A Young Man's Bravado

[KenH]

The head coach office had a smell to it. It came from years of Hector Santana’s cigars. No matter how they fumigated and scrubbed, the reminder of the Featherheads victorious coach remained.

He should have been in the mood for a cigar. After all, only earlier that day he had been at the head of the championship parade. He deserved to light up a self-congratulatory cylinder of pre-meditated, slow-acting suicide, yet there was no such desire. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything in the skipper except some sort of odd forlorn solemnity. He was drained and dead tired… and the front office needed his decision. Tonight.

He needed to take a walk but first he needed a drink. Barrel strength bourbon in his heavy-bottomed old-fashioned glass, filled with ice. Bonded Jim Beam. Nothing fancy, but usually the right call.

He considered the amber liquid slaloming its way past the ice from the medical staff’s machine down to rest at the bottom of his glass. When men asked for whiskey neat, they were trying to impress someone with their masculinity. It was a young man’s bravado. Nobody actually enjoyed “neat” liquor. You want it cold, watered down. Gives you heartburn otherwise. He always considered neat liquor to be akin to eating a cylinder of partially frozen orange juice concentrate and saying “this is actually the right way to enjoy juice.” It made no sense. Plus, there was no one here to impress. Just an old man with his thoughts.

Since retiring as a career .230 hitter from the now-defunct MLB, coaching had always seemed like a logical next step. He didn’t have the clout of some of his contemporaries, but that wasn’t so bad. He liked baseball. It was what he was good at. Plus, a man could live on $20,000 a year if he was smart with his money, right?

Before this year, the most he had made was a bit over six figures. Not bad… but it was the 2030’s. He was in his 50’s. A normal career would have netted him significantly more without the incessant caterwauling of his wife and kids to go on a “real vacation”. Never really did have enough money for Disney. Went to the everglades, ate peebee and jay’s inside a camper he “bought” from a player thirty years younger and worth a hundred times more. They had a good time when the bugs weren’t too bad.

Now he was in the bigs. His salary: about one half of a rookie’s minimum, but a princely sum to him. It had helped pay his debts and buy his wife a heavily-used Mercedes which, subsequently, also smelled of cigars.

Christ, he needed that walk.

Ballpark’s an eerie place with no lights on. No crowds. A man can get lost in his thoughts between first and second. He hoisted his leg up on the middle step, shifting his weight to the elevated foot, looking out over the expanse, striking the pose that had become second nature. It was November, but it was still muggy as hell at the ballpark. The mosquitos still feasting.

To his right was the long row of bleached and warped pine that coddled those who rode it. Out of the sun, beneath the ever-present fans. He remembered conversations here with Mike as the young player watched the best player alive overtake him on the depth chart. Technically as the manager, he could have done something about it… but everyone knew the score. Even Mike. He took it like a champ.

The old man made his way out to his old haunt between first and second base. It smelled of baseball here more than anywhere else on the field. Action and contemplation in equal measure. The most concentrated form of the game. Like barrel proof bourbon, straight up. A young man’s bravado. He set his glass, now dripping condensation, on the warm earth and knelt down on one knee. His hand ran along the dirt, turning and digging his hand into the loam, lifting and watching runnels of sand, silt and clay fall back to their resting place. This was his home once, just as that middle step in the dugout had been as well.

He picked his glass up off the dirt. The infield mix had mingled with the water, plastering itself to the sides. He gripped the glass tighter but didn’t brush the now mud away.
Streets’ Seats were right next to the dugout. Gold, of course. He chuckled to himself. He wasn’t the best boss, but he definitely wasn’t the worst, either. It was a good view: the left field foul pole dominant in frame behind the netting; the gentle slope of the pitcher’s mound; the flamboyant sign that listed the successes of the franchise scrawled over the left field bleachers.

The middle step, the dirt, the seat. Not sure how to square it any longer. It had become an impossible puzzle. Buckley sat motionless in thought. No sounds or sights beyond the interminable blankness of an empty stadium.

And the more that he sat, the more comfortable he was.

He reached into his pocket and drew out his phone. The bourbon had done its job.