Closed Book - Friday Flash

Prior to birth, my parents' friends speculated on my likely sex with their homespun portents. How low my mother carried me. How high beyond the navel the black line running up her stomach extended. The significance of which breast was larger than the other. They even suspended a gold ring on a thread and dangled it over her bump. There were drinks won on the back of some of these calls. My parents could have simply asked the ultrasound technician to reveal my sex, but they preferred to bate their own breath. Even as I was struggling towards taking my own.

And in that same overwrought anticipation, they bought a Baby Book to record my development. They could have just read Piaget instead. And on their deaths, it passed to me along with all the other sentimental bric-a-brac that cluttered up first my family home and then the retirement place they both inhabited until the end of their days. God preserve me from such a vitiating march headlong into death.

I'm holding it now, this baby book. I've never opened it before. Still can't see the point of it. Wonder if it was something my parents went back to gaze upon and delve inside, in their quest to extract my essence? That which they dejectedly referred to as the 'closed book' of me. It's hard to judge how well-thumbed the book is. Its venerable age alone has left it careworn. God knows what the state of the organic contents will be like. The forensic clippings attesting to me, but never being brought before any jury.

The leaf of the inside cover, my mother's florid script in an unfurled scroll borne by cartoon cherubs. My name, date of birth, weight, eye colour, the usual biometrics of the passport entry into life. Smudges that presumably were my neonate fingerprints, though could have conceivably been unfortunate bugs trapped by the wax paper and executed with the snapping closed of the covers. My ultrasound scan picture. Too undercooked to determine organs of sex, thus preserving their fussy ignorance. Seeing how I was hatched from a conspiracy of self-delusion, was it surprising that I became their lifelong rebus?

The coming home photo. Wrapped in a shawl that probably was never used again. Red eyed me on the red eye express family car no doubt driving at 3mph all the way home from hospital. The colours have faded on the snap, save for the demonic eyes of course. Behind my Zimmer frame I reckon I can hit 2mph.

And to the guts of the book inside. A lock of my hair preserved under selloptape. Patently a more durable adhesive than the glue for my toupee. The baby tress is blond. The hue before they quickly darkened to the mouse brown tone I inherited from my mousy father. But even that seems light years away from the dirty snow grey of the few remaining follicles that crazypave my sideburns. And sprout from my knuckles, my nostrils, my ears and every flaming orifice. So what do these blond hairs commemorate, other than a fleeting period of another me from a time before consciousness? So a non-me really.

A small swollen, sweated envelope holding a slither of nail cuticles. Desiccated like some voodoo magic. And it's worked too, to judge by how hard and thick my nails are now. The clippers can't cut them and that's before the arthritis contorted my fingers so that I couldn't even grip them. They're twisted and curled over like talons. Biting into the circulation there so I no longer have any feeling in my digits.

First age of crawling, which I have reverted every time I try and rise from my bed. Age of teething, well now my gums have shrunk and persecute me all over again. Reduces me to eating rusks and baby solids, oh the indignity. First slept through the night, well that one didn't take for very long. Burning the candle at both ends might have shaved seconds off my life span, but it did screw up my body clock for good. Drank from a cup for the first time. Ha, I was precocious on that particular skill. Of course hailing from a family of lushes I would have been. First smile, just left blank! And look here, my first word. A babbling single syllable. An unremarkable lexeme. Modelled for me by my mother's deferential idiom no doubt. These first words of countless ones. Words adorning books. Words splattered across theatre stages by actors. That cheap and nasty Polaroid of me emerging into the light, when thirty-five years later I was being photographed by three-thousand pound a session photographers for my inner sleeve picture. And all from the humble beginnings of the first word "ta-ta". Goodbye and good riddance.

Yet now I have no more words. All my books are written. There is nothing left to say. Me and Roth both. Just as well with these numb fingers unable to palpate the keys. I have turned the closing page and embraced the final dust sheet on my oeuvre, the same as on the spare chairs in redundant rooms in my house. And yet I see there are blank pages aplenty at the end of this Baby Book. Guess my parents fell out of love with the task of chronicling my development. Or maybe just fell out of love with me. Why shouldn't indifference be mutual?

And then it struck me. The ending of this book. The ending of endings. This book which is supposedly all about the burgeoning of life, needs also to mark the pathway to death and cessation. Of course I'll reach a state eventually when I won't be able to record the final part of the journey. And there is no one around to do it on my behalf, since I forbade all biographies, while the writer's life is irredeemably solitary. But why shouldn't people speculate, wager and the few successful ones celebrate with drink once again? Bookending my entry and exit from this world. What with the internet and everything, I can offer this to anyone and everyone. My final book, one I omitted to recognise I still had left in me. I can't collect any winnings on this one either.

