Ghost of Tomorrow

[Ghosts]

Niihama, Japan - 27 November, 2033

“Figgy, my boy, you’ve gotta hear me! You’re a star! I see you draped in green, baby, but not these terrible pinstripes! You’ve gotta hold out!” Jeremiah Spank wheezed as he expelled the words with undue effort. His blonde hair was visibly slickened, adding a to the odd mixture of color Antonio Figueroa observed on the small video screen. The man’s red and white splotch combined with his orange shirt to complete the insalubrious palette. “Has the Spankman ever steered you wrong?!”

Antonio considered it for a moment. In the last year he’d made more money than his entire family had in a century. San Juan isn’t the poorest area of Puerto Rico, and his neighborhood was even relatively nice growing up, but his mother and father were both unskilled workers that lived hand to mouth until he was able to make the roster in Bakersfield. This man, his agent for the last year, had pursued him with ferocity as soon as the Niihama – Shin Seiki trade rumors began to swirl back in April of 2032. Antonio was having the season he’d always dreamed of after Niihama gave him the starting job he could never stick in Bakersfield. Then, just as soon as he started to feel at home, Niihama traded him to Shin Seiki.

Normally, that might have phased him, but he felt like a man possessed. He poured himself into baseball more than he ever thought possible. He won the Royal Raker – more than he’d ever dreamed – and Jeremiah was there the whole way. He represented him in arbitration and got him a $13M salary. He’d earned less than $2M in salary his MVP season, but Jeremiah had gotten him several endorsement deals that collectively more than doubled that. It was even kind of fun, but then when he started cold this year, just like in Bakersfield, the Evas had no time for a big salary that wasn’t producing. They shipped him right back to Niihama. Out went the endorsements.  Out went the accolades. Out went the winning.

It was exhausting. But, the Ghosts never benched him. They saw value in him just as they had when the plucked him from West Valley. They let him ride It out. And just like skip said, in Niihama, right field is his. “Just go play, Figgy”. That’s all he’d ever say. No big speeches or great strategies. “Just go play.”

“ARE YOU HEARING ME, SON?!” Jeremiah wiped the beaded sweat from his brow and renewed his plea, “YOU NEED TO TELL THOSE LOSERS THAT YOU’RE A STAR AND YOU DON’T BELONG THERE! YOU NEED TO DEMAND A TRADE!”

Antonio stared into the screen. He hated this. The pressure, the hectic schedule and make-up artists on sets, the media, the greed, all of it.

“FIGGY BABY WE CAN GET YOU SOMEWHERE BIG! HAVANA! AURORA! FARGO! Someone wants the sexy young veteran with that royal hardware on his shelf! You’ll see! Just let me make the calls, Figgy!” Jeremiah was pleading again. It had been months of this. The constant push toward a bigger, better market for more endorsements and more commercials and more money.

“Stop,” Antonio squeezed his temples and repeated, quietly but firmly, “stop.”

“Come on Figgy baby you’re bigger than this town! They don’t deserve you! We’ll make ‘em pay at the hearings and then I’ll talk to every manager in the league before the meetings and get them HYPED for their very own SUPERSTAR! YOU!” Jeremiah continued but his voice faded as Antonio’s attention waned. For how deeply uncomfortable these last two years had made him, being traded three times, experiencing the greatest of successes both on and off the field and the crashes thereafter, all he wanted was to be chasing down line drives, testing catcher’s arms, and making pitchers pay for testing his bat. He just wanted… to go play.

“You’re fired,” Antonio announced flatly, staring over and beyond the screen. He barely registered Jeremiah’s confused reaction and plaintive pleas. Instead, Antonio just kept staring, and spoke firm and tired words, “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, and I may reach out to you again, but I need to focus on baseball now. I’ll represent myself at the arb hearings,” and, moving his eyes back into focus onto the screen with great effort, completed his announcement, “Really, J
, thank you for showing me the ropes. It’s just not for me, the endorsements and all that. I have more than I’ll ever spend already. I’m just going to go play, now, though. Goodbye.” Antonio ended the call midway through the scrunch-faced man's objection.

Antonio slumped a bit, sinking deep into his new leather recliner. “God damn do I love this thing”, he spoke aloud, meeting the gaze of his neatly tiled ceiling. The unfamiliar pattern offered him a welcome distraction for a moment.

He sat, breathing slowly, his mind blanked and spine decompressing in his reclined position. After several minutes, his gaze still fixed on the ceiling tiles, he spoke, “Siri, call Papi”. Within seconds his father’s voice centered him. Everything else melted away as stories of the neighborhood’s day-to-day passed from father to son, trading time for life.

Before long, Antonio sat up, fixed his gaze on the deep green of his Ghosts cap, which lay slumped and discarded at the feet of his coffee table, and told his father, “Yeah the hearings are tomorrow. It’s no big deal. I’ll be home this week. Love you, Papi.”

[Sandgnats]

"love you papi"