Choosing Sophie

by Leslie Carroll

  “You know, Rosa always told me, ‘Dusty,’ she said, ‘Dusty, you live and die the Bronx Cheers. You breathe them and eat them and the Lord knows you probably crap them, too’—for a good Catholic, she could have a salty mouth on occasion. And now that Rosa’s gone, I’m gonna live and breathe and eat and crap them even more because I won’t have anything else in my life, Olivia.” The words caught in his throat as he choked back tears. “So, I just want you to know that my jury’s out on you as to whether you can fill your father’s shoes. I don’t have a doubt in my mind that you can strut across a stage and shake your booty,” he added, checking out my body, “but can you run a ball club?”

  “I wouldn’t want to be in your stilettos,” Sophie said, when I told her about my conversation with Dusty. “’Sides which I have no idea how you people can walk in heels like that, anyway. I want to help. You never said whether I could watch the tryouts. I’m a good talent scout, I promise! I learned from my dad,” she said, referring of course to Glenn Ashe, not to Rodney the Red Sock—though there may be something to be said for biology. “Dad was a major talent scout back in the seventies and eighties—and he was really good at it! When he was only my age, he convinced Bing Devine, the GM of the St. Louis Cardinals, to sign Keith Hernandez for their St. Petersberg A-ball team in seventy-two. Hernandez was a forty-second-round pick—but he went on to win eleven straight Gold Gloves and shared the National League’s MVP title in 1979.”

  “I’ve always had a crush on him,” I sighed.

  “Yeah, well, you do seem to have a thing for major league infielders,” Sophie observed tartly.

  “If I didn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I wouldn’t be me, that’s for sure,” she reluctantly agreed. “So—can I help scout?”

  “Isn’t the scouting over? Aren’t we going to be watching the prospects strut their stuff and then make our decision?”

  “Well, I can help you decide when to give a guy the thumbs up and when to feed him to the lions instead. Please, Mom. Pleeease?”

  She’d called me Mom again. I couldn’t have refused her the moon.

  Top of the Fifth

  Days later, Sophie and I trudged across a muddy campus to Farina Arena, where at least someone had had the presence of mind to close up the roof. “Isn’t this a great way to spend a Sunday morning?” she crowed. I hadn’t seen her so ebullient since I’d told her she could sit in on the Cheers tryouts. At her suggestion we’d Googled every player we expected to see. By the time they took the field, I felt like I knew them already, although after having read their blogs, I questioned the maturity level of some of them—those who behaved more like adolescents than twenty-ish. “Maybe it’s just me, and undoubtedly I still have a lot to learn about the business of baseball; but frankly, I’m not so sure I want an avowed devil worshiper on my team, no matter how high his batting average,” I told Sophie. “I never hired any Goth girls when I had my own nightclubs in Vegas, no matter how tall they were or how well they could wield a pair of ostrich-feather fans. Unlike stripping, burlesque still retains an almost wholesome sweetness. Like baseball. But without the sordid steroid stuff.”

  My daughter disagreed. “Not hiring Goth girls! That’s religious discrimination, Livy!”

  “No, it’s called casting,” I replied. “Religion has nothing to do with it.”

  Sophie shrugged, unconvinced. “Do you know what Sammy Santiago’s nickname is?”

  I shook my head and took a guess. “The Sultan of Satan?”

  Sophie laughed. “They’re not that clever. Besides, you’re wrong. They call him ‘Grand Slammy.’ He’s an awesome defensive third baseman, too. Besides, I don’t think he’s a real devil worshiper. I read his blog, too, and it sounds to me like he just dabbles. That streaming video where he was chanting that stuff about Beelzebub—I think those are actually the words to a rap song.”

  My cousin Marty greeted us on the field, as though he and his lawyer weren’t trying to litigate me out of my legacy. “It’s gonna be a great day today, isn’t it?” He was rubbing his hands together with such glee you’d think he was going to step up to the plate himself. “Uncle Augie never liked the scouts from the majors to pick his players, so he always ran his own tryouts. Of course, he wasn’t the only eccentric in baseball—far from it—but since he had so much money, the folks from the majors pretty much left him alone and let him run the team like his own little fiefdom. Linda’s running a little late, by the way. Rosebud’s stuck at the groomer’s. We watch the tryouts every year. She likes the young blood.”

