July 31, 2017, 7:47 pm EDT


         

Yuma Trades Tugboat for Veteran Reliever


by Roberta Umor for the Yuma Sun



Minutes before the PEBA trading deadline, a controversial trade between the Yuma Bulldozers and the San Antonio Calzones of Laredo was announced that immediately sent tremors across the PEBAverse. Yuma traded its young star right hander, Tugboat Smith, for San Antonio’s veteran relief ace, Hulk Taylor.



Cries of protest were heard from PEBA General Managers, including one who accused the Calzones and Bulldozers of collusion. “The fix is in,” he said, choosing to remain anonymous. “The game is rigged.” When asked to elaborate, he was so angry all he could manage was, “Don’t you see? It’s the Yankees and the A’s all over again!”

He was referring to the arrangement during the Fifties between the New York Yankees and Kansas City Athletics, of the old MLB. During that decade the Yankees used the A’s almost as a virtual farm team, assigning fading or less talented players to Kansas City while “promoting” the cream of the KC crop to fame and stardom in NYC. Roger Maris was the most famous of the young players traded from KC to NY during the decade, but the list included Enos Slaughter, Clete Boyer, Bobby Shantz, Art Ditmar, Ryne Duren, Harry Simpson, Hector Lopez, and Ralph Terry. All had productive seasons for the Yankees and contributed to the Bronx stranglehold on the AL pennant during the 50s and early 60s. 



Contacts in the Calzones organization confirmed that the deal was initiated by “someone” in the Dozer front office. Who that “someone” was seemed to be a carefully guarded secret, at first.

No one in Yuma was available for comment.



The Yuma consortium of owners met privately. Inside sources reported they were “outraged” at the trade and at having been left out of the discussion. The owners elected Emma Span as their spokesperson and sent her across town to the Dozer front office to find out how such a trade could happen without anyone in Yuma knowing about it.

_______________

Yuma Bulldozer Front Office
July 31, 2017, 5:13 pm PDT

“Okay,” Bulldozer part-owner Emma Span said to the gathered front office staff, “what do we know?”

“That the Calzones GM got a phone call earlier in the day making the offer.”

“What time?”

“Early afternoon, we think.”

“Where from?”

“We’re trying to find out.”

“Just download the LUDs, or whatever it is they always do on those cop shows.”

“Police have access to phone records, not us.”

“Call up the sheriff, he owes us a favor for all the friends of his we’ve comped at the ballpark. Do we have any idea where the call came from?”

(Silence)

 “Okay,” Span said finally, “look, I’ll ask once, just to get it on record and then I won’t mention it again, but if the call came from this office and you tell us now, we can work things out. If we find out later one of you was on the phone to San Antonio … well, there won’t be anyone in the PEBAverse that will want to hire you.”

(Long silence)

“Really?” Span asked. “It was none of you?”

“Why would anyone here want to trade Tugboat? We love him. We’ve watched him develop since college, when we started keeping tabs on him. We wouldn’t swap him for some middle reliever.”

“Ace reliever,” someone said from the back of the office. “Don’t minimize what we got in return. One of the best bullpen men in PEBA. It’s not a bad trade.”

“Tugboat for a reliever?! You gotta be kidding. Ace reliever or not, Tugboat’s got Hall of Fame written all over him.”

“He hasn’t even pitched a season in the bigs. Don’t let your attachment to Smith inflate him—”

“His potential was HUGE! Is huge, only now he won’t be realizing it in a Dozers’ uniform.”

“Okay, okay,” Span said, silencing the argument. “Their comparative value is not the issue here. What we need to find out is who did it.”

(Longer silence)

“So no one here did this. Who then? Who could impersonate a Yuman being so well that the Calzone’s GM would even negotiate? And why? What do they gain?”

(Longest silence)

“You guys are not a lot of help,” Span finally said. “Get back to work. You’ve got a new reliever to welcome. Don’t take out your frustration on him.”