Book on my Death:

Heart failure 2-1

Cancer 5-2

Pneumonia 100-30

Kidney/Liver 5-1

Thrombosis 7-1

Lower-respiratory/infections 8-1

Alzheimers/dementias  10-1

Bile/Gallstones 12-1

Flatpunchline - Friday Flash

Zimmer frames are not funny. He challenged any of his erstwhile peers to make them so, on stage in front of a thousand people in the auditorium. Without resorting to some lame pratfall clown routine. Not that any of his peers could rise to the arthritically thrown down gauntlet. Since he had outlived the lot. Seen them all die for that final time both on and offstage. Whatever the manner of their exit stage left, the final curtain had come down on them all.

Ceding the ground to all those Young Turk comedians. With their 'Observational' comedy, Jesus Wept and then hopefully rather than turning the other cheek heckled them and maybe threw a pint glass for good measure. 'Have you ever noticed how all supermarket trolleys seem to have three wheels pointing in one direction and a fourth in the complete opposite?' The only thing cutting edge about that gag, is it makes the audience want to slit their wrists. A joke about how many gears an Italian tank has on the other hand... Observational comedy was so damn cosy and self-congratulatory. The comedian going, 'look at me, aren't I clever for noticing this everyday thing' and the audience recognising it and sharing in some sort of community with the comic. Yet there is no joke to be in on together. Just a bland, unremarkable statement of fact. You want an observation about everyday life? Ageing is a bastard. See, not funny at all. The punchline is "four" by the way, "all of them reverse"...

Tears of a clown? Don't you believe it for one second. There's none more competitive than a bunch of gagmeisters. Funnymen take their rivalry extremely seriously. There may be no disputing which name is the headline act, but those on the bill below will contest whose stage entrance garnered the loudest cheer, who was called for the most or longest encores, each with an imaginary clap-o-meter in their head to back up their claim. We all punch the air and bellow a satisfied "yes!" when it's our one liner or punchline that goes into a script when you're sat around with nine other comic writers sat with thunder on their faces that their witticism didn't make the cut. I'm glad all those other fuckers are dead. Proves my burning desire to live and share with the world was stronger than theirs. Lightweights of comedy all.

See that's what these young comics lack. A bit of fire in their bellies. Tough clubs full of miners just re-emerged from the Pit, wanting only to slake a thirst, not listen to some dinner-jacketed dickey-bowed smart-arse talking about what they've got waiting for them at home in the form of their wife or mother-in-law. This lot go to University and fall straight into a television contract. The best comedy is splenetic. Bile spat across the room that picks people from being slumped over their drink and shakes them silly. 'Oh my aching sides' rather than tickling their ribs. It's called a punchline for godssakes, a blow to the guts that takes the wind out of you, not a pat on the back.

See us comedians knew our humour was a buffer between us and the world. Instinctively we felt the world wasn't set up right and we needed to tilt it off its everyday axis. But we weren't entirely clear what it was that needed lancing. Well we do now. It's bleedin' Death isn't it? Death always has the last laugh. If only we could factor that into our hilarity from the outset. But then we probably wouldn't be wisecracking anymore. Wiser and more cracked in the head probably.

Good comedy is the gauze and iodine liberally applied to help drain the pus of a raw wound. To own it, defang and deplete its crippling power. Only eventually death's grinning visage can't be deflected anymore. The infirmities of the body tear the gauze away and expose it once again to putrescence. Laughter as the best medicine until your failing body builds up total immunity to it. Your bile congeals inside you into gallstones.

The man regards his zimmer frame. If he were more august with the spoken word, he could make like a character out of a Samuel Beckett play and bend down inside his frame and act as if it were a cage or a prison. Instead it confers the illusion of mobility. Him the tortoise in his metal shell here. He grips the handbar with one shaking hand as it has to support his evanescent weight, while with the other he leans over to pick up his walking stick that he no longer uses. He brandishes the stick above him, with a shooting agony in his shoulder as the stick raises above the horizontal. With the heavy rubber tip of the stick, he taps the shade over the central light of his room and sends it swinging. The bulb is too weak to give him the spotlight trail after him that he craves.

Ah to hell with it. They may all be sat there pissing themselves before he even enters the room, their hearing aids squealing with feedback, but there's still an audience in his old people's home to be entertained goddamnit. He would slay them tonight... 

Fourteen Bulbs -Friday Flash

She sat where she had sat countless times before. In the harsh glare of the lights fringing her mirror. Fourteen naked bulbs to show her up in all her rawness. Stark like a Noh mask.

Fourteen interrogatory lamps burning into her face. Garlanding the looking glass, festooned like wedding arch colonnades. Though she’d only ever experienced those as scenery on the theatre stage.

The lights so tightly focused, they barely penetrated the darkness beyond her. Every evening and prior to matinees and premiers, her ghostly, disembodied head floated in the mirror as she caked it in thickly layered cosmetics. The bulbs’ other function, foreshadowing the dazzle out on the stage itself. If they couldn’t efface her features here at close range, then it augured well for her characterful expressions to prevail under the spotlights, tractor beamed in the footlights.

