The Might-Have-Been

by Joe Schuster

  Edward Everett stepped into the batter’s box, trying to shut it all out, his imagined heroics, the movement of the crowd like a field of red and white grain stirred by the wind, the noise that was starting to build again, the organ playing a cadence, bum bum bum bum bum bum, Fairly at second base, taking a cautious lead, one, two, three steps.

  Down the third base line, the coach was going through the signals, swiping his shirt, tugging the brim of his cap, tapping his thigh. Edward Everett realized no one had taught him what the signals meant.

  “Time,” he said, stepping out of the batter’s box when the umpire gave him the time-out and trotting down the line to meet the coach halfway.

  “What you need?” the coach said, standing close to him. His breath smelled of cigarettes and something else that was sour.

  “Signals,” Edward Everett said. “I don’t know what you want. No one—”

  The coach laughed. “You’re the only guy in the fucking area code who don’t know. Pop quiz. Runner on second, none out, bottom of the seventeenth, no score. What would you do?”

  “Bunt,” Edward Everett said, deflated. “Bunt.”

  He went back to the plate, trying not to show his disappointment. True enough, even the Pirates knew what he was going to do. The entire infield edged closer, the first baseman and third baseman playing well in front of the bases, the second baseman edging toward first, the shortstop playing behind Fairly to hold him close. For a moment, Edward Everett thought about changing them all up, swinging away, lining a hit to right field, the crowd erupting in joy. But he knew he wouldn’t do that; he would sacrifice.

  At the plate, he took his stance and looked out at the pitcher, who was rubbing the ball between his palms. He was a rookie himself, younger than Edward Everett, maybe only twenty, a stocky, round-faced kid who seemed more like a fast-food fry cook than a professional athlete. The thought pushed into Edward Everett’s head: five or six years ago, the pitcher might have been in junior high. Edward Everett saw him as a boy in a white oxford shirt and blue slacks, sitting in a … but he shoved the thought aside. The past meant nothing. There was only this moment: the pitcher nodding to the catcher’s signal, holding his stretch for a scant second, as Edward Everett slid his right hand along the barrel of the bat, noticing and then dismissing a rough spot in the wood, cradling the bat partway over the plate.

  The pitch came in on the outside corner, and Edward Everett caught it with the meat of the bat, dropping a slow ground ball that trickled toward first base. Stay fair, he thought, dashing down the baseline for the bag, wanting to make it more than a sacrifice, thinking, if this were grass instead of artificial turf, it would die in the grass and he could beat it out, but this was not grass but turf. He willed himself to go faster, leaping for the base, urging his body to take off, hearing the ssszzz of the first baseman’s throw from behind him, hearing the slap of the ball into leather at perhaps the instant his foot met the bag, just a touch off-stride, making him stumble slightly as he took his turn into foul ground, thinking he was on with a single, but the umpire was throwing his right fist into the air, and grunting, “Out.”

  Edward Everett waited for the coach to argue but he just clapped his hands and shouted, “Good sac, good sac.” And indeed, Fairly stood on third. Edward Everett had done his job.

  He jogged off the field. In the stands, fans gave him polite applause before resuming their roaring and stomping as the announcer introduced the next hitter.

  Then it was over. With the infielders drawn in for a play at home on a ground ball, the hitter punched a flare over the second baseman’s head that fell just at the edge of the outfield grass, and Fairly was in, the game won.

  Later, in the hotel room the team had rented for him across the street from the stadium, Edward Everett stood in the dark, looking eight stories below at the ballpark. The game had been over for hours by then, and the infield was covered by a blue tarp that glinted under the stadium lights. In the bleachers, workers moved through the aisles, bending to pick up trash. From some blocks away, where the city was staging a fireworks show on the riverfront, Edward Everett could hear the muted explosions celebrating the holiday. Every once in a while, a red or blue trail streaked across the sky within his field of vision. He stood there until the finale lit the sky in brilliant yellows, oranges and greens, and as the last flares faded, as the lights went out in Busch Stadium below him and all he could make out was the great dark gaping bowl of it, he thought about calling someone.

