catching up, 4
Beckett lost the first game of the Division Series, but it wasn’t his fault. Seven innings, one run, just two hits, the both of them singles. He walked five Giants, which turned out to be his downfall, but still: only one run in his postseason debut. Pudge was absurdly, almost viciously proud of him, but Beckett was not having any of it, not with Jason Schmidt out-pitching him at almost every turn: a complete game, with no runs, and no walks. Beckett had been good, but Schmidt had been amazingly good, and in Beckett’s weird little mind the fact that he had not been as good as the opposing starter was the only fact that mattered.
Only three Marlins got on base at all. Pudge was one of them, but that didn’t mean anything when it came to calming Beckett down. He couldn’t spend all day and night soothing Beckett; he had to get Penny ready for Game 2, he had to talk things over with the relievers, he had to make sure he knew what approaches he wanted to take at the plate against Sidney Ponson, the Giants’ Game 2 starter. He did not have the luxury of sulking that a starting pitcher had.
They won the second game (seven pitchers, and so many runs, fourteen between the two teams, the kind of game that was hell on catchers). Penny had only lasted four innings again this time, and Pavano had somehow vultured a win despite only pitching for two outs. Encarnacion had homered. Coming back to tie a best-of-three series was enough to make the rest of the team fuzzily happy, inclined to over-tip at the unfamiliar San Francisco bars, but Beckett refused to come out to celebrate.
“I will not stay in and pat your back all night long if you are goin’ to sit here all malhumorado. I am not your fuckin’ baby-sitter,” Pudge spat, throwing up his hands in exasperation.
Beckett sank further into the pillows of his hotel bed. All the lights were off except for the bathroom, where Pudge had been getting ready, and the TV, which was tuned to an old Indiana Jones movie.
“Didn’t ask for no damn baby-sitter,” Beckett muttered. He did not move his eyes away from the TV screen.
At the bar, nobody asked where Beckett was. It was possible that nobody even noticed his absence. Penny bought a round for the whole team as thanks for bailing him out, and if he still glared a bit at Pudge when the bartender slid his bottle over, well, Pudge was not going to dwell on it.
Some of them, like Cabrera, were still technically too young to be there, and the possibility of getting into the kind of trouble that could keep them out of games was a good deterrent for the more obvious kinds of stupid behavior. Pudge was not so worried that he felt he had to watch the kids closely, keep track of their locations at all times, run interference with bouncers and other patrons: the kind of stuff he did make a habit of doing on roadtrips during the regular season. He let himself drink a little more than usual, a little more liquor than beer. He kept ordering drinks with a lot of fruit in them, sugary stuff that disguised the alcohol so that it went down deceptively easy, and apparently this was funny-- Urbina, who was drinking straight scotch, kept sniggering indelicately into his glass and nudging whichever Marlin happened to be sitting nearest so that they too could get a laugh at Pudge’s latest beverage.
Urbina had been kind of meanly teasing, lately. Maybe he should be worried, or at least more interested in paying attention to the phenomenon, but Pudge was too strung out on baseball in October to bother trying to figure it out.
He staggered back to the hotel room late, ricocheting off the walls and giggling quietly to himself, glad to be fat and padded for once, because he could hit a wall or two and come up not much worse for the wear. Beckett had fallen asleep with the TV on, its flickering light making his slack face look awake for a moment, optical illusions faking a flutter of his eyes. Pudge crawled in next to him with all of his clothes on, and woke up to Beckett bitching about the mark Pudge’s belt buckle had left on his hip.
They kept playing, kept winning, taking the next two games and earning the right to face the Cubs in the next round. Beckett was slated to pitch the first game of the series, again. On the plane to Chicago he chewed up the fingernails on his left hand so badly that his index finger started to bleed. Pudge, intent on ignoring Beckett’s nervousness lest it make him unbearably nervous too, did not even notice until the trainer, who had been making his way up the aisle to go to the bathroom, saw it. The trainer made dramatic noises and ran back for his bag. He grabbed Beckett’s hand with a series of angry tchs in the back of his throat as he daubed Beckett’s finger with some kind of synthetic liquid skin and ordered him to wear his batting gloves to bed.
