Class A

by Lucas Mann

  “I’ve got him on my skin,” Derek says. “And it hurt like a bitch, but it’s never going anywhere.”

  His fiancée has started coming to the games with him again but still rolls her eyes when he mentions the thing. She doesn’t get it at all. Why should she?

  Joyce says, “I wouldn’t have the nerve. I don’t like needles”

  She smiles, then looks down. She rummages in her bag for something, doesn’t find it, stops.

  After the season, I still go to Joyce’s house every month or so. She shows me her things and I like her excitement and she likes that I like it. We sit down and watch TV, and the cat paces. Usually, she’s picked up something new to show. Sometimes she has a present for me. A Louie the LumberKing fridge magnet. A little holiday card on which she’s written nothing but 125 days until opening day! Sometimes I get her presents, too. I was on vacation with my girlfriend, wandering through a consignment shop in geriatric Florida. I found a mini-bat in the back of the store, hidden in a pile of children’s gloves, left sneakers with no right, a Frisbee dedicated to the fire department of a town I’ve never heard of. The bat was faded. There was half the face of a mascot I couldn’t recognize. It was dated 1991, made the year Clinton won, the year Nick Franklin was born, the year Joyce started working at the casino thinking she’d someday leave, a collection of coincidences that mean nothing but still comfort me because there can be a pattern to things if you want there to be.

  I tell Joyce a story, and then it becomes co-authored. Nick Franklin went upstairs to his hotel room alone before he and his parents drove away from Burlington, up 61 to Clinton, packed his clothes by midnight, slid out past the industrial sprawl in the early morning. He told his mother and father to stay put, leaving them to tell me all the bullshit things that they thought I needed to hear—how grateful the family is for the chance, how all Nicky wanted to do was be part of a team. He left to find Hank. Nick stayed up there a long time, just the two of them talking, his parents looking at their watches in the lobby, his father finally bolting to the parking lot to let the rental car’s A/C run for a while.

  “It must have been like talking to his older brother,” Joyce says.

  “They really get close here,” she continues.

  “I bet he thanked him,” I say, not knowing. But Hank was so important to him.

  “I bet he said, ‘See you soon,’ ” she says. “That’s what they say to each other because it’s nice to hear.”

  We go on like that, batting one-sentence proclamations back and forth, making the scene, off-season archival baseball footage on the TV in the background, unwatched for the moment.

  Their phones were buzzing, neither of them picking up. Finally, an embrace. Maybe an exchange of a token. That must have happened. A wristband or a piece of paper with a note on it, something for Hank to keep.

  We sit in her dining room, where nobody dines. My allergies are acting up because of the cat. The carpet isn’t helping, neither is the lack of airflow, windows never opened, vacuum never sucking up the things hidden in the cracks. I sneeze and my eyes are beginning to water, streaks of defensive tears running into the creases between nose and cheek. She looks at me, hopeful, head cocked, eyes ready to empathize.

  “Are you okay?” she asks. “I know, it’s a lot.”

  I’m not exactly sure what “it” is. I think “it” might mean the end of a season, the talk of Nick now gone. Or maybe it’s the experience of looking at all these names from all these season, stacked floor to ceiling, trinkets of the past looming over us in the present. I want to be really crying for her. “I can’t wait for opening day,” she says. “I don’t like this town as much in the winter. It seems like there’s less people every year.”

  I will be going to spring training next year and Joyce won’t. She asks me to take things for her. She asks me to take the stories she’s written to those she’s written about. She has Nick’s story ready, not just in her omnipresent red notebook, but typed up in a nice bold font on a nice clean sheet of paper. She’ll put it in a blue envelope for me, with polka dots. She bought a big pack of polka-dot blue envelopes. She uses them for the players who she thinks will have a lot of mail to sift through. The ones who have become public property, no longer glad for attention. That is who Nick Franklin is now. She’s happy for him. She just wants to be remembered for her part, her shadow waiting by the fence to get signatures, her voice above all the others, her collection. And so Nick will get a blue polka-dot envelope from Joyce, different from the envelopes of all the other people who want to know him now. And there will also be a blue polka-dot envelope at the Texas Rangers’ spring-training facility, too, on a Santa Claus–sized pile of letters, a copy of the tale for Mitch Moreland to sign and send back, his signature confirming that he knows she saw him.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

