The Wise Men of the New York Gothams
The Wise Men of the New York Gothams
By KD Casey
It was the top of the fourth inning when everyone had to agree that the New York Gothams baseball team had a mazzik.
Martinez looked skeptical. But then he always looked skeptical. Of any lead that wasn’t by more than ten runs. Of the Gothams’ ability to overcome any deficiency of more than one run. He gripped his Phiten necklace and said, with conviction, “There’s no such thing as the supernatural, and definitely no such thing as mazziks.”
Ellis looked more convinced. He had to put his socks on right sock, left sock, and put his spikes on left spike, right spike. If he was interrupted lacing them up, he had to unlace them—right spike, left spike, then relace them and do them up again. “I could feel that something was wrong. Like a ghostly presence or whatever. We’re cursed. We’re doomed.”
Holt, who had a healthy skepticism of the fantastical, a healthy belief that the improbable was possible, and most importantly, ten years of service time, so the right on speak in any and all club-related matters, said, “So supposing we do have a mazzik, how do we get rid of it?”
It was the top of the fourth inning and there were clouds rolling in on the horizon. It would only be a matter of time before the game was declared a wash. And so they sat around the dugout, exchanging the kind of do-nothing conversation particular to baseball players awaiting the inevitable.
When they looked for it, the signs were already there that they’d attracted a mischievous spirit. Bad hops, bad weather, bad games. A pitcher who was indomitable in triple-A who couldn’t throw a strike in the Big Show. Hitters whose swings always came a little too early or a little too late.
And then there were the injuries. Players came down with hurt backs and throbbing knees. With shoulders that ached as if burdened by a great and invisible demon. How does one get rid of a mazzik, they asked?
They asked the coaches, who shrugged, and said, “Rub some dirt on it.” They asked management, who scoffed and said, “We could send you back down.” And who reminded them, at each turn, that they were all hovering at replacement. And therefore replaceable.
They asked ownership, who listened attentively around the shining oval table of a boardroom, and who, after an afternoon of nodding thoughtfully at player concerns, said, “If the city doesn’t approve a bond for a new stadium, we’ll move the team to a town where there are no mazziks.” Or inconvenient baseball fans to get in the way of their real estate development.
Finally Ellis said, “We will ask the rabbi!”
And when Holt said, “Which rabbi?” and the centerfielder said, “My rabbi!” and the third baseman said, “No, mine!” they resolved to go through them one by one by one, a batting order’s worth of sages and scholars.
Their leadoff rabbi said, simply, “Mazziks are fantastical ways of explaining everyday phenomena. Consult your mental skills coaches.”
The second had many opinions, about lineup construction, about pitchers’ usage of their slider in a two-strike count, and very few about exorcising demons.
The third rabbi listened closely, nodded vaguely, and they thought they were making progress until his wife, the rebbetzin, came in and said, with a volume that would impress any umpire, “Harold, you’re hearing aid’s off again.”
By the fourth rabbi, they had grown disheartened. Their party had winnowed from the complete roster of twenty-six to a bare handful: Holt, along with their sixth starter, and a handful of relievers who likely were avoiding their coaches’ solutions to the team’s collective demonic affliction: calisthenics and bunting practice.
A woman answered the door when they knocked.
“We’re here to see the rabbi,” Holt said. He glanced around to see if the rabbi was lurking in the foyer, possibly hoping they would go away.
“You found her.” It was hard to place her age, but she could have been anywhere from forty to sixty, with the kind of lines by her eyes that ballplayers got from sun exposure but on her spoke to good humor.
She ushered them into her office. Books overflowed from the shelves; papers formed a tilting tower on her desk. There were enough ornamental pillows that they had to cast them aside onto the floor, and soon, they found themselves seated on a couch whose springs protested under their combined weight, drinking tea from glass mugs and explaining the team’s mazzik problem.
“We think it began in the fourth inning of the game against the Federals,” Ellis said.
“The scrubbed game,” another chimed in.
“I knew before then,” Holt said. “When our second baseman went on the injured list, he said his knee was haunted.”
There were murmurs of disagreement, but none that led to outright argument, whether from Holt’s authority or by the veil of politeness they were all wearing from being in a rabbi’s study, even if it were one who was nodding indulgently at them.
The discussion went on long enough that they drained their tea glasses. Holt began stealing lumps of sugar from the small ceramic bowl, clutching each with tiny silver tongs like oversized tweezers and dropping them into his callused catcher palms.
“You know,” the rabbi said, finally, “you are not the first set of athletes I’ve found on my doorstep, complaining of a mazzik.”
There was a collective silence, as each considered which of the city’s beleaguered teams was likely the most cursed.
“What did you say to the others?” a player asked.
The rabbi smiled, the lines at the edges of her eyes deepening in a way that somehow communicated a spiritual tranquility and that the team wasn’t going to like what comes next. “The best way to displace a mazzik is to attract an ibbur.”
Holt sighed audibly, the kind of sigh that would have cooled tea if he had any left to drink. “An ibbur?”
“The spirit of a tzadik, a righteous person,” the rabbi confirmed.
