By Roberta Umor
1 September 2029: Yuma, AZ — Within an hour of learning she had been summarily released by the Yuma Bulldozers, former Acting GM Pam Postema called a press conference. She made a brief statement and then answered questions for more than an hour.
Postema gestured to the press booth they stood in, high above home plate, owned by The Yuma Sun, the town’s local newspaper. The booth was mobbed with reporters. Pam stood near the announcer’s chair at the front of the booth, overlooking the playing field, and held the microphone to speak into. Her voice was projected into the adjacent press booths—one for local tv, another for radio, a third for the national affiliate, and one for the Mexican broadcasting stations. All were full or nearly full with reporters listening to Postema.Thank you for coming today. I apologize for the awkward surroundings, but since I am no longer employed in any capacity by the Yuma Bulldozers, I was prevented from speaking to you in the Press Room or team locker room, so the best alternative was … this.
Postema held up a cardboard box with her personal possessions. The box wasn’t even half full.As you are no doubt aware, I received a phone call yesterday from Bulldozer Spokeswoman Emma Span informing me that my services were no longer needed. I was ordered to clear my office and vacate the premises by noon today. So here I am with my personal effects.
“I’ve been fired by the Dozers before,” she continued, which generated a few laughs, “and with any luck, I’ll be fired by them again.” She explained:
A small wave of disbelief and surprise swept the room. A trailing echo of gasps and mutterings could be heard seconds later coming from the adjoining press booths.I was originally hired by the General Manager, Bob Mayberry, to be his assistant. He fired me shortly before admitting himself to convalescence care in Camarillo, California. The owners then hired me as Acting GM to fill in for Mayberry until his return, which was expected shortly. I’ve served in the capacity of Acting GM for … oh, well, more years than I care to admit. It has not been the best of times, as you know, so I can understand the frustration of the owners and their desire to clear house as they prepare for an influx of talented young ball players over the next four or five years. But I would remind the owners that three people are chiefly responsible for scouting and drafting those young talents: Augusto Martinez, the club’s perspicacious talent scout; myself, as Acting GM; and GM Mayberry.
The first question came from this reporter, your representative from the Yuma Sun: “You said GM Mayberry has been involved in the first three rounds of draft picks. What happens in rounds four, five, etc.?”Yes, the old GM himself, from his residence in the Camarillo State Hospital, has been involved in every first, second or third round draft pick Yuma has made for the past two decades. So, while a housecleaning may be in order for a club with such a dismal won-lost record, let’s all remember whose decisions provided Yuma with its hope for the future. I’m gone—though I hope to return some day when Mayberry resumes an active role as GM—and I hope my exit will secure Augusto Martinez’ position for a long time as well as alert the owners to the need to recall the GM from Camarillo. The club needs leadership, especially today, with the departure of both the manager and Acting GM. Thank you, I will take questions.
“Well,” Pam replied, smiling, “not to be too coy about it, sometimes the GM needs to take a nap.”
“You mean he falls asleep during the draft?” someone shouted from the top of the booth.
“Yes,” Pam said, adding, “sometimes.”
“And this guy is still the General Manager?”
“Wait,” Pam said, holding her hands up to still the noise in the booth, “I’ve given you the wrong impression.” She paused and looked at the faces in the booth, many of whom she knew from her years providing stories and background for the press corps. “Have any of you ever attended a rookie draft?” she asked.
Heads shook. One grizzled veteran spoke up, “We’re not allowed in. We wait outside to report who’s drafted.”
“For how long?” Pam asked.
Muttering filled the press box until the grizzled vet spoke up again. “We don’t usually hang around beyond the first round. We have deadlines.” A general chorus of affirmation confirmed his statement. “Besides, it’s kinda boring.”
Several voices echoed the old reporter’s sentiment. “Damn right … Tedious … Slow … Cure for insomnia, though.” The last witticism evoked laughter.
As it subsided, Pam continued, “Exactly, it’s boring and slow, so you might understand why an old man in a wheel chair might need a short nap after the third or fourth round. We wake him when Yuma’s turn arrives, but by then the team—that’s myself, Robert Tipitina, Augusto Martinez and usually someone else from the front office—by that point in the draft, 3 or 4 rounds in, we have mapped out who we want to pick in which round. If the GM nods off, we’re still carrying out the team’s plan, one which, I might add, Mayberry and Martinez are largely responsible for.”
She let that sink in, looked for a reporter to take them in a new direction. She found a young woman from Yuma’s community college standing near the back of the booth. She pointed to her.
“Young woman, what news agency are you representing?”
The young woman looked flustered, held up her press pass, and said, “Arizona Western?” like it was a question.
“The community college has a journalism program?” Pam asked.
“No, ma’am, I’m just fulfilling an assignment in my English class.”
Curious, Pam asked her, “What kind of assignment would bring you into a baseball press room?”
The young woman replied, “I have to write an essay about a woman I admire.”
That silenced Postema for a moment while creating a buzz in the room. “And,” Pam finally continued, hesitantly, “I’m that woman?”
The young student nodded.
“I’m honored,” said Pam, “though I think there are many other woman who deserve your admiration more than I do.”
