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Episode 30—I read my Pushcart Prize-Nominated Essay "That Pickoff Play"
132 Plays8 years ago
Chautauqua Americana published my essay, "That Pickoff Play", earlier this year. The editors nominated it for a Pushcart Prize. I read that essay for this milestone episode of #CNF.
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Transcript
30th Episode Celebration
00:00:00
Speaker
I heard somewhere that a podcast has an average run of about seven episodes. Yet here we are at episode 30 of the hashtag CNF podcast. That's on account of the people I hear from who derive some value and entertainment from the interviews. For that I say thank you so much. And let's keep this thing
Essay Reading: Chitagua Americana
00:00:21
Speaker
going. Let's try and reach more writers and more readers. So episode 30 is a little different than the typical interview format.
00:00:30
Speaker
For this milestone episode, I chose to read an essay I had published this year in Chitagua Americana, a literary journal run by Philip Girard and Jill Girard. They were gracious enough to nominate this essay for a pushcart prize, so without further ado, here's me reading my essay, that pick-off play. Thanks again for listening.
Impact of Sports on Life
00:01:05
Speaker
that pick off play. These things, they stay with you man. There's the power of sport, but there's also the curse. How the failures never relent their grip. No, they never let go. In fact, you need laser surgery to burn the remnants of the ink below several dermal layers of flesh.
00:01:27
Speaker
This isn't war, but it's undeniably important because the world does, in fact, revolve around each and every one of us.
Team Bonding Rituals
00:01:38
Speaker
In 1996, Brian, a good friend and fellow teammate, and I plugged in hair clippers and shaved our heads, watching tufts of our hair tumble to the ground. Brian and I had made the expanded varsity roster for the state tournament.
00:01:54
Speaker
I felt it an opportunity to learn the ropes from a safe distance, see how these big leaguers do it. As a sign of team solidarity, the eponequate Lakers shaved their heads while we waited for our first round opponent in the Massachusetts State Tournament.
Nicknames and Belonging
00:02:10
Speaker
Apparently if we were going to lose, we were going to lose looking like a bunch of neo-Nazis or cancer patients.
00:02:17
Speaker
Jeremy Sweet, the catcher, 6 foot something, 200 something, had a full ride to Providence College ahead of him and might even get drafted. He had the type of surname local sports editors dreamed about. He won the MVP of the South Coast Conference. At the start of the baseball season, he walked around the halls of a pond equip with a brand new catcher's mitt.
00:02:40
Speaker
He lobbed the ball up and down making people look at his gleaming ivory smile against weirdly perennial bronze skin. He had the girlfriend and he had an earring. We passed in the halls and he looked down on me with that whitening toothpaste commercial smile. What's up BO?
00:02:59
Speaker
At first, I thought he might be making fun of me. Is he really just calling me by my initials? Or is he making fun, making some sort of comment about my body odor? Do I smell? No, I don't smell. But can you really smell your own odor? Probably not. So maybe he was making fun of me after all. I'm just a freshman and he's got an earring. Maybe he's just trying to make me feel good, being a freshman and all, he being a leader.
00:03:29
Speaker
But why was he smiling? And man, what a smile. Well, maybe he's in a good mood. Did you ever think of that? Just because he used your suggestive initials doesn't imply he's making fun of you, making you look like a fool in front of his friends, also seniors. Nicknames are a sign of solidarity, like you belong. Scoobs for Brian, Nate Dog for Nate, Sweet Butter for Jeremy, Ponce for Jason De Leon.
00:03:56
Speaker
Nicknames are a punch ticket to the brotherhood, but none of their nicknames are as suggestive as B.O., body odor, stinky, unwanted, anti-social, untalented, choker. Shit, you better say something.
Debut Game Pressure
00:04:12
Speaker
Um, hi Jeremy. Swish. It didn't matter. My head was shaved, and Brian and I took pictures standing side by side with our hands on each other's skulls.
00:04:24
Speaker
We're both smiling, ready for the games ahead, knowing that this is when students, our peers we cared far too much to impress, actually turn out to watch high school baseball. We'd be on a stage, not unlike the football players and basketball players, and the stakes were high.
