Dear Mike Piazza by Rachael Jordan

McDonald’s always reminds me of Dodger Baseball; the yellow arches the first pit stop, the sign that we were on our way to a ball game. My brother and cousin would pick their pickles off their hamburgers and I would pile their extra pickles onto mine. Warm pickles are weird, but I loved how the sour dill rounded out the sweetness of the ketchup. I wanted chicken nuggets every time, but at two dollars more than a hamburger Happy Meal my choices were only “with or without cheese?” So, we would sit in the middle and back seats of my Uncle’s minivan, his best friend Al, a short stocky man with the booming voice of Paul Bunyan, his co-pilot. His own kids would sit in the back with us and we would munch away on our burgers and fries. I would watch Long Beach turn into Los Angeles from the window and the younger kids – aside from Al’s teenage son I was the oldest – would laugh and talk and throw fries at one another. My youngest cousin still drives that same van, twenty years later, and she could probably still find a stale fry in between those seat cushions.

We would exit the freeway into what felt like a different world. Mom complained the city looked “dirty,” but to me Los Angeles was beautiful. The brightly painted walls, faces peeking from murals under freeway overpasses, even the graffitti seemed to wink at me with the bravery of its creators. Being the kid who wouldn’t even write in pencil on her own desk, I couldn’t imagine painting a public wall.

The city even smelled different outside, sounded different. I could hear the rushing of cars, distant sirens, guitars singing over the fast thump of a percussion, seep into the van from the small crack in the pushed-out back window. We would get to the games early, right when the gates opened. I’m sure herding six kids wasn’t easy, but that also gave my Uncle and Al time to tailgate before going into the games. Us kids would unbuckle our seatbelts, play I Spy or Twenty Questions, jog around the van, while my Uncle and Al sat on the bumper, van back door up to shield their heads from the sun even the LA Dodger hat lid could not protect against. They would lift the silver cans to their mouths and laugh. Us kids would all pretend to be the Lost Boys from Peter Pan. “I’ll be Tinkerbell,” Al’s daughter, the only other girl and much younger than me, would insist. I’d just roll my eyes and brandish my imaginary sword. The sun would beat down and warm my hair, the hot, black asphalt would skin my knees when I’d fall, and I’d look up to the stadium – a giant sitting on the hillside. Eventually, it would be time to climb the concrete stairs and go inside.

I never understood how the stadium could even stand erect. It felt like the seats at the top should scrape the sky and since we were always near the back row, it seemed climbing the steps of the stadium would be the closest I could ever get to flying. My Uncle would try to take us on a fan gift night. One night we got towels to twirl above our heads. I placed mine against my cheek, but it was scratchy, and I spent the game picking at the stamp’s big blue “D”. No matter what we were holding, we’d scale those steps, the field getting smaller behind us and the smell of caramel popcorn and hot dogs got stronger than the smell of the grass.

My Uncle and Al snuck in those tiny bottles of alcohol. We would order frozen lemonades and my Uncle would let us eat the sweetness from the middle, making little craters.

“My turn,” he would say, and turning from us, fill the empty space with whatever Al and him had snuck in. My Uncle would get very red very fast under the hot sun, beneath his pale hair and sparkling eyes. Baseball games are long. I guess he knew he could sit out the buzz.

I just loved the wave and the beach balls, everyone in blue. I loved how people would yell and stand up, cheer, and hug strangers. The baseball stadium was steadied, ordered. I knew what to expect. The pitch, the swing, a strike or connection. The counter-clockwise run of the players. Singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”, my arms tight around my little brother and my cousin’s shoulder. Not like it was at home. I held my brother’s shoulders for a different reason there.

Sometimes it was like I could feel the tension even before the snap. Those were good days, when I could get out of the way, my brother in tow. Sometimes, I could almost see the lightning fissure crack between my mom and my stepdad and then he would say something sarcastic, or accuse my mom of spending money, or she would be cold and dismissive and then the whole house would light up with their anger. If I could catch it right before that burst, I’d scoop Erik into his room.

“Hey, E! Let’s go watch something on your TV!” or “Let’s go play with your action figures” or “Let’s try that Super Nintendo game!” and I’d smile, a smile so big I hoped it would spread across the house and he wouldn’t see his parents’ tense shoulders and mad eyes and we would go into his room. I’d turn up his TV or his CD player extra loud, so their yelling would become a soft boom in the background and I’d keep him focused on whatever game we were playing. Those room times were how we came up with the game where we’d run into each other with pillows over our heads, or put our beanie babies on the still ceiling fan and turn it on, making bets about whose would fly off first.

