Chapter 5
JEFF
“Lookin’ good, Coach!”
“It’s about time!”
I wave at my players, acknowledging their ribbing as I stride out to meet the wedding officiants at home plate.
The loud speaker crackles to life, and our home game announcer welcomes the modest crowd to the pregame event.
“Friends and family of the Outlaws, and of our lucky couples today, please welcome the honorary groom, team manager Jeff Rosehill!”
Now my wave is to the crowd, some of them clearly dressed up—in one way or another—to exchange very real vows of their own after I do the schtick version with our mascot, Captain Citrus.
Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I agreed to this.
There are two people performing the service today: someone from city hall and a minister. Molly thought of everything, apparently. I introduce myself to them gruffly, then we’re saved from any more conversation by the ballpark organ starting to play Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.”
Captain Citrus emerges from the tunnel, the handler guiding him. He waves at the crowd, and it’s not his usual gesture. It’s nervous, and I wonder if Molly cornered him in a dark office too.
Not that I was actually cornered.
If anything, she was the one caught like a wild animal, snared in my trap when I caught her spinning around in my chair. I’m the predator who blocked the door, who snapped at her and pretended not to know her name in a misguided attempt to remind her of my authority.
We’ve only met twice, but both times, her bold, fearless confidence has gotten the better of me.
Both times, I’ve been left wanting more, aching with an unfamiliar craving.
I can’t wait until spring training is over and I’ll be on the road with the team after the time, far away from the bright, incessant ideas of Molly Henderson.
The mascot stops beside me, and the organ music finishes with a dramatic flourish. The crowd cheers.
“Friends and family and fans, we’re gathered here today to celebrate the nuptials of many special Outlaws. Before we proceed with the group ceremony, our honorary couple of the day will exchange rings.”
The handler makes sure that the Captain’s holding an oversized baseball ring the right way up, then the mascot gets down on one knee, proposing to me.
I turn red.
“Yeah, yeah, of course I’ll marry you,” I say gruffly.
It’s picked up on the officiant’s mic, and the crowd goes nuts.
I roll my eyes, and there’s a faint giggle from inside the mascot uniform.
I frown. That’s not what our usual mascot guy sounds like.
Peering intently at the screen that covers the grapefruit’s mouth doesn’t help.
I help the muscular pirate mascot back to his feet. Her feet? I’m pretty sure whoever is in the costume today is a woman, from that little laugh.
She catches my left hand and clumsily puts the ring on me. It’s big enough to go all the way around my wrist, and it swings around, the baseball weighting it funny.
We both laugh. The whole stadium laughs. I’m sure the video of this is going to go viral, and Molly will be thrilled.
The officiant hands me a matching, even bigger baseball ring.
“Now, Coach, we have it on good authority that you’re a bachelor man. Married to baseball, they say.”
They do say that. I shrug, vaguely uncomfortable. After Sinclaire’s mom and I broke up a long time ago, I accepted that I wasn’t built for relationships, not when I gave everything I had to the game. I focused on being a better father and the best coach I could be.
But now … now it itches at me to hear it that way. I’m not proud that I’ve never remarried. I think about how happy Sinclaire and Trick are, and there’s a part of me that wants that for myself—with the right woman.
With someone fearless and bold like Molly. Someone who would challenge me to be a good husband, to love her with my whole heart, to laugh and fight and live.
She’s half my age, but God, I’d be so good to her if I had the chance. Which I won’t. I can’t.
“Time to turn over a new leaf,” I mutter to the officiant. “Even if it’s against my will.”
My words crackle through the whole ballpark.
The mascot costume shakes with silent laughter.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. In for a penny … I lean in so the microphone picks up my next words clearly. “No, I’m happy to be doing this. I’m proud of our fans for choosing our ballpark for their big day. We’re going to have a great season, Outlaws!”
There’s a cheer.
Now I lean away from the officiant and whisper to the mascot, “Is that better?”
“That’s great,” she whispers back. “You’re a lot of fun when you aren’t growling.”
The teasing words are muffled a bit by the crowd noise and the screened mask, but I’d recognize the bright notes of that voice anywhere. “Molly?”
She doesn’t reply.
My heart pounds as the officiant puts our hands together.
“Coach, repeat after me …”
I stare at the too young, too sweet, too bright woman of my dreams hiding inside a costume she’s wearing because she wants to help my team climb back to the success it knew only two years earlier.
And I hear myself say a wedding vow that will haunt me forever.
“I, Jeff Rosehill, also known as Rosie and Coach, take you, Captain Citrus …”
The crowd roars again, and the mascot’s hands squeeze mine.
“Molly,” I repeat again under my breath.
I take you, Molly …
How I wish that could be true.
“I take you to be my outlawfully wedded spouse …”
Another rousing cheer.
I take you to be my lawfully wedded wife …
“In sickness and in health, in good times and in bad. With all that I am and all that I have, I give you this ring.”
It’s a bit of a mangle of the real vows I would say in another lifetime, but it still feels profound to even hold her hand and say it as part of a charade.
I work the baseball ring onto her hand, then sweep her into a dip that I know will play well for the cameras.
Afterward, we pose for a photo with the officiants, and then I step aside as the real couples to get married file onto the field, the organ once again playing the “Wedding March” for them.
The mascot handler moves Molly away from me, and then the game begins immediately after the ceremony. There’s no chance to find her, and when the game ends that day, she’s long gone from the ballpark.
My chest feels hollow in a funny way, like I’m sad we can’t debrief together on how weird that was. That thing we did. That time we got fake married at home plate.
That time I almost made Molly my wife.
And when I drive the short distance to my rented condo, the little house I stay in for the short spring training season, Sinclaire and Silas are waiting for me.
She has video of the entire thing, and she’s shocked when I’m willing to sit through replay after replay.
“That was a really fun thing you did, Dad,” she says as I watch it again, her toddler climbing on my back.
Fun?
It was something.
“If your husband would just come back to play for me, I wouldn’t have to do things like this to fill the seats,” I grumble.
She just laughs.
And for the first time in my life, I fully understand why it was easy for him to retire without a second glance back when we’d just won the World Series. Because Trick doesn’t need baseball anymore.
But I’m all alone, and when she flies back to Wyoming, baseball will be literally all that I have.