The Batboy

by Mike Lupica

  Not on a night like this.

  He was waiting near the top step of the dugout, knowing that Hank liked to take his favorite bat, his gamer, to his locker with him, sure that this night wasn’t going to be any different.

  As Hank approached him, Brian said, “Your first homer in the majors, your very first one, was against Todd Wirth! How great is that, you did it again!”

  Then he handed Hank the bat.

  Hank nodded and took it. Behind Brian were all these people still in the stands near the Tigers’ dugout, still cheering the home run, still cheering for Hank Bishop. Brian could hear the kids calling Hank’s name, just wanting him to look in their direction. There was one kid, wearing a Tigers cap and a Tigers T-shirt, glove on his left hand, screaming, “Hank, this is the greatest night of my whole life!”

  Hank didn’t even look at the kid, any of the kids. But he did look at Brian with this look on his face that was almost curious, as if he didn’t understand what Brian had just said to him.

  “Fascinating,” he said.

  Then he took the bat from Brian and disappeared down the dugout steps.

  Brian stood there for what felt like a long time. Even the kids who had been yelling Hank Bishop’s name started to leave. Finally he took one last look into the stands. The kid in the Tigers cap was still there, watching Brian.

  Almost like he knew.

  Brian walked down the dugout steps, got one of the baseballs the home-plate umpire had thrown out of play in the ninth inning. Without a word, he came out and stuck it into the kid’s glove.

  Sometimes you wanted to go home with something more than a memory.

  It was a lot more than Brian was going to get from Hank on this night.

  CHAPTER 10

  Mr. Schenkel called Brian and Finn into his office after Saturday’s game, saying he had something he wanted them to tell their parents.

  It was always “parents,” Brian noticed. Plural. It was something you noticed when you had only one parent.

  Singular.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” Mr. Schenkel said to them in his office. “There are going to be times this season when there’s a real late game one night and a real early game the next day and the most sensible thing is going to be to just sleep here. So with ESPN making us their Sunday Night Baseball game and us having to play a twelve thirty on Monday because the Rangers are flying to the West Coast right after the game, well, long story short, we’re gonna just stay over tomorrow night.”

  Brian wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly.

  “Stay . . . over?”

  Finn said, “No way.”

  “It’s a fact,” Mr. Schenkel said. “Now you can both close your mouths. I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want the two of you to start pecking at me the first time a Friday night game ran late and we had to turn the whole thing around for Saturday afternoon.”

  “We get to have a sleepover . . . here?” Brian said.

  “If,” Mr. Schenkel said, “it’s okay with your parents.”

  “Oh, trust us,” Finn said. “It will be.”

  And it was.

  Brian explained to his mom what Mr. Schenkel had explained to them: that Mr. S. would take the couch in Davey Schofield’s office and Brian and Finn would sleep on the two couches in the main clubhouse, the ones set up in front of the two flat-screen television sets.

  Liz Dudley shook her head. “By the end of the season I’m going to end up feeling like your home away from home.”

  “Do you not want me to do this?” Brian said, scared as soon as he said it that she might say that she didn’t.

  “No, no, no,” she said. “You go and have a good time. I know it’s where you want to be.”

  “It’s only going to be this one night and maybe a few others during the season,” Brian said.

  She closed her eyes, slowly shook her head. “Look at me,” she said, “getting to live the baseball dream all over again.”

  As she walked out of the room, she said, “It’s like they say about the mob. Just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in.”

  The last thing he heard was her shutting the door to her bedroom. He’d always known that baseball was never going to be anything he could share with her, not the way he had with his dad when he was still around. And he’d tried to tell her every way he knew how that baseball wasn’t ever going to come between them the way it had with her and his dad.

  But now he wasn’t so sure.

  Sunday went so fast for Brian that he felt as if he’d instant-messaged himself through the whole day.

  First he got two hits against Royal Oak, even plated the go-ahead run in the seventh when he doubled home Will Coben, before the Sting scored six in the eighth to turn the game into a total beatdown.

