The Batboy (15 page)

There was a pitching change going on and Brian didn’t have anything to do, so he looked over at Section 130 for a long time, waiting for just one look back from his dad.

Look at
me,
Brian thought, down here on a big-league field, in a big-leaguer’s uniform.

But it was as if he wasn’t here, the way he hadn’t been in the clubhouse. It was as if he didn’t matter to his dad, whether he was at Comerica or on the other side of the world.

He finally snapped out of it when he heard the home-plate umpire yelling over to him, saying, “Batboy!”

Brian’s head whipped around, but he saw the guy was grinning at him, hands on hips, mask tipped back, saying, “Earth to . . . ?”

“Brian.”

“Sorry, Brian, I got no head for names. Could you go grab me my bottle of water?”

He went and got the bottle of water where he kept it for home-plate umpires on a shelf in the dugout, and then went back to work, knowing exactly what he had to do.

They said their goodbyes outside the clubhouse about fifteen minutes after the Blue Jays had beaten the Tigers and the media was already inside talking to the players.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to wait and take you back?” his dad said.

“No, I’m good,” Brian said. “I never know how long it will take to finish my work, and Finn’s mom is coming anyway.”

“I thought maybe we could go out and grab a bite before I dropped you home.”

“Dad,” Brian said, “ballplayers go out to eat after games, not batboys.”

“Well, I’m glad we got to go to another ballgame together,” Cole Dudley said, “even though it was a little different than it used to be.”

“It was great to see you, Dad.”

“Yeah. You too.”

“I’ll check in once in a while, let you know how I’m doing,” Brian said.

“I promise to do better with letters,” his dad said. “Even thinking about buying myself a laptop finally. Then we could e-mail each other.”

“Right.”

“Well, you take care of yourself,” he said, then added, “and your mom.”

“She’s pretty good at taking care of herself.”

“Always was,” Cole Dudley said. “Always was.”

A couple of writers, late coming down from the press box, went past them. Brian and his dad stood there, out of words before they were out of time.

“Next time I’ll try to stay longer.”

“That would be
great,
” Brian said.

They looked at each other.

Then his dad put up his hand for a high five and Brian gave him one and walked quickly back toward the dugout, leaving his dad there, not looking back.

Finn was collecting towels.

“Hey,” Finn said.

“Hey.”

“Where you been?”

“Just getting things straight with my dad,” Brian said.

“Everything cool?”

“Totally.”

Then he got busy pulling bats out of their slots, not wanting to talk about a day with his dad that had ended up crushing him, even though he was sure his dad thought everything was fine. Brian realized now that it was too late for his dad to be somebody else, to be the dad Brian had been holding out hope he could be.

He turned around and saw Finn looking at him and thought of something his mom liked to say, that sometimes guys had to talk about stuff whether they wanted to or not.

As usual, he ignored that voice.

He and Finn split up their chores the way they always did, Brian taking on most of the shoe-shining work tonight, Finn helping Mr. Schenkel get the laundry started since there was an afternoon game tomorrow. When they were finished, Brian took one last walk-through in the dugout to make sure they hadn’t missed anything.

When he got back to the clubhouse, Mr. Schenkel was turning out the lights in his office. “Trying to make this an early one, because tomorrow’s an early day,” he said. “Lucky we got a fast game in tonight.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Brian said.

“You and Finn good to go?”

Brian nodded.

Mr. S. said, “You guys want to walk out with me?”

“I left a couple of things in No. 3,” Brian said.

“It was nice seeing your dad,” Mr. S. said. “He seemed pretty happy to be with the guys.”

“Yeah,” Brian said, “he loved seeing the guys.”

“Well, tell Finn good night for me,” Mr. Schenkel said.

But Finn was gone.

Brian had told him he was going home with his dad the way he’d told his dad he was going home with Finn. And he’d called his mom and told her he was a total idiot, he’d forgotten to tell her that with an afternoon game tomorrow, he and Finn were doing another sleepover at Comerica.

But only he was.

H
e hadn’t wanted to take the ride home with his dad because he didn’t want to talk to him anymore. He didn’t want to hear his dad say what he’d tried to say outside the clubhouse, how things were going to be different with them from now on.

Better.

Brian
knew
better than that. Things were never going to change between them, never going to get better, whether his dad was there or here. Not in a million years.

And he knew something else: He didn’t want to come home and have his mom be waiting up for him, as she’d said she was going to be, and have to talk about his dad.

He just wanted to be alone.

Brian wanted the ballpark to make him feel the way he did the first time he’d slept over.

Maybe he wanted it to make him the way it had always made his dad feel, like it was all he needed, like it was the only place in the world he really wanted to be.

He waited a few minutes until he was sure it was safe to go back in the clubhouse, walked up the hallway and up the steps and through the door, found the blanket and pillows where he knew Mr. Schenkel left them in one of the closets, and laid them neatly on the couch he’d used the first night.

If anybody came in and found him, from security or from the grounds crew who’d hung around late, he would just say that his mom was late, that she was coming, and that he was just waiting inside.

He stayed inside the clubhouse a long time, not turning on the television, just sitting there, feeling like he wanted to pull the whole place over him. Finally he looked up at the clock. Almost two in the morning now. He still didn’t feel like sleeping. He’d felt tired all day, exhausted sometimes, yet now he couldn’t sleep. So he walked down to the dugout and then up onto the field, took a few steps up on the field the way he had the first time.

