Word is CJ might be on the trade block this winter. Could be interesting.
A dozen versions of himself lined up in his mind, each with a different answer. The funniest one typedwildand sent an emoji that made him hate himself. The honest one saiddon’t do this to me.The most professional saidwe’ll see what the market does.The scared one put the phone face down again and went to brush his teeth like a kid who thought he could erase the day with mint.
Evan
I heard. Not my problem.
Matt
It never is until it is.
Evan didn’t answer. Not because he’d decided to ignore it, but because sometimes the only honest reply was no reply at all.
He got up and carried the empty containers to the trash, rinsed his hands, and leaned on the sink with his head down for a count of eight. He thought about Rosa warning him not to let his head make a movie and realized he was terrible at following instructions. All his head had done was make movies tonight.
On his way back to the couch, he flicked the TV off, sending the apartment into darkness except for the city. He stood there until his eyes adjusted, then he lowered himself to the floor and leaned back against the couch, knees bent, forearms resting across them. A posture he hadn’t taken since he was twenty and thought it was his best angle in pictures.
The phone buzzed again. Not Matt. His mother this time. He hovered his thumb over the message before moving it away. Talking to her never brought about anything good.
He let his head tip back against the edge of the couch. The off-season stretched out in front of him, and he could see the version where he slept late, lifted hard, hit and swam, and hung out with friends. Where he didn’t think too hard and showed up to spring training with his legs under him again, always ready with a smile and a laugh.
And he could see the version where he got too far inside the quiet and forgot to put the noise back.
He closed his eyes and saw the movie Rosa had warned him about. A panel show and pregame theatrics, and a profile in right field that a camera loved because sometimes bodies made for games were also made for lenses. He saw Chicago navy and light blue. And he saw the kids they’d been, sons of different towns and backgrounds, bonded over the same bad jokes in batting cages where stinging hands came from moving too slow and the days never had enough hours. He saw the version of himself that hadn’t been left standing there, watching CJ walk away. The version that hadn’t been cut loose and left to hold all the what-ifs alone.
His phone buzzed again.
Matt
One more season down. Congrats.
Evan almost typedyou toobecause agents had seasons, different but just as relentless. Instead, he typed nothing and clicked his phone dark, listening to the city breathe.
Tomorrow, he would work out. He would answer texts in a tone people read as cheerful, and he would send his mother a picture of the beach and tell her he was fine before agreeing to send her more money. He would call Rizzo and say, “Fine, Arizona. You can teach me to slice a ball onto someone’s patio and then apologize to them with my wallet.” Tomorrow, he would take his mitt out of his duffel to oil the pocket and respool the laces. Not because they needed it but because the ritual honored the hunger.
Because tonight, he’d watched a game end and a man he’d once loved lift a trophy he’d coveted since childhood. And he told himself with the kind of stubbornness you cultivated as a catcher, that tomorrow he was going to focus on doing what he could to bring a championship to San Diego.
Whatever had happened in Chicago had nothing to do with him.
3
CJ
CJ Hartman liked routine.
Not in the obsessive, color-coded-calendar way, but in the kind of way that gave the off-season shape. Something to lean on when the ballpark light went dark for the winter and the roar of the crowd faded into memory.
Late fall into winter wasn’t gentle in Chicago. It was all gray skies and sharp wind and snow that turned to dirty slush the moment it hit the streets. But the city had become CJ’s home, and he’d found a rhythm here in the off-season, in his apartment that overlooked the river, and he liked the ritual. Coffee first, steam curling from the chipped Blazers mug he’d stolen from a diner his rookie year. Then a workout at the gym down the street. A quick stop at Manny’s for a breakfast burrito big enough to feed two, but that he demolished solo. Maybe—maybe—a late-morning nap before heading to the batting cages in the afternoon.
It was a rhythm that kept his head clear. A rhythm he planned to keep until spring training.
Except this year, the lights hadn’t faded the same way. The Blazers had won a title after decades of near misses, and Chicagowas still celebrating. CJ had caught the final out, had stood on the field and felt the champagne burning his eyes and the weight of his teammates piling on top of him until he couldn’t breathe. Two days later, there had been a parade down a confetti-covered Michigan Avenue. Fans had climbed light poles, trying to get closer to the players on the upper levels of double-decker buses, chanting their names until their voices broke. They’d been convinced they were untouchable.
For more than a week now, the city had been a living party, and CJ should still be riding that high. But celebrations ended fast in front offices, and the confetti had barely been swept up when the business side of baseball went back to work. While fans clung to glory, someone in a suit was already moving names around like chess pieces.
During the season, rumors had circulated that teams were interested in trading for him, but the trade deadline had come and gone and CJ had remained in Chicago. He was confident enough in his game that he knew what Chicago would be losing if they traded him, but he wasn’t so far gone that he wasn’t aware it could happen. Conversations with his agent had revolved around the possibility more than once, in the kind of vague, what-if scenarios that agents float so their clients aren’t blindsided. But CJ had still shut down the conversation when he could.
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” he’d told Marcus. “I like it here. I want to finish here.”
