Big in Japan, Hated in Venezuela 3
Continued from last week...
In the minor leagues, for example, he once booted a ball, and really booted it, halfway up the stands, knocking an old lady nearly unconscious. Bill had made a deft scuttle over to his left, swooped his arms down and then up, was in the process of bring it up to sling over to the first baseman, when the ball slipped out of the webbing of his glove, and down to his foot, where it was kicked neatly, NFL punter-style, into the stands. Bill was not a graceful sort. Ozzie Smith, Bill Mazeroski, Orlando Cabrera. Notice how Bill's name wasn't in that list. Because it didn't belong there. He looked so much like a bobblehead doll when he's fielding, people would say, that he doesn't need a bobblehead doll night in his honor.
The unfortunate thing about that incident is that it turned out the woman hit was the wife of the owner of the ballclub. And while the ball was in the process of knocking her nearly unconscious it put her in the unenviable position of putting to test everyone's mother's old admonishment to always wear clean underwear, because you never know when you're going to get struck by a baseball and knocked rear end over tea kettle, showing off that self-same underwear as you're face down on a plastic seat, bloomers and all on display just above the little metal 9 bolted into the back of the chair. She failed the test, it so happens.
Now, you'd think something like that would have rattled Bill, sending him into a shell of visualization, imagining himself a hermit crab, looking for a new, bigger shell to hide in. But he shrugged it off, giggled a little (but not too much), and set himself up for the next batter. Who hit a ball right at him, which he caught, and promptly tagged out the runner from first, who'd been running on the pitch, and flipped the ball back into the stands in the owner's wife's direction with a nod and a smile.
But when he got to the majors, with Boston, something went slightly awry. He'd been highly touted: International League Player of the Year, batting champ, led the league in steals... he wasn't quite a gold glover, but he got the job done out there. He was the number two or three rated prospect in the Sox farm system. His name kept coming up in trade rumors. Things were looking good.
So when he reported to spring training, and proceeded to set the place on fire (not literally, though a middle infielder did have an unfortunate accident that year that caused them to have slightly more games away from Fort Myers than they normally would have due to smoke damage to the home clubhouse), and got an invite to the big club as their provisional starting second baseman.
When he arrived with the club at Logan airport late in the evening on the first of April, he waved off offers of a lift to his new, as-yet-unseen apartment out in Brookline. He hoped to find his way out there via public transport, and, if that failed him, a cab.
After seeing Wonderland, State, Back Bay, he hopped a commuter rail into South Station, by accident and unintentionally leaving a shoe on the platform. The shoe had come from his bag, it wasn't one of the ones he had been wearing -- he was in the habit of leaving his money in one of his shoes, in his duffel bag, and it was the money shoe which he had taken out to get more money to pay the fare to the next station, which he mistakenly thought was bringing him closer to his new home in Brookline. He kept his money in his shoes because he deemed it safer from pickpockets, of whom he he been warned when taking trips to the big city. Of course, he needn't worry about pickpockets now, as it was platform cleaners who would most likely benefit from his odd choice of money storage.
At South Station he triumphantly caught the Red Line, all the way to the end. Which was Alewife, which wasn't terribly close to Brookline, it had to be said. At this stage, extremely late, quite tired, and ready to go home and sleep in before the next day's home opener, he hailed a cab outside the station.
"White Place, just near Emerson Garden. Please." Bill nearly collapsed on the seat. He slung his duffel bag awkwardly over on to the seat beside himself. There was something comforting in it's boxy bulk, thudding off the partition between himself and the driver and his knees. The boxy bulk got him thinking about his missing shoe, which he'd noticed on the train ride out to Alewife, but he leaned over on to the bag, and propped his head up to gaze out on his new city.
"Where?" The cabbie looked around. Kind of like the girl at the party that was always looking to move on to something more interesting. He even chewed gum like her.
"White Place. 21 White Place. It's off Harvard St." All this he'd looked up online before boarding the team plane down in Florida. "I think."
"What's that? Some kind of joke?"
"What?" Bill started to look around, as well, something the cabbie hadn't stopped doing yet. Nor had he started driving. Which were two things Bill didn't like about this cab driver already.
Whatever it was the driver was looking for evidently wasn't going to make an appearance, so, with a hearty clunk, he shifted into drive, and started off on to what looked like a major highway.
To be continued... ?
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Thus goeth the serial. Or something.
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