As she was leaving she turned back to say, “And for Tugboat’s sake, don’t talk to the press! If we can keep this out of the news, we might have a chance of reversing it all and bringing Randy home.”

_______________

Camarillo State Hospital
July 31, 2017, 7 am PDT

In the beginning was baseball.

And baseball is all that would be left, in the end. He didn’t know that yet, but he sensed it. Baseball had put him in this joint, and baseball was gonna get him out. He hoped.

But he had to be patient. It could take time. He laughed. Time was all he had, and he had plenty of it. No shortage of time, no sir. This place was built on time, it consumed time—exhumed time was more like it—and it managed time, controlled time, by snapping it into tiny little pieces.

Breakfast & meds at 8:05
Morning exercise at 8:25
Showers at 9:05
Group therapy at 9:25
Social Room at 10:35
Sports at 11:15
Lunch & meds at 12:05
Afternoon exercise at 1:15Afternoon nap at 2:05
Psych consult at 3:35
Social Room at 4:05
Dinner & meds at 5:25
TV & game room at 6:35
Evening services at 7:45
Evening meds at 8:55
Lights out at 9:15

My god, he thought, who lives like that? Parceling out life in tiny segments. Well, he realized, I do. We do, all of the patients here. They control the rhythm of our lives like … like … like …

He couldn’t think of an apt metaphor, but all this scheduling, this tight control of someone else’s life, it reminded him of something. Of some time, long ago, buried deep within the fog of his brain. He searched for it.

But all he could find was a single phrase that ran around in his head like some manic long distance runner circling the oval track over and over until he died of exhaustion. He was exhausted, not from running but from repeating the phrase over and over:

In the beginning was baseball, and baseball was the word, and the word was …

What? The word was what? He had no answers. The phrase simply repeated like a broken record.

In the beginning was baseball, and baseball was the word, and the word was …

Each time he said it, the fog lifted, briefly. Just long enough for him to glimpse something, something he used to know, something he once took for granted but which now was lost to him in the fog. Lost, but briefly found. And this time, what he glimpsed was the telephone and a smiling face, his, as he spoke in the phone. What was he saying?

And then he remembered. He remembered what he used to use the phone for. The lives he used to control like the nurses now controlled his and the adrenalin that manipulating those lives once sent rushing through his brain. He ached for that feeling. And so he began to hatch a plan, a way out, an escape from the fog—first—and from this place after that.

In the beginning, he remembered, baseball was played by telephone, and baseball and the telephone would be the beginning and the end … of this.

Now he was grinning. He saw himself, holding a phone, speaking into the phone, and he heard a voice on the other end of the line as clear as if the speaker were standing next to him. “A deal?” the voice was saying. “What kind of deal?” And he was talking, offering, negotiating, swapping. It reminded him of another time, when he was very young, when he would gather with the neighbor boys outside the local drug store to show each other their latest baseball cards.

He remembered lusting for Willie Mays more than he ever lusted for a woman. Just the smell of the bubblegum on the card made his mouth water. But the other boy wanted too much: his Mickey Mantle and another player. Some of the names from the old MLB came back to him, but others … others remained invisible in the fog.

The other boy was walking away with his Willie Mays so he called out, “Mantle is worth Mays, even up!” He remembered the way the other boy turned back toward him, slowly, with a sly grin, as if he’d caught a fish, and he said, “Mays is worth whatever I can get you to swap for him.” And with that the other boy disappeared into the fog.

But those words he remembered, words that shaped his entire caree. “… worth whatever I can get you to swap for him.” It wasn’t about the card, it was about the other boy, the one who wanted to swap. Value didn’t adhere to Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle, no, value was an expression of how badly the other boy, the other card holder, the other trader, wanted what you had. He had never forgotten that, not even—

Suddenly he remembered it all. The team he’d managed, the players he’d traded, the phone calls he’d made. What had happened to all of it? Ah yes, he thought, the fog machine. That’s what made the fog, and the fog made everything else disappear.

