Chapter Two / Midseason Form
It was a steamy night in late July, and the fans were heading for the exits.
"I can't believe it," Kerry Page said. "It's the best game of the year, so why is everybody leaving?"
"What do you expect?" Danny Stanton replied. "They know the game's over."
"It isn't over yet."
The score of this particular game was Anaheim 2, Kansas City 1, going into the bottom of the ninth. The Royals held a 1-0 lead through eight innings, thanks to a lights-out pitching performance by right-hander Josh Atchison. The Royals had held a 1-0 lead, thanks to a towering solo home run by veteran first baseman Clint Murphy that nearly cleared the left-field fountains. But in the top of the ninth, Kansas City closer Todd Bowen allowed two Anaheim runs to score, and most of the already-sparse crowd took that as their cue to leave. From their perch in the Kauffman Stadium pressbox, Stanton and Page could see the traffic on the interstate, out past the outsized center-field scoreboard, heading away from the stadium.
It was just a little past midseason, but the Kansas City Royals were already out of the pennant race, thirty games back of the first-place Cleveland Indians. The Royals had signed a long-term lease in the American League cellar and were planning on redecorating. Kansas City hadn't been in sniffing distance of the division lead since the Royals' improbable playoff run in 2003. Team management advertised the current campaign as a "rebuilding" year, ignoring that the Royals had been in a state of constant rebuilding ever since their last (and only) World Series victory in 1985. With a horrific 28-71 record, they were well on their way to their third consecutive hundred-loss season, a new team record.
The only statistical category where the Royals led the majors was in errors. They were setting new team lows for strikeouts, slugging percentage, and attendance. The only bright spot so far was that the whole nation wasn't sharing in the embarrassment, as the Royals were laboring in comparative obscurity. The team had been the lead story on ESPN SportsCenter exactly once this season, when third baseman Tommy Merrick ran into the stands in Comiskey Park chasing after an inebriated White Sox fan who had stolen his glove.
The Angels had their closer on the mound, a hard-throwing fastball specialist named Rodrigo Montoya. He was tall, whip-thin, and he got the first two Royals batters of the inning to ground out meekly to the left side of the infield.
"What did I tell you," Stanton said. "It's over."
"Still one more batter to go," Page replied. "Who's up?"
"Hawkins."
"Well, if he can get on base, he can do some damage."
"Get on base?" Stanton asked. "Hawkins? He's struck out three times already. The way he's been playing, he couldn't hit the ground if he fell out of a tree."
The first pitch from Montoya was high and inside, causing Hawkins to take a step back to avoid a concussion. But the second pitch was low, right over the middle of the plate. Hawkins swung and connected, and the ball shot into left-center field, just as if he'd hit a strong five-iron. The ball fell about a foot in front of the warning track, and bounced up against the wall.
Hawkins rounded first; the first-base coach was waving him to second. He glanced at the outfield; the Angels center fielder hadn't put a glove on the ball yet. An easy double, with a good shot at a triple.
Tying run in scoring position, he thought, as he rounded second base.
The third-base coach was waving him in, windmilling his arms. Some of the fans who were in the process of leaving had paused, just for a moment, reconsidering.
Spikes in the dirt. Knees high. Legs churning.
Make it look easy.
Almost there.
Go, go go go…
Thump.
Splat.
Hawkins fell face-down on the infield dirt. He was twenty feet short of third base, the unwitting victim of a broken shoelace. The Angels shortstop caught the relay throw from the outfield and casually jogged over and tagged him out as he lay prostrate on the dirt. Final score, Anaheim 2, Kansas City 1.
Hawkins rolled over and put his hands on his knees. He looked around and saw his right shoe lying in the dirt, five feet away. He picked himself up, grabbed his errant footwear, and limped back to the Royals dugout. The few remaining Kansas City fans were booing him lustily, if not particularly loudly.
He didn't blame them. They weren't any unhappier with him than he was with himself.
Up in the pressbox, Danny Stanton was laughing.
Not just laughing, more like a cathartic howl. He couldn't stop himself. Finally, Kerry Page socked him on the arm from the next seat.
"Quit it," Page said. "Let's go. It's not funny."
"I was wrong," Stanton explained, gasping for breath. "I guess he could hit the ground if he fell out of a tree."
"Were you paying attention at all?" Page asked. "That was the best game we've seen all year, and it was just ruined. That's not funny, it's tragic."
