Chapter One / Spring Training
"I won't report," Darius Hawkins told his agent. "I won't."
Hawkins was pacing back and forth at Gate B7 of the Fort Lauderdale airport, wearing a minor groove in the cheap airport carpet, and clutching his cell phone as if it were a life preserver, which he devoutly hoped it was. Three hours before, he was wearing the uniform of the Los Angeles Dodgers, preparing to take the field for an exhibition game against the Baltimore Orioles at Vero Beach. Three hours from now - more or less, depending on flight delays - he would land at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, where he was slated to report to the spring training complex of his new team, the Kansas City Royals, in Surprise, Arizona. Unless, that is, a miracle happened.
"There's nothing you can do," Ted Cziersky told him. Ted "The Czar" Cziersky was the most powerful sports agent in Southern California, but even he couldn't stop a trade after the fact. "If you don't get on that plane and report, you won't get paid, and the Royals will own your contract for the next three years. Do you really want to risk that?"
Six days before, a left-handed reliever for the Los Angeles Dodgers fractured his pitching shoulder in a freak Disney World monorail accident. The Dodgers, seeking to add bullpen strength, offered 24-year-old left fielder Darius Hawkins to the Royals for their top reliever, Tremonte Torrez-Trevino. The cash-strapped Royals had been trying to trade the outsize salary of Triple-T (as he was known) for months. Getting Hawkins to fill their gaping hole at the top of their lineup was just an unexpected bonus.
However, nobody consulted Darius Hawkins about this move, and he was sorely displeased by the prospect of playing for the Royals, who had lost 90 games the year before. And for one other reason.
"I can't believe this. Nobody told me this was coming," Hawkins told his agent. Despite the industrial coolness of the terminal, Hawkins was sweating badly. The phone felt slick in his hands.
"Nobody knew," Cziersky said. Certainly he hadn't. While the Royals and Dodgers were making the trade, the Czar was at his favorite Malibu day spa, getting a deep-tissue massage with mango-ginger body butter, followed by a revitalizing honey-seaweed exfoliant wrap.
"There has to be something you can do," Hawkins demanded. "You don't understand what a disaster this is for me."
"What do you want, the President to declare you a federal disaster area?"
Hawkins ignored the sarcasm. "I have to play in California," he insisted.
"Kansas City is not the end of the world," the Czar said. "It's not like you're being sent down to Las Vegas again."
"It's not about that. I… I just can't play in Kansas City," Hawkins stammered. "I just can't. It's… personal. I can't do it."
"Well, you're going to have to. Look, Darius, I have to go."
"We need to talk about this. Can you meet me in Arizona?"
The Czar sighed. "I didn't want to have to tell you this just now."
"Tell me what?"
"We just bought out a small practice in Chicago. The agreement said they would handle all our Midwestern clients. I'll have your new agent talk to you. Ken Holtzman's his name - no, that's not it. Something like that."
"New agent? What do you mean, Czar? You're my agent."
"This guy is great, though, you'll like him. I have to go, kid. One of our Russian hockey clients just got arrested for smuggling caviar at LAX." Click.
Darius Hawkins snapped his cell phone shut. He resisted the urge to toss it the length of the terminal, as though he was throwing a runner out at the plate. "Son of a bitch," he said, his voice growing marginally louder with each word. "Son of a bitch. Son of a mother-fucking bitch."
He continued to curse the Czar, the Dodgers, and the greater Kansas City metropolitan area with a stream of heartfelt - but unimaginative - profanity until he was stopped by a gate agent. She was about five-two, but had the voice of a tyrant.
"Excuse me, sir," she interjected. "There are children here." Hawkins looked down and saw them; twin five-year old girls, wearing matching pink Miami Seaquarium T-shirts. They were sobbing quietly. Their mother shot him a hateful look.
"I'm sorry," Hawkins said, and he really was.
"If you cannot control yourself, we cannot let you on the plane," the agent said.
"I know. I'm sorry," he said quietly.
He hung his head, and looked woebegone, and the Gorgon gate agent took pity on him. "You're in first class, so I'm going to let you pre-board," she said, almost gently. "Go and get a drink and try to pull yourself together, young man."
Hawkins boarded the plane, and quietly asked the flight attendant for a vodka and cranberry juice. He buckled his seat belt and stared blankly at the overhead panel.
Son of a bitch, he thought. Son of a bitch. Can't do anything right.
His cocktail arrived as the other passengers were boarding, but he never got to drink it. Just as he raised the plastic cup to his lips, he was struck on the back of the head. He spilled his drink, and a maroon stain spread over his shirt. He glanced back, and saw that it was the mother of the two crying children; she had bonked him on the head with a pink Little Mermaid carry-on. "Sorry," she said, tonelessly.
He scooped the ice into his plastic cup, and dabbed himself with his napkin. The flight attendant came over with a towel and helped with the cleanup. "Well, it could be worse," she said. "Could have been a Bloody Mary or something."
"Yeah," Darius Hawkins said. I lost my team, and I lost my agent, but it could be worse. In fact, it would be worse. He hadn't told Donna yet.
It was late, and Danny Stanton was on his third Heineken. He winced as the TV above the bar showed a Los Angeles Lakers point guard draining a three-point shot over the outstretched arms of a hapless Phoenix Suns power forward. "I hate the Lakers," he said, for the fourth time that evening.
"Everybody hates the Lakers," the bartender said. "It's the key to their karma." The Phoenix coach, sensing the karmic shift somehow, called for a timeout.
Stanton stretched, yawned, and noticed for the first time the tall, lean figure, hunched over some sort of purple drink at a corner table. Stanton didn't recognize him, but he didn't have to. Whoever it was, he looked like an athlete, and you couldn't say that about too many people on the current Kansas City roster. And he was drinking alone, so he wasn't happy about being here.
Stanton didn't care for drinking alone, anyway. He decided to introduce himself.
"You're Darius Hawkins, right?"
"Who wants to know?" Hawkins asked.
"Danny Stanton, beat reporter, Kansas City Sun. You were, what, Rookie of the Year last year, right?"
"Year before last. And I didn't win. It was the Korean dude."
"Oh, yeah." Kim Lee Choi of the Phillies had been thirty-five years old. "You shouldn't be able to play ten years in Japan and then come over here and be a rookie."
Hawkins gave Stanton a dull stare. "So what do you want?"
"You just got traded. Must have been a shock."
"What would you know about it?" Hawkins asked. "You're a reporter. It's not like you're going to wake up tomorrow and be traded to the L.A. Times."
"True enough. So, tell me. How do you feel about getting traded to the Royals?"
Hawkins knew his limitations, and talking to reporters when he was tired, half-drunk, and thoroughly pissed off was one of them. "No comment," he said.
"Are you sure?" Stanton asked. "You want that to be your introduction to the one million people in the Kansas City metro area? No comment?"
"How about this. No fucking comment."
Stanton took a long swig from his Heineken bottle. "OK, if that's the way you want it, we'll leave it at that. See you in the clubhouse."
"You do that," Hawkins said, and got up and stalked away. Stanton shrugged, and went back to the bar and the Lakers-Suns game.
"Jesus, what an asshole," Stanton said to the bartender. "An attitude like that, it's going to get him in trouble."
"You mean you'll get him in trouble," the bartender said.
"Same difference."
© Curtis D. Edmonds, 2004, all rights reserved
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