Unwritten Rules Page 5

  And it must be serious if he’s gonna need to buy her a whole cheeseburger to discuss it. “Yeah, okay.”

  He thanks her when she hands him a glass of portioned out shake. It tastes like chocolate-flavored limestone. “Have you seen Morales?”

  “He’s been in there with the Big Man. For a while.” She nods toward the closed door of their manager’s office.

  Eugenio comes out a few minutes later, face carefully neutral. He swallows the cold espresso that Zach brought him in two swigs, working his jaw to get rid of the taste.

  “Glasser” comes a booming voice. And it must be serious if their manager is hollering for him.

  “Good morning, sir,” Zach says, once he’s in the office, and the Big Man—whose real name is Courtland—rolls his eyes. He’s old, even for a manager, in his seventies, and scrawny as an underfed chicken. He’s got a deep voice that seems to start in his toes and a tendency to let umpires have it at the slightest provocation, though he didn’t intercede yesterday with Eugenio. After four years with the team, Zach’s not really sure if he likes him, but he’s a little afraid of him, which is probably the more important thing.

  “D’Spara went to the doctor for something or other this morning,” Courtland says.

  “Is he all right?”

  Zach gets a hand wave in response as if medical problems are something that young people have invented to get out of their responsibilities, even if D’Spara is pushing sixty.

  “I’m not here to talk about D’Spara being a hypochondriac. I asked the pencil necks—” which Courtland calls the analytics guys, sometimes to their faces “—to put together some numbers about our catchers’ framing abilities.”

  He pushes forward a packet of papers, some of which have an indecipherable scrawl across them. Zach looks through them—they’ve fixed the color coding but haven’t simplified the charts into ballplayer-ese—and spends a long minute trying to interpret the list of catching metrics before going, “Uh, okay.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t know what they were trying to say either.” Though that’s bullshit, given that Courtland was hired to be an analytics-minded manager by the organization that pioneered analytics. “Basically, you’re better at stealing strikes than Morales is.”

  Zach stares down at the packet again, mostly so that Courtland is looking at the crown of his head and not whatever expression passes over his face, in case he’s accused of not wanting to see his teammate succeed.

  Which he doesn’t, at least a little.

  Especially at something Zach has worked on, spending hours, days, weeks with their training staff on improving his framing, so that on a borderline pitch, an umpire is more likely to call a ball a strike.

  “It turns out,” Courtland continues, “that more strikes means fewer base runners. Which means fewer runs. Which means we win more.”

  “Yeah, I got that.” It’s a little more sarcastic than Zach should be, particularly since Courtland can bust him down to triple-A, though he just gets a laugh out of him, loud enough in the otherwise quiet office that Zach’s hearing aid barks painfully.

  “Point is,” Courtland says, “it’s spring training. Even if I don’t have you out doing bunting drills, there’s time to put in some work.”

  Zach doesn’t say that he has been working with their hitting coach on his timing. With Morgan to the point that he’s aching. And he definitely doesn’t say that he both resents and is looking forward to spending more time with Eugenio, just the two of them. So he just says, “Okay.”

  “See, Glasser, that’s what I like about you. No arguing. No bullshit.” Implying Eugenio argued with him or balked at having to work on something—though he’s been there every morning before Zach has, and Zach usually leaves before he does. “I expect to go into the regular season with two catchers who could convince an umpire that up is down and left is right and that a ball three inches outside the zone is actually a strike down the middle. D’Spara and Martinez’ll get you caught up on what they’re thinking.”

  It’s a dismissal, so Zach dismisses himself.

  He finds Eugenio out in the clubhouse.

  “I hear you’re gonna teach me to frame better.” Eugenio doesn’t sound particularly happy about it.

  “They didn’t work with you last year?”

  Eugenio shrugs. “They did. I’m just lousy at it. And the organization didn’t prioritize it, you know? Glad to be someplace that does.”

  “Sounds like D’Spara and Marti are coming up with something.”

