28
I HEARD THE crack of the ball off the bat. Papi jumped to his feet at the sound and so did I. It was a long fly smacked to deep center field. Papi was bending his body with the flight of the ball, like maybe that could influence it. Only it couldn’t. The baseball vanished over the 418-foot mark on the fence. The Marlins’ home run statue stayed silent, though. Most of the crowd did, too. That’s because it was a Yankee who’d homered. They’d had a runner on first base at the time. And after the top half of the first inning, New York was ahead, 2–0.
Papi gave the Marlins’ starting pitcher some words of encouragement as he came back to the dugout. Then he turned to me and said, “Those Yankees think Game Seven belongs to them, because of all their tradition. They think this moment’s too big for us. It’s not. We’re not afraid of their uniforms or anybody wearing them.”
We’d gone more than six years without speaking. Not a single word. I couldn’t believe that Papi was actually talking to me about the Yankees’ stuck-up attitude.
The Marlins went down in order in the bottom half of the first inning. When they took the field again, their shortstop made a slick play on the first Yankee hitter, robbing him of a base hit.
“Ramon tells me you were the best young shortstop in Cuba this season,” said Papi. “Is that true?”
“If they’d let me play.”
“Explain that.”
“You defected,” I said, spitting out the last of my seeds. “They wanted to punish me for that, afraid that I’d do the same.”
“Those bastards were right,” said Papi, as if he were teaching me something.
“You explain that,” I said, annoyed.
“Well, would you rather I’d stayed? Or that I left, so one day we could both be free?”
I didn’t know how to respond. Part of me wanted to curse him out for leaving us behind. Another part wanted to say thank you, for making me walk that long, hard road to right here. And when the grateful part started to win that tug-of-war in my heart, I became angry with myself.
After a few more pitches, Papi said, “I don’t blame you for not having an answer. Sometimes I don’t have one either.”
Both teams put up goose eggs on the scoreboard in the second inning. Then Papi left the bench and walked back to the clubhouse. This time I refused to sit still.
He was on the floor in the middle of a hurdler’s stretch, with the fingers of his left hand reaching for the toe of his right cleat, when I walked in. The game outside was being shown on a pair of huge flat-screens at either end of the room. That’s when it came to me that Luis was watching the game on TV with his father, and now I was watching it the same way with mine.
“How’s the apartment you’re living in? Nice enough?” asked Papi, as he popped off the floor and started to do a set of jumping jacks. “I’ve never seen it.”
“Uncle and Cousin really love it,” I answered, measuring my tone. “What’s your place look like? Full of tricycles and kiddie toys?”
“No, I live alone,” answered Papi, beginning to run in place with his knees coming all the way up to his chest.
“What do you mean?”
“Julio, I’m not with Milo’s mother. We were never a real couple or going to get married. This baby was a surprise. But Milo’s my son and I love him. So I provide for him and his mother.”
Suddenly, I was less jealous of the kid. But I still had plenty to challenge Papi on.
“So how come you never—”
“No more!” demanded Papi, who stalked over to a huge trunk full of equipment. Searching through it, he pulled out a right-handed glove. “Here, take this. You’re going to need it.”
I remembered the last time Papi gave me a baseball glove. It was for my tenth birthday. He’d promised to play catch with me every day until it got broken in. That was a promise Papi never kept.
I took the glove from him. But I didn’t even want to put it on my hand. So I tucked it beneath my armpit.
“Come on. I have to get back out there and support my teammates,” said Papi.
All I could think was that he’d spent a lot of effort supporting everyone except Mama, Lola, and me.
The hallway between the clubhouse and the dugout was covered in a collage of hundreds of photos, reading like a history of the Marlins’ franchise. But there was a blank space in the corner, where there was just blue wall.
Papi stopped right in front of it and said, “There used to be a picture here of me and my former manager. He told some sportswriters how he admired Fidel Castro for being so tough.”
“Uncle Ramon told me about him on the trip over.”
“From the moment I read that quote, he lost my respect—even after he apologized,” said Papi. “Because my children were stuck in Cuba, without the freedom to follow me here.”
“What happened to the photo?” I asked, as the crowd outside let out a roar.
“The day he was fired, I told the general manager to get rid of that picture. He gave me some excuse about how they’d have to redo the whole wall. So I came here with a putty knife and I cut it out myself. That way I never had to ask about it again.”
When we got back to the dugout, Miami had a runner on second base with just one out. That’s when the Marlins’ shortstop came to bat. He hit a high chopper to the left side of the infield, with the runner holding at second. The Yankees’ third baseman had to wait for the ball to come down, and then gunned his throw across the diamond. I could hear the sound of the runner’s foot striking the bag an instant before the ball hit the first baseman’s mitt. It was like the rhythm of a song—swish-pop.
Only the umpire called, “Out!”
The Marlins’ manager charged onto the field. He got between the umpire and his player, who was already arguing the call. That way his shortstop wouldn’t get tossed. The umpire was acting smug as anything, like he could never blow a call. The Miami manager completely lost it. He spun his cap around. And without the brim in front, he could get his face about a quarter of an inch from that umpire’s. Before he got ejected from the game, he really had his say. I didn’t know all of those words in English. But I could guess.
The manager was supposed to leave the dugout. Instead, he hid in the doorway right behind me and Papi at the end of the bench. That way he could manage the team from there.
“He was safe,” said Papi, with his eyes glued to the slow-motion replay on a TV monitor. “I hate when umpires become more important to the game than players.”
I didn’t need the cameras to slow it down. I’d heard the music of that bang-bang play and knew he was safe.
The shortstop was standing right in front of me, looking at the monitor. I was watching him watch himself, being present in his past. It reminded me of those two sets of footprints I’d left on the beach in Cuba—one coming and one going—before I decided to defect.
All that emotion the manager showed on the field had an effect on the crowd and the players in the Marlins’ dugout. Even I was up on my feet. I had my thumb and pointer finger jammed into the corners of my mouth, emptying my lungs into one long whistle. Papi was blowing just as hard with a sharp tsssspp! But the next Marlins batter struck out to end the third inning. And that surge of emotion was suddenly gone, like the air escaping from a punctured balloon.
Neither team scored over the next two innings. After the Marlins made the final out in the bottom of the fifth, I could see them starting to get really tight. The Yankees’ starting pitcher was sailing along. The Marlins had just four innings left—twelve outs—to put a crooked number on the scoreboard. It was either be winners—World Series Champions—or losers. As a baseball player, that I understood.
“Let’s go. Come with me,” said Papi, walking out of the dugout and beginning his jog to the bullpen in the right-field stands.
I was on his heels in front of that huge crowd, with the glove he’d given me still stuffed under my arm.
That’s when I heard a high-pitched voice from the first row calling, “Papi! Mi papi!”