Chapter Twenty-Two
There was a great baseball quote that said “every twenty-four hours the world turns over on someone who was sitting on top of it.” For Tucker it wasn’t even a full day. He sat in the clubhouse watching through the doorway as Emmy stretched out Chet, until the sudden appearance of Chuck interrupted his line of sight.
“Hey, Coach.”
“Lloyd.” The coach shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. There was nothing comforting about the gesture. “GM wants to see you upstairs when you’re cleaned up.”
Tucker’s stomach did the shortest free fall in history, dropping from throat to intestine in one second flat, leaving him with a dizzy, spinning, about-to-puke sensation. “He say why?”
Chuck shook his head. “Said, ‘Good game.’ Said, ‘Send up Lloyd.’”
The coach was a big talker.
The general manager of a team rarely interacted with the players at any time. It was often easier for them to maintain a professional distance from the men whose lives they bought and traded if they didn’t have to know them on a personal level. How could you tell a man you knew and liked that his whole life was suddenly being move across country on a whim? If the people you work with might someday become financial bargaining pieces, don’t become their friend. That was general manager logic.
So if Darren Meritt wanted to see him in person, he could only imagine one possible scenario, and it wasn’t a good one. He wasn’t getting a raise—that would be discussed through his agent. No, if the GM wanted to talk to him, the only logical reason was the worst case possible.
Trade.
His contract still had two and a half years remaining, so he knew it wasn’t the end of his career. But a trade was just as unfathomable. Tucker broke out in a cold sweat thinking about what it would mean for him to be moved somewhere else. He’d spent his entire major league career in San Francisco. No other city would feel like home. No other team would make sense to him.
The weight of that knowledge left him so dazed he accidentally washed his hair with a bar of soap.
When he arrived in the long white hall leading up to the GM’s office, Tucker realized he’d only put on one sock. He was a wreck. Any sweat he’d managed to rinse off in the shower had returned threefold, soaking the pits of his dress shirt. The air conditioning chilled the perspiration, causing a literal cold sweat.
The door of the suite swung open when Tucker knocked, giving him no extra time to wait in the hall for someone to answer. He waited anyway until Darren beckoned, “Come in, Mr. Lloyd.”
Mr. Lloyd was never a great name to hear. It came from bill collectors in his youth and lawyers in his progressive years. No one who meant positive things for Tucker ever called him Mr. Lloyd.
“Good evening, sir.”
Evening was a polite phrase for it. Since it was well past eleven, he was shocked the old man was still in the office. Waiting for him. It all added up to shitty, shitty news.
“Come in, son. Have a seat.”
Tucker sat in a large wingback chair across the desk and kept his hands clasped together in his lap to keep the tremor in his fingers from showing. He hadn’t been this nervous since he pitched his first game in the majors.
“Chuck said you wanted to speak with me?”
“I do.”
“You stayed awfully late to do it.”
Darren chuckled and patted the round curve of his belly. “I suppose I don’t see the time of day the same way as most. When my job moves at night, I move with it.”
It was hard to argue with Darren’s logic, and Tucker wasn’t in much of a mood to argue, anyway. “Not to rush you, sir, but I’m assuming there’s a reason you wanted to see me?” Might as well rip the Band-Aid off.
In the back of his mind Tucker was running through the list of teams who’d recently had pitchers succumb to illness or injury. The Red Sox and the Mariners were both down one regular starter. The Marlins had a middle relief spot to fill. Tucker choked down a swell of bile.
“I do.” Darren leaned forward and picked up a heavy fountain pen off his desk, twirling the writing instrument in his fingers as he stared at Tucker with a new ferocity. “You’ve been with us for a long time, Tucker.”
“Fourteen years.”
“Yes. And you’ve done great things for us in that time. You’ve been a great player.”
Tucker nodded solemnly. A lot of past tense words were being thrown around. “I love playing for the Felons.”
“I know you do.”
“I’d love to keep playing for the Felons,” he added, drawing out the word keep in the hopes he’d make his feelings clear. Not that he could stop a trade if the ball was already rolling.