Daily Log of a Fresh-faced College Graduate
May 30, 2013

It’s another long drive.  Neko Case is playing some weird stuff on the radio, and we’re just passing South Bend, Indiana when I check my phone and see the news.  “Holy crap,” I say.  “Hal Spade is dead.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.  Headline says ‘New Orleans Baseball Owners Dies in Vacation Accident’.  Boating accident of some kind.”

Don-o gets silent, and suddenly I feel the weight of the trip closing in on me.  We are pointed toward home, and that feeling is strange in and of itself.  We haven’t been home for nearly two months – long enough that the term “home” seems to represent something that maybe doesn’t quite exist anymore.  Then, of course, there is this thing with Percy Nor that seems… well… it’s strange and real in ways I’ve never felt before.  It comes to me as we’re driving along in Annie that life is this tightrope that you walk, and there’s no real safety net.  But that’s not right either.  You build your own safety net – and that thought is as fear-laden as anything I’ve ever considered.

“Was it really an accident?” Don-o says.  Just the idea that the owner of the New Orleans Trendsetters‘ death might not be an accident makes my heart pound.  I read the articles, trying to ignore the fact that the radio is now playing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald“.  “Don’t say,” I reply.

#

The Crystal Lake Sandgnats have never lost the Great Lakes Division.  They have never lost more than 60 games and, except for a single season, have never lost money.  Needless to say, as Warriors fans, Don-o and I hate them.  This is why it’s particularly satisfying to step into Gnat Field with the team playing to a two-game losing streak.  The stadium is everything money can buy.  It holds 45,000 people comfortably, and its outfield seats are ringed by billboards that rise like Chicago skyscrapers to make you feel like you’re in a grass-lined cavern.

To really understand the Crystal Lake snootiness, you need know only one fact.  This fact is that it’s a team with $59M tied up in their starting rotation, led by Nelson Anderson‘s $19M and followed by Kiyoemon Takeda, José Cruz, and Bryan Stewart at $14-mil, $13-mil, and $12-mil, respectively.  Not all is perfect in the city, though – while Cruz and Stewart have been their normal sub-3.00 ERA selves, Anderson, who is 33, and Takeda at 38 are throwing merely mortal 4.50s and drawing whispered questions about whether Old Man Time is catching up to them.

Couldn’t happen to a better team, says I.  I try not to get too excited, though.  GM Dean Giesey and owner Larry Ellison have a history of making miraculous deals that just work out.  The idea has me looking at Don-o and wondering about DNA, magic and other stuff that make my head hurt.

This is Thursday, and we’ve pressed hard to make it here because we need to meet Don-o’s brother, which we’re going to do after the game.  In classic Don-o fashion, he’s not telling Ken – his brother – a damned thing.  I can tell Ken is as annoyed about that as I get, but what the hell are you gonna do?  Arguing with Don-o is a losing gig.

Aurora is in town today, and we get to see Artie Tillman take on the $13-million-dollar Cruz.  Both of these guys are veteran hurlers, both with a mix of solid pitches, and both know how to win.  Tillman has won 84 games in his career; Cruz, 102.  So it’s no surprise that the first two innings yield nothing but a single line-drive base hit.  As luck would have it, though, Cruz is the first to flinch, as Wilson Berry inside-outs a curve into a soft liner that falls just past the first baseman’s glove and goes for a double.  Al Edwards then jumps on a rare mistake and crushes a double into the left field gap.

The Borealis gets a second run an inning later on an infield hit by Octávio Pexego and a pop fly that gets lost between fielders in right field and falls for a freakin’ triple for John Knight.  It’s about here that I start thinking that maybe the world is righting itself – that maybe luck evens out.  If the Sandgnats are subject to this kind of stuff, maybe there is free will.  Maybe determinism is truly a farce.  This idea is cemented even more firmly a few minutes later when Steve McDonald flies out into deep enough center to bring in Knight.

Tillman mows Gnats down in the fourth, but things get tighter in the fifth and sixth when second baseman Chris Holmes and DH Sok-man Yi hit towering solo shots.  Yi’s is particularly annoying because there are three Korean-looking kids, all about twelve, in the aisle down from us who bring out their “Sok-signs” that ring up the homers that their countryman is registering.  They high-five and wave their signs.  It’s hard to get too upset at them because they are so damned happy… except for the fact that Sok-man is a Sandgnat rather than a Warrior.  Son of a be-atch.

But the world is just, and the only scoring left is a manufactured insurance run that Aurora comes up with in the top of the ninth.  Orlando Ramos, usually the setup guy, is pressed into service as the closer since “Vulture” Suarez has pitched the past two days.  Ramos shuts down the game.  Gnats lose 2-4.  Life is freakin’ good.

Then we go to see Don-o’s brother.

#

So we go to Hillie’s Bar and Grille, which is a lot more bar than it is grille, and Don-o introduces me to his brother.  He doesn’t remember me none, though I think I met him a year or two back when his sister was getting married.  We order three drafts, and I pay for them with what amounts to the last of the cash I got for my Yuma article.  Don-o tells him about our trip – leaving out the shrooms and the A and the parts about lifting line from an old lady’s garden.  He tells about all the stuff going down with Percy Nor the Bad Dudes, and you can see Ken is getting upset at all the right times.  This makes me happy.

Then Don-o explains his plan.  His brother shakes his head the whole time.  He swills beer and generally seems to like it.  “Only one problem,” Ken says as he tosses a handful of beer nuts down his gullet.  “I ain’t no cop no more.”