The Ringer

by Bill Scheft

  “Why. Can’t take compliments?”

  “No, because the next time you walked through that door, I would have jumped you.”

  “Oh.”

  As Sheila put away the last of the kitchen supplies, Janet handed her four fifties and apologized for the unexpected spike in mutual sexual unsettlement. Briefly. Then she was back on the job. “If you ever have 8 by 10s done, please send me some. You could get commercial work.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well then, just send me a Polaroid to have around.” She kissed Sheila on the cheek as the new Janet Grasso kissed people. “You know where to find me.”

  Three weeks ago, President’s Day, Sheila was riding the elevator to the thirty-sixth floor of the Landmark. 36H. Janet Grasso Associates. She had called the night before. She didn’t know why. Maybe because she knew the gym was closed Monday and Ray had ordered her to take the day off. Maybe. “Janet, Sheila. I have that Polaroid” was all she said.

  At 7:05, wearing the black leather trenchcoat, she knocked on the door just hard enough to find out it was already open. There must have been seventy-eight candles working. Sheila would have counted had she been there longer than the two minutes.

  “Be right out.”

  At 7:06:40, Janet Grasso emerged. It was neither the new or the old Janet Grasso. It was the Janet Grasso who wore an open Japanese silk bathrobe and pantingly rubbed Lubriderm (Lubriderm?) over her naked breasts and whatever else. That Janet Grasso. Sheila made out two words on her way out: “Ready, baby?”

  So, other than that, her world had gotten very simple.

  This morning had been the first time she’d heard his voice in five months. Woke her out of a sound sleep. But Sheila Manning was right there, “Fuck you, College Boy!” loaded up, and ready to fire, her home phone number the launch code.

  She decided to call Vinnin Estates around dinnertime. It was the next right thing to do. Maybe he’d still be at the hospital with Mort and she could leave a message.

  “Hello?”

  Shit. “Is he dying?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  “You can stay here.”

  “You sure I’ll be able to get in the door?”

  “Fuck you, College Boy.”

  “Good one, Harvey.”

  “Ow.”

  She’d leave at ten. Wait. What was she, fucking nuts? She’d leave at eleven-thirty. Right after her workout.

  18

  The sign read: EIGHT BALLS—ONE DOLLAR.

  “How many strikes do I get for a dollar?”

  “Good one, College Boy,” said Randy Zank. “I haven’t heard that in about twelve years.”

  “I was probably the last guy who said it.”

  “Probably.”

  That line used to be the standard icebreaker at Route One Fun, the amusement complex at which College Boy had spent the better part of his youth. Not most of his youth. Just the better part.

  “Hey Zank, what was the old guy’s name who used to work in the booth for a million years when we were kids? Arnie?”

  “Barney.”

  “Right. Remember, you’d say, ‘Hey, Barney. How many strikes do I get for a quarter?’ And he’d always say the same thing.”

  “Pig pussy.”

  They laughed like kids. Ages twelve and up, an old man in a token booth saying “pig pussy” is about as good as it gets. No kid can hear it once.

  “He die?”

  “Ten years ago. I bought him out the year before. Nineteen-eighty.”

  “How’s business?”

  “Can’t complain.”

  It used to be eight balls for a quarter. Always. And they used to be balls, too. Baseballs. Not these mustard colored half-rubber, half-titanium orbs covered with half-centimeter dimples like they’d come from a buckshot testing range. It didn’t even sound like a baseball when you made contact. It sounded like a mistake.

  College Boy had not been to Route One Fun since he moved to New York. Fourteen years. Okay, it might have been six balls for a quarter the last time he was here. And Barney may not have said “pig pussy.” He might have said, “Hey, dicklick. Wear a fucking helmet.” But they were still baseballs, and it was still a good idea to be there.

  He hadn’t had a bat in his hand in almost nine months and the meager selection of house whuppin’ sticks catered more to Little Leaguers and people in street shoes waiting for their tee time on the Route One Fun miniature golf course. So, not good. And the softball machine was busted so he ended up in the 60 mph baseball cage, the first time against the pills in at least ten years. And they weren’t even baseballs either. That yellow shit with the dimples.

