catching up, 5

[americanleaguer]

2004

Flying into Detroit in January, his very first stop was a doctor’s office. The Marlins were coming off just about the best season a team could have, but could not afford him. The Tigers were coming off just about the worst season a team could have, and were looking to spend money. It was, as Boras kept saying, a no-brainer.

It was true that he had lost some of the urgency that had dogged his career, getting that long-awaited ring. But he still wanted to win. He was not in any way ready to fade out to a bad team, live out the rest of his baseball life in easy semi-obscurity. The question, then, was whether or not Detroit equaled semi-obscurity. He wasn’t quite decided yet, but it wouldn’t hurt to respond to their show of interest, get the physical at least.

Mike Ilitch, the owner of the Tigers, came out and met him at the doctor’s office. Pudge was impressed in spite of himself; he could not think of another owner who would have done the same. Ilitch only wanted to talk about the future in Detroit, how much they needed a veteran winner to help show them the way, how much influence Pudge could have on a team like this. All very flattering. No doubt it was also all very calculated, but he could not work out where Ilitch would be lying. The Tigers had been so bad, and they really did need a leader, and that leader really did have to be high-profile and well-established, if they wanted to have a hope of getting any other free agents to sign-- that was just plain good sense.

The physical took a while, the doctor paying particular attention to his knees. Pudge was not offended. He had, after all, been catching for thirteen years at this level, many more at the amateur and minor league levels before it. When he came out Ilitch was still sitting in the little waiting room with a foot up on one knee, reading a dog-eared magazine that must have come from the table in front of him. Pudge stared. Ilitch was a billionaire. It was kind of a bizarre sight.

“Right as rain, I trust!” Ilitch said, popping up with a spryness that belied his years when he saw Pudge standing there. He had some accent that Pudge could not quite place.

“Sí, doctors think so.”

“Well then, son, I’m sure we won’t have any objections on our end. You think on what we talked about.” Ilitch put a hand on Pudge’s shoulder. “We’d be happy and honored to have you. The kids on this team, they could really use a man like you around. And the things you could do for us… well, happy and honored. Yes sir, that’s what we’d be.”

He knew that he was being played ruthlessly, that all the bargaining power was on his end, but Pudge was stupidly, overwhelmingly flattered anyways. On the one hand-- Detroit. On the other-- well, this level of respect. Hadn’t he earned that sort of thing, by now? Wasn’t it his just and proper due?

**

//How does Detroit sound?//

//Detroit?// Maribel, to judge from that reaction, did not think Detroit sounded good. Pudge took the phone away from his ear, took a deep breath, and shoved it up to his face again.

//You wouldn’t have to live in, you know, the city. There are places, suburbs. They took me around to see them, they’re pretty nice. It doesn’t look like the Detroit you’re thinking of.//

//Detroit, Iván. Detroit. Detroit is cold.//

//We’d mostly be here in the summer anyways,// Pudge said. //Kenny was in Minnesota, you know, he got by.//

//Didn’t Kenny grow up on a farm?//

//In Florida,// Pudge muttered. //Not like it was…. corn in Iowa or something.//

//What a farm boy can handle still doesn’t have anything to do with what we should think is OK. And what about the schools in Detroit? The kids would have to stay in school down here, and I’d have to stay with them.//

//So. What are you saying? It’d be like Texas again?//

//Texas was not so far from Miami as Detroit is.//

//Well, I’d want you with me,// Pudge said, quiet. //And the kids. That’s what I’d prefer. Always. But… we’ve done it before, we can make it work again. I can’t stay in Florida. It’s a good deal, what they’re offering here. The money, the years.//

//Better than what they’re offering you everywhere else?//

//Yes,// Pudge said, although it wasn’t just the contract. Plenty of teams were interested in him; there had been a number of contract offers, most of them very good. But Detroit was the only team that needed him, and knew it, and was willing to get down on bended knee in front of him if they had to, and maybe he liked that. Thirteen years-- maybe he did feel like he deserved that.

There was quiet on the line. Pudge shifted the phone to his other ear, looking out the hotel window. They had put him up in a place on Woodward Avenue, which was the road the ballpark was on, but it was a long road and the hotel was miles and miles up it, in an area that did not bear much resemblance to downtown Detroit. There were little shops on the street, boutiques with fancy window displays, the sidewalk pavement clean and in good repair.

//It was nice having you around,// Maribel finally said. //For the kids, it was good, and for me…. but it was only the one season. I guess I was hoping we could find a way to do that again.//

//I know,// Pudge said, feeling a little guilty and tamping it down as ruthlessly as he could. //I would’ve… it was nice. I mean, for me too. But the only way would be to stay in Florida, and the Marlins don’t have any money. And Tampa Bay, they have even less. And, you know, I can’t sign for so much less than I’m worth, or the union gets on me.//

//They really wouldn’t let you take less, to be here?//

//If it was only a little less, maybe. But the offers they’ve made, it would have to be so much less. I can’t, I mean, what it would say to the owners and everything, they could not allow it. I don’t blame them,// he added, quietly.

There was another pause, and when Maribel spoke again, her voice had changed in some way Pudge could not entirely interpret. //So. Detroit. You weren’t asking so much as telling, were you?//

//Of course not. If you really, absolutely hated it--//

.//You’ll do what you want to do,// Maribel said. //You’ll go where you feel-- where you have to go. But I will miss you during the season, Iván. The children will miss you.//

//I know,// Pudge said. //Me… me too. But that, you know, that is baseball. Always missing people.// He had been very deliberately not thinking about Beckett this winter. Beckett was young enough to stay under contract with the Marlins, not due the raise that would take him out of their price range for another couple of years yet.

He was not an idiot. It was obvious that Maribel was not happy with the idea of him being so far away for so much of the year. But he couldn’t stay for Beckett and he couldn’t stay there for her, and maybe he should have found some way to stay there for Dereck, Amanda, Ivanna, but events had stacked up against him and he could not think of a way. It wasn’t that he had no choice: it was just that none of his choices could possibly involve staying in Florida anyways.

