Out of Control (2 page)

Music was a different world from baseball. I don't mean to say there isn't creativity in sports, but baseball—and I would think most sports—is about dependability, repetition, and routine. There is no situation in baseball that hasn't happened before, and for every situation there's a time-tested, reliable strategy for handling it. But music is full of surprises. In music there are no “percentage plays.” Genius gets to play. Doing the unexpected is a good thing. I feel like I've always known this.

When Dad and his friends played around, if I wasn't at baseball practice, I would find a place to listen. I picked up keyboard and guitar pretty early. I practiced whenever I had a chance. Kinda funny—you hear about kids wanting to bolt music lessons so they could play outside. I was the opposite.

A couple of years ago I even started a band with three guys I know at school. We call ourselves Four. Dad was okay with it as long as it didn't interfere with you-know-what. We do covers of pop stuff, and we've actually played at a few school dances and some parties.

But baseball was fun too. I thought my brothers were heroes, and I always expected to play for the Roadrunners. When I was old enough and realized Dad was right about my talent, I was happy in a kind of unthinking way. And I loved that Dad was happy about me.

So when did it all change? It wasn't clear-cut. I guess baseball just lost the element of surprise, and that was something I valued. The closer I got to choosing baseball as a profession, the more I started to feel closed in. Trapped. Everyone I talked to seemed to be talking about my future in baseball, like it was all decided. But I didn't decide. Shouldn't it be my decision? Maybe it was like an arranged marriage, and I was starting to feel like a runaway groom.

I still play and work at playing, even though my teammates and coaches sometimes tell me I don't look too aggressive at the plate. “You've got a good eye, though.” Which means I walk a lot. Which means I score a lot. At shortstop—that's my position—I get recognized. Shortstop allows for most of the very limited creativity available in baseball. After the catcher, the shortstop is the playmaker.

There was this one game. We were ahead by one. The other team had runners on first and second with no outs. The batter slashed a grounder deep to my left—deep enough that the runner on second was off for third. There was a force at second, but the batter was speedy—no double play. So I'm going for the ball and out of the corner of my eye I see the base runner stumble a step on his way to third.

Our third baseman, Nellie Carville, is smart and powerful. The stumble happened, and I knew Nellie saw it too. When the ball got to me, I wheeled 180 degrees and gunned it to Nellie. His throw to second just nailed the guy sliding in. It was pretty. It was surprising. Was it genius? Probably not, but it made me happy.

That play, by then, was an exception. I was playing, but I wasn't looking forward to it. I could feel that something was wrong. I could feel some kind of pressure building. What would Dad say if I quit?

CHAPTER
4

I
f I really didn't know the answer to that question, I got it in the game on Father's Day. Dad's jumping onto the field to yell at me was really the climax of something that had been building for a while.

For example, I already missed two practices. I really did feel too sick to play those days, but I can't say part of it wasn't mental. And when I did play, even when I tried to concentrate, there were times when I wasn't all there.

Coach Washington, whom we all call Wash, was the first to notice. We were playing in Salt Lake City against a good team, the Salt Lake City Bobcats. In the second inning I picked up a routine double-play ball and threw to first instead of second. Gus Toomey was so surprised at first that he almost missed it.

Wash was on me as soon as I got back to the dugout. “What's up, Trip? Catchin' a few winks out there?”

In the seventh I batted second. Sammy Perez had walked ahead of me. We were a run up, but we needed more. On the first pitch I grounded into a double play. Wash was on me again: “Didn't you see the bunt signal? Wake up, man!” The fact was I missed the signal, but heck, I didn't need someone to tell me it was a bunt situation. My head just wasn't in it.

I know you've heard this exchange before:

Sportscaster to athlete: So, Joe, what's your team's plan for tonight's big game?

Athlete: We just want to go out there and have fun, Marv.

But I got to the point where baseball wasn't fun anymore. My automatic skills kept me in the lineup, but I was making more and more mental mistakes.

