The Eephus
The Eephus
By Robert B. Miner
In early May, I took my daughter Willa to Coney Island for a Brooklyn Cyclones game. It was a perfect day for baseball, and we surfaced out of the N Train to sun and the smell of seawater and French fries.
On the short walk to the stadium, we passed roller coasters, Nathan’s Famous, the boardwalk, and lots of other things for which the day would also have been perfect. Willa was ten-almost-eleven and wanted to stop at all of them, but it was already the top of the second inning. I said no.
She stopped anyway, looked around. There was a guy in sandals behind an easel, doing caricatures in the grass. She watched him chat and laugh easily with the teenage girl he was drawing.
I barked that we had to hurry up. Loud enough that the artist and his model looked our way. Every part of Willa froze except her eyes. They were frantic for an escape route. Her gaze settled on me. Her face fell apart.
She sobbed, “Don’t yell at me.”
Any father of daughters will know the sort of guilt I felt then. It paralyzed me for a moment—I had failed so perfectly that I couldn’t be sure of the next right thing. I noticed other people notice, but never for long. A bad dad wasn’t cause for New Yorkers to stop and watch. There were too many shirtless mutterers, too many hateful street preachers, too much wonder.
I tried to make it up to her at the concession stands. A soft pretzel, a gigantic fountain soda, and Dippin’ Dots: the Ice Cream of the Future served in a souvenir batting helmet cup. She didn’t want to carry any of it, and I blurted out that I thought that was selfish. When she didn’t react, she became a mirror. I saw how much harder it had become to make her happy. It used to be doing a puzzle together at the kitchen counter was enough. Or a clandestine peanut butter cup. She was changing faster than I was adapting my tactics.
By the time we found our seats, it was the bottom of the fourth, and the Cyclones were already down 3-0. Willa’s sour mood had infected me; it was like we were the lone spot of frigid darkness in a stadium that throbbed with cheer and brightness. Eleven seemed early for the sort of sullenness that plagued her, and I resented it, especially because I hadn’t yet figured out how to lay the blame for it on my ex-wife.
The Cyclones came to bat in the bottom of the fifth, and a leadoff home run brought the stadium to its feet, all seven thousand of us celebrating the young second baseman in the greenness of his potential. He was a handsome kid, nineteen or twenty, grinning as he crossed home plate.
Even Willa seemed interested by the sudden eruption. When we took our seats again, she picked up the souvenir helmet and stuck a plastic spoon into the Dippin’ Dots. It had begun to melt, but the little balls still mostly held their shape. She tasted it, swallowed, took another bite.
She was on the cusp of something, and because of that, so was I. She’d taken to wearing chunky white shoes, closer to what I’d seen my own father wear than what I remembered girls sporting in my teens. She wore high-waisted jeans. She’d amassed a collection of butterfly hair clips that were so juvenile they somehow transcended into something more mature.
It wasn’t about the items themselves. She was making choices. I was watching her create herself. Her mother had made a decision about me, but Willa’s affections could still be won. As this new version of her continued to take shape, I had to slough off parts of myself and grow new ones in kind. It was, I’d found, easier said than done. An exercise in a kind of discipline I’d never cultivated.
The pitcher for the Wilmington Blue Rocks retired the next three batters in short order, and the game went into the seventh inning at 3–1. Willa finished her ice cream and set the helmet on the concrete at her feet.
“Do you want the Cyclones to win?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know.”
“They’re the home team.”
“So?” she said, somewhat meanly. “It’s not like they’re the Yankees.”
No, I wanted to say, but these players might be Mets someday. It didn’t seem like the time to try and explain the farm system, or that I’d prefer her to root for my team and not her mother’s.
“How was the ice cream?” I asked.
She shrugged again. “Pretty good.”
The sixth was a bad inning for the Cyclones. Their pitcher, a tall, hard-throwing lefty with poor control, let up two singles to start. The third batter flew out to center field, but that allowed the runner on third to score. Next came a two-run home run, then a solo home run. Then he walked the next guy.
The crowd began to get restless. A man in a Mets hat one row in front of Willa added his voice to the chorus of boos.
“Get that asshole off the bump!”
He wore big black earphones, the kind with an antenna that old school fans used to listen to radio broadcasts. I glanced at Willa, who was staring at the back of the man’s head. She looked confused, maybe on the verge of being scared. There was a family of four—two young boys—on the other side of her, and both parents looked upset, but the dad was a shrimp. This was on me. I leaned forward.