Sometimes the fight would barge into the room, though, usually my mother coming in crying and saying, “it’s not my fault” her face red, tears making her cheeks shine. One time she was still holding the metal spatula she used for making fried eggplant and I noticed the blackened mark on my stepdad’s white shirt as he passed my brother’s room to leave and slam the front door.

“I’ll be right back!” I’d tell my brother, rushing our mom out. She’d have to bend over to lean on me, I was shorter than her until I was twelve, and cry and I’d look over her shoulder, making sure Erik couldn’t see.

But I tried not to think about that at the stadium. There’s no crying in baseball.

We would bring baseball gloves to the game and I would punch the center of my glove with my fist, like the boys in The Sandlot did. Some part of us knew the impossibility of a ball landing in the nosebleed section, but we still hung on to the tiniest thread of hope. My Uncle would laugh and look down from the edge of our seats.

“We are so high up,” he would say, “but you can feel it, right?”

And I could. I could feel the excitement, the shared experience. I danced when songs came on, knowing I had to get on the jumbotron one day, see myself in seventy foot tall color, a giant above the crowd (it still hasn’t happened).

We got to split Dodger Dogs and I would pretend I was in a cartoon, where everything elongates and changes, where stomachs never get full. Sometimes, we would get real lucky and my mom would give my brother and I a few dollars and we would buy cotton candy and I would let my cousin pick from one side as I ran my teeth across the sticky, hardening center, scrape the last sugars off the wilting paper, warm in the sun and disintegrating with our spit.

Twilight felt safe at Dodger Stadium. The light would change, but it was hard to notice with the stadium’s blaring beams, artificial suns shining down on the toy soldier figures of the players. Twilight at home was like watching ink spill across a blank page, the black overcoming everything else.

I’d be out in my boundary – corner to corner and not across the street – and try to ignore the sky slipping into shades of dark blue. Sometimes, I thought if I looked at the setting sun long and hard enough, I could will away my mother’s call. But the sun always set and the streetlights always winked on and, no matter where I was, I’d hear my mother scream my name out onto the wind, telling me to come home.

I’d let myself slouch until I came in view of the house, my mom would stand on the porch to wait, and then I’d straighten up and run. As my feet hit the pavement I’d try to decipher what “mom” I was getting that night. Hands on hips meant frustrated, arms crossed over chest meant either irritated or insecure, sitting on the top step of the porch meant sad, and outstretched arms meant okay. My mother was like the mood ring I wore on my finger; she cycled through emotions, but she didn’t come with a color-coded key, and she didn’t fit snug around my finger.

Instead, she could strike without notice.

I held the permission slip in my hand and walked to the kitchen without looking up and stopped in the doorway. My mom stood at the counter, her back to me, toasting something in the toaster. “Mom,” I said, still scanning the permission slip. “Can you sign this permission slip?” My heart pounded. Los Angeles! We were going to go to downtown Los Angeles! My Catholic school never went anywhere cool and I was so excited to see the tall buildings and the freeway and maybe even someone famous.

She snatched the paper from my hands, the first warning that I didn’t heed, and grabbed a pen. She slammed the junk drawer shut. Warning number two.

“Where do I sign to be a chaperone?” She asked, the paper splayed on the kitchen table, her body leaned over the front dining room chair. My mom had chaperoned every one of my field trips since kindergarten and, for some reason, I thought maybe fifth grade could be different.

“Well, um,” I hesitated in a voice so small I didn’t recognize it as my own. “I was hoping you could give some other moms a chance to do that?” I had heard Lindsey’s mom complain about how she hadn’t gotten to chaperone a field trip yet and felt the shame flush in my stomach, knowing my mom always took a spot. Shame made me brave, apparently. I asked it as a question, but she looked up with her nostrils flaring.

I should have noticed her hands slam against the chair she had been leaning over. I should have noticed how her hands gripped and turned white on its scalloped edge. I should have recognized how her shoulders tensed and her face turned red.

The chair flew at my head before I could even blink.

It hit the wall, but I flinched away and covered my head. It pounded with a crack to the floor, one of its legs hanging limp like a broken limb.

She was yelling and I couldn’t even hear the words. I just saw her face, red and puffy, tears streaming down as if I was the one who had attacked her. In a rush of adrenaline, I turned and grabbed the phone from its charging base, but she ripped it from my hands and slammed it to the floor where it shattered.