  But, Christ Jesus, it felt great. The wrist and the thumb were delightfully sore, like burning the roof of your mouth on great pizza, and he sprayed four dollars worth of pitches wherever he wanted.

  And then he moved next door, to the cage with the rotting VERY FAST sign. Another four dollars. Thirty-two balls, maybe twenty-two strikes. He nailed them all. Okay, maybe he fouled three straight back.

  And then he was College Boy again.

  “Hey, Zank. This thing is only throwing seventy-five. Can you turn it up to ninety?”

  “I don’t know.” He came out of the token booth.

  “What about if I give you ten dollars?”

  “Okay. But you gotta wear a helmet.”

  “Here’s another five for no helmet.”

  “Keep it. Just pay for my balls.” Randy Zank quick-limped back inside the token booth and emerged seconds later with a bat. His bat. Wood.

  This apparatus, one of the old Iron Mike overhand jobs, hadn’t thrown ninety miles per hour since it and College Boy had been in their early twenties. It took a while for the pitching machine to find the plate, joints dizzy from the increased torque, as if Old Mike was giddy from what he was being asked to do. College Boy watched the first eight offerings sail over his head, the second eight come to him on a hard bounce—“fast-bowling,” as the cricket people called it—and the third eight a variety pack of wildness.

  By the fourth dollar, the machine was suddenly warm and focused. Eight pitches, six strikes. That left him and Zank to split his last five dollars. Forty pitches, forty potential strikes. Five real at bats.

  “Go ahead, Zank.”

  “Let’s see if I have anything left.”

  “You want a helmet?”

  “Pig pussy.”

  Before Randy Zank left for Vietnam, he was what baseball scouts call a five-tool player. He could field, throw, hit, hit for power. And run. Run all day. Ball four, two pitches later, he’d be on third. If a ball he hit bounced twice in the infield, he was safe. If it bounced three times, he was on second. Wheels. Wheels in the late ’60s, when nobody in Lynn called them wheels. Now, caged yet unshackled, down to one tool, Randy Zank whaled away for a glorious, decade-backpedaling two minutes. Twenty-four pitches, twenty strikes, twenty-four hurried destinations. All hits. All clean.

  “I think you’ve done this before,” said College Boy.

  “Never before closing.”

  “Can I try the wood?”

  “Sure.”

  Two bucks left. College Boy still had twelve good, quick swings in him. He sent nine balls into the deepest corner of the netting that enveloped the cages. Each time he connected, it almost, almost sounded like he was hitting baseballs. The other three belt-high strikes he lashed on a furious line back at their originator. The last one put a half-dollar-sized dent in the top crook of the metal arm of the pitching machine. So endeth the comeback of Iron Mike.

  “That’s enough. I’m good.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do I owe you anything for repairs? I can come back with money tomorrow.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Are you sure? It seems a little slow here.”

  “Can’t complain.”

  College Boy’s only reward for putting on the batting exhibition that disabled Route One Fun
’s second-hardest working employee was a remarkably smooth reentry onto the highway. He negotiated the Everett rotary unconfused and headed north on U.S. 1, back to Salem.

  No one but Zank had seen him rip at ninety miles per hour. This again. How come whenever it mattered at all, College Boy worked in virtual silence, with backs turned? And did it really matter now, at thirty-six, grabbing a couple of March hours to take his mind off where it refused to be in the first place? No. The career that he never had was over and the only trade he’d learned, how to care for a relative with Parkinson’s, was about to be phased out by Personnel. No, not Personnel. Human Resources. Perfect.

  Mort Spell had arranged the tryout in May, 1978. College Boy’s senior year. Despite three outstanding seasons at Lynn South and full scholarship offers to six schools, Suss Sussman had been passed over in the 1974 Major League Baseball amateur draft. Good player. A little small. Not enough upside, they said. Upside. Was that even a word? Maybe when Fred Sanford told Lamont where he was going to smack him, upside yo head, but not to describe someone’s baseball ability. Or not describe it. Some scout had made it up. Some guy in plaid and stains with a stopwatch and a car full of Whopper wrappers whose life had, well, not enough upside.

