Field of Fantasies

by Rick Wilber

  “Just do it, honey,” Green said to her. “In fact, put that cup of ice on my tab.”

  That got a smile out of Kirby. Green, despite his name, wasn’t—he had been bouncing around the league for a good number of years already before getting the invite to Red Sox camp. Kirby didn’t know much about him.

  When the ice came, Kirby clamped his swollen left hand around the glass, and sighed.

  “You catching Roger today?” Green asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Thought it was you. Can’t really tell you guys apart with the fucking masks on, of course. What number you wearing?”

  “Eighty six.”

  “Well, my sympathies to both of us, brother. They gave me sixty seven.” Hiram shuddered. “If I get a chance I hope to switch it up.”

  “Why?”

  “How old are you? Aw, you would have been only two. But sixty seven, that was a cursed year for the Red Sox, didn’t you know?”

  “Uh, eighty six wasn’t such a great year either” Kirby said, still not quite sure what Hiram was going on about.

  “Cursed,” Hiram said, shaking his head sadly. “You don’t want nothing to do with that number.”

  Kirby felt a shiver run through him as the image of that ball going through his legs earlier in the day suddenly popped into his mind. It wasn’t anything like what happened to Buckner and yet. . . ? He shook himself. Snap out of it. Ridiculous.

  He sipped his beer in silence and let the pitchers indulge their superstitions. Catchers had to be better grounded, squatting down instead of perching up on the mound like flamingoes surveying their domains. He was used to this kind of thing. Pitchers, when in groups, invariably talked about three things besides women, and that was breaking balls, jinxes, and hitting. Yes, hitting. Even American League pitchers seemed obsessed with it. The rumor that Major League Baseball was going to institute interleague play during the regular season within a few years persisted, and of course here in Spring Training, when they played a National League team, they would use the National League rules.

  So Kirby wasn’t surprised when, halfway through his steak, the pitchers started talking about wanting more cage time. “Yeah, I want to get my cuts,” Hiram said. “But I’m a bullpen guy. Like I’m going to be out there more than one inning anyway.”

  “Don’t say that, Green,” a blond, red-faced lefthander named Jones said, a little breathless. “Some of those split squad games, they don’t bring that many guys. If you come in to face the last batter of an inning, and then have to pitch the next inning, and the pitcher’s spot comes up to bat. ..”

  “Keep dreamin’,” Hiram replied. “’Cause that’s the only way you or I are getting any licks in this spring. Really. No way, Jose.”

  One of the Latin pitchers jumped in at that, though Kirby hadn’t determined if the guy’s name was Jose or not. He stopped listening. Everyone knew pitchers couldn’t hit. The National League clung to their stupid rule out of tradition, but they were pretty much the only ones at this point. Kirby had been a fairly good pitcher in his time, but one of the reasons he had given it up was that his hitting talent would have gone to waste. Well, that was the rational reason his coaches and he gave. The less rational reason was that he somehow knew that because he could hit, he did not belong in the fraternity of pitchers. His eyes scanned the bar. Where were all die other catchers tonight? Did they have some other watering hole he didn’t know about?

  The pitchers around him, egged on by booze and the presence of the blond bartender—her baby blue shirt seeming to grow tighter as the evening wore on— were now actually bragging to one another about which one was a better hitter than the next. Kirby put a twenty dollar bill on the bar and stood up to leave.

  “You ain’t goin’ now, are you, man?” said Jose, or whatever his name was.

  “Catchers have early cage time tomorrow,” he said, unable to resist making it a subtle dig.

  “Okay, mister high and mighty,” said Hiram. “But just wait until you see how I hit.”

  Kirby didn’t mask his chuckle, which was maybe a tad on the condescending side. He figured it was all in good fun, but he hadn’t counted on how much Hiram had drunk, or maybe why Hiram—despite deceptive stuff and a high strikeout to inning ratio—never stuck with a club.

  “What are you laughing at? Are you laughing at me?” Before Kirby could answer, Hiram proclaimed, “I’m sure I hit better than you pitch, meat.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Kirby said and walked out.

