Dugout

Winner - Mesa Visions Fiction

The field lights were still burning hot white, but the dust had settled in the stadium’s parking lot as Jim sat in the dugout with his elbow in a cooler of icy water. Even as the swarms of mosquitoes and gnats buzzed around his ears he sat unmoving, and focused on the crickets chirping as he looked out over the well-lit field. He glanced over at the scoreboard and laughed at the team's mascot, a Firefrog, that was painted an electronic red on the otherwise black background. 

“Pops,” he heard someone shout from home plate. He turned to see Julio standing there, smiling, with a six-pack missing two beers and the empty plastic rings looped around his fingers. As he made his way into the dugout, he took one of the beers off, tossing it at him.

“Thanks, kid,” Jim said as he caught the beer, one handed. 

“Good game tonight, huh Pops?” 

“We lost, Julio,” Jim said flatly, as he positioned the beer in his lap, cracking it open with one hand. 

“Sure we lost. But, I had a home run. That’ll look real good for my reel.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Julio spit the sweet tobacco juice that had been pooling in his mouth and opened his beer, sipping into the side of his mouth to avoid swallowing the shredded Skoal. 

“You pitched good tonight too,” Julio said.

“Not good enough.”

“Nah, that ain’t on you, Pops. Anderson dug us in a deep hole early.”

“I suppose.”

“Cheer up old man!” Julio said lightly, slapping him on the back. “You got some good tape. Braves might even call you up to Single-A if you keep pitchin’ like that.”

Jim frowned as Julio kept his hand lightly on his shoulder blade and moved it to his biceps, he squeezed Jim’s arm gently and affectionately. It was with a tenderness and warmth Jim hadn’t felt since he had been a young man and it made him smile. The two men realized where they were and Julio jerked his hand away. 

“How long you been doin’ this, Julio?” Jim asked suddenly.

“Playin’ ball?”

“No. Playin’ in the minors.”

Julio spat on the ground again and looked up at the night sky. He could see countless insects shooting around, illuminated only by the field lights. 

“Three years? Give or take?”

“I’ve been at this for thirteen, kid.”

“You’re thirty-one?”

“I came out of college, not high school. I’m thirty-six.”

Julio’s head jolted back in surprise. The other guys always teased Jim. They assumed he was older because of the crow's feet creeping up the side of his eyes and the bald spot he desperately tried to hide under his cap. But thirty-five? That seemed impossibly old.

“Well Pops, you still got it.”

“Nah.” Jim looked over at his arm and sucked his teeth. “Can you pull my smokes out of my pocket?”

“You smoke, Pops?”

“Just on special occasions.”

“Coach’ll be pissed if he sees you smokin’ in the dugout.”

“I don’t care,” Jim said as he shifted toward the cooler so Julio could fish out his pack. Julio reached into his pocket and found the menthol Pall Malls. He took one out and delicately put it in Jim’s mouth, and he lit it using the small, red lighter deep in the half empty pack. Julio was drawn to Jim’s green eyes that lit up in the dancing flame, but he hid that feeling away. 

“It was a good run, Julio.” Jim finally said, taking a drag, and putting his head on the concrete behind him. 

“Don’t be so doom and gloom, Pops. You could get called up again.”

“I only got called up to the majors for a few innings. They were all some late-season games. Teams that didn’t want to waste their starters’ arms. It was always a losing record, and always when the season was lost anyhow.”

“Maybe. But who cares?”

“Because Julio, I’ve given my life to baseball and I don’t have nothin’ to show for it.”

“Sure you do.”

Jim shook his head, and he looked down at his cleats. The sole was holding on just barely because of a fresh roll of white electrical tape. His eyes welled up with tears, and they started to fall onto his grey, pinstriped pants, splattering in clustered dots in his lap. Jim sniffled but Julio pretended not to hear him and looked away to drink more of his beer. 

“They’re never calling me back up, kid. It’s over.”

“What’s over?”

“It snapped tonight,” Jim said nonchalantly. 

“What did you snap?” Julio asked voice full of concern, but he already knew.
“It was the last pitch,” Jim started to lift his arm out of the cooler so he could show Julio, but winced and grunted. He put it back in, gingerly. “Right when I let go of the ball, I felt it. It hurt, but I’ve done it all now, kid. Labral and rotator cuff tears, tenidis, dislocated fingers, broken feet and ankles. But this one was different. I felt the ligament give out. I heard it too. Just a gentle pop, like a few rubber bands snapping, but that was all it took.”

“UCL?” Julio asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yeah,” Jim said slowly, “I’m never pitching again. Even if I get the surgery, after the rehab and strength training, I’d be thirty-seven at best before I step back out on the mound. If I’m lucky, they’ll stick me in this minor league bullshit just to see if I still got it. They’d want to see a lot of it too. I wouldn’t be called up until I’m thirty-eight. That’s best case, Julio. I’m done.”

