Normy sat there, alone on the bench, like a fat dimple. Unmistakably cute in his eighth grade baseball pants and belt. Little precious darling in the Seattle Mariners jersey was picking at his thumb fingernail kicking his cleats against the concrete, tapping a tune only he could hear. He didn’t know why he chewed his finger nails. With his mouth or just picking with his fingers, he’d make them bleed, over and over again. Infections came, and went. Recovery. And back to picking and biting he’d go. He idled there alone on the bench while the rest of his team was on the field, except Wilson of course. Wilson Kruger was on the other end of the bench, his head so far in the clouds you’d think he found the promised land. Chewing Big League Chew by the fist full, staring directly at the sun. Wilson Kruger was not the brightest, but he may have been the wisest of us all. While we all played this very important game, he was playing another game, not setting himself up for the undigestible outcome of winning or losing. Wilson’s parents made him play and although he took no apparent joy from running on a field and throwing a baseball, his eyes would light up and a breaking smile would arrive every time there was a huddle or something team oriented. Wilson was a bigger part of the team than any of us bothered to understand, and now it’s too late.
Norms Dad showed up in the bottom of the sixth, Donald “Donny” Walters, a used to be television executive who used to be a lawyer who used to be better and smarter than all the rest of us regular people. He knew everything about every sport, every job, every person, and had zero clue of himself. He was truculently handsome, with a smile and a type of charisma that somehow pulled you in despite knowing it would swallow you and tear your mind from it’s sockets, and you’d lie there, in heaps of pieces, knowing secretly that you let him do it. You gave him permission, deep down, to punish you and twist you until you squelch like if a towel had a soul. Coach Barber was a mild mannered man, even tempered and unequivocally optimistic. A devout Mormon who looked like a Jew, big bushy eyebrows that he tried to tame, they in fact tamed him, those Jewish eyebrows. He was in fact an actual lawyer and also head coach of the Mariners this season, coaching his son William Barber, the leagues biggest prospect. He was fast and stole bases more than anyone else in the league. Billy B hit at least one triple, one double, and one single in four games in a row. That was crazy. Runs piled up around him. Billy was pitching. He wasn’t the best pitcher but he threw the hardest. Catching mini meteorites hurled by Billy wasn’t necessarily fun, it hurt and their primary catcher, Todd Ingles, would have to take a fifth inning stretch. Guess who’d get in there to back him up, Norm. Norm would block the blasts from Billy’s mature throwing arm and essentially keep the game from getting out of their control. Norm hated this. Why him? Because he was fat? That’s what his Dad told him, trying to motivate him to lose weight.
Now his father was there, impetuous, needing his time to be used well. He needed action, Norms was sitting. This wouldn’t do, he needed to either be here or he needed to go be doing Hollywood stuff, work, meetings, people, socializing was how this person made money, or at least that’s the only thing he was actually good at. He was a middle man. The world needs them. Middle men. And they are mighty middle men….
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