Beckett gave him a look of pure, incredulous scorn. “Uh, no.”
“Uh, yes,” the trainer said. “You bite these any more, won’t matter if they aren’t on your throwing hand, you won’t be able to put your glove on come tomorrow.” He pulled a little roll of athletic tape out of his back pocket and started mummifying the tip of Beckett’s finger, muttering to himself.
“I ain’t wearin’ my damn battin’ gloves to bed,” Beckett insisted. He turned to look at Pudge, who had the window seat and had been pretending to be fascinated by the clouds.
“Trainer says,” Pudge said, not looking around. Clouds. Clouds were great. Really interesting, the shapes they made. That one was totally shaped like Dodger Stadium. The trainer left, still mumbling to himself. Beckett was stewing in the seat next to him. Out of the corner of his eye Pudge could see the damaged finger creeping slowly upwards again. He looked back out the window. The next time he glanced over, Beckett was chewing absentmindedly on the tape, flipping through a scouting report on his lap and still looking furious.
**
Beckett gave up four runs in the first inning. Pudge was concerned that he would try to do something drastic in the dugout-- smash his head into the wall so hard his neck broke, shatter his hand on the bench, something catastrophic-- so he stuck close, sitting down right next to Beckett even though it was very, very obvious that Beckett wanted to be left alone.
“We will be fine. Go out, next inning, get them back.”
“Two triples. And a homer. And a double,” Beckett said, his voice hollow. He was looking down at the dugout floor, a towel over the back of his neck. “Two, two triples in one innin’. Don’t fucking tell me shit’s gonna be fine.”
“Zam-bran-o, Lof-ton, Grud-zie-la-nek,” Pudge sing-songed, those being the next three Cubs due up. “Put your mind on those guys. The ones you pitch to already, they are gone. Your job is to get the guys inna future.”
“Fuck off. Fuck you, if I didn’t think ‘bout the fuckers I pitched to before, I’d make the same damn mistakes over and over and, and, and I wouldn’t be worth shit for beans. Hey, maybe I’ll give up three triples next inning.”
Pudge fisted his hands in his lap, resisting the urge to reach out and touch Beckett. Jeff Conine, up at the plate with two outs, lined a ball into right field. Carlos Zambrano, who was pitching for the Cubs, whipped around to watch it go. Conine barreled around the basepaths, dirt flying in his wake, rounding second without stopping, his cleats scoring the ground as he slid into third.
Pudge watched him carefully, waiting for the umpire’s broad-armed safe signal. “Maybe today, is jus’ a day for a triple.”
Beckett grunted.
The next inning went by one-two-three: strikeout, groundout, groundout. Beckett did not look particularly relaxed, but he did sit upright in the dugout after, and he actually watched the batters this time. Pudge was willing to convince himself that that was a good sign. Beckett was the first Marlins batter in the next inning, something that had the potential to be disastrous if he was already in a surly frame of mind.
When it was Beckett’s turn to bat Pudge kept a wary eye on him, paying attention on his footing, his proximity to home plate; too close, and Zambrano was sure to think he was being disrespected, which would set off a chain of subtle and not-so-subtle retaliatory effects that Pudge would have to handle. Redmond eased up alongside him.
“Looks good.” He nodded helpfully towards the plate, as if Pudge might have thought he meant one of the Cubs or something. In truth Beckett looked more grimly determined than good. Pudge held his breath until Beckett cracked the ball into right field. Sammy Sosa caught it without much difficulty, and Beckett racked his bat hard into its cubby hole on his way back to the bench, but he had made contact. That was good. It was swinging and missing entirely that brought out his worst moods.
Juan Pierre tripled, Luis Castillo worked a walk. Pudge came out on deck while Castillo was up, edging around behind the homeplate umpire as close as he dared, trying to get a good look at Zambrano’s motion, the precipitous dive of his sinker. Castillo glanced back at him after trotting down to first. Pudge stamped twice in the dirt, breaking it up with his cleats. Be ready to run.
