Page 21 of Unwritten Rules
“Do you?” Carter says, with the tone of someone who spends all their time on the futile task of trying to wring articulate answers from inarticulate ballplayers.
“I mean, who doesn’t have regrets?” Zach tries to smile at that, to shrug it off the way Eugenio did. Something easy. Marketable. Unflavored by truth. “If I had to do it again...” He trails off.
Carter smiles at him indulgently, already on to the next topic. And Zach pretends he doesn’t see Eugenio looking at him, like he wants to know what Zach was going to say. Like Zach has the answer to what he’d do differently. Other thaneverything.
Chapter Eight
March, Three Years Ago
Their next framing practice goes better. It’s midmorning, sun hot in the bright blue bowl of the Arizona sky, though the forecast most players are focusing on is the certainty of minor-league cuts, which are coming at some point that afternoon.
Zach came out of the last session with bruises that looked like hickeys, and he got shit for it in the clubhouse, especially when Eugenio looked the same. Their second baseman whistled loudly enough to make Zach’s hearing aid distort and asked what they’d been getting up to together. And Zach considered telling him to fuck off, but that might invite further comments, so just shook his head and went to find Morgan for his lifting session.
Zach watches Eugenio drink two cups of coffee, fast—his tongue must be total sandpaper since they were hot when Zach handed them to him—before setting up to receive pitches. There’s the familiar silver foil of a pack of cigarettes glinting on a chair; he hasn’t yet smoked one, though Zach bets that he will at some point, given how this is going.
“You’re scooping your glove,” Zach says, when Eugenio catches another pitch, dipping his mitt down and then bringing it back into the zone.
“It’s just hard to retrain my stance. Like, I’ve been catching this way since Little League. I have to retrain everything or...” He doesn’t finish. Doesn’t need to finish. Theorhanging over him like it’s hanging over every other guy who’s hoping to stay in big-league camp for another day, rather than being reassigned. “How am I supposed to throw guys out from this position?”
“Don’t think of it as learning a totally different stance.” Zach demonstrates, shifting from a traditional primary position to having his right knee under and left leg out to allow him to frame, cycling to a higher stance for throwing out base runners. “Marti’s got some drills if you want.”
Eugenio gets up and turns off the pitching machine before it can pelt another ball at the fence. And then does the same series of positions that Zach did, once, twice.
Zach probably doesn’t need to watch him in order to tell him to make his movement more fluid—there’s no reason, no baseball reason, he should. But he does anyway. Eugenio is shorter than he is; he makes up for it with the strength in his legs, the muscles that strain against the confines of his shorts, the solidity there that scouts refer to as lower-half thickness.
“Looks good.” Zach tries, and possibly fails, to keep his tone clinical. “Smooth.”
“Yeah?” Eugenio is smiling, and it’s warm enough out that he has color high in his cheeks. And fuck, Zach hasn’t smoked a cigarette since he was thirteen and snuck one outside of a friend’s bar mitzvah, but he wants one now, if only to have something to do other than look at him.
“Yeah.” Zach’s voice sounds a little rough. “Now you only gotta do it about a thousand more times.”
Eugenio laughs. “Yes, Coach.”
“Next time, I’ll bring a clipboard and a whistle. I mean, if you’re into that sort of thing.” And Zach turns slightly so that he’s admiring the verdant green of the outfield grass and not looking directly at Eugenio’s response. Can’t see if he’s looking at him like he can’t believe Zach just said that, a position Zach firmly agrees with, face going hot. He wonders if Eugenio’s going to think something of it, or say something, or just chalk it up to Zach being under-caffeinated and corny.
Eugenio goes over to the cooler and pulls two cups of Gatorade. He hands one to Zach. “This desert air,” Eugenio says. “You sound like you could use it.” And he gestures to his throat to indicate that Zach is parched.
“Uh, thanks.” And he drinks his Gatorade.
“Okay,” Eugenio says, a few minutes later, “I think I’m ready to try again.”
Zach sets the pitching machine to throw low strikes, and Eugenio catches the first one, glove diving and pulling back up. And then he does it again. And again.
“Hold your glove steady,” Zach says.
“I am.” The pitching machine throws another ball, and Eugenio fields it, though his glove twitches as he does. “Fuck.”
“Here.” Zach clips his gear on, and he gets down, squatting next to Eugenio, turned forty-five degrees from the pitching machine, which is probably going to pelt him with something during this. “I’m gonna—”
He circles his hand around Eugenio’s wrist, thumb against the texture of veins in his forearm. Eugenio’s skin is smooth, a little dry from the Arizona air, the hair on his arms prickling against Zach’s palm. Eugenio didn’t wrap his wrists with tape, the way he does during games, and Zach wishes he did, if only to provide some film of protection between them, even if it wouldn’t mask the pulse of blood in his arm, the answering one in Zach’s temple.
He leaves sufficient leverage so that Eugenio can move his elbow back and forth to absorb the impact of each pitch but can’t move it along a vertical axis. “Move your body, not your wrist.”
The pitching machine fires, and Eugenio adjusts, or tries to, and ends up eating a pitch that bounces off his chest protector.
“Stop trying to move my hand.” Zach presses down on Eugenio’s arm with more of his body weight, not thinking about the last time he touched someone beyond the contact necessary to run drills. Not thinking about the constant, casual touching the game allowed—hell, encouraged—the attaboy slaps and head rubs and fist bumps, all predicated on the notion that it isn’tlike thatbecause no one in the clubhouse islike that. “You’re not gonna be able to shake me off at this angle.”
On the next pitch, Eugenio lowers his wrist, defying Zach’s grasp, and he catches the pitch but flaps his glove obviously in doing so, muttering to himself.
