A baseball team without a home field, a pitch that mistakenly hits the head of a rookie—it’s a curse, right? Years later, the second baseman is interviewed about his time on the team and we’re right there with him—in the field, always away from home. It’s only near the end that we come to understand that all may not be as it seems.
They gave him a pool cue to use as a bat and had him stand in front of some stacked cinder blocks. This was in the backyard of the place—yard being a generous term for what it actually was, a few withered skeletal remains of some vegetation in plastic planters and the concrete underfoot dotted with cigarette butts and those splotches that suggest chewing gum had occurred there at one time or another. He assumed his batting stance and the big lefty reliever threw one at him. And it was supposed to get him someplace meaty, the thigh, the buttock. Certainly not anywhere above the shoulders. Certainly not right by his ear where the upper jaw met the lower. The idea had been all about initiation; the idea had been to break him in, not break him. This is what the second baseman talked about to the interviewers.
If you want to know the truth of it (this was sort of the second baseman’s default phrase to open or close a remembrance), some of them would come to believe that the shot to the head ended up doing the rookie good. And anyway, everyone quickly forgot about what the rookie had been like before that night. How had he behaved? Had he always had that frosted-glass-vacancy in his eyes? Had he always hummed that weird, two-note hum? Had he always had that (for lack of a better word) aura about him? They couldn’t even remember the name of the city they were in when it happened, couldn’t remember which erstwhile industrial boomtown they were in, other than it had to have been one of those, a town that had once manufactured something the world needed, if you want to know the truth of it, he told them. It had to have been one of those because those were the only cities they played in, likely someplace midwestern and economically depressed, an area whose citizens were always making sad attempts at “bringing it back” with the “it” meaning the town’s bygone livelihood and its jobs and its collective youthful spirit, a mythic municipal joie de vivre, an ideal that had somehow grown legs and strayed off, something its denizens needed to nudge back within the city limits. And speaking of sad attempts, the shortstop (the only member of that drinking contingent who was not out back) who had been, in each successive town, striving to have a threesome with a man and woman (husband and wife was strongly preferred) yet had not achieved, was inside the bar trying to talk to some of the couples, so he missed what happened to the rookie. But of the others who were there in the backyard, each was certain that, however directly or indirectly, he’d just taken part in a murder or manslaughter, watching the rookie go rigid, hit the cinder blocks, drop to the cigarette-butt-concrete, eyes back in his head, still holding the pool cue.
Another one of the second baseman’s commonly used phrases was, if you can believe that. If you can believe that, you two, he said to them, then get this: Seconds after they’d become convinced that this poor bastard’s life had been extinguished right in front of them, the rookie sat right back up and looked around at them all, all their stricken faces, as though he’d just been roused from a pleasant dream.
If you can believe that. And if you can, believe that, then you can also believe that the rookie acted so normal that no one did anything. They went about the next several days as if nothing had happened beyond the shortstop’s usual antics. It was not so much an unspoken agreement as it was a shared terror so palpable that the idea of making any mention of it was not on any mind.
So they acted as if nothing happened. No one said anything. The rookie got up without any help and gingerly walked alongside that drinking contingent (somebody took the pool cue out of his hand) back into the dive, where they found the shortstop sitting dejected next to two recently-vacated barstools, and they made their way back home, as it were, which was a motel, because home was always a motel. That particular season, the second baseman told them, they didn’t play any home games. If you can believe that. See, there was a wealthy guy who’d come to town—to their town, the one in which they’d normally play their home games—and he’d cast some sort of dumb spell on all of those folks. He vowed to go to bat for our team, an obvious and tacky choice of words, printed on the town hall meeting flyers, along with a picture of himself in a suit, holding a metal fungo in an awkward stance, even though he wasn’t even from around there and may or may not have had a toupée, and his call for a new stadium, because he loved their team, was suspect. Nevertheless, the city’s high-ups entrusted him with the task of bringing back its bygone vigor. They demolished the old stadium at the end of the previous season and laid the foundation for a brand new one in the fall. Then, over the winter that toupée’d man was investigated and indicted for fraud or embezzlement or one of those things that rich people get in trouble for, so investors and sponsors pulled their money out of the new stadium, and everyone sued everyone and that rich guy was in minimum security before the next season’s opening pitch was thrown. What existed of the new field was an ugly, brown-rusted confusion of I-beams half-submerged in pools of clay. So, they were the away-team for the vast majority of that long season.
