Page 63 of Unwritten Rules
“I’m good,” he says. “Real good, in fact. They activated me. I’m on the forty-man. I mean, Baptiste is getting surgery, so that’s not great for him.”
“Hey, congrats. Good for you.”
“Thanks.” And Johnson looks like can’t stop himself from grinning.
Zach asks how his season has been, and Johnson tells him about playing in Nashville, living with four other guys in an apartment that could be a lot worse than it is. About how his parents drove up a couple times to see him pitch, and Sara Maria flew in for a series. About how he’s learning Spanish, so her family doesn’t feel like they have to switch to English when he’s around.
“Yeah,” Zach says, “that still going on?”
Johnson turns red, and Zach laughs, and he turns even redder when Zach laughs. “Um, I’ve been looking at rings, especially now that I might be making some money. It’s early. It just feels like we’ve been through so much together.”
“Everything feels that way when you’re twenty-one.” Zach should probably say something else—that getting serious that young doesn’t always work out. That some guys Zach’s age are going through their first divorces.
“I just want to be with her.” And he says it with the kind of certainty that makes Zach look away from his phone, long enough that Johnson asks him if the call got frozen.
“No, I’m still here.”
“I’ve been thinking, if baseball doesn’t work out, I might move back to Arizona. It only takes a year to get in-state residence for tuition, so if I live there during the offseason, I could enroll someplace. I did two years of junior college, so it wouldn’t even take that much.”
“That’s still kind of a long time,” Zach says. “And like you said, you’re on the forty-man now. Stuff’s gonna work out for you.”
“I’ve been praying on it, and I don’t know. Baseball. Just doesn’t seem fair, even if I make it, other guys don’t.”
“No, it isn’t. I didn’t have a lot of options. It was pretty much baseball or re-covering couches in Baltimore for the rest of my life. Hell, it still might be if things don’t work out.”
“You really think the Elephants would cut you? Even with how you been playing?”
Because he has been playing well, though he feels like less a member of a catcher tandem and more a backup catcher, Eugenio starting nearly double the number of games he is. Enough that guys are beginning to comment on it, Gordon even asking if Zach was injured and not telling the team about it, and not quite believing Zach when he said he wasn’t. “None of this stuff comes with a guarantee.”
It hangs there, Johnson absorbing it, and he looks young to Zach, even if they’re only eight years apart in age.
“But this isn’t about me,” Zach says. “You’re smart. You have good instincts. If you want to go and do something else, well, I mean, I’ll be glad I never have to face you on the mound.”
Johnson laughs at that. “You know, everyone else I’ve said that to acted like I was throwing something away.”
“There’s more to life than having three good pitches. Or in your case, two and half good pitches and a curveball you tip.”
“I’ve stopped doing that. But yeah, I guess I got some thinking to do.”
“Whatever you end up doing, let me know.”
“Thanks, man. I, um, I don’t think I can really say how grateful I am for everything you did for me.”
“You’re making me blush, kid,” Zach says, mostly because it makes Johnson go red. “I mean it, though. Whatever happens—pitching or college or whatever, I want to know about it.”
After they get off the phone, Zach gets a notification that Will Johnson is trying to send him a payment for $20, one markedFirst of three, a reimbursement for the money Zach gave Sara Maria months ago. Zach declines the transfer.Save it for tuition,he texts, and gets a thumbs-up in response.
He takes the later bus to the ballpark the day after his second start, and when he gets there, Eugenio is standing by his stall. With two people he introduces as his parents.
“This is Zach,” Eugenio says, as if his parents will know who Zach is already.
“It’s nice to meet you both,” Zach says. And he wasn’t expecting anything in Detroit to be challenging, not against the Detroit Muscle’s weak bats, and not in the clubhouse either. Which doesn’t help the churning in his gut as they stand there. His palms, which were previously dry, start to sweat.
Eugenio’s parents aren’t that short, but he has to reach down to shake each of their hands, hoping that they can’t tell that he’s having fifty percent of a panic attack. They’re dressed in more formal clothes than most people wear to ball games, his father in a collared shirt and dress pants, his mother in a modest sundress and a cardigan, though each of them has a Morales jersey over their clothes. Their demeanor is similarly formal, more soft-spoken than Zach would have expected, Eugenio at one point asking them to speak up in the din of the clubhouse.
Zach doesn’t know much about them, other than that they’re professors. But they seem to know about him—definitely more than his own parents do about Eugenio, since he worries he won’t be able to talk about him without accidently giving something away. Usually, it’sMorales, you know, the other catcherand Zach’s playing time has been reduced enough that his mother started grumbling when he does.
“Zach,” Eugenio’s father says, “Eugenio tells us you’ve been helping him get acclimated.” And he says Eugenio’s name differently from the way that Zach’s been saying it, pronouncing theEandUas slightly separate syllables, but not fully separate the way reporters do.