  * * *

  The next day went much like the first, bullpen sessions, fielding practice, wind sprints, the usual. It was some time around noon when Kirby realized he was the subject of a larger than usual number of stares and looks.

  “What is that all about?” he asked Roger, as they walked back to the foul line to start the next wind sprint.

  “Heard any trade rumors?”

  “No.”

  “Have a hot date last night?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s probably nothin’.”

  But when Kirby got back to the clubhouse, he found Hiram and a small cabal of pitchers hanging around his locker. Kirby’s locker, that is. A twenty dollar bill was tacked next to Kirby’s name tag.

  “So, when are we getting it on, amigo?” Hiram said, his smile and his arms wide. He was wearing only a towel around his waist and his shower flip flops.

  “Sorry, Hiram, you’re not my type,” Kirby replied, drawing guffaws out of some of the guys.

  “No, no, man, our bet.”

  “What bet?”

  “Don’t you remember? At the bar last night, you bet me twenty dollars that you can pitch better than I can hit.” Hiram indicated the sawbuck with one long finger.

  “No, I didn’t,” Kirby said. “That twenty was to pay my bill.”

  “Don’t you remember? I said I was paying for you last night.”

  Kirby paused for a moment. That wasn’t the way he remembered it. But his argument clearly wasn’t going to get him anywhere, not if they were all in on it. He just wasn’t sure what kind of clubhouse prank this was leading to. It wasn’t that he didn’t expect a little hazing—that came with the territory—but he really wasn’t sure where this was going. “That was just talk,” Kirby said, pushing his way through the group to the locker. He sat down on the stool and started unlacing his spikes. They were caked with red infield dirt.

  The group did not disperse, looking to Hiram to take the lead. “All I know is, we have a bet, you and me, and we ought to find a time and place to see who wins it.” There were murmurs of approval from the others. “I mean, who said pitchers couldn’t hit?”

  Did I say that? Kirby wondered. He didn’t think he’d actually said it. “Later, Hiram. I gotta go lift.”

  “Oh, right, build up those muscles so you can get that fastball of yours by me,” the pitcher sniggered, but sauntered away.

  ***

  By the time the regular position players showed up at camp, Kirby’s hands, knees, and his throwing arm were more sore than they had ever been in his life. Thank goodness for the trainers, who had a ready supply of ice, liniment, analgesics, and rubdowns. He didn’t mind being sore when it meant being taken care of so well. And he was catching Roger Clemens every other day, which he figured if nothing else he could tell his grandchildren about. All in all, Kirby was in baseball-player heaven except for one thing: Green and his bet.

  Somehow things had escalated to the point where now half the pitchers in camp were getting ready to take swings against him, and the other half were placing bets themselves.

  He knew it was at the point of no return when Clemens himself said, on one of those wind sprint walk-backs, “Heck, I’d like to get in there and take some cuts against you myself.”

  “Can you hit?” Kirby replied.

  “I dunno,” Clemens shrugged. “I’ve been in the American League all my life. But I never back down from a challenge.”

  Kirby sighed. There hadn’t be
en any challenge, but everyone was acting like there was, and in a team situation you had to go with the group’s idea of reality. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.” The Rocket spat onto the grass.

  “Can you show me how you throw the splitter?”

  ***

  A couple of days later in the showers Kirby snapped Hiram on the ass with a towel and said “So when are we getting it on?”

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Hiram replied, clapping his hands with glee, ignoring the welt on his ass, and scrubbing his head with vigor under the spray of the high showerhead.

  “What about tomorrow, since it’s a light day.” Kirby started the flow on the next showerhead over. They were the big ones, like sunflowers, and they never ran out of hot water.

  “Sorry, couldn’t hear you,” Hiram said, shaking water from his hair and ears like a dog. He raised his voice. “Did you say tomorrow?”

