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“Good, thanks. How about you? Did you have a good holiday?”
“I did, I did. Took my wife to New York for the ball drop this year. She’s always wanted to do that, you know?”
I nod. “Yeah, that sounds awesome.”
“Well, hey, I don’t want to beat around the bush too much before I just get into it,” he says, and I can hear the shift in his tone of voice before he even says the words. “The Kings are releasing you.”
My entire body freezes as my brain tries to process those words.
Releasing you.
“The whole organization has been doing some moving around of their coaching staff, and the new guys, unfortunately, don’t think there’s a place for you on their roster.”
I blink a few times, staring down at my left hand where it rests on my knee, wondering if it’s about my injury, if bringing me back is too much of a risk because of this fucking…mistake.
Or maybe it’s just that I don’t have the talent. Or the skill. Or the drive.
“But hey, that doesn’t mean anything super horrible just yet,” Richard continues, though the rest of what he says sounds like a voice in the distance. Something about me being a free agent and how I could get signed at any time with a new team. It all goes in one ear and out the other.
I’m being released.
After one game.
After getting to play one game.
“You keep enjoying your time with your family, and I’ll reach out if I have any news, alright?”
If, not when. If he has any news, the loud unspoken part being that he might not.
“Alright, Richard, well…thanks.”
“Have a good one, okay?”
We say our goodbyes then get off the phone. I sit there for a long while, just staring at the wall across from my bed. Shelves of baseball trophies and MVP plaques and signed memorabilia from a few players I’ve admired my entire life.
The people who went on to be the greats.
Who definitely didn’t get released from their teams.
I’ve spent my entire life working toward a future that seems suddenly gone in a blink, over before it ever really began, and that was my big fear, wasn’t it? The thing that lurked in the back of my mind? That I’d made it to that next level and then fucked it up because I got cocky.
Since the second I broke my wrist, I tried to play it off in my mind. The choice to run through second and go for third. The foolish mistake my ego pushed me to make, because who hits a triple on their first at-bat in the minors?
Me. I wanted to say it was me. I’m the guy who does that, who shows up and blows everyone out of the water.
But now, I couldn’t care less about that triple. Who fucking cares about a triple when it’s the only thing you’ve ever done? When you only ever get a chance to play in one game? When all your effort and energy and talent get shot to shit with one fucking selfish choice?
“Alright, everybody—ready, set, go!”
Rush and I watch from the back of his truck, chuckling as Justin, Ruben, Tommy, and the rest of the Pirates book it down the dock at Miller’s Landing. The sound of their bare feet hitting the wood makes them sound like a herd of buffalo as they speed through the cool air in nothing but swim trunks and then leap into the water. Some of them jump, some of them flip, some of them cannonball, but every single one of them launches their body into the freezing cold of Cedar Lake in 29-degree weather.
“Glad I don’t have to do that anymore,” Rush mumbles, taking another sip of his coffee. “I’ll take my blanket and my coffee and my seat right here any day over that.”
I snort. “You never had to do it. It was a choice.”
“You keep saying that.” He chuckles. “But I remember it differently. The Bam made that a tradition. You don’t break a tradition, especially one by a Cedar Point icon.”
Any other time, I’d hear his words and laugh, rib him a little, feel a bit of flattery. Today, less than 24 hours after getting released from my team, I feel…I don’t know. Definitely something else. Shame, maybe. Embarrassment, obviously.
