Daily Log of a Fresh-faced College Graduate
May 13, 2013

I wake up to the sound of pounding on our hotel door.  A guttural voice bellows some form of displeasure out there, and I see Don-o’s form stir under the sheet on his bed.

“What the…?” I say, rolling to stand and heading toward the door.

“Don’t freakin’ answer that!”

I haven’t seen Don-o move as fast as this since Freshman PE after he coated a linebacker’s jock strap with atomic balm.  He leaps from the bed and grabs my arm.  The pounding intensifies and I’m pretty sure I hear profanity coming from outside.

“Grab your stuff and let’s get out of here,” Don-o says.

I get a real look at him for the first time today.  Dude looks like Bad Bad Leroy Brown – cut in a hundred places and punched in a coupla more.  Now he’s running around the room, grabbing what few clothes we brought in, and I realize now is not the time for interrogation.  I grab my duffel and the shirt I had tossed onto the table across the room and I’m ready to make like Superman and fly.

Don-o’s got the window open, and then he’s through.  I toss my stuff out and follow.  I fall out the window just as I hear the door give way behind me.  The ground is sandy and hard.  I grab my stuff and follow Dan-o as fast as my legs will carry me – I am apparently much like a cheetah in that I can manage a furious pace for a very short time.  My lungs, however, give out after what seems to be about a week of running but is, in reality, probably thirty seconds or so.  We make it to the street corner.  Annie is near.  The door to our room is still ajar; the Bad Guys are apparently still in there.

“Come on,” Don-o says, and before I can stop him, he’s running to the car.  Nothing else to do but follow him, I suppose, so I do it.  The Bad Guys appear just as I’m throwing my stuff in the backseat.  They are dressed – honest-to-God – in black from head to toe, one of them with hair slicked back and the other bald and wearing dark sunglasses that wrap around his head.  How freaking stereotypical.

Annie responds to Don-o’s sense of urgency, and I jump headfirst into the passenger seat as we back out of our spot at about a-hundred-fifty.  Annie’s wheels chirp, we run a stop sign, take a left at the next two streets, a right, a left, and then we’re on the Interstate heading north – and on the road again.

#

“You want to fill me in on the alarm clocks back there?”

Don-o looks sheepish through an eye that looks like it needs a cold steak.  He has dried blood in the folds of his lips.  I see a bruise growing on his thigh.  “I think they wanted to kill me.”

“Well-freakin’-duh.  Where did you go last night?”

‘They got a place out at St. John’s Bluff – basically a little lake house center.  I went out there to see if I could learn anything about why Aguilar would throw a game.”

“Jebus,” I say.  “I admit I’m a quart low on caffeine, but that makes no sense.  Why the Hell would you go anywhere to see if you could learn something like that – I mean, how the Hell could you even know where to go?”

Don-o drives for a moment.  I notice he is rubbing his fingertips absently over Annie’s cracked seat covers.  I sense some kind of communication, a communion of sorts.  “I don’t know how I knew,” he finally says, “but I did.  I knew they would be there.”

“Who is ‘they’?  And why the hell didn’t you take me?”

“’They’ is… well, they’re bad guys.  I don’t know who they are.”  He touches his tongue to his busted lip.  “But I’m a hundred percent certain they have something on Aguilar, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to get worse.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw…” he hesitates and I see him picking words, trying them on for size before he speaks.  I see his beaten face and I sense for the first time ever a feeling of true survival instinct.  I realize the problem.  I see he’s afraid, worried about bringing me into this thing he’s created.

“We’re a team, right?” I say.  “Casey and Don-o?  We do this together, eh?”

So he tells me everything.  And it’s freaking amazing.

#

It’s a pretty straight shot up 95 to 26, then down to Charleston, where the Statesmen are facing – you got it – San Antonio.  We’ve seen this team lose for most of the past week, and it’s getting familiar.

“We’re going to get a reputation as Calzones fans,” Don-o says.

“I’ve been called worse.”

Moultrie Park is a thoroughly modern facility, clean and accessible in every way.  It’s got the electronic scoreboard and the real-time Noise-O-Meter.  Its hitting background is a big orange wall of brick that has the reputation of being hard to see against – which could well be true since the park has played to a pitcher’s advantage for most of its life.

