“Cursed, I guess,” said the ballplayer. “Cursed long before I took the last out.”
“Yeah?” said Mike. “Tell me.”
“You a baseball fan?”
“I watched a game now and then.”
“So you heard of Skipper Nelson, Giant’s shortstop, right?”
“Nope,” Mike said. “Sorry.”
“So I’ll start where it started,” said Skipper.
I used to think I was cursed because of the bird, but now that I’ve thought about it, it was probably because I planned the murder of Villarreal. I first ran across Villarreal in the minors, before the bird, so it was probably him. Probably.
I was drafted as a shortstop right out of high school by the Giants and sent to their double-A team in Richmond, Virginia, the Flying Squirrels, which is where I got my nickname—the squirrel—when I finally got sent up to the majors, because of the way I could track down a grounder and turn double plays—“like a squirrel after a nut,” the announcer says, and it sticks. It coulda been worse, though. I could of gone to the Grand Chute, Crotch Crickets, and then had to deal with that nickname for my whole career. A year after me, Villarreal was drafted out the Dominican League to the Chattanooga Lookouts, which were the double-A club for the Dodgers, a catcher, switch hitter, batted .325 in the Dominican, arm like a cannon. He was an early draft pick, so you knew he wouldn’t be in double-A ball for long, but a butterball, five nine, two-fifty—you could time his forty-yard dash with a sundial, so the Dodgers wanted to see if they could take some weight off of him and give him a little more speed on the bases.
First time I meet him he’s catching for a one-pitch lefty name Markley, one of those guys you see a lot in the minors—scary heat, pushing a hundred miles an hour, but no movement, a laser beam—you know if it’s going to be over, it’s going to be right at your knees in the middle of the plate, then, after about eight pitches, he’s going to be spraying deadly leather all over the goddamn place, so if you can avoid getting a burning, baseball-sized hole through your body somewhere, you draw a walk. One out, guy before me whiffs so bad, I can feel the wind off his bat in the on-deck circle. But I’m not worried, I can see heat. It’s a gift. Then, as I’m walking up, before I even get in the batter’s box, Villarreal starts talking . . .
“How you doing? Nice to meet you? Are you married? Got any kids? How’s your mother? How was the bus trip? You guys staying at the Travelodge? How’s the rooms? You got a mini-fridge?” And he just keeps talking, mostly questions, for the next fifteen fucking years, but I don’t know that. Right then, I know, absolutely know, I can hit Markley before he goes all Wild Thing on me, I just have to watch one go by to measure, but I’m listening to Villarreal the whole time, and I whiff. And so it begins . . .
Fortunately, that first one was an exhibition game, so we don’t play Chattanooga again, before I get brought to the bigs the next year when the Giants’ starting shortstop is trying to turn a double play and gets a knee bent back by a sliding base runner. Already I have a reputation as being nimble on the turn, and no matter what the odds of it happening twice in a season, a ball club loses a starter to a certain kind of injury, they want to avoid it happening again, so I get the nod instead of the shortstop at Fresno, who has a better batting average then me, but can be flat-footed at times.
Villarreal gets called up by the Dodgers the same season, backup catcher, because their starter has taken a lot of shots to the head and is kind of goofy. In those days, before the concussion rules, if a guy could count to ten and tell his left from his right, he was good to play, and to be honest, I know a couple of ballplayers couldn’t pass that test without getting hit in the head, but they have Villarreal ready, and he’s been batting over .300 in the minors with a lot of home runs, so he was coming up soon anyway, despite still being shaped like a pregnant mailbox.
So, I finally get my first at-bat in the bigs against the Dodgers. It’s bottom of the ninth, and we’re tied two to two. The utility infielder playing short ahead of me, Manny Ignacio, a lefty, strikes out three times, and they got a left-handed closer pitching, so the skipper needs a righty at the plate. We’re playing in Candlestick Park, which, as you know, sits out on a peninsula in San Francisco Bay, and usually has a prevailing seventy-five mile an hour wind, but what I’m not used to, is about the ninth inning of every game, the seagulls start coming in, getting ready to swoop down on the uneaten fries and hot-dog buns, and they do it like they’re psychic or they can read the scoreboard or something.
