12

“I think you may be blowing this out of proportion, Mike,” Dad said.

“I’m not,” I told him.

We were in the van again, on our way to the high school. I yawned. Monday mornings were tough enough even when your best friend hadn’t recently told you he was trying out for the baseball team. He might as well have said he was having suicidal thoughts.

“I don’t know what the big deal is,” Dad said. “So Terry’s going to try out for the team. Good for him.”

Terry was Dad’s nickname for Eric. It had to do with Eric’s last name, Pendleton, which was the same last name as Terry Pendleton’s, a former MVP third baseman for the Atlanta Braves. Eric loved the nickname, of course.

“Dad,” I said, “he hasn’t played organized ball since fifth grade. He’s going to get killed.”

“Killed, Mike? I think you’re forgetting that baseball’s a sport.”

“So was being a gladiator in ancient Rome,” I reminded him. “And they died awful, gory deaths.”

“Any chance you’re underestimating your friend?”

Dad steered us onto the exit ramp, getting off highway 12 and getting ready to take a right. Ice glimmered on the ramp. Dad pumped his brakes just in case.

“Dad—you were there the last time he played. You of all people should know what I’m talking about.”

He was the coach, as a matter of fact. In the first game of the season, he decided to let Eric play catcher. It was the first year of kid pitch, and that meant stealing bases was also allowed for the first time. Eric couldn’t catch most of the pitcher’s pitches, or even keep the ball in front of him. Pitch after pitch bounced to the backstop. Baserunners galloped from one base to the next. The other team scored 15 runs even though they’d hardly swung the bat. (We didn’t technically keep score in fifth grade, but all of us kids kept track.) The other team showed no mercy. Our team got angry. Not at the other team—at Eric. My dad, who didn’t know what else to do, finally decided to have me play catcher instead. I’d been sitting on the bench that inning, and when I got up to take Eric’s place, Eric lost it.

I think it was getting taken out, not how badly he was playing, that devastated Eric most. He looked up to my dad a lot—and despite all the not-so-subtle comments made by other parents to do exactly what my dad ended up doing, Eric was still surprised when it happened. He’d gotten it in his head as the inning went on and on that he and Dad were in this thing together. That they were going to see it through to the end, no matter what else happened or what the others said.

So when Dad told him to take off the equipment, Eric bawled. Dad actually had to take the gear off for him. First one shin guard, then another, then the chest protector, then… When the mask came off, everyone could see the scrunched-up face that was making the huge howling sounds. As for me, I just stood there, three or four feet away, wondering whether I should put the stuff on or wait until Eric had left the field. No one felt worse than my dad. “I’m sorry, Terry,” he kept saying over and over again, under his breath. “This isn’t your fault, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s my fault. It’s my fault that this happened.” After that game, Eric’s parents took him off the team—and he hadn’t tried to play organized ball since.

Until now.

Dad must have been remembering all this, too, because as he took a left past Big Scoop, he said, “That was a long time ago, Mike. I’m sure things have changed a lot since then.”

He didn’t sound sure, though. He sounded more like he was asking a question than making a statement.

“Not as much as you’d think,” I said.

We passed the hospital, just a couple blocks from the high school.

“Anyway,” Dad said, “tryouts aren’t until the spring. You have a lot of time to talk it over with him.”

Which was Dad’s way of saying that I had a lot of time to talk him out of it.

At lunch, Eric told me it was a done deal. He was definitely trying out.

“How’d you decide to do this?” I asked, my mouth full of fries. The fries were an attempt to keep my face and voice sounding as neutral as possible. If I could have enunciated more clearly, he probably would have been able to detect the uncertainty in my voice.

“The Bible,” he said. He had his hand on the Encyclopedia as though he was taking an oath in court. “Its prophets paved the way.”

“Prophets?”

“Yeah—all these former players, the ones who only played one game?”

The Zeros.

“Yeah?” I grabbed another handful of fries.

“Well, I’ve been trying to learn more about them. I didn’t know where to start, so I looked them up online—and the only one I could find was this guy, maybe because his name is so unique.” He opened the Encyclopedia to a bookmarked page. “Ed ‘Crank’ Crampton, from Oregon. Remember him?”

“Yeah,” I remembered writing his name down, anyway.

“He ended up being an American History professor at a small college near his hometown.”

“Wow. Interesting,” I said, even though it wasn’t.

“Here.” Eric took his phone out of his pocket, unlocked it and slid it across the table. “Check this out.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Read it.”

It was an email.

 

 

Dear Eric Pendleton,

Thanks for the e-mail. No one’s called me Crank since well before you were born.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You emailed him?”

“Keep reading.”

 

 

The answer to your first question (why did I only play one game, one at-bat, and so forth), I’m sorry to say, isn’t as interesting as you likely hoped it to be. A player got hurt, I was sent up, the player got healthy. There wasn’t too much more to it than that. I was a veteran minor leaguer by then, and it didn’t surprise me by then to be sent down just as quickly as I was sent up. 

To answer your other question, however: “Was it worth it?” You bet it was. I had been playing in the minors for seven years by then—riding the bus, staying at cheap motels—and I was ready to move on with my life. But for some reason, I couldn’t. Getting called up to the big leagues, flying in a plane, staying at a nice hotel, not to mention realizing a boyhood dream—it allowed me to move on with my life.

Plus, for the one and only time in my life, I got to use new balls for batting practice.

I hope this email satisfies your curiosity. Thanks again for writing me.

Crank

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Wow,” I said again—and this time I meant it. “That’s really cool, Eric.”

“Not just cool, Mikey. Prophetic.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m telling you,” Eric said, “ever since I discovered these players it’s felt like… like I was meant to find them, you know?”

I didn’t know. “Eric, the whole church thing, it’s a joke.”

“Obviously, Mike. I’m not crazy. It was a joke. But it isn’t one anymore. These players—they mean something.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Until I got this email I wasn’t sure, but it seems pretty clear now.”

I waited for him to finish his thought.

“That I should go out for the baseball team, Mike. Ever since I quit I’ve felt like a failure.”

“Isn’t that a little dramatic?”

“Look, Mike, this is my chance. I don’t have to hit any home runs—I don’t even have to get a single at-bat like these guys did. I just have to make the team to… to… to redeem myself, you know?”

He said this as though he was being totally reasonable. Rather than hyperventilating like he usually did when excited, his voice was calm. So were his movements. He reached for his phone and put it back in his pocket.

The thing is, though, he wasn’t being reasonable—even if he thought he was. The chances of him making the team were the same as him hitting a home run.

Zero.

It wasn’t going to happen. And if he thought it was, he was crazy.

I wanted to grab the Encyclopedia out of his hands and toss it in the trash like Adam Pilsner.

But I knew Eric would just dive into the bin and fish the book out again.