Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
COOPER
“ I ’m such a huge fan, Coop. We’re all rooting for you to make a full recovery,” the very tan woman I just took a selfie with says.
“That means a lot,” I say with my signature grin. She turns her attention to her phone, and I’m 99% sure she’s going to give me her number. I bolt before she can.
I run hard and fast for the first half mile, wanting to get as much distance as possible between me and potential fans. But soon, my feet find a familiar rhythm that calms my racing thoughts.
It’s good to be back in Phoenix. The bone-chill of Chicago makes my elbow ache enough to need another surgery. I grew up in a border town in New Mexico, so mild, dry winters feel familiar to me. Because we didn’t have our own MLB team, my family cheered for the Diamondbacks. Getting to play for the team I love for the first seven years of my career was a dream come true. But I may have not quite been the dream they wanted. I wasn’t a bad teammate, or anything, but I’ve had a target on my back since I was on the cover of Sports Illustrated in high school. And let me tell you, I’ve had fun with that target. Sometimes at the expense of the team, as the woman in the airport suggested.
The woman in the airport. And the lobby. And the stairwell. She’s like a pretty little pest that can’t stop buzzing around my head. Those blue eyes of hers saw too much. And that mouth said too much. She said she works in baseball, and considering the entire Firebirds organization—from Single A to the Majors to our international affiliates—has meetings here this week, it’s safe to assume she works for the Firebirds at some level. She must belong to the most long-suffering department in the business, because she’s insufferable.
The stuff she spouted is nothing new; in fact, it’s getting old. I’d normally keep my disguise on, but I couldn’t with how wound up she was.
Maybe I shouldn’t have kept winding her, come to think of it. Her neck was so red when she was ranting about me, I probably should have kept quiet and at least listened politely.
Or not.
I’m not trying to make my team hated; I’m trying to make baseball fun again. Other sports have so much tradition around celebration, and baseball has a tradition of being “too good to celebrate.”
Too boring, more like it.
Kids don’t watch baseball to the same degree anymore. There’s a reason more and more people are getting into teams like the Savannah Bananas. They make baseball fun.
And so do I.
When the Diamondbacks traded me, it was because they couldn’t afford me. But not all of Arizona was sad to see me go, and it’s because of my “attitude” about the sport. I’m not respectful enough. I don’t venerate it like some holy institution.
I see it as a game. One I get paid a lot of money to play, and one I play to the best of my ability. I train harder than any guy on the field. And the Firebirds have been good to me, fortunately. I’ve tried hard to be a team player. Harder, at least.
But come on, if you run your mouth about how you’re going to strike me out, yeah, when I hit a homer off you, I’m going to blow you a kiss. And do a backflip onto home plate.
I don’t make the rules.
After another few miles, I reach a gated community. I look at my phone and enter the code my GM sent me. A moment later, the small walking gate unlatches and I enter an immaculately kept neighborhood that’s a far cry from the tiny apartment I grew up in. The entire neighborhood looks like it’s something out of a “Christmas Wars” reality show, where neighbors compete for best decorations, prettiest Christmas lights, most reindeer on a roof, you name it.
And I love it.
After another half mile, I reach a gorgeous, sprawling home and press the camera doorbell. A moment later, a little kid says in a robot voice, “Who are you and why are you here?”
“I’m Cooper Kellogg, and I’m here to see your dad,” I say.
“Dad! Coop’s here! Can he sign my—” There’s a scuffle, and a moment later, my GM opens the door, his salt and pepper hair looking disheveled.
“Hey Doug,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Sorry, Coop. Come on in.” His seven year-old is hiding behind his legs. “You remember Mason, don’t you?”
“I do,” I say, bumping his fist with mine.
“Can you sign a baseball for me?” Mason asks before his dad can cover his mouth.
“I signed ten for you last time I saw you, didn’t I?” I say.
“Don’t sign anything,” Doug says. “He’s been selling balls with your autograph on them for a hundred bucks a pop.”
“A hundred each?” I chuckle. “Not bad, kid.”
Mason sighs. “Yeah, but Aiden sold a Hideo Suzuki ball for two hundred.”
“Two hundred?” I huff. “Hideo Suzuki can sniff my dirty socks. And so can Aiden.”
“It’s simple economics,” Doug says, tousling his son’s hair. “Aiden was the only kid in school with a signed Hideo Suzuki ball. You sold ten of Coop’s. Supply and demand, kid.”
Mason sticks his tongue out at his dad.
“Careful. That’ll put you on the Naughty List,” Doug says.
“NO!” Mason screams, falls at his dad’s feet, and starts hitting Doug’s legs. “Daddy, no! Don’t tell Santa!”
Doug shakes his head. “I won’t tell Santa.”
Mason’s tears dry up and he immediately runs off.
“That kid is a bigger handful than his four older siblings combined,” Doug mutters.
Doug leads me through his beautifully decorated home. Each room has a Christmas tree, and it makes me nostalgic for Christmas with my parents. As lovely as Doug’s mansion-home is, it can’t compare to my mom’s decorating. She always made our little apartment seem grander than the Windsor Hotel on Christmas. And now that she and Dad are celebrating Christmas in the house I bought for them, she does the same on a grander scale.
Doug escorts me outside to the backyard. His home is on at least a couple of acres, and just past the pool, I see an actual baseball diamond I itch to play on. We walk over to it and stand in front of home plate. I breathe in deeply.
There’s nothing more beautiful than an empty stadium. The perfectly manicured lawn, the crisp white base lines, the orderly seats. When I was ten, my travel baseball team had a tournament in Phoenix, and my dad took me to my first Spring Training game. The stadium took my breath away. We sat on the lawn, the sun beating down on us even in March. Dad got me a huge bag of cotton candy, and to this day, it’s still my favorite treat. Then, something incredible happened. A player came up to bat and pointed to the outfield, just like Babe Ruth calling his home run.
