were times he loved the idea of dating me. Those times just never managed to line up, our occasional make-out sessions never enough to convince each other that a dedicated relationship was worth pursuing.
One wife trickled over to our group, her curvy body draping over Cook’s lap. She was a new one; his last had had an issue with prostitutes, and his use of them. This one had been around for two years. I had a side bet with Dad that she wouldn’t make it to five.
“Love has its own timeline, Tyler. Remember that.”
He told me that in the moment before he took the field, the crowd roaring to their feet, swallowing my response. I was upset over Tobey, my frustration hidden behind fifteen-year-old attitude, my sunglasses masking any flash of irritation his occasional presence sparked. He’d walked into the stands, moving sideways down the row in Section 17 with a girl. Some tart in cut-off shorts and a tight tank top, her hair straightened, enough makeup on that I could see her eyelashes from my spot by the first baseline. Dad must have caught my look, my quick glance away. He stayed silent for two damn hours before slapping my back on his way out to the mound, his advice tossed out gruff and concise, no opportunity for discussion, the game needing to be played, strikes needing to be thrown, teenage feelings muffled.
It hadn’t been the greatest advice in the world. And for me, a confused teenager who wasn’t even sure I liked Tobey, it was useless. I asked Dad about it later that night, in a booth at Whataburger, the restaurant empty, one employee mopping the floor.
“You said that love had its own timeline. Was that the problem with you and Mom?”
He wiped his mouth, setting down his burger, his brow furrowed in his glance at me. “Problem? Why would you ask that?”
“You just weren’t around a lot.”
“You know this life, Ty. It’s not one for a baby.”
“So … before me, she came on the road with you?”
He nodded, lifting his coffee cup to his lips. “She did.”
“I’m sorry.” I busied myself with the edge of my burger’s wrapper. “For messing that up.”
“Don’t be. She came with me because we couldn’t really afford anything else. Once I moved to the Majors, she would have stayed home anyway. Even without you.”
“And missed all this?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, Ty. And missed all this.”
He thought I was joking, our 2 AM fast-food dinner not exactly high-living, despite what we had in the bank. But I wasn’t. For me, everything about our life, from the long hours, to the hell of a schedule, to the sweat and smells of the locker room … it was all magic. I couldn’t imagine ever walking away from it.
I felt a nudge against my foot and looked up from the fire, Dad’s eyes on mine. He tilted his head to the house. “They’re putting dessert out.”
I stretched, pushing to my feet and grabbed my empty Sunkist bottle. “Want anything?”
“Nah.”
I headed to the house, my flip-flops loud against the deck, and I tossed m
y bottle toward the trashcan, movement in the side-yard catching my eye.
10
At the private airport, the setting sun glinted off the tail of the Citation jet. Chase Stern stood by the back of the car, waiting as men loaded his bags into the plane, his phone out, fingers busy.
“Ready, boss?” the pilot stopped before him, and he glanced up.
“Yeah.” He looked back at the car. “Got everything?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then let’s roll.” He stepped toward the plane, his long legs eating up the space, and he was up the steps and into a seat too quickly, his head still playing catch-up with the fact that this was it; he was leaving Los Angeles and headed to New York, to the place he’d dreamed about since he was a kid, to wear a jersey that had, for so long, seemed unattainable. This would be his future, where he would stay, his jersey hung next to the greats, his number retired, records forever broken and kept in his name. He glanced out the window, the driver already back in the car, no crowds recording this moment, not a single soul showing up for his exit. Not that he’d broadcasted the news, but it was in that moment, the airport rolling by, that he realized how few connections he had made in Los Angeles. Maybe it had been intentional—the push away from others, a part of him knowing it wasn’t a permanent situation, stopping the dig of emotional roots.
Still, as the plane gained speed, the engines roaring beside him, it would have been nice to have someone there to see him off. He had a brief thought of Emily, and his heart tightened. Not that she’d have been holding a sign. No, she’d have been in the seat next to him, catching his eye with a smile and toasting his future before they even lifted off.
11
He tasted like peppermints. I opened my mouth wider, and his tongue moved faster, an excited dart of flesh pushing against my gums, the clash of teeth brief, then he pulled back a little. We were on the side of his house, a palm tree beside us, my back against the brick. In the dark, only the moon lit his face, pale highlights on his lashes, the tip of his nose, and bruised lines of his lips.