Senior Year

by Dan Shaughnessy

  I felt better. Before going to bed that night, I left a note in front of Sam's door. It read: "Sam, what time do you want me to wake you up for your game?" I left checkmark boxes with choices: noon, 1 P.M., 2 P.M. I knew he had to be at school for the team bus by 2:15.

  The next morning at 5:41, I heard the Bulgarian goat bell on our front door and knew that Sam's long night was over. When I passed by his room later in the morning, I looked on the floor and saw that he'd scribbled "1:45" on my wakeup query.

  He was awake when I got home just after one in the afternoon and said that prom night went well. Dad did not want any more details. Sam did not appear hung-over, there hadn't been any calls from the cops, and he looked game ready as he sat at the kitchen counter, wearing jersey number 24, eating a turkey sandwich.

  I put a little Zevon (always good hitting music) in the disc player as Sam loaded his baseball bag, his tuxedo bag, and the case of Red Bull ("liquid crack" according to Sarah) into the back seat. In something of a regressive development, we were driving Sam to and from school a lot during the final days because we had out-of-town company and a car shortage.

  A crew painting the trim on our house wished him good luck as he got into the front seat in full uniform. Like myself, they all wanted to be Sam for the day. We made a quick stop at Mr. Tux and I had a moment when I watched him walk into the shop.

  I mean, really. An 18-year-old kid, wearing his baseball uniform, returning his tux on his way to the state tournament the day before graduation? Now that is senior year.

  We didn't say much on the way to North. I mentioned that the newspaper stats indicated Arlington's pitchers hardly walked anybody all year. He'd be seeing some strikes for a change. I dropped him at the school entrance on Hull Street, gave him the usual dad advice ("Keep your head in and watch the pitch until you hit it"), then drove to Spy Pond in Arlington.

  Regardless of your allegiance, you've got to love a place named Spy Pond and a team called the Spy Ponders. The freshwater lake, located off Route 2 leading west out of Boston, is called Spy Pond because there's a lofty perch above the water that served as a lookout for Revolutionary War soldiers who needed to see whether the British were bound for Lexington or Concord. The Arlington High team took on the name early in the twentieth century, and the Spy Ponders had great baseball tradition and an unusual number of elderly male fans who sat in the first base side concrete stands (our moms said those stone seats caused "piles") for just about every game. Spy Pond, I decided, would be an okay place for the end of Sam's high school baseball career.

  Coach Sis had scouted Arlington and showed me the mimeographed one-page report he'd handed out to the team. It was thorough. It even said, "Greeley should pick one of their guys off third base."

  Cheryl was stalking the premises fairly early. Her James was scheduled to start, making his seventeenth appearance in twenty-two games. His prom date had been Alex Sera, the four-year star pitcher for the North girls and co-MVP of the Bay State League ("What do you think they talked about all night?" quipped Sam). Cheryl said James had left the post-prom party at 3 A.M. to get ready for the start. That sounded good until he booted an easy, two-out comebacker in the first inning. A second error, this one not committed by a prom warrior, gave the Spy Ponders a 2–0 lead.

  A couple of hours and eight innings later, it was still 2–0 and Newton had the bottom of the order due up in the ninth. It had been one frustrating day for the Tigers: Ten runners left on base and a lot of hard hit balls right at people. Greeley settled down nicely and picked a Spy Ponder off third in the fifth inning (thanks, Coach), but it looked like the Tigers were going down.

  And then we saw some of the high school glory that kids carry with them for the rest of their lives. Led by seniors, the Tigers rallied for four runs in the ninth. Sam tied it with a two-out, two-strike RBI single to left, and Walsh drove home two more to make it 4–2. Greeley got the Spy Ponders in order in the bottom of the inning, and a few parents were crying as they gathered behind the backstop.

  Who knew it took Red Bull three hours to kick in?

  There were a lot of jokes about not forgetting Greeley this time. I was happy for Coach Siciliano. There was some reward for a man who got up at five in the morning to pump water off his team's home field. This was his best team ever. They were going to the sectional semifinals against St. John's Prep.