“Hey,” I said, “do me a favor and watch your language. There are kids here.”
Willa’s shoulders folded inward.
“Oh my God, Dad,” she whispered.
The man turned toward me, eyes narrow and lips twisted, indignant, but when he saw the two of us, his expression softened. He faced back to the field and said, “Yeah, yeah.”
In the interest of behaving, of trying to show Willa the good parts of myself, I tried not to think about how much I wanted to fight him, about how knocking him out cold would be as satisfying as the thick crack of the second baseman’s bat against that homerun ball.
Willa had retreated into her phone—a gift from her mother against my wishes—thumbs flying across the screen. I got curious about what she was doing, but I thought she’d lie if I asked. Was it her mother on the other end? Were they talking about me, about how much she hated it here? I craned my neck, but I couldn’t see anything. The angle was bad and the sun was too bright.
By the end of the seventh inning, the Cyclones were down 9-1. The energy in the stadium had deflated, and though the weather was still beautiful, no one seemed to care about what was happening on the field. Instead they chatted, sunned themselves, slugged beers. I wanted beer, too, and badly. But I couldn’t leave Willa alone in the seats, and if I brought her with me, I thought she’d ask me to leave the game altogether. Every decision I made now seemed to be about restraining myself, and sometimes I wondered, once I’d pulled back enough, what sort of man I’d turn into. If Willa’s awareness of my faults had blossomed sooner, would I still be with her mom?
As the Cyclones took the field to start the eighth inning, a new pitcher hopped over the baseline and walked to the stripe with his head down. His belly jutted out over his belt, and his short sleeves flapped loosely around his arms. When he took off his cap to wipe the sweat from his brow with his forearm, the hair around his temples was peppered with gray.
The stadium announcer broke in over the speakers.
“Now pitching for the Cyclones, number forty-five, Mickey Valens.”
The name was distantly familiar, so I looked it up on my phone and—that’s right! Valens had pitched for the Mets about ten years prior, a short stint as a reliever. He’d been a promising prospect, but injuries had dogged him. I’d lost track of his career when the Mets traded him, but he’d bounced around the minors until he washed out a few years ago. Now it looked like he was trying to claw his way back to the Bigs. At thirty-eight, he was the oldest player on the Cyclones by twelve years.
The fluttery tug of nostalgia yanked in my chest. I remembered that I’d liked watching Valens pitch. He wasn’t a flamethrower, but he had an unorthodox delivery and a bad attitude, both of which kept hitters off-balance.
The first batter settled into the box, waving his bat in tight circles over his shoulder. Valens stepped into his windup, raised his knee nearly to his chin, then leaned precariously backward. He sank, sent his momentum forward, and threw.
The ball arced so high into the air that, at first, I thought it was going to be a wild pitch, but as it crept toward home plate, I saw that the trajectory had been intentional. The batter kept his bat on his shoulder, confused as anyone, and the ball landed safely in the catcher’s mitt.
The umpire signaled a strike. A soft ripple of laughter went up from the crowd. Valens caught the catcher’s return, reset, wound up, and tossed again. This pitch seemed to move even slower! The batter swung at it, but he was so ahead of the ball that he grounded it foul toward the visiting dugout, moving the count to 0-2.
Valens was throwing the eephus. I’d never seen anyone do it in a real game, certainly not live. It struck me as a brilliant move, a wily veteran overcoming whatever age and all the surgeries had taken from him. The man in the Mets hat didn’t share in my excitement.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He put his hands out and looked at the sky like he was praying. “What’s this sideshow?”
I spoke to Willa, but loud enough for the man to hear.
“He’s been throwing an eephus pitch. He tosses it slow and high on purpose. Watch—now he’ll throw something with speed to catch the batter off guard.”
The fastball that came next sunk just below the batter’s knees. The kid started to swing, then stopped, then started again, but by the time he recovered his footing, the ump had already called him out. He banged the end of his bat angrily into the dirt and retreated to the dugout.
A cheer went up from the crowd. The stands were blotchy with empty seats, but those of us who remained were in it again. The chatter I heard as the next batter took his place was excited, unified in its focus.
“How’d you know that was gonna happen?” asked Willa.
