Change-up

by John Feinstein

  Stevie hadn’t been holding out, but he hadn’t mentioned his blocking the cameraman as he reached toward Stinson. “It was no big deal,” he said.

  “No big deal?” Stinson said. “The cameraman was ready to crack me in the head with his camera.”

  “Come on,” Kelleher said. “I doubt if he’d risk a ten-thousand-dollar camera on your skull.”

  “Good point,” Stinson said with a smile. “But still, Steve was great.”

  “Clubhouse is open,” Stevie heard a voice say. “You guys have forty-five minutes.”

  The security guard here was just a little bit different than Big-Time Bill in Boston. As Stevie walked by, he said, “Nice stuff this morning.” Stevie smiled and thanked him.

  Stevie had been inside the Nationals clubhouse during the playoffs, but seeing it again after two nights in Fenway reminded him how huge it was—at least four times bigger than the Red Sox clubhouse. He and Kelleher scanned the room. There were perhaps a dozen players inside, some at their lockers, others sitting on couches in the middle of the room watching TV.

  Kelleher pointed at Doyle’s locker. “He’s not here,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “No clothes,” Kelleher said. “If he was still here, his street clothes would be hanging in his locker.”

  The lockers—which were gigantic, like everything else in the room—were the open kind, so it was easy to see clothes and uniforms that were hung in each one. Kelleher was right. Doyle’s locker was untouched. Two uniforms hung neatly, and there were several gloves piled up along with some of those socks with numbers they had talked about the day before. But no street clothes.

  Aaron Boone, the veteran utility player, was sitting on one of the couches reading a newspaper. Boone was another remarkable story. He’d had open-heart surgery in the spring and had then come back in August to play for the Houston Astros. Just prior to the trading deadline on August 31, he’d been traded back to Washington—where he’d played the year before. He’d provided both maturity and leadership on a young team in the heat of its first pennant race.

  Stevie had noticed during the playoffs that Boone was one of those rare players who actually knew the names of media people. Boone looked up, overhearing the conversation.

  “He wasn’t here today at all, Bobby,” he said to Kelleher.

  “Gave him the day off, huh?” Kelleher said.

  “I think he’s holed up with his agent,” Boone said. “Let the bidding begin, eh?”

  “That stuff can’t wait until after the series?” Kelleher said.

  “You gotta strike while the iron is hot, man,” Boone said. “Unless he wins game six or seven for us, he’ll never be hotter. I mean, my God, if The Rookie was a movie, what’s this?”

  Stevie remembered watching The Rookie with his dad. It was based on a true story about a pitcher who hurt his arm in his twenties, became a high school baseball coach in Texas, and then, in his midthirties, signed after an open tryout by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He made it to the major leagues briefly as a relief pitcher. Stevie had liked the movie; his dad had loved it.

  “Good point,” Kelleher said.

  “Started the season in the minors, never won a big-league game, and he pitches a one-hitter in the World Series!” Boone said. “Not to mention being a good guy and a single dad. Heck, I’d love to be his agent right now.”

  Stevie and Kelleher looked at one another, both thinking the same thing: what was there about Norbert Doyle that all the people who wanted to tell his story didn’t know?

  Stevie noticed Wil Nieves walking through the room to his locker. “I’m going to talk to Nieves,” he said, hoping there wouldn’t be a mad dash to talk to him. Most of the writers were talking to Ryan Zimmerman at that moment.

  “Go for it,” Kelleher said.

  Stevie walked over to Nieves and was relieved to see no one else walking in the same direction.

  “Wil, hi, my name is Steve Thomas, I work for the Washington Herald,” Stevie said, putting his hand out when Nieves, having tossed his catcher’s glove into his locker, turned to face him.

  Nieves took his hand and gave him a friendly smile. “I know you,” he said. “You were there last night when those two guys almost got into a fight.”

  “Right,” Stevie said.

  Nieves knew more. “You and that girl, Susan, right? You’re the two kid reporters who are so famous.”

