The Boss Returns

[Arroyos]

1. Meanwhile in the Yuma Front Office

She wasn’t expecting it. It had never crossed her mind. “You could have blown me over with a feather,” she would say later, explaining it to her friends. “A feather,” she would repeat. But at the very moment she heard it from her office assistant Denise, she said nothing.

“You’re the boss now!” Denise cried out.

“What’s up?” the mail room boy asked as he poked his head into her office.

“She’s the GM!” Denise repeated.

“The what?”

“The General Manager, stupid. She’s it. She runs this whole club now.”

“Nah,” said the mail room boy, “she’s a girl.”

“Mrs. Tipitina to you from now on,” Denise insisted.

“No,” the middle aged, former office manager said quietly, “it’s still Roberta.”

“But you’re the boss,” Denise protested.

“Doesn’t mean I have to act like one,” she said, turning away. But she turned back to ask Denise, “How do you know? I mean … who told you?”

“He did, Slummings.”

“You spoke to Mr. Slummings?”

“He called, just now, I told you.”

“Called you?”

“The office, he called the office, the land line. I was standing right there,” she gestured toward the large wooden desk with three phones on top, “when it rang.”

“Where was he calling from?”

“The train. The 3:10. He’ll be here in the morning.”

“He will?” Denise nodded. “Alone?”

“No, Mayberry’s with him.”

Roberta looked at her assistant. Something wasn’t right. She wasn’t sure which question to ask first, so she blurted them both out at once. “He had a cell phone and Mayberry is coming back?”

“Yes, yes!” Denise quivered with excitement. “And you’re the new boss.”

“No,” Roberta said slowly, “if he’s coming back—Mayberry—then he’s still boss.”

Denise looked puzzled. “You don’t want to be boss?”

“I think I’ve done enough bossing since Slummings left. I look forward to letting them make the decisions and get the headaches.”

Denise didn’t understand. “But …”

“Spit it out.”

“You are the first woman GM in PEBA.”

“Assistant GM, Denise. Assistant.”

Denise shook her head vigorously. “No no no, he said—I’m sure he said GM. No ‘assistant,’ nothing like that.”

Roberta looked at her young assistant, a woman she had trusted with some very sensitive tasks after Slummings left the two of them in charge of the Yuma Front Office, and she tried to reason it out. But it wouldn’t reason. There was nothing reasonable about it. If she wasn’t Assistant GM, then …

Roberta slapped her own head, but it didn’t make anything clearer. “ No,” she finally said, “if Mayberry’s coming back, he’s still GM. We kept him in that position even while he was in the hospital. It makes no sense—no sense, whatsoever—for him to be removed now that he’s out of the hospital.” Denise started to object. “No, sorry, Denise, there’s a mix-up somewhere.” She saw the look on her assistant’s face. “I’m not saying—”

“I know what I heard,” Denise interrupted. “I know what he said. And it wasn’t assistant.”

“Okay … okay,” Roberta said, squeezing her eyes closed to think harder, “maybe … maybe there was a poor phone connection. Maybe he said ‘assistant’ but it got lost in transmission.”

“Or maybe he didn’t say it.”

Roberta looked at her obstinate assistant. She wasn’t going to change her story, so the source of the confusion, Roberta now surmised, was likely not her. Which meant …

“If he didn’t say it, then maybe he’s confused.”

“Slummings?” Denise asked to clarify.

“Yes. Maybe,” Roberta conceded.

“Or maybe …” Denise paused to judge Roberta’s reaction, “maybe he and Mayberry decided …” Denise couldn’t bring herself to say it.

Roberta looked her in the eye. “Don’t say that,” she said. “You can think it, for now, but don’t say it. Not until they’re standing right here—both of them in front of us telling us what they’ve decided. Until then,” Roberta turned to walk away and end the conversation, “Mayberry’s still GM.”

Denise could do nothing but stand and wonder why Roberta would walk away from such a gift—a gift from the Fates. Why is she so afraid to hear such good news? Is she afraid of being GM? But, Denise reasoned, she’s been GM, really, she’s been doing the job since Slummings turned the office and the decisions over to her. For a couple seasons now, she’s been doing the GM’s job. Why won’t she accept the title that goes with that?