“It just made sense. These young players haven’t seen anything like it, so they have to overcompensate. He’s keeping them off balance.”
For the first time all day, she looked to be considering baseball intently.
“Why don’t more people throw that way?”
Before I could answer, the man in the Mets hat scoffed and piped up. “Because the eephus is a nothing pitch.”
His tone was haughty, tinged by booze, but he didn’t turn around. I considered pouring Willa’s half-drunk soda over his head. Instead, I ignored him.
“It takes more skill than it seems. You’ve got to get the angle and speed just right. You can’t overuse it.”
The next batter swung at Valens’ first pitch, a big loping curveball, and grounded out to second base. When Valens threw another eephus at the inning’s third hitter, a lump formed in my throat—I wasn’t sure how long it would take for the other team to catch up with his strategy—but the hitter swung and missed. Next came a fastball that he took for a second strike. Then another eephus, which the hitter chased, less a swing than just trying to get his bat in the way of the ball. Strike three.
The inning was over. The crowd whooped and cheered as the teams switched positions. Valens barked at the Blue Rocks’ dugout as he ambled off the field. I loved it. Willa leaned her head back, smiling with her eyes closed, letting the sun bake down on her face.
Her mother had laughed at me when I suggested the game. She’ll hate it, she said. The undercurrent of pleasure in her expression—How could this guy be so stupid?—had been the reason I insisted on following through. But look at us now. I smiled. Willa turned her head slightly and smiled back. She stuck out her tongue. It had a pale streak of white down the middle from the ice cream. I stuck out my tongue. She put hers away and turned her face toward the sky again.
She looked older in that pose. She maintained a mature and purposeful stillness. Stay, I thought. Stay. Puberty, the next stage, scared the shit out of me. I remembered how it had warped me, how for fifteen years all I’d thought about was the next girl or the next fight or the next escalating experience of any flavor. How it derailed the trajectory of my life, and yes, it led to Willa, my wonderful Willa, but my God, how much damage had I done to the world just to get there?
In the bottom of the eighth, the Cyclone bats came alive. The leadoff hitter cranked a left-field double off the first pitch. An opposite-field single by the team’s right-handed catcher drove him home. The Cyclones played small ball, clipping hits down the baselines, looping them over the heads of the infielders. The pitcher began to get rattled. With the bases loaded, he walked in a run.
Before the Blue Rocks managed to secure the second out of the inning, the Cyclones had driven the score to 9-7. Even Willa was caught up in the frenzy of it all. Her face was red from screaming, and her skin glistened with sweat from jumping around with each new run. I groaned along with her and everyone else when the third baseman popped out to center for the inning’s final out, but I was too full of gratitude to care. Maybe it was just an absence of guilt. When I put my arm over the back of Willa’s seat in between innings, she didn’t even give me a look like I should move it.
The crowd erupted when Valens took the mound again. We all knew, with the strange telepathy of sports fans, that he was the source of the Cyclones’ offensive surge, and he had given us back our day. Watching him take his warm-up throws, I felt emboldened. I leaned my head toward Willa’s. I didn’t want the guy in the Met’s hat to hear. This was a moment for us.
“I’ll bet you a big surprise that the Cyclones win.”
Her face lit up when she first saw the boardwalk, and I imagined the evening we could have when we left the stadium. Stuffed animals won at carnival booths. Roller coaster rides as the sun set over Jamaica Bay. Funnel cake, laughter, and the sparkling city.
“But there’s only one more inning, Dad.” Her tone was playful, curious. “They’re still losing by two.”
I could have cried at this demonstration of her knowledge of the game, but the inning was starting, so I just kissed the top of her head.
The Blue Rocks third baseman came to the plate, another talented young player with his whole career ahead of him. Valens stared him down as he walked from the batter’s box. I understood the resentment I felt radiating from the mound. I appreciated the way it fueled him.
Everyone knew the eephus was coming. Valens went into the stretch and tossed the ball, and we watched it crawl toward home. The third baseman sunk into his batting stance, coiled like a snake. He waited. We waited.
I flinched at the crack of the bat. That sounded like a home run, I thought.
From the stands, a few thousand heads tracked the ball high, high, higher into the sky. The ball slowed, then began its descent, and we dropped our heads in time with it.