Both men were well acquainted with tragedy and with each other. Stanton covered the Royals beat for the Kansas City Sun; Page did the same for the Kansas City Star. The two reporters were trudging through the Royals schedule together, like Arctic explorers abandoned by their dog teams.
Their only solace was that the Royals, made up as they were of castoffs from other, more successful teams, were at least interesting to cover. Or that was one way to look at it. The Royals were, not to put too fine a point on it, weird, even by the loose standards of major league baseball. Their second baseman was a professional mime in the off-season. Their sole representative to the All-Star Game, right fielder Kwame Brooks, was arrested the day after the game after allegedly attempting to shoplift some ladies' shoes from Nordstrom's. In May, a disoriented, maddened squirrel bit catcher Augie Reynolds in the dugout of Comerica Park during the sixth inning of a game against the Tigers; he'd gone on the disabled list for two weeks getting the rabies shots. You had to have a sense of humor to cover this kind of team.
"The only thing tragic," Danny Stanton said, "is that you don't have a sense of humor."
"I have a great sense of humor," Kerry Page retorted, although it wasn't true. The Star reporter was much more at home with abstruse baseball statistics than he was with the world of comedy.
"That was like something out of a Roadrunner cartoon. Splat!"
"Those aren't funny. Think of the poor coyote."
"You have no taste at all, do you?" Stanton asked.
Page changed the subject. "Wonder why his shoelace broke like that?" he asked.
"I don't know," Stanton said. "I'll have to ask him."
"Waste of breath."
As of this point in the season, Darius Hawkins had refused all requests for interviews. Actually, he wasn't even that articulate about it. If he wasn't in the showers, he was sitting in front of his locker like a sphinx, full of resentment and mystery, almost daring Page or Stanton to ask him a question. It had been that way since spring training, and Stanton didn't think it would change now. Still, public embarrassment is one of the iron gears that drive the newspaper business, and Stanton's lead in tomorrow's Kansas City Sun would feature Hawkins and his pratfall. It was worth a shot to try to get a quote, if possible.
The only problem was that Hawkins had disappeared from the clubhouse.
"He's in the whirlpool," said Rob Burnette, the Royals trainer, who was rubbing down Clint Murphy's arthritic left shoulder.
"Is he okay?" Stanton asked. "Looked like he might have pulled a hamstring."
"Nothing hurt but his pride," Burnette said. He kept rubbing Murphy's shoulder as though it was his full-time job, which it easily could have been. Murphy had biceps like tree trunks and a left forearm like a steel piston; years of batting practice had worn down the shoulder joint like a weak hinge on a heavy door.
"So he just tripped, huh?"
"Yeah. Hey, these things happen."
"Thanks, then I'll just go back and ask him a couple of questions, get his take on…"
Murphy interrupted him. "Hey, leave him alone, Danny, will ya?" Murphy had a thick, gravelly voice, as though he had spent a lifetime on a bad Clint Eastwood imitation until it had become his own voice.
"Ah, c'mon. A couple of questions never hurt anybody. Worst he can do is ignore me. Either that, or tell me to go to hell."
"Give the kid a break, Danny," Murphy said. "He wouldn't talk to you anyway. You know how he is."
"Anyway," Burnette repeated, "these things happen."
"Really?" Stanton asked sarcastically. "They do? Because, you know, you usually don't see major-league players falling down on the basepaths. I mean, you know, not with two outs in the ninth inning and the game on the line. That's kind of what you call a rare occurrence, given the undoubtedly high level of talent in the game at the major-league level, isn't it?"
Murphy grunted. "Since when have we been playing at the major-league level?"
"There is that," Stanton conceded.
"Anyway," Murphy said, "don't worry about it. We'll take care of it."
"What do you mean?" Stanton asked. "You going to give him a hotfoot? Pour itching powder in his jock?"
"Nothing so crude."
Stanton was intrigued. "Something special planned, then?"
"A true master never reveals the secrets of his craft," Murphy answered.
"I can feel it, Danny," Page said. "This is going to be the day." He spread out a sheaf of lottery tickets with the dexterity of a Mississippi blackjack dealer.
"You'll never make it," Stanton said. "I checked. The Missouri lottery is at six million, and the Kansas lottery is at twelve million. You can't make it with that kind of money, not after taxes. Probably won't be able to buy a luxury box."
"That, my friend, is where you're wrong. Check it out. California lottery, $88 million. I got them in Oakland at the airport, just before we left. And I feel lucky."
