“Whine, whine, whine … Pass the honey, will you?”
Jason slid the jar to Garza. “You know if a kid under two eats honey, he can have a seizure and die?” Nobody said a word. “Scarlet fever, bee stings, choking on a peanut — there’s a million things can kill a kid.”
“Nobody ever does that, do they?” Corliss said skeptically. “The honey thing.”
“Naw, naw, people know,” Jason replied. He beat the table with his open palms. “It gets passed down from generation to generation, like drumbeats.”
The sound of forks scraping, large mandibles chewing, chairs squeaking. “So how’s marriage?” Seligman asked with a sardonic drawl.
Jason nodded as if he’d never heard the question in his life. He hated to acknowledge defeat. It was an awful marriage, but he was hardly willing to admit that. “Having a kid is awesome,” he replied enthusiastically. “They’re kinda like Mini-me’s: they do whatever you do, but they do their own shit too.” A large plate of green beans made its way around the table. Jason heaped some onto his plate, then began filling the plate beside his. “But one thing Rafe loves to do, I don’t know where he gets it — he loves to sing in his bed in the mornings. He wakes up and just starts singing whatever comes into his head — ”
A strong hand seized his forearm. “I don’t like green beans,” Lister said in his imperious Australian accent.
“Sorry, mate,” Jason smiled. “Rafe loves them. He calls ‘em ‘bean beans.’”
Lister swept the beans off his plate with a fork. “I’m not your fuckin kid.” Corliss laughed with a single, sharp bark. Jason blushed and passed the platter along. Rafe’s image came to him, running toward him in his comical, top-heavy toddle. He saw his sparkling eyes, his tiny mouth calling out “Da-Da!” He was surprised by how much he missed him — and how little his teammates cared.
AFTER LUNCH came more running, more calisthenics, more stretches, loosening muscles that had tightened during the break. Jason lay on his back, his legs twisted to the right, his left shoulder straining to reach the ground when Vucovich’s shadow crossed his face. He looked up and saw his own reflection in Vuco’s Robocop shades. Bill Vucovich was a ramrod straight, square-jawed, thirty-three-year-old former second baseman for the Anaheim Angels who had torn an anterior cruciate ligament at twenty-seven and never returned to play. As a former Stanford Cardinal, coaching at his alma mater was the closest he could get to recreating his dreams of stardom. The will to play still burned in his taut body. It was a will that made him impatient with players who didn’t give 100% or more.
“You been throwing?” Vuco asked.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s see what you got.”
Jason stood on the mound with the new ball in his hand, the leather as familiar as his own skin. He looked over and saw head coach Milt Baptiste talking with an assistant, his hands thrust in the back pockets of his uniform, shoulders rounded, abdomen thrust forward looking as if he had been born in a baseball uniform. A hundred fans lounged in the stadium seats, die-hards of the senior set or parents of prospects there to give their offspring some moral support.
Jeremy Asher squatted behind the plate and offered his mitt as a target. “Show ‘em how it’s done, JT.”
Jason rocked into motion, his right knee rising against his belt, his long left arm sweeping from three-quarters above his shoulder toward the plate. The echo came milliseconds after the ball slammed into the pocket of Asher’s mitt, like a sonic boom. Heads turned — Lister, Seligman, Connolly, the new guys who only had heard stories about the flame thrower from Texas who gave it up to raise a kid. Jason nodded to himself. The thrill of being able to do something that only a van full of guys could do was deeply satisfying. This was his world. This was his ticket to the Show.
The coaches lined up along the first baseline and watched their big lefthander throw fifteen, eighteen, twenty pitches. They never used the radar gun this early in the season, but it was clear he was throwing heat. Jason felt good — for himself, for the team, for Vuco. Vuco had gone out on a limb to keep him in the program. He never knew what he had said exactly, but Baptiste had finally agreed to red-shirt him rather than release him. Red-shirting was something teams did all the time — but at the team’s instigation, not the player’s. Guys were held back for injuries, for academic reasons, because they had another player at your position who they wanted to play ahead of you. But raising babies? No one had ever seen that before, at least on the men’s side of Stanford sports. It was a first that Baptiste hadn’t wanted to earn for his esteemed program, but he had to. He could hardly teach personal responsibility while forcing a young man to abandon his child for baseball — or vice versa. And then, there was the 98-miles-per-hour fastball.
Jason started his motion but stopped when he saw Vuco walking towards the mound. “I thought the kid was covered.”
“What do you mean?”
Vuco gestured towards the dugout. There was Rafe with his babysitter, Carmen, dressed in the tiny Stanford uniform Vicki’s father had bought for him, the number 1½ stitched below little letters spelling out “Thibodeaux.” He could see Rafe’s wide brown eyes, his fair hair fringed at the bottom of his cap.
“It’s just for today,” Jason tried to explain. “Vicki had a conflict.”
Vucovich rubbed his eyes beneath his shades, then reached for the ball. Jason handed it over and trudged past Baptiste without looking. Rafe’s eyes danced happily as his father drew near. “Da-Da!” Carmen looked at him apologetically. “Vicki can’t come until 4 o’clock,” she explained. “I have to go to my other job.”
Jason shoveled Rafe with his Rugrats backpack into his arms, snatched the stroller from Carmen and hauled them down the right field line towards the clubhouse. He could feel forty pairs of eyes burning into his back as Rafe played with the bill of his hat. Goddamn Vicki, he steamed. Fifteen months caring for Rafe and she still wouldn’t pull her weight. This was his career, not some Sunday pick-up game.
He set Rafe down and looked at the clock on the clubhouse wall — 2:40. Twenty minutes to nap time. If he could get him down he could get back to the workout before Vicki showed. Rafe, however, ran straight for the free weights laying on the floor. Jason grabbed his right arm and snatched him back.
“Nap time, Buddy.”
Rafe tried to squirm away. “Jugo! Jugo!” he shouted, using the Spanish word for juice that Carmen taught him. He was excited, the clubhouse was something new.
“Come on, Rafey — it’s time to take your nap!”
Rafe’s small face collapsed. “I-want-some-jugo,” he cried, tears streaming down his now-reddened cheeks.
“Oh for Christsakes.” He pulled Rafe into the clubhouse and opened the huge refrigerator stocked with juice and soda. Rafe grabbed a Pepsi from the bottom shelf but Jason yanked it away. Before Rafe could even think of crying again, Jason opened a bottle of Orangina and filled Rafe’s sippy cup and shoved it into his hand. He carried him to the big leather couch where they could see through the open glass doors as Eric Freeholder spanked grounders to the infielders and Baptiste skied fly balls to the outfielders and Vucovich huddled with the pitchers and catchers down the left field line. As Jason watched, Rafe pulled a pile of magazines off the slate coffee table. Jason heard them hit the hardwood floor with a thud, and turned to see Rafe spraying the magazines with orange soda from his sippy cup.
He caught Rafe’s arm and shook him. “That’s a NO-NO!” he shouted. “NO-NO!” The toddler’s face contorted and a pitiful wail escaped his mouth. A wave of guilt swept over Jason, then utter frustration. He should have lined up another babysitter, but he never thought Vicki would actually leave him in the lurch. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
He pulled a tissue from the bag and wiped the streams running