Sure, I smell the hot dogs, and I feel the grass, but I also smell the scent of urine splashed on the walls of the minor league tour bus while the coach seats dig into my ass. I see sugar-crazed gremlins lining park fences, begging for baseballs. I say no, and those cute, innocent, dreamy little faces cuss me out like the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. Every two weeks my minor league paycheck affords me another round of value meals, and if I stay in the game long enough, I just might make as much as the high school dropout messing up my order.
I don’t have a slick car or a nice condo. I don’t have a designer wardrobe or a good investment strategy. I’ve been slaving away at this job for the last four years, heading toward my fifth, and the only thing I have to show for it is an uncanny ability to hit squirrels with snowballs.
This is my question—my giant, dinosaur-turd-sized question: How much longer do I want to keep living this dream? Truthfully, not very much. I know folks would say that walking away from such a great opportunity would be a mistake. But what if giving up some of the best years of your life for something that may never happen is the mistake? There comes a moment in life, no matter what your line of work is, when you have to step back and wonder if you’re heading in the right direction.
Most baseball players are content to play until they have absolutely no chance left. In fact, I’d say that’s the basic mindset: keep pitching, until your arm falls off or they tear the uniform from your back. However, I’m not most baseball players. I realize that if this doesn’t pan out, I’m not going to have anything to show for it except boring stories of glory days.
While I lay there on my air mattress, some unremarkable Tuesday morning with snow and squirrels and screaming, I decided I’d start taking the necessary preparations to make my peace with baseball. I didn’t want to quit, but I’d run out of good reasons to keep playing. I couldn’t go on living like this, which wasn’t really living at all. I needed to get out before too much of my life had collected alongside the other broken-down relics in Grandma’s house. I just had one problem: I wasn’t the only person wrapped up in this dream.
Chapter Three
Though my parents’ house was only a few miles away in Canton, I didn’t visit it very often. When I did, I didn’t have to be there long before I was reminded why I stayed away. Yet, I had to come home, they deserved to know what I was thinking. My parents were there at the start of my baseball career, and they should know how it would end.
My dad sat at the kitchen table, smoke streaming up from the cigarette pressed in his off hand. I took a seat across from him and waited for a chance to talk. A gray smog had collected in the air above us, hanging there, dimming the light. He was so silent, one might suspect he was dead, stuck in place save for the way the smoke-filled air moved when he breathed.
I didn’t know how long he was like that—minutes, hours, or days perhaps. The only way to measure was to check how much ash had accumulated in the tray in front of him. If I had to guess, he’d been motionless for about two hours.
Stomping could be heard upstairs. My mother and brother were moving about. The thumps came and went with long breaks in between—water running, toilet flushing, someone taking a shower. It was just a matter of time before they crossed paths.
I tried to think of something to say to my father as we sat, but how to begin? Small talk? Something light before telling him I really wanted to quit my dream and ruin the family’s big hope of something better for just one of its members? What was there to say?
He had no life, nothing to chat idly about. On the off chance we did speak, he’d regurgitate television programs he’d watched. Some show on how things were made. That’s all he did now. Unemployed, angry, unmotivated to live, he sat in front of the television or in the silent haze of a cigarette. We’ve passed a lot of hours like this: neither of us talking, both sitting in front of his television drug.
My mother’s voice broke in above us. The sound of my brother’s retort followed—yelling ensued, foot stomps, more yelling. Refreshed, they’d awoken to resume the fight. As much my mother’s fault as anything, she couldn’t let it go. I’m not sure I blame her, but since she was unwilling to lock him up, the fighting would just meet the same result it always did.
Today was Saturday. My brother was probably drunk last night. Came home late to my mother, who stayed up to ambush him about his debauchery. They fought, maybe something got broken, maybe someone got hit, maybe both. My dad, unwilling to stay in bed and listen, would get up and start screaming at the both of them in a voice that made you wish the world would end. Then, when he couldn’t take it anymore, he’d implode, start to cry, and wish he were dead—maybe more than wish, maybe try again. He’d say he hated his life, hated the family, hated everything. Upon losing her ally, Mom would turn on Dad. She’d say he needed to toughen up, quit being a baby, and act like the man she used to know.
Vindicated, my brother would laugh mockingly, calling them both fuckups, horrible parents, the reason for his drinking. And then there would be more screaming, more breaking, and more hitting, followed by a call to the cops, not to make an arrest, but to scare away the drunk. He’d leave, wreck his car, stumble back, and pass out on the floor in his own vomit. Come morning, when he was hung over, the fight would continue.
My dad sighed at the sound, lifted his head from his hands, and snuffed his cigarette into the ashtray. He was both as sad and angry as a person could be; you could see it when you looked at him, the way his body worked as if under some heavy, invisible weight.
Acting on the urge to leave, he reached down to put his shoes on. His crippled hands grabbed at them with all the finesse of a rusty wrench. Next, he reached for a wooden spoon, his makeshift shoehorn. He attempted shoeing his feet into his Velcro shoes, but the simple motion was too complex and he dropped the spoon. He tried to pick it up, but his fingers would not grab as instructed. Extreme frustration trumped the sadness that kept him in check and he exploded.
“Goddamn worthless fucking hands!” he screamed. Then he began clubbing his hands into the table with the same force someone would smash dry tree limbs. He couldn’t feel the blows, the same reason he couldn’t feel the shoes or the spoon. Repeatedly, he beat his hands until the frustration gave way to sadness again; then he began to sob. He slumped back into his chair defeated, head in broken hands, heaving.
At one time he built million-dollar machines. Perfect lines of metal intersecting in perfect mathematical harmony. He drafted things, complex mechanical things that would themselves build more complex mechanical things. All of it, pristine, flawless, designed never to break. Now the man behind all that perfection was broken. He couldn’t even tie his shoes, Velcro shoes.
I said nothing. I hadn’t spoken the entire time I was there—not even hello. I was a spectator in my own home. I was slowly remembering what drove me out in the first place to fight my way toward the big leagues into a better life.
The battle above us stopped. My mother must have detected my father’s outburst. She made her way downstairs, rounded the corner into the kitchen, and stood with her hands on her hips, staring at him, a puzzled look on her face. I could see the remnants of compassion in her eyes, deeply buried beneath a layer of resentment, as if her emotions moved away years ago, leaving the place to deteriorate.
She surveyed the two of us. Then, looking to me, she asked, “What’s wrong with him?”
I shrugged.
“Sam,” she said, turning to my father, “what’s the matter?”
No answer.
“Sam, tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing,