catching up, 6
2006
Another spring, another season: his sixteenth now, and he could still get excited for the first day of spring training, that beautifully groomed infield grass, baseball with Ivanna pressing her face into the fence to watch him because the Tigers trained in Florida and she could be there to watch it. The chance to meet a whole new group of pitchers. Or old pitchers-- Rogers, who had been back in Texas, signed with Detroit in the offseason. Pudge liked to think that he had had a lot to do with that. The money Detroit had offered had been good, but Rogers had made almost as much money his second time through Texas; the money alone would not have meant that much.
Rand gave him a thorough entrance exam, huffing lightly over Pudge’s weight like he’d been doing the past couple of years (Pudge had made a habit of ignoring him-- they’d been calling him Pudge for almost twenty years, for God’s sake, it was his name), jerking the ruler up a couple inches past the top of Pudge’s head to fudge his height for the press packets. He checked Pudge’s back and knees very, very carefully, double checking when he couldn’t find whatever damage he had been expecting.
Well, Pudge had been lucky when it came to injuries. All those years at catcher, a position that beat most guys into the ground by season ten-- if they even made it to a tenth season, which most of them never did. He’d seen those old catchers, the forty year old men who moved like they were twice that age. There were horror stories about knee surgeries, vertebral fusings, transplantations of tendons, insertions of metal plates and pins and artificial hip sockets, things the old backups muttered to each other over the water cooler in the dugout to scare the rookies.
Sure, his knees hurt a little more than they once had, clicking in the mornings when he got out of bed. His back was definitely more painful, a constant low-grade ache where he had never had any lingering pain before, but that was well within his tolerances. He had acquired some weird scars in strange places: an oval cluster of points on the back of one shoulder where he’d been stepped on by a Mariner wearing metal-capped cleats; a slight discoloration on the inside of his left thigh, a mark left from a fastball strike that had never entirely gone away; the one fingernail on his right hand that wouldn’t grow in properly anymore. But those were just souvenirs. In veteran-catcher-terms, he was practically pristine.
“Don’t think I’ve ever seen this,” Rand said. He was admiring a series of X-rays that he’d stuck up to the training room’s lightboard. “Look at this knee. The wear on the bone here! Like the knee of a third year.”
“Does not exactly feel like it did, my third year,” Pudge grumbled.
Rand traced a finger reverently around a glowing X-ray patella. “That’s the soft tissue talking. Still. This? Is a thing o’beauty.”
Pudge rolled his eyes and kicked his legs, drumming on the exam table base with his heels. Rand waved him out absently, not taking his eyes off of the X-rays. It was a little creepy.
Out on the field, the sun beat down, warmly Florida-familiar. He ran the presumed starters through their paces. The coaches wanted to look at Bonderman’s curveball, and Rogers had to learn the pitch signs (different from the ones Pudge had used with him on the Rangers, of course). There was debate over whether or not Maroth would be starting, so the coaches had to see him work, and Pudge had to catch those sessions, because it wasn’t fair to judge Maroth against some infant catcher who barely knew what he was doing.
And there was the new pitcher, Justin Verlander. His brief service in the previous year had not been enough to count as a real rookie season, leaving behind the lingering aftertaste of a passable fastball and nothing to support it; almost the very definition of a rookie who needed more time in the minors. Ilitch, through Trammell, had asked Pudge for his opinion. His opinion was that Verlander (tall, awkward, skinny) needed to put on some weight and build some muscle if he was going to keep throwing those fastballs.
So when he overheard Verlander complaining to Ledezma about the weight lifting workout routine the team had had him on all winter (“Brutal, man,” Verlander said, “just, like, the most brutal”), he grinned to himself and made a mental note to tell Rogers later. Torturing the rookies before he even met them properly. It was the sort of thing Rogers would appreciate.
**
Really, the amount of luck surrounding every aspect of his life was insane. He’d signed on with Detroit when they were still considered something of a joke, but this 2006 team was no joke at all, and just over two months into the season, everyone knew it. This was a good team, a team with the potential for greatness. Part of that was smart management, but a lot of it was luck.
He was lucky to have the family that he had. Three spectacular kids, all fully bilingual, able recite the infield fly rule from memory, all of whom were healthy, gracias a Dios. He had Maribel, who was, if he was honest, most of the reason for the spectacular kids. Not that he didn’t do his part, of course, but when a guy had to do most of his contributing from at least a thousand miles away, it was a lucky, lucky thing that the other contributor should be able to pick up the slack so adroitly.
He was lucky to have screwed up so many times in such a potentially career-destroying way-- Ryan, Urbina-- and to still have a career. Sometimes he lay awake at night staring at the ceiling, wondering why Urbina hadn’t said anything yet. It wasn’t like Urbina had anything left to lose. But maybe it was a bad thing, to let it get around that you voluntarily did things like that with other men, when you were in prison in Venezuela. He couldn’t really even begin to guess.
Lucky, lucky. Lucky that he had good friends for nights like this one, when he was trashed out of his mind in some impossibly slick Toronto bar, one cheek pressed flat to the smooth cool bartop, mumbling about how lucky he was in every way.
Rogers scuffed a hand affectionately over his head. “Wanna get lucky some more? Some girls over there, look like they’d go home if you asked.”
“What’f I don’ wanna girl tonight? What’f I want a, a boy? Or both? Eh?”
“Public, quiet,” Rogers murmured, very quiet himself, rubbing Pudge’s head again. Pudge closed his eyes and sighed through his nose. Rogers had such nice big hands, big strong pitcher’s fingers.
