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Ah, there it was. The question Emmy had been hoping to avoid. At least it was Alice asking and not one of the guys. She worried that by telling Tucker her favorite team was the Cubs she might have given herself away, but he hadn’t put two and two together yet.
Emmy sipped her beer thoughtfully, a rush of fresh lime filling her mouth. “He doesn’t understand why I left Chicago. I think he figured I’d pay my dues there forever and wait for Mitch to retire. But Mitch was set to keep that job for another decade. The Felons gig was way too good to pass up.”
“Of course it was. He’ll figure that out.”
It was hard to say what Vince Kasper would do now that Emmy had packed up and moved to San Francisco. He’d been proud of her accomplishments thus far in her life, bragging to his baseball buddies about his talented daughter while their sons peaked in college or went on to fade away in the minors.
Her dad was so legendary there was a bar in Chicago named after him. He’d been a Hall of Fame hitter and a great third baseman when he’d played. Now in his retirement years, he was the long-standing voice of the Cubs, calling games for radio broadcast, with another ex-player providing the cutesy color commentary. Vince and Angelo were as much a part of Cubs tradition now as Wrigley itself.
Thankfully no one—with the exception of her bosses—seemed to have made the connection yet. Kasper wasn’t as unique a name in baseball as say Mantle or DiMaggio. She was part of a proud baseball family, but she needed the men to respect her for her merits, not because her daddy was one of the modern greats.
And she wanted her father to be proud of her no matter where she worked. He had to understand not everyone could make their careers last in one city the way he had.
“Uh, hey.”
Emmy and Alice turned to the deep voice behind them. Alex Ross offered a sheepish grin and raised a mostly empty pint glass in their direction. “Hi, Emmy.”
He was being polite, but he wasn’t looking at her. His big brown eyes were focused right on Alice.
Emmy smiled to herself. “Alex, this is Alice. Alice, this is Alex. May you two never date, because that couple name would be hell to figure out.”
Alex grinned at Alice, and Emmy’s friend eyed him warily. “You’re Alex Ross?”
“I am.”
“You crowd the plate when you bat,” she replied, then sipped her beer. “And you get really pissy when home plate umpires make perfectly fair strike calls on you. You know it’s not a ball just because you’re too close to the plate. A strike is a strike.” Then she flashed a bright smile at him while he stared at her, his mouth slack.
“Who are you?”
“Alice Darling.”
Emmy leaned in close to Alex, bracing her hand on his shoulder. “She’s a Grapefruit League umpire. You’d have better luck hitting on Alex Rodriguez than you will with her.”
“You’re an umpire?” Alex asked, eyeballing the pint-sized blonde again.
Alice gave a You’re out arm gesture.
“Goddamn.” He finished his drink, then glanced between the women. “Look, your friend’s poor job choices aside, we’ve got some room at our table and the pitchers seem to refill themselves. Why don’t you join us?”
Emmy regarded the crowded table warily. “I don’t know, Alex.”
“You’re going to be spending the whole season icing these guys down in their underoos. Might as well get to know them now.”
There was a sort of perverted logic to that. She would be spending almost every single day with these guys, and she knew what a locker room was like. Once they got over the initial she’s a woman thing, they’d start up with the typical bawdy jokes and would walk around the locker room butt naked. She’d seen it happen with the Sox. On the regular forty-man roster, she had seen thirty-nine out of the forty Sox in all their masculine glory. She used the phrase loosely because a majority of ballplayers were not as in shape or sexy as fangirls would like to believe. And after only a few months with the team, all the guys started to feel more like brothers than potential hook-up material.
Four years later she knew every mole and freckle on the team, and their nudity had long ceased to shock her. She was a locker room veteran at this point, and this new job only meant forty new naked asses to adjust to.
Alex was right. They might as well get comfortable with her now and put the awkwardness aside ASAP. And she should get used to being around Tucker. He was one of the main reasons she’d gotten the job after all. She had a lot of experience with post-Tommy John pitchers, having coddled six of them in her four years with the Sox. Of those six, five had reached or surpassed their presurgery power. The sixth accepted a set-up position instead of his previous starting slot and ended up being traded by the end of the season.
Such was the life of a baseball player.
Emmy and Alice followed Alex back to the Felons table, and a few players shuffled positions to allow the women room. Emmy made introductions, and Alice pleasantly informed the guys she’d be seeing them during the preseason matchups when she was calling games. Any interest the men had shown dwindled when she told them what she did. Alice was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. An umpire masquerading as a pretty girl.
Talk had already begun about the season ahead. The guys were speculating about the blue chip drafts—players who were considered the most likely new recruits to make it into the regular roster. Miles Cartwright was one, and Emmy noticed he hadn’t joined the team for drinks.
Another missing member was the new second baseman Jamal Warren. He’d been a late acquisition, and a handsomely paid one at that. Two hundred million over seven years. Simon had called Emmy shortly after the announcement to grill her for details, but she didn’t have any. Warren was a heavy hitter, and the expectation was that the one-two punch of him and Ramon Escalante would take the Felons straight to the World Series.
Emmy had her doubts. No team’s success was made or broken by one player. But if people wanted to call Warren the second coming of Babe Ruth, they were welcome to do it.
