The New York (2 page)

“Fuck Sid, fuck agents. I'm up to here with agents. Fuck them all,” George said. The Gila monster's eyes flickered then. I wouldn't have been surprised if his tongue had darted out and stabbed a fly.

“The trouble is, George, I'm not very good at negotiating these things. I could probably do it for someone else, bet not for myself. I'm jest too personally involved.”

“I paid fifty million dollars in payroll this season to finish third,” George said. “If I paid fifty million to be in the World Series, that would be one thing. I thought that's what I was paying for, to be in the Series. Bet no. I paid fifty million dollars for twenty-five assholes to finish third, fucking third. New York does not stand for third. They love that shit in Chicago, fucking Cubs could finish in Triple A and they'd be standing in line to throw their money into Wrigley Field, bet I am in New York, this is New York all around you, Ryan, this is not third place, not for a fifty-million-dollar payroll. What do you think the last baseball strike was all about? We have to take control of the game before you people rein it.”

“I just play, George, I don't rein nothing,” I said.

“That's what they all do. They all play, the greedy bastards,” he screamed. “I walk in the locker room and they got their boom boxes on and they dance their watusi jitterbugs when they should be concentrating —”

“Maybe you should get us chess boards,” I said.

Nothing I said was getting through. He was standing now, gesturing, walking around that Motel 6 room of a box, staring out at all those empty seats like the empty stadium was the sea and he was King Lear.

“Money! Money is raining this game! In the old days, a ball player was happy to have something to do in the summer and if he got paid for it, all the better! But not any more, no he needs BMWs and broads and Johnny Walker Black Label not Red and a fucking farm in Florida or some such godforsaken place!”

“I live in Houston in a motel,” I said. I wasn't being humble. I was trying to distract the bull because that little vein in his forehead was swelling up. It would have been alright if the damned thing ever burst but it didn't, it just made everyone else miserable.

“You're bums, illiterate fucking bums, all of you!” George said, not looking directly at me. I suppose he meant not me personally but in the collective.

“We finished third! Third! The
New York Times
, I'm surprised they still carry the box score. You know what the
Daily News
said this morning? No, I forget, you probably don't read. I read. The
Daily News
, the rotten bastards, the
News
says,
GEORGE BOMBS AGAIN!”

He said it exactly that way, with capital letters, just like a headline. I just sat there, deciding whether I could take another sip of Rolling Rock before he turned to look at me. I snuck it.

“Oh, you arrogant scum, you strike baseball, you blow the World Series even, you break little boys' hearts for your filthy paychecks!”

“George,” I began.

“Shuddup, Ryan. You should talk! You had 10 saves and a 536 ERA and that sucks, Ryan, that sucking sound you hear is six hundred fifty thousand of my — MY — dollars going into your pocket for shit. For total unvarnished unpolished unimpeachable shit.”

Well, I figured I would go out quietly, not with a bang and not with a whimper neither. George didn't look like he was going to die of a stroke so there was no point in sticking around. I think an employee can tolerate a certain amount of abuse from a boss, but not so he'd make a habit of it. I put down the Rolling Rock and got up quietly and started for the exits. For just a moment, I saw all those empty seats in the old place and tried to feel the way George must feel, but then I thought, fuck it. Empathy was wasted on a prick like George Bremenhaven. Never have sympathy for an owner.

“Where you going, Ryan?”

“Texas.”

“Is that your answer?”

“What was the question?”

“Three hundred thousand.”

“Doesn't have a question mark at the end of it, so I figured it wasn't a question.”

“And that's your answer?”

“What was the question?”

“You asshole, I'm offering you a one-year, last-hurrah contract for three hundred thousand dollars.”

“Shit, you got guys on the team make three million a year for lingering on the DL list half the season,” I said.

“Those days are over, Ryan. There's a new reality in baseball The fans are sick and tired of paying thirty bucks a pop to watch losers shuffle off into third place.”