Denise could not understand Roberta’s reluctance. And there was nothing to do about it now, except wait for tomorrow morning, for the return of Mayberry and Slummings, when surely everything would be explained.

Surely, she told herself, tomorrow we’ll know. But not for a moment did she believe it would be that easy.

“I’m heading home early,” Roberta called from inside Slummings’ office.

“Okay,” Denise called back. “How come?”

Roberta marched out of the inner office with her coat and bag in hand. “Need to get some shuteye if I’m going to meet the 3:10.”

“You’re meeting the train?” Roberta nodded as she turned toward the front door. “At 3 in the morning?!?”

“Yup,” Roberta called over her shoulder as she opened the door and stepped into the icy Sonoran Desert wind. Spring training was a week away, Opening Day less than a month, and Roberta knew that by that time, by the time the ump bellowed out “Play Ball!” for the first time in a new season, her life would be changed. Utterly, irrevocably, and not necessarily for the better.

She closed the door behind her and ducked into the wind. A woman running the Yuma Arroyos. It didn’t seem possible.



2. The 3:10 to Yuma—DELAYED

Slummings sat in the snack bar on the lower level of car #3 of Amtrak’s 3:10 train to Yuma, stalled somewhere east of Fullerton and still hours west of Yuma. He had already made the phone call, though he wasn’t confident the office assistant had understood, but that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was how he was going to tell the man next to him, the Yuma GM and his friend, Mayberry.

He had no plan, so he figured he ought to use this time, while the train was stuck on a siding, to conjure one up. But he couldn’t focus; he kept wondering about the train and why it just sat here in the desert darkness when it was already an hour late.

Maybe we’ll never get to Yuma, he thought. This train will be a sort of Purgatory, a waiting room, he thought, like in Sartre’s play No Exit. That made him chortle. There sure ain’t no exiting this train!

Slummings didn’t travel by train often, but he’d heard that Amtrak had a consistent record of running certain trains late. Something to do with who owns the tracks themselves.

He pulled out his cell phone and learned that the rails from LA to Yuma were laid between 1873-77 and have been owned by various entities, all of which were eventually bought up by or incorporated in Southern Pacific Railroad. It was Southern Pacific, then, who owned the track the train was sitting on right now. Amtrak, he discovered, owns no track but rents the right to run its trains on other people’s tracks, like So. Pacific. And since So. Pacific makes its profits from hauling freight, Amtrak’s passenger trains are scheduled so as not to conflict with So. Pacific’s freight trains. So, when Amtrak trains run on time, few notice the many freight trains waiting on sidings for the passenger trains to roll by. But if an Amtrak train gets behind schedule, especially at night when freight trains operate, then the freight trains have priority, in order to meet their schedules, and Amtrak passengers sit on sidings wondering why their train isn’t moving.

Which is exactly what happened last night when the 3:10 to Yuma was delayed out of Union Station in LA (a faulty computer wouldn’t load the program necessary for the train to run on the appropriate tracks), then delayed again at Fullerton (an irascible passenger who insisted he should be on the train to Yuma when his ticket clearly said he was traveling to San Diego). Both problems were eventually resolved: new computer for the train, new ticket for the passenger. (Let him go where he wants to go was the thinking of the Amtrak conductor. Just make him buy a new ticket.)

Nearly an hour late out of Fullerton meant the 3:10 to Yuma had to wait at several stations and a couple desert sidings while freight traffic thundered by at enormous speeds. Passengers in the sleeping compartments felt their beds rock precipitously from side to side while the freights flew by. Passengers resting in coach or enjoying the view from the lounge car could watch the heavily tagged and graffitied box cars zip by—like a Cheong-Sang Yun fastball, Slummings thought.

He rocked and rolled every time a freight went by, but his companion hardly noticed the freight trains or the delays or the empty rum bottles piling up on their table—little rum bottles, the kind they serve on airlines. With his hospital gown peaking out beneath his heavy winter coat, Mayberry was sleeping. And occasionally snoring, much to the chagrin of everyone else in the snack bar. Slummings kept stroking his beard and trying to count the freight cars as they passed. To no avail, they were too fast. Which is what made him think of Yun’s fastball and wonder why Yuma didn’t have a flamethrower like Yun.

