Heart of the Game

by Rachel Spangler

  Molly knew how she felt and threw her a line before she realized the implications of what she was about to say. “That doesn’t do anything for me…not on any level.”

  This time Duke’s smile grew more slowly, and more knowingly. “Yeah, me either.”

  “I sort of got that from you.”

  “Really? I sort of missed it from you.”

  “Most people do.”

  “Well, good for you, though,” Duke said with fake resoluteness. “Two sons. And there’s that, but also, no interest in anyone in the bullpen.”

  Molly waited, enjoying watching her stammer. She’d come out to only a few people in her life, and none of their responses had ever been quite so amusing. Duke had actually started to blush. She could almost see the wheels turning under her blond hair. How did Molly get the boys? Where was the partner? Were there signs she’d missed? Molly wouldn’t answer unasked questions. She might not even if asked outright. She generally had a “none of your business” attitude with busybodies, but Duke hardly seemed nosy and certainly not judgmental. If anything, her confusion was endearing.

  “Alrighty then,” Duke continued awkwardly. “Some other time maybe, or not. About the bullpen visit, I mean. Not about anything else. Not that there’s anything else. You know, I could just stop talking.”

  Joe looked from one adult to the other, clearly intuitive enough to realize the conversation had deeper meaning, but thankfully not old enough to realize what. “Are we still talking about watching the pitchers warm up?”

  “We are now,” Molly said, easily transitioning back into mom mode.

  “Oh, thank God,” Duke mumbled.

  “It’ll be a good learning experience for you boys to see some of the work that goes on behind the scenes of a game. We’ll call it an educational field trip.”

  Joe gave a fist pump, and Molly scooped up Charlie before turning to Duke and uttering a phrase that didn’t come easily to her. “Lead the way.”

  *

  They stood behind a fence, peering straight into the bullpen. Their position was below the stands and level with the field. High green walls on either side sheltered them from the noise of the crowd. The pop of the ball smacking against a leather catcher’s mitt reverberated through the air around them. If pushed, she’d have to admit the vantage point did impress her. Aside from the chain-link barrier, they had the same view an umpire would see during the game. Sixty feet away, a lean pitcher in home whites reared back, then snapped forward with the violence of whiplash combined with the grace of a dancer to hurl a ball with lightning speed and pinpoint precision.

  “A ninety-five-mile-an-hour fastball covers the distance to the plate in about four tenths of a second. The batter has about two tenths of a second to decide whether or not he wants to swing,” Duke explained. She’d regained all of her confidence now that she’d found a more familiar topic. “Connecting a round bat to a round fastball is a feat of physics most people will never accomplish. The task is complicated enough to do even when the ball is headed straight down the pipe, but these pitchers make it move in wickedly deceptive ways.”

  “Like a curveball or a slider?”

  “Yeah, here, watch this.”

  Duke crouched down to the side of the catcher, and Joe mimicked her stance. Molly felt a twinge of something she couldn’t quite decipher. They looked so engrossed, so comfortable together. They shared a common language, an instant bond, a unifying passion. It all seemed so effortless for them. Was Joe even aware he’d started to mirror Duke’s mannerisms, like the way she steadied herself with a few fingers on the ground, or rolled her shoulder forward with each pitch like she could somehow affect its direction as she talked about the various ways to direct a ball over the plate? Envy blended with affection at the sight of them huddled together.

  Maybe he didn’t have enough men in his life to connect with. Then again, Duke wasn’t a man, which made Molly feel a little safer and might have the same effect on Joe. Maybe he felt drawn to Duke because she was such a guy without actually being one. Still, women were every bit as capable of letting someone down. Her own family had taught her that, but she wouldn’t let her mind wander there. Duke wasn’t like her family in any way. She was fun and playful and good-natured. Her comical reaction to Molly’s earlier revelation provided distraction enough to keep her from examining why she’d felt the need and the safety to reveal something so personal. Or at least it had until now.

  Why had she come out? Was she simply trying to clear up a false assumption? She didn’t like being put into boxes, especially ones whose labels didn’t fit. Or was she looking for a little bit of the camaraderie like the kind Duke shared with Joe? Did she crave her own connection, some common ground, some unspoken bond? As much as she loved her boys, she did occasionally long for a conversation on something other than superheroes or peanut butter and jelly. There was no harm wishing for an adult conversation so long as it didn’t cross into something more than casual, and Duke seemed safe enough on that front. She might be a lesbian, but she was far from the gracefully feminine form Molly envisioned when she examined her attraction to women.

  “Hey, Colin,” Duke called to a teenage boy sitting on a bench in the bullpen, “will you toss me a ball for a sec?”

  The boy lobbed a ball over the fence. Duke snagged it out of the air with one hand before holding it out for Joe to see. “This is a standard fastball grip.”

  Molly glanced first at Charlie to see he was still fully absorbed in his inspection of the grounds crew’s garden hose, then scooted closer to look over Joe’s shoulder.

  “That’s probably how you throw a ball when you play pitch and catch. It’s usually the first thing people learn to throw because it’s the most accurate.”

