The Day We Dropped Coach
The Day We Dropped Coach
By Scott Chiusano
Many years later when we got the guys from the team together, usually about the third round of drinks which was Teddy’s round to buy, we always, always came back to the day we dropped Coach. It was the only time it happened, really. One time. We swear. On the graves of our grandmothers and Joe DiMaggio.
By the time spring came around our biceps always felt bigger, from a winter spent carrying Coach up the stairs to the gym. OK, let’s back up, calling what we had biceps is a bit like calling a Honda Fit a sportscar. But nevertheless we flexed what little God gave us in the locker room mirror, although if you admired yourself too long you were bound to get five-starred, a full-palm smack to the back that left a perfect imprint of your attacker’s fingers.
Carrying Coach up the stairs was just something you had to do, like taking IO before a game or wearing a cup. As a freshman it was serious manual labor, you needed a protein shake or at least a banana after that, but by the time we got to be juniors and seniors it was hardly a thought anymore. There was a perfect system to it. Two guys in the front, one at each footrest, two guys in the back, one on each handle. Everyone knew you couldn’t grab by the wheels, or if you were a freshman and didn’t know you learned the hard way, the grease would stick to your hands for days and stain the doors of your mother’s white cabinets. Nobody wanted that. And you had to bend at the knees to pick him up, otherwise your back would be barking mad during practice and ground balls on the slick hardwood floors of the gym would be making a tunnel out of your stick-figure legs, just passing straight on through. Nobody wanted that either.
We did this work mostly in silence, partially because we could hardly catch our breath but also because what was there really to say? There were rare times one of the seniors would crack wise, did you have extra bacon for breakfast this morning, Coach? If he was having a good day he’d laugh, say at least I’m not feeling gassy, but if it went the other way he could make himself like a dead weight boulder in that chair, and whoever the wisecracker was, more often than not it was Teddy, would be on solo ball pickup duty after practice.
At least the way we remembered the day we dropped Coach, we’ve always been quick to blame Teddy. But to be honest it could’ve been any one of us or all of us collectively. The way you lose a game. It’s never one error, one strikeout, one missed bunt signal. To be fair, he had warned us, Teddy had, once we’d reached the third landing, that he didn’t have a good grip. And considering what we knew about Teddy, that he had the sweatiest palms in the entire PSAL, ran through sticks of pine tar like they were chewing gum, we probably should have listened to him. But we were so close, there was one more flight to go, we were young and reckless, foolish then and thought we could power through anything.
When Teddy gets that third drink in him he likes to embellish. He’ll tell you he felt the handle slipping from his grasp like raindrops through your fingertips. He says he yelled I’m losing him, but none of us remember that, we suspect Teddy’s been watching too many World War II movies. In reality, once he lost his grip it was the first domino to fall, and even our cleanup hitter Noah, who had once deposited a ball in the East River, then after the game stripped down to his jockstrap and dove in to retrieve it, could not compensate. Coach was going down and at that moment there was nothing anybody could do.
We watched the chair hit the lip of the step we were on and then it bounced, bounced, bounced until it reached the landing, at which point Coach was pitched forward out of his seat like we’d pressed an eject button. Holy fuck, when Teddy reaches the story’s denouement he’s usually standing, his hands on his head as though he’s watching it happen right there in front of him on replay review.
Noah was the first to reach him, sprinting down the stairs two at a time, and he rolled Coach over onto his back so he could lean against the wall. Coach wasn’t saying anything, so Teddy, who got there next, reached out two fingers to his neck to check for a pulse, and that was when Coach grabbed him by the wrist. You are one colossal clutz, Teddy, Coach said. This is the point in the story at which we all cheer and finish our drinks and Teddy takes a slight bow.
The rest of the story is clinical, the way we were able to get Coach back into his chair, taking him by the legs like trying to grab hold of a fish out of water, Noah hoisting from underneath his large backside so we could slide him back onto his seat. Then we looked up at that last flight and knew just a little of what Sisyphus had felt.
The strangest part about dropping Coach is that he never mentioned it after, not even in jest. Never showed any signs of fear that it could happen all over again. He had no choice. He had to trust us, had to believe we could perform this rote task without fail.
All this we knew to be true. Because the day after we dropped Coach was just another day. Of school. Of practice. Of life. Like always, four of us took our places around his chair, and we lifted him up. It took all these years, of balding and weight gain and loneliness, for us to realize we’d only been returning the favor.
Scott Chiusano is a writer/editor, currently at MLB.com and formerly at the New York Daily News, with fiction published in Toasted Cheese Literary Journal. He is a fan of slow rollers and Jacob deGrom sliders.
The Twin Bill is a nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. You can support The Twin Bill by donating here.