Keep Them Close(30)
* * *
Denise loops her arm in mine as we walk toward the chancellor’s office. “These suits don’t know shit about loyalty,” she says. “After everything you’ve done for this program.”
“Crisham wants me gone anyway,” I say. “We both know that. I’ve just got this last year left on my contract. He was hoping I’d leave so he could bring in his college buddy—”
“Fuck that,” she hisses. “I’ll resign first.”
“You’re not resigning,” I say. “And his buddy won’t take over as coach.”
We enter the chancellor’s office, the largest in the admin building, spacious enough for a meeting area in the corner with its own round table and set of chairs. Elias Crisham sits at a walnut desk, behind him a picture window overlooking the quad. He is all business today in a pricey suit and school-appropriate purple tie.
“Luke, come in, please,” says Crisham, his brow furrowed, giving off the sobriety of a funeral director, any second now a phrase like This is not a happy occasion or We’re all sorry to be here today sure to escape his lips.
He introduces the two men flanking him, the school’s general counsel and some man I’ve never met, a jowly guy old enough to be my grandfather, who is apparently their “outside counsel.” I forget his name as soon as I hear it, so I’ll just call him “OC.” No, “Notorious OC.” “Notorious” for short.
“Luke,” says the chancellor, “this is a difficult situation for everyone. The Board has a responsibility to our students and our student-athletes. Until your situation is resolved, the Board feels it’s in everyone’s best interests that you be suspended with pay.”
He slides a piece of paper across the desk. Two short paragraphs. The first explaining the Board’s decision based on my “recent arrest.” The second explaining my administrative remedies should I choose to fight. Followed by nine original signatures of the Board of Regents.
I sit back in my chair, a comfortable leather job. We don’t have chairs like these in the athletic department. I wouldn’t want them. Comfort is the enemy of success.
“Who’s taking my place?” I ask. I knew Crisham was not going to pass up this chance. But I’m not in here fighting for me. I’m fighting for my team.
“That’s not your concern,” says Notorious, wagging a bony finger.
“It’s my only concern,” I say. “Our season starts in a week. Alan McIntyre, my assistant coach, is the only one who could possibly step in. He knows more baseball than I do. And the players love him. You promote Alan and I’ll walk away quietly.”
Crisham eyeballs me. “And if we don’t?”
“Then I’ll sue,” I say. “My lawyer doesn’t think you have cause to suspend me. It might have something to do with that pesky presumption of innocence.”
“You’ve retained counsel.” Notorious crosses a leg, lifting it with the speed of a crane.
“I have.” I fish Allison’s business card out of my pocket and hand it to him.
He looks at the card. Something changes in his expression. “You’ve hired Allison Brice?”
“Yep. Heard of her?”
“Well…obviously.”
“She’s my sister,” I say. “And she’s pissed.” I clap my hands together. “Chancellor, you want to screw me over, fine. But you’re not gonna screw over my players. They need Alan. They’ll want Alan. It’s best for the team. Do the right thing. Or I’ll sic my lawyer on you.” I get up from my chair. “And she never loses.”
23
Luke
I’m here to tell you, Mrs. Rankin, Mr. Rankin—I’ve been in baseball forty-six years, and I have never seen this much arm talent in a kid Luke’s age. A fourteen-year-old who clocks eighty-five on the gun with that kind of precision control? And the boy’s hardly five foot seven? That just doesn’t happen. We want you at Tennessee, son. We’re ready to commit right here, right now.
I sit on the pitcher’s mound inside the dome, my butt on the hard rubber where the pitcher’s foot aligns, like I have so many times over the last three-plus years. Sixty feet and six inches away is home plate, bordered by a batter’s box stenciled into the artificial turf. That distance, that journey of the baseball from the pitcher’s hand to that white pentagon, decides more in a baseball game than every other factor combined. The chess match between pitcher and batter is the most decisive and intricate battle in all of sports.
This much I promise you, Vanessa, Brian: We’ll turn your son Luke into a first-round pick in the MLB draft. And he’ll love California, I promise you.
Mortimer’s indoor practice dome is two miles off campus, a facility we share with two high schools, a semipro team, and a travel baseball outfit. Video cameras in left, center, and right fields, guarded by caging. A radar gun sticking out of the cage on the third-base side of the backstop. A pitching machine moved off the mound for now. They dyed the turf dark blue, the colors of the travel baseball team that owns the dome. I don’t know why they didn’t color it green. We could at least pretend it’s a real diamond.
That’s a battle I’ve long lost. I like real grass and dirt, bumpy and sloppy as it may be. Then again, I prefer the time before players wore batting gloves on both hands, before arm sleeves and elbow guards and sliding mitts—I mean, seriously, sliding mitts? Are you stealing second or taking muffins out of the oven? If I had a time machine, I would have coached and played in a different era, before instant replay, before video captured every angle of every swing of the bat in practice, before all the metrics and analytics that substitute for gut instinct.