The Draft

The Draft

The grand silence ends at breakfast with an explosion of voices.  Mangini, our table head, is the only guy at our table whose hair is perfectly combed, tie flawless.  He waves his knife like a baton.  “Today is Thursday, our weekly holiday, so we don’t have any classes.  You new guys are supposed to go down to the campus and play softball.  That way the scouts can look you over and decide whether they want to pick you.  We’re all on a team.  I’m a Rambler.”  He gestures at Ormsby.  “He’s an Indian.  Everyone has to play.”  Mange stabs his fork into the scrambled eggs.  “And you can’t hold out.”

 “What do you mean hold out?” I say.

He looks at me, chewing his eggs carefully.  “A couple of years ago two new guys pretended they didn’t know how to play softball.  They kept dropping flies and throwing like girls, so nobody thought they were any good.  Turns out the Trojan captain put them up to it because he was from their parish in Oakland and knew how good they were. He was able to wait until the third or fourth round to pick them.  That’s why the Trojans ended up with all the best athletes in that class. They cheated.”

As he talks, my heart starts beating faster.  Am I ready to play sports?   These guys are out for blood and I’ve been on the bench for two years. With a blood disease.

The locker room already smells like old socks even though it’s the first week of the year.  I stand at my locker trying not to show my skinny white legs as I pull on my sweats.  “BOs,” Dick told me last night, “we don’t call them sweats.” I watch McLaughlin next to me as he pulls a red baseball shirt over his muscled chest and laces up his mean-looking spikes.  He adjusts a red baseball hat on his carefully combed hair, checks his reflection in a small mirror hanging inside his locker, then saunters out, spikes echoing on the tile floor.  I grab my lumpy old baseball mitt and follow him.  The field is down on the other side of the creek, an old meadow that’s been broken into three baseball diamonds.  The morning fog still glistens on the grass as the team captains huddle with their scouts to one side, watching us.  McLaughlin is whispering something into Jersey Joe Harrington’s ear.  I stand with the other new guys, kneading my glove nervously, trying to push images of parents and doctors out of my mind.  When I hear my name called, I run out to join the others on team B.  Later I walk up to the plate, plant my feet, swing the bat a few times looking for the old rhythm. I watch a couple of pitches then swing at one coming in high and outside.  The bat connects sending the ball into shallow right field.  I scramble toward first, unfamiliar muscles waking up, laughing in my legs.  I cross the bag, relieved.  No collisions, no plasma explosions so far.  A big kid with acne comes up next, hits a long ball over the left fielder’s head.  I round the bases and score.  Winded, I stand behind the backstop with my hands on my knees, catching my breath.  McLaughlin sidles up to me.  Moving in close, he checks his clipboard and talks out of the side of his mouth like we’re planning a drug deal.  

“Ever play any ball at Marin Catholic?”

“No,” I say.  “I got a blood disease my Freshman year and couldn’t play sports.”

He lifts an eyebrow, looks at me over his glasses.

 " A disease?" 

He makes a mark on his clipboard and walks away.

Three days later there’s a mob around the bulletin board where they’ve posted the draft results.  I worm my way in and scan the names.  I’m not listed in the Trojan column – no surprise after McLaughlin’s scouting report – nor under Bears or Ramblers .  I’m an Indian, last year’s worst team.  “Anybody know who was first pick?” a kid asks.  

“Conneely,” a chorus of voices replies.  He’s the sixth-latiner who’s been charging the senior stairs every day, trying to fight his way to the top while we’re waiting for mail-call after lunch.  A scrappy little guy, he comes back day after day even though he’s gotten several jake shampoos.  Yesterday I watched him in the locker room, kicking and yelling while the bigger guys stuck his head in the toilet and flushed it.  He came out red-faced but still laughing, calling them chickenshits.  

After supper Pat Browne gives me a little jerk of his head.  “Let’s take a walk.” He jams his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker as he leads me away from the crowd.  A tall good-looking kid, Pat usually hangs around with the jocks, acting cool.  Why’s he taking a walk with me?   

Once we’re out of earshot of the others, he flashes a smile.  “You got picked on the Indians.  It’s a good team.” He walks slowly, talking in short, clipped sentences.  “We’ve got a shot at it this year.  If Conneely doesn’t get his ass thrown out, we’ll win the peanut division. MacNamara’s the best basketball player in our class, except maybe for Brady.  So we’ll do okay in basketball.  Baseball we’re strong.  I pitch and Potter catches.  You might play first base.  Soccer’s our weakest sport.  Healy’s our only really good player.  We need a goalie, so that might be your job.” 

