“What?” Lynn said, returning from a solo venture underneath the bleachers. She handed me a beer and a bag of peanuts. She had insisted on buying the tickets, too. Evidently I was being hosted at the home park tonight.
“Nothing. That guy’s an old friend of mine.” I pointed up at Steiner. Lynn was being real nice, I guess, but I felt a little screwy. Seeing Steiner and being in a ballpark made me think for a minute the world might want me back. He had played at our parties.
And it is my custom with people I don’t know to pay my own way, at least, but as she had handed me the plastic cup, I had accepted it without protest. My financial picture precluded many old customs, even those grounded on common sense. I would keep track and pay her back sometime. Besides, early in the game, so to speak, I didn’t have the sense not to become indebted to this woman.
“Don’t you want a beer?” I asked her. She demurred, and retrieved a flask of what turned out to be brandy from her purse along with a silver thimble. I don’t have the official word on this, but I don’t think you drink brandy at the ballpark. Certain beverages are married to their sports, and I still doubt whether baseball, even the raw, imprecise nature of Triple A, had anything to do with brandy. Brandy, I thought, taking another look at my date as we stood for Steiner’s version of “The Star Spangled Banner,” which he sprinkled with “Yellow Submarine,” brandy is the drink for quoits.
I don’t know; I was being a jerk. It wasn’t a first. Blame it this time on the eternal unrest that witnessing baseball creates in my breast. There you are ten yards from the field where these guys are playing. So close to the fun. I loved baseball. The thing I regretted most was that I hadn’t pressed on and played a little minor-league ball. Midgely himself and Snyder, the coach, talked to me that last May, but I was already lost. Nixon was in the White House and baseball just didn’t seem relevant activity.
That isn’t my greatest regret. I regretted ten other things with equal vigor—well, twelve say. Twelve tops. One in particular. Things that I wanted not to have happened. I wanted Lily back. I wanted to locate the little gumption in my heart that would allow me to step up and go on with my life. I wanted to be fine and strong and quit the law and reach deep and write a big book that some woman on a train would crush to her breast halfway through and sigh. But I could see myself on the table at the autopsy, the doctor turning to the class and looking up from my chest cavity a little puzzled and saying, “I’m glad you’re all here for this medical first. He didn’t have any. There’s no gumption here at all.”
I took a big sip of the beer and tried to relax. Brandy’s okay in a ballpark, a peccadillo; it was me that was wrong. Lynn rooting around in her big leather purse for her silver flask and smiling so sweetly under the big lights, her face that mysterious thing, varnished with red and amber and the little blue above the eyes, Lynn was just being nice. I thought that: she’s just being nice. Then I had the real thought: it’s a tough thing to take, this niceness, good luck.
The most prominent feature of any game at Derks is the approximate quality of the pitching. By the third inning we had seen just over a thousand pitches. These kids could throw hard, but it was the catcher who was doing all the work. The wind-up, the pitch, the catcher’s violent leap and stab to prevent the ball from imbedding itself in the wire backstop. Just watching him spearing all those wild pitches hurt my knees: up down up down.
I started in, as I always do, explaining the game to Lynn, the fine points. What the different stances indicated about the batters; why the outfielders shifted; how the third baseman is supposed to move to cover the return throw after a move to first. Being a frustrated player, like every other man in America, I wanted to show my skill.
After a few more beers, I settled down. The air cooled, the mountains dimmed, the bright infield rose in the light. I leaned back and just tried to unravel. I listened to Steiner’s music, now the theme song from Exodus, and I could faintly hear his fans singing, “This land is mine, God gave this land to me…” Steiner made me smile. He played what he wanted, when he wanted. In nine innings you could hear lots of Chopin and Liszt, Beethoven, Bartok, and Lennon. He’d play show tunes and commercial jingles. He played lots of rock and roll, and I once heard his version of An American in Paris that lasted an inning and a half. He refused to look out and witness the sport that transpired below him. He had met complaints that he didn’t get into the spirit of the thing by playing the heady five-note preamble to “Charge!” one night seventy times in a row, until not only was no one calling “Charge!” at the punch line, but the riff had acquired a tangible repulsion in the ears of the management (next door in the press box), and they were quick to have it banished forever. As long as the air was full of organ music, they were happy.