Double Switch

by T. T. Monday

  “Pitchers make mistakes, Joe.”

  “Sure they do, but that wasn’t one of them.”

  “Who the hell are you to say if it was a mistake or not?”

  “I’m the goddamn plate umpire. It’s my job.”

  “Hell of a job you’re doing…a bullshit job!”

  “One more word, Terry, and you’re in the clubhouse with your pitcher.”

  “How the hell do you know the ball didn’t slip out of his hand? Can you read his mind?”

  South jerks his thumb again, ejecting Skipper. Another cheer from the crowd.

  Now that he knows he’s gone, Skipper turns it up a notch. We call this “getting your money’s worth.” He calls South a jackass. South calls him senile. You’d never guess these guys are friends. Bass-fishing buddies, if you can believe it, with winter homes in Florida just a few miles apart. When Skip’s wife passed a few years ago, he moved in with Joe and Sharon South for a month. My point is that, as angry as they are, this is basically theater. On the video board in left field—the same spot “The Fizz” Cunningham hit in batting practice earlier—these two old men, now twenty feet tall, vent their spleens belly to belly. I have to believe some part of them loves this.

  “You’re too old to be calling balls and strikes,” Skip yells, his face getting redder by the second. “And if you can’t even see the strike zone, how the hell can you tell if my pitcher meant to hit this guy? You can’t see shit, Joe! You know what you ought to do? Retire! You ought to retire!”

  “I ought to retire? Who’s the one getting up to piss eight times a night?”

  “At least I still have my prostate!”

  Apparently, this is Skip’s last insult. The tank is dry. He taps me on the ass. “Let’s go.” By this point Yonel Ruiz has shaken it off. He stands on first base, glowering.

  I follow Skip into the dugout, where we pace for a minute while Skip gives the bench coach instructions about what to do in his absence. Then we walk down the tunnel to the clubhouse. In the manager’s office, Skip grabs two cans of Diet Coke out of the fridge and throws one at me. He turns on the TV. In silence, we watch as our new pitcher, Malachy Garcia, gets the next batter to ground into a double play, ending the inning. The TV screen changes to a Rockies logo on a purple background.

  “So,” I say.

  “What the hell happened out there, Adcock?”

  “It’s like you said—the ball slipped.”

  “Spare me the bullshit. I know you threw at him. Joe South knows it. You’re lucky it hit his back and not his head. As it is, you may be facing suspension.”

  “Nah…”

  “Off the record, you threw at him, right?” Skipper is putting me in a tough spot. Pitchers never admit to throwing at a batter, even when the batter deserves it, and that isn’t just machismo: although it is sanctioned by the unwritten, Old Testament code of baseball ethics, intentionally throwing at a batter is forbidden by baseball’s actual written rules, and if you admit to breaking those rules, the commissioner’s office will have no choice but to fine you, and maybe more.

  “What am I supposed to say, Skip?”

  “If I were in the league office, I’d sit your ass down for a week.” Skipper taps his forehead. “Something ain’t right up here, that’s what I’d be thinking. So let me ask you again—what the hell happened? Why’d you throw at that poor fool? Have you heard what he went through to get here? There were sharks circling his ass. Hungry sharks. Do you have any idea what that’s like? I don’t, and with luck I never will. And now you’re trying to break his back with a fastball?”

  “I didn’t break his back, Skip.”

  “Is there something you want to tell me? Something from your other career?”

  Like everyone in baseball, Skipper knows what I do in my spare time. He’s never been bothered by it, but it’s his job to make sure I know where my bread is buttered. His message is essentially the same as Feldspar’s, but his manner is more collegial. He was a player himself way back when—a good player, a catcher, with a long big-league career. He knows every player has something that keeps him sane, some blowhole or release valve or mountain-retreat-of-the-mind. Some guys drink. I have this. He gets it. But he’s right.

  “I’ve got it under control,” I say.

  “I’d say you don’t, given what I saw out there. I’d say you were about eighteen inches away from ruining a young man’s life.”

  “Listen, Skip, it’s a personal matter….”