So it’s two outs, we got a guy on second with some speed, and I come up and who is catching, but Chava Villarreal. Chava is short for Salvador, which makes about as much sense as a guy named Villarreal that can’t pronounce the letter V even if you put him in a Volvo and drive him to Visalia for Valentine’s Day. And he’s off; “Hey, man, nice to see you again. How you doin’? You get married? You got any kids? How’s your mother? You like San Francisco? You been to the Mission?” And he goes on, and on, and on, until between him and the seagulls diving on the outfield beyond the pitcher, I think it’s going to be a miracle if I even see the ball, let alone hit it.
And, “You like Caribbean food? I take you for the best plantains in the city when you come to Los Angeles.”
And the pitcher throws me a hanging curve that moves like a balloon, time slows down, Villarreal is a mosquito buzzing in another city, and I let go on that son of a bitch—whole body swing, toes to hips to fingertips, and it has that clack-stick sound of a homer, I can feel it and the crowd can hear it and they’re on their feet—it’s going to be a line-drive homer, not high, just a rocket off the field, except before it gets off the infield there’s an explosion of feathers, a literal explosion—I’m not even out of the batter’s box and this circular snowstorm of feathers appears right over the second baseman’s head, and this bird drops, crushed and limp, and the ball drops, plop, and the second baseman shakes his head like he’s got water in his ears, because he was following the ball to go out like the rest of us, but now it’s sitting at his feet and he picks it up and throws me out at first. We go on to win, but my first big league at-bat, I kill a bird, and not a seagull or a pigeon, oh no. My line drive killed a friggin’ goony bird. An albatross. Like a five-foot wingspan. I basically knocked a turkey out of the sky with my first hit in the bigs, and the last thing I hear before the ball hits the first baseman’s mitt is Villarreal. “Oh, man! Oh, shit! I can’t believe it. Oh, man!”
So that’s it, right? I’m cursed. But it turns out, I’m not that cursed, and I bat .260 that season and we get to the National League playoffs and by next year I’m starting shortstop, but here’s the thing, Villarreal is starting catcher for the Dodgers, and we have to play those sons-a-bitches nineteen times during the season. And three or four times every game, for nineteen games, when I come up, that fat fuck is, “So how you doing? You feeling good? I heard you got married. You have any kids? How’s your mom?” And between that and the albatross I get to be almost worthless on offense against the Dodgers, batting a flat buck-fifty against them when I’m batting in the high two hundreds, low three hundreds against everyone else.
My third season with the Giants, we’re neck and neck with the Dodgers for the division and the guy I jumped over at Fresno is batting .375 and fielding just as well, so I figure I’m maybe two, three bad games from losing my starting position, so when I come up in the second game against the Dodgers, I say, even before I get in the box, “Villarreal, just shut the fuck up. Just shut your fucking mouth while I’m in the box, you hear me?”
Evidently, though, he didn’t hear me, because through three balls, four foul balls, and a swing and a miss, Villarreal jabbered, “I’m sorry, man, I didn’t know it bothered you. You want me to shut up, I’ll shut up. I’m a pro, man. A batter needs it quiet, I’m quiet. I was just wondering, you know, how your mom was.”
Two Dodger games later, right after the ump calls a third strike which was a gift to the pitcher, because it’s like a foot off the plate, I turn around and say, “You cocksucker, you don’t shut the fuck up I’m going to knock your fucking head off.”
And the ump says, “You’re out of here.” And makes to throw me out of the game. “You can’t use language like that,” he says, which is more explanation than he has to give.
And I say, “I wasn’t calling you a cocksucker, I was calling this cocksucker a cocksucker. You ought to throw him out of the game. He’s got to drive you nuts, right? He never, never shuts the fuck up.”
It was a Sunday day game, and there was a lot of kids at the park, and it was televised nationally, and they muted me, but it turns out that people read lips a lot better than you’d think, so the cocksucker—and this time I mean the ump—suspended me for two games, and that cocksucker Villarreal hit a game-winning homer against us that day. So I think you can see where I’m going with this. That’s right, it might not have been the albatross. And every baseball fan in the country thinks I have a black box over my mouth because they can’t even play the highlights without I’m calling every granny watching the six o’clock news a cocksucker.