  “Yeah.” Kirby grabbed the soap and began to lather his chest, gently because there were a couple of bruises there from getting crossed up and taking bouncers in the dirt off his equipment. “I hear there’s some other guys want a piece of me, too.”

  “Yeah, me!” shouted Jose—it turned out his name was Jose—from across the cinderblock room.

  “Fine.” Kirby ducked his head under to wet his hair and then turned to Hiram. “Get as many guys together as you want.”

  Hiram had raised an eyebrow and was unsure what to say now that Kirby had made such a dramatic about-face. “So what’s the bet then? You gonna pay us each twenty bucks if we get a hit off you?”

  Kirby shook his head. “Even a blind chipmunk finds a nut sometimes.”

  “So, what, no lucky hits?”

  “Hiram, Hiram,” Kirby said, not sure where the confidence in his voice was coming from, since he didn’t actually feel it. “Have you really thought about how this is going to work? We gotta do it schoolyard style.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Any ground ball on the infield is an out, any pop-up is an out. Line drives, anything that lands on the warning track, hits the wall, or goes over, is a hit. You guys get twenty seven outs. Every three outs clears the bases.” He ducked his head again then came out blinking water out of his eyes. “I’ll give you twenty bucks for every run you score.”

  “You’re on,” Hiram said, and they shook on it, ghetto style, to the whooping of Jose in the background.

  * * *

  Kirby found, much to his annoyance, that he could not sleep that night. He was housed in a two-star motel a couple of miles from the park, the same place most of the other low-paid players and coaches stayed. Nice little place, the kind with a breakfast room and a coffee dispenser that ran 24 hours. Kirby was as perky as the coffee when midnight came around. It wasn’t as if he really cared whether Hiram, or any of the other pitchers, got a hit or a run off him. It was Hiram’s ego, not Kirby’s, that had a lot at stake.

  But something one of the coaches had said to him in the lobby had started him worrying. As he was grabbing a little iced tea from the dispenser there, Red had come up and wished him good luck.

  “Oh, you know about it?” Kirby had said.

  “Kiddo, everyone knows about it. Didja think you were just going to waltz out there and no one was gonna care?”

  “Well, I.. .”

  “Even the groundskeepers are going to be out there. Heh, should be fun.”

  Kirby lay in bed after that wondering how he could have missed the fact that he was now the center of everyone’s attention. That hadn’t been his intent. He just wanted to get it over with, in fact, so that he would stop being the recipient of so much attention. But he couldn’t call it off now, he just had to get out there and do it. Just like any other day in baseball, he told himself. Sure, it was something out of the routine, but it was still baseball. The whole key to success was just being in the moment and doing your best in that moment. Right? That’s baseball

  The next morning he arrived to find the other catchers—or someone—had festooned his locker with red, white, and blue bunting, and there was a ball stuffed into one of his cleats. He shook his head—he knew what the ball meant. In the old days, before strict pitching rotations, managers used to leave a ball in the shoe of that day’s starting pitcher so he’d know it was his turn.

  There was a glove there, too, a pitcher’s glove. Kirby picked it up gingerly, as if it might be booby-trapped, but it appeared to be free of joy buzzers, roaches, or dog poop. He turned it over and saw the name on it was “Clemens.” He had a moment of panic, wondering who stole it from Roger’s locker and looking around to see if he might be able to slip it back in there without Clemens noticing. But then Clemens himself came up beside him, clapped him on the shoulder, and said “I thought you might need that.”

  “Holy crap, Rocket, thanks.”

  “No problem, man. Now let’s get out there.”

  Kirby found it hard to concentrate on the workouts that day. He had to catch Hiram, for one thing, and everywhere he went, people were full of cracks and comments. He found himself blushing under his mask a lot. He tried to shut it out, stay within himself, but he couldn’t.

  He paid for it when catching Roger in the bullpen around noon. They got out of synch, Kirby got crossed up, and Roger let go a forkball when Kirby was expecting the fastball, or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, Kirby didn’t see what he expected, caught the pitch awkwardly, and the next thing he knew Roger was leaning over him asking “Are you okay?”

