'The Entitled': A tale of modern baseball

So while “The Entitled” is about a superstar Hispanic-American baseball player, Jay Alcazar, he could be the golden boy of any background, in any sport today. I wanted to reveal what it is like to be a classic modern athlete, but also to understand that we must be careful not to stereotype any of these guys.

I also wanted to show the other extreme — the athlete who devotes himself to his game, even though he lacks great natural ability. Such a man is Howie Traveler, Jay’s manager (and foil).

The delicate relationship between the two men — one so blessed, the other so driven — is of the sort that is so deeply etched into sport but hasn’t ever been studied in other novels. I didn’t want to write an “inside baseball” story, but instead an “inside-the-team” story.

At the heart of the novel is the possibility of a date rape. It is an issue that is so common in society today. What are the boundaries? And when a male celebrity-athlete, such as Alcazar, goes out with a woman, who might be taking advantage of whom — meaning, is it the woman out for money or the superstar taking advantage of his status/celebrity?

Excerpt from the first chapter of Deford’s new book, ‘The Entitled’

So, for Howie, it was, at last, neither resignation on the one hand, nor anger on the other. No, it was simply awful, horrible disappointment that tore at him. That it all must end this way. No, not this way. Anyway it ended would be a calamity, because despair would follow, and Howie understood himself well enough to know that he didn’t possess the creative resources to really ever overcome that despair.

This is the way he put it, over the phone, to Lindsay: “I’m a dead man, sweetie. I know I won’t get outta Baltimore alive.”

Howie was, after all, a practical man. Whenever one of his regulars would go onto the disabled list, all the writers would flutter around him, asking how the team could possibly manage until the wounded star returned.

“I don’t deal with the dead,” Howie would reply. That concluded the discussion. Ask me about the ones who could suit up. You play with what you had. And now it was he who was the dead man, because he was positive that he was going to be fired in Baltimore, and that would mean the end of his life in baseball, which was the only existence he had ever known.

There was a singular blessing. Because his demise was so clear-cut, he had, for the short term, found a certain calm within, so by the time he got to Baltimore he was concerned mostly with how, when the inevitable happened, he must display dignity upon his leave-taking. There would be no grousing. He would, in fact, thank the Indians for giving him the opportunity to manage in the major leagues. He would wish the team and the organization well.

There would be no back-biting. Of course, yes, he would, in passing (only in passing, you understand) recall how well the team had done under his aegis his first year on the job. He would not embellish that fact, but he would mention it (in passing) so as to remind everyone that just because Howie Traveler was a busher, he had shown that he could damn well manage a team in the big leagues. He had proved that. It was important to leave the media bastards with that. Especially the talk-radio bastards, those who spewed venom for a living, and those amateur venom-spewing bastards who just called in.

When he got to Baltimore and found the time, Howie was going to write down what he wanted to say, and then commit it to memory so that he would display extemporaneous eloquence in his last public appearance.

In the meantime, he tried to pretend that he was not dwelling on what everyone knew. The pallbearers were assembling. Not only the columnists from the Plain Dealer and the Akron Beacon Journal, but, as well, the lead columnist of the Columbus Dispatch had signed onto the press manifest this trip, ready to dress up his obituary on the spot for the enlightenment of central Ohio fans. After all, a road trip offered the kind of timetable general managers preferred for these proceedings. Fire the manager away from home. Let an interim manager — in this case, the team’s trusty old reliable Spencer “Frosty” Westerfield, the bench coach — handle the next series, in Chicago, and then have the new man on hand, prepared to assume command — “take the helm,” as the papers would have it — when the team returned to Cleveland, ready to start fresh, turn a new leaf, salvage the season, restore the damage that he, Howie Traveler, had indisputably done.

Never was anything so pat. So Howie just waited for Moncrief to fly in from Cleveland and fire him. Of course, everybody knows that baseball managers are, as it is written in stone, hired to be fired, but this was cold comfort when you were the manager in question and this was your time to be eighty-sixed.

Once there was a basketball coach named Cholly Eckman, and when he got a call from the owner, who told him he was “going to make a change in your department,” Cholly said “fine.” Then, as Cholly recalled, it ruefully occurred to him that he was the only one in his department.

Nowadays, though, what general managers tell managers when they fire them is that: “We have decided to go in another direction.” Unsaid: That direction will be up, whereas you, you dumb sonuvabitch, have been taking us in a direction that is most assuredly down.

So now, Howie put on the best smile he could manage, of the sort he assayed when he had to take a staged photograph at a charity auction or some such thing. “I wish I could think to say something really clever wise-ass when Moncrief tells me that,” he said.

He had arrived in Baltimore and was eating dinner (as best he could) with his daughter.

“Don’t, Daddy,” Lindsay said. “Just be classy, like always. Everybody with any sense knows it’s not your fault. Go out with style, and that’ll help you get another chance.”

Howie took his hand off his Old Grandad, reached over and laid it on hers. Lindsay was his only daughter, only family now, really. How adorable it was of her, how thoughtful, that she had come up from Washington, where she worked as a lawyer for some arcane House subcommittee, to see him. She had just showed up, knowing what an incredibly difficult time he was going through. She had been standing there when Howie came out of the clubhouse after the game tonight. The Indians had beaten the Orioles, 6-4. Alcazar had gone three-for-five, with a monstrous home run and then a two-run double in the ninth that won the game. He’d been dogging it all season, it seemed, but now that he knew Howie was shit-canned, he was suddenly a hitting fool again.

