F I C T I O N Ma moped when the Yankees failed to make the pennant that year, and fell into what Chevegny and I thought might be a post-season slump. To help her through I bought her Moneyball on the off-chance she could get her baseball fix that way, help bridge the gap to spring training of 2007. Now, Ma had not been one to read books, her hands so busy with all of us she never had a free moment to herself. In fact, I couldn’t remember her ever reading anything, even after Dad died and she was on her own. She’d watch Doctor Phil or Oprah, but I never even spotted any magazines around. Moneyball was a different game altogether, no pun intended. When she asked what it was about, I told her it treated how poorly-funded teams could vie with money-bag outfits like New York and Boston, and she said it was about time someone looked into that. I thought that in parts the book might be a bit technical but that didn’t seem to bother Ma, or she skipped over them, reporting in a coy voice that she’d been reading about her boy, Jason Giambi, and with tears in her eyes said she now understood why he had such a keen sense of the strike-zone. She got so into that book that one time Chevegny called her to dinner and Ma finally limped in several minutes late, apologizing for not coming on time but explaining that she had to read to the end of the chapter. Trouble brewed in April of 2007 when we were not sure, right up to before the opening pitch of the season, if we could still get the Yankees with our cable. Ma was panicking and I kept calling the cable company and two local satellite dish businesses to find out what was what. Negotiations to get every red cent had Yankee fans country-wide biting their nails in terror that they would have to resort to buying MLB’s games over the Internet. We had no computer in the living room near our big-screen TV, and the logistics of using the Internet to view the games had us reeling. At the last minute we learned one of the dish companies offered the sports package, and all became well in our happy home once again. Except for the alarming news at the start of the 2007 season that Yank after Yank was going on the disabled list. Ma was beside herself and concocted a dark and unlikely scenario to account for what was happening. “Don’t they see,” she cried, “that the Red Sox have sent an evil spy into the Yankee organization to ruin our chances this season? If they can’t win honestly . . . .” I had to cut her off. “Ma, your paranoia’s getting to you.” As soon as I’d said those words, her face crumpled and I felt ashamed of myself. I recovered from my error by assuring her that there certainly seemed to be mismanagement at the highest levels of the Yankee machine, but she cut me off and said I should ponder the meaning of the general manager’s name—Cashman. She argued, “I’m not saying he’s in cahoots with Boston. I’m saying they sent over a spy trainer at a discount price from the Red Sox whose secret mission is to make sure all Yankees get hurt.” It was then
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THE CONTEMPORARY WEST
FALL 2015