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SAbrINA CARPENTER

“I honestly have no fucking idea how you deal with these guys on a daily basis,” Tiffiny mumbled to me from our current view of the field. For most of the games, I liked to wander around the stadium so I could see the dance routines from every angle. Making dance moves visible from most of the ballpark at any given time wasn’t an easy feat. Sometimes they needed to be tweaked or modified in some way or another until perfection hit.

“Why?” I snorted as I glanced at her. As much as I loved my best friend, sometimes her unhinged outbursts even took me by surprise. “If you ignore their antics, they aren’t that bad.” Most of the time it was difficult to have any sort of serious conversation with my fellow petite counterpart when she was still neck-deep in her mascot costume.

We were far enough away from prying eyes that no one would catch a glimpse of her as the headless mascot. My favorite vantage point in the park was the hidden mascot entrance because it constantly blasted cold air in the direction of the field to give Tiffiny a reprieve when she came for her usual breaks. Wearing a fuzzy padded suit, in the shape of the Liberty Bell, for a summer sport was no cakewalk .

“I feel like we have this conversation every season since I’ve been here. You must have invisible balls of steel to put those assholes in their place.” That sharp retort got me to laugh.

“Call it ‘tough love’.” Turning to her, I caught the glassy stare of her character’s hinged eyeballs, as the head of the mascot was tucked up under her arm. The cartoon-like slipper sneakers were always a hoot on her small feet. But the pièce de résistance was the fact that the damn Philly Sillys Liberty Bell mascot was named Ding Dong. I told the marketing team that they were geniuses when they showed us the concept.

Despite the rather goofy and delightful grin on Ding Dong’s face, the person inside was anything but. Tiffiny was charming in her special way. That is if you liked sarcastic abominable snowmen with razor-sharp teeth. But she sure as fuck knew how to charm the fans and get tons of laughs when she was in uniform. I joked a lot that she made Ding Dong into something like the Philadelphia Flyers’ infamous orange fur-covered mascot, Gritty’s, toxic and insane ex. She had a gift.

To the normal person, it seemed like a weird schtick. But to Sillys fans, she was an utter hit. The marketing team even set up a social media account for Ding Dong. Most of Tiffiny’s free time was spent coming up with more and more unhinged content. Even in the off-season. While most of us had a few months off, she had to do her best to keep the mascot, and the Sillys, relevant throughout the entire year.

Her personality grew on me during the season last year, when she was hired. In the off-season, we commiserated in our mutual misery and became forever friends. I mean, who else could understand the utter insanity that I had to go through on a daily basis?

For the games, Tiffiny did her own thing. Sometimes she joined the guys on the field for a routine. But there was just something there that made her reluctant to do so regularly. I mean, I get it. Being on the field in front of a crowd was rather intimidating. That’s why I never tried it myself. I was more than happy sitting in the outfield and looking on with pride. Or well cringing .

Sometimes the guys took their own creative liberties. Usually, it worked out in their favor. How were the fans to know that the routine wasn’t supposed to go that way? Then again it could also turn out to be an epic fail that ended up on social media. Which then fell on my shoulders. How the fuck was I supposed to keep them in line during a game? Remote-controlled shock collars?

Believe me, I suggested that already.

Squirting them with the field’s watering hoses was a very close second. Also vetoed.

“More like herding cats.” Tiffiny’s gaze hardened the longer she stared out at the field. “Smelly, off-beat, howling, hairless cats.”

I snorted. “Geez let me get the bullhorn out and immediately tell the guys what you think of them.”

“Oh, they know.”

Even with her attitude, I knew Tiffiny loved this team almost as much as me. Although if she had to deal with the players regularly, like I do, her charming description of them might skew a bit differently. But only a bit.

“They aren’t that off-beat today,” I added after taking a long, hard look at them mid-routine .

“Yeah, today .”

I cocked my brow at her. “Well, you’re in a rather chipper mood. Throwing out compliments left and right here.”

