Yard Man by Thomas Shealey

It was so early in the morning Vic Breen had trouble keeping his eyes open as he walked to work. Once he just missed tripping on a deep crack in the sidewalk.

“Wake up!” he scolded himself, smacking his forehead with the heel of his right hand. “Wake the hell up!”

A rare afternoon baseball game was scheduled today to make up for one postponed by lightning a month ago so, as a member of the grounds crew at Metropolitan Stadium, he had to report to work much sooner than he was accustomed. He wished he had gone to bed a lot earlier than he did last night but a couple of guys he knew from a tavern he frequented invited him to go with them to the dog track. It was a mistake. Not only did he miss three good hours of sleep but he lost almost two hundred dollars on the six races he put down bets. It was money he couldn’t afford to lose. Not these days.

“You’re up awfully early,” the doorman in front of the Dorchester Hotel remarked as Breen approached him.

“There’s a game today.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”

He crossed his fingers. “Let’s hope we can get a win for a change.”

“Go, Saxons!” the doorman cheered, tipping his top hat.

As he waited to cross the street, he took a few deep breaths, still trying to recover from the brutal losses he suffered last night at the track. They were, without question, the worst he had experienced all summer.

When he got across the street, he headed to an ATM machine on the corner because he needed to put something in his wallet. He was within a few feet of the machine when he noticed a card lying on the ground beside a Snickers wrapper. Right away, he assumed it was a baseball card because a lot of businesses in the vicinity of the stadium sold such cards. Smiling, he hoped it was a valuable one, maybe a Mickey Mantle rookie card, though he knew that was highly unlikely especially the way his luck was running recently.

As he bent down to pick it up, his eyes widened in surprise. It was a Visa Platinum credit card. A spasm of excitement raced through his stomach. Warily he looked around to see if anyone was watching him, no one was, so he seized the card and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

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Finally his luck had started to improve, he thought, as he drove out to the outfield in an electric golf cart.
Always before a game it was his job to smooth out the dirt track located some fifteen feet in front of the stadium wall. It was there to warn fielders running back to catch a fly ball that in a few more feet they would collide into the wall. Back and forth he went over the 700-foot-long track, dragging a thin metal screen that was about the width of a porch mat. By the time he finished the track would be as smooth as a linoleum floor.

Finally, after he didn’t know how many weeks of making bad bets, something had gone his way, he reckoned, as he drove back to the tool shed. It was hard to believe, even though he could feel the platinum credit card in his pocket. Still, he took it out to make sure it wasn’t a baseball card someone had dropped.

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Breen got the ancient power mower started on the third pull of the rope which surprised him because it usually took seven or eight pulls. Everything was going right today, he thought, adjusting the brim of his sweat-stained Saxons cap. Then he set out across right field, cutting the grass in the familiar zigzag pattern favored by Caleb, the head groundskeeper. He moved briskly, despite his sore left knee, determined to finish in half the time it usually took him to mow the outfield grass.

“You got ants in your pants?” Caleb asked, approaching him in an almost new golf cart.

He looked at him quizzically.

“You’re mowing so fast.”

“Am I?”

“You sure as hell are, Vic, which is fine with me as long as you do a good job.”

He nodded. Today he had to work faster because he knew he had only a short time to use the credit card he found before the owner realized it was missing and called the bank to cancel it. He wished he could use it right away but he knew Caleb wouldn’t permit him to leave the stadium until his lunch break.

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Vigorously, with a stiff wire brush, he cleaned the blades of the lawn mower after letting it cool off for a few minutes. As he did, he thought of what he might purchase with the credit card at the Macy’s store six blocks west of the stadium. The other evening he and Caelynn, his girlfriend the past eight months, were in the crowded department store, seeing what there was to see, and she mentioned she could use another handbag. One, in particular, caught her eye: a crocheted bag from Italy that cost nearly two hundred dollars which was a little steep for his pocketbook. Now, however, he could buy it for her if he were so inclined or, possibly, he could buy something like an expensive necklace that he could then pawn and use whatever cash he received to place more bets at the dog track.

What to do, he wondered, what to do?

Out of the corner of his eye he looked at his watch and saw that he had plenty of time to make a decision because lunch wasn’t for another hour and a half.

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“You think we’ll get the game in today?” Royce, another crew member, asked Breen as they shared a drink from a garden hose.

“Sure. Why not?”

“There are some mean clouds heading our way.”

He looked up at the overcast sky. “It’s always dark around here. When’s the last time you saw the sun in the morning?”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“We’ll play.”

“I sure as hell hope so because I’m not eager to haul out that tarp.”

“Neither am I,” he chuckled. “I almost got swallowed up by the damn thing the last time we rolled it out.”

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Posted in every clubhouse in professional baseball is a sign warning players, umpires, and club employees not to bet on baseball games. It is the most famous rule in the sport because anyone who violated it risked permanent expulsion from the game.

Breen bet on dog races and car races and horse races, on boxing matches, on basketball and football games but, so far, he had no bet on a baseball game. He had been tempted to on occasion, he recalled, as he raked the first baseline. And he didn’t really know if he could have avoided the temptation years ago when grounds crews were known to tinker with fields to benefit their teams. Caleb told him when he started as a groundskeeper he was told to slope the foul lines inward so bunts stayed in fair territory because the team he worked for had several excellent bunters.

“That kind of chicanery might well be the difference between winning and losing,” Caleb remarked, “and earn someone a sizable payoff.”

Someone like me, he thought, grinning thinly.

..........................................................................................*

Not quite forty minutes to go before it was time to go to lunch, Breen calculated, as he sprayed another blast of cleaning agent across second base. Then he picked up a shoe brush and began to scrub the dirt and grime off the base. He knew he wouldn’t be able to leave until all the bases were clean enough to pass Caleb’s inspection. By game time they had to be as bright as fresh new pillow cases.

..........................................................................................*

As he walked to Macy’s, he could not believe how tightly his shirt clung to his back. It really wasn’t that warm out so he hadn’t worked up much of a sweat at work this morning. But now he was dripping with perspiration which was why his clothes felt pasted to his skin. And he knew it wasn’t because of the slowly rising temperature but because he was nervous about what might happen when he attempted to use the Visa card.

Every now and then, when he made a hefty bet he wasn’t confident about, he experienced a similar feeling. His whole body felt damp and clammy as if he had just stepped out of a shower stall. It seemed whenever this occurred he lost and often quite significantly.

Turn around, he cautioned himself. Go back to the stadium.

He continued to make his way to the department store, though, ignoring his own advice.
When he entered the store, he didn’t head for women’s furnishings as he had planned but went straight to the customers service desk.

“Yes, sir?” a bored woman asked, looking up from her cell phone.
He set the credit card on the counter. “I found this outside on the sidewalk.”

“Oh, gracious, it must’ve fallen out of someone’s wallet or purse.”
​
Nodding, he stepped away, sure he did what was right but for the wrong reason. He was scared what might happen if he didn’t return the card.