Rounding Third
Renee Gravelle
Copyright 2012 by Renee Gravelle
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real situations or characters is coincidental.
Smashwords Edition
First Year
The Champions
I
Marisol stood in the pathway where four baseball fields converged like the stem of a four-leafed clover. Patches of late-winter snow clung like deflated icebergs to the base of the hulking scoreboard of the largest field, the one whose home plate Marisol stood behind. She gazed at the field through the backstop, a tall extension of the fence. Her eyes circled the cluster of ball fields, taking in the smaller baseball field across from this one and the two softball fields the girls played on. She was seeing the complex up close for the first time, and now, in the ample space between the points of this four-leafed clover, Marisol understood how a snack stand and a storage shed could fit into this center zone. It was bigger than it looked from the school building or the parking lot. “Whoa, they even found room for a press box,” the smooth male voice behind her enthused. She nodded as Josh pointed up at the red cinder block structure looming over the first baseline of the largest field
Josh jogged into position beside Marisol. He had been checking out the picnic area between the ballfields and the lake. Catching his breath, he poked his fingers through the fence. “You’re sure about this Mari?” he panted, smiling toward his wife of fifteen months.
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s one thing to be a player on a team and another to be in charge of the whole team.”
Marisol looked at Josh for a long moment. Then she quipped, “Now you know why I married you.”
“To play softball wid’ me?”
She pinged his arm and shook her head, plucking a sweep of raven hair out of her eyes. “Unh-unh. So I could be in charge of things.” He chuckled and snuggled his left arm around Marisol’s shoulders.
Each baseline was flanked by a pair of team cages made of cinder blocks, a corrugated roof, and chain-link fencing. A wooden players' bench ran along the inside of each cage. “Check this out,” Marisol exclaimed, jabbing Josh's side. He followed her pointing finger from one baseline to another, causing both of them to turn in a complete circle.
“What'm I lookin' at?” he queried.
“The bleachers.”
He pondered the bleachers, noting the disparity in their sizes. “Yeah, what about 'em? Those over there are big.” His neutral tone reflected the expectation that this set of taller, longer bleachers would, of course, go with the biggest field. Marisol grabbed his hand and jerked him toward the point between the softball fields; she trotted with him to the bleachers behind the first baseline of one softball field, stopped behind the bleachers, and said, “There, wha'd'you think?”
“They're smaller.”
“They're depressing.” He knew at a second glance what she was getting at—peeling paint, the decaying wood exposed through curls of dirty paint; once upon a time, they were blue, he thought.
Josh nodded. “Eh. Who'd wanna sit on those after a heavy rain when you could sit on those nice metal ones?” Marisol nodded as she glanced at the large bleachers. The two walked around the outfields holding hands, commenting on the decrepit bleachers that housed the softball spectators and the bent but slightly nicer metal bleachers on both sides of the younger boys' baseball field. “Guess ya gotta get big to get the good stuff,” Josh commented.
“Or be a boy,” added Marisol. The couple strolled past the snack stand, squishing through chilled water that seeped into their socks. They fell into silence, and Marisol lost her impressions of the varied fields in a shiver of excitement at her new role as creator of the camaraderie, competition, sounds, sights and smells of grass and leather that she'd always enjoyed as a softball player. Now she would be the crafter of memories, the unfolder of strategies and skills. It was easy for her to flip her thoughts to the scene that would cover these fields in June: clusters of variously colored shirts, their owners lost in the action on the field as they shut out three other microcosmic worlds; bands of spectators in lawn chairs beside the field or sprawled across the bleachers behind each baseline; frazzled parents trying to keep up with a thicket of uniformed and short-sleeved children jockeying for a place in front of the snack stand. Knowing he'd lost his wife to another athletic reverie, Josh kissed her wide lips and sprinted toward the parking lot. “Be right there,” she called after him, and he held his hand up and waved as he jogged up the hill between the parking lot and the fields.
Marisol walked slowly around one of the baselines, recalling how she had landed the coaching role, knowing it had been accidental. During a week of substitute teaching in the high school, she had overheard a trio of male teachers in the faculty room talking about the shortage of coaches left by the cancer death of one coach and the relocation of another. “I’ll do it,” she’d proclaimed.
Ryan Adamowicz had turned and looked at her, puzzled.
“I’ll be a coach.”
The men shrugged at each other as if to say “Wha’d’ya think?” and then “Why not?” Tom Matthews curtly fired off the name and phone number of the league president, and the trio resumed their conversation with heated banter about the coming year’s professional football prospects.
As soon as she’d gotten home that day, Marisol had called and left a message with the league president—someone named Don—and was pleased when he called her back an hour later, offering her the job after only a few quick questions about her experience and availability. With newfound zeal, she imagined the whirlwind season: May, June, then the winding down in July. In her reverie, Marisol pictured herself dancing back and forth between the field and her team’s cage, her thick, wavy black veil of hair reined into a ponytail that bounced through the hole in the back of her cap. She pictured players she had met in her substitute teaching assignments as well as players yet unknown—high school girls in various shapes and sizes, many of them fit and muscular, others short and round or scrawny and gangly. She pictured them running and throwing, shouting encouragement to their teammates, crouching at the plate to size up every pitch. Mostly she pictured them laughing.
On this early-spring day, Marisol's thoughts turned away from the school-worn cares of the academic year. Reluctant to leave these fields and yet anxious to return to the warmth of the car and Josh, she smiled over these empty fields once more, knowing she would have her team on them before the city maintenance crew sanctified them with foul lines or seeded grass into bare patches still crusty from the winter's harsh freeze. Marisol gazed at the sky, a swirl of gray tinctures confused about whether to snow or rain. “Get over it!” she teased the sky, willing it to assume its baseball hues right away. Having lived her life in Puerto Rico until her fifth year, she loved hot weather. Most of all, she loved the equation of hot weather plus softball, a pastime she’d discovered and undertaken with zeal at the age of eight in Newark, New Jersey. Restless as a child, Marisol knew she would find it hard to wait for April.
