The Sieve

San Diego Padres announcer Bo Barber cracks his knuckles, realizing he’s about to broadcast baseball history.

“It’s been fifty-five years since the San Diego Padres joined the National League. During that time, the Padres have made the World Series twice and lost both times. Here, in game seven at Petco Park, with the deciding game of the series tied at 2-2, the Padres’ best player, Rhett Cutler, has a chance to put the game away in the bottom of the eighth with a man on first. You played with Cutler, Tony. What do you think is going through his mind?”

Former pitcher turned announcer Tony Bobeck wipes his brow. “Nothing. The man has ice water running through his veins. He’s loving this moment. He’s not the nicest guy in the world but he’s simply the best hitter I’ve ever seen, and his defense is equally flawless.”

“Cutler has been in this position many times throughout his career with the Red Sox, Brewers, Dodgers, and Angels, and always seems to come through,” Barber says. “He has five World Series rings to prove it.”

“Cutler’s successful track record has put him on the cover of Sports Illustrated half a dozen times and landed him an armful of ESPY Awards. He’s also garnered fourteen All-Star selections,” Bobeck notes. “In his eighteen-year career, Cutler has been MVP six times and won a dozen batting and home run titles. His lifetime batting average is .324 and when you talk about the greatest of all time, his name is always in the conversation.”

“But success also breeds contempt,” Barber says. “Some players view Cutler as cocky, self-centered, and being a me-first player worried about his statistics rather than his team. That’s why he’s been traded four times. You can see the confidence oozing from him as he swaggers to the plate. Cutler steps into the batter’s box, grinning, as Miguel Ruiz dances off first base… The first pitch from Bouton Blaze is down the middle for a strike. Cutler smirks as if having a strike against him is an advantage… Blaze winds up… Cutler swings from his heels and sends a ball deep to center…McKay, the center fielder just looks up… GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY! THAT BALL IS OUTTA HERE! The Padres lead the Toronto Blue Jays 4-2, with three outs to go for their first championship!”

Chastity Fullbright, a dugout reporter for the Padres’ network, pulls Rhett aside after his home run.

The cheers are so loud he can barely hear her question.

“How does it feel to be a hero to thousands of Padre fans?”

Rhett puffs up his chest. “Management brought me here to lead this team. The best way to do that is to be a star and produce.”

Chastity flashes her whitened teeth. “You let the first pitch go by. Did you know Bouton Blaze was going to throw the same pitch?”

“I know that busher inside and out. His fastball’s not very fast and his curve doesn’t curve anymore.”

“So, you’re pretty confident your home run will stand up and the Padres will win their first championship?”

“I’ll eat my glove if it doesn’t. And I’m going to win the Most Valuable Player Award too.”

Mickey “the Motor” Motorola, the Padres usually lights out closer, gets two outs, and then gives up a single. He then uncharacteristically walks the next two hitters.

Standing in right field with his hands on his hips, Rhett yells, “Get over yourself, Motor!”

Cookie Gleason ambles to the plate. In the lineup for his glove, the weak-hitting Blue Jay shortstop has two feeble singles in twenty-three at-bats in the series.

 Leaning forward in his chair in the broadcast booth, Tony Bobeck wipes his brow. “There’s no place to put Gleason, but if you’re a Padres fan, this is the guy you want your struggling closer to face.”

The Motor runs the count full to three balls and two strikes.

The Motor takes a deep breath, throwing the ball down the middle of the plate. Swinging late, Cookie slashes the ball to right field.

“Line drive to Cutler,” Barber says casually. “This should end the inning and bail out the Padres.”

The line drive comes directly at Rhett. He opens his glove, ready to catch it.

Rhett comes to an abrupt halt like a cartoon character, his spikes digging up the turf.

The ball whizzes over his head, landing behind him and rolling toward the wall.

Rhett stares at the ball for a moment, unable to believe he didn’t catch it.

“GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY! HE MISSED IT! HE MISSED IT!” Barber yells, swooning.

