don't worry about a thing
My dad gave me a book called The Baseball Codes, by Jason Turbow and Michael Duca, and I read it in like a day and a half and then wrote a fic. Joy!
Zito/Lincecum (for the win!), rated R, 12155 words.
This story takes place in a fictitious 2009 where Timmy's already won his first Cy Young Award, but none of the game data or on-field events (or off-field events, for that matter) actually happened in any way.
The Code
By Candle Beck
It started in the players' parking lot.
Just a week into the spring training schedule and it was the Dodgers come to face the Giants at the pretty miniature stadium in downtown Scottsdale. It was Randy Winn's Escalade that one of the Los Angeles players backed into as he was trying to fit into a spot too small for his own Escalade. The jerkoff wasn't even supposed to be parking on that side of the lot, the shady home-clubhouse-adjacent side--anybody with two brain cells to rub together could see that.
The dent left over Winn's wheel well was big enough to fit a large man's fist. The Dodger (it was Jonathan Broxton, for those keeping score at home) didn't think anyone had seen the transgression, nor heard the chunking metallic sound, and he scooted off to the far side of the lot, shoulders hunched over the wheel as if running from the cops.
Behind a stone pillar near the Giants' clubhouse door, a young catcher who would spend most of the year in the minor leagues saw the whole thing.
Tim Lincecum was pitching that day, his second spring training start since winning the Cy Young the year before, and in the dugout Barry Zito handed him a baseball and said, "Knock 'em on their asses."
Lincecum had nothing in particular against the Dodgers. He squeezed the baseball and said, "For Randy."
"For all of us," Zito corrected him. Lincecum nodded. He was still learning the intricacies of this stuff.
Two batters into the game, two outs and bases empty, a headhunting moment if ever there was one, Lincecum aimed a four-seam fastball at Russell Martin's shoulder. The Los Angeles catcher spun away from it, slipping in the dirt and dropping to one knee.
Out in right field, Randy Winn clapped against his glove. Behind Lincecum, the infield was chattering, attago kid attaboy. Russell Martin was back on his feet, his face snarled, dirt gritting between his teeth.
Martin shouted at Lincecum, "Try that again, you little fucker."
Lincecum spat on the ground. He didn't like it when people called him little (it happened a lot). Anger welled up and he let it come. He set himself, hands to his belt, and then hurled the ball at Russell Martin's throat.
Martin had to be restrained by the plate umpire. The players on both benches leapt to their feet, hanging together in sneering packs at the front of the dugout. Bengie Molina shouldered his mountainous body between the batter and his pitcher. Lincecum leaned on Molina's back, one hand caught in the straps of his chest protector, and met every one of Martin's obscenities with one of his own.
Lincecum and Martin were both ejected from the game. Lincecum had to go to the practice field to get his day's workout in, lonely in the beating sun with the small spring crowd roaring on the other side of the fence. When he got back to the clubhouse, he found a fresh beer already cracked for him, the best seat on the couch saved, and Shark Week on the television.
That night, the boys took Lincecum out drinking. Next to a very large speaker, black metal screen burring with the volume, Edgar Renteria called the Dodgers pussies, and everyone toasted to it.
Lincecum ended up with Zito and Brian Wilson at the end of the night. They clustered together at the dark end of the parking lot, the orange spot of a jay passing back and forth between them.
"They didn't come back at us," Lincecum said. He was pretty drunk, swaying and feeling awesome.
"What?" Zito said. He had trouble concentrating when there was a joint in circulation.
"He's talking about the Dodgers," Wilson said.
"They didn't come back," Lincecum repeated. "Just a lotta big fuckin' talk."
Wilson's cheeks hollowed around the jay. In a voice tight with pent-up smoke, he said, "They will. Regular season."
"I mean they can try," Zito answered, leaning heavily on Lincecum's shoulder. "Try's not the same as doing."
Zito was the drunkest of the three of them. Lincecum could hear it in the softened edge of his voice like water seeping into cardboard. He could feel Zito hanging on him, losing his balance for brief moments here and there.
"But, but," Lincecum said, and then stopped. His head was going all fuzzy. "Regular season actually matters."
Wilson nodded, and Zito stared dazedly at the stars, but Lincecum didn't think they really understood. The point was that he had thrown at a Dodger in a game that meant nothing, and gotten tossed out of a game that meant nothing. In a month, the world would look very different for them all.
"We'll get ours," Wilson promised. "They'll come in with dirty slides or something. Punch a glove in somebody's face tagging him out. Have to watch out for the boys when we go to L.A., don't let them get knocked down without a quick response. They fuck with us, then we fuck with them."
The logic behind it was fairly straightforward; all the same Lincecum was hazy and confused, becoming uncomfortable under the weight of Zito's arm. He wished for it to be an hour ago, or an hour from now. He was too drunk, and now stoned, that delicious sour diesel that Zito had brought two ounces of from California. It filled Lincecum's head with mesh, layers of smokey lace.
"Who taught you this stuff?" Lincecum asked.
Wilson shrugged. There was patchy streetlight through the scraggly desert trees at the edge of the parking lot. When Wilson lifted his hand to take a hit, the light caught on the ink-black tattoos on his forearm. Badass, Lincecum thought, which was something he'd thought a lot since becoming a major league baseball player.
"You pick it up down in the minors, from the older guys," Wilson said.
"Rickey Hen'erson taught Chavvy," Zito contributed in a slur. "Chavvy taught me."
Lincecum shifted his weight, feeling Zito breathe deeply, his arms folded on Tim's shoulder. The proximity was causing Lincecum's lungs to expand only half-full. His head was pounding, and he sucked greedily at the joint when it came back to him; it was medicinal, after all.
"Nobody taught me," Lincecum said.
Wilson snorted. He rubbed his palm across Lincecum's head, knocking his skull lightly against Zito's.
"Guess they figured you weren't worth the effort."
"Hey." That hardly seemed fair. "Mean, dude."
Now Zito was laughing against the back of his neck, huffing chuckling kind of laugh that betrayed all the various kinds of fucked up he was.
"Go tell your mom about it, why don't you," Wilson said with a big grin. He licked his fingertips and pinched out the jay.
Lincecum shrugged hard, dislodging Zito off his back and almost falling over. The night sky yawed violently above him, tilting to an acute angle before slamming back into place like a drawbridge crashing down.
"I wanna know about this stuff," Lincecum said. His eyes fixed on a single point, the license plate of a shiny red Miata, to quell the roil in his stomach. "You should tell me."
"You'll learn," Wilson replied, another one of those supremely confident pronouncements of his. "If you wanna last in this league, you better learn."
Lincecum scowled at that. Wilson was always talking like he'd been around for a decade and eight All-Star teams, like he wasn't just another punk kid pitcher, only two years older than Lincecum. Wilson was assumptive--Lincecum considered that that might not be the right word. Presumptive. Cocky, but usually in the good way.
"There's a snake by the fence," Zito reported out of nowhere.
Tim startled; he fucking hated snakes. "Where? Dude, get away from it."
Zito was leaning close, peering at the scrub brush lining the bottom of the fence. Lincecum wanted to grab his shirt and haul him back. Paranoid, stoned as a sinner, Lincecum was possessed of a wicked sense of how things could go south really quickly.
"Oh wait," Zito said. "It's a stick."
"Jesus," Wilson said, exasperated. He smacked Zito upside the head and set off across the parking lot to the main road where taxi cabs loitered, their drivers leaning on the hoods smoking cigarettes and waiting for the bars to empty.
Zito shot Lincecum a quick smile. "It woulda been cooler if it was a snake."
"Yeah," Lincecum said mindlessly, although it definitely would not have been cool in any way shape or form. He would have made an idiot of himself, all jumping and yelping like a twelve year old girl or the dog that lived in her purse, and Zito would have come up with some unintentionally perfect nickname for him, Yippy or Tweety or something, and it would catch on with the whole team and then the broadcasters and then the entire goddamn world like Zito's nicknames had a tendency to do, and twenty-five years down the road it'd be inscribed between quotation marks on Tim Lincecum's plaque in Cooperstown (knock wood).
So, that would have been lame. But Lincecum smiled and lied because Zito had a way about him that made a person want to agree with him all the time, just to keep the conversation going.
They followed Wilson back across the parking lot, matching each other with hands in their pockets, heads tilted up to look at the massive desert moon shining off in a corner of the sky.
*
Winning the Cy Young had changed a lot of things.
Lincecum supposed that he should have expected that. That press conference and all those stupid interviews over the winter with their bonehead questions and his brain-dead answers, that was never going to be the end of it. That would have been too easy.
Twice as many people showed up for Lincecum's spring training starts, and not just fans. Half the baseball press in the country was down here, and when Lincecum pitched they took up the good seats behind the plate, black sunglasses and caps emblazoned with corporate logos instead of team insignia, endless golden beers catching the sunlight as Lincecum leaned in to get the signs. He got recognized on the street every single day and in bars every single night. Strangers kept calling him Timmy.
It was mildly disconcerting. Lincecum stuck close to Zito because Zito had been through it.
"Is it gonna be like this all the time?" Lincecum asked one day after he'd spent a good half-hour signing autographs at the fence while the rest of his slow-ass team dragged themselves out of the clubhouse and onto the bus. They weren't even at their home ballpark, gone way the hell out to Peoria to play the Mariners, but there had been no end to the sunburned arms pressing baseballs and caps through the fence for Lincecum to sign. He ground his thumb into the center of his palm, working out the cramp.
Zito had the window seat, keeping an eye on the other cars on the road. "What?"
"The, the fans. Dozens and hundreds of them, all over the place. Wanting me to sign everything in the whole freakin' world."
"I think you're exaggerating."
"Only a little." Lincecum leaned towards Zito's window, wondering what was so interesting out there on the road. "Is it just down here, though? Just 'cause of spring training?"
"Yeah. Or, well, no. You'll get it back in San Francisco too, at least kinda. Won't be so bad on the road. Not unless you start doing Nike commercials or some shit."
That was laughable, and so Lincecum laughed. He shook his head, and pulled his fingers to pop them, looking for Zito's watery reflection in the window.
"I most seriously doubt it," Lincecum said.
"You've been on the cover of Sports Illustrated," Zito said, sounding bored. "Anything can happen now."
"Is that how it works? Awesome."
Zito smirked, and turned to give him a look. The sun was going down on the other side of the bus, spears of light making Zito's face scrunch and squint.
"It's one of those things to cross off the list," Zito told him.
Lincecum nodded with enthusiasm. He was happy to hear that Zito also knew about the list of things to accomplish. "Next is a Wheaties box."
"And tomorrow, the world."
"Hey, the Ramones," Lincecum said, and Zito looked vaguely confused, so he probably hadn't been quoting lyrics to classic punk rock after all. "I mean, yeah."
Zito lifted his eyebrows, looking somewhere between bothered and amused, which was a pretty typical way for Zito to look. Lincecum smiled at him, because he liked Zito a lot. He always had.
"Anyway, don't think about it too much. Pitching's hard enough, you know what I mean?"
Lincecum immediately nodded; it was another one of those unconscious reactions that didn't hold up under greater scrutiny. He didn't think it was cool to tell Zito that pitching wasn't exactly hard for him, no more than running or riding a bike. Everybody liked to talk about the unorthodox (read: fucked up) pitching mechanics that his father had taught him in the backyard and refused to let anyone train out of his son, but the thing they seemed to miss was that it wasn't weird if you'd been doing it since you were five years old. It was just how his body worked, at this point.
There was really no point in saying any of that to Zito. Lincecum went digging in his bag for the pair of chocolate chip cookies wrapped in white paper napkins that he'd stolen from the spread in the clubhouse. Zito took his cookie with a pleased, "Thanks kid," always somewhat surprised even though Lincecum brought him a cookie a lot of the time.
They ate in companionable silence. The bus rumbled under them. Heat shimmer clung to the faraway stretches of sun-struck highway. Lincecum's hand still ached from autographing shit for so long, but he knew he couldn't complain.
It was toolish in the extreme to complain about the minor inconveniences caused by your lifelong dream coming true.
*
They came home to San Francisco and the 2009 baseball season truly began.
Lincecum got off to a hot start: three starts, three wins, two complete games, and thirty-four strikeouts. Batters cursed his name. The San Diego manager accused him of inching forward off the rubber, and so Lincecum had to pitch with the umpiring crew and both teams' pitching staffs gathered around like vultures, arms crossed martially over their chests, squinting at his motion.
Lincecum wasn't inching off the rubber. His stride was just longer than he was tall. It just looked strange. He told the San Diego manager, "I've always pitched like that," and got called a fucking piece of shit for his trouble, which seemed unwarranted.
Three hours later, with the Giants holding a six-run lead, Lincecum put a fastball (not his best) into the San Diego shortstop's ribs. The batter hollered at him from first base, "What the fuck was that for!" and Lincecum hollered back, "Ask your cocksucking manager!"
