fic: excerpt from Ace
Here's the first 6000 words of Ace.
Seriously.
Features: 2010 San Francisco Giants pitchers, Jensen being an irascible dickhead, a French bulldog named Cy, twitter, Bengie Molina, unrepentant baseball nerdery, and a lack of Jared
This is a remix of The War Criminal.
@theGarfoose
I just want to go on the record saying: this book is the most important, bravest thing written about baseball maybe ever, It's that important.
(via TweetDeck)
@JPosnanski
Is there anything I can write about The Book that hasn't already been written by now? Probably not, but I'm going to try. at the blog: [url]
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@marianogirl42
@keithlaw So The Book… what magnitude of "biggest baseball story ever" is this? Braun PEDs? A-Rod PEDs? Zito contract?
(via TweetDeck)
@keithlaw
@marianogirl42 Bigger than the Braun suspension? Maybe as big as Jackie Robinson.
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@giantsgirlie97
o. m. g.
(via web)
JENSEN
The first thing Jensen Ackles says to a reporter when he arrives in Spring Training is that he is absolutely, completely, one-hundred percent convinced that the Chicago Cubs really are cursed.
The San Francisco Chronicle beat writer, a fiftysomething man with a big gut and mutton-chop sideburns, raises his eyebrows. "You sure you want to say this on the record?" he asks, like Jensen is admitting to being a 'roider or something.
Jensen just shrugs. "Like it's news?" he asks.
"Right, right." He waves a meaty paw and fiddles with his digital voice recorder. "So the Cubs are cursed," he prompts.
"Yep," Jensen says, squinting into the distance, where Phoenix melts into mountains and desert and nothing. "Like to think I'm a pretty good example."
All Giants pitchers and catchers are to report to Spring Training camp officially on Valentine's Day. Of course, many of them have been in Arizona for weeks and months already. A significant contingent lives there year-round.
Against his better judgment, Jensen moves into a condo in the middle of a complex completely filled with ballplayers. His next-door neighbor is a coach. Felix Hernandez lives up the street. He promises himself that the second someone's wife bangs on his door and insists he come to a cookout, he'll move, but then Brandon McCarthy's wife is so charming and swears there won't be kids and promises there will be liquor, so he decides to stick around after all.
("Really," he told her later, when he was drunk and sitting on her porch with his head between his knees to fight off the drunk spins, "you had me at liquor."
"Good to know," she'd replied, one eyebrow arched like she was judging him so hard. Even so, she still made sure that his favorite Irish whisky was always on hand for him for subsequent parties. Not for the last time in the coming year, he finds himself jealous of the Texas Rangers. Turned out she was a bit of a lush herself.)
His own ex-wife makes him promise to try to get along with others. "I know it's a terrible trial for you, Jensen, but maybe make an effort? Please?" It's just about the last lecture he wants to receive when all he's trying to do is have his once-a-week chat with his kid, but he gamely agrees. After all, this new season in this new city is supposed to be his new start.
Jensen gives Tim Lincecum's dog a dubious look. It sits down and stares up at him, tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth and an expression on its face that quite clearly says, "I am more important in this room than you are and we both know it, motherfucker."
"I could punt you like a small, white French bulldog-shaped football," he tells the dog. It cocks its little fuzzy head. "It's true," Jensen says, nodding fervently. "You're totally aerodynamic. You're a rugby ball with a tongue."
The dog looks away, interest in him apparently waning.
"That's what I thought," Jensen mutters, and then he feels like the biggest loser in the room because he basically just lost an argument with a dog.
He turns back to his locker and squints at the 34 on the back of one of his jerseys, turned funny on its hanger, which is a flimsy piece of wire that can barely support the material's weight. Call Jensen an egotist, but he thought he might merit more substantial equipment than that. Then again, there are other guys in the room with Cy Young plaques on their mantles, and one of them gets to bring his fucking dog into the clubhouse. Jensen's just the used-to-be-good guy the ballclub signed in the offseason.
"Meeting time, Ackles," someone says behind him. He turns to find one of the relievers whose name he hasn't caught yet, an unremarkable younger guy with a scruff of beard and dark eyes.
Jensen nods and glances at his cell phone. Ten a.m. Time to get this motherfucker started.
Despite his best intentions of surliness and "character," Jensen finds he kind of likes his new team. He signed with them because the money was better than he probably deserved and more importantly, because San Francisco was pretty much as far west as he figured he could get after the last four miserable years in Chicago. All he wanted to do was escape, to hide somewhere near water, to find somewhere with enough other talent to overshadow him and all the million ways he failed to live up to expectations since he left Anaheim. He wanted to be left alone, and since nobody really paid any attention to the Giants, San Francisco seemed like as good a place as any.
They do have one hell of a pitching staff, that's for sure. Tim Lincecum's in the corner, hiding behind his hair and laughing with Barry Zito, who talks entirely too fucking much. Jensen has nothing in common with Lincecum beyond some accolades in his past and nothing in common with Zito except for the crushing disappointment of failed expectations, so he sits next to Matt Cain instead. Cain is quiet and solid and well-spoken and young, face still kind of round with puppy fat, and he smiles easily but isn't nosy. Jensen likes him immediately. Jonathan Sanchez doesn't talk at all, watching everything with suspicious dark eyes, and Jensen's first thought is, yep, dude's a lefty. There's a kid with huge ears and huge eyes, apparently the team's top pitching prospect, who won't make the team out of spring training but will definitely finish the year with the big club.
The bullpen guys are the usual cocktail of personalities. The closer is a beefy guy with an almost-fauxhawk and obnoxious chest tattoos visible through all of the holes cut in his shirt, the kind of jerkoff Jensen used to be, who talks in a booming voice and seems to expect everyone to laugh at every single thing that comes out of his mouth like he's Sam Kinison or something. Jeremy Affeldt is there, and all Jensen can think of when he sees him is that time he got tackled to the ground by Kyle Farnsworth (a teammate of Jensen's in Chicago; the less said about that the better). The rest of them sort of blend together anonymously, and Jensen is bad with names.
The catchers are on the other side of the room, still talking amongst themselves as the pitchers file in. Another reason Jensen came to the Giants is Bengie Molina, who was his catcher for years in Anaheim. Jensen loves Bengie Molina, who caught his no-hitter and his World Series winner, who drove him to the hospital when Jensen's wife went into labor and was there at Brett's christening and who is pretty much the only person allowed to call Jensen on his shit. The big league backup has a shock of silver hair, an easy smile, and a Southern drawl so impenetrable he has to repeat himself a lot, especially to the foreign guys. There's a non-roster invitee with a poorly manicured goatee, and all the guys in the minors, one of whom can't be older than sixteen and doesn't speak one lick of English.
And then there's The Kid.
Jensen wants to refuse to call the kid "Buster" sheerly on principle. Buster is a name for Golden Retrievers and six-year-olds. Jensen's ex-wife calls their son that occasionally, especially when the he's in some kind of trouble. But this is Buster Posey. Jensen hates him immediately.
He's not even entirely sure why at first. The kid is appropriately deferential, thoughtful, respectful, and even funny in a way that would usually appeal to Jensen. There's just something about him that rubs Jensen the wrong way.
For a while, it's just a small dislike he can't even pinpoint. Jensen is rather mollified by the fact Lincecum doesn't seem to like him much, either, but that has more to do with Lincecum's infatuation with Bengie Molina than the fact Posey looks like a gopher. Jensen can't take guys who look like rodents seriously.
And then the guy has the gall to ask him not to drink so much.
Sure, Jensen had come in so hungover that he couldn't even throw his bullpen session, spending the morning workouts cowering in the trainer's room with a towel over his face and a bucket nearby just in case.