  “I don’t know about famous …,” Stevie said.

  “Don’t be modest,” Nieves said. “I read about you in our playoff program.”

  The Nationals had done a story on the fact that Stevie and Susan Carol were covering them for the Herald and the Post in their postseason program, which was sold at the ballpark for the startling price of $10. Stevie’s dad had bought one but said, “When I was a kid going to the old ballpark in Philadelphia, you paid twenty-five cents to buy a scorecard and a program—and they gave you a pencil to keep score with.”

  “What was it like watching Babe Ruth?” Stevie had said in response to his father’s moaning.

  “Well, thanks,” Stevie said to Nieves. “Since I’m so famous, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Fire away,” Nieves said. He sat down on the chair in front of his locker and pulled a chair over from the one next to his and offered it to Stevie.

  Stevie didn’t try to pick up where they had left off in Boston the night before. He asked Nieves first about his own background, which was actually interesting. He was from Puerto Rico and had signed with the San Diego Padres as an eighteen-year-old. He had spent most of the thirteen years since then in the minors, making it briefly to the majors with the Padres in 2002 and then with the Yankees for parts of 2005, 2006, and 2007.

  After the Yankees had released him, he had signed with the Nationals as a minor-league free agent and had stuck with the team for most of two seasons because he had finally been able to hit a little. He had hit his first-ever major-league home run early in 2008.

  As Nieves talked, Stevie worried that someone might interrupt them. A couple of times he saw writers approaching, but they veered away. There seemed to be an unwritten rule that if someone was seated, talking to a player, you didn’t interrupt.

  “So, would you say last night was the biggest thrill you’ve had in baseball?” Stevie said, steering the conversation back to the present.

  Nieves thought for a minute. “That and the home run,” he said. “The home run was a walk-off in the ninth inning, so that was pretty cool too.”

  Stevie asked Nieves again about Doyle’s performance and then, slowly, returned to what he had said the night before. “Before we were interrupted last night, you were starting to talk about knowing Norbert in the minors….”

  “Or not really knowing him,” Nieves said, smiling.

  That was a relief. Stevie had been afraid a night’s sleep might have made him more cautious about discussing his team’s sudden star.

  “Right,” Stevie said. “Nice guy, just shy …”

  “Not exactly shy,” Nieves said. “Always friendly. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him laugh, though, really have fun. Even when we were celebrating winning the pennant last week, we had to practically beg him to get involved.”

  Stevie remembered that. He had been standing with Doyle while his teammates kept trying to get him to join them in the celebration. Then again, he hadn’t been on the roster for the playoffs.

  “You said something about joy not being part of his life….”

  “I can’t say it isn’t part of his life, I’ve just never seen it. I asked him about it once—”

  “You did?” Stevie said, realizing instantly he had made a mistake by stopping him in midsentence and perhaps appearing a bit too eager. For the first time since they had started talking, he saw Nieves hesitate.

  “Well, yeah, it was no big deal or anything….”

  This time Stevie said nothing. Thankfully, Nieves filled the silence.

  “It was a few year
s ago. We were both in Columbus, which was a Yankee team back then. He’d been traded over in midseason and I was the only guy on the club he knew, so we hung out a little on the road. One night at dinner I asked about his kids. I knew his wife had died years earlier in the accident….”

  He paused again. “You know about that, right?”

  “Yes,” Stevie answered honestly. “He told me about it the other day.”

  Nieves nodded. “He started talking about how proud he was of them, what great kids they were, and how much he wished his wife could be around to see them.”

  “Uh-huh,” Stevie said, not wanting to interrupt, just encouraging him to go on.

  “Perfectly understandable, right?” Nieves said. “But then he said something I didn’t understand.”

  Stevie waited, afraid to say anything.

  “He said that sometimes when he looked at them, he believed in God because they were so wonderful. But then, when he thought about it, he decided God was pretty cruel, because every time he looked at his kids, he was reminded that he had taken their mother away from them.”

