Free Mentor: A Memoir by Tom Grimes Page B

halt in a red Ferrari, which he left purring as his fashion model girlfriend, a creature minted, it seemed, out of pure platinum, circled the car, kissed him, and then dropped into the driver’s seat and sped out of the lot.
     
    I walked to the office Jay had directed me to and collected my press card. In my back pocket, I kept a small, gray memo pad and a blue ballpoint pen, although I’d vowed never to scribble notes in anyone’s presence. To the players, I wanted to become familiar to the point of invisibility. Professional athletes live in a fishbowl. Therefore, they tend to be skittish around people who ask them direct questions. So I planned to ask as few as possible. I entered the locker room and drew a few curious stares. Within an instant, I was forgotten. I found a corner chair, sat, listened to reporters conduct interviews, and watched the players dress. First, they pulled long white socks above their knees and secured them with navy blue stirrups. Next, they hoisted jockstraps over their hips, stepped into Spandex shorts, and then reached inside them to snugly place a hard rubber cup over their testicles. They tugged short-sleeved Mets T-shirts over their heads, slipped into immaculate white, blue, and orange pinstriped uniforms, and then knotted the laces of their polished black cleats. Finally, they crossed the cool, low-ceilinged locker room and studied the blackboard bolted to a cinder-block wall to see who was in the starting lineup. The ones who weren’t said, “Fuck.” The ones who were said nothing, but their bodies swelled when they inhaled, which said everything. Alone and in pairs, they headed for the tunnel that led to the dugout. Civilians were not allowed to follow.
     
    I wandered out to the field. For a moment, the blue sky made me light-headed. I’d become accustomed to Iowa’s muted winter landscape, its subtle shades of gray. I scanned the grass, looking for Strawberry. Instead, I saw Mr. Cashen peering through the fence behind home plate. He wore a tan suit, eyeglasses, and his signature bow tie. Despite being nearly seventy, his dull blond hair and short, swift gait made him appear younger. He and tall, lean Al Harazin, the team’s senior vice president, studied hitters taking batting practice. From a distance, the two seemed to whisper to one another, but mainly they frowned, as if they had been forced to choose between one piece of rotten fruit and another. As I strolled toward them, noting the texture of the third-base bag, the brightness of the white baseline, the palpable calm radiated by the empty expanse of left field, and the stadium’s small scale, I recognized the three sources of my disorientation. Sunshine, a balmy breeze, and the freedom of being outdoors, which Iowa’s winter had erased from my memory. Also, I’d escaped the pressure of my novel. The six months I’d spent hunched over my desk in a small, cold room near an ice-glazed storm window had ended. I felt as if I’d ascended from the ocean’s frigid, black floor, broken the water’s surface, and taken a deep breath. A world did exist apart from the intensity of making sentences and the anxiety of scratching my way toward an ending. The stadium no longer seemed unreal, the players no longer like images in a dream. The shift from one reality to another became complete. And I went to meet Mr. Cashen.
     

    On the evening news, I appeared in the Mets dugout, standing beside the team’s manager, Davey Johnson. I immediately called Frank and said, “I was just on television!”
     
    “Great!” he shouted. A moment later, he dropped his voice an octave and said, “Remember your friends, Tom.”
     
    I laughed. Then I said, “Mr. Cashen told me to say hello. He asked about Body & Soul .”
     
    Frank said, “Tell him it’s going well.”
     
    After GQ published its first chapter, a dozen countries bought the rights to publish the novel, only half of which was written. The circle of readers who had read the