This particular mirror seemed as venerable as she. The glass had flowed, rucked and bubbled, like her own skin corrugated with wrinkles. Tarnished where the silvered paint had chipped or turned green with verdigris. Aping her liver spots and burst blood vessels. She loved the bulbs for blasting such imperfections away under their unforgiving blare. The mirror on her dresser at home was not nearly so forgiving.

It occurred to her that in all the years sat in place, she couldn’t ever remember a single bulb having popped. The divine power of the theatre, palace of illusion.

There was a time when other bulbs popped. Those of the Press cameras. Preview nights, gala performance evenings and end-of-run parties. Fluid, promiscuous alignments of leading men and first ladies, arm in arm with supporting cast members all beaming for the lens. Dissolved at the moment of the striking of the set, as each heads on to their next role. Another theatre, different dressing rooms. The same fourteen bulb guard of honour.

Sadly she had witnessed her own mind’s bulbs pop one by one. It was getting progressively harder to recall her lines. There were no unseen stagehands inside her head to replace the burned out filaments.

Now there was a dearth of good luck telegrams wedged into the mirror frame. While the best wishes cards accompanying bouquets of flowers had also dried up.

Neither wigs, nor curlers sat on her dresser. Simply not required any more. She could not get away with counterfeiting ages other than her true one, unlike in the past. Her skin so dried and cracked. Even the greasepaint could no longer suggest any glossy suppleness. It just seemed to disappear down the fissures in her brow and cheeks as it required ever greater volumes to recongeal her face whole. Far greater preparation time was demanded, when all she wanted to do was lie down on the ottoman and rest her weary eyes.

The cubicle was smaller than she was used to. No other background hubbub of fellow actors full of life and lusts. Exercising their voices along the full range. Practising the entire gamut of human emotion and intrigue beyond the world of the play, centred instead within these tiny rooms.

For she was of such an age now, whereby she only appeared in monologues. Wistful treatises of old women looking back on unfulfilled lives. Playwrights didn’t seem to credit the venerable woman with any ability to pursue relationships still. Seemingly audiences could only feel pity, not desire, at this juncture of her life.

Her hair pulled back by the band, face blanched or greyed out in hue, these were the only effects the directors were after for her these days. Like a ghost. The bereft Trojan women. Now her appearance was as if she had ceased the make-up process at the foundation stage. Her dressing robe and protective serviette towel barely having to be removed for the performance, as she played women confined to dressing gowns, asylum smocks or wrapped in a bed sheet.

She knew it wouldn’t be too much longer that she would be able to stare into that mirror and recognise the face staring back at her. Be it disguised or unadorned by emulsion. Her ministrations complete, she flicked the light switch off. The bulbs did not die immediately. She watched the reflected light in her satellite eyes fade gradually in the mirror. Until only the spectral outline of her death mask remained square in the flat plane of glass.

She was sat where she had sat countless times before, with only the green “Exit” light to illuminate her way.

Reflections On A Funeral

Had to attend a funeral this weekend. Been to plenty before, so not a new experience. But there was something about this one...

It was of a close friend of my parents, whom I remember vividly from my childhood, but I hadn't seen for 25 years or so. Nor had I seen his sons in that time. We had played together because our parents' friendship brought us together on numerous occasions. That neither they nor I had chosen to perpetuate the relationship once we stepped on to our different launchpads into adulthood, was judgement enough on the depth of that friendship.

The deceased parental friend formed part of my parents' 'Card Crowd' circle. Every month for 40+ years, a card evening was hosted in a different home, with drinks, nibbles, poker & cigars for the men, Kalouki and chat for the women who sometimes didn't bother breaking open the deck of cards. In all that time the group suffered their statistical share of divorces, child troubles and illness, but they were of an age where if one of the partners dies, they were young enough to remarry. Same thing with divorces, though that always prompted a tricky issue of which of the man or the woman would be invited to the social evenings. In my father's case, he just spurned the card gathering and saw the odd male outside of such a gathering. I ought to add he is a compulsive gambler so surrendering the card games was actually part of his recovery programme. Before he quit the circle, he did use to attend and just watch and chat. But I think that just became impossible for all concerned.

That's the background. Two things struck me about the gathering at the funeral yesterday. A minor point was that I saw the sons for the first time in 25 years and of course they had all grown into men (as I suppose have I). They were instantly recognisable and yet I still couldn't but see them as frozen in time 25 years ago. The conflicted input of reality and memory were really hard to reconcile and hold in focus. If I don't see them again, will they forever be held in my recollection as children, having edited out this one contradicting image of them? In their religion, they maintain a house of mourning for a week, where prayers are said and people are encouraged to drop round not only to pay respects, but to provide support, company and shared recollections. As a part of the coping process, it works rather well. Having initially concluded that I'd paid my respects to the deceased at the graveside, I have now decided to go to a prayer session later this week. Partly to help fix a new image of them in my head and to purge the frozen one I retain. Inevitably we will catch up, however superficially, with 25 years of life about which we know nothing of one another, apart from what our (proud?) parents may have leaked in that period. But then it will be strange to beat a retreat from the door and probably never see them again in the future? I don't know, but there is a tug to attend all the same. It must have something to do with that suspended state of childhood we all bury under maturation and development. Time to disinter it, even for a fleeting moment.

