He hates when I call him that, says it sounds too ridiculous, but I do it just to tease him. Leaning against the fence, he’s in his usual T-shirt and jeans, when most of these reporters show up in sharp suits. But Bryant is of the old realm of journalists, with a notebook stuck in his back pocket and a pen behind his ear. He rarely carries a cell phone, doesn’t dress to impress anyone, and would rather spend time sitting near the bat boys during games than in the press box.
“Eh, Ronnie doesn’t know what’s good for her. That bag she cried over at Christmas was only bought using the money from my blackjack winnings.” He waves off the comment about his gambling and his wife.
Two wrinkly arms lean against the chain-link, the black skin of them sagging with age and littered with spots. Taking a good look at him, I notice he looks thinner than the last time I saw him a month or two ago. His face, still freckled with a cinnamon-colored trail across the bridge of his nose, is more wrinkled. But he still has the freshest haircut a good barber could buy, and for that I’ve always admired Bryant. The man cares about the important things; a good shave, a firm handshake, a decent, fairly-priced beer. He taught me to care about those things as well.
Growing up, I had no one. My father, as the story goes, split before I had even made my entrance into the world. My mother had hung on a while longer, but as far as I could trace my birth back, she was young and decided to give me up at a fire station near San Diego. Other than that, I have no concrete facts on the people who gave me life.
So foster care it was, and once my baseball talent was discovered, I was “sponsored” by travel teams so that I could basically help them win. Then the families on those teams became my sort of guardians, looking after me and helping to take care of me. But only so long as I didn’t surpass their own sons.
Oh sure, they’d take in the charity case when they felt like doing something good. A teammate’s family would take pity on me if I was good friends with their son, and they’d want to provide for me. I’d be as quiet and courteous as I could, causing no trouble in the way their biological kids would. I’d travel with the team, and they could claim they were “giving love” and “providing comfort” to the orphan of the bunch.
Except it always ended. Usually badly. One time, it was because one of my friends, the son of a family who had taken me in for close to six months, got cut from our travel team. This was around the time I was in middle school, and things were getting more competitive. I’d grown four inches that year, and my voice dropped. I started being able to make plays that some of the other kids couldn’t, including their son. So he’d been dropped from the team, not by any fault of mine. And suddenly, it was like they were too burdened to take care of me anymore. They sat me down with pitiful looks in their eyes and told me I’d be going back to a foster home.
All because I had more natural talent than their son. All because I couldn’t help but loving the game of baseball and working hard at it.
This happened four times during my youth, with the last being when I was fifteen. From then until the age of eighteen, when I aged out and got drafted into the minors, I bounced around from foster home to foster home. Most of the ones I was in were decent; meaning that even if the “parents” didn’t care about more than collecting a government check, they at least didn’t beat us and still put food on the table. That’s the bar to meet to be a good foster home in this country.
It’s why I’ve dedicated so much of my time, my salary, to improving things for kids in the system. Kids like me, once upon a time.
But back before all of it, there was Bryant. He was the only one there for me in a time where, not only did I have no one else, but I had no idea what I was doing. I was an eighteen-year-old kid who had just been handed more money than I’d ever seen in my life, was traveling the country, and could have gotten myself into real trouble if someone hadn’t been there to check on me.
I come out of the cage and go around to him. We go in for a bear hug at the same time, and he smells of his usual cigar and mint gum scent.
“Good to see you, kid. It’s been too long.” His grizzly voice invades my eardrum.
“It’s only been a few weeks, and you didn’t tell me you were coming out to cover this game.” He’s a big softie.
“The paper only dispatched me last night. Want me to get a narrative piece on the feel at Pistons park now that Jimmy is behind bars.” He raises an eyebrow, and I know he’s looking for a scoop.
I plop to the ground, needing a stretch, and he follows. “You know everything with me is off the record. Don’t tell me you’ve completely lost your marbles in old age?”
Bryant slowly sinks down too, sitting cross-legged as I reach for my left toes in a straddle. “I’m just playing, kid. I have to write my piece, but I came for you. You know that.”
We met during one of my high school games when I was a sophomore, when Bryant had just so happened to be in the area and wanted to scout out a local talent who was being talked about. That local talent was me. He struck up a conversation after the game, and we kept in touch for a bit. Our relationship grew stronger over a mutual love for the game of baseball, and when I aged out of the system, he’d been the first person I called.
I went to stay with him and his wife, Ronnie, in their condo while I started playing in the minor leagues, until I could safely commit to having my own apartment after being shuttled around foster homes for most of my life. The two of them taught me how to be an adult, how to care for myself in a world that would definitely take advantage of me if it could. Ronnie helped me open up my first bank account and went to pick out the bedding for my first apartment.
Bryant taught me other things, like when to say no in contract negotiations and how to keep my mouth shut around reporters blood thirsty for some gossip. He was the only father figure I’d ever known, and I was thankful to have him in my life.
“Your game looks tired, Hayes.” He eyes me, those brown eyes wise with age.
“Well, shit, don’t be so forward.” I snort self-deprecatingly.
“I’ve never known you to phone it in, even in the worst of seasons. It’s disappointing.”
Hearing him say that, that he’s disappointed in me, is worse than a knife to the gut. I never want him to feel anything less than proud of me, and I’ve worked hard to make him feel that.
I shrug. “I can’t wrap my mind around this shit. I shouldn’t even be here.” I switch to stretching my right leg.
Bryant lets his head tip back, so that he’s concentrating on the clouds. “That might be so, but what did I tell you a long time ago? Things happen for a reason. There is always a meaning about why life jerks you one way or the other, and you have to lean into that. You got swept up in something evil, but it doesn’t mean you have to turn with that tide. Be a good teammate, a good leader. Play the game you love. You know more than anyone that life isn’t fair, that it’s short, and you only have so many games left. Play the hell out of them.”
His words sink into my brain as I bring my legs together and grab my toes, stretching my back and hamstrings at the same time. The grass beneath my legs is familiar, I became one with the ball field long ago.
“Why’d you have to come here and go all philosopher on me?” I half-joke.