“We drew pretty well till toward the end,” I said. “You got your television money. It wasn't all expenses, George. Ball players are just one of the unavoidable costs that go with owning a major league team. They must've told you that at Owners' School before you bought the Yankees.”

He glared at me then, but he didn't say anything. Maybe he saw I was getting personally pissed off, which is not the way I usually am. I do a professional piss-off, but that's to scare the shit out of the batter. I wasn't doing that now.

When he started talking again, he started soft and low.

“Ryan, I want to keep you. Like Ishmael. You're going to tell everything you saw and heard and did when George Bremenhaven declared a one-man revolution and seized his team back from the bloodthirsty, bloodsucking, scum bag agents and players and unions and showed he could win the pennant on his own terms.”

It's true I spent three years at Arizona State before I got into the minors and I did officially major in English, although it was mostly fooling around. I knew who Ishmael was, but I didn't know then that George was really planning something and not just spouting off. So I just opened the door of the skybox and said, “S'long, George.”

“Ryan, there isn't a team that is going to give you a better offer.”

“Sure there is,” I said, as if I believed it.

“I need you next year,” he said.

I just looked at him.

“Six hundred thousand. But the proviso is you don't tell anyone what you're getting, not anyone.”

“George, my agent will know and the union will know, all kinds of people get information.”

“Not if you don't tell them.”

“Six hundred fifty," I said.

“Six and a quarter,” he said.

I couldn't believe it. I thought this time next week I'd be selling Buick Regals for a three-hundred-dollar-a-week draw and now the old crocodile was giving me one more ride on the merry-go-round. I thought I should call Sid and just check it out with him, but Sid hadn't been returning my calls promptly like he did when I was twenty-nine and burning up the league with the lowest ERA in baseball. Damn, I was beginning to think like George and that was a scary thought. Fuck Sid.

“Draw the contract,” I said.

“Where will you be in the morning?” he said.

“I was gonna be in Texas,” I said.

“Fuck Texas. Texas'll wait. And while you're waiting, practice up on your Spanish.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because, Ryan, I gotta have one ballplayer who speaks English,” George said.

That didn't make any sense to me at the time. I thought George was going off the deep end again, jumping into a martini and swimming his crazy old way from rim to rim.

I wanted to just stare at him like the cold-blooded old reliever I am, but I couldn't.

“What are you talking about, George?” I finally said.

And those Gila eyes twinkled at me and that Gila tongue darted out and stabbed a fly.

“Cuba,” he said, like that explained everything.

For a couple of days after that, I didn't hear a word from George, although he'd said he'd call me as soon as the contract was ready. It's like waiting for the check that's always in the mail.

I called him a couple of times and got his private secretary, Miss Viola Foster. She was nice on the phone, but she said Mr. Bremenhaven was away on business in Washington. She would tell him I called; I believed her. George was just doing one of his disappearing things and it annoyed heck out of me. It also annoyed me that I was sticking around New York, taking it, because of the thought of working another year for just a $25,000 salary cut.

I even believed George was down in Washington, D.C. on business, other business, not baseball business.

The trouble was that Washington didn't have a baseball team, and that Baltimore was the closest city in the playoffs. I watched some of the games on television at night with a six-pack of MGD close at hand. I thought about George. Every owner worth his weight in gold — and they all are, no matter how they poor-mouth —- was at one or the other playoff game. Baseball owners have a weird social life, like umpires. Owners can't fraternize with anyone except other owners and they jump at any chance to hang out with the other guys in the Owners' Club. Umpires stick together because they don't fraternize with ballplayers and they need someone to eat with at night on the road.

One thought led to another while I was drinking beer and surfing through the games on television. I thought about speaking Spanish. And I thought a disturbing lot about Charlene Cleaver, who was waiting for me down in Houston.

I called her the first night after the last game of the season. She was disappointed, she said. She had made reservations for us for dinner at Tony's and now would have to cancel them. I said for $625,000 for another ride in the Bigs, I'd make up the dinner to her.

This was the wrong thing to say. Or maybe I put it in the wrong way. George had upset me some and I let our conversation carry over to Charlene by the tone in my voice.