  “I thought we could practice. Or you could diagnose what I’m doing wrong?” He says it quietly, like he’s entrusting Zach with this. A request Zach wouldn’t refuse even without being ordered to help him.

  They’ve only been out in the bullpen for a few minutes—after Zach makes Eugenio dig up the now-cold breakfast he brought him—but it only takes a few minutes to realize what Eugenio is doing wrong in framing: pretty much everything.

  It’s heartening in a way. Eugenio is a smooth receiver and his pop time, the time it takes him to throw out would-be base stealers, borders on elite. Zach’s been watching him catch for more than a week, and he’s good at it. Except, apparently, when he’s trying to frame pitches.

  “You can’t keep moving your glove like that,” Zach says, when Eugenio catches a ball fired by the pitching machine.

  “I’m supposed to move my glove.”

  “Yes, you’re supposed to move your glove. Just not like that.”

  Because decent pitch framing is about moving your glove slightly, subtly, imperceptibly to convince an umpire a ball is a strike. But even the most nearsighted, fool-headed umpire could see that Eugenio is practically jerking his glove on pitches, dragging it obviously inward, to the degree that he’s even making pitches that are strikes look like they aren’t.

  And the thing is, Zach can just tell him that he’s doing well. Lie to him and say, “Yep, go get ’em.” But of course he doesn’t want to get chewed out by Marti, or deal with D’Spara’s deep, almost parental disappointment. Or admit to Eugenio that that’s what he’s doing.

  On top of that, Eugenio is frustrated, all lip-chewing, jaw-clenching, temple-throbbing annoyance behind his mask. He’s taken a few balls off the chest, which probably smarts, even if they’re not being hurled by the pitching machine at full velocity. He’s scrambled after a few more, knees in the dirt, like it matters if he doesn’t field what would obviously be wild pitches. He curses as he catches a pitch, moving it so obviously that he doesn’t even wait for Zach to tell him he messed up. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  Zach goes over to the Gatorade cooler and offers Eugenio a cup. “We could watch video instead.” Because D’Spara’s back and probably has more footage of framing than Zach ever cares to see.

  “Did watching porn teach you how to fuck?” Eugenio snaps, and it hangs there for a second before Zach laughs. “Sorry, I’ve watched tons of video. I know when I’m bad at something. Hell, even my coaches told me I was bad at it.” He makes a vague hand motion that seems to encompass everything wrong in his previous organization.

  “You just gotta relax. Stop thinking about it.”

  Eugenio gives him an incredulous look.

  “Fuck, I know, I know, that’s not helpful.” Zach buckles his chest protector and then slips on his mask. Squatting in front of the pitching machine is like facing a firing squad, or at least, a squad firing a bunch of baseballs at him at eighty miles an hour. Even with the chest protector, he’s going to have bruises. He crouches down and waits for the pitching machine to fire. The ball comes at him more or less down the middle. He catches it, careful not to adjust his glove.

  “I know how to catch a ball,” Eugenio says. “And you didn’t even move.”

  “It was a strike. If I’d moved my glove like I was framing, then the ump would start calling strikes balls just for showing him
up.”

  “They think I’m showing them up anyway.”

  “Then don’t give ’em another reason to.” The pitching machine fires again, and this time, the pitch is on a low outside edge. Zach catches it, thumb tilted up in his mitt, making the movement of his glove less obvious as he pulls the pitch back into the zone.

  “Was I supposed to see something?” Eugenio says.

  “Exactly.” It’s a little gloating, and Eugenio doesn’t throw up his hands or tell Zach to fuck off, but he probably should.

  “Talk me through it,” he says, after Zach’s caught a few more pitches. “Tell me what you’re doing.”

  “Okay.” And it’s kind of strange for Zach to self-narrate. “I know the pitch will be outside, and when the machine goes off—” and there’s the sound of it firing “—I move my body in case I’m set up in the wrong place.” He drops to one knee, letting the ball skid past him. “It’s harder to see that I’m half outside if I’m not in a full squat.” His right leg is tucked under but still giving him mobility so that he can move if the pitch isn’t delivered where it’s supposed to be.