But the crowd booed the guy.
I couldn’t understand why they’d boo him. He was so brave! When he hit a pop fly, the crowd laughed, and I held back tears.
Dad put his arm around me and told me that it was just a game and the player had thick skin. The Jumbotron showed him holding out his arms in a shrug, but he was smiling. “It’s all part of The Show,” Dad said.
That guy became my hero.
He wasn’t a big player. He only lasted six seasons in the majors. But he got into baseball operations, and guess what team he manages now?
The Chicago Firebirds.
The pretty pest from the airport and the lobby and the stairwell is right: I’m not a fifty million a year player. The Dodgers offered me even more.
But they didn’t have Doug Turner as their GM.
“You miss it already, don’t you?” Doug asks. His eyes jump down to the wicked scar that curves around my elbow on the inside of my arm.
“Yeah, but don’t worry,” I say. “I’m not doing anything to get in the way of making a full recovery.”
He nods and guides us back through the yard and over to the covered patio, where a full spread awaits us. “I get it,” he says. “It took me about a decade to get over retiring.”
“You’ve done okay for yourself.” I gesture around. “Summers in Chicago and winters in Scottsdale? I’d say being a general manager has its perks.”
“Yeah, but I’d still be playing if I’d had half your skill.”
“Or if you had your real knees.”
He barks out a laugh and we both pile up our plates and sit at the outdoor table. The weather is perfect—probably 70 degrees—and it’s the only thing I don’t like about December in the desert now that I’ve lived in snow.
It doesn’t feel like Christmas.
My mom always made sure that even though it was sunny outside, our apartment felt like a winter wonderland. I still don’t know how she did it, how she managed to make the mundane magical.
I know why she did it, though. Why she still does and always will.
I ask Doug about the team while we eat, but rather than talking about the holes in our roster, he turns the conversation back to me.
“How are your parents?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say.
“Is your dad still working at the Builder’s Bench? He promised he was going to retire this year, didn’t he?”
“He has officially retired and is talking about buying an RV. He said once my elbow has healed, he wants to drive to every one of my games.”
Doug chuckles. “How does your mom feel about that?”
I swallow hard. Doug doesn’t know as much about my mom as he does about my dad, but I get the feeling he knows more than I want him to. Of course, it’s hard not to put some pieces together when my dad attended every one of my playoff games last season and she didn’t make it to one. “That’ll be a game time decision,” I say, and leave it at that.
“Are they flying out for Christmas?” he asks. My chest aches with a familiar pain.
“No, I’ll go visit them.”
Doug holds my eye for a moment too long. Then he crumples his napkin and throws it away.
“Let’s talk about the coming season. The doc isn’t clearing you, so you have a full eighteen months to get ready for your next Spring Training. Right?”
My chest burns with something between guilt and humiliation. I was traded to the team to win them a World Series, and instead, in the last game of the league championship series, I tore a ligament in my elbow trying to throw out the tying run at home plate. I ripped my arm apart throwing that ball from right field, and it still wasn’t enough.
The ump ruled the guy safe.
My injury can’t compare to how bad I feel having failed my team. Failed Doug. It’s a pain no surgery can fix. “Coop?”
I blink. “Uh, yeah, I’ll miss all next season. It’s healing nicely, but the doc doesn’t want me risking reinjury. If that’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay. This is your life we’re talking about. We brought you in for the long haul, not for a single season. We believe in you. And to that end,” he says, distracting me from getting too choked up. “Let’s talk about how we can put you to work. I’d like you to be my special assistant over scouting next year.”
“Scouting? You want me in the front office?”
“You’re too valuable to us not to squeeze a bit of extra work out of you.”
“I’ll do whatever you want.” I hate how eager I sound, but I can’t hide it. I’m known for my devil-may-care attitude, and I’m not playing a part as much as you’d think. You don’t know me? Don’t like me? I don’t care what you think.
But if I like you —if I respect you—I need your approval like Mason needs to know he’s on the Nice List.
Doug nods. “Good. I want you to focus hard on rehab. But this week, I need you at our staff retreat working with the analytics team to fix our roster. And you can’t be a punk about it.”
He grabs a heavy folder from the chair next to him and drops it between us like it’s punctuation. A period. A command.
“That’s the second time today I’ve been called a punk,” I say. “Am I in a John Hughes movie? Is this The Breakfast Club ?”
“Who was the first person?”
“Some woman in the airport.”
Doug’s lips twitch, but he shakes his head. “She has your number, Coop. You’re the most passionate player on the field, day in, day out. Everyone who gets to see past the bravado likes you. The problem is most people don’t get to know you well enough to see past it. But I need you talking to coaches and front office staff who aren’t impressed by your on-base percentage because they’re too busy analyzing how much you’re costing the team.”
“Ouch.”
“I’m telling you like it is. You can’t pull crap like giving them your autograph or blowing a kiss if I pick a player you recommended over them.”
“I get it,” I say. “I won’t let you down.”
Doug smiles. “Good man. Now let me drive you back to the resort so you can study prospects.” We get up, and I take our dishes with me into the house. “You don’t need to do that. I’ll have my kids clean it up.”
“I don’t mind,” I say. I scrape down the dishes and load them in the chef’s kitchen as Doug watches me.
When I’m done, I follow him through the house and into the garage, where we climb into his Tesla. “You know, if people found out that you clean a rich dude’s home, they’d have to change their minds about you. This would kill your reputation.”
“Easy, now. I’m a showboat, not a jerk.”
“You’re a better guy than most people will ever know.”
“As long as the right people know, I’m cool. Oh, and it’s okay if you know, too.”
Doug laughs under his breath. “Such a punk.”