A Season of Daring Greatly

by Ellen Emerson White

  Of course, it was entirely possible that her Aunt Karen had negotiated all of these points. She hadn’t read all of the fine print yet, but her contract was full of atypical and complex details, including a clause mandating that her uniforms would be tailored to fit properly—which had led her maternal grandmother to say, “Thank goodness she won’t look boxy!”

  But, considering how loose her uniform pants were at the moment, the Pirates were already in breach of that part.

  “Will they be making other special arrangements?” one of the reporters asked, and the whole group looked at her attentively.

  Time for some quirk, maybe. “Well, I’m not sure how it’s going to be received,” Jill said, “but, there’s something of a comfort factor knowing that on the days I pitch, the mound is going to be moved in to fifty feet, five inches.”

  So many of the reporters—and team officials—looked aghast, that she had some immediate concerns about her comic timing.

  Fortunately, Nadine laughed, which gave everyone else a cue that she was playing around with them.

  “I heard you had some problems in the locker room,” a reporter said. “Do you want to talk to us about that?”

  She wasn’t sure who gave her the sharpest look—Nadine, Mr. Saunders, or her mother—who actually put her book down. But, it probably wasn’t surprising that someone had told someone who told someone else—and that the reporter had caught wind of it.

  She immediately felt panicked, since all hell might break loose, if she was honest. But, she made herself pause, and take a sip from the bottle of water a team official had handed her earlier, to give herself a few extra seconds to think. She didn’t like to lie—but, that didn’t mean that she had to tell the exact truth, either. “I didn’t see anything particularly notable,” she said. Which was true. “Maybe it was before or after I was in there. I really couldn’t say.”

  “Well,” the reporter said, “I heard that—”

  Nope, she wasn’t going there. “I iced up, did some stretching, put in time on a bike—it was pretty routine,” she said.

  The reporter clearly wanted to pursue it further, but got hard looks from Nadine and Mr. Saunders, so he subsided and jotted something down on his notepad.

  There were a few more questions, which she answered cautiously and conservatively. Which was tedious, but seemed like the best strategy.

  When the interview was finally over, Nadine, Mr. Saunders, and her mother followed her down the dugout tunnel.

  “What happened in the clubhouse?” Mr. Saunders asked.

  There was really no point in going into what had, unfortunately, been pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. “Just boys being boys,” she said.

  He looked suspicious, and her mother’s expression was downright stormy, but Jill didn’t feel like getting into it with either of them.

  “Mom, I’m going to go change. I’ll meet you and Theo upstairs in about twenty minutes, okay?” she said—and didn’t wait for an answer.

  When she went into the clubhouse, there were guys everywhere, in various stages of undress, but it was always going to be like that. And, this time, she didn’t get the sense that anyone was trying to harass her. At the end of the day, they were really all just getting ready for work—in an extremely peculiar profession—and it shouldn’t be much more complicated than that.

  After another formal dinner with corporate sponsors and local politicians and so forth, the front office wanted her to watch that night’s game from the owner’s box—which predictably turned out to involve more meeting and greeting than actual watching. But, it was pretty funny to see her mother and Theo pretending to be captivated by baseball.

  She was sent over to the television announcers’ booth during the fifth inning, to answer questions and be introduced to the Pirates’ viewing audience. The play-by-play guy and color commentator were nice, although she was more ill at ease than she had expected to be. But, she was getting better—which might not be a good thing—at answering questions on autopilot, while looking far more engaged than she really was.

  When the color commentator asked her whether she thought that, at that very moment, millions of little girls all over the country were practicing their pitching motions, she was caught off guard, and said that she hoped millions of little girls were currently reading books and doing their homework.

  They didn’t seem to like that answer, because both announcers frowned.

  “You don’t want girls to play baseball?” the color commentator asked.

  She would have assumed that being pro-education was a very safe position. “Of course I do,” she said. “I hope that any kid in the country who wants to play baseball can.” And she should have left it at that, but it had been a long day, and she was very tired, and she couldn’t resist going a little further. “But, I think the path to total world domination by women will be much easier, if we’re all extremely well educated.”

  They stared at her, and the play-by-play guy’s gum actually fell out of his mouth, so it was a struggle not to laugh.

  “Well, gosh, Jill,” the color commentator said. “That is a very interesting remark. You’ve given our viewers a lot to think about.”

  She was damned if she was going to say that she had been kidding.

  Because, after all, maybe she wasn’t. So, she just nodded, and smiled, and said something about looking forward to having girls and young women find more opportunities to play competitive sports like baseball, professionally and otherwise.

  But, she had a feeling that they weren’t sorry when the inning was over, and they could wish her luck and send her on her way.

  “World domination?” Nadine said, as they walked back to the owner’s box.

  And how. “You bet,” Jill said.

  Nadine smiled. “Well, you’re preaching to the choir.” She started to say something, and then stopped.

  “It’s okay,” Jill said. “I’ll try not to be flippant anymore.”

  Nadine shook her head. “No, do whatever you need to do to handle the pressure. Just”—she hesitated—“please pitch well.”

