The three metal bats leaning on the fence are identically too short, too light, their taped grips much too thin. I tell Paul to stand clear while I “test” one bat, holding it up in front of me like a knight’s sword, sighting down its blue aluminum shaft (as I used to do long ago when I played in military school) and for some reason waggling it. I turn sideways of Paul—my camera still on my shoulder—cock the bat behind my ear in a natural-feeling Stan Musial knees-in stance and peer straight at him as though he were Jim Lonborg, the old BoSox righty, ready to rare, kick and fire.
“This is how Stan the Man used to stand in there,” I say over my left elbow, my eyes hooded. I trigger a wicked swing, which feels clumsy and ridiculous. Some necessary leverage between my wrists and shoulders feels sprung now, so that my swing could only possibly contact the ball with a slapping motion that wouldn’t drive a fruit fly out of the phone booth but would absolutely make me look like a girl.
“Is that how Stan the Man swung?” Paul says.
“Yeah, and it went a fuckin’ mile,” I say. I hear shouts, a chorus of “I got it, I got it,” from inside Doubleday Field. I look around and above the grandstand where we were five minutes ago; white balls arch through the sky, two and three at once, all to be caught but invisible to us here.
Each cage has a title to colorfully reflect the speed of its pitches: “Dyno-Express” (75 mph). “The Minors” (65 mph). “Hot Stove League” (55 mph). I have no reservations about trying my skills in the “Dyno-Express” and so give Paul my camera and two quarters, leaving the batting helmets on their fence hook. I step right inside, close the gate, walk to the batter’s box and look out toward the mean green machine as I seek out solid footing a bat’s length from the outside corner of the regulation rubber plate that’s planted between two scruffy rectangular AstroTurf pads put there to make things look authentic. I once again assume my Musial stance, make a slow, measuring pass of the bat barrel through my putative strike zone, square my knuckles on the handle, rotate the trademark back and line my deck-shoe toes with the center-field flag (though of course there is no flag, only the pitching machine itself and the protective netting, behind which is a sign that says “Home Run?”). I take and release a breath, once more deliberately extend the bat over the plate, then slowly bring it back.
“What time is it?” Paul says.
“Ten. There’s no clock in baseball.” I glimpse him over my shoulder through the diamond fence wires. He is looking up at the sky and back at the grandstand entrance, where a few fantasy players and their young-looking wives are strolling happy-go-lucky into the sunshine, gloved hands draped over soft shoulders, ball caps turned sideways, everyone ready for a beer, a bratwurst and a few yucks before the big game with Boston.
“Weren’t we supposed to do something else?” he says, and looks at me. “Something about a hall of fame?”
“You’ll get there,” I say. “Trust me.”
I again have to establish my stance and settle on a proper balance and repose. But once I’m fixed I say loudly to Paul, “Slap the money in the box,” and he does, after which and for a long moment there is calm as the machine radiates a kind of patient human immanence, though this is broken after several seconds by a deep mechanical humming during which a heretofore unnoticed red bulb begins to brighten on top, after which the plastic hopper full of balls begins to vibrate. The machine gives no other sign it means business, but I stare riveted at the black confluence of rubber tires, which have not moved.
“Those greaseballs fucked it up,” Paul says behind me. “You wasted your money.”
“I don’t think so,” I say, keeping my balance and stance, my calm intact, bat back, eyes to the machine. My palms and fingers squeeze the bat tape, my shoulders stiffen, though I feel my wrists begin to bend back in a way Stan would deplore but that feels necessary for the raised bat barrel to descend quickly enough to the plane of the ball for me to avoid the girlish
slap
motion I don’t want to be “my swing.” I hear someone shout out, “Look at that asshole,” and can’t resist a quick look to see who’s being referred to but see no one, then quickly return my gaze to the machine and the two tires, where there’s still nothing happening to indicate a “pitch.” Until I slightly relax my shoulders to avoid “binding,” and it’s then the machine makes a more portentous, metallic whirring noise. The black tires start to spin at an instantly great rate. A single ball teeters in full view down a previously unremarked metal channel, then goes “underground” into a smaller slot, after which it or one just like it is viciously spit from between the spinning rubber rings and crosses the plate at a speed so fast and at a distance so easily reachable that I don’t even swing, merely let the ball whang the fence behind me and bound back through my legs and out toward an unobserved concrete bunker in front of me whose duty is to route balls back to the hopper. (The basketball version was much jazzier.)
