Last Night at 498

Last Night at 498

By Kyle Bilinski

Johnny “Nonstop” Miles couldn’t sleep on game nights. He listened to the static baby monitor linked up to his boys across the hall and thought about the pitchers he’d soon face—their heaters, their junk, the ticks of their windups. His wife turned and curled against him again, kicked a leg over his shin, and breathed into his shoulder. Her soft puffs reminded him of the way he tried to steady his lungs in the batter’s box, hungry for something fat, aching to connect. That’s when he heard a click and creak downstairs. His wife didn’t stir, but he slid out from under the bedsheets and fumbled for his Louisville Slugger under the bedframe and rushed into the hall for the three-way switch.

It felt like waiting for smoke to dissipate or fog to clear, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the bright can lights overhead. Then he appeared on the landing below, tall but fragile looking, with a nylon stocking and SF cap pulled down over his head, a belly gun in his grip.

“Rings, diamonds, pearls, cash,” he said.

“My wife called 911,” Johnny said, which was a good lie. “You have two, maybe three minutes before the cops show up,” he added, then explained how close the nearest police station was to his unassuming two-story in the Outer Sunset, which overlooked the Great Highway and Ocean Beach. 

The stocking distorted his face, smashing his nose and cheeks, and the hat bill shadowed his eyes. “Rings, diamonds, pearls, now,” he said and waved the gun behind Johnny. 

“My bambinos are dreaming,” Johnny said and took a slow step down. “You can have anything you want downstairs, on your way out. You’re not coming upstairs.” He took another step but halted when he saw the perfect circle of the barrel.

“Jewelry,” the man shouted.

“Don’t you know we’re on the same team?” Johnny said and pointed at the man’s cap. “I’m Nonstop Miles, your big slugger.” He took another slow step. “We’re on the same team, man.” 

They moved like opposite poled magnets, repelling one another. The man backed down the steps towards the front door with a hand on the railing and the other on the gun, and Johnny rested the bat against his shoulder as if he were waiting for a pitch, gripping it two-handed as he pushed the man away from his family. But staring at the barrel of the snub-nosed revolver made him feel like he was 15 again—the last time he remembered feeling so timid and afraid—when his junior varsity coach asked him stay late one night after practice to stand on the inside line of the batter’s box with 50-pound sandbags straddling his spiked cleats, anchoring him to the dirt. His coach took to the rubber with a five-gallon bucket of balls and hurled two-seamed zingers in at his wrists, up at his temple, back at his shoulder blades, and made him twist out of the way or take the blows to his body, one bruiser after the other, to get over his crippling fear of getting hit by the pitch.

“The car keys are on the hook,” Johnny said. “Take them if you want.”

The man reached for the doorknob but not the keys. Sirens sounded in the near distance, which meant that Clara had woken up, that she’d seen the light and heard their voices, and made the call. He knew that she’d have crossed the hall by now, pressed her back up against the door to Frank’s and Hank’s room, and was praying to God to protect them all.    

“Take it,” Johnny said and offered up the knob of his bat. “It’s signed by The Big Hurt, from his ’97 season.” THOMAS was etched in big block letters with a Sharpie signature below, from a game his mom had taken him to at Comiskey—a couple miles from where he’d been born and raised by her alone. He could sense the man’s fear and desperation, his sudden immobility, now that they were close. “It’s worth a small fortune,” Johnny said. “Take it, now.” He shoved the two-toned barrel into the man’s grip and gut, pushing him outside in the darkness before blue and red lights swirled down the street.  

Johnny hated sirens, flashing lights. He’d seen enough of those to last a lifetime in South Chicago before he’d signed with the Giants and come west. Even after the officers left, after they’d searched the gridwork of neighboring streets and written a report, he couldn’t shake them out of his brain. Clara helped him pull their sofa across their family room and pin it up against the front door. They triple-checked deadbolts and window latches before hiking upstairs to look in on the boys. Johnny hovered over their cribs, got within inches of Frank’s and Hank’s lips to hear their breathing. Their sound machine and thick curtains had kept them insulated, unaware. 

Johnny turned up the static of the monitor once they crashed back in bed, which helped him calm down. But Clara needed to talk, needed to process. She set her head on his chest and told him how panicked she’d been that he’d get shot and that she wouldn’t be able to protect the boys afterward. “Shhh,” he told her, not to stop her from talking but to soothe her. “Shhh,” he said again and rubbed her back. It was the same thing he’d learned to do with Frank and Hank when they were upset in the middle of the night. They regularly woke up together and he’d ball them up against his chest and neck and rub their tiny backs and butts. “Shhh,” he’d say over and over, like he was doing now with Clara, until they settled.

Johnny rested his eyes but never fell back to sleep; his brain never stopped. He thought about calling security companies to wire an alarm. He thought about adding a hotel-style chain lock himself in the meantime. Then, eventually, images of windups and release points and two-seemed fastballs overtook memories of the man’s smashed face and belly gun. And he thought about how incredibly close he was to joining the 500-homerun club—just two more four-baggers and he’d become 29^th on the list—and how much he wanted to do this at home in San Francisco, in front of his family and the only fans he’d known outside of his childhood in Chicago. He ran through all his idols on the list—Hammerin’ Hank, The Say Hey Kid, Mr. October, The Big Hurt himself, and The Thomenator—but tried to push the extra pressures and nervousness out of mind until the boys got him up around six-thirty in the morning.

