Waiting out the Machine
title: Waiting out the Machine
pairing/characters: Madison Bumgarner/Buster Posey
word count: 3300
rating: PG-13 (language)
notes: AU-ish (neither player is married) Madison Bumgarner and his temperament fascinate me. I wanted to explore what it must have been like for the two months that he and Buster Posey were playing together in the minors, before he started to calm down. In one of his NLDS interviews he says that Buster calms him down, so I took that idea and ran with it.
This is the first fic I've written in years and my first baseball fic. Eeek.
disclaimer: This is all made up. Except for the game details, none of this actually happened. Characters aren't mine
summary: Madison Bumgarner is impatient after spring training. Takes place in April 2010 when both players were playing for AAA-Fresno.
They start off the season with a long road trip to Nevada, and Madison Bumgarner's tired of the road before he even gets his first start. In the chilled, early April air of Reno, they lose two before finally getting used to the thin air and splitting the series and just then, it's time to pile on the airport bus and fly to Vegas. Momentum's in their favor; but Madison's still not settled into life in the west, life without his sister, and now that he's blown up his relationship, single life. Fresno at least has farms; sure, it's mile after mile of grapes, or peaches after they leave the city, but at least there's that. In the dusk, Nevada looms below him, a weird collection of mountain ranges and dry valleys, with roads and their few cars barely visible in this light. No green like back east, desert unlike Arizona, and the only farms to be seen are isolated circular fields growing hay. There's ranches here too like at home, but who can tell? Cattle here must eat gravel and sagebrush and some of that hay. Other than that, it just looks like piles of rocks, for a hundred miles until it gets too dark to see anything.
An hour later, they've landed at the airport and it's back to the bus and the hotel. There was the spread after the game, but everyone's still a little hungry and a bunch of guys wander out on the streets looking for a convenience store and some frozen burritos. Madison stands around chewing the wrapper from his beef jerky for lack of anything better to do, listening to the sound of the electronic slots while they wait for a couple of the guys to blow some of their spare change. No one wins anything. Hell, their luck is so bad that no one even gets two symbols in a row and everyone's laughing nervously that it's a sign. Luck, he thinks to himself. At least with the ballgame there's some skill involved. Just for kicks, he puts a dollar into the slots. This time, it's two cherries and a bar, and the crowd goes wild.
Outside, Buster Posey's waiting with a brown bag with some Power Bars. Madison can't help but think that he's looking on at the slots in disapproval, but he always seems to have that same, intense look, so maybe it's nothing. It takes them a while to get back to the hotel; everyone is walking and playing with their phones, and they almost make a wrong turn, because all these streets and hotels and gas stations just look the same, in the light, in the dark, doesn't matter. Only Buster is walking with some purpose, like he knows and cares where he's going. He's been through all this before, thinks Madison. Already spent a year in this league, been to these cities and played their parks.
Both of them are just waiting to be called up, but Madison's fingers are itching already to pitch in a big park. Waiting for a position to open up. Buster's more than proven himself already, and talk around the clubhouse is surprise that he's still there at all. He's ready for the big league but never once acknowledged it or shows any signs of impatience with still being down here, and Madison is not ready but wants to be. Not quite ready, not until he proves he can pitch against the 4-A guys consistently for more than the 10 innings he did when he was briefly called up to the majors, prove his fastball speed is holding steady and that he has control. Sometimes throwing that ball into the postage stamp feels like little more than a crapshoot, and tossing the ball around in Reno, it felt even moreso. Buster never caught it like it was a crapshoot, though. In fact, given his complete avoidance of games that don't involve a ball and a mitt, Madison thinks, the word 'crapshoot' is probably not even in his vocabulary. The man could probably walk up to one of those machines and just wait it out, wait while it's throwing balls and then dig in at just the right time for the money. He'd do that if it were in his nature at all.