  I bet she does, I thought, trying hard not to focus on Marty’s spindly legs. Some men should never wear Bermuda shorts.

  Something on the ground caught my eye as I was avoiding Marty’s legs. “Oh my God, that’s so adorable!”

  “What’s adorable?” Dusty Fredericks wanted to know.

  I scuffed my toe against the base. “Home plate. Who knew it was shaped like a little house?! House—home—it’s so cute!”

  Dick Fernando smacked his forehead with his hands. “She’s kidding us all, right?” He exchanged disgusted glances with Barry Weed and the other limited partner, Peter Argent. “Don’t tell me the woman who stands to gain the controlling interest in the Bronx Cheers has never even set foot on a baseball diamond! Yes, sweetheart,” he said to me sarcastically, “home plate is shaped like a little house. And inside live Hansel and Gretel and the Wicked Witch of the West.”

  “Aww, leave her alone,” Dusty said.

  “Fucking bimbo!” Peter Argent muttered to Dick Fernando. “Oh, lookie, it’s a cute little house!” he said in a high voice, which I suppose was intended to mimic my own.

  Dusty came between the two limited partners and laid a hand on each of their shoulders. “All right, knock it off, you two. We’ve got a team to put together here.”

  We settled into seats behind home plate. Farina Arena seemed a ghost town with only a handful of us in the stands. Sophie sat beside me; Dusty staked out a seat a couple of rows back. Marty stretched his legs in the aisle. Any minute I thought he was going to pull a box of Cracker Jack out of his knapsack.

  A pitcher trotted out to the mound. “Now this kid’s got something special,” Barry Weed said to me.

  “Actually, it’s not what he’s got; it’s what he lacks that makes him special,” Sophie muttered. I asked her to explain. “Pinky Melk is one of the best southpaws to come out of college baseball in a decade,” she said. “Check out his hands. They call him Pinky because he lost the one on his left hand—an accident in wood shop when he was in eighth grade.”

  I winced. “Damn.”

  “Tell me about it,” Sophie concurred. “To this day I can’t hear a buzz saw without freaking out, and I don’t even know Pinky!” She pointed to the player again. “Even in his Little League career, he was considered a hot prospect, but then he got hurt and switched to throwing right-handed instead. He was good, but his college coach suggested he go back to throwing southpaw, even without the pinky—and as a lefty he’s even better. He’s got a screwball that nobody can hit.”

  Well, he struck out Grand Slammy Santiago, who’d been hoping for fastballs. I didn’t know if that necessarily made Pinky any good. “After all,” Barry Weed told me, “Santiago can only hit high fastballs. But he hits them all the way to Cleveland.”

  Peter Argent chimed in. “Don’t worry about the devil-worshiping…thing. He says he doesn’t do that anymore. He’s into collecting butterflies now.” Argent shrugged. “What do I know? Just what the kid tells me.” He nudged Dick Fernando. “I thought we were going to see Shoji Suzuki today. Where the hell is he?”

  “He’s from Japan,” Sophie whispered to me.

  “Yeah, I guessed that.”

  Sophie cupped her hand to my ear. “Word on the street is Shoji’s a great center fielder. Except that no one can understand a word he says. And vice versa.”

  “Did you get him a translator?” Barry Weed asked the limited partners. They lo
oked at each other accusingly.

  “I thought you were taking care of that,” Fernando said to Argent.

  “Wonderful. And I thought we agreed that you were going to hire the translators. Jicama Flores is practically right off the boat from the DR, and Spot Baldo needs a Croatian interpreter. Is Croatian even a language?”

  “Spot Baldo?” I asked Sophie. “What kind of first name is Spot?”

  “It’s a nickname; his real first name is Aleksandar. But he’s a Dalmatian,” she replied, keeping her eyes on Pinky Melk. “From Brela.”

  “Isn’t ‘Spot’ kind of un-PC, Soph?”

  She laughed. “He picked it! Some of the guys call him Bald Spot, too. He seems to take it in stride.”

