Free The New York by Bill Branger Page B

George wants you to do.”
    It was hopelessly true and Charlene was too smart not to see it.
    â€œCharlene. He owns the team. They’re all that way, the owners. And we’re the same way. This ain’t sandlot, we’re playing for big bucks. We all talk about respect, but what we’re talking when we say it is about getting a sweeter contract than some other mope on the team. We got a union, but it basically is every man for himself. The best thing the union ever had going for it was the collective dumbness of the owners, Take arbitration, that’s a hoot in itself. Owners fucked themselves up good on that one. So George is dumb and selñsh. For $625,000, I’ll be dumb and selflsh one more year.”
    â€œThen what? You’ll never get a job in baseball again.”
    I hadn’t thought ofthat at all. It showed I was right about the dumb part. But Charlene was dead on — if things turned out sour, I’d be the goat and I couldn’t get a job scouting class A ball.
    Well, who said I would have anyway?
    That question comes from the Resentful Ryan when he gets up against it. It’s a cousin to Self-Pitying Ryan. What did I need baseball for?
    Which got back to why I signed for another year under George’s terms. I could say it was the money, and it was, but it was something else. I can’t explain the Bigs from the inside out because it is a parade like no other parade you ever seen, and you’re in the center of it. You go into Yankee Stadium and, man oh man, there are 60,000 people who actually paid to come out and see you, who sit there eating hot dogs to watch you scratch your nuts or spit or warm up in the bull pen. Not that I think I’m the center of attention; I’m just part of the center of the parade. Sometimes, after a game, you can’t get down at all. You drink beer and just sit there in your sweaty old suit and just think about it, about winning or losing, about the high of it or the low of it, depending. It is an addiction that you know is going to be cured when you’re too old to play, and then you hope to carry it on by doing something else in the game. That’s why you see those old farts coming around the clubhouse before a game with their golf shirts on and their Florida tans and gray hair and crinkled eyes; they just want to be part of it again for a moment, like smoking a joint again when you used to smoke one every day.
    â€œShit, I wasn’t coaching material anyway. I’ll go out like Catfish, open me a restaurant, learn the trade.”
    â€œCatfish?”
    â€œDeke Williams,” I explained. Then I explained Catfish to her and that made her smile a little, even though her eyes were sad.
    â€œI bet he doesn’t serve healthy food,” she said.
    â€œNot a lick of it, except for greens. Although I thought catfish was supposed to be good for you.”
    â€œNot fried catfish.”
    â€œHmmph,” I said.
    â€œNot ribs.”
    â€œWell, it tastes good. I ate a salad at Ernie’s Cafe yesterday with the traditional Thanksgiving dinner of sliced turkey in gravy with mashed potatoes and string beans.”
    â€œPoor baby. I should have brought you home to Mama, but I wasn’t sure about you, even yesterday. I was just missing you so much that I said, ‘Chariene, go ahead, make a fool of yourself for this man.’“
    â€œBecause you still believed that phony letter.”
    â€œAnd because you were acting goofy. I mean, you didn’t want to talk about Jack Wade and not taking the job selling cars and, I don’t know, you were just moping like a milk cow after milking’s done.”
    â€œCharlene, I was the way you say I was back then because I didn’t want to get you involved in the mess I been making for myself.”
    â€œI believe you.”
    It was like she had said she loved me. Exactly like that. Later, when we were finally getting to sleep after another round