Change-up: Mystery at the World Series

10: THE MYSTERY DEEPENS

STEVIE WANTED TO SHARE what Wil Nieves had said with Bobby Kelleher, but there was no time. Everyone was fighting deadline when he got back upstairs. Then in the cab back to the hotel, he didn’t want to say anything with Susan Carol sitting there.

He left the personal quotes about Doyle out of his story because they didn’t really fit with what his sidebar was about: Nieves’s view of how Doyle had managed to baffle the Red Sox so completely. He knew that Tom Stinson and the other two writers who had been standing there might well use the quotes, but he was thinking long-term: he wanted to consult with Kelleher when he got the chance and then follow up.

Normally, the person he would have talked to first in this sort of situation was Susan Carol. That, however, was not an option, in part because they were working for different newspapers, but more because they weren’t speaking to each other very much.

The next morning the four of them took the short cab ride back to Logan Airport. The series, and everyone in it or covering it, was on its way to Washington. Stevie spent most of the flight trying to catch up on some reading for his English class and trying briefly to work on some algebra, but the math might as well have been written in Chinese, so he gave up fairly quickly. It was a beautiful day, and the plane flew straight down the Potomac River, past all the monuments as it landed.

“Pretty spectacular,” he said to Tamara, who was sitting next to him.

“On a day like this, landing here is actually fun,” she said. “In bad weather, though, it’s not fun at all because the runways are so short.”

They took another cab to Potomac, Maryland, where Bobby and Tamara lived. They had two extra bedrooms, so Stevie and Susan Carol would be staying there for the weekend. Games three, four, and five would be played at Nationals Park on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday-all night games, of course, so that TV could get the largest audience possible.

They were talking over lunch about whether there was any need to attend the off-day workouts and press conferences. Bobby and Tamara, who were writing every day with their local team in the World Series, had plenty for their columns, and Susan Carol and Stevie had been given the day off.

But Stevie still wanted to go to the ballpark. The clubhouses would be open while the managers and starting pitchers for the next day were in the interview room, and he thought he might be able to get some time alone with Nieves. Or even Doyle, although he suspected Doyle would be the target of a lot of writers on the off day. With no game until the next night, he was still the big story.

“I’d like to go to the park,” he said. “You never know what you’ll stumble into when there aren’t a million people in the clubhouse.”

“Spoken like a real reporter,” Kelleher said. “Tell you what, I’ll drive down there with you. I’d actually like to talk to some of the Red Sox if I can. I can write from down there if necessary.”

That was perfect as far as Stevie was concerned. The tension between him and Susan Carol was almost unbearable, and the car ride would give him a chance to talk to Kelleher alone.

They left the house with Tamara sitting at her computer and Susan Carol reading a history book.

“So I take it things aren’t any better with Susan Carol?” Kelleher said as they drove down the George Washington Parkway. It was a perfect fall day in Washington, and Stevie was struck by how pretty the area was with the leaves in full color.

“Worse,” he said. “She lied to me at first about meeting with David yesterday, then when I told her we’d seen her, she got mad and told me she couldn’t tell me what they were talking about.”

Kelleher was silent for a moment-rare for him-as if deciding what to say next. “She flat out lied?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” Stevie said. “She said she’d gone over to Faneuil Hall and walked around the Freedom Trail but never mentioned spending time with David.”

“A lie of omission,” Kelleher said. “But a lie nonetheless.” He turned and went up the ramp onto the Fourteenth Street Bridge, and Stevie noticed they were back near Washington National Airport again.

“It wasn’t just that,” Stevie said. “She totally clammed up when I tried to ask her what they were talking about. Said it was a secret and then practically ran away from me.”

“Huh,” Kelleher said. “That doesn’t sound like her at all. But I’m sure she’ll open up sooner or later.”

Stevie hoped that was true. “I suppose. Different subject: listen to this.” He took out his notebook and read Kelleher the quotes from Nieves.

“Those weren’t in your story,” Kelleher said.

“They didn’t fit with what I was writing, especially with only eight hundred words,” Stevie said, feeling a bit defensive. “That’s why I want to go down there today. So I can follow up and see if there’s more to it.”

Kelleher nodded. “Okay, good. It seems like there’s something about Doyle that we don’t know-but I haven’t a clue what it is. I mean, right now the guy is a true Cinderella story-all the years bouncing around the minors, single father, two great-looking kids…”

He paused to look over at Stevie. “Sorry,” he said.

“No big deal,” Stevie said. “You’re right. They are great-looking.”

“Anyway,” Kelleher continued. “Something’s missing here. We just need to figure out what it is.”

“Could be nothing to it,” Stevie said. “Or it could be something not even worth a story. Who knows?”

“You might be right,” Kelleher answered. “But you need to ask the questions to find the answers-or the non-answers.”