He let the first pitch go by without swinging. Zambrano did not have his best control this inning, no need to push it; he was going to have to throw a fastball soon. He almost felt bad for Paul Bako, who had the dubious honor of catching Zambrano, because it was all so terribly obvious. Being forced to call obvious pitches was a cruel, cruel thing for a catcher.
The next pitch came in slow and straight, something offspeed that wasn’t dropping away. He had been expecting something faster and almost overswung, managed compensate with his feet at the last possible moment, twitching back just enough to stay with the ball, get it right in the middle of his bat, the seams making a hard sound as they blasted off the wood.
Zambrano was swearing before the ball even left the infield. Pudge ran towards first like it was going to drop and turn into a real race, but his hands were tingling that particular way they did when he’d made home-run-hard contact. Sure enough, as he rounded the base, he could see the ball fly over and out past the wall. Sosa turned to watch it go almost wistfully.
Pierre and Castillo were both waiting at home. He let them smack him over the head a little before shrugging them off with a nod to the umpire-- not showing anyone up, just a little excited, you understand. With a single swing he’d brought them back to within one run; that was as much as he could do for Beckett right now.
He was almost afraid to look for Beckett in the dugout, knowing they were still behind, but Beckett beat him to it, joining the crowd of Marlins high-fiving Pudge at the stairs. He locked eyes with Pudge-- a sensation entirely inappropriate for a baseball game jolting Pudge somewhere well-hidden by protective gear-- and smacked him firmly on the ass. Half a second later Encarnacion and Conine and Lee were also slapping Pudge on the ass, but it was a little different when it came from Beckett.
Once things had calmed down he spotted Beckett in the middle of the dugout and went over, intending to ask a few pointedly leading questions, see if there had been as big an improvement in Beckett’s mood as he hoped. He had only taken a few steps, though, before Miguel Cabrera hit a home run of his own and the bench erupted in boisterous celebration again.
“OK?” he asked, after things had calmed down for a second time. Pierre was shaking out his jersey; someone had dumped sunflower seeds down his collar after the second home run. Encarnacion was batting. The game was tied.
“OK,” Beckett said, nodding compulsively and rubbing his hands together. “This is OK, this is OK. I gotta, I better stay warm.” He was halfway through shoving his arm into his warm-up jacket when Encarnacion lined a ball out of the park, and got tangled up in the next, increasingly riotous welcome in the dugout. McKeon had to help extract him from the resulting jacket knot.
“Crazy,” Redmond said, eyeing Beckett as he contorted himself around, all twisted up in shiny teal fabric, McKeon tugging gamely at one sleeve.
“He is not crazy,” Pudge protested. “Just a little… all over the place. It is his firs’ October, this is normal. I mean, he is still jus’ a kid when it comes to baseball, you know.”
Redmond shook his head sadly. “He’s infected you with his craziness.”
“You are so full of mierda,” Pudge said. Beckett was experiencing so many things for the first time, on the field and off of it; his type of craziness, if it could even be called that, was nothing he could pass on to Pudge. If anything, it was the other way around.
**
They beat the Cubs, which sent them off to Yankee Stadium. The World Series. They were so much the underdogs that practically nobody outside of the professionals in Vegas could calculate the odds of them winning. In the clubhouse they blustered to each other, anything can happen, short series, luck of the day, but it was a grim sort of bluster. It wasn’t as if they could just throw up their hands and admit that the thing was over; it had to be played out to the bitter end. Still.
They won the first game in New York, but lost Game 2 before anyone could really get their hopes up. Redman was wild right out of the gate, nothing Pudge or anyone else could do to stop it. McKeon pulled him in the third, and Redman sat in the dugout with his head in his hands, hair sticking out between his fingers, just about the most abject thing Pudge had seen.
Back to Florida, then, where they lost Game 3 in front of what might have been the biggest crowd ever to watch baseball at Pro Player Stadium. He had gotten kind of used to home games where 10,000 people showed up and half of those were gone by the sixth inning, throwbacks to the kinds of crowds he’d played for in those old Tulsa Driller days. This was a real big league crowd, though: well over 60,000 lofted high in the air on those football stadium seats. Many of them were Yankee fans, but not all.
