The Chris Sartinsky Memoirs: Chapter Thirteen: My Debut

I showed up for my second day of service with the Lakeland Flying Tigers already a failure. But they were paying me (pretty good) money, and they always needed bodies to fill out the roster, so I was to be a middle reliever for the rest of the year. I was an outcast on a team full of people at least three years older than me and I just wanted to go home, but the world doesn’t work like that. I told myself I would never sign another contract again as long as I lived, for any reason. If this meant I would have to live in a cave for the rest of my life, then I would live in a cave for the rest of my life. Fine.

Thankfully, after the blimp stunt, everyone ignored me. I guess it was just an initiation of some sort, and now that I had gone through it and I had learned my place, there was no need to beat me down any further. If that’s a cynical view of a pretty simple incident of hazing, I’m sorry, but that’s the way I thought of it at the time.

For about a week, I didn’t see any game action. I just sat in the bullpen with all the other relievers. It was fun, or it would have been, if I hadn’t been too frightened to speak up and join in. Your regular bullpen stuff—insulting the manager, insulting other players, pointing out attractive women and ugly people in the stands. A lot of it was course, but you didn’t think about that after a while. It was the simplest kind of human bonding, and I was a little desperate to get involved with it. I probably could have, if I'd wanted to, since my status as the hot shot new prospect was long forgotten in the face of my incredible failure. But I kept my mouth shut, because I was too afraid of the silence that would fall over the rest of the guys the first time I tried to say something.

It’s too bad I was so horrible at pitching, because I could have made a career out of being a middle reliever. Sit around with a bunch of friends, watch a professional baseball game every night, throw maybe 25 pitches a week and cash your nice big paycheck for a few minutes’ work every week. What a life.

During the second week—I think it was my tenth game with the team—we happened to be getting shelled by the Fort Myers Miracle, and the bullpen coach told me to start warming up. I was a little stunned. I didn’t really know how to do it correctly, so I tried to make it up. Meanwhile, on the field, reliever after reliever threw a few pitches, got bombed, and got yanked for someone ahead of me. Finally, I noticed that there was me and only two other pitchers in the bullpen. One was the closer and another had a sore elbow. It was only the seventh inning in a blowout, so I realized that I was going to be the next pitcher the manager called out. And sure enough, when the big lumberjack-looking fellow with the thick red beard let up a couple of runs, the manager walked out to the mound and pointed to his right arm. He was calling for me. I almost didn’t believe it, so I didn’t run out until I heard the bullpen coach yell at me to get the hell out there already before I took my trot across the field.

I don’t even remember running out to the mound. You’d think that would be one of those things you remember for the rest of your life, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t thinking.

On the mound, I threw every one of my allotted warm-up pitches, I guess because I was hoping that something would happen—maybe a spontaneous brushfire in left field—that would delay this horrible moment indefinitely. Or maybe it would start raining. Anything. I didn’t want to pitch. But nothing happened, except the batter stepped into the box, so I paced around the mound before I found my spot on the rubber and got ready to do my job. I was dying.

The catcher called for the fastball. I couldn’t tell behind the mask, but I think he was having a bit of a laugh about it, because I hadn’t learned how to throw anything but a fastball. The signal was completely unnecessary and I wished he hadn’t called attention to it. I scratched my upper lip and looked down to make sure I had the good grip on the ball and noticed a smear of red across the leather. I put my hand to my nose and found that blood was gushing out of my nostrils, faster than I could do anything about it. I stepped back and put my neck out, allowing it to pour onto the pitcher’s mound and looked at the dugout for the manager to come out and help me. He just sat there, scratching his head until the umpire called time and ran out to the mound.

“Is it stopping?” the ump asked me. I shrugged. I put jersey up to stop the bleeding, but it was pretty thin, and the blood pooled and spread quickly, and my hands were sticky where I was holding the shirt.

“What the hell’s going on out here?” the manager asked. “Are you going to let the boy pitch?”

“It’s bleeding pretty bad,” said the umpire. “I don’t know if he’s good to go.”

