Class A

by Lucas Mann

  Everyone else shook his hand. Danny, Hank, Sams, all in a row, each saying something forced like “Yeah, brother” and then glancing down. A bunch of pitchers who seemed to realize at the same time that they’d hardly ever spoken to Raben went up to pay their respects.

  “How does it feel?” I asked him at the end of the procession, that most ridicule-worthy of sports questions that is, often, the only thing I can think of.

  “Crazy,” he said. “I’ve never moved up before.”

  He looked around the room at a bunch of young men who never had either. They looked back at him, realizing that. Tamargo, who had moved up plenty long ago, gave a short wave, said, “Well,” let it linger there, and left.

  I don’t remember Welington Dotel saying a word to Dennis Raben that night. He may have been the only one not to say anything, not out of dislike, I don’t think, but what to say? He stood, framed in his locker, naked, looking straight ahead at the clothes that he’d hung neatly, his deodorant, body spray, lotion, cologne, watch, BlackBerry, family picture, lined up across an eye-level shelf. I remember thinking how little space he needed, how little conversation or eye contact, anything beyond a locker with the dimensions of his body.

  “Where is Dotel?”

  “What?”

  “Dotel?”

  “Oh.”

  Sams makes a gesture with his head, up and away, over there. Sams is walking off the field after a dismal batting practice, face knotted in some mixture of confusion and rage. He is holding a bat still, occasionally glancing at it as though the wood were to blame. He does not want to talk.

  I glance to where his head directs me. Players walking in clumps to the clubhouse, some laughing, none of them Dotel. The center-field wall. The smoke rising from smokestacks unretired and out of sight.

  “No,” he says, the way one would say it to a dog. “He’s gone. Too many outfielders on this team.”

  “I was watching him take batting practice yesterday,” I say, whining a little.

  Like, Say it ain’t so, Joe.

  Like, Come back, Shane.

  “Yeah,” Sams says, at least a little happy.

  I imagine that Dotel’s release was, at least, spoken in Spanish because Tamargo would have the ability and the tact to do so. You should not have to strain to figure out the last words you hear from an organization, nodding when you’re not quite sure what to do. And I imagine, no, I know, that Dotel took the whole situation in with the silent grace that a fan would want him to have.

  I asked Tamargo once, “Do they yell at you? Do they cry?”

  No, they do not cry. And that is a rather stupid question. There is no rage, either. Even the throwing of a chair or of a punch is somehow unmanly in this context, and everything that these men have been taught about how to be takes hold, instinctively. Still, I don’t understand how someone can smash his plastic helmet on the cement of the dugout floor until it cracks as a response to hitting a fly ball to center instead of a home run, but repress every instinct to make noise one last time when he is told that he is insufficient, when it is ended.

  From my first arrival in the clubhouse, ducking away from all the proud, nude men, I have wanted to see the act of their demise. I can say, and all the fans can say, that the draw of watching pro sports at this level has to do with watching someone realize how great he is, witnessing his baby successes, feeling intimately happy for him and then somehow connected to his happiness, if only through proximity. And that’s kind of true. But ultimately, I can turn on SportsCenter for immediate and distilled transcendence. And victory, in someone else’s games and someone else’s life, can’t sustain interest on its own. No, I have that opposite urge, too, more visceral and satisfying. I like that I can be up close to watch powerful people be rendered into nothing more than anyone else, a kind of bloodless snuff film.

  “You can’t see that,” Tamargo told me early on, and I sulked a little, and he glared.

  I am glad now that I didn’t get to see the moment Dotel was cut. He is a real person discarded. And I don’t want to have seen him trying not to fold into his folding chair. Or to be present for the car ride to Quad Cities International, two duffel bags in the trunk, a bag of bats next to me in the backseat, BJ, the trainer, driving in silence, all of us focusing our attention on the sunrise that hasn’t yet come. Nothing about the scene would have been unexpected. And I would have sat there hoping for a crack that would never appear.

  “He knew,” Tamargo tells me. “Of course he knew.”