He cracked an eye to watch the girls for a while, not bothering to lift his head from the bar. They were attractive in that standard groupie sort of way-- the obviously-straightened hair, the heavy eye makeup, the low-cut tops and short, short, short skirts. Nothing wrong with that; it was kind of comforting, the consistency. It would take him, he estimated, ten minutes to get the prettiest one into the backroom (he had never been in this particular bar before, but there would be a backroom, there was always a backroom), on her knees, or turned around straight up against the wall.
He’d walk over, smile, put a hand on her arm. Say, “Hi, I play baseball.” The girl would smile in return, put a hand on him somewhere, his back or a hip, say, “Oh, really?” Maybe a comment about how it was too bad he wasn’t a hockey player, but that would just be a joke, a little momentary tease to remind him which city this was again, and that would be a good thing, there were so many baseball cities and he ended up in all of them sooner or later. Thus established, he’d buy her a drink. She’d finish it, giggle, maybe stumble against him a little, and off they’d go, headed for that inevitable backroom.
But tonight-- no. Tempting, always tempting, but no. He missed Maribel, and he missed the faint itch of Beckett’s underlip scruff dragging across his stomach. He missed the power of Ryan’s hands hard on his shoulders, even though he’d only felt that a couple of times, so many years ago. He felt like hanging onto that empty feeling a little. That ache. They had been playing so well lately, maybe it was good to remind himself that nobody could be that lucky, not even him.
“Well?” Rogers asked.
“Nah. You go ‘head if you want, I will jus’ stay here and. Watch.”
“Kinky, but no.” Rogers dug his fingers into Pudge’s shoulder. “Someone’s gotta keep an eye on your drunk ass.”
“Don’ lemme hold you back, man, you wanna get some ass you shoul’ go for it, they’re there, you got it, you go right ‘head--“
“You’re babblin’.”
“M’not,” Pudge muttered, mouth an inch off the bartop.
“Mmm. C’mon.” Rogers tugged at his shoulder. Pudge peeled up slowly, his cheek making a sticky sound as it separated from the bar. Rogers tossed a wad of bills down, nodded at the bartender, and pushed Pudge towards the door. He didn’t even glance at the group of girls as they passed. Which was weird-- hadn’t he wanted one? Or had he only been looking for Pudge? Or-- he couldn’t remember. Something about groupies. It wasn’t important.
Toronto was noisy and bright, stiflingly humid, or maybe that was just the inside of his head. The lights went too far up, way above ground level. Way above ballpark light tower level, which was the natural upper limit that bright lights should reach. It gave him a headache, wincing and stumbling, only Rogers’ arm around his shoulders keeping him upright.
“Too good t’me, you’re the bes’, jus’… too good.”
“Ah, where would I be without ya?” Rogers waved the arm not around Pudge, signaling for a cab.
“Gettin’ laid, prob’ly.” Almost certainly. He felt guilty, but it was a fleeting thing.
“Can do that any ol’ time. Anyways, bros before hos, right?”
A cab pulled up, whitish and beaten-looking, wheels unrelieved black without their hubcaps. Rogers hauled the door open and Pudge crawled into the back seat. It smelled dry, like old cigarettes.
“Bros before hos,” he agreed. Rogers gave the cabbie their hotel name. “Also bros before bros. Or. Bros before bros I’m fuckin’.”
“My god, look at you,” Rogers laughed. “You and your fat drunk ass.” His eyes had crinkled up at the corners in amusement. He was 41 years old; the lines there were starting to become permanent.
Pudge lifted his hand, pressed it to the side of Rogers’ face. All his concentration went to his hand, not wanting to poke Rogers in the eye. Couldn’t have that happening, not in the middle of the season, no sir. That was an important thing. Preserve the pitchers: the most important thing there was.
“Look at you,” Rogers repeated, still smiling to himself. He did not push Pudge’s hand away, but in spite of his words he did not look at him either, staring instead out the window at the dizzying flash of Toronto speeding by, that little smile on his face. After a while Pudge brought his hand down, and a little while after that he was thinking about Beckett again, thinking about a headful of tousled black hair in his lap, a power-pitching hand twisted in the sheets next to him, and Rogers was just a convenient soft thing, there to take his weight as he listed to the side.
**
Trammell had been fired at the end of the ’05 season, for a whole host of reasons. Pudge had probably been responsible for some of it, insofar as he had played a role in the whole Urbina thing, and sure, maybe there had been a few instances where he talked to Ilitch instead of bothering with the low-level authority of a manager first, which he supposed must have reflected poorly on Trammell. But he was not too bothered about it. He hadn’t been responsible for the badness of the team as a whole, and it wasn’t ever his fault that Trammell had had to deal with that, inexperienced and unprepared. Those were facts set in place long before he had arrived.
The new manager, Jim Leyland, was a clear and direct reaction to all the things that had gone wrong with Trammell. Where Trammell had been soft and uncertain, Leyland was hard and dead sure. Trammell had put up with a lot of shit from all of them, had let himself be pushed around and overruled and generally ignored. He had wanted to be friends with the guys on the team much more than he had wanted to be their manager. Poor Trammell, he knew a lot more about being one of the guys than he could possibly know about managing them. Not that that was surprising; Trammell was still so close to his own playing history. He had still been playing for the first six years of Pudge’s career.
Leyland did not care about being anybody’s friend, and wasn’t about to take any crap from any of them. By the time Trammell stopped being a baseball player, Leyland had already been a big league manager for eleven seasons-he was very obviously long since over wanting to be friends with his players. He treated Pudge exactly the same as he treated everyone else, which was mostly as if they were individually annoying pieces of dog shit stuck to the bottoms of his cleats.
When Leyland told Pudge to see him after the game, he didn’t even think about sneaking out, leaving early, making a run for it, even though there had been no breeze at all in the ballpark that night, which had made him sticky and irritable, and Rogers’ short, four-inning outing had only amplified that. The combination would have been more than enough to make him inclined to blow off a Trammell meeting.