"You're a damn drunk," someone said from the vicinity of the doorway. It was a young voice, so probably not a coach or, even worse, a clubbie. You don't fuck with clubbies-clubhouse attendants, two and a half steps down from God, basically-and you tip them well or they can and, in Jensen's experience, cheerfully will make your life hell. Jensen tries, he really does, and he tips them as well as anyone. They still hate him.
(That might be a consequence of Jensen's totally sunny and pleasant (cough cough) disposition, though; Buster Posey is all smiles and cheap tips and still has the fucking clubbies eating out of his hand from day one. Jensen finds he's lucky to have clean socks most days. He starts stealing them from Zito, whose head is so far up cleat-chaser pussy he doesn't notice shit anyway. And anyway, Zito has striped socks that look fucking cool.)
"Fuck off," Jensen said to the intruder, not particularly concerned.
"You get the shakes so bad you can't pitch, or do ya just go out there drunk?" the intruder continued, an obnoxious forced casualness in his tone. "Guess I know now why you sucked balls the last couple years."
"You want to call up David Wells and ask him what he did?" Jensen snapped back.
Young Voice actually laughed. "Everybody knows he pitched drunk," he said dismissively. "You're also not a big enough fatass to play John Goodman in a movie. Get up, you drunk fuck. We got stuff to do today."
There was a quiet pause long enough that Jensen figured the guy has given up and left, and then the towel was snatched off his face and lemon-lime Gatorade was dumped all over him. Jensen shrieked, flailed, and nearly injured himself in the process. Everyone knows lemon-lime Gatorade is piss bottled up for human consumption. It's basically poison.
"You evil fucking ninja cocksucking bastard," Jensen sputtered, sitting up as fast as he thought his stomach could handle, spitting and furiously wiping sports drink out of his eyes and ready to lash out at whomever thought this was a good idea. "What the fuck was that?"
"That was a wake-up call," Buster Posey said, arms crossed over his chest, very serious expression on his haughty little gopher face. Then he handed Jensen a clean towel. "Dry yourself up," he said warningly, "and I don't just mean the Gatorade."
Jensen snarled and shoved past him out of the trainer's room, storming off to find some silent dark corner of somewhere else to hide. Or, failing that, some fucking coffee.
It's Mike Rosenbaum that tells him. Rosey's an old friend, the oldest kind of baseball friend a guy can have, dating back to the bus leagues when Jensen was young and Rosey was on a rehab assignment after some injury. Rosey's a coach in the Detroit Tigers organization now, and he claims he loves it as much as he ever did pitching. Maybe he does. If Jensen's memory is as accurate as his location of his famous changeup, Rosey was never a particularly good pitcher.
"So hey, fuckface, guess who's going to make the Tigers roster out of spring training," Rosey says after hellos and how's-the-kids-wife-whatever chitchat. Rosey has two sons in baseball, one a catcher in AA and the other drafted by the Padres last year, third round but getting first round money to lure him away from a hefty scholarship at Auburn. Jensen's son is six and doesn't seem to care very much about baseball.
"Justin Verlander," Jensen says dryly, naming the Tigers star pitcher. He's sitting on his rental couch in his rental condo, and at least this conversation is more interesting than trying to decide between streaming a movie on Netflix and streaming porn.
Rosey laughs. "Not a chance. That kid's green inside when you cut him," he jokes. "C'mon guess," he needles. He's probably bouncing on the balls of his feet, because he's like that. He makes Jensen tired.
"I don't know. Got any interesting NRI's?" Jensen asks gamely. He can't think of anything he cares about less than Detroit Tigers non-roster invitees. "It's Ty Cobb, isn't it?"
"Yes, obviously," Rosey says. He pauses, then his voice turns all concerned and genuine and a little awed, like he's talking to someone who doesn't know somebody shot President Kennedy. "You really don't know, do you?" he asks slowly.
Jensen is abruptly annoyed. "I don't know what?" he snaps.
"Nobody's told you? Well, fuck me, Crackle-Ackle. The grapevine's really letting a brother down, here. And here I was thinking ballplayers were nothing but a buncha prissy little gossips. Shit. My world is warping." He pauses and takes a deep breath. Jensen stifles a groan.
"Would you just tell me?" Jensen bitches.
"Like a motherfuckin' phoenix a'risin' from the ashes of torn rotator cuffs and strained ligaments and shit… it's Jared Padalecki, man. J-rod, Padawhatsit, Boy Wonder. He's back."
Jensen would love to respond. He would. He'd love it if he could go, wow, that's amazing, that'll be the story of the year, but he can't. He just can't. He can't even get his head around it.
Rosey pauses again to let Jensen soak in every little thing that might mean. Rosey loves a dramatic pause. Jensen distracts himself with imagining that Rosey has both arms stretched out to his sides right then like Scott Stapp in a music video. It helps.
Jensen stutters out, "Wait, w-what?" and he sounds like he did that time in high school he got kicked in the head in a soccer game and suffered a concussion that kept him foggy and confused for two weeks.
So Rosey says, voice calm, and he's probably shaking his head, "Well, compadre, let me tell you a story."
While Rosey talks, Jensen gets up and goes to find the box that he takes with him everywhere he lives. He hasn't actually opened it in years. It's the important baseball mementos: a rosin bag stolen from Jacobs Field when he was just a draftee, the sweat-stained cap he was wearing that night in '02 when he won the World Series, a game ball from his no-hitter in '05, a glove he used in Little League-stuff like that. There are dozens-maybe hundreds-of photographs, and he digs until he finds the one he wants.
His hands are shaking. He thinks idly, Fuck, I need a drink. Rosey keeps talking, about the Tigers giving out magic chances and healed UCLs and high school baseball.
In the picture, Jensen is squinting in the bright Florida sunshine and giving the camera a bit of a fuck-you look, but he's tucked under the arm of a teammate like the guy's telling him to cheer the fuck up. That teammate is Jared Padalecki, a few inches taller but much skinnier, a grin on his face so bright it could've lit up Wrigley before they installed the lights. It was taken at some point during Spring Training in '98, the year Jensen made his Major League debut.
The Jared Padalecki he remembers, the one from the moment frozen in this photo, was twenty-one and coming off the best year of his life. He was loud and happy-go-lucky and he had more talent in his non-dominant hand than Jensen did in his whole body, and Jensen had loved him with everything he had.
"Are you even listening?" Rosey asks, bringing Jensen back with a jolt.
"No," Jensen says honestly.
"Asshole," Rosey says without heat. "This's important. You should."
"I'll read it online," he replies, even though he tells himself he won't. He looks at his twenty-four-year-old self in the photograph and shakes his head. Oh, the things you'll accomplish and the things you'll lose, kid, he thinks. Probably a toss-up which ones'll make you crazier.
The next day after morning workouts, Jensen sits at his locker in the clubhouse and tries to project "Go away" vibes to everyone, sneaking pulls from a flask everyone else pretends not to see. He's in a poor mood, slept very little the night before, and the last thing he wants is to have a heart-to-heart with nosy gopher-faced top prospects about his fucking changeup or drinking habits.
He uses blue stick-tack stolen from Bochy's office to hang up the photograph of himself arm-in-arm with Jared Padalecki, both of them smiling and young in Cleveland Indians uniforms. He rarely personalizes his locker, especially in spring training, but this seems appropriate. This is a new start, this year in San Francisco, so he starts new traditions. He puts up a couple different ones of his son, another of his parents wearing Angels gear and laughing, one of himself with Bengie Molina where they're both wasted and wearing top hats and holding giant iguanas. He puts up several shots that he took himself, landscapes and objects and strangers and old teammates. He's always been something of a photographer.