The response from Lincecum's team was generally approving. Aaron Rowand clapped Lincecum on the shoulder and said, "Good lookin' out." Freddy Lewis brought him the last blue Gatorade. Zito slumped beside him on the bench, remarking casually, "Motherfuckers."
Lincecum was having a wonderful time. Last year had been his first full year, and he'd been distracted by all the stuff he had to remember, like how to pitch individually to each of the seven hundred and fifty men who played major league baseball. And then he kept striking everybody out and everybody started talking about him, and then he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and the whole planet started calling him 'Freak,' which should have bothered him but didn't.
There had been too much going on last year to really enjoy it. Lincecum woke up in October to his cell phone buzzing, his agent calling to tell him that he'd won the Cy Young Award. The winter had been a mess, interviews and solicitations and his dad calling him every day without fail, but now the season had begun and Tim was okay again, untouchable.
The Giants went to Los Angeles for the first time in late April. Better than a month had passed since Jonathan Broxton had backed into Randy Winn's car. Lincecum hadn't forgotten throwing the ball at Russell Martin, but it had faded in his mind with the passage of time, become just one of thousands of pitches.
It was something of a surprise, then, when in the top of the third inning Hiroki Kuroda's first pitch came sailing in towards his face.
Lincecum made an undignified noise as he collapsed to his knees in the dirt. "Whoa," he muttered, looking at his hands strangled around the bat.
"Get up, bitch," Russell Martin said from behind the plate.
Shooting him a vicious look, Lincecum braced the bat and pushed himself up. Kuroda was standing at the front of the mound, grinning. Lincecum scowled and dug back in, jamming his spikes into the dirt and imagining it was the pitcher's face.
Kuroda's next pitch hit him in the hip. Tim twisted away, felt the visceral thud of the ball hitting bone.
"Ow, the fuck!" Lincecum yelled at Kuroda, who kept grinning at him, moon-faced and malicious; he probably didn't even speak English.
"Get your ass to first base," Martin said as he pulled off his mask. "You had it coming."
"Fuck you, Russ," Lincecum said. He tossed his bat aside and jogged down to first, one hand screwed against the throbbing place on his hip.
Lincecum lifted his fist for first base coach Roberto Kelly to bump, but Kelly only gave him a stink-eye, as serious and stern as a stone figure carved atop a grave. Lincecum faltered.
"What?"
"Get your hand off your hip," Kelly said from the corner of his mouth like a gangster. Lincecum dropped his hand immediately. The tension in Kelly's body relaxed slightly. He put his hand on Lincecum's shoulder.
"Don't rub it, chico," Kelly told him. "No matter how bad it hurts. No matter what."
"Sorry," Lincecum said, thinking that he should have known that. His hip ached dully in time with his heartbeat.
"Just don't do it again. Mira, he's pitching."
Lincecum edged off the base, eyes on the pitcher. He thought it was stupid that he wasn't allowed to rub his hip. He thought it was stupid of the Dodgers to still be throwing at him when a month had passed.
Lincecum got as far as second base, and then was stranded. Kevin Frandsen brought his glove and cap out to him and asked if Tim needed some ice for his boo-boo. For the rest of the game, instead of smacking him on the ass, his team smacked him on his sore hip, and then two hard punches in the shoulder for flinching.
Tim was all the colors of the rainbow by the time he got out of the shower after the game. The bruise on his hip had concentric circles of lavender and indigo.
He put on jeans and a shirt and talked to the press for a few minutes, microphones pushed at him like autograph books. They asked about him getting hit and if there was any bad blood there, and Lincecum had to laugh.
"It's the Giants and Dodgers, I thought?" he said. "Bad blood's a given."
Apparently it was the right answer. Lincecum smiled for the cameras, trying to be sincere but the effort alone seemed to suggest that he'd failed.
Zito was still picking at the spread when Lincecum finally escaped. Most of the other guys had retreated to the couches to watch SportsCenter before going out to the bars. Lincecum sidled up next to him, stabbing a mini carrot with a fork.
"How's the hip?" Zito asked, which was what everybody had been asking Tim all night. The lesson had been well-taught; Tim would never rub at another plunking for the rest of his life.
"Multicolored," Lincecum told him. He munched on the carrot, a Bugs Bunnyesque feel to the scene.
"I'll get 'em for you tomorrow."
Zito said it off-hand, bland and distracted as he corralled extra cherry tomatoes to put on the salad he was building. Lincecum experienced a happy pang in his chest, knowing that it was only a teammate thing but still, it was nice to hear.
"Thanks," he said, and Zito said, "What?" because he'd already forgotten about it, or didn't consider it a thing worth being thanked for, and Lincecum stuck another carrot into his mouth instead of answering.
They ate sitting side by side on the smaller of the couches in the clubhouse, their knees touching. Lincecum had to sit kinda weird to keep pressure off his hip, but he liked it. It was a combat injury.
*
In the next game, Zito got precisely no run support, managing to hold the scoreless tie into the sixth inning before Ethier figured out his curveball and sent it rocketing into the night over Chavez Ravine. It would be the only run of the game, a 1-0 loss and every man on the team taking a moment to put their hand on Zito's back or shoulder in silent apology.
No chance for Zito to enact his promised retaliation, of course. The Code counted for a lot, but winning would always count for more.
Lincecum didn't care. He was exhausted just from watching the game, squeezing a baseball between his hands and stomping in frustration. The wretched look of concentration on Zito's face as the game got later made Lincecum's throat close up in sympathy. Zito had pitched as well as he possibly could, scraping sequences together out of guile and weak late movement, but he took the loss, took the last two innings of the game sitting stoically on the bench.
Zito didn't go out drinking afterwards, though it was their last night in Los Angeles and usually Zito had fifty thousand friends he needed to catch up with over the course of a three-game series. He told Lincecum he needed to get some sleep and took a cab to the hotel alone. Later that night, Lincecum got shanghaied into karaoke, and caught himself wishing as he climbed the stage that he'd just gone back with Zito instead.
The next day, down in the weight room before the third game of the set, Matt Cain took the stationary bike next to Lincecum and told him conversationally, "Steve's got their signs."
"Huh?"
"Holm. He decoded their signs when he was on second base for like ten minutes in the fifth yesterday, you remember?"
"Yeah yeah. That works, no shit?"
"Would I shit you?"
Lincecum gave him a look, then conceded, "Probably not." Cain had a farm boy's impeachable moral code, everything about him very black and white. Lincecum wasn't sure of the course of logic that allowed sign-stealing to occupy the light side, but he was willing to go with it.
"So what do we do?" Lincecum asked.
Cain punched his bike up a few levels higher, rising off the seat. "You don't do shit, man. Just try to look surprised."
"No problem." Lincecum was still existing in an apparently perpetual state of shock, not much having changed in the two years since he'd first taken the mound at a major league baseball stadium.
The ruse was pretty simple; get a guy to second and then watch his right hand as he took his lead. Right hand on the knee was a fastball. Everything else--right hand on hip, right hand adjusting helmet, right hand hovering just over the dirt--everything else was going to break.
It wasn't a lot of information, but just enough. The Giants scored three in the first and four in the third and suddenly it was a fucking beautiful day.
Lincecum spent most of the game sitting on the back of the dugout bench next to Zito, shouting encouragement and stamping their feet until someone else told them to quit it. They were sharing a bag of sunflower seeds, shoulder to shoulder.
Freddy Lewis worked a walk leading off the fourth inning, Giants up 7-0. He stole on the third pitch of the next at-bat, coming in hard to second base, sliding with his knees up to take out the shortstop. They landed in a many-limbed pile as the animal that was the crowd gasped. The ball squirted away.
Freddy got up first, brushing the dirt off his uniform as if nothing particularly interesting had happened. Belatedly, he offered his hand to the shortstop Furcal, and was totally ignored. Zito nudged Lincecum with his elbow.
"That was on purpose. The slide," Zito said.
"Well. Yeah." It wasn't like Lewis had tripped or something.
"No, the high slide, the take-out. That was for you getting plunked in the first game."
"Really?" Lincecum noticed that he was flattered against his will. He reminded himself, it's not 'cause you're special, numbskull, which was something one of his high school coaches used to say.
"Dodgers players do not disrespect Giants players, no matter what," Zito recited, and then sorta half-smiled. "Bonds used to say that, actually."
"He'd know about it."
"Yeah."
They returned their attention to the game. Lewis danced around second base, subtly telegraphing the catcher's signs. It was neat, knowing what was going on underneath the stuff that everybody else saw.
Lewis scored two batters later on Aaron Rowand's two-out single. Zito and Lincecum both got to their feet and shuffled with everyone else to the mouth of the dugout to hold up their hands for Lewis to hit. Lewis wasn't even breathing hard; the kid could run for miles.
"Furcal's talking shit about that steal," Lewis told them.
"Fuck that bitch, it was a clean slide," Rich Aurilia said. "He's just upset he lost the ball."
Lewis shook his head, bending to get a Dixie cup of water from the blue cooler on the steps. "No, man, the steal itself. He said it's fucked up, stealing when we're kicking their asses this badly."
"Bullshit," Aurilia proclaimed. "It's only the fourth inning, you don't lay off 'til the sixth at least."
"I ain't defending him, shit." Lewis knocked back another cup of water. "Somebody might get knocked down, though."
"Let 'em," Cain spoke up from the bench where he was sitting with his warm-up jacket on even though it was eighty degrees in Los Angeles today. "I been wanting to get some hunting in."
The team made a communal grunt of agreement, a subtle expectation of violence coloring the air in the dugout. Lincecum climbed back up on the back of the bench. Zito wandered away to beg some barbecue sunflower seeds off Pablo Sandoval. Lincecum thought about all these rules you had to follow, this constant cycle of offense and redress. Simple pride was a part of it, and territoriality, and the fact that it had been a dick move to begin with, fucking up Winn's car, hit-and-run and all. They'd started it. Even a hundred years ago, back east at the very beginnings of major league baseball, the Dodgers had probably started it.
Just putting on the uniform and walking into this stadium was a story. There must be millions of them. Someday, Lincecum thought dreamily, he was gonna write a book.
*
No one got knocked down that day, and then they didn't play the Dodgers again for another three weeks.
The Giants went to St. Louis, and they went to Cincinnati, and they went to Milwaukee. Prince Fielder watched one of his home runs fly for approximately a quarter-second too long, and the next time he came up, Jonathan Sanchez drilled him in the ass. There was some jawing and some anticipatory gathering on the dugout steps, waiting to see if a brawl would erupt, but nothing came of it. There was no real animosity there.
Zito pitched like shit on the road trip, and then again once they'd come back home. He collapsed in on himself, closed off. He spent hours in the video room, hours standing on the bullpen mound going through his motion in super slow motion. Zito lost his sense of humor when he was pitching poorly. He became sour, impenetrable. Lincecum hovered around, bringing him cookies and acting like an idiot to get him to crack a smile, but there was nothing doing.
It bothered Lincecum. He'd seen it before; not yet in their time as teammates had Zito pitched up to his own standards for more than two or three starts in a row. Every time Zito lost the touch, he did this, faded back, sank away. It was like a self-inflicted punishment; when Zito was walking five or six guys a game, he no longer deserved friends.
Stupid, Lincecum thought, and got a Twix from the candy rack for them to share.
Zito knew the Code for this kind of thing, too. Never complain about lack of run support. Never bitch at the fans for booing. Never blame your fielders, or your catcher, or your coach. Zito had signed a contract for $126 million dollars and that meant he could never open his mouth again. He just had to wear it.
It frightened Lincecum in a vague way. Zito had won a Cy Young Award when he was twenty-four years old too, and now here he was seven years later, stumbling, scuffling, halfway to being a punchline. Zito was really smart and knew more about pitching than Lincecum would ever learn, and it was worrisome, seeing him come down to this.
Lincecum put it out of his mind. He concentrated on the things that he could control.
Personally, Tim was pitching brilliantly. As good as last year. Even better, maybe--and he knocked wood.
He finished off a complete game shutout against the Rockies and got drunk on beer in the clubhouse as soon as the reporters left. Lincecum sprawled across one of the couches, laughing that too-loud horse laugh that always infected him when he was lit.
Brian Wilson shoved his legs aside and slumped down. He gave Lincecum a long assessing look, then asked the room at large, "Who the fuck let him have beer?"
"Hey." Lincecum kicked at him, but no force, no malice. "I'll drink all the beer I want."
"Yeah yeah, king of the world, I'm sure."
"Not the whole world," Lincecum said, just this little corner of it, but he didn't say that because he thought maybe it would sound arrogant, and Lincecum didn't want people thinking he was arrogant.
"Fooled me. Fuckin' ridiculous change-up tonight, by the way."
"Yeah I know," Lincecum said. His head rolled back on the couch, and he grinned dazedly at the ceiling. Throwing his change-up was basically Lincecum's favorite thing to do.
Zito came back from his locker, his hair damp and his bag slung over his shoulder. Lincecum sat up, his heart skipping.
"I'll see ya," he said, and then when Zito didn't answer or glance at him or anything, he said quickly, "Night, Barry, goodnight."