We cheered when it finally fell ineffectually into the glove of the centerfielder. Valens’ pitch was even fucking up the physics of hitting. If he’d thrown a fastball, it would have cleared the fence no problem, the velocity of the pitch reversed and multiplied by the force of the bat. But the eephus didn’t have enough juice.
Valens needed two more outs to complete the revolution to which I thought I was witness. I was sure the Cyclones would continue the momentum they’d started in the last inning and take the game in the bottom of the ninth. But it wouldn’t be easy to get there; Valens had reached the cleanup spot in the Blue Rocks lineup, their best hitter. This first baseman had broad shoulders and thick wrists, and his thighs were like a pair of young oak trees, and he’d already taken the last pitcher for three hits on the day.
He stood in the box and held the bat on his shoulder with one hand. With the other hand he beckoned Valens. Throw it, he seemed to be saying. Throw it.
A hush settled on the stadium. We knew we didn’t have a part to play in this moment. We were like the Israelite army, watching David face down Goliath in single combat.
Valens stepped into his windup and threw. The eephus crawled toward the plate, and the hitter watched it come. He didn’t swing. The umpire signaled a strike. There was applause, but not enough to break the tension that kept me leaning over my knees.
Valens caught the catcher’s return. He stood with the ball in his hand and his hand cradled in his glove at his chin as the batter settled into the box for the second pitch.
He wound and threw. The pitch traveled so slowly I wasn’t sure it would reach home. It did. The sound was like a thunderclap, and the ball flew off Goliath’s bat so fast I couldn’t track it until I saw the swell of outreached arms in the outfield stands, waiting for it to land among them. It felt like the temperature dropped ten degrees.
Goliath had swung so hard he managed to twist his body all the way over his lead leg. Once he recovered, he ran the bases like he was savoring the trip.
I smiled at Willa, tried to impart a sense of hope I couldn’t articulate.
She said, “Sorry.”
I shook my head. “Don’t be sorry.”
Valens eventually got out of the inning. Heading into the bottom of the ninth, the score was 11-7, but The Cyclones didn’t do anything. When they announced the final score, nobody seemed as disappointed as I felt. If I could have seen Valens, I guessed he might have. One had the sense that this was it for him.
Exiting the stadium was slow-going, moving a few steps at a time as the crowd surged out en masse. Willa held my hand, though, and that was something. The force of the crowd kept us near the guy in the Mets hat. He was talking to someone on the phone.
“No, they lost…I know, I know…No, I don’t think so…” He raised his voice. “Cool? A little girl could hit that pitch. You just have to provide all the power yourself.”
We escaped him, finally, outside the ballpark. Willa and I headed toward the N Train, but this time it was me that meandered and slowed us down. I wasn’t ready to head underground just yet. After a block, the smell of hot dogs hit me. I pointed at the white and green sign on the Nathan’s Famous building.
“You hungry?” I asked. “They’ve got crinkle cut fries.”
Willa shook her head.
“Mom said not to eat too late.” She leaned her head against my arm. “Andy is coming over for dinner tonight.”
Her cheek was warm against my skin. Once I dropped her off, I knew I wouldn’t want to go home, not to the apartment full of boxes I still hadn’t unpacked three months on. The bar would beckon. Oh well. As long as she wasn’t around to see.
She sighed and made a little squeak at the end. I looked down. None of this was her fault, but I knew saying so would make it feel like the opposite was true. Keep it small, I thought. I squeezed her hand.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be sorry.”
“Alright.”
We crossed the street, then turned north toward the subway. There were buskers on the sidewalk outside the entrance, two kids dancing while another played bucket drums. They were good, and a crowd had gathered. We watched them instead of heading down the steps. When they finished, Willa let go of my hand to clap, and I put a dollar in the hat one of them brought through the crowd.
Robert B. Miner is a New York City native, West Point graduate, and occupational dilettante. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in, among others, J Journal, New World Writing, The Dodge, and Identity Theory. His work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He lives in Kansas City with his wife, two kids, and a dog, but you can find him at www.robertbminer.com.
Yaleeza Patchett is an artist who finds the beauty in the dark macabre, and melancholy, with a dash of whimsy with her specialty in acrylic painting, graphite, and ink, she loves to create whimsical dark creations to decorate any eclectic home. Yaleeza resides in Greenwood, IN with her husband Jon, two cats, and a bloodhound. You can find her work on Instagram.
The Twin Bill is a nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. You can support The Twin Bill by donating here.