II
During the days that she wasn't called to teach, Marisol enjoyed lazy mornings, afternoon art sessions that revitalized the apartment's austere, whitewashed second bedroom, and evenings that were hit-and-miss cooking attempts, always with the purpose of emulating her mother's kitchen finesse. Picking up her team roster from the league president made the week after her visit to the sports complex speed along. Marisol's thoughts kept returning to the complex, which she sketched from several vantage points. She even played with images of the school that presided over it; the red school with its unusual features intrigued her art teacher's eye poignantly. Marisol sketched the brick wall in back that created a courtyard and the half-dozen archways along the side walls that sported stained glass inlays of children studying and playing. Most fascinating to Marisol, as well as being the subject of a triptych of watercolors, was the trio of brick arches that fronted the building, including the peaked center over the gate in the wall that gave an observer the sense that he or she might be looking at the Alamo rather than a school in the American Northeastern woodlands.
This unique structure seemed an inspiring place to assemble her players, and now all she needed to do was contact them and set up a practice session. She was ready—so ready that the school days plodded more excruciatingly than ever toward the spring break point that would foretell the freedoms of summer. So ready that she thought she might sketch a few memories of her college softball years, as if sketching would bring on the season a little quicker. Marisol had learned one important fact of winter during her two years in Waterville—winter beside this lake could drag on forever if you didn't keep your mind and hands busy.
Finally April arrived. Sunshine and warmth competed with frost and late-season flurries; occasionally, a chilly downpour fell to remind everyone not to take the limited gifts of sunshine for granted. On a Wednesday afternoon during spring break, Marisol stood on the pitcher’s mound, waiting for her team to arrive. During her visit five weeks before, she had been so caught up in daydreaming about the action to come on these fields, she hadn’t taken in the entirety of this sprawling park. It was quite an entertainment complex, featuring not only the quartet of baseball and softball fields, but also tennis and basketball courts, a skateboarding park, and beyond that, picnic tables and a beach area. A second snack stand hovered near the edge of the park, beyond the baseball fields. In a city of only 12,000, all this fun stuff tended to be clustered together, in contrast with her youthful town of Newark, where every neighborhood had its own park.
Marisol turned her artist’s eye on the first two players to arrive, tumbling out of the same Jeep: a short, round girl with tawny waves of flowing hair draped over her shoulders and an average-sized girl whose long face was modified by a brown bob. Both girls wore royal blue sweat pants with white trim up the sides. The bob girl wore a loose “Property of Penn State” sweatshirt, while her friend had on a yellow and blue V-neck shirt. The girl with the bob, standing a few feet in front of her friend, was obviously the more outgoing of the two. “Hi, I’m Megan,” she stated.
Marisol smiled and chuckled with her words. “I’m Marisol.” She held out her hand; Megan grabbed it and shook it. Marisol tipped her head toward Megan's companion, her thin eyebrows arching in an invitation for this girl to introduce herself.
“Alicia.” The shorter girl answered the unspoken question.
Marisol thought she recognized the two girls from some class that she’d taught, but they didn’t seem to recognize her. She was quickly learning that teens in a school hallway seldom acknowledged adults at all, especially adults they didn't see every day in the same classroom. Outside of school, the rule of non-recognition held even more firmly. She would, of course, have to carry the conversation through these awkward first few minutes. She made small talk about the weather still being chilly, tying it to the practical matter of the girls needing to wear a jacket to night games for awhile. Then she asked about favorite positions. “Any outfield—especially left or center,” Megan proclaimed. Marisol grinned, thinking that Megan was a serious player who knew what she wanted. Alicia shrugged. “I just signed up because of Megan.”
“Fool!” Megan joked.
Marisol laughed. “Okay, okay,” she said. “We’ll show you how to have a good time.” Something just then drew a sincere smile, finally, out of Alicia—maybe the broadness of the coach’s own smile, which seemed to travel right up to her eyes, maybe the jaunty sideways tilt of her red and yellow hat, worn with the shortened bill to her right side. There was something approachable in the slightly askew appearance, her hair falling in looped strands around her cheeks; she frequently pushed it behind her ears.
Alicia sighed and let her shoulders fall to a natural height. Megan, knowing her friend’s shyness, rubbed her back and smiled. “It’s gonna be a good time,” she affirmed.
“Tha’s right,” agreed Marisol, the dropped consonant a legacy of the flowing Spanish of her Puerto Rican childhood.
All of a sudden, to the boisterous relief of both girls, new waves of players arrived. Some walked with aluminum bats hoisted on their shoulders, their sleeves rolled up as if to signal their intentions to play hard. Some wore turtlenecks, a nod to the recent weather. A few wore cleats or toted them in a ballasted bundle over their shoulders, while the remaining girls wore Nikes or other brands. One girl even had on fuchsia high tops. “Hey, look at those shoes,” Marisol announced by way of greeting. “I love ‘em!” Then she shook the girls’ hands and introduced herself. She noticed that some of the hands she shook had batting gloves on them.
“You’re that lady from French class,” commented one girl, and affirmations swept through the half dozen girls present. Within the next several minutes, six more of the fourteen girls on the roster arrived. Not bad for a vacation afternoon, Marisol thought. She instructed her players to leave their bats and gloves in the “dugout.”
“You mean the cage?” asked a lean, tall girl with rolled-up sleeves. She pointed to the cement enclosure. Marisol nodded and summoned the girls to the home plate area. They stood in a rough semicircle around her. “Welcome,” she began. “We’re going to have a great season.” She wrestled a hair tie out of the pocket of her warm-up pants, tucked her hat under her arm, and corralled her thick black hair through the tie, then put her hat back on over her ponytail. “I think I introduced myself to everyone, but just in case I missed anyone, I’m Marisol.”
“Aren’t we supposed to call you Mrs. Anzalone?”queried a tall, doe-eyed girl with a sporty, blunt, neck-length haircut. She had arrived with the second wave of players.
“Tha’s right, Miss,” stated a short girl in Puerto Rican dialect. “You subbed for our chemistry teacher last week, di’nt you?” Marisol smiled in concert with the realization that the new arrivals' sudden interest in recognizing her demonstrated the fickle and shifting behavior of adolescents. Gotta love 'em, she mused “You figured out my other life,” she said. A girl with a light-brown ponytail whom Marisol had seen laughing with her friends smiled at Marisol’s comment, her relaxed smile bestowing permission on her peers to appreciate the comment as well. This girl watched and listened intently to Marisol, admiring the big smile that engulfed the coach's cheeks until it came to rest on a pair of sparkling obsidian eyes. “You can call me Mrs. Anzalone if you like—definitely call me that in school—but you can call your softball coach Marisol if you want.” Suddenly her eyes fastened on a man and woman standing by the snack stand, watching. She waved, her shoulders bouncing with each jerk of her wrist, and the couple shot back a smile and a wave. Marisol gestured them toward the group, and they strolled to the edge of the cluster of players.
