May 2007

Joliet, Illinois

“Fuck, this line is too long,” Gord moaned. “I’m not waiting forty minutes for the chance to drink five-dollar beers.”

Ten members of the Lumberjacks stood outside of Blue Bar, the pre-eminent nightclub in downtown Joliet. Live music blasted out of the front door as the whoops and shouts from the revellers inside drifted through the line huddled on the narrow sidewalk. Those waiting in line eyed the scene just beyond the front door with an intense jealousy.

“We don’t have to wait in line,” Brown stated matter-of-factly.

“What do you mean?” Gord queried.

We play for the Lumberjacks,” Brown said. “No line, no cover. Ever.”

Gord stared at his moon-sized teammate, incredulous that a non-affiliated independent league team carried such weight in the community. He was used to receiving preferential treatment at Michigan, but every varsity athlete at every major program in the country was treated better than the general student population. And minor league affiliates were steps away from the majors, so people went out of their way to please players destined for the Show.

But independent league ball was primarily filled with dreamers and reclamation projects hoping for one last shot at glory. The sad reality was that, in eighteen months, the majority of independent league players would be stuck working nine-to-five jobs they hated, still dreaming of the time when baseball was the only thing that mattered in their lives.

Gord did not want to become another statistic. Indy ball was a means to an end. If he could have a dominating season in the Pioneer League, a pro team might take a chance and sign him to a minor league contract. But he needed a big summer. Gord did not want to be stuck in Joliet next year talking to the new recruits about how much the city loved the Lumberjacks.

Brown walked to the front of the line — with the rest of the team in tow — and spoke quickly with the bouncer manning the front door. The bouncer nodded, stepped aside, and let the players into the club like he was opening the door to Oz, much to the chagrin of the people still in line.

The Lumberjacks sat in a long, curved booth adjacent to the dance floor. Gord sat beside Geoffrey Jackman, Joliet’s starting catcher. He was from Canberra, Australia, and in his first year of American baseball. He had destroyed the pitching in the Australian League, hitting over .400 the year before, which was enough for Chris Carlucci to give him a chance against stiffer competition.

However, the conversation was stilted because Jackman kept getting approached by women asking him to dance. He looked like a movie star: dark hair, dark eyes, and a perfect tan. Girls were practically throwing themselves at him, and he barely batted an eyelash. He was used to such treatment. Ironically, Jackman’s calm, cool demeanour only made the women want him more. Gord had never seen anything like it. It was like Mick Jagger and Wilt Chamberlain in one supremely tanned package.

The rest of the team — getting barely a sniff from the fairer sex with Jackman’s visage at the table — stared with amazement at their fortunate teammate. Yunel was especially flummoxed by the female attention Jackman was receiving. He had just returned from an unsuccessful trip to the dance floor.

“I don’t get these girls, here,” Yunel said, waving his hand toward the dance floor. “They are different than back home.”

“What do you mean?” Gord asked.

“I dance with blonde girl. She very hot. Grinding on me and everything,” he cried, getting agitated. “It excite me.”

“Excite you?” Jackman queried.

“Yes,” Yunel said firmly. “My penis was so wet.”

Gord and the Australian burst into hysterics at Yunel’s cringingly literal description.

“Why do you laugh?” he asked, his face scrunched in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

Yunel turned to face Jackman. “It’s so easy for you,” he moaned. “Girls just love your accent. Why?”

The Cuban looked at a couple of girls eyeing Jackman from the periphery of the dance floor. He proceeded to start a hypothetical conversation with them, his voice barely audible, lost in thumping club music.

“Do you want some beer?” he asked, inflecting his voice with a comically bad Australian accent. “Do you want to go to a party?” He faced Jackman. “That’s all you have to say, and the girls want to fuck with you.”

“Jesus, that’s enough,” Gord interjected, covering his face with his hands. “You’re embarrassing us.”

“Maybe I should get a tattoo,” Yunel continued. “American girls like tattoos.”

“What would you get?” Jackman was almost afraid to ask.

“Something on my lower back,” he said confidently. “Or maybe my front hip. It would look sick, Bro.”

“Dude,” Jackman laughed. “You can’t do that. That’s where chicks get tattoos. That’s gay, man.”

“No, you’re kidding,” Yunel dismissed his teammate’s taunts.

“He’s right, Yunel,” Gord agreed. “Only girls do that here.”

Pierre Coubertin approached the booth on a diagonal, stumbling across the dance floor like a pinball careening off the rails toward his teammates. He was sweating profusely and his eyes were bloodshot.

“How’s it going, Frenchy?” Jackman asked.

“I’m such a stud,” he slurred. “I’ve made out with two chicks already. I have better game than anyone here. I bet I can make out with any girl in the bar.”

“Really?” Gord challenged.

“Sure,” Coubertin shouted, unable to control the volume of his voice.

“Okay, that one,” Gord pointed to the next booth. “There.”