  His mother would be at his aunt’s house for the barbecue she had every year. If he called there to tell her about what he’d done, she would pass the telephone around, to uncles, aunts, cousins, and he would have to repeat his story over and over for everyone. His mother would say, Oh, if only your father were still alive to see this, and then she’d cry and he didn’t want that, not tonight, not when he’d finally made it this far, the beginning of what he knew would be his years in the major leagues. He thought of the girl he had been seeing in Springfield, Julie, but whom he had stopped calling for no reason he could think of, just made a decision one day when he got back from a road trip that he didn’t want to see her again. For the first time since then, he regretted it, because she was someone he could call to tell, but now he couldn’t.

  Stepping away from the window, he caught his dim mirrored image in it, and he actually seemed to be outside, hovering in an incomplete, ghostlike room. There was the reflection of a bedside lamp, a slash of the bed, the table where he’d laid his suitcase. He pressed his face against the window again. Below, knots of people leaving the fireworks show moved up the street toward their cars and, he knew, eventually home. He felt suddenly the fact of his being a stranger in a city of two million people where he knew no one.

  He turned from the window and switched on the television, flipping channels until he found a sportscast. The announcer was talking about the game and Edward Everett sat on the edge of the king-sized bed, wondering if he’d be mentioned.

  The account of the final inning showed Brock’s catch and throw for the double play, twice—once at full speed, and once in slow motion. Then it cut to Fairly’s double to start the home half of the inning, but then it jumped ahead, and Fairly was taking his lead off third.

  “Then with one out,” the sportscaster said, “and Fairly on third, Hernandez singles over the drawn-in infield and the Cards get the win.”

  It was, Edward Everett thought, like a baseball miracle—there is Fairly on second and then abruptly on third, through no human agency. Poof. In a way, he might never have even been there. Indeed, he knew what his line would be in the box score the next day, all zeros—no at-bats, no hits, no runs, no RBI, just “Yates PH 0000”—a miracle of nothing.

  Still, he thought, he was here. There was a uniform in a locker across the street with his name on it and only six hundred men out of how many tens of millions of men in America could say that. Tomorrow was another game and the day after another still. He would have his chance and he would do something with it.

  Chapter Two

  The end of Edward Everett’s season came with such abruptness that, even years later, it could nearly take away his breath to think about it: in the latter part of July, three weeks after he was called up. The Cardinals were in Montreal for a three-game weekend series and on Saturday, he came to the park and found he was in the starting lineup. It surprised him: since his sacrifice bunt on Independence Day, he had ridden the bench—game after game in St. Louis, then Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia—suppressing a dread that his single plate appearance would be the sum of his major league career. Perry would heal and Edward Everett would go back to Springfield to resume a sad march toward thirty, when even he would have to realize that his faith had been pointless, that he had crossed the line between hope and delusion, and would have no choice but to return to the World.

  Day after day, he arrived at the ballpark and chased down fly balls during batting practice until it was his turn in the cage, wh
ere he took his cuts, ten swings and out for someone else, then back to the outfield to chase down more flies until game time, when he sat at the end of the bench, waiting and waiting, ashamed that, after the last out, as he filed into the locker room with his teammates, his uniform was pristine save for the powder from the husks of the sunflower seeds he ate compulsively, while theirs were stained with dirt and grass, knees torn, where he took a shower he didn’t need and then went outside where the kids pestered them all for autographs—the stars, the regulars, even Edward Everett, who had done nothing that would make anyone want him to scrawl his name on a scorecard or a baseball. And so when he signed, he did it quickly, not meeting any of the kids in the eye, his mark a kind of lie, the kids asking him because they had no idea who most of them were, just that they were coming out of the right door, their hair damp, pushing through the swarming flock of children toward the team bus.

  Then, in Montreal, he got his opportunity.

