Love to Love You Baby

  * * *

  At the last moment, Jack had veered away from the garages, deciding what he needed was a long walk. A drive might end in road rage, he was so primed to pop.

  Cripes, what a morning! Baby on his doorstep, smart mouth in his kitchen, Sadie on the loose. He hadn’t even gotten to see the ball scores on ESPN.

  Not that the sky would fall if he missed finding out how the Yankees had done last night. Nobody from the Yankees had called to see how he was doing, right?

  Nobody wrote. Nobody called. Nobody gave a damn.

  He was yesterday’s news, the pitcher who could have gone to the Hall of Fame, the “used-to-be” who was only good now for after-dinner speeches at youth sports banquets and showing up for old-timers’ games, his beer gut hanging over his belt.

  And all while Tim went on and on. Catching. Slugging. Heading for the first-string All-Star team next month. Girls hanging all over him, ESPN calling for interviews. Getting the best table in restaurants, being recognized on the streets. Hanging out with the guys, swapping stories, pulling practical jokes on the bullpen catcher.

  Not having to grow up, damn it!

  That thought stopped him, just as he was about to give a kick to a stone that had somehow ended up on his well-manicured lawn. Grow up? Wasn’t he a grown-up? Didn’t he want to be a grown-up?

  A game. Sadie had called his profession a game. Which it was, for the fans. For those who operated between the white lines, it was a whole hell of a lot more than just a game.

  Scrabble was a game. Tiddlywinks was a game.

  Baseball? Hell, baseball was a way of life!

  Jack pulled up a patch of grass and sat himself down, leaning his back against a tree trunk as he considered a few things.

  Baseball had never been a game to him; even though it was called a game, what went on was called playing the game. He closed his eyes, remembering a quote from Pete Rose: “I’d walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.”

  Jack was pretty sure where Pete was coming from with that statement, that cry from the heart.

  He knew that for him there was nothing else; he hadn’t ever wanted to know anything else. He lived for the sights, the sounds, the smells. The look on the batter’s face when he swung from the heels and connected with nothing but air, as Jack’s curve whizzed by him, made a pop in the catcher’s mitt. The three no-hitters, the all but perfect game. His lucky socks. That long walk to the mound, the sometimes even longer walk back to the dugout.

  The guys. The fans. The attention.

  All of that, all of that. But it was the game that he missed the most. The science of it, the mechanics, the strategies, the feel of the ball in his hand, the explosion of its release. The guys, the stats, the hot-foots they pulled during a laugher, when there was nothing to do in the dugout but have fun because the score was already sixteen to nothing. The sound of his spikes as he walked across the locker-room floor, damn it! He loved it. He loved it all.

  He missed it all so much.

  “God,” Jack muttered, scrubbing at his face, trying to rub the memories out of his brain. “I lose the game, I’ve got an empty house, Cecily’s kid, a bigmouthed pain in my ass out to empty my bank account and drive me nuts, and a whole bunch of nothing to look forward to. Add a tax audit, and my day would be complete.”

  He stood up, grabbed his car keys out of his pocket as he headed for the garage. “I’ve got to cut this out. I hate pity parties, and I sure don’t like being the guest of honor. Sadie’s right. I’m a mess, pathetic even. Something’s gotta give here, and soon.”