  “And depending on where your fingers cross the seams, it can be a two-seam or a four-seam fastball,” Joe said proudly, and Molly wondered where he’d learned that.

  “You got it, and both pitchers tonight can throw both of those wherever they want in the mid-nineties. They can also both throw the curve.” Duke slid her fingers deftly around the ball until her index and middle fingers pressed together and formed a smooth half-circle around the ball all the way down to her thumb.

  She had long, graceful fingers, slender and completely unadorned. Her hands were feminine, smooth, and gentle, with a strength born out of skill rather than force. She didn’t try to crush the ball in her grip, but rather cradled it artfully. Molly found it strange that in the midst of explaining a man’s job to a boy, Duke revealed such a feminine trait. Right now she clutched a baseball, but Molly could easily imagine her using those hands to play a piano, or sew, or massage the nape of her neck.

  She shuddered, and Duke looked up, her blue eyes still shining with the focus she’d directed at the baseball. They were clear eyes, open and filled with unfiltered interest and affection, now directed at her. Molly had to blink back unexpected emotions.

  “Am I boring you to tears?” Duke asked softly as a shadow of self-consciousness flashed across her features.

  “Not at all.” She looked away, out to the wide open field, this space suddenly confining.

  “It’s okay. Not everyone wants to know the details. They can detract from the magic.”

  Magic? Was that what she’d felt when their eyes met? Absurd. She didn’t believe in magic. “No, I just realized the game’s about to start, and we’re not ready yet.”

  Duke smiled brightly. “One of the great things about this game is it starts whether we’re ready or not.”

  Molly’s breath caught. She didn’t find the idea of things happening without her approval or preparedness appealing. She didn’t like the way Duke stated the fact so calmly, and she didn’t enjoy the way the words lodged in her chest.

  She wasn’t ready.

  She wasn’t where she needed to be yet.

  She wasn’t with who she thought she’d be with.

  She wasn’t even sure she knew the rules of the game well enough to play, but n
one of those fears had stopped the players from taking the field. She stood rooted to her spot, staring disbelieving at the sparkle in the eyes of Sarah Duke, as somewhere from across the field she heard an umpire call “Play ball.”

  Top of the Second

  I’m Just Lucky to Be Here

  The St. Louis Cardinals clubhouse was calm three hours before game time. Players lounged in their warm-up clothes or bare-chested, sprawled on leather sofas or perched near their lockers. One outfielder padded past her in nothing but socks pulled up to his knees. Duke had long ago grown inured to the sight of men in various stages of undress much the same way a doctor would. Some of the players, and even more of the old-time managers, didn’t think a woman belonged there. She’d dealt with that attitude since middle school, when she’d first started writing for the school paper. The sexism started subtly, like her high school editor asking if she wouldn’t rather cover field hockey, or her high school advisor suggesting her desire to cover baseball might be because she liked the view of the older boys in their tight pants. Thankfully her high school had been small, and most of the people writing for the paper wanted to be serious journalists and therefore looked down on sports writing, allowing the job to fall to her.

  In college, things had been harder. There were lots of former athletes looking to retain their ties to the game via the sports pages. That was when the criticism about her place in the game really began to fly. How could she cover a sport she’d never played competitively? How could a woman relate to male players enough to get them to open up? How could she ever cover a locker room successfully with all those naked men around? She’d had to fight for every single story, sometimes even going to games being covered by one of her male counterparts and turning in a competing account of the game. That practice won her no friends, but her stories prevailed as better versions, more times than not. College was also where she found the anonymity of the Internet. She submitted to sports blogs as S. Duke and began to earn recognition for covering both college and minor league teams. Soon the offers came rolling in, and by the time the editors found out she was a woman, it was usually too late for them to rescind those offers without breaking a contract.

  Over time, she’d proved herself worthy of covering every aspect of the game, but a major league contract and lengthy résumé still hadn’t stopped people from grumbling. Most of the younger ballplayers and managers left it at a smirk or a raised eyebrow, but a few of the older trainers had told her rather bluntly they didn’t want her in the clubhouse unless the players were fully dressed. They continued to argue she’d be a distraction to the players or prevent them from relaxing fully, but between spring training and the start of the season, she’d seen most of these guys in nothing but their skivvies or a towel at least once, and if they hadn’t distracted her from her job, she didn’t see why her presence should prevent a multimillion-dollar-a-year player from doing his.

  “Hey, Duke,” Cayden Brooks said, glancing up from tying his shoes.

  “How’s it going?” she asked.

  He spun his plush swivel chair. The high-backed leather with a cardinal red STL emblem across the back, the same kind as every other player had, was the type of chair one expected to find behind a desk in a swank office. They were likely meant to remind players of a business setting, but Cayden used his feet to roll the chair back like a child who wanted to spin around and around until he made himself dizzy. “Couldn’t be better.”

  She smiled down at his expectant, eager-to-please face peeking out from beneath a mop of shaggy blond hair. He clearly wanted her to ask him a question, interview him, put his name in the paper. He was such a rookie that this part of the job still excited him in ways it didn’t the veterans. She liked that about him, perhaps because she was a rookie, too.