But the major impression relates back at the funeral. It was packed. I was almost crowd surfed into the hall, such was the pressure of people trying to enter. I am average height, 5'9", yet everyone there seemed smaller than me. Hunched. Old. Grey. Leathered. And it struck me that this time there will be no more remarriages when there is a passing over. On show was a proto-generational cull, waiting in the atrium of the grim reaper. Just a grouping of people who had all reached an age, where they would really begin to be required to attend more and more of these rituals and mark off another one of their peers on five bar gates of death. That was a scary perception and not one limited just to my parents being included, but as I say, that whole generation. And then of course, further down the line, such a similar cull confronts my generation.

The night I've plumped for attending the house of mourning is my birthday. Seemed appropriate somehow.

The Measure Of A Man (Short Story)

“No Pops, you stay here !” “Go on in the clubhouse and rest up in your rocking chair. Coach, lend him your quilt !” Now they’re warnin’ the Bench Coach to watch himself as they all rise up off the bench, cos if it’s just him and me left at the end, I’ll shoot him up into space. Wiseacres. “And hey Big Daddy, don’t be goin’ and eatin’ all the chicken wings !” And then it starts, their dumbass chicken routine. Flapping their elbows and bumpin’ and borin’ into each other as they climb out the dugout. On the way to the slaughterhouse. To have their necks wrung. Bench Coach just fixes me with a look. I can guess what’s behind it. How in hell I’m sposed to give ‘em a heads up ? First they’d have to pull ‘em from out their asses. Same ways they don’t listen ta him. Don’t want to hold his ice chip gaze any longer, so I rise off the bench. He don’t shoot up into orbit. His chewing tobacco shoots to the floor though.


Rest of the time in the dugout, they give me a wide berth. Don’t want to be in range of me chatterin’ in their ear that they need to be figurin’ out the pitcher. Watch what stuff he’s got himself tonight. Not like I haven’t faced him a hundred times before. So I know what he’s gonna throw. I memorised him. Got him indexed in my mental book. Let these young pups write up their own books on pitchers if they ain’t gonna listen up. But they got no respect for me. For my advice. My veteran status. For my numbers put up season after season. They always razzin’ on me, cos in their eyes, the DH ain’t an everyday player. ‘Hundred and sixty two game season of sittin’ on his butt every half inning, why he gotta get a night off now and then as well ? How’s that work ?’ Wish I had tonight off, way this is shaping.

It ain‘t no rocking chair, I got a recliner in the clubhouse. I rest up, visualise and focus in before a game. That’s if they haven’t pranked it. If it were a rocking chair, it’d be nothing but a pile of sawdust by now from my termite teammates. My chair ain’t no privilege, any of them could do likewise. What bugs them is my earnings. Claim since I ain’t out on the field with a glove, I shouldn’t be pulling a full salary. Their calculations is wrong. Plain wrong. Like their attitude. Like their numbers. Maybe if they weren’t so hyper with their music, and their lame pranks, they’d have something left to give out on the field. I’m supposed to bat clean up, but the table’s never set for me to clean up. So you tell me how that’s supposed to work ? I’m left to clean up the mess you knuckleheads make by not gettin’ on base. And how comes my uniform is always covered in dirt, unlike you everydayers out there in the field ? Cos I play hard that’s why. Everyday hard. You want someone who ain’t an everyday player ? Try our Closer. But ain’t his fault he’s always sat there in the pen, like he’s taken root. His number lines rely on the rest of the team. So he’s flatlined right now. Sides, even if their thinking were true, I think my record in the game means I earned it. Not like them starting out now. Headlong into the big dollars while they’re still at college. Mega bucks down on the farm. Major League contracts signed in the Minor League. Prospects not numbers. That’s all they are. Let’s see them post some real numbers. Not some digits plucked from the perfumed air of college and then set down on scented paper. They already won the Lotto jis by being here.


Look around the ballpark. Numbers everywhere your eye falls. Championship year pennants. Giant shirt numbers retired to mark the greats. Ghostly numbers. Dead men’s numbers in some cases. 410 ft marking on the wall at center. The out-of-town game scores. Telephone numbers on the billboards. Live numbers. Money-chasing numbers. And I’m familiar with all of them. I’ve taken the trouble to tip my cap and honor them thru my eighteen seasons here. Clubhouse behind me is my home from home. But them there out in the field, they’re only passing thru. They’re only aware of their own numbers. How stats translate into their market value. That’s their sole concern. In this team game, everyone’s in it for themselves. Looking after their own numbers. Everything’s a would-be unassisted double play. And right now, the numbers are down. A team down on its luck. Down on its knees. Yet the payroll’s up. That don’t square. That just don’t tally in my book.