  I watched the Red Sox and Yankees on television that night. Before going out with his friends, Sam stopped by the TV room and announced that he had not been selected in the first eighteen rounds of the major league draft. The final thirty-two rounds would unfold the next day, graduation day, and Sam said he was hoping to be picked. He was kidding. Sort of. Major league teams are not in a hurry to draft five foot ten high school hitters from the northeast, but a lot of the guys Sam played with in Wilmington were getting calls from the big league ball clubs. One of his summer pro showcase teammates went ninth in the country, which is a $2 million ticket. We both knew Sam's letter of intent to Boston College probably took him out of the mix for the late rounds. Why should a team waste a draft pick on a kid who's already pledged his allegiance to college? Plus, Sam had seen Baseball America's predraft scouting report on him that stated: "figures to be a tough sign with his commitment to Boston College, but he could probably use the college experience anyway. Shaughnessy's short swing generates plus power, but that's his only tool—he's not a strong runner or thrower and lacks a true position."

  Sounded a little like Mr. Lacerte's evaluation of my French abilities.

  Having nothing to do with the major league draft, I was feeling a little guilty about Sam's situation because that very day I'd learned that Peter Hughes—the man who recruited him to Boston College—was going to take a job as head coach at Virginia Tech. It didn't seem fair to tell Sam this news before his game and everybody was still enjoying the post-victory high after the win, so I kept it to myself a little longer.

  It rained the next day, graduation day, and the Newton North ceremonies were moved indoors to Boston College's Conte Forum. Sam got home from practice just after three and needed to be at BC by four. Given the hour, normal weekday traffic around BC, the historic rains, and the friends and family of 550 graduates, this made for a perfect storm of snarled humanity. We picked up Sam's friend Tom, another thirteen-year neighborhood veteran, and he rode in the back seat with my sister Mary as we drove two miles to BC through the pouring rain. Sam was on his cell phone, monitoring the final rounds of the major league draft. "Thirty-nine rounds down. Eleven to go," he announced. I laughed and changed the subject, commenting on the unlikelihood of all the graduates and their families getting to BC on time.

  "No one knows what's going on," Sam blurted. "I talked to Gabe and he said people keep calling him."

  Gabe was class president, bound for Harvard, a regular at Chez Shaughnessy. I'd seen his parents on the party circuit all week and told them how much I was looking forward to Gabe's speech. I knew he'd come up with something better than my cornball closing line in 1971, when I took a quote I'd heard on a popular television show. It went something like this: "First they came after the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not object. Then they came after the Catholics, but I was not a Catholic so I did not object. Then they came after the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist so I did not object. Then they came after me, and there was nobody left to object." The passage had absolutely nothing to do with my speech or with the class of '71, but I liked it so I used it.

  Gabe would do better. I knew.

  I dropped my sister and the boys at the front door. Sam and Tom respectfully stood in the pouring rain while my none-too-nimble sister got out of the back seat and opened her umbrella. Mary kept telling them to go ahead, not to wait for her, but they stalled and got wet while she gathered herself. Mary was impressed and will recite this moment in any future retellings of her experience at Sam's graduation.

  Marilou came separately with her dad and Sarah. Uncle Eddie arrived by cab. We
sat in section V of the lower bowl and watched the two-hour ceremony unfold. There were boring speeches by a bunch of politicians. Outgoing principal Jennifer Huntington gently reminded us that "in many cultures rain is a sign of good luck."

  Gabe did not let us down. He employed one of his dad's tired expressions: "Aim high, finish strong." He said his dad applied this phrase even when encouraging Gabe to take out the trash. Gabe looked great on the Jumbotron scoreboard and he finished strong, but my favorite speaker of the night was a retiring math teacher who was saying goodbye after thirty-six years at North. She complimented the behavior of the class of 2006 during the raucous countdown and at the overnight post-prom party. She said the kids had been respectful of one another. And kind. She also told us that for the first time in her four decades of service—now that she had retired—she suddenly no longer felt like she belonged. That killed me. It was my future, too. I'd no doubt still stop by the school to watch games in days to come, but I would no longer belong in the Newton North stands. I'd be an outsider. A creepy old guy watching other people's kids.