“A righteous person in big-league baseball?” Martinez wondered.
The rabbi smiled a knowing smile. “I did not say it would be easy.”
Holt unloaded another lump of sugar into his palm. “How does one attract such things?”
“The usual ways,” the rabbi said. “Teshuva, tefillah, tzedakah.”
The players absorbed this. Repentance, prayer, acts of lovingkindness.
“So we’re screwed,” Holt said. “Uh, beg your pardon, Rabbi.”
The rabbi smiled and did not offer them more tea and as they filed out, she snagged Holt by the back of his shirt. “They will need someone to show them the correct path.”
But he shook his head and left, into the morning’s unwavering sunlight.
Things did not get better. If anything, the team played like they’d never seen a ball, a bat, or a mitt before. Gusts of wind arose from nowhere and deadened hitters’ fly balls. Others carried every line drive their opponents hit over the outfield fencing.
Bad hops became errors, errors became endemic, and Ellis broke his hand punching a cooler in frustration, one he said he heard taunting him. Their mental skills coach told him to focus and breathe through his eyelids, which did not help. Their manager told him to get right or get out, which made him punch a wall. Holt told him to take a couple of days and brought him some soup, which seemed to improve his mood, if only temporarily.
Still, the season demanded that they play, so they played. Badly. Perpetually. Because baseball did not quit, even if the team had.
Crowds groaned then booed. Then, worst of all, stopped coming. Ownership, unburdened from having to answer for the team’s poor performance, rattled their billionaires’ cups for more money. A new stadium would solve the problem! A new complex with amusement park attractions for fans! A boost to economic development! A win-win!
Ellis remained at home with a sore hand and hurt feelings, and Holt visited, bringing soup, then the team’s greetings, then finally the dugout cooler.
Holt put the cooler, which looked like a plastic orange beehive, on Ellis’ bed. “Apologize.”
Ellis was propped up, looking sallow and unshowered, miserable from inactivity. Like perhaps he needed a friend more than a Gatorade dispenser. He eyed the cooler. “It’s not even saying anything.”
Holt glared, the ten-years-of-service-time glare.
“All right, I’m going, I’m going.” Ellis ran his unbroken hand down the side of the cooler as if in apology. “I was frustrated. So I got angry. And now look at me.”
Holt raised his eyebrows.
Ellis addressed the cooler. “I’m sorry I punched you. And I’m sorry I broke my hand. And I’m sorry the team has a bad spirit attached to it. And I’m sorry that we’re all playing like we lost already.”
“Good.” Holt removed the cooler from the bed and set it on the shelf near the window. If he didn’t know better, he might think it looked happier, its orange brighter in the midday sun. “I brought soup. Go shower.”
Ellis did as he was told, even acquiescing to letting Holt wrap his braced hand in a plastic bag, which he stuck out from the shower curtain. Holt sat on the closed toilet, scrolling through his phone, and listening for the familiar sound of skidding feet should Ellis start to fall.
After soup, after a bad movie, after a conversation that had nothing to do with the team’s chances, Ellis said he felt better, and Holt had to admit the same.
They played, and the team labored under the weight of the July heat, of management’s expectations, of almost surely losing the division to the Constitution, who were worse than invisible demons because their fans were anything but invisible or silent.
They played an afternoon game on a hot and unforgiving Tuesday, attendance sparse enough that they could hear individual boos. The team was, inevitably, down by three runs, the kind of hole that felt insurmountable, especially when their bats were as dead as their postseason chances.
Martinez, their fourth starter, readied himself for his next inning, watching their own hitters go down one-two-three and spitting seeds moodily next to Holt. Martinez’s shoulders were slumped, as if the mazzik sat directly on them.
Their pitching coach had removed himself to the other end of the dugout as if inserting space between himself and their inevitable failure. And so Holt patted Martinez on the arm. “Go get ‘em.”
Martinez looked at him, in annoyance, in disbelief. “We’re gonna lose.” Like it wasn’t only the fifth inning.
Holt shrugged. “We might. But we might not.”
The umps were getting restless, the fans, such as they were, impatient, and Martinez jogged out to the mound, kneeling to trace something on the manicured soil with his finger before erasing it.
The first hitter strode into the box, bat on his shoulder—a challenge, an impudence. And Martinez wound up, fired, and sent a sinker that dropped like it had weights on it, leaving the batter to chase it, knees in the dirt as if in disbelief. And then another, and another, a three-strike out.
He strode around the mound, shoulders cast back like he’d thrown off more than the leadoff hitter. And then he set back up, readied himself for the next batter, who swung and missed and swung and missed and swung and missed.
By the third man up, the Gothams not on the field have gathered at the dugout railing. And when Martinez threw a strike, even the napping afternoon crowd started to take note. Chatter echoed through the stadium. “Could it be… ?” “Is he going to… ?” And a cry, as if in collective pleasurable disbelief when he threw another strike.
The crowd scrambled to its feet. Parents alerted their children, wives woke their husbands, a group in the outfield bleachers linked hands.
