July 2008

Dunedin, Florida

The dream was always the same.

Every April, like clockwork, it grabbed hold of his subconscious and dominated his nights until the summer sun was forced from the sky and replaced by crisp autumn winds.

April to September. Baseball season. Every year since 1997. The year he turned thirteen. The year he became a pitcher.

For Gord Mattis, the dream was both a blessing and a curse. A curse because it scared him. It kept him awake at night, his breath short, his heart palpitating like a jackhammer, and his body slick with cold sweat. A blessing because without it, he felt lost. Like a man without a purpose. He thought the dream defined who he was.

The dream was always the same.

Gord opens his eyes and finds himself on the loneliest hill in the world. Ten inches of dirt and clay. The pitcher’s mound. Fifty thousand pairs of eyes bear down on him, like they’re trying to peer into his soul.

He grabs the resin bag and feels the fine powder cling to his sweat-soaked hands and forearms. He tosses it once in the air and flings it to the back of the mound. He slowly rubs the white pearl in both hands, tracing the stitching and cowhide leather with his fingertips.

Taking a hip-width stance on the rubber, Gord squares his shoulders and wipes his left spike across an imaginary undulation in the dirt in front of him. He focuses his gaze on the hitter, sixty feet six inches away.

Both the hitter and the crowd are faceless. It’s just Gord and the mitt — a tempestuous relationship that, when working, can be a form of artistic perfection.

He steps back with his right foot to start his balanced, mechanically efficient delivery that’s been honed through thousands of repetitions and hundreds of hours of practice.

But something’s wrong.

The motion is anything but smooth. His joints flail wildly, like they’re attached to a puppeteer’s strings. Gord tries to regain control of his limbs, but his body ignores his brain. He has lost complete control. A sick feeling develops in the pit of his stomach. The wretched taste of bile burns his esophagus.

The wild gyrations continue as Gord’s left arm comes forward at an obscene angle and attempts to release the ball toward the mitt. The result is a cross between a shot put and a five-year-old flinging a mosquito off her shoulder.

The ball lands fifteen feet in front of the plate and rolls toward the batter, who stops it with his left foot. Boos and catcalls rain down from every corner of the stadium. Gord gets the ball back and, with great trepidation, tries another pitch. This time the delivery is even more awkward. The ball loops over the batter’s head and strikes the base of the backstop, fifty feet from home plate.

Again and again, Gord’s pitches fly all over the park — some falling short, some going too long, others thrown halfway up the baselines. None come close to the strike zone.

He’s powerless to stop it. The crowd’s taunts become more derisive and vitriolic. The boos thunder down onto the field and rattle his eardrums.

The walks and runs pile up like stacks of cordwood. Gord looks in desperation to the bullpen, longing for relief and an end to the nightmare, but no one is there. He is completely and utterly alone …

Gord Mattis jolted awake. Disoriented, he was unsure of where he was. The motel room sheets clung to his body like paper towel on a wet counter. A cool sea breeze drifted in through the oceanfront window, tickling his nostrils and slowing his frantic breathing.

The soothing sounds of waves breaking against the beach jogged Gord’s memory and brought him back to the present. He peered through the darkness and recognized the decrepit seediness of his double room at the Motel 6 in Dunedin.

A glance at the alarm clock revealed the time: 2:30 a.m.

Gord noticed that his roommate’s bed was empty. The sheets and comforter were packed with a military-like precision, typical of a motel housecleaning service. Danny must still be out trolling for ass.

He shuffled into the bathroom and flipped on the light. He shut his eyes tight, waiting for his sight to acclimate to the brightness. The glare off the blinding white tile in the tiny, mildew-stained bathroom shook the remaining fog from his mind.

He gazed at himself in the mirror. Brown, shaggy hair and four days’ worth of stubble stared back at him. At six feet two inches and 215 pounds, Gord possessed a strong, muscular physique that was the envy of the rest of the pitching staff on the Lakeland Wildcats of the Class A Central Florida League.

Unfortunately, the so-called “Steroid Era” had unfairly painted all clean ballplayers with the same brush as the drug cheats who had cheapened the integrity of America’s pastime. Doubts were cast and eyebrows rose anytime a player, especially a pitcher, showed up at spring training with a body typically seen gracing the cover of Men’s Health.

Whispers of performance-enhancing drug use dogged many players. For many fans and media members, it was now “guilty until proven innocent.” The proliferation of sports blogs and the lack of accountability on the Internet made the outlandish claims and wild accusations of PED use all the more prevalent.

But Gord Mattis never used steroids, unlike so many of his fellow athletes. His musculature was the result of hours spent in the weight room and not as a trustee of modern chemistry.

Gord shut off the bathroom light. He made slow, methodical circles with his left arm, hoping to loosen his joints and release the shoulder stiffness that had built up throughout the night. The cracking in his shoulder and the barking in his elbow were vestigial duress from his pitching appearance the night before. It was nothing new; just typical wear and tear on a limb not meant to throw objects overhand at high velocity.