  Something Climactic

  THE HOT TUB IN THE BLEACHERS of Veterans Memorial Stadium in Cedar Rapids is empty but on, bubbles crashing into each other and fizzling out. The hot tub is perched over the left-field fence, meant to house parties of young, drunk fans who want to be seen. Right now, though, the most noticeable presence in the stands is the small but vocal Roadkill redux, all of whom have driven an hour and a half and will be driving the same again home at eleven on a work night. Joyce is here, of course, irked at the tepid home crowd that seems willing to only give lackluster claps during the deciding game of the first round of the Midwest League play-offs.

  The most effusive I’ve seen Cedar Rapids fans was during a softball home run derby held before the national anthem of a game in July, entered by weekend warriors in specially made T-shirts repping autobody shops, custom decal services, divorce lawyers. I watched the field, heard kinetic noise behind me that did not fit what I was watching. I leaned on the fence behind home plate with Bose, the strength coach. We glared at the men on the field and laughed uneasily. They were enormous.

  “Look at these pussies,” Bose said to me. I let my voice get cold and condescending, too, like, What kind of void are these clowns trying to fill getting one last afternoon of cheers? These local monsters could hit, though. Softballs like ostrich eggs went flying as far as a baseball can when the Nick Franklins of the world swing right. Each hitter was cheered with fervor, especially Scott, the best, who scowled in his bright orange uniform and had a collection of manic-grinning women holding signs in his honor. Terry Pollreisz sidled up next to us as we watched. The last time he hit in a game was during the Nixon administration, but he sounded young and blustery and personally invested in the thought of being unintentionally shown up by another guy’s success when he said, “Hey, I’ll tell you something. I went in the office before the game and saw the staff freezing softballs so that they’d fly farther. So don’t get too impressed.”

  We sneered and I wondered if Scott knew, if mammoth Scott was complicit in the lie of his greatness or if he hadn’t been told and thought that all the distance was supplied by his body that was no less than a pro’s. It didn’t matter. He was worshipped and people who cared about him were there to see his staged exploits and to wave their glitter-glue homemade signs as he posed with his plastic trophy.

  Now the crowd energy that Scott basked in is absent. The real players are out limbering up for a crucial play-off game, and they are met with near silence, children’s sneakered feet running, the crunch of nacho chewing, the collective chuckling of people killing time. Erasmo is bouncing in anticipation on the top step of the dugout, jacket on even in the sticky heat. He is pitching tonight, what is surely the most important performance of his life by the metrics through which we are taught to look at team sports. This is a make-or-break game for a team on which he is a crucial member. Winners of this league get rings with gems in them and a write-up in the hometown paper of a place that is not their hometown. Erasmo, after a life’s training, has never actually pitched in a game like this, one with consequence, with a community of fans’ and teammates’ expectations resting on him, no
t just his own or his family’s, desires that aren’t actually tied to teams or victories. “Hey,” yells one autograph seeker who has wandered to the front row, the loudest voice in the stadium. “Hey, hey, hey, hey,” until Erasmo turns to him. And then, “Who the fuck are you?”

  I’ve been reading pamphlets and interview transcripts from the Clinton Corn strike, saved on microfilm, converted into PDFs by a few loving hands. Not much documenting the conflict has been saved in Clinton, because why would there be? In the historical society’s illustrated history of the town, there are a few pictures of angry-looking picketers with a caption saying, “Many claim that today’s economic problems in Clinton are a direct result of that strike,” but that’s where the story ends. In state historical societies and university libraries, Clinton is defined, if at all, by two moments. There is the invariable blurb about the lumber and the millionaires, such happy and unexpected facts, and then a jump right to 1979 and 1980, the years taken as the town’s last stand and a metaphor for an entire part of the country, an entire way of life.

