Asshole of the Game

Coach Cletian had some strange ideas about baseball. One of them was the Asshole of the Game. The reason for it, he said, was because “baseball is preparing boys to become men by thinking of themselves as part of a team. When you make a mistake, when you’re not focused, you let everybody else down. That’s what makes you the Asshole of the Game.”

Things that could qualify you as the Asshole included not knowing where the play was, or not hitting your cut-off man, things like that. But the players decided, not the coaches. The team had to think as a team, act as one mind. So a player could get chosen for, say, throwing a ball over the first baseman’s head, or striking out, or even not talking it up enough on the bench. And this was summer league, junior high division, where these things happened often. At the end of the game, coach Cletian would gather together the Main Street Body Shop team, give a few remarks, and ask, “All right. Does this game have an Asshole?” Whoever the boys chose, he was it.

What happened next: the Asshole was stripped of his jersey and made to stand on home plate with his torso bared and his hands behind his back, and each player took turns whipping his glove at the designate while proclaiming, “Asshole!” There was no rule about how hard you whipped your glove or how loudly you identified the Asshole. Sometimes, some kids only went through the motions. But you had to do it if you were playing for coach. “And you’ll thank me some day,” he insisted. “Some of you will go on to play high school or even college sports. Some of you will serve in our nation’s proud armed forces, or work in our brightest corporations. What we do here is preparing you for excellence.”

Of course, Main Street Body Shop had the option of deciding a game didn’t have an Asshole. But they seldom did, especially with so many targets to choose from among the pudgy, pubescent boys that populated the team’s less talented ranks, and you’d hear, among the soft sounds of a Michigan summer, hard slaps and choral declarations, “Asshole!” Thwop. “Asshole!” Thwop. A baseball glove can be hurled against a bare abdomen hard enough to sting, and tears would reluctantly mist the cheeks of the pilloried as he pulled his jersey over continents of welts raised on the map of his flesh. 

Main Street Body Shop didn’t have a captain, but there were a handful of players that could be thought of as captains. One was Seb Roman, the catcher, and he didn’t seem to fit coach Cletian’s idea of how a player should behave. For one thing, he was one of the boys that never threw his glove hard at the Asshole, and when he said it, “asshole,” it was in a gentle, kidding way. Afterwards, he would put his arm around the condemned and walk with him off the field, and he would exhort this boy, saying something like, “Come on. It’s okay. Everybody’s the Asshole sometimes.”

“You’re not,” the Asshole could have replied honestly, but Seb would go on, “Don’t let it get in your head. Just think about what you did, and try to do better. I’ll practice with you.” And he would.

Not so, Lucian Jones, the short stop, and Marcus Bixby, a pitcher that also played first, who might have been considered the team’s other captains. They responded to an Asshole by shaming him. “Julian, you dip shit! How many times you gotta be told to hit your cutoff man before it sticks, numb nuts? You gave up two runs throwing your shit to home. Think, moron!”

This, too, was part of coach’s design. As well as not interfering with the identification of each game’s weakest link, he did not get involved in its repair, but equipped the team to do so themselves by whatever methods they would employ. In this way, too, they would develop as men, capable of correcting themselves and others.

Because it was summer league, the teams had to take everybody that signed up, and each boy had to play at least three innings per game. This, along with the fact that even the league’s best players were still developing in skill, meant the games, which were played by teams named after local businesses in Royal Oak, Clawson and Berkley, were ripe for lurching changes in score enabled by errors. Into this equation factored one of Main Street Body Shop’s most problematic players, Steve Quint, sometimes called “Squint,” “Steve Queer,” or a host of other vicious nicknames by Lucian and Marcus and those who followed their example. Pear-shaped and pale, uncoordinated and near-sighted, Squint’s presence on the field or at the plate always heralded potential disaster. Even though he rarely played past a game’s required three innings, he was always in danger of being selected its Asshole. 

Watching Steve fail to catch a right field pop-up, or swing so wildly at a pitch he tumbled to the dust, Seb would cross his fingers and hope that some other play, some other boy, would draw the fire of his teammates, and question the wisdom of coach Cletian’s system. Thankfully, it was obvious to even its worst abusers that you couldn’t make Squint the Asshole of every Game. That was defeating its purpose. But while Seb could acknowledge that purpose, he doubted its heart. Seb once asked his father why they played baseball. Like, he got intuitively the thrill of sports, of seeing a human body in flight as it contested time and trajectory, tools and other bodies. But what was the use in baseball? Love, his father said. “What?” Love. The love of the game. Simply to delight in strapping on one’s cleats and the scent of infield sand. To feel a bat in one’s hands and try to get hold of a pitch and blast it, touch a base, lead off, clap for the next batter, dare a pitcher. That was all. To love the game the way you loved, not your mom, but stepping onto the back porch and admiring the sun in the trees behind your house. This made sense to Seb, and he played that way. But he held it in tension with the Asshole of the Game and couldn’t help asking, where was the love in that?

