Page 10 of Unwritten Rules
“For some of us it does.”
And it’d be different with Eugenio in Zach’s rental unit, sitting on his couch, expansively explaining scouting reports, in a place where Zach doesn’t have the excuse of crosstalk and ambient noise to watch him as intently as he is now. A place separate from the ballpark, where it’s easier to forget all the reasons he can’t let himself look—that they’re teammates. That Eugenio doesn’t mean anything by inviting himself over other than wanting to secure a roster spot and a meal. That whatever he meant by wanting someone there when he fell asleep was a desire for white noise and familiar chatter. And not Zach in bed with him.
Things Zach wills himself to remember, even if it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do so. “Yeah, maybe some other time,” he says, belatedly, trying for the kind of blow-off statement that veteran guys use to quash hopeful rookies. It must work too well, because Eugenio doesn’t say anything for a long minute, one that’s interrupted when D’Spara comes to tell them to get moving.
Eugenio hustles out, not waiting for Zach, though he glances at him with an expression Zach would almost call regretful if he doesn’t know better, like Eugenio wishes he didn’t ask the question in the first place. Something Zach feels as well. But it’s too late to change his answer without some bigger explanation, some justification for why he both wants, and therefore cannot have, Eugenio in his space. So he pulls himself up and goes out to the field to run drills alone.
Chapter Four
Zach’s parents call that night. They’re on video, and even with the sound turned all the way up and his headphones on, it’s sometimes a little hard to track their conversation, mostly because they talk to each other as much as they talk to him.
“You having a good time?” his mother asks, as if he’s away at sleepaway camp and not playing professional baseball.
“Yeah, Mom, making friends and everything.” He tells them about the game coming up, their first of spring training, where he’ll catch one or two innings and take maybe two at-bats. “There’s another guy here. Another catcher. He’s, uh, pretty good.”
“Should you be worried?”
He should be, even if it’s hard to worry in the bright Arizona mornings, Eugenio bringing him breakfast and receiving his coffee and telling him about some cooking show he’s watching or something silly one of the minor leaguers said. And even if he were, he doesn’t want to transfer that worry to her. “No, nothing like that.”
She changes the subject anyway. “Your brother’s coming home for Pesach.”
And Zach meant to check the dates, just on the off chance he’s playing anywhere on the East Coast. He brings them up on his phone, toggling between the Elephants’ schedule and a calendar of Jewish holidays. “Sorry. It looks like I’m gonna be in Kansas City.”
“Can you Skype in for part of the seder? It would be nice to see you.”
He could ask for the days off, though there isn’t really an option other than being listed as day-to-day, like Judaism is the same as a tweaked hamstring. But it would likely antagonize the front office, something less manageable than whatever loneliness he’ll feel when he doesn’t go.
“Charna Friedman and her daughter will be there,” his mother adds as an enticement, because his parents have taken to inviting their friends with daughters his age to dinner whenever possible. One that has the opposite effect.
“How’s everyone at home?” Zach asks. And if his parents notice his deflection, neither mentions it.
They tell him about his brother’s law practice, about his sister’s students, who are building an underwater robot for a competition. About the perpetual miasma that is Baltimore County politics. His father has been petitioning to get a little strip of grass near their house designated a park and named for a longtime member of their shul who passed away last year. It’s a whole process, one that his father relates in enough detail that, if Zach wanted to, he could probably get every highway median in Baltimore named for a different third-string Oysters outfielder.
They’re holding a fundraiser at their house for a county council member who, in exchange for canapés, has promised to expedite the process.
“It would be nice,” his mother says, “if you could put in an appearance.”
“Email me the date.” Though his mother just tells it to him anyway, and he has to scramble to find a pen to write it down.
Their first game of spring training goes well until it doesn’t.
Zach has the first inning, and there’s a lot of fanfare: a ceremonial opening pitch from a former player to a standing ovation. A comically large American flag unfurled on the field, the grounds crew holding it like kids holding the parachute in gym class. A flyover so loud he takes his hearing aid out. Baseball and all its attendant rah-rah pageantry.
Braxton, their starting pitcher, was keyed up before the game—or keyed up for him, anyway—and Zach went over their plan more than once, even though the game is essentially an excuse for Braxton to wave his hat at the crowd and embarrass the opposing lineup with his curveball. Braxton goes and waves his hat and fans the first batter, who swings over his curve for a strikeout.
Zach pounds his mitt and calls for another, and another, a one-two-three at-bat, which is over so quickly that the Friars player doesn’t seem to realize it’s done. Easy, the way things are in spring training, before the seriousness of the season.
Angelides hits third. He’s a catcher, and built like one, broad and square, his name forming an arc around the numbers on his jersey. He has a reputation for being an explosive hitter with a similarly explosive temper, and he strides into the batter’s box like he wants to start a fight.
Zach calls for a fastball, and Braxton sends him one. It’s outside the zone, and Angelides doesn’t bother to swing at it. Zach is tempted to try to frame it just to see what happens, moving his glove to see if he can convince the ump it’s a strike. A changeup next, and the pitch is all the words that Zach has heard commentators use to describe pitches and his father use to describe uncared-for fabrics—nasty, filthy, disgusting, beautiful. The kind of pitch that makes Braxton, despite his mumbled press conferences, the face of their franchise.
Angelides takes the bait, swinging too early, and muttering to himself like he’s ashamed of taking a bad hack.
The next one doesn’t fool him. Instead, he barrels it, making the kind of assured ringingthwackparticular to baseball, the wood-meets-leather noise when a hitter gets every single fiber and stitch of a ball. But whatever deities govern baseball are apparently listening to Zach’s half-formed prayers, because there’s a wind blowing in, one of the hot desert ones like the breath of a forgotten god, and it deadens the ball before it leaves the park, right into the waiting glove of an outfielder.
Zach curses in relief and then gets up out of his crouch to head for the dugout. There, he gets some Gatorade and a handful of seeds, because baseball is a sport you’re encouraged to eat during.
Eugenio sits on the bench next to him, tapping his fingers arrhythmically, flexing his feet in their spikes, and it’s all so obviously screamingnervousthat Zach almost wonders if it’s a put-on, until he sees that Eugenio is taking tiny sips of water from a cup the way Zach does when he has the flu.
