Written by Casey Neal
Daily Log of a Fresh-faced College Graduate
May 27, 2013
altAs we enter Manchester, New Hampshire, I see a billboard that says "Welcome to the largest city in northern New England!" This, it turns out, is like saying UMD is the biggest college in Duluth. The town feels smaller than it probably is. Maulers owner Arturo Bruto was once famously quoted as saying that he put the team here because he loved Friendly's ice cream and because it had the best tax deal north of the Caribbean. Of course, it draws from many bigger communities, and the entire freakin' area has Maulers fever. I suppose it's justified seeing as the team has won the division twice in the last four seasons and has been to the playoffs in three of them. It's a good team, and a good team draws. In the case of Manchester, it drew over three million fannies to their seats in 2012.
But today's an off-day and we find ourselves with some time on our hands, so we go to the roller derby. Neither of us knows crud about roller derby, but we enjoy the speed of it, the spectacle of women crashing into each other and shouting various obscenities, and the crowd throwing popcorn and cheering.
We're between roller derby matches (or sets or games or whatever the hell they call them) when I finally decide to bring up The Subject. "This thing is too big, Don-o." At first, Don-o doesn't seem to know what I'm talking about, but I cock my head and give him a WTF look, and he's with me. "We need to go to the cops," I say.
"I don't think that's a good idea."
"Seriously, dude, we can't do anything ourselves."
The girls start skating again and the crowd gets to rumbling. Don-o leans into me, cups his hand around my ear and screams above the din. "If we call the cops now and they actually listen to us, all we can expect is to nab the Bad Dudes."
"That sounds freakin' good by me."
Don-o shakes his head and tugs on his beer. "We need to do something to cut this off at the top, Neal. PN has to go down, too, or it will just start up again."
I nod and admire a sweet elbow a lithe blonde chick throws into a Latina. The Latina falls and gets up ready for blood. It's true what Don-o says. Percy Nor has to go down, but how two kids from Duluth, Minnesota who are watching the Mad Hampshire Babes destroy Skate Bait are going to pull that off sounds to me like some form of quantum string theory voodoo that is about as likely to work as me pulling a date with Scarlett Johnasson.
"You know they'll find us before long," Don-o says when the round is over and the crowd settles down.
"Yeah," I say. "We need to do something soon." I drink my beer and realize that my definition of "something" is probably different from Don-o's.
#
May 28, 2013The next day, we find ourselves sitting in Whiten Field on the outskirts of Manchester, New Hampshire, watching the Maulers host the Featherheads. It's an important game for both teams, as each are involved in what are turning into mid-season pennant chases. We take our seats in the right field bleachers, which are a modern tack-on to an old-timey base. The seats everywhere else are classic decks of pull-down seats – two layers wrapped around the foul ground and a span at each gap that look like recessed valleys. The centerfield zone is pure green, a fantastic hitting background topped by an electronic scoreboard that's been camouflaged to look like one of those hand-operated jobs from the 50s. Our seats are aluminum benches with the numbers painted on, and they hurt my butt to sit on after about the sixth inning. The park is a hitter's haven, though, and we have high hopes of seeing a dong or two.
The Maulers' Yoritoki Ando is facing Chris "Moondog" York today. We've seen York throw before. "He throws too many balls," Don-o says. I agree. At 6'0", 210 lbs., he should be able to throw nine innings on a good day, but it's clear after these two outings that York is just wild enough to throw to pitch counts that mean he'll have trouble staying in games past six innings. But the kid throws 100 MPH on the gun, and you don't find those guys too many places. "He's twenty-three," I say. "Give him some time."
Ando gives up a pair of singles in the first but gets out of it when second baseman Todd Hanna turns a nifty double play. Moondog gets a couple pop-ups and then feeds Kikugoro Memoto pure heat that gets him swinging to end the inning. It's a performance that has both of us smiling.
The Featherheads get a run in the second when Kevin McNeill doubles off the centerfield wall, and Brock Brett singles him home without a throw. Moondog lets a bit of that wildness loose in his half, leaving a slider up in the zone that Carlos Reyes grounds into the hole at first for a base hit. Reyes is a kid having a year no one would have predicted. His numbers at AAA New Brunswick were good, but not 1.100 OPS good. York hits poor Brooks Erickson, who has the bad luck to be next up. It's a classic York confrontation: ball high, nasty heat for a called strike, ball wide, sharp cutter for a called strike, 55-foot worm-burner for ball three, too far up and in for the HBP. Not a single pitch was actually hittable, and Erickson was just there for the ride.