The next few hours rushed by. He always let Clara sleep late on mornings when he was home, and now that the boys were starting to crawl, keeping them corralled and away from the stairs wasn’t easy. He liked feeding them most—a baby in either arm with warmed milk bottles to start, followed by scrambled eggs, cereal puffs, and apple sauce in their highchairs. Then they were all back on the floor, pulling books from shelves, toys from baskets, until Clara found them and told Johnny he’d better shower and hop on the train.

The N Judah metro line platform stood four blocks from his house. Johnny took his time walking since he couldn’t see a train parked. He was still warm from his shower, but the foggy ocean air cooled him down. He’d started dressing down on his commute to the park—sneakers, sweatpants, hoodie, and cap; everything solid black with orange stitching and discreet detailing—rather than wearing a suit and stiff leather shoes like he’d done in high school on game days. He liked being comfortable. He didn’t mind being recognized in transit and talking to fans—taking encouragement and even heckling when he was in a slump. But there was no one waiting around the platform, and when the train finally arrived, he collapsed in a seat and leaned his head against the glass, exhausted.

“Two more long balls,” Johnny mumbled as he drifted. The metro lurched, vibrated, and dinged. He thought about the last three-game series of the season against Los Angeles, the final chances to clinch 500 with the pennant and wildcard races too far gone. He knew it was unlikely that he’d see more than 12 at bats—four chances per game. The train took on passengers at each stop until the seats and aisles were packed with locals and then tourists after passing through the underground chambers below Montgomery St. But Johnny was lights out—he was standing in a narrow hardware store aisle, listening to a salesman point out all the differences between locksets and deadbolts and additional protections like home security cameras to keep his family safer.

The old lady sitting beside him rubbed his leg and whispered “honey” three times before he left the hardware store. He wiped the corner of his mouth with his sweatshirt sleeve where he’d drooled and rubbed his eye sockets with the palms of his hands. “That was some nap,” the old lady told him and laughed. She said he was bound to miss the ballpark and then went right into the day he got his nickname. The train was jammed with passengers standing in the aisles, holding rails above their heads to keep steady, and everyone seemed to zero in on him and her story.

Johnny loved hearing fans replay how he’d been dubbed. She told him where she and her granddaughters were sitting—upper deck, along first—when he came to home plate and cranked the first pitch straight up into the sky. Then she backtracked, describing how unusually hot and sunny it was that afternoon in the city and how the ball became lost to everyone in the bright sun, how almost no one at the park saw it come down, and kept searching the sky until a jet emerged overhead, bound for the airport. That’s when the crowd roared, the old lady said. The third base umpire was holding up both arms—he’d somehow tracked the smack to deep left field, beyond the last row of bleachers—and the third base coach was signaling Johnny around the bases. She talked about how she sat in front of the television later that night to see the blast’s trajectory on baseball highlights, where they replayed the footage and narration of the wound-up announcer losing sight of the ball to the sun and jetliner and telling fans that Johnny Miles must’ve sent that pitch on a nonstop flight out-a-here after the umpire made the call.       

Johnny grinned and embraced the old lady. He thanked her for the story, for waking him up, and darted through the crammed train for the parting doors. Locals patted his back, wished him luck, told him they’d be at the game. “Back-to-back,” someone shouted as the doors snapped shut. He said it back to himself on repeat as he passed through security, down a ringlet of stairs, to the underbelly of the ballpark, where he found a quiet corner in one of the locker rooms to text Clara. He asked her to call the memory care home where his mom lived and plan for someone to bring her to the game. She texted back right away, said she’d already made the call, that his mom wouldn’t want to miss this.

He popped in his wireless earbuds and clicked on his Bossa Nova pre-game playlist. He let the music calm and distract his busy mind as he stretched and warmed up in the weight room. The relaxed tempos kept him from moving too fast, wasting energy. He suited up. He snacked on catered fruit and veggies, half of a ham-cheddar sandwich, a big cup of Gatorade, and waited for his group to be waived up on the field, where they took batting practice. When his turn came to hit, he asked for pitches at the corners, nothing hanging over the plate—the same locations he anticipated during the game. He listened to his smooth music and didn’t try to jack anything out of the park; he focused on timing, connections, and the mechanics of his swing. There was still a lot of warming up and waiting before he could turn up the heat. 

The national anthem came and went without Johnny caring who sang it. Everything went fuzzy beyond his job at the plate, his job at first base. He took to the field and skipped grounders to his teammates at second, short, and third, catching their returns on autopilot. Then everything was set in motion, and he focused on the outs as they came: pop-fly to shallow center, line-drive to third, and a strikeout to change sides. He loosened up a bit back in the dugout, trading ballcap for helmet, pulling on his batting gloves, picking out his bat. He waited, fourth in line, ready for his first shot, when his batting coach came up from behind and slapped his ass. “They’re here,” he said. “Your mom and wife and boys and in-laws are up in a box behind the plate.”  

He couldn’t picture the first or second home run, but he could see himself talking with the fan who snagged his 500^th homer, bargaining from the field, handing over his bat in exchange for the ball—something small to take back to his mother, waiting alongside his wife and kids on the field. Something to run her fingers against, each lace a flame of a reminder of their life together for the days she felt robbed or alone. 

Kyle Bilinski only jacked one home run, in a church league softball game when he was eighteen, and he pumped his fists and jumped up and down as he sprinted around the bases, unable to play it cool. He’s written a handful of stories (a poem, too) about slingers and sluggers, which can be found in places like Hobart and Stymie.      

Andy Lattimer is a gay guy who lives in Southern California. He makes comics, most of which are about baseball. You can read them on his website, andylattimer.com

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