00:04:40
Speaker
And that invisible division between them and us will be on the good side, the desired side. Oh, and another matter of team solidarity. Much like the football players on game day, we wore our jerseys to school. I walked about the halls wearing my number six Lakers jersey while everyone else got to watch and gawk and gaze and ooh and ah at the only freshmen in the entire class who got to throw his jersey on and walk through the halls and be considered one of them.
00:05:07
Speaker
such as my delusion, the enviable, no longer just an honor student but an athlete, the kind of people the wallflowers hated. I didn't care. I felt like my hard work had paid off. My validation, my worth, was tied to this adulation, this admiration. I needed it. I needed to feel valued, to have my strength come from outside, measured by the hard numbers of batting averages, slugging percentages, stolen bases, home freaking runs.
00:05:37
Speaker
My jersey was paper white, and when I walked the halls I felt illuminated by a spotlight, with all lights drawn to me. I like being on the inside, because everybody wants to be on the inside. We all want to be part of something. Until, of course, you fuck up.
Crucial Game Mistake
00:05:55
Speaker
The crowd on our third baseline stood and cheered. The atmosphere had that electric crackle that comes when any sporting event gets heated.
00:06:03
Speaker
It was so loud. I took it all in, just happy to be on the bench, watching my peers come back against our opponent, watching Jeremy Sweeten and Chris Krupa swing the bat with hedonistic fury. Coach Kordimash paced up and down the third baseline. He had to yell to his junior varsity coach, now up for the state tournament. Who's your best base runner? After a pause, my junior varsity coach said, O'Mara. Huh? I said under my breath.
00:06:32
Speaker
I apparently had forgotten to put on Sauron's ring of power and disappear from sight. Brendan, grab a helmet, go to first, Coach Cordemar said. I ran to the stash of helmets and quickly found one that fit. They were all scuffed in smallpox from a season grinding on the Aponiquet stone dust.
00:06:49
Speaker
I fumbled it in my trembling hands and finally secured it on my head. Is the visor even pointing forward? Yeah, I think so. Oh shit, who cares? No time. Oh fuck, breathe. Once secured, I jogged out the first base. My heart jackhammered in my chest and I couldn't take a deep breath. I could hear my heart. Wumpum. Wumpum. Wumpum.
00:07:14
Speaker
I could feel the pulsing of blood from my atria into my ventricles, and then out to wherever the fuck my body needed blood at this point. Wumpum. Wumpum. Wumpum. We had a runner on first. No wait, I was the runner on first. Nobody out. Down 2-1 to East Bridgewater. We were in a bunt situation, and I was the tying run here in the bottom of the seventh. I needed to get into scoring position, but more importantly, I needed to play it safe.
00:07:42
Speaker
Oh god, they're all watching me. Stop watching me. Not just you. All of you. My friends in the stand screamed, B.O. By this point I had surmised that my initials were, in fact, a form of endearment. I didn't stink after all. Wumpum. Wumpum. Wumpum.
00:08:03
Speaker
My teammates banged on the chain link fencing on the dugout, trying to rattle the pitcher. I looked over to the dugout for a sign. I
Game Tension and Comeback
00:08:12
Speaker
wasn't given the coach's sign, so I didn't know what to look for. I looked anyway. Better to give the impression that I might be a threat, but maybe I should be lying low. Well, the other coach must assume I'm a threat, otherwise why would I be pinch running?
00:08:26
Speaker
He doesn't know that I haven't even smelled the varsity field. No doubt the opposing coach must think I'm a threat, because why would our coach pinch run for someone unless I was, in some small way, an advantage to the person who had successfully reached base? I wasn't given any sign from coach, so I decided to take a conservative lead and be smart.
00:08:48
Speaker
It was a huge run. The biggest, most game-tying-est run of the season. I knew this. Coach knew this. The other team knew this. This was my varsity debut. Sink or swim. I ballooned to my lungs and let out a long, slow breath. Then it got quiet, and the world descended. I waited for the pitcher to tow the rubber in the stretch.
00:09:13
Speaker
All the sounds were muffled, as if by a pillow. I shuffled off the bag and crouched in a wide athletic posture, ready to get a good jump on a ground ball, pass ball, a liner to the gap, anything. I needed to score.