He spends the day before his start with the radar gun up in the stands, tracking his teammates' pitches. Word from on high is that Giants' management thinks the pitching down here isn't worth a damn, and that's why they're waiting on Buster, whose hitting was on fire in spring training and in Reno. They've been shutting him down in the first two games here, but it hasn't seemed to faze him at all, and he'll come back and get multiple hits per game after that. Those hits will come back, and he still has a good eye for balls. Madison thinks about tomorrow's game, gripping a ball in his left hand in practice. Pitching will be good tomorrow, he promises himself. Good enough to prove the organization wrong, and they'll call us both up again, give us a chance sooner. Only a month or two more. Wellemeyer's looking worn out and they'll need me.
Finally it's time for his first start. His fastball is going well, but the batters are finding a way around it. He doesn't even make it one frame before there's a trip to the mound. His palm is a little sweaty and every pitch seems to take 10% more effort than he remembers it ever taking before, but then he confers with Buster. "Just take a few deep breaths there. You're looking tense," Buster says, then adds, "More amped up than usual." He's still got a one-run cushion after allowing two runs, and things fall into place by the next inning as he shuts them down for three frames.
Then, in the fifth, it all starts to fall apart again. He sees the call for a breaking ball and his arm just doesn't do it, and he gives up a hit. Then two more hits and two more runs and it's time for another conference. It's like I'm always one call behind, or ahead, he thinks. At the conference, he swears he's good to stay on. He tries to stare through the catcher's mask into Buster's unwavering eyes, and somewhere in that line of sight, he'll see just where the batter's going to swing, and then he won't swing there, but they do not lock eyes. Shaken, Madison looks at the sign and throws another fastball, which hangs for a fat homer target. Then it's time for another conference and he's pulled. Spends the rest of the game on the rails, thoughts spinning round and round, spitting out sunflower seeds left and right and inching away from anyone who sits down nearby.
That, he considers, was an absolutely terrible first start in AAA, not one that will get him called up anytime soon. "Fucking Vegas," someone says in the dugout. "It's always a crapshoot." He knows this should be reassuring, but it's not, and it's not even true. Just a little more concentration, and he wouldn't have gotten behind in the count, wouldn't have tried to hard to through strikes that ended up connecting. He wouldn't have blown the lead and they wouldn't be down 5-7. The team rallies, and Buster scores for a second time in the 9th, but they can't put enough hits together to overcome the deficit.
It's the third hard loss in a row and on the way back to the Holday Inn Express, everyone's on edge. A bunch of the guys gather in a room for pizza and HBO, but Madison's not in the mood to face up to his loss quite yet. His roommate's out, and he surfs the channels for a while and eventually ends up in the vending machine hallway, a sour taste in his mouth. Funyuns seem like a good remedy for that, but when he tries to buy a Coke, the red light comes on, showing it's all out. "Just my luck," he mutters. "Fuck it."
"One of 'em will give you some soda, just press the buttons until one works," comes a voice from the doorway. It's Buster.
"That ain't your typical strategy," Madison replies. "You'd look at this vending machine and just wait it out until it it coughed up exactly what you wanted all along."
"Hey, you know, sometimes life just ain't like that," says Buster. "Can't let this one game get to you. There'll be others."
"I blew it, though. I blew that game up and left you to clean up the mess."
"That happens. Someone's gonna lose the game, one pitcher or the other."
"I know," says Madison. "It's just..." I didn't want that to be me, he finishes mentally. Not in my first AAA game, not with those results. I wanted to win that one for my sister. Wanted to win it and get over everything that happened in the offseason. I want my fastball to be faster, and placed right.
Buster stares him right in the eyes "It's just one game. Could go either way, even if you take control of it. It's a whole new game tomorrow that doesn't rely on today's results. We'll get 'em tomorrow." He reaches over, grabs Madison's hand and pushes the button for Sprite. A can comes down and he hands it to Madison, nodding, before nodding and heading back to his room. Madison's hand tingles a little from the touch, and he can feel it in him now, like a little of that control has just been transferred over to him.