“Oh, Mom and Dad,” acknowledged the athletic girl with the ponytail. Marisol noticed how different these three people looked: Dad was short and balding—his dearth of hair compensated by a trim black beard and mustache—and he stood on meaty legs; Mom was slightly taller and round with an oval face that nestled in a frame of wavy shoulder-length blond hair; the daughter—Jen, Marisol recalled from introductions—stood taller than both parents but compensated for her height by hunching her shoulders. Her greenish-blue eyes and brown hair more closely matched her mother’s tones than her father’s, but her nose was thinner than her mother’s. While she was muscular enough to be called athletic-looking, she had wide, feminine hips. The word “sturdy” came to Marisol’s mind, along with the impression that this girl was an all-arounder who could hit and play any position.
“Joe Muscato,” offered the father, extending his hand to Marisol. “Jen's Dad, but I guess you figured that out,” he said with a smile and a glance at Jennifer. Marisol shook his hand and turned to Joe's wife. “Diane,” she said, and the women shook hands. “Do you mind if we stick around?” Joe asked.
“No, not at all,” replied Marisol. “In fact, you're welcome to help, if you want. Call me Mari, by the way.”
Practice soon got underway, enhanced by the serendipitous addition of two assistants. Time went the way every practice would until game day three weeks later. Even as a fledgling coach, Mari had a plan that became her pattern, deftly incorporating whatever adult help showed up into her practices. Usually, that help was limited to Joe and Diane—at least, in the beginning.
The first practice began as all practice sessions would, as games themselves would—with pairs of girls claiming spots around the field, tossing balls back and forth to warm up. Marisol stumbled through attendance, grateful that she at least knew most of the players by sight, if not by name. Shanequa and Hannah were the only two missing; they were away at a tournament for high school teams. Fortunately, she had learned from the coach, the two schedules barely overlapped, and he had no trouble with his girls playing recreational softball as long as the Varsity team took precedence during the two weeks of overlap. Marisol agreed that her team would make do with this requirement.
Every girl knew at least one other girl well enough to fall instantly into a comfort level in throwing, knowing how hard a throw her partner could handle, as well as how bouncy, how wild, how high, how close to the sky. It took Marisol only one warm-up to see that her assessments of the players were right so far. She shook the metallic contents out of a long, green canvas Army bag with a pair of sturdy handles; a dozen metal and wooden bats clanked onto the ground next to the team’s chain-link enclosed shelter. She flashed a big smile at Joe and Diane, who watched silently, expectantly. “All right,” she said to the couple to acclimate them to this first practice. “Mr. Muscato, you and I, we’re gonna hit some balls out to the girls so they can practice their fielding. I’ll stay here by home plate and hit out to right field. You hit over to left field. Let’s see, there’s…” She paused to count and continued giving directions. “Eleven girls, so we can each take four—Mr. Muscato, you get three. Mrs. Muscato, you’re gonna work hot box scenarios with four girls, if that’s all right with you?” Diane nodded and smiled, comfortable with the plan. “Back of the dugout. Oh, wait a minute—I don’t have my practice bases with me.”
“I’ve got some cardboard in the car we could tear up,” Diane offered.
“Good, that’s fine. Everyone ready?” Joe and Diane were already moving. Joe had grabbed a bat and three balls and struggled to keep up with the three charges he’d acquired: his daughter Jen, Ashley, and Destiny. Marisol hollered to Faith, Myra, Courtney, and Megan to follow Diane around the backstop through an open space in the fencing. Then she called to the remaining girls: “Mariah, Frances, Crystal, Alicia, come to home.” Alicia and Megan glanced sadly at each other and then separated after Megan whispered in Alicia’s ear and patted her shoulder encouragingly. “I like your sneakers,” Marisol complimented Myra, gushing over the swirls of silver among the red.
“Oh, thanks,” Myra replied, smiling shyly. Her curly, dark hair wafted around her ears like the swirls in her sneakers. Marisol took note of her wiry frame and long legs and thought, “She’s gonna fly around those bases.”
“Okay, girls,” the coach began, “We’re gonna practice some fielding for about ten, fifteen minutes. Then we’ll rotate, see how you all handle the hot box. You’ll be hitting with Mister Muscato as well as me.”
“Joe!” he protested, holding his palms up.
“All right then—Joe—” As she spoke, Marisol looked from one girl to the other, smiling often. “Spread out through right field.” They were already bolting out to the field, Myra in the lead. “Two of you stay closer, play in,” Marisol shouted, and to her surprise, Frances and Crystal heeded her and stopped at midfield. If only they listened this well in the classroom, she thought.
The crackling of bat on ball thrilled Mari. After the long silence of winter, she savored each crack. Before long, the sound would become a routine part of the happy ritual of softball. She hadn’t really heard this comforting sound since her final year on the college softball team five years before, and now she realized how much she had missed it through the preoccupations of establishing a teaching career and marrying Josh. Suddenly, it all felt different. She was in charge. She had to know the rules in an enhanced way, a way that conveyed authority. She had to ensure that her players knew them. She had to make softball comfortable for Alicia! And mostly, she was the one on whom the imperative to have fun depended. She had seen plenty of yelling and criticism from some martinet coaches during her youth, but her instincts told her the pressure of intercollegiate performance wasn’t appropriate here. The realization that she now had a chance to be a coach, just at the moment of rediscovering the ineffable joy of bat cracking against ball, convinced her that the pure bliss of being in the game was the experience she most wanted to create for her team.