  Did he? Or maybe the better question is, what did he know? He hadn’t played in twelve days, I know he knew that. He counted. But the way he smiled. The confidence with which he hit the last ball of the day, each day, heard it ping and leave a dent in the metal cage. The way he said, “I’m ready, I will stay ready,” and the way it was true. The way he always spoke in whens, never once a nod to the precarious nature of his assumptions.

  My wife is pregnant. She’s a good girl. She’s waiting. When I get to Seattle, it will all be perfect. You know the schools where the kids wear suit jackets—that will be where my child goes.

  And on his last day, when Pollreisz opened up the door to the batting cage, interrupted his fantasy of a little boy named Dotel junior wearing a prep school blazer, he went back to hit again.

  “I’ve got ten minutes for you,” Pollreisz said. “You too tired?”

  And he said, “No way, not me, come on.” And Pollreisz said, “Attababy.”

  They simulated a game. Pollreisz barked out the fantasy. One out, two strikes, man on first. Dotel waited, slapped a grounder that maybe would have skipped past the second baseman if this wasn’t just a room with Astroturf flooring, green mesh, broken chairs, the husks of sunflower seeds spit-stuck to the walls. Then hit and run, then sac fly, finally swing away, Dotel catching the ball cleanly, dropping his bat, and watching his shot as though it could travel through the ceiling.

  “Catch that, Asshole,” Pollreisz said, Asshole being the name of the hypothetical opposing outfielder whom he likes to conjure when one of his players does something well in simulation. Dotel laughed. They stood together, and Pollreisz said to me, “What do you think, partner, is he ready?”

  “Ready,” I said.

  “Ready,” Dotel said.

  And Pollreisz was the proud coach, slapping his prized stag’s chest. And I was the admirer, believing. And Dotel was the player, loose and hulking, preordained to perform.

  That was yesterday afternoon, and it felt sincere. Maybe it was sincere; maybe nobody was fooling anybody or being fooled or being lied to or professionally cuckolded. You do not stay in the game if you do not automatically react to adversity by keeping faith. Terry Pollreisz is a sixty-three-year-old man who showers in a group and wears pants with elastic waistbands at work. He crams wads of original flavor tobacco behind his lower lip, spits as though the act of spitting indoors still gets him a little high. He wears cowboy boots to his car after the game. He believes, vocally, heartily, in goodness, in people’s indefatigable ability to earn things. Never mind that he would be standing by the door hearing Dotel’s soft good-bye in six hours: Is a man not entitled a chance to work? And Dotel, with his idol’s smile, his pride, his blistered palms from day upon stubborn day of extra practice—was that muscle memory or just denial? Was it admirable, the consciously constructed last image of himself working, the need to be remembered as such? Or was it that there was nothing else to do but swing?

  He told me that tomorrow he would hit a home run and then we would talk about it, how he knew it was going to happen. He walked out the back door to the parking lot to call his wife, the patient one waiting to bear him a child who would know only opulence. The last I saw of Dotel came from a distance. He was leaning against the outside cement wall of the batting practice building, underneath the paintings of faceless white men in old-timey uniforms with calf-length stirrups, and those ever-bland, ever-cruel words, Field of Dreams, painted there as a dramatic finishing touch to the 20
06 stadium renovation. Maybe he wasn’t looking at anything; maybe he was just still for a moment, content. He was facing the riverboat, freshly painted, never moving. And today is tomorrow and he’s gone.

  Written into Midwest League rules are two distinct seasons, a second chance every year. To prevent teams from being entirely out of contention by June, the standings begin again after the all-star break. The first and second place teams from each half qualify for a play-off berth, so, unless a team is terrible all year, it’s got a decent shot at finding something to play for. It’s like bowling with bumpers. Such a forgiving system makes the value of each game less, each half as crucial, which is why it is hardly ever talked about, I think, the way the good trophies on windowsills are arranged to block the ones that say “Most Improved Player” engraved on a fake-gold plate. Clinton’s disappointing first half simply spawns a disavowing of the recent past and a resilient hope for the near future.