I didn’t feel anger or hate. Instead, I stood there, my own tears running down my face, feeling sorry for her. Every day, she created one more brick in a wall she couldn’t even see past her own hands to realize she was building between us. I should have yelled, “I’m only ten years old!” She was twenty nine. Instead, I went to my room, packed for school, and gave my poster of Mike Piazza a high five on my way out.

She chaperoned that field trip. And when I was too scared to ride the elevator up the forty-story building downtown, it was my first grade teacher, Mrs. North, who sat on the long steps outside with me while my mom rode it with everyone else.

Once night settled in at Dodger Stadium, though, it felt like being set against a movie screen. There was nothing beyond the horseshoe of the stadium and the outfield wall, other than lazy lights moving on far off streets. The game always continued its steady pulse — it’s three strikes and out, its three outs and moving to the dugout — the top of the inning, the bottom of the inning. Pitch, swing, crack. Pitch, swing, miss. But baseball was never boring. Baseball could surprise me in a good way, not a scary way, when a runner steals a base, an outfielder makes a rolling catch, or someone gets a grand slam. In 1995, the Dodgers hit 140 home runs in their season. Thirty-two belonged to Mike Piazza.

In third grade, when we learned letter writing at school, I decided to write a letter to Mike Piazza.

Dear Mike Piazza, I wrote, thank you for being on the Dodgers. I like your long hair and catcher is the best position. I always scream the loudest for your name. Do you like Ninja Turtles? Sincerely, Rachael.

“Why do you like Mike Piazza?” My Uncle asked me one game.

“Cause his name is really close to ‘pizza,’” I told him. The part I didn’t tell him is how I feel watching Piazza play.

During the game, a line drive slices past the shortstop and a Rockies player takes off from second base. He rounds third and I watch as Piazza rips off his mask and it thunks to the dirt, wobbling from the force. He pounds each of his feet to either side of home plate, down into a crouch, one eye on the ball that should make its way towards him and the other on the runner. He protects home plate with his whole body and the runner goes into a slide, kicking up a cloud of dirt, just as the smack of the ball hits Piazza’s glove and he brings it down, slamming it against the runner’s leg. The whole stadium seems to be holding its breath.

The umpire comes out of the dirt cloud, swinging his fist up into the air. “He’s out!” booms across the speakers and the crowd erupts into screams and applause, as if we all are releasing our hearts out of our throats and sending them to the sky. I jump up and down with my cousin and watch Piazza’s face take up the whole jumbotron. He throws the ball back to the pitcher and picks up his mask as if he just did the easiest thing in the world. A small smile is on his face as he heads back to his place behind home plate and a tiny, impossibly optimistic part of me wonders, and hopes, that he can hear my voice above the crowd.

I grab my brother around his shoulders and hug him close to my body. His face beams and we both chant, “Pee-at-SUH! Pee-at-SUH!”

I never ran away because of Erik. I remember being eleven years old and my mom and I getting into a fight about something. I ran into my room and began to tear out all of the clothing that was in my closet and throw it on the floor until all of my clothes laid in a pile knee high below me. My mom came in yelling at me.

“What the hell are you doing?” She said, face red and hair matted to her forehead.

“I’m moving in with my dad,” I said to her, moving from my closet to my drawers. I was determined to go live with my dad. How I was going to get from my house near Lakewood to downtown Long Beach I hadn’t exactly figured out yet. But I knew his number by heart and was hoping that as soon as I got to a payphone I could call him and he would pick me up. Hopefully.

As I was ripping the clothes from all of their hangers I thought about how much better it would be to live with my dad. He was so much more fun than living in my mom’s house. He would take me to movies and we would get free popcorn, soda, and candy. He would take me fun places to eat dinner like Ruby’s on the pier and let me drink chocolate shakes. He’d play catch with me, basketball, and even football. I was daddy’s little girl. Well, I was daddy’s little girl at least once a week.

“I like it better with my daddy,” I said, pulling open a drawer of old Nike shirts.

“He doesn’t want you,” she said.

I stopped mid-pull. But it wasn’t my mother’s words that made me falter. Those I had heard before during the countless fights about how my dad doesn’t really love me, that he is a jackass, a jerk, and left me without even caring. Those words didn’t hurt anymore. What made me stop mid-movement was seeing my brother at the door. He stood there, his eight year old body leaning up against my door frame, brown hair falling into his eyes. He was crying. He was so quiet, standing there watching my mother and me. My mother, seeing that I had stopped packing my stuff, figured she had dissuaded me and walked away, mumbling something about me being stubborn like my father. Erik didn’t move a muscle. I sat down, defeated, on my bed.