"You feel ill. Get the soup, it'll make you feel better."
"I'm getting the fried chicken. How about you?"
"Grilled fish."
"What are you, on a health kick? Get the chicken like everyone else." They were eating lunch at Stroud's, a Kansas City institution famous for its fried chicken and other greasy fare. "Live a little. All that healthy eating you're doing is making you miserable."
"If you win that $88 million, you're going to wish you ate better. All the money in the world won't keep that chicken fat out of your arteries." Stanton really wasn't one to lecture; he practically lived on fast-food burritos, Cheez Doodles, and Heineken these days. He was starting to get heavy, and intermittently regretful that he wasn't in better shape.
Page folded up his lottery tickets and put them back in his ever-present laptop bag, bulging with scouting reports and used M&M wrappers. "If I win that $88 million, I'm not going to have time to hang around with the likes of you. I'm going to be busy executing my plan."
"Not this again," Stanton complained. "You don't have a plan. You have an overactive fantasy life."
Kerry Page's plan was remarkably simple. The first step, as already laid out, was to get a big lottery payday. The second step was to buy a share of the Kansas City Royals, a big enough share to install himself as general manager. After that, he had developed a set of detailed strategies for trading away half the current roster and bringing the team back to respectability, utilizing scientific principles developed by the top baseball statisticians - "sabrematricians", as they liked to be called, for some reason nobody outside their community understood. The third step was abandoning outdated, suburban Kauffman Stadium and rallying public support for a new downtown ballpark, complete with luxury boxes, a barbecue restaurant, and a redesigned pressbox with leather seats, free broadband access, and an open bar. Once all the elements of the plan were accomplished, the Royals would inevitably return to the top of the heap in the AL Central, as surely as night follows day, as surely as a road trip follows a homestand.
Stanton tried - not for the first time - to explain the drawbacks to this strategy. "First, you would have to win enough in the lottery to afford to purchase a majority stake in the Royals, which is only slightly less likely than your being able to sprout wings and fly."
Even if Kerry Page could have sprouted wings, he was unlikely to be able to be able to get very far off the ground; he was short and a little stout, to the point where he should have considered getting the grilled fish, or staying away from the excellent pan-fried chicken at Stroud's altogether. However, he was very confident in his plan, and waved away the difficulty. "A minor detail. And, anyway, if these tickets don't come in - and they will, you watch - the Maryland lottery is at $75 million, and the Florida lottery is even higher." Baltimore and Tampa Bay were the next two stops on the Royals road schedule.
"Second, even if you overcame this extraordinary hurdle, you would have to actually convince the current ownership to sell the team - more importantly, to sell it to you."
"I have that figured out. I buy the Royals, and that gives Moss the capital to land an NBA expansion team for the new downtown arena," Page said. Andrew Jackson Moss was the current owner of the Royals; he was some sort of eccentric billionaire bond trader. He was a shadowy, remote figure who seldom showed up in his Kauffman Stadium skybox, or anywhere else. If Moss had any interest at all in basketball, or knew that the sport existed, it was news to Stanton.
"Thirdly, even if you did, manage this extraordinary chain of events, you don't have the vaguest idea of how to run a professional baseball team."
Page leaned back against the back of booth and tucked his thumbs into his belt - the necessary preparation for doing his bad John Wayne impression. "Them's fighting words, pilgrim."
Kerry Page was a Seamhead, part of that particular breed of baseball writers and researchers who thought that baseball was not just a sport, or even a way of life, but the axis on which the world turned. Page could calculate slugging percentages in his head, and talk intelligently about Win Shares and Runs Created and other statistical oddities. He'd devoured Michael Lewis's Moneyball, and was convinced that he could apply his knowledge to running a baseball team himself, or at least advise Royals management on the best way to run their team through his platform at the Star.
"For one thing, you had that insane idea about trading Gregorio Ortiz."
"It only looks insane," Page said. "It's actually brilliant, and I can prove it."
Gregorio Ortiz was the best young player on the Royals, and had started the year as their starting shortstop. Page had been advocating for a trade since spring training, arguing that the Royals needed young pitchers more than they needed a potential All-Star infielder. However, Ortiz snapped his wrist at a series in Arlington in May, and was currently on an extensive rehabilitation program in an undisclosed location. It was rumored that Ortiz was spending the season hanging out in Ixtapa, drinking Corona Lights and working on his tan.