  Her knowledge of the players continued to impress me, including her infield chatter on the two right-handed relievers—Debrett Peerage, and some other guy nicknamed Lefty, as well as the actual lefty, Wayne deBoeuf. “Everyone always shouts ‘Where’s the Beef?’ when the starting pitcher is falling apart,” Sophie told me. “He’s a terrific closer, but his high school team made the mistake of starting him off as a middle reliever, until they realized his potential to shut down the opposition in the clutch. Essentially, Wayne has no central nervous system,” she grinned. “Though if you sign him, you’re going to have to give him a little lecture about riding his motorcycle without a helmet. Or boots. Well, any kind of shoes, actually. He says he never uses them in Mississippi.”

  “Would it be bootless to ask if his hero is Shoeless Joe Jackson?”

  Sophie smacked my upper arm with the back of her hand. “Wow—you made a baseball joke, Livy.”

  “We’re going to see another right-handed starter in a few minutes,” said Barry Weed, stamping out his cigarette butt on the cement steps. “Homegrown, too. A Clarendon kid.”

  “Do I know him?” I asked.

  “I think so. Tommy DuPree.”

  I looked at Sophie but read nothing in her face except that trademark inscrutability.

  Marty was practically levitating out of his sneakers, he was so pumped. “I told you on visiting day, this kid’s got a great arm.”

  “Soph?” I waited for her reaction, and when I got none, I drew her to me so that we were shoulder to shoulder. “He was a prick to you at that Christmas party,” I whispered. “Why should I consider rewarding him?”

  Sophie shrugged noncommittally. “I’m over it. Moved on. I don’t even think about Tommy anymore. But you realize you could end up killing his career forever, just because he can be an asshole from time to time.”

  “Not just any asshole. He was an asshole to you. My daughter. I don’t forgive as easily as you do, apparently.”

  “Okay, so, Tommy’s a jerk. But, if you want to factor character issues into baseball, so is someone like Pete Rose for allegedly gambling on his own team. Does that erase the fact that he was an incredible player?”

  “Yeah, but even if I accept your argument, Soph, didn’t your—didn’t Glenn mention that Tommy’s control of the ball is erratic, and that he doesn’t really throw that hard?”

  “Well…that doesn’t mean he won’t improve with the right coaching.”

  “Why do you think Cousin Marty is so keen on him? The other guys—Weed, Fernando, and Argent—don’t seem so convinced. I find it hard to believe that you and Marty see eye to eye on something. Especially since he’s suing me to get your grandfather’s will invalidated.”

  Sophie shook her head. “It’s definitely not what Gramps had in mind. Trust me. With Tommy, I bet Marty wants to prove that he can pick a winner, and that old Augie was wrong in never letting him have enough shares in the ball club to have any influence on the way it’s run. That’s been going on for years, you know. I’ve got articles on it in my scrapbook. Augie never wanted Marty to have any say in the Cheers. He always thought Marty was a loser. If he’d ever wanted to make him a limited partner, he would have done it years ago. Now, as far as right-handers go, I think Tommy’s got potential; a diamond in the rough that you could polish into a real gem that’s going to yield a major return on your investment.” She looked at me earnestly. “I say take the chance on him. I’ll stake my entire reputation as a talent scout—albeit an amateur one—on it.”

  “Move over.” Dusty had descended the stairs and wanted to muscle into our row. “I don’t think he’s as good as they say, Olivia. I think what you see is what you get.”

  “Sophie’s inclined to think otherwise.” For a couple more minutes, we watched Tommy DuPree in silence. Then Dusty said, “I been managing in the minors for twenty-five years. I got batting gloves older than your daughter. So, who’re you gonna listen to—this crusty old salt or some kid who never managed a team in her life?”

  Of course he’d made a couple of excellent points. But if Sophie had become an astute judge of talent, even avocationally, at her adoptive dad’s knee, maybe her advice was sounder than that of a man who was so set in his ways that he’d posted several losing seasons in succession rather than change his game plan.

  I turned to my daughter. “Sweetheart, I’m very serious about this: are you sure you’re okay with the way Tommy DuPree treated you? Because I don’t care how good he is, I don’t want him to so much as set foot inside the team’s locker room if it makes you in any way uncomfortable or unhappy.”