Paul is silent. I do not even turn his way, refixing instead like a sniper on what is my opponent, the slit between the spinning tires. Another interior whirring sound becomes audible. I watch as another ball wobbles down the metal track, disappears and then is shot through space, hissing across the plate directly under my fists and again whanging the fence behind me, untouched and unswung at.
Paul again says nothing. Not “Strike two” or “It sounded high” or “Just try and make contact, Dad.” No chuckle or raspberry or fart noise. Not even a bark of encouragement. Only adjudicating silence.
“How many do I get?” I say, merely to hear a sound.
“I just got here,” he says.
Though just as I’m picturing the numeral five as the likeliest number, another orange-stitched ball comes rocketing across the plate and rattles the screen, suggesting the machine has possibly quick-pitched me.
Sweat has now appeared upward of my hairline. For ball number four, I extend the stubby bat barrel like a gate barrier straight out into my strike zone and hold it there stiff until the machine generates another pitch, which hits the bat and ricochets off the metal sweet spot with a
dink-poink
, and fouls off against one of the warning signs, finally bouncing back and actually striking me on the heel.
“Bunt,” Paul says.
“Fuck you, bunt. Bunt when it’s your turn. I’m up here to hit.” I’m not looking at him.
“You should be wearing your windbreaker,” he says. “You’re a windbreaker.”
I frown out into the now sinister black crease, twist my fists into the tape, straighten my wrists into a properer Stan-like trigger cock, shift my balance to the ball of my right foot, and ready my left to rise and stride toward contact. The machine whirs, the red light glows, the ball teeters down its metal chase, drops from view, then spanks out from between the rings fast and in full view, at which instant I lunge, flail the blue barrel down into the ordained space, hear my wrists “snap,” actually
see
my arms extend, my elbows nearly meet, feel my weight shift as my breath gushes—all just as my eyes squeeze tightly shut. Only this time the ball (unseen, of course) squalls off the bat straight up into the netting, pinballs off two rankled fence surfaces, then falls back to the asphalt in front of me and drains off toward the bunker, leaving me with a ferocious handful of bees I’m determined not to acknowledge.
“Strike five, you’re history,” Paul says, and I glare back at him as he snaps my picture with my camera, disdainful concentration on his plummy lips. (I can’t help seeing what I’ll look like: bat slumped to the side, my cheeks sprouting sweat, my hair awry, face distressed by a frown of failure endured in a dopey cause.) “The Sultan of Squat,” Paul says, snapping another picture.
“Since you’re the expert, you need to try it,” I say. Bees are burning my hands.
“Right.” Paul shakes his head as though I’d spoken the most preposterous of words. We are completely alone here, though more ersatz players and their real-life wives and kids are strolling carefree and happy across the hot parking lot, their voices crooning praise and good motives. Balls still rise above and arc down upon Doubleday Field. This is the small, consoling music of baseball. For a man to entice his son into a few swings would not be mistreatment.
“What’s the matter?” I say, letting myself out of the cage. “If you miss it you can say you meant to miss it. Didn’t you say that was the best trick?” (He has already denied this, of course, but for some reason I don’t mean to let him.) “Don’t you eat stress for lunch?”
Paul holds my camera at belly level below “Clergy” and takes another picture, with an evil smile.
“You’re the daredevil tightrope walker, aren’t you?” I say, leaning the bat back against the fence, the big green machine now silent behind me. A warm breeze kicks up a skiff of parking lot grit and sweeps it by my sweaty arms. “I think you’re walking way too narrow a line here, you need to find a new trick. You have to swing if you’re going to hit.” I’m wiping sweat off my forearms.
“Like you said.” His smile becomes a smirk of dislike. He is still snapping my camera at me, one picture after the next—the same picture.
“What was that? I don’t remember.”