But now he had a way to fight the fog. A way to turn off the machine. A way to escape. And it would all depend on a telephone and …

In the beginning was baseball, and baseball was now and forever, until kingdom come, amen.

He laughed at himself. No way, he thought, can I pull this off. And no way am I not gonna try. Win or lose, he thought, I win. What’d we use to call that? The winning horse? Winning ticket? No matter. If I win, I’m outa here. And if I lose, if this house of cards collapses, well, I still win. Because while winning is a treat, losing is still a damn sight better than not playing. And not playing is what I’ve been doing this last year. Sitting here waiting for someone else to decide I can leave.

My turn now. Me to play!

In the beginning was baseball.

¡Viva beisbol!

_______________

MYSTERY AT STATE HOSPITAL
July 31, 2017, 7:45 pm PDT

7:45, evening services according to the schedule. But really, it was just down time for the nurses and orderlies. An hour when they could relax and not have to monitor the patients, all of whom were in the chapel or the Social Room or the Multi-Purpose Room (depending on their particular faith) saying their prayers or singing hymns or listening to one of the visiting religious leaders talk.

The orderlies counted the patients into the chapel and other rooms, and the orderlies counted them out, but the hour between was theirs to indulge in gossip, play cards, take a nap, even kick up their feet and watch their favorite shows.

The halls of the state hospital were empty. The patients’ rooms were empty. Even the restrooms were empty. Outside the staff lounge, nothing moved.

Except one furtive figure. Tall, though stooping with age. Thin, except for the beginning of a bulge in the middle. Silent, but for the soft squeak of rubber soled slippers. The figure slipped down the hallway past the staff lounge toward the nurses’ station. No one there, everyone in the lounge, so the figure pulled a small shiv from a back pocket and inserted it between the latch and the wall frame. Skillfully, like this had been practiced before, the figure cleared the latch and stepped into the nurses’ station.

If one of the orderlies had stepped out of the lounge at that moment—to head outside for a smoke, perhaps, or to take a leak in the restroom across the hall—the orderly would have seen the silhouette of the figure holding the telephone to its ear and speaking into it. The orderly wouldn’t have heard a thing, since the nurses’ station was equipped with soundproof glass, but the orderly would have known the figure had broken into the station, and so the orderly would have sounded the alarm.

But no orderly left the lounge, and the figure had time for a brief phone conversation before hanging up and, latching the station door behind, returning to services in the Multi-Purpose Room.

Only later, when the night shift reviewed the phone tapes—all calls made on hospital phones are recorded, to protect the patients, of course—would someone discover this nearly impenetrable fragment of discourse:

“Do we have a deal?

(Pause, while the other party spoke, presumably. Hospital recording devices only recorded the voice of those calling from the hospital, so as not to violate the privacy rights of callers.)

“He’s already on the plane. I assume our guy too? … Good. Pleasure doing business with you. Inform the league office.”

For hours, the graveyard security shift pondered the mysteries of this phone call. They interviewed the orderlies and nurses, but none of them owned up to making a call at that hour. And why wouldn’t they, if they had? The hospital tolerated phone calls by its staff, even non-hospital-related calls. So the assumption was that one of the patients had made a call. But the orderlies counted all the patients into the evening services at 7:45 and counted them all out again at 8:55. No one was missing.

Had someone sneaked out of a service? Who? And what was the mysterious phone call about?

When the graveyard security shift was replaced by the day shift, one of the staffers dropped a morning newspaper on the desk, open to the sports page. In letters no one could miss, the paper announced:

                    Mysterious Caller Impersonates Yuma GM
                      Pitching Prospect Swapped for Reliever
                                 Dozer Owners in Uproar

That’s when they started to put it all together.

_______________

 
Camarillo State Hospital
August 1, 2017, 12:01 pm PDT

In the beginning was baseball, and baseball was there in the end too.

For Yuma GM Bob Mayberry, the first of August was a busy day. First, the hospital security questioned him. Then the local press wanted to hear the story from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. And finally, later that evening, Emma Span, famous sports writer and one of the Yuma Bulldozer owners, came to question the GM.