  There had been problems getting into the city from Philadelphia late Thursday night; the Olympics were going on, and the airport was chaotic, long lines at the customs desk and confusion at the baggage claim. One of Edward Everett’s teammates had made a derogatory remark about French-Canadian efficiency and the already irritated official had made them all open their carry-on bags so that he could inspect them, counting, in a deliberate way, cigarette packs and confiscating pill bottles from one of Edward Everett’s teammates, who argued, honestly but in vain, that they were natural dietary supplements.

  They didn’t check into their hotel until after four in the morning and, as a result, were out of sync by game time. They dropped pop flies in the infield, botched coverage on stolen base attempts, only winning because Montreal was even more inept than they.

  On Saturday then, a twelve-fifteen game, the Skipper decided to give half the regular starting lineup the day off and started Edward Everett in right field, leading off.

  It was a miserable day, windy, raining throughout the morning. The teams couldn’t take fielding practice because the grounds crew kept the field covered, and Edward Everett feared they would cancel the game, that his chance would come and go, and his entire career would add up to nothing: a single sacrifice bunt that didn’t count as an at-bat, a batting average that wouldn’t rate expression in numbers, because even to have an average of .000, he had to have at least one unsuccessful official time at-bat. But no, there was a benign God, because at a few minutes to one according to the scoreboard clock in right field, he stepped to the plate to begin the game.

  The atmosphere in the park was entirely different from that in St. Louis for his first plate appearance. The Expos were a bad ball club and, with the poor weather and the Olympics in the same city, the crowd was sparse, perhaps fewer than a thousand people scattered throughout the stands, many huddled under blankets and plastic rain gear against the unseasonably cool weather.

  “You going to hit or watch the people?” the umpire snapped. Edward Everett realized he’d been lost in the moment and stepped to the plate. On the mound, the pitcher bent from his waist and looked in for his sign from the catcher. He was in his forties, a left-hander with a round belly and a plump face. As Edward Everett set himself, he remembered that he’d had the pitcher’s baseball card when he himself was a grade school boy. The pitcher had been with the Braves then, something of a stud with a fastball that sometimes hit 100 miles an hour. He’d once had what Edward Everett’s mother would call “matinee idol looks,” but now, a bloated, almost fuzzy version of his younger self, he was in the game only because a poor team needed bodies to fill out the roster.

  Edward Everett took the first pitch, a good one on the inside that he could have driven hard, but the third base coach had given him the “take” sign—one pitch to get used to the idea of being there; one pitch to remind himself that he shouldn’t be thinking about who was on the mound and who he once was; one pitch to remind himself to breathe, see the ball, hit the ball.

  The second pitch came in even better than the first. Behind him, Edward Everett could hear the catcher groan, his gear clicking as if he were adjusting for a pitch not going where he expected it, a breaking ball that hung on the outside, fat and inviting, and he swung and hit it not quite perfectly but well enough, a line drive that hooked down the right field line and skipped on the wet grass to the fence.

  Edward Everett flung his bat aside and made the dash to first, where the coach was windmilling his arms, yelling, “Go go go go,” and he made the turn to second base, just a bit too wide, he thought. As he approached the base, he glanced toward the third base coach, who was signaling, “Come to me, come to me,” and Edward Everett did, coming in standing up, a triple. In the stands a handful of fans applauded, Cardinals fans, and the coach gave him a smack on the butt. Then the coach was yelling to the pitcher, “First hit, first hit,” and the pitcher obligingly tossed the ball toward the dugout, where it rolled in: his first trophy.

  The next hitter grounded out to second, but he’d done his job, hit to the right side of the infield, solid team play, scoring Edward Everett, and when he came into the dugout, some of his teammates clapped him on the back until someone said, “It’s just one, for Christ’s sake,” and he sat down, breathing hard, not from the exertion, but from the excitement, thinking so many things he couldn’t sort them out: there he was in Hoppel’s office at Springfield, listening to the all-but-naked manager tell him he was going up; there he was back at home the next winter telling stories about the season that lay ahead of him now, bright with promise; there he was a dignified old man at the podium at Cooperstown, tearing up as he reminisced about his first hit on a cold and wet July day in Montreal … then someone was tossing a glove at him, saying, “Nap time’s over,” and he realized he’d missed the rest of the inning, when they sent eight men to the plate and scored five runs, the last on a two-run home run by the second baseman.

