He was a friend from college, and the two of us reconnected when I played minor league ball in Bakersfield. He came to some games. We went out. Everything was . . . fun.
Then I went to spring training right as it was getting more intense with him. He was a gentle soul, a writer who wore his heart on his sleeve, poured it into his words.
And into me.
More than I expected. More than I had room for.
I tried to make room for those emotions—talking to him in the evenings after practice, trying somehow to sustain a long-distance thing.
“I miss you, babe,” he’d say. “Do you miss me too?”
“Send me a text in the morning, so I know you’re thinking of me.”
“Can I come see some of your games? I’ll catch a plane. Root for you.”
Soon, my answers—“Thanks, but my schedule is crazy,” or, “I was out for a run at six-thirty in the morning so I forgot to text”—weren’t enough.
He wanted more. Wanted to buy a ticket to Phoenix to see me play. Wanted to go out to dinner after a game.
I was stretched thin, with little experience at balancing a boyfriend’s needs with my own. I was twenty-two with a pro contract and a future I desperately needed. I didn’t know how to manage his hurt. The more he needed me, the less I could give, and the more it weighed on me.
I didn’t want to be that kind of boyfriend.
Soon enough, the late-night calls and the early-morning pleas affected my game.
There is no room for a few bad games in the Major Leagues. There’s barely room for one when you’re a rookie in spring training.
But I served up two in a row, whiffing at the plate, missing easy grounders, fumbling all over the diamond. My agent flew down from New York, took me to a steak house, lavished praise on me, the kind that warns you that it’s the good news before the bad. I girded my loins, and finally, he stared me right in the eyes and said, “You need to get your shit together right now, D.”
I gulped. “What do you mean?”
Vaughn raised a solitary finger. “You get one rookie season. Count it. One. It started a few weeks ago. The clock is ticking,” he said, pointing to a clock on the wall in the restaurant. I swore I could hear every second, like a bomb counting down. “Whatever is bringing you down, whatever’s getting in the way, you need to get rid of it. Trust me. I know exactly how fleeting this job can be.” He tapped his right knee. A meniscus tear had shortened his career to three mere years in the NFL. “I don’t want to see you miss your chance,” he said, softening.
I broke up with Kyle. Took him a while to get the message, but I stuck to my guns. Didn’t look back. The result? I watched my stats soar, and I chose to live with no regrets.
Baseball is it for me now.
I don’t have a fallback plan. I can’t afford to let the game slide. Back in high school I made some foolish choices, self-destructive ones, during a stretch when things were the most beyond my control. But I came back from it.
Baseball has already given me a second chance, and I don’t take that for granted.
That’s why I gave Grant my warning.
This sport deserves my best years. Deserves his best years too.
I wake early the next morning and tug on gym shorts, so I can log a dawn run. There’s a high school a few blocks away that has a great track. Hardly anyone’s on it at six-thirty, so I can get lost in the rhythm of the laps and the music in my ears. With the Arizona sun opening its eyes above the horizon, I crank up the tunes, blasting a mix of Pearl Jam and Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains.
Old habits die hard. I grew up with these bands as a teenager, courtesy of my mom blasting Pearl Jam tunes in the house.
As Black reverberates, I make out another noise coming from behind. The unmistakable sound of sneakers on dirt. One glance and my skin heats in seconds.
It’s not from the sun. It’s from the rookie.
AirPods in, he flashes a grin my way.
On the one hand, I wish he weren’t here.
On the other, I don’t object to the view.
I pull out an AirPod as I keep running. “Didn’t peg you for a stalker,” I tease.
“I didn’t peg you for a Type A, neurotic, early-morning, obsessed-with-performance, extra-exercise runner,” he says.
The plethora of words tumbling from his lips makes me laugh. “Really? That was hard to figure out?”
“Maybe because you make it all look so easy.”
“I do my best to maintain the illusion. But the way I see it, you’ve got to put the extra time in. Stay on top of the game.”