All-Star Break

All-Star Break

By Scott Palmieri

Gaffney sat on a flipped milk crate, outside of the Knights’ home dugout, and turned his head to the squeak of the chain-link gate, where Barton ambled onto the field.

“Abandon hope all ye who enter,” said Gaffney, the Knights’ second baseman, squinting up at Barton, the tall, lanky right-hander.

“What’s that from?” asked Barton.

“Dante’s Inferno.”

“Sounds about right.” More players trickled in from the parking lot. The campers would arrive in an hour.

Any further attempts to invoke Dante would be clumsy. Even though Gaffney could quote the famous warning, he, like most Knights who encountered the famous text in classes on their campuses, mostly read the textbook edition preface summaries of each canto, evident when Gaffney received his term paper back from Dr. Collins: It’s clear that you did not understand the story and perhaps did not read it, but at least this meandering paper can give someone a small sense of what it’s like to experience torture.  

An English major could have more fun stretching the metaphor, that the Inferno was camp, Purgatory, their summer in upstate New York, and home Paradise. But even without literary allusions, the prospect of spending their only weekend off at the Geneva Knights Baseball Camp—part promotional event, part money maker—evoked images of perpetual punishment. Most of the Knights entered not quoting Dante but more in the fashion of Ricciardi, who, as he dropped onto the dugout bench, muttered, “This is fucking bullshit.”

It was the league’s three-day All-Star break, but for the Knights, it included two days of work. Given the team’s feeble 1-10 record, they earned only the one obligatory spot for the All-Star Game, right fielder Jim Martin, whose .315 batting average was good enough for best on the team. When they were children, the big-league All-Star break was a desert, the ceaseless stream of baseball dried up. No nightly games to count on, starting in fading light before middle game darkness. Mornings were robbed of newspaper box scores, standings, and pitching matchups to size up for the new day’s slate of games. Now, with this summer season half over, on the heels of the long baseball year playing for their various colleges, reaching from fall practices to winter trainings to spring games, they yearned for a respite.

Coach Davy, in his waddling gait, emerged from the clubhouse, followed by the smiling, gum-chewing Coach Sweeney, and walked to the dugout and the loitering Knights. Parents filed in with their Little Leaguers, signing forms by the concession stand at a table manned by Mrs. Miller, who collected from each fifty dollars, enough for a modest boost to the coaches’ summer stipends. Team owner Charles Dinkweather included wording in the players’ contracts that the camp work was an obligation. Not in fine print was their compensation, which was pizza, and what didn’t go to Uncle Pete’s Pizzeria covered meal money for the longer road trips.

One camper who crossed onto the Geneva Stadium infield, Johnny Clarke, arrived at camp wearing batting gloves on both hands, a blue wristband on each forearm, on his face thick glasses with straps fastened around his ears, on his back the navy-blue number 23, for the perennial all-star Don Mattingly, interrupting the pinstripes of his jersey that matched his pinstriped pants. Johnny scanned around in awe as if the modest field was the House that Ruth Built. 

Meanwhile, Davy stood atop the dugout’s front step, the players on the shadowed bench, looking up at their coach, his silhouette carved out in the blast of sunlight behind him, the field strange to see so early, the buzzing heat along with the sound of spit spritzing through the teeth of players who packed behind their lips the day’s first tobacco pinch. After handing the players the printout of the day’s plan, Davy began his pre-camp instructions, an early sweat seeping through his flushed face. 

“Nobody gets hurt, gentlemen. Do we understand?” The players peeked up from their cursory glance at the day’s agenda, all of their eyes darting to the bottom, noting the distant three o’clock end time. By nine o’clock, most of the children had arrived, ranging from seven to twelve years old. As the campers clanked on to the small metal bleacher behind the dugout, Davy spoke again, the same theme to the campers as to his Knights.

“Rule number one—no one swings a bat unless a coach tells them to. Rule number two—learn rule number one,” said Davy, his script well-worn from an endless number of camps. Opting for the insurance with the highest deductible, Dinkweather made it clear to Coach that out-of-pocket casualties would come out of Davy’s stipend. Rules three and four were about learning and having fun, but Davy forgot to mention them. 