Lincecum is a few lockers away, wet-haired from the shower and playing old sock tug-of-war with his dog. Zito is on the floor doing what might be Pilates to Jensen's right, which is every bit as uncomfortable as it sounds. On Jensen's other side, Jonathan Sanchez is talking in rapid-fire Spanish on his cell phone. Someone nearby is playing the Black Keys on his iHome. It's oddly peaceful, in the usual chaotic clubhouse kind of way.
Jensen has an iPad because it’s easier than lugging around his laptop, plus the games are more fun. He gets it out to distract himself from old photos, and he does a search for news about Padalecki because you know, why not torture himself a little more?
Turns out Rosey had, if anything, been underselling it. Padalecki signed a minor league deal the previous offseason and spent all of '09 working his way through the Tigers system, building up arm strength and velocity and shaking off the rust of almost a decade out of baseball. He'd been untouchable in AAA by season's end, and Jensen finds at least one blog post lambasting the Tigers for not calling him up in September when rosters expanded. He figures the team probably would have if they had made the postseason. All the news pointed to him breaking camp bound for Detroit, a member of a very good bullpen.
Jensen can't say he's surprised, exactly. Of the two of them, Jared had always been the more talented one. Jensen probably would have drunk himself to death at thirty-five if their positions were reversed.
Lincecum's dog goes off to get a belly rub from Panda, whose wobbly frown indicates that he needs it more than the dog does. Lincecum gets up and wanders over to Jensen, leaning down to peer at the photos. "How old're you in this one?" he asks, pointing at the one with Padalecki. He sounds remarkably lucid, which is kind of a switch. Must have been the shower.
"A baby," Jensen says gruffly.
Lincecum side-eyes him but doesn't pursue it; he doesn't know Jensen well enough yet. He laughs when he sees the one of Bengie. "That's awesome!" he says. "He seen this yet?"
Jensen detaches it from the wood and hands it to him. "Naw, here. Go show him." Lincecum lets out a whoop of laughter and goes off to find him. Jensen can see the appeal; it's always fun to get a jab in at your craggy old catcher.
He goes back to reading. It's kind of like a fairytale, he decides. He's not surprised that the whole thing was Rosey's doing; Rosey used to enter games to R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly."
The first game of the Cactus League slate pits the Giants against the Cubs in a laughable split-squad set up. Jensen is torn between pretending he's never seen those fuckers before in his life and going over and acting like a civilized person who can say hello to people he used to know. He settles for drinking spiked Gatorade and waiting for them to approach him.
Some of them do. Dempster bounces over like a giant goateed Canadian sheepdog and asks how Jensen's winter was. Dempster is one of those guys it's impossible to be mean to, all aw-shucks and bad jokes and kind words, so Jensen plays nice. Soto flips him the bird then laughs and comes over to give him an actual hug, even though Jensen's pretty sure Soto would rather kick him in the kneecaps with his spikes on. Lou Piniella is managing the Cubs' other half of a team somewhere else, which suits Jensen just fine. Jensen has never been very good at faking polite.
Jensen isn't pitching today. He probably won't see game action for at least another week because the catchers keep whining that his location is for shit during his bullpen throwing sessions, and Bochy only listens to the catchers. Of course my location's shit in bullpens, Jensen thinks. They're bullpens.
He spends the game on the fence with Bengie Molina, muttering whatever inane bullshit pops into his head.
"It's the fucking goat," he rants to Bengie, who has a humor-the-crazy-person look on his face. "The fucking goat, it just sucks the life out of you. That's why they'll never win another fucking World Series. The goat turns you into pathetic husks of people who aren't good at baseball."
"Oh," Bengie says, nodding slowly.
"Yeah," Jensen says with conviction. He turns back to the game and glares at the batter, some Giants minor league middle infielder with too-long hair and a name Jensen hasn't bothered to learn. "Fucking goat," he grumbles.
Jensen's first appearance of the spring is almost two weeks later in Surprise against the Rangers. By then, he's pretty pumped. He's trying to cut back on his drinking a little because even March mornings in Arizona are fucking hot, and it's no fun being hungover in heat like that.
Before the game, he more or less literally runs into Rich Harden, who was in Chicago with him for a couple of seasons. They exchange awkward back-slaps and a half-hug/half-handshake thing that leaves both of them unsatisfied. Jensen actually liked him, too, united with this smirky Canadian in a mutual antipathy for just about everything, so he huffs out a breath and tries to make the best of having to actually interact with someone.
"Well, fuck," Harden says, shaking his head. Jensen wonders meanly what the over-under is on how long it'll take for the guy to get hurt. He tries to think if there's anyone he could ask. He wonders if anyone has a pool going yet. Soto, probably. Maybe one of the guys who was in Oakland with the guy. Come to think of it, Zito might.
"Here we are," Jensen says in agreement, squinting up at the sky. Not a cloud for miles. Arizona sucks.
Harden invites him over for hockey and sushi sometime. Jensen isn't interested in either of those, but he does want to see whatever shithole of an apartment the guy has managed to find this time around (well, that and the fact the guy could probably drink a 400-pound Irishman under the table; Jensen respects that kind of dedication to drunkenness). He's got a positive genius for renting the absolute shittiest places ever, which makes Jensen feel better about his own much-more-metaphorical life shitholes. At least Jensen doesn't have cockroaches for roommates.
"Still trying to drink yourself to death?" Harden asks with a smirk.
"That's between me and my liver. Good to see you're still a mouthy cock, by the way," Jensen retorts, grinning for what feels like the first time since he left his offseason home in Texas.
He shrugs. "Hope you get fucked today," he says cheerfully, tipping his head towards his own dugout, which seems to be packed with intimidating hitters. Jensen thinks he's probably right. His shoulder feels tight. He feels old.
"Think I'd rather that happen tonight," he says with a smirk of his own. "Maybe I'll let Zito take me out and buy me drinks and find me a groupie to suck my cock. What do you think?"
"Get him drunk enough and he'll suck it himself," he says with a laugh. Jensen raises his eyebrows but doesn't get a chance to comment.
Buster Posey yells Jensen's name from the bullpen area. "Looks like the kid wants me to warm up," Jensen says. He fiddles with the bill of his cap.
"Fuckin' kids," Harden agrees amiably.
The Rangers win the game, but it's not Jensen's fault. The Giants score zero runs and Random AAA Middle Reliever gives up a two-run homerun two innings after Jensen's hit the showers to wash off the sweat and desert and the amazing hum of the first real baseball since fall. Such a lead is insurmountable for the Giants, who go quietly back to their bus and home to Scottsdale. It feels like being back in Chicago.
Jensen's next three outings are rough. He gives up eleven runs over just six innings, which is awful even when you consider that Spring Training stats are irrelevant. Posey acts like Jensen is lower than shit stuck to a tumbleweed.
The beat writers must be writing terrible things about him, but Jensen hasn't sunk so low that he's going to read his own press. He's perfectly capable of beating himself up.
Jensen gets more than one "what the fuck?" voicemail from Rosenbaum. Even his ex-wife calls to ask him if he's okay, and he doesn't remember her paying attention to a single second of baseball in the eight years he's known her. She puts Brett on the line and damn if the kid doesn't get all grave and ask, "Daddy, are you broken?"
Bengie, however, knows him the best. He invites Jensen over to drink beer and eat takeout and watch tape on his huge flatscreen. "We figure it out," Bengie tells him.
They even kind of do. Bengie points out that Jensen's shoulder is flying open a bit against lefties, easy enough, a mechanical issue that they can fix with one or two side sessions.