  Scouts. They were always there to see someone else. Usually a tall blonde or black guy with black guy wheels. They knew College Boy enough to wave and move on, like meeting your date’s girlfriend. Occasionally, they even said something to him. But it was always, “Suss, nice game. Can you get Chad (or Reggie) to come over here?”

  Mort had stopped by that April on his way to Buffalo. He was researching two pieces for the New Yorker. A long hockey profile on the Buffalo Sabres high-scoring “French Connection Line,” Gilbert Perreault (Peh-ROW), Rene Robert (Ro-BEAR), and Rick Martin (Mar-TEHN), and a casual anthropological study of the evolution and impact of the Buffalo Wing. (That would be Buffalo Wing, the food. Not Buffalo wing, the position played by Ro-bear and Mar-tehn on either side of Peh-row.) Mort Spell had not seen his nephew play since Little League, and bundled in the bleachers with a dozen others (No scouts: Too cold, no blondes, no blacks.), he watched this sudden man do everything right in a 10–2 win over Cortland State.

  “Where do they have you going in June, kid?”

  “Who?”

  “Whatever team you signed with.”

  “I’m with nobody.”

  “Rubbish. Have they seen you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Can you get Chad to come over here?”

  “Well, that’s bilge.”

  “Yeah, I don’t get it.”

  “They must think you’re going somewhere.”

  “I’m with nobody.”

  “No, going somewhere, like business school. Somewhere else.”

  He wanted to laugh out loud and say, “Good one, Uncle Mort.” Instead he tried for the only time, out loud, to explain what he could not. “It’s like they look at me and don’t know what to do.”

  “By the way,” said Mort, “welcome to the club, kid.”

  Lenny Merullo, head of the Major League Baseball East Coast Scouting Bureau, promised Mort he would swing by before the end of the season and take a look at his nephew. As a rule Lenny Merullo never ventured too far off the East Coast, and Upstate New York qualified as the Outback. But there was this big righty at Cornell, Kutzer, who one of the plaid guys thought had something. He was pitching in the first game of a Saturday doubleheader with Harvard. So, Lenny Merullo figured two hours for Kutzer, then another hour for the fifty-mile drive to Binghamton, on his way home, where this nephew would be playing the second game of his doubleheader. What’s his name. Harvey Sussman. Whew, bad name.

  Kutzer only lasted three innings, which was a bit unfortunate, but he was only a sophomore and Lenny Merullo would be back. Lot of upside. More unfortunate, much more, the three innings he lasted were the first three innings of the second game. Lenny Merullo would be very late.

  College Boy, still Suss that day, had heard from Mort that Lenny Merullo might try to make it before the end of the season. He stopped waiting after a couple of games. Too distracting. Like waiting for the end of something that may have already ended. So, to his credit, Suss Sussman just enjoyed the last licks of his baseball life. Purely. It was a state of mind he would never perfectly duplicate thereafter, although thirteen years as a softball ringer in New York proved a facsimile that could have and did fool everyone but the boys in forensics. And himself.

  Binghamton was the last stop, and the second game of the doubleheader the snack bar inside the terminal. He had gone 3-for-4 in the opener, a 6–1 win, and was 2-for-2 with a triple and a triple-robbing lunging catch through five innings of the nightcap. College doubleheaders are seven innings long. Binghamton led, 4–2, and was batting in the bottom sixth when Lenny Merullo showed up. The triple-robbing lunging catch had been in the bottom of fifth, but you probably knew that.

  Lenny Merullo had the sincere sensation of watching Harvey Sussman—whew, bad name—haul in a routine fly ball for the second out. And, if that wasn’t enough, in the top of the seventh, with two out and a man on second, Binghamton walked him intentionally and Lenny Merullo watched the bat never leave his shoulder. But wait, there’s more! For two glorious seconds, he watched him run hard halfway to second on a 3–2 pitch before the ump wheezed “hy-eeeeeeeeek” to end the game.

  “Harvey?”

  “Suss, that guy wants you.”

  “Hi.”

  “I’m Lenny Merullo.”

  “Mr. Merullo.”

  “Sorry I got here so late.”

  “How late?”

  “Bottom six. I heard about the catch, and the two hits.”

  “Well, thanks for stopping by. I know you were doing a favor for my uncle.”

