Casey's Home (23 page)

“Do you think that a woman will ever play pro ball?” I
asked my father as we drifted back into the city. The sun hovered just above
the mountains, defining their jagged white tops against the brilliant orange
glow of the sky. He was watching the water, closing in on our right, playing
hide and seek with the freeway.

“Women have played pro ball,” was his immediate
answer, without even turning his head.

“I meant in the majors.”

He was quiet for a moment, and I realized he was
genuinely considering the question, which surprised me. Mostly because it meant
he hadn’t ever considered it before.

“Maybe,” he said at last, glancing over at me. His
face was purposely unreadable. “But I doubt it.”

“Why?” I asked, instantly defensive. “Because they
aren’t physically strong enough? Because you know, Dad...”

“Before you put words in my mouth, Case, maybe you
could listen to my reason.”

Effectively silenced, I let him talk. He narrowed his
eyes and stared at the darkening waters of Lake Washington, as if he were
concentrating on the flotilla of small white sailboats that skimmed past us.

“I don’t think it would be fair,” he finally said, after
much deliberation. “Not because women aren’t strong enough. There wouldn’t be a
female Jose Canseco, mind you, but there could easily be a female Harold
Reynolds. He’s no macho man.” I smiled at his constant disparagement of my home
team. “But no matter how well she played, it would always be the same.
Everything she did would be news because a woman did it. If she screwed up, it
would be just like a woman. If she did well, it would be amazing, because hey,
she’s a woman. And she’d always be a little bit behind the best, never able to
really excel. Now, Harold won’t be a superstar, but he didn’t know that from
the moment he stepped in the ring, and neither did his manager. Any man they
sign could become a great player. Any woman they sign could be a very good
player, but she probably won’t be great. Would you want to play in that
atmosphere?”

“I might have liked the choice, Dad.”

He studied me for a moment, then sighed. “You could
have played softball.”

“I hate softball. You know that.”

“It’s not all fat fifty year-old men taking their
shirts off at first base and standing around in the outfield drinking beer, you
know.”

I snorted. “No, it’s all women playing with a bigger
ball, shorter base paths and aluminum bats because everyone knows that girls
couldn’t possibly run as far or throw as hard or hit as well as men, so let’s
give them a break. It’s like golf,” I said, angry with him for not
understanding, angry with myself for being unable to explain. “I don’t want the
advantage. I want to hit the ball from the same point as everyone else. If it
doesn’t go as far, fine, but boy does it feel wonderful when it does. What use
is it to be the best at something when you aren’t playing against fifty percent
of the competition?”

He pondered this as we crossed the bridge back into
Seattle. Traffic backed up at the end, beginning to show the early stages of
the gridlock that would drag the city to a halt.

“Do you know anything about the All-American Girls
Baseball League?” he asked at last.

“You mean the women’s Fifties league, from the movie,”
I said.

“You know they were a softball league.”

“I remember.”

“Well, in the twelve years they played, something
amazing happened, without anyone really noticing. The ball kept getting smaller.
It was easier to throw that way.”

“Small hands,” I said viciously, and he grinned.

“And it kept getting harder. Now it was easier to hit
further. Then the base paths started to get longer, to accommodate all those
harder hits. They started stealing the occasional base, since those base paths
were so much longer. And then the pitchers started throwing overhand, because
the batters were so much better. By 1954, their last season, they weren’t
playing softball anymore.”

I looked over at my father, his face shadowed in the
descending light, and he was smiling, a little sadly.

“They were playing baseball,” I finished for him. He
just nodded.

“I know how it is for you, Case. I know how badly you
wanted it. I’m just telling you the truth. Maybe someday someone will start
another women’s league. The climate is right. But if you want to play baseball,
the honest truth is, you have to be a man. That’s just the way it is.” He laid
one gentle hand on my arm then, and I turned from the stopped car ahead of me
to watch him. “I’ve never been sorry you weren’t a boy, Casey. Besides, this is
all irrelevant,” he pointed out after a moment’s silence.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because I’m right, but not for those reasons. Every
girl growing up today who wants to play ball is funneled into softball. You
wouldn’t have grown up dreaming about being in the majors. You’d have grown up
dreaming of being in the Olympics.”

