Retaliation

“Townie, you’re up,” the Blue Jays’ bullpen coach said.

Ryan Townsend threw one last fastball to the bullpen catcher, whose name he did not yet know, then stepped off the mound. The view from the Blue Jays’ bullpen was similar to the one from the visitors’ side, but just different enough to be slightly disorienting. He had a lot to learn about Toronto and Toronto about him. For instance, no one ever called him “Townie”.

Before he stepped through the bullpen gate, Ryan took a breath to steel himself. There were going to be boos, perhaps ones as merciless as he heard the previous night, when Ryan was a member of the Minnesota Twins. 

He’d thrown at Arturo Stone, the Blue Jays’ star outfielder, triggering a bench clearing brawl. The only grievous injury in the fight was to Ryan’s jersey, which was de-buttoned near his navel. Shortly after his ejection, Ryan learned the Twins had traded him. Worse, they’d sent him to the team he’d just finished exchanging punches with. 

Now he was in a Blue Jays jersey, which didn’t feel right. Maybe it was that he’d never worn a professional uniform unrelated to the Twins; maybe it was the insultingly high number 84 on the back. That was the kind of number assigned to a spring training non-roster invitee, not a five year veteran like Ryan.

Granted, he had not been good that season. After multiple years as a successful setup man for Minnesota, his slider had lost its snap. He blew leads in three consecutive appearances in April and hadn’t sniffed a competitive game since. He became the mop-up guy, the person who came in when the Twins faced an insurmountable deficit and didn’t want to waste one of the good arms in their bullpen.

Bring on the boos, Ryan thought as he stopped on to the artificial turf warning track at the Rogers Centre. He kept his head down as he jogged in from left field. He didn’t look up as he passed Arturo Stone, now his teammate. He waited for the jeers to hit him. They did not. 

Canadians, he tried to tell himself, so polite. But he had a suspicion it wasn’t that. It was more likely staggering indifference. People knew there’d been an incident the day before, but did they bother to remember the name of the middling reliever who started it? Evidently not.

In a way, he would have preferred the boos. 

His new manager and catcher were waiting for him on the mound. The manager was a grizzled 72 year old named Herman Blackburn. A wad of tobacco puffed out his left cheek. He spit; the turf did not absorb the output as quickly as a grass field, leaving a brown splotch near Blackburn’s feet. 

“Hey, we go one for fastball, two for slider, three for change,” the catcher said. “You got anything else you like to throw?”

Ryan was relieved that the catcher didn’t seem to hold a grudge against him. No one had spoken to him in the clubhouse, not even Marvin Walker, who’d played with Ryan in Minnesota for a couple of years. The bullpen didn’t exactly exclude him from their conversation, but he couldn’t follow it. The Blue Jays’ relief corps had a language of their own, just as the Twins’ did.

“Don’t worry about any of that today,” Blackburn said. “He’s gonna hit this guy and probably get tossed.”

Ryan glanced at the plate. Ben Brennan - “BB” - was up. He couldn’t hit BB. The guy had come up through the Twins’ organization with Ryan, catching him since rookie ball. There was no one in baseball Ryan trusted more than BB. 

The day before, they hadn’t even had to discuss what Ryan was going to throw to (or, more precisely, at) Arturo Stone. BB set up on the inside of the plate. This would allow Ryan to plausibly claim that, yes, he was throwing inside and the pitch got away from him. Ryan gave BB a slow nod, which was all the signal BB needed to know that the pitch would not be anywhere near his glove.

Blackburn handed the ball to Ryan who gripped it just enough to avoid dropping it. He stared past his manager and catcher, watching BB slice his bat through the air with a practice swing.

Ryan generally deferred to his manager and coaches. He’d yet to play for a team where the staff was less experienced than him. Even when he was relegated to mop-up duty, he didn’t try to plead his case. If he wanted to be the setup man again, he’d have to work harder to find that slider and earn his spot back.

He didn’t want Herman Blackburn to think he was the kind of guy who didn’t carry out orders. Still, that was BB up there. 

“Why?” Ryan said.

“Why what?”

“Why am I hitting B…this guy?”

Blackburn lowered his head like a disappointed kindergarten teacher.

“They hit our guy, now we have to hit their guy.”

The logic was sound. In any other situation, Ryan would have readily agreed with Blackburn. But this time was a little different.

“They didn’t hit our guy. I did.”

“But you were them then.”

“And now I’m us. So who am I sending a message to, myself?”

“No, you’re—”

Blackburn took a step back, removed his hat and wiped his forehead. 

“Christ, next time we gotta make sure we aren’t trading for one of these intellectuals.”

He said it under his breath, but not really.

“Look, you know how this goes. A team hits us, we hit them back. Ledger has to be even.”

“I know, but their guy – sorry, our guy – charged the mound. That’s equal to hitting one of their guys.”

Blackburn stared Ryan down for a moment, turning his chaw over in his mouth. He looked like he regretted bringing Ryan in as much as Ryan did.

“Don’t you think so?” Ryan said, turning to the catcher to appeal. It was a risky move, but if anyone was going to side with a pitcher, it was the guy catching him.

“I don’t know, I just wanted to go over the signs.”

“You want to take a poll?” Blackburn said. “We’ve got time.”

He motioned the infielders to the mound. The second baseman and shortstop jogged in, the corner infielders walked. Ryan put his hands on his hips. 