“Sit,” Leyland said. Pudge had barely poked his head into the office. He was still damp from his postgame shower and the hair at the back of his neck was going to drip down into his collar and onto the back of the chair, but he sat. Leyland eyed him from across the desk. His face was practically statuary, each wrinkle creasing down his cheeks as precise as if it had been carved out of stone. Somehow, without moving it, his mustache managed to bristle threateningly.
“Ten runs for us tonight. That’s a lot.”
“Uh, yes sir.”
“Might not get that many tomorrow.”
“I guess maybe not.”
“Ain’t my business to guess. I’m anticipatin’. And you know Justin’s startin’ tomorrow night.”
“Sí,” Pudge said, cautiously. He was starting to get the horrible feeling that this conversation would end with more busy-work for him, but he was not quite sure why that should be. Verlander already had ten wins, just four losses. His fastball was a joy to catch, his offspeed stuff just good enough to keep the fastball usable. He was not exactly struggling through his rookie year.
Leyland picked up a cigarette and twirled it neatly over his knuckles. “You’ll write up a set of notes about the lineup you dealt with tonight. Tomorrow, you’ll meet up with Justin before the park opens and go over it with him. Don’t care where you do it, just get it done.”
“Excuse me, not to question, but…” Pudge paused, wondering how much diplomacy was worth trying on Leyland. “Verlander is, you know, he is having a good season. These are, ah, the Royals. I do not think he needs--“
“I don’t really give a fuck what you think he needs,” Leyland said quietly. Pudge was shocked into silence. “I didn’t ask you what you think he needs. I’m tellin’ you what he needs, and what you need to do. Now.” He produced a lighter that he absolutely was not supposed to have in the park, lit the cigarette and brought it to his mouth for a long drag. He exhaled, expertly directing the smoke out the corner of his mouth, away from Pudge, where it was sucked up by the wall vent. “I’ll explain my reasonin’ just this once, but you damn well better not expect it every time.
“Justin’s been pitchin’ good. OK, sure. Nobody’s gonna deny that. But he’s twenty-three-goddamn years old and this is his rookie-goddamn-season. It doesn’t matter how good he’s goin’, the kid’s got no idea how to deal with success. He’s gonna be thinkin’ just like you: oh, this is just the Royals, oh, we beat ‘em bad Friday, my game’s gonna be a snap--“ he snapped his fingers for emphasis, making Pudge twitch-- “nothin’ to it. Now, you think that and somethin’ happens, it goes to shit, fine. You’ve been around, you bounce back. But he can’t start thinkin’ like that, or he’s gonna fall down, and he’s just a kid, he ain’t used to it, so when he falls down he’s gonna fall down hard and maybe he don’t get up so quick.
“Now that’s what you’re for. You’re gonna let him know that you think his punk ass needs to come back down to Planet Earth and study, even if it’s for the Royals, even if we’re goin’ good and he’s goin’ good. You’re gonna show him that there ain’t no such thing as goin’ so good that you’re allowed to slack. I don’t care if he’s Pedro fuckin’ Martinez, I don’t care if he’s Nolan fuckin’ Ryan--“ Pudge twitched again, although Leyland, thankfully, did not seem to notice--“and I don’t care if he’s Cy fuckin’ Young himself come back from the dead, that’s the way it’s gonna be on this team. That’s my message, and you’re the messenger who’s gonna make damn sure he gets it. Got it?”
Pudge nodded rapidfire, and bolted as soon as Leyland lifted his hand at the start of a go on, get outta my office gesture.
Verlander had already left-- he’d barely dressed for the game, and probably hadn’t stuck around to shower after-- so Pudge sighed and got the kid’s number out of Joel Zumaya, their burly fire-balling middle reliever, who was even younger than Verlander and was also stumbling wide-eyed through his rookie year.
Rookies everywhere, and every year it felt like they were getting younger and younger. Pudge had been four years younger than Verlander when he made his rookie debut, but he was pretty sure that, somehow, in some impossible-to-define but fundamental way, he had been older at nineteen than Verlander was at twenty-three.
**
Verlander walked into Pudge’s apartment wide-eyed, obviously not much experienced with anything other than shabby rookie bachelor pads. Pudge allowed him a few minutes to wander, gaping at the framed photos on the walls of Pudge standing with Gold Gloves in his hands (the Gold Gloves themselves up on a shelf back home in Miami, of course), before he gently steered him towards the dining room table, where he had laid out his notes on the Royals. Verlander sat willingly enough, although he frowned when he saw the papers.
“Probable lineup for tonight,” Pudge explained, tapping a paper with the list of names on it. He waved a hand over the rest. “Notes on all these guys. We go over them, then the guys on the bench. How much detail for the bench guys, depends on how much time we have.”
“I don’t… I mean, what? I don’t need this.”
“I think I will be the judge of that.” Verlander opened his mouth, but Pudge was not about to let a rookie think he could always object and get his own way. “Oh, what you are about to say, I know. Don’t care, I have heard it a million time before. We will go over all dis, and we will do it because I say we will, you will shut up and do it, we will win a game, everything will work nice, smooth, and I am not goin’ to hear a complaint out of you. ¿Entiendes?”
Verlander slowly shut his mouth and slumped very slightly down in his seat. He stared at Pudge with eyes that had gone a little glassy, unfocused.
“OK?” Pudge asked. The expression on Verlander’s face was disturbing in its familiarity, but he could not immediately place it. He had seen it before, or one very much like it; maybe not on Verlander’s face, but he had seen it…
“I. Yeah. Yeah, OK.” Verlander shook his head like he was trying to clear it, scruffed a thumb down one sideburn. “I, um. Yeah. That’s… sure, if you say so.”