I smiled at him as the last light disappeared and we
were left in darkness.

“That wouldn’t be so bad,” I admitted.

“No,” he chuckled, “And I’d have been out there in the
stands, cursing those damn Russians or Germans or whoever the hell it would
have been. Forget goodwill, I would’ve worn an American flag sewn right across
my damn chest.”

And the wonderful thing was, in that moment, I knew he
would have.

1998

Though he would have said in the weeks prior, that the
morning of the hearing would probably be gray, tinged with winter, Ben was
somehow not surprised to wake with shimmering clear sun outlining his bedroom
window. Lying on his warm sheets, spread out like a sunbather on the beach, Ben
felt strangely marvelous. Better, perhaps, than marvelous. Something in the
nature of truly wonderful. He considered this feeling in the shower, turning it
over in his mind as if it were a globe, a crystal ball, searching for the
meaning in his joy. It wasn’t, he decided, because he was resigned to his fate.
It wasn’t the knowledge that he would be picking Casey up on the way in, though
that was good too. He thought, as he shaved in front of the wavering glass of
the medicine cabinet, that it might be because the outcome no longer mattered.
He had nothing left to prove. In the broadest sense of the words, he was in
love; not with a woman or with himself, but with everything at once, like
skimming above the atmosphere and looking down to see it all.

Thinking of the story Casey had
told him about her mother just two nights before, he dragged an old
Who
tape out of his glove compartment and listened to it on the way into town. The
rising sun pulled steam in great ribbons across the roadway and he plowed
through them, leaving swaths of empty air in his wake. He rolled the window
down and let the wind dry his hair in decidedly unprofessional tufts.

Ben had always believed in many good
and important things; the foundation of his mother’s and grandparents’ gentle
teachings. These were the same sorts of things that most people profess to
believe in: God, country, faith, honesty, hope, the essential goodness of the
human soul. He tried, with the usual limited success, to live within the
boundaries set out by his particular set of morals. Sometimes, those boundaries
shifted and he found himself standing in territory that frightened or confused
him. And sometimes, as they had one day twenty-two years before, the boundaries
as he understood them disappeared entirely.

The reporter had been nice
enough. A tall, wiry, young man who was obviously hoping to find that one story
that would finally establish him as a journalistic visionary, the next Woodward
or Bernstein. He even wore a rumpled gray pinstriped suit, smoked too much and
drank his coffee stinkingly black. He was earnest and honest and as stupid as
any greatly intellectual, well-educated young man can be. What he wanted was so
simple. Tell him who was involved. They knew there were bets being placed
against the Atlantics and they suspected it was someone on the team. Someone
had used Ben’s name, though they’d got his middle name wrong. Could it have
been Billy? Just tell the truth, buddy, and no one will blame you for anything.
After all, your career is over, right? What do you have to lose?

Oh Joe, Ben thought as he stared
at the reporter’s serious tie. Say it ain’t so.

What would it mean, to be
absolved of his guilt? What was his guilt, after all? So he had smothered his
accusations and his knowledge. He hadn’t done anything wrong; he’d just kept
his mouth shut, a favor for a friend. At least that’s what he was telling
himself in his hospital bed, itching all over from the excessively starched
sheets, drugged-up and trussed like a turkey.

Though no one had definitively
said it yet, he already knew he was never going to pitch another ball, never
going to get teased in the dugout, never going to hear the sharp crack of a bat
and know with certainty that the ball was foul simply because he had thrown it
to be. And this kid; this scrawny, overdressed and self-righteous kid from
Stanford or Yale or maybe Boston; this kid wanted him to just tear down
everything he had ever believed in to save something that didn’t even exist
anymore. What the hell was wrong with the world, anyway? Where was that line he
had learned to recognize through bitter experience, the one that told him
firmly where he stood? Jesus, how do you choose between two distinct and
necessary parts of your own soul?

