333 Miles (7 page)

Gary: “You will, when it is right. You just
need to be open for it.”

Alex: “Thanks. I hope so.”

Gary: “Suddenly, hanging with you two,
marriage doesn’t seem so bad. No hiatus and no CPL to worry
about.”

Alex took his eyes off the road and looked
straight at Gary with a serious expression on his face: “No, no.
You’ve got to be careful with that shit. I’m serious, dude.
Mother-fucking alimony. It’s the super-highway straight to a
six-figure CPL. No shit, I’ve seen it happen.”

This gave Gary a laugh: “I’m not too worried
about it. Listen, let me ask you guys a question. Do you ever, you
know, bottom out?”

Mike: “What do you mean?”

Gary: “Well, in certain positions, I run out
of room. I can’t get it all the way in. I am just wondering if this
is normal. I can’t really remember having this issue when I was
single.”

Alex: “Now this is interesting. Are you
talking regular positions, or kinky weird shit?”

Gary: “No, just regular. Blair’s idea of
kinky is leaving the lights on.”

Alex: “In that case, dude, no, I don’t think
it’s normal.”

Gary: “Hmmm.”

Mike: “What are you saying, like you’ve got a
huge fuck-stick or something?”

Gary: “No, no, it’s not that . . . I think
maybe Blair has a shallow dish.”

Chapter Nine

Games Part I

5:02 p.m.

“
Do you believe in miracles?
Yes!!!”

– Al Michaels,
1980 Winter
Olympics

It was still early in the trip, but the group
was making solid progress and had just passed through Corona,
California. Despite the fact that the Stanford game had not yet
started, Mike woke Roger up several miles back because he was
snoring and they were starting a game of categories. Nirvana’s
Smells Like Teen Spirit
was playing lightly on the stereo.
Roger yawned and stretched his arms, straightening them into the
front seat, one on each side of Gary’s head. In the driver’s seat,
Alex was trying to crack his left knee but was struggling because
there was not enough room to fully extend it. Behind him, Mike
rearranged his balls with the hand in his right pocket.

Roger: “Alex, do you mind if I have a dip in
here?”

Alex: “You mean another one? No, not as long
as you give me one. Just don’t spill. Hundred dollar penalty you
spill. Plus I beat the shit out of you.”

Roger agreed to these terms. “Done and done,”
he said. He grabbed the Kodiak can off the floor, and packed and
inserted a dip within five seconds. “When have I ever spilled?” he
asked through a mouthful of tobacco grains, handing the can up to
Alex who had put his right hand awkwardly into the back seat but
kept his eyes on the road.

The question was directed at Alex, but it was
Gary who answered, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe like the time when you
got drunk and tried to hide your open spitter inside Blair’s new
Dior bag.”

Because this elicited no response from
anyone, Gary got back to the game at hand. “Okay, the scores are
Alex three, me two, Rodge four and Mike three. If Roger loses here,
I win and Alex gets his money back. And the category is . . .
either World Series winning teams or league MVPs – you need the
team or the player and the year. I will start with the ’86
Mets.”

Roger: “So a World Series winner or a regular
season MVP?”

Gary: “Yes, and you need the year.”

Roger: “Okay, Bonds, 2004.”

Mike: “Bonds, 2003.”

Alex: “In that case, Bonds 2002.”

Gary: “Bonds, 2001.”

Roger: “Yeah, that guy sucks, Bonds,
’93.”

Mike: “Bonds, ’92.”

Alex: “Bonds, ’90. Next?”

Gary: “Okay, I guess that is done. How about
Kevin Mitchell, 1999?”

Roger: “Ooooh – nice one. I will go with
Sosa, ’98.”

Mike: “Caminiti Baby. 1996.”

Alex: “Mike, you really are gay. The guy is a
juiced-up crack-head. And a dead one at that. Whatever. Okay, I can
do World Series, right? 2005, White Sox.”

Mike: “Have some fucking respect. The dude
won the MVP and led the Pads to the World Series. Who are you to
judge his private life?”

Alex: “Okay, fair enough. Take it easy.”

Gary: “2004, Red Sox.”

Roger: “2002, Angels.”

Alex: “Those bastards.”

Mike: “Larry Walker, 1997.”

Alex: “Pujols, oh-five.”

Gary: “Yastrzemski, 1967.”

Roger: “Good one, last triple crown winner.
Okay, if we are going old school, Bob Gibson, 1968.”

