A baseball!au no one asked for! Finally ready to start publishing it, which is great. I promise, there will be actual, real life, dialogue in following parts. Parts 2-7 are already written yay! Who knows how long we’ll get though… Thank you for your time :)
Diamond—(n.) the field upon which the game of baseball is played
Michael ranges near third base, red hair clashing with his uniform, tufting out over his ears, glowing in the sunlight when he lifts his cap to adjust it after every play. He’s a solid .270 hitter, not bad, not great, and his arm’s better than his swing, but it’s his speed at getting to the ball, his eagerness when he has to drift into foul territory to catch a popup, the way he sets his legs before whipping the ball to first—that’s what kept him in the minors for only a year and a half. His speed and his drive won him the starting job after the team’s everyday third baseman went down with a recurring hamstring issue, and the infield replacement from the bench was better suited to shortstop or second base. And Mikey, Mikey is overwhelmed by the reception he’s gotten—from the team, who laughingly put him through rookie hazing even though he came to the team months after the season had started; from the coaching staff, who never bothered him about his hair, his tattoos, his piercings, so long as he remembers to take the eyebrow bar out before every game. He thinks that’s more for his safety though, rather than about how he looks. Brian Wilson dyed his beard and wore it in a dang ponytail, the baseball community should be cool with a few piercings. He’d run into that problem in the minors though, where it seemed like every decision he made was wrong. He’d even taken to wearing a protective sleeve on his right arm to cover his tattoos; the wincing from his coaches, the eyerolls from the management, had been too much to take on top of all the pressure he, and the organization, put on him in his first season of professional ball. The majors was different—all that mattered to the organization was his skill on the field. But the best part, aside from doing what he loved 162 days of the year, the best part was the fans.
The city just took to him. Only twenty-two, Mikey still wasn’t the youngest guy on the team, but he was the newest face. He’d worried for the entire drive up the state to his new home, “his new office,” as he sometimes though about the field, but he hadn’t needed to. Within the few weeks with the team, wigs with his hair color, cut ragged and short, tucked under ballcaps and hoods, started popping up all over the stands. He hadn’t had the heart to recolor it and make them feel they’d wasted their money. One day, during batting practice, he noticed someone in the stands in his jersey. Running away from the patch of field he’d been stretching in, he called out until the fan had turned around, walked down the aisle towards him.
It was an older guy—he’d covered the jersey in pins from postseasons past. “Where’d you get my jersey?” Michael coughed out. The man laughed.
“I was a third baseman in college,” he explained, “Never played pro, but my family have been fans of this team since they came to this city, and I have the jersey of every third baseman we’ve had, so long as they’ve made jerseys for them!”
“They’re making my jersey?!”
The guy laughed again, as loud as the day was bright. “Yeah, of course they are. You have seen yourself, right son? The city loves its teams, and it loves its quirky players.”
“Wow.”
“Maybe you should get back to your team, Clifford. Sign this first, ok?”
Mikey signed the jersey numbly, barely remembered to smile and thank the man as he ranged back to the field proper. Once it was his turn to hit a few practice pitches, they all shot out into the stands. And while he didn’t hit any homers that game, he hit two for three, earned a clap on the back from his hitting coach, a rarely-seen smile from the manager. The jerseys kept popping up, more and more as the weeks wore on. He found out that they had sold out of them at a kiosk once, and it wasn’t even the day he’d bought a bunch for his family back home. He was blown away by the fact that anyone wanted to wear his name, other than his mom, who’d asked for enough to give to his extended family, her friends from work, her book club…he thought maybe his mom was prouder of his success than he was. It was her gentle pushing (and promise to ease up nagging him to clean his room) that found him signing up for tryouts of the four major sports teams his first year of high school. Baseball had been the only one he’d been good at, and thank god, he’d fallen in love with the sport seconds after pulling on a too-big glove and jogging to the only acceptable place for a complete newbie—right field. When the coach had seen how quick he was—if not completely willing to lay it out for a sharp drive—it had been “over to third, Clifford.”
Michael thinks sometimes that the fans have changed his life. Before his call-up to the Big Show, he’d been losing his mind in the minors, kept thinking about his Associate’s degree in fucking Econ, of all things. But he was here, and god, there was no way he could be in contention for Rookie of the Year this far into the season, but he was dammed if he wasn’t going to play for it, going to play like hell for the thousands in those seats, the people who stood behind him and stood up for him when the press or the league tore him down for his look, for his attitude. He never gave them a chance to hurt him for how he played.
Well, that batting average could always come up.
*****
His teammates were great; of course with a locker room full of adrenaline and testosterone (not the illegal kind!) fueled jocks, tempers ran hot and deep. But these were professionals, and it always came back to the game, and yeah, Mikey hated getting criticized for his performance on the field and at the plate, but he knew he needed it, and moreover knew that these were his men, that it was their team, that they were—wince—all in this together.