Every game, it’s all I can do to not hit Villarreal in the throat every at-bat. And then we’re coming into the fall, and I get my chance. I’m on second when Joe Rollo smacks one into the gap in center, sending it to the wall. I’m hell on wheels going for home, and their center fielder has a good arm, but the third-base coach sends me, and I look up and see Villarreal is blocking the plate, and the ball is going to get there before I do. So I got one choice, and one choice only. That’s to cream him and knock the ball loose. I’ve got four seasons of frustration going down that baseline with me, and not only is this a run, it’s my chance. I’m going to take his fucking head off. I’m going to explode him like that ball exploded the albatross. I’m going to leave broken bits of can’t-shut-the-fuck-up Dominican cocksucker scattered over the infield. So when I’m a good five feet from him I make my move. I go like I’m going for Olympic gold in the pole vault, which led to what was to be known as the Superman Slide.
Yes, he was a fat fuck, and he ran like he had tubs of lead tied to his cleats, but he was quick, so as I leave my feet, Villarreal has the good instinct to duck, and I sail, vertical, over him, not even grazing him, past the ump (on the replay you can see him saying “what the fuck?” even through his mask) and I land a good three feet on the far side of home plate, having never touched it. Villarreal spins and tags me out while I’m still wondering what happened.
When you kill a goddamn albatross with your first big league at-bat, you think, yeah, that’s going to be the highlight they play when I do something good. They’re going to go, “Oh, nice turnaround by Nelson, but let’s take a look at that time he killed the rare seabird.” But no. You show the world that you have the athletic prowess to not be able to run into a fat Dominican when there’s a fucking line painted up to him, that piece of film is going to Cooperstown, and ne’er a day shall pass from now to the end of time when your name is mentioned that with it is not shown your dumb ass flying through the air to land with your dick in the dirt to be tagged out as gentle as Jesus picking a baby to be born.
Doesn’t get any worse, right? Can’t, right? Nineteen times a season. Regular season. Twenty-five times if you count spring training games. I got to the point where a week before we played the Dodgers I’d start losing my shit. Making dumb mistakes in the field. I get some beta-blockers from my doc to slow my heart down when we’re playing L.A. so I can hit, but I can’t field for shit on them either. So they bring up a kid from the minors who takes my place as the starter. I become the utility guy, playing when someone is hurt or bats from the wrong side. Pinch hitting, unless it’s against the Dodgers, because believe me, I’m not the only one who notices I’m cursed. As bad as it can get, right? If I’m a pitcher and I let a guy get into my head this bad, I’m selling Chevys in Petaluma, because fuck-knows I can’t go into broadcasting and have the Superman clip play every goddamn day, and the front office isn’t going to hire the dead bird/cocksucker guy to coach or scout, right? So I still have a job, year-to-year contract, minimum money, which isn’t bad, except now I have a kid and wife who wants to hang with the wives whose husbands are making major coin, and she spends and dresses like them, too. Could be worse, though, right?
Then the Giants’ starting catcher decides to shoot his coke dealer in the off-season in a Miami disco, at the same time that Villarreal’s contract is up at the Dodgers, so that babbling fucking ball of chorizo becomes our starter. So it’s every day, every goddamn day I go into the clubhouse. “How you doin, Skipper? How’s your wife? Your kid getting big, huh? How’s your mom?” Guy has been in the States ten years now and he’s still only got about forty words of English, which he rearranges a hundred times a day to get up my ass.
“She’s dead, Chava. Just like she was this morning! Just like she will be in twenty fucking minutes when you ask me again, Chava. She’s dead!”
She wasn’t dead. My mother is still alive and lives in Jupiter, Florida, with seven miniature poodles, but that’s not the point. The guy was annoying.
He says, “Oh, I’m sorry, man. Anything I can do? Man, that must be so hard. I lose my mother, I don’t know what to do. My heart goes out to you, man. How’s your wife holding up?”
