“Oh God Jack, I can’t wait to hear Nolan now when you call him to tell him that you just tied his no hitter record!” comes booming down that long corridor underneath the park. The long, wet, and scrawny corridor, which Jack has walked down 80 times a year for the last 20 years, still smells funky, but Jack knows that he is going to miss it badly this time next year.
“He’ll remind me that he got about 1500 more strikeouts than me and lasted an extra six years in the game, so I’m going to have to tell him that I’m dating his daughter too,” Jack yells back to John as they make their way onward towards him but then pipes up over the confused look on John’s face “Yeah when he gives me that look I’ll say ‘oh yeah that was the love child your wife had with Seaver’ and then hope that his knee is still bad” and the two of them started cackling away.
The hallway is not much bigger than Lily and her 230-pound brother to walk down, side by side, as Jay is mimicking her every step perfectly. Even if she tries to stop quick, he can adjust and maintain his place right beside her, but you never know what is going to happen from day to day, so she tries anyway. Another locker room awaits her and a new set of guys to have to learn to adjust to a woman in the locker room is the only thing that is going through her mind as she is walking. Of course getting changed before the game was easy as she was here an hour before everyone to strategize and warm up the pitcher, so now she is going to have to learn a new routine for real, but that monotony is broken up at the end of the hallway when John says to her, “Your dressing room is over there,” and points to a door that says “Lily” on it. “It used to be the extra bathroom, but the carpenters were in here during the game. They put the sign up when they heard your home run announced, because it was obvious that you were going to be here a while.”
Lily looked around for Jay so that she could explain to him, as hopelessly as she assumed it would be that they would have to change in different rooms, but all she could see was his back as he had kept walking strait down the hall to the men’s lockers. In a million years she will never live to understand her own brother, but she takes it in stride and walks to her new dressing quarters that she quips to John, “I’ll be in the powder room, can you pay the bill for me sugar,” and then of course gives him the wink.
“I will go keep an eye on Jay for you. There is an exit on the other end of that bathroom that will take you to the service corridor to the player’s parking lot and if I need you, I will knock,” and with that he scrambles off to the other dressing room as he had promised. Lily opens the door to her new accommodations and lets out a squeak as she notices how tacky her little room is.
It is not much bigger than her bathroom at home really, but it is wallpapered with all the former Red Sox greats. Ted Williams, and Carl Yastrzemski, Jimmy Fox, and even a little caricature of Cy Young. It clashes with the red curtains and the blue doors, but it obviously was a “special guest” bathroom before it became her new quarters, and the trivial things they did do to make it more “lady” like are humorous. The padded loveseat was a nice touch, even if the canary yellow color of it clashes even worse with the red and blue, and the little brown baseball players all over the walls, but the big spacious equipment locker with all of her clothes in it that they had obviously labored putting in, was all that mattered. She closes the door behind her and walks towards the locker.
Over in the men’s locker room John sits next to Jay and tries to comprehend what Jay is fixated on, as he stares into his locker. No there is not anything special in there it is just the same old routine that Jay has done after every game for the last two years whether he pitched or not. Jack comes strolling over from the shower with the huge ice bag on his shoulder as all ball players do after they pitch a long game, with the reporters following behind him looking for tidbits and mind droppings to print in the paper. Jack, of course, is going on and on about how it was that extra helping of Froot Loops that gave him the eight essential vitamins and minerals, that a healthy breakfast is centered around, and every once in a while looks into their note pads to make sure that they spelled Froot Loops correctly because he is hoping to get an ad opportunity from them after the season is over.
John, sitting down next to the standing and changing, Jay while shaking his head over the little “jibber jabber” performance that jack is playing. Jack finally decides that he is done playing and shoos the reporters away so that he can sit down next to John holding out his hand. John places a dollar in it and says “You’ll get the other nine as soon as I see any of that crap in print,” and as the two grown children start laughing he adds through chuckles, “Did you work on that last night before you sold it to them today?”
“Froot Loops aren’t as good as Fruity Pebbles” Jay pipes up as he walks away from the two of them towards the door that he came into the locker room from, which leaves the two men looking at each other amused.
“The kid has a point, John; I will have to remember that one for the next time I pitch. I will tell them that I am on the outs with Froot Loops and Fred Flintstone himself called me to plug Fruity Pebbles, and I am waiting for a call from Barney to give me the Cocoa Pebbles side of the story.” … to be continued
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