Maybe I should buy Yun, take him and his salary off Kalamazoo’s hands, he thought, then wondered when Yun’s contract expired. He longed for “the good old days,” when owners could just buy any player they wanted, if they had enough money. And then he realized owners never could do that, the Reserve Clause prevented it. How’d he forgotten that? He shook his head, but nothing fell out. Memory slippage, he thought, as unpredictable as a knuckle ball. Owners had never been able to buy any player they wanted, and baseball had never had any such “good old days.”

“Still, I wish I could do that with my money,” he muttered aloud, which caused his sleeping companion to snort and sputter and yawn himself awake. Slummings was surprised. He’d never seen anyone wake themselves up by yawning. Mayberry seemed to be doing it all backwards: you yawn and then you go to sleep. Not wake up.

But there he was, eyes open, mouth open, drool dripping onto the table, trying to say something but not yet having found the words.

“Want something?” Slummings asked.

Mayberry shook his head, then took a long hard look at Slummings. “Who are you?” he mumbled.

“Good question,” Slummings smiled. “For the time being I’m still the Arroyo’s owner.” Slummings paused, then decided it was time to step up to the plate. “And we need to discuss something. Look, I’ve noticed since we left the hospital that—”

“Hospital?!” Mayberry snapped, then leaned in close to study Slummings’ face. “Just who the hell are you? And what are you doing in my room? And where the hell—”

His sentence was muted by a freighter passing. The snack bar rocked wildly, patrons grabbing the nearest support.

Mayberry’s eyes got big as saucers. “What the hell was that? Can’t a man take a nap without waking up in the middle of a war zone?” He looked around at the snack bar, with its attendant behind the register and the windowed cabinets with food for purchase, and at the passengers waiting to select their drink or sandwich or bottle of wine, then he looked back at Slummings. “We ain’t in Kansas, are we, Toto?”

Slummings snorted. “Nope, we ain’t. Though just then it did feel a lot like a Kansas twister. Saw a few of those in my years in Oklahoma. They sail through Kansas just long enough to pick up all the Kansas topsoil and drop it along the Cimarron River in Oklahoma.”

“You’re from Oklahoma?”

Slummings cocked his head in disbelief and studied Mayberry. “You all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“A little tired, maybe?”

“What business is that of yours?”

Now Slummings was not only perplexed, but troubled. If Mayberry’s memory had gone on strike, if he didn’t have nine players on the field and an umpire to make the calls, well, there was probably no point in discussing the very thing Slummings needed to discuss with Mayberry.

So he decided on an alternate approach to the subject. Establish a common ground, work from there.

“Our train’s been delayed. An hour out of LA and now—”

“This is a train?!” Mayberry blurted out. Several passengers turned to look at him.

Slummings decided to go even slower.

“Yes,” he said, “we’re on a train.”

Mayberry looked around. “Well, that explains them,” he pointed to passengers standing in line for food, “but you ain’t said who you are.”

Not slow enough, Slummings realized. Maybe we need to back it up. Like a Christy Mathewson fadeaway.

“Okay,” Slummings said as slowly as he could, “you seem to have forgotten what we’re doing.”

“And you seem to have forgotten who you are,” Mayberry retorted.

Slummings smiled. “True, true, I often do. Okay then,” he took a deep breath. “I’m the owner of the Yuma Arroyos and—”

“No shit? What’s the owner of a baseball team doing on this tiny little train, judging from the size of this dining car.”

“No,” Slummings said, laughing in spite of himself, “this ain’t the dining car. Snack car.”

Mayberry took another look at his surroundings. “Oh,” he said. “I see.”

But Slummings wasn’t sure he did. “It’s a long train—I don’t know how many cars, but many, including sleepers. It’s headed for New Orleans, but—”

“Never been to New Orleans.”

“And I’m afraid you won’t be going there tonight.”

Mayberry gave Slummings a skeptical look. “You just said—”

“We’re getting off in Yuma.”

“Yuma?”

“Yuma,” Slummings confirmed, then asked, “You remember Yuma?”