Sadly, she thought, that also meant she would not be the one on the field now, and the control she used to have over her performance would now have to be ceded to the thirteen players on her roster. From now on, every good and bad play that happened would belong to them. Pondering the real nature of her role beyond arranging batting orders and assigning positions, she upheld a vague sense that wins and losses somehow reflected on her, but this was a sense at odds with the reality that the players bore responsibility for the team’s record. Maybe her role was to create a context of success or failure—a process, or expectation. Maybe her role was to embody the mystery of esprit de corps—that intangible force she often recalled from her days as a player, the recollection filling her with awe at her newfound power to inspire effort beyond a player’s own expectations of herself and sometimes beyond the player's natural ability.
This swirl of thoughts powered Marisol’s batting. Every ball she sent to the field carried her new purpose, its arc rising like her swelling exuberance in the wake of her spoken promise: “We’ll show you how to have a good time.” She shouted advice to her charges, her strong alto scurrying to them across the grass and dirt. “Make that glove meet the ground,” she yelled. “No shy gloves here. Bend. Bend! Watch the ball carefully. Run to it. Don’t wait for the ball to come to you!” Following her lead, Joe began yelling similar advice to his cadre; once assured that his tone and manner were kind, not harsh, she tuned him out and focused on her own purpose so happily that it felt almost cruel when a check of her watch told her fifteen minutes had passed. She called for a rotation, prompting the girls to move as three groups while the adults stayed in place.
By the time all three rotations wore down, the team had started to coalesce. “Way to go, Faith,” Mari heard one girl cry out. In fielding, two girls ran toward each other to catch a fly ball and the fielding catcher called out “I got it!” while the other girl backed up, yielding. The example set by these girls inspired others. As Mari anticipated, Alicia always yielded, and she wondered whether she should ask Megan to peer coach her friend or take it upon herself to teach her. A peer might be more encouraging than an official teacher, especially a peer who was obviously such a good friend—at least in the beginning. She resolved to remember to situate Alicia and Megan near each other during practice.
Batting practice came last. She hollered a command for all the players to return to the pitcher's area. “Okay, you’re all very warmed up now,” Marisol said, looking around the rough semicircle of girls gathered in the infield. “I’m going to ask you now to take the position you want to play, except for Mariah, who’s going to bat. Yes, you,” she encouraged, laughing at Mariah’s mouth opened wide in faux disbelief. “Come on, Mariah, you’re a trailblazer, you have it written all over you, there’s still a trail out in left field where you blazed all those balls you shagged right into your glove, I saw you.” Jen and Frances laughed, prompting a “Shut up!” look from Mariah. “I know you can hit,” Marisol continued, “but since you’re first, we’ll expect more of your friends who come after you.” Scanning her teammates, Mariah exaggerated her nod, vindicated.
Marisol chuckled and jerked her head in surprise when Myra scooted to the pitcher’s mound rather than the expected shortstop position. Glancing at Alicia’s scrunched-up face and seeing puzzlement, Mari assigned her to right field, positioning the lithe but muscular Courtney behind her in the field to coach her. Three girls hovering around first base negotiated which one would take that coveted position; Marisol gave it to the loudest girl: “Megan, start at first. Faith—shortstop. Jen—how about second base?” Jen shrugged, disappointed, but then nodded and jogged off to her position. Mari had to shout while turning in circles to make all the girls hear her. “All right, girls,” she said, “this won’t necessarily be your position all the time. I like to mix things up a lot—” She shook her shoulders and hips to underscore her words and continued speaking. “I know when Hannah comes back, she wants to pitch, and you too, Frances, so we’ll try you all. We’ll try different things, I promise you. Now remember—there are no shy gloves. They are in love with the grass! They want to kiss it.” The strange image elicited a few chuckles, including chortles from Joe and Diane standing beside the third base bench, but no shortage of groans escaped from youthful cynics as well.
When the girls returned to the bench area, they carried assorted grass, mud, and dirt stains on their sweatpants and running suits—detritus from the spring thaw. Panting, they grabbed water bottles off the bench and swigged long draughts, saving a little water to squirt over their heads. Marisol laughed to see their faces streaked with watery trails of grime. “You look like soil paintings, or maybe sad warriors,” she declared. “But anyway, you all did really, truly wonderful today. Next practice I’m gonna change you around a little—no, don’t scowl at me,” she joked. She had an inkling that recreational softball as a forum for trying new experiences was an unfamiliar practice in Waterville’s history. “I just wanna give everyone a chance to try different positions. You all know pretty much what you like, but you may find some pleasant surprises out there. Just be open-minded.” Parents had started driving into the parking lot. Some got out of their cars and began walking down the hill toward the field. A few girls stood up. “Hold on, hold on…” Marisol raised her hands to her face, palms out. “Next practice is Monday, 6:30! Be prepared for more mud!” Her players were already scurrying toward the hill.
Jim and Diane said goodbye. Marisol thanked them and waved the remaining players and parents to their cars. She stuffed balls and bats and her two spare gloves into the duffel bag. She could not wait to get home to tell Josh her most exhilarating thought, that she now had a real, functioning team and not just a faceless roster of names, addresses, and phone numbers.
Then a discordant thought attacked her. “Oh no!” she exclaimed, slapping her palm against the side of her head. Joe and Diane turned for a second. Realizing Mari wasn’t talking to them as she smiled and waved them on, they continued up the hill. The team had no name, she realized, and she wanted its members to claim one, but she had just dismissed them. Oh well, it would wait till Monday, she thought, mentally composing a “lesson plan” that began with the naming of the team.
Marisol opened the apartment door and stepped into the small foyer. Josh called out “That you, Mari?” from the kitchen. She veered into the kitchen, where he was bent over the oven, mitt in hand, his face turned to smile at her.
“Yup.” An orange tiger cat and a long-haired gray cat trotted out of a room down the hall and rubbed against Mari’s legs.
“How was your first day?” Josh asked, bending back to the stove. Smiling at the serving spoon in his free hand, Mari draped her arms over his shoulders. He stood, barely topping her five feet, five inches. She loosened her raven hair out of its tie, and Josh caught a flowing drape of it over his wrist and rubbed it against his cheek. “I think it went well,” Mari said. She caressed the back of Josh’s head with her left hand. They kissed luxuriously, giving in to the timelessness of those without children. Finally she pulled away and inquired, “What are you cookin', Sweet Cheeks?” As usual, he was wearing his cooking clothes—blue sweat pants and a blue sweatshirt with the arms cut off, liberating the entire length of his slender arms. She smacked the cheeks in question.
