Page 42 of Diamond Ring
Jake focuses on thinking about that and not about Alex, seated at his other side. Unlike Charlie, who looks tense but interested, Alex looks bored. Not the slightly world-weary expression he used to get during game planning but actually bored. He has his phone out, as if he doesn’t care if Courtland yells at him for it, and looks halfway to a nap.
Jake suppresses the urge to tell him to put his phone away, like he would have years ago. Alex finally puts it down, glaring up at Jake with a scowl bordering on comical. So Jake smiles—his best smug, teacher’s pet smile designed to piss Alex off—and nods to the center of the room where Courtland is saying...something.
“—this year marks my fiftieth in the game,” Courtland says. A few guys holler their appreciation. Jake settles for clapping a hand against his leg.
“The thing about baseball,” Courtland continues, “you ask anyone about baseball, and they’ll tell you it’s complicated. It’s gotrules. It’s got obscurities and technicalities and all kinds of bullshit. I’m here to remind you that the game is simple. Score at least one more run than the other team. Do enough of that and you win a division. Do it some more and you win a pennant. Keep at it for just long enough and you win the whole goddamn thing.”
He waits, like he’s expecting spontaneous applause that doesn’t come, though guys bang on stuff to show their approval. Some whistle. Because who doesn’t walk into the season thinking about being a contender in October?
D’Spara takes over, talking about the stuff they actually need to do today. Including which pitchers need to go throw bullpen sessions to keep their arms fresh, a series of assignments for their catching staff.
“Angelides”—D’Spara manages to find syllables in Alex’s name that aren’t there—“you’re with Fischer.”
Another psychological experiment. Fucking terrific. And Jake tries to ignore their teammates’ stares as he makes his way outside.
A decade later, the Coliseum still doesn’t have a real bullpen. There’s the indoor pen but with the weather being decent, they assemble on the outfield grass by the infamously wide foul grounds. Even with the game that night, it still has the feeling of spring training, sitting in the sunshine, breathing air that smells like the particular clean scent of trucked-in ballpark dirt.
At least Jake isn’t alone. The pitching staff chatters like seagulls, if seagulls were mostly white guys in ball caps. Guys fall into the familiar rhythms of stretching and warmups and talking about nothing in particular. A few start bumping music.
Jake warms up, a standard set of pitchers’ stretches. Alex is sitting near him, butterflying his legs, glaring holes at Jake. The sun picks out silver glints in his hair.
Jake’s interrupted in definitely not watching him by Will Johnson, one of their relievers, who looks like he got made in a factory for producing late-inning relief pitchers: a thatch of blond hair, a permanent sunburn, a drawl. “How’d the documentary go?” Johnson asks.
“Being on camera’s really not so bad,” Jake lies.
Johnson makes a slightly displeased face. “Gordon didn’t want it to seem like the club was forcing guys.”
Some of us don’t have a choice either way.“Not a big deal.”
Johnson rotates his wrist, which bears the shine of a surgical scar, in apparent displeasure. “If they’re doing stuff like that, makes it harder to argue the bigger issues.” Like there are things brewing Jake doesn’t—and probably shouldn’t—know about.
Alex peels himself up from where he’s stretching and comes over to them. “C’mon, the sooner we do this, the sooner we get this over with.”
“That’s the spirit,” Jake says, mostly to rile him, then ascends the angled rise of the pitching mound installed along the sidelines. Alex sets up forty feet away. His stance is different from ten years ago, his familiar crouch replaced by pivoting his weight on one knee the way a lot of catchers now favor. Jake’s grateful for the distance and the shielding effect of Alex’s gear, so he doesn’t do something stupid. Like ask him what else has changed in ten years when his opinion of Jake clearly hasn’t.
A throwing session between starts at least has a predictable pattern. Soft tosses to warm up the pitcher’s arm followed by twenty or so real pitches. Alex flicks a hand, indicating he wants Jake to start with light tosses. An old signal done so casually Jake almost misses it. Maybe that’s just how Alex has been dictating his throwing sessions for the past decade. Maybe he’d do that with any other pitcher.
A half dozen tosses later, Alex gives the “move back” nod; Jake retreats the additional distance so he can throw for real.
Alex puts down the sign for a fastball like he expects an argument. Which, fuck, means Jake will have to throw one. Jake’s fastball is a fifth starter’s fastball:fine. Very good, if he was any place but the majors. He’s vaguely embarrassed by that—by if Alex will think of him like everyone else does. A has-been. Worse, someone who almost was.
He throws a fastball. Alex catches it without comment. Something in Jake’s stomach drops. Alex doesn’t just not care about how their season goes but doesn’t care about him, specifically.
Their conversation narrows to throw, catch, return, throw, catch, return. Maybe this won’t be so bad. Maybe that’ll be that.
Then Alex signals for a changeup.
Jake almost says no. It’s too much, too soon. The memory of the last time he threw one to Alex still smarts. But he can’t decline, so he throws.
The ball slips out of his hand. Jake knows a bad changeup when he tosses one—he’s thrown a lot of them over the years, in the minors, in Mexico, in the Dominican Winter League, in indy ball, and most famously, in the Fall Classic. A listless changeup is slow, unbeautiful and, given that this is just a practice session, not that big a deal.
Age hasn’t slowed Alex’s reflexes much, but he still doesn’t move fast enough. Because of course—of fucking course—the ball ricochets off the base of his glove. At least the only people watching them are other pitchers and the petty fucking baseball gods who decided that Jake doesn’t get one normal day.
Alex grunts in frustration, then tips his mask up, glaring at Jake.
Jake puts his hands up in amy badgesture that probably pisses him off more. He jogs over to check on him as Alex unfurls from his crouch, flexing his taped-up wrist.
“Didn’t mean to get you there,” Jake says. Facile. Fucking useless. He closes his eyes, briefly, tries to imagine squares aligning into neat rows. It helps sometimes when he’s anxious. It doesn’t now.