  Matt, the mailman, is sitting a few rows back, in the shade, because people worry about him fainting when the direct sunlight of full-on summer mixes with Old Style Light, a big body, and the general stresses of passionate fandom. He yells louder, and it seems to hang in the humidity, not amplified, just lingering. He is furious that Welington Dotel is not here, that the rest of these slow-moving, heat-fearing slackers are still on the field nearest his home while Welington Dotel has been insulted with exile.

  “This is what I have been saying,” he hollers, eyes straight ahead, everything this. “We go and give away Sir Welington, the best damn leadoff hitter we’ve got, a guy who should be playing center field in the Show.”

  He won’t be. But perhaps he deserves to be. And even if that’s not exactly true, he certainly deserves to have somebody claim it.

  The players glare up at Matt, and he glares back. Their goal is so indelibly not a mutual one now, each betrayed, the players incredulous that they could be chided by strangers for not getting dirty enough, as dirty as a guy already deemed unworthy by the organization. The fans just as disbelieving that sometimes the players not trying the hardest for them are the ones left. Matt Cerione, trotting in from center, feels the sting of being underappreciated by someone whose sole purpose at the field is supposed to be appreciating him. He is so much better than those watching, and clearly better than Dotel. How could this fat prick have the balls to not want him? But Matt, the mailman, is positive that he knows what this team needs. He has been here longer than any player, assessing talent for more seasons than most of the front-office staff. It comes down to the fan’s dilemma, easily ignorable until moments like this. His irrelevance. In a few weeks’ time, this tension will boil over when Cerione trots after a double, doesn’t gallop the way Danny maybe would have, the way Dotel would have for sure. And the mailman will be leaning over the railing telling him everything that’s wrong with how he plays, how he lives, telling him that those who don’t run hard don’t make it. And Matt Cerione will say, “You don’t know anything, you fat fuck. You bitch. You fat fucking bitch.”

  Mailman Matt will deflate into his seat. Cerione will disappear into the dugout, the sound of his muffled expletives buzzing through concrete.

  A few days earlier on a highway in North Dakota, Dan, Tammy’s husband, had a heart attack, had time at least to call 911 before slumping against the giant gearshift of his truck in a ditch as the sun went down. So that is something real, and we in the stands had been talking about how the first thing he asked for in the hospital when he regained consciousness was a cigarette and how scary addiction is, and how God reveals himself in the spaces between life and death. Heavy stuff. Also, there was a stampede at a parade in nearby Miles, and skittish show horses stomped on twenty-four people and Deb saw it, her daughter saw it, and how do you get a kid to forget that? Also, there’s Julie’s son, getting ready to head back to Afghanistan. And Cindy’s husband, the bomb defuser, already over there and with something different in him now that makes him not want to come back.

  But those things are distanced, an ache, not a stab. The shattering of the unspoken alliance between bleachers and field, the permeable but still present wall extending up from the top of the dugout, that is what will really hurt. The loss of the time that people claim to remember when fans wouldn’t have been made to feel shame. And Mailman Matt will get patted on his ample back, hear whispers of “That was out of order” and “There wouldn’t be a game without fans like you.” And hours later in the clubhouse, Cerione will sit on the trainer’s table, his body sore from the pains of a season, and he will talk about the lack of care for him, about playing for the fans, leaving it all out on the field for them. How can people be so unappreciative?

  I will hear both and think that maybe both are right.

  So tensions are high.

  At least Hank gets to play a little more now, a rebirth in the making, maybe, or a first birth, the shedding of a cocoon. Steve Baron and his abysmal batting average have left, sent down to Everett to do some growing up. It’s just Hank and Brandon Bantz, ordinary and persevering, entering their mid-twenties, splitting time behind the plate. Think Costner’s Crash Davis or Robert De Niro from Bang the Drum Slowly. That’s what I am thinking at least. They are on the field together in Cedar Rapids before the game, identical except for skin color, talking with a lovable, weary humor. They’ve been hitting. Hank two days ago, a hard grounder down the third-base line, driving in two. And Bantz yesterday, a double in the left-center-field gap, a triumphant dirt cloud rising as he slid into second.