If Dad hadn't jumped onto the field when he did, he probably would have done it the night before. Luckily, though, he was doing a show then. Because I lost the game for the Runners.

We were a run up on the visitors in the top of the ninth inning, but our relief pitcher, Shotaro Mori, was struggling. By the time we had two outs, they had men on second and third.

The next guy up hit a very high fly to short left. I automatically yelled, “I got it!” and started back to catch it. “Automatically” was the problem. I was watching the ball but not listening to Darius McKay, our left fielder, who was coming up behind me, yelling, “Get out!”

In situations like this, the outfielder has priority over the infielder. Just to be sure, when two guys are calling for the ball like we were, the center fielder can yell “You!” to the guy who is supposed to get the ball. And Danny, our center fielder, was doing just that. It was Darius's ball, but all I was thinking was, “Catch it and the game's over.”

At the last minute I heard Darius, and at the last minute I turned around and backed off. But Darius had seen that I was sleepwalking, figured what the heck, I'd catch it, and at the last minute he stopped coming in.

The result was two players looking at each other while the ball dropped between them. Since it was their last play of the game, both runners had taken off at the sound of the bat, and they both crossed the plate before Darius had even picked up the ball and tossed it to second.

The next batter grounded out to second. Wash didn't say a word when I got back to the dugout. Neither did Darius or Danny. It was Nellie, our captain, who came over to where I was sitting alone and sat down next to me. Just sat, without saying anything, but it meant something. I was grateful.

I held out hope that we would come back in the bottom of the inning, but we went down in order. Visitors 5, Runners 4. I should have felt terrible; I
did
feel terrible. But to be truthful, the bad feelings I had were only partly because I had let down the team. They were mostly because I just wanted to be out of there.

CHAPTER
5

A
fter the Father's Day game where Dad lost it and got escorted off the field, Coach Harris asked me into the room he called his office. It was really just a big closet at the training facility with a desk and a couple of chairs. I was still feeling physically sick from adrenaline after the run-in with Dad. I didn't want to talk. To be completely honest, I was afraid if I did I might start crying.

Coach started, “Hey, Trip, I'm sorry about that. Is everything going to be okay at home tonight?”

“Sure, Coach. No worries,” I said. Although I didn't really know what “okay,” meant at that point.

“You know, I was talking to Wash,” Coach continued. “There was a kid on the Phoenix Sand Demons. Really good. But last year he just . . . I don't know, he just started spacing out during games. He wasn't all there. We actually took advantage, started hitting it at him.”

I knew who he was talking about, and my face started to burn. “Coach, you think I'm doing drugs?” Because that had been the case with the Sand Demons' player.

Coach was looking hard into my eyes. Then he looked away. “No,” he said. “But Trip, you haven't been yourself this year. Is something going on?”

I wondered what would happen if I told him.

“I know your dad is . . . enthusiastic. Heck, he can push. Is that—?”

I decided to open up. “Coach, it's not my dad. He is who he is. It's me. I'm the problem. You say I haven't been myself. The fact is, I'm wanting so much to be myself. And right now baseball doesn't feel like part of that. It feels like a job.”

Coach digested that. I expected him to say something like, “Relax. Just go out there and have fun.” Instead, he said, “That happened to me. Except I was in my twenties, on track for the majors. And one day I just . . . didn't feel it.”

“What did you do?”

“I tried to ignore it. I was good. There was a lot of pressure to perform, to move on to the next level. But I knew I needed some distance. So I asked my coach for a rest.”

“What did he say?”

“Let's just say he didn't embrace it. I was valuable. But he was a good coach and an understanding man. I knew I mattered to him as a person more than a player. So he took me out of the lineup for a while.”

“And . . . ?”

“After a few weeks I started caring about the game again. But in a different way. It's hard to explain.”

“If you benched me, my dad would freak out completely.”

“At me, not you.”

