Gil

  Praise for

  Gil

  “Baseball novels are a staple of literature. Something about the game captures our imagination, maybe because we view the players as better versions of ourselves, chasing a dream we once harbored. Like the game itself, we lose ourselves in the rhythms and bounces of it. Every pitch is an opportunity, every swing a herculean effort, every throw from the outfield the pursuit of a low probability shot at changing everything.

  In Darin Gibby’s new novel Gil, this sense of the dream is given breath through vivid detail and the vicarious immediacy of strapping on the cleats and staring down a batter. Love, dreams, bitter disappointment, heroic effort—it’s all here and it will break your heart as it takes you back to a time when you believed anything is possible. You don’t have to love baseball to love Gil, but if you do, you’ll be back on the field. Being in the game is everything, and Gil takes us there with a full count and a shot at glory.”

  —Larry Brooks, former minor league player

  “At 44 years of age, Gil Gilbert places his seemingly superhuman ability to pitch a baseball at unheard of speed on display with the Colorado Rockies. The decision has its fans and detractors, even within his family. With the ultimate prize within reach, Gil must decide if it’s worth the sacrifices he must make. Gil is a well-told tale about the personal costs of pursuing a dream and the far-reaching, unintended consequences it can bring. A mesmerizing tale about much more than baseball, Gil will have you cheering while turning pages. Baseball fan or not, you’ll love Gil.”

  —Ron McManus, award-winning author of Libido’s Twist and The Drone Enigma

  “Gil captures the imagination, and presents questions that linger long after the reading is done. Very well written with realistically drawn characters, it is a compelling portrait of a man torn between the two North Stars in his life: baseball and family. Even though this is a baseball tale, readers who are not baseball fans, like me, will find Gil relatable and enjoyable, because Gil speaks to universal themes that haunt us all—the choices that we make in life, and the “truths” that we thought were inviolate, but turn out to be just a set of individual points of view.”

  —Maria Granovsky, Ph.D., J.D., author of Poison Pill

  Gil

  by Darin Gibby

  © Copyright 2016 Darin Gibby

  ISBN 978-1-63393-363-7

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other – except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters are both actual and fictitious. With the exception of verified historical events and persons, all incidents, descriptions, dialogue and opinions expressed are the products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Published by

  210 60th Street

  Virginia Beach, VA 23451

  800-435-4811

  www.koehlerbooks.com

  In loving memory of Melvelene,

  whose courage, compassion,

  and love of life inspired me

  to include her story here.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

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  1

  GIL HURLED THE baseball as hard as he could at the backstop. He needed to blow off steam and calm himself before he did something stupid, or regrettable. He picked up another ball from the fluorescent-orange five-gallon bucket, and concentrated on his form.

  He was consumed with frustration, and was venting with the baseball instead of with his fists or mouth. He tried concentrating on his form instead of his woes. Gil could control his pitches, but not his destiny. He was good, but not good enough. At age forty-four, Gil knew he was well past his prime and was trying to accept the inevitability of unfulfilled dreams.

  He reached again into the bucket beside him on the mound and grabbed another ball. Focusing his form, he hurled another, and then another. Arm back; elbow bent, he told himself. He threw once again, then he looked up, and saw his buddy and assistant coach, Peck, making his way over to him from a series of disjointed brown brick buildings, the campus of the Prairie Ridge High School Coyotes.

  “First strike I’ve seen you throw all night. What gives, Gil?”

  Gil kept his foot lodged against the rubber on the pitcher’s mound then stooped down and plucked up another baseball. With a quick windup, another of his pitches cut the thin Colorado air and hammered the fence.

  “Okay,” Peck interrupted, stepping between the mound and home plate. “That’s enough, Gil. We need to talk before you ruin a whole bucket of balls—and your arm. With these budget cuts we’ll be lucky if we get enough for the season.” He turned and made his way to the backstop, tugging on two balls lodged in the wire lattice. Peck yanked one out and ran his fingers across the torn leather.

  “Holy crap,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head.

  Gil flippantly tossed the ball back into the orange bucket.

  “What’s got you so pissed off?” Peck asked.

  Gil slid the back of his worn leather glove across his brow. “I’ve got my reasons.”

  “Like?”

  “All my life I’ve worked so hard, tried to do the right thing, and look what it’s gotten me.”

  Peck lifted up his ball cap and smoothed back his brown wavy hair, letting his burly hand glide over his six-inch mullet.

  “Are you kidding me? You’ve got the hottest wife this side of the Mississippi, two of the most well-mannered kids I’ve ever met, and you’re one of the most highly respected high school coaches in the state. And you’re still playing ball—and coaching it. Most guys your age gave it up long ago. What’s with the self-pity?”

  “My age, exactly,’’ Gil huffed. “What I’ve really got is some loser job that is going nowhere fast.”

