The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [61]
“Yea baby! Yeah! Give me that baseball!”
“Alright, that’s how it’s done right there,” Slappy declared, announcing to everyone in earshot as if it was the perfect advertisement. We knew someone would eventually get one. We fished out a beat-up ball and handed it over to the boy. He didn’t care that it wasn’t a new ball, a pearl as we called them. He happily took it, passing it around and high-fiving his friend.
“Okay, let me take my next shot.” He still had three quarters left. Slappy obliged. The odds of him sinking another were slim to none. Giving out one ball was good for business in a way.
The boy lined up his next shot, put his hands in the air, and let the quarter loose. It landed in the center of the cup. “Wow, this kid is amazing. Great job kid!”
“That’s right, that’s right, this game is easy! Bring your quarters, everyone’s a winner!”
We fished him out another ball. He handed it to one of his friends as if it were a large, stuffed dog he won for knocking down milk bottles, then set himself up for his next shot. A quick glance at the inventory of balls revealed that we didn’t have that many scuffed balls, in fact, we had no scuffed balls left. It was early in the season, and we hadn’t beat too many balls up yet. If he drained another one, we’d have to pass him a pearl. I did the math in my head. If this kid made his next shot, we’d be giving out balls at the rate of one ball every six dollars. They cost ten in the gift shop.
The boy set his feet and steadied himself. The quarter tumbled through the air and came up short. We all breathed a little easier. The boy fell back as if he were shot, and all his friends groaned at the near miss. He recovered, set his feet again, and let his last quarter fly. It landed in the center of the cup.
“That’s great, good for you, bud,” Slappy said through gritted teeth. He handed over a perfectly round, rubbed up, game ready, pearl from our bag. The boy took it, chest bumped his compadres, and reached his hand into his pocket to produce another dollar.
“Sorry kid. Game’s over,” Slappy said. Maddog picked up the cup and threw it in the trash. Rosco shut the ball bag.
“But you have a whole bag right there.”
“Sorry. I can’t give any more out.”
“But why—”
“Here kid, take this as a ‘cancelation’ prize,” Maddog said offering the kids Bazooka Joe bubble gum.
“I don’t want no gum.”
“Tough,” Maddog said, pushing gum into the kid’s hands. “Here you go, now you kids go sit down.”
“But—”
“Usher! These kids are bothering us.” The usher came down at our call and shooed the children back to their seats. The boy who won three baseballs told us that we sucked.
“We are going to have to start finding ways to build our inventory if we plan to keep doing this.”
“Let’s all just steal them from batting practice. Those balls are all chewed up—no one will miss them.”
“I just have one question,” I said, looking at Maddog.
“What’s that?”
“Did you call it a cancelation prize, Maddog?”
“Yeah, you know, a prize you get when you don’t get something you want.”
“It’s consolation, buddy. A consolation prize.”
“A constellation prize?”
“So-lation. Consolation.”
“I like cancelation better.”
Around the fifth inning change, Stubbs Wimperton, the team’s soft-throwing left-handed relief specialist who relied on a steady diet of smoke and mirrors to get outs, came walking down to the pen. Fans cawed at Stubbs to take a detour over to them for signatures and souvenirs, but he ignored their requests in favor of stirring his coffee as he plodded along. Not the largest, most masculine build compared to his teammates, Stubbs was about five feet six inches with a receding hairline. He had a waddle to him like a penguin, and an excitable little giggle that followed his words. However, expertly landscaped facial hair and features like Kevin Spacey more than made up for his lack of manly size when it came to impressing females in the audience, something he was a natural at. As he passed the last section of seating, he gazed into the stands and