What the numbers tell me, what I know from numbers, is that jis one team can win the World Series. Only a certain number of the teams got a chance of making it into the shakeup for it even. Half are out of contention by the All-Star game. A handful like us are out of contention before the first pitch of the season. I knew that when I saw the roster. No shoots of recovery to be had in Spring Training. Can’t harvest much in a dustbowl of talent. Pretty clear we had no chance of winning bupkis, but still we gotta put nine guys out on the field, ten including me, night after night after night. To feed the dreams of the fans. They ain’t no fools. They know the score. Or they could just look over to the scoreboard and see it written in ten foot high numbers. Scoreboard don’t lie. This team is out for the count. Players only out for themselves. Just considering their own numbers. Look at some of the crazy plays they’re tryin’ to make out there. Impossible plays. Ridiculous plays. While the team nosedives around them. Cos they know this team don’t catch much TV coverage. Gonna get no market-wide exposure here. No scouting reports. Other teams’ Front Offices never even heard of them. So they try some bonehead circus catch to make their way on to a highlights reel. The only time they do get their uniforms dirty. The fans sense it. Attendance figures are down. They’re no dopes. They know their collective dreams are built on feet of clay. Or dirt in this case. We are false idols. Sacrificial lambs. The franchise throwing us players to the wolves. When I’ve bled for this team. Busted knees, shoulders and ankles. Busted hopes. Man, if only I’d got some say in a trade written into my contract. Gotten me some leverage, I woulda been outta here faster than a tape measure dinger ! But me and my agent, we lost that particular battle. The Owner, he don’t miss a trick. Tough negotiator. Different type of hardball. He must know I want out at the end of the season. That I’m going thru the motions. But no less than any of the other stiffs here. How’s any of us rotting down here going to help him make trades ? He may give me the evil eye, but what’s he delivered up by way of a team ? Nuttin’. But you can’t tell him that. Can’t tell him his job. But he knows it like I know it. This team is uncompetitive. And for some time to come yet. I’m way too far over the hill to be part of any rebuilding job. You can hold your head up high each time you step up to the plate. But in your heart, your corrosive heart that eats at your resolve, you know.


The Owner was down in the Clubhouse before game time. Why not, seeing he owns the joint ? But what gives him the right to open his mouth to deliver us the grand speech ? The big words. Motivating us ? That’s Coach’s job. Taking team meetings. So just makes Coach look like a punk. People asking themselves just who’s in charge down in the clubhouse anyway ? No way to run a ballclub. If the players think that the Coach is on the way out … Coach, he’s been tossed from tonight’s game already. For showing his passion. Displaying his fight. Revealing his strain. The Owner, he don’t know anything about the game. He may know money, but he never played the game. Well not above Little League anyways. Don’t wanna catch his eye. So I stay out the clubhouse. Even though I’m tempted to grab some chicken wings, just to play them when they come in off the field. Can’t chance it. Can’t risk running into the Owner. He’s sure to be pissed with our performance tonight. He’s gonna be on the prowl, looking to blame someone. That someone ain’t gonna be me. Not tonight. Got me my hit. A cheap one admittedly, a broken bat bloop. But a hit all the same. The fielding team didn’t hustle on the ball. Taking evasive action from the sheared bat. Played percentages, rather than risk throwing the ball away in what would have been a bang bang play. They knew I weren’t going to steal no bases. And they were even more confident that my teammates behind me weren’t going to advance me round to come home and score. No matter how ugly, it’s down in the scorecard. A hit is a hit is a hit. More than the rest of my team. 0-fers all of them. O-fers and loafers. Carryin’ on like they do. I done my bit. Maintained my numbers. Can’t afford to get into it with the Owner. Not this season. Could be my last. Certainly need it to be my last here. Don’t want to let on, not now, not til the offseason. My agent can deal with him. He’s a pitbull, he won’t be intimidated. I could affect going to the toilet and swing back by the food. A proper bang bang play. Damn, Physio’s got his eyes trained on me now. Everybody watching everybody else. Who’s gonna jump ship first ? Why don’t he go tend someone ? Treat the Closer in the pen. His arm must have seized up thru inactivity. Muscle wastage. We’re all wasting away one way and another. Go over to my cubbyhole and affect examining my wrist guard. My chicken wing as the guys call it.