Zito walked out, oblivious. Lincecum felt lousy for a second, spurned and ignored and abandoned.
Wilson was smirking at him. "He had his headphones in, dude."
"Oh." Lincecum slouched back, dismissed. "Whatever."
Wilson laughed out loud, which seemed excessive. "Aw, poor widdle Timmy, doesn't get to hang out with his boyfriend tonight."
"Dude, shut up." Lincecum punched him on his tattoo. His face was coloring, but he couldn't do anything about that. "He's not my stupid boyfriend."
"Yeah, too bad for you, huh?"
"You go to hell and you die," Lincecum said by rote, happy that there were well-worn paths that he could tread, insults so over-used as to be as harmless as milk. There was a shivery uncomfortable feeling in his stomach, this sense he had of being watched from every angle.
"Damn, you do need to get your dick sucked. Hang on, lemme call him before he leaves the yard," and Wilson had his phone out and everything, probably only fucking around but Lincecum was drunk enough not to take the chance.
He pounced on Wilson, scrambling after his phone. Wilson shouted and held him off with one massive arm like stone thrust against Lincecum's chest. Lincecum experienced a very clear sense of déjà vu, a memory of wrestling with his older brother on the living room rug and feeling how he held back from full strength because Tim had always been small.
Wilson tossed him off the couch. Lincecum hit the floor and started laughing, one of those imbecilic spates of laughter that started in the pit of his stomach and made him tremble. Wilson tried to step on Lincecum's face, reaching out with his foot, and Lincecum only rolled away and laughed harder.
"Timmy's lost his mind," Wilson reported to the room at large.
The remnants of the team murmured, uninterested. It was a nice little bonus, Lincecum thought hazily, something they didn't tell you about when scouts started showing up to watch you in college. As long as he kept winning, he could go as crazy as he wanted.
*
On the day they would start a three-game set against the Dodgers in San Francisco, Lincecum ran into Mike Krukow in the hallway.
Krukow was the color-man on the Giants broadcast team, a former starter himself with big pitcher shoulders and silver senator hair. He usually carried a baseball in the pocket of his sports coat, which was how Lincecum recognized him as a kindred soul.
They bullshitted for a minute, kidding around about inconsequential stuff, and then Krukow's eyes went sideways and he leaned closer to Lincecum.
"Listen, we were talking to Vin Scully earlier," Krukow told him, and Lincecum immediately perked up, because Vin Scully, holy cow. "The Bums caught on to you guys lifting signs last series after watching the tape."
"We didn't lift any signs," Lincecum said automatically. Krukow half-smiled.
"Yeah, I know you didn't. Just keep an eye on those fuckers pitching inside, all right? Somebody gets hit, it probably wasn't an accident, you dig?"
"Yeah," Lincecum said assuredly. "I'll tell the boys."
"Good man." Krukow clapped his hand on Lincecum's shoulder. "Fuckin' Dodgers."
"Fuckin' Dodgers," Lincecum agreed, and they went their separate ways.
In the third inning, Dodger pitcher Vicente Padilla threw a pitch that clonked off Emmanuel Burriss's helmet and sent him careening to the dirt. Burriss was only stunned, never lost consciousness and walked down to first under his own power, but as far as his teammates were concerned, Padilla might as well have shot him in the back.
Randy Winn stood on the dugout steps and hurled profanity like confetti. Padilla was a dog-fucker, a cocksucker, a bush league piece of shit. It was energizing, seeing Winn all het up like that, because Randy was usually the chillest motherfucker in the place. The other Giants stamped their spikes on the bench, punched each other on the arm. They were gnashing, snapping at the bit.
Lincecum was sitting near Zito at the far end of the dugout. Lincecum lent his voice to the fray, shouting whatever random four-letter words trickled through his brain. Zito was just watching.
In a lull, Zito remarked, "Yo, this might actually happen."
"What?"
Zito shot him a quick hard grin. "Ready to rumble, kid?"
"Really?" Lincecum sat up straighter, his attention ratcheted up. He'd never been in a real all-out brawl. If he was gonna be completely honest (heaven forbid), Tim Lincecum had never been in any kind of fight involving punching. He wasn't sure if this made him lucky or cowardly.
"Starting to look like it." Zito gave him a sizing-up look. "Do I need to teach you how to throw a punch?"
Lincecum demonstrated his answer quite plainly via his fist and Zito's shoulder. Zito didn't gasp or catch his breath, didn't rub it. He only chuckled.
"Just try to stay close to Pablo or somebody big, all right? I think I heard somewhere that you're the franchise."
That was an unaccountably sore spot. It made Lincecum uncomfortable thinking that the whole team was supposed to be his to lead someday, that he'd been anointed or preordained or whatever it was. Lincecum found it all kinda doubtful. He was much more into cracking jokes from the sidelines than actually taking charge of anything.
"Don't you worry about me," Lincecum said, and Zito said, "Ha," as if it was a ridiculous thing to even think.
There was a moment of silence like an indrawn breath. Everyone in the stadium was staring at the mound.
Padilla pitched, and the ball hit Eugenio Velez square in the ribs.
Later on, looking at the tape, Lincecum decided that Padilla had probably just been a little wild. He was coming open too early with his front. He certainly hadn't meant to put two Giants players on base while holding a one-run lead.
The facts of the matter didn't have much sway in the moment. Velez absorbed the blow, turned hard and sprinted for the mound, flinging his bat and helmet aside onto the grass. Padilla chucked his glove at him hard, came down off the mound with his fists up. The Dodgers infield rushed in, and the benches cleared.
Lincecum was swept along, a cork in the river. Adrenaline pumped through him hard as they thundered onto the infield grass. The San Francisco crowd was roaring like a tsunami; not even for game-winning home runs were they as loud as they were now.
And then there was a mass of gray and blue and white and orange, elbows slashing through the air, thick-fingered fists flailing about. Guys were in clinches, scratching and struggling; nobody was landing solid punches.
It didn't last long. The umpires dove into the melee and hauled out Velez and Padilla and Russell goddamn Martin who of course was in the thick of the whole thing, a bastard sneer on his squat stupid bulldog face. The coaches were in it too, dragging guys apart. Dave Righetti personally grabbed hold of Lincecum and took him out of the fray, haranguing him for swinging with his pitching hand.
Two Giants and three Dodgers were ejected in the aftermath. A couple guys sported bruises, but no one was bleeding. The Giants retreated to their own dugout shaking with unrelieved energy, punching their fists into gloves. Zito was shaking his hand and grimacing, and a few seconds after he disappeared down the tunnel, Lincecum followed.
Lincecum was ramped up beyond belief, feeling like the top layer of his skin had been stripped off. He'd wanted a fight, a real honest-to-god baseball brawl like you saw on TV, and instead he'd gotten shoved around a little and then removed for his own safety by his pitching coach. His blood felt as hot as steam.
Zito was in the little kitchen, wrapping up ice in a rag. Down the hall, Lincecum could hear Bochy reaming the guys who'd gotten tossed for letting themselves get tossed. There was a metallic taste in his mouth.
"Is your hand okay?" Lincecum asked, surprised to hear the breathlessness in his voice.
Zito shot him a look, kinda wild at the narrow edges of it, and Lincecum's stomach flipped over. He leaned closer to Zito unconsciously.
"Think I'll live," Zito said.
"Fuckin', that wasn't even a real fuckin' fight," Lincecum said. He wanted to stutter on every other word. "I wanted a real fuckin' fight, I wanted to see some blood and ninja moves and fuckin' Nolan Ryan putting guys into headlocks and shit, why the hell can't we fight like that?"
He'd lost his bearings. He was too near to Zito, angled in close enough that he could smell the rough sweat and dirt smell on him, see the tiny white-thread scar just tracing the line of Zito's eyebrow, almost taste the little half-smile that curved Zito's lips, and it made Lincecum's brain shut down entirely.
Lincecum tipped forward and kissed Zito on the mouth. It lasted all of one and a half seconds, and then Zito was pushing him back.
"Dude." Zito's eyes were huge and huger still. "Dude."
Lincecum gaped at him for a second, refusing to accept that he'd really just done that. He'd kissed Zito--he hadn't even realized that he wanted to kiss Zito.
"Holy shit!" Lincecum said, way too fucking loud, and jerked backwards away from Zito. "Oh my god, I'm sorry."
Zito shook his head, face cracked wide with shock and his hand stuck to Lincecum's shoulder, and Lincecum wrenched away before Zito could say anything because Lincecum really really didn't want to hear it. Clearly this was all going to blow up around him. He had to find a hole to crawl into, and never be seen again. It was a shame too; everything had been going so well.
Zito said his name hoarsely, "Tim," and then Matt Cain came in laughing about how Jeff Weaver punched like a fucking girl, and Lincecum didn't have to look at Zito anymore.
And now he could breathe again.
*
So, things had gotten kinda weird.
Lincecum was scheduled to pitch in the rubber match of the Dodgers series, and he wanted to think about that and only that. He avoided Zito with the diligence of a runty kid eluding a bully through school corridors. Hours Lincecum spent in the video room, shut up with Righetti and the pitching coaches, wherever Zito wasn't. He kept the Dodger line-up and how to pitch each one of them running through his mind like the chorus of a particularly grating pop remix.
It worked on a surface level, but underneath Lincecum was pretty sure he was still a wreck. No matter his efforts (and they were exhaustive), he couldn't stop thinking about how apparently he was totally gay for Barry Zito.
It was disconcerting in the extreme. In his lifetime, Lincecum had screwed around with two guys and twenty-seven girls, so the math seemed all wrong. The guy thing was hazy, years and years behind him at this point.
(He'd gone to baseball camp the summer after his sophomore year in high school. Every night after lights out, the cool kids (and Tim one of them for the first time ever, just 'cause he could throw ninety miles an hour and a curveball too) sneaked out of their dormitory and down to the biggest of the fields. They climbed to the top of the bleachers with six-packs and joints made of schwag rolled up in yellowing papers. Fucked up and floating, Tim had gone under the bleachers exactly twice that summer, with two different guys. Over time their features had melded in his memory and become one pair of dark eyes, one set of rough-fingered hands sliding under his shirt, one low voice asking him if he'd ever sucked someone off before. Tim had thought of it like going to war, some place where the normal rules didn't apply. He had never worried overly about it, because Tim wasn't really the worrying type.)
And now suddenly: Zito. Zito and his damp spiky hair fresh from the showers, Zito with his socks pulled up tight and high, Zito with his irritatingly perfect nicknames and habit of slumping on the nearest warm body when he was drunk. Zito and his $126 million dollars, his unmet expectations and that curveball still dropping faces to laces like it always had.
Lincecum was coming to realize, with a kind of dawning horror, that he liked Zito a lot.
So he stayed away. He took the hill against the Dodgers, his mind wiped clean of all but the immediate. The first few innings flicked by under a depthless blue sky, witnessed by the muffled mid-weekday crowd. His change-up drifted towards the plate like something out of a narcotic gleam. Swing and a miss, swing and a miss, and Lincecum swore he could feel the breeze on his face.
In the fourth, Bengie Molina came out to the mound to tell him that Mark Loretta had been peeking back at the signs in his last at-bat.
"I told him to cut that shit out," Molina said, his catcher's mitt resting heavily on Lincecum's hip in the casual way of a mound meeting. "But if he doesn't, I'm calling for one in his ear, okay?"
Lincecum nodded instinctively, because the very first thing they had taught him was listen to Molina, he's been around longer than you've been alive, kid (not true, by the way, but ballplayers rarely stuck at inconvenient facts). Then he remembered the context.
"Um. Seems like if I hit him there might be another fight."
Molina spat off to the side, narrowed his eyes at Lincecum. "I told him to stop. Motherfuckers want a fight, they get it."
Lincecum nodded. The slow-approaching umpire was almost to the dirt of the mound and so Molina thumped him on the hip and turned to trot back to the plate. Lincecum squeezed the ball in his hand, adrenaline coating the insides of his veins. He'd never been charged on the mound before.
Loretta fouled off the first two fastballs, and then Molina put down his middle finger, which meant fuck this guy. Lincecum was half out of his mind with nerves, thinking he was gonna get his ass kicked by a dude fifteen years his senior, in front of twenty thousand people and on television too, and people were gonna make all kinds of fun of him and this was going to suck, and he wound and pitched, his heart thick in his throat. He hit Loretta in the meat of his arm, and braced for impact.
Loretta didn't even look at him. He tossed his bat towards the batboy and jogged down to first with his head down. Lincecum released a huge shuddering breath, and almost missed Molina's return throw.
Lincecum couldn't calm himself down for a couple of minutes, and ended up walking the next man before inducing a double play and getting out of it. There was a nagging sense of disappointment; it wasn't that he wanted to get tackled by a professional athlete, just that he'd expected to be, and somehow it felt like a loss.
In the dugout, Lincecum shrugged into his warm-up jacket and sat near Bengie. "He didn't charge me."
Molina unhooked his leg protectors, dusty plastic rattling on the concrete floor. "He got caught. Can't get caught."
