The Batboy

by Mike Lupica

  Because she was the station’s best news writer and one of their senior producers, and because the station was all news all day and night, Brian’s mom could pretty much make up her own schedule. And for this summer in her son’s life, she had managed to organize it as best she could around the Tigers’ schedule. So she was working four to midnight when the Tigers were in town, dropping Brian off on her way to the station. After the game, Brian would get a ride home with Mr. Schenkel, who lived in Bloomfield Village, or with Finn Simpkins, another one of the batboys, who lived a few minutes away from the Dudleys, over near the famous Oakland Hills golf club. And sometimes Liz Dudley would be the one driving Brian and Finn home.

  Today she dropped off Brian underneath the walking bridge over Montcalm at a few minutes before two. She never got out of the car, never walked him to the door. Like this was as close to Comerica—to this world—as she wanted to get.

  Brian checked himself in, got on the elevator, went down to the service level like always, amazed at how normal this felt to him already—as normal as walking into his own room.

  When he walked through the double doors today, he didn’t even stop to say hello to Mr. Schenkel, just kept going right into the clubhouse.

  And saw that Hank Bishop was already there. Like he had walked right out of one of Brian’s baseball cards.

  Here he was. Brian really felt like he was in a movie theater, only the star had walked right off the screen and into the audience.

  Brian saw that Mr. Schenkel had placed Hank’s locker between Willie Vazquez, the life of the team and the life of the clubhouse, and Marty McBain, the team’s veteran left fielder and one of the few Tigers left who had been around when Hank Bishop was still playing third and batting third.

  Marty had even played with Cole Dudley when both of them were with the Mariners. The team knew by now that Cole Dudley was Brian’s father, and every once in a while somebody would ask Brian where his dad was, what he was doing, and he’d tell them.

  Brian hadn’t noticed Finn hanging back near where the coffeepots were, staring across the room the same as Brian was. But now he heard Finn, in a low voice—batboys were supposed to be seen and not heard—saying, “The man, the legend.”

  Brian answered in a total whisper. “Oh, baby.”

  Finn said, “Like he never left.”

  “He probably wishes that’s the way things had worked out,” Brian said.

  He looked the same, at least to Brian, looked like the guy they’d always said was too big to play shortstop, even though he once played the living daylights out of the position, covering as much ground as anybody in the league at 6 foot 3 and 225 pounds. Maybe he was a little skinnier than that now. And maybe he looked more tired than Brian remembered.

  But he was still Hank Bishop.

  In the flesh.

  There was a home-white No. 24 jersey hanging in his locker. Mr. Schenkel, who handed out numbers to new players if they didn’t request a particular number, had never let anybody else wear No. 24 for the Tigers even though the number wasn’t officially retired.

  So there was his old uniform, looking brand new. Brian wondered if everything felt brand new to Hank Bishop today, as if he’d be starting all over again once he put on his uniform.

  He kept staring. So did Finn. Mostly Brian wondered why Hank Bishop, who’d been away from baseball for as long as he had, who’d been given the baseball version of a prison sentence, didn’t look happier.

  Brian just wanted to stand there and watch for a while, watch the guy’s moves with his teammates and with the media when they were allowed in. But both he and Finn knew there was another of Mr. Schenkel’s big rules for his batboys:

  Once they were at the ballpark, they’d better get busy. And stay busy.

  Brian knew by now that usually rookie batboys like himself and Finn started on the visitors’ side of Comerica, that working on the Tigers’ side was something you had to earn. But all of the batboys were rookies this summer, and so Mr. Schenkel had had to choose, and he had chosen Brian and Finn.

  “I always liked watching your dad pitch,” he’d said, “ because he knew how to get outs even when he didn’t have his best stuff. And, on top of that, you wrote the best letter this year.”

  So Brian and Finn went down to Equipment Room No. 3—or simply “No. 3,” as they now called it—to change into their pregame uniforms: what looked like a blue Tigers’ golf shirt, worn with their uniform pants. They wouldn’t put their regular jerseys on until four thirty, when it was time to go out for batting practice.