Mayberry laughed, “How could I not? Lost my virginity in Yuma, to a lovely lass who never wore no bra, just a t-shirt, and had the softest, sweetest—”

“You were a kid in Yuma?” Slummings asked, as much to cut Mayberry off at the pass as to learn about his GM’s childhood.

“Me? No, never. I don’t actually recall ever being in Yuma.”

“You just said …” Slummings stopped himself. He recognized the symptoms. No point in proceeding right now. Like the Amtrak train, he needed to sit on the siding and wait for the tracks ahead to clear. How long that would take, no one ever knew.

“What did I just say?” Mayberry asked.

“Oh … nothing,” Slummings lied.

“You said I said something, not nothing. What was the something?”

Slummings tried to find a way out of this jam. Rather like being called in as a relief pitcher with the bases loaded. Any mistake will cost you. Even non-mistakes, routine fly ball outs, can be costly. So what do you do? What, Slummings considered, does he want his bullpen staff to do in such situations? Go for the strikeout. Keep the ball off the plate, persuade the hitter to swing at balls he can’t hit. Okay, Slummings thought, here goes.

“The something was about a woman who wore no bras. Someone you—”

“Ah, Ruthie! What a dreamboat! I was telling you about her?”

Slummings nodded, “Yup,” hoping the batter would chase the pitch.

“Did I tell you about the time she showed up late one night at my apartment door?”

“I don’t think so.”

“She was wearing a big overcoat, but it was dry out. This was Nevada, it’s always dry. When I invited her in, she took her coat off. All she was wearing were bright red long johns, from neck to toe. You coulda knocked me over with a feather!”

“A feather?”

Mayberry waved off the comment. “Something Roberta used to say all the time.”

“Roberta Tipitina?”

“You know any other Robertas?”

Slummings studied Mayberry’s eyes. The old man looked sharp and aware and … well, he didn’t look like he was pulling a con. He knew what he was talking about. So maybe this was the right time. “I promoted Roberta,” Slummings said and watched for the response.

“About time,” Mayberry said. “Whatcha been waiting for? She’ll make a top notch GM.”

“But …” Slummings started to say, then stopped himself. No reason to upset the apple cart, right? “Yes,” he said instead, “she will.”

“Good,” Mayberry said. Slummings thought he saw a sort of sparkle or twinkle in his companion’s eye. “You want to hear the rest of the Ruthie story or not?” Mayberry asked.

Slummings smiled. “Oh, yeah. That I want to hear.”

And so, as the Amtrak 3:10 to Yuma pulled away from the siding and resumed its delayed journey, Mayberry told him the whole story, especially all the juicy bits, until tears came to Slummings’ eyes from laughing so hard.



3. The 3:10 Arrives at 5:20, Roberta Meets the Train, Mayberry Is Surprised, Slummings Confirms the Decision—or starts to—when Other Nonsensical, Confusing and Often Quite Contradictory Happenings Necessary to Bring this Long and Sometimes Tedious Journey to an Abrupt and Probably Unsatisfying End Intervene and … well, you’ll see


Roberta had the good sense when her alarm woke her at 3 am to check the Amtrak website before crawling out of her warm bed into the cold Arizona winter night. When she learned how late the 3:10 to Yuma would be, she crawled right back into that bed. Unable to return to sleep, she decided to read a baseball novel—more reliable than Melatonin for sleep inducement.

Her favorite baseball novel, not surprisingly, was Peter Schilling’s The End of Baseball, which reimagined how integration of the major leagues might have happened if Bill Veeck had had his way and purchased the last place Philadelphia Phillies in 1942, then replaced their aging lineup with an all-star team from the Negro National Leagues. Roberta loved Veeck, the wily owner whose ideas were scoffed at in his day and most of which (like Ladies Day and home run fireworks and player names on the back of jerseys) were eventually adopted. And though he never got the chance to bring an all-black team to the white major leagues, he did sign Larry Doby, the first black player in the American League, and Satchel Paige, the greatest pitcher in the history of the Negro Leagues and the oldest rookie pitcher in the white major leagues. And, of course, his lasting legacy is all that ivy growing on the outfield walls of Wrigley Field. Bill planted it himself. Yes, Veeck was one of a kind, but Schilling’s rollicking novel would not put her to sleep. For that she needed something more staid, more predictable, and less imaginative. She had just the thing.