Why couldn’t they have just worn their home jerseys every now and then? They could have! On scoreboards they were listed sometimes as the home team but that was a matter of word placement—their team’s name being on top or being on the bottom. They were also allowed to bat last. They really could’ve worn their cream jerseys. The fact that they never did was some combination of bureaucratic oversight, laziness, and some weird erstwhile-industrial-boomtown-jingoism on behalf of the cities they visited. They were just always the away-team. Always the visiting team. And that was just the beginning of their troubles.
If you want to know the truth of it, he told the interviewers, they all started getting hurt. They all did. A separated shoulder and a fractured cheekbone for the left fielder (a glorified black eye, was what the skipper called that). The right fielder pulled both groin and hamstring on a line drive that hopped strangely at the warning track. First base had his bag-foot stepped on by a runner trying to beat out a throw. The catcher’s knees… He, second baseman, sprained a knee too, he told them. All of the pitchers were struck down by those familiar pitchers’ plagues—elbows, shoulders, wrists, fingers. The lefty, who’d pegged the rookie with the drunken high heater, tore his rotator cuff in the seventh inning of a scoreless game. The shortstop (no surprise to any of them, and perhaps not an injury-injury, nevertheless) came down with a gnarly case of chlamydia. Even the batboy rolled his ankle on a bunt that had trickled over near the on-deck circle.
It was like their silence on the matter of beaning the rookie in the head had paved the way for some angry god’s wrath or karmic comeuppance. None of them used the word curse. No one dared use the word curse, but come on, that was the word slopping around inside every dull head in those away-team locker rooms. It got to the point where a faction emerged, and then a faction of that faction. The first was comprised of those who felt they all needed to come clean, to tell someone. Tell the skipper for Christ’s sake, get it over with. The skipper, for the love of Jehovah, would at least have a suggestion as to what to do. Something. The second faction believed that telling would indeed change their circumstance, but not necessarily for the better. And let us do not forget about those few who didn’t even know what the hell had happened, those innocents who were sorely sleeping in whatever hell motel when the beaning occurred. Should they tell those poor guys, or would that open up a new can of something they were not prepared to deal with? And yet there were even a different few people who felt they were in Hell anyway. It didn’t matter what they did. Could it get any worse than having to hear the shortstop scream every time he took a piss?
What was it then? What was it—with not even enough back-up players on the squad to offer up twenty-seven outs to the opposing team, so people had to simply play hurt or they’d forfeit games and they weren’t even granted the dignity to wear those jerseys that just remained crisply folded in the cargo section of the bus—if not a curse? He said this to these interviewers. What was it then, if not a curse?
New attention was paid to the rookie. Because, who gets clocked like that and simply gets back up? The faction (most of those who thought that telling the skipper would ultimately fix something or other, somehow better their situation, or at least remit some sort of penance) began to discuss the real creeping notion that they had, indeed, actually killed the man, that they had killed him that night: the big lefty had eliminated him and now he was just a signifier; he was a ghost or a zombie, only there to cause them suffering, a walking and talking—or, rather two-note humming—emblem of their crime. Here was culpability blasted back into their faces. He told this all to the interviewers. But again, maybe they didn’t have to read all this Christian guilt stuff into it. Maybe they didn’t need to feel that way. Maybe what the plain truth was they just weren’t very good, and they were beaten up a little. Nevertheless, they stopped sitting next to him on the bus, the rookie. And that might’ve been okay with more traveling space, but under such brutal minor league conditions, it was dire.
He told this to them, the two interviewers, without them having prompted him. He just kept talking, and it was only after maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes that he finally gained the presence of mind to ask if they wanted anything to drink. To which his interviewers laughed and said drinks weren’t necessary. They’d brought some things with them. They were the ones who should be offering him things. The second baseman said that was absurd, they were the ones who had to schlep all the way out there just to ask him questions. At which point the two young people made some indecipherable faces and changed the subject. What about that rookie? they wanted to know. What was he, center field, then? He was, the second baseman told them. So then, what was it? What was going on with him, after the injury?