Moondog then proceeds to work Jeff Cline into a fly ball and strikes Stephen Longchamps out after going 2-0, making him look silly on a rising fastball that might have decapitated the umpire if Brett hadn't been back there to catch it. Nathan Bolitho is next up and he sees – you got it – ball, called strike, ball and called strike before he heaves lumber at a slider and pops it up into right center for the final out.
"Classic," Don-o says.
"Twenty-two pitches," I reply, shaking my head and grinning.
A guy sitting next to us overhears. "No damn runs," he says. "My Maulers gotta take care-a business."
Don-o and I smile. There's always that.
Both teams go out in the third, and in the fourth, a piece of magic comes our way. Tsumemasa Morimoto gets hold of an 0-2 mistake from Ando and launches a big fly to right field that comes directly at us. The whole play seems to slow down. I see the ball up in the air, hooking in that way a lefty's ball will hook. The crowd erupts at the same time as the sound of the bat hits us. Then we're standing, our arms reach out and the ball comes down with that sizzling sound that only a baseball can create as it flies through the air. Don-o reaches his paw out and the ball settles into it as if the fit were perfect. People all around are clapping him on the shoulder and some are telling him to throw it back. He looks at me, shrugs and heaves it back into the sea of green below us.
He turns and looks at me. "Awesome," he says, and I agree with him. Freakin' awesome.
Moondog works through another 22-pitch inning in his half of the fourth, this time giving up a run when Longchamps gets a fly ball deep enough to Reyes score from third. Reyes had walked on four pitches to lead off; never a good sign. The Maulers get to him hard in the fifth, too, loading the bases on a Theodore Boyd single, a walk, a Memoto double that scores one, and then an intentional BB to Erickson. At that point, Florida goes to the pen and brings in Carlos Ávila.
"Serves York right that he's gotta throw the intentional there," I say. "Wouldn't be right to make the bullpen guy put that on his register." Don-o agrees, but Ávila puts matters to rest by striking McNeill out on three pitches.
Ando does his best to keep his club in the game. He's a good pitcher, as his 14-9 record last year would suggest, but he's a bit limited, and the F-Heads get him in trouble in the 7th. His bullpen pours a little lighting fluid on the fire. Florida gets a run in each of the least three innings. By the time Michael Smallbridge takes the mound in the ninth, everyone knows it's going to take a miracle for the Maulers to pull this one out, and here on May 28th in Manchester, New Hampshire, miracles are in short supply. Smallbridge gets his 13th save and the fans go home disappointed.
#
Morimoto's homer makes PEBA Tonight's "Web Gems of the Day" – or, more appropriately, Don-o's catch makes it. We're in a local bar and watching it when it dawns on us that this is not a good thing. "The Dudes will be able to find us now," I say.Don-o nods. "It's okay. They were coming pretty soon, anyway. It's not like it would take Sherlock Holmes to track us down."
"So what do we do?"
Don-o looks up at the screen. "We need to create a home field advantage."
"What?"
"We need to call Percy Nor and get him to commit to meeting us in place where we can control what happens."
I give a snort. "How the hell do we do that?" Don-o just grins. "This act of yours is getting goddamned annoying, Don-o. I mean, seriously annoying. If I had any nads, I would get the hell up and leave you alone."
"Be my guest, dude, but you're in it now. Can't get away just by running."
I know he's right as a rainout there. The Dudes know I know whatever they think I know, and it's probably true that I know enough to be dangerous as all get-out to whatever Percy Nor has in mind. "Crap."
"Wish I could tell you more, Neal," Don-o says in a low tone. He looks me straight in the eye in a way he almost never does, and I suddenly feel like things might just work out, though I have no freakin' idea how. Just that whatever the world has in store for me might not mean I'll be dead in a couple days, and that who the hell can say Scarlett Johansson wouldn't go out with me if she just knew me better?
"Yeah," I say. "Freakin' right."
We drink beer for a little longer and go to the hotel. We've got a long haul tomorrow.
I leave the rest for you to put two-and-two together.