The batter called time, stepping from the box, tapping dirt from his spikes with the end of his bat. On the mound, Martinez fussed with the rosin bag, powdering his fingers, then knelt, retracing whatever previous lettering he’d written, before rising.
The sky, which cycled between too bright and the cloying overcast of a bad summer day, revealed a bright shaft of sunbeam that spotlighted the mound as Martinez wound himself into his set up.
Holt held his breath. The ballpark held its breath. The city beyond the outfield walls held its breath. And Martinez threw, and the ball arced and tumbled down for what should have been a low strike. But instead, an umpire’s silence indicating a ball. The possibility of an immaculate inning spoiled.
Holt expected the crowd to huff its disapproval, to get up, gather their things, and leave the Gothams to their inevitable conclusion. Instead a shout came from the tied outfield seating—an objection. An outrage that the umpire would make such a fickle and unwarranted call. Another came and soon a chorus of them, like bullfrogs at night, like horns from irritated traffic, injecting the park with energy.
They tied the game, then took it to extras, won it in a walkoff, and a few guys rubbed Martinez’s hair and issued a few invectives toward the umpire, a few more against the mazzik, and their manager unlocked a case of beer and passed it around. Fewer guys hustled off to their cabs or trains and instead sat around, talking about other games, other walkoff hits, other immaculate innings, and for a moment, the air felt a little lighter.
They played out the season. And the owners went to the city council, to the state assembly, agitating for more, more, more: More money. More land. More particular favors or else the team would pack their bags and move some place better. Like Topeka.
And a reporter stuck a microphone in Holt’s face after a game—a rare win in interleague play against the scuffling Baltimore Oysters—and asked if the Gothams were serious about leaving New York like the Pacifics had done years earlier, moving out to the wide splendor of Chavez Ravine.
Holt considered telling the reporter to shove it. He considered walking away like he hadn’t heard. He considered what the team meant to the city, not its elected officials, but the people who came and mostly slept through their losses, but who came nevertheless. It would be easier to live in Topeka. Quieter. Cheaper. A smaller stage. They probably didn’t have mazziks there, and he didn’t know if this one could survive a permanent move.
He considered Ellis’ hand, now that he was back, and how he breathed more slowly and didn’t fuss so much at his shoes. About Martinez’s newfound faith, if not in anything greater than the team’s ability not to perpetually lose.
“No,” he said, finally, “I can’t see the Gothams ever leaving New York.”
Ownership was not happy. Management was not happy. The fans who came streaming into the stadium to watch double-headers and extra innings and day games and rubber matches were, however, delighted.
They were about to play an afternoon game when clouds started banking on the horizon, the kind that portended afternoon rain. The air was heavy, and there was generalized grumbling at having to play in the heat, the humidity, the weight of atmospheric pressure and of course the mazzik, though players had been mentioning it less and less.
Holt was starting. He’d only been in the heat for a few minutes, but sweat was beginning to bloom on his back, at the straps of his pads. Martinez was already out on the mound. He paced, picking up and replacing the rosin bag, fiddling with the sign card in his hat band, with the glob of sunscreen he had dabbed on his forearm. He put a hand up, shading his eyes even more than the brim of his hat permitted, studying the sky with an expression that said he didn’t like the look of the clouds.
The team was playing better, if only because they could not have played much worse. Not enough to win the division but enough to be in the Wild Card discussion. Around them, fans waited, eager, impatient. Holt went out to the mound of one last consultation with Martinez.
Martinez nodded toward the horizon. “They might scrub it.”
“They might,” Holt conceded.
“We’ll probably lose.” Because they were playing the Constitution.
“We might.” Holt scanned the crowd, who might be cheering them on or baying for their defeat. It was hard to tell.
Martinez fiddled with his Phiten necklace, which he wore even though most pitchers had abandoned them years ago. “Do you think it’s true—that the team is cursed?”
“Would it make you feel better if I said I did or if I said I didn’t?”
“I’m not sure.”
“The team isn’t cursed,” Holt said. “Or isn’t anymore.”
Martinez considered that. “If we didn’t have a mazzik, then why did we play that badly? And why are we playing better now?”
Big questions for him to be asking with half of Queens yelling at them to start the game, with the umpires making disapproving movements toward the mound to usher Holt off.
“I don’t know if I believe in the supernatural,” Holt said. “But I know we start every game with the same score as the other team. So we owe it to ourselves to try to at least try. And to them too.” He motioned to the spectators.
“Yeah,” Martinez said. “OK.”
And Holt returned to home plate, sliding on his mask and then squatting behind the batters’ boxes.
Above him, the sky was clear. Which is how he could see it, rising like steam, like morning dew off the grass of the field, the faint tatters of a ghostly shape that rose and evaporated in the possibility of the afternoon air.
KD Casey is a romance writer and baseball enthusiast living in the Washington, DC area. Her debut novel UNWRITTEN RULES, about a Jewish catcher who unexpectedly reunites with his ex-teammate—who’s also his ex-boyfriend—will be published in October 2021 by Carina Press.
The Twin Bill is a nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. You can support The Twin Bill by donating here.