They all wanted to know the same thing: “How’d you do it?”

“Simple,” he said. “I called up my old friend Matt Higgins, told him I had just the pitcher his Calzones needed to make a run at the playoffs, and told him what I wanted for that pitcher.”

Just like that he agreed?

“No,” the GM smiled, “not quite. I wanted a first round draft pick.” The GM laughed. “Old habits die hard. What’s the saying? Uh, ‘habits learned early are habits for life,’ right? It was like a reflex. Ask for a draft pick. Like I had no options. But someone on the other end of the line—I don’t know who—was advising Matt and for once, first time really, Matt wasn’t going to give me his draft picks. Man, I’ve built that Dozer club on Matt’s draft picks, but not this time.”

Did he offer Hulk Taylor?

“No, I asked for Hulk. Straight up for Tugboat.”

Emma Span looked aghast.

“You think I’m crazy?” the GM asked her.

She sputtered and stuttered and finally just shook her head.

“Sure you do. Everyone does.That’s why I’m here. That’s why they’ve been giving me electroshock therapy. That’s why they drug me all day long and why there are guards in the halls at night. They think we’re all crazy. And maybe I am, who am I to say? But I ain’t stupid. Trading Tugboat for Hulk may be a little crazy, but it’s not stupid. It’s good baseball.”

Emma asked, as politely as she could manage, how he figured trading a top starting prospect for a veteran middle reliever was good for Yuma. The GM sat back, rubbed his gown-covered thighs, and said as straight as he could manage,

“If you’ve got a case full of fresh croissants but no tea to drink with them, you’d trade a croissant for a cup of tea, wouldn’t you?”

Emma protested that she didn’t drink tea.

“Alright, have it your way. Croissants for coffee or soda or, hell, even for a glass of water. If what you need is something to drink and what you have is too many croissants, you swap. If you greedily hang onto every last croissant, because you figger it’s more valuable than some damn glass of water, well, that just leaves you thirsty.”

Emma looked at the GM. She shook her head. She started to tell the GM he was crazy, but stopped. Finally, she asked if he thought Yuma had too many talented young pitchers.

“Starters, not pitchers, Emma. We have exactly the same number of talented young pitchers we had before the trade, but we have one fewer starters. And one more reliever. Which, by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed, we were in bad need of.”

Emma wondered how he knew what Yuma needed. She assumed potentially inflammatory news was kept from the patients.

“Yeah, they try, oh how they try. No newspapers, no tv news shows, even the one computer we can use has all the major news sources blocked. But we find out anyway.”

How? How do you get news of the Dozers way over here in Camarillo?

Yuma’s GM, and Camarillo’s resident patient, just smiled. “No way I’m gonna tell you, Emma. You’d report it to the staff and they’d shut down our little news pipeline. No way. Nice try though.”

Emma protested she would never do such a thing.

“Doesn’t matter. They’re probably bugging this conversation of ours. We’ll read about it next week in the Yuma Sun. Or maybe it’ll be posted on the PEBA home page.” He chuckled at the thought. “Though why any of this is news is beyond me. It was just a trade. We do trades all the time. You can’t know how one-sided a trade is ’til the season’s over. In fact, with a deadline trade like this, you can’t tell anything until next season. It’s all just speculation until then.”

The GM thrust his bearded mug into Emma’s startled face and said, “Tell you what, Miss Spann—”

“Ms.,” she insisted.

“If Tugboat wins the Golden Arm next year,” the GM said ignoring her, “and Yuma finishes last again, I’ll resign. That’d make you and the rest of the owners happy, wouldn’t it? But if Taylor solves our bullpen problem and Gunner or Javelin win the Golden Arm, or if Yuma finishes out of the basement, you’re gonna have to give me a pretty good raise. Deal?”

Emma Span thought about it. Seemed like a win-win to her. “Deal,” she said.

In the beginning was baseball, and baseball will be there in the end too.