Christopher Moore - Secondhand Souls

So that’s it, right? I’m cursed. But it turns out, I’m not that cursed, and I bat.260 that season and we get to the National League playoffs and by next year I’m starting shortstop, but here’s the thing, Villarreal is starting catcher for the Dodgers, and we have to play those sons-a-bitches nineteen times during the season. And three or four times every game, for nineteen games, when I come up, that fat fuck is, “So how you doing? You feeling good? I heard you got married. You have any kids? How’s your mom?” And between that and the albatross I get to be almost worthless on offense against the Dodgers, batting a flat buck-fifty against them when I’m batting in the high two hundreds, low three hundreds against everyone else.

My third season with the Giants, we’re neck and neck with the Dodgers for the division and the guy I jumped over at Fresno is batting.375 and fielding just as well, so I figure I’m maybe two, three bad games from losing my starting position, so when I come up in the second game against the Dodgers, I say, even before I get in the box, “Villarreal, just shut the fuck up. Just shut your fucking mouth while I’m in the box, you hear me?”

Evidently, though, he didn’t hear me, because through three balls, four foul balls, and a swing and a miss, Villarreal jabbered, “I’m sorry, man, I didn’t know it bothered you. You want me to shut up, I’ll shut up. I’m a pro, man. A batter needs it quiet, I’m quiet. I was just wondering, you know, how your mom was.”

Two Dodger games later, right after the ump calls a third strike which was a gift to the pitcher, because it’s like a foot off the plate, I turn around and say, “You cocksucker, you don’t shut the fuck up I’m going to knock your fucking head off.”

And the ump says, “You’re out of here.” And makes to throw me out of the game. “You can’t use language like that,” he says, which is more explanation than he has to give.

And I say, “I wasn’t calling you a cocksucker, I was calling this cocksucker a cocksucker. You ought to throw him out of the game. He’s got to drive you nuts, right? He never, never shuts the fuck up.”

It was a Sunday day game, and there was a lot of kids at the park, and it was televised nationally, and they muted me, but it turns out that people read lips a lot better than you’d think, so the cocksucker—and this time I mean the ump—suspended me for two games, and that cocksucker Villarreal hit a game-winning homer against us that day. So I think you can see where I’m going with this. That’s right, it might not have been the albatross. And every baseball fan in the country thinks I have a black box over my mouth because they can’t even play the highlights without I’m calling every granny watching the six o’clock news a cocksucker.

Every game, it’s all I can do to not hit Villarreal in the throat every at-bat. And then we’re coming into the fall, and I get my chance. I’m on second when Joe Rollo smacks one into the gap in center, sending it to the wall. I’m hell on wheels going for home, and their center fielder has a good arm, but the third-base coach sends me, and I look up and see Villarreal is blocking the plate, and the ball is going to get there before I do. So I got one choice, and one choice only. That’s to cream him and knock the ball loose. I’ve got four seasons of frustration going down that baseline with me, and not only is this a run, it’s my chance. I’m going to take his fucking head off. I’m going to explode him like that ball exploded the albatross. I’m going to leave broken bits of can’t-shut-the-fuck-up Dominican cocksucker scattered over the infield. So when I’m a good five feet from him I make my move. I go like I’m going for Olympic gold in the pole vault, which led to what was to be known as the Superman Slide.

Yes, he was a fat fuck, and he ran like he had tubs of lead tied to his cleats, but he was quick, so as I leave my feet, Villarreal has the good instinct to duck, and I sail, vertical, over him, not even grazing him, past the ump (on the replay you can see him saying “what the fuck?” even through his mask) and I land a good three feet on the far side of home plate, having never touched it. Villarreal spins and tags me out while I’m still wondering what happened.

When you kill a goddamn albatross with your first big league at-bat, you think, yeah, that’s going to be the highlight they play when I do something good. They’re going to go, “Oh, nice turnaround by Nelson, but let’s take a look at that time he killed the rare seabird.” But no. You show the world that you have the athletic prowess to not be able to run into a fat Dominican when there’s a fucking line painted up to him, that piece of film is going to Cooperstown, and ne’er a day shall pass from now to the end of time when your name is mentioned that with it is not shown your dumb ass flying through the air to land with your dick in the dirt to be tagged out as gentle as Jesus picking a baby to be born.

Doesn’t get any worse, right? Can’t, right? Nineteen times a season. Regular season. Twenty-five times if you count spring training games. I got to the point where a week before we played the Dodgers I’d start losing my shit. Making dumb mistakes in the field. I get some beta-blockers from my doc to slow my heart down when we’re playing L.A. so I can hit, but I can’t field for shit on them either. So they bring up a kid from the minors who takes my place as the starter. I become the utility guy, playing when someone is hurt or bats from the wrong side. Pinch hitting, unless it’s against the Dodgers, because believe me, I’m not the only one who notices I’m cursed. As bad as it can get, right? If I’m a pitcher and I let a guy get into my head this bad, I’m selling Chevys in Petaluma, because fuck-knows I can’t go into broadcasting and have the Superman clip play every goddamn day, and the front office isn’t going to hire the dead bird/cocksucker guy to coach or scout, right? So I still have a job, year-to-year contract, minimum money, which isn’t bad, except now I have a kid and wife who wants to hang with the wives whose husbands are making major coin, and she spends and dresses like them, too. Could be worse, though, right?

Then the Giants’ starting catcher decides to shoot his coke dealer in the off-season in a Miami disco, at the same time that Villarreal’s contract is up at the Dodgers, so that babbling fucking ball of chorizo becomes our starter. So it’s every day, every goddamn day I go into the clubhouse. “How you doin, Skipper? How’s your wife? Your kid getting big, huh? How’s your mom?” Guy has been in the States ten years now and he’s still only got about forty words of English, which he rearranges a hundred times a day to get up my ass.

“She’s dead, Chava. Just like she was this morning! Just like she will be in twenty fucking minutes when you ask me again, Chava. She’s dead!”

She wasn’t dead. My mother is still alive and lives in Jupiter, Florida, with seven miniature poodles, but that’s not the point. The guy was annoying.

He says, “Oh, I’m sorry, man. Anything I can do? Man, that must be so hard. I lose my mother, I don’t know what to do. My heart goes out to you, man. How’s your wife holding up?”

So that’s when I decided to kill the cocksucker. But not right away, because now that he’s not playing for the Dodgers anymore, my batting average is going up and I don’t want to jinx it. So instead, I compromise and decide to get him kicked out of the game and ruin his life in the interim.

This is a time in baseball when steroids have become a pretty big deal. On our team, you got Barry Bonds, who is hitting home runs like a mortar barrage, and whose head has grown to a size where when they make his promotional bobble-head, they just do the whole thing to scale, while across the bay in Oakland, Mark McGwire now has forearms like Popeye and will only speak in dialects of horse, and they’re keeping José Canseco chained to a post under the ballpark and throwing him raw meat until right before game time, so the league is starting to get sensitive about it. Personally, I stay away from the juice, as I already have what my wife calls “anger issues” and steroids are suppose to be bad for that, but the league is starting to spot-check players, so I figure this might be my chance to get rid of Villarreal without jinxing my hitting.