Pudge eyed him suspiciously, but if Verlander was fucking around with him, it was at least not immediately obvious how, so he set it aside for the time being and sorted the papers to start looking them over. He prompted Verlander to ask questions at pertinent points until Verlander had recovered enough from-- whatever-- to ask on his own.
The kid was not stupid, and he already had a good sense of what questions to ask: what Pudge thought they should do to address Joey Gathright’s speed on the basepaths, whether or not there were any circumstances under which they would pitch around David DeJesus, what signs they should use when John Buck (the catcher, thus the greatest sign-stealing danger) was batting or on second base. Once he seemed to accept that this was how he was going to be spending his day, he settled right into it, leaning across the table in his eagerness to scrawl strikezone diagrams in margins, to demonstrate changeup grips on wads of discarded paper. The afternoon passed so quickly that Pudge was surprised when he glanced at his watch and saw the time.
“C’mon.” He pulled the paper Verlander had been looking at out from under his nose and swept it together with the others into the center of the table. Verlander looked up, blinking in comical surprise. “Almos’ time to head to the park.”
“Oh. Was that…” Verlander stood, his long frame turning the motion into a highly complex unfolding procedure. “Was that… I mean, that was enough, right? I did OK?”
“You already win ten games this year,” Pudge said softly. “Sí, you did OK, an’ tonight you will do fine.”
“If you know I already… then why… nevermind.” Verlander bit his lip and shot a look at Pudge from under his eyelashes, a look that would have been too weird from almost any other ballplayer, but just barely worked coming from a rookie.
“Because I say so,” Pudge muttered, putting a hand low on Verlander’s side to shove him out of the apartment. Verlander tensed under his fingers, resisting for a moment, so that Pudge had to lean into him just a bit to get him moving.
Interesting. But Pudge gave him a sharper nudge with the points of his knuckles, and Verlander walked out of the door readily enough. Pudge turned back for his equipment bag.
“Hey, uh, I dunno how to get to the ballpark from your place,” Verlander called.
Pudge rolled his eyes at the empty apartment. God save him from common-sense-deficient rookies. “So you follow me.”
“Oh. ‘Course.” Verlander sheepishly trailed behind as Pudge brushed past him to lead the way to the elevator.
They won the game, 6-0. Verlander pitched seven innings of two-hit ball, mowing down Royals with such simple, easy confidence that it made Pudge’s chest ache to see it. Verlander’s fastballs were something between pure power and pure artistry-- they straddled that line with the delicacy of the platonic ideal of a fastball, the thing that every fastball aspired to be. The Royals didn’t stand a chance, and for once it was not just because they were the Royals.
In the dugout between innings Verlander sat with him, jacket awkwardly hiked up around his right arm to keep it warm, repeating the things they had talked about earlier that day. He kept sneaking little looks at Pudge, something in the set of his dark expressive eyebrows begging for approval that he had to know he already had.
Leyland nodded at Pudge in the lineup after the game, which was, Pudge knew, as far as he would go to ostensibly recognize the fact that his message had been expertly delivered. It would not have been nearly enough acknowledgement from a manager like Trammell, but from Leyland it was plenty.
**
It was a cloudy Detroit night, the Tigers back home fresh off a north-south Cleveland-Minnesota-Tampa road trip, and Bonderman stumbled early, allowing three runs in the first inning. It was not the first time this had happened when Bonderman was pitching. Pudge set both his hands on Bonderman’s shoulders in the dugout and squeezed until Bonderman, sitting on the bench, raised his reluctant eyes to Pudge’s own.
“Knock it off,” Pudge said.
Bonderman looked away. “Would if I knew what I was doin’ wrong.”
“Bondo. Jeremy. Knock it off.”
“I want to… can’t…”
“Not good enough.” He dug his fingers into Bonderman’s thick shoulders, feeling the places where they gave and the places where they pressed back. This was what came of bringing up pitchers before they were ready, doing what had been done to Bonderman back in ’03, before Pudge had been on the team to at least soften the blow. There was a right way to bring along a young pitcher, and a wrong way, and everything about the way Bonderman had been handled was wrong, wrong, wrong, and everyone was paying for it now: the team, the relievers, and Trammell had already paid for it, and Bonderman was paying for it most of all.
“M’sorry,” Bonderman said. He sounded like he was on the verge of tears.
“Hey. Hey. Look at me.” When Bonderman didn’t, Pudge grasped his chin and pulled his head around, slow and deliberate so as to not accidentally strain his neck. “You think too much. Next inning, go out and jus’ pitch.”
Bonderman stared at him with pleading eyes; he really was moments away from crying. “I would, I would, it ain’t that easy--”
“I. Bondo. Here.” Pudge dropped down into his crouch in front of Bonderman, fitting himself between Bonderman’s knees, letting Bonderman feel him as a catcher, that unmistakable and hopefully soothing catcher-shaped presence. He gathered up both of Bonderman’s hands in his own. “Look. You go out, you are making a pitch more wit’ your head and not your arm. Your arm, he knows what to do, but you are letting the head talk over him. I don’ wanna hear shit from your head the rest of the game. OK? I want to hear your arm only.”
Bonderman shook his head. Pudge rubbed the big hands, shifting his weight forward a little to lean against Bonderman’s legs. “If you start to think wit’ your head again, jus’ look at me and remember, I will do all the thinking. That is my job. No worries for you about what to throw, what not to throw, how to throw it; that is all for me. You look at me, you empty out the head, jus’ let your arm do what he wants to do. OK? OK?”
Bonderman took a deep breath and nodded, eyes closed. His fingers twitched inside the cage of Pudge’s hands.