By the time Rhett fires the ball to the infield, three runs have scored, and a jubilant Cookie is standing on third base.

When the inning mercifully ends, Rhett is assailed with garbage and insults as he skulks back to the dugout.

“You couldn’t catch a rash at a poison ivy convention!” one fan yells.

“You should try catchin’ it with your mouth... It’s big enough!” yells another.

“The cow they used to make your glove just turned over in his grave!”

A chant begins, resounding throughout Petco Park.

“SIEVE! SIEVE! SIEVE!”

The Padres go down easily in the bottom of the ninth inning, losing the game and the World Series.

Grumbling, shaking their heads, Rhett’s teammates desert him.

Rhett sits motionless in the dugout repeatedly muttering, “This can’t have happened to me,” until he notices Chastity’s microphone waving in his face.

Chastity throws her abundant blonde hair back like a Shetland pony, displaying her blinding smile.

“Do you want ketchup with that glove?”

“I misjudged it,” Rhett says to the throng of reporters assembled in the locker room. “No voodoo, no lights in my eyes, and I didn’t slip on anything. I made a mistake. Haven’t any of you ever made a mistake?”

An anonymous reporter in the crowd says, “Yeah, but we didn’t pick the biggest moment of our lives to make one.”

Gritting his teeth, Rhett hisses, “I didn’t choose the moment. It chose me.”

Wren Ryder of the San Diego Union-Tribute asks, “What went through your mind when the ball went over your head?”

“Oh, %#@&!”

“I can’t print that.”

“Good. I’ve already apologized a thousand times to my teammates and the fans.”

“A lot of opponents, particularly the Blue Jays, wanted to see you fail, and you finally did,” Ryder continues. “You were pretty arrogant throughout the series…”  

“I don’t think of my style of play as being arrogant. I see it as aggressive. You didn’t see anybody else on the team taking the extra base.”

Ezra Pope of the Times of San Diego, another of Rhett’s longtime critics, asks, “What’s it feel like to have eighteen years of success blown away by one flub?”

“Awful. I haven’t had to taste defeat many times in my career, and I don’t like the taste. I feel for all Padres fans. I let them down when we had victory in our grasp. But believe me when I say this, the Padres will be back next year.”

“The question is, will you be with them?” Pope asks.

Rhett exhales heavily as he pulls his car into his driveway. He’s getting home a lot later than he planned to. When he came out to the parking lot, his tires were slashed. He had to pay an irate mechanic twice as much to fix his flats, trying to ignore him muttering, “You hit like Ted Williams, but you fielded like Robin Williams.”

Stepping out of the car, Rhett notices something in the large oak tree in the front yard.

“Probably a raccoon or a cat,” he says.

As he draws closer to the object, he realizes it’s a dummy hanging from a rope.

Written across its chest is the word “Sieve.”

Grumbling, Rhett walks toward the house.

Climbing up the steps he can see the front of the house has been bombarded with eggs.

Rhett spends the first month of the off-season fishing with his cousins in Canada, ducking interviews, leaving Fiona, his wife of fourteen years, his twelve-year-old daughter, Jasmine, and his eight-year-old son, Jeremy, to bear the brunt of the public’s scorn.

Big for his age, Jeremy handles comments like “Look up in the sky, it’s a ball!” or “The Sieve can’t catch a cold,” with a threatening glare or a sock on the jaw.

The comments are so thick and persistent that Jeremy doesn’t mind walking the twelve blocks to and from school.

His tormentors join forces one afternoon after school. They follow Jeremy home, taunting him with, “Cutler’s glove has more errors than a Windows update!” and “The Sieve couldn’t catch a steel ball with a magnet!”

“My Dad’s an All-Star! He’s got World Series Rings! He’s met three presidents! Can any of your douchebag fathers say that!”

Possessed of his father’s lack of grace or patience, Jeremy faces his persecutors, turning the parking of Walgreens into a bloody bare-fisted battlefield.