As soon as he hung up with Maribel, he started dialing again. He was going to have to let Boras know that he’d made a decision. Detroit, he thought. Los Tigres. Soy un Tigre. He mouthed the phrase silently while he waited for Boras to pick up, trying to make it sound right, trying to fit it to the reality he knew.

**

It was good to be back in the American League. None of these pitchers wanted anything to do with the batting cage and none of them wanted to fight Pudge on pitch calling, workout routines, anything. They mostly just seemed grateful to be with the team, even if there was no guarantee, in February, that any of them would make the big league roster.

Some were still obviously shell-shocked from the previous season. Mike Maroth spent all of spring training walking around like a ghost, looking through people, which Pudge was willing to put down to weird left-hander personality quirks until someone told him that Maroth had lost twenty-one games in 2003. Nobody lost twenty-one games and came back the next season intact, but here was Maroth with his jersey on just the same as the rest of them.

There was this kid, Jeremy Bonderman, who had been called up at twenty years old, straight from single-A. Pudge could sympathize with that experience, to a point-- it wasn’t too far off from what he’d done when he had made the leap to the Majors-- but he had been called up because the minors had nothing left to show him. Bonderman had been called up out of organizational necessity and had been thrown into the rotation long before he was ready. He had lost nineteen games in his very first year, a kind of bad that was almost unheard-of. Nineteen losses in a single season was more than most veterans could stand and remain sane; teams were supposed to protect their young talent from things like that. Alan Trammell, the manager, could not even look at Bonderman without guilt breaking out, painfully obvious, all over his face.

When he asked Trammell who the catcher had been in ’03-- a not-insignificant question, with the pitching such an epic mess-- Trammell had jerked a thumb out at the field, towards Brandon Inge, who was small and scrawny and blonde and did not look anything like a catcher. In fact, he was taking infield practice at third base. Pudge stared and asked again, certain that there had been a misunderstanding, but Trammell just pointed at Inge again.

“The third baseman was the catcher?”

Trammell shrugged, awkward. “He’s never been, um, the happiest about it, but he’s a pretty versatile guy? He can play, you know, lots of positions. If he has to? And last year he, um, he kind of had to?”

“Madre de Dios,” Pudge muttered. “Rookie pitchers and a catcher who is a third baseman, no wonder how it turn out.” Trammell flushed a little and turned his gaze back to where Inge was fielding balls at third. He had very good footwork for someone who had spent the previous year at an entirely different position.

So maybe it was a damaged, fucked-up version of the AL. But it was still the AL, with the ballparks that Pudge knew best and the players with whom he was most familiar, the lineup strategies he had spent most of his career preparing for and understanding. Aside from the cold-- and it would be seriously cold come April, in Detroit-- it was just like riding a bicycle. Get right back up in the seat and it all came back to you.

The Tigers signed Urbina in March, the middle of spring training. Nobody bothered to tell him about it beforehand (why would they, of course; still, he would have liked some word, some warning, something), and so it caught him by surprise, walking in one morning to see Urbina standing there, a heavy bag slung easily over one shoulder, thick eyebrows drawn down and together, looking around like he wasn’t quite sure where the locker room was. He brightened right up when he caught sight of Pudge, though.

He grinned, all teeth, as he dropped his bag and stepped up to Pudge, catching him in a hard hug. //Well, well! All anyone can talk about, you signing here!// He bent his head forward and lowered his voice. //It is good to see you again. Very good.// One hand slid down Pudge’s back like an afterthought of the hug, skimming over his hip just a little too slowly before Urbina took a step back to pick up his bag again.

Pudge smiled politely. Urbina had to have meant that innocently. It had probably looked innocent to anyone who might have been watching. Probably.

He meant to nip this in the bud, take Urbina aside early on and make certain they were both clear on what they would and would not be doing together, but somehow he never got around to it. Between the Detroit media (eager for any player who could legitimately be called a star) and the other Detroit players (eager for any player who could legitimately be called a leader), it seemed like there was never a moment when he and Urbina were alone together. And he was spending as much time as he could with his family while he was still in Florida, which limited the time he had for any ballplayer outside of practice hours.

Urbina for his part seemed to get the message anyways. Maybe he understood when he saw that Pudge was not going out of his way to make time for him, or maybe he noticed that Pudge made a point of not showering at the same time as him for a week before giving up on the logistical difficulties involved in that. He was more reserved around the other guys than he had been in Florida and he didn’t seem like he was making any special effort to get Pudge on his own. He didn’t seem to be looking for a Grand Speech of Parting or anything; that was good enough for Pudge.

**

Trammell had given all the pitchers scouting packets as preparation for their first trip into Yankee Stadium. They were coming off a four-game losing streak and so Pudge was not particularly surprised to see the pitchers all deeply, almost desperately engrossed when he got to the ballpark. For a moment he toyed with the idea of grabbing an extra one himself, but presumably if Trammell had thought he needed it, he would have given one to Pudge directly.

He went in to have Kevin Rand, the trainer, work on his back for a bit. It was July and he was starting to feel those months piling up in the muscles around his spine. Nothing too bad, of course, nothing that would keep him out of games, but he was getting to be the age where it was better to take extra precautions. It wasn’t paranoid to want to get to know the trainer a little better; it was just good sense.

When he came back out into the clubhouse, the pitchers were all still deep in their packets, pages split evenly in half as they variously worked their way through towards the middle, with the exception of Bonderman, who had not gotten past the second page and was staring down at the papers in his lap with a tight little line furrowed between his eyebrows. Bonderman was near-infamous on the team for his general stoicism and impassiveness. Pudge had never seen him look perturbed before.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, leaning in close, something in the library hush of the clubhouse making him feel like he should speak quietly.

“Nothin’.” Bonderman’s broad, usually pasty cheeks were turning a dull brick red.

Pudge frowned. Bonderman didn’t blush easily; most of the time he barely reacted to anything at all. And if he didn’t react much during games, to get visibly ruffled over a scouting packet…. a horrible thought struck. “Can you… are your eyes OK?”

“M’eyes’re fine,” Bonderman muttered.