  “I’ll tell you what’s personal—this goddamn team! This is my team. I don’t give a shit what you do when the ballgame is over, but when you’re out there on the mound, you’re working for me. Do you understand, Adcock? For three hours every night, I own you. And when you fuck up—and, bullshit aside, that’s what you did today—when that happens I get angry, because that’s my ass on the line. My ass, not yours.”

  “I know, Skip.”

  “Do you? Only two kinds of people get wins next to their name: pitchers and managers. Which means you and me should be seeing eye to eye here. But we’re not. Why is that, do you think?”

  “I’m sorry, Skip.”

  “It’s not time for you to apologize. I’m not done yet. Why is it that our interests aren’t aligned? One possibility is that your ship has sailed.”

  “My ship?”

  “You’re too old. Know why you didn’t break that bastard’s back? Because you’re throwing batting-practice fastballs. Don’t argue, you know I’m right. Your velocity has been slipping. These days, your game is all location and switching speeds. But what happens when you can’t hit your spots, or when your fastball is just as slow as your off-speed stuff? You’re not far from that point, Adcock. You and I both know it. So I’m thinking maybe that’s what’s going on here. You’re washed up, but you don’t see it. Or you won’t admit it.”

  “You want me to quit?”

  “The other possibility is that this investigation thing has gotten out of control. I don’t know what you want with Yonel Ruiz, but I do know that if he’s connected to one of your detective hunts, this is the first time it’s influenced a game. I’m a reasonable man, Johnny, but when it comes to wins and losses, I’m a goddamn psychopath. This is your first and last chance, understand? You can apologize now.”

  “I’m sorry, Skip.”

  He points to the office door, and I leave. Psychologists tell us that losing hurts more than winning feels good, and they’re right. To hell with winning being the only thing—not losing is what really matters. Fear of losing, or, more accurately, hatred of losing, is the secret behind all great athletes, from Michael Jordan to Mike Trout. Because the accounting is the same, the distinction between winning and not-losing gets muddled, but there is a big difference. Ask any ballplayer, and he’ll tell you the same thing: winning is good, but, man, fuck losing.

  Ironically, the ability to shrug off a loss, to move on and compete the next day without the mental weight of yesterday’s outcome, is essential for success at this level. It’s especially true when you play every day, or nearly every day, like I do. Today I blew it, but tomorrow, if Skipper asks me to pitch, I need to walk onto the mound with a clean slate and a case of amnesia. This is what ballplayers mean when they say they’re approaching their season one game at a time. Tomorrow you won’t remember today. You just can’t.

  12

  I shower alone and put on my street clothes. On the muted TVs suspended from the ceiling, I see that the score is still tied upstairs, going into the tenth. The silence in the empty clubhouse is profound; the only sound is the rumbling of the ice machine outside the trainers’ room.

  I have plans tonight with Connie, another romantic dinner followed by another cozy evening at home. Looking back on last night, I’m glad we didn’t get to talk about commitment—and not just because I slept with another woman a few hours later. I’m not sure I’ve changed my mind on the subject, but suffice it to say that my feelings are evolving.

  Behind the wired-glass windo
w of the manager’s office, I see Skipper with his feet up on the desk, shouting at the TV screen. He finishes his Diet Coke and throws the can at the wall. Skip was married forty-two years, but he behaved like this even before his wife died. Maybe marriage brought him comfort. He certainly never showed it.

  Very quietly, I rise and walk through the trainers’ room to the hall between the clubhouses. A few people from the Rockies’ media-relations team are already hovering outside the room used for postgame interviews, thumbing at their phones. The video room is just around the corner. I take a peek and see that there’s a security guard sitting on a folding chair in front of the door. I pat my pocket to make sure I have my ID on me. On the road, you can’t depend on security guards to recognize you out of uniform. With a head-down, businesslike stride, I turn the corner and approach the door. A length of yellow police tape runs diagonally across the doorway like a pageant sash.

  “Hey, can I get in there for a sec?” I ask the guard. “I left my notebook on the desk.”

  “Sorry, man. No entry tonight. If you need to watch tape, you can use the video suite in the executive offices upstairs.”