On the bookshelf next to her bed, Roberta kept late night reading, the kind of stories you don’t mind falling asleep in the middle of, over and over, night after night. Agatha Christie held a prominent position on the bookshelf, with a half dozen of her cozy mysteries there, as did James Michener, whose historical sagas were certain to force her to count the sheep of deep sleep.

But only one baseball book rested on those shelves. An old battered copy of Malamud’s classic, The Natural. It had been an electric experience the first time she read it, in fact it had been how she learned about the shooting of Phillies player Eddie Waitkus, the inspiration for Malamud’s protagonist Roy Hobbs. By the second time she read the book, she found the whole mythological analogy a bit over-wrought. But the third time she started the novel, it put her to sleep. Night after night, she’d read a couple pages about Hobbs and Wonderboy and before she knew it she’d be dreaming of young ball players frolicking in the sunlight.

So she pulled old reliable Malamud off the book shelf once more, reset her alarm for 5 am, and curled up with the unnatural and unbelievable history of Roy Hobbs.

When the alarm startled her awake at 5, she discovered she’d only read one page of the novel. Smiling, she set it aside for the next time she needed help getting to sleep. She bundled up and trundled out into the still cold Arizona night.

By the time she got to the train station, she could hear the distinctive Amtrak horn blowing several miles up the track. And, minutes later, when a weary-looking Slummings stepped off the train, a smile broke across Roberta’s face. But when Slummings’ companion stepped gingerly down from the cafe car, her eyes teared up. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him. Nor how much his tenure at the hospital had aged him. She rushed forward to give the old man a hug.

Mayberry was surprised to be squeezed so warmly by a strange woman. When she pulled back enough to shout, through her tears, “Goddamnit it’s good to see you!” he didn’t know what to say. He looked at Slummings and mouthed, “Who is she?”

Slummings smiled and said, “Roberta.”

Mayberry took a closer look at the woman hugging him. It took a moment before memories of working with this woman years before matched up with the face smiling up at him in the dim light of the Yuma station.

“You don’t recognize me, do you?” Roberta asked.

Mayberry shook his head, “No, I do—I mean, I didn’t at first, but now I do. Roberta.” He pulled her close for another hug.

Slummings put his hand on Roberta’s shoulder and whispered, “I told him, he thinks it’s a great idea.”

Roberta turned to look at him. “What is?” she asked.

“Your promotion,” Slummings said, taken aback by her question. “Don’t tell me you have a problem with it?”

“What promotion, MISTER Slummings? You haven’t told me a thing.”

Slummings’ jaw dropped, his face—or what little of it wasn’t covered by his scraggly old white beard—flushed, and he stammered, “I didn’t—but I did, I mean, I told what’shername, your assistant.”

“You didn’t tell me,” Roberta said, pulling away from the hug with Mayberry, “and judging from his face,” she nodded toward Mayberry, “you didn’t tell him either.”

“No no—I mean, yes, I did. Didn’t I?” Slummings said to Mayberry.

“What? Who? When, where, why?” Mayberry sputtered.

“Oh shit,” Slummings said softly to Roberta, “his memory takes a nap every once in a while and you just have to—”

“My memory’s fine,” Mayberry said, smirking. “It’s my body needs the damn nap.” He put his arm around Roberta. “So what lies are you telling this woman now?”

“No lies,” Slummings said, suddenly on the defensive. “I told you about her promotion, right?”

Mayberry looked up at the early morning sky. “Am I ‘spozed to remember every little thing you tell me?”

“This is pretty big,” Roberta said, looking up at Mayberry.

“Alright then, I remember. He told me,” Mayberry took his arm from Roberta’s shoulder and extended his hand to shake hers. “Congratulations.”

Roberta didn’t return the shake, but looked first from one old man—the former Yuma GM—to the other—the current Yuma owner. Both were or had been her bosses and now she got the feeling they were playing a practical joke on her. “I still don’t know what I’m being congratulated for.”

“Your promotion!” Slummings said.

“To what, exactly?”

“Didn’t that assistant of yours tell you?”

“She was a bit confused.”