Game 4 went more than four hours, lasted twelve innings. Pudge caught every single one of them. They won on a walk-off homer from Alex Gonzalez, the exhaustion that had filled the dugout turned unexpectedly to giddy happiness like a switch had been flipped. Cabrera had actually been dozing in the dugout and snapped his head up so abruptly when the ball was hit that the trainers kept him after to make sure he hadn’t strained his neck. Pudge stuck around the park, ostensibly to play translator if Cabrera needed it, but really because he was buzzing with energy and couldn’t bring himself to leave the site and source of it just yet.
The series was tied at two wins apiece. It still seemed like a fluke. These were, after all, the Yankees. Pudge knew the Yankees better than most of these NL players; he was not about to be fooled.
Then they won Game 5.
**
//No. Absolutely not.// Maribel folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. She wasn’t even looking at him and Pudge still winced.
//But mo-o-o-o-m, it’s the World Series//, Dereck pleaded. //I’ll take my homework with me, I’ll do it on the plane and inna hotel, I’d be the only kid in my class going and dad’s playing and pleeeeaaaaaase?//
//If he gets to go I get to go,// Amanda added, piping up from her perch on the couch.
//Nobody gets to go! You haven’t even been in school two months this year,// Maribel said. //You want to get out of school right after the year starts? How are you going to learn anything that way, and what will your teachers think? Oh, there go those spoiled Rodriguez kids, off on a plane again! You want people to think you’re spoiled brats?//
//I don’t care if they do. Everyone knows dad plays baseball anyways, if we don’t go they’re gonna be like, Hey, your papi was in the World Series and you didn’t even go see him play, that’s weird.//
//But we did see him play, we went to the games here,// Amanda said.
Dereck grabbed a pillow off the couch and threw it at her head. //Shut up, pest, you aren’t helping!// Amanda batted the pillow away with both hands, reflexes as good as any infielder Pudge had seen, and stuck out her tongue at Dereck, who bugged his eyes out at her in retaliation. Ivanna, who had been quietly building a tower with oversize lego bricks on the floor, saw his face and got frightened and started to cry.
//God, Ivanna, don’t be such a baby!// Dereck muttered.
//She’s only three, she is a baby!// Amanda sat up straight and put her hands on her hips, Maribel in miniature.
//Not a baby!// Ivanna protested, starting to cry even harder. Maribel shot Pudge a dirty, look what you did sort of glare before rushing over to soothe her.
Pudge sighed. He hadn’t been the one to bring it up, but he couldn’t very well blame it all on an eleven-year-old. And the truth of it was that he did want them there in New York with him. Dereck, of course, who cared about baseball in this deeply intense and personal way; but also Amanda, who liked baseball when Pudge was playing at home and hated it when he was on the road; and Ivanna, who was too young to really understand that what her papa did for work was different from what most other papas and mamas did; and Maribel, who still had the magic-seeming ability to kiss him and make him forget all about baseball for at least a couple of hours. Things were going to be crazy enough as it was. Knowing that his family was there with him, for him-- maybe that would help.
When Maribel went into the kitchen to start making dinner, Pudge followed. //Look,// he said. //You should all come.// Maribel ignored him, pulling a large pot out of a cabinet, setting it down on the stove maybe a little harder than necessary.
//It would only be a few days,// he tried. //They won’t be out of school that long. They could get sick and be out longer than this.//
//God forbid,// Maribel snapped. She turned on the faucet and started measuring out cups of water.
//I mean, like, a cold,// Pudge said. //Not… you know what I meant. Look.// He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. Maribel set the measuring cup down in the sink and lowered her chin, sighing softly. //I want you there,// Pudge said, pressing what little advantage he had while he still had it. //You should be there. And what if… what if this is the only chance I get? The last time I was on a team this good, the whole damn league went on strike. The World Series, that doesn’t come around every year for most guys, not for me. It’s taken long enough, what if I never get back here and this is my only chance and if you and the kids aren’t there…//
//Hush,// Maribel whispered, turning around in his arms, wrapping her own arms around him. Pudge was surprised to realize that he was breathing hard, blinking a sting out of his eyes.