“Maybe, but none of them were giving press conferences today.”
That brought down the house. Pam laughed loudest of all. The young student seemed surprised that everyone was laughing. “It’s true,” she said.
“Well then,” Pam said as the room quieted, “let’s give you some material for that essay. What would you like to know?”
The student looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Her eyes got big, her mouth opened, but she didn’t know what to say.
“Anything,” Pam said. “Just ask.”
The student looked at her notepad, then looked up at Pam, and said, “Why are they firing you?”
Pam smiled. “That’s the 64 thousand dollar question. Why, indeed.”
As Pam paused to compose her answer, tape recorders clicked on, iPhones were lifted above the throng, and—if you listened closely—you could hear the rustle of notepads from the older reporters as they prepared to copy whatever came out of Pam’s mouth. But before she could speak, the young student reporter suddenly asked, “If the team’s so bad, why don’t they fire the players instead of you?”
Again, the press box dissolved in laughter. You could hear guffaws from the adjacent press boxes as well. The student looked around the room, once again not quite certain why her question had evoked such a response.
Pam said, “The owners can’t fire the players, because then they’d have no team, which means no profits, and that, young lady, is what the owners are all about. Profit. So they fire anyone else they can pin some blame on: the manager, the GM, the scout, the trainer—hell, we’ve seen frustrated owners fire the bat boys or girls when teams started losing!”
Much nodding of heads and whispering of insane firings filled the room. “I’m an easy target,” Pam continued, looking at the young student. “I’m not only the Acting GM—not the real one, mind you—but I’m also the most visible female in the organization, with the possible exception of Emma Span, and she is one of the owners. So … instead of going home after a bad day at the office and kicking the dog, baseball owners fire people.”
Pam looked at the young woman as she scribbled furiously in her notepad. “Understand?” Pam asked.
The young woman looked up, realized the question was directed to her, and said, “I don’t get why women would fire other women. Aren’t there any men they could fire?”
“Oh, yes,” Pam said, laughing along with the other reporters, “plenty of them. That’s why Manager Goode was fired. Remember, Span fired him before she and I spoke, before she decided to get rid of me too. And in her defense, if you want to call it that, I did provoke her. I challenged her authority, questioned her decisions, so she figured I had to go too. Uppity women, young lady, are a threat, so they get canned regularly.”
A voice from the back of the press box shouted out, “Uppity women make history!”
“That too,” Pam said. “But in this case, the jury is still out on this uppity woman.”
One of the veteran reporters spoke up. “Any idea who will replace you?”
Pam shook her head. “None whatsoever. It’s hard to gauge the Consortium of Owners right now. Even Span herself says they’re ‘absolutely worthless.’” As Postema made air quotes, several in the room nodded their heads as if they’d already heard what Span called the other owners. “You’ve heard that?” Pam asked.
“Oh yeah,” said a reporter in the front row, “a transcript of your phone call was released.”
“A what?”
“Transcript. Expurgated, but not hard to figure out. That Emma Span is a potty mouth, isn’t she?”
Pam laughed. “But, I don’t understand, who made a transcript? Emma?”
Another reporter said, “We assumed you did, to embarrass her.”
“No, I never record phone conversations. It’s illegal, isn’t it?”
Several reporters confirmed it was illegal, while others said, “No, not at all.”
Pam quieted the room with a question of her own. “Since I didn’t, and we can assume Emma didn’t, who did? Is the FBI tapping our phone?”
A wave of disbelief swept the room until someone said, “They might be listening, but they’d have no reason to release a transcript.”
“Did all of you get a copy?” Pam asked.
It was immediately apparent not all had. But why some had received the transcript while others hadn’t was a mystery.
“How’d you get it?” Pam asked one of the veteran reporters.
“Email attachment.”
“Sent from where?”
“Your office.”
“Mine?” Pam was enraged. “Who would do that?”
No one had an answer to her question, but Roberta Tipitina leaned in and whispered something in Pam’s ear. Pam looked gave her a startled look, then nodded, and turned to the reporters.
“We’ll find out who did it and let you know.”
“Maybe you have a mole in the office,” one reporter volunteered.
“A mole?” Pam asked, grinning. “What is this, James Bond?”
As the laugher subsided, the young student reporter spoke up again. “What about the question of who will replace you. You didn’t answer that.”
Pam shrugged, “I have no answer. And no idea what Emma Span or the owners have in mind. But I encouraged Emma to bring back Mayberry—he’s still on the payroll as GM. Regretfully, she dismissed the idea.”
Questions followed about Pam’s future, whether she had any job opportunities, if any other PEBA clubs had expressed an interest in her services, etc. She had no answers to any of them.
And so former Acting General Manager of Yuma Bulldozers, Pam Postema, concluded another chapter in her varied career—from minor league umpire and author of You’ve Gotta Have Balls to Make it in this League, to truck driver, factory worker, nurse for her aging father, and then Assistant GM, Acting GM and, finally, unemployed baseball administrator. “It’s been quite a journey,” she said.
“What’s next?” piped up the young junior college reporter.
“Who knows?” Pam said and smiled.