They started bringing people around to see him. They didn’t advertise, per se. They didn’t not say he was a savior. They didn’t not say he was a Buddha, or an angel. They did not say he was not one of those things. They brought people around, for him to talk to, or maybe just sit with. It might have been one or two from an umpire crew. There were some eccentric fans (eccentric, first and foremost, because they were fans of that league) and memorabilia collectors. There were civic groups, ticket takers, hot dog vendors, book clubs, scout troops, organ players, churchgoers, newlyweds, new parents, scorekeepers. The catcher seized on an opportunity to make an extra buck and began charging people—he accepted their tens and twenties with ice packs plastic-wrapped to his knees. Just like the motel rooms—this one had green carpet, that one had HBO, this one had a bed that vibrated if you put quarters into the slot next to it—the looks on the faces of the visitors were different but not by all that much. Desperation and hope and despair all kind of look the same after a while.
And, he told them, it all stopped once they started winning again. Those factions—the ones who initially didn’t want to tell anyone about the deliberate pelting of the rookie and those who did want to tell; and then the ones who were on the fence about the whole thing; the ones who’d been enamored with the rookie after he started behaving the way he did, and the ones who were afraid of him and the ones who were mad at him—that all disappeared once they started winning again. And once a liberal arts college not far from their depressed town invited them to host their home games there, where the fence was not nearly as deep as the other stadiums they played in—indeed, was not even a stadium per se (but at least they got home games). At least they got to wear their home team jerseys every now and then, the jerseys with a name stitched onto them that was different than the one on the college’s dugout and scoreboard. But whatever. At least they got to do that. And they got to go home.
The interviewers asked about the rookie. What had happened to him? And in their voices was the strange tone that said they’d heard this story once before, perhaps many times before. And there were the looks on their faces like they weren’t surprised when he told them the rookie had played a not half-bad couple of seasons, that he’d done okay for himself and was now, last the second baseman had heard, living in a southern state and selling cars or real estate or something like that, really doing okay for himself.
And they, after rummaging around in his little apartment, sat back down and asked if he needed anything. Did he want anything? Did he feel like he was getting everything he needed? They just wanted to know if he was comfortable, is all. And he told them they were pretty young for sportswriters. And, hell, sportswriters didn’t really come around anymore. They used to be a dime a dozen, but now, pffft. And they both got these pained looks on their faces, so much so that he knew that he’d mislabeled them, or otherwise somehow offended them. And then the one—the young man—asked him where he’d played, which position. And the second baseman said, where else would I’d’ve played? Second. And the two of them gave nods.
And these interviewers both hugged him and one of them kissed him on the forehead and then they moved around the space, his rooms, as though they were proofing them in some way—looking at windows, evaluating accrued dust on fingertips run over surfaces, twisting gas burner dials, engaging locks.
And then they said we love you, in the collective like that. We love you. And then they went out through that side screen door and the second baseman watched them walk, sort of slouched together (sadly? were they sad?) and thought then of what he hadn’t thought to tell them. And he wished to tell them that, if you want to know the truth of it, he was confused a lot of the time and the TV (which they’d plugged back in) had been on for days and he couldn’t figure out how to turn it off, until finally realizing he could pull its plug out of the wall; and there was something dreadful happening with the hasp on the screen door that led to his little yard, which was nothing but a concrete patch with splotches that suggested chewing gum—the hasp always seemed to be unsecured every time he awoke despite him thinking he locked it every night. And the dismal weirdness about that compounded by the word hasp. Why couldn’t he remember basic things like how to turn off a TV and lock a door, yet know the word hasp? But as he watched them walking away, he was struck by what he was certain was a perfect memory that made the skin on his back prickle and he laughed and coughed, and it got him a little steamy eyed, if you want to know the truth of it. That season, on the way back—home, they were finally going home—the radio on the bus was broken, so they sang all the way.
Jonathan Rose is a writer based in New York. His fiction has been published in The Southampton Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Chicago Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He has recently finished his first novel.