dude, i so already did this
all right, y'all. this being the very first mlb fic i wrote. i was maybe a month away from going to london, living on capitol hill and taking a beating from the weather every day. hadn't been back to california in nine months; wouldn't get back for another eight. which probably contributed to it. summer in california and the sky's so blue--it's one of things where i was thankful that i could write. all the times i've described zito's curve, this first is still the best.
Title: Game On
Author: Candle Beck
Email: meansdynamite@yahoo.com
Category: MLB, Oakland A’s
Pairing: Zito/Mulder (but, boy, about as pre-slash as a thing can get)
Rating: G
Keywords: pre-slash
Feedback: By all means.
Disclaimer: If only they were mine. What I wouldn’t do.
Summary: Nothing’s as beautiful as the game itself. But some things come close.
Game On
By Candle Beck
It’s a good day. Zito’s game is on.
Summer in California and the sky is so blue it’ll break your heart. San Francisco glitters like a dream across the bay, vague and beautiful through the fog. The Coliseum is all laid out, the grass perfect green, the dirt raked smooth and begging to be messed up by the scramble of a run-down, the foul lines straight as arrows and looking like if there wasn’t a wall in the way, they’d stretch on forever, endless and clean white.
Days like this, Zito’s pretty sure Oakland was invented for baseball, and he’s pretty sure he was invented to play it.
His game is on.
His curveball is diving, each time he pitches it, it’s this ungodly sweeping thing, this roller-coaster that actually drops your stomach, just watching it cut. Once in the minors, he remembers crystal-clear his manager telling him, “Nobody has a career in the Show with just a curve. I don’t care if it does break two and a half feet, they’ll learn how to hit it in Yankee Stadium. They’ll learn how to hit it *out* of Yankee Stadium, if that’s all you ever throw.” So he developed a change-up, which necessitated first developing a fastball, which embarrassed him because 88 miles an hour shouldn’t ever be considered a fast anything. But it worked, and today that 88 miles an hour fastball is zipping like it’s got a spark biting at its tail, and the change is stopping on a dime, the batters unable to lay off.
What a magnificent day, deep in the pennant race, the sweet heart of the summer, five innings into the rubber match, with the sun on his shoulders and his game on.
He induces John Olerud to ground out to third to end the inning, and falls in stride with Eric Chavez coming into the dugout, tapping gloves with the third basemen and kicking a grin to him in acknowledgement of the routine play.
“All right, Zito, all right. Way to hold ‘em,” says Rick Peterson, the pitching coach the first in a string of chatter that accompanies him down the bench until he finds his place next to Mark Mulder, who distractedly pats his shoulder, the other pitcher watching Freddy Garcia warming up before the bottom of the inning.
Zito pulls off his hat and shrugs on his warm-up jacket, though it is seventy-five degrees with only the calmest of breezes. The jacket is more ritual than required, same as the towel that he drapes over his neck and the gum that he is never without when he is on the mound.
Zito believes in luck, he believes in things unseen. Baseball is not a game made up entirely of what happens on the field, there is more going on than the pitches and the hits and the plays made. He would never be able to prove that pulling up his socks gives a little something extra to the movement of his fastball, there’s no way to explain that he pitches better if he keeps a nickel in his back pocket, because the power of these things is intangible. That mysterious power is the truest part of the game.
Mulder leans back as Garcia settles in against Eric Byrnes. He slides a look Zito’s way and says, “You’re losing something off it when you’re pitching out of the stretch.”
Zito shrugs. “Well, if I don’t put anyone on base, I won’t have to pitch out of the stretch, how’s that?”
Mulder grins. “That works.”
Zito grins back, wishing idly that the majors could have open air dugouts, like in Little League, high school, college, even some minor league parks. The roof is welcome in New York, Boston, Chicago, where sometimes teams have to wait three hours for rain to clear up, but in northern California, where rain delays are as rare as no-hitters, the protection of the overhang seems excessive. Zito wants to feel the sun on his body as he watches his team take its at-bats, it’s the way baseball is meant to be seen.
Garcia is tiring, and has been streaky all year. He hangs a slider and Byrnes rips it, a frozen rope down the right field line. As he makes his dash for second, the young outfielder loses his batting helmet, and his mess of blond hair flashes gold, catching the pure summer light.
“Plays like his hair’s on fire,” Mulder mumbles, quoting something Ken Macha had said about Byrnes. Zito nods absently as Byrnes slides in, raising up a huge cloud of dust, making himself disappear.
“How are you pitching Ichiro?” Mulder asks, his elbows up along the back of the bench, lightly pressing into Zito’s shoulder.
“Very carefully,” Zito replies, and Mulder snorts.
“Thank you, that was helpful.”
Zito leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees, his hands folded together and tucked under his chin. Byrnes dances off second, his legs flickering, driving Garcia crazy. Terrence Long takes a quick swing at the first pitch, zinging one foul.
Half-turning to say something about a hitch in Garcia’s movement, and Zito finds Mulder not watching the game, but looking at him, steadily, even, with a slight smile playing on his face.
Zito blinks at the calm scrutiny. “Dude?” he asks, lifting his eyebrows.
Mulder doesn’t look away, just continues to study him, like there’s something fascinating about Zito with his scruffy unshaved face and dust-ragged hair spiking in every direction. “You got your game on today,” Mulder says, his smile sneaking wider, crooking.
Lighting a smile of his own, Zito replies, “Yeah, I know. You expected different?”
Mulder just rolls his eyes, and shifts so that his knee knocks against Zito’s.
Zito turns back to the field, aware that he’s beaming like a crazy person, but not really caring, because right now it’s baseball season in California, and he’s pitched lights out through five, and they’ve got a runner in scoring position with no outs, and Mulder’s knee is up against his own, and his game is on.
THE END