The Knights shepherded the campers to the outfield for daily warmups, which allowed, along with Davy’s talk, the first hour to be chopped in half, the killing of time being an unspoken additional rule. As luck would have it, this late June morning brought with it a heat wave resembling late July. Heat at eight o’clock meant stifling heat at noon and unbearable heat by three. After an extensive stretch, from arm circles to neck rolls to groin squats, followed by a series of runs from the foul line to centerfield- from high-knee trots to backpedaling; it was time to throw. Each camper partnered up and separated between the foul line and outfield, as Sweeney, the Knights’ pitching coach, taught the perfect form. 

“Show the ball to the wall!” yelled Sweeney, his bucolic twang blaring from the edge of the infield dirt to the 310 sign in right field. The campers pointed their glove to their partners, two fingertips crossing the stitched “C” atop the baseball, straightening their arm, pointing it directly behind them, aligned with their glove arm, straight as a weathervane’s arrow.

The Knights hustled around to refine each stance. In that pose, they were perfect, each a work of art Norman Rockwell would have called Kid Makes a Throw, capturing the American Pastime at its core. In that moment, all of them could have been the next Nolan Ryan.

But when Sweeney yelled “Throw,” the perfection vanished, with writhing torso turns and flopping arms, most bereft of the graceful twist of elbow and snap of wrist. Had it been a tryout, most of the cuts could have been made after the first throw. Most would never throw a baseball correctly, unimportant in terms of living a good life but incurable, nonetheless. No number of drills, no length of instruction could change a body to contort in this specific way, part nature, part nurture, though Sweeney favored the latter, murmuring to Barton, “I blame the fathers.”

For the rest of the morning, the basics were exhausted at the stations that dotted the fair and foul territory with familiar credos repeated over and over: run through the bag, keep the glove on the ground, take one step back when for a fly ball, catch the ball with two hands, swing the bat shoulder to shoulder. 

Lockwood was the swing man for the camp, meaning he could drift from station to station, helping the coaches keep the camp on schedule. Davy rewarded the Knights’ centerfielder with this honor, in part because he deserved to be an all-star. But Lockwood said nothing of the snub, and by all accounts, he was the kindest on the team. 

“How’s soft toss going?” Lockwood asked Ricciardi, the stout catcher leaning on one knee as the campers gathered baseballs into his bucket in deep left field.

“I’m dead inside,” said Ricciardi. 

“I know it’s so hot,” said Lockwood.

“I think my sweat is sweating,” said Barton, in earshot, from his bunting station.

“I’m just thinking of how much beer I’m going to drink after this,” said Ricciardi, watching the jagged swings trying to hit his easy underhand toss. 

Most Knights shared similar daydreams of beaches, bars, and girlfriends, and they, like Ricciardi, would have been helped to have paid more attention when discussing Dante, to lean on his professor reading, “There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.” As if experiencing a mirage, Ricciardi could see the idyllic scene of his beach back home, on Long Island, a football spiraling to one of his high school buddies, who snatched the ball into his bare chest and tumbled backward over a low wave crashing in, and his girlfriend there, too, brunette, hair swept up, in her yellow bikini smiling at them from the shore. The best strategy was to pretend that he would never escape, that he would be punished to toil at the soft-toss station forever.

The afternoon meant scrimmages, and for the Knights, this meant a downshifting of effort, each inning inching them closer to the end of the camp’s first day, which included one last aimless talk from Davy and then dismissal.

By the next morning, though, most felt like they were entering a second week. Another scorching day, the players resumed their places, after the morning routine, which included a soliloquy from Sweeney, who was blessed with the ability to kill time- armed with talks on any topic, this day’s being captured by the mantra, “Effort guarantees you a chance but not success,” which smothered a thick glaze over the squinting campers who sat in the infield grass around the Sweeney on the pitcher’s mound.

The drill stations resumed. Lockwood blew a whistle every fifteen minutes, yelling out “Rotate” each time, the small groups trudging along, most of the youngsters obedient in their gait, some flipping hats off of their groupmates, others twirling their gloves in the air. Norris, the Knights’ third baseman, had to endure Lucas Benson, who was well versed in the Knights’ season and born with an unfiltered bluntness that made his fifth grade teacher Mrs. Wells, at Geneva North Street School, limit him to one question per day.