So that’s when I decided to kill the cocksucker. But not right away, because now that he’s not playing for the Dodgers anymore, my batting average is going up and I don’t want to jinx it. So instead, I compromise and decide to get him kicked out of the game and ruin his life in the interim.
This is a time in baseball when steroids have become a pretty big deal. On our team, you got Barry Bonds, who is hitting home runs like a mortar barrage, and whose head has grown to a size where when they make his promotional bobble-head, they just do the whole thing to scale, while across the bay in Oakland, Mark McGwire now has forearms like Popeye and will only speak in dialects of horse, and they’re keeping José Canseco chained to a post under the ballpark and throwing him raw meat until right before game time, so the league is starting to get sensitive about it. Personally, I stay away from the juice, as I already have what my wife calls “anger issues” and steroids are suppose to be bad for that, but the league is starting to spot-check players, so I figure this might be my chance to get rid of Villarreal without jinxing my hitting.
By this time, my wife was breeding Yorkshire terriers, so naturally I’m nearly able to claim her vet as a dependent on my taxes, so in exchange for a stack of prime tickets behind home plate, the vet hooks me up with some animal steroids in powder form, which are supposed to be tasteless except for a slight hint of dog balls, which I figure Villarreal will never notice because he constantly eats jerk chicken and Caribbean pulled pork, which, for all I can tell, are spiced with garlic, fire, and dog balls anyway. So I start slipping a spoonful of powdered dog balls in Villarreal’s Gatorade in the clubhouse, and after a week or so, when I figure it has built up in his system enough to be detected in a piss test, but before he starts barking and humping an ump’s leg, I have my wife call the anonymous tip line to rat him out.
Now, it’s a hard sell with the league to convince them a guy is on performance-enhancing drugs when he’s so slow that when he hits a double, fans can go take a leak and still get back to their seats to see him slide, but my wife, it turns out, is a terrific liar, so I’m thinking that Villarreal is going to be peeing in the hundred-game suspension cup any day, but the day before the spot test, the son of a bitch whiffs on a backdoor slider, winding himself into a knot and snapping the hamate bone in his right hand, which gets him put on the disabled list for three weeks while he has the bone removed. (Turns out the hamate bone is one of those things like the appendix, the tonsils, and algebra, that you don’t really need but is left over from a ti
me when we used to live in trees and didn’t have calculators.)
But with Villarreal out of the clubhouse for a month, my batting average jumps up twenty-five, my blood pressure drops twenty points, and I’m starting to make some good plays on defense. At this point, when my guard is down, my wife decides that we need to buy a house in Marin with a bigger yard for her dogs, and I’m in such a good mood, I give in, and before you know it, I’m commuting to the ballpark across the Golden Gate Bridge every day.
A week before he can actually start playing, Villarreal comes back from Arizona, where he was doing rehab on his hand, and he’s in the clubhouse, all day, every day, “How you doing? You getting some good at bats, man. How’s your wife? She like the new house?”—six thousand times a day, and my batting and fielding go to shit again and I’m afraid I’m going to get sent down to the minors unless Villarreal shuts the fuck up. But how?
So my wife is on me about the new house, how there are all these plants in the backyard that aren’t safe for her precious puppies and maybe even the kid and she wants them out of there. Foxglove, she calls them. Really tall flowers. I look at the Yorkies, which are about a foot tall at best, and the foxglove, the poison part are the flowers, which are about four feet off the ground, and I tell her I’ll get to it next time we have a day off.
“Digitalis,” she says. “It’s in the flowers. If one of them eats one of those flowers, their little heart will explode and we won’t even know what it was from.”
“What?” I say. I say, “What?”
“Digitalis. They make heart medication from it. If you have a weak heart—”
Before she finishes her sentence I decide it’s time to do some yard work because, goddammit, those little dogs give her a lot of joy and you can’t have one of their little hearts explode from eating those horrible flowers. So I cut those sons-a-bitches down, pile them up until I have a whole bale of them, then put them in the garage workshop where the puppies can’t get to them, and so they can dry and I can get rid of them responsibly.