More than new teammates, he’d made friends. All the way on the other side of the field stood Calum Hood; figured his closest friend on the team would play in the spot furthest from him. Cal was younger than him, the youngest guy on the team at just twenty-one. It was his rookie season as well, though the right fielder had started with the rest of the team at the beginning of the season. Hood had fallen in easily with Mike—they were both young, both felt a little uneasy with the praise and pressure heaved onto their shoulders. Better, his constant smile contrasted sharply with Michael’s permanent arched brow, the bright with the skeptical, the chuckles with the smirk. Honestly, it felt like he had known Calum forever, and while the outfielder had only grinned at him before falling back asleep after Michael told him that on a cross-country flight, he thought maybe Cal felt the same.
Calum Hood was something of an enigma. During the Draft, everyone, every analyst, every reporter, hell, likely every fan—casual or lifelong—was saying the kid would be a designated hitter for one of the American League teams, whose pitchers don’t hit and use a tenth man whose only role is to hit the ball, hard, often, and far. He had power. He’d been a right fielder in high school, because no one can hit to right when they’re still in high school—it was the exact reason an untested freshman like Michael was shoved there his first day. But Calum wasn’t fast like an infielder, like Michael. He wasn’t accurate like a pitcher, didn’t have a cannon for an arm like a proper outfielder. He couldn’t remember pitches like a catcher should, and his knees got too stiff as well. So he stayed in right. But what his first coach, then pitchers all over then state, then the country, had found out, was that Hood could hit. In his two years of college ball, he hit .335. His teammates back in school always laughed, said it’d be better to leave right field empty, let him rest until his turn in the lineup, than put him in the outfield and deal with errors left, right, and center (little baseball humor there). Calum had gotten better though, miles better, simply because he had to. People can hit to right field in college, in the majors; left-handers are in higher percentages in the baseball community than anywhere else. So yeah, Calum will never get the Golden Glove, but fans are already betting, not on whether he’ll get a Silver Slugger, but on how many.
When a National League team drafted him, when he realized he’d be not just mindlessly playing offense, he’d cried. Only his sister knew that, sitting with him in his dorm room when he’d gotten the call. Someone wanted him, thought he was better than he did, thought he could compete, thought his positives outweighed his negatives. By a lot, it turned out—Cal didn’t start a single game in the minors, And sure, he was making almost the least amount of money for a second-round draft pick in a decade, but he was where he wanted, needed to be.
Mike had seen the same drive in Calum as he found in himself. Mike was quick to the ball, Cal was quick to the ball—one with a mitt, the other a bat, but they were moved by the same goal, the same need to prove themselves, to pick up their team, to win.
But Cal wasn’t the first of his teammates Mikey had met, and he wasn’t the only one he was close to.
Ashton Irwin was…something else. Like Michael, he sometimes looked out of place on the field—when he made it there, that is. Irwin, who Mike had known of for the last few years (but who hadn’t), looked like a hipster, a surfer, a poet, anything but someone who player America’s Favorite Pastime, nevermind professionally. It was Ash who, while only twenty-five and not part of the starting lineup or rotation, convinced the rest of the team that Mikey should be subjected to the same hazing his fellow rookies went through—three months later. Yes, flying to and rolling up to the field of his first major league start, an away game, in a fluorescent wrestling singlet had been humiliating, but Cal’s (back then, just Hood’s) complaining about how Michael’s costume wasn’t as bad as his made it worth it, and Ashton’s brief hug and “welcome to your team” had made it worth it.
Irwin was a reliever, a damn good one. But, like a certain hero of their team from decade past, he tended to get injured. A lot. Randomly. At the moment, he was on the 15-day disabled list with a “neck strain,” though Ash had only giggled, put a finger to his lips, and mouthed “tell you when you’re older” when Michael asked. It seemed like the fan-favorite was injured more often than not, but he was excellent, sublime, on the mound. His quirks were as many as his pitches were sharp. His hair remained in a permanent bun off the field; he took it out when pitching, golden curls snarling out from the brim of his ballcap in a seemingly constant breeze, “distracting the batter and entrancing the crowd,” as he himself put it. He never called them the fans; they were “the crowd” or “the audience.” Calum always rolled his eyes, but Mike laughed, and he didn’t miss the quirk of Calum’s mouth either. Ashton’s hair, his smile, his tendency to steal the mascot suit and cavort on top of the dugout, his hopeless enthusiasm, his fucking talent…that’s what drew their fans to him, why they called him “Sunshine,” why he’s signed a contract longer than any oft-injured specialist reliever should have—according to the experts. Mike tried his best to never mind the “experts.” He, and more importantly their GM, knew how much of an asset Ashton was, and that was enough.
Yeah, Mike was loving his life in the majors so far. He had friends, he had fans, and he owned that little stretch of basepath, the place he’d always wanted to be. So he’ll work on his average, his ERA, cross his fingers for a shot at the postseason, and maybe do a little research on the pitcher everyone was talking about, the one rumored to be in trade talks with his team. Hemmings, his name was, Luke Hemmings.