"I don't want to hear your ten reasons why you think this is a good idea," Stanton warned, "because it isn't. You don't turn your back on someone with that kind of talent, even if he is hurt."
"What talent?" Page countered.
"You're just jealous. You'll never have that kind of athletic talent." Page hadn't ever played any game more strenuous than Monopoly in his life.
"I have something much more important, something that you will never have, and that's writing talent."
"You've got something else I will never have, too," Stanton said.
"What's that?"
"The check. It's your turn to buy lunch."
Darius Hawkins waited in the on-deck circle, bottom of the third, one out and nobody on. The Royals were down 5-0; the Seattle Mariners had chased Kansas City starter Wilson Montgomery in the top of the inning.
Hawkins had led off the game in the first with a little tapper back to the pitcher, swinging at every pitch out of pure sheer frustration. Partly it was his own fault, tripping over his own feet the other night. Then there was the stupid story in the Kansas City Sun, with the big photo of him lying on the infield dirt, with the headline - "Angels Trip Royals" - implying that he, alone, had lost the game, all by himself.
He'd called his psychiatrist that afternoon. Sid was his name; he liked to call himself a "sports counselor", but he was a pshrink. He'd started seeing Sid last October, back in Los Angeles. Hawkins had deserved the Rookie of the Year award his first year, but his sophomore season was well short of a success, and the Dodgers demoted him. He'd spent two months in Triple-A Las Vegas before being called back up in September, where he'd sat on the far end of the Dodgers' bench, making the occasional appearance as a pinch-runner.
He'd hired Sid when the season was over, at the urging of his agent, the Czar. He also had a personal trainer and a nutritionist, all of whom were trying to help him get back into the mental and physical shape he needed to get back into the Dodgers everyday lineup. However, when the trade happened, he was forced to make sacrifices. He fired the nutritionist - which, actually, was the easiest call to make, given that she was constantly badgering him to drink foul soy protein milkshakes. He ditched the personal trainer and invested in a Bowflex instead. And he refrained from calling Sid for a phone consult in all but the most dire of circumstances. Like today.
"So I get to my locker," Hawkins explained, "and some smart-ass, whoever he was, thought it would be funny to put a hundred shoelaces in my locker. They're all over everything. Some in my hat, in my jock, inside the fingers of my glove."
"A practical joke," Sid said.
"Yeah. Completely fucking hilarious."
"Who do you think did it?"
"I don't know. I think it was that cracker jerk Murphy," Hawkins said, showing admirable perception for once.
"Why?"
"I don't know. Kind of thing he'd do. But anyone might have done it, though."
"Could you have done it? To someone else, I mean."
Hawkins thought for a moment. "If I thought it was funny. Maybe. I'm not really too good at thinking up jokes."
"So it could be funny in other circumstances, then."
"I guess so, Sid, but it happened to me."
"Well, why did it happen?"
"Because I broke my shoelace and fell on my ass on national television, that's why." ESPN had relaxed its embargo on Royals coverage for the occasion; they had run the clip about twelve times that Hawkins had seen.
"Why did you break your shoelace?"
"I didn't break my shoelace. It just broke."
"Are you sure?" Sid asked.
"Of course I'm sure."
"Darius, what I think happened is that you were so stressed out about the way you've been playing is that you maybe tied your shoelaces too tight and that's why they broke."
"For God's sake. I know how to tie my own shoes, Sid."
"Subconsciously, though, you might not have noticed what you were doing."
"This is ridiculous. I am a grown man. I've been tying my shoes since I was four years old. I tie my shoes every day. This did not happen because I didn't tie my shoes right." I have to find me a new pshrink, Hawkins thought.
"Never mind, then. It isn't important. What is important is that you're slipping again, when you should be getting into midseason form. That means staying focused, not letting the little things worry you. Be consistent. Be professional. Be successful." This was Sid's mantra; he'd even trademarked it for the book he was thinking about writing.
"I'm not worrying about the little things. I'm worried about the big things."
"Such as?"
"The trading deadline. Whether I'll still be playing here or not, or whether they send me back home, or what." Despite frequent conversations with his new agent, Hawkins had been unable to get the Anaheim Angels or the San Diego Padres to show even the tiniest morsel of interest in trading for him.
"What else?" Sid asked.
"Well, the thing with Donna, of course."
"Can you control either one of those by worrying about them?"
"No. I guess not," Hawkins said. "Doesn't stop me from worrying, though. And then there's not being able to get a hit."