They win the next day, and fly back to Fresno in better spirits for the home opener. The next two weeks are magical, and they go 10-2. In Portland, with every pitch he throws, it's like that laser beam stare is back. The trees around the park are greener. He's picking up the signs, he's striking people out swinging, he's picking off runners, and in one particularly magical moment, he hits a line drive into right field that isn't picked up, and scores a home run.
When he's finally pulled, he goes back to the clubhouse for some crackers and soda and finally, finally, stretches out his legs to relax and enjoy the rest of the game. For the rest of the team, it's just another good win, but this one feels personal. Sure, he walked a few, and his fastball's missing a few mph, but he'll take the win, a delayed win that feels almost better than one would have felt in Vegas, although maybe that's just hindsight speaking.
The next day, the game's rained out, and they're just kicking around the hotel. Some guys are off with their wives, and a few more made the trip to see the city a little bit, even in the rain. Madison's taking advantage of the end of the continental breakfast line, and has a tray with muffins, cereal, and bananas loaded up to take back to his room. Buster's at a table by himself, working on the USA Today crossword while eating some toast, and waves Madison over. Madison sits down, eyeing the crossword upside-down. "I couldn't even do one of those things if I was looking at it the right way around," he says, opening a little box of Frosted Flakes and pouring them into a paper bowl. "Must be one of those college things, right? You learn that there?"
"My mom used to do these when I was a kid," says Buster. "Do them enough times and it starts to click." Madison cranes his neck, trying to read some of the clues.
"Can't get too excited about a win," says Buster, out of nowhere. "Can't let them get to you. Not the losses, not the wins. We'll have some of each no matter how good we are."
But baseball's not a crapshoot, Madison wants to say. It's skill and focus. You should know that, up there on the plate with your superhuman ability to know just where the other guy's gonna throw it. Just like these crosswords. And you said...
He sighs. Buster touches his wrist again. "Hey, I don't mean it like that, but you look at the guys we were with in spring training, look at Lincecum and Cain, those guys are amazing but they still don't win every game. Can't let it get to you 'cause even if you do everything right, you can still lose, and it's not a reflection on you. You do what you can, you try your best, and if you've got it, most of the time it'll work. Sometimes it won't, and that's just reality." Buster flips through the newspaper all of a sudden, looking for something.
"No good drawing spaces," he says. "Bring your food up to my room and I'll show you."
They head upstairs in the elevator, since it's still pouring out. The elevator is slow, and neither one says anything, lapsing into old elevator habits like they don't know each other. In his room, Buster grabs a notebook out of his suitcase and starts drawing something. He holds it up to Madison. "What's this?" he asks.
"One of those...it's an atom," he finally says. "You're not going to go all college boy on me now, are you?"
"That's how everyone draws it in school," says Buster. Just like planets orbiting around the sun, like you can predict just where everything is going to be at any one time. It ain't like that, though. It's more like this." He hands Madison a pencil. "Close your eyes and draw lots of dots right in the center of this drawing." Madison closes his eyes and jams the pencil down a few dozen times, aiming for the target. When he opens his eyes, it's just like a pitching graph.
"That's the way an atom really looks," says Buster. "These other particles are drawn toward the center, but really, they're randomly out there, just like the universe's dumb luck. These are the smallest pieces of us and they're working on blind luck, so why shouldn't there be any of that when we're playing? It ain't like the physics they show you in textbooks where you can just calculate exactly where the ball's gonna land." Madison bites his tongue; he never took physics even in high school so all this that Buster's waxing poetic about, calculating trajectories and whatnot, that wouldn't work for him anyway. He just goes by the feel of the ball.
"...but you can try as hard as you want to throw the ball toward outside corner of the strike zone and sometimes it'll go there and sometimes it won't, no matter how good you are. Otherwise you'd see Lincecum and those guys just striking out every guy on the side, 27 times in a row for the perfect game, but it ain't like that. Can't rely too much on luck but you can't expect perfect results either, any time. Still, though, it ain't like rolling dice where there's no skill at all involved, just luck."