“OK.” He looked down at the scouting packet still in Bonderman’s lap. Bonderman had a hand lying on the page, finger extended like he had been trailing it over the lines there. Pudge might have assumed he was just a slow reader, but even Wilfredo Ledezma had made more progress by now, and English wasn’t his first language.

Bonderman mumbled something. “What?” Pudge asked. Bonderman mumbled again, head bowed. His face and neck were entirely red. Pudge still could not hear him.

“OK, look, jus’… come wit’ me.” He grabbed Bonderman’s arm and tugged him upright.

The player territory deep inside Yankee Stadium had been built like a warren, low-ceilinged and poorly lit, a bewildering maze of hallways branching off and unexpectedly reconnecting, kinking crazily around sharp corners, but Pudge had been coming to it on road trips for over a decade now, and knew his way around, having long since ferreted out all the relatively private places a visiting player could readily access. The room into which he pulled Bonderman had once been a video room, abandoned when the Yankees switched away from VHS and started recording everything digitally, something that apparently required different equipment, easier to install in a new, dedicated space, rather than trying to retrofit a roomful of outdated technology. There was a single long table, very dusty, with an old cube-shaped TV on it, also dusty. The shelves along the walls were only half full of tapes.

Bonderman swept his scouting packet over the surface of the table once, clearing away the worst of the dust, and eased up onto it without being asked. His feet started swinging back and forth immediately in tight, nervous little jerks, drawing little paths in the dust on the floor.

Pudge leaned against the shelving-- carefully, in case it was no longer as structurally sound as it had once been-- and waited. He was not about to insult Bonderman by asking again.

“I. I read slow,” Bonderman said, head down, fingers picking at the edges of the packet’s pages. “I got. I was born with. Um, it’s called dyslexia. An’ they didn’t catch on ‘til I was thirteen, so. It’s still pretty… hard’n’all. I cn’read just fine,” he added, a defensive bite creeping into his voice, “ain’t like I’m some kinda idiot. It just takes me a while, that’s all.”

“Dislexia. That is, what, a disease, right?”

“Kinda. It’s a. A kinda learnin’ disorder.” Bonderman was looking at the floor still, his voice gone quiet and reluctant.

Pudge eyed at the fat sheaf of papers rumpled up on Bonderman’s lap. At the rate he had been reading, it would take him a week to finish them all. Trammell wanted the pitchers to be at least passing familiar with all the reports before the end of the series.

He stepped forward and held out a hand. Bonderman stared at him for a long moment, then hesitantly held the papers out. Pudge took them away, flipped past the introductory pages, the team stats, until he found the first hitter profile.

“OK. Bernie Williams. Lead-off. ‘Bility to hit for average… mm, he is in decline. Thirty-five year old--“

“You don’t gotta do that,” Bonderman said. Deprived of the packet, his hands twisted around each other, uncomfortably twined.

“Ey, it is probly a good thing for me to read this stuff anyway, you know? Doesn’t hurt to know a little more about a Yankee before a game.” He shrugged to make it a small nothing, not a big deal. Bonderman looked unconvinced, but Pudge hopped up onto the table next to him anyways, close to his side, smoothing the packet flat across his knees so that they could both see the charts. Bonderman shuffled his hands in his lap, head hanging so low that Pudge could not tell if he was looking at the packet or not.

But that didn’t really matter. What mattered was getting this information into the pitchers, and not causing a pitcher so much pain or embarrassment in the process that he wouldn’t have a hope of retaining that information. There was a problem getting the information to Bonderman-- the exact nature of the problem was not important. The only thing that mattered was the fact that there was a problem, and the fact that Pudge had the ability to at least temporarily circumvent it.

He drew his own finger down the page until he found Bernie Williams’ scouting report again, cleared his throat as unobtrusively as he could, and started to read.

**

//I saw you go off with Bonderman,// Urbina said. He was clearly trying to say it airily, nonchalantly, but his voice was strained.

//So?// Pudge glanced up over his shoulder, hands soapy under the stream of water in the sink. He hadn’t heard Urbina come into the bathroom, but he was definitely there now, a sullen fuming presence, arms folded, glaring at Pudge. //I can’t talk to the starters before a big series?//

//Don’t see any need to go off talking in private. I don’t know what you’d need to be doing in private that you couldn’t do in front of the rest of the team.//

//Nothing. I just wanted to talk, you know, pitching… I didn’t want him distracted, to get interrupted in the middle of it--//

//Sure, and I’ll bet you didn’t want to get interrupted in the middle of anything.//

//What the fuck is that supposed to mean?// He turned the sink off, wiped his hands down the sides of his pants, two quick swipes each to get the worst of the water off, wondering, idly, why these kinds of conversations always seemed to happen to him in ballpark bathrooms. Maybe it was that way for everyone. //You, what, implying something? What’s it matter to you?//

//To me, nothing. I’m just letting you know, you running around like a whore is getting to be a little obvious.//

No, this definitely only happened to him. //Like a…. Nothing. Happened.// He would have laughed at the idea of it-- the idea of doing anything like that with Bonderman-- if he wasn’t fully invested in gritting his teeth with rage. Who the fuck did Urbina think he was, saying shit like that? As if Urbina-- who was married and had a kid and slept around as much as any ballplayer-- had a leg to stand on, calling him un puto.

//Sure it didn’t.// Urbina flicked at the fingernails of one hand with his thumb, probably trying to look like he didn’t care what Pudge did, but if that was true he wouldn’t have brought this stupidity up in the first place. Jeremy Bonderman, of all people…

//You need to stop being such a paranoid freak,// Pudge said. //Do you think it’s, what, cute or something? Am I supposed to be impressed?//

Urbina’s brief cool snapped with a sharpness that was almost audible. He surged forward, grabbed Pudge by the shoulders and drove him backwards into the tiled wall. There was something wrong with his face; he barely even looked like the Urbina that Pudge knew-- thought he had once known-- anymore. He shoved a leg between Pudge’s knees, trapping Pudge between his body and the wall, turning his relative height into a weapon. His hands on Pudge’s shoulders were like tightening vices.