  From then on, the entire team seemed to have come out of its somnolence of the night before. In the second inning, after the pitcher struck out, Edward Everett started things with a single, and he batted again in the fourth, when he doubled. When he came to the plate in the top of the fifth, St. Louis was already up eight–nothing, and there were men on second and third, with two outs. It was raining then as he dug his spikes into the ground, a slow rain at first, large drops plopping like random pebbles kicking up tufts of dirt around the plate, and then, abruptly, more steadily. The crowd had thinned and most of those who remained—were there even five hundred left?—began unfolding umbrellas or dashing up the aisles for cover.

  It was yet a different pitcher this time, the third he had faced in his four times at the plate, another refugee from athletic old age hanging on for the money and the camaraderie that ordinary men didn’t have going to the office and mowing their lawns in the suburbs. This one was Laurel to the first pitcher’s Hardy, tall and skinny. Unlike the first pitcher, who had come up relying on velocity, this one had survived through guile, picking at the edges of the plate, changing speeds. As Edward Everett waited in the box for the first pitch, he was beginning to feel as if he were playing some kind of game underwater. Rain dripped from the brim of his helmet; his jersey was soaked through, the fabric prickling his wet skin; his bat was slick in his hands. Before the pitcher could throw, Edward Everett held his hand up to the umpire—time—and the umpire gave it. He stepped out, clamped the handle under his arm, between his sleeve and the body of his jersey, and drew it out again: still damp, but at least not too wet to grip.

  “It’s no skin off my ass,” the catcher said, “but the day you’re having? I’d want to make sure the game got through five.”

  Edward Everett glanced at the scoreboard: it was the top of the fifth inning, not yet an official game. For it to be official, they would have to finish five full innings, four more outs. He stepped back in, thinking for an instant about making an out intentionally, to move the game just one more step toward counting, but he flicked the idea away as if it were a g
nat and set himself, aware that mud was clumped on the bottom of his spikes, that they felt like they weighed another twenty pounds, thinking he ought to knock some of it out so he wasn’t slowed down if he hit the ball, but put that thought aside as well.

  The third pitch came in on the outside of the plate, and he hit it, not quite squarely, a high fly ball down the right field line, and he flipped his bat away in disgust, lighting out for first base, thinking maybe the fielder would misplay it in the wind and the rain, thinking if he did, he might be able to get two out of it, but the mud on his cleats made him feel earthbound, a tired man slogging through sludge. He watched the ball arcing through the rain, although he knew he was breaking a rule, let the coach worry about where the ball went, just run, and then improbably, just as the fielder seemed to settle under the ball a few steps in front of the 340-foot sign that hung on the chain-link fence bordering the field, a gust of wind seemed to push the ball, and it was over the fence, and the first base umpire, who had jogged into the outfield to make the call on the play, was jogging back in, tracing circles with his right hand in the air, signaling a home run. When Edward Everett was back in the dugout, some of his teammates gave him a gruff check, their shoulder to his, knocking him about, and he sat, dripping and incredulous, until someone threw him a towel and he dried off his face and hair, kicking his spikes at the concrete step beneath the bench, knocking out clods of mud.

  In the bottom of the fifth, although Montreal tried to stall, the hitters insisting on stepping out after every pitch, to dry their own bats, to call over to the batboy to bring them a rosined rag, and then taking their time to wipe their bat handles, the St. Louis pitcher retired the first two with remarkable efficiency, one on a slow roller back to the mound, the second on a weak line drive to second. In right field, Edward Everett found himself praying, One more out, one more out, and then they would call the game, and it would be in the books, eleven–nothing, Edward Everett four-for-four, a cycle, it came to him for the first time: single double triple home run.