Diamond in the Rough

“There usually is.” Recognizing that Miranda was not about to let this go easily, Tilda left her workstation and came over to her former lab partner. She draped her arm around Miranda’s shoulders. “Look, people’ll always talk, even when there’s nothing to it. And when there is,” she added innocently, “they go into high gear. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

Miranda shrugged off Tilda’s arm. Her eyes narrowed as stubbornness came into them. “Yes, there is.”

All Tilda could do was sigh. “You do realize that murder is illegal in all the fifty states.”

“There’s some play for justifiable homicide,” Miranda countered. She didn’t want to kill Marlowe, just watch him eat his words. And to retract them—publicly, so that a little of her father’s pride could be salvaged.

Tilda shook her head. “I don’t think a judge would see Marlowe’s writing an article insulting your dad as a sufficient reason for your killing him.” She dropped her bantering tone. “Let it go, Miranda.”

But Miranda could sooner stop breathing than say nothing. Her father needed someone in his corner, fighting the fight he wouldn’t. Being banished from baseball had robbed him of his spirit, his zest. Granted, as she grew older, he’d had less and less time for her because he was on the road so much. And then Ariel had died and everything began to fall apart. First her parents’ marriage and then her mother. But, through it all, the one thing she wouldn’t allow to change was the way she felt about her father.

He needed her more than ever now.

“I can’t.”

Miranda planted herself in front of her computer again. But this time, there were no equations, no on-going research figures dancing before her on the monitor. She pulled up a screen and began to write. Feverishly. Had they been wired for sound, the keys on the keyboard would have groaned and whimpered from the lightning assault.

Curious, Tilda looked over her shoulder. “What are you doing?”

Miranda continued typing. She lifted her chin as she answered, as if silently daring the world to take a swing at her for expressing her opinion.

“I’m telling Mike Marlowe what I think of him and his high-handed article.”

“Are you going to tell him whose daughter you are?”

They both knew that would probably add weight to the e-mail. But it would also make it seem biased. And she was doing her best to be fair—not that the cretin deserved it.

She paused to push her blond bangs out of eyes that turned a darker shade of blue when she was angry. “No, just that he’s an ass.”

Tilda laughed, shaking her head. Backing away, she gave her friend some measure of privacy. Her mouth curved in amusement. “I’m sure that he’ll find that enlightening.”

Mike Marlowe had expected feedback from his article. To some degree, he got it with every article he wrote for the Times. With his most recent piece he’d expected e-mail from die-hard lovers of the game who agreed with him.

It was sad, really, he thought. There’d been a time when Shaw had been revered as the greatest pitcher who’d ever lived, certainly the greatest living pitcher of his generation. He could make the ball do everything but sing the national anthem—and there was some doubt about that. He remembered watching the man play and worshiping his precision. In an arena where a career total of three thousand strikeouts was astounding, SOS had managed to garner two more than four thousand. A lifetime total of three hundred wins was something every starting pitcher dreamed of. SOS had three hundred and seventy-seven under his belt when he was forced to retire from the game.

In almost every way, the man had been a god among men, almost being the key word.

And it was almost that wound up being Shaw’s undoing.

The one unpardonable offense in baseball was not the loss of a crucial game, or the throw of a wild pitch that ultimately cost the team the World Series. It was steroid use and gambling.

It didn’t even have to be the supreme sin of betting against your own team, which indicated that you were somehow involved in throwing the game. The very act of placing a bet where the outcome of a sporting event was the deciding factor of the prize was comparable to partaking of the forbidden fruit. SOS had committed that offense, that one unforgivable sin. One late summer he had bet on a series of games. And he had been discovered and disgraced.

Mike supposed it was to the man’s credit that Shaw hadn’t tried to deny what he was being accused of or attempted to explain it away. He hadn’t pleaded temporary insanity or momentary drunken enthusiasm for the game he loved more than life itself. Shaw had stepped up to the plate, taken the pitch without flinching and retired his bat, as well as his glove.

Mike remembered that awful day well. Remembered hearing the news broadcast just as he and his family were about to have dinner. Remembered catching those mind-numbing words—banned from baseball forever—just as his father had turned off the set in the living room. Hearing them, he’d bolted out of the kitchen back into the living room and turned the television set on again, his stomach twisting itself into a knot. He was twelve at the time, too young to lose a hero to the ugliness of reality.