"Do you hate baseball?" Bengie asks seriously.
"No," Jensen says honestly. "Hate just about everything else, though."
"Hate me?"
"Sometimes."
Bengie grins. "But you love baseball," he says. "That's what counts, loco."
Jensen shakes his head. "I don't know that I love it. We're kinda on the outs, if you hadn't noticed. But I don't hate it. Couldn't hate it, I think. Not even if I tried. Not even if I had to spend the next ten years with fuckin' Posey moralizing at me."
Bengie snorts. "That just make that worth it, yeah?" They share a grin.
Jensen agrees. "I dunno. It's my first love, y'know? That little white ball and the dirt and the grass and the sun. Fuckin' baseball, Benge. Only thing I ever been good at except being a fuckin' drunk."
"So… I don't know, man, start writing down what you think about baseball," Bengie says slowly. "Maybe you remember why you love it."
Jensen thinks about that. ""Whatever gets me through the season," he says finally, then he takes a drink.
Jensen doesn't give up a hit in his next outing, five innings that look a lot like progress. His spring only gets better from there. Posey is re-assigned to minor league camp. Jensen finds that he's actually looking forward to the season.
Jensen has to ask around about good places to live in San Francisco. He's only been there as a member of the visiting team and that one All-Star Game. And sure, that's a decade of roadtrips and hotel stays, but it's not the same as living there.
Half of the team lives up in the hills outside the city, up in Marin County, but Jensen finds that he doesn't want that kind of solitude. Maybe it's the fact he's cut back on his drinking, but he doesn't seem to be as grumpy. He wants neighbors and a local bodega and maybe a taquería nearby.
He decides he doesn't want to live with Pacific Heights snobs or tourists. He asks guys he knows who played in Oakland what they think (Rich Harden excluded because Jensen has better taste than whatever hovel that guy might recommend), thinking maybe one of the East Bay suburbs might be to his taste. Berkeley gets a long look before the idea of hippies makes his skin crawl.
Eventually, he settles on an apartment up near Washington Square, agreeing to the lease sight-unseen. The realtor promises him a view of Coit Tower and the sound of the parrots in the morning. He's annoyed with himself when he realizes how excited he is about the stupid parrots, but he can't wait to take Brett up Telegraph Hill to see them.
Two days before the Giants head to Houston to open the season, Jensen decides he should see if maybe there is something to what Bengie suggested. He has a lot of thoughts about baseball.
He's at a coffee shop in Scottsdale pretending to be anonymous when some guy in a Cubs jersey with Kerry Wood's name on the back comes up to him and says, "Hey, you're Jensen Ackles! That's awesome."
The Jensen Ackles of, say, a decade ago would have laughed and said, "Yes, it's awesome being me." The current version-fourth starter of a Giants team projected to finish fourth in the division, divorced and exhausted and drained dry-just gives a strained smile and nods and signs the baseball the fan pulls out of a pocket.
"You have a good day," this tired Jensen Ackles tells the fan.
"You were my favorite when you were a Cubbie," the fan says. "I mean, 'cept for Wood."
"Of course," Jensen says genially even though he knows that's a line of bullshit. He spent four years in Chicago. Nobody ever compares to Wood. Not even guys who actually, you know, won Cy Young awards. And that's not even mentioning that the city of Chicago spent the last couple years collectively hating Jensen's money-grubbing, sucking-at-baseball guts. Well, except for the White Sox fans, who thought the whole thing was hilarious.
The fan walks away smiling and looking over the ball, his day made.
Jensen takes a deep breath and goes back to his coffee. He stares at a blank Word document on his laptop and wonders where to begin. The coffee is burnt, which is apparently what they're trying to pass off as "dark roast," and it makes him miss the early days of his career. He wouldn't have noticed that the coffee sucked, and if he had, he wouldn't have cared.
I love baseball, he writes.
It's a pretty good start.
The season starts like a miracle. Jensen doesn't give up a run for three weeks. He doesn't lose a game until May, entering the month with a 4-0 record and a shiny 0.64 ERA. He wins NL Pitcher of the Month honors for April. The Chicago media isn't oblivious, and he hears about more than one op-ed bemoaning the fact Jensen Ackles has apparently found magic out in California. Jensen's quote about the goat surfaces.
He isn't sure how he feels about it. He's never been given to introspection, especially in-season. A lot of guys tell the reporters they're just taking it one day at time, trying not to think too hard, but those are bullshit clichés and everybody knows it. Jensen's just as good at parroting that shit back, but he finds that this season, he really doesn't care.
"It feels weird," he admits to a national writer in town for the Phillies series at the end of April. "That's all I can say about it, I think. It feels weird. Good, I guess. But weird."
"Noticed you're coming out to 'Sympathy for the Devil,' though you've always been famous for not having entrance music," the writer says. "Any particular reason?"
"Trying new things this season," Jensen says, cracking a smile. "Please allow me to, like, re-introduce myself."
"Looks like it's working," the writer says.
Jensen loves his new apartment. He only has a few sticks of furniture he's collected from quick trips to IKEA and a couple thrift stores, and he's sleeping on a mattress on the floor like he's back in the minor leagues. He doesn't care. The view is gorgeous, his neighbor offers up his wifi password for the promise of Tim Lincecum's autograph and some free tickets every so often, and every Italian pastry in North Beach is two blocks away.
Rosey, ever helpful, keeps sending him updates about how Jared Padalecki is faring in Detroit. After the fourth 'scoreless inning! 2 K's (1 looking), dude is sharp' email, he gives in and sends back: 'I DONT CARE MICHAEL STOP IT.' He hopes his annoyance reads through.
The longer he dwells on it, the angrier he gets. Because fuck Jared Padalecki. Sincerely. If Jensen's honest with himself (and if there's any one person you have to be honest with, it's yourself; Jensen's learned that lesson hard)-if Jensen can be honest with himself for once in his life, he can admit that maybe that's what he's most upset about.
Jared flamed out, injury after injury after injury enough to beat a guy down but who gives up on a dream like that? Jared gave up and he walked away and he didn't even say goodbye. Coward.
Jensen was pitching a Spring Training game, five innings of no-run ball before coming out to give someone else some work, the kind of outing they would celebrate. He came into the Clubhouse looking for Jared and found an empty locker. He ended up celebrating with the poor company of a bottle of whiskey, and that didn't feel much like a celebration at all.
So, yeah. Fuck Jared Padalecki. Jensen puts up a picture of Jared looking sad and waving at the camera to remind himself that no matter how good Jared Padalecki is this year, Jensen will be better, dammit. He doesn't remember taking the picture, but it was on a roll of film he developed after Jared disappeared.
Rosey's reply reaches him two hours before Jensen's due to take the mound against the Rockies: 'No, fucker, you care. Keep on pitching like you gave God a handjob with that arm, tho, k?'
So he does.
@sfgiantsbeat
Probable matchups for 4/9-11 series vs. ATL: Hudson vs. Sanchez, Lowe vs. Ackles, Kawakami vs. Lincecum.
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@sfgiantsbeat
Probable matchups for 4/16-18 series @ LAD: Ackles vs. Padilla, Lincecum vs. Haeger, Zito vs. Kershaw.
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@sfgiantsbeat
Probable matchups for 4/19-21 series @ SDP: Cain vs. C. Richard, Ackles vs. Latos, Sanchez vs. Garland.
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@sfgiantsbeat
Probable matchups for 4/26-28 series vs. PHI: Halladay vs. Ackles, Moyer vs. Sanchez, Hamels vs. Lincecum.