“Why are you guys so bad?” he asked, an unapologetic grin. “The Knights only have one win,” drawling the “w” to the “n,” loud enough for his peers to all look up at Norris for a response.

“Trying the best we can, brother. Baseball’s a tough game sometimes.”

Norris let everything terrible he wanted to do and say pass through him.

“Why are YOU so bad, Lucas? Make a catch before you criticize us, you little piece of shit.” But Norris resisted, later telling Lockwood that two days with Lucas was the most powerful form of birth control he had ever found. 

The Knights repeated the same lessons over and over for each pilgrimage of campers, the heavy, hot air pressing beneath the heavy, hot sun, the Knights on their knees at the hitting stations as if in desperate prayer; at fielding sessions, their hands raised to the heavens.

Lunch then was finally upon them. The sweaty and flushed campers sat eating pizza in the shaded picnic table area behind the first base dugout. Davy told Lockwood to collect nominees and decide the Most Valuable Camper award. 

“Don’t make it the best player. Pick a kid who was hustling a lot, maybe someone who’s not great but tries.” Flopped-open pizza box lids cluttered the picnic bench where Lockwood asked for nominations, out of earshot of the campers. The winner would receive free tickets to every remaining home game, a prize that Mrs. Miller created and won grudging approval for, from Dinkweather.

“Oh, could we make it Jimmy Shaw?” said Norris, with a smile and a mouthful of pepperoni. 

“Why?” asked Lockwood.

“His mom’s really hot.”

“You think that gives you a chance?” 

“Private lessons. Very private.”

“Classy, Norris.”

“No, it’s gotta be Mattingly,” said Ricciardi.

“Oh, Mattingly, he’s classic,” said Gaffney.

“What’s his real name?” asked Lockwood.

“Johnny. Johnny Clarke, I think,” said Ricciardi.

Johnny had worn his Mattingly jersey both days, earning him his nickname, and on the first morning, Ricciardi, who was charged with leading Johnny’s group, made the mistake of asking him about the former Yankee captain, who was Ricciardi’s hero, too. The 12-year-old offered a new factoid with each encounter: his career .307 batting average, the batting title in ‘84, his MVP in ’85, the seven straight games with a home run in ’87. 

“He played in Oneonta,” said Johnny, referencing Donnie Baseball’s one summer of rookie ball a few hours from Geneva.

“Oh yeah? Cool,” said Ricciardi, trying to stamp out the conversation and start batting practice. 

“He’d still be playing, but he had a bad back.”

“Yeah, that damn back. He was great. All right, Mattingly, let’s see whatcha got.” 

Ricciardi lifted and shook a ball to let him know a pitch was coming, as the boy bent in an awkward lefty crouch, clearly doing his best Mattingly imitation, revising it after every missed swing, much as the real Mattingly did, season to season, sometimes month to month, experimenting with his stance, leaning up and down, opening his front foot or closing it in. But Johnny kept missing, and the round turned into a carnival game of sorts for Ricciardi, who started aiming the ball where he thought the camper’s bat might go, as it dropped from his shoulders into his swing.

“What about Griffey?” asked Gaffney, referring to a camper who sported a Ken Griffey Jr. jersey both days. 

“Which one is he?” asked Lockwood.

“That’s Teddy Barker.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty bad, too.”

“OK, it’s either Griffey or Mattingly.”

For a few minutes, they debated which camper was worse. Then the conversation veered to their jersey names: the real Mattingly versus the real Griffey Jr. Just a couple years before, it was Griffey whose Mariners ended Mattingly’s only playoff series and sent the Yankees home and the ailing hero to retirement, ending a great career that could have been a Hall of Fame career, if not for a chronic back and all those years of missing the playoffs, in the shadow of legendary dynasties of the past, just missing out on a winning dynasty about to start. 

“Who will lead a sadder life?” asked Barton, entering, offering a new tiebreaker as he perused what was left in the pizza boxes. 

“Wow, that’s a tough one,” said Ricciardi.

“At least they can say they won the Geneva Knights Most Valuable Camper. Something for the college applications,” said Barton.