“It's the heat.” She dismissed quickly as she squirted some water from her Sillys water bottle into her mouth. Her brown hair was plastered to her forehead in misshapen ringlets. The suit did have a fan/air conditioning contraption, but it only offered a tiny bit of relief in the insufferable summer humidity.

“You know…wearing a fur suit isn’t exactly the most conducive for people who despise the heat–”

“And what the hell am I going to do with my Masters in Theater Studies? Teach a bunch of stuck-up kids how to do shitty Shakespeare in a private school in center city? Hell no. At least here I can work solo.” She hooked a fuzzy thumb in the direction of the team. Subtlety was definitely not her middle name.

“Hey ‘Shitty Shakespeare’ does have a nice ring to it… You might want to trademark that as a backup plan. Or at the very least that would make a fantastic band name.”

That at least got some semblance of a smile out of her.

“Sure, let me pull together all that money I have lying around while I pay off my student loans for the rest of my natural life.” Tiffiny let out a huff, almost as if she tried to hold back laughing at her own joke. “Speaking of money, how’s that boyfriend of yours?”

I felt the heat rise to my cheeks. With it being baseball season, it was a given that neither Tiffiny nor I had any semblance of a significant other. Which could only mean that it was one very unattainable person she was referring to.

“Oh…uh, Jamie’s, um…fine.” The incredibly hunky catcher had graced my apartment almost nightly since late February. Although “graced” was a stretch. The man showed up on my television, not nearly enough, thanks to there being other players on a baseball team. Sometimes I wished I could bribe someone to keep a camera solely on Jamie for the entire game.

“Any homers lately?”

Only in my fantasies in the ballpark of my bed.

“Not since before his surgery.” I sighed. The franchise nearly broke my heart when they announced all of a sudden that Jamie was going on the IL due to knee surgery. That was the longest few weeks of my life. Tiffiny got me through most of it with movie nights and gorging ourselves on appetizers at our favorite local haunts. Although not without some rather heated teasing about my “boyfriend”, as she calls him.

“That’s too bad. It's probably because you didn’t send him any flowers.” I rolled my eyes. “Or topless pics.” That comment earned an elbow to her upholstered bell curve.

“You’re such a brat.”

“But you love me.”

“Only sometimes.”

“That’s fine. I can only tolerate you sometimes.” We both cracked up with laughter. It was always a loving but insulting back and forth. A love language for both of us .

“But really,” I sighed as the fantasy I had of Jamie hovered in the back of my mind. “Who would want to date one of these guys anyway?”

“I don’t know. Some parts of them are appealing. Money. Fame.” Tiffiny offered with a shrug. “Hot bodies.”

I snorted. Baseball was the one sport where you didn’t necessarily have to be physically fit to play. I’d seen some pitchers and basemen who had pot bellies that Santa would be envious of.

“Well, like you, I like being a quiet swamp witch in my apartment, thank you very much.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t seem like Jamie’s vibe at all.” I rolled my eyes.

“You don’t know that. Maybe he’s a witch-loving homebody.” When Jamie wasn’t on the field, I was usually combing through interviews and articles about him. There was never much. It was like he was allergic to the spotlight. When he did manage to interview somewhere it was typically to talk about his position and what the team was doing. Outside of baseball, he was seemingly an enigma.

Some of the other Philadelphia players didn’t shy from the spotlight. They were found out on the town, taking photos with fans or in the arms of some pretty model or influencer. Not that I knew who any of the women were. Nor did I care.

I liked to think that Jamie was a guy who was more comfortable at home. Maybe he had a dog or even a cat. Or maybe he was close to his parents and siblings, and he spent his free time hanging out with them.

“Come on, the man is too pretty. He can’t sit and waste away at home. ”

“You do.” I quipped back at her. The unexpected compliment spawned a quick quirk of a smirk at the corner of her mouth. “Aren’t you the one who is supposed to be encouraging this infatuation instead of giving me shit for it?”

“Oh, right. I need something to razz you about daily. Well, until one of us finds a real guy and not one from a book or on TV.” We glanced at each other for a moment before erupting into a fit of uproarious laughter. A real man? Who were we kidding?