Page 3 of Nailed at Home Plate

“Hey, Cadence?”

“Oh uh, hey Ender.” I managed to get out, still breathless from his sudden appearance.

“You forgot your hat.” With a bashful little smile, he stepped into my office and handed it over. His Venezuelanaccent always made me swoon. With a baby face, he still looked like he was fresh out of high school, even though he was in his early 20s.

“Fuck, right.” The guys were rather rambunctious today as practice concluded. I must have left my hat on the field when I was trying to show one of them how to do a proper cartwheel. “Thanks, Ender.” Even with his promising potential, he was the sweetest guy on the team. Well, maybe he and Roman were tied for first.

“Don’t let the guys get under your skin.” He probably told me the same thing once a week so far this season. At this rate, all I could do was laugh and nod.

“I know, they’re just a bunch of overgrown goofballs. Some more than others. I’m good though. I’m used to it.” I dismissed him with a laugh and a wave. With a quick grin and a nod as he left, I found myself in silence once again. Well, as much silence as the closed double doors to the locker room could offer. Silence was not in the team’s vocabulary or know-how.

Glancing at my watch, I swore under my breath. It was that time again. Grabbing my purse, I made abeeline for the parking lot. I had to get home to watch my imaginary perfect guy squat behind home plate.

Money & Fame

NEEDTOBREATHE

“You have got to be fucking kidding me. The Philly Sillys?” I slapped my hands down on the wooden conference table. Standing abruptly, my legs shoved the chair hard enough to hit the wall. “They’re a fucking joke. I’d rather go on IL permanently. Hell, I’ll even take an early retirement.”

Injured leave, or IL, was certifiably a death wish next to being benched in major league baseball. Especially when it was going to be long-term. It was an unsure storm of what-ifs as you recovered. Would you be as strong as before you were injured? Will the injury only get worse? Time would only tell, and it was torture. Absolute god-forsaken torture. Torture that, up until recently, I never was a part of.

“And do what, Jamie? Work as a Little League coach? Dammit, man, you’d make all the kids cry. You’re too serious about baseball. Don’t be a fucking idiot.” I shot my agent, Tom Allen, a dirty look. His language didn’t match his sportscoat and khaki business casual demeanor. But he wasn’t wrong.

I didn’t have the most approachable personality. Baseball was my job. I didn’t do it for the fame or the fans, I did it because I loved it. And you didn’t needto smile because you liked doing something. “If you want any chance of playing this season to get your strength back up to get back in the majors, you need to do this. You’re lucky the Sillys had an opening instead of the team benching you. Thank fuck it’s nowhere near the trade deadline.”

“Yeah, but the Sillys? They’re just a sad excuse for the franchise to do whatever the Savannah Bananas are doing.” At this point I didn’t care who I insulted. I was fucking pissed that ownership thought this was my only viable option. “They just want me for ticket sales and the views on the Tock Tick or whatever the fuck it's called. The Sillys don’t even playrealbaseball!”

Technically it was baseball, but with a bunch of extra over-convoluted rules that were more akin to kids playing backyard ball. It was purely for the entertainment factor. There was no end game, no World Series sort of pomp and circumstance. Hence the league beingEntertainmentLeague Baseball. They solely existed to put on a show for the crowd. It looked closer to a damn circus. Why the franchise thought it was worth throwing money into a team of a bunch of goofballs was something I had yet to fathom.

“But they’re quicker games, Jamie. Two hours tops. Look, if you manage to not fuck up your body any more, and recover while still playing ball, you’ll have your contract intact to come back to the Phils. Hell, maybe even before the season is over. But I can’t emphasize it enough. You. Can’t. Fuck. It. Up.”

Gritting my teeth, I growled out of sheer frustration. I felt as if I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. It wasn’t my fault I was injured. Notexactly. It was the repetitive motions from crouching behind home plate as a catcher. At my age, I was a ticking time bomb to perhaps an inevitable career-ending injury in the baseball world.

With ownership out of the room, I felt I could speak frankly. Albeit a bit too loud for Tom’s liking, judging by his expression. The frosted glass could only hide so many sins.

It wasn’t like I’d already been frustrated enough with the bullshit that life had dealt me lately. Being in my mid-thirties and still on a major league baseball team as the starting catcher was rare. I was on borrowed time. The injury only reiterated that fact.

My backup catcher was decent. I did my best to teach him all my tricks during the game. But he wasn’t ready to go full-time just yet. Probably in another season or two. Or three. Time that I still needed to convince myself to retire with grace. Today was not the time, even though I was frustrated by this roster move.

Being a catcher meant that one needed killer multitasking abilities. Not to mention staying cool in a stressful situation. While everyone was staring at the pitcher, it was the catcher who studied the batters in-depth as to their at-bat habits so we could call accurate pitches in the heat of the moment. Throw in keeping an eye on anyone stealing a base, and it was certifiable chaos.

Because of the weight and prestige I had in my position, I put off telling anyone I was having an issue with my knee. Swallowing a couple of over-the-counter pain pills before a game took the edge off for the beginning of the season. It wasn’t until I stubbornly hobbled into the locker room one daybefore a game that the team’s physical therapist threw a fit as they sent me through a gauntlet of tests. Which was only bad news after bad news.

Unfortunately, I was familiar with the issue as I had the same thing happen to my other knee a few years ago in the off-season. At least that side of my body had better timing. Probably the only body part to have good timing. Everything else on me had piss poor time management skills.

I went in for surgery the same week. The recovery was four weeks before they eased me back into practice. Everyone expected me to be rusty the first week or so back. What no one planned on was the fact that my stats weren’t getting better. They were gettingworse.

Due to my prestige as a Gold Glove award winner and a few stints at the All-Star Game, ownership had framed this fucking awful turn of events for me to be the saving grace of the Philly Sillys. To bring Philadelphia’s ELB team into the spotlight. No matter how they sugar-coated it, it still felt like a demotion with a slap in the face to boot. The first thing out of my mouth was the suggestion of pulling someone up from the farming system from players in the Single-A, Double-A, and Triple-A leagues of the minors. That was immediately shot down with the fact that they were keeping the guys on task for major league ball, not the Entertainment League bullshit.

They thought that my move from the majors to the ELB would kill two birds with one stone so to speak. Having a star major league player starting for the less popular team would draw crowds in and hopefully give a reason for ownership to stopworrying about the fact that investing in the auxiliary team might have been a bad idea. That way I could still play some semblance of baseball with my slow as fuck recovery in something less strenuous.

I really fucking hated it.

I hated the idea so much.

“Look, think of it as something short-term. Give the Sillys a few weeks of your time and then you’ll be back before the postseason.”

As much as Tom was maybe right, I didn’t want to entertain the other outcome. I didn’t want to admit to myself that this could be my last season as a major league ball player. Especially if my stats remained in the toilet.

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