When Pudge stood to get ready for his at-bat, he was surprised to see Verlander, up at the dugout rail, twisted around to stare avidly at whatever sort of tableau he and Bonderman had made. Leyland had watched them out of the corner of his eye, as was his managerial prerogative; most of the other Tigers were politely pretending that they had not been paying attention; but Verlander was looking right at them, not even attempting to hide the direction of his gaze. Pudge narrowed his eyes at him. Verlander ducked his head hastily, like he all of a sudden realized that he had been inappropriate, and turned back around to face the field.
Bonderman pitched better in the second inning, but he had used up so many pitches in the first that it was clear he was not going to last very long. Leyland was already on the dugout phone, mumbling down the line to the bullpen coach. At the end of the inning Pudge slumped onto the bench and sighed, just letting the familiar weight of his catching gear press down on him for a moment before he went through the ritual of unbuckling and unsnapping and removing it all.
**
His backup catcher was a grizzled former Met named Vance Wilson. Literally grizzled: his patchy facial hair, when he let it grow to stubble, was sprinkled all over with gray. He was a year younger than Pudge, though, and had been in the league only half as long; a definite weird twist to the usual starting/backup catcher dynamic.
There were plenty of guys who might have made it awkward (Zaun, he couldn’t help thinking), but Wilson was laid-back, funny in a quiet way, and he seemed to accept the fact that Pudge got more playing time than the average starting catcher. He was certainly capable enough for a backup; he just was not going to get many starts on the same team as Pudge.
Maybe, he told Leyland, Wilson should do some of this pregame prep-work with the pitchers. Nothing on the field, of course-- it would not make much sense for Wilson to prep the pitchers on days Pudge was catching-- but this extra-curricular stuff, the meetings outside of the ballpark, the hours cooped up with Maroth’s creepy quietness or Bonderman’s unflinching awkwardness or Verlander’s uncomfortable enthusiasm, around which Pudge was starting to not trust himself, if he was being honest.
Not that he said as much to Leyland. It was enough that these study sessions were probably well within Wilson’s abilities, and the poor bastard should have something to do for the team, something more substantial than catching the rare day game immediately following a Pudge-caught night game, or the less-important half of a double-header.
Leyland frowned, mustache ends dropping. “You tryin’ to get outta the off-field work?”
“No! No, I would not ever,” Pudge said, which was not exactly true. “But all he does is sit there, I feel bad, you know?”
“Not bad ‘nough to let him take some’a your starts…”
“Well. No. But they did not sign me to sit on the bench.”
“That is what they signed him for, though. So settle down. Let me worry ‘bout who’s happy with their playin’ time and who just wants t’bitch.” Leyland opened a drawer on his side of the desk, pushing stuff around like he was looking for something, not even looking at Pudge anymore. “He warms up the relievers durin’ games, that’s enough to keep him from gettin’ too rusty.”
A year ago Pudge probably would have argued the point, but a year ago he had been playing under Alan Trammell. He picked up the pack of cigarettes that was half-buried under the pile of papers on the corner of the desk and pushed them across to Leyland, who shut the drawer and muttered his thanks.
Pudge hooked his thumbs into his pockets, rocked on his heels for a moment, debating, then thought better of it. Leyland knew damn well that Maroth was weird and Bonderman was awkward. He probably knew that Rogers and Pudge spent more time drinking and bullshitting together than studying for games. He either already knew more about whatever Verlander was getting out of the meetings than Pudge did, or he had no idea at all, in which case it was in Pudge’s best interests to keep it to himself anyways, wasn’t it? What else could he ever have on this team that Leyland wouldn’t somehow know about, that he had not somehow orchestrated?
It was not as if he was trying to hide information from his manager. It was not as if he honestly thought he would win if it ever came down to a power struggle between them. But surely it was good-- prudente-- to keep something back for himself.
**
The bus that took them from the hotel to Fenway Park was unmarked, with tinted windows: a necessity in Boston, where Very Bad Things had been known to happen to visiting players who made the mistake of being recognizable where Boston fans were present (which was, as it happened, everywhere in the city). They could see out, but people outside the bus could not see in, although some experimentation had shown that they could see vague human-shaped outlines if the guy in the window seat pressed right up against the glass.
One day they would invent some sort of direct tunnel system to shuttle players from hotels to ballparks underground, but that day, alas, had not yet arrived. And this was Boston. Traffic was snarled, an epic tangle of irrational streets and irate drivers meeting in a rancorous gridlock. Some of the younger players were speculating about accidents, road closures, something extraordinary to explain it, but long, bitter road trip experience had taught Pudge that this was simply how things went in Boston. Los Angeles too, but these American League kids wouldn’t know much about that. Regardless: the bus was stuck. They could not exactly get out and walk. They had no choice but to wait.
Wilson was quietly going over scouting reports with Nate Robertson, who was starting that night. Inge was involved in some kind of deeply annoying slapping game with Chris Shelton. Leyland was up front, chain smoking out the window, which he had cracked the absolute minimum amount possible. Guillen and Magglio Ordonez were playing I, Spy in Spanish. Bonderman was, impossibly, asleep.
Pudge was sitting on the aisle, Rogers at the window next to him, trying to have some approximation of a quiet adult conversation. The delay, the close confines of the bus, the brassy off-key honking surrounding them: all of it was combining into a hot, stabbing pressure at the front of his head. Rogers was clearly not faring much better, his responses growing shorter and more terse by the minute.
Several rows in front of them, something kept happening to make all the Tigers in the vicinity burst out laughing. The first few times it happened Pudge was more or less able to ignore it. They were stuck on a goddamn glorfied tour bus, in what amounted to enemy territory; let the kids have some fun-- even if it was annoying fun. The eleventh time they exploded in shrill rookie laughter, though, grating across his consciousness, Pudge lost any semblance of patience and surged up out of his seat, storming down the aisle to see what the fuck was going on.