“How old is Mattingly, I mean Johnny?” asked Lockwood.

“He’s 12,” said Ricciardi.

“Then it’s gotta be him,” said Gaffney.

“Yeah, he’s the older kid. He can’t come back next year,” said Lockwood.

“And he probably won’t be playing baseball next summer,” offered Gaffney.

“Why?” 

“Because he’s done with Little League. And he’s not making a middle school team, no way.”

Lockwood thought of the fate that awaited their nominee. The end of Little League meant, for many, the end of baseball except for the ones who would show up at middle school tryouts. And after a few days, they would take an early morning long walk to a bulletin board with a list of names, pinned to the cork, a sheet of loose leaf that could mark the sudden end of their baseball lives.

Camgemi, the team’s lefty relief pitcher, sat apart from the others wearing his usual wry grin, not engaging in the debate, not immersed in existential questions. He was thinking about pizza, about Uncle Pete’s pizza, folding the crust in his left hand, starting on his third slice. He liked it, but it was not the pizza he knew from childhood. It was not Little Joe’s in Cranford, New Jersey, which was the standard bearer. Most would agree that their first great pizza, like a first family dog or first school crush, forever lingers as the greatest.

But the pizza also meant summer afternoons, when he would ride his brother’s hand-me-down BMX dirt bike into town to meet friends at Arboretum Park to play baseball. Then they would bike to Little Joe’s for the two-dollar lunch special- a soda and a slice. During All-Star breaks, they would play even later, with no games on television to run home to. Even years later, after college and moving away, when they would return home, despite the changes in the neighborhood, the stores replaced by different stores, the old, rusted jungle gym ripped out of the ground at Arboretum replaced by a smaller, safer one, the trees larger and greener, Little Joe’s endured. The pizza tasted the same. 

Davy’s voice calling over the Knights broke up the conversation and the meandering reflections as the boys slapped closed the pizza boxes and bent them into a large trash barrel. Lockwood and the ad hoc committee agreed that the afternoon game could still decide the winner. Those watching the contest from afar could see the jerseys stumbling about, some alternate universe where Mattingly and Griffey were terrible players, shrunken down, or dropped on a different planet, where their powers vanished, that allowed Mattingly to miss with every swing and Griffey to raise his glove to the sky while weak popups dropped behind him.

Then, it happened. An unmistakable clincher. On a grounder to third, with Johnny playing first, he scurried to cover the bag, looking down at his feet, trying to frame his cleats at the front edge of the base, as he had been taught, unaware that the camp’s strongest player had snatched it up and made a quick, perfect throw across the diamond. By the time Johnny lifted his head, the ball was between his eyes, crashing into the goggles that fell across his face, the strap dangling them beneath his chin, as the ball dropped to the dirt.

Luckily, Dinkweather had insisted that Davy use safety balls—firm but forgiving—for any activities that could put the campers in the way of a fastball or line drive or, in this case, a hard throw from third to first. Nonetheless, Johnny doubled over and, though trying to brave through, teared through his wincing face. Davy squatted beside him, patting him on the back.

“Wanna come out, big man?” asked Davy, to which Johnny shook his head, the tears sliding over the smudged eye black on his upper cheeks. 

“Great job, Mattingly!” yelled Ricciardi, as Davy walked Johnny to the outfield, finding a safer spot, wondering how the boy ended up at first base in the first place, a clear path to violating the spirit of Rule Number 1. 

As Johnny jogged to the dugout with the last out of the scrimmage, Lockwood, noticing the reddened cheek and reddened eyes through the thick glasses, huddled with Gaffney, Barton and Ricciardi while Davy gave his final talk of the camp.

“OK, it’s time to announce our Most Valuable Camper,” Davy said.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Barton’s baritone blared through the megaphone-shaped speakers attached on either side of the small press box. 

“We are ready to announce the Geneva Knights Most Valuable Camper, which wins two season tickets for the rest of the summer and a brand-new fully loaded Chevy Jeep.” Davy shook his head, shielding the sun with his hand as he looked up with the rest of the campers. “OK, just the two tickets. We know him as Mattingly, but the Geneva Knights’ Most Valuable Camper is Johnny Clarke!” A stunned Johnny lifted his head and smiled up at Barton. “Step up to home plate, young man!” Johnny approached the batter’s box, and Ricciardi stepped up to the pitcher’s mound.

