Bainbridge’s wife is on a rampage and hell bent to find out who Steve has been screwing behind her back. She’s texted all of us, asking questions, but the truth is, if he is doing something like that, none of us know about it. Not that we’d tell her either. There’s solidarity in our brotherhood and that pisses her off so she’s been going after the wives.
We all stand tall when Singleton smacks the ball into the outfield. We raise our arms, thinking it’s gone and groan when the centerfielder jumps up and snags the ball out of the air before it clears the wall.
“Shit,” a few of us mumble as Singleton returns to the dugout. He’s pissed and throwing his helmet at the wall with a string of slurs coming out of his mouth. To make matters worse, he was traded from the Yankees to Boston a few seasons back and has held a grudge ever since. The trade didn’t make sense – Branch is one of the most consistent DH’s in the league – once his name hit the trade wire, teams started a bidding war. Even if they didn’t need him, they wanted him. Boston wasn’t even the highest bidder, but they are the archrival of the Yankees, and Branch wanted to stick it to them. Most of the time he does.
There are those moments, when you’re in the lead and the outfielder makes an amazing catch, and you give props to your teammate for hitting it deep enough that the outfielder has to work to stop the run. But then there are times when you don’t speak about the almost homerun that would’ve put your team within two runs rather than three down. This is the time when you just ignore the “what could’ve been” and let your teammate stew.
Jasper Jacobson, our catcher, is up next. He takes the first swing and hits a grounder right to the short stop. Jacobson is fast and has the ability to beat out the throw to first, but not today. Next, second baseman, Bryce Mackenzie, steps up to the plate. The crowd is still somewhat loud, but has died down considerably after the last two outs. Mackenzie takes the first two pitches without even flinching. The third pitch is also a ball, giving me hope that the pitcher is tiring and maybe we can wear him down in the next inning, as long as his relief doesn’t come in.
Mackenzie swings at the next pitch and I’m thinking it must’ve been a damn meatball because he was ahead in the count and now the right fielder is taking a few steps in to catch his pop-up. The inning is over and we’re still down by three runs. We take our sweet time coming out of the dugout as the music starts to play and the Jumbo Tron lights up with the Kiss Cam. I’d love to take Daisy to a game and get on the Kiss Cam. It’ll never happen though, unless we go to a Celtics game, because there is no way in hell I’ll stand out in the freezing cold in Foxborough to watch the Patriots. Checking out the Bruins, on the other hand, would be on my list of things to do in Boston.
After taking our warm-up grounders, the heart of the Yankees line-up steps up to the plate. I take a step back and get into position. My eyes are steady on his bat, watching every wiggle that it takes. He starts the rotation and the wooden weapon comes around, smacking the white leather ball toward me. I move into position, ready to use my body as a shield to stop the ball. It bounces nicely into my glove and in one swift rotation, the ball in and out of my mitt, into my hand and being thrown accurately to first base.
It’s a three up, three down inning; in fact, the rest of game is played out like that with us losing five to eight and dropping yet another home game to the Yankees. This loss puts us even at fourteen and fourteen – a shitty way to start the month.
Our cleats clank as we walk down the corridor to the clubhouse. The press is already there, waiting for interviews. The mood is subdued. It’s not just the fact that we lost, but that we have put ourselves in an early hole and holes in the majors are hard to climb out of.