Verlander had a window seat and was hard up against the glass, going through a series of contortions like he was being stabbed to death. Pudge could indistinctly see, down on the sidewalk, a number of pedestrians staring at the bus. Undoubtedly trying to work out what on earth was happening to the agonized silhouette they were able to see through the window.
“Do the butt one, do the butt one again,” Zumaya chanted, sitting next to Verlander. Curtis Granderson and Jordan Tata, young center fielder and relief pitcher respectively, were hanging off the backs of the seats in front of him, cheering him on. Verlander went into an elaborate pantomime against the window that made it look like he was getting spanked by an invisible hand behind him, sending the others into gales of enthusiastic, impossibly young-sounding laughter.
“Enough!” Pudge barked. Granderson and Tata both immediately disappeared back into their seats. Zumaya froze mid-laugh, mouth hanging open, and Verlander collapsed away from the window like the glass had gone lava-hot, eyes wide. It probably would have been funny if Pudge had not been staggered under the weight of such an enormous headache.
“Seriously, what is this, are you in, in kindergarten? We are all stuck on dis fucking bus, it is not jus’ you alone, you cannot act like it is jus’ you! Dios, my son did not act up so much when he was a four year old! Sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, save the fucking energy for whenever the hell we get to this fucking ballpark!”
Verlander and Zumaya stared at him in stunned silence, eyes and mouths matching shocked circles. There was some scattered applause from the back of the bus.
Pudge put his hands up to his temples. “Jus’… jus’ be quiet, and if you have to talk, do it wit’out all of this… hoot and shout. Dios.”
“OK. Lo siento,” Zumaya said, very quiet. Pudge sighed and flapped a hand at him, yeah yeah, whatever. Zumaya winced, then glanced at Verlander, who had slumped down farther in his seat and had gone glassy-eyed, dazed again. Pudge squinted at him. He had seen Verlander look like this before, when Pudge was yelling at him. It was almost as if… almost like he was… almost…
No. “I cannot even deal wit’ you rooks right now,” he muttered, stomping back to Rogers and quiet and relative sanity.
**
Beckett was one of the Red Sox, his first season ever away from the Marlins. He was already the number two pitcher on the staff, just behind Curt Schilling, who was old and wouldn’t last much longer anyways. By this point in the season Beckett had a 13-and-6 record. Verlander was 14-and-5, which didn’t really mean anything, except for the way it kind of did.
Pudge spent the whole night before Beckett’s start curled up on his hotel bed with every undersized bottle out of the minibar arrayed before him, in a state of hazy terror, trying to imagine batting against Beckett. Being on the wrong end of that curveball. He knew that curveball, knew the spin of its seams, the exact point where it would start to break. He knew Beckett’s release point and the spot where his front foot would come down onto the mound. He knew the way Beckett held his shoulders a little bit differently when he was about to throw a fastball. But to hit it, to actually get his bat around on it, make contact, do something other than pop out or hit a weak grounder? He would do it, of course he would, it was his job, but he wasn’t entirely certain that he could. Standing at the plate in opposition of Beckett seemed like the kind of thing that would leave him destroyed in so many different ways.
He hardly slept, staggered off the bus into the ballpark with his eyes bleary and a faint tremor in his hands, no kind of shape to be in before a big game. The home team always took batting practice first; if he went out onto the field, the Red Sox and Beckett would be there, doing the usual ritualistic pregame stretches on the grass, but trying to talk to Beckett would almost certainly only make things worse.
Leyland tacked up the night’s lineup. Pudge went over to look out of habit, skimming down the page for the familiar shape of his name and not finding it. He scanned the lineup again-- a mistake, sure-- no, there was V. WILSON inked in at the absolute bottom of the order, right next to C. He had the night off.
Leyland must have thought he needed it. Maybe he had seen some of the tiredness in the pinched muscles of Pudge’s back, or maybe it was just some weirdly brilliant flash of managerial intuition. It was just barely possible that someone had noticed, had told Leyland about the sorts of things that had happened back on that unlikely winning Florida team. Leyland had once upon a time managed the Marlins; he still had lots of friends back there. But the potential reasons why didn’t matter. He had the night off. He would not have to face Beckett from anywhere other than the visitor’s dugout.
Granderson led off the game with a triple to deep right, which was typical for Granderson but not at all typical for Beckett. Pudge leaned forward on the bench, pretending to care about Coach McClendon giving Granderson the signs, really just trying to get a better look at Beckett. Beckett got a new ball from the homeplate umpire and popped it into his glove a few times, glaring down at it.
He ran the count full on Craig Monroe, glancing over to third after every other pitch. The next pitch was a curveball, sloppy, curving far too much, hitting the dirt right at the catcher’s feet. The Red Sox, like the Tigers, were going with their backup catcher for this game: Javy Lopez, Juan Gonzalez’s brother-in-law. Lopez pounced on the ball to keep it from getting away.
Monroe tossed his bat to the side and trotted down the line, signaling across the diamond to Granderson at third. Beckett raked the front of the mound a bunch of times with one cleat, a bull pawing at the ground. Pudge gave any hope of playing it cool and bounced up to the rail to watch more closely, elbowing Bonderman out of a prime rail position. Bonderman shifted over without complaint.
Batting third was Dmitri Young, who hit a hard ball to right on the very first pitch he saw. Beckett spun on his heel, every furiously quivering inch of his body language screaming out to Pudge that he just could not fucking believe this was happening to him. Granderson trotted home easily. The ball rolled to the right fielder, who tried to pick it up and bobbled it. Monroe alertly took third.