//Hey! Hey, knock it off, OK.// He was not going to let Urbina get to him, he was not going to be freaked out, he was not going to be scared that Urbina was so much taller than him and had him backed up with nowhere to go and apparently had the strength of a crazy person and if he yelled and someone came in they would think the wrong thing instead of rescuing him, and the wrong things they were thinking would kind of be right, and he couldn’t have the kids on this team thinking he needed rescuing anyways, so he could not let Urbina get to him, he couldn’t, he…. was already freaked out, he had to work with what he had, fine, he would just have to fake cool more effectively than Urbina had done. If he let Urbina see just how rattled he truly was, it would only goad Urbina to loftier and more dangerous heights of insanity. That was one good thing he’d learned from the season with Beckett, anyways.

Urbina pressed his leg up harder between Pudge’s own and lowered his head as he aimed for a kiss. Pudge turned his head sharply, avoiding it. His lip was sliding up in a disgusted sneer that he did not care if Urbina saw. How he had ever thought this was a good idea was beyond him now. Shouldn’t he have some kind of… some kind of crazydar to go with his gaydar?

He tried to think back, see if there had been indications, but it was hard to think clearly under the circumstances, and Urbina had seemed like a normal guy anyways, within the usual parameters of Professional Baseball Players Weirdness. Still. Still. There had to have been something. He should have noticed.

Deflected, Urbina’s lips landed on the side of his neck, where he immediately started to lick and suck, grossly fervid. //Get off,// Pudge grunted, shoving forward as hard as he could. Urbina staggered backwards, arms pinwheeling to keep him on his feet, eyes wild. Pudge hastily stepped away, trying to put distance between them without getting his back up against the wall again.

His neck felt like it was burning where Urbina’s mouth had been. He didn’t dare take his eyes off of Urbina long enough to look in a mirror, could only hope that there wasn’t a mark.

//Stop it with this playing around bullshit. Hard to get isn’t pretty in old men.//

//This is not me playing hard to get,// Pudge said. His breathing was steady. The breathing of a guy who was cool and in control and not in the least bit worried, and if that came with an effort, well, faking it effectively was the main thing. He thumped his own chest with an open palm. //This is me telling you no. This is not a thing that we do and it’s not gonna be a thing that we do, not now and not ever and that’s. Final.//

//Oh don’t be coy, darling, you can’t deny how it was before--//

//Before! What, I fucked you once, a fucking year ago! This was never a thing that we did.// Urbina shook his head, like he couldn’t believe what Pudge was saying. Pudge’s desire to stay away from Urbina just barely overrode the desire to stomp right up to him and wring his stupid neck. //No, OK, you fucking listen to me. You need to stop being so… so fucking delusional! I’d say you need to get over it, but there wasn’t ever anything to get over anyways!//

//You’re the delusional one,// Urbina snarled. His arms were stiff at his sides, fingers curling in. //You wanted it as much, more than I did, now you think, what, you fool yourself…. why, huh? You finish with your little pitcher, now you think you’ve found some new toy, someone younger, prettier--//

//You got no fucking idea what you’re talking about--// --because if Urbina was talking about Beckett, he should shut the fuck up about things he didn’t understand in the least, and if he was talking about himself he was clearly out of his mind, and really, on top of everything, the idea of Bonderman being prettier than anyone was almost too much.

//You don’t think anybody knows, you think, you think, but everyone knows, little Pudge, I know everything about you.// The look on Urbina’s face was warping into something that Pudge did not like one bit. He backed away, trying to edge around towards the door without Urbina really noticing.

//You don’t know shit about me,// Pudge said. Dios forbid he keep his big stupid mouth shut.

Urbina shook his head jerkily. His hands closed into fists and opened again, the fingers tense and twitching. He probably didn’t even realize he was doing it. Probably. It was freaky as hell.

//You. One of these days you’re going to regret this,// Urbina said. //You’re really, really. You little bitch, you’re going to regret it.//

//I really don’t think so.// Pudge edged back until he could get his hand on the doorknob. The only thing he regretted was having ever touched Urbina in the first place, but at least he had enough brains left to not say that out loud.

The clubhouse seemed eerily normal after escaping close quarters with Urbina, who was evidently crazy, but thankfully not quite so crazy that he would out himself alongside Pudge in front of the other guys. Most of the team had gone home already, but Trammell was still in his office with the door open, typing very slowly on his computer. Carlos Guillen had stayed late to soak in one of the metal sardine-can hot tubs, letting the pain from a pitch that had hit him during the game fade out a little. Inge and Eric Munson were on the floor in front of Inge’s locker, doing something that looked like a card game played with baseball cards instead of the usual kind. Inge cheekily waggled a couple of fingers when Pudge walked by. They were betting little piles of bubblegum.

Apparently nobody had heard anything. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised-- they had mostly been talking, not shouting-- but it was still somehow weird to walk through the familiar space, to walk past the guys in it like everything was the same as always, when it felt like he was all raw edges and flayed ends. It felt like the sort of thing that someone should have been able to see.

But Trammell just muttered indistinctly about how good it was he had worked a walk off of the Twins, and Guillen nodded at him like always, weak chin sinking into his neck (uncharitable of Pudge to notice, maybe, but he always, always, always did), and Munson didn’t even glance up. Munson, who was some sort of failed catcher-- Pudge had never asked anyone for the details-- was kind of terrified of him. Pudge wasn’t really interested in doing anything about that, because it was nice, maybe, to have at least one kid in the clubhouse who still considered him scary this late in the season.

He had made things as clear as he possibly could to Urbina. And Urbina, he felt certain, could not do anything more to attack or expose Pudge without exposing his own activities to the team at the same time. So it was a punto muerto, an impasse. It might be a little tense, a little awkward, but things should return to normal now.

Over by his locker, taking slow, careful breaths, he could hear the irregular tick-tacking of Trammell’s bad typing, just off-rhythm enough to be annoying. He could hear the occasional slosh of Guillen in the hot tub, the flicks of Inge and Munson’s cards as they turned over. He could not hear Urbina anywhere. Normal. Things would go back to normal. You could sneak a little to the left or a little to the right, but nothing could deviate too far from the baseline in baseball and expect to stick around.