  Nieves stopped suddenly. Stevie was scribbling madly in his notebook. “Oh wait, hang on, I shouldn’t have said that. Please don’t write that. I don’t even know what Norbert meant by that.”

  “I promise I won’t unless I talk to him about it,” Stevie said.

  Nieves sagged a little. “Okay,” he said finally, “that’s fair.”

  “But one more question,” Stevie asked. “What do you think he meant? They were hit by a drunk driver. How could that be his fault? Or was he saying, you think, that it was God’s fault?”

  “That’s what I asked him.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing,” Nieves said. “He just asked the waitress for some more iced tea.”

  11: NORBERT DOYLE, SUPERSTAR

  STEVIE STOOD UP A MOMENT LATER and thanked Nieves. Someone was walking around the room saying it would close to the media in five minutes. When they shook hands, Nieves said, “I probably said too much. I hope you handle that gently with Norbert. I know it has to be upsetting for him to even think about it.”

  “We talked about it a little yesterday, and he did get choked up,” Stevie said, telling the truth. “It’s probably nothing. He probably feels guilty because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time that night.”

  Nieves nodded. “I guess so. Or he somehow thinks he should have been able to avoid the accident. He never brought it up again and neither did I. I’m so happy for the guy right now. I wouldn’t want to see anything take away from this.”

  “Me neither,” Stevie said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Stevie felt a little guilty. Nieves had been remark ably honest, and now he clearly felt as if he had violated the confidence of a teammate. But Stevie knew he had to follow up on what Nieves had told him—even if he wasn’t sure what it was he was following up on. He knew it was personal—extremely personal. So, was it really news?

  He walked back across the room looking for Kelleher but didn’t see him. He remembered Kelleher saying he wanted to talk to the Red Sox, so maybe he was in their clubhouse.

  “How’d you do with Wil?” Aaron Boone said when he passed him on his way out.

  “Great,” Stevie said.

  Boone nodded. “If I was a reporter, I’d love this clubhouse,” he said. “Most of our guys haven’t been around long enough to become jaded about all this.”

  “You’ve been around a long time,” Stevie said.

  “Oh yeah—I’m old,” Boone said, laughing. “But I’m not good enough to be jaded.”

  Stevie knew that wasn’t true. Boone was famous for his home run in the eleventh inning of game seven of the ALCS in 2003 that had allowed the Yankees to beat the Red Sox and advance to the World Series. He was still known in Boston as “Aaron Bleepin’ Boone” because of it, and many of the pre-Series stories had been about his return to Boston six Octobers later.

  “You’re being modest,” Stevie said.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Boone said, laughing again.

  Stevie was tempted to ask Boone what his read of Norbert Doyle was. Clearly, he was a smart guy with a good sense of humor. But time was up in the clubhouse, and this wasn’t the right time anyway. So he waved goodbye and headed down the hallway to see if Kelleher was in the Red Sox clubhouse. He found him among a group of reporters around David Ortiz. When Stevie walked up, Ortiz was talking about the triple play.

  “Someone called me this morning to tell me I’d made history,” he said, smiling. “First triple play in the World Series in eighty-nine years. I can tell my grandkids about it someday. It’s what I’ll be known for.”

  Everyone laughed. Someone asked Ortiz if he’d ever heard of Bill Wambsganss. “Not until last night,” he said. “Now I even know how to spell his name.”

  “I’m glad we came,” Kelleher said, walking away while Ortiz continued to talk. “I picked up some stuff that will help my column a lot. How’d you do with Nieves?”

  “So well I’m not even sure what I’ve got,” Stevie said.

  Kelleher gave him a look. “I should have known,” he said. “Only you can take a story that appears to be The Rookie on steroids and find something hiding underneath. Let’s go outside and you can tell me about it.”

  They walked back into the hallway, and Kelleher leaned against the wall while Stevie read back to him what Nieves had said.

  “Whoo boy,” Kelleher said.

  “Isn’t it possible he just feels guilty because he lived and she didn’t?” Stevie asked.