Josh grinned. “Arroz…pollo.”
“Mmm…beans with the rice?”
“Of course, how could you wonder?”
“Mama’s recipe, I suppose.”
“Of course,” he quipped, hiding his smirk.
“You mean my mama,” she teased.
“No, Carmen Acevedo’s mama,” he teased back, citing his boss.
“Whatever,” she concluded, ruffling her husband’s hair and tossing her own from side to side, a gesture she had always made to free her hair from its athletic tightness and one she knew drove her husband wild with desire.
“Go clean up for dinner, Querida, and let me cook my chicken,” Josh stated, returning to the steaming oven. Mari followed the trotting cats down the hall to the bedroom, passing framed abstract paintings in vivid colors and sharp lines, a sample of the projects she had created during her college years.
III
Monday was a chilly, misty day. Marisol confined practice to an hour. Hannah and Shanequa had returned from their tournament with fourth place laurels. Practice still felt overly official to a team of girls who were ready to play a game, regardless of the weather. Marisol reasoned to herself that very little effective fielding could be accomplished when the ball died instantly upon splatting onto a soggy field. Equally challenging would be running bases along muddy base paths the consistency of molasses. It’s a good thing it’s just practice, Mari reasoned.
The team sat expectantly on the bench while their coach strolled back and forth in front of them, making eye contact and smiling at each player, each of her charges. “Girls, we forgot something very important the other day,” she began. “Anyone wanna guess what it is?” she asked broadly, flinging her arms out, her palms open. Faith whispered something to Frances, and Jen smiled curiously, as if she thought she knew the answer but wasn’t sure. A couple of players shrugged.
“Our uniforms?” Destiny ventured a guess.
“No, good guess, but that’s under control. The uniforms are coming. And they are purple.” Marisol gave a little cheer, effecting a ripple of agreement among several team members. Then she paused, giving what she knew as a teacher was officially called “wait time” to allow the girls’ thoughts to process. Finally, she teased, “Aw, come on. I think I know all your names pretty well already. But I don’t know what to call us.”
“Aahh,” several girls remarked, understanding at last.
“We need a name!” Jen exclaimed, stabbing her index fingers into the air.
“Right!” Marisol exclaimed back.
“But we have a name. Or we did, yo,” Frances said, giving the youthful jerk of the head that prevailed among many teens.
“Well, many of you played for the Barons. But a lot of those girls graduated or moved on. It seems like a good time for a new name,” Marisol reasoned.
“How about Purple Eagles?” Frances suggested.
“That’s Washport,” Mariah argued. “We play them on the school team.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Frances agreed.
“The eggplants,” joked Megan. Alicia and Jen rammed her shoulders from both sides, passing her back and forth.
Marisol laughed. “Cute,” she said.
“Radishes,” called out Faith.
“Duh, they’re red, and we’re, like, purple,” her sister, Frances, cajoled.
“Jerk,” Faith shot back.
“My aunt cooks with purple onions,” Shanequa stated. “They look really cool before you cut them up.”
After a moment’s pensive silence, Myra nodded her head thoughtfully and muttered, “Cool.”
“You all like that idea? Purple Onions?” Marisol polled the group. Myra’s endorsement had settled the naming.
“We like it,” Jen declared, sealing the name with a verbal gavel.
“All right,” said Marisol. “We are the Purple Onions.” She tucked her hair into her baseball cap, a purple cap she had bought when she learned the color of her team’s uniform. She pulled her ponytail through the hole in the back of the cap. Purple Onions was about the last name she’d anticipated. This element of surprise was one of the things she loved about kids and a quality she hoped to use in inspiring their creativity as fledgling artists.
“Time to play,” said Crystal.
“Infield practice!” Marisol shouted. The players rose and bolted to the field.
Hannah, Frances, and Shanequa took turns pitching and fielding from the mound area when it wasn’t their turn to pitch. Frances, though the shortest of the three, had disproportionately long arms, so her windmill windup matched the power and speed of the other girls’ pitches. The remaining players batted and fielded in two groups. The batters, rusty after a long winter, took several swings warming up but were quickly able to retrieve their dormant accuracy and smoothness.
Fifteen minutes later, Marisol sent all the players to the infield and told the base fielders and shortstop to rotate with other players. The girls quickly took positions, except for Alicia, who stood near Megan. Marisol hit strategically in order to review—and in a couple of cases, teach—rules such as the infield fly rule and the dropped pitch rule. She decided she would have to expend extra effort with Alicia and Destiny in batting and fielding alike. Both girls swung too late or too soon, held their gloves away from them—as if they were toxic or caustic—and responded to balls hit nearby by looking to their coach or a teammate for advice, which of course usually came after the ball splatted beyond them or flew over their heads. Nadine, a friend of Megan’s and Alicia’s, had just joined the team and was uncertain where she fit on the field yet; her skills were still unfolding and unknown.
At last, muddied and laughing, the team gathered in the cement cage.
“Important things first,” Marisol began. “I should have your uniforms at your next practice. Is Wednesday good for everyone? It’s supposed to be nice that day.”
The answer came as a mixture of nods and shrugs.
“Okay, well it looks like just about everyone can make it, and that’s good, because we have only two weeks till the opening game.” Simultaneously, cheers of “Woo-Hoo” went up from Mari and several players.
Jen asked who the newly-minted Purple Onions would be playing. “It looks like the orange team,” Mari answered.
“The squashes,” Megan quipped. Alicia jabbed her side good-naturedly with her elbow. Their teammates laughed.
“One more thing,” Marisol blurted out as her players began to rise. They froze in various stages of sitting and standing. “Sit down, just for a second.” She waited a few seconds and then continued, her expression serious. The players’ faces grew serious in response, inquisitive, Marisol thought. She hadn’t planned to deliver a speech, but she wanted to convey her philosophy right from the start. “I want this season to be fun for each and every one of you,” she began. “There’s one guaranteed way to make that happen, and that is for all of you to play this game.” She paused, glancing up and down the row of players, and smiled. “Everyone here has something to offer the team. Everyone. I’ve seen already what you have in you. But it’s different to put all of you together as a team.”
“Miss, it’s not like we don’t know each other or something,” Frances interrupted.
