Big Leagues (10 page)

Dustin put his hands on his hips and grunted a
jalapeño-scented huff. “You know, I can’t wait for—”

“Hello there!” A third voice hollered from
behind. Cat turned to see who had called interference and saw Andy
St. John stepping down the stairs. He grinned and approached,
offering his hand.

“The infamous Ms. McDaniel, I
presume.”

Cat turned her back on Dustin. She gave Andy’s
hand a quick shake while subtly taking the reporter’s
measure.

And I thought his writing was
pretentious.

Andy carried an alligator briefcase, wore a tan
jacket with the sleeves rolled up just far enough to showcase a
gold Rolex, and brandished well-manicured nails shining with clear
polish.

Who the hell wears an ascot to a baseball
game?

Wait, who the hell wears an ascot?

“Mr. St. John, I’m a huge fan. I never miss
your column.” Cat averted her eyes and dusted an imaginary piece of
lint off her arm. She shook the lie off, along with her guilt,
knowing the truth wasn’t an option in this situation. Privately she
thought of him as a conceited windbag with no feeling for the game.
With Dustin itching for a fight, she needed at least one ally in
the press box. Her false flattery must have been just the key to
his ego’s vault, because the sportswriter beamed and waved his hand
with phony nonchalance.

“Well then, please, my biggest fans call me
Andy.”

She forced another saccharin smile and wondered
how many wrinkles she’d get from this unspoken job requirement.
“Andy it is. You can call me Cat.”

He nodded. “Very well. So, Cat, how many runs
do you think the Chips are going to score today?”

She looked out at the flags flying and
whistled. “Oh boy, if they can get the ball up into the wind, we
might be looking at double digits.”

“To think they call Chicago the Windy
City.”

Cat didn’t respond. As an Illinois native, she
was all too familiar with the wild winds off Lake Michigan. She
opened her mouth to vouch for the Second City’s vast breezes, but
before she could, an off-key crooning echoed through the park’s
speakers. Cat stared out to the mound to see which reality star was
cashing in on fifteen minutes of fame by butchering the national
anthem. She shuddered. Andy leaned in and patted her
shoulder.

“That’s our cue. I’ll talk to you
later.”

She nodded and looked around the press box.
Sometime in between the scrum with Dustin and the huddle with Andy,
the room had filled to capacity, with the exception of one
noteworthy waitress.

It was then that she noticed the iced tea.
Shannon must have delivered it when Cat wasn’t looking. Maybe there
was more to the girl than she thought.

Cat smiled as the ball soared into the outfield
bleachers. If she took anything away from her first day at the
office, it was that nine innings go by a lot quicker while watching
the game from a catered, air-conditioned, leather-cushioned seat
with a million dollar view. The glitzy slot machine scoreboard
issued three cherries, and the crowd’s cheers matched the wail of
its victorious siren. The JumboTron replayed the hit as the home
run hitter rounded third base and continued home to tie the
game.

Make that a billion dollar view.

Wearing the press badge had been different than
she’d imagined. Here she was, paid to do the one thing she loved
most—watch a baseball game—yet Cat was feeling flakier than ever.
She’d spent two-thirds of the game distracted by the frenzy of the
media, the madness in the seats below the box and even the
weariness of her own body. The long day of Erich’s meet and greet
left her yawning through the seventh inning stretch’s “Take Me Out
to the Ballgame.” Taking a large gulp of the iced tea, Cat stared
over at the Chips’ dugout and silently begged the offense to score
a tiebreaking run. She planned to frame her first Chips byline and
didn’t want a loss memorialized on her desk for years to
come.

Twice an inning, Cat managed to sneak a peek
around the press box, still in awe of her immediate company. Though
they lacked the libations of the bleacher bums across the field,
the press box made their own fun during the game by spouting trivia
and engaging in lively debates. Cat remained quiet most of the
game, choosing this first day to observe rather than participate.
By the time the first out of the game was recorded, Cat had
pinpointed the worst part of her new job.

Restraint.

In the words of Jerome Holtzman, Cat’s
Chicagoan sports writing idol, “There’s no cheering in the press
box.” From the depths of their fish tank, the journalists had to
merely observe while the forty thousand fans high-fived over the
good and buried their heads in their hands over the bad. No matter
the play, the press box was to remain detached. Cat had surrounded
herself with sports fans from middle school up. Baseball was easy.
She learned at an early age that sports fans didn’t discriminate.
No matter what side of the tracks you hailed from, anyone could
bond over home runs and touchdowns. In her twenty-nine years of
sports solidarity, she’d never met a single fan who didn’t salivate
at the thought of being paid to watch their favorite sport. Until
today. Surveying the box to see how her peers obeyed the law of
stoicism, she saw that the restraint didn’t seem to bother them.
Plays at the plate didn’t earn anything more than a curious lean
toward the glass. Close calls at first prompted a raised eyebrow or
two. A diving catch was acknowledged with pleased nods. A home run
was met with a low whistle and sometimes a “How deep did that one
go?” Every inning or so, Cat would detect a few small smiles.
Seconds later, those smiles were stifled. Dustin typed away on his
laptop and shuffled through several windows of statistics. Andy St.
John pecked at his Blackberry. Phil Bonati spent half the game on
the phone giving live updates. Not wanting to look as out of place
as she felt, Cat took a few notes on the pitcher and jotted down a
thought or two during the offense’s at-bats. The pen in her hand
helped keep her enthusiasm in check, until the Chips’ hitter broke
the tie and the stadium went wild. She had to sit on her hands to
resist the urge to fist pump.

There were worse things. Cat sat back in her
chair and crossed her arms, tuning out the loudspeaker’s
announcements and the fans’ clatter. She surveyed the packed
stadium—the ballpark sparkling with camera flashes and stadium
lights under the night sky—and took a long, deep breath.