  “I told you, Mom, I’m over it,” she said unconvincingly. But she also knew she’d just hit my Achilles’ heel.

  I waved over the Cheers’ general manager. “Barry,” I said, mustering my best authoritative voice and pointing to Tommy DuPree, “offer the kid a contract.”

  As the weeks wore on, and we awaited one more court appearance—after which the judge assured us he would issue his final ruling—I grew increasingly anxious to get on with my life. Now I was hungry to take the Cheers and make something out of their sorry blue-and-white asses. The new additions to the team seemed relatively promising, if spring training was a good indication of future performance on the field. The outfield was looking particularly strong, with a slugger named Anton Anton in left, Ahab Slocum—though he had an ego the size of Milwaukee—out in right, and the enigmatic Shoji Suzuki in center. Shoji was always apologizing for something, at least according to his translator—a dropped fly, a miscalculated position on the field where he’d played either too deep or too shallow, a fumbled bunt attempt—and yet he never seemed to be truly contrite. I’d been listening to Japanese language CDs with the hopes of communicating with him myself one of these days, so I could find out what was truly up with the kid. Maybe reading some Manga would help, too. Shoji always had his nose in one of those books whenever he wasn’t immediately required for anything. I also wondered—a maternal thing kicking in—whether I should be worried that his hair was dyed royal blue.

  Marty deMarley stared at his Minor Leaguer magazine, forcing his brain to memorize a sheet of stats. Then he slumped back in his recliner, which resembled an enormous baseball mitt. Linda hated it. She’d been trying to train Rosebud to scratch up the upholstery for years. But the dog hated the smell of it. “Why do you think Uncle Augie hated me so much?” Marty moaned.

  “He didn’t hate you, Marty; he just thought you were a putz.”

  “But I’m not a putz. I’m a very successful bond trader! Fuck—if I crunched the numbers, did a little creative accounting, I could probably buy my own team, instead of waiting around and hoping to inherit the Cheers and getting shafted by everyone.”

  Linda’s brain lit up like the Empire State Building at dusk. “Then why don’t you? What do you need the Cheers for? You could buy a successful team. And then you could sell it and make an enormous profit, and we could—”

  “Why would I sell it?” Marty was appalled. “Linda, all I’ve ever wanted, as an adult, anyway, was to own a baseball team.” Thinking about his dream some more, he realized that it wasn’t about owning a team in theory; it all boiled down to the Cheers. Uncle Augie owed him. It was all about family.

  “What did you want
as a kid?” Linda realized she didn’t know this about her husband. Most of the time, she didn’t really care to know things about him that had nothing to do with her. What had she seen in him, beyond a fat paycheck and a cushy lifestyle? What did she see in him now, all crumpled up like a little boy in that heinous chair of his? She thought about having a glass of champagne as she ruminated, but it was only noon, so she opted for coffee instead. Marty. Marty Marty Marty. Well, it wasn’t all that hard to figure out. Her therapist told her years ago that she was one of those people who is considered a “fixer,” the type who looks for someone to “rescue.” Marty had presented a project on a grand scale. She imagined it was a bit like coming across an old house, a gingerbread Queen Anne with a crumbling facade, sloping floors, and wonky plumbing, and getting dewy-eyed over its possibilities for renewal. So much potential, Linda had thought at the time she met Marty. She’d never forget the night. It was at an Easthampton cocktail party for the designer Lucky Sixpence; Marty was his broker. Linda saw even more promise in Marty after she signed up a personal trainer and sent him for hair plugs. Unfortunately, Marty couldn’t seem to bulk up; destiny and biology had given him the physique of a plucked chicken. And the hair plugs made his scalp break out. But that made for another project to tackle; more things for Linda to fix. She realized that one of the things she adored most about her husband was that she would always be needed to fix something about him.

  “I wanted to be a paleontologist,” Marty said wistfully.

  Bottom of the Fifth

  “How did you feel, Mrs. Ashe, when your daughter decided to find her birth mother?”

  Joy hesitated before replying. She didn’t want to do anything to hurt Livy’s case, because that would hurt Sophie as well, but she’d put her hand on a Bible and sworn to tell the truth. And Joy feared the wrath of God more than that of Judge Randazzo if she committed perjury.