After dinner, Dereck washed the dishes, it being his turn. Pudge stood next to him at the sink, drying them and keeping an eye out for stray spots.
//Well?// Dereck finally blurted, after fidgeting silently through the silverware.
Pudge winked at him. Dereck grinned, huge and bright. //Awesome! Can I take batting practice with you guys? Can I hang out in the clubhouse during the game?//
//I will ask Coach McKeon,// Pudge said, trying and failing to keep a stupid grin off of his own face. //Tell you what, though. Keep it a secret, just you and me, but…// Dereck leaned in, soap suds dripping from his hands. //If we, you know. Go all the way.//
Ganamos, Dereck mouthed, silent, afraid to say it out loud. Win.
Pudge nodded. //If that. Then you and me, we will walk the bases together, right after. And we can… I will kiss home plate. And you can kiss home plate right next to me. OK?//
//OK,// Dereck said, eyes gone huge. He looked like the slightest push would have knocked him over. If only Amanda had been there to take full advantage of it.
He did not know what had possessed him, making a promise like that. It was only more pressure to win, and if they lost, Dereck would be even more upset. That, on top of the losing itself, would probably be more than he could bear. But if they could pull it off, it might just turn out to be one of the best promises he had ever made.
**
The flight from Miami to New York for Game 6 was so quiet that he could hear every last mechanical twinge of the flaps on the wings, straight through from takeoff to touchdown. If they won this game, that was it: the World Series. All they needed was one win. It would have to be in New York if it happened, but it could happen. It could. Just one more win.
Of course Beckett had the start.
As soon as they got their keycards Beckett beelined for the hotel elevators, not waiting for Pudge to ride up with him. Maybe he was intimidated by the presence of Pudge’s family, the fact that this was the first road game in months where Pudge would not be sharing his room, but lots of the other guys had brought their families up on the team plane too, and Pudge did not see why his family should be any weirder. Maybe it was something else. In any event it was worrying enough for him to con an extra key to Beckett’s room from the team’s travel secretary, get the kids settled into their suite before whispering to Maribel that he needed to go check on this young pitcher, big start tomorrow, you know, left by himself he might do anything. Maribel rolled her eyes and nodded.
//Don’t come back too drunk,// she said, already unzipping the nearest suitcase in pursuit of distracting kid’s toys.
//Wouldn’t dream of it,// Pudge promised.
By the time he got there, Beckett was in the bathroom. He had the faucet running as high as it could go, so he was almost certainly doing something that Pudge needed to be there for-- throwing up, or hyperventilating, possibly even crying-- but when he tried the door he found that Beckett had locked it.
Getting Beckett out of the bathroom before he wanted to come out would result in a lot more noise than Pudge wanted to make. Fine. So long as Beckett didn’t fall asleep in there, he could wait.
The first channel that came up on the TV was the hotel information screen. The second channel was something that looked like local high schoolers had broadcast it, the third and fourth were running Yankees highlights. Pudge hastily clicked away from those. Twelve channels up he finally found Telemundo, which was showing Mexican fútbol, but at least it was in Spanish and contained no references to Derek Jeter.
Two goals later, Beckett emerged. His hair was wet but he was in the clothes he’d been in on the plane, so he probably hadn’t been in the shower. He looked sheepish and defensive already, wiping his palms on the pockets of his jeans, but he did not seem surprised to see Pudge there.
Pudge shifted over on the bed without saying anything. Beckett lay down right next to him, pressing up close, shivering. Pudge could be charitable and assume that was because Beckett hadn’t toweled his face off properly. He scooted down the bed so that he was lying down too, not propped up against the pillows. Beckett edged closer.
“Can we… can we jus’, not. Talk ‘bout shit.”
“Yeah,” Pudge said. He rolled up onto his side so that he was nose to nose with Beckett, who had his eyes closed, mouth set in a grim line, already anticipating some kind of inquisition. He carefully smoothed his hand down the back of Beckett’s head, the wet hair there refusing to stay plastered down, springing back up as soon as his hand had moved off of it.
