Heft (11 page)

I have lied about my father to all of my friends at my high school. I have told them he is dead. My freshman year I wrote an essay for my English teacher. The assignment was to write about a personal hero.
My father died when I was four,
it began,
but I think I inherited many things from him. For one thing his height. For another thing his great love of sports.
The first was a lie and the last was the truth.

I first noticed that I was good at baseball when I was very small, when our coaches still pitched to us. I could pitch too, really pitch. When my coach discovered this he told my mother and she told my grandfather and then from time to time he would practice with me when he saw me but he died when I was ten.

Baseball is the loneliest sport to play for someone who does not have a father. Everyone’s dad lines up behind the chain-link fence at games. Everyone’s dad has a catch with them in the backyard. Everyone’s dad tells them stories about great games and teams and players. Pounds them with phrases like
Keep your eye on the ball. Swing through, swing through. Get in front of the ball, get in front of the ball, get in front of the goddamn ball.
I was not given these by anyone but coaches. Still I made them my own. I would chant them all day. At night I would turn on the radio and listen to Charlie Rasco the sportscaster tell me about sports. This was how I fell asleep. He told me a lot of things I would not otherwise have known and I pretended it was my father telling me these things, I am embarrassed but it’s true. After school I would practice in the tiny dirt yard behind our house. I propped an old mattress against the back wall. My mother drew a red circle on it and a red dot inside the circle. I threw the ball at the mattress over and over again. When my mother was up for it I had her bat ground balls to me and I scooped them. This was rare. I did not want to be a pitcher but as a younger boy I was.

When I was twelve I was on an all-star team that went to the Little League World Series in central Pennsylvania. My mother took off work as soon as she found out we were going, which was especially hard because it was right before school started. Her car at the time was a horrible old Nissan that broke down when we were only half an hour away, and we almost didn’t make it. I remember her standing on the side of the road, going
I’m so sorry, baby, I’m so sorry, Kel.
I was very mean to her and would not talk.

An old man in a baseball cap pulled over in a pickup truck and asked were we all right, and my mother told him no. My son’s on his way to the Little League World Series, she said. You better come with me, then, said the old man.

I could tell that my mother did not want to but she did it for me. She sat in the middle and I sat on the far side and the old man called a towing company and got my mother’s car towed for her. He was a very nice man and nothing to fear. He told us jokes on the way. Did you hear the Cubs got a new pitching machine? Yeah, it beat them five to one.

He asked me who my favorite player of all time was and I told him Mike Schmidt.

Attaboy, he said, because we were in Pennsylvania.

We got a phone call later from the garage. He’d paid for our car to be towed and fixed. My mother cried.

That was the best week of my life. We stayed in a terrible motel ten minutes from the nice hotel that everyone else stayed in. But twice I slept over in a friend’s room and my mother said it was fine and didn’t even seem sad or lonely. The nights I stayed with her we watched TV, huddled in bed, and got Chinese food from a place down the street. My mother laughed and made jokes and told me several stories about when she was a kid which usually she did not. One game I made a triple play all on my own. I caught a fly ball, tagged third base, and tagged the player running from second. I have never done that since.

We made it to the state semifinal and lost. But I didn’t mind. On the way home the whole team went out for McDonald’s. My mother had no one to talk to because all the other adults were couples, and she’s shy, but she sat there and smiled and my coach went up to her and sat with her for a while, telling her how much promise I had and how proud he was of me. I had two Big Macs and a vanilla shake and fries and an apple pie. My mother said I could have anything I wanted, I deserved it.

This same man, Ted Jaworski, coached a summer league team too. He invited me on and I said I could not pay for it. I knew this without asking my mother. He raised the money for me. From that point on I have played for town and school and club. My summer team now is the Cardinals who are the top team in the state of New York. For three years I have played with the Cardinals from the end of the school year through the summer. We take the bus and travel all over the place. The boys on this team are my friends but not my good friends because we are all competitive with each other.

