Peter Abrahams - The Fan

“I don’t want anything flashy,” he said. “Just a solid, family vehicle.”

He chose a Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited. V8, ABS, 4WD, AM-FM CD, $35,991, with the gold hubcaps. Bobby wrote a check. An insurance agent arrived, called Bobby’s insurance company in California, collected another check. Someone else took the papers to the registry, returned with the license plate: 983 KRZ. Bobby didn’t want a K on his plate. They went back and got him another one. It all took about an hour. Bobby signed a few autographs and drove off.

Nice car. He had nicer ones, but Bobby liked riding up high, liked the sound system, liked the power and heft. He drove along happily for a while, testing the features. Then, just before the turnoff to Soxtown, Bobby realized he was bored with it. He’d give it to Val, get something else for himself after she came. He parked in his reserved place by the palm tree. The odometer read 000018.

Stook met him in the clubhouse. “What’s it gonna be?” he said. The three shirts-thirty-three, forty-one, fifty-one-were hanging in his stall. Thirty-three was out-wasn’t that Jesus’s age when he died? Bobby tested the divisibility of the remaining numbers. Three went into fifty-one, but nothing went into forty-one. He saw Primo watching from across the room.

“Hey, Primo,” he called. “You’d know this.”

“Know what?”

“If forty-one’s a prime number.”

Primo frowned. “I don’t get it.”

Bobby laughed. He took forty-one.

Bobby dressed: sleeves, jock, sanitaries, stirrups, pants, cleats, shirt. He had fried chicken and iced tea from the buffet, then went outside for BP. The pitching coach was throwing, harder than Burrows and with more stuff, but the ball was still out of a coffee-table book, even bigger, slower, clearer then yesterday. Bobby banged it around the yard, then shagged flies until the Tigers came on.

He returned to the clubhouse, drank more iced tea, checked his mail. The usual: requests for autographed pictures, most from preteen boys and slightly older girls; phone numbers from girls a little older than that, some accompanied by bathing-suit pictures of the writers; a letter from a man who wanted to know why Bobby never bunted; and a four-leaf clover in a plastic locket on a chain, sent by a granny in Texas. Bobby hung the locket around his neck.

Burrows came in, lit a cigarette, and took out the lineup card. Bobby, who had hit third since freshman year in high school, bent down and retied his shoelaces; casual.

“Primo at short, bats one,” read Burrows. “Lanz in left, bats two. Rayburn in center, bats three. Washington at first, bats-” Bobby slipped on his headphones, pressed PLAY.

A few minutes later, they took the field. Boyle started. He struck out the first two batters, walked the next. The runner stole second; Odell’s throw was perfect, but Primo dropped the ball.

“Tut-tut,” Bobby said, quietly, all by himself in center field.

Twenty or thirty feet behind him a voice spoke: “You said it.”

Bobby glanced around and saw a sunburned old man sitting in a wheelchair just beyond the chain-link fence, binoculars hanging on his white-haired chest.

“He’s such a fucking showboat,” the old man said. “They’re all like that, the spics.”

Bobby turned back to the field, saying nothing.

Boyle walked another batter. When the next one came up, Burrows motioned Bobby toward right. Bobby changed his position. Then Odell flashed the sign: curve. Bobby was astonished: he’d never been able to read the catcher’s sign from center field, not even as a kid.

“Jesus,” he said. I’m going to fucking hit. 400 this year.

“Tell me about it,” said the old man with binoculars, as Boyle went into his motion and threw. “Burrows. Shit. Moves you over and then calls for the deuce. They shoulda fired him years-”

The batter swung, connected. A screamer, into the gap in left between Bobby and Lanz. Bobby took off. He might have had a play if Burrows hadn’t shifted him. That thought was obliterated by the realization that he just might have a play anyway. Bobby dove, weightless for a long moment, fully stretched out in the air. First the ball was a hissing white blur; then it disappeared and went silent, leaving its sting on the palm of his glove hand. Bobby fell hard on his chest, rolled over, stayed down.

Lanz was kneeling beside him. “You okay?”

Bobby struggled for breath. “Ball in my glove?”

“Hell of a catch,” Lanz said. “But let’s not get crazy in spring training.”

Bobby heard a boat whistle, far away; smelled the grass; felt a tiny insect walking across the back of his neck. “Three outs?”

“Yeah.”

Bobby rose just as the trainer jogged up, breathing hard.

“You okay?”

Lightheaded, then fine. “Yeah.”

“Rib cage?”

“No problem.”

Bobby ran off. Cheers from the little crowd. He sat down in the dugout, drank water. Something tickled his chest. Had he landed on an ant hill? Bobby peered down his shirt. No ants. He’d smashed the plastic locket. The four-leaf clover was gone.

Burrows was standing over him, his cigarette cupped in his hand in case a camera was pointed his way. “You all right?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s that rib cage?”

“Fine.”

“Wanna come out?”

“No.” Bobby didn’t want to sit. He’d been sitting all winter. He wanted to play.

Burrows went back to his seat in the corner, took a deep drag. “Bibbity bobbity,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

First pitch. Slider; Bobby could tell from the dugout, before the ball was halfway to the plate. It came in just above the belt, and Primo slapped it over second base.

“Bibbity bobbity,” Burrows said.

“Knock off that bibbity-bobbity shit,” someone said.

“I can say what I like,” Burrows said. “Even the poor got rights in this country.”

Bobby pulled his bat from the rack and walked to the on-deck circle. “What’d he hit last year?” he asked Lanz.

“Primo? I don’t know. Two-fifty, two-sixty?”

Bobby nodded. He himself had hit. 319.

Lanz stepped in. Bobby slid the donut down the barrel. Sky blue, sun warm, his body loose and strong. He timed the pitcher’s first pitch to Lanz, swinging as it crossed the plate. Fastball, low and away. Lanz swung and missed. Now comes that chickenshit slider. Just wait on it and unload. But Lanz couldn’t make himself wait long enough. He topped the ball, sending a slow roller to the shortstop, who threw to second, forcing Primo.

Bobby went to the plate. The catcher, who’d been with him in California five or six years before, said, “Welcome to the bullshit league.”

“You can say that again,” the umpire said.

“Don’t spoil it for me,” Bobby said.

The pitcher stared down for the sign. Bobby waited in his stance, completely still, but loose, all the way to his fingertips. Show me that chickenshit slider, you asshole.

It came. Fat, clear, spinning sideways. Bobby got it all, hitting it so squarely he didn’t even feel the impact. It cleared the fence still rising, and disappeared. Foul by fifteen feet.

“Ooo-wee,” said the catcher.

Bobby took a few swings, stepped back in, looked for the fastball inside, and got it: fat, clear, spinning backwards. Bobby hit it as far as the first one, maybe farther, and not quite as foul.

“Oh and two,” said the ump.

Bobby took a few more swings, resumed his stance. Now would come the slider, but down and away, out of the strike zone. The pitcher checked Lanz, kicked. Bobby heard a voice from the stands: “Straighten it out, Bobby Rayburn, straighten it out.” He recognized that voice: the skinny little community-relations guy. He’d forgotten all about him, forgotten about the boy, forgotten all that home-run shit. John? Sean.