As the season progressed, the question of what to do became more acute, because despite its problems, Main Street Body Shop was looking like it had a chance at the playoffs. A new level of urgency now gripped the team, along with a new idea of Lucian’s and Marcus’s: we need to get rid of some dead weight – Steve Quint specifically. Of course, they would make him the Asshole of the Game, which they did after defeating Gaia’s Produce 14-10, for not playing deep enough against one of Gaia’s big hitters. But they also implemented a new pressure campaign. 

“Hey, Squint, why don’t you quit?”

“I can’t. My dad’s making me play.”

“Tell him you want to drop out. You do want to drop out, don’t you? You suck.”

“I can’t quit in the middle of the season. Besides, my dad won’t let me.”

“Tell him you wanna play soccer. Tell him you wanna take piano lessons. Tell him anything, just get the hell offa this team before you ruin our chances.”

“I can’t, dammit! I’m sorry! I’m doing my best.”

“You suck! Your best sucks! Asshole!”

Gloves were thrown at Steve with real fury, and not just by Lucian and Marcus but by other error-prone players grateful to have the target be someone other than them. When pummeled, Steve Quint could not restrain tears as prolific and wobbly as his protruding pink stomach.

It seemed to Seb as his discomfort with the situation grew that there was a play here, a position to take. He tried words. “Come on, guys. Leave him alone.” But these failed to contain the mania that infected the team, a fervid belief that it could make the playoffs if Steve Quint could be eliminated from its ranks. “Is there an Asshole of this game?” coach Cletian asked after they played Mercury Tax Services, Sextus Fabricators, Caesar’s Market. “Yes,” said Lucian and Marcus. Steve Quint. Steve Quint. Always, Steve Quint.

“You guys,” protested Seb, “he can’t be the Asshole of every game. Lucian, you struck out when we had runners on in the third. Maybe you’re the Asshole.”

“Maybe you’re the Asshole, Seb,” Lucian fired back, “because you don’t seem to care about helping us.”

It was in their game against Gall’s Towing that Seb made a decision. Or maybe he had made it long before, and was finally seeing the opportunity to act. It was tied 7-7 at the bottom of the seventh, two outs. Gall’s was at bat with a man on second. The Gall’s batter hit an arcing bloop to right that was scooped up by Julian Barnes. The runner on second rounded third and was heading for home. The play was to hit the second baseman, Mike Cicero, who would fire it to Seb to guard home and tag the runner out. But Seb took two steps forward and waved for Julian to throw it to him. Rocketed from right field, it went wild, over Seb’s head, where it hit the chain link back stop. The Gall’s runner scored and the hitter advanced to second. 

Just to make sure there was no mistake, Seb spent his next at bat watching strikes fly into the catcher’s mitt, even after clearly seeing the third base coach signal, “Swing away.”

“Boys,” coach Cletian said afterward, “we’ve only got a couple of games to go and they will decide whether we make the playoffs. We’ve got to be real careful about our mistakes. So. Who’s the Asshole of the Game?”

“It’s me,” said Seb. “I’m the Asshole.” He looked at Julian. He looked at many boys, looked them in the face. 

“It’s Squint,” insisted Marcus.

“It’s not,” Seb said. Again, he looked to Julian, who nodded. 

“It’s Seb.”

“It’s Seb,” agreed Mike Cicero. “Seb,” said another, and another.

For many boys, the image that stayed with them long after they had gone on to lead the kinds of lives coach had predicted, as athletes, soldiers, breadwinners, fathers themselves of sons, was of Seb, upon whose torso nature had just begun to etch muscle. Seb, slender, summer-bronzed, calm, with light brown hair that touched his temples and shoulders, standing with his hands behind his back accepting the projectiles that struck him and the accusations that pierced him. Asshole! You asshole! What are you trying to prove? Hard bolts of leather striking his skin as he kept his eyes upward and the summer sun crowned him. This was something they thought about sometimes as they went on with their lives, striving, suffering, sometimes succeeding, sometimes eating great barrels of shit from their bosses, their spouses, their kids.

The campaign against Steve Quint abated. Even Marcus was declared the Asshole after one of the remaining games. Main Street Body Shop went to the playoffs. They lost in the first round against Aqueduct Plumbing. 

On an evening shortly after this, Seb was walking his bike across Wagner Park when he was jumped by a group of kids that pinned his arms while someone rammed a baseball bat into his stomach, then smashed up his bike. He claimed he didn’t get a good look at them. Though the neighborhood was shocked and the Royal Oak police talked to a lot of people, they never did figure out who did it. 

The next year, Seb’s father asked if he’d like to sign up for summer league again. “No, I don’t think so,” Seb said. Oh? I thought you loved the game? “Not anymore.”

Photo by benjamin hershey on Unsplash.