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@sfgiantsbeat
Probable matchups for 4/30-5/2 series vs. COL: Cook vs. Cain, Rogers vs. Ackles, Chacin vs. Sanchez.
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Seriously.
Features: 2010 San Francisco Giants pitchers, Jensen being an irascible dickhead, a French bulldog named Cy, twitter, Bengie Molina, unrepentant baseball nerdery, and a lack of Jared
This is a remix of The War Criminal.
@theGarfoose
I just want to go on the record saying: this book is the most important, bravest thing written about baseball maybe ever, It's that important.
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@JPosnanski
Is there anything I can write about The Book that hasn't already been written by now? Probably not, but I'm going to try. at the blog: [url]
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@marianogirl42
@keithlaw So The Book… what magnitude of "biggest baseball story ever" is this? Braun PEDs? A-Rod PEDs? Zito contract?
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@keithlaw
@marianogirl42 Bigger than the Braun suspension? Maybe as big as Jackie Robinson.
(via Seesmic)
@giantsgirlie97
o. m. g.
(via web)
JENSEN
The first thing Jensen Ackles says to a reporter when he arrives in Spring Training is that he is absolutely, completely, one-hundred percent convinced that the Chicago Cubs really are cursed.
The San Francisco Chronicle beat writer, a fiftysomething man with a big gut and mutton-chop sideburns, raises his eyebrows. "You sure you want to say this on the record?" he asks, like Jensen is admitting to being a 'roider or something.
Jensen just shrugs. "Like it's news?" he asks.
"Right, right." He waves a meaty paw and fiddles with his digital voice recorder. "So the Cubs are cursed," he prompts.
"Yep," Jensen says, squinting into the distance, where Phoenix melts into mountains and desert and nothing. "Like to think I'm a pretty good example."
All Giants pitchers and catchers are to report to Spring Training camp officially on Valentine's Day. Of course, many of them have been in Arizona for weeks and months already. A significant contingent lives there year-round.
Against his better judgment, Jensen moves into a condo in the middle of a complex completely filled with ballplayers. His next-door neighbor is a coach. Felix Hernandez lives up the street. He promises himself that the second someone's wife bangs on his door and insists he come to a cookout, he'll move, but then Brandon McCarthy's wife is so charming and swears there won't be kids and promises there will be liquor, so he decides to stick around after all.
("Really," he told her later, when he was drunk and sitting on her porch with his head between his knees to fight off the drunk spins, "you had me at liquor."
"Good to know," she'd replied, one eyebrow arched like she was judging him so hard. Even so, she still made sure that his favorite Irish whisky was always on hand for him for subsequent parties. Not for the last time in the coming year, he finds himself jealous of the Texas Rangers. Turned out she was a bit of a lush herself.)
His own ex-wife makes him promise to try to get along with others. "I know it's a terrible trial for you, Jensen, but maybe make an effort? Please?" It's just about the last lecture he wants to receive when all he's trying to do is have his once-a-week chat with his kid, but he gamely agrees. After all, this new season in this new city is supposed to be his new start.
Jensen gives Tim Lincecum's dog a dubious look. It sits down and stares up at him, tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth and an expression on its face that quite clearly says, "I am more important in this room than you are and we both know it, motherfucker."
"I could punt you like a small, white French bulldog-shaped football," he tells the dog. It cocks its little fuzzy head. "It's true," Jensen says, nodding fervently. "You're totally aerodynamic. You're a rugby ball with a tongue."
The dog looks away, interest in him apparently waning.
"That's what I thought," Jensen mutters, and then he feels like the biggest loser in the room because he basically just lost an argument with a dog.
He turns back to his locker and squints at the 34 on the back of one of his jerseys, turned funny on its hanger, which is a flimsy piece of wire that can barely support the material's weight. Call Jensen an egotist, but he thought he might merit more substantial equipment than that. Then again, there are other guys in the room with Cy Young plaques on their mantles, and one of them gets to bring his fucking dog into the clubhouse. Jensen's just the used-to-be-good guy the ballclub signed in the offseason.
"Meeting time, Ackles," someone says behind him. He turns to find one of the relievers whose name he hasn't caught yet, an unremarkable younger guy with a scruff of beard and dark eyes.
Jensen nods and glances at his cell phone. Ten a.m. Time to get this motherfucker started.
Despite his best intentions of surliness and "character," Jensen finds he kind of likes his new team. He signed with them because the money was better than he probably deserved and more importantly, because San Francisco was pretty much as far west as he figured he could get after the last four miserable years in Chicago. All he wanted to do was escape, to hide somewhere near water, to find somewhere with enough other talent to overshadow him and all the million ways he failed to live up to expectations since he left Anaheim. He wanted to be left alone, and since nobody really paid any attention to the Giants, San Francisco seemed like as good a place as any.
They do have one hell of a pitching staff, that's for sure. Tim Lincecum's in the corner, hiding behind his hair and laughing with Barry Zito, who talks entirely too fucking much. Jensen has nothing in common with Lincecum beyond some accolades in his past and nothing in common with Zito except for the crushing disappointment of failed expectations, so he sits next to Matt Cain instead. Cain is quiet and solid and well-spoken and young, face still kind of round with puppy fat, and he smiles easily but isn't nosy. Jensen likes him immediately. Jonathan Sanchez doesn't talk at all, watching everything with suspicious dark eyes, and Jensen's first thought is, yep, dude's a lefty. There's a kid with huge ears and huge eyes, apparently the team's top pitching prospect, who won't make the team out of spring training but will definitely finish the year with the big club.
The bullpen guys are the usual cocktail of personalities. The closer is a beefy guy with an almost-fauxhawk and obnoxious chest tattoos visible through all of the holes cut in his shirt, the kind of jerkoff Jensen used to be, who talks in a booming voice and seems to expect everyone to laugh at every single thing that comes out of his mouth like he's Sam Kinison or something. Jeremy Affeldt is there, and all Jensen can think of when he sees him is that time he got tackled to the ground by Kyle Farnsworth (a teammate of Jensen's in Chicago; the less said about that the better). The rest of them sort of blend together anonymously, and Jensen is bad with names.
The catchers are on the other side of the room, still talking amongst themselves as the pitchers file in. Another reason Jensen came to the Giants is Bengie Molina, who was his catcher for years in Anaheim. Jensen loves Bengie Molina, who caught his no-hitter and his World Series winner, who drove him to the hospital when Jensen's wife went into labor and was there at Brett's christening and who is pretty much the only person allowed to call Jensen on his shit. The big league backup has a shock of silver hair, an easy smile, and a Southern drawl so impenetrable he has to repeat himself a lot, especially to the foreign guys. There's a non-roster invitee with a poorly manicured goatee, and all the guys in the minors, one of whom can't be older than sixteen and doesn't speak one lick of English.
And then there's The Kid.
Jensen wants to refuse to call the kid "Buster" sheerly on principle. Buster is a name for Golden Retrievers and six-year-olds. Jensen's ex-wife calls their son that occasionally, especially when the he's in some kind of trouble. But this is Buster Posey. Jensen hates him immediately.
He's not even entirely sure why at first. The kid is appropriately deferential, thoughtful, respectful, and even funny in a way that would usually appeal to Jensen. There's just something about him that rubs Jensen the wrong way.
For a while, it's just a small dislike he can't even pinpoint. Jensen is rather mollified by the fact Lincecum doesn't seem to like him much, either, but that has more to do with Lincecum's infatuation with Bengie Molina than the fact Posey looks like a gopher. Jensen can't take guys who look like rodents seriously.
And then the guy has the gall to ask him not to drink so much.
Sure, Jensen had come in so hungover that he couldn't even throw his bullpen session, spending the morning workouts cowering in the trainer's room with a towel over his face and a bucket nearby just in case.
