Written by Roberta Umor, Yuma Sun

April 1, 2016: Yuma, AZ – He stormed out of his office – the office he had been living in for the past seven months, the office he barricaded himself into when he heard the news about Gunner, the office he hasn’t left since, not even to pee (which has created a whole host of odor and cleanliness issues). He stormed out screaming, “I’ll have their heads!” The front office staff scattered – some beneath desks, several into the hallway, and one out the back window. Whose heads were gonna roll, no one knew, but they wanted to make sure it wasn’t theirs.

Yuma’s GM looked a fright, his graying fringe of hair flying above the stained white t-shirt that hung out over his dirty blue sweatpants. His glasses were spotted with something – no one could be sure what – and crumbs hung in his beard. He was frothing in anger, looking for someone to fire, yelling at the copy machine and the coffee machine and the fax machine because he couldn’t find a breathing soul to direct his venom at. “Someone’s gonna pay for this! Someone’s hide is gonna be ripped off in bloody strips for this!”

A meek voice spoke. “For what, sir?”

“For winning five straight! That’s what.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” the voice asked as meekly as it could.

“It’s disrespectful, that’s what it is. It’s unnatural. It’s ‘inYuman’! We do not tolerate that kind of behavior here. You sign with the Dozers, you play like a Dozer. You win a few, you lose a bunch, but you do not win five in a row!”

“But isn’t it just spring training?”

“Who is that? Where are you?” The old man looked about him but saw no one. Clumsily, painfully, he lowered himself to one knee and looked under the desk he was standing next to. No one. “Who’s there?” he bellowed. “Who’s there?”

“Knock, knock,” the voice answered uncertainly.

“What?” the GM started to crawl toward the voice.

“What who?” the voice replied.

“Whoever and wherever you are,” he cried out as he crawled along, “I’m gonna find you and fire you and kick your butt out that door.” After a moment, he added, “Though not in that order.”

“That’s not the way to play the game,” the voice chided.

“Who are you to tell me…?” He didn’t finish the sentence because, as he crawled around a table leg, he came face to face with a young woman on hands and knees beneath the fax machine. They stared at each other – the GM in complete astonishment, the young owner of the chiding voice in trembling fear. She tried to say something, but that voice was gone. “Do I know you?” the GM asked.

“Uh, no, maybe not. That is to say, you’ve never… we’ve never… I mean…”

“You were smarter when you were hidden,” the GM said. “Who are you?”

“Patsy. I mean, Patricia…”

“Don’t tell me your name!”

“You asked. That is to say, I thought you…”

“Don’t you ever give a straight answer?”

“Well, I, uh… what do you mean?”

“Who are you? And I don’t mean your name. What do you do? What’s your job here?”

The young woman, Patsy or Patricia – it hadn’t been settled yet – thought for a moment, then said as straight as she knew how, “I don’t work here. Sir.”

“Then what are you doing hiding in my office?”

Patricia, or Patsy, or both, looked confused. Pointing to the room the GM had stormed out of moments before, she said, “I thought that…”

The GM waited. “Yes?”

“I thought that that, sir, was your office.”

The GM beamed. “It’s all my office, sweetie. All mine, mine, mine! Got it? I run this show. I order the furniture, I say where it goes, and I decide who works and who doesn’t work here, and you, dear girl, don’t work here anymore. You’re fired.”

“You can’t fire me,” said the meek voice.

“I just did. Now get your things and…”

“I mean,” the meek voice said interrupting the old man, “that you don’t employ me, so you can’t fire me.”

She looked imploringly at him. The GM sat back on his haunches, and winced. He rubbed his sore hip. “Bursitis,” he explained.

“Bur-what?” she asked.

“Inflamed hip joint. Just kills me when I sit for long stretches. Or crawl on the floor, it seems. Ain’t done that since…” He couldn’t remember how long. Then he couldn’t remember why he was crawling on the floor. “What are we doing down here?” he asked her.

“You were firing me.”

“Right.”

“Only you can’t.”

“And why is that?”

“You didn’t hire me.”

“Right,” the GM said, remembering why he was on the floor, “but since you’re here, somebody in this organization did hire you. And so it stands to reason – or sits at the moment – that I can fire you. Or,” he added to cut off her anticipated objection, “if I can’t fire you, I can fire the person who hired you. Gotcha!”

“No, sir,” Patricia of the meek voice said, “no one in your organization hired me. I work for the Reno Gazette-Journal.” When the GM didn’t say anything, she added, “I’m a reporter.”

“What kind of story you expect to find hiding on the floor of my office?”

“This story. Sir.”

“This? This isn’t a story. I didn’t agree to an interview. You can’t print this.”

“Someone threatened to fire me. That’s a good story. I’m just reporting what happened to me on my little sojourn to Yuma.”

“You work for that crazy Scott Mayor guy up there in Reno, don’t you? General manager for the Zephyrs. He sent you to spy on me, didn’t he? That sniveling little lowlife son of a…”

“His name’s Maynor.”

