“It’ll be a puff piece,” she says. “Just go on and on about the Space Needle.”
I groan. “I hate the Space Needle. No one from Seattle likes it.”
“Don’t say that to Vince,” she says. “How about the Gum Wall? Everyone Instagrams that.”
“Chewed gum pasted on a wall is nasty. No self-described Seattleite likes it.”
“Don’t mention that either, then. What do you like in your hometown?”
“Lots of stuff. The Ballard Locks. They help salmon swim upstream. Also, coffee. And walking around the city with my parents.”
“Perfect. Talk about fish, caffeine, and family.”
“Easy enough.”
Famous last words.
The day of the interview, I head into the coffee shop, looking for a bearded guy with glasses, someone who matches the headshot that runs with his articles. I spot him in the corner, laptop open, watching the door. As I make my way over, he rises, flashes a grin, and says hello. “Cortado for you, Holden? That’s your favorite, right?”
He must have listened to Reese’s podcast. That was the first time anyone asked me about my drink of choice. Suddenly, I’m picturing her face, her lips, her smile.
“It is. And that’d be great.”
He heads to the counter while I trip back in time, to that one perfect day.
The honesty and the connection, the banter and the real talk.
And the sparks that flew like an electrical wire.
What is she up to in South America? What is she doing? Does she still wear a lot of red? Does she keep in touch with her friends? Does she dig teaching kids about media and podcasting?
A smile tips my lips as I remember my what-if woman.
I haven’t googled her in ages. I did at first, right after I met her. I found exactly what I thought I would—pics of her with her friends on her Instagram and her podcast website.
Last time I checked her feed, she’d posted a shot of a pair of teenage girls in Bogotá who’d started a podcast about art heists, with a caption that said, Proud of these two!
That was it.
I haven’t checked since then. There’s no point.
A few minutes later, Vince returns with my drink—espresso and a bit of warm milk—along with a soy latte for himself.
“Knew about the cortado from the college interview. The one with the podcaster. Good stuff there,” he says, and I try to give nothing away, to keep the smile spreading inside me from showing too much. “Helped me a lot with background info.”
“We had a good chat,” I say, keeping things friendly but kind of generic, like Carlotta said.
“Thanks for doing this interview. I always like talking to local personalities. Getting to know them. Seeing why they love the city.”
“Can’t beat the rain. Well, as long as there are retractable roofs for playing ball.” Not a bad platitude. This is going to be easier than I thought.
He smiles then dives into the meat of the interview, asking standard questions about the game, why I love it, what I want for next season.
Then he peppers me with questions about growing up here. I keep it vague but positive, giving him some nuggets about the Ballard Locks and my favorite coffee haunts for color, but keeping my life and family close to the vest. Because family is private.
Except when it’s not.
When the piece runs the next week, it’s a dissection of my parents—how they met, where they teach, where they live. It might as well include a picture of their house and the route my brothers take to school.
Oh, because that’s in there too. “When Kingsley was called up to the major leagues,” Vince writes, “the first thing he did was yank his younger brothers from public school, putting them in one of the city’s swank and high-priced private high schools. He believes those are better than the public schools he attended, citing woeful inadequacy in public education.”
I see red.
I call Carlotta. “I said none of this. He must have dug up all this info on my parents and then made up this shit about my brothers. I said nothing of the sort.”
“I’ll talk to Vince.”
But the damage is done.
This article makes me look like a bougie prick in my hometown. My brothers don’t say much, but Mom lets it slip that they got hassled at school for being little chess pieces in my life.
The press can fuck off.
I’m done with talking to the media.
From now on, it’s baseball and only baseball. That is all.
Over the next year, I keep my head down and avoid the media. I become good at barking “No comment” to nearly every request, because that’s the only thing I have to say.
My life is baseball—the game and my friendships with other players, guys on my team, like Shane, and guys on other teams, like Crosby Cash, who mans third base for the San Francisco Cougars.
Crosby and I trade a few hitting tips at the All-Star Game, and I pass on Edward Thompson’s advice.
I absorb it even deeper too, continuing to make a few more adjustments at the plate. Little ones, shifting by increments. It works—I pop my batting average up six more points, finishing the year with some of the best stats in the league.
Trouble is, it’s not enough for my team.
The LA Bandits are sagging, well out of playoff contention.
But other teams are noticing me.
That’s what Josh Summers, my shark of an agent, keeps telling me. I’m trade bait, apparently.
“You’re getting lots of interest, Holden,” he tells me at the end of October when we meet in New York.
“Keep me posted.” There’s not much else to say. Being traded isn’t up to me.
When my cell buzzes in late December while I’m vacationing with my family in Costa Rica, I’ve got a feeling I know why Josh is calling.
“What’s up, Summers?”
“You. As in your baseball stock. It’s been rising. How would you feel about going to the San Francisco Dragons?”
I wince. “The team that’s best known for cheating its way to two World Series in the last five years?”
“Yep,” he says.
“Then I feel like they’re pretty much the scourge of baseball.” But the question is rhetorical; I don’t actually have a choice in the matter. Still, I have to try—anywhere but the Dragons. “How about the New York Comets? That’d be awesome. Or Seattle.”
“We’ll work on that for the future. For now, keep this in mind—the Dragons were the scourge of baseball. The organization has completely cleaned house. They just brought in a new partial owner with some deep pockets. Plus, with the year you had and the money they have, we should be able to avoid arbitration and get you a fat raise.”
That piques my interest.
I pace along the beach, watching my little brothers tackle the waves. Horribly. They tackle the waves absolutely horribly. But they do it fearlessly, getting back on their surfboards again and again, going over and over.
Having a blast.
They’ll be going to college soon.
College isn’t cheap, and I don’t know if they’ll get scholarships like I did.
Players get traded all the time early in their careers. I don’t have enough service to have a no-trade clause, no matter how little I want to play for a team known for their roster-wide sign-stealing scandal. Blatant, shameless sign-stealing, with team staffers banging trash can lids in the stands to signal the pitches—pitches they knew were coming thanks to cameras surreptitiously installed in the ballpark.