  I have a copy of the document that Clinton workers wrote to remember themselves, forty pages of reassertion that this place is important. “A Year in Our Lives” is the simple title. Of course I flip right to the page with the pictures of proud, organized protest taking place in the stadium, no players on the field, just workers. I look for Bill and Betty and Tim and Tammy in the pictures, as if they’ll be where they always are, by the third-base line, maybe even laying out free candy for the strikers to take home. I don’t see them, though they were there, somewhere, I think they’ve told me that. Or maybe I’m looking at them, but I don’t recognize who I’m seeing.

  It’s the best crowd I’ve ever seen in Clinton’s stadium. Every seat is full in the photographs. And there are signs. Nobody in Clinton thinks to make signs now, not for Nick Franklin’s record-breaking home run, not even for a play-off win. In the pictures of the protest, all the signs say the same things, printed on the same flimsy white scrap wood with the same stenciled lettering that you see on the “ADM Poly Is Not a Good Neighbor” signs today in south Clinton. But these aren’t hidden in the neighborhood that nobody goes to. These say, “We Stand with Local 6.”

  Three thousand people filled the stadium. It was Labor Day, 1979, and in the thirty-one years since then nothing has remained the same except for the skeleton of the stadium. There were union representatives on the field that day. Men from the Teamsters and the United Automobile Workers as well as from the national offices of the Grain Millers Union. The crowd paraded from the stadium down to the foot of the factory, arms raised in the pictures, flags waving, American flags, Iowa state flags, homemade banners to represent the Labor Congress, and then back to the stadium for prayer. They seemed to believe, from the language in the news clippings and personal recollections, that they would win, that they had to. And even a year later, when no more protesters flooded the stadium, when many had left town, when they had definitively lost, the newsletter for the struggle asserted a refusal of the ending: “Personal differences divide the community we formed with one another. People are feeling burned out after the long, hard, bitter struggle. But a faithful remnant remains. And we shall overcome.”

  It makes sense to think about the Clinton Corn factory that would become ADM while I’m in Cedar Rapids because ADM has a facility here, too, its smell mixing with the similar but softer odor of the Quaker Oats plant. What’s different, though, is that ADM doesn’t feel so omnipresent here. Maybe because it employs 500 out of 125,000 in the city. Or because, like in many other American cities, just not in Clinton, the plant is situated off a highway here, kept to the very edges of town. Or because the Teamsters established a local at the plant in the 1950s and the industry in the town has remained unionized ever since, no ire-filled arguments in the local paper, no lawsuits, no signs. Even the trains full of product sliding past the stadium don’t sound so heavy. You hear them if you want to listen, but they do not force you. And when I drive by Cedar Rapids with my university friends we all say, “God,” and hold our noses, but really the smell doesn’t seep into everything, or at least it doesn’t bother me so much. Cedar Rapids, to all who have traveled from Clinton, is sneered at. A rising economy, a booming population, uniform suburbs full of new homes. Yeah, there was that flood a couple of years back, but the new stadium looks just fine.

  For the Clinton faithful who have traveled here, for me, Hank embodies that feeling as he stands waiting for a pitch. He limps every time he walks now. Even just standing in his half crouch in the batter’s box, he winces. The bat is loose in his swollen hand, resting on his broken thumb. The bases are loaded, too perfect. James Jones is on third, ready to sprint. And Kevin Mailloux, Nick’s replacement who was the home run leader in rookie ball, but who obviously no Clinton fan likes, he’s on second. Catricala is on first.

  A fastball bores in on Hank’s hands. He swings and groans. The ball makes a pop on his bat, skids hard toward the hole between shortstop and third. My body tenses along with Betty’s and Joyce’s next to me. It looks as though the shortstop will get to the ball. Maybe he takes a bad route, but the ball slides under his glove, into the outfield. Everything is moving. Jones scores, Mailloux scores. Hank hobbles around first, ecstatic pain on his face.

