Chapter 57
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Decker
The Colts aren’t signing me.
Jagger says the market is strong.
I say the market can take its time because I’m newly married and my daughter just started second grade and I’d like to be present to celebrate both of those things, but Jagger says that’s not how free agency works, and I say I know, and so we do the meetings.
Boston
Pellegrino has the handshake of someone who wants you to know he lifts.
He slides a folder across the table with numbers that are genuinely impressive and talks about legacy and championships and the history of the franchise for twenty-two minutes without asking me a single question about what I want.
I eat the steak they ordered for me.
I think about Hazel’s second-grade teacher sending an email about the holiday play last week and asking if both parents would be available to help.
When Pellegrino finally asks if I have any questions, I say no and thank him for his time. Jagger tells me to get my shit together.
I buy a Boston sticker with a clover on it for Hazel.
Houston
The warmer climate is a plus. The GM here is a woman named Dana Chu who has done her homework.
She knows my fielding percentages for the last four years, my numbers against left-handed pitching, my range factor.
She asks good questions and listens to the answers, and the conversation is the best one I’ve had since this process started.
I almost mean it when I tell her I’ll think about it.
On the flight back, I text Penelope a photo of the Houston skyline and she texts back a photo of Hazel’s second-grade art project, which appears to be a self-portrait of a girl with a hula hoop and a large dog.
The dog is not subtle.
Hazel wants to name the dog Goldie, she texts.
I buy a Houston magnet with an astronaut on it for Hazel.
Seattle
It rains the entire time I’m there, which feels appropriate.
The organization is rebuilding, which means they want my veteran presence in the clubhouse.
That’s a polite way of saying they want me to mentor the twenty-two-year-olds who will eventually take over my position.
Hernandez is a good GM who is honest about where they are and what they’re offering, and I respect his honesty even while knowing my answer.
I walk back to the hotel in the rain and call Penelope.
She answers on the second ring and I say nothing for a second, and she says that bad, and I say it’s fine, it’s just Seattle, and she says come home, and I say tomorrow, and she says Hazel wants to know if you’re bringing her something, and I say obviously, and she says she wants a snow globe, and I say it’s not snowing, and she says she doesn’t care, and I find a snow globe of the Space Needle in the hotel gift shop.
Atlanta
The money is the best offer I’ve seen. The GM knows it and leans on it the way people lean on a thing when it’s the strongest thing they have. The weather is good. The team is young and talented and hungry, and they’d use me well.
I sit across the table and do the math.
The flight home from Atlanta is two hours and twenty minutes. Chicago to Atlanta. I could manage that. During the season, it wouldn’t matter. I’d be traveling, regardless. In the offseason, I’d be home.
Penelope said wherever you go, we go, and I know she meant it, but I also know what that means. The house. Hazel’s school. Ripley. The life she built there.
Two hours and twenty minutes.
I eat the bread they bring to the table and tell them I’ll be in touch.
I buy a stuffed Coca-Cola bear for Hazel.
New York
I was already in the city to shoot another ad campaign for Noir Cologne, so Jagger set up a meeting between Graham Sutter and me. The restaurant Sutter picks is the kind of place where the menu has no prices, and everybody acts as though money isn’t a thing.
I arrive exactly on time because I’m not in the business of power moves with men I haven’t decided if I even like yet.
Sutter is already there, which is its own kind of power move—arriving first so I walk to him instead of the other way around.
He stands when he sees me coming, hand already extended, smile already in place.
“Decker.” The handshake is firm without being a contest. “Glad you made the trip.”
“Thanks for the invitation.”
He’s in his late fifties, the kind of man who wears money like a second skin.
Good suit, no tie, the specific casualness of someone who stopped needing to prove themselves a long time ago.
He pours the wine himself when it arrives—an Italian red that probably costs more than my first car—and he does it the way you do things when you want them to feel intimate.
Personal. As if he’s a regular guy and this is just two people having dinner.
I’ve sat across from a lot of men in this business. I know the move.
“I’ll be direct,” he says, settling back in his chair. “I’ve wanted you on this roster for two years. The timing wasn’t right before. It’s right now.”
“I appreciate the directness.”