“I want you to fuck me,” Beckett said. He was still shivering pretty hard.
“Night before a start? I don’ think so.”
Beckett tipped his head in so that their foreheads touched. “Don’t care,” he breathed, barely above a whisper. “Really, really fuckin’ don’t. It’ll be. Worse if you don’t.”
“Oh, OK,” Pudge said, “no pressure or not’in’.” But he gently nudged Beckett’s chin up with a finger and kissed him, like he couldn’t feel Beckett shaking at all, and when Beckett rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in a pillow, Pudge made no comment on that either. He just stroked Beckett’s back for a while to see if he would settle down (he didn’t), then sighed, pressed a kiss there, and went to dig out the little travel bottle of lube and condom packet that he knew were in Beckett’s suitcase. When he came back to the bed, Beckett had wriggled out of his clothes and was facedown again, arm crooked up, nose pressed to a forearm laid across the pillow. The sight of him there-- the broad pale back, the dark hair fuzzed over his thighs, the infinitely tantalizing curve of his ass-- was enough to make Pudge stop and stare, even if it was only for a moment. He still could not believe, sometimes, that this was something he really got to do.
He worked into Beckett slowly, a careful progression of fingers and lube and more fingers and more lube before he even thought about fucking Beckett properly. Partly it was because they should not have been doing this at all with Beckett pitching the next day, partly because something in that shivering was just a little bit scary. It was almost certainly because of the upcoming game, the potential to make or break the Marlins’ chances at that ultimate prize, which was an awful lot of pressure for a kid Beckett’s age. He was pretty sure it wasn’t anything to do with him. Still, he was afraid on some level that if he went too fast, too hard, Beckett would crack apart along some fissure-lines lying hidden just beneath the surface of his skin and it would somehow be his fault for planting them there.
“OK?” he asked, easing up onto his knees, addressing the strong familiar line of the back of Beckett’s neck. He pressed the head of his cock into Beckett, going as slow as he could stand.
Beckett mumbled something into the pillow that might have been move, or more, or something else entirely. He was tighter than Pudge had felt in a while, and that could have been for any one of a million reasons.
He pulled back, the sensation of it dragging all the way down to his toes. Beckett shifted up to his hands and knees, pushing himself back onto Pudge. He went in more easily the second time.
“This good?” he asked. “What you wanted?” He held onto Beckett’s hips carefully, moving a little faster. Beckett was so hot inside, shaking less already, head hanging down loose between his braced arms.
“Ey. I ask you a question.”
Beckett blew out a sharp breath and bucked back hard. Pudge felt himself slip in deeper than his careful, shallow thrusts had allowed and couldn’t stop himself from gasping, like he was the one being opened up. Beckett dropped his head down again and started rocking back and forth, establishing rhythm at a pace he liked.
“Fine,” Pudge muttered, “be that way.” He spread his knees on the bed, broadening his base so that he could match Beckett’s motion with harder thrusts. Beckett slid one leg back a little, hooking his foot over Pudge’s calf. Pudge reached down and gave his heel a squeeze.
“Yeah,” Beckett said, after a while. Pudge thought he might just be voicing his approval of the sex-- Pudge had an arm awkwardly wrapped around Beckett’s body, now, moving over his cock with unsteady strokes-- but Beckett swallowed and said, “yeah. This. Yeah, this’s what I wanted.”
“Oh,” Pudge said. He closed his eyes. The pull on his cock was almost too much, aching in his balls and the back of his throat. He tightened his hand around Beckett, Beckett clenched down around him, and suddenly it was too much, Pudge gasping and gasping, twitching raggedly behind Beckett, pressing up against him so hard when he came that he couldn’t not hit Beckett’s prostate, nudging him up over the edge too with a surprised, short yelp that would have been deeply unsexy at basically any other time.
“Oh,” he repeated, once he could breathe again.
“Yeah,” Beckett said. He had put his face back down on the pillow, but his shoulders lay smooth and still, all the shivers and tremors worked clean out of him. Lying on his stomach like this, spread and relaxed on the hotel sheets, he could have been any average guy, coming down off a good fuck, not a worry in the world.