Madison looks at him. Half that explanation went over his head completely.
"Now throw me that orange," says Buster, jumping off his bed and crouching down in his catcher's position. "Just slow pitch it to me. A couple times."
Madison complies. He throws the orange a few times, and Buster misses the catch twice. "More," says Buster. Is this a trick? He's throwing slow enough that the orange won't break open and bust out all over the carpet, there's no reason why he should be missing. He bites his lips and throws three more times, missing twice. "What the...fuck, Buster, my throws are just fine, why aren't you catching these?"
In reply, Buster grabs the notebook again. It was a fucking trick, Madison confirms. "Do it again. Try to draw the dots with your eyes closed." Madison twitches, snatches the pencil, and hits the paper. When he opens his eyes, the dots are all over the place compared to his first time through.
"You were angry," says Buster. "See what that does to you? Can't let it affect you. Have to get past the hard times and swallow whatever you're feeling, happy or sad, or else you'll do that same thing to the strike zone. The more you lose your focus, the more it'll become like dumb luck. Dumber luck. The atom's breaking down."
Madison sighs. It's getting to him anyway, this advice. Fuck your preaching and your science and your crapshoots, he wants to say. I'll go back to my room and try to find some good TV and you can finish your crossword and I'll leave you alone while I digest my good game in peace. He picks up the orange, which has a cracked skin now and is sticky. "I'm going back to my room," he says. "You can have this."
He's lying on his bed staring at the ceiling with the TV turned to a country music concert, volume down low and almost drowned out by the rain outside the window when he hears a knock on his door about an hour later. Naturally, it's Buster fucking Posey again.
"Just wanted to see if you wanted any real food to eat. I was going to take a cab, see what I could find at a store."
"No thanks," says Madison.
"Look," says Buster. "I'm probably coming off too strong, you know? I realized I sounded just like some sort of wannabe professor back there, a bit like my high school coach and his badly-timed words of wisdom. I'm sorry about all that."
"It's fine," says Madison. He changes the subject. "Don't know if I want any food just yet, though, can't hardly think of that when I've just eaten, but let me give you some money and maybe you can get me a deli sandwich when you're out, something with lots of meat on it." He turns around and starts to rummage through his pile of stuff, looking for his wallet. "Fuck, where'd it go?"
"Riling you up like that was just an asshole thing to do," continues Buster. "I'm sorry. About earlier."
"Would you just quit talking? I don't need to hear it from you," says Madison. "I just want...." And then he looks at his teammate and sighs. "I just want..."
Buster's still looking at him. All of a sudden, Madison's lost his words. I want to know I'm about to be called up for sure, he thinks. I want your patience and maturity and I don't want to be here having to take advice from you. He's trying to avoid looking at him directly again, and then their eyes meet, just like that game yesterday when he was striking people out so well. Half skill, half crapshoot, he thinks, and takes one step toward Buster and kisses him. It's over so quickly, Madison backing off and shaking his head, that he's not sure if he actually just did that, or if it was just a stray thought passing through his head. But there's Posey staring at him, then smiling, then pulling him close again and guiding his head down for another kiss. His mouth tastes like orange. This time, when they kiss, all of his emotions, all his grief and anger and joy, come pouring out. He's clutching at Buster, and Buster's holding him steady and he's not sure what to even do here.
Buster breaks it off and holds him back with one arm. "If we're going to do this," he says. "You have to save that all for here. All of it. Just put all those feelings away until the end of the game. None of it goes into the ball. You gotta wait until later. I'll be here, and when we get called up, I'll be there for you too, okay? Save it for me. You gotta take it easy the rest of the time."