I cannot believe I get paid for
this.

As a sportswriter in the minors, Cat had seldom
stuck her slingbacks into the team’s clubhouse. Most interviews
took place in the dugout after the game or on the field beforehand.
Here in the majors, where thousands of fans waited as either an
angry mob or an adoring throng, the players raced for the isolation
of their clubhouse as soon as the twenty-seventh out was
recorded
.

Apparently, they aren’t the only
ones.

Before the Chips’ victory song cued up, the
members of the press box were halfway out the door. Dustin slammed
his laptop lid and hopped up from his chair. She followed his
lead.

“As goes the players, so goes the media,
huh?”

Without responding, Dustin pushed in his chair
and headed for the door. Cat grabbed her laptop and bag, trying to
pack the computer and follow him at the same time. She rushed to
keep up with his long legs as he scampered down the narrow
staircase. They met up with the other journalists waiting outside
the closed clubhouse doors.

Cat frowned at Dustin’s listless expression and
whispered, “I don’t know how you can contain yourself. This is so
exciting!” She bounced on the balls of her feet.

Dustin’s eyes formed into tiny slits and his
upper lip curled in her direction. He tilted his head and, making
no attempt to lower his voice, said, “Well I’m not a giggly
schoolgirl salivating at the thought of seeing the jocks in their
jocks.”

Dustin’s acid tongue didn’t throw her this
time. Cat smiled and faced forward. “Well, not giggly,
anyway.”

The door opened, and the media piled in, elbow
to elbow in the clubhouse that a mere six hours ago she’d found so
spacious. Cat followed from behind, too scared to stray from the
pack. First up before the mob was the hero of the night, Jarrett
White, whose go-ahead home run in the eighth won the game. She
wiggled her way through the gang of men.

Many years ago in journalism school she had
been cautioned about the chauvinism that confronted females in the
sports industry. The horror stories about the entrenched sexism
were legendary. While Cat had never encountered a player groping
himself during an interview or dealt with a manager who refused to
let her into the clubhouse without a note from her father, the same
message was still thrown her way and she didn’t have to be Johnny
Bench to catch it.

Cat was well aware that a career in sports
meant she’d have to climb a testosterone fence that had been in
place for over a century. The gender barriers went back to the
beginning of baseball, when women were forbidden to even enter
ballparks, let alone interview players in the clubhouse. Sexist
comments were still par for the course:

Female sportswriters aren’t avid for the game;
we’re horny for the players.

Our questions aren’t bold; they’re
bitchy.

We aren’t inquisitive; we’re stupid.

Cat McDaniel had met her fair share of men who
longed for the days of yore and Dustin Carlyle was no
exception.

However, as the horde swarmed Jarrett, Cat
realized she had one advantage over her colleagues. Amidst the
madness, she’d been able to slip her smaller—
but hornier,
bitchier and stupider
—body past her male counterparts and head
up the reporter nucleus, coming face to face with the star
shortstop.

Make that face to beautiful face. This man is a
walking Ken doll.

She cursed her decision to order the garlic
knots from Shannon in the fifth inning.

The last thing I need is to be known as “that
reporter with halitosis.”

Jarrett ran a towel through his wavy blond hair
and thrust a tanned hand up to the group.

“Hey, guys.”

As if it’s not enough they’re rich and
athletic, why do so many ballplayers have to look as if they jumped
off the Abercrombie wallpaper and hopped the mall shuttle to the
ballpark?

Cat clenched her digital recorder. She tried to
swallow the giant lump of intimidation in her throat. The effort
failed and, in retribution, the lump doubled in size. She attempted
again, afraid the stress of the day—or perhaps a bad batch of
garlic knots—had rendered her unable to swallow. She took in a
shaky breath and felt her body relax as the humid locker room air
buried the lump and filled her lungs. She examined the page of her
notebook where she had spent the last nine innings trying to come
up with an utterly brilliant question for this very moment. Her
colleagues, who didn’t seem to suffer from the same attack of
nerves, fired off questions from all sides of her faster than
Jarrett could extinguish them. Cat finally mustered up enough
courage to shoot one of her own.

“Jarrett, I know you’ve said you don’t have any
hard feelings about the trade, but how did you feel hitting the
winning run against your former team?”

She held her breath, waiting and dreading a
reply such as,

“What kind of question is that?”

“Be a peach and get me a fresh
towel.”

“Who let you in here?”

Instead, Jarrett smiled coyly and said, “Well I
always want to help my team with whatever contribution I can.
That’s first, you know? All that matters is that we got the ‘W.’ ”
He paused before bursting into a big grin. “Yeah, I’d be lying if I
didn’t say it felt awesome to stick it to ’em.”

The crowd of reporters laughed with him for a
few seconds, then thanked him and moved on to their next prey. Cat
gulped when she saw everyone heading into the conference room to
meet with the team’s crotchety manager.

Ron Bouvier was the nastiest dish on a
sportswriter’s menu, touchy with a side of rage. It wasn’t unusual
for him to blow up at the most innocent questions, and that was
after a good game. He’d gone on record as saying the only thing he
hated more than an umpire was a sports journalist, and umpires had
ejected the cantankerous manager more times than any other active
manager in the game.

The media filed into the conference room that
adjoined Ron’s office, and Cat grabbed a chair on the end of the
first row. She was encouraged by the manager’s bearded grin, hoping
that it signaled he was in good spirits after the thrilling
win.

Ron plopped down at the head table with a
grunt. “Well, whatta ya guys want from me tonight?”

Cat began to chuckle and abruptly stopped when
she realized her laughter was solitary; the manager wasn’t making a
joke. Her face heated up, but her embarrassment went unacknowledged
in the busy room. Just as they had with Jarrett, the questions
detonated from all directions.