"Yeah," Aaron Rowand chimed in. "You're not doing anything wrong until you get caught. He knew what was coming, and he's a good guy anyway, he's not gonna start shit when he knows we had him dead to fuckin' rights."
Lincecum thought that over for the rest of the half-inning, as the Giants scraped together two runs out of small ball and luck. You couldn't get in trouble 'til someone saw. You weren't doing anything wrong until you got caught at it--it was convoluted in his mind, a paradox.
He looked down the bench at Zito, who was chucking sunflower seeds at Gatorade cups with Fred Lewis and Travis Ishikawa. That absurd out-of-the-blue kiss reoccurred in Lincecum's mind, the giddy energy in him and the warmth of Zito's mouth fit against his own for exactly a second and a half. It was vivid enough that his skin prickled all over, and he shivered under his warm-up jacket.
Don't get caught, Lincecum thought, and as if he could hear it, Zito turned to meet his gaze, a faint question on his face. Lincecum was arrested, staring back helplessly. It was quiet for a moment.
And then Pablo Sandoval hit a home run and the crowd howled its dismay, guys jumping off the bench and crowding at the front of the dugout. Lincecum jerked, violently startled out of his reverie. He lost Zito in the shuffle, but only for a second.
They won the game. Lincecum pitched until his arm almost fell off. He came out of it feeling decades older, wised up in that baseball way, that forged-in-fire kind of thing. Ten years like this might actually kill him, like it was dog years or something, but his whole team came over to touch his hand and rap him on the head when he came into the dugout at the end of the eighth inning, so it pretty much seemed worth it.
*
That last Dodger game was getaway day, straight to the airport from the ballpark and then flying east through the night.
They went to Houston. It was eighty-five degrees on the Gulf and the air felt like syrup made of crude oil. Getting to the hotel was a whole ordeal; the bus driver was new or something and managed to get them ridiculously lost in the an extremely shady part of town at one in the morning. At least twice there were sounds that could be easily mistaken for gunshots by a bunch of overtired ballplayers, several of whom had been watching Band of Brothers on the plane and were therefore highly suggestible. The veterans started joking about using the rookies for human shields, which garnered a lot of ha-ha-very-fucking-funny and not much else.
Eventually they made it to the fake-marble safety of the Ritz-Carlton. Lincecum loitered at the back of the group as they tromped into the hotel, wanting to keep a weather eye on things. They were all slumping, leaning on each other. Zito was half-asleep on Brian Wilson's shoulder, and Lincecum watched them with a dumb sick feeling of jealousy--or envy, probably more like envy at this point--curling in his stomach.
They got their room keys and packed themselves into the elevators, up to the fourteenth floor. There was no thirteenth, which Lincecum felt boded poorly for them, because the whole tradition had always seemed impossibly thickheaded to him; the thirteenth floor was the thirteenth from the ground, no matter what the fuck they wanted to call it.
Nobody else made a big thing about it, so he kept his mouth shut.
It was right to bed for everybody, yawning through goodnights and thanking god it was a night game tomorrow. Lincecum put his suitcase away in the closet, put his dop kit out on the bathroom counter and brushed his teeth before stripping down to his shorts and a shirt and attempting to go to sleep.
It didn't take. Stupidly, he'd taken a nap on the plane and now he was fresh as a daisy. Tim twisted and turned and kicked the covers off. The room was excessively quiet, the air excessively conditioned. He'd be insane by morning.
And then, like a gift from above: marijuana.
The sour old-sweat smell drifted through Lincecum's room. His mouth started watering like a cartoon dog, and he eased out of bed, padding barefoot over to the sliding door and the tiny balcony.
He paused before going out. It was Zito; it had to be Zito. There were maybe half a dozen guys on the team who smoked in-season, but the universe wasn't a merciful place, as Lincecum had learned. Of course it would be Zito out there. It was time for some retaliation.
Lincecum manned up, stepped out onto the cool cement of the balcony in his bare feet. Zito looked over, caught in the middle of an inhale with the cherry flared red and his eyes squinted against the smoke. Lincecum grinned dopily, his hands pawing for non-existent pockets at the sides of his boxers.
"Fancy meeting you here," Lincecum said in as low a voice as was practical, very aware of the dozens and dozens of dark curtained windows surrounding them.
Zito tipped his head back and exhaled a long straight ribbon of smoke into the thick air. "Minnie the fuckin' Moocher, aren't you."
"No, no. The jay is just a happy coincidence. Can I have some, though?"
Zito smirked and passed him the joint over the gap between balconies, the thirteen floors worth of space yawning below them. Lincecum took the proper two hits and passed it back. Their hands touched and Lincecum couldn't believe that was how his brain worked now, noticing shit like their hands touching.
"Thanks," Lincecum said. Zito waved it away. They passed the jay back and forth until it wasn't much more than a stub. The silence was not wholly comfortable, and Lincecum figured that was probably his fault. He figured he should probably do something about it.
He swallowed, mouth sticky-thick and dry, and said before he could lose his nerve, "I got the most godawful crush on you, man, it's ridiculous. You probably guessed already."
Zito choked on his laugh, tangled up as it was with shock and smoke. He sounded like he was strangling for a minute, eyes bugging at Lincecum, and then he started coughing, muffling it in his forearm.
Lincecum rocked back and forth on his heels quickly, near-panic skittering across his nerves. Stupid stupid stupid is what his mind wanted him to believe, but fuck it, Lincecum could do stupid things every once in a while. He had an obligation to at least try.
The cough settled, and Zito blinked at him, heavy-lidded and intent with a disbelieving smile tugging at his mouth. The jay burned forgotten in his hand, dense ribbons of smoke hanging in the windless air.
"Jesus, you pick your fuckin' moments, don't you," Zito said, whispered really, keeping it a secret, and reached across the balcony to twist his hand in Lincecum's shirt. "Get the fuck over here."
It was only to be expected when Lincecum almost fell off the goddamn building while attempting to traverse the small space between the two balconies. Zito grabbing him about the chest and hauling him the rest of the way over the rail might have saved his life, but it was on Zito's account that Lincecum was risking it, so there didn't seem any point of saying thank you.
Instead, Lincecum hooked an arm around Zito's neck and pulled him down into a second kiss. To his overwhelming relief, Zito didn't hesitate in kissing him back, smoke taste and hot, softening the line of his body instinctively to fit against Lincecum's. It lasted a good deal longer than that fabled second and a half, and when Zito broke away this time, it was only to pull Lincecum back into his room, wicked smile glinting across his face.
Lincecum's heart was going so fast it was more rattle than beat. Zito's hands were under his shirt, on his stomach and his ribs. He laid Lincecum out on the bed and followed him down, lying heavy across his legs, mouth open on his throat. Lincecum made a raw sound that didn't seem like it should be coming out of him, his body arching hard under Zito's.
Zito laughed breathlessly against Lincecum's cheek. His fingers curled in the waistband of Tim's shorts with devastating promise.
"You gonna freak out again later?"
"Maybe," Lincecum said, having this vague sense that honesty was important. His mind was splintering in really interesting ways.
"Well, don't bother. There's a Code for this kinda thing too, you know."
No, Lincecum wanted to say. I didn't know that. Please please please tell me more.
But there was very little breath left in his lungs and so he just let Zito pull off his shorts and push his legs apart. This was going to be spectacular, Lincecum could already tell. Zito had that kind of look on his face. Lincecum craned his head up and Zito kissed him like it was necessary, edged down his own sweatpants and took them both carefully in hand.
And then, sure enough: just fuckin' spectacular.
*
The next morning, Lincecum woke up in an empty bed. It was somewhat disheartening, until he lifted his head and spotted Zito contorted on the carpet in front of the bed.
"What're you--what?" Lincecum asked, knuckling the sleep out of his eyes.
Zito tilted his head to glance at Lincecum. "Yoga."
"Huh. Okay." Lincecum lay back down. It was too early to deal with new things like the dude he was apparently sleeping with now who woke up at dawn to do yoga.
Life was weird, Lincecum decided, and went back to sleep.
He woke up for the second time only a little while later, when Zito brought coffee and waffles from the breakfast buffet downstairs. They ate in bed, watching Cartoon Network, and then put their plates on the floor and made out for a little while.
He could get used to this, Lincecum thought dizzily as Zito mouthed across his jawline. They were both moving slowly, muffled as if by sleep. His hands were in Zito's hair. It didn't even seem to be building up to anything, just necking for the sake of it like high school kids on network television.
It tapered off. Lincecum got up to take a shower when Zito became distracted by SpongeBob Squarepants. He shaved even though he didn't really need to, it was just part of the whole experience. Shaving in perfect-circle mirrors in hotel bathrooms, food from room service and the minibar, hallways races and sneaking up to the roof of the building long after curfew. Road trip life, tramps and ramblers, how romantic. Everything was coming up just as he'd hoped.
Lincecum came out naked and got dressed in his workout clothes, cheerfully immodest around Zito because they were teammates and that was how you had to roll. He sat down to pull on his socks, and said:
"I didn't freak out, you'll notice."
Zito turned a glazed TV-watching look on him, his eyes clearing a second later. "Yeah, good for you. You want a cookie?"
Lincecum laughed a little bit under his breath. Zito was great.
"Sorry, that first time, that was lame," Lincecum said. "I didn't even realize I was gonna do that."
"I got that." Zito smirked at him. "Try to restrain yourself when we're at the yard, okay?"
"Well. No promises." Lincecum was only being realistic, his eyes busy working over Zito's long body laid across the bed, arm folded under his head to pull his right side taut. "I'm going down to the gym, I think."
"'kay," Zito said, looking largely uninterested, but not discontent.
"You should come."
"Nah."
"All right." Lincecum smoothed back his drying hair with both hands, swiped a palm across his forehead, checked that the tag at the back of his shirt was tucked in. He got up out of the chair and crawled onto the bed, bringing his knees close to Zito's side. "You gonna tell me about this other Code when I get back? What is it, the Queer Ballplayers Code?"
Zito smiled up at him, cheshire and clever. "Can't do it."
Lincecum tapped his fingers on Zito's ribs, thwacked him with his finger like checking for a ripe piece of fruit. He rubbed his thumb on the spot in case it had hurt. "Why not? Unfair."
"You don't talk about it," Zito told him. "That's actually the majority of the thing. Don't freak out, don't talk about it. Don't be stupid."
"Stupid how?" Lincecum asked, his throat jammed. Zito shrugged.
"Million different ways. Can't start looking at the wrong guy. Can't say certain stuff or act a certain way. All that shit."
"So wait, you just broke it? By telling me?"
"Yeah." Zito grinned sharkily. "Fuck it, though, I'm over it. There are more important things in the world."
Lincecum grinned back, a wild feeling growing inside him. He wanted to pin Zito in place by his shoulders and kiss the hell out of him; it seemed like that kind of moment. Zito beat him to it, sitting up swiftly and burying his head in Lincecum's shoulder, cartoon growling noises and his mouth chomping painlessly at Lincecum's throat. Lincecum laughed and wrapped his arms around Zito's shoulders, letting his head fall back.
He went down to the gym a few minutes later. The television facing the stationary bikes was showing the Cubs game on WGN, and Lincecum couldn't have asked for better. He set up with his iPod and water bottle and towel and all, feeling generally awesome, like he could ride this stationary bike all the way to Tierra del Fuego if only he had the time.
The Cubbie pitcher was throwing inside, coming down hard off the mound and glaring batters out of the box. Lincecum leaned forward over the handlebars, his eyes turned up and reverent. He was watching the game beneath the game, the hidden show. He was in on it.
And Tim thought, finally, like a man who had spent years abroad being greeted once more in his native tongue.
THE END
here is the list of code stuff to use that i put together after reading the book:
-don't steal late/work the count with a big lead/don't run up the score
-don't watch dingers
-don't smirk
-don't rub it when you get hurt
-don't walk in front of the catcher
-relievers pitch easy to relievers
-pitchers stay in the dugout until the inning is over
-pitchers don't show up their fielders when they make a mistake
-don't swing big on 3-0 with a big lead/don't bunt
-intimidation/retaliation
-don't slide hard if you never usually slide hard, or you'll get a ball thrown into your face
-don't take anybody out unnecessarily on the basepaths
-game 5 2000 alcs a's yanks chavez mentions, 'they've won enough times,' and scotty bro wants to know, so he's dropping the past tense on us? that little fucker! and so forth.
-deke punks if they're falling for it (gamesmanship)
-always say yes when the manager asks you if you can still go
-don't hit dudes cos you're frustrated unless you want your guys hit too
-don't buy drinks for veterans
-never tell the press anything
-never let wives know about girlfriends (yes nancy?)
-don't tell your opponents you're gonna hit them with the first pitch of the game
-don't wave sarcastic goodbyes at the other team after sweeping them
-don't throw your bat at the pitcher (seriously now)
-don't say somebody hits like a woman to a reporter
-if you're cheating (and you are) don't get caught
it coulda been like three times as long, clearly.