00:09:27
Speaker
Then that meditative silence snapped. Bunt, bunt, bunt! yelled the second baseman. What the hell is that? I thought, as my eyes widened, I mean, what the fuck is going on? Our hitter wasn't squaring the bunt. I felt detached, similar to that scene in Jurassic Park when Muldoon encounters the Velociraptor in the jungle, only to realize he was about to be flanked. He said, clever girl, before getting mauled to pieces. Picked off.
00:09:58
Speaker
A disembodied version of myself floated above the scene and could do nothing but wait for the inevitable. The pitcher fired to first base. I dove back to the bag. The first baseman snagged the ball and slapped the tag on my right arm. He's out! screamed the umpire.
00:10:16
Speaker
I remained there for a second, on my stomach, the visor of my helmet scratching at the dirt, realizing that I had single-handedly ruined my team's chance at advancing further in the tournament. All those seniors, all those juniors, all those sophomores on the bench who watched this freshman take a foolishly courageous lead off first base and fall for a silly, trick, pick-off play. East Bridgewater smelled chum in the turbulent bottom of the seventh inning, see?
00:10:44
Speaker
Their players in the dugout roared. In their minds they had just won the game. Just two more outs to go. I jogged back to the dugout with my head sunk low. I looked like a cane. My face only had eyes from my feet. I lay my helmet down in the dirt and paced to the end of the dugout. I crouched against the fence and watched as our next batter, no doubt feeling dejected by what he witnessed, popped up for the second out.
00:11:12
Speaker
I stared out onto the field, unblinking, staring out into the woods far, far away. The leaves in the now-flushed trees waved in the late spring breeze. My eyes started to burn, but I kept it together. I looked straight ahead, then down at my feet, and hoped that with one out to go we might still have a chance.
00:11:35
Speaker
I might have felt the sympathetic pat on my shoulder. Then again, I might not have. At moments like these, sometimes it is best to be left alone. No one was near me. I did stink, my initials realized. Everything slowed down and the sounds muffled. I saw my JV coat shaking his head, his foggy, cataracted eyes admonishing me in a milky gaze.
Personal Growth and Baseball
00:12:00
Speaker
I had let him down, since it was on his advice that I'd be called off the bench in the first place. Ping! Nate Sorrell then hit a swinging bunt single down the third baseline, which gave the team some life. I stood up and hooked my fingers through the fencing of our dugout. Two outs, runner on first. The Cro-Magnon Aaron Gagner, an athletic right-hander, better than average speed and no shortage of confidence, stepped into the box.
00:12:29
Speaker
The pitch zipped in and gagged near swung. The ball erupted off the barrel of his Easton and screamed for the left-center field gap. Our field had no fence, and by the time the ball hit the ground between the two EB outfielders, Sorrell had reached third. Still the ball rolled. I sprang up and yelled for our runners. We all smashed the screen of our dugout, urging them on, rattling it like rabid prisoners.
00:12:54
Speaker
Coach Kortimosh windmilled his right arm, sending Sorrell to the plate. He easily scored. Gagner rounded second and charged for third. Would there be enough time for Gagner to get home? The ball flew in from the outfield and Coach Kortimosh put up the stop sign. And Gagner stood on third with a game-tying triple. The dugout, the fans, the place was loud as a jet engine. East Bridgewater's pitcher paused and regrouped.
00:13:20
Speaker
We didn't have a scoreboard, but if we did, he'd see the game tied at 2-2. He took his cap off and wiped his brow. He stepped back to the rubber and stared at the plate. We screamed from the dugout to disrupt his rhythm as best we could. This wasn't golf. He wound up and delivered. The pitch skipped in, the dirt and scurried to the backstop.
00:13:41
Speaker
Gagnier broke for home and scored the game winner. We stampeded home plate and jumped up and down, screaming and yelling and smashing our hands onto the helmet of the hero who came through in our moment of need. Our fans kept on cheering, and I felt recharged by the electricity. I approached Gagnier and said, thanks for bailing me out, man. You're damn right I fucking bailed you out. He barked and turned his back, celebrating with our other teammates.