  “Shoot, Gil. I’m your assistant. What does that make me? A double loser?’’

  Peck made his way to the mound, his tattooed arms folded, like a coach ready to talk some sense into his rattled starter, or else make a decision to yank him before the other team could do any more damage.

  “How so?”

  “We don’t need to go into this, not now.”

  Peck continued rolling the ball in his hands, digging his fingernail into the sliced leather. “Oh, I think we do. You know, with the strike, all the major league teams are looking for replacement players. You could try out for the Rockies.”

  Gil grunted. “That’s not going to last. The owners will cave before the season starts and all those replacement players will be back on the streets. Besides, I gave up that dream—and I’m too old. All I’ve been doing is messing around in the rec leagues for years. I’d get creamed, ev
en by replacement players.”

  “Not from what I’ve seen. You can still throw in the eighties, and you have a big breaking ball. I’ve seen it. No way, I bet you were just firing at least eighty-five,” said Peck, looking at one of the scarred balls he plucked from the fence. “That’s better than most minor leaguers.”

  “You never told me why you didn’t try to play professionally,” Peck continued. “You must have had one rocket of an arm when you were younger.”

  “Unlike you, I didn’t stand a chance,” Gil snapped back.

  “That’s not what I heard. And not with what I just watched you throw. What gives?”

  “It’s really complicated.”

  “Try me.”

  Gil hung his head and breathed out deeply.

  “Well, when I was playing for ASU, a lot of scouts were looking at me. I had to make a decision.”

  “Like?”

  “Being a responsible adult and finishing my degree, or being flighty and chasing some harebrained idea that I was good enough to play professional baseball.”

  “I take it you were offered a contract?”

  Gil nodded.

  “You never told me that. So why didn’t you sign?”

  “Some things came up, and getting a degree seemed like a better choice than wasting my life away in the minors.”

  “Easy there. Remember who you’re talking to.”

  “You had a real chance, Peck—if you hadn’t had those elbow problems. Not so with me. Do you know how many twenty-year-olds can throw a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball?”

  Peck shrugged.

  “A whole bunch.” Gil adjusted his cap. “It’s water under the bridge. My life is in the history books. I made my bed and all that stuff. I’ve lived a very mediocre life. Four years of misery to get a physics degree. I was too much of a loser to even try to get a masters degree. I took a job as a lousy high school teacher making fifty thousand a year, coaching on the side. What kind of loser career is that?”

  “Again, Gil, consider your audience. At least you are the head coach. Look at me. I’d kill for your job.”

  Gil spit and covered up the spittle with a kick of his toe. “You know I didn’t mean that.”

  “But seriously. How can you say it is a loser job? With all the talk of your science fair this year—and another season in the playoffs—you could easily get teacher of the year. How many people can brag about that? And the kids here love you to death. You are the coolest teacher ever. How many high school students beg to have their science teacher play at their prom? You can sing Sunday Bloody Sunday better than Bono.”

  “When I get to play him! The only gigs I get anymore are overplayed country songs about some guy finding religion. Have I ever written one of my own?”

  Peck shrugged. “I’ll bet you have.”

  “Well maybe, but you’ll never hear it on the radio. Just good ol’ Gil. Friend to everyone, foe to no one. That’s all I am.”

  “Well tell me this, if teaching is such a loser job as you say, then why did you choose it?”

  Gil shook his head. “I don’t want to go there.”

  Peck hopped up beside his friend and shoved him back, enough to dislodge Gil’s foot from the rubber. “With the energy you were putting into that ball, I think we need to go there. Come clean with me. How long have we been together?”

  Gil’s jaw muscles clenched, and he slapped his glove against his thigh then looked up into the fading sky. “Alright, I’ll tell you, if you really want to know. I did the honorable thing and married her, then dumped any dream of playing pro ball. I took a teaching job to pay for the baby. Would you believe that I met her at a frat party? You know when you go to those dinner parties and everyone has to tell how they met? I couldn’t do it. I made up some story about how I picked her out of the crowd when we were playing UCLA.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute. Way too much information. I didn’t mean to pry like that.”

  “She was pregnant. My plans for baseball were over. And don’t you ever mention it to anyone—my kids don’t know.”

  Peck reached out and put a hand on Gil’s broad shoulder. “How was that a bad thing? Look at what it got you.”

  “Yeah, a beautiful family that I can’t even support. Not now—not now that I am going to lose everything.”

  “Gil, what exactly are you talking about?”

  “The little turd is suing me, that’s what.”

  “Are you drinking, man?”

  “Do I ever drink? I am the clean-cut all-American parent. Except that now I am getting hauled into court.”

  “For what? Wait, for when Zach was screwing around after practice and thunked Shaila in the head?”

  “Yes, they’re suing the school and me personally. Two million bucks. Claiming the ball cracked her skull and caused brain damage.”

  “If you ask me, the ditz already had brain damage.”