  When the game was over, he changed in the car, his mom getting him down to Comerica at four o’clock on the nose, yelling at him as he sprinted for the entrance that he’d forgotten his gym bag, the one with his toothbrush and a change of clothes in it.

  “Thanks,” he said, out of breath.

  “I have never seen anybody this excited to get hardly any sleep,” she said.

  He went straight for Willie Vazquez’s locker, the way he did every day now, starting to feel a little bit like he should be wearing one of those little red McDonald’s outfits as he took Willie’s order. By now, word of the burger runs had spread, and Willie gave him orders from Curtis and Mike Parilli, too.

  “Mike, too?” Brian said.

  “He says he’d rather eat paper than those little cut-up veggie deals,” Willie said. “Just think of it as givin’ us all fuel, just with pickles and fries and whatnot.”

  And tonight it worked like rocket fuel for Willie. He went 4-for-4, scored three runs, knocked in three, stole two bases, and even ended the game with an acrobatic play behind second base—laying out to his left, somehow gloving the ball, then flipping it out of the glove in one motion to the second baseman, who made the turn like a pro and finished off the double play that gave the Tigers a 7-5 win over Texas.

  Then the night became different from all the others before it. Usually Brian was in no hurry to finish his chores, even when he knew his mom or Finn’s mom would be waiting outside. Sometimes even Finn would tell him to pick up the pace, asking Brian if he was shining the shoes or putting new soles on them. Mr. Schenkel liked to tell Brian they didn’t have all night.

  Tonight they did.

  The game had taken three hours and thirty minutes, which meant that the game-ending double play didn’t come until a few minutes before midnight. Brian saw the players showering and dressing in a hurry, dumping out of the clubhouse as quickly as they could, knowing they had to be back by ten in the morning, even though Davey had given them all a shout-out that there wouldn’t be any batting practice.

  Hank Bishop, who’d hit another home run tonight, was usually one of the first to leave, which made it easier for Brian and Finn to stay out of his way once they started doing their work—staying out of what Finn called the line of fire. But for some reason he took his time tonight, ended up being one of the last to head for the players’ parking lot, actually pausing to say “’Night” to Mr. Schenkel as he passed by his office. As usual he ignored Brian and Finn, who were tossing towels and uniforms into a bin near the clubhouse doors.

  It wasn’t until Hank had disappeared through the doors that Finn sarcastically said, “Good game, Hank.”

  Brian joined in. “We’ll have your coffee ready when you get back, just the way you like it.”

  Finn, laughing now, said, “Hope I don’t spit in it.”

  “Heard that!” Mr. Schenkel called out from his office.

  Then they all laughed, Brian and Finn the loudest, mostly because it was still totally ridiculous to them that they got to do this tonight.

  When all the work was done, Mr. Schenkel brought out a couple of dark-blue Tigers blankets and a couple of pillows, then began shutting off the lights in the player
s’ lounge and in the trainer’s room.

  “Ask you something, Mr. S.?” Finn said.

  “Where are your cookies and milk?” he said.

  “No,” Finn said. “I wanted to ask if we can watch TV for a little while.”

  Mr. Schenkel handed them the remote. “Knock yourselves out,” he said. “Just keep the volume down, because I’m going to be asleep in about ten minutes.”

  Brian and Finn had each brought T-shirts and the Tigers sweatpants Mr. S. had given all the batboys. They changed into them now. “It’s like we’re getting into our jammies,” Finn said, before Brian told him to shut it.

  Now the only lights in the clubhouse came from the flat-screen in front of them, showing all of the highlights from Sunday’s games.

  When the show went to a commercial, Brian got off the couch and walked over to Hank Bishop’s locker.

  “Be careful,” Finn said. “There might be some sort of invisible fence around it, like people use for dogs.”

  “Just want to check it out,” Brian said.