Madison nods, breathing heavily. As Buster guides him over to where they're both sitting on the bed, he feels more like the tall, gawky kid than he has in years, but as he leans against his teammate and they fall back, he thinks this maybe this call will pay off. All his impatience about the game fades into impatience for other things, and he's not even thinking about being called up, just about here, just about now, just about them.
pairing/characters: Madison Bumgarner/Buster Posey
word count: 3300
rating: PG-13 (language)
notes: AU-ish (neither player is married) Madison Bumgarner and his temperament fascinate me. I wanted to explore what it must have been like for the two months that he and Buster Posey were playing together in the minors, before he started to calm down. In one of his NLDS interviews he says that Buster calms him down, so I took that idea and ran with it.
This is the first fic I've written in years and my first baseball fic. Eeek.
disclaimer: This is all made up. Except for the game details, none of this actually happened. Characters aren't mine
summary: Madison Bumgarner is impatient after spring training. Takes place in April 2010 when both players were playing for AAA-Fresno.
They start off the season with a long road trip to Nevada, and Madison Bumgarner's tired of the road before he even gets his first start. In the chilled, early April air of Reno, they lose two before finally getting used to the thin air and splitting the series and just then, it's time to pile on the airport bus and fly to Vegas. Momentum's in their favor; but Madison's still not settled into life in the west, life without his sister, and now that he's blown up his relationship, single life. Fresno at least has farms; sure, it's mile after mile of grapes, or peaches after they leave the city, but at least there's that. In the dusk, Nevada looms below him, a weird collection of mountain ranges and dry valleys, with roads and their few cars barely visible in this light. No green like back east, desert unlike Arizona, and the only farms to be seen are isolated circular fields growing hay. There's ranches here too like at home, but who can tell? Cattle here must eat gravel and sagebrush and some of that hay. Other than that, it just looks like piles of rocks, for a hundred miles until it gets too dark to see anything.
An hour later, they've landed at the airport and it's back to the bus and the hotel. There was the spread after the game, but everyone's still a little hungry and a bunch of guys wander out on the streets looking for a convenience store and some frozen burritos. Madison stands around chewing the wrapper from his beef jerky for lack of anything better to do, listening to the sound of the electronic slots while they wait for a couple of the guys to blow some of their spare change. No one wins anything. Hell, their luck is so bad that no one even gets two symbols in a row and everyone's laughing nervously that it's a sign. Luck, he thinks to himself. At least with the ballgame there's some skill involved. Just for kicks, he puts a dollar into the slots. This time, it's two cherries and a bar, and the crowd goes wild.
Outside, Buster Posey's waiting with a brown bag with some Power Bars. Madison can't help but think that he's looking on at the slots in disapproval, but he always seems to have that same, intense look, so maybe it's nothing. It takes them a while to get back to the hotel; everyone is walking and playing with their phones, and they almost make a wrong turn, because all these streets and hotels and gas stations just look the same, in the light, in the dark, doesn't matter. Only Buster is walking with some purpose, like he knows and cares where he's going. He's been through all this before, thinks Madison. Already spent a year in this league, been to these cities and played their parks.
Both of them are just waiting to be called up, but Madison's fingers are itching already to pitch in a big park. Waiting for a position to open up. Buster's more than proven himself already, and talk around the clubhouse is surprise that he's still there at all. He's ready for the big league but never once acknowledged it or shows any signs of impatience with still being down here, and Madison is not ready but wants to be. Not quite ready, not until he proves he can pitch against the 4-A guys consistently for more than the 10 innings he did when he was briefly called up to the majors, prove his fastball speed is holding steady and that he has control. Sometimes throwing that ball into the postage stamp feels like little more than a crapshoot, and tossing the ball around in Reno, it felt even moreso. Buster never caught it like it was a crapshoot, though. In fact, given his complete avoidance of games that don't involve a ball and a mitt, Madison thinks, the word 'crapshoot' is probably not even in his vocabulary. The man could probably walk up to one of those machines and just wait it out, wait while it's throwing balls and then dig in at just the right time for the money. He'd do that if it were in his nature at all.