“I don’t know if you’ve looked out at my bullpen, ump, but I don’t have a lot of other options. It’s just a bloody nose for God’s sake. I think it stopped already.” I pulled the shirt away from my nose and a big glob of blood flew through the air and landed on my manager’s cleats. I apologized. “There’s nothing that says a man can’t pitch if he’s bleeding a little bit,” said the manager, a little disgusted.

“I can’t let him pitch,” said the ump. “The blood constitutes a foreign substance, I think.”

“Oh, get the hell out of here! If that were the case, you’d have guys pricking their fingers on the mound!” The manager suddenly stopped, as if he had just thought of a great idea. At this point, the opposing manager must have felt left out, because he came to join the conference.

“Could we get this show on the road?” he asked. He was a shifty man with a moustache. He looked anxious and couldn’t seem to stand still. He looked at his watch, like he had someplace better to be than a single-A ballpark at 4:30 in the afternoon.

“If he wants to let him pitch, then just let him pitch,” said my manager.

“Sometimes I get bloody noses when I’m nervous,” I said, just in case anyone hadn’t figured that out yet. The ump shrugged and got back into place behind the plate. So we were all ready to go and got ready to throw my fastball, struggling to get a good grip with the drying blood on my fingers and the torrent still pumping out of my right nostril.

The pitch I threw was pretty incredible. I’ve never seen a baseball move like that in my life. It wasn’t like with the apples, with big late drops and cuts. It zig-zagged through the air, like in a cartoon. By now, the ball was a big, eerie red mass. You could have slowed it down and watched the thing frame by frame and you still wouldn’t have been able to predict where it was going or how it would get there. It defied physics. The batter took a wild swing and hit a soft grounder to the shortstop. It was a double play. My first pitch thrown in the Minor Leagues was good for two outs. I practically skipped back to the dugout.

Once I got in there and took a seat at the end of the bench, the bleeding stopped. My shirt was stiff and almost completely red, my hands were covered in my own blood. It was disgusting and I went to the back to wash up, but the second baseman told me to sit down.

“Don’t want to blow your good luck,” he said with a smile. “My name is Ollie, by the way, and nice job out there.” I thanked him. He was very friendly and we had a nice little chat for the rest of the bottom of the inning. It was strange to interact with someone after so many days of communicating with nothing more than grunts, single-word responses and apologies.

I went back out there for the top of the eighth. There was no one warming up in the bullpen behind me. I felt better about myself now and nodded at the catcher when he called for another fastball. The batter hit it into and through the scoreboard, knocking the number three out of one of the little boxes. Our third baseman gave me a sarcastic little round of applause. The shortstop laughed. But this time, Ollie told them to give me a break, which stunned me. I gave him an appreciative little smile, making sure I didn’t look too gay (because that kind of thing still concerned me), and took my place back onto the rubber and promptly gave up another home run to the next hitter.

I couldn’t hear anything anymore, just the blood rushing through my head. And then I guess all the blood rushing through my head got together and decided to make another mad dash for my nose because I started bleeding again, worse than before. By now, I had probably lost a couple of pints and I started to get a little dizzy. The umpire looked at our dugout again, but my manager threw up his hands and retreated to the back, so the game went on.

I proceeded to blow through the heart of the other team’s lineup, striking out the three, four and five hitters in nine pitches. I got an impressed little ovation from everyone else, even though I was basically cheating and everyone knew it. It’s not like we were going to win the game anyway, and even if we had a chance, I still don’t really think people would have cared. It was a very relaxed atmosphere down there.

After the game, Ollie visited me at my locker and congratulated me again. “You know,” he said, “I’m sorry some of the guys on the team have been so hard on you. They can be very cliquey like that.” I looked around and people seemed to be giving me nasty looks again since Ollie started talking to me, which is something they hadn’t really done since the blimp. But I nodded my head, because I was still of the age that finds things like cliques and social exclusion to be exceedingly important and endlessly revelatory.

“That guy you replaced?” he went on, talking about Markie, “he was a douchebag. A real top-tier asshole, know what I’m saying?”

“I don’t know, I never met him,” I said. “I heard he was a real nice guy,” though I was smiling, because I really wanted what Ollie was saying to be true. Because then it wouldn't be my fault.