In his best Bob Shepherd, Barton announced, “Now batting, number 23, Johnny Clarke, number 23.”

The plan was to let Johnny circle the bases, but Camgemi emerged from the crowd of Knights with a fungo bat and baseball. He had remembered from those pizza afternoons, most of which ended back at Arboretum Park playing “Touch Em All” with his friends, when they would self-hit, using an aluminum bat and bucket of balls, trying to clear the shallow outfield chain link fence. Sometimes it took twenty swings, but they tried over and over until they could hit one out and glide around the base paths. Something about the transcendence of it- hitting the ball over the wall- meant something, the moment everything stops, when everyone watches the brief flight, gauging the fall, the witnesses sure or unsure of the ball making it.  

“OK, Mattingly. Dig in,” said Ricciardi, nestling his sneaker into the pitching rubber, a few feet from Camgemi. The boy stood at the plate, crouching into his best stance. Ricciardi leaned in, as if to take a sign. Rearing back, he threw an invisible ball and Johnny took his meager lefty swing. Camgemi tossed up his baseball and smacked it, belting it high toward right field.

The boy watched it sail, what would be for Johnny the first and last time the sight of a home run from the batter’s box, of an arcing ball shrinking into the sky with just enough distance. Johnny opened his right hand, dropping the bat next to him, trotting up the first base line, as the ball crested and sank behind the painted Uncle Pete’s Pizzeria sign, the faded red words on the right field fence panel with a slice of cheese angling down as an apostrophe. The Knights erupted, and the campers followed suit, as Johnny raised his arms, cleating first base and rounding toward second, the cheers wild, as he reached third and headed home.

It was this moment that Johnny would carry with him the rest of that summer and all the way through winter and the three cold March afternoons of middle school tryouts, the long lines taking grounders, the long waits until getting his swings at the dimpled balls popping from the Juggs machine veering inevitably from his bat. And despite the errors and the infrequent contact at the plate, the Geneva Knights Most Valuable Camper honor was still tucked in his baseball mind, giving him a small sense of hope as he took the long walk one morning from his bus into the school and to the locker room.

Up and down the list, he scanned for his name. He could almost see it written there, until, at last, he couldn’t, the small death mourned later at home, pushing past his mother who asked how it went, to his bedroom, where he closed his door, stifling a sob on his bed beneath a poster of Don Mattingly, captured in a finished swing, his muscles and face strained, looking out to the field to track a hit ball, in a sun-drenched Yankee Stadium.

But Johnny would never forget the site of the campers encircled at home plate waiting for him. When he reached the batter’s box and jumped with two feet on the plate, Gaffney barreled over with the big finish—a douse of water from the opened orange cooler, drenching the camper, the pinstripes pressed to his torso. Lockwood lifted him to his shoulder, while the campers reached up in adulation, his mother smiling and leaning on the metal top of the foul territory’s chain link fence. 

When the campers all cleared the field, Mrs. Miller handed Lockwood an envelope with $40, winking, “Use it on some sodas for the boys.” That night, most of the team journeyed out to The Wagon Wheel, the money spent on pitchers of cheap beer, the boys blessed with an extra day off the next day to salvage their All-Star break, toasting to Mrs. Miller, Griffey Jr., Mattingly, and Johnny Clarke, before stumbling out into the warm night to rebehold the stars. 

Scott Palmieri is a professor of English at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. His writing has been published in Sport Literate, Aethlon, Hobart, The Leaflet, The Alembic, and The Result Is What You See Today: Poems About Running. He played baseball at Providence College and continues his love of the sport through writing, coaching Little League, and playing, as long as his legs will allow, in a senior men’s league. He lives in Wakefield, Rhode Island, with his wife and three children, his biggest fans.

Matt Lawrence is a Spanish/ESOL teacher in Baltimore, Maryland.  He is the father of two young men and has been deriving joy from making art for decades. You can check out some of his work on Instagram @Mattymarcador.

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