He spends the day before his start with the radar gun up in the stands, tracking his teammates' pitches. Word from on high is that Giants' management thinks the pitching down here isn't worth a damn, and that's why they're waiting on Buster, whose hitting was on fire in spring training and in Reno. They've been shutting him down in the first two games here, but it hasn't seemed to faze him at all, and he'll come back and get multiple hits per game after that. Those hits will come back, and he still has a good eye for balls. Madison thinks about tomorrow's game, gripping a ball in his left hand in practice. Pitching will be good tomorrow, he promises himself. Good enough to prove the organization wrong, and they'll call us both up again, give us a chance sooner. Only a month or two more. Wellemeyer's looking worn out and they'll need me.
Finally it's time for his first start. His fastball is going well, but the batters are finding a way around it. He doesn't even make it one frame before there's a trip to the mound. His palm is a little sweaty and every pitch seems to take 10% more effort than he remembers it ever taking before, but then he confers with Buster. "Just take a few deep breaths there. You're looking tense," Buster says, then adds, "More amped up than usual." He's still got a one-run cushion after allowing two runs, and things fall into place by the next inning as he shuts them down for three frames.
Then, in the fifth, it all starts to fall apart again. He sees the call for a breaking ball and his arm just doesn't do it, and he gives up a hit. Then two more hits and two more runs and it's time for another conference. It's like I'm always one call behind, or ahead, he thinks. At the conference, he swears he's good to stay on. He tries to stare through the catcher's mask into Buster's unwavering eyes, and somewhere in that line of sight, he'll see just where the batter's going to swing, and then he won't swing there, but they do not lock eyes. Shaken, Madison looks at the sign and throws another fastball, which hangs for a fat homer target. Then it's time for another conference and he's pulled. Spends the rest of the game on the rails, thoughts spinning round and round, spitting out sunflower seeds left and right and inching away from anyone who sits down nearby.
That, he considers, was an absolutely terrible first start in AAA, not one that will get him called up anytime soon. "Fucking Vegas," someone says in the dugout. "It's always a crapshoot." He knows this should be reassuring, but it's not, and it's not even true. Just a little more concentration, and he wouldn't have gotten behind in the count, wouldn't have tried to hard to through strikes that ended up connecting. He wouldn't have blown the lead and they wouldn't be down 5-7. The team rallies, and Buster scores for a second time in the 9th, but they can't put enough hits together to overcome the deficit.
It's the third hard loss in a row and on the way back to the Holday Inn Express, everyone's on edge. A bunch of the guys gather in a room for pizza and HBO, but Madison's not in the mood to face up to his loss quite yet. His roommate's out, and he surfs the channels for a while and eventually ends up in the vending machine hallway, a sour taste in his mouth. Funyuns seem like a good remedy for that, but when he tries to buy a Coke, the red light comes on, showing it's all out. "Just my luck," he mutters. "Fuck it."
"One of 'em will give you some soda, just press the buttons until one works," comes a voice from the doorway. It's Buster.
"That ain't your typical strategy," Madison replies. "You'd look at this vending machine and just wait it out until it it coughed up exactly what you wanted all along."
"Hey, you know, sometimes life just ain't like that," says Buster. "Can't let this one game get to you. There'll be others."
"I blew it, though. I blew that game up and left you to clean up the mess."
"That happens. Someone's gonna lose the game, one pitcher or the other."
"I know," says Madison. "It's just..." I didn't want that to be me, he finishes mentally. Not in my first AAA game, not with those results. I wanted to win that one for my sister. Wanted to win it and get over everything that happened in the offseason. I want my fastball to be faster, and placed right.
Buster stares him right in the eyes "It's just one game. Could go either way, even if you take control of it. It's a whole new game tomorrow that doesn't rely on today's results. We'll get 'em tomorrow." He reaches over, grabs Madison's hand and pushes the button for Sprite. A can comes down and he hands it to Madison, nodding, before nodding and heading back to his room. Madison's hand tingles a little from the touch, and he can feel it in him now, like a little of that control has just been transferred over to him.
