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Like most American males who came of age in the nineties, Del burned his girlfriend a mix CD. Unlike most of his peers, he created liner notes to accompany his, sketching twenty-one original caricatures of himself wooing Dana, one for each song. In most he was dressed as a knight, with a batting helmet protecting his head and a bat for a sword. Dana wore long, flowing robes and a tiara. The drawings told the story of their courtship, at least as it unfolded through the selected music.
The compilation led off with “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls, then rolled into “Everlong” by Foo Fighters. It was the third tune in the order where things took an uncharted turn: “Moonlight Mischief” by the Loose Vowel Movements.
The moonlight peeking through the clouds,
I steal across your dappled lawn.
Under your second floor window,
I plant my ladder and we’re gone.
We disappear into the shadows,
And duck behind the neighbor’s shed.
Still close enough to hear your dad scream,
When he finds your empty bed.
It was a bold move going with the unreleased track, unheard of, at least outside of his own household, and perhaps those of the other three members of the band.
The artwork for the song featured Del carrying Dana down a ladder as her flush-faced father raged at the window above. Her sisters loved it, pronouncing Del a keeper before they ever met him. Her mother called it cute. Her father found it less than amusing and made a point of telling Del so the next time he called to pick up Dana.
If anything, that worked in his favor, though she was sufficiently smitten by that point that her father’s blessing or curse wouldn’t have altered the course of their romance greatly. Del continued to doodle, slipping folded sheets of sketch paper into her locker as he passed throughout the school day. When she cleaned out the remains at the end of the school year the stack of drawings was more than an inch thick.
His weekly dispatches from the Midwest League arrived in comic form, the panels conveying the struggles and triumphs of Sir Del. Committing hara-kiri with a splintered bat following a three-strikeout performance at Lansing. Riding upon the shoulders of the locals as fireworks erupted from the scoreboard after his two-run homer determined the rubber game of Quad Cities’ first home series against Dayton. Morphing into a Gatorade bucket in a game he rode the bench.
He ran out of places to sketch himself on the two or three nights a week he didn’t play. The bat rack, the bubble-gum tub, the Coke vendor’s tray up in the grandstand. He wasn’t used to sitting. He had never ridden the pine this much, not even as a freshman at Central. Early on, he would perch on the bench near the coaches, naively hoping that showing a keen interest would win him a ticket back onto the field. As the games passed, he migrated toward the other end of the dugout where the fun was.
There were rules for dugout hijinks. Unwritten, of course, and many made up during the early weeks of the season as teammates explored the line between entertainment and explosion. Sometimes the best butts proved the least suitable for even the most innocuous pranks. After striding to the plate with a bubble-gum balloon the size of a softball secured to the top of his helmet, Chad Skeen challenged the entire club to a fight, splintering his bat over the top step of the dugout and waving the broken barrel as the rest of the squad suppressed laughter. That spurred a lecture from manager Gene Lyons about boundaries. And earned Skeen a bust in the clubhouse Hall of Dicks.
Less volatile games to pass the time included variations on Jeopardy, sunflower seed spitting for distance and/or accuracy, and people-watching in parks that offered unobstructed views of the crowd. The participants’ focus wavered every couple of innings as their various opposite numbers came to bat. For Del that meant Alejandro Torres, who started at first against all southpaws, with Del relegated to the bench despite having hit .280 against lefties in Elizabethton. Del studied his rival as he would an opposing pitcher, recording every muscle twitch as Torres spread himself in the batter’s box, his thick thighs straining against his uniform pants as he dropped into a pronounced crouch as one might lower himself onto a toilet seat. Like many Latino players, he had been slapped with a tired, unimaginative nickname: Bull. From Torres to Toro was a short step. His personality was hardly bull-like. Unfailingly polite, he typically whiled away long bus rides reading a Spanish-language bible. He never raised his voice to his wife or young daughter, who lived with him in the apartment across the hall from Del and Edsell. He was generous with good vibes and kind words, often the first man at the top of the stairs to welcome a teammate after a big hit or run-saving play. Which all made it so hard to root against him as Del did every time he found himself on the wrong side of the dugout screen.
The tally of their competing batting averages and RBI totals stacked up in Del’s mind like columns in a spreadsheet, constantly updating, frequently pitch by pitch, Del making assumptions on the outcome of Torres’ plate appearances when the count reached two strikes due to his proclivity to chase breaking balls low and away. But when those pitches came straight and inner half? They were punished, Del in turn punishing himself as Torres’ column burgeoned with extra-base hits.
While their batting averages ran neck and neck, the power numbers favored the Bull. Del’s only clear advantage came on defense, where Torres played first base like a matador, waving his mitt at balls as they passed on their way into right field. The club’s catchers scampered harder up the line when Torres was at first, knowing any throw that took less than an ideal bounce was likely to scoot beyond him.
It was a Torres miscue, in fact, that set the stage for a rally in the home half of the ninth. Dugout games were abandoned, participants elbowing for real estate along the railing from which to monitor the comeback. Quad Cities trailed by a run as Torres settled in with one out and Skeen at second. Peoria closer Evan Riefenbach whistled a slider over the outside edge, halving the volume of the suddenly boisterous crowd. Torres stepped out, crossed himself, and glanced up into the family section, where his daughter slumbered on her mother’s shoulder. Eyes narrowed as though he were squinting through a sandstorm, he lowered his haunches until his thighs were nearly parallel to the ground, waggling his bat head over his right shoulder. Riefenbach checked the runner at second and delivered a fastball that darted into the path of Torres’ bat. As it rose into the evening, Del’s teammates rushed the dugout stairs, forming a tunnel of extended hands to welcome the evening’s hero.
The words never assembled in specific “should have been me” order, but the dull throbbing in Del’s brain as he forced a smile and slapped the passing Torres’ shoulder amounted to the same sentiment. Why didn’t anyone feed him pitches like that? He collected his glove from the bench and followed the stream of teammates into the clubhouse. There was little point in showering, not having broken a sweat. “I’ll be outside,” he said to Edsell, who could rightfully claim a share of the win, having picked up a hit in three at-bats and turned a nifty double play in the top of the eighth to keep the game close.
A knot of youths waving baseballs and cards and Sharpie markers awaited. Del slowed his pace, accepting a pen and a team yearbook from a reluctant young boy, maybe eight, nudged forward by his mother. The rest of the youngsters drew tight around him like metal shavings to a magnet. On the days he played, especially when he collected a key hit or made a nice stop in the field, he would banter with the kids, particularly some of the older ones who seemed to be there every night, collecting the same signatures. Even after an oh-fer someone might offer a consoling “you’ll get ’em next time.” But on nights like tonight, when he hadn’t stepped on the field since the national anthem, he made no attempt to engage anyone. With a blank expression and virtually no eye contact, he took whatever objects were placed into his hands. “One each,” he’d utter every so often then glance back toward the clubhouse door for Edsell.
Regan Flint, a catcher who like Del hadn’t played in the win, stopped to sign, siphoning some of the crowd away. It grew smaller yet when Torres emerged, his daughter perched atop his shoulders. The last two boys waiting on Del appeared to be brothers, the younger draped in a mock Twins jersey that hung down to his knees. Del signed his ball first, then inked his name on the sweet spot of his brother’s.
“Thanks,” the older boy said.
“Yeah, thanks, mister.”
As they started toward Torres the younger one asked his brother, “Who was that?”
The older boy ran his finger down the roster page of his open program. “Del Tanner.”
“Is he any good?”
“Nah. He’s a nobody.”
Del labored for forty-five minutes that night on a sketch of himself impaling both boys with a fungo bat before snapping his pencil in half and shredding the page to confetti.