  Hank had a couple of bats in there, a few extra pairs of spikes, a pair of sneakers. A pair of jeans hung on a hook. There was a bunch of toiletry stuff on the upper shelf.

  And taped to the inside of one of his locker walls was a picture of a girl.

  A teenaged girl, Brian was guessing, tall and pretty, smiling, standing on a beach somewhere.

  The picture was big enough that she had written “Love you, Daddy” in Magic Marker against the blue water behind her and the blue sky.

  Brian had almost forgotten that Hank Bishop had a daughter. He’d gotten divorced during his steroids suspension. Brian suddenly remembered her name, Katie. Katie Bishop. Living near an ocean somewhere without a parent, singular, the way Brian was.

  He stood there and stared at the picture and wondered if there was one like it in the clubhouse of his father’s team in Japan, because Brian had sent him one earlier this year without telling his mom he was doing it, a picture of him and Kenny in their Schwartz Investments Pirates uniforms. He’d included a letter along with the photo, telling his dad about his season, about his batting average and RBI.

  Told him at the end how much he loved him and missed him.

  And never heard back.

  Brian had no way of knowing how old the picture of Katie Bishop was, how long ago it had been taken. He stared at it now, and for some reason, it made him like Hank Bishop more.

  CHAPTER 11

  It was past midnight now, way past, on the night of the great Comerica sleepover.

  “C’mon,” Finn said, “they’re about to show the plays of the week on the Tigers’ channel.”

  “Plays that occurred,” Brian said, turning, “in a ballpark we are still inside of.”

  “Good night, children!” Mr. Schenkel yelled from behind the closed door to Davey Schofield’s office.

  “Good night, Mr. Schenkel,” they sang out in classroom voices.

  They watched the highlights from the week. Watched Willie’s four hits, his headfirst slides on his steals, watched him glove that ball behind second again. Watched the replay of Hank’s walk-off against the Angels again, saw the other players jumping him at home plate. It wasn’t like the rockets he used to hit, Brian knew. It looked more like a ball just falling out of the sky, landing just beyond the right-field wall.

  Who cares, Brian thought. The swing still looks the same, just not the results. There had been a fly ball early in tonight’s game, one that the crowd thought was a home run when it came off Hank’s bat. But when it ended up an easy out on the warning track, Brian had heard the Rangers’ pitching coach yell out, “Not anymore, big boy.” Trash talk about the steroids.

  Brian didn’t know whether Hank had heard, but Brian had.

  They watched the rest of the highlights until Brian looked over and saw that Finn had fallen asleep, as if the air had come out of his balloon all at once.

  Brian gently took the remote out of his hand and used it to shut off the television. He left Finn where he was and took the other couch, the one in front of the other television set. The only light in the Tigers’ clubhouse now was from the supermarket-style refrigerators, the ones with the glass doors and bottles of water and Gatorade and fruit juice and Vitaminwater inside, the ones he and Finn were constantly re stocking.

  He was almost ready for sleep, too. Almost. But first there was something he wanted to do. He walked across the room, through the double doors, down the stairs, and up the runway to the dugout.

  Then up the stairs to the field.

  He took it all in. The quiet expanse of the outfield. The blue tarp on the mound at home plate. He noticed that the lights at the top of Comerica were dimmed slightly, and would stay that way through the night.

  Then he walked over to home plate in his bare feet, feeling the cool, wet grass underneath him, and got into the batter’s box side. He took a huge swing with an imaginary bat, hit himself a great big imaginary home run, and started to run around the bases, taking his time.

  As he came around third, he tossed away an imaginary batting helmet before jumping hard on the blue tarp covering home plate.

  He took one last look around, taking in the sights of the empty place and the night sounds, even though there were hardly any sounds at all at this time of night. Comerica was so quiet he could actually hear the hum of the stadium lights.

  He started back toward the dugout, again feeling the soft ballpark grass underneath his feet.