They win the next day, and fly back to Fresno in better spirits for the home opener. The next two weeks are magical, and they go 10-2. In Portland, with every pitch he throws, it's like that laser beam stare is back. The trees around the park are greener. He's picking up the signs, he's striking people out swinging, he's picking off runners, and in one particularly magical moment, he hits a line drive into right field that isn't picked up, and scores a home run.
When he's finally pulled, he goes back to the clubhouse for some crackers and soda and finally, finally, stretches out his legs to relax and enjoy the rest of the game. For the rest of the team, it's just another good win, but this one feels personal. Sure, he walked a few, and his fastball's missing a few mph, but he'll take the win, a delayed win that feels almost better than one would have felt in Vegas, although maybe that's just hindsight speaking.
The next day, the game's rained out, and they're just kicking around the hotel. Some guys are off with their wives, and a few more made the trip to see the city a little bit, even in the rain. Madison's taking advantage of the end of the continental breakfast line, and has a tray with muffins, cereal, and bananas loaded up to take back to his room. Buster's at a table by himself, working on the USA Today crossword while eating some toast, and waves Madison over. Madison sits down, eyeing the crossword upside-down. "I couldn't even do one of those things if I was looking at it the right way around," he says, opening a little box of Frosted Flakes and pouring them into a paper bowl. "Must be one of those college things, right? You learn that there?"
"My mom used to do these when I was a kid," says Buster. "Do them enough times and it starts to click." Madison cranes his neck, trying to read some of the clues.
"Can't get too excited about a win," says Buster, out of nowhere. "Can't let them get to you. Not the losses, not the wins. We'll have some of each no matter how good we are."
But baseball's not a crapshoot, Madison wants to say. It's skill and focus. You should know that, up there on the plate with your superhuman ability to know just where the other guy's gonna throw it. Just like these crosswords. And you said...
He sighs. Buster touches his wrist again. "Hey, I don't mean it like that, but you look at the guys we were with in spring training, look at Lincecum and Cain, those guys are amazing but they still don't win every game. Can't let it get to you 'cause even if you do everything right, you can still lose, and it's not a reflection on you. You do what you can, you try your best, and if you've got it, most of the time it'll work. Sometimes it won't, and that's just reality." Buster flips through the newspaper all of a sudden, looking for something.
"No good drawing spaces," he says. "Bring your food up to my room and I'll show you."
They head upstairs in the elevator, since it's still pouring out. The elevator is slow, and neither one says anything, lapsing into old elevator habits like they don't know each other. In his room, Buster grabs a notebook out of his suitcase and starts drawing something. He holds it up to Madison. "What's this?" he asks.
"One of those...it's an atom," he finally says. "You're not going to go all college boy on me now, are you?"
"That's how everyone draws it in school," says Buster. Just like planets orbiting around the sun, like you can predict just where everything is going to be at any one time. It ain't like that, though. It's more like this." He hands Madison a pencil. "Close your eyes and draw lots of dots right in the center of this drawing." Madison closes his eyes and jams the pencil down a few dozen times, aiming for the target. When he opens his eyes, it's just like a pitching graph.
"That's the way an atom really looks," says Buster. "These other particles are drawn toward the center, but really, they're randomly out there, just like the universe's dumb luck. These are the smallest pieces of us and they're working on blind luck, so why shouldn't there be any of that when we're playing? It ain't like the physics they show you in textbooks where you can just calculate exactly where the ball's gonna land." Madison bites his tongue; he never took physics even in high school so all this that Buster's waxing poetic about, calculating trajectories and whatnot, that wouldn't work for him anyway. He just goes by the feel of the ball.
"...but you can try as hard as you want to throw the ball toward outside corner of the strike zone and sometimes it'll go there and sometimes it won't, no matter how good you are. Otherwise you'd see Lincecum and those guys just striking out every guy on the side, 27 times in a row for the perfect game, but it ain't like that. Can't rely too much on luck but you can't expect perfect results either, any time. Still, though, it ain't like rolling dice where there's no skill at all involved, just luck."