“Fuck you.”
“Oh. Fuck me. Sorry, I did forget that.” I come toward him suddenly, pity and murder and love each crying for a time at bat. It is not so rare a fatherly lineup. Children, who sometimes may be angels of self-discovery, are other times the worst people in the world.
When I get in reach of him, I don’t know why but I grapple him behind his head, my fingers achy from squeezing my bat, my shoulders weightless as if my arms were nothing. “I just thought,” I say, strenuously holding him, “you and me could experience a common humiliation and go off with our arms draped over our shoulders and I’d buy you a beer. We could bond.”
“Fuck you! I can’t drink. I’m fifteen,” Paul says savagely into my chest, where I’m still clutching him.
“Oh, of course, I forgot that too. I’d probably be abusing you.” I pull him in even more harshly, finding his rough buzzed hairline, his Walkman earphones and his neck tendons, forcing his face into my shirtfront so his nose pokes my breastbone and his warty fingers and even my camera push and dig my ribs in rejection. I don’t entirely know what I’m doing, or what I want him to do: change, promise, concede, guarantee me something important will be better or pan out, all expressed in language for which there are no words. “And why are you such a little prick?” I say with difficulty. I may be hurting him, but it’s a father’s right not to be pushed, so that I squeeze him even harder, intent on keeping him till he gives up the demon, renounces all, collapses into hot tears only I can minister to. Dad. His.
But that is not what happens. The two of us begin awkwardly scuffling on the pavement beside the batting cages, and almost immediately, I realize, to attract the interest of tourists and churchgoers out for a Sunday stroll, plus lovers of baseball on their way, as we should be, to the famous shrine—except that we’re struggling here. I can almost hear them murmur, “Well, hey now, what’s all this about? This can’t be good and wholesome. We need to call somebody. Better call. Go ahead and call. The cops. 911. What’s the goddamned country coming to?” Though of course they don’t speak. They only stop and gaze. Abuse can be mesmerizing.
I loose my grip on my son’s neck and let him break away, his fleshy face gray with anger and disgust and shame. My grip has ridden into his cut ear and got it bleeding again, its little bandage rucked off. When I see it, I look in my hand and there is beet-red blood down my middle finger and smeared in my palm.
Paul gapes at me, his left hand—the other’s still holding my camera, with which he has gored me in the ribs—gone fiercely into the pocket of his baggy maroon shorts as if he is trying to look casual about being furious. His eyes grow narrow and shiny, though his pupils widen with me in their sight.
“All in fun. No big deal,” I say. I flash him a lame, hopeless grin. “High fives.” One hand is up for a slap, the other, bloody, one finding my own pocket. Sunglassed tourists continue observing us from forty yards out in the parking lot.
“Gimme the cocksucking bat,” Paul seethes and, ignoring my high fives, goes tromping past me, grabbing the blue bat off the fence, kicking the gate open and entering the cage like a man come to a task he’s put off for a lifetime. (His Walkman earphones are still on his neck, my camera now lumped in his shorts pocket.)
Inside the “Dyno-Express” cage he stalks to the plate, the bat slung back over his shoulder, and peers down as if into a puddle of water. He suddenly turns back to me with a face of bright hatred, then looks at his toes again as though aligning them with something, the bat still sagging in spite of one attempt to keep it up. He is not a hitter to inspire fear. “Put in the fucking money, Frank,” he shouts.
“Bat left, son,” I say. “You’re a southpaw, remember? And back off a little bit so you can get a swing at it.”
Paul gives me a second look, this time with an expression of darkest betrayal, almost a smile. “Just put the money in,” he says. And I do. I drop two quarters in the hollow black box.
This time the green machine comes alive much more readily, as if I had previously wakened it, its red top light beaming dully in the sun. The whirring commences and again the whole assembly shudders, the plastic hopper vibrates and the rubber tires start instantly spinning at a high speed. The first white pill exits its bin, tumbles down the metal chute, disappears then at once reappears, blistering across the plate and smacking the screen precisely where I’m standing so that I inch back, thoughtful of my fingers, though they’re stuffed in my pockets.