Beckett turned back around. The look on his face sent a jolt like a lightning bolt straight through Pudge, even though he was almost eighty feet away and behind a padded railing, even though Beckett wasn’t looking at him.
He threw four pitches to Ordonez before he let loose with a wild one. Pudge winced; Lopez had no hope of even touching it. Monroe came scampering home from third. The ball had bounced so far away that even Young, who was very fat and very slow, could make it to second base. The Tigers were already up by two and Beckett had not yet recorded a single out.
A couple of groundouts advanced Young the final two bases, bringing the score up to 3-0. Sean Casey flew out to end the inning. Beckett was storming off the mound while Casey was still standing at the plate, trying to undo his shinguard. Lopez tried to stop him, say something conciliatory, Pudge could recognize damage control when he saw it, but Beckett shrugged him off and marched down the dugout steps, Red Sox scattering out of his way. Intelligently, as it turned out: Beckett took off his glove and whipped it as hard as he could down the entire length of the dugout. Terry Francona, the Boston manager, hurried over to put his hands on Beckett’s shoulders and his body between Beckett and the field, shielding him from camera lenses and from the eyes of everyone but his own teammates.
“He looks like a National Leaguer today,” Monroe announced, back in the visitor’s dugout. He picked up two gloves and tossed one to Granderson, who had been standing there, looking around helplessly. “NL all the way, fellas. Take advantage.”
That was tempting Beckett and fate both; Pudge wanted to tell Monroe to shut the hell up, he knows what he’s doing out there, don’t call him that, but it was not exactly the sort of thing he could say where the whole team could hear. He tightened his hands around the rail, padding crumpling under his palms.
The Red Sox were third in their division and the Tigers were in first in theirs. He wasn’t playing and Beckett wasn’t pitching like an ace. It was like he’d fallen into some bizarro alternate dimension.
Beckett settled down some and managed to make it through six more or less steady innings, but the Tigers tacked on a couple of runs in the third, and by the time Beckett left, the worst of the damage had already been done. Pudge watched from the rail and thought of all the things he would have done differently, all the times he would have gone out to the mound and all the different pitches he would have called. They won, 7-4. Nate Robertson came out of it with a better ERA than Beckett, which was just, well, wrong.
Pudge showered much more slowly than he had to, avoiding the rest of the team as they gathered for the buses back to the hotel. When it had quieted down, only one or two stragglers left in the trainer’s makeshift road office and the clubhouse attendants going around to collect dirty towels, he ducked out and made his way down to the home player parking lot. It was easy to get lost in Fenway, but the place was so small that it was impossible to get too lost, and eventually he found his way by following the faint street noises up and out. He picked Beckett’s huge white Range Rover out almost immediately and perched on the back bumper, squishing his butt back as best he could to stay up.
It was two hours after the game had ended, the night sky dead with clouds and bruise-colored urban light pollution obscuring the stars, but he could still hear the background rumble of Red Sox fans beyond the lot fences, milling around, shouting at each other, waiting for friends or on their way to a bar. There were a couple of bored cops all the way across the lot at a part of the fence that must have been the gate, waiting to shoo fans out of the way if someone needed to leave.
Most of the other Sox had already gone, but Beckett’s was not the only car in the lot. Pudge kicked at the air, watching his sneakers flash in and out of the yellow light illuminating Beckett’s parking spot. Mike Lowell came out, keys jangling as he twirled them idly around one finger. He stopped dead when he saw Pudge. Pudge risked taking one hand off of the bumper to wave at him.
“Hi.” Lowell took a few steps towards him before stopping, realization breaking plainly across his face as he recognized the car. “Oh. He. He’s not in a good mood.”
Pudge nodded, shrugged. Lowell glanced over his shoulder at the ballpark, then back at Pudge. “How’ve you… you’ve been OK?”
“Sure. You like Boston?”
“It’s, you know, everything’s a little crazier here. It’s good.” Lowell’s eyes drifted back towards the brick exterior Fenway wall. Pudge grinned.
“It’s OK. You don’ have to stay, I know how he is goin’ to be.”
“I don’t think you really do,” Lowell said. “Not anymore.”
“Trust me, it’s fine.”
Lowell stared hard at him, then shrugged. “On your head. He shouldn’t be too much longer.” He turned and started walking towards his car, tossing a casual see you tomorrow back over his shoulder. The cops down at the other end of the lot roused themselves, getting ready to haul the gate open.
It grew quieter once Lowell had left and the gate had been closed behind him. Maybe the crowd was finally starting to thin out a little. Pudge tilted his head back and watched the faint undulations of the yellowed cloudcover. He found himself wishing for a clear night, stars, a moon, something he could focus on.
He heard the scrape of the door opening, the gentle pad of crosstrainers on asphalt moving in his direction. “What the fuck are you doin’ here?” Beckett asked, sounding aggrieved. Pudge brought his head down. Beckett looked as pissed off as he sounded.
“Hola. Nice to see you too.”
Beckett hooked both his thumbs into the back pockets of his jeans, a move that made his shoulders look bigger, more dangerous. “What, you come out to gloat or some shit?”
“You think I would do that? Josh. What, I cannot come say hi?”
“Been a while since you bothered, huh? Excuse me for bein’ surprised.”
Pudge stared. Beckett rolled his shoulders back in something that might have been a stretch and might have been a shrug, looking at the top of the car, just over Pudge’s head.
“If you want to talk,” Pudge said, very carefully, “you can call me as easy as I call you.”
Beckett still refused to look at him. “You left.”
“I… yes. Well. Yes, my contract was up.”
“You left,” Beckett repeated. “You just up and left and didn’t say shit, you didn’t try’n talk, you didn’t try to do anythin’, you just up and left, you-- you abandoned everyone on that team.”