Madison looks at him. Half that explanation went over his head completely.
"Now throw me that orange," says Buster, jumping off his bed and crouching down in his catcher's position. "Just slow pitch it to me. A couple times."
Madison complies. He throws the orange a few times, and Buster misses the catch twice. "More," says Buster. Is this a trick? He's throwing slow enough that the orange won't break open and bust out all over the carpet, there's no reason why he should be missing. He bites his lips and throws three more times, missing twice. "What the...fuck, Buster, my throws are just fine, why aren't you catching these?"
In reply, Buster grabs the notebook again. It was a fucking trick, Madison confirms. "Do it again. Try to draw the dots with your eyes closed." Madison twitches, snatches the pencil, and hits the paper. When he opens his eyes, the dots are all over the place compared to his first time through.
"You were angry," says Buster. "See what that does to you? Can't let it affect you. Have to get past the hard times and swallow whatever you're feeling, happy or sad, or else you'll do that same thing to the strike zone. The more you lose your focus, the more it'll become like dumb luck. Dumber luck. The atom's breaking down."
Madison sighs. It's getting to him anyway, this advice. Fuck your preaching and your science and your crapshoots, he wants to say. I'll go back to my room and try to find some good TV and you can finish your crossword and I'll leave you alone while I digest my good game in peace. He picks up the orange, which has a cracked skin now and is sticky. "I'm going back to my room," he says. "You can have this."
He's lying on his bed staring at the ceiling with the TV turned to a country music concert, volume down low and almost drowned out by the rain outside the window when he hears a knock on his door about an hour later. Naturally, it's Buster fucking Posey again.
"Just wanted to see if you wanted any real food to eat. I was going to take a cab, see what I could find at a store."
"No thanks," says Madison.
"Look," says Buster. "I'm probably coming off too strong, you know? I realized I sounded just like some sort of wannabe professor back there, a bit like my high school coach and his badly-timed words of wisdom. I'm sorry about all that."
"It's fine," says Madison. He changes the subject. "Don't know if I want any food just yet, though, can't hardly think of that when I've just eaten, but let me give you some money and maybe you can get me a deli sandwich when you're out, something with lots of meat on it." He turns around and starts to rummage through his pile of stuff, looking for his wallet. "Fuck, where'd it go?"
"Riling you up like that was just an asshole thing to do," continues Buster. "I'm sorry. About earlier."
"Would you just quit talking? I don't need to hear it from you," says Madison. "I just want...." And then he looks at his teammate and sighs. "I just want..."
Buster's still looking at him. All of a sudden, Madison's lost his words. I want to know I'm about to be called up for sure, he thinks. I want your patience and maturity and I don't want to be here having to take advice from you. He's trying to avoid looking at him directly again, and then their eyes meet, just like that game yesterday when he was striking people out so well. Half skill, half crapshoot, he thinks, and takes one step toward Buster and kisses him. It's over so quickly, Madison backing off and shaking his head, that he's not sure if he actually just did that, or if it was just a stray thought passing through his head. But there's Posey staring at him, then smiling, then pulling him close again and guiding his head down for another kiss. His mouth tastes like orange. This time, when they kiss, all of his emotions, all his grief and anger and joy, come pouring out. He's clutching at Buster, and Buster's holding him steady and he's not sure what to even do here.
Buster breaks it off and holds him back with one arm. "If we're going to do this," he says. "You have to save that all for here. All of it. Just put all those feelings away until the end of the game. None of it goes into the ball. You gotta wait until later. I'll be here, and when we get called up, I'll be there for you too, okay? Save it for me. You gotta take it easy the rest of the time."
Madison nods, breathing heavily. As Buster guides him over to where they're both sitting on the bed, he feels more like the tall, gawky kid than he has in years, but as he leans against his teammate and they fall back, he thinks this maybe this call will pay off. All his impatience about the game fades into impatience for other things, and he's not even thinking about being called up, just about here, just about now, just about them.