  He is in his mid-twenties, athletic build, goatee. Seems like a decent guy. Given another outcome in the genetic lottery, he could have been in the Bay Dogs bullpen instead of me. Instead, he’s stuck on a folding chair in a windowless hallway.

  “That’s cool,” I say. When trying to relate to members of the post-Jackass generation, I try to sound as young and casual as possible. In practical terms, that means imagining how my daughter would say things. “No worries. I just need to grab my notebook and I’ll be outta there.”

  The young man looks at me. “Seriously? I just said no.”

  “All right, look. I’m on the Bay Dogs, I’m a pitcher, and I need—”

  “Johnny Adcock. I know who you are.”

  “And what’s your name?”

  “Jeremy.”

  “Okay, Jeremy, what’s it going to take for you to let me in there?”

  Jeremy leans back. The top lip of the folding chair tinks against the wall. “You’ll have to find me another job, for one thing, because I’ll get fired. See the police tape? Somebody died in there.”

  “He was a friend of mine,” I say. “Erik Magnusson.”

  “That sucks,” the kid says. “But I can’t let you in.”

  “What if I told you there was an old man having a heart attack in the visitors’ clubhouse?”

  “Is that true?”

  “You’d better check, right? ’Cause, if he was having a heart attack, and your boss found out you knew about it and didn’t check—I’m guessing you’d lose your job for that, too.”

  He thinks about this for a minute before realizing I’ve got him. He stands up. “You say it’s an old man?”

  “In the manager’s office.”

  He jogs away, and I duck into the video room. It’s a tiny, windowless cell with the same block walls as the hallway. Folding tables line the walls. Normally, you sit down in front of a laptop at one of these tables, but the laptops are gone and the tables are covered with a fine dusting of black fingerprinting powder. Above the center of the room, the acoustic ceiling tiles have been removed and an exposed steel beam has been marked with yellow spray paint. I look closely at the beam. Pink nylon fibers, like those from a cheap rope, are lodged in the steel’s fireproof coating.

  Was it a suicide? Based on what Mags told me at the bar about his family life, it sounds like he had plenty of reason to be depressed. But why wouldn’t he just get a gun? In this state, they practically hand them out free at the airport. Hanging yourself is what you do if you’re trying to make a statement with your death. Mags was a modest man. If he were going to kill himself, he’d do it in private. He’d just disappear and never come back, like an ailing cat.

  A jug of mineral water sits in the cooler on the far wall, alongside a whiteboard with all the markers still lined up neatly in the aluminum tray. I kneel to look under the desks, but the cops have swept the place clean. Aside from the tables, the water, and the markers, everything not bolted down has been taken away by the evidence collectors. I am making one final pass across the center of the room when I hear something skitter across the square of exposed concrete. I bend down and search the perimeter of the carpet until I find it. At first I think it’s a bit of chipped concrete, but then I see that it’s hollow inside. It’s a tooth, or part of a tooth. The hole inside is still pulpy, like it was only recently chipped.

  I turn around to see if I’ve missed anything. The whiteboard is full of notes about struggling Rockies. At the top of the board is Dan Anglin, the first baseman who was giving Magnusson heartburn. Next to his name are some dates: 5/15, 4th PA; 6/22, 1st PA. “PA” stands for “plate appearance,” so these must be reminders to look at those particular at-bats. Maybe Mags saw something that could be corrected? Then I see a name that doesn’t belong on the board: Yonel Ruiz. I can’t imagine why Ruiz would be listed alongside Anglin—God knows, he doesn’t need any help at the plate. Below Ruiz are two more strange inclusions: Fausto Carmona and Roberto Hernández. These guys are even more out of place than Ruiz because: (a) they play for the Astros, (b) they are pitchers, and (c) they are the same man.

  The same man? It’s an odd story. Fausto Carmona is the name of a Dominican pitcher who had a couple of excellent seasons with the Cleveland Indians before it was discovered that he had changed his identity, and his age, years ago. When the fraud was discovered, his visa was revoked and he was suspended by MLB. He appealed and eventually clawed his way back. He now pitches in the Houston Astros organization under his birth name, Roberto Hernández.

  What was Magnusson trying to say here? I look more closely at the names and notice that they are laid out in a kind of two-by-two grid, with Carmona and Hernández directly below Ruiz and someone named Pascual Alcalá. I take a picture with my phone and leave the room.