“I know, I know. But there are girls new to softball here, and come on, the Purple Onions have never existed before. Except maybe in Shanequa’s kitchen—” Myra and Destiny jabbed Shanequa. “So in order for everyone on this wonderful team to show what they have to give this wonderful game, I’m gonna do things a little different than maybe what yer used to. I like to mix things up a lot.” She smiled broadly and shook her body, as if to demonstrate by mixing herself up. Some of the players leaned back, their arms crossed and their legs stretched before them. Some looked at the ground, creating dirt bullseyes or meandering valleys with their shoes. Others looked at Marisol, listening with their eyes as well as their ears as if grasping the measure of the woman as well as her words. “I won’t go on and on about it,” she concluded. “But here’s the thing. Everyone on this team will play a lot of ball. And only nine people can play at a time, right? So everyone will spend some time on the bench too. The most important thing, above all, is that everyone go out there, work together, and enjoy this wonderful game.”
“Wait!” came an unexpected exclamation from Faith. “So like, ya mean, Myra and me are gonna, like, sit out a whole buncha innings…and Jen is gonna sit out…”
Marisol nodded and jumped in. “Sure. Okay, here’s the deal. Some of you have more skills fielding than hitting—” Jen poked Crystal in the side; Crystal pushed her with her shoulders and pretended to scowl. “Some of you,” Marisol continued, shaking her head while smiling at the jostling players, “are powerful hitters, but run slow.”
“Yeah, Myra,” Megan teased.
“Not!” rejoindered Myra.
“You all have one thing in common,” Marisol stated, surprised to be met with silent attention rather than the expected riposte. “You all are here to play this game. And that’s why every single one of you will have plenty of playing time.” She wondered if the thought of playing a lot struck terror rather than excitement into her two rookies, Destiny and Alicia. “I really hope,” she concluded, “that that means you will also all have a lot of fun. All right. Now go home!”
Hannah’s father joined her side, leaning into her to talk to her. Marisol watched them walk that way up the grassy hill to the parking lot. She was so serious, Mari thought, recalling how Hannah had batted with her mouth clamped shut, a dutiful dose of concentration drawing lines across her brow. She had handed her glove delicately to her father, like a dog surrendering a ball to its master. He worked the glove purposefully or absentmindedly—a prop to use while talking to Hannah, perhaps. As with Hannah, “serious” was the word that came to Mari's mind when she realized that he had not smiled or even spoken to her in greeting or farewell—not even to grace her with small talk. In fact, Marisol recalled, when she had made the initial phone calls to her new team members’ houses, it had been Hannah’s mother she had first talked to, a woman with a curt, businesslike phone voice that also seemed, paradoxically, pleasantly lilting. “Okay, I’ll tell her,” she had repeated each time Mari gave her a piece of information regarding where to meet and when, as well as what equipment and clothing to bring.
Mari's attention focused on the parking lot. Several cars waited in the lot atop the hill that separated the school from the playing fields. Joe pulled up along the edge of the lot in a blue minivan. He stopped, got out, and scrambled down the hill. “Sorry again we couldn’t make it!” he called out, referring to his earlier phone call regretting that he and Diane would not be able to help.
“No problem. How’s Jake?”
“Oh, he’s fine. Diane just took him home. It’s a baby tooth—“
“Thank God!”
“Yeah, I know. Doctor Kozlowski thinks the adult tooth will come in fine. Now I gotta convince Jake to use his glove instead of his mouth!”
Mari laughed along with Joe. Then she told him about the upcoming practice and invited Joe and Diane to help. “Wednesday should be a nice, warm, sunny day,” she said, sweetening the deal.
Joe nodded briskly. “We’ll be there,” he declared, not needing Mari’s coaxing. He pulled the waist of his pants over a protruding stomach. “We’ll have to bring Jake ‘cause his Grandma and Grandpa are away.”
“No problem.”
Joe returned to the car, where Jennifer waited already.
Marisol noticed that Destiny, Ashley, and Myra had left. Hannah and her father reached the parking lot, where Crystal waited for them. “Have a good week, girls!” Marisol called out to the remaining players, most of whom had scattered, except for Nadine, Megan, and Alicia. Marisol waved broadly to Jen and Joe and then turned to the remaining three girls. “Do you want to use my cell?” she asked.
“My mom should be coming,” Alicia answered. “But I’ll call anyways. I think I told her two hours.” Marisol responded with her broad, patient smile.
Ten minutes later, all the girls were gone. Mari climbed the hill to her car, releasing her hair from its tie and her purple cap. Driving home, she hoped Josh had taken dinner in hand. If not, frozen lasagna was the contingency plan. Also a bottle of red wine—“for my heart” she always claimed, reveling in Josh’s sudden chortle and enjoying the tousling motion of his nimble fingers on her head.
IV
As April unwound, the rollicking, boisterous parade of chilly clouds gave way to the subtle, widening warmth of May. Lengthening days stretched sunlight into evening and mellow temperatures birthed swarming bees, lake gnats, and other insects no longer dormant behind winter's shield. Lake Monaghon sparkling just beyond the park seemed to wait quietly for the commotion and buzzing of summer boats. It was softball weather for sure, Marisol thought one day in school, closing her eyes as the familiar warmth spread up her young and athletic frame from her purple-sneakered feet.
The Purple Onions joined established teams and other new teams in filling the fields for practice sessions. Even on Friday nights, young revelers of the nation’s pastime filled the complex, preparing for opening day. To counter her growing nervousness borne of the deadline pressure of having two weeks left to prepare her freshly-crafted team, Marisol wore her “lucky suit” to every practice —a lime-green warm-up suit with a pink stripe up each leg and pink piping on the arms.
“They are all over the place,” she told Josh, referring to her players’ varied abilities. She described the athletic, muscular, able players whose confidence showed in smooth fielding and effortless addressing of bat on ball. Jen, Hannah, Myra, Megan. Then there were Destiny and Alicia on the other extreme. Everyone else possessed some degree of fielding ability, some speed and agility, if not strength in batting, or vice-versa.
“Maybe they just need to believe in themselves,” Josh said of Destiny and Alicia. Mari nodded, her mind preoccupied with images of their arms held out futilely, gloves dragging their hands down like lead weights. She told Josh of their awkward batting stance, the way they rested the bat on their shoulders and always swung too late, if at all. “Don’t you think some experience will change all that, Babe?”