00:14:10
Speaker
Any joy I had vaporized. I walked with heavy cleats as I packed up some gear. I picked up my fingernails and threw my bag over my shoulder. I grabbed one of the pitching machines, turned it on its side, and wheeled it back to the garage. Baseball took a turn for me here. It was this moment where the game, I don't know, changed. That feeling would only fortify over the summer. For the weak of mind, as I was, this irreparably cracked my armor.
00:14:38
Speaker
whatever porous armor I managed to secure. The following day, I grabbed the Brockton Enterprise to read the story about the game. The headline read, A Poniquet Finds Way to Shake EB. I read the story, then I read it again, this time with a yellow highlighter.
00:14:55
Speaker
Glenn Farley wrote, Dave Quartermarsh is a realist. So after seeing the potential tying run picked off first base, the next batter pop up on the 7th inning of Friday's MIAA Division 2 South sectional first round game with East Bridgewater. Well, let's just say the Aponiquet High School baseball coach wasn't formulating pitching plans for Monday's second round of the tournament.
00:15:18
Speaker
We've come back a lot this year, said Kordimash. But realistically, after that pick-off play, and then the second out of the inning, I was thinking, yeah, it was over. We were fortunate to win this game, said Kordimash. Indeed, the Lakers were, particularly after the pinch runner for Chris Krupa, who had let off the last of the seventh with a single off-hunter, got nailed off first. I then taped that story in its entirety onto my fifth page of my scrapbook.
00:15:48
Speaker
I stared at it, memorized it, burned it into my eyes like a barcode, took the ink from the newspaper. If and when the opportunity came up again, the result would be different. It had to be. A couple of seasons passed, thousands of swings in the basement, many long tosses, the memory of that pick-off play always chirping. The sport carried all my dreams. For the entirety of my life, before, during,
00:16:16
Speaker
and after TPP. The only thing that made any sense was baseball, and playing baseball, and earning a paycheck for playing baseball. Ted Williams once said, baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel, not just to be as good as someone else, but to be better than someone else. This is the nature of man in the name of the game. It was time, now my junior year, a year I was fully entrenched. It was time to cut myself loose and let it rip.
00:16:48
Speaker
We trailed 12-4 against East Bridgewater, the same team that picked me off. It was the first round of the state tournament, bottom of the sixth inning, with only six outs left. Our fans still stuck around, still cheered for us, but it was clear that E.B. was on the verge of avenging that loss from 1996.
00:17:08
Speaker
Brian, the same Brian who shaved his head with me two years ago, hit his first of two home runs and the top of the sixth to cap a five run inning to pull us within three, twelve to nine. Blood was in the water. We looked at each other and we knew we could do this. We high fived a little harder, smacked each other's shoulders and asses with the force of a jackhammer. In the bottom of the seventh Bobby DeRosa struck out to lead off the inning, one out.
00:17:37
Speaker
Tommy Leonard hit a single, Andy Rose walked, then I walked. Nate Dennison smacked a single to center, scoring two runs, 12 to 11, moving me to third as the tying run still was just one out. Our fans screamed, reanimated.
00:17:55
Speaker
It reminded me of my freshman year. I looked over and saw our fans jumping, yelling, hoping we could pull off this comeback. My heart hammered in my chest, but I had been here. I wasn't nervous, though I felt nerves. I was ready to score, to tie this game, then to win this fucker and move on. Coach Quartermarsh approached me from the bench. If that ball's in the air, you're tagging up, he yelled. I could barely hear him over the screaming fans and my screaming teammates in the dugout, trying to rattle the cage of the pitcher.
00:18:25
Speaker
I nodded and breathed in deep to loosen my tightening chest. I took my lead off third and foul ground and shuffled home as the pitch zipped in. If that ball's in the air, you're tagging up.
00:18:38
Speaker
Jay Deleon, our designated hitter, took a big swing and hit the second pitch you saw in the air toward right field. I went back to the base to tag up. That ball is not deep, I thought. It's barely on the fringe of the infield-outfield line. Thinking. Oh shit, I'm thinking. Stop it, you basket case. Second baseman is gonna catch that ball just a few feet into the outfield. If that ball's in the air, you're tagging up. No second guessing. Brendan.