  When he got to the top of the dugout steps, he used his own chair as a ladder and hopped into the stands and walked up through the empty rows and then over a couple of sections to the two seats on the aisle where he and his dad used to sit, in the last row of Section 135.

  And in that moment, Brian didn’t feel alone at all.

  CHAPTER 12

  Hank Bishop was the first player there the next morning, arriving in the clubhouse a few minutes after Davey Schofield.

  And for the first time, Hank spoke to Brian without Brian saying something to him first.

  “Hey,” he called out when he saw Brian across the room.

  Brian couldn’t help looking over his shoulder to make sure he was the one Hank was talking to, even though it was just the two of them in the clubhouse. Brian was there to make sure the coffee had finished brewing and was ready for the early arrivals.

  There were two forty-two-cup Hamilton Beach coffee urns set up on a long table in the clubhouse for regular coffee and a smaller pot for decaf, because only Davey Schofield and Rube Morgan, the old pitching coach, drank decaf. One of the urns had an R on it, meaning “regular.” The other had an H. For “high test.”

  The high test was like the coffee version of Red Bull, which meant a caffeine bomb. Brian and Finn had been instructed to put twice as much ground coffee into its oversized filter—going by Mr. Schenkel’s instructions—as they did the other.

  And to make sure it was always filled, even after the game had started.

  “Sometimes our kids need a little jolt to get their hearts started,” is the way Mr. S. put it.

  But Brian knew enough about major-league baseball to know the deal, had read up on how players dealt with the long season. Many of them used to use amphetamines before amphetamines became a banned substance in baseball, something you got tested for along with other illegal drugs like the ones Hank Bishop had used.

  The players weren’t kidding anybody. Brian knew high-test coffee was a kind of substitute now, even if nobody talked about it that way.

  “Hey,” Hank said now. “Hey, you.”

  You, Brian thought.

  “How about a cup of your breakfast special?”

  High test.

  “Yes, sir,” Brian said.

  He filled up a tall cup, not having to be told what kind of coffee he drank because he still watched every move the guy made without letting on that he was watching.

  Brian walked the coffee across to him, eyes on the cup the whole way, desperate
not to spill any.

  “Here you go, Mr. Bishop,” he said, handing it to him.

  Hank Bishop tasted it, winced a little. Brian stood there as if waiting to be dismissed. “Yep,” Hank said now. “My favorite. Kind that tastes like you ought to be pumping it for three dollars a gallon at the gas station.”

  “Is it too strong today?” Brian said.

  Thinking he’d already said more than he should have, even about a stupid cup of coffee.

  Hank Bishop said, “Let me explain something to you: It could never be too strong to suit me.”

  He placed the cup on the carpet next to him, Brian noticing even more bats than usual inside his locker today. Then he picked up the sports section of the Free Press he wanted waiting for him at his locker before day games. Brian could see his eyes scanning the front page. Then Hank looked up, as if surprised to see him still standing there.

  “What’s your name again?” he said.

  Brian told him.

  “Brian,” Hank said. “Why can’t I ever remember that?” Then he stood up with his coffee and his newspaper and headed for the players’ lounge.

  “Brian,” he said again, without looking back.

  And as much as Brian felt like a complete idiot, he turned and felt himself smiling as Hank disappeared through the door to the lounge. As he did, he saw Mr. Schenkel watching him from outside his office, shaking his head, almost like Brian had done something wrong.

  “What did I do?” Brian said.

  “You didn’t do anything,” Mr. S. said. “I just wish guys like him were nicer.”

  “Most are.”

  “Just not him.”

  “Not yet,” Brian said.

  “You ever hear the one about the guy who finally stops beating his head against the wall?” Mr. Schenkel said.

  “No.”

  “When he finally does, somebody asks him how he feels and he says, Great!”

  “That’s me?”

  “Little bit,” he said. He shook his head. “I can’t figure that guy anymore. He used to love every part of this game when he was a rookie. Almost like he was a batboy.”