  Another run scores in the first, and the LumberKings don’t need anything more. Erasmo, as he always has, does his job. His arm has been worked this season nearly twice as much as any year in his young life, and though his stuff is in no way electric—his fastball barely reaching ninety, his curve limp and flat—he does his job. He gives up an early hit in every inning, loud ones that quasi-excite the Cedar Rapids fans, but each time a couple of lazy fly balls or a double play ends their chances. In what could be Erasmo’s last performance as a LumberKing, he turns in a game that looks exactly like so many of his others. Seven innings, a lot of hits that amount to not much, no walks, two runs, and then he’s up on the top step of the dugout, jacket on, grinning a little. He is right there to see and he’s hard to notice. Joyce notices.

  “You’re the best, E-mo,” she yells to him, and in a movement so small but so big he turns, smiles, nods once. She lists his accomplishments this year to everyone around us, him, too, easily within earshot. His ERA, his wins, his all-star selection, how few people he walked. All the numbers that only he and she and I remember.

  In the clubhouse, after winning the first round of the play-offs, guys are happy and cheering, and then they turn their attention to sandwich orders. Tamargo is napping in his underwear with the door to the manager’s office left open a crack. Hank is on the trainer’s table tensing his body and trying not to yell.

  Freeze this. The light is shitty. The room is cramped. There’s a radio on somewhere playing honky-tonk rock, Seger into Mellencamp into George Thorogood, and somehow no player has thought to drown it out with vibrating beats from his portable speakers. BJ is looking through cupboards and coolers that have already been emptied, trying to find enough tape and enough ice. Other players are standing, waiting for treatment on blistered hands or sore knees, but they all come after Hank. There is one table in here, and it’s occupied by the number five hitter, the game winner, a crucial man.

  BJ is leaning in and saying, “You can’t play.”

  And Hank is saying, “Bullshit, I’m fine.”

  And BJ is saying, “I know you want to. But you can’t run. You can’t throw the ball to second.”

  And Hank is saying, “You all need me.”

  And BJ is softening, saying, “Of course. Of course we do. That’s not what I mean.”

  I am hanging by Hank’s shoulder. His pain is wonderful to me, brings with it soaring thoughts of If this guy can last through this, then I can … then we all can … Fill in the blanks. Or don’t. It is a feeling better undefined. But by now Hank doesn’t want to mean what I want him to mean. He doesn’t want to be hurt. He doesn’t want to be flailing against inevitability. He wants real things, like no pain and a co
ntract beyond September.

  He keeps playing against Kane County in the second round of the play-offs, but the pain only increases. By the time a foul ball bounces off his right hand, hitting the spot that is already fractured, leaving him looking more stunned than writhing, there is a fatalistic quality about him, intrigue already waning.

  “That must’ve stung,” Betty says in the stands.

  “He’ll be fine,” someone responds. “He ain’t in Afghanistan or anything.”

  That comes up a lot. Tough game out there, or those boys must be hot, or they can’t catch a break. Hey, they’re not in Afghanistan.

  True. But Hank’s gritting his teeth and trying hard to live up to the maxims of war movies and recruitment officers. He doesn’t get a moment to limp off, giving a little wave to tell the fans he will keep trying. He plays through the inning without much notice of his obstinacy. Then in the dugout, he’s told he’s done, he can’t help with anything as banged up as he is. He doesn’t reappear for the next inning. This moment that didn’t happen is his last moment as a player in Clinton, Iowa.

  It feels as if the winning should end when he leaves the field, with how clutch he’s been, how he’s muscled himself into the center of the story. But the LumberKings coast to a 6–2 victory, easy, even with Ochoa’s two strikeouts in Hank’s stead. I’m almost annoyed about it. And then the next game, the deciding game. The LumberKings all hit; the bleachers are pandemonium. They win easily.

  Hank limps to the mound to make a gesture at celebration with his team. They have done it. The thing that they worked for, the vague collective goal that they shared since April has arrived, though Danny’s gone and Sams is gone and young Nick Franklin has moved way beyond. Still, without them, without Hank, the LumberKings will play the Lake County Captains from Ohio for the chance to be champions.