  “Yeah, well tell that to a jury. They are going to wipe me out.”

  “They can ask for anything, you know that. Besides that, the school district is required to defend you.”

  “That’s what I thought, but it’s not that clear. What if they don’t? I can’t afford a lawyer. You know how much I make. What am I going to do?”

  Peck also spit and shook his head. “I see now.” Then he went and fished a catcher’s mitt from the equipment bag. “Okay, at least throw the rest at me so we don’t destroy any more balls. And don’t worry, they won’t fire you. Can you imagine the protests? You’ve had a winning season for fifteen straight years.”

  Gil went into a full windup and whipped the ball at his catcher, each pitch slamming into the glove with a loud smack. Peck bolted up and tossed down the mitt, shaking his stinging hand.

  “Holy crap! What is going on here? You taking some kind of performance cocktail? Your gut is gone, your chest looks like a bulldog’s, and you are solid as a rock.”

  A hint of a smile crept onto Gil’s weathered face. “Drugs? Never did them—not being the son of a preacher.”

  “Then what? You don’t just all of the sudden hurl like that.”

  “Mid-life crisis is all. Lots of stress builds the physique… and I’ve been working out some.”

  “No, man. What kind of drugs are you on? I’ve caught for a lot of pitchers, but nothing like this. You gotta be throwing in the nineties, pushing a hundred. I’ve got to get a speed gun on you, Gil. What is the record these days?”

  “The fastest pitch? Some say Bob Feller threw a one-hundred-and-seven-mile-an-hour fastball, but who knows? Most of those guys were full of themselves. That was before radar, so it is all speculation.”

  “You are the science guy. You should know.”

  “Since modern speed guns came around, there has been a few clocked at one hundred and four, and in 2010 Aroldis Chapmin was officially measured at one hundred and five. But it’s hard to say. Feller thought Satchel Paige was the fastest pitcher alive. So, could he throw faster than one hundred and seven?”

  “What were you in college?”

  “Fastest was ninety-one.”

  “Then that confirms it—you are all screwed up my friend. A forty-four-year-old man can’t throw like that, not without a whole lotta dope.”

  “No drugs, man. You’re just getting old. Bad eyesight and soft hands. Still getting those manicures?”

  “Hey, the last time was with you. Come on Gil. Let’s be honest here. This is crazy stuff. Those balls I pulled out of the fence—the leather was completely torn through. Let’s try one more, just as a sanity check. Let me have it. Get really pissed off. Imagine you are throwing at that lawyer’s face.”

  Peck backpedaled to the plate and pounded his fist into his glove. “Give me all you’ve got.”

  This time the ball whizzed into Peck’s glove with the same familiar smack. Peck removed his hand from the glove. The palm was red.

  “I think that confirms it,” he said, shaking his head. “Tomorrow I am going to make a few calls.”

&nbs
p; 2

  RAY RATCLIFF, MANAGER of the Colorado Rockies, scratched his gray whiskers and shook his head as he watched his rotation of pitchers loosen up in their last practice before heading off to Arizona for spring training. His bullpen should have been practicing in Arizona beginning the third week in February, but with the strike, they were scattered across a continent. This season, nothing would be normal.

  The players’ contracts had expired at the end of the World Series last October and, despite prolonged negotiations, no progress had been made in getting the players onto the fields for spring training. Normally, preseason started in early March, with the teams playing around thirty games before opening day on April 6. This year, the fields in Arizona and Florida remained vacant and the bleachers empty. Both sides started getting nervous, but the major league owners, convinced revenues would continue to decline, held firm. The players felt ripped off, even though most of them made more money than they could ever spend. By the third week in March, the owners and general managers got together and made a decision: If the players refused to accept the current offer, they’d hire replacement players. The striking players laughed, assuming the fans would boycott mediocre talent. Not even minor league players would take the field, because they too were bound by the fate of MLB—Major League Baseball.

  The owners were ready to gamble that a new generation of fans might not care about seeing the pampered, overpaid pros. Most people earn forty, maybe fifty grand a year. These spoiled ballplayers were making millions a season. How sympathetic would the average fan be? Trying out for a major league team could become a great fascination and make for great TV, the owners calculated. Fans would almost certainly empathize with these underdogs who, like them, were fighting for a break in life. When the players insisted they deserved more and rejected the final offer, the owners decided to play ball without the pros. Each team had until the end of March to fill its roster. They’d play a ten-game preseason, then the regular season would proceed as normal.

  Playing baseball in Colorado in March was just wrong. Training indoors at the rented local community college was a downright embarrassment, but with a blinding blizzard outside and gaping holes in his lineup, the Colorado Rockies had no choice. The manager needed to round out his team before heading off to warmer climates. In the heart of the Rockies, a sudden storm could slip over the high peaks, changing a mild February day into a winter wonderland in a matter of minutes.