  The kid is back on his chair. “Old man was fine,” he says. “Just angry.”

  “Thanks for checking.”

  “Just doing my job.” He reaches up and pantomimes tipping an invisible cap.

  Back in the clubhouse, I watch Skipper crack another Diet Coke. I wonder what the kid said to him: Excuse me, sir? Are you okay? Are you having a heart attack? I think we’re lucky there wasn’t another murder just now.

  On the muted TVs hanging from the ceiling, the game heads into the bottom of the eleventh, score still tied. This could go on indefinitely. I’m under no obligation to stay, having been ejected from the game, and with the new information about Magnusson’s death, I’d like to make some inquiries before I have to meet Connie. I’m not sure what to think about the tooth. If it was murder, the chipped tooth suggests that Mags fought back. But there were no signs of a struggle—no bloodstains, no scuff marks on the wall. Hell, the water cooler was still upright. Maybe the killer found Magnusson asleep, killed him with a blow to the head, and then strung him up to make it look like suicide. Makes sense, but it would be hard to prove without access to the body. And it doesn’t explain the tooth.

  The names on the whiteboard, though—I’m curious about that, and I have a source who may be able to shed some light on the situation. I reach up to disconnect my phone from the charger (I wasn’t bullshitting Tiff when I texted her about phones at the park—they’re prohibited during games by MLB rules). Then, all of a sudden, the damn thing rings, breaking the funereal silence and scaring the shit out of me. My left hand shoots out so fast that I knock the phone off the shelf. It dangles on its cord like a terrier straining the leash. The screen reports a call from a blocked number. I tap the green button to answer.

  “Johnny Adcock…” The voice is languid, robotic, and indistinct, as though it has been run through a digital filter. I immediately think of the call Magnusson received in spring training, the one that warned him against talking about Ruiz.

  “Who is this?”

  “I have information you may find useful. You will rec
eive a text message with an address. Be there at eight tonight.”

  “I’m not coming unless you tell me who this is.” It’s an empty threat, and the caller knows it. He hangs up without another word.

  Suddenly I’m back in the empty locker room, listening to the pulse in my ears. Then I hear a rumble—that’s the crowd in the stands several stories above me—and on the TV I see the Rockies huddled around the plate, bobbing up and down in anticipation. Yonel Ruiz trots down the line from third, his face conspicuously devoid of emotion, like he’s too tough to feel joy, but then, at the last minute, he tosses his helmet in the air and enters the mêlée.

  A moment later, I hear voices in the tunnel and the clicking of spikes on concrete. Although I am not technically responsible for the loss—Garcia got the double play after I hit Ruiz—my mistake no doubt shifted the momentum of the game. The box score is one thing, but if the beat writer is doing his job, the wrap-up will capture what the score can’t—that San José’s Johnny Adcock inexplicably threw at Yonel Ruiz in the bottom of the eighth inning, lighting a fire under the Cuban slugger, who hit a walkoff homer in the eleventh.

  Fuck losing.

  The phone vibrates in my hand as the text arrives. It’s a Denver address, West Forty-fourth Avenue. I have no idea where that is, but, lucky for me, the geniuses who designed my phone are one step ahead. I click the address, underlined in blue, and a map appears. After some stretching and scrolling, I see that it’s in an industrial zone five miles north of the ballpark. The phone even shows me a photo of the building, which looks like a printer or an auto-body shop. With a few swipes I’ve walked around the block, checking out half a dozen identical warehouses. I’ve never been there, but I can predict with confidence that this neighborhood will be deserted at 8:00 p.m.

  Here’s the thing about me: it’s not that I can’t tell the difference between a good choice and a bad one, it’s more like good and bad aren’t what I consider when I’m planning my life. Remember when I said I was done with Ruiz? And remember how all I wanted tonight was to hide out in Connie’s loft? Those were good, safe choices. But safe choices don’t inspire me. A phone call from a disguised voice, asking to meet in an industrial zone after dark? That’s your classic bad choice. And yet, as soon as I receive that call, I know it’s what I’m doing tonight.