“Fuck you,” he told the kid in no
uncertain terms. He was normally very polite in print, but if this kid thought,
for even a moment, that Ben McDunnough was going to turn patsy on his friends,
on his team, on his whole fucking game, then he was in for a surprise.

“Mighty defensive, aren’t we?”
The kid cocked an eyebrow and made some notes on a yellow legal pad.

Ben stared at the yellow pad and
wanted to grab it, to throw it out the window and watch it reel slowly down to
the parking lot like a yellow butterfly. Maybe the kid would go after it. Ben
could just picture the kid’s wiry body as it fell, arms out and grey suit
spread wide, gliding. Instead, he grit his teeth and shook his head. “We won,
for Christ’s sake. What the hell does anyone care about this shit, anyway?”

Oh, people cared all right. If
they didn’t, Mr. Junior Reporter was going to make them care. Ben wanted to
strangle him. Maybe if he’d had two good arms... But in the end it didn’t
matter. Nothing ever turned up. No one ever rolled over, or coughed it up, or
whatever phrase was used for what he used to call snitching.

But it didn’t end because there
wasn’t a story. Ben could still remember sitting in his room in his mother’s
house, being cautiously ignored after he’d put his hand through the wall above
the telephone. That little room, the same one he’d slept in as a dreaming
child, when the world was as wide open as a summer afternoon. What he’d done in
that bed seemed to go beyond weeping into something more cataclysmic, more
life-threatening. Even if he hadn’t gone to California and nearly drank himself
to death, he would have broken apart. The world was wide open, all right, but
that was because every line of conscience, everything he’d believed about friendship
and sportsmanship and doing what was right, damnit, had been fractured and
blown like dust into his ever-expanding empty future. It was like standing in
the middle of the desert. Everywhere he looked seemed just as deadly, just as
unreal, without baseball to fill the void.

Now that he was older, in the
singing sweetness of May, the void hadn’t disappeared, exactly. With time he
simply felt he knew it. Florida never really had a spring, per se, but this
morning the sun was shining with a renewed brightness, like a polished coin.
Doves lined his way, flapping in soft flight from the edge of the road as he
passed. Citrus blossoms took away the dank smell of swamp and replaced it with
pure sugar. Ben was in love, all right, but not with Casey. He liked her.
Perhaps he even felt something more than that, something there wasn’t a word
for in the limited language of English and the stilted heart of a grown man.
But right now, trailing ghostly fingers of mist through eddies of sparkling air
as if he’d been patted down with glitter, Ben was delighted with the world,
with life and with the glorious moment that was now.

Now was freedom, now was
conscience-less and guiltless and sweet like honey. Fuck the hearing and the
Board and the stiff-assed members of the University. Nothing they said could
tear him down to be less than he already was, just as he couldn’t build himself
up in their eyes. What did he need with praise? He wasn’t Billy, shouting and
strutting and cock-sure of everything but himself. Ben had found a certain
self-surety, not sudden but suddenly realized, and he was filled with it,
caressed by it, awakened.

He only wished he’d found it
twenty years ago. God, but that would have helped.

Casey wasn’t wearing black, bless
her. She had on a sensible, long, blue skirt and a matching skin-soft little
sweater that made him want to put his face between her breasts and just rub.
And he had done that, though not with any sweater between them. That was a
wondrous thing, to touch her shoulder as he opened the car door for her and
know he had been with her. His life, despite what others might think of it,
still contained moments of pure joy and he knew this.

She smiled at the sound of Roger
Daltrey and soon began to sing along, her voice rusty and soft but on-key.
Perhaps it was infectious, this endless freedom, he thought as he watched her
surreptitiously. He wondered briefly if he could spread it around him like a
sweet disease. What would the gray heads of the University Board do if they
were to suddenly discover the pleasure of being alive at forty-four, with a
future no more sure than a weather forecast?

What was he going to do?

He was going to enjoy whatever
the hell it was, that was the certain thing. That was the freedom.

“Ben McDunnough, thank you for
coming in today.”

