Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

“Come on. They haven’t tanked yet,” Marco says while repositioning a garbage can. They haven’t, but they will. They always do in a manner so predictable that I can’t see it coming — the implosion. It’s late night. They’ll show a compressed version of the earlier live broadcast. I’ve heard some compare baseball to opera. Some have said that the Red Sox’s story is tragic. This replay then — only the highlight innings — is like a dark cantata.

I follow him inside, into the great windowed room. The television is on already. His laptop is open on the glass coffee table. He drops heavily onto the couch and waits for me to sit. He slides some stapled pages to me.

“What do you think of this?”

“What is it?”

“A legal document. What do you think of the writing?”

The first paragraph has three comma splices and one subject-verb disagreement.

“It’s a mess, right? It gets worse.”

I slide it back to him.

“They all graduated at the top of their classes from top schools, made law review. They can’t write for shit.” He pats the sheets. “But what burns me is they think they can. This was handed to me as a finished document. Now I have to stay up all night to correct the work of someone who sticks it to me every chance he gets that I didn’t go to Harvard.”

“The Red Sox take the field.”

“Fuckin’ bums. Come on, you fucks. . Oh,” he slides me a note, “someone called. He left a time and an address.”

“Thanks.”

“Meeting?”

“Yeah.”

He jumps up from the couch quickly, as though he’s forgotten something. He calls from the kitchen.

“Want anything?”

“I’m good.”

“How’s the picture?” he asks, coming back with a bowl full of ice cream — chocolate with chocolate sauce. I shrug, not knowing what he means. “Satellite. I don’t know. I’ve heard good things and bad things.”

I gesture at the television. “It looks fine.”

I don’t recognize the pitcher. He’s skinny, adolescent looking.

“Oh no, the youth movement. The downward spiral has begun.” He turns up the volume.

“The Sox are still playing for a postseason bid.”

It’s twilight at the park, so it seems to me that Boston’s in a different time zone, perhaps even a different place in time. There are long shadows in left field cast by the green monster and the light towers atop it. The players run to their respective positions. I’ve always thought there was something anti-American about baseball: the definite defensive positions, the batting order, the lack of fluidity between offense and defense. It seems anachronistic, old-world — its rituals, its built-in stasis — and can turn all who watch and honor it into anachronisms dreaming of golden ages. And each fan or group of fans has a golden age — before the live ball era, before the Negroes, before television, before free agents, before steroids. No, I have forgotten. Baseball is American — as America has aged from a country of dreamers into a country of rememberers. It is better then, to live in memory and not be made to reconcile how the then is rejected by the now. The grass is emerald, the infield dirt raw umber. The first pitch is a ball.

Marco slaps a pillow.

“That stringbean can’t throw ninety-five. The gun’s fixed.” He takes a spoonful of sweets. “How hard did Koufax throw? Carlton? You’re telling me that he brings it like them? Who is this guy?”

“He’s not Koufax.”

“Damn right. Every lefty who shows up and can throw a little hard they try to sell you as Koufax.”

“Well, he’s not Koufax. He’s probably not even him.”

“Outside. Ball two. Another fastball.”

“Six back with twenty-five to play. Is there a chance?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“You think if they make a few deals this summer?”

“No.”

“No never, or just no this year?”

“Ball four. He lost him. Lead-off walk’ll make a manager lose his hair.”

“It doesn’t matter. I quit.”

“Quit?”

“Yes.”

“Shut up. Stop it. Come on.”

“No more.”

“Why?”

“Exactly.”

Marco shakes his head and eats more ice cream.

“Want popcorn or a soda or something?”

“No thanks.”

The first baseman is having a friendly chat with the guy who’s just walked. The runner takes off his batting gloves, hands them to the first-base coach, and puts on his sliding gloves. Both he and the first baseman are serious now. I almost say something about it, but I don’t. I’ve killed the game for me, but there’s no need to kill it for him.

I turn to Marco.

“Is your dad a fan?”

“Bit of a jam the young southpaw finds himself in here. Two on, nobody out.”

“Not so much. I think he’s always appreciated the sport, the competition, but baseball’s hard to get to know late in life.”

“Would like a double-play ball here.”

“But he’s not a ground ball pitcher. Everything he’s throwing seems to be hard and up in the zone. I’m sure he’ll take a pop-up or a strikeout.”

“He was in his early thirties when he came here. I went to games with my friends and their families. What about you?”

“My father did this to me.” He laughs and nods as though he knows what I mean, although we both know he doesn’t. “I started out as an A’s fan. I was little, and there was something about those guys — the green and gold uniforms, white cleats, the mustaches. Reggie, Campy, Rudi, Vida Blue, Blue Moon, Catfish. But, you know, you go to Fenway. You watch Yaz swinging a bat on deck. .”

“Fastball. Got the corner. Strike one.”

“Nice pitch.”

“Painted the corner.”

“You guys had box seats?”

“The first time we did. He’d always try to get them if he could. You know, to be close enough to hear the sizzle and pop of the pitches.”

“El Tiante!”

“Yeah, Tiant. I met him in a supermarket once. He was smoking a cigar.”

“Good old days, man.”

“I suppose.”

“He’s got good stuff. Big-league stuff.”

Marco skims the last of the melted cream and sauce from his bowl while shaking his head.

“Bullshit.”

“Curve ball. Pulled the string. Strike two.”

“Yeah, he was sitting dead-red on a fastball and he got Uncle Charlie.”

“What’s your dad doing now?”

“Drinking beers. Watching games.”

“Is he retired?”

“Steps off the mound.”

“You could say that.”

“He’s just trying to slow things down a bit.”

“Yours?”

“No. He won’t. He thinks he’s still broke.”

“Still welding?”

“Still a steel man. Butchered another finger last month.”

“Fuck.”

“They managed to save it.”

“Looks in. Doesn’t like it. Shakes him off.”

“How many has he lost?”

“Two.”

“How?”

“He got a W-28 dropped on them — his left pinkie and ring finger.”

“That’s a lot of steel.”

“Fuck yeah.”

“Now he’s ready.”

“What happened?”

“I did it.”

“That’s a ball.”

Marco looks at the screen as though it will conjure the image, the memory for us both. It doesn’t. He looks into the empty bowl, spins it on the coffee table, and looks in again. He frowns. Whatever’s in there is a disappointment, as well.

“It was summer. I was twelve. I was working for him. We were hoisting the beam into place, but I hadn’t secured the chain properly. His fingers got caught between the steel and concrete. And at the hospital — his English wasn’t so great, neither was mine — they told him it wasn’t worth sending him to Mass General, so they amputated. We both must have been in shock. It was over before we knew what to do.”