2005

The atmosphere in the plane was stuffy and close, the little nozzle above him issuing only a thin stream of dried-out, cooled air. Carlos Pena was in the window seat next to him, thumbing though an old Sports Illustrated with a bunch of Blue Jays on the cover. Pena was 27 but looked closer to 21. He knew Pudge from the ’01 season, when he had been up with Texas a little, and he had finally gotten over the starry-eyed stares that had dominated his interactions with Pudge before. He spoke perfect Boston-accented English and flawless Dominican-accented Spanish, had amazing dimples, and was absolutely, incontrovertibly straight. Pudge liked him for it. Being around Pena was easy.

There was some low, murmured conversation from the back of the plane, but except for the droning undertone of the engines and the subliminal shushing of the air nozzles, it was mostly quiet. Overnight flights to the west coast after a game in the eastern time zone were generally tired and subdued, a universal across all of Pudge’s past and present teams. He dozed. Every so often he would lose control of the muscles in his neck, one by one in gradual sequence, so that his head slid down onto Pena’s shoulder, which would jerk him back into wakefulness just long enough to straighten and begin the process all over again.

When the shouting started he at first thought it was part of a dream, his mind slow and reluctant to give up on sleep. It wasn’t until he felt Pena stiffen alertly underneath his cheek that he sat up properly, realized he was hearing actual sounds. He wiped a hand across his eyes, gummy with exhaustion. There was a hell of a commotion coming from the back of the plane.

“Holy shit,” Pena muttered. Pudge twisted around in his seat to look.

Half the team, it seemed, had tried to cram themselves into the aisle near the rear end of the cabin. It was impossible to see clearly, but arms were moving up and back in a way that triggered a cascade of Nolan-Ryan-esque memories in his head. Guys were throwing punches back there.

“I’m gonna--“ he said, clambering up out of his seat at the same time that Pena grabbed his arm and said, “--dude, you better not.” Pudge gently dislodged his hand. The Tigers did not have an official team captain, but he was the closest thing to it, and he couldn’t-- he couldn’t just let this, whatever it might be, happen without him. Pena did not make any other moves to stop him, although he did lean all the way over Pudge’s now-vacant seat to watch anxiously as Pudge started fighting his way through to the center of the disturbance.

He shoved Bobby Higginson out of the way, ducked under Kirk Gibson’s arms, and found himself practically on top of the core of the fight-- it was a fight, no chance of mistaking it now. Rondell White was curled up at the very back of the plane, hands over his face. On the aisle floor in front of him was Inge, face bright red against his blonde hair, grappling with someone larger. Pudge could only see the back of Inge’s assailant, but that was enough to make the bottom of his stomach drop straight down through the floor of the plane. Venezuelan swear words sounded out clearly against Inge’s one man background chorus of breathless, almost squeaky fucks.

He got his arms around the aggressor’s midsection, planted his feet, and pulled backwards as hard as he could, peeling the guy off of Inge. A heavy, boozy scent wafted up, palpable as a warm cloth being laid across his face.

//Fuck you, I fuckin’ kill you!// Urbina shouted, still flailing his arms around. Pudge backed him off another step. The rest of the team was pressing in behind him and the seats were pressing in on him from both sides; he didn’t have nearly enough room for this. Inge was trying to sit up but couldn’t stop wheezing. White was still curled up with his hands over his face. Between flashes of Urbina’s arms, Pudge could see something that he was pretty sure was blood on the floor. Good God. Hopefully it was just from a nosebleed.

//Stop it!// he shouted, trying to break in through whatever mess of noise was occupying Urbina’s mind at the moment. //Knock it off! What the fuck is wrong with you?// He tightened his arms around Urbina’s ribs, some vague idea that if he squeezed hard enough, maybe the crazy and the drunk would be forced right out. But Urbina just kept thrashing, fists tracing dangerously unpredictable arcs through the cabin, swearing in unconnected phrases, slurred Spanish that wasn’t directed at Pudge and wouldn’t be understood by Inge.

More people were shouting behind him. Gibson had pressed up close to Pudge, grabbed one of Urbina’s arms and pinned it to his own side, shouting for someone else to grab the other. Inge had crawled over to White and was pulling his hands away from his face, calling for the team trainer in a hoarse voice that could not possibly carry over the rest of the noise in that part of the plane; Rand, operating on some injured-player instinct, was trying to squeeze his way up the side of the aisle towards them anyways.

Urbina stopped struggling. Pudge sighed in relief and turned his head to look at Gibson, precisely when Urbina suddenly shoved his entire body back, hard. Pudge slammed into Gibson, who slammed into the three or four other Tigers close behind him, and the whole mess of them slammed down onto the floor.

The plane hit a short space of turbulent air, bouncing them all. Someone’s elbow crashed into the side of Pudge’s head, almost making him lose his grip on Urbina, who surged forward in the direction of Inge and White. Pudge just barely managed to stay with him, fingers scrabbling at Urbina’s shirt, the fabric tearing a little but holding long enough for Pudge to wrap both arms around Urbina’s chest again.

Urbina flung his head backwards and cracked Pudge across the bridge of his nose. Bursts of red exploded across his field of vision, and the cacophonous shouting faded out to a brassy buzzing in his ears. He gaped up at the ceiling for a bit, indistinctly aware that his arms were still around Urbina, holding him back, somehow. After a while he gradually realized that a new weight had added itself to the squirming mass on top of him, and a few more incredibly painful blinks of his eyes got that to resolve itself into Gibson, two or three Gibsons, who had apparently clambered up out of the pile and were slugging Urbina in the stomach while they were all still on top of Pudge. It was shockingly inappropriate behavior for a coach, but characteristic behavior for Gibson, who had never pretended to be anything other than a pugnacious old-school former ballplayer first, and a coach second.

Pudge pushed at Urbina, weakly at first, then more strongly, working his way out from under. There was nowhere for him to really go; a pack of shouting Tigers still filled the aisle behind him. He turned over so that he was on all fours facing the floor and grappled with the pain in his head for a while, but it was a losing battle. The plane lurched again and he retched, pain searing across the front of his face, the smell of sweat and alcohol pouring off of Urbina in reeking waves. The plane turned red-washed, then red and black dappled, then lost its distinctness altogether and faded out to a dull, headachy gray.