My designated role to stay in the dugout. Rooting for my guys. Clapping and gettin’ into the heads of my teammates, like the oldest cheerleader in town. Tough call, when the atmosphere in here stinks. The stench of fear. Of careers going down the toilet. Even worse tonight than normal. That weren’t team spirit on display. They meant it with their elbows. Two of them in each other’s ribs over a missed sign from last night. Big card debts still outstanding too I shouldn’t wonder. Coach should have come down hard on that. Still festering. The name calling and accusations. Like rutting bucks. Twelve point bucks, with point twelve averages. Acting like street punks. Maneuvering for the leader of this team on the field, since Skip got traded away. Like it makes a difference in the long run. Other than maybe a percentage point or two in the contract. When you’ve been in the game as long as me, you learn just to let it go. Don’t bear grudges. I’m too old, Who needs it ? Don’t bother wasting your energies. They’ll break the rest of this team up soon enough. Rip it apart. I’m aiming to sit on the bench, out of the crossfire. That’s why I don’t bother coming back at them. That’s why I sit on my hands.


I got one more move in me. Fat signing on fee. Before I can swap this clubhouse for a more forgiving one on a golf course. But DH’s are hard to move on. Only of use in one of the two leagues straight off the bat. We only got a coupla tools to do the job apparently. That’s not what my numbers say. My agent will get me the move. He’s a pitbull. He don’t let up. Just give him something to work with. Give him the numbers on paper. Then he can draw up his own numbers. Work his brand of magic. Throw his curveballs and sliders into the negotiations. Deliver him the numbers. So he’s got something that holds up on paper. Don’t show them you’re on the slide. That the old bat doesn’t have quite the same pop in it. Sure the power numbers are down. But can’t get me no ribis if there’s no one on base in front of me can I ? My coach the agent. Get our stories straight. Our excuses. Some numbers lie don’t they ? They’re right misleading. You can see that. You gotta know how to read ‘em is all. But not the Won-Lost column for this team. Can’t effect that. So gotta bust my own numbers out. This has to be the year. Now or never. Sluggers go downhill very quickly. Just maintain the numbers for this one season and I’ll be okay. Doesn’t matter what my body has to say after that. Once the ink’s dry. The ink on the past numbers is long dry. Set in stone. Down in the records. Can’t take them away from me. That must count for something. But it’s always the next set they’re interested in. The numbers to come. For as long as you’re playing, there’ll be a set of numbers against the letters of your name. For as long as you’ve a number on your uniform. Even Coach has a number on his back. His past achievements a burden for him to carry now. Bet he wishes he was numberless. Two ways to get a number off your back. Feats that get your number retired and taken out of use. The upper deck dream when we all start out. When we first get assigned our number. Or get your shirt ripped off your back and canned, like Coach’s is aheading. No real place for lowly numbers. For humble dreams.


They’re coming back in now to bat. Stay out their way while they toss their gloves. I press my face to the chain-link. Lookin’ up into the press boxes. Ow, it hurts to look up there. Must be the dazzle of them sharpening their knives, catchin’ in the lights. Cos you know those buzzards will be all over us in the locker room again. Like a rash. Making themselves right at home where we live. Hands hooked over our locker doors so we can’t shut them and leave. Trapping us. Pinning us in their spotlight. Eyes always on the move. Never giving us their full attention. Always scoping. Scouting out a greater scoop. I don’t give nuttin’ away. 162 game season, ups and downs (mainly downs). But I keep it level. We all bin here before. Last night and tomorrow. Last season and maybe next, we’ll still be back there. God forbid. They don’t come my way no more. They know I’m an old hand. A DH who plays excellent defense. In the locker room at least. The cut-off man. A slugger content to bunt their off speed stuff away and try and beat out the throw. So to them, even my quotes are tired. Tired old quotes from a tired old player. Designated hitter, but never designated spokesman. Not team leader. This team without a leader. Since they traded the Skip. For more goddamn prospects. Headless chickens. Chickens with wrung necks. The Media chase the brash players. The ones who don’t hold back. Them that don’t watch their mouths. Those who don’t know any better. The ornery ones, who feel cheated by being with this organization. I could have told them from the get-go this team weren’t going nowhere. Not very loyal to the ballclub, but then who really is deep down ? We’re all looking to our next contract. The reporters know that. They sniff out them who’re frettin’ over their future prospects mired down in this clubhouse. It’s no great skill. It’s all round in the air. It’s in the steam from the showers. The atomized spray of the deodorants. The analgesic fumes we patch up our bodies with to go on playing. Instead of masking our fear, it’s broadcast from our very pores. Scratch’n’sniff venality. ‘I want outta here, tonight and forever’. You can’t leave the clubhouse if your locker door is still open. Team rule. The Press know that. They wedge their elbows inside the doors. Microphone pushed in our face. Press got us pressed in tight. Now no elbow room to be had. No space to catch your breath after our endeavors. We’re getting changed round them. We’re half-dressed and they’re fully clothed. We’re eating chicken wings as they talk. A strange intimacy. But beneath their bromide questions, they’re really asking us about our next contract. We’re talking about our day just done, when the journalist blindsides us. Right in the guts. They got their elbows in first. Their low blows. The angry ones slam their locker doors but the Pressmen jump their elbows clear. They got what they came for. Can’t strike back. Who can we lash out at, ‘cept each other ? Owner pays our salaries so he’s gold plated. Can’t feel anger with the fans. Number one rule. They can murder you and they do. But they also contribute to our wages. That’s what their money buys, if they can’t buy a winning team. They got a right they paid top dollar for, to holler for our blood. They vote with their feet. And their wallets. Gate receipts are down. Merchandise sales down. They don’t want to yell their allegiance. Not to this team. They come, they pay their money and then they have the right to slaughter us with no end. The Press love it. The Press lap it up. The Press interview the fans during a game. Get the fire from them that they see as lacking in the clubhouse. Put the fans in pinstripes. See how they get on. Put the goddamn Press in a uniform too.