**
“Pretty cold,” Beckett said, when they got to the stadium. It was in the 50s, sun long since down. McKeon got a frightened look on his face. Any admission of concern from his starter was a sign of doom.
Pudge took Beckett’s hands between his own, rubbed them up even though he had the smaller hands. Beckett dropped his eyelids to half mast and McKeon visibly relaxed. It was not a problem. If it got too cold, he would ask the umpire to let Beckett blow into his hands on the back of the mound. The umpire-- Tim Welke was the homeplate umpire for this one. Pudge had worked with him before. Not a problem at all.
The crowd was almost entirely made up of Yankee fans, packed in so tight that there was not a sliver of teal to be seen, not even a brief glimpse in the dark mass. They cheered at the Yankee introductions, chanted the names of the players one by one, waiting on a wave from Jeter or a finger to the hat brim from Bernie Williams. October was something they felt they had a right to, here in New York; the crowd was comfortable dispensing with reverence and moving straight to raucousness, excitement, unrestrained shouted support for the names they wore repeated in replica jerseys on their own backs. They weren’t much like Marlins fans.
Beckett was stoic throughout, eyes gone distant with his mouth tamped down small. Pudge did nothing to pull him back. It was better for Beckett to be off wherever it was he went when he was ready to pitch, not here with this stadiumful of wrongly colored pinstripes and this easy confidence in the arm of Andy Pettitte, the inevitability of another ring.
After the introductions they played the National Anthem. Pudge of course was out in the bullpen with Beckett, paused in their warm-up to stand with their hats over their hearts, bellied up to that snapping flag. The rest of the Marlins, across the field in the dugout, seemed so far away that they might have been by themselves out there, pitcher and catcher alone against the Yankees and the world.
The anthem ended. Pudge put his hat on, smoothing it down around the edges. He reached out and leaned his glove against the small of Beckett’s back. “Ready?” he asked.
Beckett did not answer. But his spine straightened from the point where Pudge had touched him, his shoulders drawing back, chin up, making him look at least an inch taller.
“Listo,” Pudge said, quietly, to himself.
**
Something in that curve, that pitch dropping out of its supposed line like a trick lead weight, was giving the Yankees fits. They swung and missed, swung and missed again. Derek Jeter was batting better than almost anyone else on the team, but in the fifth inning he made his third out in as many at-bats. He whiffed badly, grimacing before he had even finished his follow-through. Pudge was up out of his crouch immediately, shouting wordless encouragement, holding up a fist for Beckett to see, yes, yes, fucking right we got him.
Jeter went back to the Yankee dugout with his head down, staring at his bat like he did not understand how it could have betrayed him. There was no fear there, not that Pudge could see-- Jeter had won before and obviously expected to win again-- but there was incomprehension, a simple inability to really understand what he was facing. Pudge wanted to chase him back to his bench and shout at all those blandly self-assured ballplayers, lined up there with their close-cropped hair, their clean-shaven chins: take a look at this, you cabrones, take a good fucking look. You’ll never see pitches this good again.
**
They only got two runs. An RBI single with two men on, Pudge standing on deck, pushing his hands down, down, down as Gonzalez raced home, telling him to slide; a sacrifice fly with Jeff Conine hurrying home from third. The very smallest of small ball.
But they were runs. One, two, right there on the scoreboard, and Beckett had set his mouth in a grim, hard line, the very embodiment of determination to not be out-pitched, not by Andy fucking Pettitte, not in a game this big. Not in front of a crowd this hostile. Not this time.
**
Ruben Sierra pinch hit in the seventh inning. He was baseball-old, in the declining phase of his career, but the Yankees trusted him as a power bat off the bench, trusted in his ability to loom over home plate, make the pitcher think twice about throwing fastballs.
Not going to work, Pudge thought. Got this guy, he thought, and although he badly wanted to, he did not dare head to the mound to say it. He was not willing to risk breaking Beckett’s concentration.
Four pitches later, Beckett had struck Sierra out.
**
In the bottom of the ninth, Bernie Williams flew out to left. Miguel Cabrera caught the ball easily. He tossed it back in casually, like this wasn’t a World Series game, like he wasn’t a twenty-year-old kid two outs away from a World Series victory.