  “Of course—likely, even,” Kelleher said. “But it feels like more than that, doesn’t it?” He paused. “It may be time for us to ask Susan Carol about her talk with David yesterday in Boston. Before we go running around on what might be a wild-goose chase, let’s find out what she knows about the goose.”

  “I don’t think she’ll tell us,” Stevie said.

  “Maybe not,” Kelleher said. “But we’ll ask anyway.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?”

  “One of us may be going on a road trip,” Kelleher said.

  “Road trip?” Stevie said. “Where to?”

  “To Lynchburg, Virginia,” Kelleher said. “And into Doyle’s past.”

  On the car ride home Stevie asked Kelleher what the purpose of going to Lynchburg would be.

  “You know Bob Woodward, right? The Bob Woodward, as in Watergate and Richard Nixon?”

  Stevie nodded.

  “He was my editor when I was starting out on the Metro staff at the Post. He was the best reporter I’ve ever met. He had a saying about stories that don’t seem to add up: ‘Get the documents.’”

  “What does that mean?” Stevie asked.

  “It means that somewhere, someplace, there is paperwork on almost everything that happens in the world. The story that really got Watergate going came when he and Carl Bernstein ran down some obscure bank records. They found a check that linked the burglary at the Watergate to Nixon’s reelection committee. And, at the end, the final documents were the tapes from the White House that proved Nixon had discussed covering up the break-in right after it happened. Any time we were stalled on a story, Bob would say, ‘There have to be documents, there always are.’”

  “So, what kind of documents would there be on this story?”

  “Court records,” Kelleher said. “Or police records. Somewhere in Lynchburg there has to be paperwork on what happened the night Analise Doyle was killed.”

  “But what can it possibly tell us that we don’t already know?” Stevie said. “She was killed by a drunk driver. What more can there be to that?”

  “I have no idea,” Kelleher said. “But if we think there’s more to Doyle’s story, the night she died is the place to start. And if Woodward’s theory is correct—and it always is—the documents should at least give us a direction to look next.”

  “So you’re going to go to Lynchburg, Virginia, in the middle
of the World Series?”

  “First we’re going to talk to Susan Carol,” Kelleher said. “But if that’s a nonstarter, I’m not going to Lynchburg, you are.”

  “Me?” Stevie said.

  “Yes, you,” Kelleher said. “If Susan Carol can’t or won’t tell us what this is all about, you’re going to take a train down there tomorrow.”

  “What about the game?” Stevie asked, dismayed.

  “This is potentially a lot more important than writing a sidebar off game three. You can be there in only about four hours or so on the train.”

  “And what am I going to do when I get there?” Stevie asked.

  “You’re going to take a cab to the courthouse, and you’re going to ask for the police records from the accident. When was it—1997? It shouldn’t take them that long to find it.”

  “It was in August of that year,” Stevie said, remembering what Doyle had said back in Boston.

  “I doubt if there will be too many police reports under the name Analise Doyle,” Kelleher said. “You’ll be able to find it.”

  “And they’ll give it to me?” Stevie asked.

  “Public records,” Kelleher said. “You would be amazed how many things are in the public record. All police reports are unless they’re sealed by a court for some reason.”

  Stevie was less than thrilled by the idea of a four-hour train ride and a trip to a courthouse in a strange town. He had a feeling his parents wouldn’t be thrilled at the idea either. But if Kelleher thought it was important, he wasn’t going to say no.

  “Why can’t you go too?”

  Kelleher shook his head. “I can’t miss the first World Series game in Washington since 1933 to go off chasing a story that may or may not even be a story,” he said. “If it were today, no game, I’d go with you. But not tomorrow.”

  Seeing the look on Stevie’s face, he patted him on the shoulder. “Cheer up,” he said. “The best stories are usually the ones that are the hardest to do. This may be one of them.”

  They pulled into the driveway. Tamara’s car was there. “They’re home,” Kelleher said. “Let’s go find out if you’re going to become an investigative reporter beginning tomorrow.”