  It was just like any other day.

  Only it wasn’t.

  “You think he can still do it?” Finn said. “At the plate, I mean?”

  “I don’t think Mr. Schofield would have brought him back if he couldn’t,” Brian said.

  “But if he’s not doing steroids anymore . . .” Finn stopped himself. Finn Simpkins had red hair and more freckles than anybody Brian knew, and had just turned sixteen but was small for his age. He played baseball, too, but had told Brian he was nothing more than a scrub on his Juniors team, and hadn’t even tried out for tournament ball. Finn didn’t know as much baseball history as Brian, but he seemed to love the game just as much. “You think the steroids helped him hit as many home runs as he did?”

  Brian blew out some air. “I think they helped everybody,” he said. “Hitters, pitchers, everybody who used them. It stinks, just thinking about it, how they screwed up the record books. But it’s a fact. And if it’s a fact for everybody else, it’s a fact for Hank Bishop.”

  The two boys began going through their list of supplies, even though it was still early. They wanted to make sure that all the work they usually did before batting practice was done so they could be on the field when Hank Bishop took his first cuts.

  But it wasn’t just that. Brian and Finn knew how things worked with Mr. Schenkel, because it was another thing he’d told them their very first day:

  The harder you worked, the more prepared you were, the more likely you were to stay on the home team side of Comerica Park this summer, to not have to switch over to the visitors’ side, the first-base side, which Finn referred to as “Siberia.”

  So the two of them went around the room, making sure everything was in order and fully stocked. Pine tar? Check. Cups? Check. Sunflower seeds—which the players could devour in epic proportions?

  Check.

  Sugarless gum and Bazooka and Big League Chew?

  Check.

  The two of them went back to the clubhouse and made sure they didn’t have to refill the coffee machine. Mr. Schenkel gave them some shoes that needed shining. Brian and Finn took care of that. When they got back down to No. 3, it was almost time to lug the coolers of Gatorade up to the dugout.

  Brian grinned at Finn and said, “I am mad, stupid excited.”

  “No kidding,” Finn Simpkins said. “I hadn’t picked up on that.”

  By four thirty, Brian and Finn had been in their real uniforms for half an hour. So were Matt Connors and Adam Price, the batboys working for the Angels tonight.

  It had been unusual for Brian to watch the bottom of the ninth against the Indians from the dugout, Davey Schofield being like most managers and not wanting his batboy running back and forth in front of him and obscuring his vision of the field. But that game had been an exception, Davey seeing how much Brian was into the game, giving him a chance to experience a great bottom of the ninth from inside. Most of the time Brian was in a chair set up on the field, right next to the end of the dugout closest to home plate.

  For most of the game that was where he sat, unless he was fetching a bat or running new baseballs to the home-plate umpire. Finn’s chair was down the third-base line, at the point where the stands were closest to the field.

  Finn had told Brian his name for the summer should be Foul Ball Simpkins.

  For now, though, the two of them got to enjoy watching batting practice. Brian still felt stupid excited as he watched Ha
nk Bishop get ready to take his cuts with the rest of the regulars. Davey Schofield would be using him as his DH tonight and batting him fifth in the order.

  The Tigers’ first-base coach, Rudy Tavarez, was throwing batting practice today. Rudy had been at the end of his career as the Tigers’ second baseman when Hank Bishop had first come up with the team. As Hank came around from behind the batting cage now, Rudy yelled, “Oh, man, am I seeing a ghost?”

  Hank just gave him a little wave. The gates had been opened early today, so there were a lot of fans in the stands, and they gave Hank his first cheer of the day now. It wasn’t much, the cheer almost sounding as if it came from outside, but it was enough for him to give a brief tip of his batting helmet.

  Hank was ready to hit.

  Brian noticed that everything seemed to stop inside Comerica. Even some of the Tigers players warming up in front of the dugout, to Brian’s left, had stopped throwing or stretching. The media, so much more media than Brian had seen for batting practice in the first games he had worked, crowded to the front of the rope lines that had been set up in front of both dugouts.