00:19:07
Speaker
If you're gonna go, man, just go, just fucking go for it. The ball hit the second baseman's mitt, two outs, and I took off. The sprints, all those sprints, the weight I carried, the black tire and toe, the failed to inflate parachute, the vomit, the burning trachea, the upsetting result every time the stopwatch beeped.
00:19:28
Speaker
4-4-4 yelled the players on the East Bridgewater bench, as shocked as the hundreds of people watching this game. As shocked as I, at this point, if they tagged me out, the game's over.
00:19:40
Speaker
My battle spikes crunch in the stone dust as I reach full velocity. I took giant strides and pumped as fast as my legs could carry me. Friends of mine in the stands watching the game later told me they couldn't believe I tagged up. As soon as I left the bag they knew I'd be out and I'd be the subject of David Letterman's top ten list for things more clutch than BO.
00:20:02
Speaker
The ball was way too shallow for me to score. Still, I chugged for home plate and looked over my shoulder as that ball came hurtling toward home plate. We were going to meet together at the same time. The catcher put his shin guard down to block me from sliding. He wasn't budging, which meant this throw was on target. I put my head down and ran harder. I was weightless.
00:20:26
Speaker
The ball approached and the catcher stuck out his glove to make the catch. I slid to the outside of home plate sticking my right leg in front. The catcher put the tag down. I slid across home plate. I saw the ball pop loose and bounce as if in slow motion onto the crunchy dirt. The crowd was silent. My team was silent because they couldn't see the ball.
00:20:49
Speaker
I saw it though. I saw the ball sitting there in the dirt while the catcher kneeled, hanging his head. I popped up and pumped my fist and screamed. I knew it before anyone else. The umpire yelled, safe. And the crowd and our team erupted as we tied the game, 12-12. My teammates huddled around me. B-Yo, you scared the shit out of me, man, Brian said.
00:21:14
Speaker
Coach Kordimash approached me, grabbed my right hand, and squeezed it as hard as he could. He didn't let it go, and just looked me in the eye and gave me one strong, affirmative nod. He didn't have to say anything. We both understood.
00:21:29
Speaker
In the bottom of the eighth, tied 12-12, Brian drilled a shot to right center field where no one could track it down. He sprinted around the bases and I remember him rounding second with his arms flailing and his eyes wide as baseballs staring at third base so he didn't miss it. The outfielders had barely tracked the ball down as he rounded third and we spilled out of the dugout.
00:21:52
Speaker
When he hit home plate, we mobbed him and put him on our shoulders. 13-12. We won again. Brian hit two home runs all season, and he saved them all for this game. Coach Quartermarsh told the Brockton Enterprise after the game,
00:22:07
Speaker
E.B. has terrible luck here. Two years ago, we trailed 2-1 in the 7th, and an RBI triple in a wild pitch beat them. I knew the subtext to that inning two years ago. I had it highlighted on page 5 of my scrapbook to remind me how low I was and, hopefully, how far I'd come.
00:22:26
Speaker
Years later, after that pick-off play, after I sprinted 90 feet home, after I batted over 500, after I made a Division 1 baseball team, after the coach cut me, thus ending my pursuit of the show, after all of this, the game still sticks with me, man.
Lingering Sports Memories
00:22:42
Speaker
You lose yourself in the game, in the sport, and it takes something from you. It goes both ways, but it mainly takes.
00:22:51
Speaker
Roger Angel, the iconic baseball writer of New Yorker fame, once wrote, American men don't think about baseball as much as they used to, but such thoughts went deep. Yes, they do.
00:23:03
Speaker
He recalled the time when he was 35 years old, the same age I am now, and recounted a recurring dream to a psychiatrist. In the dream, Angel looked down on the ground and saw a gravestone of the sort you find below a flagpole in Yankee Stadium's Memorial Park. It said, 1920 to 1955. The psychiatrist asked Angel what he thought it meant. Angel thought a beat. Then he cried, oh, oh.
00:23:32
Speaker
His dream of becoming a pro ball player had, quote, died at last, end quote. These things, and failure and triumph, like I said, they stay with you, man. Far longer than they ought to.
00:23:51
Speaker
That's it for another episode of the hashtag CNF podcast. If I may ask, please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Thanks again for listening.