The first article about me came out when I was fourteen.
For Kel Keller, Baseball Is Life.
Someone came to interview me about baseball and growing up in Yonkers and going to school where I do, in Pells Landing, which happens to be the richest town in the state of New York—a fact that my mother does not fail to point out regularly. It was just after Pells won state for the first time in three decades. In playoffs I hit .570 with 12 RBIs. And I was still a freshman. He took a picture of me tossing a baseball in front of my house. I spent the morning before he came trying to clean up all the leaves and the spare papers and pieces of trash that had found their way onto our little lawn. I even asked my mom if I could paint our door which was peeling like a joke and she said no because paint is expensive. So our house looked crappy in the picture which is probably what the reporter wanted anyway. If you Google my name it’s the first thing that comes up. This has always embarrassed me.

The most recent article came out last month and it was about my prospects as a major league player. I’m not kidding. It was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me in my life and I even showed it to my mother who cried, from sadness or happiness I’m not sure. She wants me to go to college first. Last year, my junior year, a bunch of college recruiters called me up or contacted me through my coaches. But I have never been a good student and pro ball is where I want to be.

So it was very exciting when it started last spring: a few bird-dog scouts began coming to some of my PLHS games, and a couple of them talked to Coach Ramirez about me, and Coach told me what they said. Over the summer a few more came to my Cardinals games. At Pells it was clear who they were there for; I was the only one who had a shot, and everyone knew it. But my league team is different. A bunch of us probably have a hope of getting drafted. Then last July, in the middle of a tournament in New Jersey, one of my teammates said
Do you guys know who that is?
and pointed to a gray-mustached man in the bleachers. A general murmur started.
Mets scout,
said the boy, and nodded slowly. All of us avoided each other’s eyes. It was the first time a supervising scout had come out—all the others had been young guys, hungry for money, but this one was patient and kind of looked like it didn’t matter to him whether we were good or not—and the best part was he was from the Mets. My father’s team. I played like a tornado and I knocked one out of the park. At the end I had a chance at a grand slam but the pitcher walked me and I’ve never been madder in my life. The whole time I was thinking All I’ve ever wanted is to play for the Mets. Please let him be here for me. Please.

Afterward the whole team sort of hung around longer than we usually do. The scout was talking to our coach. All of us pretended to talk to each other and looked at them peripherally. Then Coach Jaworski said
Keller!
and waved me over. I tried not to smile but I smiled very much. The rest of my team bore holes into my back.

His name was Gerard Kane. He was as tall as I was and redfaced and he had Popeye arms and he wore sunglasses on a rope around his neck and a Mets cap. He was like everyone’s father. He talked to me for a while that day and he came to several more of my games. At the end of the summer season he told me he was going to call me to set up a private workout with a pitcher and me. I wasn’t going to tell my mother but when I got home the news burst out of me before I could stop it. I had no one else to tell. She wasn’t as happy as she should have been. All she talks about is college. She does not understand that she is part of the reason I don’t want to go. She said, Well, I guess it doesn’t hurt to go practice. You can always make up your mind later.

But I’d already made up my mind.

It took longer than I thought it would for Gerard Kane to call. He waited all fall, in fact. I didn’t blame him—the Mets had a good season. He was probably busy.

Last week, finally, my phone rang. It was an unknown number. I answered quick as I could.

Hello, may I please speak to Kel Keller? asked a girl I didn’t know.

This is Kel, I said.

Hi, Kel, My name is Sarah, she said. I’m Gerard Kane’s assistant?

Oh, hi, I said. My heart began pounding.

—Do you remember Mr. Kane?

Yeah, I said.

He’s very sorry it’s taken him this long to get in touch with you, she said. But he’d love to set up a private practice with you whenever you’re available.

Sarah sounded pretty. She said a Saturday would be best, and what do my Saturdays look like? December 10th is the date we came up with. Three weeks away.