“Come ‘ere,” I said, patting my pink-flowered covers next to me. Without a noise, Erik made his way from my door to my bed and I gave his butt a boost to lift up to it. He’d been a small kid and our beds were tall because of the built in drawers under them. I put my arm around him and pulled him close to me. I could smell the Johnson’s baby soap that he still used in his hair because he was so afraid of shampoo stinging his eyes. He rested his head on my shoulder and I could feel his warm tears make a little puddle on my shirt.

“You’re not really leaving, are you?” he said, looking up at me. Looking at him was like seeing the innocent version of my mother. They had the same almond brown eyes that, in that moment, held so much fear and worry. He was only eight years old and there he was crying, worrying that his big sister was going to leave him in that house alone.

“No, E. I’m not going anywhere.” I said. He leaned back into my shoulder and wrapped his arms around my waist. After giving me a light squeeze, he slid down the side of my bed and began to put my clothes back on their hangers.

“Look, I’ll be more help. Will that make it better?” He said, one of my Tasmanian Devil t-shirts in his hand. I wanted to tell him that it had nothing to do with him, that I just wanted to get away from mom. He couldn’t understand that part, though. Mom never did to him the things she did to me.

I never got a letter back from Mike Piazza. But that didn’t stop me from putting an extra Mike Piazza baseball card in my bike spokes. I had three of the same one, none of them his rookie card, so I liked to keep him with me. Every time I rode my bike, the card would make the tick tick tick sound as Dodger blue banged against the spokes, the white 31 of his jersey bending towards metal. I would squat in front of the television during games, my LA hat turned backwards on my head, and watch from my “catcher’s pose.”

“I wish I was a boy,” I told my mom during one game.

It was a good day, one where she woke up and made pancakes while singing along with her Rod Stewart CD. She had curled her hair and put a swipe of something shimmery on her eyelids. Her eyes looked bright and focused, if a bit sulky that we were all paying more attention to the game than her.

She laughed and asked me why.

“So I can play for the Dodgers,” I told her, my eyes locked on the play. From what I had gathered in 10 years, only boys got to play sports on the television in the big stadiums. Unless I wanted to be in the Olympics. I was athletic, but I knew I wasn’t Olympic good. My stepdad sometimes watched women’s tennis, but I hated tennis. The only thing I liked about the tennis lessons I took for a few months was getting free Now & Laters at the end. Plus, I wanted to play with a team. That’s why I liked playing volleyball, basketball, and softball.

So, I watched as the crowd erupted in the stands when Mike Piazza hit a home run, the ball sailed out into the sky and beyond the wall, the center fielder jumping as if for a star that shot past him. In that moment, nothing in the world felt as important as baseball.

I can feel the world sink as we leave the stadium, my Uncle yawning, even us kids move like slugs down the stairs that hours ago we had pounded against. I always look back to the stadium, to all the fans who stream out like water pouring down the hill where the stadium sits.

My Uncle complains about the line to get out of the gates, but I don’t mind. The longer I’m in this van, the longer I’m away from home. Sometimes, my mom will be asleep when we get back to the house, my stepdad will shush us and send us right to bed. Sometimes she’ll be up, manic with wine, and want to cuddle and talk about everything I experienced, and other times she’s stomping around the house and I try to sneak Erik through his room, with its doors on either end, back to my room without her noticing us.

Leaning my head against the window, car headlights blur past me, illuminating random street lamps or houses. I try to fall asleep because sometimes my stepdad will carry me from the car to my room and I won’t have to open my eyes. Like a mantra in my head, I hope for baseball dreams. Ones where I sit right behind home plate. Where I don’t have to watch the Jumbotron to see Mike Piazza’s face and can catch the foul balls that sometimes launch back, up, and over the catcher’s head. Baseball dreams where I can drink Coke and get ball park nachos, the wet, gooey cheese dripping down my chin. And I’m there with just Erik and my cousin and we can sing and laugh and hug and jump as high and scream as loud as we want. And in those dreams, Mike Piazza will give me the game ball and sign it and tell me, “I got your letter. My favorite Ninja Turtle is Donatello.” Just like me, my dream self will think.

I try to imagine my way into that dream as Los Angeles unfurls beneath the van’s wheels, Dodger Stadium becomes a dark, sleeping giant on a hill, and I am hurtled closer to home.

Rachael Jordan was raised, and still lives, in Southern California where she teaches writing. She is the recipient of Emrys Journal’s Spring 2020 Linda Julian Creative Nonfiction award. More of her writing can be found in Not Your Mother’s Breast Milk, The Passed Note, and Plenitude Magazine.