I see Shea Hillenbrand, alone in the clubhouse, cold despite the heat still wafting from the now-abandoned showers. The rest of the team is on the bus by now, hushed chatter that waits only for the first fissures, that fracture of decorum – the sideways remark, the cocked-eyebrow inflection – that will open the gates, and send the torrent of derision careening around the vehicle. You got to feel sorry for that kid. Imagine having that guy for a dad. There’s a reason they had to adopt. Fucking pussy can’t knock the bitch up? Makes sense. Hillenfuck. Hillenfag.
Alone in a foreign country, Shea Hillenbrand hears none of this, but he knows it nonetheless. He is a long way from Arizona, far from the desert, and the comfortable spread of desert life, the warm, dry air that first made the ball jump for him, sailing over the fence at Mountain View and landing who knows where? He is a ballplayer. A ballplayer, and a father, and a husband. He sits in front of his locker and does not move.
He can play first base. He can play third. He can hit. God, how he can hit, he knows it. He knows other things. He knows that he can see, and understand what he sees. He knows that he can hear, both what is said, and what remains unsaid. The cowardice behind the silence that greeted his return, the anguished weakness beneath his manager’s tirade. Fight? He knows he is a warrior. His job is to compete on the field, not on the floor of the clubhouse, the sanctuary.
But this is no sanctuary. No longer. A tomb. Yes, a sinking ship. He was correct about that, and he knows it. It is getting dark in the clubhouse. The motion-sensor lights disregard him, still and shrouded. He wants so very much to get back to Jessica. And the kid. The kids. Good God, what are they doing? What have they done? Oh, God, dear God, what have they done? And then it’s as if the bat has just flown out of his hands. It all gets away from him and he lets go.
Time seems to stop, in the dark. Yet somehow the darkness feels proper, merciful. He belongs.
And suddenly, he is masturbating; he doesn’t know for how long. He is not particularly aroused, but it is comfortable, the first actual comfort he’s had in hours. Days. Weeks? It is dark and getting darker. No reason to stop. He could stay here in the dark all night.
And just as suddenly, light. Painful, blinding. The motion detector’s sensors register the door opening, but not who is at the door. Only Shea Hillenbrand, gripping his erection in horror, knows this. The light comes from everywhere – no light has ever been brighter. It is a bullet to the back of the head; an errant slider in the kneecap. The bright light a man sees in the moment before drowning is no brighter than this, and no less painful. The ship is sinking. It has been sinking for a long time. The water level, he now realizes, is almost to the top.
No one questions that the true value of the game is its ability to reveal us to ourselves. What player, manager, or baseball man this year revealed us, in our humanity, as Shea Hillenbrand did? He is correct. The ship is sinking, and we are all on board.
Joyce Carol Oates is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University. She is the author of over 14,000 novels and collections of short fiction, each more depressing than the last.
