Boy's World

Derek Zumsteg

Back to Chapter One

Chapter Two

Karen's gym bag dragged along the rough concrete wall of the tunnel as she walked in the cold, sweaty air to the field. The contact between laminated fabric and irregular stone made a warbling headache sound. Karen was working on a foul mood like no one on the grounds had ever seen. She'd already been challenged by three people on her way in, and needed to punch someone, anyone, in the nose as hard as she could.

In the sun and heat of the field, she set her bag down and stood on her first infield. There were a dozen players in the outfield, playing pepper games, throwing balls back and forth easily, standing around, gloves in hand, joking.

Two Latin American players stood a couple of feet away, talking in Spanish and stealing looks at her. Karen realized she was going to need a haircut, because her ponytail was a dead giveaway. She recognized Hart, the manager. He was weathered and had tanned poorly, the hair under his hat was graying, and there was something in the way he stood that made her feel bad. Karen caught his eye. Hart finished his conversation and then joined her. "You Karen Moran?"

Karen nodded. The stadium weather was strange in the morning, all of the heat and humidity with eddies of the cool, shaded air chased out by breezes, and it made her skin crawl. She should have come down a week earlier and acclimated.

Hart shook her hand, barely squeezing. "Good to see you."

"I need a uniform," Karen said.

"Equipment's in the locker room, back down the tunnel and on the right." He looked her up and down in an appraising, disinterested way. "I think we have something in your size."

The two players laughed. "I don't think we have anything suitable for a woman," one said in Spanish, glancing at Karen and clapping his chest.

The second one slapped the others' shoulder and replied in kind. "I don't think she'll need it."

This was really funny. Karen stared at them and then started to laugh with them, as loud as yelling. They stopped and looked at her. Karen kept laughing.

"What is so funny?" the first player asked.

"Hablo espanoles," Karen replied. Their smiles disappeared. The manager's expression hadn't changed at all. "I'll be back in a few minutes." Karen turned, picked up her bag, and walked to the locker room.

There was an equipment room in back, where a short man chewing tobacco watched her enter, as close to leering as he probably thought was safe at that point. Karen set her bag down across the room and walked as straight as she could to the half-door counter.

"I need a uniform," Karen said.

"What's your size?"

Karen approached the equipment room. "What do you have?"

"Medium, large, extra large, and extra-extra large."

"How large is large?"

He gave her the same regarding look she'd gotten from the coach. "It's about right for you. You're what, six feet?" "Six-one," Karen said.

He nodded. "About one-sixty?"

"About."

"You one-sixty or not?"

"Sure."

He reached back and handed her a top. "Try this." It fit okay, loose across the shoulders. She handed it back. "That's good. Do you have number twenty-three?" He handed it to her again. "You're number 18," he said.

"I don't get to pick my number?"

"Not yet."

Karen took the top, took the pants, and found a corner where she could change quickly. She took a second to look at herself in a mirror. She saw herself serious and angry about something. Karen tossed her stuff in an empty locker, put cleats on, and grabbed her stuff. The tunnel was still cold and clammy.

The red stands of seats were empty but for a scattered couple of organization types over the home dugout. They wore shorts, polo or Hawaiian shirts and sunglasses, took drinks from great bottles of ice water and smiled big, white smiles at each other. And rows behind them, a tall, unshaven reporter, who waved as she looked.

Karen stretched out on the ground, paid attention to her shoes. "Moran, you feel like running some drills?"

"Sure." She stood, hopped on the grass and followed the manager to the outfield.

"Let's run some sprints," he said.

Sprints were bad for Karen. She kept up with the back of the pack, but some of the recruits were speedsters, here to see if they could develop bats and gloves to match their 40-yard dash times, and they ran it out just to demonstrate.

In fielding she worked easy drills, she charged, caught the ball off the last hop, fired to first. She noticed people seemed to pay attention to her as she worked. They squinted in the light and regarded her without emotion, as if a rhesus monkey had come to play and was going through all the measures of the game somehow. She started to throw harder, snap her partner's glove a little, trying to make the same kind of point others were while knowing that burning her arm out in long-toss accomplished nothing for her.

As the shadows started to clear onto the field, Karen relaxed and took batting practice, taking the easy pitches and lining them at will across the field into the other groups doing runs. Then the guy started to mix her up, pitching her breaking stuff inside, and Karen kept trying to turn on them but they were too fast. She fouled them straight back just off her hands until she stood in the batters box, her fingers aching under her batting gloves, bat on her shoulder, staring at the pitcher.

