Devil in the Dugout

It was my fourth year of patrolling left field in Bowie, Maryland. Not Baltimore, not D.C., not Philadelphia. I would even take Milwaukee or Kansas City at this point. My fourth season of not getting moved up to AAA ball, but also not being sent down to single A. I guess that was a positive. When I was in high school, I hit .513 and had major league scouts at every game. They recorded my every move and kissed my parent’s proverbial asses in the hopes that I would ink a contract with them. I signed right out of high school with the Baltimore Orioles organization, and my fast track to stardom and that big league contract seemed inevitable. In my first season, I spent about a month in single A where I made those pitchers look like Little Leaguers until I got the call to pack up for double A Bowie.

           This was what scouts and my agent wanted to see, rapid ascension through the ranks. My first year in Bowie I broke my ankle sliding into third at the beginning of the season and lost the whole year. The next season I kept having setbacks with the ankle, minor surgeries to fix the original surgery and I never really recovered. My third season I was perfectly healthy. My ankle had never felt better, and I was moving faster than I ever had. I just couldn’t hit. I got sent back down to single A for a couple weeks where I demolished their pitchers. And now in my fourth year of professional ball, I needed to make a name for myself quickly or I probably needed to find a real job.

           It was the first game of the biggest season of my life. Another lackluster season wouldn’t necessarily mean my playing days were over, but it could mean something worse. That I was forgettable. I would join the long list of players who were really good at baseball, but not good enough to join the elite few. The crack of the bat brought me out of my daydream. A left-handed hitter reached out for a bad pitch and lifted a lazy fly ball out to me. During my half-jog, I realized it was hit harder than I thought. The ball was slicing away from me, headed for foul territory until I turned on the jets, went into a slide and caught it just before it hit the ground. My coaching staff and scouts watched silently to see how my ankle handled a slide on the first game of the year. I immediately popped back up and jogged without pain to my spot in left field as the crowd roared. Whatever apathy I had towards this game all winter dissipated as I saw people standing to cheer for me. The next two outs came quickly, and as I jogged back to the dugout, the manager of the team Stan Blaylock was waiting at the top of the cement steps with a heap of sunflower seeds spilling from his mouth. He clapped twice and gave me the standard slap on the behind. “Legs look good kid,” he affirmed.

           I checked the lineup card and saw I was hitting leadoff, I guess he trusts that my speed is back. I went two for five and even stole a base. This was going to be my year. For the first month of the season, I was on fire. I was leading the league in almost every offensive category there was. The call to triple A had to be right around the corner.

           Two months went by and there was still no call. One scorching July night, about an hour after everyone else left the stadium, I was still in the cage hitting ball after ball from the pitching machine. I’ve been swinging and missing at pitches high and inside all year, so that’s what I worked on. I thought I was alone, but I heard a door open from down the hallway. One by one, lights started to shut off. First the kitchen, then the film room. Coach was still wearing his cleats and I heard him clacking down the cold, cement hallway until he stood outside the cage. I turned and gave him a nod of acknowledgement, and continued working on the fastball up and in. In between pitches, Coach walked over to the machine and ripped the plug from the wall. Sweat was pouring down my head and I looked down to see that my shirt was completely soaked.

           “You had a good game kid, time to call it a day,” he said as he underhanded an ice-cold beer can at my stomach that I caught at the last second. I sat on a chair with my head down, holding the bat vertically to keep my arms from shaking.

           “It’s almost midnight. What the hell are you still doing here?” Coach asked.

           “I don’t know if you were watching the same game as me, but I struck out twice against the fastball up and in.”

           Still in full uniform, he stood in front of me and lit a cigar which he only did after a victory.

           “We won tonight, kid. And we wouldn’t have if you didn’t make that catch in the fourth inning with the bases loaded and two outs.”

           I said nothing and walked towards the machine to go plug it back in. Coach side-stepped me and put one finger on my chest. “Your time will come. You will get that phone call. Keep grinding like you have been and that call will come.”

           I tossed the bat to the side and cracked open the beer. “This is my fourth year in double A. I got a daughter to take care of now. I can’t afford to be paid peanuts and spend half my time in a bus to Chattanooga or Montgomery or wherever.”

           “Kid, you won tonight. One thing you need to start doing is having fun again. Fun with this game you used to love. The guys have told me you don’t go out with them anymore. And now as your coach, I want you to chug that beer in the shower, then hit the bars with the rest of your team and sleep it off on the off day tomorrow. I’m locking up the cage so don’t even think about going back in.”

           I followed my coach’s instructions that night. I chugged the beer in the shower, and in my mind left anything to do with the baseball at the park before I left. When I showed up to Caroline’s, the teammates that remained were barely coherent. It was to be expected, we won a big game and were off tomorrow. The first thing I saw in the back of the bar was Willy Ramirez, our shortstop belting out a karaoke version of that song that goes I don’t want anybody else, when I think about you I touch myself. The chorus repeated for about the fifth time when Willy saw me, tossed the mic aside and hopped off the stage and then onto my back.

           “Oh shit, Charlie Brown is here!” Willy said as I tried to spin him off my back. My last name wasn’t really Brown. It was a name I earned due to our home jerseys being yellow and the fact that despite my age, I was bald.

           “Get off me, El Guapo,” I said, which was our team’s loving nickname he earned by being the biggest flirt on the team.