  It takes about an hour to announce names and hand out diplomas to 550 kids, and it gets a little tiring once you've seen your child walk the walk. During this lull, after we'd seen Sam get the scroll and the handshake, Sarah's cell phone rang.

  "Dad, Sam wants to talk to you," she said, handing me the phone.

  I got out of my seat and walked through the portal to the concourse behind the stands, holding the phone to my ear.

  "Dad, did I get drafted?" he asked.

  Unbelievable. Sam had been a high school graduate for all of five minutes, and many of his classmates were still in line for their diplomas, and he was calling to ask about the major league draft.

  "Sam, I don't think it's happening. Somebody at the paper would have called me if that happened."

  We took the perfunctory goofy photos after the ceremony, then went to dinner at the Sheraton, where Marilou's parents were staying.

  "No go on the draft," Sam said when I first saw him in the hotel lobby. "I'm kinda pissed."

  He was kidding. But deep down I know he secretly had hoped some big league team would pick him in the forty-ninth round. Everybody likes to be able to say they got drafted.

  Later that night, there was true disappointment. While I was taking off my necktie and sports coat, Sam came into my office looking wounded.

  "Dad, Hughes is leaving," he said.

  Welcome to the real world, young man. Less than three hours after you finish school, you get one of those life-lesson kicks in the teeth. The guy who sweet-talked you into coming to his school takes off for greener pastures after getting you to sign a letter of intent. It's an age-old recruiting story.

  Sam was confused and concerned. We didn't know who was going to replace Hughes. Sam was hoping for Mik Aoki, the BC assistant who had made the most contact during the recruiting phase.

  "Hughes always talked to me about how much he liked my bat speed," he said. "Now ... I don't know."

  I apologized for not telling Sam, but there never seemed to be a good time. I asked him if this gave him any second thoughts about the Notre Dame decision. He raised his eyebrows, grunted, said he was going to Emily's, and walked out the door into the rain.

  Ever classy, Coach Hughes called the next day. He told Sam that Coach Aoki was going to get the job. He said he'd been unable to talk to any of the players or recruits during the process. He told Sam they were going to need hitters at BC next year. He told him how much he liked his competitiveness and that he wished he had had a chance to coach him.

  Before the month was over, Notre Dame coach Paul Mainieri left South Bend to take the head coaching job at LSU. Mainieri took the staff with him, including Terry Rooney, the enthusiastic recruiter who'd told all the high school players, "If you just want to be good, go someplace else—if you want to be great, come to Notre Dame!" Turned out Rooney and friends, like Sam, ultimately settled for just being good, not great.

  So all those warnings turned out to be true. A recruited athlete needs to pick a school independently of the coaching staff that recruits him or her. The school will still be there in one or two years, but the coach may be gone. Sam batted an amazing 1.000 (two for two) in this game. Both men who'd recruited him were coaching someplace else before the first week of his freshman year. Meanwhile, Sam's classmate Corey Lowe, maybe the best athlete in the North graduating class, switched from Providence to Boston University just before graduation because the Providence basketball staff decided to bring in another guard ahead of Corey. Athletes in North's class of '06 were learning lessons long after the final grades were issued.

  The Tigers had been scheduled to play their third game of the tournament the day after graduation, but rain just kept falling. With no prom, no classes, no pomp and circumstance, and no baseball practice, Sam had his first quiet day of the week. I asked him how it felt to have the whole graduation thing behind him.

  "It's weird," he said. "We've got practice tomorrow and a game Saturday. Then maybe more games. I just feel like I'm not done yet."

  Exactly. It was weird. He wasn't done yet. Same with his parents. There were graduation parties, two a day sometimes. Everywhere we went, other parents were getting all weepy and nostalgic. They were exhaling. But Sam wasn't done. We weren't done. Sam was a graduate of Newton North High School and had the orange tassel hanging from the rearview mirror of the Acura, but he was still going to school for practices and on Saturday he'd be getting on a yellow school bus for a ride to Lowell's Alumni Stadium.