  Brian stopped watching them, focused on Hank Bishop. He laced the first pitch he saw over the screen in front of Rudy Tavarez and over Rudy’s head, and Brian saw that his batting stance hadn’t changed a bit in his time away from the game:

  Bat held high and held completely still as he waited for the pitch. No waggling of the bat or extra movement from Hank Bishop. Hardly any stride at all.

  He hit one out of the park on his third swing, the ball hit so hard and so high as it came off his maple that for a moment it looked as if it might go crashing into the scoreboard in left, the one Brian felt hovered over Comerica like a satellite.

  It didn’t. But it cleared the wall with ease. Now there was a bigger batting practice cheer. Hank kept swinging. Nobody had made any announcement around the cage, but it was clear that he was getting extra swings, maybe because everybody just wanted him to get his bearings back.

  Or maybe just out of respect.

  He ended up hitting two more out, the last one to dead center, which at Comerica could feel like hitting a ball over the moon. When he left the cage, Brian was hoping he might walk over and hand him his bat, the way some of the guys did when they were done with BP. But he didn’t. He just walked past Brian and Finn, down the steps, put his bat in with the other ones already in the rack, and placed his batting helmet, looking as new as his uniform did, with the others.

  Then he walked down the tunnel toward the clubhouse. Brian watched him go and then said to Finn, “Be right back to help you start cleaning up, swear.”

  He followed Hank Bishop.

  When Brian got to the clubhouse, the only two players in front of their lockers were Hank and Edwin Rosario, tonight’s starting pitcher. Edwin was facing into his locker, listening to music on his iPod. Hank Bishop walked across the room, poured himself a cup of black coffee, the coffee that Mr. Schenkel had showed Brian and Finn how to make superstrong for the players, and walked back to his locker.

  Brian had learned that Hank’s locker used to be on the other side of the clubhouse, in the corner, but that one now belonged to Curtis Keller. Mr. Schenkel had also told Brian that nobody in the big leagues ever gave up a corner locker without a fight.

  As soon as Hank Bishop sat down, Brian took a deep breath and walked across the room himself.

  When he was standing in front of his idol, he said, “Mr. Bishop, my name is Brian Dudley and I’m one of the new batboys.” The words came tumbling out of him, like a spill he’d have to clean up later. “And I just wanted you to know that you’ve always been my favorite player and not just when you played for the Tigers. And besides that I just wanted you to know how happy I am that you’re back with us.”

  He stuck out his hand. Hank Bishop looked at it, then up at Brian’s face, and smiled.

  It was the first time Brian had seen him smile all day.

  “I’m sorry?” he said.

  “I just wanted you to know how happy I am you’re back,” Brian said.

  “I get that,” Hank said. “What I don’t get is . . . was I talking to anybody?”

  “Were you . . . ?” Brian said. Not getting this. “No, sir.”

  He was looking right at Brian, the smile still in place.

  “Then don’t talk to me,” Hank Bishop said.

  CHAPTER 7

  Brian stayed away from Hank Bishop the rest of the night and told Finn he probably ought to do the same.

  “Maybe he’s just freaked about this being his first game back,” Finn said. “I’m just putting that out there.”

  “I’m just putting this out there,” Brian said. This was a few minutes before the first pitch. “I’m not even making eye contact with the guy from now until we’re in the car going home.”

  And he didn’t, not for all nine innings of a game the Tigers finally lost, 4-2. And that wasn’t easy with a DH, because they didn’t play in the field, which meant they were around twice as much as the guys who were.

  Brian had noticed in the past that the Tigers’ DHs would often go down to the clubhouse in the top half of an inning. Some guys would watch a replay of their last at-bat on the big flat-screen TV in the players’ lounge, where that night’s game was always being TiVo-ed. Some would ride the stationary bike to keep themselves warm. When Bobby Moore, the team’s regular first baseman, was DH-ing, he’d go down to the batting cage and either hit off a tee or have one of the coaches throw him some extra BP.

