Page 6 of Breakout Year
He chewed that over as he walked to the Cosmos clubhouse, showing his badge to the lady working security. “I’m Eitan,” he said, probably unnecessarily given that his badge listed his name.
She laughed and introduced herself as Fabienne. “You here to save the team?”
I can’t even save myself from myself. He smiled, asked about the multicolored beaded bracelet she had on one wrist that her grandkids apparently made for her. After a few minutes of conversation, she began eyeing the door into the clubhouse. It was possible she’d realized Eitan was both very interested in hearing about her grandbabies and also definitely stalling.
On the other side of that door, his new teammates were waiting. He’d gotten exactly one text—confirming that they had his number correct. He’d expected an invite to the Cosmos team group chat to follow shortly, but none had come. It was possible, like the Crooks, they weren’t sure what to say.
So Eitan said goodbye to Fabienne and scanned his badge against the card-reader next to the door and went to whatever awaited him inside the clubhouse.
Yesterday, while the team was traveling, the clubhouse had been quiet—which only served to amplify the noise Eitan had managed to make. Now, the maze of training rooms and hallways rattled with a certain energy: the distant clang of weights and thump of sneakers on a treadmill; the pop of balls off bats as guys put in work in the indoor batting cages; the current of conversations that carried players through the grind of the season.
All of which seemed to stop when Eitan went down the short hallway and into the central dressing area.
Everyone looked at him seemingly all at once. Twenty-four hours ago, Eitan thought things would be better once he’d escaped the unblinking black lenses of a dozen TV cameras. Turned out, having a roster’s worth of guys stare at him wasn’t much better.
A few players he recognized from the once-a-season series the Crooks and Cosmos played against each other in past years. A few more he knew from that general way baseball guys all knew each other.
No one said anything. He was the new guy, so the onus was probably on him to start the conversation. “Hey,” he began, “I’m Eitan.”
Unlike Fabienne, no one laughed. Aguila, the Cosmos shortstop, studied a particular patch of clubhouse floor that appeared to be no different than any of the floor around it. That really wouldn’t work if he and Eitan were going to be responsible for patrolling the left side of the infield together.
Bishop, their first baseman, came over. He and Eitan had chatted a few times: first basemen were the bartenders of baseball; they talked to everyone. Bishop extended a bear paw of a hand, then a wave passed over his face like he was reconsidering the gesture. Like in a game of backslaps and attaboy pats, he didn’t want to touch Eitan at all, in case he was contagious. Still, Eitan managed two pumps of a handshake and didn’t—wouldn’t—think something of it when Bishop wiped his palm against the fabric of the joggers he was wearing.
“Hey, man, what’s up?” Eitan said and got a few sounds that could have been words in return.
Another player, a wiry guy with a lot of mustache whose name Eitan vaguely recalled was Williams, gave him a half-wave. Eitan waited for whatever followed it: a pained look. A flinch. None came. Or none had come yet. The dread forming in Eitan’s stomach was entirely new.
No one did much more than nod in his direction. Right. Time to address…whatever was happening here. Distantly, some part of Eitan wondered if he was going to spend the next few months in this silence, if every conversation would stop when he entered a room. Yesterday, he’d said he was glad to be in New York or at least out of Cleveland. Today…he wanted to be somewhere where the silence didn’t feel so silent.
“Don’t know if you caught the press conference,” Eitan began, “but I meant what I said about being excited about getting to know all of you and maybe winning a championship together.” His throat went dry at the end. He needed more water. He needed to rewind the past two days of his life.
He needed something other than what he got, which was more shuffling like guys were waiting for him to be done.
One guy who Eitan didn’t recognize, though he was approximately seven feet tall, six of them leg—so probably a pitcher—said, “Yeah, we saw the press conference all right.” He laughed at the end as if it was a joke, though no one else joined him. He had a honking laugh like a sandhill crane, a bird once removed from parts of Ohio and since returned. Eitan remembered that fact vaguely from something he’d read…somewhere.
It was possible he was dissociating. He should probably do something other than stand there. “Great. So you know the situation then.” The situation. A cowardly way to characterize it, but if he didn’t leave this dressing room right now, he might do something desperate. “Which way’s the field?”
Someone—a player sitting by a stall labeled Vientos—pointed to an enormous sign hanging over one doorway that read To the field. Which, whatever. Sure.
Eitan took himself to the field. At least, out here, the dirt smelled like dirt. The sky was an impressive azure; the wind in the stadium all blew outward, so that a fly ball had a good chance of becoming a home run. Eitan had certainly played in worse places.
He got about five seconds of standing at the top steps of the dugout before a text came from Isabel that read DO NOT IGNORE followed by instructions that Eitan should bring himself up to her office.
Everyone here seems mad at me, he sent to Connor, hoping to at least get a response of that’s tough, bro. Nothing came, so he dropped his phone into his pocket and made his way back inside.
When he got to Isabel’s office, she was sitting at her desk, gnawing a honeydew melon ball off the sharp end of a skewer.
“So the fruit made it here,” Eitan said, instead of What did I do now?
He sat at Isabel’s instruction, tried not to tap his feet in impatience. Or tried not to tap them too much. “This feels like high school. You know, being called into the office for a talking-to.” He’d never actually been suspended, but that hadn’t stopped every assistant principal and counselor from sighing when he’d appeared, yet again, with a fresh bruise on his cheek. By high school, he’d been smart enough to only get in fights off school property. His mother had called it growth.
Isabel’s office looked like a guidance counselor’s too: windowless, a neat stack of notebooks. She squared them like she knew this discussion was gonna get messy, then withdrew one from the top and opened it. “We have to run triage,” she said finally.
Eitan had been in a lot of these conversations in Cleveland too, the last of which had been when the team invited him to speak at Faith and Family night, and he’d had to explain that, no, his wasn’t that kind of faith. Why is everyone so determined to find something wrong with me? He swallowed the words. Isabel was here. She was, seemingly, his ally or at least not his enemy. “Because I pissed off the media?” he asked.
Isabel chuckled mildly. “No, that’s normal—the New York media loves nothing more than being pissed off. It gives them something to write about.”
“Sounds like you know them pretty well.”