“What?”

“Not Mayor.”

“Who cares? He’s still a…”

“And I don’t work for him. I work for the Gazette. And you can’t go around firing people just because your team won a few games. That’s not right. That’s not… sporting.”

“Don’t tell me about sporting, little missy…”

“Patricia.”

“There’s winners and there’s losers, and without those losers, there’d be no winners, so we gotta have teams like Reno and Yuma. Otherwise, we got no winners. Got it? Get it.” When she started to speak, he cut her off. “Now, now, now, don’t interrupt me when I’m on a roll. You want an interview, you’re gonna get an interview. My kinda interview.”

The GM pulled himself off the floor and onto a desk chair. He sighed in relief, rubbed his hip again, and pointed a dirty, ragged fingernail at Patricia, or Patsy, when she started to stand up too. “You stay there. I didn’t invite you here, so you don’t get to sit on the furniture. Just scoot back down under that fax machine there and listen up.” The GM stretched his aching legs.

“Reno and Yuma got into this whole mess because of one ballplayer. One greedy ballplayer. One greedy, lazy ballplayer. Everything he touches turns to dirt. It’s like he’s got the reverse Midas touch. If he comes to bat during a rally, he strikes out. If the team needs a double play to get out of an inning, he’ll boot the ball sure as I’m sitting here. And if someone hands him, oh, let’s say, twelve million dollars, he’ll find a way to lose it all. Yeah, I’m talking about that no-good Goode.

“Reno drafted the inept idiot in ’07. That was mistake one. They got wise and traded him away. He bounced around until he became a free agent, and that’s when Yuma picked him up. Mistake number two. Wasn’t me – can’t blame any of what’s happened since on me. Little Goode Two Shoes got himself a fast-talking agent. Negotiated a sweetheart of a deal. Six-year contract for roughly 12 mil a year. Mistake number three.

“When I was hired as the new GM, they told me to ‘dispose’ of Goode’s contract. That was the word: ‘dispose.’ I tried to put a hit out on him, but the guy is elusive, and apparently the mob in Yuma doesn’t do that kind of work anymore. They’re outsourcing now. I never could find out who they were outsourcing to. Mistake number four.

“But the Calzones and I cooked up a plan whereby I’d trade them Goode and then they’d turn around and package him with some players Tempe wanted, and we’d dump the 12 Million Dollar Fiasco on the rich and successful Tempe Knights. Figured Goode’s presence alone would turn that franchise around and they’d sink like a stone to the bottom of the league. Didn’t quite turn out the way we’d planned. All because of your boss – don’t tell me you’re not spying for him, I can smell a mole a mile away – that damn Scott Whateverhisnameis went and traded for Goode. Where’s the sense in that? Mistake number five.”

The GM filled himself a paper cup from the water cooler next to the fax machine, directly beneath a big, bright poster with a picture of a smiling David Goode. Beneath Goode’s grin were the words: “Yuma Bottled Water – The Breakfast of Champions.”

Patricia, or Patsy, decided it was time to speak up. “I don’t work for the Zephyrs, sir, but I really appreciate this interview.”

“You ain’t heard nothing yet, little lady. Wait til you hear what happened next.”

“Oh. Okay.” She waited. And waited some more. “You’re going to tell me?” she asked.

The GM looked at her. “I’m gonna tell you what?”

“About David Goode,” she said, pointing to the poster.

The GM turned and looked at the poster. He shook his head. “That father-killer. Did I ever tell you how all of this…” he gestured to the world beyond the office, “…not just the Dozers and the Zephyrs, but the whole water-guzzling PEBA – all of it, is in a state of chaos because of that guy?” He pointed at the grinning Goode.

“Yes sir, you were telling me just now.”

The GM looked at her. “I was? Just now?” He shook his head. “Don’t ‘member that.”

“You told me about the five mistakes,” she prompted, looking at her notes, “and you were about to tell me what happened after Scott Maynor acquired David Goode from the…”

“Oh, that guy! Scott Mayor! That little low life son of a…”

“Maynor. His name’s Maynor, not Mayor. I just told you that. Why can’t you…” She stopped midsentence then, because she knew why. And she felt, well, not sorry, but something akin to sympathy for the old man.

Oblivious, he had started up again. “Did you know he traded to get Goode back?”

“Yessir.”

“You do? Well… good for you, because that was the start of this whole mess.”

“And what mess would that be? Sir.”

“I’m getting there, I’m getting there, give me a minute. You young people are always in such a rush.” He paused, sipped more of his drink, then saw the impatient look on her face. “Here it comes, here it comes.”

With that he finished off the drink, he wadded up the cup and tossed it into the trash basket across the room. “Swish!” he announced with fervor. “You see that?” he asked her. She nodded, but gestured for him to go on. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Here it is.”

He spread his arms out and announced like he was reading a Broadway marquee: The Story of David Goode and the End of PEBA.