**

Someone was wiping at his face. It hurt quite a lot, but when he reached up to swat the offending hand away, his hand was caught easily in a firm grip. His eyes were still closed, which probably had something to do with that.

“Sit still,” said a familiar voice. He could not place it immediately, and it was not until he felt the hand firmly tipping his chin up to wipe something there that he realized it was Rand. There were few ballplayers who could handle another guy’s body with that sort of tactile confidence; a trainer’s touch was always distinctive.

“What--“ he started, meaning to ask what had happened, but opening his mouth made him aware that there was blood all down the back of his throat and on the base of his tongue, which made him gag, cough, then bend over with a series of body-shaking dry heaves. All this just made his head hurt even more, which made him gag again.

Rand was saying something. Pudge managed to slow his coughing with what felt like an enormous effort. “Hold still, hold still, goddammit,” Rand muttered, voice betraying the thinning patience of a man who has repeated himself many, many times.

There was a little rattling sound, followed by an aerosol spritz. His face was briefly splashed with cold, which turned into tingling, then a cool and comprehensive numbness.

“Ah, I shouldn’tve put that on your face,” Rand said, conversationally. Pudge managed to crack one eye open to peer blearily at him. There was a hand up by his face again, wiping at something, but he couldn’t feel it anymore. He couldn’t feel most of the pain anymore either, though. “Had to get you to settle down somehow,” Rand added. “Keep thrashin’ around like that, we’ll never get this fixed.”

A bottle floated up into Pudge’s limited field of view. “Anesthetic,” Rand explained. “Spray-on. So long’s you don’t cover your head in plastic, it probably won’t kill you.” Pudge went to nod-- he recognized it as the stuff they used in the dugout on guys who’d been hit by a pitch-- and thought better of it, circling his thumb and forefinger into a shaky OK instead. The bottle exited frame left, and a long-needled syringe floated up in its place. “Our special little clubhouse blend of anti-inflammatories. This’ll take the swelling down. It’s not exactly indicated for this kinda thing, but it probably won’t do too much harm. Coach doesn’t want Joe Q Fan seein’ our guys with their faces all swollen up after a team fight. We got some cream stuff, some makeup stuff, you can wear it when you’re facin’ the public, it’ll cover up the bruising. This--“ the syringe disappeared, replaced by a broad splint--“is what you’ll wear when you aren’t at the park, to fix it up. Should heal straight, nothing got displaced.”

“Heal what?” Pudge asked, trying very, very hard to ignore the metallic taste on the back of his tongue. He cautiously opened his other eye. Rand was fuzzy, out of focus, but more or less visible in front of him. They were both sitting on the floor. He thought they might be at the back of the plane.

“Your nose. You got a broken nose, bud,” the Rand-blob said, “you’n Rondell both, and Brandon’s lucky he doesn’t have a full set o’broken ribs on him, and it’d be more time than I’d be willing to spend to list out the damage on Ugie. Now hold still and let’s see if we can’t get you photo-ready by the end of this flight.”

The syringe hove into view again. He knew he wouldn’t be able to feel it, but Pudge closed his eyes anyways.

**

All three of them played in the first game of the LA series: Pudge and Rondell White with their broken noses, Inge with his bruised body. They lost, but that was mostly Bonderman’s fault, giving up five runs in six innings. It was a mercifully quick game, just over two hours, leaving Pudge pathetically grateful, because he was running on fumes and tiny amphetamine pills out there, something in which he did not often indulge, and not the sort of thing that would last. He could not imagine that White and Inge were in much better shape.

Urbina pitched in the second game. It was not a very critical situation; the Tigers were already up by four. Pudge squatted on his haunches behind the plate and tried to give out the signs like normal, to forget the last time he had sincerely looked Urbina in the face (distorted almost to unrecognizability with rage), his only real goal to keep from wincing every time Urbina threw a pitch. He managed it, just barely, and that only because Kyle Farnsworth had pitched the previous inning. Farnsworth regularly threw at 100 miles per hour and over. After that, even a ball wielded by a violently unstable drunk didn’t seem quite as dangerous.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Inge said, pulling Pudge aside in the locker room after the game. “I saw how it was out there today, when he was throwing. And I c’n tell you, I didn’t wanna be playing behind him anymore’n you wanted t’be catching him. The team can’t play like that.”

“I know,” Pudge said. He picked up the pot of tinted concealer that he had gotten from the trainer and headed for the bathroom. Inge trailed behind him. Farnsworth was holding forth in the locker room, telling some incredibly graphic story involving groupies, alcohol, and unlikely lime wedge applications. Nobody so much as glanced at them. Pudge had gotten very good, over the years, at disappearing unnoticed into bathrooms with teammates. One of those vital skills he never would have imagined himself mastering, back with Tulsa.

He stopped in front of the long bank of mirrors that backed the bathroom sinks, set the pot down, unscrewed its lid. Very, very gingerly he spread the concealer across the bridge of his nose, under and around his eyes, and began working it in. Inge leaned a hip on the sink next to him, arms folded carefully across his chest, watching in silence.

“Front office guys know,” he said, dipping his fingers into the pot for more concealer. It was going to take a lot, until warm compresses and time faded the bruising.

Inge snorted sharply, then cringed as the motion brought some fresh little pain to his ribs. That he was so sensitive after spoke wonders about whatever Rand was giving him to get him through the game. “So they know. They gonna do something about it?”

Pudge shrugged. “Have to. Before it was… we can put up with him as a crazy fuckhead, but he still has to be good, he has to be, you know, good enough so it is a balance with the bad. But now, after this, the bad weighs more than the good.”

“They shoulda dumped him before now, though. Lotsa people saw this coming.”

“Maybe.” Pudge shrugged again, looking sidelong at Inge. Maybe he had heard the bathroom fight back in Detroit after all. Somehow it didn’t much matter, now.