*
tim lincecum gets one more happy ending from me, and then it's onto the angst train with him. enjoy it while you can, shawty.
Zito/Lincecum (for the win!), rated R, 12155 words.
This story takes place in a fictitious 2009 where Timmy's already won his first Cy Young Award, but none of the game data or on-field events (or off-field events, for that matter) actually happened in any way.
The Code
By Candle Beck
It started in the players' parking lot.
Just a week into the spring training schedule and it was the Dodgers come to face the Giants at the pretty miniature stadium in downtown Scottsdale. It was Randy Winn's Escalade that one of the Los Angeles players backed into as he was trying to fit into a spot too small for his own Escalade. The jerkoff wasn't even supposed to be parking on that side of the lot, the shady home-clubhouse-adjacent side--anybody with two brain cells to rub together could see that.
The dent left over Winn's wheel well was big enough to fit a large man's fist. The Dodger (it was Jonathan Broxton, for those keeping score at home) didn't think anyone had seen the transgression, nor heard the chunking metallic sound, and he scooted off to the far side of the lot, shoulders hunched over the wheel as if running from the cops.
Behind a stone pillar near the Giants' clubhouse door, a young catcher who would spend most of the year in the minor leagues saw the whole thing.
Tim Lincecum was pitching that day, his second spring training start since winning the Cy Young the year before, and in the dugout Barry Zito handed him a baseball and said, "Knock 'em on their asses."
Lincecum had nothing in particular against the Dodgers. He squeezed the baseball and said, "For Randy."
"For all of us," Zito corrected him. Lincecum nodded. He was still learning the intricacies of this stuff.
Two batters into the game, two outs and bases empty, a headhunting moment if ever there was one, Lincecum aimed a four-seam fastball at Russell Martin's shoulder. The Los Angeles catcher spun away from it, slipping in the dirt and dropping to one knee.
Out in right field, Randy Winn clapped against his glove. Behind Lincecum, the infield was chattering, attago kid attaboy. Russell Martin was back on his feet, his face snarled, dirt gritting between his teeth.
Martin shouted at Lincecum, "Try that again, you little fucker."
Lincecum spat on the ground. He didn't like it when people called him little (it happened a lot). Anger welled up and he let it come. He set himself, hands to his belt, and then hurled the ball at Russell Martin's throat.
Martin had to be restrained by the plate umpire. The players on both benches leapt to their feet, hanging together in sneering packs at the front of the dugout. Bengie Molina shouldered his mountainous body between the batter and his pitcher. Lincecum leaned on Molina's back, one hand caught in the straps of his chest protector, and met every one of Martin's obscenities with one of his own.
Lincecum and Martin were both ejected from the game. Lincecum had to go to the practice field to get his day's workout in, lonely in the beating sun with the small spring crowd roaring on the other side of the fence. When he got back to the clubhouse, he found a fresh beer already cracked for him, the best seat on the couch saved, and Shark Week on the television.
That night, the boys took Lincecum out drinking. Next to a very large speaker, black metal screen burring with the volume, Edgar Renteria called the Dodgers pussies, and everyone toasted to it.
Lincecum ended up with Zito and Brian Wilson at the end of the night. They clustered together at the dark end of the parking lot, the orange spot of a jay passing back and forth between them.
"They didn't come back at us," Lincecum said. He was pretty drunk, swaying and feeling awesome.
"What?" Zito said. He had trouble concentrating when there was a joint in circulation.
"He's talking about the Dodgers," Wilson said.
"They didn't come back," Lincecum repeated. "Just a lotta big fuckin' talk."
Wilson's cheeks hollowed around the jay. In a voice tight with pent-up smoke, he said, "They will. Regular season."
"I mean they can try," Zito answered, leaning heavily on Lincecum's shoulder. "Try's not the same as doing."
Zito was the drunkest of the three of them. Lincecum could hear it in the softened edge of his voice like water seeping into cardboard. He could feel Zito hanging on him, losing his balance for brief moments here and there.
"But, but," Lincecum said, and then stopped. His head was going all fuzzy. "Regular season actually matters."
Wilson nodded, and Zito stared dazedly at the stars, but Lincecum didn't think they really understood. The point was that he had thrown at a Dodger in a game that meant nothing, and gotten tossed out of a game that meant nothing. In a month, the world would look very different for them all.
"We'll get ours," Wilson promised. "They'll come in with dirty slides or something. Punch a glove in somebody's face tagging him out. Have to watch out for the boys when we go to L.A., don't let them get knocked down without a quick response. They fuck with us, then we fuck with them."
The logic behind it was fairly straightforward; all the same Lincecum was hazy and confused, becoming uncomfortable under the weight of Zito's arm. He wished for it to be an hour ago, or an hour from now. He was too drunk, and now stoned, that delicious sour diesel that Zito had brought two ounces of from California. It filled Lincecum's head with mesh, layers of smokey lace.
"Who taught you this stuff?" Lincecum asked.
Wilson shrugged. There was patchy streetlight through the scraggly desert trees at the edge of the parking lot. When Wilson lifted his hand to take a hit, the light caught on the ink-black tattoos on his forearm. Badass, Lincecum thought, which was something he'd thought a lot since becoming a major league baseball player.
"You pick it up down in the minors, from the older guys," Wilson said.
"Rickey Hen'erson taught Chavvy," Zito contributed in a slur. "Chavvy taught me."
Lincecum shifted his weight, feeling Zito breathe deeply, his arms folded on Tim's shoulder. The proximity was causing Lincecum's lungs to expand only half-full. His head was pounding, and he sucked greedily at the joint when it came back to him; it was medicinal, after all.
"Nobody taught me," Lincecum said.
Wilson snorted. He rubbed his palm across Lincecum's head, knocking his skull lightly against Zito's.
"Guess they figured you weren't worth the effort."
"Hey." That hardly seemed fair. "Mean, dude."
Now Zito was laughing against the back of his neck, huffing chuckling kind of laugh that betrayed all the various kinds of fucked up he was.
"Go tell your mom about it, why don't you," Wilson said with a big grin. He licked his fingertips and pinched out the jay.
Lincecum shrugged hard, dislodging Zito off his back and almost falling over. The night sky yawed violently above him, tilting to an acute angle before slamming back into place like a drawbridge crashing down.
"I wanna know about this stuff," Lincecum said. His eyes fixed on a single point, the license plate of a shiny red Miata, to quell the roil in his stomach. "You should tell me."
"You'll learn," Wilson replied, another one of those supremely confident pronouncements of his. "If you wanna last in this league, you better learn."
Lincecum scowled at that. Wilson was always talking like he'd been around for a decade and eight All-Star teams, like he wasn't just another punk kid pitcher, only two years older than Lincecum. Wilson was assumptive--Lincecum considered that that might not be the right word. Presumptive. Cocky, but usually in the good way.
"There's a snake by the fence," Zito reported out of nowhere.
Tim startled; he fucking hated snakes. "Where? Dude, get away from it."
Zito was leaning close, peering at the scrub brush lining the bottom of the fence. Lincecum wanted to grab his shirt and haul him back. Paranoid, stoned as a sinner, Lincecum was possessed of a wicked sense of how things could go south really quickly.
"Oh wait," Zito said. "It's a stick."
"Jesus," Wilson said, exasperated. He smacked Zito upside the head and set off across the parking lot to the main road where taxi cabs loitered, their drivers leaning on the hoods smoking cigarettes and waiting for the bars to empty.
Zito shot Lincecum a quick smile. "It woulda been cooler if it was a snake."
"Yeah," Lincecum said mindlessly, although it definitely would not have been cool in any way shape or form. He would have made an idiot of himself, all jumping and yelping like a twelve year old girl or the dog that lived in her purse, and Zito would have come up with some unintentionally perfect nickname for him, Yippy or Tweety or something, and it would catch on with the whole team and then the broadcasters and then the entire goddamn world like Zito's nicknames had a tendency to do, and twenty-five years down the road it'd be inscribed between quotation marks on Tim Lincecum's plaque in Cooperstown (knock wood).
So, that would have been lame. But Lincecum smiled and lied because Zito had a way about him that made a person want to agree with him all the time, just to keep the conversation going.
They followed Wilson back across the parking lot, matching each other with hands in their pockets, heads tilted up to look at the massive desert moon shining off in a corner of the sky.
*
Winning the Cy Young had changed a lot of things.
Lincecum supposed that he should have expected that. That press conference and all those stupid interviews over the winter with their bonehead questions and his brain-dead answers, that was never going to be the end of it. That would have been too easy.
Twice as many people showed up for Lincecum's spring training starts, and not just fans. Half the baseball press in the country was down here, and when Lincecum pitched they took up the good seats behind the plate, black sunglasses and caps emblazoned with corporate logos instead of team insignia, endless golden beers catching the sunlight as Lincecum leaned in to get the signs. He got recognized on the street every single day and in bars every single night. Strangers kept calling him Timmy.
It was mildly disconcerting. Lincecum stuck close to Zito because Zito had been through it.
"Is it gonna be like this all the time?" Lincecum asked one day after he'd spent a good half-hour signing autographs at the fence while the rest of his slow-ass team dragged themselves out of the clubhouse and onto the bus. They weren't even at their home ballpark, gone way the hell out to Peoria to play the Mariners, but there had been no end to the sunburned arms pressing baseballs and caps through the fence for Lincecum to sign. He ground his thumb into the center of his palm, working out the cramp.
Zito had the window seat, keeping an eye on the other cars on the road. "What?"
"The, the fans. Dozens and hundreds of them, all over the place. Wanting me to sign everything in the whole freakin' world."
"I think you're exaggerating."
"Only a little." Lincecum leaned towards Zito's window, wondering what was so interesting out there on the road. "Is it just down here, though? Just 'cause of spring training?"
"Yeah. Or, well, no. You'll get it back in San Francisco too, at least kinda. Won't be so bad on the road. Not unless you start doing Nike commercials or some shit."
That was laughable, and so Lincecum laughed. He shook his head, and pulled his fingers to pop them, looking for Zito's watery reflection in the window.
"I most seriously doubt it," Lincecum said.
"You've been on the cover of Sports Illustrated," Zito said, sounding bored. "Anything can happen now."
"Is that how it works? Awesome."
Zito smirked, and turned to give him a look. The sun was going down on the other side of the bus, spears of light making Zito's face scrunch and squint.
"It's one of those things to cross off the list," Zito told him.
Lincecum nodded with enthusiasm. He was happy to hear that Zito also knew about the list of things to accomplish. "Next is a Wheaties box."
"And tomorrow, the world."
"Hey, the Ramones," Lincecum said, and Zito looked vaguely confused, so he probably hadn't been quoting lyrics to classic punk rock after all. "I mean, yeah."
Zito lifted his eyebrows, looking somewhere between bothered and amused, which was a pretty typical way for Zito to look. Lincecum smiled at him, because he liked Zito a lot. He always had.
"Anyway, don't think about it too much. Pitching's hard enough, you know what I mean?"
Lincecum immediately nodded; it was another one of those unconscious reactions that didn't hold up under greater scrutiny. He didn't think it was cool to tell Zito that pitching wasn't exactly hard for him, no more than running or riding a bike. Everybody liked to talk about the unorthodox (read: fucked up) pitching mechanics that his father had taught him in the backyard and refused to let anyone train out of his son, but the thing they seemed to miss was that it wasn't weird if you'd been doing it since you were five years old. It was just how his body worked, at this point.
There was really no point in saying any of that to Zito. Lincecum went digging in his bag for the pair of chocolate chip cookies wrapped in white paper napkins that he'd stolen from the spread in the clubhouse. Zito took his cookie with a pleased, "Thanks kid," always somewhat surprised even though Lincecum brought him a cookie a lot of the time.
They ate in companionable silence. The bus rumbled under them. Heat shimmer clung to the faraway stretches of sun-struck highway. Lincecum's hand still ached from autographing shit for so long, but he knew he couldn't complain.
It was toolish in the extreme to complain about the minor inconveniences caused by your lifelong dream coming true.
*
They came home to San Francisco and the 2009 baseball season truly began.
Lincecum got off to a hot start: three starts, three wins, two complete games, and thirty-four strikeouts. Batters cursed his name. The San Diego manager accused him of inching forward off the rubber, and so Lincecum had to pitch with the umpiring crew and both teams' pitching staffs gathered around like vultures, arms crossed martially over their chests, squinting at his motion.
Lincecum wasn't inching off the rubber. His stride was just longer than he was tall. It just looked strange. He told the San Diego manager, "I've always pitched like that," and got called a fucking piece of shit for his trouble, which seemed unwarranted.
Three hours later, with the Giants holding a six-run lead, Lincecum put a fastball (not his best) into the San Diego shortstop's ribs. The batter hollered at him from first base, "What the fuck was that for!" and Lincecum hollered back, "Ask your cocksucking manager!"
The response from Lincecum's team was generally approving. Aaron Rowand clapped Lincecum on the shoulder and said, "Good lookin' out." Freddy Lewis brought him the last blue Gatorade. Zito slumped beside him on the bench, remarking casually, "Motherfuckers."
