Out of curiosity, what is your drink of choice? I don’t actually drink very often, but when I do, I’m a whiskey/bourbon/scotch guy. Definitely no beer. Also, no vodka. A nice wine, sure, but only with food. You?
I have a meeting in a few minutes so I’m going to get going—for now. But don’t leave me hanging!
Colin
Colin
Practice starts at 5:30 p.m., so after hitting send on a responseemail to Grace Landing, I shut down my laptop and ask Daisy how she’s getting to the park.
“Cab, I guess,” she says. “I’m getting too old to schlep all this crap cross town on foot.” She gestures under her desk, where she’s got an oversized L.L. Bean backpack with a metal bat sticking out of the top resting alongside a huge tote bag from Whole Foods.
I smile. “Let’s share an Uber. My treat,” I say. “What have you got in there?” I point at the Whole Foods bag.
“I baked snacks for practice. Homemade granola bars. Then, I thought maybe that wouldn’t be enough, so I threw in a bag of tangerines, just in case anyone got low blood sugar and needed a quick pick-me-up.” She shrugged. “Then, I figured we’d need water, so I got one of those twelve packs of tiny water bottles just in case anyone finished theirs and got thirsty. And I picked up some candy in case everyone thought all the snack choices were too healthy.”
“So, you essentially packed an entire grocery store into a single bag.”
Daisy blushes.
“You’re too good,” I say.
“I don’t know what they like down the hall,” she goes on.
“Are you kidding me? Dom will eat whatever. Richie will bring his own four pack of protein shakes. Jessica and Mark are easy. Courtney—not so much.”
Daisy scowls. “Is she still giving you grief?”
“Not grief. She’s just a wild card, you know? One minute, she acts like we’re fine and the next she’s crying to Jess that I’m the worst person she’s ever met.”
Daisy looks at me with anI told you solook but doesn’t say anything.
“I know, I know. I’ve learned my lesson. No more one-nighters. At least not with girls from the team.”
Daisy’s like my work mom. She’s known me since I was in grade school, and when I used to visit the firm as a kid, she’d help me with my homework or let me play Spider Solitaire on her computer. In my teenage years, she watched from afar as my dad proudly displayed articles from the local paper about my prowess on the field. She came to my graduation party after college, and when I became a junior partner, she baked me a cake and bought me a money tree for my office. By contrast, when Gordon Aycock was crowned junior partner, she raised an eyebrow at me and muttered, “What is hethinking?” in reference to my father. She’s steadfast and loyal, and I appreciate that, especially since Gordy incessantly tries to undercut me.
I had a dog growing up. I had no siblings, so for my eighth birthday, my mom gave in to my constant begging and let me choose a rescue dog from the local animal shelter. I named her Chocolate Chip on account of the fact that she had black spots all over her back. Cici for short. Cici was part yellow lab, part Dalmatian, and I remember when they referred to her as a “Dalmador” at the shelter, I thought that sounded like the name of a cool Transformer or something, so I immediately took to her. She was fairly small when we brought her home, but in no time, she shot up and was (in my eyes) roughly the size of a small horse by the time I turned nine.
Cici and I were inseparable until I went to college. She was ten by that time and had slowed considerably. I was about to start my first year as a D1 pitcher for Arizona State. I’d gotten a scholarship andBaseball Americalisted me on their “Ones to Watch” list after I was the 121st pick in the fourth round of the MLB draft that year.
The Sun Devils were killing it my first year of college. We got into the playoffs, which was no surprise. My record was sick—I’d been recruited to the Cape Cod league for the summer based on my stats during the regular season and was flying high.
During the second game of the first round of the playoffs, I was pitching a no-hitter. It was the game of my life. I had perfect control over the strike zone.
It was the fifth inning. I had two strikes on a guy from Cal. All of a sudden, I threw a pitch and I felt something snap in my shoulder. It was swift and excruciating. My arm fell to my side, limp and throbbing.
Meanwhile, 2,400 miles away in the Bronx, my mom had just put Cici to sleep. She had brought her to the vet and found out she was being eaten up by cancer.
The timing was too close for me to chalk it up as being a coincidence.
I had to have surgery on my shoulder, and once my coaches realized the extent of the damage, I lost my baseball scholarship. I transferred back home and started in the prelaw program at Fordham. If we couldn’t make it to the big leagues, Dad said, I had better be ready to take over the family business.
I kept up my end of the deal, but somehow, he’s still fixated on me playing ball. Like, so much that my poor girl Daisy goes into snack prep overdrive every spring.
I carry her giant bag downstairs to meet the Uber, and we get to the park in about ten minutes. Gordon’s already there, along with my dad and most of the D’Aleo and Strauss crew. Only Dom is missing.
“Hey now, slowpokes! Let’s get it going!” my dad chirps from the bench alongside the third base line. He claps his hands a few times.
Gordon claps back at him. “Yeah, now, let’s hear it for baseball!” he screeches. His voice cracks on the wordlet’s.