It’s nearly dark when the game starts, and over the first couple innings we get to see the remarkable sight of the Ravenel Bridge being lit in the distance behind centerfield.

José Martínez is on the mound for the Statesmen, another odd choice seeing as he’s been a reliever for the past month and even threw an inning the night before.  He’s 29 years old, a lanky right-hander with a major league fastball and curve, and a cutter that he runs into right-handed hitters.  If he could keep that cutter on the inside of the plate to lefties, he might be something absolutely special.

San Antonio counters with Pablo López, a kid who shows some actual promise.  He’s a biggun, or at least a tallun.  At 6’8″, 210 lbs., he’s a bit spindly.  His delivery is all elbows, but it kind of works and he can heat it up into the mid-90s without working too hard.

“I bet Charleston scores in the first,” Don-o says.

I grumble, figuring I’ll need to be the one to go get dinner.  That’s one of our things: We bet on something the first inning, and the loser has to fetch brats or Italian sausage or whatever team dog is on the menu.  “I need odds.”

“I lose I pay,” Don-o says.

“You got it,” I answer, though I can already feel my shoes preparing for the trip.

Martínez needs nine pitches to dispose of the Calzones in the first, and López manages to match him, though he gives up a pair of singles in the process.

“Damn,” Don-o says as he goes to get food.

“Don’t forget the beer,” I say with a grin.

#

Charleston, like Florida before, is a beacon of excellence in the Dixie Division.  They have won 99 or more games each of the past four seasons and never have suffered through a losing season.  The 2010 Championship banner flies over Moultrie Park, proudly lit by spotlights.  2013 appears to be no different, as they are in a death-fight with Florida for the division lead.  Charleston is 9-2 in May.

They are, of course, also one of the richer teams in the league, with over $60M tied up in just four players – the exquisite Víctor Matos and hard-hitting Vicente Bernal leading the pack at about $18-mill a year.  Then at $12-mill apiece come three-time All-Star Rubén Cruz and Luis Pérez, who was signed out of the Dominican to much fanfare last year.

The face of the team to me, though, will always be Jeff Wilson, a guy who gives respectable defense in left field and who you can just write down for 25-30 homers and 100+ RBI.  I like him as much for the fact that he signed a five-year extension at about $8-mil a year, which seems about right, though one does wonder if the Statesmen might find themselves with a bit of an albatross around their neck by the time Wilson is 36 and executing his option.  Still, it’ll be worth it.  Wilson is one of those guys you don’t hold anything against.

Charleston starts the scoring when rookie shortstop Francisco Velasco takes a fastball deep to left for his tenth homer of the year.  At 26 years old, Velasco is a bit long in the tooth for a rookie.  He’s never hit more than nine dongs in any of his string of minor league stops, yet the fans love him already.

It’s a bullpen game for Charleston.  Martínez, tired from his appearance the night before, lasts only into the 4^th inning before giving away to Orlando Maldonado, who will go two more before handing the ball to Bobby Wright.  The baton gets passed through six pitchers before Roberto Bustamente enters in the ninth to nail down his 13^th save.  Charleston gets a second run somewhere in there on a walk and a pair of singles, but it doesn’t really matter.  The Calzone bats are pretty much defenseless against the Charleston staff, and the Statesmen win 2-0.

“Quick game,” I say as we leave the stadium.

Don-o takes a last gaze out over centerfield and focuses on the bridge.  It seems to be a fixture out there.  Sturdy.  Reliable.  It’s like baseball, I think.

“And a good one,” Don-o finally replies.

“Not for San Antonio.”

Don-o shrugs.  “López pitched well.”

“Everyone pitches well in Moultrie.”

Don-o shoves my shoulder.  “What’s gotten into you tonight that you’re such a downer?”

“Dunno.”

We walk past the closing vendor stands and past a place where a guy is selling Statesmen hats and pennants.

“You running anywhere tonight I ought to know about?” I say to Don-o.

“No.  Not tonight.”

I see Annie ahead of us out in the parking lot.