“He was a limey piece of shit. You know what he used to do? He used to—when somebody had a bad game, he’d tell you ‘too bad, you’ll get them next time’ to your face, but then when you left the room, he’d say the most awful things about you. And then, when you were walking to your car, he’d sneak up behind you and beat the crap out of you.”

“No! That can’t be!” I said, but in the tone of voice that a person uses when they are trying to say that they really do believe it and it’s just too awful to accept right away.

“Well, not the last part. But the other things.”

“That’s terrible,” I said, and Ollie nodded.

“I’m having a little bit of a party tonight,” Ollie said, slipping me a paper with his address on it. “Why don’t you stop by? Unless you’re doing something else.”

I agreed, naturally. I was ecstatic to have a friend on the team, and I appreciated that he asked if I had anything else to do, as if it were a possibility. I didn’t really worry about the fact that I didn’t like parties, or that I had just turned sixteen and Ollie was eight years older than me. It was just nice to be invited somewhere.

He ended calling me that night and told me there had been a change of plans and that I was to meet him at a motel downtown. I had no driver’s license, only a car and a permit that said I could only operate a vehicle with a licensed driver as a passenger, but Ollie told me that if I got pulled over, I would only have to tell them that I was on the team and they would let me go. But I wasn’t going to get pulled over anyway, he assured me. Just come on by, he said. I wrote the new address on the back of a napkin and headed over there. He told me to be over at exactly 10:30, so I left my room at 10:30 for the fifteen minute drive, because I was trying to cultivate an image of fashionable tardiness.

When I got to the motel, it was deserted. I looked at the napkin and drove up to the door of the room Ollie had given me, but all the lights were out. I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that Ollie was playing a joke on me, but I tried to put it out of my head, because it was kind of too horrible for me to consider. With the team, I could pretend that I never really wanted their approval anyway. But now, here, I had come too far to act like I wasn’t embarrassed about it the next day. This had to come off.

I sat in the car for a little bit, trying to think of something to do. I could have knocked, of course, but for some reason the fact that the lights were off was far too powerful a symbol for me to mess with. It meant something, that’s for sure. And when I listened, there was no sound coming from inside. There was no party in there.

As I was thinking in the front seat, a prostitute approached the car and tapped on the window with her fingernail. She wasn’t like the prostitutes I had ever seen on television. TV prostitutes are always thick and voluptuous and healthy, and sex is either a bore or a passion for them. This woman was thin and unsteady and her clothes were faded and torn and out of style. She looked sad and beaten-down. Her hair was more yellow than blonde, and it was barely combed. Her mouth was opened in a kind of disappointed smile, like the kind of smile someone gives when they see a train pull away right when they walk into the station, but this woman looked like she had been seeing that train pull away for decades. She was shivering. TV prostitutes never shiver. I tried to shake her off, but she kept tapping, like she was annoyed about something. She started saying “Hey, hey,” but in a really strained voice, like she expected that thin piece of Plexiglas to be soundproof, so there would be no reason to strain herself. I unrolled the window, but only a crack, because I was frightened and I didn’t trust her.

“Are you Ollie’s little friend?” she asked. I had to think about this for a second or two. I was little, and I knew Ollie, and I hoped that he would be my friend, even though we didn’t know each other too well yet, so would this make me Ollie’s little friend? Would Ollie tell this woman to expect one of his little friends? Maybe. I went with yes. “Let me in,” she said.

I asked her where Ollie was. She told me that he was at the party, which apparently wasn’t here. “He told me you were going to give me a ride,” she said. “Now are you going to give me a ride to the party or ain’t you?” She sounded a little hurt.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Where’s Ollie? Are you sure this was his idea?”

“Give him a call if you want,” she said. She offered me a little slip of paper with a phone number on it. I took it and thanked her and walked over to a pay phone a few steps away. Getting out of the car, I tried to avoid touching her.