  Meaning—what? Jill looked at her with some confusion.

  “What you’re doing matters to so many people,” Nadine said. “It’s good to blow off steam, and I know you’ve been given a hard time today, but you’re going to take the game itself seriously, right?”

  She couldn’t even imagine clowning around on the mound. “Very seriously,” Jill said.

  And then some.

  CHAPTER 9

  They were going to fly from Pittsburgh to Albany—by way of Philadelphia—and then rent a car and drive to Pomeroy from there. Before they left, at the team’s request, she was interviewed from the living room of the suite by all of the major national morning shows, as well as a couple of local ones, and she went out of her way not to be controversial. And to look wide-awake. And not to feel like an utter idiot.

  It was almost two-thirty when they drove up to the stadium, which had that old-fashioned minor league look, with a redbrick façade and a quaint, small-town atmosphere. There was a large statue of a beaming dog dressed in a team uniform out in front, which was probably a likeness of the Pomeroy Retrievers mascot.

  “That’s a big dog,” Theo said.

  “They use an actual golden retriever to fetch bats, I think,” Jill said.

  Her mother paused in the act of parking to turn and look at her. “Seriously?”

  Jill nodded. “As far as I know.”

  “Do the hitters get upset about the teeth marks?” her mother asked.

  Good question. “I hope so,” Jill said. Since, after all, what made a pitcher happier than fretful hitters?

  There were ESPN and other television trucks parked out in front, but luckily, they weren’t prepared for her to arrive, because she was barely filmed as they walked by. In fact, an amusingly high number of them didn’t even notice her.

  When they went inside the entrance to the main offices, there was the usual round of int
roductions, and she forgot most of the names within seconds. The GM said to call him Richard—he was one of those crewneck sweater went-to-law-school-instead-of-playing-baseball guys—although she stuck with “sir” or “Mr. Brayton.” The assistant GM, a very friendly woman in her late forties or early fifties, introduced herself as “Indira,” but Jill was, of course, more comfortable with “ma’am” or “Mrs. Doshi.” In rapid succession, she met a series of other front office people, stadium employees, and an interchangeable group of interns. To her relief, all of this was closed to the press, but a team photographer clicked away pretty much nonstop, standing closer than she wanted, while she gamely smiled through a stream of grip-and-grin photos.

  Once it was time for actual baseball stuff, her mother and Theo left to go check into the motel, although they were planning to come back for the game. She would stay at the motel with them as long as they were in town, before moving in with her host family, to whom she was going to be introduced later, according to Mrs. Doshi, who also seemed to run the travel and logistics aspects of the team’s operations.

  Mr. Brayton—Richard—brought her downstairs, through several corridors that felt more like musty tunnels, where the clubhouse, coaches’ offices, equipment room, training area, and weight room were. Since she was with the general manager, people were polite, if not wildly enthusiastic, about meeting her.

  The clubhouse was mostly deserted, except for two young guys, one of whom was hanging clean uniforms in players’ open wooden lockers, while the other was putting sandwich makings, snacks, and drinks on a large folding table set up along the far wall. They both looked like they were in their early twenties, and one was pudgy with glasses and dark hair, while the other was a skinny pale guy with too many tattoos and an ineffective attempt at a mustache.

  “These are our clubbies,” Mr. Brayton said. More formally known as clubhouse attendants, but she had never heard anyone refer to them that way. “Anything you need, they’ll get for you. Nicky, Terence, meet Jill.”

  It developed that Nicky was the one with glasses, and Terence was the tattooed guy.

  “Hi,” she said. “Just let me know how you handle clubhouse dues and everything.” As far as she knew, each player had to pay about ten dollars a day for food and other supplies, and then add hefty weekly tips on top of that.

  They both nodded, without really looking at her, and she was relieved to have Mr. Brayton motion for her to follow him into the training area. There were only a couple of players around, getting worked on by the trainers—a very muscular man named Louis and a stocky woman named Sofia—and she assumed that most of the others were out on the field, taking BP or something. The two players nodded briefly at her, and she nodded back.

  Out in the corridor, the franchise had converted a nearby small room—maybe a former office, or storage space—into a dressing room for her, although they hadn’t finished the tiny shower stall and bathroom she would be using. So, for a few days, they would either have to figure out a way for her to shower in the main locker room—privately—or she would just have to get cleaned up in the restroom the women who worked in the front office used. At most of the ballparks on the road, it was likely that she would have to use civilian restrooms.

  “Well, let’s go see Benny, get you settled,” Mr. Brayton said.

  Benny was Mr. Adler, the manager. She didn’t know much about him, other than that he had played for a couple of years in the majors, and had worked as a coach or manager at various levels of the minor leagues ever since.

  “Benny has been in the game for a long time,” Mr. Brayton said, as they walked down the hallway. “You may find him abrupt, but he’s a good baseball man.”

  Gruff, but lovable, ideally.

  “Not a chatty person,” Mr. Brayton said. “Don’t take it personally.”

  Which was good, because otherwise, she probably would have.

  “We’d like you to have your first start here in Pomeroy, before the team heads out on the road,” he said. “The front office is going to be flying in for it in the morning. Will you be ready for that?”

