Page 2

Mike

W e’re down by an absurd amount, and it’s killing me not to be out there. I lean so far forward on the metal bench in the dugout that my chin is almost touching my knees. The afternoon sun is brutal, and I need to adjust the brim of my hat to shade my vision so I can see the field.

“Let’s do this, Crabs.” I clap a few times and bounce my knee, trying to rein in some of the adrenaline that has nowhere to go when I’m not in the game.

One of my teammates tosses a red Starburst at me, and I catch it without looking, unwrap the candy, and pop it into my mouth. As I start to chew, the next Chesapeake batter steps up to the plate. All I can do is watch as he hits a pop-up right down the center of the field.

“Got it,” our pitcher, Lincoln, calls because the ball is coming right to him. This should be an easy out. We run this drill at every practice. Of course, our shortstop, Davis, wants to be a hero and calls for it at the same time, so Lincoln backs off, and the ball lands on the ground between them and rolls just out of easy reach. Ridiculous mistake. There’s not a high school coach in the country who would stand for it, and we are supposed to be professionals.

“Christ. What the hell was that?” Coach Johnson drops his clipboard in the dirt and puts his hands on his hips, sticking his large gut out a bit further while muttering the same profanities I want to scream at my teammates.

“Come on,” I yell from the dugout, throwing my arms up in frustration, then immediately clamping my mouth shut. I’m not stupid. I know cussing out our starters won’t be the thing that finally gets me into the game. But I do fully support Coach swearing at them all he wants while I sit here and bite my tongue, because that play was trash. So instead, I focus intensely on sucking the life out of this piece of candy while he reams them out.

Lincoln recovers quickly and throws the ball to Smithy at home plate, but the Cheetah player on third is too fast. His foot hits home and it’s another run for the visiting team. 13-2. Pathetic.

Jordan, my roommate, is playing first base. I can see him wiping his right hand down his face in frustration and looking up toward the sky. I know it’s taking everything he has not to scream at Davis, too. Instead, he breathes deeply and punches his free hand into his glove twice.

“Okay Crabs, let’s turn this around,” he calls out in an effort to encourage everyone, as if there is any coming back from this one.

The most frustrating part of being benched is knowing that if I could be out there these errors wouldn’t keep happening. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, I know I’m damn lucky to even be alive after all of the stunts I pulled on my way to get here. I just didn’t realize achieving my childhood dream was going to involve quite so much sitting on my ass. It’s not like I was expecting a multi-million-dollar deal and cereal commercials right off the bat (pun intended). The fact that I have a steady, albeit small, paycheck coming in regularly from playing baseball still boggles my mind.

Things might have been different if it weren’t for that shoulder injury sophomore year and all the drama that came after, but I’m not a man for what-ifs. I’ll put in my time on the field, I’ll keep going to meetings, and I’ll get to the majors eventually. It’s a solid plan. In the meantime, playing for a few dozen fans in the stands as the rookie shortstop on the minor league team in North Bay is still playing pro ball. Or at least it would be, if I were playing. That’s the problem, though. I’m not.

“We’re going to need to fly your old man out here to perform our funeral, because they are killing us,” Rodriguez says. He’s my fellow bench-rider and the other rookie on our team.

I only grunt because he’s not wrong about the game, but he doesn’t know how long it’s been since I spoke to my dad.

I’d take playing ball any day of the week over going back to Idaho to work in the family business, which is selling caskets and urns. My great-grandfather turned death into a profit-steady business, and we’ve been feeding our family off of other people’s misery for generations since. We offer full “celebration of life” services at the Miller Family Funeral Home from start to finish. “Death is recession-proof” is what my old man likes to say. Or at least that’s the kind of thing he used to say before he stopped talking to me. If the baseball thing doesn’t work out, there’s a Plan B waiting, assuming my dad might forgive me eventually for everything that happened before I left. At this point that’s not a guarantee, so I need baseball to work out.

Unfortunately, the Cheetahs just hit a triple, and they are already leading us by almost a dozen runs. I wish I could say it’s a fluke, but we lost our last four games with similar scores.

I look out to the stands and see the same few familiar faces. Mr. and Mrs. Hayward, the older couple who attend every game, are here in their matching jerseys, and an exhausted mom is trying to wrangle her preschoolers out of the aisles and toward the playground. There is a family area of the ballpark that features a bounce house and face painting. Most days that area is more crowded than the metal bench seating in the rest of the stadium.

I know as the rookie I need to earn my spot and prove my worth. I get it. I do. Clark Davis is in his seventh season as the starting shortstop with this team, which is probably his last. If he doesn’t get called up to the majors—and it’s not likely when he keeps making errors like this one—he will probably retire after this season. He’s going to hit thirty in a few months, and while he’s a nice enough dude, I don’t think his heart is in the game anymore. It’s not personal. It’s just that every play Davis makes lately is garbage, and that position should be mine because I’m objectively better at it.

“At least we have that crab feast tonight, hey Miller?” Rodriguez tries to lighten the mood.

“Yeah, I guess.”

I have to hand it to the guy. Rodriguez never takes life too seriously. He is completely unfazed by the annihilation happening right in front of our eyes. This is the same dude who didn’t let the fact that he doesn’t know how to play the guitar stop him from performing absolutely horrendous versions of Ed Sheeran covers at open mic night this week. Lack of talent be damned, he still had almost the entire place on their feet, with the exception of two women in the corner who seemed lost in their own conversation.

I nod about the dinner, my fist still clenched from the bonehead mistake that cost us yet another run. I don’t know what it is with this town and crabs, but it’s a whole thing. I’ve never been anywhere else where you can walk in someone’s front door and announce “I have crabs” and everyone would start to cheer instead of assuming you have pubic lice. Maybe I’ll get used to them eventually, but if I’m being honest, the idea of eating crabs tonight seems nasty. They are scavengers who literally survive by collecting the dead, rotting stuff off the bottom of the bay. Then we’re supposed to eat the thing that’s been shoveling in all the decaying sea trash? Forgive me if I have reservations. It’s weird.

We manage two more runs in the ninth, but in the end, we lose the game 14-4.

“Okay, Rookie,” Jordan says as he jogs in from the field. “Let’s get showered and go eat.”