“Of course. Of course. So how do I get them to believe in themselves?”
“Just keep helpin’ ‘em.” Marisol’s teacher mind began running through the possibilities: model the poses while they watched; position their arms and legs, gloves and bats; lob slow balls at them until their fear lessened, then increase the speed; and finally, use peer coaching—pick out friends for the task, or a couple of patient girls, or both. Suddenly the terror of assigning positions intruded on her planning. Right field? Center field? Not first base. Not catcher or pitcher. Maybe, optimistically, eventually, third base. The whole thing was like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Start with the frame—pitcher, catcher. Fast pitch was a pitcher’s game. Then attach the obvious pieces to the frame. The rest of the player pieces would fall into place.
Marisol attacked her apple pie, her mouth talking around the circular rhythm of her spoon flying from the dish to her mouth. “Alicia is my biggest worry. She’s kinda shy, so she doesn’t really say what she wants, and she just kinda follows Megan around, but she needs to learn to do her own thing, y’know?” Mari held her spoon like a flag and shook her head back and forth.
Josh chuckled. “Would you slow down? You’ll choke yourself. Whaddaya mean, ‘her own thing’?”
“Me? Slow down? Sure thing.” She leaned over and jostled his shoulder with her own. “Here’s the thing. She can’t catch anything. She’s afraid. And she swings all over the place.”
“So you put her in as rover and hope nothing comes her way.”
Mari had scraped her bowl clean of pie and ice cream. She put her spoon down and cradled her face between her hands, resting her elbows on either side of the bowl. “Josh—”
“Huh?”
There was a mutual pause. “You don’ know anything!” She drew out the last word teasingly.
“Whattaya talkin' about?” He smiled curiously.
“There is no rover.”
“Yes there is. We play wid' a rover all the time. You know that. You’ve been there.” The orange tabby cat jumped onto his lap, chirping on the leap. He rubbed her face and the cat-euphoria-inducing hot spots around her ears. “Marble knows it too,” Josh declared.
“That’s slow-pitch, Honey.”
He turned one palm upward in a “yeah, so?” gesture and contorted his face in mock confusion.
“I’m coaching fast-pitch.”
“So then, you put her in right field,” he said, stroking the length of Marble’s arching back.
“I guess that’s a start.”
“She’s prob’ly not gonna play that much anyway.”
Marisol scowled. “Of course she is,” she countered. “Just like everyone else. If she keeps showin’ up. She has so far. I assume she wants to play.”
“You always play your better players more,” Josh said, stuck on Marisol’s first comment. “In fast pitch, of course.” He smiled and kissed Mari’s cheek. “And your unskilled players less.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Whaddaya mean, why? You wanna win, don’t ya?”
“Oh, of course, smart-ass. Sure. But I think maybe fun has somethin’ to do wid’ it too.”
“Of course, but you have more fun if you’re winning.” He grinned.
“Yeah? Well, I’m the coach. Not you. And everyone—” She kissed him—“plays—” She kissed him again—“a lot. Everyone—has—fun.” He kissed her back vigorously. Not another word about softball was said that night.
V
The ashen sky on Wednesday produced a drizzle that came and went. Marisol ran practice for an hour, concentrating on pitching. She wanted to find out who hoped against reason to pitch and who truly had pitching talents. She knew she would be more careful with pitching placements than with other positions, and the strategy of her new role as coach filled her with excitement; she was entering an untried dimension of this sport she loved so well.
Mari shoved her ponytail into the back hole of her cap as she approached the field. Hannah and Crystal already occupied the pitcher’s mound and were taking turns pitching to Myra. Soon enough, other players arrived and the practice fell into its routine: warm-ups with a few minutes of tossing the ball back and forth, then batting and fielding practice. Because of the short practice, Marisol had the girls occupy only the infield and did all the batting herself so she could hit the ball strategically to different positions along the baseline.
Myra, Crystal, Hannah, and Frances pitched. “She’s good,” Mari said to herself, watching Hannah wind up and fire the ball. Of the four girls, she had the smoothest windup and delivery, the most natural, as if she had a lot of indigenous talent or studied practice—probably both. Frances had good speed on her pitch, and Myra and Crystal would be able to fill in adequately too. Still, Hannah had speed on top of her other skills. Crystal preferred the catching role, Marisol could see, and she seemed to be the only girl vaguely interested in the grueling up and down poses and the stance right in the “line of fire” required of a catcher. Things are coming together nicely, Mari thought, the familiar blush of excitement racing through her.
As Marisol gathered her team in the cage, she noticed Hannah’s father standing behind the backstop, waiting for practice to end, apparently concentrating on the team's every move. In knee-length shorts, a solid gray sweatshirt cut off at the sleeves, and sunglasses with a black shoelace head strap over his eyes, he seemed to scoff at the real weather—or he was beckoning better weather. Marisol smiled at him and spoke to her team. “Before you leave tonight, I’ll give you your uniforms,” she proclaimed, pointing to the two big boxes she and Joe had hauled down from her car. “We have one more practice tomorrow—”
“Woo-hoo!” someone called out. Marisol continued. “You don’t need to wear these tomorrow—” She began pulling pants and purple shirts out of the boxes. “But we do have a scrimmage next Tuesday if you want to wear them then—”
“Who with?” Shanequa interrupted.
“The Bankettes.”
“Did you say the Banquets?” Megan called out. A buzz of laughter rolled down the line.
“No, no, no,” Marisol replied, chuckling. “Their sponsor is First Towne Bank, so they’re the Bankettes—get it?” There were nods of affirmation. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the coach trailed off. “Anyway,” she began anew, “they’re good, but you’re better. They don’ have very good pitchers. They’re not fast, and their accuracy is off. But it’s only the start of the season, and they’ll get better. So don’ get smug and be sayin’ ‘Oh, we don’ gotta do no work, we’re all that—’ ”She jerked her head back and forth as she said each word, causing smiles and a few chuckles at her imitation of the girls’ speech. Then, seriously: “It’s considerable work all the time, but that’s what makes it so fun, right?” Getting only a muttered response and a few weak nods, she repeated: “Right? Come on girls!”