Their eyes followed Gord’s finger. They saw an alluring brunette clad in a sparkling grey dress. She stood with her hands perched strategically on her hips, her back arched ever so slightly. Her mouth was open in a slight pout. She gazed at the dance floor with a disinterested look on her face, surrounded by a group of eight guys who appeared to be in the midst of a birthday party.

“Her?” Coubertin squeaked. Even drunk, he was intimidated by Grey Dress’s icy glare.

“Her,” Gord said smugly. “What are you waiting for, Frenchy?”

Coubertin quickly steeled his resolve. “Not a problem,” he sniffed. “Watch and learn.”

The Canadian veered toward the unsuspecting woman, twice having to stop his momentum so he wouldn’t collide with people on the dance floor. He approached on the girl’s left and immediately invaded her personal space, lightly spitting on her as he spoke. It was evident that she wanted nothing to do with his drunken pass, but Coubertin’s self-awareness had left the premises after his eighth beer.

Gord and Jackman shifted forward in their seats to get a better vantage point of the train wreck. Coubertin’s drunken ramblings did nothing to impress the woman. She looked at him with a pained expression. Even Coubertin could tell he was going down in flames. He needed to pull out some heavy artillery.

He leaned forward and planted a kiss on the girl’s lips. She recoiled in disgust. Gord and the Aussie howled at the scene. They couldn’t believe their teammate had been so brazen. She quickly pushed Coubertin away and slapped him across the cheek, drawing the attention of her table mates.

They all stood up and surrounded the drunk Canadian.

“Oh shit,” Gord exclaimed, rising from his seat. He looked at Jackman. “We may have to do something here.”

Jackman whistled at their teammates on the dance floor as Gord sprang toward the next table. One of the girl’s friends pushed Coubertin hard in the chest. He was knocked backward, his fine motor skills non-existent at this level of intoxication. Coubertin lunged forward as another man crashed a beer bottle into the top of his skull.

Then all hell broke loose.

Coubertin collapsed sideways as shards of broken glass covered the top of his head. A river of blood erupted from the open wound, running over his forehead and pooling into his eyes.

Gord saw the bottle explode on impact and watched Coubertin’s legs buckle underneath him. Gord raced toward the coward standing above his incapacitated teammate and speared him, driving his right shoulder into the man’s sternum. Gord felt the air whoosh out of the man as they slid across the slick dance floor, a mass of bodies stampeding past them. Before the man could regain his bearings, Gord was on top of him, delivering quick, short strikes to his face, igniting a torrent of blood from his opponent’s freshly broken nose.

Though Gord was drunk and high on adrenaline, he was still able to think coherently, despite the mass hysteria of the last few seconds. He punched the man with his right fist, explicitly avoiding any and all contact with his pitching hand. The last thing Gord needed was to break one of the infinitesimally small bones in his wrist or hand in a bar fight, jeopardizing the tenuous grip he had on a professional baseball career. It was the cardinal rule among the pitching fraternity, declared by Kevin Costner’s Crash Davis in Bull Durham: Never hit a drunk with your pitching hand.

Gord recalled that nugget of wisdom as his left hand was wrapped around the guy’s neck. His right hand started to throb after using the coward’s face as a punching bag. Gord was just about to release his grasp when he felt a forearm tighten around his neck and drag him onto his back. He was pulled underneath the table in the middle of the booth.

Gord was wrestled to the ground by one of the girl’s friends. He quickly scissored his legs, stomping his attacker in the solar plexus, creating some space between them. Gord looked back toward the dance floor and surveyed the scene. Dallas Brown had two guys by the throat, basically goading them to engage him. Gazing at the size of the first baseman, they wisely kept their hands to their sides.

Jackman and Yunel had two other guys wrapped in bear hugs, ensuring that no one else tried to grab a bottle off a nearby table. Other Lumberjacks pushed and shoved with the remaining friends of the Helen of Troy-esque brunette.

Security personnel and Blue Bar bouncers quickly arrived on the scene and began the arduous process of separating the combatants. It was impossible to get an accurate depiction of the events with the blaring bass line pumping out of the sound system and a group of enraged, drunken twenty-somethings screaming at each other.

Security decided the best course of action was to kick both groups out of the bar through separate exits and let cooler heads prevail. They knew Gord’s group were members of the Lumberjacks, but didn’t want to create any negative publicity for the team, so details of the incident were kept quiet.

Besides some sore knuckles, and seven stitches for Coubertin, the Lumberjacks made it through their first bar fight of the season basically unscathed. Ironically enough, these types of altercations were often team-bonding experiences that brought the guys involved closer together and prepared them for the ups and downs of a months-long baseball season.

“Yeah, Dad, I pitched well.”

Gord, his equipment bag slung over his right shoulder, carefully cradled his cell phone in the crook of his neck as he opened the heavy glass door guarding the entrance to the residence hall. It was a few minutes after midnight, and Gord was just returning from his first start of the season for the Joliet Lumberjacks.

It was his first-ever appearance in professional baseball.