Lincecum was having a wonderful time. Last year had been his first full year, and he'd been distracted by all the stuff he had to remember, like how to pitch individually to each of the seven hundred and fifty men who played major league baseball. And then he kept striking everybody out and everybody started talking about him, and then he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and the whole planet started calling him 'Freak,' which should have bothered him but didn't.
There had been too much going on last year to really enjoy it. Lincecum woke up in October to his cell phone buzzing, his agent calling to tell him that he'd won the Cy Young Award. The winter had been a mess, interviews and solicitations and his dad calling him every day without fail, but now the season had begun and Tim was okay again, untouchable.
The Giants went to Los Angeles for the first time in late April. Better than a month had passed since Jonathan Broxton had backed into Randy Winn's car. Lincecum hadn't forgotten throwing the ball at Russell Martin, but it had faded in his mind with the passage of time, become just one of thousands of pitches.
It was something of a surprise, then, when in the top of the third inning Hiroki Kuroda's first pitch came sailing in towards his face.
Lincecum made an undignified noise as he collapsed to his knees in the dirt. "Whoa," he muttered, looking at his hands strangled around the bat.
"Get up, bitch," Russell Martin said from behind the plate.
Shooting him a vicious look, Lincecum braced the bat and pushed himself up. Kuroda was standing at the front of the mound, grinning. Lincecum scowled and dug back in, jamming his spikes into the dirt and imagining it was the pitcher's face.
Kuroda's next pitch hit him in the hip. Tim twisted away, felt the visceral thud of the ball hitting bone.
"Ow, the fuck!" Lincecum yelled at Kuroda, who kept grinning at him, moon-faced and malicious; he probably didn't even speak English.
"Get your ass to first base," Martin said as he pulled off his mask. "You had it coming."
"Fuck you, Russ," Lincecum said. He tossed his bat aside and jogged down to first, one hand screwed against the throbbing place on his hip.
Lincecum lifted his fist for first base coach Roberto Kelly to bump, but Kelly only gave him a stink-eye, as serious and stern as a stone figure carved atop a grave. Lincecum faltered.
"What?"
"Get your hand off your hip," Kelly said from the corner of his mouth like a gangster. Lincecum dropped his hand immediately. The tension in Kelly's body relaxed slightly. He put his hand on Lincecum's shoulder.
"Don't rub it, chico," Kelly told him. "No matter how bad it hurts. No matter what."
"Sorry," Lincecum said, thinking that he should have known that. His hip ached dully in time with his heartbeat.
"Just don't do it again. Mira, he's pitching."
Lincecum edged off the base, eyes on the pitcher. He thought it was stupid that he wasn't allowed to rub his hip. He thought it was stupid of the Dodgers to still be throwing at him when a month had passed.
Lincecum got as far as second base, and then was stranded. Kevin Frandsen brought his glove and cap out to him and asked if Tim needed some ice for his boo-boo. For the rest of the game, instead of smacking him on the ass, his team smacked him on his sore hip, and then two hard punches in the shoulder for flinching.
Tim was all the colors of the rainbow by the time he got out of the shower after the game. The bruise on his hip had concentric circles of lavender and indigo.
He put on jeans and a shirt and talked to the press for a few minutes, microphones pushed at him like autograph books. They asked about him getting hit and if there was any bad blood there, and Lincecum had to laugh.
"It's the Giants and Dodgers, I thought?" he said. "Bad blood's a given."
Apparently it was the right answer. Lincecum smiled for the cameras, trying to be sincere but the effort alone seemed to suggest that he'd failed.
Zito was still picking at the spread when Lincecum finally escaped. Most of the other guys had retreated to the couches to watch SportsCenter before going out to the bars. Lincecum sidled up next to him, stabbing a mini carrot with a fork.
"How's the hip?" Zito asked, which was what everybody had been asking Tim all night. The lesson had been well-taught; Tim would never rub at another plunking for the rest of his life.
"Multicolored," Lincecum told him. He munched on the carrot, a Bugs Bunnyesque feel to the scene.
"I'll get 'em for you tomorrow."
Zito said it off-hand, bland and distracted as he corralled extra cherry tomatoes to put on the salad he was building. Lincecum experienced a happy pang in his chest, knowing that it was only a teammate thing but still, it was nice to hear.
"Thanks," he said, and Zito said, "What?" because he'd already forgotten about it, or didn't consider it a thing worth being thanked for, and Lincecum stuck another carrot into his mouth instead of answering.
They ate sitting side by side on the smaller of the couches in the clubhouse, their knees touching. Lincecum had to sit kinda weird to keep pressure off his hip, but he liked it. It was a combat injury.
*
In the next game, Zito got precisely no run support, managing to hold the scoreless tie into the sixth inning before Ethier figured out his curveball and sent it rocketing into the night over Chavez Ravine. It would be the only run of the game, a 1-0 loss and every man on the team taking a moment to put their hand on Zito's back or shoulder in silent apology.
No chance for Zito to enact his promised retaliation, of course. The Code counted for a lot, but winning would always count for more.
Lincecum didn't care. He was exhausted just from watching the game, squeezing a baseball between his hands and stomping in frustration. The wretched look of concentration on Zito's face as the game got later made Lincecum's throat close up in sympathy. Zito had pitched as well as he possibly could, scraping sequences together out of guile and weak late movement, but he took the loss, took the last two innings of the game sitting stoically on the bench.
Zito didn't go out drinking afterwards, though it was their last night in Los Angeles and usually Zito had fifty thousand friends he needed to catch up with over the course of a three-game series. He told Lincecum he needed to get some sleep and took a cab to the hotel alone. Later that night, Lincecum got shanghaied into karaoke, and caught himself wishing as he climbed the stage that he'd just gone back with Zito instead.
The next day, down in the weight room before the third game of the set, Matt Cain took the stationary bike next to Lincecum and told him conversationally, "Steve's got their signs."
"Huh?"
"Holm. He decoded their signs when he was on second base for like ten minutes in the fifth yesterday, you remember?"
"Yeah yeah. That works, no shit?"
"Would I shit you?"
Lincecum gave him a look, then conceded, "Probably not." Cain had a farm boy's impeachable moral code, everything about him very black and white. Lincecum wasn't sure of the course of logic that allowed sign-stealing to occupy the light side, but he was willing to go with it.
"So what do we do?" Lincecum asked.
Cain punched his bike up a few levels higher, rising off the seat. "You don't do shit, man. Just try to look surprised."
"No problem." Lincecum was still existing in an apparently perpetual state of shock, not much having changed in the two years since he'd first taken the mound at a major league baseball stadium.
The ruse was pretty simple; get a guy to second and then watch his right hand as he took his lead. Right hand on the knee was a fastball. Everything else--right hand on hip, right hand adjusting helmet, right hand hovering just over the dirt--everything else was going to break.
It wasn't a lot of information, but just enough. The Giants scored three in the first and four in the third and suddenly it was a fucking beautiful day.
Lincecum spent most of the game sitting on the back of the dugout bench next to Zito, shouting encouragement and stamping their feet until someone else told them to quit it. They were sharing a bag of sunflower seeds, shoulder to shoulder.
Freddy Lewis worked a walk leading off the fourth inning, Giants up 7-0. He stole on the third pitch of the next at-bat, coming in hard to second base, sliding with his knees up to take out the shortstop. They landed in a many-limbed pile as the animal that was the crowd gasped. The ball squirted away.
Freddy got up first, brushing the dirt off his uniform as if nothing particularly interesting had happened. Belatedly, he offered his hand to the shortstop Furcal, and was totally ignored. Zito nudged Lincecum with his elbow.
"That was on purpose. The slide," Zito said.
"Well. Yeah." It wasn't like Lewis had tripped or something.
"No, the high slide, the take-out. That was for you getting plunked in the first game."
"Really?" Lincecum noticed that he was flattered against his will. He reminded himself, it's not 'cause you're special, numbskull, which was something one of his high school coaches used to say.
"Dodgers players do not disrespect Giants players, no matter what," Zito recited, and then sorta half-smiled. "Bonds used to say that, actually."
"He'd know about it."
"Yeah."
They returned their attention to the game. Lewis danced around second base, subtly telegraphing the catcher's signs. It was neat, knowing what was going on underneath the stuff that everybody else saw.
Lewis scored two batters later on Aaron Rowand's two-out single. Zito and Lincecum both got to their feet and shuffled with everyone else to the mouth of the dugout to hold up their hands for Lewis to hit. Lewis wasn't even breathing hard; the kid could run for miles.
"Furcal's talking shit about that steal," Lewis told them.
"Fuck that bitch, it was a clean slide," Rich Aurilia said. "He's just upset he lost the ball."
Lewis shook his head, bending to get a Dixie cup of water from the blue cooler on the steps. "No, man, the steal itself. He said it's fucked up, stealing when we're kicking their asses this badly."
"Bullshit," Aurilia proclaimed. "It's only the fourth inning, you don't lay off 'til the sixth at least."
"I ain't defending him, shit." Lewis knocked back another cup of water. "Somebody might get knocked down, though."
"Let 'em," Cain spoke up from the bench where he was sitting with his warm-up jacket on even though it was eighty degrees in Los Angeles today. "I been wanting to get some hunting in."
The team made a communal grunt of agreement, a subtle expectation of violence coloring the air in the dugout. Lincecum climbed back up on the back of the bench. Zito wandered away to beg some barbecue sunflower seeds off Pablo Sandoval. Lincecum thought about all these rules you had to follow, this constant cycle of offense and redress. Simple pride was a part of it, and territoriality, and the fact that it had been a dick move to begin with, fucking up Winn's car, hit-and-run and all. They'd started it. Even a hundred years ago, back east at the very beginnings of major league baseball, the Dodgers had probably started it.
Just putting on the uniform and walking into this stadium was a story. There must be millions of them. Someday, Lincecum thought dreamily, he was gonna write a book.
*
No one got knocked down that day, and then they didn't play the Dodgers again for another three weeks.
The Giants went to St. Louis, and they went to Cincinnati, and they went to Milwaukee. Prince Fielder watched one of his home runs fly for approximately a quarter-second too long, and the next time he came up, Jonathan Sanchez drilled him in the ass. There was some jawing and some anticipatory gathering on the dugout steps, waiting to see if a brawl would erupt, but nothing came of it. There was no real animosity there.
Zito pitched like shit on the road trip, and then again once they'd come back home. He collapsed in on himself, closed off. He spent hours in the video room, hours standing on the bullpen mound going through his motion in super slow motion. Zito lost his sense of humor when he was pitching poorly. He became sour, impenetrable. Lincecum hovered around, bringing him cookies and acting like an idiot to get him to crack a smile, but there was nothing doing.
It bothered Lincecum. He'd seen it before; not yet in their time as teammates had Zito pitched up to his own standards for more than two or three starts in a row. Every time Zito lost the touch, he did this, faded back, sank away. It was like a self-inflicted punishment; when Zito was walking five or six guys a game, he no longer deserved friends.
Stupid, Lincecum thought, and got a Twix from the candy rack for them to share.
Zito knew the Code for this kind of thing, too. Never complain about lack of run support. Never bitch at the fans for booing. Never blame your fielders, or your catcher, or your coach. Zito had signed a contract for $126 million dollars and that meant he could never open his mouth again. He just had to wear it.
It frightened Lincecum in a vague way. Zito had won a Cy Young Award when he was twenty-four years old too, and now here he was seven years later, stumbling, scuffling, halfway to being a punchline. Zito was really smart and knew more about pitching than Lincecum would ever learn, and it was worrisome, seeing him come down to this.
Lincecum put it out of his mind. He concentrated on the things that he could control.
Personally, Tim was pitching brilliantly. As good as last year. Even better, maybe--and he knocked wood.
He finished off a complete game shutout against the Rockies and got drunk on beer in the clubhouse as soon as the reporters left. Lincecum sprawled across one of the couches, laughing that too-loud horse laugh that always infected him when he was lit.
Brian Wilson shoved his legs aside and slumped down. He gave Lincecum a long assessing look, then asked the room at large, "Who the fuck let him have beer?"
"Hey." Lincecum kicked at him, but no force, no malice. "I'll drink all the beer I want."
"Yeah yeah, king of the world, I'm sure."
"Not the whole world," Lincecum said, just this little corner of it, but he didn't say that because he thought maybe it would sound arrogant, and Lincecum didn't want people thinking he was arrogant.
"Fooled me. Fuckin' ridiculous change-up tonight, by the way."
"Yeah I know," Lincecum said. His head rolled back on the couch, and he grinned dazedly at the ceiling. Throwing his change-up was basically Lincecum's favorite thing to do.
Zito came back from his locker, his hair damp and his bag slung over his shoulder. Lincecum sat up, his heart skipping.
"I'll see ya," he said, and then when Zito didn't answer or glance at him or anything, he said quickly, "Night, Barry, goodnight."
Zito walked out, oblivious. Lincecum felt lousy for a second, spurned and ignored and abandoned.