“Your numbers speak for themselves. Four Gold Gloves. Fielding percentage in the top two percent of the league for the last six seasons. You read the game better than anyone I’ve seen at that position in twenty years.
” He picks up his glass. “And the second half of this season was the best baseball you’ve played in your career.
Which tells me you’ve got something to prove.
I want to be the one who gives you the field to prove Shane Whitaker wrong. ”
I wonder which one of his lackeys gave him my stats.
The conversation moves on through the appetizers and into the main course.
He’s sharper than his presentation suggests, and the vision he has for the team is real and thought through.
He talks about the roster, the gaps, where he sees them in two years.
He doesn’t oversell. He lets the facts do the heavy lifting, and they’re genuinely good.
It’s New York, of course they’re good. More than good.
The offer comes out with the main course, slid across the table on a single card.
Jagger was right. It’s significant.
I look at it. Look up and at him.
“Three years,” Sutter says. “With a player option on the fourth. We want you long-term, not as a bridge. The team around you is real. You’re not walking into a rebuild.”
I put the card face down. “What happened to Ferrara?”
“Retiring. Knee.” He says it without sentiment. “Which is why the timing is right. I need someone who can step in day one. No adjustment period.”
The waiter refills our glasses without being asked. Everything in this room runs on that frequency—smooth, anticipatory, no friction. Sutter has built himself an environment where things happen before he has to ask for them. He must be a regular.
I’m cutting my steak when he leans back and says, almost as an aside, “Heard you married Ripley’s daughter?”
My knife slides along the plate and squeaks.
For the first time tonight, his smile doesn’t seem genuine. “News travels.”
“Yes, we got married a month ago.”
“I give Ripley credit. Not sure I could handle if one of my players was seeing my daughter behind my back.”
“Oh, I wasn’t aware you had kids?” I just want to detour this conversation away from my personal life.
“I don’t, but if I did.” He winks and finishes off his glass of wine.
“I’ve known the Ripley family a long time.”
His eyebrows lift, and he pours himself another glass.
“Good family. Ripley’s one of the best managers in the league.” He swirls his glass. “Must be an interesting dynamic. Dating within the organization. I imagine that complicated your contract situation.”
He says it lightly. Conversationally. As if he’s making an observation about the weather. But I hear it in his tone.
I look at him across the table. Take a sip of my wine. “She had nothing to do with my contract situation. The Colts made their decision based on factors that had nothing to do with my wife.”
“Of course.” He nods, backing off the way people do when they’ve said the thing they wanted to say. “I just meant—it’s a lot to navigate. New relationship, engagement, marriage, free agency all at once.”
“It has been,” I say, but I don’t bother telling him I wouldn’t change anything.
“Well.” He raises his glass. “Congratulations.”
I raise mine. We clink. We drink.
The conversation moves back to baseball, and he’s smooth enough that we’re halfway through dessert before I’ve finished deciding whether I like him.
He hasn’t done anything wrong exactly. Nothing I can specifically point to.
He’s professional and prepared, and the offer is real, and the position sounds as though it’s mine.
I shake his hand at the end of the night and tell him I’ll be in touch and walk out of the restaurant into the New York night.
I stand on the sidewalk.
Jagger is going to tell me this is the best offer I’ll see. He’s probably right.
I take out my phone and call Penelope.
She answers on the first ring.
“How was it?” Her voice is clipped, stressed.
“It’s a good offer.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” I put my hand in my pocket. “I just need to get home. I need to see you and Hazel and think about all of this at home.”
“We’re waiting.”
“Tomorrow,” I say. “I’ll be home tomorrow.”
I stand on the sidewalk a little longer after we hang up.
The number on that card is real and worth considering.
But so is the drawing of a little girl with a hula hoop and a dog on a refrigerator in Chicago.
So is both parents in a forwarded email.
So is a flower ring on a seven-year-old’s right hand.
They are everything to me, but baseball is my career, my way to support them, give them a good life. And Graham Sutter made a serious offer that I’m not sure I can say no to.
I buy an I Love New York keychain for Hazel, although there is a chance she’ll be able to buy any souvenir she wants because New York will be her home next year.