Since then I’ve been dreaming. My news has been following me around like a happy balloon. There is one thing I haven’t told my mother: that if I get drafted I’ll sign. She will not be happy when I tell her this. She wants me to go to college even though going to college will mean leaving her far behind. Which I cannot do. As I have said. She is holding on to some idea of what our lives will be. The idea that she had when she was working still, when I was a good scared boy who did whatever she told me to do. She always told me she had dropped out of college after one semester because she couldn’t afford it. It was, she said, her biggest regret in life. She tells me, Kel, you’ll be a doctor. Or some days, Kel, you’ll be a professor. As if being a doctor or a professor was the best thing she could think of to be. As if she didn’t know me at all, who I was and am. And in my head I thought to her, I’ll be a ballplayer if it kills me. I know that every boy wants to be a ballplayer but I wanted it, I want it, more than anybody. I always have. I dream about it. Drifting off to sleep it comes to me suddenly: a vision of crowds in stands.

So I have to tell her. She’ll cry. I have to tell her anyway.

Sometimes I feel like I’m trading my mother’s dream for my father’s. When I was younger I thought somehow that being good at baseball would bring my father to me. That what he could resist in a son he could not resist in a famous son. A famous baseball player. In photographs, his orange shirts told me this. His pennants and trophies.

Does he have other sons. That is the largest most frightening question that I have. Does he have other sons that he is raising to be tanned and white-headed, out in the Arizona desert, that he is raising to be better at baseball than me.

• • •

F
irst period is history. Mr. Potts, our teacher, is a young guy
who sits on his desk during class. He always has a coffee in a tall Styrofoam Dunkin’ Donuts cup. When I see him in the afternoon he’s still drinking out of it, which probably means that it is cold. On Fridays he wears jeans which is technically against the rules of our school for teachers—Trevor once found a faculty manual and it said so—but Mr. Potts doesn’t care. He calls me Keller because he heard some boys in the hall calling me that. My friends call me Keller. Or Yonkers, or Bonkers, or Keeeel, plain Keeeeel, low in their throats and congratulatory. When the football team loses, Mr. Potts says Keller, what happened yesterday? Keller, he says, lookin’ good today, like the hat. It’s a joke. He’s making friends with us.

We call him Pottsy. He doesn’t mind.

The best teachers are the ones who want to be liked by you. All teachers want to be liked by you but the best ones are the ones who know who to go after, which kids to befriend. I’m one of the ones to befriend. If I like you everyone does. It’s happened in all my classes.

One time I saw Pottsy in Yonkers standing outside of Rory Dolan’s Pub and smoking. I was driving and I didn’t stop. My little-kid instinct took over and I ducked my head, even, I did not want to be seen. He had one foot pressed against the wall behind him and he was wearing his baseball cap sideways like a fool, for a joke. He had friends on either side of him. Everyone was laughing.

When I come into class today Pottsy says What’s on your feet, Keller? Tomatoes?

I’m wearing red huge basketball shoes. As I have found my place in this school I have begun to dress like I used to and this means whatever I want.

Jealous? I say.

I sit down next to Kurt and across from Lindsay. Our desks are set up in a horseshoe. This is the first class I’ve ever had with her even though we have gone to school together for four years. She’s smarter than me. This year I took A.P. U.S. History II just for the hell of it, because I liked my history class last year and my teacher made me feel like I could.

Happy Monday, says Pottsy, and then he dives right in before everyone’s settled. The Beats, he says. Who knows what the Beats are? The Beat Generation. Beatniks.

No one says anything.

Well you all should, says Pottsy. Because it was part of your reading assignment over the weekend.

We look at him blankly and see that he is getting the face he gets when we are not performing up to his standards.

No one? says Pottsy. No one at all can tell me who the Beats were?

In that case, says Pottsy, I won’t have a conversation with myself. You guys will lead the class on the Beats yourselves on Thursday.

He goes around the room and pairs us up and gives each pair some aspect of the Beats to cover. By some miracle he puts me and Lindsay together. It is the first time we have worked together all semester.