Crawling back into bed, Gord heard two voices outside the room.

“What, what house — room, heh heh, are you in?” An obviously drunk woman.

“1–0 … 3. No, no 3 … 0–1,” was a man’s slurred reply.

Gord smiled, recognizing his roommate’s voice. Sounds like Danny was successful.

This was something Gord had to put up with on a fairly regular basis. Danny Johnson, his roommate, was an eighteen-year-old fireballer from Oklahoma City. He was the Detroit organization’s newest bonus baby. Blessed with a ninety-seven mile an hour fastball, Johnson was snapped up sixth overall in the June draft and signed for a cool $7 million. A month earlier, Danny pitched in his last high school game. Now he was in Single A ball, fucking his way up and down the Gulf Coast.

Gord, at twenty-four, was the oldest member of the Lakeland Wildcats and in his second year with the club. Not blessed with overwhelming stuff, he depended on location, command, and deception to succeed on the hill.

The rest of the Wildcats’ roster was comprised primarily of high round draft picks not yet able to drink legally in the continental United States. Being the senior member of any minor league team was never a good thing. Gord might as well have worn a scarlet letter on his chest. Twenty-four-year-old Single A lefties were not highly regarded on any organization’s depth chart.

Tom Conrad, Lakeland’s manager, had roomed them together thinking that Gord would be a maturing presence to the callow flamethrower. Unfortunately, possessing maturity in a professional baseball clubhouse is akin to being the best-smelling turd in a shit pile. It was a sliding scale.

Danny and his new friend stumbled loudly through the door and entered the motel room.

“Make yourssssssellllfffff comfur — comfurble, Lauren.”

“Lauren? My name’s Lindsay.”

“Oh, yeah.” He whispered an aside to himself, “Like it matters.”

Lindsay, oblivious or unwilling to recognize Danny’s callous comment, noticed Gord, with his back to the pair, lying on the bed farthest from the door.

“You didn’t tell me you had a roommate! I’m not sleeping with you with someone else in the room.”

“No, he’s cool. A real deep sleeper. Watch this: Hey, Gord! You awake? Gord?”

This dialogue was a regular occurrence. A few times a week, Danny returned to their room with his newest conquest. Upon seeing Gord in the next bed, said conquest would express concerns that the night would devolve into some type of sexual handicap match. Gord, whether he was awake or not, stayed silent to assuage her fears.

Gord, ever the devoted wingman, ignored Danny’s provocations. He quickly fell into a light sleep, and the couple romped around the open bed in a drunken stupor.

Ninety minutes later, Gord’s sleep was disrupted once again. Not from the dream, the sea breeze, or the waves, but from two strange sounds.

Squeak.

Thwap.

Squeak.

Thwap.

Squeak.

Thwap.

Squeak.

Thwap.

Squeak.

Thwap.

The two bizarre sounds, building in crescendo, alternated back and forth like volleys in a tennis match until Gord, forced by curiosity, rolled over to take a look.

It would have been smarter to remain curious. Gord saw a stark naked Danny perched above an equally naked Lindsay like a peregrine falcon trying to feed its young from an elevated position. Danny’s blindingly pale, white ass drilled away at the poor girl like an offshore rig trying to strike oil.

Besides the obvious, the oddest thing about the scene was how quiet Lindsay was. Danny was panting like a steam engine, and she was as quiet as a mouse. Gord furrowed his brow and smirked quizzically. Danny Boy may be able to throw a baseball through a brick wall, but it sounds like he could use a little more lead in his pencil.

Gord quietly slipped out of bed and took a comforter and pillow out to the balcony. He paused at the sliding glass door as the warm sea air fluttered the heavy polyester drapes. He heard a soft moan from underneath the Oklahoma Oil Rig. He nodded approvingly. Good, she’s alive. We don’t have to add necrophilia to Danny’s ever-increasing list of off-field exploits.

He settled into the cheap plastic chair and slid the glass door shut. Attempting to position himself as comfortably as possible, he smiled inwardly. Oh, the glamorous life of a minor league ballplayer.

The next morning, Gord squinted through the first slivers of the Florida sun peeking over the horizon. He ran barefoot along the surf near the motel as the fledgling sunlight warmed the cool perspiration blanketing his forehead and chest. The wet, goopy sand squished beneath his feet and kicked up behind him like a dirt bike tearing around a mud track.

Every hundred yards, Gord abruptly dropped to the sand and knocked out a set of twenty push-ups. The pulsating rhythms of the classic rock exploding out of his iPod kept his intensity high and forced him to finish the workout.

The daily run and push-up routine was just one of many mechanisms Gord used to stay in peak physical condition. His rigorous training routines coupled strength work with metabolic conditioning and were used to squeeze every last mile per hour out of his left arm, which topped out at eighty-seven on a good day.