"You're a damn drunk," someone said from the vicinity of the doorway. It was a young voice, so probably not a coach or, even worse, a clubbie. You don't fuck with clubbies-clubhouse attendants, two and a half steps down from God, basically-and you tip them well or they can and, in Jensen's experience, cheerfully will make your life hell. Jensen tries, he really does, and he tips them as well as anyone. They still hate him.
(That might be a consequence of Jensen's totally sunny and pleasant (cough cough) disposition, though; Buster Posey is all smiles and cheap tips and still has the fucking clubbies eating out of his hand from day one. Jensen finds he's lucky to have clean socks most days. He starts stealing them from Zito, whose head is so far up cleat-chaser pussy he doesn't notice shit anyway. And anyway, Zito has striped socks that look fucking cool.)
"Fuck off," Jensen said to the intruder, not particularly concerned.
"You get the shakes so bad you can't pitch, or do ya just go out there drunk?" the intruder continued, an obnoxious forced casualness in his tone. "Guess I know now why you sucked balls the last couple years."
"You want to call up David Wells and ask him what he did?" Jensen snapped back.
Young Voice actually laughed. "Everybody knows he pitched drunk," he said dismissively. "You're also not a big enough fatass to play John Goodman in a movie. Get up, you drunk fuck. We got stuff to do today."
There was a quiet pause long enough that Jensen figured the guy has given up and left, and then the towel was snatched off his face and lemon-lime Gatorade was dumped all over him. Jensen shrieked, flailed, and nearly injured himself in the process. Everyone knows lemon-lime Gatorade is piss bottled up for human consumption. It's basically poison.
"You evil fucking ninja cocksucking bastard," Jensen sputtered, sitting up as fast as he thought his stomach could handle, spitting and furiously wiping sports drink out of his eyes and ready to lash out at whomever thought this was a good idea. "What the fuck was that?"
"That was a wake-up call," Buster Posey said, arms crossed over his chest, very serious expression on his haughty little gopher face. Then he handed Jensen a clean towel. "Dry yourself up," he said warningly, "and I don't just mean the Gatorade."
Jensen snarled and shoved past him out of the trainer's room, storming off to find some silent dark corner of somewhere else to hide. Or, failing that, some fucking coffee.
It's Mike Rosenbaum that tells him. Rosey's an old friend, the oldest kind of baseball friend a guy can have, dating back to the bus leagues when Jensen was young and Rosey was on a rehab assignment after some injury. Rosey's a coach in the Detroit Tigers organization now, and he claims he loves it as much as he ever did pitching. Maybe he does. If Jensen's memory is as accurate as his location of his famous changeup, Rosey was never a particularly good pitcher.
"So hey, fuckface, guess who's going to make the Tigers roster out of spring training," Rosey says after hellos and how's-the-kids-wife-whatever chitchat. Rosey has two sons in baseball, one a catcher in AA and the other drafted by the Padres last year, third round but getting first round money to lure him away from a hefty scholarship at Auburn. Jensen's son is six and doesn't seem to care very much about baseball.
"Justin Verlander," Jensen says dryly, naming the Tigers star pitcher. He's sitting on his rental couch in his rental condo, and at least this conversation is more interesting than trying to decide between streaming a movie on Netflix and streaming porn.
Rosey laughs. "Not a chance. That kid's green inside when you cut him," he jokes. "C'mon guess," he needles. He's probably bouncing on the balls of his feet, because he's like that. He makes Jensen tired.
"I don't know. Got any interesting NRI's?" Jensen asks gamely. He can't think of anything he cares about less than Detroit Tigers non-roster invitees. "It's Ty Cobb, isn't it?"
"Yes, obviously," Rosey says. He pauses, then his voice turns all concerned and genuine and a little awed, like he's talking to someone who doesn't know somebody shot President Kennedy. "You really don't know, do you?" he asks slowly.
Jensen is abruptly annoyed. "I don't know what?" he snaps.
"Nobody's told you? Well, fuck me, Crackle-Ackle. The grapevine's really letting a brother down, here. And here I was thinking ballplayers were nothing but a buncha prissy little gossips. Shit. My world is warping." He pauses and takes a deep breath. Jensen stifles a groan.
"Would you just tell me?" Jensen bitches.
"Like a motherfuckin' phoenix a'risin' from the ashes of torn rotator cuffs and strained ligaments and shit… it's Jared Padalecki, man. J-rod, Padawhatsit, Boy Wonder. He's back."
Jensen would love to respond. He would. He'd love it if he could go, wow, that's amazing, that'll be the story of the year, but he can't. He just can't. He can't even get his head around it.
Rosey pauses again to let Jensen soak in every little thing that might mean. Rosey loves a dramatic pause. Jensen distracts himself with imagining that Rosey has both arms stretched out to his sides right then like Scott Stapp in a music video. It helps.
Jensen stutters out, "Wait, w-what?" and he sounds like he did that time in high school he got kicked in the head in a soccer game and suffered a concussion that kept him foggy and confused for two weeks.
So Rosey says, voice calm, and he's probably shaking his head, "Well, compadre, let me tell you a story."
While Rosey talks, Jensen gets up and goes to find the box that he takes with him everywhere he lives. He hasn't actually opened it in years. It's the important baseball mementos: a rosin bag stolen from Jacobs Field when he was just a draftee, the sweat-stained cap he was wearing that night in '02 when he won the World Series, a game ball from his no-hitter in '05, a glove he used in Little League-stuff like that. There are dozens-maybe hundreds-of photographs, and he digs until he finds the one he wants.
His hands are shaking. He thinks idly, Fuck, I need a drink. Rosey keeps talking, about the Tigers giving out magic chances and healed UCLs and high school baseball.
In the picture, Jensen is squinting in the bright Florida sunshine and giving the camera a bit of a fuck-you look, but he's tucked under the arm of a teammate like the guy's telling him to cheer the fuck up. That teammate is Jared Padalecki, a few inches taller but much skinnier, a grin on his face so bright it could've lit up Wrigley before they installed the lights. It was taken at some point during Spring Training in '98, the year Jensen made his Major League debut.
The Jared Padalecki he remembers, the one from the moment frozen in this photo, was twenty-one and coming off the best year of his life. He was loud and happy-go-lucky and he had more talent in his non-dominant hand than Jensen did in his whole body, and Jensen had loved him with everything he had.
"Are you even listening?" Rosey asks, bringing Jensen back with a jolt.
"No," Jensen says honestly.
"Asshole," Rosey says without heat. "This's important. You should."
"I'll read it online," he replies, even though he tells himself he won't. He looks at his twenty-four-year-old self in the photograph and shakes his head. Oh, the things you'll accomplish and the things you'll lose, kid, he thinks. Probably a toss-up which ones'll make you crazier.
The next day after morning workouts, Jensen sits at his locker in the clubhouse and tries to project "Go away" vibes to everyone, sneaking pulls from a flask everyone else pretends not to see. He's in a poor mood, slept very little the night before, and the last thing he wants is to have a heart-to-heart with nosy gopher-faced top prospects about his fucking changeup or drinking habits.
He uses blue stick-tack stolen from Bochy's office to hang up the photograph of himself arm-in-arm with Jared Padalecki, both of them smiling and young in Cleveland Indians uniforms. He rarely personalizes his locker, especially in spring training, but this seems appropriate. This is a new start, this year in San Francisco, so he starts new traditions. He puts up a couple different ones of his son, another of his parents wearing Angels gear and laughing, one of himself with Bengie Molina where they're both wasted and wearing top hats and holding giant iguanas. He puts up several shots that he took himself, landscapes and objects and strangers and old teammates. He's always been something of a photographer.