“No pain, no gain!” Ashley blurted out, and the roisterous cliché was what the girls needed to hear to send up cries of “Woo-hoo” accompanied by high fives.
“All right, that’s better,” Marisol said, her smile drawing up to twinkling eyes. Then she was surrounded by a flurry of activity as she matched uniforms to sizes specified on the players’ application sheets. Finally all the girls had uniforms—with only one wrong size to correct—and they scurried up the hill to catch their rides.
Mari delighted in returning home to a light supper of plantains, Josh’s famous beef empanadillas made with a crispy orange pocket, a green salad, and strong, black coffee. As usual, his day as a case manager with HINGE—Housing and Income Generate Equality—started the discussion, but it turned inevitably to softball. “Who are your good players now?” he queried.
“Well, Myra I’m not at all worried about” was the immediate answer, followed by a more considered, “She can do it all—run fast, run hard, stretch to nab those lobs to first base, know when to steal and when not to.”
“Is she a hitter?”
“Yeah! Oh my god, are you kidding?”
Mari lit into her third empanadilla. “Jen is a great all-around player too—maybe a little slower—she’s bigger than Myra.”
The shrill ring of the phone felt like an intrusion. Mari pushed her chair back, rose, and crossed the kitchen into the hall, calling out, “This is why we need one in the kitchen.” The phone sat on a small wooden buffet atop a Persian carpet just inside the living room door. She reached out and picked up the phone, swirling toward it as she answered.
An unfamiliar man’s voice on the other end blurted out “Marisol Anzalone, please.”
“Speaking,” she replied, the statement inflected as a question. She feared it would be a sales call or a consumer survey, neither of which her mood could handle patiently.
“This is Mike Reilly, Hannah’s Dad.”
“Oh, hi, Mike.” The teacher in her had wanted to address this parent as “Mr. Reilly,” but the recreational softball coach went with “Mike.” She recalled seeing Mike standing on the hill, stiffly ready to chauffeur his daughter and her friends, Crystal and Myra, back home. She wondered if one of the girls had forgotten a glove on the field or taken the wrong size uniform. Mike was one of the few remaining parents she hadn’t talked with, so she welcomed this chance to connect with him. “Let me guess, one of the girls forgot something,” she said.
“No, no, not at all.” The raspy, high-pitched voice didn’t match the tall, beefy-shouldered figure Mari remembered seeing. He obviously lifts weights, she had thought when she first glimpsed him. “The reason I’m calling is because I want to talk to you about your pitching staff,” Mike began.
This was not at all what Marisol was expecting. Nor was the formality of the word “staff.” She was surprised to hear him declaim, “I’ve noticed that your pitching staff is pretty weak. Other than Hannah, I mean.” There was that word again—staff. And weak? Curious to hear his reasoning, she squelched the urge to argue immediately against the claim. “Crystal is a fine catcher, but as pitcher, she’s jerky on the windup and delivery. Myra can hold her own, and I think with some work and some coaching, that Frances girl could be brought up to speed, as a backup, now.”
“We’ve had Nadine in a few times—”
“Is that the girl with red hair? Short, curly? Sort of chubby?” Marisol cringed at the label, remembering her own chubby childhood and the teasing that went with it. Mike didn’t wait for her answer. “Yeah, she could be a relief pitcher, but she’s a little rough around the edges. She tires easily. I wouldn’t start her.”
Marisol began to wonder exactly where Mike Reilly was going with all this advice. She unclenched her jaw and listened. “You’ve got some help, I see—”
“Yeah, Joe and Diane Muscato. They’ve been a big help. Not that I wouldn’t welcome a couple more parents—”
Mike cleared his throat. “I’m mostly concerned about the pitching staff,” he stated. The errant word was starting to rankle Marisol. “That’s where the coaching lapses. I have experience as a pitcher, mostly slow but some fast-pitch. The season starts in a coupla weeks, here. You have a scrimmage next Tuesday, so that doesn’t leave us much time, but there’s still tomorrow to straighten out the pitching, get your team in shape—”
Marisol's mind began to stray, only partly registering the words that were obviously a criticism at odds with the sense of fun she felt had prevailed so far. Did he just say something about a lapse in coaching? Had she heard him right? She felt the conversation spiraling away from her and wanted to bring it back. “Whoa, whoa,” she interjected loudly enough to pause Mike’s speech. “We have a great little team shaping up, the girls are excited, I’m excited, I think some of the parents are excited, even some of the weaker players are coming along in their hitting skills.” She hoped to say something positive about Alicia and Destiny before Mike mentioned one of them.
Mike chuckled. “Sure, sure. I’m sure you’re doing a fine job. I’m sure it’ll be a fine season. I see potential in some of our players. If we all pull together, work together, the girls will play some good ball, win some games, have a great experience.”
“Okay, right, right. So then, what was the reason you called me?”
“Well, even with the shortage of time before the season, I’ll be glad to work with your pitching corps, practice them intensely. Throw in the catcher and I’ll work with your whole battery.” Corps—at least that had a more fun ring to it than did “staff.”
“Well, I’ll be glad to have your help. I don’t know how intensely you can practice in this short a time, and I don’t want their hitting and base running to get rusty—”
“Not a chance.”
Marisol suspected he was fretting over Hannah’s skills alone getting rusty. “What did you say your credentials are?” She was surprised at her formality in asking a parent volunteer for his “credentials.” Something about this man’s commanding tone warned Mari to remain formal, in charge of her emotions as well as her coaching strategies.
Mike answered quickly but steadily. “Three-time All-State pitcher, junior year MVP.”
“High school?” Again, the interview quality of this conversation unnerved her. Even more unsettling was the feeling that she was the one being scrutinized and assessed like an entry-level candidate seeking employment with a major company.
“Sure, sure. I’m also plant manager at Federated Steel, coach of our Slo-Pitch team. Like I said, I’d be glad to help, and anyone you wanna throw at me Thursday, I’ll be glad to work with, you know, get ‘em ready for scrimmage, off to a good start.” Marisol had only half heard Mike’s recitation of credentials. She snapped back into full listening mode when his tone softened at his last turn of phrase. “I’ll be there at 6:30 warming Hannah up,” he concluded.