What’s the score ? What’s the game position ? What does it matter ? One thing the retired number shirts up there don’t come provided with, is giant rally caps. I’m in the hole. Like this team. Like my career. Randy’s at the plate. Surefire what’s coming next. See it at BP. In the cage he’s swatting away at everything. Like the devil’s swarm’s taken the form of baseballs and comin’ after him. Not that Randy’s a religious man. None of ‘em are. No prayer meetings no more. Hardly any team meetings for that matter. Money is his god. Money is the god of them all. And stats the way into the Promised Land. Pay dirt Heaven. Paradise is a long ways off from this ballpark. We’ve such a poor conversion rate in our church of the on-base percentage. The sin of avarice. The congregation out in the bleachers is thinning out weekly. So concession sales are down on their numbers too. They’re demanding a miracle out there and we got no one to deliver. No wine to be had from gatorade. Our outfielders baptized in beer thrown from the stands. From aspersion to submersion. Keep your head down. We’re beyond saving. The boos start up.


See, what I tell you ? Three pitches, three swipes and an out before the announcer’s got his name out over the PA. The catcalls getting’ louder. Randy’s stuck at the plate looking down at his bat. As if that’s gonna clue him in. Even the Mascot’s shaking his outsized head. He’s got it tougher than the players even. Trying to boost us to this crowd. Man they’re baying for Randy’s blood. I told him a thousand times to take a few pitches. He’s finally steppin’ off now. Moreno’s already out by the batter’s box, having to hold up for Randy. So it’s part deliberate then. Lay down a marker. But it’s a bad play, cos he’s exposed himself to prolonged abuse from the crowd. God they’re murdering him out there. Now he’s feeling it for real. They got to him. C’mon man, don’t drag your heels. Head for the refuge of the dugout. The bat dragging along the ground behind him. Like a tail between his legs. The Devil got him good then. Less like idols, more persecuted saints with arrows sticking in our sides and our guts spilling out. What with our banged up bodies and pitchers hurling missiles at our heads. And the barbs of the crowd. Yeah okay we’re well paid martyrs, but we’re easy targets all the same. Lashed to the diamond. Warning track serves to protect us from unforgiving fans, more than an unforgiving concrete wall. Randy finally makes it off the field. I should ask and he oughta volunteer bout the pitcher now that there’s moisture in the air. But neither of us swap any darn thing. Just move the hell away from each other as fast as possible as I go on deck. Put as much distance between us, as I take up my stance and he puffs himself up to trash something in the dugout. Put on a show. Get the cameras tracking him. Highlighting his passion. Like the phoney even gives a damn. I swing the bat off my shoulders. The displaced air sings. I slay a thousand imaginary devils. They drop out the air and fall at my feet. I went yard on them. I’m going yard on all their tails.


Nobody on, what a surprise. Moreno will be gone, so I’ll get me a free go. Don’t matter really what I do. Got me my hit already. Two out, with what’s behind me we ain’t gonna build squat even if I get on. Maybe I’ll get my chicken wings when I get back. Get me a second hit on the night, a multi-hit game and I would have earned it. Battin’ for average now. Keepin’ those numbers up. No one can pull me up on that. Not any of those chumps who are all hitless. Not the Owner as I’d be the only one showing all his prospects, his stalled hopes, his long-shots who can’t even hit it off the infield, how it’s done. He couldn’t begrudge me some sustenance. Sure as hell none to be had from my teammates. I watch the pitcher as his arms reach back to hurl. Visualise tearing his wings off him and devouring them. Making his scrawny neck turn round to see my ball hurtling off into the night sky like a comet. Moreno didn’t last long. Swinging at the first pitch. Like all youth today, no patience. Didn’t give me no real time to warm up. To get the muscles firing. Here he comes now. Like he can’t vacate the field quick enough. Like it’s a punishment to go out there. It should be fun hombre. We are privileged to be doing something we love, for good pay ! He pauses only to glare at me as I get the weights off the bat. Shelling peas. Shucking devils.