  It’s Hank’s turn today, mostly because Erasmo is pitching and it helps him to have a guy mumbling Spanish back at him during mound visits. But no matter, he will perform. I will watch. Hank and Erasmo stand on the bullpen mound and laugh together. Hank pulls his mask off and wipes the sweat from his dark, quiet eyes. I find him, in the most ridiculously meaningful sense of the word, heroic.

  I have forgotten about Dotel. Everyone has. Hank, five feet away, readying himself to perform, fills the void for me, though void is too strong a word. Hank is here.

  The team returns to the locker room, and Hank tapes his forearms. Then Hank and Erasmo leave the rest of them early, return down the cement hallway toward the light of the dugout, their spikes scraping, at first a staggered noise, then in unison. Clackety-clackety-clack.

  Clack-clack, clackety-clack. Clack-clack, clackety-clack. Their spikes sounded like music on the concrete floor.

  It was a chorus in all the books that my father read to me, Keystone Kids, The Kid from Tomkinsville, The Kid Comes Back, World Series, marking the end of moments of action on the field, announcing reflection. When I first bought cleats, oversized and unnecessarily metal, I wore them down the street to get milk, listening to the sound of me on the sidewalk trumpeting my presence, trying to conjure childhood memories from the old Italian men sitting on folding chairs outside the Laundromat, wheezing totems of what I thought manhood should be.

  I sit next to them now, Erasmo and Hank, in the dugout. They drink water and speak as though I’m not there, and I am happy for that, catching the odd word of Spanish, smiling as they laugh just because they’re laughing, which, I realize only now, they hardly ever do. Erasmo is a giggler. When something is really funny, his eyes widen and creases like parentheses snake across his round cheeks. The sound of a still-pubescent nerd escapes, a gurgle almost, a squeak. He puts his hand on Hank’s shoulder, says, “Coño, Diablo.” I begin to laugh, too, like a child at Thanksgiving who doesn’t get the joke but loves the unhinged feeling at the table. It isn’t hard to see them as the next logical step in American baseball lore, not from small towns in the middle of cornfields, but from Mexican L.A. and Central America, still looking the part of well-worn fables, dugout shadow across their faces, youthful and grown-up all at once, sitting close on a long, empty bench.

  Terry Pollreisz pops his head out from the hallway, shoves tobacco behind his lower lip.

  “Hola,” he says, and they smile at his effort.

  He shuffles
over to us, hunched. He tells me to leave. Hank looks frightened and then hopeful and then nods before anything has been said.

  I don’t leave. I linger by the doorway. Pollreisz’s kind growl gets silenced in the space between, but I see him smile with his browned teeth. I see the white of his knuckles as he kneads his catcher’s shoulder harder than usual. I hear Erasmo say, “Lo siento.” I see him give his former teammate a half hug, arm across Hank’s back but body pulling away, unsure, the moment they touch.

  Erasmo walks over to me, gives me a little shove.

  “We go,” he says.

  We go. Back down the cement hallway, his cleats clacking alone now, a scattered and weak sound. Erasmo runs his hand along the cinder-block wall. He will not initiate this conversation. I begin to ask, “What just—”

  He cuts me off, a swipe of his hand across the throat—done, over, isn’t it obvious?

  It isn’t, but the subtleties are not something Erasmo wants to talk about. Hank hasn’t been cut, not like Dotel, but it feels like it. He has been sent, with compliments, to the purgatory of rookie ball, meant for prospects just signed, half a season of games in which they can dip their toes into professional waters. Hank has been sent there to be the backup to more eighteen-year-olds who have talent that he never will. It is doubtful he’ll be back. Hank is told, “They need you.”

  These are things I know about athletes:

  Player X worked fourteen hours a day on a watermelon plantation as a teen. No wonder he got so strong.

  When you take a raft from Cuba, staring at circling shark fins, the World Series doesn’t feel like much pressure.

  This guy was just about to quit and go work on the assembly line next to his father, but then fate intervened.