Hideki Matsui was up next. Godzilla, that was what they called him in Japan, a significantly cooler nickname than Pudge. But Beckett got him to pop up too, only two pitches, easy, so easy.
Next up was Posada. The catcher.
**
The Marlins were wearing their black jerseys, and the sky over Yankee Stadium was black, so that Pudge in his crouch, looking up from a low angle towards the mound, saw Beckett as a part of that sky, an occasional whirlwind of motion issuing white balls from its midst, spinning wildly, as if they really had been ejected from some kind of intense weather pattern, a miniature isolated cyclone formed by the competing wind currents in the bowl of the stadium.
**
He put down a sign for the pitch, flashing the signal secretly with his fingers, low, between his legs where Posada couldn’t peek down and see. Beckett flicked his eyes a hair, agreeing without any other movement.
Keep the ball down, Pudge thought, but it was just a fleeting reminder to himself. It wasn’t anything he had to try and signal.
**
On the third pitch of his at-bat Posada made contact. Pudge lunged forwards but the ball was already beyond him, skipping down the inside of the first baseline, each blade of grass that crossed its path slowing it in tiny increments. Derrek Lee, at first base, was too far away to get it with Posada off at the crack of the bat. Posada was not so very slow, for a catcher.
Beckett came charging off the mound: one step, two, perfectly timed so that the ball fed itself into his ready glove, right in stride. He took one more step, momentum carrying him to the baseline, to Posada, who was right there, moving perpendicular to him--
and Beckett was straightening up with the ball in his glove, arm outstretched towards Posada--
and Posada was barreling onwards, nowhere to dodge, unable to back up--
and Pudge was running down the line, he had to be there to help if he could--
and Posada tried to twist away, showing his back to Beckett, who tried to slow mid-step, started to stumble over his own feet, glove hand outstretched--
and the glove touched Posada--
and Pudge saw it, and Beckett saw it, and Posada must have felt it, and the nearest umpire saw it. He brought his arm up. He clenched his hand into a fist.
Beckett stumbled to a stop, bent over, head down, and screamed. It was a sound like nothing Pudge had ever heard before. It sounded like something that shouldn’t exist outside of jungles, rainforests, hot wet places where the air was so thick it could choke you and the birds came in colors never seen on a baseball uniform. It was a sound that made his scalp tighten and prickle, a sound that made all the fine hairs on his forearms stand up.
Then Beckett straightened. His face was red, his eyes wild, his mouth still open but no sound coming out, now. He put both his hands up in the air, and Pudge realized.
He leapt up, mask gone, helmet sliding backwards off his head, and when he came down he was in Lee’s arms, somehow. And then Gonzalez was grabbing him around the back and they were all jumping together, yelling and whooping, and the rest of the team was on the field, jumping in the New York night, and he didn’t know where Beckett was but it didn’t matter, because Dereck had run out onto the grass.
He had on a black jersey too, and he was getting so tall, it took a moment before Pudge realized, but Dereck picked him out right away and moved in a straight line towards him, the only person moving in a straight line on that twisting field of celebration. Pudge saw him, and bent over and hugged him, his nose mashed into Dereck’s shoulder so hard that it must have hurt, but Dereck didn’t say anything at all, hung on just as hard. There were camera flashes going off all around, popping white against the sea of black.
Pudge stopped hugging Dereck just long enough to grab his hand. Dereck squeezed his fingers so hard that they ached, but it was good. Everything was good. Pudge looked down at him and Dereck looked back and neither one of them had to say a word. They walked to first base, hand in hand. There were lots of Marlins on the basepaths, but they all got out of the way.
From first base they walked to second, making sure they both touched the base with their shoes, and then around to third. A couple cameramen had started tagging along in their wake. From third base they walked to home, and they knelt there. Pudge bent to kiss the plate, Dereck doing the same at his side. That dirty, scuffed, off-white pentagon set flat in the New York ground was the best thing that Pudge had ever touched to his lips.
And the Florida Marlins won the World Series.
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