           “Boys, Charlie is here!” Willy yelled as he grabbed a drink off the table, tilted his head back and emptied the drink. I sat and drank with my team for a while, and as the drinks loosened me up, I started to feel bad that I didn’t go out with them more or play cards in the hotel rooms on the road. I’ve been so focused on making it to the big leagues that I forgot to savor these moments. Who knows, one more severe injury and baseball could be done for me forever. Since they were already plastered, I felt the need to play catch up and bought shots until I too, was barely standing. I sat at the bar while one by one, taxis and angry girlfriends and wives picked up my drunken teammates. Too worried that I would slur my sentence, I lifted my empty glass towards the bartender as he walked by, and he nodded.

           “Put that one on my tab, Jimmy,” a man in a fedora said that I previously had not seen.

           “Thanks friend,” I said as I shook his hand.

           “Hell of a catch you made out there today.”

           “Oh ya? You were at the game?”

           “I was. Is that surprising to you?”

           “Just never been recognized before is all. I’m Charles Eliot. Doesn’t ring out like a Mike Trout or a Mookie Betts.”

           The man chuckled and gave me a slap on the back.

           “One day.”

           “So, you a fan? Take the kids to the game?”

           “Not exactly,” he said as he slid over a business card to me. I closed one eye so that I could read it. Hank Margolis, MLB Scout. A scout, in this bar, striking up a conversation with me.

           “How can I help you, Hank?”

           “I’ve been watching you for a while, Charlie. Good speed, good eye at the plate, and you got work ethic. You can’t teach that to some of these kids nowadays.” Hank took a big sip from his glass and an ice cube fell and landed on his mustache. He wiped it away and set the glass back down.

           “What if I told you that you could be in the big leagues as soon as next week?”

           “I would tell you that if you are joking, I will physically assault you.”

           A cloud of silence hung in the air and Hank let out a sly smile.

           “I’m kidding of course. It’s all I’ve dreamt of since I was a kid.”

           “Do you want it more than anything? Would you do anything for it? Would you allow anything to happen if it meant you were on the big club? Getting that big check and being on the nightly highlight reels?”

           “Yes. I want it that bad.”

           “Then shake my hand.”

           “That’s it?”

           “That’s it.”

           So, I shook his hand. He excused himself to go to the bathroom. I ordered another drink and nursed it for a bit, he still hadn’t returned. When I finished that drink, I decided that it was a smart decision to switch to beer. When I finished that beer, I went to go see if he was still alive in there. Caroline’s had a small, dingy bathroom. One urinal, one stall with a broken door and no windows. He was not in this room, and even in my state, I was certain that I saw him enter it. I went back out to settle my tab with Jimmy, who was already stacking stools on top of the bar.

           “Need me to call you a cab, champ?”

           “No, I’m good Jimmy,” I stated as I twirled the business card in my hand.

           Coach Blaylock was a sadistic son of a bitch and called in everyone for a mandatory team practice on our off day. He knew Jimmy well and was well aware that three quarters of the team had their heads buried in a toilet bowl this morning. After practice we were all sitting around lockers in our uniforms with belts missing a loop and jerseys not buttoned properly. We awaited Blaylock with a pending sense of doom. Mitch Sunderland stood up to shut off the massive overhead lights that we were all squinting at. Masaki Yori, or Maz as we called him, puked into an empty bucket of sunflower seeds.

           He finally lumbered out of his office, spitting tobacco into an empty water bottle.

           “Don’t worry, I won’t keep you boys long. I don’t like to make these type of announcements over email or text. Everyone of you deserves to hear it from me. But for one of you, tomorrow night will be your last game in Bowie.”

           We all hung our heads even lower than they were, awaiting the dreaded send down to single A, or even a trade to another team altogether.

           “I want you all to take a good look over there at Charles Eliot. I want you to say goodbye to him. And I also want you to wish him the best of luck in Baltimore.”

           Maz, who was vomiting only moments earlier, sprinted over to the Gatorade cooler and dumped it on my head. Within moments, I was buried under a sea of my teammates, a bunch of half-drunk hooligans who I am proud to call my friends. Once everyone started filing out of the clubhouse to sleep off the rest of their hangover, I stepped into Blaylock’s office to thank him and ask him about the callup. He gave sage-like advice as he was known to do and gave me the contact information for some people in Baltimore. Before I stepped out, I asked about Hank Margolis. To my surprise, he had never heard of him. I shook his hand and walked out the door.

           I only half remember jogging out to left field that next night, my last game in the minors. I was trying to sprint, but everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Three outs quickly came, none that I was involved in, and I assumed my place in the dugout and popped in a wad of chewing gum. In between innings, something commenced that I will not miss in the majors. The family-friendly antics that drive families to minor league games, ones that are not needed at the major league level. This particular circumstance was the classic t-shirt cannon. A team employee runs out onto the field, jumping around, trying to get the crowd pumped up. As the crowd cheered, he would load a t-shirt into a cannon and fire it into the crowd. He did it a few times, and on his last shirt of the charade, he fired up to the second deck, directly behind home plate. A concerned gasp permeated throughout the crowd, and then a collective terrified scream as a heap of arms and legs tumbled from the second deck, landing firmly onto the grass. Instinctively the team ran on the field as the bullpen doors swung open with a team of paramedics in full sprint. An ambulance which was always on call sped around the warning track. The man on the field lay unconscious with his legs at an awful angle, femur exposed into the night. The owner of the cannon still held it, dumbfounded, muttering to himself about how the man reached out for it while holding a beer and just tumbled over. I wanted to help the man on the ground, but professionals had already stepped in. With my eyes, I retraced the trajectory of the shirt to the accident that had just occurred. My eyes focused on the people, who were in a state of shock. Except for one man, who sat calmly biting a hot dog and licking ketchup from his fingers. I almost turned away before I spotted the fedora and the mustache. I had seen this man before. He stood and tossed the final bite of the hot dog in his mouth. He tipped his hat to me and walked off, disappearing into the frenzied crowd.