Beatrice Russell was a nice
woman, and an old girlfriend of Billy’s. She was younger than most of the
Board, with a wealthy husband and a desire to be philanthropic. If Beatrice
Russell wanted to be on a Board, she was. Shaking his hand, she smiled at him
and he noticed for the first time that her teeth were slightly crooked. Ten
years, and he’d never noticed her teeth.

“Right, Bea, shall we move
forward here?”

She nodded, not quite looking in
his eyes, and led him to a seat behind one of those temporary tables usually
reserved for bake sales and pledge drives. He wasn’t sure if he felt more like
Anita Hill or someone facing Senator McCarthy. In the end, he figured, either
analogy placed far too much importance on his small corner of the world. Casey
sat behind him in one of the ascending chairs in the old lecture hall. A few
concerned students and parents were scattered in the seats behind him. Ringed
in front of the blackboard, the members of the Board stared, stern and
disapproving. Except for Bea, who was smiling at him, or at least in his
general direction.

Two seats back and four seats
away sat Jake Munsey and Lee, who was wearing black. Jake smiled warily at Ben
and Ben could find no reason not to return the gesture. There was nothing to hate
in Jake, just because he wanted this job. If he were Jake, he’d want it too.

“Shall we get started?”

Ben nodded and took a small sip
of the tepid water someone had left on the table for him.

“The members of the University
Board have convened this hearing in light of your long record of service to
this University, Mr. McDunnough. This isn’t a forum for decision, rather an
opportunity for you to argue on your behalf, to convince us that your
reputation as a coach precedes your lack of experience in the major leagues.
The board has given you this opportunity because you asked us for a chance to
be heard. We do not guarantee that anything said here today will affect our
decision making process.”

Well, there it was. He could talk
all he wanted, but they weren’t going to guarantee they were listening. Was he
supposed to feel guilty because, in the end, his body had failed him on the
field, whereas Billy’s hadn’t? Should he apologize for being singularly normal
instead of wildly… whatever Billy was? With a deep breath of the stale,
air-conditioned air, he began.

“Ladies and Gentlemen of the
board, I’m well aware that I am not Billy Wells. Billy had the sort of
illustrious career I dreamed about when I was a kid, worked for when I was a
rookie, and admired as an adult. He was a fantastic pitcher and a great coach.
He was also my best friend. I know he drew talent from around the nation to
this school because even if they didn’t know his program, they knew his name.
He was, in my mind, the greatest pitcher ever to play the game. And I… well, I
wasn’t. Maybe, if my arm had held, if I’d played twenty years later and had
access to today’s doctors, maybe then I would have proved myself to be as good
as Billy always thought I was. But the truth is that I never had the opportunity
to prove myself on the field. My arm cost me my career as a baseball player,
and I have no name to use to draw the best players here.”

The stony glares of the board
seemed set to petrifaction. Ben plowed on. It wasn’t rehearsed exactly, not in
the formal sense. But he had awakened knowing he would say something like this,
and here he was, with words rolling out and spilling around him and they felt
right, correct.

“I know that you say you are
interested in how well I coached this team, in how much time I spent with them,
in how much I did versus how much Billy did,” Ben continued, “but the problem
is that that’s not really why we’re here. You say you need a good coach. You
say you need someone with experience. You’re absolutely right. You need someone
who understands the boys of this team, who has seen them through several Series
and several years where, frankly, they stank. All of that, I can offer this
institution in spades. I’ve given you seventeen years of my undivided loyalty
and hard work and I think it shows, both in the quality of the boys we attract
to this team and in the number of titles they’ve brought home to this
university.

“But I don’t think that’s enough,
anymore. You want something that I can’t give you. Something I lost any chance
of having, years before you hired me. What the people of this university want,
what the students and the parents and the benefactors and you, sitting on the
board, are looking for, is glory. That’s why you had Billy, that’s what he gave
you. It wasn’t hard work, or dedication, or trust or belief, because in the
end, I gave you all of that, just as much as Billy did and sometimes more. If
that was all you wanted, you’d already have hired me. And let’s face it, you’re
not going to do that.”