Wilson was smirking at him. "He had his headphones in, dude."
"Oh." Lincecum slouched back, dismissed. "Whatever."
Wilson laughed out loud, which seemed excessive. "Aw, poor widdle Timmy, doesn't get to hang out with his boyfriend tonight."
"Dude, shut up." Lincecum punched him on his tattoo. His face was coloring, but he couldn't do anything about that. "He's not my stupid boyfriend."
"Yeah, too bad for you, huh?"
"You go to hell and you die," Lincecum said by rote, happy that there were well-worn paths that he could tread, insults so over-used as to be as harmless as milk. There was a shivery uncomfortable feeling in his stomach, this sense he had of being watched from every angle.
"Damn, you do need to get your dick sucked. Hang on, lemme call him before he leaves the yard," and Wilson had his phone out and everything, probably only fucking around but Lincecum was drunk enough not to take the chance.
He pounced on Wilson, scrambling after his phone. Wilson shouted and held him off with one massive arm like stone thrust against Lincecum's chest. Lincecum experienced a very clear sense of déjà vu, a memory of wrestling with his older brother on the living room rug and feeling how he held back from full strength because Tim had always been small.
Wilson tossed him off the couch. Lincecum hit the floor and started laughing, one of those imbecilic spates of laughter that started in the pit of his stomach and made him tremble. Wilson tried to step on Lincecum's face, reaching out with his foot, and Lincecum only rolled away and laughed harder.
"Timmy's lost his mind," Wilson reported to the room at large.
The remnants of the team murmured, uninterested. It was a nice little bonus, Lincecum thought hazily, something they didn't tell you about when scouts started showing up to watch you in college. As long as he kept winning, he could go as crazy as he wanted.
*
On the day they would start a three-game set against the Dodgers in San Francisco, Lincecum ran into Mike Krukow in the hallway.
Krukow was the color-man on the Giants broadcast team, a former starter himself with big pitcher shoulders and silver senator hair. He usually carried a baseball in the pocket of his sports coat, which was how Lincecum recognized him as a kindred soul.
They bullshitted for a minute, kidding around about inconsequential stuff, and then Krukow's eyes went sideways and he leaned closer to Lincecum.
"Listen, we were talking to Vin Scully earlier," Krukow told him, and Lincecum immediately perked up, because Vin Scully, holy cow. "The Bums caught on to you guys lifting signs last series after watching the tape."
"We didn't lift any signs," Lincecum said automatically. Krukow half-smiled.
"Yeah, I know you didn't. Just keep an eye on those fuckers pitching inside, all right? Somebody gets hit, it probably wasn't an accident, you dig?"
"Yeah," Lincecum said assuredly. "I'll tell the boys."
"Good man." Krukow clapped his hand on Lincecum's shoulder. "Fuckin' Dodgers."
"Fuckin' Dodgers," Lincecum agreed, and they went their separate ways.
In the third inning, Dodger pitcher Vicente Padilla threw a pitch that clonked off Emmanuel Burriss's helmet and sent him careening to the dirt. Burriss was only stunned, never lost consciousness and walked down to first under his own power, but as far as his teammates were concerned, Padilla might as well have shot him in the back.
Randy Winn stood on the dugout steps and hurled profanity like confetti. Padilla was a dog-fucker, a cocksucker, a bush league piece of shit. It was energizing, seeing Winn all het up like that, because Randy was usually the chillest motherfucker in the place. The other Giants stamped their spikes on the bench, punched each other on the arm. They were gnashing, snapping at the bit.
Lincecum was sitting near Zito at the far end of the dugout. Lincecum lent his voice to the fray, shouting whatever random four-letter words trickled through his brain. Zito was just watching.
In a lull, Zito remarked, "Yo, this might actually happen."
"What?"
Zito shot him a quick hard grin. "Ready to rumble, kid?"
"Really?" Lincecum sat up straighter, his attention ratcheted up. He'd never been in a real all-out brawl. If he was gonna be completely honest (heaven forbid), Tim Lincecum had never been in any kind of fight involving punching. He wasn't sure if this made him lucky or cowardly.
"Starting to look like it." Zito gave him a sizing-up look. "Do I need to teach you how to throw a punch?"
Lincecum demonstrated his answer quite plainly via his fist and Zito's shoulder. Zito didn't gasp or catch his breath, didn't rub it. He only chuckled.
"Just try to stay close to Pablo or somebody big, all right? I think I heard somewhere that you're the franchise."
That was an unaccountably sore spot. It made Lincecum uncomfortable thinking that the whole team was supposed to be his to lead someday, that he'd been anointed or preordained or whatever it was. Lincecum found it all kinda doubtful. He was much more into cracking jokes from the sidelines than actually taking charge of anything.
"Don't you worry about me," Lincecum said, and Zito said, "Ha," as if it was a ridiculous thing to even think.
There was a moment of silence like an indrawn breath. Everyone in the stadium was staring at the mound.
Padilla pitched, and the ball hit Eugenio Velez square in the ribs.
Later on, looking at the tape, Lincecum decided that Padilla had probably just been a little wild. He was coming open too early with his front. He certainly hadn't meant to put two Giants players on base while holding a one-run lead.
The facts of the matter didn't have much sway in the moment. Velez absorbed the blow, turned hard and sprinted for the mound, flinging his bat and helmet aside onto the grass. Padilla chucked his glove at him hard, came down off the mound with his fists up. The Dodgers infield rushed in, and the benches cleared.
Lincecum was swept along, a cork in the river. Adrenaline pumped through him hard as they thundered onto the infield grass. The San Francisco crowd was roaring like a tsunami; not even for game-winning home runs were they as loud as they were now.
And then there was a mass of gray and blue and white and orange, elbows slashing through the air, thick-fingered fists flailing about. Guys were in clinches, scratching and struggling; nobody was landing solid punches.
It didn't last long. The umpires dove into the melee and hauled out Velez and Padilla and Russell goddamn Martin who of course was in the thick of the whole thing, a bastard sneer on his squat stupid bulldog face. The coaches were in it too, dragging guys apart. Dave Righetti personally grabbed hold of Lincecum and took him out of the fray, haranguing him for swinging with his pitching hand.
Two Giants and three Dodgers were ejected in the aftermath. A couple guys sported bruises, but no one was bleeding. The Giants retreated to their own dugout shaking with unrelieved energy, punching their fists into gloves. Zito was shaking his hand and grimacing, and a few seconds after he disappeared down the tunnel, Lincecum followed.
Lincecum was ramped up beyond belief, feeling like the top layer of his skin had been stripped off. He'd wanted a fight, a real honest-to-god baseball brawl like you saw on TV, and instead he'd gotten shoved around a little and then removed for his own safety by his pitching coach. His blood felt as hot as steam.
Zito was in the little kitchen, wrapping up ice in a rag. Down the hall, Lincecum could hear Bochy reaming the guys who'd gotten tossed for letting themselves get tossed. There was a metallic taste in his mouth.
"Is your hand okay?" Lincecum asked, surprised to hear the breathlessness in his voice.
Zito shot him a look, kinda wild at the narrow edges of it, and Lincecum's stomach flipped over. He leaned closer to Zito unconsciously.
"Think I'll live," Zito said.
"Fuckin', that wasn't even a real fuckin' fight," Lincecum said. He wanted to stutter on every other word. "I wanted a real fuckin' fight, I wanted to see some blood and ninja moves and fuckin' Nolan Ryan putting guys into headlocks and shit, why the hell can't we fight like that?"
He'd lost his bearings. He was too near to Zito, angled in close enough that he could smell the rough sweat and dirt smell on him, see the tiny white-thread scar just tracing the line of Zito's eyebrow, almost taste the little half-smile that curved Zito's lips, and it made Lincecum's brain shut down entirely.
Lincecum tipped forward and kissed Zito on the mouth. It lasted all of one and a half seconds, and then Zito was pushing him back.
"Dude." Zito's eyes were huge and huger still. "Dude."
Lincecum gaped at him for a second, refusing to accept that he'd really just done that. He'd kissed Zito--he hadn't even realized that he wanted to kiss Zito.
"Holy shit!" Lincecum said, way too fucking loud, and jerked backwards away from Zito. "Oh my god, I'm sorry."
Zito shook his head, face cracked wide with shock and his hand stuck to Lincecum's shoulder, and Lincecum wrenched away before Zito could say anything because Lincecum really really didn't want to hear it. Clearly this was all going to blow up around him. He had to find a hole to crawl into, and never be seen again. It was a shame too; everything had been going so well.
Zito said his name hoarsely, "Tim," and then Matt Cain came in laughing about how Jeff Weaver punched like a fucking girl, and Lincecum didn't have to look at Zito anymore.
And now he could breathe again.
*
So, things had gotten kinda weird.
Lincecum was scheduled to pitch in the rubber match of the Dodgers series, and he wanted to think about that and only that. He avoided Zito with the diligence of a runty kid eluding a bully through school corridors. Hours Lincecum spent in the video room, shut up with Righetti and the pitching coaches, wherever Zito wasn't. He kept the Dodger line-up and how to pitch each one of them running through his mind like the chorus of a particularly grating pop remix.
It worked on a surface level, but underneath Lincecum was pretty sure he was still a wreck. No matter his efforts (and they were exhaustive), he couldn't stop thinking about how apparently he was totally gay for Barry Zito.
It was disconcerting in the extreme. In his lifetime, Lincecum had screwed around with two guys and twenty-seven girls, so the math seemed all wrong. The guy thing was hazy, years and years behind him at this point.
(He'd gone to baseball camp the summer after his sophomore year in high school. Every night after lights out, the cool kids (and Tim one of them for the first time ever, just 'cause he could throw ninety miles an hour and a curveball too) sneaked out of their dormitory and down to the biggest of the fields. They climbed to the top of the bleachers with six-packs and joints made of schwag rolled up in yellowing papers. Fucked up and floating, Tim had gone under the bleachers exactly twice that summer, with two different guys. Over time their features had melded in his memory and become one pair of dark eyes, one set of rough-fingered hands sliding under his shirt, one low voice asking him if he'd ever sucked someone off before. Tim had thought of it like going to war, some place where the normal rules didn't apply. He had never worried overly about it, because Tim wasn't really the worrying type.)
And now suddenly: Zito. Zito and his damp spiky hair fresh from the showers, Zito with his socks pulled up tight and high, Zito with his irritatingly perfect nicknames and habit of slumping on the nearest warm body when he was drunk. Zito and his $126 million dollars, his unmet expectations and that curveball still dropping faces to laces like it always had.
Lincecum was coming to realize, with a kind of dawning horror, that he liked Zito a lot.
So he stayed away. He took the hill against the Dodgers, his mind wiped clean of all but the immediate. The first few innings flicked by under a depthless blue sky, witnessed by the muffled mid-weekday crowd. His change-up drifted towards the plate like something out of a narcotic gleam. Swing and a miss, swing and a miss, and Lincecum swore he could feel the breeze on his face.
In the fourth, Bengie Molina came out to the mound to tell him that Mark Loretta had been peeking back at the signs in his last at-bat.
"I told him to cut that shit out," Molina said, his catcher's mitt resting heavily on Lincecum's hip in the casual way of a mound meeting. "But if he doesn't, I'm calling for one in his ear, okay?"
Lincecum nodded instinctively, because the very first thing they had taught him was listen to Molina, he's been around longer than you've been alive, kid (not true, by the way, but ballplayers rarely stuck at inconvenient facts). Then he remembered the context.
"Um. Seems like if I hit him there might be another fight."
Molina spat off to the side, narrowed his eyes at Lincecum. "I told him to stop. Motherfuckers want a fight, they get it."
Lincecum nodded. The slow-approaching umpire was almost to the dirt of the mound and so Molina thumped him on the hip and turned to trot back to the plate. Lincecum squeezed the ball in his hand, adrenaline coating the insides of his veins. He'd never been charged on the mound before.
Loretta fouled off the first two fastballs, and then Molina put down his middle finger, which meant fuck this guy. Lincecum was half out of his mind with nerves, thinking he was gonna get his ass kicked by a dude fifteen years his senior, in front of twenty thousand people and on television too, and people were gonna make all kinds of fun of him and this was going to suck, and he wound and pitched, his heart thick in his throat. He hit Loretta in the meat of his arm, and braced for impact.
Loretta didn't even look at him. He tossed his bat towards the batboy and jogged down to first with his head down. Lincecum released a huge shuddering breath, and almost missed Molina's return throw.
Lincecum couldn't calm himself down for a couple of minutes, and ended up walking the next man before inducing a double play and getting out of it. There was a nagging sense of disappointment; it wasn't that he wanted to get tackled by a professional athlete, just that he'd expected to be, and somehow it felt like a loss.
In the dugout, Lincecum shrugged into his warm-up jacket and sat near Bengie. "He didn't charge me."
Molina unhooked his leg protectors, dusty plastic rattling on the concrete floor. "He got caught. Can't get caught."