“I happen to know $625,000 is a lot of money,” Charlene said. Then nobody said anything for a moment. “What does Sid say?”

She talks about Sid Cohen like they are co-conspirators and I am the conspiratee. I resent the hell out of it. Charlene and I were close, but, I thought then, not that close. Same with Sid.

I have to admit here that Charlene is a prattler at times and goes off on her own tangents, which, combined with her stunning good looks, might lead some people to think there is no brain behind those pretty eyes. But there is. When we first started going together, I showed off my wallet to her, in a manner of speaking. Talked about my CDs and how I would be fixed when I retired and so forth. She set me straight on that.

I remember the first loving words out of her mouth that night. I kissed her long and deep, and she said, “Latin American funds.”

I was so intoxicated by her at the time that it took me a moment to react. “What did you say?”

“Latin American funds are returning twenty-five percent the last I looked. What do your CDs return?”

One thing led to another. One kiss led to another to an invitation to share breakfast with her at her place. And I started listening close to Charlene after that, transferring out of my CDs and into strange things like Latin American mutual funds and some gaming stocks. Damned if she wasn't right about all that stuff I never paid much attention to.

But she wasn't Sid Cohen. I had cut this deal for myself by myself.

I tried a silence-breaker. “Charlene —” I began.

“Anybody works for a living ‘stead of playing baseball knows what that kind of money is. I might have to work fourteen, fifteen years to see that kind of money, Ryan Patrick, so don't high-hat me. But what does Sid say?”

“I didn't talk to Sid.”

“Oh. I see,” she said.

“Honey, I just wanted to point out the obvious. If I was to tell you I had a chance to make twenty-five dollars an hour shoveling shit in some godforsaken place like Albuquerque, you'd give me a kiss and pack my lunch before I left. Bet I tell you I got another chance on the merry-go-round, you sound like you ain't happy.”

“I'm
not
happy,” she said, stating her feelings and correcting my English in the same three-word sentence. “I miss you.”

“Hell, I miss you, honey,” I said.

“I was jest thinking about you comin' up the drive.”

Charlene don't have no drive. She lives in an apartment building.

“I was thinking' it, too,” I lied.

“Was you?” Sometimes she slips like that. She went to community college, not a regular four-year place, bet she works hard to root out that East Texas way of talking.

“I was.”

When we start talking like characters out of “Li'l Abner,” it is a sign that the squall is passing.

“Isn't that less money than you made last year?” Charlene said.

“A bit”

“Why's that?”

“Why's what?”

“Why're you getting paid less?”

“I'm lucky to be paid,” I said.

“I know that,” she said. “I mean, why would he pay you again? You ain't that good, not anymore.”

“You never complained.”

“I don't mean about that,” she giggled.

“He don't pay me for that,” I said, sort of sly and giggly myself.

“I miss you, honey.”

“I miss you. Couple of days here, settle this contract up, and I'll be heading home, Charlene. Come up that driveway, you better look out, girl.”

“You been good, Ryan?”

“I been good.”

“I know you're lying when you say it.”

“I ain't lying, Charlene. I'm sittin' here in my box in Fort Blessed Lee, New Jersey, dosing myself with Miller beer and taking cold showers morning and night.”

Giggles.

“I mean it, honey. You're worth waitin' for.”

I did mean that and maybe it showed in my voice because her tone got cooey and soft. Actually, Charlene Cleaver was the first serious girlfriend I had had in some time.

She was very pretty, which goes without saying, but she was very smart as well. I ain't half-dumb, so I know smart. She studied to be a nutritionist at Houston West Community, said nutrition was a growth field in the years to come. Looks like she was right if you half-read
USA
Today
most mornings, all that stuff about B's and C's and E's and bulk fiber, which is one of my favorites. She had a good job with Rice University Hospital working on improving the diet habits of Texans, which is a lifetime job in itself. It's a lot like selling grizzly bears on a low-fat salad diet when they would much rather chomp on hikers and campers.