Lincecum is a few lockers away, wet-haired from the shower and playing old sock tug-of-war with his dog. Zito is on the floor doing what might be Pilates to Jensen's right, which is every bit as uncomfortable as it sounds. On Jensen's other side, Jonathan Sanchez is talking in rapid-fire Spanish on his cell phone. Someone nearby is playing the Black Keys on his iHome. It's oddly peaceful, in the usual chaotic clubhouse kind of way.
Jensen has an iPad because it’s easier than lugging around his laptop, plus the games are more fun. He gets it out to distract himself from old photos, and he does a search for news about Padalecki because you know, why not torture himself a little more?
Turns out Rosey had, if anything, been underselling it. Padalecki signed a minor league deal the previous offseason and spent all of '09 working his way through the Tigers system, building up arm strength and velocity and shaking off the rust of almost a decade out of baseball. He'd been untouchable in AAA by season's end, and Jensen finds at least one blog post lambasting the Tigers for not calling him up in September when rosters expanded. He figures the team probably would have if they had made the postseason. All the news pointed to him breaking camp bound for Detroit, a member of a very good bullpen.
Jensen can't say he's surprised, exactly. Of the two of them, Jared had always been the more talented one. Jensen probably would have drunk himself to death at thirty-five if their positions were reversed.
Lincecum's dog goes off to get a belly rub from Panda, whose wobbly frown indicates that he needs it more than the dog does. Lincecum gets up and wanders over to Jensen, leaning down to peer at the photos. "How old're you in this one?" he asks, pointing at the one with Padalecki. He sounds remarkably lucid, which is kind of a switch. Must have been the shower.
"A baby," Jensen says gruffly.
Lincecum side-eyes him but doesn't pursue it; he doesn't know Jensen well enough yet. He laughs when he sees the one of Bengie. "That's awesome!" he says. "He seen this yet?"
Jensen detaches it from the wood and hands it to him. "Naw, here. Go show him." Lincecum lets out a whoop of laughter and goes off to find him. Jensen can see the appeal; it's always fun to get a jab in at your craggy old catcher.
He goes back to reading. It's kind of like a fairytale, he decides. He's not surprised that the whole thing was Rosey's doing; Rosey used to enter games to R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly."
The first game of the Cactus League slate pits the Giants against the Cubs in a laughable split-squad set up. Jensen is torn between pretending he's never seen those fuckers before in his life and going over and acting like a civilized person who can say hello to people he used to know. He settles for drinking spiked Gatorade and waiting for them to approach him.
Some of them do. Dempster bounces over like a giant goateed Canadian sheepdog and asks how Jensen's winter was. Dempster is one of those guys it's impossible to be mean to, all aw-shucks and bad jokes and kind words, so Jensen plays nice. Soto flips him the bird then laughs and comes over to give him an actual hug, even though Jensen's pretty sure Soto would rather kick him in the kneecaps with his spikes on. Lou Piniella is managing the Cubs' other half of a team somewhere else, which suits Jensen just fine. Jensen has never been very good at faking polite.
Jensen isn't pitching today. He probably won't see game action for at least another week because the catchers keep whining that his location is for shit during his bullpen throwing sessions, and Bochy only listens to the catchers. Of course my location's shit in bullpens, Jensen thinks. They're bullpens.
He spends the game on the fence with Bengie Molina, muttering whatever inane bullshit pops into his head.
"It's the fucking goat," he rants to Bengie, who has a humor-the-crazy-person look on his face. "The fucking goat, it just sucks the life out of you. That's why they'll never win another fucking World Series. The goat turns you into pathetic husks of people who aren't good at baseball."
"Oh," Bengie says, nodding slowly.
"Yeah," Jensen says with conviction. He turns back to the game and glares at the batter, some Giants minor league middle infielder with too-long hair and a name Jensen hasn't bothered to learn. "Fucking goat," he grumbles.
Jensen's first appearance of the spring is almost two weeks later in Surprise against the Rangers. By then, he's pretty pumped. He's trying to cut back on his drinking a little because even March mornings in Arizona are fucking hot, and it's no fun being hungover in heat like that.
Before the game, he more or less literally runs into Rich Harden, who was in Chicago with him for a couple of seasons. They exchange awkward back-slaps and a half-hug/half-handshake thing that leaves both of them unsatisfied. Jensen actually liked him, too, united with this smirky Canadian in a mutual antipathy for just about everything, so he huffs out a breath and tries to make the best of having to actually interact with someone.
"Well, fuck," Harden says, shaking his head. Jensen wonders meanly what the over-under is on how long it'll take for the guy to get hurt. He tries to think if there's anyone he could ask. He wonders if anyone has a pool going yet. Soto, probably. Maybe one of the guys who was in Oakland with the guy. Come to think of it, Zito might.
"Here we are," Jensen says in agreement, squinting up at the sky. Not a cloud for miles. Arizona sucks.
Harden invites him over for hockey and sushi sometime. Jensen isn't interested in either of those, but he does want to see whatever shithole of an apartment the guy has managed to find this time around (well, that and the fact the guy could probably drink a 400-pound Irishman under the table; Jensen respects that kind of dedication to drunkenness). He's got a positive genius for renting the absolute shittiest places ever, which makes Jensen feel better about his own much-more-metaphorical life shitholes. At least Jensen doesn't have cockroaches for roommates.
"Still trying to drink yourself to death?" Harden asks with a smirk.
"That's between me and my liver. Good to see you're still a mouthy cock, by the way," Jensen retorts, grinning for what feels like the first time since he left his offseason home in Texas.
He shrugs. "Hope you get fucked today," he says cheerfully, tipping his head towards his own dugout, which seems to be packed with intimidating hitters. Jensen thinks he's probably right. His shoulder feels tight. He feels old.
"Think I'd rather that happen tonight," he says with a smirk of his own. "Maybe I'll let Zito take me out and buy me drinks and find me a groupie to suck my cock. What do you think?"
"Get him drunk enough and he'll suck it himself," he says with a laugh. Jensen raises his eyebrows but doesn't get a chance to comment.
Buster Posey yells Jensen's name from the bullpen area. "Looks like the kid wants me to warm up," Jensen says. He fiddles with the bill of his cap.
"Fuckin' kids," Harden agrees amiably.
The Rangers win the game, but it's not Jensen's fault. The Giants score zero runs and Random AAA Middle Reliever gives up a two-run homerun two innings after Jensen's hit the showers to wash off the sweat and desert and the amazing hum of the first real baseball since fall. Such a lead is insurmountable for the Giants, who go quietly back to their bus and home to Scottsdale. It feels like being back in Chicago.
Jensen's next three outings are rough. He gives up eleven runs over just six innings, which is awful even when you consider that Spring Training stats are irrelevant. Posey acts like Jensen is lower than shit stuck to a tumbleweed.
The beat writers must be writing terrible things about him, but Jensen hasn't sunk so low that he's going to read his own press. He's perfectly capable of beating himself up.
Jensen gets more than one "what the fuck?" voicemail from Rosenbaum. Even his ex-wife calls to ask him if he's okay, and he doesn't remember her paying attention to a single second of baseball in the eight years he's known her. She puts Brett on the line and damn if the kid doesn't get all grave and ask, "Daddy, are you broken?"
Bengie, however, knows him the best. He invites Jensen over to drink beer and eat takeout and watch tape on his huge flatscreen. "We figure it out," Bengie tells him.
They even kind of do. Bengie points out that Jensen's shoulder is flying open a bit against lefties, easy enough, a mechanical issue that they can fix with one or two side sessions.