In a scene resembling foot soldiers taking down an elephant, two boys jump Jeremy from behind, pushing him to the pavement.

When Fiona greets her son at the door, she’s surprised to see he’s battered and bruised. The word “Sieve” is written across his shirt.

He’s crying. Not for himself, but for his father.

The phone rings for the twentieth time that morning, and it’s only 10:00 a.m.

“Does this go on all the time?” Rhett asks Fiona.

Fiona lets her unsmiling expression and tired eyes serve as her answer.

Jasmine jumps into the conversation. “If you were here the past month instead of hiding out at some fishing hole in the wilderness you’d know it.”

Jasmine stomps out of the kitchen, slamming the back door as she leaves.

Rhett picks up the phone.

“Is this ‘the Sieve?’” the voice on the other end asks.

“This is Rhett Cutler. You got something to say to me?”

“I sure do. You broke our hearts. We’re gonna break your skull.”

The caller hangs up before Rhett can respond.

“Another death threat?” Fiona asks.

“…Yeah…”

Fiona walks to a small whiteboard taped to the refrigerator. Taking the magic marker attached to the board she adds a slash.

“Nearly two thousand.”

“Death threats?”

“Yep. Hanging is pretty popular. Beating you to death with a baseball bat is another. There’ve been some weird ones, like stuffing baseballs down your throat or running over you with spikes, and some creative ones like sticking your head through a target and letting people bean you.”

“We need to speak to the police.”

“Tried it,” Fiona says. “The Chief is a rabid Padres fan. I can’t repeat what he said about you.”

Rhett reaches out for Fiona. The cute strawberry blonde quivers in his arms.

“I thought they’d just come after me. I mean, who takes something like this on a guy’s family? I figured if I was in Alberta or Saskatchewan, they wouldn’t be able to find me, and this nightmare would eventually go away.”

“They’ve been waiting all their lives for a pennant. They feel you took it away from them.”

“What can I do?”

“Face it.”

The number of telephone calls, letters, and emails continues increasing.

Rhett’s response is to fire back at his detractors. The interviews Rhett grants typically begin with the reporter praising Rhett’s accomplishments, leading to the inevitable question, “Why didn’t you catch the ball?”

After three months of answering the same questions, listening to angry fans tell him how they plan to kill him, and watching his family’s psyches collectively collapse, Rhett loses his will to fight back.

Fiona often finds him asleep in his easy chair by noon, a half-finished bottle of Scotch sitting next to him.

There’s no relief for Rhett when the team reconvenes the following year for spring training. Fans cheer derisively when Rhett corrals a fly ball, making comments like: “See. It didn’t have to hit him in the head for him to catch it!”

Out of shape and often hungover, Rhett’s poor showing in spring training carries over into the regular season. Hitting a frustrating .230, eighty points below his lifetime average, Rhett gets called into owner Montague Peregrine’s office halfway through the season.

Peregrin and Manager Cag DeSoto greet Rhett’s hopeful smile with grim expressions. A historian of the game, Peregrin is short, baby-faced, and the youngest owner in baseball. He made his money in tech and lives by the credo: “What have you done for me lately?”

Pot-bellied, diabetic, and concerned for his job, old school Manager DeSoto loves Rhett’s results but hates his attitude.

As Peregrin sits back in his oversized chair, Rhett feels as if he’s being lectured by a circus dwarf.

“I traded for you four years ago, ignoring the whispers about your personality, because you’re a winner. Baseball can be cruel. In 1908, Fred Merkle made a baserunning mistake that helped cost the New York Giants the pennant. Merkle played for twenty years, but the blunder followed him to his death. Fred Snodgrass dropped a key fly ball in the 1912 World Series. Sixty-two years later, the headline of his obituary read: ‘Fred Snodgrass Dead; Ball Player Muffed 1912 Fly’. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

“The fans will never forget that play,” Rhett replies. “My family and I have had a lot of baseballs thrown at us, and I can’t count the number of burning bags of dog crap I've had to put out on my front lawn.”

