The Ongoing Diary of Casey Neal

Go Watch Baseball

(March 2020)

We walked back through Higashi Kawaguchi in silence, following Ichihara’s lead. It felt like the city parted before us, letting us by without so much as a cricket’s chirp in comment.

Ichihara slept on the train, short though the trip was.

He laid his head back on the plexiglas, and in an instant his jaw had gone limp, and he began to snore softly.  I remember the way his head swayed from side to side with the train’s movements.

“What just happened?” I said to DK.

My friend just shook his head, and looked grave. “Should not play with Yōkai.”

“Yōkai.”

“Spirits, Casey san. Unnatural.  Sorcery.”

Normally I would have laughed at these words, and I suppose you would to. But I had just seen what I just saw, and I wasn’t in the laughing frame of mind

The train came to the end of the line.

DK and I got him to his apartment, and then into bed.

#

The next day, Yuni Ichihara was at his desk, doing his job as if nothing had happened.  The only thing that stood testimony to the evening was the empty space at the corner of his desk.

“What’s the plan?” I said when I stepped into his office.

“Wait for news from agents.”

“That’s it?”

He sighed, looking of the reports on his desk that were heaped up like the proverbial haystack, several of which had been read many times over.  “Yes. That is it.”

“So?”

“Go watch baseball,” he said.

“I call double bull on that,” I replied.  “It’s not fair, Yuni. We can’t make us go through what we went through last night and not tell me what it was.”

Ichihara stood up and looked me directly in the eye. His voice was from deep in the back of his throat.

“I not make you do anything.  You follow.”

“Yeah, I know that. And I’m sorry.” I looked around the office to make sure no one was within listening distance.  “But you get the idea, here, Yuni.  We’re on the same team. Neither DK nor I can unsee that.”

“Not my fault.”

“I see.”

Yuni wasn’t backing down.  He was mad.  He was hurt.  And for some reason he was embarrassed.

“It’s okay, Yuni,” I said.  I shuffled out of my jacket, and laid it over the corner of my desk, then I sat down in one hard chair and rested my leg over the seat of another.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re as stubborn as Don-o was at one point, but me and him had a thing going on that in some ways isn’t much different from me and you.  I’m gonna sit right here until you decide you want to tell me just what is going on.”

His face grew darker.

“I’ll have you thrown out.”

“That’s what it’s gonna take, Yuni.  And I don’t think you want to do that.  I mean, first there’s the whole thing that I’m the brash American press and all the hooey, and then there’s the fact the you and I both realize this thing is bigger than us and that whatever comes out of the investigation has to help things more than it hurts them.  And then there’s the other thing, too.”

“Other thing?

“Yeah, the other thing.”
Ichihara drew his eyebrows together and cocked his head.

“The fact that the Transmitters won yesterday.”

He smiled. “Fifteen runs!” Then he sat down and his shoulders slumped.

“Look, Yuni. The fact is that that I think you and I are getting to be besties now, you know?  I mean, crud.  You danged well know I’m not gonna write no stupid story about you, just like I know you’re not gonna have me thrown outta your danged office.  I know you’re having a tough time right now, and I can see you got no one to talk to about it.  So how about we just go down and get some coffee and I leave my recorder off and you just tell me what happened.  Friend to friend.”

I held my hands out, trying to be casual.

He nodded his head.

“Coffee on you,” he said.

#

We go to a kissaten nearby, an independent called “The Roasting,” which is half tea room and half upscale gourmet coffee.

“I can’t believe the Transmitters are leaving.”

It is the first time I can remember Yuni actually mentioning that his favorite team is moving to Texas.  He cups his drink in one hand and uses the other to make an open-handed gesture of futility.

“Hard to come to grips with,” I say.  The coffee is bitter, which I like.  They don’t serve as much here.

“No.” he says.  “Or, uh, yes,” he responds again.  “Matt Higgins,” he says, speaking the name of the new Kawaguchi General Manager.  “What do you know of him?”

“Good rep.  Shoots straight with answers.  Builds teams from the bottom up.”

He nods.

“I guess that’s good. We never have a chance before. Kawaguchi. Every year, hope, but no faith.  Every year but this year.  This year, we get no hope.”

“I hear you played ball when you were a kid.”

He smiled.

“I did, too, of course.  What did you play?”

“All around,” Yuni replied.

We spent the next half hour telling stories about teams we played on as kids and the things the game meant to us then.  I told him of a diving stop I made in the hole at second base one game when I was twelve, and he told me about a time he stole home.  We talked about hot grounders and choppers, and how we would pitch to guys like Morimoto or Nakamura.

I went to get a second cup, and brought back some pastry.

“Thank you, Casey,” he said.  “For this all.”

And, yeah, I know he’s not talking about coffee and doughnuts.  It’s all good.

I tip my cup at him.

“Kawaguchi gone,” he says as I settle in.  “Baseball not gone. But Kawaguchi gone.”

“Love’em while you got ’em.”

“Charlie Cooper gone.”

“You’ll find him. Something will show up.”

“No.”

There’s something about his firm tone that strikes a chord.

“Charlie fly the Coop,” Yuni added.

I had to laugh.

“Seriously, Yuni.  A lead will come up.  No one’s that good, especially not a young guy like Charlie Cooper.”

“No.” He looked up at me. “That’s what I ask for last night.”

I sat there, waiting.

“I go to … spirit woman … and ask her where is Charlie Cooper.  She says spirits say he is no more.”

“Whaaaat?”

“She tell me they say: Not here.”

“These yōkai spirits, or whatever they are, must not be the most reliable things on the planet, then.”

“Don’t make fun of what you don’t understand. I have their help before.”

I nod, and purse my lips.

“Maybe they just meant he was using a different name.  That there was no Charlie Cooper at all.”

He shakes his head.

“Yōkai not lie.  Not like that, anyway.”

“All right,” I say.

We drink coffee.

“Kawaguchi, they play tonight,” Yuni says.

His eyes have a sparkle.

“Yes.  Shin Seiki.  If we leave now,” I say, “I think we can make it in time.”

#

We go then, and we make it in time.

We sit in a pair of rickety stands that were built to last for about as long as spring training would last, and we’re coming to the end of spring training.

The Transmitters take on the Eva empire, and Yuni sings to them with all his heart throughout most of the night.  He chants.  He eats noodles and drinks beer.  And his Transmitters reward him with doubles and triples and homers that add up to six runs, enough to give them a 6-3 lead heading into the bottom of the ninth, wherein, of course, Shin Seiki puts together three hits, a wild pitch and another double to tie it up.

Yuni is crestfallen.

But still he sings, and still he chants, and Shinsui Hoshino, a journeyman infielder who will soon be seeing time in the minor leagues, responds with a two-run triple that gives his mighty Transmitters a miracle victory.

“Two in a row!” Yuni Ichihara says.

“Look out for the Miracle ‘Mitters,” I reply, and I laugh even though Ichihara doesn’t get it.

#

We get all the way home, and settling into bed before I realize the Yuni Ichihara hadn’t smoked a single cigarette all night.