April, 2021
I paused just inside the door, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. It took a while - just when I thought it was going to work, I'd look over to the small stage that for some reason was lit up, even though the band was nowhere to be found. And I'd be blind again.
Eventually, I got to where I could look to the other end of the bar. He was already there. Of course.
I slid onto the stool next to him. "Tom," I said. Then I waved to the blonde bartender who probably thought she was fat, and was so, so very wrong about that. When I had her attention, I said, "Maker's Mark, neat." Tom and I sat next to each other in silence, him nursing his drink, me waiting for mine.
After a few moments, the bartender placed my drink in front of me. I started to hand her money, but she waved it off, saying "I'll start a tab."
I'd become at least a semi-regular.
I sipped my drink, savoring the taste, and not for the first time wishing I wouldn't get ridden quite so hard if I'd ordered some water in it. But Tom wasn't likely to let it slide.
"How did you ever find this place?" I asked him as we drank.
"Google," he replied, his gruff baritone making the single word sound like an insult. Or maybe it was just that I had known Tom for twenty years, and believed that he really was insulting me. "Plainville is almost exactly half way between Brooklyn and Boston. Tangles is the best bar in Plainville. So here we are. Drink up, I'm one ahead of you."
While I sipped, I turned to look at the man next to me. Still about 6' 1", his hair now turned to iron gray, so that it finally matched his eyes. Tanned far more than a resident of Boston should be in April, though I was sure he traveled back to his home in Los Angeles as often as he could. Wiry muscles everywhere, and a rugged face that worked magic on the ladies.
Seriously, I'd seen him do it, back in our playing days long ago and far away. He would just look at them, and it would make panties drop faster than a vodka punch at a freshman mixer. I'd asked one of them about it, the next morning. "I don't know," was all she could say. "It's like he looks at you, and his eyes are saying 'We both know I can have you whenever I want to, so how about we stop pretending.' And then, he does."
All my eyes ever seemed to say was 'Give me glasses, I can't read the small print any more.'
"So how's the team going?" Tom Slade asked me.
"Actually?" I replied. "We lost to the Blue Jays, 5 - 0. We lost to the Blue Jays, 11 - 3."
"Did you expect anything else?"
"Ah, but in between those two. It wasn't pretty. We got a 5 - 1 lead and barely hung on. But we did, in fact, hang on. Toronto is 12 - 4, and one of those four losses was to us. Lowly little us."
Tom tossed back the rest of his...whatever it was. Something manly, I'm sure. "Well, you're beating us, that's for sure. That bunch of losers I've got in Boston has managed three wins, and one of them was lucky."
"what do you mean?"
"A 1 - 0 game is lucky, no matter who wins it. Orlando Marston got hold of one when we were in Chicago, the wind was blowing out, and it was enough. Otherwise, if you ain't the Brewers, we can't beat you."
I wanted to sympathize with him. But I really couldn't. The worse his team was, the worse mine could be with me keeping my job. And it didn't go the other way - we'd established early in our clandestine meetings that his team owner, Northcutt, wasn't doing anything as stupid as the little challenge my owner had set for me. Tom had his job, and he had it for at least a couple of years.
Northcutt was probably afraid that if he fired him, Slade would steal his wife. He may have been right. Tom's morals had changed since his divorce. Or was it his second divorce? Then again...
"How about your attendance?" I asked, hoping for a subject change. But this was the wrong question.
"We're averaging about 30k. And we've played the Giants and Marlins at home, so you can't say that nobody wants to come see bad teams. You?"
"We're doing pretty good. Better than that, even." Actually, all three games had sold out. I think that's the part that I'm having the hardest time accepting. That we're 7 - 8, and appear to be flirting with respectability for a few moments? I can accept that...no, I shouldn't lie. I can't quite accept that either. I fully expected us to be no better than 5 - 10 by this point, and if you'd told me we'd be 0 - 15 I'd have been disappointed, but not surprised at all. 7-8 is better than Tampa and Boston.
And it's four games better than Tom.
Tom ordered another. I'm sure it was purely my imagination that she served him faster than she had me. And with a more hopeful look on her face. "The bottom half of my rotation and three quarters of my bullpen are in their contract year, and on a good day they're not worth one contract between them all. The top two in my rotation are set, but they're also over the hill and over 20 million a year."
"Bull, Tom." His eyebrows both rose, as they always did when I contradicted him. I didn't do it much, but most people didn't do it at all. This was how I knew we were friends. "Your staff ERA is 3.6. Mine's over 6. I'd kill to have the pitching problems you have."
"I didn't say I had pitching problems, kid. I said I had contract problems with my pitchers."
"Fair enough," I said as I sipped again. "No, your problem is that your team batting average is a buck eighty-eight. Makes my .226 look like the second coming of the '27 Murderer's Row." I took another sip, this one larger. "Besides, I've got contract problems of my own."
"Do tell."
"How about this? The one player I got who was supposed to be decent, the one guy who is relatively young and might be able to hit the ball? Matt Delahanty?"
"Ah yes, how is the Hammerin' Hawaiian?"
If I looked sour at the mention of Delahanty's nickname, there's a reason. "Still Hawaiian, but he ain't hammerin'" I said. "He hit 103 homers over the past two years. Know how many he has now? 2. One. Two. And an average of .115."
"Sh1t, that's not an average, that's what a drunk girl tells you she weighs at closing time." I wasn't exactly sure how to respond to that, but a nod seemed safest. I did look around to see if the bartender had heard. She had not.
"Tell me about it. Not only that, I'm hearing clubhouse rumors that he's pissed that he got traded from the champ to the basement. But his agent is starting to call me about renegotiating. He's up for arbitration this year, making 840, and he wants to go over 4 mil."
"Sign him. That's cheap, you sign him long term, and he's there when he gets out of the slump."
"I know that," I said impatiently. "But what if he's clubhouse poison? And more immediately, what if he doesn't get out of the slump?"
"Then you're still not out much. Unless you're dumb enough to give him a no trade deal." He took another drink, and saw my look. "You didn't?"
"No, I didn't. And he's not here long enough to have actually earned one. But he's got it in his head that he's getting one. I think our team press releases when we got him are going to his head."
"Yeah, well, boo hoo hoo. I'd kill to have him. At least your first baseman has potential. I've got a 33 year old career minor leaguer who's just barely over half the Mendoza line. So don't tell me how bad you've got it. Why..."
As they tend to, the conversation went into the night. It was good to have someone who understood. It was worth the two hour drive back to Brooklyn. I left around 11. Tom was staying, and almost certainly going home with the bartender.
And my team had still won more than twice as many as his had.