The two sat there for a few minutes, neither sure what to say. 

“What was your last pitch?” Julio asked.

“It was a curveball.”

“Was it any good?” 

“Hell no. I was way out of the box. But he swung anyways.”

“Well then, it was good enough.”

Jim looked back at his arm. Even with his black long sleeve down to his wrist, and through the ice water he had been soaking it in, he could see his elbow was swollen to the size of an orange.

“When the guy swung, and the game was over, I stood out there for a while. I watched the dozen or so fans leave, most of them were so drunk they didn’t even realize it was the bottom of the ninth. I stayed on the mound, thinking about the game.”

“Yeah, Pops. I’d be thinking about a lot too if I tore my UCL.”

“Yeah? What would you think about?”

“If I knew my career was over? I’d probably think about all the good times playing ball.” Julio looked out on the green field and breathed deep through his nose. He caught some of Jim’s cigarette smoke, and it mixed with the sweat and the fresh cut grass as he smiled. “I’d remember back to my junior year when we beat Seabreeze High.”

“What happened?”

“Bases weren’t loaded, but they had a runner on second and third. They were only down by one when their designated hitter came up. The game was in their stadium, but there was a thick quiet. Kenny, our pitcher, usually did well when it was tense. He threw a fastball, right in the bottom corner of the box, and this kid made contact. I heard that bat ping and I saw the ball like it was moving in slow motion way, way up; past the lights’ glow and into the dark sky. 

“The crowd went crazy, but I didn’t look away. I kept looking for the ball, my eyes scanning the sky, only seeing faint stars. It felt like the night had swallowed it up. Like it would never come down.”

Julio laughed to himself and looked up, like he was searching for that lost ball somewhere in the stars that were blotted out through the lights that lined the field. 

“I couldn’t hear the crowd anymore, and I wasn’t looking at my teammates. I was lost, frantically searching, feeling like I knew where it was but not seeing anything. Then, it was just there. Like God dropped it right on top of me. I didn’t even need to move; I just kept my eyes on it. I opened up my glove in time, and it popped right in. Everyone was stunned because nobody had even seen where it went. I yelled at third base and threw the ball, and then he kicked it to second. Triple play. After that I was the star of the team.”

“Were you any good before?”

“Not really,” Julio said shaking his head. “I mean, after that it was just who I was. I was Julio, the baseball player. I got invited to parties, teachers let me pass classes. Shit, my Dad even woke up early to run drills with me. I guess I just became someone else. In a weird way, I was forced into it.”

Julio shook his head, like he was waking up from a deep dream and laughed at himself, embarrassed about how lost he was in the memory. “Sorry, Pops. What were you thinking about on the mound?”

“I was thinking about my Dad. After games we’d always pile in the family’s station wagon. I’d sit behind him and he’d just yell and rant the whole way home. I stopped crying after the hundredth time, and I stopped listening after the thousandth, but he would always scream until his spit was splattered all over the windshield and my mom would beg him to stop.”

“What would he yell about?”

“He would always yell about how I needed to give more, and how if I could use my arm for school tomorrow I hadn’t thrown hard enough. That if I wanted to make it in the majors, I’d have to try harder than everyone else just for a chance to be someone.”

Julio didn’t say anything, but he started to remember his dad yelling too. About how he needed to provide for his family, and how his brothers and sisters were counting on him. How it was all on his shoulders because he was the one touched by God. He’d warn him about gold diggers taking the money he was going to make, but secretly, Julio knew he would never need to worry about a woman in his life. 

“Well, one night Dad realized I wasn’t listening. He must have asked me something, but I had blotted him out at that point. He pulled the car over and told me to get out.”

“Then what?”

“He told me to run. So, I ran in front of the car, and he was driving just behind me with his hazards on. Even through the closed windows I could hear the muffled cursing from Dad and the dull thuds of him slapping the steering wheel. He just yelled at nothin’; straight into the night. He made me run the eight miles home at thirteen.”

“Jesus.”

“I cried, and I puked, and I begged for him to let me back into the car. He would just scream about never giving up, and how winners have to want it.” Jim stopped for a second, and looked back at the Firefrog painted on the scoreboard. “This tear is the best thing that could have happened to me, Julio. I haven’t stopped running since that night. Now, I don’t have to run anymore.”

“I’d be scared if I was you.”

“I am scared. But now I know I gave it my all.”

Jim’s big, brown eyes met with Julio’s, and he cautiously put his hand on Julio’s knee. They looked at each other, hypnotized for a moment. Julio looked down and smiled. 

“Sometimes,” Jim said, “when people yell at you enough, you start to forget who you are.” He squeezed Julio’s knee gently, moving it to the inside of his thigh. “I don’t want to forget again.”