  It was all about the baseball now. Our youngest child was still a part of the Newton school system, if only for another nine innings. So there was no closure. Not until the final out of the final game.

  We had a party for Sam and Alexis on Friday, the night before the big game. The bash had been scheduled for Saturday, but the rain changed the baseball schedule and our party plans. Made me wonder what people do when it rains on the day of their daughter's wedding.

  Joe King, Sam's Babe Ruth coach, made it to the party, as did John Colantonio, a Newton firefighter who had coached Sam for three years in Little League. They were the first two guys to draft Sam. John's graduation gift was Sam's old number 7 Indians jersey. Sam's Uncle Bill was in town from Arizona, which seemed like good luck since Bill had been present a year earlier for the three-homer tournament game. Jeremy Kapstein, a Red Sox executive who'd become an unofficial uncle, came late, after the Sox's Friday night victory. Jeremy had also been at the three-homer game.

  The cops never came and I was somewhat disappointed. Our DJ played till well after midnight, and there was partying on the porch until after 2:30 A.M., but neighbors of eighteen years do not summon the gendarme when you do this only once a year.

  The morning after the party, Sam was out the door, in uniform, with the remaining cans of Red Bull stashed in his bat bag. Naturally, he got rained out again.

  "This is so frustrating," he said when he got back to the house. "Every night I can't go out with my friends because it's a game night, but then there's no game the next day."

  I told him it reminded me of the 1975 World Series, the one made famous when Carlton Fisk hit a homer off the foul pole after midnight in the bottom of the twelfth inning. What is often forgotten about that Series is the rain delay, which made a lot of us crazy. The Sox and Reds played Game 5 in Cincinnati on Thursday, October 16, and did not play another game until the following Tuesday. Game 6—the game for the ages—was rained out Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. And then look what happened.

  Sam liked this line of thinking.

  "That was like Braintree last year," he said. "It rained really hard and a bunch of us were in the Toyota waiting for it to stop and we wrote 'JT Sucks' on the windshield when he walked by. We didn't think we were going to play and didn't really want to play and then I went 0-4 and wished we hadn't played and then I hit the walkoff and it was all good. And for weeks after that, anytime the car would get fogged up, 'JT Su
cks' would reappear on the windshield to remind me of that day."

  Sunday, June 11—after the senior countdown, the awards night, the graduation ceremony, the Lynn English game, the draft, the BC coach leaving, the monster party, and three solid days of rainouts—the Newton North Tigers finally got a chance to play baseball again. I put Zevon in the CD player and drove Sam to school for the last time.

  He'd gone to Emily's on Saturday night with an armful of videos, and I asked what they'd watched. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," he said, smiling. "Love that one."

  It pleased me that Sam was watching a movie that came out when I was in high school. Self-absorbed and reluctant to grow old, baby boomers believe our generation set the standard for all forms of future entertainment. It has been fascinating to watch three children adopt and embrace so much of the stuff we consumed all those years ago. En route to North, Sam and I traded a few classic lines from Butch ("You didn't see Lefors out there, did you?"), and I dropped him at the door.

  Two and a half hours later, on a finally perfect, October-like afternoon in Lowell, Massachusetts, the Newton North Tigers took on St. John's Prep in a sectional semifinal. Our guys had won nine in a row and were still on a high from the big victory over Arlington, but I feared we might be overmatched by the Prep, a traditional powerhouse, loaded with 19-year-old kids and future Division I talent.

  It felt like a pretty big deal. There was a $7 admission charge, a fair-sized crowd, reporters from at least five papers, and the standard, tinny public address system. Both starting lineups were introduced and we all stood for the national anthem. Sam had a lot of fans on hand—Uncle Bill, two aunts, a cousin from North Carolina, Uncle Eddie, Legion coach Manny, Teo, Sarah, mom, and dad. We gathered with the rest of the Newton baseball community in the stands on the first base side. It was all feeling pretty good after the interminable rains, and we knew the boys were only four victories removed from a state championship.

  And then the Tigers came apart like a cardboard box in a tsunami. Newton made five errors. Newton allowed fifteen hits and ten runs. Newton was shut out for the first time all season.