“This all reflects badly on the team,” Peregrin says.

“I didn’t intentionally screw up.”

“You haven’t gotten over it. It’s still affecting your play, DeSoto says. “You know you’ve got to produce in to keep the boo birds at bay.”

“And you’ve been in a slump since opening day,” Peregrin adds. “You’ve had more strikeouts this season than the last three years combined.”

“So, this is how you’re gonna do me…”

“I don’t like it any more than you do. The bottom line is your presence affects my bottom line. Maybe you can hook up with another team, or just retire.”

“You’d like me to disappear, wouldn’t you?” Rhett asks incredulously.

“We’ll honor the rest of your contract,” Peregrin says, “That’s fifty million.”

“I knew I’d be the scapegoat No one ever mentions that our centerfielder never moved when the ball went by me.”

“Sorry, Rhett,” DeSoto says. “It’s a demanding fan base.”

Jasmine closes the kitchen door behind her, leaning forlornly against it.

“What’s the matter, hon?” Fiona asks.

“Hildy, my best friend, was teasing me. She said, ‘Your daddy had to quit baseball because he missed the ball’.”

“That’s it.”

Fiona marches into the living room where Rhett is going through his scrapbook while polishing off a bottle of Scotch.

“We’re moving.”

Residents in Westphalia, Indiana, population 202, are more impressed by the two sixteen-wheeler vans that pull up to the old Warwick Horse Farm than by the last name of the family who bought it. Very few locals know who Rhett is, and for two years, that’s how he likes it.

“I grew up in Santa Monica hanging out at the beach. I never pictured myself as a laid-back, country horse breeder,” he says one day to Fiona.

“You still miss it, don’t you? The cheers, the competition…”

“Even the boos,” Rhett admits.

“Do you think you can take the heat now? Because if you can, I’ve got an idea.”

Fiona gives Rhett a thumbs up as he sits next to Cookie Gleason at the Annual National Sports Collector’s Convention.

Pen in hand, pictures, and other memorabilia splayed out in front of him, Rhett gives the passing collectors his best welcoming smile.

A pair of young boys hover near his table.

“Hey, that’s Rhett ‘the Sieve’ Cutler. You wanna get his autograph? He was good before he lost that ball in the World Series.”

“You kiddin’ me? He’s a bum.” The second boy says. “If you toss him a ball to autograph, it’ll go over his head.”

Rhett’s head droops.

Cookie pats Rhett on the shoulder.

“Don’t let those two brats get to you. They’d probably boo the Tooth Fairy. We’re gonna attract some good and some bad fans. Especially early on. But have faith, partner. Your wife had a great idea putting us together. We’re going to become famous all over again.”

A man with tousled dark hair holding hands with two little boys stops in front of their table.

“Oh, my God! It’s Rhett Cutler! You were my favorite player growing up!”

“Even after what happened when I was with the Padres?”

“Nobody bats a thousand. Nobody plays for as long as you did without making an error. That doesn’t erase the six hundred home runs you hit, and they can’t take away all your gold gloves for fielding. I’m sorry for the things you had to go through the past few years.”

The older of the two boys tugs on his father’s arm.

“Is this the man you said was your hero, Daddy?”

“He still is.”

Three years after being foiled by “The Sieve,” San Diego finally wins its first World Series. The following spring, Wren Ryder authors an article entitled, “Come Back Rhett Cutler, All is Forgiven.” The tribute reminds Padre fans that Rhett was a superstar, and leads to his being invited back to Petco Park to throw out the first pitch.

Montagu Peregrin steps up to the microphone, lowering it to speak. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome back a man who hit over a hundred and fifty of his more than six hundred home runs as a Friar, and twice was the league’s MVP in a Padres uniform. RHETT CUTLER!”

Peregrin tosses Rhett a ball. He makes sure to catch it.

The crowd gives Rhett a standing ovation.

The following year, Rhett is elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.