  Another pitch, and Zach catches it, this time purposefully scooping his glove down before jerking it up. “See, that’s what I don’t want to do. An ump sees that and even if it’s a strike, he’ll call it a ball.”

  “Yeah, I got that. I know a hundred things I’m not supposed to be doing.”

  Zach gets up and clicks off the pitching machine, even as a ball sails out of it and bounces off the chain link fence dividing the bullpen from the field. “You know, I could be doing something else.” Said in a tone that actually does come out as exasperated veteran, mostly because Eugenio is being mildly exasperating.

  Eugenio goes over to one of the chairs where a pile of his stuff is sitting, and rummages through it before pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a blue plastic lighter. “It’s a bad habit,” he says, before Zach can say anything.

  He lights a cigarette, cupping his hand around the end of it and taking the kind of deep sucking inhale particular to someone with the lung capacity of a professional athlete, especially one with broad shoulders. Most of the other players Zach has seen smoke—actually smoke and not just dip—are pitchers, usually relievers, who need to concentrate late in games and so go rip a cigarette during inning breaks.

  Zach doesn’t sit there watching him. For one, that’d be a little weird, and Eugenio might mention that it’s weird. For another, Zach doesn’t want to notice the size of his hands or the way his mouth works around the cigarette or his long exhales of smoke or anything else. Doesn’t trust himself not to look, with Eugenio there, face pinched with frustration, shoulders hunched, actually looking upset and not the masked expression he wore in the clubhouse. So Zach turns to the outfield grass instead, concentrating on it like he might actually see it grow.

  “Sorry,” Eugenio says, when he’s done. “I know you don’t have to do this, so I appreciate it.” He grinds his cigarette into the side of a metal trash can, then puts the butt into a cup still holding a little Gatorade.

  And as he settles back behind the plate, D’Spara and Marti decide to roll into the bullpen.

  The pitching machine shoots a ball. Eugenio moves his body, knee acting as a fulcrum as he repositions himself to field the ball, glove low and steady.

  And Zach shouldn’t laugh. He shouldn’t. He’s taken pitches off his chest and back and shoulders. Being a catcher is practically a declaration of masochism, or at least, a solid reason to invest in Tiger Balm. But Eugenio is in the perfect position to field a pitch on the low outside corner, and instead takes one down the middle, thumping off his chest.

  “Fuck,” Eugenio says, and it’s enough that even D’Spara gives a chuckle. The machine is on a timer, so it fires again, and Eugenio gets his glove on it this time, though he doesn’t frame it.

  “How long you all been out here?” Marti asks.

  “An hour, give or take,” Zach says. “It’s going—” and he doesn’t say well, because that’s a clear lie. “It’s going.”

  “D’Spara brought video.”

  “Great.” And Zach reaches to unclip his chest protector.

  “Don’t think I mentioned you being excused,” Marti says and laughs at Zach’s answering expression.

  * * *

  “Have you ever watched videos of yourself for an hour?” he asks Morgan later. They’re eating dinner. It’s early; the dining room is them and senior citizens, light outside barely fading. The restaurant has broad windows overlooking the scenic view of a highway, Morgan sitting with her back to them, sun highlighting the loose fly-aways in her blond hair.

  “I was a pitcher, Glasser. So, yes, of course I have. And there’s no way you haven’t spent hours looking at your batting stance.”

  “It’s different.”

  Though he doesn’t specify how it’s different, with Eugenio sitting across from him so that Zach can watch him talk. Or how he asked questions about what Zach would do if there was a runner on second and in particular counts and with particular pitches and listened carefully to Zach’s answers. About how he leaned close into Zach’s space with that ease guys have when they’re not worried about being taken the wrong way. About how an hour went by without Zach noticing, until Eugenio mentioned having to get ready for their split-squad game later.

  Morgan doesn’t press him either, though she’s clearly gearing up to say something. She’s picked her burger apart, removing the bun and then carving the patty itself into increasingly small slivers.