“How do you play soccer?   I’ve never even heard of it.” 

“I really don’t like it that much.  The faculty makes us play it because that’s what they played over in Europe. Basically, you run around and kick each other.”

Pat keeps talking and I start to get a déjà vuof times spent with my Grandmother, when she used to catalog the neighbors for me, telling me who was going to Heaven and who was doomed to Hell.  Except Pat phrases things differently.  “Mac’s a good ball player,” “Leary’s an asshole,” “Sullivan’s pretty funny,” “Johnson doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.” I’m glad we’re on the same team. 

Softball season starts and lots of guys show up in their old CYO baseball shirts and spikes.  I imagine them being coached on well-manicured San Francisco playgrounds while I was dodging gopher holes on neighborhood sandlots, and I start to worry that I won’t be able to compete.  But then the game starts and half the guys turn out to be terrible athletes.  They’re playing because The Ruledemands it.  

Softball season is only a month, then the weather turns colder and it’s time for soccer.  “I’m going to start you as goalie,” says John Van Hagen, consulting his rain-soaked clipboard. “All you have to do is stop the ball from going between the posts.” 

Yeah, sure, easy for him to say.  Last week Frank Healy gave me the lowdown.  “Soccer’s where everyone works out their aggressions on each other.  It used to be football, but too many guys broke their collarbones so they outlawed it.” After watching McLaughlin lace up his battle-scarred football cleats and slide cardboard shin guards behind his knee socks, all I can imagine is getting kicked and bleeding to death right there in the goal box.  The field is muddy for our first game and the early morning air frigid.  My hands are stiff and I’m worried that the ball will bounce right off them.  There’s no such thing as an offside rule in seminary soccer, so the other team is always swarming around me waiting for the ball to arrive.  My only protection is my fullbacks, Pat Browne and Al Potter, and after a few plays I realize why Pat doesn’t like soccer.  He doesn’t like contact.  He just runs toward the kicker, then ducks away at the last minute and yells, “Get ‘im Potts!” Al is more gutsy, he actually charges the kicker, but half the time he misses the ball completely, leaving me at the mercy of McLaughlin and his waffle-iron boots.  I don’t do well the first few games, but gradually I get the hang of it and after a few good saves my teammates nickname me Spider, which I take as a sign of affection.  

After Christmas, soccer gives way to basketball.  An old barn has been converted into two narrow courts.  I can see my breath as I warm up for the first game against Denny O’Brien and the Ramblers.  Mike MacNamara’s our star player, so I just rebound and pass him the ball.  Bob Carroll and Poopsy Perry are no help under the basket, though Bob cracks a lot of funny jokes. The courts are filthy.  The dust is so bad I end up with a nose full of muddy snot by the end of the first quarter.  The Ramblers start double-teaming MacNamara, so I have to shoot once in a while.  I’m a lousy shot. Our other squad is better balanced.  Both Browne and Potter are good shooters.  The problem is they both love to shoot, and they end up fighting with each other over the ball.  Other teams come to their games just to watch them cuss at each other.

Even though regular football is outlawed, we’re allowed to play a non-blocking form of it called “Chuckball.” A few of us play it for fun between regular season games.  I love the fluidity of it, sprinting down the sidelines, gauging the ball floating high over my shoulder, the subtle adjustment of direction, the feel of the ball lightly touching down upon my fingertips.  Catching a football is where I have always felt most at home, most competent in the world.  But of course chuckball isn’t an official seminary sport, so it’s hard to get a game organized.

Spring blooms and we start hardball season.  I’m playing first base, Al Potter’s squatting behind the plate, giving signs to Pat Browne on the mound.  Pat’s not looking at Al’s signs or at the batter.  He’s looking down at his shadow, checking his form as he goes into the windup.  He nails the first batter in the butt with a fastball.  The second guy hits a grounder through the shortstop. Potts calls time-out, comes out to the mound.  I head over from first base in case they want to try to pick the runner off.  Potts’ face is flushed, ringed in dusty sweat as he pulls off his mask.  “Watch the goddamn signals, will you?   That was supposed to be a curveball.” Pat kicks the rubber with his spikes.  “Screw you, Potts. He just got lucky.  It should have been an out.”

In the last game I catch a spike on the ankle when Pat tries to pick off a runner at first. It bruises up pretty badly, but there are no bright red spots as there used to be.  The blood disease seems to be fading away.  Good thing, since it’s the end of the year and I still haven’t told my folks I’m playing sports.