  She didn’t need a quote from him. There were bigger names around, and his performance thus far on the field had been slightly below average, but she caved to his fresh-faced enthusiasm and opened her notebook. “How are you feeling about your time in the big leagues so far?”

  He nodded, play-acting at solemnity. “It’s a grind, but I’m learning a lot. I want to try to do whatever I can to help the team, ya know? I’m just lucky to be here.”

  She quirked one corner of her mouth at the string of baseball axioms. This kid couldn’t have used more clichés if he’d tried, and actually he probably had tried pretty hard. He’d likely been waiting to feed someone those lines since the first time he saw Bull Durham, but who was she to deny him the moment? He was trying to do his job, and she’d do hers. Maybe he wasn’t crushing the ball yet, and she wasn’t writing Hall of Fame–style journalism, but they both had roles to play, and they were playing them well.

  She thanked him for the quote and headed up to the press booth to work on her pre-game report, already thinking of ways to throw him a bone by working the quote in somehow. Maybe she’d do a short piece about pre-game routines. She’d leave out the parts about some players lying on leather couches in nothing but their underwear. The readers didn’t need to know some of their favorite players thought of the clubhouse as their own personal nudie bar, though that was part of the routine, too. She could focus her story on the ways things build one after another, from the grounds crew rolling back the tarp, to the locker room staff hanging up the clean white uniforms, to the players pulling up one by one. Then the reporters always filtered in to ask the questions that would help dust off the cobwebs of yesterday’s game before directing the dialogue toward a new day. They were all such little things, but they added up much the same way a few base hits and some sacrifice flies might lead to runs scored.

  Her dad had taught her the art of small ball: the importance of doing all the little things right. He’d talked about the slap bunt, the secondary lead, and stepping off the mound to slow the running game. He’d taught her brothers how to time a pitcher, how to steal signs, and how to frame a pitch behind the plate. She watched as he spent hours dissecting infield footwork with his boys, and she’d listened carefully as he lectured them on the myriad of ways to manufacture runs. He’d said it was the Cardinal way. Everyone played a part. Now she couldn’t wait to show him her part in it all when he visited the stadium with her mom in a few hours.

  *

  “This is the press booth. I spend most of my time during the game up here.” She pointed out her usual chair in the second row, behind a laptop and a stack of depth charts. The stadium style seating meant she didn’t have to look around anyone’s big head, and the long row desk gave her some distance from the person in front of her, at least a little bit more than the seats in the stands did.

  “You have to be a member of the Baseball Writers of America, which I am,” she said proudly, “to sit in the front row, but senior writers get first pick, so I’m still a row back.”

  “Do other sports journalists we would know sit around here?” her mother asked.

  “Sure, Jenifer Langosch, Bernie Miklasz, even Rick Hummel.”

  Her mother smiled proudly and nodded the way she had when one of her children had babbled as a toddler, a nod of love, to say, “I’m happy because you’re happy, but I have no idea what you’re saying.”

  “The press booth is named for Rick Hummel. He’s in the Baseball Hall of Fame,” she explained.

  “As a writer, not a player,” her father clarified.

  “Right,” Duke said, trying not to grit her teeth as she added, “he’s just a writer.”

  “What about Mike Shannon?” her mom asked quickly. “Where does he sit?”

  “He’s in broadcasting, so that’s a different booth. He’s a nice guy, though. I’ll introduce you if we run into him.”

  Her mom beamed, clearly impressed her daughter knew someone famous. Duke turned to her father hoping to see the same expression, but found him studying a television hanging from the ceiling.

  “Those are so we can see things like instant replays or get a close-up shot on the pitches. They are helpful on bang-bang plays, but I prefer
the real deal to the TV screens.”

  He glanced out the wide window of the press box to the expansive panorama of Busch Stadium. They were three sections up from the field, which added some distance, but the position offered an unobstructed view of the field’s grandeur and the St. Louis skyline all the way to the towering Gateway Arch glistening in the midday sun.

  “I suppose if you have to work in an office, this is a pretty nice one,” he replied.

  “No doubt, but nothing beats sitting in the seats with the crowd. I usually head down there for an inning every game to get a feel for the atmosphere. Your seats are in one of my favorite spots, just to the third base side of home plate.”

  He rubbed the short brown stubble on his chin. “Never could afford seats like that.”

  “Well, now you don’t have to.” She heard the pride in her voice and tried to rein it in. She didn’t want to seem boastful, but she loved giving him back a piece of the game he’d given to her.

  “We’re not keeping you from your work, are we?” her mom asked.

  “No, I already checked in with batting practice and filed my pre-game report. I’m sorry I won’t be able to go out with you after the game. I have to go to the clubhouse and get my post-game quotes, then file my story. I usually don’t get out of here until at least two hours after the game.”

  “It’s such a long day.” Her mom squeezed her hand. “But it must be exciting to go out on the field with the players.”

  “It really is.” She turned to her dad once more, not sure he was listening. “I waited so long and worked so hard to get on the field, I never take it for granted.”

  “You don’t bother the men while they’re trying to work, do you?” he asked, in the tone of voice he’d use when he came home from work and asked if she’d behaved for her mother.