“Because I’m an old man who knows better than you.” He nods matter-of-factly.
“Glad you’re here, though. I hope you’re sticking around for dinner after.”
“Of course I am, you’re buying.” Bryant pats me on the shoulder as he rises. “Have a good game, kid.”
He walks off, pulling his signature black leather notebook from his back pocket, and begins jotting some notes. I have no doubt his piece will be spectacular, that it will convey the exact essence of what it’s like to watch a game in Pistons’ stadium today.
But his words echo in my ears, far after I exit for the locker room and to dress in my game day uniform. My fairy godfather has a point, and I think I have to abandon some of my pigheaded nature and follow his advice.
9
Colleen
A couple of the concessions workers I know wave as I pass their stands, the smell of roasted peanuts and sizzling hot dogs invading my nose.
Fans mill about the in the concourse, drinking beers or taking a breather from the sun shining down on their seats. There is still a coolness in the air; the season hasn’t quite turned from spring to summer in Pennsylvania yet, and my favorite months of baseball are still to come. Summer nights under those large, bright lights, day games in the heat when you almost want to pass out, but then your favorite player makes a hell of a play.
I walk through the stadium, my second home. Actually, it’s probably my first. I only venture back to my ranch house to sleep these days, and since I have a shower in my office, sometimes I’m not even doing that in my humble abode.
General managers of a team typically control player contracts, plan and maintain budgets for the team, arrange travel plans, address both public and internal complaints, hires and fires coaching staff, and smooths out the kinks between the front office and the on-the-field-employees.
Suffice it to say, I’m pretty darn busy.
This week alone, I’ve had two meetings with the coaching staff on how player operations have been going, spent time with the field manager, or head coach, talking about our game strategy for the next few weeks, and am taking a deep dive into the contracts my father negotiated. The paperwork around them, the shady inner-workings, the money … it’s a goddamn circus. I’ll be working overtime on those for months, and will probably have them straightened out in our budgets and on our books come the end of the season, right in time for those players to leave.
It all got to be too much, so I decided to watch tonight’s game from the family room.
Sometimes I like to watch from in there. Two years ago, I worked a rotation in the charity and events department of the Pistons organization, which worked closely with the players’ families to help involve them on both of those initiatives. In that time, I’d developed some close relationships with some of the wives and parents, and this room held a lot more joy during games than the owner’s box.
As I walk into the huge three-room suite, the screech of children makes me smile. It had been my idea to put the small toy corner in here, and clearly it was paying off. Two of the little boys are racing Hot Wheels cars around people’s feet, and three of our closing pitcher’s daughters are playing with dolls on the floor. A baby who is just starting to crawl has a light-up toy in his mouth, and there are a boy and a girl pretending to water fake flowers with a plastic gardening set.
On the other wall, some of the wives chat with each other as they snack from the buffet, there are players’ parents milling about getting to know one and other, and the whole space just feels so much more alive than the tenseness of the executive box I came from.
I greet a few of them, stopping to chat with a trio of wives who have been with the club for a while, and they ask me about attending one of their soup kitchen nights at a shelter the town over. Of course, I agree, I like to volunteer on whatever charity event they’re putting together.
Shane Giraldi’s wife, Hannah, stands by a table full of meats, cheeses, and crackers, bounces her toddler on her hip. She looks thinner than the last time I saw her, and there are visible bags under her eyes, even from where I stand.
I make my way over there, hoping she’ll let me take her younger daughter so she can have a break.
“Hannah, how are you?” I smile kindly.
Her eyes flit to the field, as if she’s anxious she’ll miss something. “Oh, Colleen, I’m good. Thanks.”
She doesn’t ask how I am, but that’s okay. She seems to be lost in her own thoughts, and I coo at the little girl she’s rocking. With big blue eyes and dark black hair, she’s the spitting image of her mother. Somewhere in this room is the Giraldi’s other daughter, who I think must be about five now.
“Can I take her for a minute? She’s just so cute, and I need my baby fix once in a while.” Make it about me so she doesn’t feel like this is a helping hand.
Reluctantly, she hands the toddler over. “Thanks, she’s getting so heavy.”
I tickle under the girl’s chin, and she giggles into the crook of my neck. “We don’t mind, do we?”
As Hannah is pulling her arm back, her jean jacket rides up, and I see an ugly bruise on her wrist. It’s aging, that yellow and green kind, and about the size of a silver dollar. Her eyes latch onto it, and she sees me see it. My breath catches in my throat, because she snatches the material of her jacket down too quickly. It’s too hasty not to be suspect, and seeing a bruise that size on a woman … it means something.
“Hannah, are you okay?” I try to stress the worry in my voice without actually asking the real question.
I have no kind of training for this, other than trying to be a compassionate person for someone who is clearly going to spook easily. And here, I have her toddler on my hip, while I look at her mother’s skin turning purple as she hides it under her clothes.
“I’m fine.” She shrugs nervously, smiling, but the expression is off, slanting too much to look genuine.
Shane is a grade A asshole, everyone in the organization knows that. But he’s a hell of a third baseman and he works hard, so we all put up with his showboat attitude and sometimes questionable off the field antics. This, though … this is extremely serious.
I remember when I was interning here my junior year of college, there was a video that came out of a player smacking his girlfriend around outside a night club. She ended up with a broken jaw, and the Pistons suspended him immediately. The case never went to trial, because she refused to press charges, but the league stepped in and did what it could. They suspended him for the rest of the season, and we dropped him. Ate his contract in our budget, and he’s never played professional baseball again.
“If there is something going on—”
Before I can even get the words out, Hannah’s eyes go angry, and she shuts me down with her expression alone. She snatches the little girl out of my arms.
“Everything is fine, just some sleepless nights with this one. Now, I need to go watch Shane play.”
And she walks off, avoiding me entirely. Now that I think about it, this is a drastic change from the Hannah I dealt with a couple of years ago. Some would even say we’d formed a loose friendship back then. She would show up to all the charity events, help immensely, and put in overtime to make all the new wives feel welcome. Hannah was a pillar of our Pistons community.