He eased the car off the highway at the South Capitol Street exit and headed for the new ballpark. The best description of Nationals Park, Stevie had decided, was efficient. Everything was sparkling and new, it had all the new ballpark amenities: huge scoreboard that could do everything but make a plane reservation for you; several fancy clubs; a lot of luxury boxes; all sorts of different foods; interactive video games on the concourses. But it wasn’t nearly as nice (in Stevie’s perhaps biased view) as the ballpark in Philadelphia. For one thing, Stevie’s home park had a spectacular view of the city’s skyline from almost anywhere. Nationals Park had no views at all from the lower deck, and from the press box-which was so high up it was almost scary-you could see the Capitol dome but little else worth seeing.

The ballpark was right on the Anacostia River. Almost no one was around as they made their way inside the media entrance and took the elevator downstairs.

“Should be perfect timing,” Kelleher said. “It’s five minutes before the Nats’ press conference at two.”

“You going to listen to that?” Stevie asked.

“Nah,” Kelleher said. “If someone says something interesting, it will be on the transcript afterward. I don’t need to hear how much respect Manny Acta has for the Red Sox.”

He and Kelleher rode the elevator to field level and walked down the hall to the Nationals clubhouse, which was on the first-base side of the building. A knot of about ten reporters was standing outside the door, waiting for the media to be allowed inside. One of those waiting was Tom Stinson.

“Hey, Bobby, did your protégé tell you how heroic he was last night?” Stinson said, shaking hands with both Stevie and Kelleher as they walked up.

“I heard about the scuffle,” said Kelleher, who hadn’t been in the clubhouse when the Nieves near-fight had broken out. “But heroics? Stevie, you holding out on me?”

Stevie hadn’t been holding out, but he hadn’t mentioned his blocking the cameraman as he reached toward Stinson. “It was no big deal,” he said.

“No big deal?” Stinson said. “The cameraman was ready to crack me in the head with his camera.”

“Come on,” Kelleher said. “I doubt if he’d risk a ten-thousand-dollar camera on your skull.”

“Good point,” Stinson said with a smile. “But still, Steve was great.”

“Clubhouse is open,” Stevie heard a voice say. “You guys have forty-five minutes.”

The security guard here was just a little bit different than Big-Time Bill in Boston. As Stevie walked by, he said, “Nice stuff this morning.” Stevie smiled and thanked him.

Stevie had been inside the Nationals clubhouse during the playoffs, but seeing it again after two nights in Fenway reminded him how huge it was-at least four times bigger than the Red Sox clubhouse. He and Kelleher scanned the room. There were perhaps a dozen players inside, some at their lockers, others sitting on couches in the middle of the room watching TV.

Kelleher pointed at Doyle’s locker. “He’s not here,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“No clothes,” Kelleher said. “If he was still here, his street clothes would be hanging in his locker.”

The lockers-which were gigantic, like everything else in the room-were the open kind, so it was easy to see clothes and uniforms that were hung in each one. Kelleher was right. Doyle’s locker was untouched. Two uniforms hung neatly, and there were several gloves piled up along with some of those socks with numbers they had talked about the day before. But no street clothes.

Aaron Boone, the veteran utility player, was sitting on one of the couches reading a newspaper. Boone was another remarkable story. He’d had open-heart surgery in the spring and had then come back in August to play for the Houston Astros. Just prior to the trading deadline on August 31, he’d been traded back to Washington -where he’d played the year before. He’d provided both maturity and leadership on a young team in the heat of its first pennant race.

Stevie had noticed during the playoffs that Boone was one of those rare players who actually knew the names of media people. Boone looked up, overhearing the conversation.

“He wasn’t here today at all, Bobby,” he said to Kelleher.

“Gave him the day off, huh?” Kelleher said.

“I think he’s holed up with his agent,” Boone said. “Let the bidding begin, eh?”

“That stuff can’t wait until after the series?” Kelleher said.

“You gotta strike while the iron is hot, man,” Boone said. “Unless he wins game six or seven for us, he’ll never be hotter. I mean, my God, if The Rookie was a movie, what’s this?”

Stevie remembered watching The Rookie with his dad. It was based on a true story about a pitcher who hurt his arm in his twenties, became a high school baseball coach in Texas, and then, in his midthirties, signed after an open tryout by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He made it to the major leagues briefly as a relief pitcher. Stevie had liked the movie; his dad had loved it.

“Good point,” Kelleher said.

“Started the season in the minors, never won a big-league game, and he pitches a one-hitter in the World Series!” Boone said. “Not to mention being a good guy and a single dad. Heck, I’d love to be his agent right now.”

Stevie and Kelleher looked at one another, both thinking the same thing: what was there about Norbert Doyle that all the people who wanted to tell his story didn’t know?

Stevie noticed Wil Nieves walking through the room to his locker. “I’m going to talk to Nieves,” he said, hoping there wouldn’t be a mad dash to talk to him. Most of the writers were talking to Ryan Zimmerman at that moment.

“Go for it,” Kelleher said.

Stevie walked over to Nieves and was relieved to see no one else walking in the same direction.