Surprised by his actions, his father had begun to reprimand him, but Kate, the wonderful woman who had become their stepmother, had shaken her head and told his father to come help her in the kitchen. Kate knew how much the game—and the pitcher—had meant to him.

There was no question that he loved his dad, even during Bryan Marlowe’s absenteeism just before Kate had come into their lives, but as for heroes, well, there was only one for him. Steven Orin Shaw. SOS.

That August day—August 7th—he’d been stripped of his hero. Stripped of his innocence. SOS had come crashing down off the mile-high pedestal he and countless other boys and men had placed him on. After listening to the news bulletin, a dark parade of emotions had bounced around inside of him: disbelief, denial, dismay, disappointment.

Disappointment eventually overtook his other emotions, making him hurt so bad he could hardly stand it. His brothers had tried to help him come around, as had his father. But it was Kate who’d finally gotten him out of the tailspin.

“We’ll never know the real full story,” she’d told him, sitting beside him on his bed in his room later that night. “Mr. Shaw isn’t elaborating on what made him do this. And, up until now, he’s been a very good, decent man who played his heart out for the game.”

“How do you know he’s a good, decent man?” he’d challenged, doing his best not to cry angry tears. Tears were for babies. “He coulda done something else we don’t know about.”

“Maybe,” Kate had agreed. She ran her fingers through his light blond hair, the very action calming him down. “But I really don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s pain in his eyes,” she told him simply. “Deep, bottomless pain. He’s had tragedy in his life and survived. Those kind of people are honorable people.”

He remembered looking at her then, confused. “What kind of tragedy?”

“His older daughter, Ariel, died of cancer. Something like that can destroy a person, but he went on playing. Because a lot of little boys like you were counting on him.”

“Then why did he do this?” he’d cried.

“I don’t know, Mike. But I do know that he’s sorry it ever happened. Sorry that he disappointed boys like you. And girls, too,” she added with that smile of hers that promised him it would be all right.

And it was.

Eventually.

Discovering that his hero had feet of clay hadn’t killed his love of the game—something else he shared with his stepmother. He went on to go to other baseball games and eventually, could even tolerate watching the Angels play again. Without Shaw.

Like all boys at some point or other, he’d entertained dreams of being a baseball player himself. Not outstanding enough to ever make it to the minors, much less the majors, he went to college, got a degree in journalism and did the next best thing to playing—writing about the game and the players who made it all come to life.

He’d honestly thought he’d gotten over his disappointment in Shaw until he’d started writing the article. It was as if something deep inside of him was set free. The boy who’d been so sorely disappointed had been there all along, waiting to ask why.

Until he knew why, he couldn’t begin to forgive. But all his attempts at interviewing Shaw over the last few years during baseball season had been rebuffed. The man didn’t even return his phone calls.

Every year the members of the Baseball Writers Association of America would get together and pore over a list of eligible retired players to decide if there were any viable candidates. This year, there had been a rumor going around that perhaps it was time to bend the rules a bit, to forgive and forget and welcome a man who, had he not committed the unforgivable, would have been a shoo-in.

As far as Mike was concerned, there was a difference between retired and run out on a rail. One was honorable, the other drenched in disgrace.

When he’d heard the rumor a third time, Mike knew he had to say something, to finally speak up and make his feelings known. Looking back, maybe it had been the hurt boy who had written the article. But what he’d written needed to be said and he was certain that it had been the right thing to do.

But obviously “Miranda” from Bedford didn’t share his opinion, he thought with a bemused smile as he read her latest e-mail. She’d told him so in no uncertain words—he paused to count the number of e-mails with her name on them—ten times. Ten different times. He shook his head. Who would have thought there were ten different ways to say the same thing?

The woman was probably an old groupie, he thought. Baseball groupies had been around as long as the game, following a team from city to city just to sit in the stands and look adoringly at some player or other, if not the whole team. He had no doubt that Miranda had probably gotten a little something on the side once from SOS—the man was only human after all—and felt a personal connection to the pitcher.

Mike rolled the thought over in his head. Shaw had been touted as the ultimate family man—until the death of his daughter. Shaw’s wife, he’d heard, never recovered and eventually died, but not before divorcing him. That had been a black period for the pitcher, but he still played. Some said better than ever, as if he was taking solace the only way he knew how. Off the field, there’d been talk of women and wild parties, but nothing had ever been substantiated.

Mike couldn’t help thinking that this Miranda was probably from that era.