A PERFECT GAME
There was so little time left. Loren shifted his gaze from the ball in his fingers to the hand signals flashing between the catcher's thighs, unable to focus on anything. He shook his head, rejecting the catcher's suggestions, and just felt the weight of the scuffed baseball in his right hand.
The weight of the world, it felt to Loren. This five-ounce sphere contained multitudes to him; a planet unto itself which had drawn his entire life into its gravity. A life he could very well lose, if this pitch didn’t land.
Loren never thought the game could mean so much. It was a high school state championship, yes, but it was the kind of game that thrills while it lasts and is recalled fondly over a few cold beers a decade later. It wasn't the majors. It shouldn't have held a wager on his life in the balance.
Loren had at first hoped Coach Melberg was being hyperbolic when he said that Loren's life depended on the outcome of this game. There were scouts in the stands with offers riding on his performance tonight, and so far each pitch had hit its mark, solidly in the catcher's mitt as it bypassed swing after hopeful swing. Strike after strike, out after out, Loren had pitched a no-hitter. Now, at the bottom of the ninth, with two outs, no men on base and two strikes, everything came down to this pitch. One pitch away from a perfect game.
Coach Melberg observed from the dugout, his nerves taut as he assessed whether he needed to trot out to the mound. The sweatband of his cap was saturated after nine innings of razor thin spaces between bat and ball, but not once had contact been made against Loren’s pitch. He knew he was in the wrong, heaping this pressure on an eighteen-year-old boy, but it wasn't Loren's life that was truly under threat. It was his own.
Melberg was lying in a very messy bed made by casting sketchy bets with a lawyer who, at best, had a cursory relationship with the law he was charged to uphold. Jason Lake was a charlaton, a cheat, and an undeniable shyster. Melberg was taken in by Lake's insistance of a sure thing, and when the first couple of bets resulted in losses, Lake was gracious and assured Melberg that he could take his time to pay.
Lake was here now, watching just as intently as Melberg was while Loren pondered his final pitch. Lake’s patience had worn thin quickly, along with his friendly demeanor, and when Melberg did not have the funds after a month, the threats began. At first he was afflicted with only minor inconveniences. The air was let out of his tires. They weren't slashed; only deflated. Packages were stolen from his porch, but they would turn up later, opened and sometimes damaged. Things got darker when he came home one day to find his basement flooded from his own garden hose having been thrust through a newly shattered egress window. Every morning for a week, when he let his dog out, it returned from the yard with a dead rat in its mouth. At the week's end, the dog did not return. Melberg later found it in much the same condition as the rats.
When the game turned deadly, Melberg's desperation fell to his last resort. He met Lake in a commuter parking lot and convinced him to take bets on the baseball championship. He assured the man that Loren couldn't lose. The team was undefeated and was sure to win again with Loren on the mound.
Lake was swayed, but wanted to raise the stakes. "Just winning or losing is dull, especially on a sure thing. But if the kid delivers a shutout - now that would be interesting."
Melberg gulped. "I mean, the kid's a phenom, don't get me wrong, but a shutout - do you know how hard that is? How rare?"
"Exactly," Lake sneered. "Nobody would bet on that. Except you."
Melberg's jaw dropped. "Me? What?"
Lake shrugged casually. "The kid pulls it off, you live."
Melberg stared at Lake, aghast. "But – as you said - nobody else is going to take that bet."
"Of course not," Lake replied, an oily grin spreading over his jaw like a blood stain. "This is just for you."
"I don't have anything to wager," Melberg stammered, a panicked sweat dotting his brow.
"You bet your life," Lake said flippantly. "The kid pulls through, you live to pay another day. They win the game, I get paid off the other wagers. I can't lose, but you can." Lake tossed the last words at Melberg as he walked away.
When Melberg called Loren to his office the next day, he came clean with the youth, telling him about his bad bets and the threats from Lake, but he made one very dirty edit to the story. He said that Loren's life was part of the wager.
"Me? What the hell, Coach! Why would he want to kill me?" Loren was both stunned and dubious, backing up toward the door.