The rest of his teammates had returned much earlier, but Gord stayed behind to get his running in after the game. He ran a total of fourteen poles — back and forth along the warning track from the left field line to the right field line. He did this to alleviate the soreness that was sure to follow the next morning.

“I threw seven innings — gave up one earned run, struck out six, only one walk.”

“But … did the … team win?” Michael’s voice drifted in and out on the choppy connection.

“Yeah, we won,” Gord replied, annoyed that his father quickly skipped over his personal statistics without recognition. “Four–three. I didn’t get the decision, though.”

“You didn’t?” Michael was surprised. “What happened?”

“The reliever in the eighth inning gave up two runs, and then we won it in the bottom of the ninth.”

“Were your coaches happy with the way you pitched?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t they be?” Gord was defensive.

“So they’re probably going to give you another start?”

“I don’t see why not,” Gord said. “I mean, I didn’t give them a reason not to throw me again.”

“Keep working.”

“Of course I will. Why would I stop working hard? I’m getting closer to my dream. I had good stuff tonight …” Gord let his sentence drift, hoping his dad would step in with a compliment or a morsel of praise.

“Let me know when you pitch next. Get some sleep.”

“Uh, okay. ’Bye, Dad.”

Gord shook his head, ridding his mind of the doubt that had crept up during his father’s interrogation. He trudged up the long staircase toward his dorm room.

A female voice interrupted his thoughts. “Gord?” she called. “It’s Gord, right?”

He turned to his right and saw a woman, about thirty years old, sitting at the bank of computers next to the staircase. The light emanating from the monitor and the shadows skipping across the darkened corridor gave her face an eerie glow.

“Yes?” he answered uneasily.

“I’m Cindy,” she replied cheerily, standing up from her chair. “I was checking you out on the team roster.”

Confusion still played across Gord’s face.

“I’m not a stalker or anything,” she continued, laughing much too loud.

Gord chuckled nervously.

“How was the game?” Cindy asked.

Suddenly the revelation of who this woman was hit Gord squarely between the eyes. He had heard some of his teammates talk about a woman who hung out at the dorms trying to fraternize with the players. The stories they told seemed far-fetched — Gord had just dismissed them as rumours.

The woman had apparently tried to get the phone numbers of a few players. Some of the younger guys had foolishly complied in the hopes of garnering a late-night booty call. She wasn’t ugly, but the amount of craziness apparently swirling around in her head wasn’t proportional to her level of attractiveness. Instead of hooking up with the guys, the woman had just bombarded them with odd, cryptic texts at all hours of the night. She left boxes of cereal and cookies outside of their dorm rooms and knocked on their doors in the middle of the night. It had gone from slightly endearing to downright creepy very fast.

Cindy was the stalker, Gord realized. He looked around and saw that they were completely alone in the hall.

“Uh, we won,” Gord answered cautiously.

“That’s great!” Cindy exclaimed.

“Thanks.”

“How come you’re back so late?”

“What?”

“Well, the rest of the team got back to their dorms a while ago,” she stated matter-of-factly. “Why are you just getting back now?”

Is this girl for real? She must be kidding. “I was doing my post-game workout,” Gord replied, unsure why he had to explain himself to this woman he had just met.

“Oh, okay, just checking.” Cindy smiled.

“Well, I better — ”

She interrupted Gord before he could extricate himself from the conversation.

“Can I ask you a dorky question?”

“Uh, sure,” he replied hesitantly.

“Do you like coffee?”

“What?” Gord was flummoxed by her line of questioning. It was like being cross-examined by a three-year-old. “Do I like coffee?”

“Yes,” she chirped.

“Sure, I guess.”

“Do you want to go for a coffee?” she inquired enthusiastically.

“Now?”

Cindy nodded happily.

Gord looked at her in astonishment. This woman is bat-shit crazy. “I don’t think anything is open right now.”

“That’s true. Silly me.”

Okay, Gordo, you need to get yourself out of this. Nip it in the bud. “It’s probably not a good idea anyway. I’m kind of seeing someone,” Gord lied, wanting to let Cindy down easy.

“She could come, too?” she asked hopefully.

He couldn’t help but laugh. Cindy didn’t take the hint.

“I don’t think so,” Gord said with finality.

“Have you ever been in love?”

The question floored him. A lump developed in his throat. What the hell? Gord found himself thinking about the question. What’s wrong with you? She’s crazy. Don’t give what she says the time of day.

Pictures flashed in his mind like eruptions of lightning stabbing the night sky. They were pictures of Kim. He hadn’t thought about her in over a year and an innocuous question by a random woman in Illinois caused a boatload of memories to flood his brain. Why was he thinking about Kim? There was nothing between them. She wasn’t a part of his life anymore, yet there she was — never far from his mind.

Gord was rattled. He didn’t know what to say, what to do. He just left Cindy standing there in the dark as he walked back to his room in a daze. Gord didn’t even remember falling asleep that night.

Had he ever been in love?

Yes. He still was.