Mike: “He won the Cy Young and MVP?”

Roger: “Yep.”

Gary: “Yeah, that’s right. He did.”

Mike: “Okay, 1989, Oakland A’s.”

Alex: “1955, Brooklyn Dodgers.”

Gary: “Yes. I will go with the Marlins in
2003.”

Roger: “George Brett, 1980.”

Mike: “2001, Yankees.”

Alex, Gary and Roger immediately sounded the
buzzer sound in unison: “Aaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

Roger: “Sorry, buddy, Yanks won 1998 through
2000. Womack singled off Rivera to beat them in 2001.”

Mike: “That’s what I meant, 2000.”

Gary: “Sorry, dude, no take-backs. New score
Gary two, Alex three, Rodge four, Mike four. Rodge, your
category.”

Roger: “Okay, we’re gonna go with, in honor
of lover boy driving the car, actresses who Tom Cruise has boffed
in a movie. I will start with Renee Zelweiger in
Jerry
McGuire.
”

Mike: “You fags are daydreaming about who
sleeps with Tom Cruise and you call me gay? Okay, whatever . . .
um, Nicole Kidman in
Eyes Wide Shut
.”

Alex: “Rebecca Demornay,
Risky
Business.
”

Gary: “Cameron Diaz,
Vanilla Sky.
”

Roger: “Demi Moore,
A Few Good
Men.
”

Mike: “Wait, did they actually fuck in that
movie?”

Roger: “Come on, they must have.”

Mike: “Does anyone else remember?”

Alex: “No, I don’t.”

Gary: “I don’t either. I think we have to
give it to him, though. They must have at some point.”

Mike: “So you won’t let me change the Yankees
but this is okay?”

Alex: “Just fucking go.”

Mike: “Fine. Kelly McGillis,
Top
Gun.
”

Alex: “Shit, how did that last this long.
Okay, E-liz-a-beth Shue.
Cocktail.
”

Gary: “Good one. Nicole Kidman,
Far and
Away.
”

Alex: “You actually saw that?”

Gary: “No, I just remember the preview.”

Roger: “Jeanne Tripplehorn,
The
Firm.
”

Mike: “Okay, give me a minute . . . Didn’t he
fuck Brad Pitt in
Interview With a Vampire
?”

Alex: “No dude, I don’t think we can give you
that one.”

Gary (eagerly): “Is that a loss?”

Alex: “Yes, unless Mikey can come up with
another one in five seconds.”

Mike: “What about the six-year-old girl in
the vampire movie?”

Alex: “Christ. What’s wrong with you?
No.”

Mike: “That’s all I got. This is
bullshit.”

Gary: “Ah very nice, that means I take the
pot and Alex gets second.”

Mike: “Great, so I’m already down twenty
bucks and we are not even to Nevada yet?”

Gary: “Shit, we’re not even to Barstow yet.
You are in for a world of hurt.”

Mike: “This is bullshit.”

Alex: “Jesus, chill out, Sourpuss.”

Roger: “I really need Stanford to hit. Let’s
play another game for double the stakes.”

Interlude Four

Mike (9)

It was a picture-perfect day at Scripps
Ranch, twenty miles northeast of downtown San Diego. A slight wind
carried the smell of the sea air, and random puffy white clouds
floating overhead provided periodic respite from the warm sun. Much
to the delight of the kids, as well as the parents, an occasional
F-14 Tomcat from Miramar Marine Air Station buzzed over the field
on its way back to base.

The weather was ideal, and so was the
baseball diamond hosting the day’s Little League game between the
Mets and the Royals. One of the fathers from the Cubs (one of the
other teams in the league) had started a bio-tech firm that was
bought out by Genentech. This particular dad had a fetish for
baseball diamonds and dropped $475,000 into turning the Scripps
Ranch Little League diamond into one of the finest places to play
baseball on the West Coast. It was complete with sunken dugouts, a
padded home run fence, bullpens, an electronic scoreboard, and
seating for up to five hundred people. The field itself was
brilliantly manicured. People joked that it was better than Jack
Murphy Stadium where the Padres played. Somewhat unfortunately, the
dad’s name was Schtupp, so the complex was officially renamed
Schtupp Field. There were still plenty of errors made on Schtupp
Field, but here, unlike most youth leagues around the country, bad
hops were rarely the cause of any of them.