“I did not abandon anybody,” Pudge said, shocked. “I did not… I sign wit’ another team, that is baseball.”
“You left.” Beckett’s eyes were boring straight into him now, almost pure black in the poor parking lot light.
Pudge shifted uncomfortably on the bumper. “Can we… can we not do this out here?” Beckett snorted shortly, jerking his hands roughly out of his pockets. He strode around to the driver’s side of the car and pulled the door open. Pudge hesitated, then eased off the bumper and went around to the passenger’s side, where he was only slightly mortified to discover that he had to hop up to get into the seat. Stupid Ranger Rover.
He expected Beckett to pull out, drive off to the local apartment he must have, maybe head for the visiting team hotel if he felt like he needed neutral turf or whatever, but Beckett did not even turn the car on. He just sat there, hands on the steering wheel, staring grimly out the windshield at the brick wall. Pudge carefully pulled his door shut.
“You left. Didn’t even try to keep it goin’.”
“There wasn’t. I did not know there was anything to keep going.”
“I got that by now, thanks,” Beckett said, an unfamiliar bite of bitterness in his voice.
“I did not abandon you.” It was weirdly important for Beckett to understand this. “You were jus’ a kid, you were under a contract. You have a whole team there and I know they keep Redmond to catch you, he is a good man, a good catcher, it is not like I abandon anybody--“
“You weren’t there. You don’t get to say how it was.”
“Jesus, Josh. Then tell me how it was.”
Beckett turned the steering wheel left, then right. Pudge could dimly hear the tires crunching over the pavement as they moved. “It was, we. We had a thing. We were a thing.” He glanced sidelong at Pudge, then quickly back to the windshield. “And we… we won it all. And then you left, and didn’t even call, like some kinda cowardly fuckin’ fuckface. And I thought…” He thumped the wheel with the heel of his right hand. “It was like, we won the Series and I couldn’t get higher’n that, but then it was a month later and you were gone, and Lee was gone, and everybody got to talkin’ ‘bout firesales and how the Marlins love that, and it was like, I had that high, then I was havin’ a reaction to it. Like a comedown. And everything was shit and I didn’t hear shit from you, and I thought every bad thing in the world and sat around. Listenin’ to Johnny Cash and shit.”
“I’m sorry. I’m… it was jus’… it was a baseball thing, you know? I thought, I leave, I am not on the team, you don’ need me to get in your way, you will go on and there is nothing to, to miss. It was not… I didn’t know--“
“You’re lyin’,” Beckett growled. “You can’t say it wasn’t… you didn’t…”
“I. Oh, Josh. I am married.”
“Like that means a damn fucking thing, you--“
“--we have three kids--“
“I let you… I let you fuck me. I mean, what the fuck, man?”
Dios, he had screwed this up badly. Stupid, stupid, Beckett had been so damn young, and he had known that everything had been a first for Beckett, he should have realized. “I let you fuck me also, remember. It was not like-- Josh, I am sorry. If it was… that way, for you, you could have called-- “
“I did call.” Pudge twisted in his seat to look Beckett full in the face. He would have remembered that, he was absolutely certain. “I started to, anyways,” Beckett temporized. “I picked up and started dialin’ a hundred times. And every time I stopped, ‘cause I thought if you really wanted to hear from me, you’da called yourself.”
He remembered what Ryan had meant to him; of course he did, it was impossible to forget, no matter how hard he had tried. If Beckett had been assigning to Beckett-and-Pudge even a fraction of the importance that Pudge in his youth had put on Pudge-and-Ryan… oh, hell.
“I thought you would jus’ go to someone else, if you wanted. Another ballplayer even, it is what we do.”
“Is it, now?” Beckett turned to look at him and Pudge found himself wishing that he had not twisted around so much, because now he could not look away without it being a huge, obvious motion. “Is that what you do.”
“We all move around, is a rare player who stay wit’ one team for all his career. A contract run out, there is a trade, somebody is sent down. So yes, that is what you do, it is what you have to do--“
“Oh sure, and every time you got perfect fuckin’ control of how you end up… how you end up fuckin’ feelin’ ‘bout a person, is that right? Is that what you do? What other ballplayers’ve you fucked, huh?”
“It is not like that… that is not what this is, it’s not what this is about, I--“ Beckett was starting to look truly thunderous. “I, fine-- fine! Dios, if you really want to know. I ever tell you about Ugie?”
“Ugie-- as in, Urbina? What the fuck? Do you mean in Florida? While we were…”
“No! I mean, yes, in Florida, yes, but only one time and it was before, before me and you. And it is not like I was going to do wit’ him what I do wit’ you, it was jus’, OK, no big deal, very nice, simple, I make no attachment, and that was…” fine, he wanted to say, but ha ha, not so much.
“Jesus Christ,” Beckett said. He sounded sick. “Get the fuck outta my car.”
“Josh, you asked. Whatever you think right now, it was not--“ He reached across the center console to put a hand on Beckett’s arm. Beckett jerked away, almost crashing into the driver’s side door.
“Get the fuck out!”
All of his catching instincts were screaming at him to stay: Beckett was freaking out, he wasn’t well, he was a pitcher and he needed to not be left alone, he needed to be taken care of and watched over. But Pudge was not Beckett’s catcher anymore.
He clambered down from the car on shaky legs, trying to not let it show in case the lot cops were watching. He could hear the engine roar up and settle down to a purr as Beckett turned the car on, the protest of the tires as Beckett reversed out of his parking space a little too fast, slammed the car into drive before it had fully stopped going backwards.
He kept his head down and walked towards Fenway. He was going to have to find a stadium attendant, a security guard, some random late-shift Red Sox employee. Someone who knew the local companies and could call him a cab. They would be looking for him, back at the hotel.
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