“Really? Can’t imagine it. Young women don’t get confused, do they?” Slummings asked Mayberry.

Mayberry shook his head at Slummings. “It’s your mess, you clean it up.”

For a moment, the three of them stood looking at each other.

“Okay,” Slummings finally said, “I called and told her—”

“Slummings?” a voice called out. “Mr. David Slummings?”

“Yes?” Slummings replied, turning to squint into the darkness where the voice came from.

Two uniformed officers strolled up onto the train platform, one walking right up to Slummings, the other standing back a few feet.

“What is it, officers?” Slummings said.

“David Slummings, you’re under arrest for the murder of David Goode.”

Is This the End of Baseball?

“Wait! I’ve never met Goode!”

“Hands behind your back.”

“Tell them,” Slummings exhorted his companions. “I couldn’t have done it.”

“It’s true, officer,” Roberta spoke up, “Goode disappeared long before Mr. Slummings here bought the team. It’s unlikely he—”

“At the station, miss. We’ll take your statement there,” the officer said, then turned back to Slummings, now in cuffs, and said, “You have the right to an attorney …”

Neither Roberta nor Mayberry were listening. Slummings certainly wasn’t. All three were in shock. When the officers each grabbed one of Slummings’ elbows and started to direct him toward their squad car, Mayberry stepped up and said, “There must be some mistake. He’s been with me, locked in a mental hospital, for the past 3 days. He couldn’t possibly—”

“A mental hospital?” one officer asked.

“Yes,” Mayberry said, trying to be helpful, “Camarillo State Hospital. You can ask the head nurse there, name of Peters, she’ll tell you that—”

“Oh, we will,” the officer said, grinning at his fellow policeman. “Won’t we?”

As they marched Slummings to their car, one officer could be heard saying to the other, “A mental hospital! Do you believe it?”

In silence Mayberry and Roberta stood on the platform feeling utterly helpless as the cops drove off with the owner of the Yuma Arroyos. A minute passed with no one speaking, then Roberta said, “C’mon, let’s get your things and get you home.”

“Home?”

“My home,” Roberta said, then noticed the old man’s look of confusion. “Your old apartment, well, it’s gone. The whole building. Razed for the new railroad museum.”

“Fitting,” Mayberry said. “Maybe I could take up residence inside the museum. I’m old enough to be a relic.”

Robert nudged him. “You’re not.”

“Oh, yes, I am a walking museum piece. Or at least a shuffling one,” he added, lifting his slippers for her to see.

“You have a bag?”

“No, ma’am, just the slippers and gown I escaped in.” Mayberry opened the coat to reveal his hospital gown underneath. Roberta snickered. “Oh, you laugh now, but this is all the rage in Camarillo. Everybody wants one!”

They laughed for a moment, then remembered Slummings.

“C’mon,” Roberta said, leading him toward her car, “we’ll sort things out with the police in the morning.”

“Okay, but you need to know I haven’t slept with a woman in years—though there was this one nurse who—”

Roberta slapped his shoulder. “You haven’t changed, you dirty old man. And I still have a couch, so don’t get any ideas.”

“Ideas are all I have these days.” He shrugged.

Roberta shrugged with him.

On the drive across the empty village of Yuma, Roberta finally asked, “So, about this promotion. You know all about it?”

“Only what he told me.”

“Which was?”

Mayberry turned in the front seat to look at Roberta. “I think you’ll make a fine GM.”

She couldn’t stop herself from smiling, then laughed. “I didn’t want to believe it. I mean … I would be happy to be your Assistant GM.”

“You’d do all the work anyway, so you deserve the title. I just … I can’t … it’s not possible anymore.”

“I understand.”

Mayberry looked at her. “You do?”

“I think so.”

“Good, because with this latest development,” Mayberry gestured back over his shoulder toward the train station, “I don’t know how or when … you know.”

Roberta smiled, “I know. And tomorrow we’ll get Slummings out and let him deal with it all. For the meantime, you’re on my couch and I’m still running the office. Right?”

“Yeah, we’ve done it before.”

“Not on my couch, we haven’t!”

And they laughed as the sky east of Yuma began to brighten with the first light of dawn.


THE END