"Do you hate baseball?" Bengie asks seriously.
"No," Jensen says honestly. "Hate just about everything else, though."
"Hate me?"
"Sometimes."
Bengie grins. "But you love baseball," he says. "That's what counts, loco."
Jensen shakes his head. "I don't know that I love it. We're kinda on the outs, if you hadn't noticed. But I don't hate it. Couldn't hate it, I think. Not even if I tried. Not even if I had to spend the next ten years with fuckin' Posey moralizing at me."
Bengie snorts. "That just make that worth it, yeah?" They share a grin.
Jensen agrees. "I dunno. It's my first love, y'know? That little white ball and the dirt and the grass and the sun. Fuckin' baseball, Benge. Only thing I ever been good at except being a fuckin' drunk."
"So… I don't know, man, start writing down what you think about baseball," Bengie says slowly. "Maybe you remember why you love it."
Jensen thinks about that. ""Whatever gets me through the season," he says finally, then he takes a drink.
Jensen doesn't give up a hit in his next outing, five innings that look a lot like progress. His spring only gets better from there. Posey is re-assigned to minor league camp. Jensen finds that he's actually looking forward to the season.
Jensen has to ask around about good places to live in San Francisco. He's only been there as a member of the visiting team and that one All-Star Game. And sure, that's a decade of roadtrips and hotel stays, but it's not the same as living there.
Half of the team lives up in the hills outside the city, up in Marin County, but Jensen finds that he doesn't want that kind of solitude. Maybe it's the fact he's cut back on his drinking, but he doesn't seem to be as grumpy. He wants neighbors and a local bodega and maybe a taquería nearby.
He decides he doesn't want to live with Pacific Heights snobs or tourists. He asks guys he knows who played in Oakland what they think (Rich Harden excluded because Jensen has better taste than whatever hovel that guy might recommend), thinking maybe one of the East Bay suburbs might be to his taste. Berkeley gets a long look before the idea of hippies makes his skin crawl.
Eventually, he settles on an apartment up near Washington Square, agreeing to the lease sight-unseen. The realtor promises him a view of Coit Tower and the sound of the parrots in the morning. He's annoyed with himself when he realizes how excited he is about the stupid parrots, but he can't wait to take Brett up Telegraph Hill to see them.
Two days before the Giants head to Houston to open the season, Jensen decides he should see if maybe there is something to what Bengie suggested. He has a lot of thoughts about baseball.
He's at a coffee shop in Scottsdale pretending to be anonymous when some guy in a Cubs jersey with Kerry Wood's name on the back comes up to him and says, "Hey, you're Jensen Ackles! That's awesome."
The Jensen Ackles of, say, a decade ago would have laughed and said, "Yes, it's awesome being me." The current version-fourth starter of a Giants team projected to finish fourth in the division, divorced and exhausted and drained dry-just gives a strained smile and nods and signs the baseball the fan pulls out of a pocket.
"You have a good day," this tired Jensen Ackles tells the fan.
"You were my favorite when you were a Cubbie," the fan says. "I mean, 'cept for Wood."
"Of course," Jensen says genially even though he knows that's a line of bullshit. He spent four years in Chicago. Nobody ever compares to Wood. Not even guys who actually, you know, won Cy Young awards. And that's not even mentioning that the city of Chicago spent the last couple years collectively hating Jensen's money-grubbing, sucking-at-baseball guts. Well, except for the White Sox fans, who thought the whole thing was hilarious.
The fan walks away smiling and looking over the ball, his day made.
Jensen takes a deep breath and goes back to his coffee. He stares at a blank Word document on his laptop and wonders where to begin. The coffee is burnt, which is apparently what they're trying to pass off as "dark roast," and it makes him miss the early days of his career. He wouldn't have noticed that the coffee sucked, and if he had, he wouldn't have cared.
I love baseball, he writes.
It's a pretty good start.
The season starts like a miracle. Jensen doesn't give up a run for three weeks. He doesn't lose a game until May, entering the month with a 4-0 record and a shiny 0.64 ERA. He wins NL Pitcher of the Month honors for April. The Chicago media isn't oblivious, and he hears about more than one op-ed bemoaning the fact Jensen Ackles has apparently found magic out in California. Jensen's quote about the goat surfaces.
He isn't sure how he feels about it. He's never been given to introspection, especially in-season. A lot of guys tell the reporters they're just taking it one day at time, trying not to think too hard, but those are bullshit clichés and everybody knows it. Jensen's just as good at parroting that shit back, but he finds that this season, he really doesn't care.
"It feels weird," he admits to a national writer in town for the Phillies series at the end of April. "That's all I can say about it, I think. It feels weird. Good, I guess. But weird."
"Noticed you're coming out to 'Sympathy for the Devil,' though you've always been famous for not having entrance music," the writer says. "Any particular reason?"
"Trying new things this season," Jensen says, cracking a smile. "Please allow me to, like, re-introduce myself."
"Looks like it's working," the writer says.
Jensen loves his new apartment. He only has a few sticks of furniture he's collected from quick trips to IKEA and a couple thrift stores, and he's sleeping on a mattress on the floor like he's back in the minor leagues. He doesn't care. The view is gorgeous, his neighbor offers up his wifi password for the promise of Tim Lincecum's autograph and some free tickets every so often, and every Italian pastry in North Beach is two blocks away.
Rosey, ever helpful, keeps sending him updates about how Jared Padalecki is faring in Detroit. After the fourth 'scoreless inning! 2 K's (1 looking), dude is sharp' email, he gives in and sends back: 'I DONT CARE MICHAEL STOP IT.' He hopes his annoyance reads through.
The longer he dwells on it, the angrier he gets. Because fuck Jared Padalecki. Sincerely. If Jensen's honest with himself (and if there's any one person you have to be honest with, it's yourself; Jensen's learned that lesson hard)-if Jensen can be honest with himself for once in his life, he can admit that maybe that's what he's most upset about.
Jared flamed out, injury after injury after injury enough to beat a guy down but who gives up on a dream like that? Jared gave up and he walked away and he didn't even say goodbye. Coward.
Jensen was pitching a Spring Training game, five innings of no-run ball before coming out to give someone else some work, the kind of outing they would celebrate. He came into the Clubhouse looking for Jared and found an empty locker. He ended up celebrating with the poor company of a bottle of whiskey, and that didn't feel much like a celebration at all.
So, yeah. Fuck Jared Padalecki. Jensen puts up a picture of Jared looking sad and waving at the camera to remind himself that no matter how good Jared Padalecki is this year, Jensen will be better, dammit. He doesn't remember taking the picture, but it was on a roll of film he developed after Jared disappeared.
Rosey's reply reaches him two hours before Jensen's due to take the mound against the Rockies: 'No, fucker, you care. Keep on pitching like you gave God a handjob with that arm, tho, k?'
So he does.
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Probable matchups for 4/9-11 series vs. ATL: Hudson vs. Sanchez, Lowe vs. Ackles, Kawakami vs. Lincecum.
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Probable matchups for 4/16-18 series @ LAD: Ackles vs. Padilla, Lincecum vs. Haeger, Zito vs. Kershaw.
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Probable matchups for 4/19-21 series @ SDP: Cain vs. C. Richard, Ackles vs. Latos, Sanchez vs. Garland.
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Probable matchups for 4/26-28 series vs. PHI: Halladay vs. Ackles, Moyer vs. Sanchez, Hamels vs. Lincecum.
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Probable matchups for 4/30-5/2 series vs. COL: Cook vs. Cain, Rogers vs. Ackles, Chacin vs. Sanchez.
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