He smiled his slow, wide Tennessee smile at her. He reached up to touch the brim of his hat. That was the team to Karen, Spanish-speaking recruits from the Dominican Republic, Panama, Mexico, and these chicken-shit gentlemen from the Confederate states, tipping their caps at her all the time. It made her want to walk up to the mound and make him eat the rosin bag the hard way.

She walked away from the box.

"That was some nice hitting there," Hart said, spitting into the turf. "You're behind on the inside heat, but I don't see anyone else even trying to turn on it. That's good."

"Thanks," Karen said. She wanted to kick something. "I don't have you down for a position," he said. Karen let him stand there, sweat beading on the back of his orange neck. "What do you play?"

"I play third, short, second," Karen said. "And I pitch."

He nodded, spit again. Karen turned away. "Excuse me," he said. "Well, I don't have much call for a utility infielder who can pitch."

Karen watched an immense Texan who looked like Mo Vaughn take an inside pitch off his elbow. He stood back and let loose with the loudest, most vile swearing jag Karen had ever heard in her life. The pitcher started to laugh just as loud even as the Texan kept screaming at him.

"Here's the thing. If you want to pick a position, you can compete for time at that position, I can compare you to other players, I can talk about you to those organization men up there, you know what I'm saying. You're not going to be able to be something else no one is. Maybe when you make it a rung or two up, you can see if you can't argue your case there. But now, you're going to have to prove you can do one thing well enough to justify their time. And stealing playing time's not going to help anybody. Especially you. I'd recommend you think about this, let me know. You're in a weird position, Moran."

He worked on his wad of tobacco for a second. "You're going to want people to need you enough that they'll look at you. And here, I have ten possible shortstops, and the guys who aren't fast enough to play shortstop, they'll play third and second, and I've already got a couple guys there. And these outfielders, they're interchangeable. And you're good with the stick, but I don't know that you can put up the power numbers."

Karen looked around the stadium. Steve was watching something else in the outfield.

"I've seen kids who couldn't hit worth a lick put out fifteen homers and get promoted to the next level, and I've seen kids with good eyes and skills end up released and left to try and beg a chance with another organization. That was with the Tigers people, but... they're already worried about you not being able to hit."

"I know plenty of major leaguers can't hit."

Hart shook his head. "You know what I'm talking about, though."

Karen looked into the outfield. Nothing interesting was happening, despite Steve's intent gaze. "I'm worried about injuries if I pitch."

"You pitch?"

"Yeah. But a great hitting talent will almost always make it through the levels if the talent's there. I can't count great pitching talents who blow their arms out just last year."

Hart nodded. "Well, think about it." He patted her on the shoulder. "Say hello to your dad for me. He's a good man, your dad. You feel like trying to pitching some?"

Batting practice had become an informal competition already, pitchers yelling for a chance to break out their heaters, batters cutting in line to muscle heaters out into the bleachers.

"Not really," she said. "I think it's about time I called it a day."

He nodded. "I figure you can break away earlier and get through the locker room quicker or much later. We're about done. I'll see you first thing tomorrow."

Karen went to pick up her glove and leave. She changed without showering and left the park as quickly as she could. The evening was starting to feel bearable, despite the car pollution on the air.

The reporter was outside the gates. Karen made for her rental car. "How was it?"

"I'm too annoyed to be polite with you right now." "That's okay."

"So off the record, leave me alone."

"What happened? You're not quitting, are you?"

Karen stopped walking. "No, I am not quitting."

"Good. Did you see I didn't run the article?"

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. But now that you've reported, I have to go with it. If I don't, someone else will and I'd rather I get on the wire services first, you know? I need the money."

Karen started again, and Steve walked alongside her. "Fine. Whatever. Run it."

"You're not listed with a position yet," Steve said, running his hand over his stubble. "Weren't you going to settle that with your dad? What are you going to play?"

"Wherever coach tells me," Karen replied. She picked her bag up and started again.

"They told me you hadn't said yet."

Karen stopped. "You want to know? They don't want me here. They don't want another position prospect who can't hit, and I think they've already got me marked for an early arm blowout if I pitch, which is exactly what I'm worried about. I want to play the field because I don't want to be a 21-year old with arthroscopic surgery or a footnote to some medical article on female athletes and increased injury risks.

"Would you pitch if that didn't matter?" Karen blinked. "Yeah. But I love hitting." She leaned against her car. "You're in an NL system," Steve said. "You can do both. And if you'd pitch if injuries didn't matter, then they don't matter. You get me?"