"Well, that's something you can control, then," Sid said. "Let's focus on that. What can you do to hit better?"
"If I knew that, I'd be a hitting coach," Hawkins scoffed.
"What is your hitting coach telling you?"
"Not much. He says my mechanics are fine, I'm just swinging at the wrong pitches."
"So, the question is not how you hit, but when. It's about being psychologically ready to hit."
"Could be."
"Try something for me. This is something one of my other clients does." Sid knew that his athletes liked to be referred as clients, not patients, and since he got paid the same way whatever he called them, he went along with it. "Adopt a little ritual in the batter's box."
"Like Pudge Rodriguez? Crossing myself before the pitch?"
"Just so."
"Won't work. I'm not Catholic."
"Something simple, then. Tap your bat on home plate before you get set for the first pitch."
"What good will that do?"
"It will help keep you centered. Keep your mind on what you're doing. Get you ready to hit."
"Why don't I tap it twice then? For good measure?"
"If you think it will help."
Hawkins wasn't sure if it would help, but at this point, he might have tried burning incense in the batter's box. Maybe it wouldn't make a difference, he thought, but what the hell.
The batter ahead of him, second baseman Dick Housman, struck out. Hawkins walked to the plate. Here goes. He tapped home plate with the fat end of his bat, once, twice.
The first two pitches were high and away, and the third pitch was a curveball in the dirt. Hawkins managed to lay off all three of them.
Three-oh count, time to swing away.
The next pitch was a fastball, a little outside, but he thought he could get around on it, and he did. Thwack. Fly ball, deep, in the gap, bouncing on the warning track. Hawkins rounded first leisurely, pulled up at second with a stand-up double.
What do you know, Hawkins thought. Sid may be on to something.
Hawkins looked down and checked his shoelaces as covertly as he could. Still tied. Good.
Baseball is a cruel game, and one of its cruelties is that it doesn't have a clock. Football games end, usually a little bit after Sixty Minutes is about to start on a Sunday evening. Basketball games end, despite the flurry of time-outs in a close contest. Soccer games end, and not a second too soon. But a baseball game - a baseball season, for that matter - continues to its inevitable, logical end, regardless of the time or the pain inflicted.
In the third and final game of the Royals-Angels series, with the Royals coming up to bat in the bottom of the eighth, the score was 15-5 in favor of the Angels. A dark pall of gloom and depression settled over Kauffman Stadium. The few remaining die-hard fans sat in their seats as though they had been nailed there. Far-off summer lightning crackled in the background; there was a threat of rain in the offing. The Angels and Royals bench players stared vacantly out into the field, too worn-down to do anything but spit the hulls of sunflower seeds vacantly into the floor of the dugout. The only audible sound was the slow disgusted drone of the Royals radio announcers, spreading the word of another dismal defeat into the Midwestern night.
It was at that moment that a rousing war-whoop split the silence of the pressbox, startling everyone within range. It was Kerry Page, bent over his laptop, shuffling some slips of paper. A happy grin enveloped his face.
"I won," he said.
"Bullshit," Stanton said, but in a soft and reverent tone. Hell, he thought, maybe he'd give me a real job, even something like PR director, or I could do the public address system…
"Yeah, look." The screen of his laptop showed the California lottery website.
Stanton glanced at the screen and at the slip of paper with the lotto picks. "You didn't win," he said. "Look, there's a seventeen."
"Four out of six numbers. About eleven hundred bucks."
"You scared the hell out of me. I thought you won it all."
"No such luck," Page said. "This time. But I'm gonna take my winnings and go to Vegas once the season's over; might be able to turn it into something. You never know."
"What are you going to do?" Stanton asked. "Bet on the Royals to win the Series next year?"
On the field, Clint Murphy struck out on a weak 0-2 curveball to end the eighth inning. Page shook his head. "Can't say that I like those odds," he said.
As of that moment, nobody had calculated the odds on the impossible - that the Kansas City Royals would become the most closely-watched team in the American League, and that Darius Hawkins would be the most widely recognized athlete of the decade. The odds were simply too long and too unlikely. But if someone had calculated them, and if Kerry Page had been reckless enough to bet his winnings, he would have easily had enough to buy the Kansas City Royals, with enough money left over to build three stadiums. And the process had already started, although nobody, not even Darius Hawkins, was aware of it.
© Curtis D. Edmonds, 2004, all rights reserved
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