I step out on to the field. The crowd stop booing. That’s something at least. They still recognise me for what I achieved over the years. The numbers I put up. Take note all those in the dugout. Not that they’re probably even watching. I’ve quieted a whole stadium. Me. All by stepping out. What the number on my back stands for. Not quite a hushed breath of expectation like in the past. But I’ll settle for it all the same. No, more than settle for it, I honor them. They’re the true lifeblood of this team. The ones who stick with us thru thick and thin. Thin and thin. Year after year. They don’t go off in search of a better deal. My feet scuff the dirt around the plate. Put my stamp on it. My imprint. This is my home. My home plate and I’m here to collect. Catcher’s fiddling with his mask. Superstition ? I don’t know, he’s new to me. Come over from the National League. Don’t be worrying about him. Look to yourself. I sweep the dirt with my foot some more. I’m the bull, the bat is my horns, ready to keep this matador with his deadly projectiles at bay. Ready to gouge his eyes out. To spear him in his chest and send him reeling back to the dugout. Done for the evening. His numbers all messed up. I hold out the bat, Samson’s jawbone cudgel, in my left hand. I raise it slowly, pinpointing for my landmark in the middle deck. To the left of the banner flapping in the breeze. A bulls’ eye target urging me to hit it bang on the money. A thousand bucks to my charity if I do the business. Only the banner’s been a bit neglected recently. All forlorn there, a corner rippling back in the breeze. Flapping so it’s covering up the center of the target. Folded in on itself. Hibernating in the high summer. Do the sponsors know ? Do they care ? Even sweet charity has given up on this ballclub. No, cut out that negative thinking. Okay, we’re aligned now. Nice and tight. Dead ahead straight. The bat don’t feel quite right to me though. Course it don’t, it’s a new one after old faithful got shattered last AB. They should still all feel the same though. Made for my requirements. Made to my specs. To deliver me up further numbers. Monster numbers. I draw it back behind my shoulder. It pulls funny thru the air. I swear bat quality ain’t like it used to be back when I was starting out. Craftmanship gone to hell with the rest of the game. Aw man, I’m down a strike already. I wasn’t focussed. All this chatter going thru my head. Catcher don’t have to bother himself. C’mon, lock in now. Fastball right ? Probably reckon I can’t catch up to it and he’ll toss me another one. I know this guy. Faced him so often. He won’t change a winning formula. Why should he ? I wish I could change a losing one. Maybe I just will in my own small way. With this next ball. I’m sitting dead red. Fastball. Gotta be. Two seam or four seam’s only question. I’m ready. Just think of those wings, those fine, fine wings. Wings stand up and take a bow ! Argh, he threw me offspeed. I was miles out in front. Rock, paper, scissors. His rock blunts my scissors. Man, he seems to have grown even taller since I faced him on his home mound last. Taller than three innings ago even. Damn he’s one lanky sonofabitch. Seems he’s got the lights working for him now. He must have moved across the mound. Only a coupla inches, a tiny change, but now his release is straight outta the lights. Can you believe that ? The ball’s on you before you can pick it up. The matador’s got his knives raised and is dazzling the light off them into this bull’s eyes. Our home park and it’s made for him. Maybe we ought to trade for him ? He’d never come to this bum team. Need to make an adjustment of my own then. Get my line of sight away from having to stare into the glare. A couple of inches to the right in the box ought to do it. Remember to compensate as regards the plate. Everything’s thrown out of whack. Screwed my mechanics. This guy’s got inside my head. No elbow room. Step out. Shake him clear. Evict this trespasser from our home park. Two strikes. Gotta protect that plate and work my way back in to the count. Count, more numbers. Everything measured and tabulated. The measure of success and failure. Not the score, that don’t matter. That’s a team thing. I’m talkin’ bout the measure of a man. My numbers. Versus the pitcher’s numbers. It’s a pitcher’s count right now, 0 and 2. But this pitcher don’t throw too much out of the zone. Use that to my advantage. Know he’s gonna give me a chance. Don’t let them in the bleachers feel they’ve been cheated by this AB. Don’t let them down. Get some wood on it. Something. Anything. Sacrifice another broken bat to do it. Keep fighting him off. Keep fighting. Stay alive. Make him toss some extra pitches. It’s forever about the numbers. His arm’s on the clock. Not just the speed gun giving readings. His pitching coach’s stood there with a ticker to count ‘em. Wear him out. Throw him the chair. Send him back to his dugout done for the night. His arm packed in ice. His tired old arm. My tired old shoulder. Bench Coach’s ice chip eyes. Give something to my team even if I don’t get a hit. Cover the plate. Goddamn, he threw high cheese and I couldn’t lay off it ! Crossed myself up with all this clutter. Damn ball started high and stayed high and I still chased it. Didn’t break at all. Cept broke my heart and 25,000 other hearts up in the stand. Catcalls not curtain calls. No chicken wings this innings. We’re dead and buried. For tonight and the season. They’ll break the team up before waivers. But they won’t be able to move me on so easy. All the teams still with something to play for, to fight for, they got themselves solid DH’s already. Each player with decent numbers, 1 thru 9. That’s why they’re up there. I’m screwed on that front for this season. Looks like my number’s finally up. For good. Maybe I can sneak me those wings during the Seventh Inning Stretch. God Bless America !