"Kind of."

"I'll put you down as a pitcher who can play the field. Or something." Steve laughed, and Karen smiled. "It's not like anyone reads my stuff anyway."

"I did," Karen said. "After you showed up at my house."

"Hey, yeah?"

"You're terrible." Karen started to laugh for the first time that day. "You are so damn bad. I can't even believe it."

Steve looked at his shoes and kicked the pavement. "I'm not that bad."

"You're not," Karen said, reaching over to punch his arm. "Sometimes you write about baseball like you're in love, and it's sweet. But you need to stop writing these articles about high school tennis championships."

"I have to pay the rent."

"Not like that. Writing dialogue with invisible friends? Don't they have comp ads they can run in place of you?"

"I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Sure. Maybe I'll give you a real interview."

"Hey, yeah?"

Karen left him.

Karen sat in her tiny warm empty apartment with a phone, half-dressed and pacing. In the Astrodome clubhouse, a phone rang. "Clubhouse."

"Hey James, can I talk to Scott please?"

"Hang on."

Karen took a drink of Gatorade while she waited. "How's my girl?"

"They wouldn't let me pick a number."

"They probably want to make sure you're worth the effort. How was your first day of camp?"

"They're a lot better than I thought they would be."

Her dad laughed. "I told you. How's Hart?"

"He says hello."

"So how are you feeling?"

"They're discouraging me from turning out. They say they've got too many position players as is.."

"I didn't know we were that stocked in the low minors. Huh. What'd you say?"

"Said I'd think about it."

"You're pissed, huh?"

"I don't know. I thought about trying out to pitch. But I don't want to be an argument why women can't make it. And I think even a marginal position player can get a starting job somewhere, but what if I turn out to be a mop-up man? You see what I'm saying?"

"I heard you when you told me last week. But you wouldn't be a mop-up man. Even if you're half as good as I think you are, you'll be a good third or fourth starter, and if you're only the fiftieth-best starter in all of baseball, honey, that'll do. You're a Mike Mussina, Karen, not a Mike Maddux."

"I guess."

"And you're smart. You play shortstop, you can play the field well but you can't outsmart ground balls. If you're a pitcher or a catcher, you get to use that brain and you get to out talent them as well. That's all you. If you have to go that way, you'll do fine."

Karen smiled in the dusty sunset that started across her eggshell apartment. "Yeah," she said. "You didn't talk to Hart while I was on the plane just so you could win this argument, did you?"

"I gotta go talk to my starter," her dad said. "Call me tomorrow." Karen stood with the phone in her hand and grinned. "Okay, dad."

Karen was the first player to report the next day, the field shining with dew and the park barely sunlit. Karen stretched out alone and Hart made his way over to greet her.

Hart was without chaw wad. "How're you feeling this morning?"

"Let me pitch for a minute."

Hart nodded and waved for Javier to sit behind home plate. Karen dragged a bucket of scuffed balls to the mound. She loosened up one last time and with the coaching staff watching marched fastballs around the lines of the strike zone, painting the black and then the white, missing a couple, and then, slower, mixed her nasty breaking pitches with inside and outside curves. She stepped back to the rosin bag.

The manager and his coaches stood on the lines, regarding her trying to conceal their reactions: astonishment, shock, happiness. Karen tossed her Dave Fleming curve for a high strike and then stepped off the mound. "I think that's a simulated inning," she said.

Hart nodded and broke out smiling. "I'll be goddamned. What's your daddy been teaching you?"

"How to pitch," Karen said. "Along with how to hit and how to field. I have a couple more pitches but I only show them."

"Like what?"

"The splitter, the knuckler, and a hard curve."

"Those weren't hard curves?" Hart laughed. "Will you please pitch?"

"Yeah, I will," Karen said.

"How fast do you top out at?"

"I don't know," Karen said. "It depends."

"Okay," Hart said. "We'll find out soon enough." He smiled, nodding. "Okay, you win. Goddamn." He shook his head. "Can you do that all the time?"

"No," Karen said. "I have to get sort of worked up to do that."

"We can help you with that," Hart said. "Or I hope we can."

Karen walked off the mound to find weight machines, and saw in the wet stands Steve and his photographer friend, who had a camera and a lens the size of his forearm. Steve waved.

Now it was official. Karen gave him the finger and a smile. Soon she wouldn't be able to get away with it.

To Chapter Three

about the author

Derek Zumsteg would like you to know that the soundtrack to "Boy's World" is now available, and features Busta Rhymes, Motorhead, and Abba.