  So, she could be pitching as soon as tomorrow? Whose bright idea was that? But, she nodded, trying to project confidence. At the moment, she felt ready for absolutely nothing whatsoever—except, possibly, blowing all of this off and heading straight to college as fast as her little legs could carry her.

  A door just ahead of them was ajar, and Mr. Brayton knocked, getting a grunt in response. As they went in, the manager stood up from behind a desk covered with paperwork, folders, and a somewhat outdated laptop. He looked like he was in his mid-fifties, and had smoked at least seven trillion cigarettes in his life, and never once, even for a second, used sunscreen. There was a strong reek of tobacco in the office, with a slight overlay of beer and Big Macs.

  “Benny, this is Jill Cafferty,” Mr. Brayton said. “I think you’re going to enjoy having her here.”

  Mr. Adler maybe twitched, but at least he didn’t outright laugh. “Pleasure,” he said, and shook her hand.

  They all stood there.

  “The team’s really shaping up,” Mr. Brayton said heartily. “I think it’s going to be an exciting season.”

  Jill and Mr. Adler both nodded, although she was pretty sure she was the only one who smiled.

  “I know you have a lot to do to get ready for the game,” Mr. Brayton said, “so I’ll leave you to it. Jill, remember, my door is always open to you. Everyone here wants all of this to go as smoothly as possible, and for you to succeed. So, don’t ever forget that.”

  Jill nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Once the GM was gone, Adler sat down, and gestured abruptly for her to sit in the folding chair on the other side of the desk.

  “You got pristine little lungs?” he asked.

  Well, she certainly hoped so.

  “Brace yourself,” he said, and lit up a cigarette.

  She coughed, ever so delicately, and he did something that was sort of like smiling.

  “Ready to quit and go home yet?” he asked.

  “I’m going to try and stick it out for another hour, sir,” she said. Possibly more true than funny. “But, after that, all bets are off.”

  His mouth moved again. “ESPN and whatnot showing up already.”

  “Sounds like a hootenanny,” she said.

  He nodded, exhaling a big enough cloud of smoke to obscure what she suspected might be an amused expression. “I can throw you tomorrow, or Wednesday. Your call.”

  “Actually, it’s your call, sir,” she said.

  “I’d rather run you out there this weekend, on the road, give you a chance to get your sea legs,” he said. “But, not much we can do, with the circus in town.”

  She maybe didn’t want to think about how big the circus was going to be.

  “You’d have time to take a couple deep breaths, be able to get on the same page with the staff, and all of that,” he said. “Although the Power People are showing up in the morning, so—you get the drift?”

  Yes. She was pitching tomorrow. So, she nodded.

  Adler shrugged. “Hand we were dealt.”

  Pretty much. And it wasn’t—remotely—ideal, but she would have to make it work. “Just for the record, sir?” she said. “I want to pitch, not be a dog and pony show.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, and paused. “Got a good report on your bullpen.”

  That was a step in the right direction, then.

  “You met Sawyer and Bannigan yet?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Pitching coach, and strength and conditioning guy,” he said. “You’ll sit down with them and the trainers, set up the program we want you doing, try to get you kicked off right.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

  It wasn’t clear whether the conversation was over, and she started to get up, but then had the sense that he wasn’t finished yet and she sat back down.

  He inhaled deeply on his cigar
ette, then exhaled. “Think you’ll go to pieces, if I ask you a personal question?”

  “Presbyterian,” she said.

  His right eye maybe flickered, but that appeared to be the extent of his reaction.

  It was entirely possible that levity was not his favorite thing—and that he was also weak on pop culture. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “Please ask whatever you want.”

  He looked at her for a minute, and then nodded. “Okay. Are you gay?”

  Well, that was direct. She blinked. “Excuse me, sir?”

  “I guess the proper term is lesbian,” he said. “Are you a lesbian?”

  She was going to have to spend an entire summer being coached by this prehistoric guy? Who was, in fact, corrupting her raised-on-fresh-sea-air lungs? “Is there a correct answer?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  In which case, why ask such an invasive question? “As it happens, sir, I am not,” she said—possibly through her teeth. “But, I’m not sure why it would be relevant, either way.”

  “I was hoping that you were,” he said.

  “To adhere to a traditional cultural stereotype about female athletes?” she asked, trying very hard not to clench either fist.

  He frowned, but then shook his head. “If you were gay, the boys would understand that. To be honest, it’d make them relax. Different energy.”

  “Well, I’m terribly sorry that my heterosexual status is going to be inconvenient for everyone,” she said. “With luck, they’ll be able to cope.”

  This time, Adler smiled. “You have a little bit of an edge, don’t you, Cafferty?”

  Apparently so.

  “Good,” he said—again, unexpectedly. “You’re going to need it.” He stubbed the cigarette out. “Let’s take a walk.”

  She followed him to the clubhouse, where batting practice had just ended, and players—some fully clothed, some not—were gathered around, making sandwiches from the pre-game spread, playing cards, bent over their phones, and just generally hanging out.