I dialed the number. The first time, no one answered after four rings and I almost lost my quarter, but the second time, Ollie picked up. He sounded tired and distracted. He told me there had been a change of plans and the party was at a different address now. He asked me if I had picked up Shelia and told me that she would lead me there; Shelia knows where the party is. I wanted to go home, very badly, but a part of me thought it was too late for that. I thought that part of me would hate myself forever if I abandoned this. It felt like a first and a last chance at something. I would be going home to nothing but a tiny little apartment and the local news, which is the same every night.

Shelia had already gotten in the car, somehow, and she was sitting in the passenger’s seat. I got in without saying anything, and she told me where we were going. I knew the place, so she didn’t have to direct me. Part of me thought she was going to start talking, about her life or about my life or something profound like that. Give me some good old-fashioned prostitute-wisdom. But it didn’t happen like that. I don’t know why I expected her to say something. We like to believe that the people on the bottom have some kind of special perspective that the rest of us need. It helps us feel better about keeping them down there. I wonder if prostitutes get that a lot. If their clients ask them for advice, because they think the prostitute will know, by virtue of the fact that she keeps living, even though her life seems so unlivable.

We ended up at the second address, another motel. This time, the parking lot was full of police cruisers. Cops were milling around, chewing on pens and talking to each other, like something had just happened. I rushed to another pay phone and dialed the number again. This time, when Ollie answered, he sounded rushed and panicked, and spoke quietly.

“What happened?” I asked. I told him about the police. He already knew, of course.

“Change of plans, change of plans,” he said. I told him I would see him tomorrow, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “Don’t worry, the party’s still happening. We just moved again.” He gave me another address and once again made sure that I had Shelia with me. He said he really needed to see her for reasons that he would explain later. I assumed he was going to have sex with her.

This is the part in the story where I should have gone home. If I were reading someone else’s story, this is the part where I would start skimming over the lines, because something awful was surely about to happen and everyone but the main character knows it. It’s so obvious, and the solution is so simple, but the inexorable flow of the story keeps pulling the poor, foolish protagonist towards disaster. It’s unbearable to sit through, which it why you have to speed through it. Everyone looks at a car crash when we fly past on the highway, but no one stands around, examining every detail, savoring the place where the glass shattered and the skull cracked and the blood pooled. I can’t stand reading stories like that and I certainly wouldn’t write one if it weren’t true.

Instead, I got back in the car with Shelia. She was impatient. She tapped her long fingernails on her thighs, which somehow looked very hard and unforgiving. She didn’t look at me; she looked straight out the windshield and shook, like she was cold, but also like she was afraid of me. I was sixteen years old and clearly afraid of her. We had that in common; we were afraid of each other. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got to the party. I didn’t think it was possible to enjoy myself there. I imagined a room full of malnourished prostitutes with their half-hearted, bemused, disappointed smiles, shivering and shivering, a few huddled to themselves in balls to keep their bodies warm, with Ollie in the middle of the room, just laughing at his own good luck. I felt like I was going to vomit. I would only stay fifteen minutes, I told myself, and then I would go home and I could say that I went to the party. When my mother called the next day and asked how I was getting along, I could tell her I made a friend on the team and that I had gone to a party.

We drove for a long time. It felt like hours. Neither of us spoke. I listened very intently to the engine and looked at the strange purple color of the pavement under the headlights. We crawled through tangled backroads and slipped underneath shady palms that stretched over the roads. I forgot where we were going and why we were going there, and for a few moments, I was just able to enjoy the driving.

Then there was a siren behind us and I could see that it was for me. I pulled over. It didn’t even occur to me that I was a sixteen year old with a permit and a prostitute. The officer quickly reminded me when I handed it to him (the permit, that is) and he told me I wasn’t allowed to drive alone.

I turned to Shelia. She looked angry, but like she might start crying as well. I asked her if she had her license with her. Like all this would have been legal if I had my license with me. The cop recognized Shelia as a prostitute and searched the car. Someone had left a bag of cocaine under the front seat. Yeah, someone.

The DA down there went easy on me. I think there were a couple people in the Tigers organization pulling strings for me, and I’ll be grateful for that forever. I got probation on the implicit condition that I would leave the team and go back to Connecticut and baseball would never ever hear from me again.