Mike Bochner showed up this particular day
expecting to play third base and hit sixth in the lineup, as he
usually did. Mr. Schtupp also funded an official league scorekeeper
who printed out a stats sheet for the league, called Schtupp’s
Stats. Years later, in college, Mike would joke with some of his
childhood buddies about what their Schtupp stats were with the
ladies, but at the time they took their baseball numbers very
seriously. Some of the parents felt that displaying all of the
kids’ statistics for everyone to see was inappropriate and
unhealthy for those who had very low batting averages or high ERAs.
Already showing signs of being the conservative Republican he would
become years later, Mike found these parents to be “pussies” (a
newly learned word he thoroughly enjoyed using) and felt they
needed to deal with reality and quit being so politically correct.
He astutely observed that most of the parents who objected happened
to be the ones whose kids tended to suck. Mike was hitting a
respectable .315 at the time.

Five minutes before the game, Walter Chen,
one of the kids who had a very low batting average, was practicing
his swing in left field. He neglected to look behind him and his
follow-through hit Tyler Jones, the Mets’ best pitcher (arguably
the best in the whole league), squarely in the jaw. Tyler dropped
to the ground as blood sprayed out in every direction. Some of it
went farther than just about anything else Walter hit that year.
Though Tyler’s jaw would hurt every time he opened his mouth for
the next six months, he was quite lucky because the bat hit just
under his teeth, which remained intact. He was taken immediately to
the hospital where it was determined that his jaw was not broken,
which the doctor also said was very lucky.

With Tyler out for the day, this meant Willy
Christensen would start the game on the mound for the Mets. Willy
usually pitched the second half of the game, after Tyler, and was
usually pretty good. This day, however, he just didn’t have it. The
game started twenty-five minutes late due to the time it took to
get Tyler off the field and on his way to the hospital. When the
umpire finally said, “Play ball,” Mike watched Willy’s first pitch
sail four feet above the catcher, batter and umpire. Pitch number
two was equally as short as the first one was high. Number three
drilled the leadoff batter in the wrist, at which point the child
dropped the bat, grabbed his wrist and promptly started to cry.

“Jesus, what a pussy,” nine-year-old Mike
thought to himself while smoothing out the dirt in front of third
base.

Willy’s luck with the second batter wasn’t
much better. He walked him on four pitches. He was more efficient
with the third batter, hitting him in the head on the first pitch.
The ball struck near the top of the batter’s helmet and bounced
harmlessly up into the air toward the backstop. The child was
unfazed and took off in a trot toward first base.

One of the parents from the other team was
not happy about two of the first three batters being hit. “Hey, get
this guy out of here. He’s terrible and he is going to hurt the
kids,” he yelled.

Willy’s dad, who was a home-building
contractor and could rarely attend games, happened to be at this
one. Mr. Christensen was a former marine who stood about 6’4” and
didn’t take shit from anyone. He didn’t intend to let anyone insult
his kid on the field. “Stick a cork in it,” he instructed the other
vocal parent.

Everyone assumed that would be the end of it,
but it turned out Mr. Protective Parent was a cop and didn’t like
being told what to do. He immediately stood and walked right up to
Mr. Christensen and reiterated that if his son couldn’t throw
strikes then he shouldn’t be in the game and was a danger. Other
parents started slowly backing away as it seemed a physical
confrontation was all but inevitable.

Sixteen-year-old Ryan Sackson, who was acting
as home plate umpire for this game for the tidy sum of $18, had
other ideas. For a high school kid, he took impressive control of
the situation. Ryan walked immediately back to the backstop and,
just as Willy’s dad was sticking his finger in the other parent’s
face, he began to shout. “You two – you are both out of here. This
is a little league game, for God’s sake. You should be embarrassed.
Pack up your stuff and go home.”

The two adrenaline-fueled men looked at
sixteen-year-old Ryan and realized his point was valid. They also
realized he had given them a face-saving out that wouldn’t require
fighting in front of their kids. Without saying a word, they turned
away from each other and began gathering their stuff to leave.
Pretty much everyone in the place had forgotten the kids on the
field, but Willy was not happy about his dad getting thrown out of
the first game he had come to see that year.

“Hey, fuck you, Blue, you can’t throw my dad
out of the game,” he yelled at Ryan from the mound.

Willy got thrown out of the game as well.
Four minutes later, he and his dad were walking out toward the car
together. Mr. Christensen was proud of his son and gave him a pat
on the back. “How about if we go to McDonalds and hang out for a
while and not tell your mom about this?” he asked. “Sure, dad,”
Willy agreed.