“Fellas, our pitcher thinks he shouldn’t have to throw at one of their guys after last night’s little dust up. Says that clearing the benches cleans the slate. What do we think?”

The infielders looked around at each other, each of them waiting for someone else to talk first.

“I was in the can when the whole thing went down,” the shortstop said. “I heard a commotion, but I still had to pull up my pants. I skipped washing my hands, but I didn’t get out there in time to even point and yell at anyone. So I’d still like to hit a guy.”

“Yeah, no one got a punch in,” Milt Collier, the muscular first baseman who’d twice tagged Ryan for home runs that season, said. “I pulled a button off someone’s jersey and ate it, but that was it.”

Ryan momentarily forgot his conundrum. He stared at Collier, riveted, as if he hadn’t seen him dozens of times before. 

“You ate the button?”

“Yeah. Love doing that. It’s like, I took this and the only way you’re getting it back is to comb through my--“

“Okay, I get it. That can’t be good for you, though.” 

“Well, I swallowed it whole, didn’t chew it. It’s about the size of a multivitamin so no big deal.”

Collier curled his index finger into the pad of his thumb to make a small circle in illustration. Ryan started to worry about the last year and a half of his contract, which the Blue Jays now owned. What was he dealing with here? 

“That button is the property of the Minnesota Twins.”

Collier shrugged, thoroughly unmoved.

“Maybe if they didn’t employ guys who threw at people for no reason they wouldn’t have lost it.”

“It wasn’t for no reason,” Ryan said. 

If he’d taken a second to think things through, he wouldn’t have said it. This was no way to prepare for a relief appearance. But occasionally he did things as instinctually as sticking his glove out to snag a liner back to the box.

“Hitting a home run’s not a reason,” Collier said. 

“No, but he stood at the plate after he hit it. Stood there for 1.8 seconds. We timed it in the bullpen. You know you can’t let that go.”

“One point eight seconds, big deal,” Collier said. “That’s like one Mississipp—"

“Actually, it’s more like one-Mississippi, two-Mississipp-“

“No, 1.8 is less than two seconds. You can’t count two if it’s less than two seconds.”

“But two is really the beginning of the second second. The number plus Mississippi is one second. One-Mississippi – that’s one second.”

“See what I said?” Blackburn said, taking a step back to talk to the catcher. “We’ve got Baseball Einstein over here. Better not bring any books in my clubhouse. Magazines either. Unless they’re dirty.”

The second baseman and third baseman counted on their fingers, mouthing the numbers as they went. The second baseman looked up in amazement almost immediately, though the third baseman shook his head and went through the exercise again.

“He’s right,” the second baseman said. “Look at this.”

He counted to ‘five-Mississippi’ for the benefit of the group, all of whom, save for Collier and Blackburn, gave excited nods as if they were encountering a heretofore unknown species. 

“Man, I’ve got to re-think so many assumptions,” the third baseman said.

“It doesn’t matter!” Collier said. “Even if it is one-Mississippi, two-Mississipp-, that’s still not very long. Not worth throwing at someone over.”

His teammates nodded in agreement. Ryan let his hand twist from side to side in what he hoped was a kind of gentle dissent.

“Stoner’s your teammate now,” Collier said. “You’ve got to stand up for him. Show them that the Blue Jays don’t let people throw at them.”

“But I’m the one who—”

He let out a frustrated sigh. He couldn’t go through the whole explanation again. He needed to take another tack. 

“Look, we’re only down two. Is putting a guy on here really the best move?”

“This is the spot to retaliate,” Blackburn said, his tone leaving little room for compromise. He locked eyes with Ryan, who looked away first. 

“Let me help you with your decision,” Blackburn said. “You don’t want to hit your buddy? Fine. But don’t expect anyone on this team to talk to you. Whether you’re in the dugout, the bullpen, the clubhouse, the bus, the plane – silence. When we’re on the road, you will go to dinner alone. During batting practice, you’ll shag balls in left field all by yourself. When you blow a game, I won’t tell the press that you had good stuff but just missed your location by a hair on one or two pitches. 

“You understand what I’m saying to you?”

Ryan squeezed his lips together like he was trying to keep a particularly pesky bug from getting in his mouth. He averted his eyes from Blackburn, but everywhere he turned a Blue Jay stared at him. These were his teammates now. BB was not.

The umpire arrived, his stroll there so casual Ryan wondered if he’d stopped to pick up dinner along the way.

“All right, let’s get this moving, fellas,” the umpire said. If he detected any tension in the meeting, he didn’t say so. 

“Sorry, blue,” Blackburn said, suddenly sounding as perky as someone a quarter his age. “New guy, just making sure we’re all on the same page.”

He smiled at the ump, then turned back to Ryan.

“Go get ‘em, new guy.”

The umpire started back for the plate, the catcher beside him. Ryan was alone on the mound. He was in full control of what happened next. He, and he alone, determined where the ball went. 

BB stepped into the batter’s box. The catcher crouched, setting up on the inside of the plate. Plausible deniability. Ryan was going to have to decide.

His eyes flickered between his new catcher and BB. BB’s bat danced up and down behind him, his eyes locked on Ryan. Ryan gave a slow nod.

He wound up, stepped forward and released the ball.

BRYAN ERWIN is a software guy/sports fan from St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction has previously appeared in Barrelhouse, Defenestration, The Oddville Press, and Turnstyle. Erwin is also the co-author of the true crime book Slaying in South St. Louis.