And then there was Lindsay, standing outside the clubhouse. Howie almost cried. Funny, too. He didn’t instantly recognize her, for she was there, amidst a covey of other women, who were there to consort with his ballplayers. Howie could forget sometimes that Lindsay was a grown woman now, and more than that: as pretty (well, almost so) as the sort of women ballplayers would take out on the road. Lindsay Traveler had more style, though, than those sort of women. Howie didn’t himself necessarily possess style — for one thing, to his eternal despair, his legs were too short, and he had a lumpy face — but he recognized style when he was within its penumbra.

Somehow, Lindsay — she, a lousy minor league ballplayer’s daughter — had learned to dress in that way chic ladies of fashion do, with the ability to choose clothes that manage to work so perfectly that they count twice — once for how they look and then again because they proclaim to the world: This lady knows what’s best, what’s right, what’s stylish, so don’t even try to put one over on her.

Howie just wished she would let her hair grow longer, have it tumbling down, the way she did when she was younger. That was his only real complaint with her.
“No, honey,” he said to her now. “Guys like me just get the one shot.”

“Maybe not,” Lindsay said.

“Nah, and now I’m pegged, too. Traveler can’t get along with the big star. I’m old school. A hard ass. I thought he could work with me, and he did last year, but ...” Howie shrugged. He didn’t want to go over it anymore. These last few days, he had constantly had to talk with the writers about the possibility of his getting fired, and everybody else avoided him, so for some time now, he hadn’t talked about anything else. So he asked Lindsay about her job and her iffy boyfriend and anything else he could think of, so he didn’t have to talk about himself getting fired. He also asked: “How’s your mother?” and Lindsay told him, obliquely. Howie said to give her his best, and Lindsay said of course she would.

Then there was no more to say, and so he called for the check. They had gone to a restaurant in Little Italy, which was just far enough away from the hotel, at the Inner Harbor, and far enough off the beaten track that nobody was liable to find him there. “Are you sure you wanna drive back to Washington?” he asked. “I think the couch pulls out.” Managers got suites. So, alone among the Cleveland players, did Alcazar. It was in his latest contract. Not enough he got seventeen-and-a-half million a year, he got perks too. He had incentive clauses. Excuse me, Howie thought: Seventeen-five with five zeroes wasn’t incentive enough?

“No, Daddy. I’ll go back. I’m taking next week off and goin’ down to the beach in Delaware, so I’ve gotta finish a lot of stuff.”

She dropped him back off at the hotel, where she gave him a big hug. “I’m very proud of you,” Lindsay said, and Howie knew she was starting to cry. She hadn’t cried the whole time, up to now.

He got out of the car and went through the lobby walking quickly, dead on toward the elevators, looking straight ahead, praying there was nobody there to ask him about whether he’d heard anything new about his own impending demise.

As it turned out soon enough, too bad there hadn’t been somebody there to delay him.

On his floor, he hurried down the hall. And then the door just ahead of him to his right flew open. If only Lindsay had come up with him. If only he’d arrived here a minute earlier or a minute later. Just that, either way. Seconds. The one thing Howie knew, whenever he looked back on it, was that he did not want that door to open before him. But it did, and even before Alcazar came up behind the woman, and grabbed her roughly and slammed the door shut with his foot — almost as quickly as it had opened — for just those split seconds, Howie saw it all clearly. And he remembered exactly what he saw and what he heard. It was not much, but then, after all, it happened so quickly that there was not enough for his vision of it to be blurred.

No, however much Howie was taken by surprise, however much that made him freeze in his steps, it emblazoned the scene in his memory: the woman, pretty (if in no special way) but built rather nicely, her blouse pulled out just a bit from her skirt, her hair out of place some, her face creased with shock as Alcazar’s strong arms came up behind her, wrapped round her waist, yanking her back as she tried to get away, even as his foot reared up and violently slammed the door shut. And that last moment before she disappeared as she caught sight of Howie in the hall and her mouth seemed to open just enough to cry out to him. But there was no sound, just the pretty enough face, aghast, and then the door slamming shut before him.

Howie had paused there, listening, pondering whether he should knock. But he heard nothing — certainly no scream, no struggle — and, at last, he only turned and went down the hall to his suite. There he poured himself another bourbon, a nightcap, but it didn’t help, for all he could think about was that he hadn’t had the nerve to intrude. It was too late now. Whatever Alcazar was going to do with that woman, he had done it. No, it wasn’t any business of his who his players were screwing, but this seemed to be a different kettle of fish, completely.

Copyright (c) 2007 by Frank Deford

 

DEFORD BOOK SIGNING

Examiner columnist Frank Deford will be signing copies of his new book — “The Entitled” — at the Inner Harbor Barnes & Noble Friday from 4 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

About the author: Baltimore native — and Gilman graduate — Frank Deford is among the most honored writers in the country. He is Senior Contributing Editor at Sports Illustrated, a commentator on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” and a correspondent for HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.” Deford, 68, is the author of 15 books, two of which were made into movies — “Everybody's All-American” and “Alex: The Life of A Child,” a memoir about his young daughter who died of cystic fibrosis. He won an Emmy in 1988 for his work at the Seoul Olympics for NBC, and he received a Cable Ace award in 1994 for HBO’s "Arthur Ashe: Citizen of the World." He is chairman emeritus of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and resides in Westport, Connecticut with his wife, Carol. His column appears Thursdays in The Examiner.