  “Your food all right?” he asks, when she’s spent more time shifting it around in the red plastic basket it came in than actually eating it. She’s also balled up bits of her napkin and straw wrapper, which she flicks around the table.

  “It tastes fine.” But she asks the server for a to-go box when she comes around again.

  “What’d Johnson say to you?” Zach asks, rather than watch her start to shred the placemat.

  “He saw my wedding ring. And asked me about what my husband thought of me working with a bunch of guys.”

  And Zach is torn between laughing at that and ordering them both a drink. “What’d you say to him?”

  “That it wasn’t an issue.”

  “Well, shit.” Because she came into the clubhouse after the Supreme Court decision, a piece of string tied around her ring finger in lieu of a ring, saying how this felt like a dream, something that she would wake up from any moment.

  Zach congratulated her, even if some part of him wondered if the decision was something temporary, revocable, a brief window of happiness that could be slammed shut before the end of his career. Something he didn’t say out loud, even as a hypothetical, especially at Morgan’s joy in talking about marrying her now-wife. Especially when he considered how his life might be different if he was a trainer or if he stayed in Baltimore, reupholstering dining room chairs for his parents’ business.

  “It would be funny if it wasn’t just all so constant,” she says. “When I was younger, I thought it was gonna be a one-and-done. Like, I wasn’t out, and now I am, and no more conversations about it.” She shifts one of the little paper wads around on the table, edging it into a pool of water, watching as it wicks it up. “The thing is, though, is that it’s not. It’s always this calculation of who’s worth it and who’s not. Who might have some kind of homophobic freak-out. Who’s gonna make my job tougher than it needs to be.”

  Her voice tightens at the end and she blinks a few times, hard enough that Zach considers if he should get up, excuse himself to the bathroom, just to give her a minute. About the right thing to say, starting with I know how that is, which seems to die between his lungs and his vocal cords. About how he wanted to tell his brother, his sister, but told only his high school guidance counselor when he cried in her office, asking how he was going to play baseball. And no one else since then.

>   Even now, watching her as she tries not to tear up and mostly succeeds, his voice feels stuck in his mouth. He manages only, “I’m sorry. That’s really rough.”

  There’s a long moment, Morgan blinking rapidly, and Zach looking past her, watching the cars outside, two elderly people having a fight at their table about something to do with the menu. The bartender leaning to flirt with a customer who’s at least thirty years his senior. The traffic in and out of the kitchen, servers and busboys passing each other as if choreographed. He wonders if anyone recognizes them or is covertly taking pictures. If he’ll get asked for an autograph afterward, even if he’s barely a celebrity in Oakland itself, much less in suburban Phoenix.

  “Fuck,” she says. “It’s not even Johnson or whatever’s fault. Like, I don’t even think he meant it like that.”

  “Probably not.” Because it probably didn’t occur to him, like it didn’t occur to him that Zach might not go to the same kind of church that he did. “If you want, I can talk with him.”

  “No, if anyone’s gonna mention it, I’d rather it be me. Just give me a heads-up, all right, about the next green-as-grass rookie you send my way.”

  “Sure, of course.” Their waitress walks by and Zach flags her down, requesting two shots of mezcal.

  “Thanks,” Morgan says, after they’ve taken them—or after Morgan has taken hers and Zach sipped from his. “All right, enough. Tell me about how framing practice is going other than video review. Marti said a mild disaster, so give me some details.”

  He tells her about their practice that morning, at one point yanking up his shirt to show her where he has a bruise blooming on his side. “They’re sort of using me as, I don’t know, almost like I was a coach. But I’m sure you’re up to your ears in demanding-ass minor leaguers.”

  “I could stand to be a little busier. A couple of guys have no-showed to training sessions.” And Zach tries to remember if he was supposed to come see her about something and spent the morning out in the bullpen instead, which must show, because Morgan continues, “Not you. You’d be buying me dinner if you had.”