“Wil, hi, my name is Steve Thomas, I work for the Washington Herald,” Stevie said, putting his hand out when Nieves, having tossed his catcher’s glove into his locker, turned to face him.

Nieves took his hand and gave him a friendly smile. “I know you,” he said. “You were there last night when those two guys almost got into a fight.”

“Right,” Stevie said.

Nieves knew more. “You and that girl, Susan, right? You’re the two kid reporters who are so famous.”

“I don’t know about famous…,” Stevie said.

“Don’t be modest,” Nieves said. “I read about you in our playoff program.”

The Nationals had done a story on the fact that Stevie and Susan Carol were covering them for the Herald and the Post in their postseason program, which was sold at the ballpark for the startling price of $10. Stevie’s dad had bought one but said, “When I was a kid going to the old ballpark in Philadelphia, you paid twenty-five cents to buy a scorecard and a program-and they gave you a pencil to keep score with.”

“What was it like watching Babe Ruth?” Stevie had said in response to his father’s moaning.

“Well, thanks,” Stevie said to Nieves. “Since I’m so famous, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Fire away,” Nieves said. He sat down on the chair in front of his locker and pulled a chair over from the one next to his and offered it to Stevie.

Stevie didn’t try to pick up where they had left off in Boston the night before. He asked Nieves first about his own background, which was actually interesting. He was from Puerto Rico and had signed with the San Diego Padres as an eighteen-year-old. He had spent most of the thirteen years since then in the minors, making it briefly to the majors with the Padres in 2002 and then with the Yankees for parts of 2005, 2006, and 2007.

After the Yankees had released him, he had signed with the Nationals as a minor-league free agent and had stuck with the team for most of two seasons because he had finally been able to hit a little. He had hit his first-ever major-league home run early in 2008.

As Nieves talked, Stevie worried that someone might interrupt them. A couple of times he saw writers approaching, but they veered away. There seemed to be an unwritten rule that if someone was seated, talking to a player, you didn’t interrupt.

“So, would you say last night was the biggest thrill you’ve had in baseball?” Stevie said, steering the conversation back to the present.

Nieves thought for a minute. “That and the home run,” he said. “The home run was a walk-off in the ninth inning, so that was pretty cool too.”

Stevie asked Nieves again about Doyle’s performance and then, slowly, returned to what he had said the night before. “Before we were interrupted last night, you were starting to talk about knowing Norbert in the minors…”

“Or not really knowing him,” Nieves said, smiling.

That was a relief. Stevie had been afraid a night’s sleep might have made him more cautious about discussing his team’s sudden star.

“Right,” Stevie said. “Nice guy, just shy…”

“Not exactly shy,” Nieves said. “Always friendly. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him laugh, though, really have fun. Even when we were celebrating winning the pennant last week, we had to practically beg him to get involved.”

Stevie remembered that. He had been standing with Doyle while his teammates kept trying to get him to join them in the celebration. Then again, he hadn’t been on the roster for the playoffs.

“You said something about joy not being part of his life…”

“I can’t say it isn’t part of his life, I’ve just never seen it. I asked him about it once-”

“You did?” Stevie said, realizing instantly he had made a mistake by stopping him in midsentence and perhaps appearing a bit too eager. For the first time since they had started talking, he saw Nieves hesitate.

“Well, yeah, it was no big deal or anything…”

This time Stevie said nothing. Thankfully, Nieves filled the silence.

“It was a few years ago. We were both in Columbus, which was a Yankee team back then. He’d been traded over in midseason and I was the only guy on the club he knew, so we hung out a little on the road. One night at dinner I asked about his kids. I knew his wife had died years earlier in the accident…”

He paused again. “You know about that, right?”

“Yes,” Stevie answered honestly. “He told me about it the other day.”

Nieves nodded. “He started talking about how proud he was of them, what great kids they were, and how much he wished his wife could be around to see them.”

“Uh-huh,” Stevie said, not wanting to interrupt, just encouraging him to go on.

“Perfectly understandable, right?” Nieves said. “But then he said something I didn’t understand.”

Stevie waited, afraid to say anything.

“He said that sometimes when he looked at them, he believed in God because they were so wonderful. But then, when he thought about it, he decided God was pretty cruel, because every time he looked at his kids, he was reminded that he had taken their mother away from them.”

Nieves stopped suddenly. Stevie was scribbling madly in his notebook. “Oh wait, hang on, I shouldn’t have said that. Please don’t write that. I don’t even know what Norbert meant by that.”

“I promise I won’t unless I talk to him about it,” Stevie said.

Nieves sagged a little. “Okay,” he said finally, “that’s fair.”

“But one more question,” Stevie asked. “What do you think he meant? They were hit by a drunk driver. How could that be his fault? Or was he saying, you think, that it was God’s fault?”

“That’s what I asked him.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing,” Nieves said. “He just asked the waitress for some more iced tea.”