But tonight he didn’t want to go stand at home plate or run around the bases.

Instead he stood on the dugout steps and turned around and looked up into the stands, and for the first time he could no longer imagine himself and his dad sitting there together. Tonight he had no desire, none, to go up and sit with his own memories up in Section 135.

Instead, Brian looked to his left, to Section 130.

The seats in Section 130 were all he could see and all he cared about. He just saw his dad in there with the other scouts, looking as happy as if he were at his own birthday party.

It was why the ballpark didn’t make things better for Brian tonight, why baseball couldn’t make things better. Or fix things with his dad. He wasn’t sure anything could.

He’d found out something tonight:

It didn’t matter to his dad who was sitting with him at a ballgame.

And no matter how much Brian loved baseball, it was never going to make his father love him more.

I
t had been two weeks since Brian’s dad had left town, and the beginning of his last month on the job was coming up so fast he couldn’t believe it.

The first-place Tigers were at home for a weekend series against the second-place Indians, and all three games were at night, including another Sunday nighter on ESPN. It meant that Brian could play both games of a two-game series, Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon, against Birmingham, always one of the best teams in their league.

But he would have been better off going to work early.

Both days.

The Sting won both games, no problem there. Just no thanks to him. He was 0-for-3 on Saturday with a walk. The only time he put the ball in play on Saturday was a ground ball to second off the end of his bat. When he finally did squeeze a walk out of one of the Birmingham relievers his last time up, he felt like asking the home-plate ump for the ball as a souvenir.

Sunday was even worse: three more strikeouts, and a foul-out to third. At least his mom didn’t try to give him any kind of pep talk on the ride to Comerica. He rode in the car in silence almost all of the way, not talking about the game at all, not opening up about it until he was changing into his batting-practice outfit in Equipment Room No. 3 with Finn.

“I’m thinking about quitting the team,” he said.

“Sure you are.”

“I mean it.

“Actually, you don’t,” Finn said. “I’ve known you only a few months, and I still know you well enough to know that’s not you.”

“
I’m
not me anymore when it comes to swinging a bat.”

“Your problem, far as I can tell, is that you don’t get
enough
swings.”

“That’s what my friend Kenny says.”

“Clearly a genius,” Finn said. “You just gotta take a chill pill.”

Brian made a sound like he was in pain. “Please don’t tell me I’ve just got to relax.”

They continued dressing in silence, and as they were about to leave, Finn said, “Wait, I
am
a genius.”

“Glad you think so.”

“Dude, I mean it, hear me out: Why don’t you use the batting cage
here
?”

“Oh, yeah. Right. Sick idea. I saw Curtis down there using it before. I’ll just run down and tell him he’s got to clear out for, wait, the
batboy.
”

“I don’t mean now,” Finn said. “After the game.”

“
Tonight’s
game?”

“Why not? We’ll work it out with Mr. S. and then I’ll just tell my mom to come a half hour later.”

“It doesn’t matter when your mom comes, Mr. S. isn’t going to go for this in like a million years.”

“We won’t know that until we ask,” Finn said. “Right?”

“Dubious,” Brian said. “Extremely dubious.”

Finn grinned at him. “See that, Debbie Downer? You didn’t tell me we
weren’t
going to ask, now, did you?”

They waited until they were finished with their pregame chores before taking the walk to Mr. Schenkel’s office as if walking to the principal’s office. When they got there, he was behind his desk, reading glasses on the end of his nose, going over the pregame media notes the way he did every day.

He looked up now over his glasses and said, “You two look like somebody just stole home plate. And I don’t mean because the pitcher didn’t check the runner at third.”

Brian and Finn both cleared their throats at the same time. The sound effect was funny enough in the office to get a laugh out of Mr. S.

“I know you guys have grown close,” he said, “but this is ridiculous.”

“We were just wondering . . . ,” Brian said. “Actually, the truth is,
I
was wondering . . .”

“No,” Finn said, “we both were, he was right the first time. . . .”

Brian said, “If it would be okay with you, I mean once everybody is gone, of course . . .”

Mr. S. smiled, nodded, like he understood what they were talking about.

“And if it’s not against team rules,” Brian said, “if nobody would get in trouble . . .”

Mr. Schenkel took off his glasses and said to Brian, “Son, it’s a good thing you write a letter of application better than you talk.”

Finn jumped in again, this time like he was trying to save Brian from drowning.

“The thing is,” he said, talking fast, “Brian is in a terrible slump with his travel team, can’t buy a hit, pretty much can’t remember the last time he got one, and he doesn’t get enough BP because of his job here, so basically we were wondering if after everybody clears out tonight, well, if we could use Iron Mike in the batting cage.”

All in one breath.

“Let me get this straight,” Mr. Schenkel said, looking at Brian again. “
You
want to take
my
pitching machine out for a spin?”

Brian cleared his throat again and said, “Pretty much. Yeah.”

The Tigers hitters didn’t use Iron Mike anymore. When they wanted to hit indoors, they generally just asked one of the coaches to pitch. Or they hit off a tee. Or worked with this gadget that had “ocular” in the name, one that fired tennis balls at them from close range to improve their hand-eye reaction time.

But when the Tigers had moved to Comerica from the old Tiger Stadium, Mr. S. couldn’t bear leaving Iron Mike behind. The machine wasn’t as old as the ballpark, was actually fairly new, but to him it was one more symbol of the team’s past and he wasn’t willing to leave it behind.