  Brian would make sure to tell them that if they needed anything, a new T-shirt or jersey or batting gloves, to just let him know. One night Willie Vazquez had DH-ed when he was a little banged up from playing the field. He’d ended up changing jerseys after his first two at-bats.

  “Duds, get me some new duds,” he’d told Brian. “No hits in what I got on.”

  Tonight, Brian made absolutely no attempt to follow Hank Bishop around between his at-bats. He just stayed in his chair and did his job. He was still rooting for Hank to get hits, every time up. And he did get one in his second at-bat, a hard single over the shortstop’s head that got him a standing ovation from the crowd. And Brian knew he was going to keep rooting for Hank the way he always had.

  Even if he was still stinging from what the guy had said to him.

  Was I talking to anybody?

  With that smile on his face. His magazine-cover smile. Or the TV smile you’d see from him in the old days, after he’d found a way to win the Tigers another game.

  Then don’t talk to me.

  Hank had that same smile on his face when the game was over and he was talking to the media again. There was even a time when Brian was across the locker room and heard a big laugh from the crowd surrounding Hank’s locker.

  Funny Hank Bishop.

  This was one of the nights when it was his mom’s turn to drive him and Finn home. As they walked out of the stadium, Brian couldn’t help but think how the day had begun a lot better than it had ended. And it had nothing to do with the game.

  Brian had waited his whole life to meet Hank Bishop. What felt like his whole life, anyway. For all the pictures he owned, there had been one above all others he’d carried inside his head from the time he’d started rooting for the Tigers and rooting for Hank Bishop:

  What it would be like the day he finally shook his hand.

  The guy was nicer to his bat.

  It was a quiet ride home, once Liz Dudley gave up on trying to get any news out of either one of them.

  But Brian had to hand it to his old mom, she kept trying.

  “So what was he like?” she said.

  “I really didn’t get to talk to him very much,” Brian said.

  He was in the backseat with Finn, who added, “I didn’t get to talk to him at all.”

  “But you say you did, Bri?”

  “Just for a sec. Before the game at his locker.”

  “So tell me, what’s he like?” He could see her smili
ng as her face looked back at them from the rearview mirror. “Is he at least as cute in person?”

  “Mom.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I’ve been hit. Somebody help me. I’ve been Mom-ed.”

  Brian said, “He doesn’t say very much.”

  “Like my batboys tonight.”

  “I guess,” Brian said.

  Finn said, “Same.”

  She officially gave up then. When they got home after dropping off Finn, Brian said he wasn’t ready to sleep yet. His mom told him she was cool with that and joked that both of them were moving up on having vampire hours. Before she headed upstairs, she said, “Hon, seriously? Did something happen at the game that you’re not telling me about? With Hank or anybody else? Did you do something wrong?”

  Yeah, he thought, I did. I tried to talk to my hero. But he wasn’t going to tell his mom that. So he just said, “Guess I’m already taking these losses too hard.”

  Then he added, “But you know what they say, right?”

  “What do they say?”

  “Long season.”

  If it worked for the players and coaches and the manager, why not for him?

  He poured himself a glass of milk and went into the den, where he used to watch games with his dad.

  Now the den belonged to him when there was a ballgame on he wanted to watch. He turned on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight and waited for them to get around to Hank Bishop’s return to Comerica, something they teased through two sets of commercials.

  Finally they got around to the Tigers highlights. There was Hank’s second-inning single, several shots of the Comerica crowd on their feet cheering him, one guy holding up a huge sign that said, “The Bishop of Baseball Is Back!” Then came a brief shot, very brief, if-you-blinked-you-missed-it shot, of Hank acknowledging the crowd by tipping his cap.

  He was interviewed on the field after the game by one of the ESPN reporters, saying to the woman, “Until we lost the game, I felt like I was walking on air.”

  You were? Brian thought.