  “Look,” said Lenny Merullo, “do you want to do this now?”

  “What?”

  “I can run you now. Or you can come to the open tryout at Fenway June twenty-second. But that’s a month away. I know you’re not playing on the Cape this summer. That’s a long time to be idle.”

  “You’d do that? Here?”

  “Sure.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “Oh, so not that long.”

  “Actually, it takes five minutes, but I figure you need five minutes to get a pitcher and catcher. And I’ll need two bats and three balls.”

  College Boy grabbed Daniels, his catcher, and Fagan, Binghamton’s best pitcher, a highly sought-after junior who was playing on the Cape this summer. They warmed up as he walked to the outfield with the bats, balls, his glove, and Mr. Merullo.

  “Go ahead and stretch, kid. This will take a minute. Give me the bats.”

  Lenny Merullo dropped one bat anywhere, then took out the world’s oldest tape measure and pinned the business end underneath it. He half jogged exactly sixty yards, the distance between any two bases, and dropped the other bat. The stopwatch came out of his jacket pocket. Checked jacket pocket. Not plaid, checked. Huge difference.

  “Okay. When you’re ready. Go hard.”

  You have to cover sixty yards in under seven seconds or the tryout is over. College Boy, after playing two games and running around for five hours, broke ragged but clocked in at 6.6. In the catalogue of foot speed, a 6.6 sixty is listed under “Quick white guy.”

  “Okay. Grab your glove and those balls and meet me over here.”

  Over here was twenty feet in front of the fence in straightaway center.

  “What’s the catcher’s name?”

  “Daniels. Ah, Tim.”

  “Daniels! Heads up! Okay, throw home.”

  Three hundred eighty feet away. Lenny Merullo tossed the first ball in the air, just ahead of College Boy. He ran three steps beyond after catching it, and by the time he let the thing go, home plate was a concept 370 feet away. The first throw caught the back of the pitcher’s mound and skidded left. The last two sailed to t
he front of the mound and made it to Daniels on four bounces. Key word: sailed. Lenny Merullo was looking for a guy who could hit the catcher on a three-foot-high line from 370 feet, no bounces, no sailing. What the scouts called a “big league cannon.” There were about six players in The Show who could do that. Six hundred twenty-five big leaguers, six big-league cannons. That’s why Lenny Merullo kept looking.

  “Okay, let’s hit.”

  College Boy grabbed both bats and jogged in, smiling at the notion that if he walked he might stretch the tryout into its sixth or seventh minute. Fagan was warmed up.

  “Okay, Harvey. Ten swings.” No chance. Lenny Merullo still had the stopwatch going.

  Fagan helped him out, but not too much. Lenny Merullo was watching him, too. He threw seven fastballs, which College Boy redeemed for three hits, three fouls, one fly. Then three curveballs. Two weak groundballs and one hit, a screaming double that one-hopped the fence in center, ironically close to where he had attempted his throws two and a half minutes ago.

  “Okay, thanks, guys.” Lenny Merullo pulled out his current ratty notebook and made three notations. “Okay, Harvey, you’re on file with the scouting bureau.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sorry I was late. Tell Mort I made it, though.”

  “I will.”

  “Okay.”

  “Mr. Merullo, what does that mean, to be on file with the bureau?”

  “Fuck if I know.”

  Lenny Merullo then laughed like a guy anxious to get into his car and drive home without stopping to piss. Which he was.

  “Parking lot’s over there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay then.”

  So endeth the tryout.

  “Harvey, what was the pitcher’s name? Fagan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fagan. Okay then.”

  “They look at me and don’t know what to do.”

  “Welcome to the club, kid.”

  On his way home from the cages, College Boy stopped at the cash machine outside the Bay Bank in the Vinnin Square strip mall. It was Mort’s ATM card (PIN: kinglear, if you must know), another thing about which he’d been incredibly responsible, appropriate, and judicious. Who was this guy anyway? He would take out a hundred dollars, always a hundred dollars, then leave the money on the dining room table and loudly let Mort know how much he was taking and what for. There wasn’t even a Hiding Place A at Vinnin Estates. Seriously, who was this guy?