“Let me think about it, Coach, okay?”

 

. . .

When I got home that night, Dad didn't seem to be around. I should explain our house. I guess it's called a villa, but it's big enough that people can be living there and you won't necessarily run into them. And we always had guests. I looked for Dad in the usual places—his office, the studio, the theater, the pool—but he wasn't there. So I went to my room, took a shower, and lay down with the TV on.
Sunday Night Baseball
. Shoot! In one of the breaks they reported on Dad's freak-out, complete with amateur video from someone in the seats. If Dad wasn't a celeb it wouldn't be news, but he was, and it was.

At eight o'clock I got a call from Coach Harris. A few minutes later there was a knock on my bedroom door. It was Dad.

“Come in, Dad.”

“Trip, I'm sorry. I just . . .”

“Don't worry, Dad. You were right about the play.”

“I didn't mean to embarrass you.”

I looked at him for a moment. “You didn't, Dad. I love you. Don't worry.”

“I'm too hard on you, you know? I'll back off. Just play, okay?”

“I won't be playing for a while, Dad.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just got off the phone with Coach. He's benching me for a little while. He thinks I need a rest.”

Dad's face and his tone of voice suddenly changed. “He what? Trip, the team needs you! That's crazy!”

“It's all right, Dad.”

“Heck no it's not all right! I bankroll this team, and I don't back a loser! We'll see about Coach Harris.”

“Dad, I want. . .”

But he was gone. I started to think about what he might do, what Coach would say, and it was just too much. I got my iPod going and filled my head with music. After a half hour or so I called Lisa.

CHAPTER
6

I
met Lisa Mancini-Owens last year at, of all places, a Runners practice. Her granddad, Pop Mancini, supplies our team with all its gear. He owns three sports emporiums, called Pop's Stars Sporting Goods, in Las Vegas and its suburbs. Pop shows up at our workouts from time to time, and this one day he brought Lisa with him.

It turned out that she's just a year younger than me and, in fact, we go to the same high school. I learned this at the practice when she waved me over and introduced herself. We talked a little and I told her about Four, that we'd be playing a school dance in a week, and she said, “I know. I booked you.”

Lisa was on the student council, which is why I didn't know her. Like any other huge high school, we've got jocks and student-council types and brains and a dozen other groups that seem to hang out pretty much with their own kind.

Anyway, that's how I met Lisa, and in a few months she was maybe my best friend. Not girlfriend. She's hot and all, but we just related more like brother and sister. We could talk about our stuff, any of it, and not feel like the other one was judging. She found out all about Dad and knew how I was feeling about baseball. She'd crack me up sometimes with her opinions about guys, and she shared personal stuff about her family and herself that she wouldn't tell anyone else. After a while, I learned that she wanted to play guitar, so I had started showing her how.

Anyway, I called her on the night of Father's Day when I couldn't sleep, and I told her everything that had happened. She just listened to the whole story without saying a word.

“Wow,” she said when she was sure I was through. “Your dad is out of control.” She thought for a few seconds. “You know, at least he said he was sorry. He loves you, I'm sure of that.”

“Yeah, but he left here really mad.”

“Do you think he'll make trouble?”

“It depends on whether he calms down. Sometimes after he loses his temper he gets embarrassed. Like the thing at the game this afternoon.”

“I guess you can't do anything about that. How do you feel about being benched?”

“Honestly, I was relieved. Before that I was thinking of just quitting.”

“My granddad likes your coach. And now I like him too. He's willing to take the heat for you.”

“I just hate to cause him trouble.”

“He's being a good coach. Let him do that. Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is to accept their help, you know?”

She was right. Anyway, right now the ball wasn't in my court. Lisa and I talked a little more before I thanked her and turned in for the night.

 

. . .

The next morning Dad wasn't around. I had breakfast and drove my Lexus to our 9:00 a.m. practice. Everything seemed the same as usual, except neither Coach Harris nor Wash was there.