He climbed the concrete steps of the motel, shaded a putrid pastel pink, and made his way back to the room. Not surprised to see that Lindsay was nowhere to be found, he set down a tray of coffees, which he had picked up from the lobby, on the dresser next to the cheap television.

“Hey, Sunshine, wake up. Where’d your little friend go?”

A grunt sounded from under the sheet.

“From the brief look I got of her, you may want to pick up a gallon of cranberry juice on our way out.”

“Fuck off.”

“I’m just saying, if it burns when you pee, you might want to rethink your current recruitment strategy.”

Danny ignored the jab. “What time is it?”

“Just after eight. We have to be at the community centre at nine.”

Manager Tom Conrad was a reformed alcoholic who gave himself to the Lord after his first marriage disintegrated in 1995. Now Born Again and a devout Baptist, Conrad had only two goals in his life: to commit himself to the betterment of the world and to win ball games. At 23–35, the Lakeland Wildcats fell well short of the latter, so Conrad made it his personal mission to ensure his team would achieve the former.

Every off-day, while other Central Florida League teams were sleeping away their hangovers till the early afternoon, Conrad would have the Wildcats up early volunteering at soup kitchens, helping inner city youth, teaching primary school kids how to read — which proved to be problematic for some of Lakeland’s more intellectually challenged players — and other like endeavours.

That morning, the team was scheduled to appear at Highbury Park from nine to twelve helping young baseball players master the fine arts of the game. Attendance, as always, was mandatory. Even a bonus baby like Danny Johnson was forced to attend these excursions. Conrad said they “built character” and would be good for the players’ “spiritual selves.” Danny usually just tried to keep quiet and not vomit all over himself.

After a quick shower to wash off the dried sand clinging to his body, Gord emerged from the bathroom to find Danny, flirting with coherence, sitting on the edge of his bed trying to steady his hands long enough to take a sip of bitter motel coffee.

“So are you going to see … uh … what was her name again?”

“Linda.” Danny shook his head. “Naw, man. Fuck and chuck. She was terrible. I think she might have been a virgin.”

“Yeah, I’m sure she has always longed to have her first time be in a Motel 6 with a drunken jackass like you.”

“Whatever, man. I gave her an option. Mouth or vagina. She chose B.”

A bewildered smile crossed Gord’s face. “You are all class, my friend.”

The sprawling complex at Highbury Park would have made Ray Kinsella rethink his declaration that an Iowa cornfield was baseball heaven. Five fully equipped diamonds shone like emeralds against the bright Florida sun. The diamonds encircled a synthetic turf field house outfitted with ten batting cages throwing various speeds. The park was meticulously maintained by the city of Dunedin and was a tremendous source of pride for the county.

Two hundred members of the Dunedin Minor Baseball Association were warming up in organized chaos on the field house turf when the Lakeland team bus arrived.

“All right, gentlemen,” began Tom Conrad. “There are two hundred kids out there depending on us. They’ve been looking forward to this day for weeks, so don’t let them down. Smile, listen to what they have to say, and help out with not only baseball skills, but life skills.”

Nearly inaudible groans reverberated throughout the chartered bus. The team had heard this same speech, in one variation or another, numerous times throughout the year. Unfortunately, the frequency of said speech was inversely proportional to the team’s success on the field. With wins few and far between, Conrad appeared to have added life coach and motivational speaker to his on-field duties.

The ten members of the Lakeland pitching staff were sent to one of the adjoining diamonds. There, they saw a group of fifty pitchers between the ages of eight and thirteen, throwing under the watchful gazes of a handful of DMBA coaches.

Each Wildcat was in charge of a group of five kids. The biggest problem that young pitchers faced was the ability to replicate sound mechanics on every pitch. With that in mind, Gord spent the majority of his time with the group dissecting their deliveries in minute detail. He wanted to enforce the importance of developing a consistent landing point with the plant foot and a consistent release point with the throwing arm. Gord knew that mastering those aspects of the delivery was the key to throwing strikes and was the hallmark of a true pitcher.

Unfortunately, mechanical drills were not the tweens’ idea of fun, so Gord had to buffer the lesson with games and constant breaks. During one such break, he observed the interactions between his group. The five kids, all twelve years old, were from different teams in the DMBA. There was one right-hander in the group who seemed like somewhat of an outcast. The kid’s name was Matthew.

Of average height and about twenty pounds overweight, Matthew was by far the worst pitcher in the group. He had a weak arm and significant trouble with Gord’s delivery drills. The other four kids picked up on this incompetence and teased Matthew mercilessly. Their ridicule was just another example of the survival of the fittest mentality in the fierce jungle known as male adolescence.

Something about the situation struck a chord with Gord. Watching the other kids ostracize Matthew solely for being athletically challenged starkly reminded Gord of his own minor baseball experiences. Suddenly he found himself drifting back to the summer of his fourteenth year, a period of time in which Gord’s dream of becoming a professional baseball player was not only an immense long shot, but downright laughable.