"I can't claim to know how these people think. I don't know why; all I do know is we are both dead if the game isn't a shutout." Melberg hated himself, but he didn't see any way out other than to make sure Loren understood what was riding on this game. The only way he thought he could do that was to make Loren feel the threat as much as he did.
"I'm not a part of this, Coach. I don't have to listen to this! This is crazy. I... there's no way! I have to go." Loren ran from the athletic office, terrified and bewildered, but still not sure he believed the gravity of his coach's story.
That would change by the end of the school day, when he left his last class to find his car on its rims in the parking lot, all the tires having been fully deflated. He ran to the athletic office and reported the incident to Melberg, who went white-faced and wide-eyed at the news.
"That was the first thing he did to me too," he said, then grimaced in anguish. "Oh my God, Loren, listen to me. After that he flooded my house, and he - Loren, he killed my dog. He's serious. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry he targeted you because of me, but you can do this. We can do this. You're the best pitcher I've ever seen, and -"
"Shut the FUCK up, Coach!" Loren shouted. "I don't care what you did. I don't care what happened to you. Don't fucking talk to me ever again. I'll do what I have to do, but you and me - we are done. After this game I don't want to see you, hear you, think about you - nothing. Fuck you for putting this on me." Loren wheeled to the door and stalked to the parking lot to wait for a tow, and Melberg hung his head as he slipped his hand into his pocket and touched the four valve cores he’d taken from Loren’s tires.
One evening later, here they were: Melberg, Lake, and Loren, gathered together in the mutually held breath that had been drawn as Loren finally reared his right arm back and snapped it forward, rocketing the innocuous leather ball into the uncertain expanse between his fingers and home plate.
The crowd, suspended in that moment, fell out of it all at once and erupted in a cacophony of celebration after they all heard the unmistakeable impact of leather on leather, the ball having sailed under the swinging bat to drive itself deep into the pocket of the catcher's mitt.
Loren’s knees turned to water and he collapsed to the pitcher’s mound, heaving to stave off sobs of relief as he pressed his fingers into the red clay beneath him. His teammates streamed from the field and dugout and swarmed him, hoisting him onto their shoulders in jubilation.
Overcome with both relief and triumph, Coach Melberg had started to dart onto the field as well. He hadn’t even crossed the baseline when Loren, atop the shoulders of his fellow celebrants, caught him in a hard, cold glare that rooted him to the spot. Melberg remembered himself then, and the grotesque nature of what he had just done to the new hometown hero. With a conciliatory nod, he turned away from the field, slinking back to his office.
He wasn’t surprised to find Jason Lake there, seated at his desk in spite of the locked door.
“Good game, Coach,” said Lake, tossing and catching a new baseball in one hand. “One for the books, indeed.”
“How about your books?” asked Melberg. His sense of relief had started to wane.
“Oh, your name’s still there,” Lake replied with a broad smile, rising from the chair and walking around the desk. “I’ll be in touch.” He winked at Melberg, tossing the ball to him as he sauntered past him and out the door.
Melberg stood unmoving for a time, until victorious athletes began pouring into the locker room. He quickly closed the blinds and locked the door, leaving the lights off, and dropped into his chair. Awash with guilt and shame, he planted his face in his hands and cried, crushed by the weight of what he’d done, but grateful to be alive to feel it.
He wasn’t certain of how long he had sat there, alone in the dark. A few knocks came, to which he gave no response, and he heard a few of the players wonder aloud where Coach Melberg was. The assistant coach tried the handle, but didn’t have a key on him. When the sounds of revelry faded away, Melberg quietly emerged, only to find Loren waiting for him.
“Is it done?” Loren spat, with a loathing glare at his former mentor.
“Yes,” Melberg whispered, struggling to speak past the lump in his throat.
Loren nodded. “Good. So are you.”
Melberg looked puzzled.
“You’re resigning. Going out on top. Whatever. I don’t care about the reason you give, but you’re done here.”
Melberg merely gave a resigned nod.
Loren did not speak again as he stalked out of the locker room. Melberg waited a while longer and gazed around the room, taking in the spoils of sports glory one last time, knowing that he would never return.