  Despite the fact he was scrunched up on the ground like a turtle he automatically replied “I’m fine, I’m fine.” It’s what he and every other athlete always says when asked “are you okay?” despite the fact that they are not. Then the trainer and some coaches were there with more specific questions like “Can you stand up” and “Can you take your glove off”—the answer to both being “not yet.” Kirby was hunched over the hand inside his glove, his eyes squeezed shut like he could somehow wish away the pain if he just tried hard enough.

  Now there was the long walk from the bullpen, along the foul line, down the dugout steps, and Kirby felt like if every eye hadn’t been on him before, they were all watching him now. The trainer walked on one side and Roger on the other, holding him by the elbows like it was his leg he had hurt, not his fingers. The midday sun was hot like a spotlight, and it seemed to Kirby like the whole camp had paused to watch his slow march to the trainer’s room. The normal sounds of a spring workout, the smack of games of catch, the steady chop of wood in the batting cage, all were silent.

  As they went up the tunnel he thought he heard Hiram’s voice from across the grass, “Aw, man!”

  ***

  Twenty minutes later Kirby was breathing a sigh of relief They had an X-ray machine right there, and nothing was broken. Hell, it was only his pinky, and it was only sprained. He might have dislocated it but it had popped right back in. He had it wrapped in ice and resting on a shelf as high as his shoulder when Roger came in.

  “So, Doc, what’s the prognosis?”

  The trainer told him. “He won’t be catching for a while.”

  “Yeah, but can he still pitch?”

  The trainer looked at Roger like he had grown another head.

  “Can you just tape the two fingers together?” Kirby asked. “I don’t really use my pinky very much.”

  “You’re a catcher, right?”

  “Right.” Kirby caught Roger gesturing at him from behind the trainer’s back. “Am I cleared to do other things besides catch, though? Like can I still do my running and lifting?”

  “Oh, I suppose,” the trainer said with a sigh and reached for a roll of white medical tape. “Let me see it.”

  ***

  And so it was that Kirby “Nine Fingers” Wilcox, pumped full of ibuprofen and wearing Roger Clemens’ glove, took the mound in Fort Myers to face a motley lineup of eleven pitchers who were all milling around the on deck circle, fiddling with their stiff, new batting glo
ves and their borrowed bats. Three different catchers sat in the shade of the visitor’s dugout with their shin guards on, playing rock, paper, scissors to determine who caught first.

  Kirby hadn’t expected to have a catcher. Then to his surprise he saw he had fielders, too. Scott Hatteberg, another catcher, stood at first base, one of the other guys out of the minors at third. And how about Mike Greenwell and Roger standing in left center, talking? When they saw him look back at them from the mound, they jogged apart. Kirby blinked. Roger was going to play center field?

  There were whistles and cat calls from the rest of the team, players, coaches, and other employees sitting behind home plate, but back about twenty rows so they were under the shade of the roof. Rich Rowland crouched behind the plate and gave Kirby the sign to start his warm-up pitches. Red stood close by, working his chaw absentmindedly, until Kirby had thrown his eighth warm-up pitch, when Rowland and Red shouted simultaneously, “Coming down.” And just like before a real inning, the catcher threw the ball to second base, and then Red stepped up in the role of umpire.

  Hiram tapped his bat on the plate, unperturbed by this turn of events. He must have known there would be an umpire, a team. Kirby took a deep breath and tried to put out of his mind the thought that everyone else knew more about what was going on than he did. He cleared his mind of all thoughts except the one that he was grateful to have a catcher. Having a taiget made it so much easier.

  He kicked, and threw his fastball. Hiram stared at it, it hit the glove, and Red called out “Hype!” and raised his fist.

  Hiram waggled the bat, exchanging looks with his teammates, the other pitchers who had now taken seats in the home dugout. “You’ve seen him now, you’ve seen him now,” one of them shouted.

  Kirby kicked and dealt. This time Hiram swung, late, and missed.