“They can’t bitch us out for gettin’ into fights on the plane when they’re the ones who let it get t’that point,” Inge muttered. “And they can’t expect t’keep sweeping it under the rug now.”

“They know that. They’ll do something.”

“OK, but… if they don’t… willya talk to ‘em? Like, tell ‘em what you think ‘bout it and all?”

“Of course,” Pudge said. Inge gave him an intent, searching look, then nodded. He rubbed at his right side a little, grimacing in a way that Pudge thought he was probably quite unaware of doing. It said something that Inge came to him automatically when he thought someone might need to talk to the front office, and it said something else that Pudge could accept that without batting an eyelash.

**

As it turned out, he never did have to talk to the front office, because the very next day the front office traded Urbina to Philadelphia.

They had an off-day so that they could fly from Los Angeles to Denver. Everyone was a little tense at the airport-- the idea of getting on a plane with Urbina again was not something any of them looked forward to, really-- but Urbina never showed. Pudge stood next to Trammell and tried to look like he knew what was going on, but all he knew was that Trammell wasn’t acting concerned or angry, so Urbina’s absence must not have been unexpected. He was briefly tempted to call Urbina and ask what was up, but that, of course, was not something he did anymore.

When they landed and he turned his phone back on, the messages came pouring in. From Ilitch (which he appreciated), from Boras (who either knew much more than he was letting on, or was more clueless than Pudge could imagine), from a whole slew of Detroit reporters, and even one from Rogers (“Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Call me, ya poof”).

The Phillies had one second baseman too many, and the Tigers were eager to get rid of Urbina. Given those facts, it was a fairly simple trade. There was nothing physically wrong with Urbina beyond a few scrapes and a fresh set of bruises; teams had to disclose injuries, but Pudge didn’t think there was anything in the rules about disclosing alcoholism or psychosis or whatever Urbina’s problem was.

“Heard we traded Ugie,” Pena said, sidling up to him on the pavement outside the airport, where they were waiting for the buses that would take them to the hotel. Pudge nodded, rubbing his forearms. It had been hot in LA, but Denver was cool and damp, the air worn altitude-thin, and his jacket was buried somewhere at the bottom of his bag.

“You know who we got?” Pena asked.

“Placido Polanco. He’s--“

“I know who he is. He’s from La República,” Pena added, by way of explanation. Following the careers of players from the Dominican was something Pena did obsessively, despite the fact that he had lived in the US since he was a young teenager. Maybe because of that. It was cute, and Pudge could only thank the Baseball Gods yet again that Pena was so resolutely straight.

“So, a new second baseman. And Ugie is gone. Off the team, out of the league.” It was a definite relief, a release of tension in his shoulders that he hadn’t even consciously known he’d been holding there. Polanco would get to start in Detroit; in Philadelphia he had been blocked behind Chase Utley, some kind of superinfielder on whom the Phillies were heaping all their second base hopes. Urbina had a whole new set of teammates to terrorize, a familiar circuit of NL East city bars to rot his brains in. It was probably a good move for everyone.

The first bus rolled up, big tires white-stained with the dust of the road. There was some jostling to get in line; nobody wanted to wait out in the cold for the rest of the buses to show. Farnsworth, using his considerable strength to push through the crowd, got on first. Pudge hung back. Normally he would be right up there, exercising his veteran rights, but the fresh mountain air was starting to actually feel good on his nose.

“Fuck!” Farnsworth shouted, loud enough for the rest of the team to hear. “They got us the buses without any damn TVs!”

“It’s twenty fuckin’ minutes to the hotel,” Bonderman grumbled, coming up the steps behind him. “We can make it.”

Farnsworth must have said something back, because Pudge could see Bonderman shake his head in that slow way he had, but Farnsworth wasn’t yelling anymore and it wasn’t audible out on the curb. Inge brushed past, head down as he fussed with his phone, getting the trade details, other bits of news from around the league. He was grinning to himself, cheerfully dragging his team duffle on the ground behind him so that he would not have to pull its strap over his bruised shoulders or chest.

There was a gentle exhalation right behind him. “Pudge. I was wondering if I could perhaps talk to you on the ride over?”

He almost jumped off the lip of the curb, Maroth had snuck up so quietly. Or not snuck up-- that was just how Maroth moved. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself, aware that Pena was watching with amusement. “Sí, sure. Sure. You want to talk, what. Rockies?” Maroth was starting the first game of the Colorado series.

Maroth nodded solemnly. “Thank you, Pudge. I appreciate your willingness to work with me.” Pudge rolled his eyes at Pena and nodded for Maroth. Coming from someone else he might have been offended by the stiff, almost awkward wording, but Maroth always talked like that. Pena made an exaggerated sorry, dude face and wandered off to find someone else he could sit with on the bus.

News of the trade was percolating slowly but surely through the team as guys who didn’t check their phones, or couldn’t get service up in the mountains, heard from the guys who did and could. Not one face that Pudge could see looked disappointed, which was rare-- usually there was at least one guy who was unhappy that his buddy had been traded away-- but Urbina had been a special situation unto himself, by the end, and maybe Pudge had been the only one who ever would have missed him anyways.

**

Failing to make the playoffs was never something he enjoyed, of course, but the upside was that he got to leave Detroit (cold, wet, dark) and return to Miami, which was just starting to come into its own as the humidity died down and the warmth became enjoyable again. It was November, school season, which gave him and Maribel plenty of time to themselves. It had been months since they had had that much time together; he was enthusiastically making the most of it.

The chef didn’t show up until lunch. Not that she couldn’t-- she had offered full-day services when Pudge had hired her-- but he had never been one for complicated breakfasts, and he liked the mornings to be just family, moving around the enormous kitchen with Maribel slapping his hands away from frying pans, coaxing the kids to eat whatever pseudo-breakfast food they were grudgingly willing to eat that day. Once the kids had gone, piled into one of the cars so that the driver could take them to school, he sat with Maribel at the table, drinking coffee and orange juice and eating eggs, because he was supposed to be loading up on protein in the offseason.