"Yeah," Aaron Rowand chimed in. "You're not doing anything wrong until you get caught. He knew what was coming, and he's a good guy anyway, he's not gonna start shit when he knows we had him dead to fuckin' rights."
Lincecum thought that over for the rest of the half-inning, as the Giants scraped together two runs out of small ball and luck. You couldn't get in trouble 'til someone saw. You weren't doing anything wrong until you got caught at it--it was convoluted in his mind, a paradox.
He looked down the bench at Zito, who was chucking sunflower seeds at Gatorade cups with Fred Lewis and Travis Ishikawa. That absurd out-of-the-blue kiss reoccurred in Lincecum's mind, the giddy energy in him and the warmth of Zito's mouth fit against his own for exactly a second and a half. It was vivid enough that his skin prickled all over, and he shivered under his warm-up jacket.
Don't get caught, Lincecum thought, and as if he could hear it, Zito turned to meet his gaze, a faint question on his face. Lincecum was arrested, staring back helplessly. It was quiet for a moment.
And then Pablo Sandoval hit a home run and the crowd howled its dismay, guys jumping off the bench and crowding at the front of the dugout. Lincecum jerked, violently startled out of his reverie. He lost Zito in the shuffle, but only for a second.
They won the game. Lincecum pitched until his arm almost fell off. He came out of it feeling decades older, wised up in that baseball way, that forged-in-fire kind of thing. Ten years like this might actually kill him, like it was dog years or something, but his whole team came over to touch his hand and rap him on the head when he came into the dugout at the end of the eighth inning, so it pretty much seemed worth it.
*
That last Dodger game was getaway day, straight to the airport from the ballpark and then flying east through the night.
They went to Houston. It was eighty-five degrees on the Gulf and the air felt like syrup made of crude oil. Getting to the hotel was a whole ordeal; the bus driver was new or something and managed to get them ridiculously lost in the an extremely shady part of town at one in the morning. At least twice there were sounds that could be easily mistaken for gunshots by a bunch of overtired ballplayers, several of whom had been watching Band of Brothers on the plane and were therefore highly suggestible. The veterans started joking about using the rookies for human shields, which garnered a lot of ha-ha-very-fucking-funny and not much else.
Eventually they made it to the fake-marble safety of the Ritz-Carlton. Lincecum loitered at the back of the group as they tromped into the hotel, wanting to keep a weather eye on things. They were all slumping, leaning on each other. Zito was half-asleep on Brian Wilson's shoulder, and Lincecum watched them with a dumb sick feeling of jealousy--or envy, probably more like envy at this point--curling in his stomach.
They got their room keys and packed themselves into the elevators, up to the fourteenth floor. There was no thirteenth, which Lincecum felt boded poorly for them, because the whole tradition had always seemed impossibly thickheaded to him; the thirteenth floor was the thirteenth from the ground, no matter what the fuck they wanted to call it.
Nobody else made a big thing about it, so he kept his mouth shut.
It was right to bed for everybody, yawning through goodnights and thanking god it was a night game tomorrow. Lincecum put his suitcase away in the closet, put his dop kit out on the bathroom counter and brushed his teeth before stripping down to his shorts and a shirt and attempting to go to sleep.
It didn't take. Stupidly, he'd taken a nap on the plane and now he was fresh as a daisy. Tim twisted and turned and kicked the covers off. The room was excessively quiet, the air excessively conditioned. He'd be insane by morning.
And then, like a gift from above: marijuana.
The sour old-sweat smell drifted through Lincecum's room. His mouth started watering like a cartoon dog, and he eased out of bed, padding barefoot over to the sliding door and the tiny balcony.
He paused before going out. It was Zito; it had to be Zito. There were maybe half a dozen guys on the team who smoked in-season, but the universe wasn't a merciful place, as Lincecum had learned. Of course it would be Zito out there. It was time for some retaliation.
Lincecum manned up, stepped out onto the cool cement of the balcony in his bare feet. Zito looked over, caught in the middle of an inhale with the cherry flared red and his eyes squinted against the smoke. Lincecum grinned dopily, his hands pawing for non-existent pockets at the sides of his boxers.
"Fancy meeting you here," Lincecum said in as low a voice as was practical, very aware of the dozens and dozens of dark curtained windows surrounding them.
Zito tipped his head back and exhaled a long straight ribbon of smoke into the thick air. "Minnie the fuckin' Moocher, aren't you."
"No, no. The jay is just a happy coincidence. Can I have some, though?"
Zito smirked and passed him the joint over the gap between balconies, the thirteen floors worth of space yawning below them. Lincecum took the proper two hits and passed it back. Their hands touched and Lincecum couldn't believe that was how his brain worked now, noticing shit like their hands touching.
"Thanks," Lincecum said. Zito waved it away. They passed the jay back and forth until it wasn't much more than a stub. The silence was not wholly comfortable, and Lincecum figured that was probably his fault. He figured he should probably do something about it.
He swallowed, mouth sticky-thick and dry, and said before he could lose his nerve, "I got the most godawful crush on you, man, it's ridiculous. You probably guessed already."
Zito choked on his laugh, tangled up as it was with shock and smoke. He sounded like he was strangling for a minute, eyes bugging at Lincecum, and then he started coughing, muffling it in his forearm.
Lincecum rocked back and forth on his heels quickly, near-panic skittering across his nerves. Stupid stupid stupid is what his mind wanted him to believe, but fuck it, Lincecum could do stupid things every once in a while. He had an obligation to at least try.
The cough settled, and Zito blinked at him, heavy-lidded and intent with a disbelieving smile tugging at his mouth. The jay burned forgotten in his hand, dense ribbons of smoke hanging in the windless air.
"Jesus, you pick your fuckin' moments, don't you," Zito said, whispered really, keeping it a secret, and reached across the balcony to twist his hand in Lincecum's shirt. "Get the fuck over here."
It was only to be expected when Lincecum almost fell off the goddamn building while attempting to traverse the small space between the two balconies. Zito grabbing him about the chest and hauling him the rest of the way over the rail might have saved his life, but it was on Zito's account that Lincecum was risking it, so there didn't seem any point of saying thank you.
Instead, Lincecum hooked an arm around Zito's neck and pulled him down into a second kiss. To his overwhelming relief, Zito didn't hesitate in kissing him back, smoke taste and hot, softening the line of his body instinctively to fit against Lincecum's. It lasted a good deal longer than that fabled second and a half, and when Zito broke away this time, it was only to pull Lincecum back into his room, wicked smile glinting across his face.
Lincecum's heart was going so fast it was more rattle than beat. Zito's hands were under his shirt, on his stomach and his ribs. He laid Lincecum out on the bed and followed him down, lying heavy across his legs, mouth open on his throat. Lincecum made a raw sound that didn't seem like it should be coming out of him, his body arching hard under Zito's.
Zito laughed breathlessly against Lincecum's cheek. His fingers curled in the waistband of Tim's shorts with devastating promise.
"You gonna freak out again later?"
"Maybe," Lincecum said, having this vague sense that honesty was important. His mind was splintering in really interesting ways.
"Well, don't bother. There's a Code for this kinda thing too, you know."
No, Lincecum wanted to say. I didn't know that. Please please please tell me more.
But there was very little breath left in his lungs and so he just let Zito pull off his shorts and push his legs apart. This was going to be spectacular, Lincecum could already tell. Zito had that kind of look on his face. Lincecum craned his head up and Zito kissed him like it was necessary, edged down his own sweatpants and took them both carefully in hand.
And then, sure enough: just fuckin' spectacular.
*
The next morning, Lincecum woke up in an empty bed. It was somewhat disheartening, until he lifted his head and spotted Zito contorted on the carpet in front of the bed.
"What're you--what?" Lincecum asked, knuckling the sleep out of his eyes.
Zito tilted his head to glance at Lincecum. "Yoga."
"Huh. Okay." Lincecum lay back down. It was too early to deal with new things like the dude he was apparently sleeping with now who woke up at dawn to do yoga.
Life was weird, Lincecum decided, and went back to sleep.
He woke up for the second time only a little while later, when Zito brought coffee and waffles from the breakfast buffet downstairs. They ate in bed, watching Cartoon Network, and then put their plates on the floor and made out for a little while.
He could get used to this, Lincecum thought dizzily as Zito mouthed across his jawline. They were both moving slowly, muffled as if by sleep. His hands were in Zito's hair. It didn't even seem to be building up to anything, just necking for the sake of it like high school kids on network television.
It tapered off. Lincecum got up to take a shower when Zito became distracted by SpongeBob Squarepants. He shaved even though he didn't really need to, it was just part of the whole experience. Shaving in perfect-circle mirrors in hotel bathrooms, food from room service and the minibar, hallways races and sneaking up to the roof of the building long after curfew. Road trip life, tramps and ramblers, how romantic. Everything was coming up just as he'd hoped.
Lincecum came out naked and got dressed in his workout clothes, cheerfully immodest around Zito because they were teammates and that was how you had to roll. He sat down to pull on his socks, and said:
"I didn't freak out, you'll notice."
Zito turned a glazed TV-watching look on him, his eyes clearing a second later. "Yeah, good for you. You want a cookie?"
Lincecum laughed a little bit under his breath. Zito was great.
"Sorry, that first time, that was lame," Lincecum said. "I didn't even realize I was gonna do that."
"I got that." Zito smirked at him. "Try to restrain yourself when we're at the yard, okay?"
"Well. No promises." Lincecum was only being realistic, his eyes busy working over Zito's long body laid across the bed, arm folded under his head to pull his right side taut. "I'm going down to the gym, I think."
"'kay," Zito said, looking largely uninterested, but not discontent.
"You should come."
"Nah."
"All right." Lincecum smoothed back his drying hair with both hands, swiped a palm across his forehead, checked that the tag at the back of his shirt was tucked in. He got up out of the chair and crawled onto the bed, bringing his knees close to Zito's side. "You gonna tell me about this other Code when I get back? What is it, the Queer Ballplayers Code?"
Zito smiled up at him, cheshire and clever. "Can't do it."
Lincecum tapped his fingers on Zito's ribs, thwacked him with his finger like checking for a ripe piece of fruit. He rubbed his thumb on the spot in case it had hurt. "Why not? Unfair."
"You don't talk about it," Zito told him. "That's actually the majority of the thing. Don't freak out, don't talk about it. Don't be stupid."
"Stupid how?" Lincecum asked, his throat jammed. Zito shrugged.
"Million different ways. Can't start looking at the wrong guy. Can't say certain stuff or act a certain way. All that shit."
"So wait, you just broke it? By telling me?"
"Yeah." Zito grinned sharkily. "Fuck it, though, I'm over it. There are more important things in the world."
Lincecum grinned back, a wild feeling growing inside him. He wanted to pin Zito in place by his shoulders and kiss the hell out of him; it seemed like that kind of moment. Zito beat him to it, sitting up swiftly and burying his head in Lincecum's shoulder, cartoon growling noises and his mouth chomping painlessly at Lincecum's throat. Lincecum laughed and wrapped his arms around Zito's shoulders, letting his head fall back.
He went down to the gym a few minutes later. The television facing the stationary bikes was showing the Cubs game on WGN, and Lincecum couldn't have asked for better. He set up with his iPod and water bottle and towel and all, feeling generally awesome, like he could ride this stationary bike all the way to Tierra del Fuego if only he had the time.
The Cubbie pitcher was throwing inside, coming down hard off the mound and glaring batters out of the box. Lincecum leaned forward over the handlebars, his eyes turned up and reverent. He was watching the game beneath the game, the hidden show. He was in on it.
And Tim thought, finally, like a man who had spent years abroad being greeted once more in his native tongue.
THE END
here is the list of code stuff to use that i put together after reading the book:
-don't steal late/work the count with a big lead/don't run up the score
-don't watch dingers
-don't smirk
-don't rub it when you get hurt
-don't walk in front of the catcher
-relievers pitch easy to relievers
-pitchers stay in the dugout until the inning is over
-pitchers don't show up their fielders when they make a mistake
-don't swing big on 3-0 with a big lead/don't bunt
-intimidation/retaliation
-don't slide hard if you never usually slide hard, or you'll get a ball thrown into your face
-don't take anybody out unnecessarily on the basepaths
-game 5 2000 alcs a's yanks chavez mentions, 'they've won enough times,' and scotty bro wants to know, so he's dropping the past tense on us? that little fucker! and so forth.
-deke punks if they're falling for it (gamesmanship)
-always say yes when the manager asks you if you can still go
-don't hit dudes cos you're frustrated unless you want your guys hit too
-don't buy drinks for veterans
-never tell the press anything
-never let wives know about girlfriends (yes nancy?)
-don't tell your opponents you're gonna hit them with the first pitch of the game
-don't wave sarcastic goodbyes at the other team after sweeping them
-don't throw your bat at the pitcher (seriously now)
-don't say somebody hits like a woman to a reporter
-if you're cheating (and you are) don't get caught
it coulda been like three times as long, clearly.
*
tim lincecum gets one more happy ending from me, and then it's onto the angst train with him. enjoy it while you can, shawty.