//Pool today?// Maribel asked, leaning her chin on one hand and gazing out the huge windows, which showed off the expensive landscaping (three gardeners to maintain it, not counting the mowing crew, which was rarely the same group of guys twice) and the electrically blue south Florida sky.

//Sure,// Pudge said. It wasn’t as if he had anything else to do.

Hours later he dozed on his favorite poolside lounge chair, sunglasses tinting the world brownish whenever he bothered to open his eyes. The sun was warm on his face, his chest, his legs. Maribel lay in the chair next to him, a white bikini gleaming against her skin. The soft little roll of fat just above her hips, shifting gently with the rhythm of her breathing, would have been enough to drive Pudge insane if he hadn’t already fucked her twice in the pool that day. The underwater pool ledge was just the right height for her to sit on his lap, breasts floating, beautifully supported, something to watch while the water distorted his view of the thrust and roll of her hips against his.

The pool boy was doing something with a poled net on the far side of the pool, shoulders dipping and straining-he was an absolutely stereotypical pool boy, lightly muscled and naturally shirtless in the heat. Pudge teased Maribel about the pool boy all the time, but in truth, when the pool boy was around he worried more about himself than Maribel.

His phone, on the table between their chairs, buzzed. He reached across for it, turning the motion into a languid stretch. The polarization on his sunglasses made it impossible to see the screen, but that was fine.

//Pudge! God, man, you hear?//

//Hear what? Who’s this?// he asked, quiet so as to not wake Maribel.

//It’s Juan, Jesus Pudge, you haven’t heard yet? About Ugie…//

Juan Gonzalez, then. His first thought was that Urbina had said something, but if that was the case he probably would have heard from Boras before he heard from Gonzalez. His second thought was for the dangers of Venezuela, where kidnappings and ransoms were almost as common as robberies in Miami, and where Urbina was almost certainly spending his offseason. Urbina’s mother had been kidnapped at the end of 2004 and had been held in a fucking mountain cave for five months before she was rescued. It was the kind of country where anything could have happened.

//No, I… no, heard what?//

//They arrested him,// Gonzalez said, sounding breathless. //They’re saying he, he set someone on fire, he tried to kill a guy with a machete.//

//Wait, what?//

Maribel turned her head towards him, sunglasses hiding her eyes, leaving her face expressionless. Pudge sat up, pressing the phone more firmly to his ear, like that would make Gonzalez’s story come through more clearly.

//I don’t know, I don’t know, I only know what Rosman told me,// Gonzalez said. //It’s all over the news down there, they were guys who worked for him, he has that farm, all that land? And I don’t know, they were stealing from him or trying to get into his house or something, and he came after them, I mean, his whole family is there, he went after them with a, a fucking machete, I guess you keep those around in Venezuela, I don’t fucking know. And somehow he had a can of gasoline and he set one of the guys on fire, or something?//

//What the fuck,// Pudge said, because he could not for the life of him think of anything else to say. //This just happened?//

//The actual… the actual thing, it happened last week, or a few weeks ago, I think. I don’t know. He was just arrested last night, that’s what Rosman said, so it’s all coming out now.//

//Mother of God,// Pudge mumbled. He shook his head, letting the sunglasses fall down a little so that he could grasp the bridge of his nose. //Did he actually… kill any of them?// Maribel sat up sharply, swinging her legs over the side of her chair.

//I don’t know. I don’t think so. But that’s still, I mean, attempted murder…//

//What the fuck. What the… just, what the fuck? We knew he was… the Tigers knew he was not OK, but this is…//

//Iván?// Maribel leaned towards him, raised a hand tentatively towards his shoulder.

//Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know how crazy you have to be to do that, but it’s… that’s pretty crazy, I mean, right?// A noise came over Gonzalez’s end, a hard swallow or something similar. //I don’t know how fast this is going to get out, I only know because Rosman called me--// Rosman, Pudge was belatedly remembering, must be Rosman Garcia, a nobody of a Rangers middle reliever who just happened to have played with both Gonzalez and Urbina, and happened to be Venezuelan-- //but I wanted to tell you, because… because… just in case, I thought you should…//

//I. Thanks.// It wasn’t as if he had ever told Gonzalez. But they had been friends for around twenty years now, between Texas and Puerto Rico before it. Closer when they were playing together, less close when they were on different teams, but at this point there was enough history behind them to make that unimportant. //Thanks,// he said again. He couldn’t exactly say more with Maribel sitting right next to him.

//No problem,// Gonzalez said quietly. //You were… I mean, you know, the first thing I thought of.//

//Call me if you hear more?//

//Yeah. You do the same.//

//Sure.// He closed the phone and pushed it across the table, leaning forward with his legs up, arms around his shins. Maribel got up and sat on the edge of his chair, rubbing his back. She would ask about it again in a few minutes, but for now she was silent.

Urbina had been arrested. He had attacked someone with a machete. A machete! It was like something out of a bad movie. And now he was, what, detained? In jail? What little Pudge knew about the Venezuelan prison system was not good, but maybe they would keep Urbina separate from the general population, in deference to his status as a professional baseball player. Or maybe he could bribe them; he would certainly have more money than the average prisoner there.

He tried to imagine it properly, Urbina in a Venezuelan prison. He couldn’t do it. The sky in Miami was clear, the sun high, the pool absolutely pristine. The carefully scripted vegetation surrounding it was all oversized leaves and blowsy flowers. A flock of the bright green monk parakeets that lived wild all over the area had settled in a tree and were squawking at each other. The sun beat down warmly on his back, reinforced by the warm sensation of Maribel’s hand moving over his skin.

Somewhere out there a Venezuelan farmer lay bleeding from machete wounds. Somewhere out there, Urbina was in prison. Maybe he was being harassed by the police, or his fellow prisoners. They would know who he was; maybe he was having to fight to keep them off. Maybe he was alone in a room with whatever disturbingly dark shape his thoughts had taken. Maybe he was thinking about Pudge, although he probably wasn’t.

Across the way, the pool boy swept his net through the water slowly and easily, going through the motions of clearing away debris that wasn’t there. Pudge pressed his fingertips into his forehead as hard as he could, trying focus on something that made some kind of sense.

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