Chapter 2

When we landed in Seattle-Tacoma, I honest-to-God looked around the airport for somebody ready to hand me a return ticket to Akron, Ohio. But it didn't happen. Evidently, the Orioles hadn't managed to swing a trade for an almost-used-up professional infielder who could take my place on the roster.

It was very early in the morning -- around four -- when I fell into my hotel room bed. Sleeping on the plane had proven unsatisfactory, and I was intending to skip breakfast -- and maybe lunch -- and get in some Z's.

I managed to catch up a little before the telephone in the room rang at ten a.m. My roomy, the relief pitcher, Darby Conway, handed me the phone and said, "It's for you."

"Yes?"

"Is this Fred Brumbelow?" It was a female voice. I came awake pretty quickly. I didn't know any women in Seattle, Washington. Hell, I didn't know anybody in Seattle, Washington.

"This is he."

"This is Josie Fitzgerald?... With BirdSports Network?... I didn't call you too early, did I?"

"No, I... No. I'm up."

"I haven't been awake very long myself!" Josie Fitzgerald said, although judging by her voice, she'd been up and at it for hours. Talk about perky!

"Listen, the reason I called, I'd like to interview you today, OK?"

"Interview me?"

"Yes. On camera. I'd like to record an interview with you -- the newest Oriole. We'll broadcast it tonight, during the game, or maybe we'll hold it and use it the first time you get into the lineup."

"Oh. Uhh. Well, OK, but you know, I may never get into the lineup. I'm kind of an emergency fill-in, you know? I mean, it's just all the injuries the club has had, and all, that's caused..."

"I know about all that, Freddie... Is it OK if I call you Freddie? Or Fred?"

"It's OK, yeah. Sure. Look, if you want an interview, that's fine. You just need to know that it's kinda a... a waste of your time, in a way."

"I don't think of it that way at all!" Josie Fitzgerald said. "I need to get to know all the players on the team. Even if it's true that you're only here temporarily, I'm sure you'll be back, called up to the Big Club soon on a more permanent basis. And when you come back, I'll already know you!"

Well, hell, I wanted to know Josie Fitzgerald a lot more, probably, than she wanted to know me. I was pleased that she wanted to tape an interview. Extremely pleased. "When do you want to do this?" I asked.

"Have you had breakfast yet?" she asked. "We could get together for breakfast, get to know each other a little bit, and then, after I have a little something in the way of background about you, we could scare up a cameraman and do the tape."

"Sounds fine. Listen, I just got up. How about a half-hour?"

"That'll be fine. Make it forty-five minutes. It takes us girls longer to get it all together. There's some easy chairs in the hallway leading to the hotel restaurant. Just meet me down there, near the door."

I was waiting for Josie when she walked up to me in the lobby and introduced herself. "You're already very familiar to me," I told her. "I watch the Orioles' games anytime they're playing while the Baysox aren't. I like your interviews and features."

"You're very kind," she said. "Let's go on in. I'm starving. These west coast swings always mess up my metabolism something terrible!"

"My first time, out here," I told her as we followed a young woman to a booth and accepted our menus. "My first time in the Twin Cities, too. Lots of firsts for me this week."

"Were you surprised when they called you up?"

"I was stunned," I told her. "I'd heard about the string of injuries, but I never expected it to have any impact on me at all. I figured there had to be other guys in the System who were ahead of me."

"Yes, it's been a real epidemic of bad luck," she said. "All the way down to Norfolk and beyond. They really had to scrape the..."

I laughed. "Go ahead and say it!" I told her. "'... the bottom of the barrel, ' you were about to say."

She blushed furiously. "I'm really sorry," she said. It sounded as if she really meant it.

"Listen, my manager in Bowie told me not to be surprised if the Orioles handed me a return ticket to Double-A at any time. He warned me -- in very blunt language -- that this wasn't my real shot at the Bigs. It was just desperation-time, and I was the warm body chosen."

"Well, we're not going to approach this interview in that way," Josie said. "As far as BirdSports is concerned, you're a young Lou Gehrig, and those injured infielders you're replacing are just so many Wally Pipps."

"Nothing like truth in journalism," I said.

"We try, not only as a matter of policy but just as a matter of simple decency, to treat all the players with respect," she said. "I'm really, really sorry about that scraping-the-barrel thing!"

"Hey, it's OK, really! I have no illusions. None. I'm two or three years away from sticking, up here. I'm cannon fodder, my manager in Bowie told me. When I left, he said he'd see me in a week."

"Well, we're not going to treat you like cannon fodder in this interview," she said.

"Why don't you, though?" I told her. "I mean, how many interviews have you done with guys where all you had to work with was their playing history, their position, their home town -- all that stuff, and maybe what their first impressions of the club and the league were? In my case, you could really do something interesting. You could let the viewers see the intricacies of running a franchise when things go really wrong."

"You mean -- highlight the fact that you're a Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time player?"

"You got it! Zero in on what a nobody I am! What went wrong -- in Baltimore and in Norfolk, too -- that led to the Orioles' reaching all the way down to Double-A for a kid infielder with no power -- one who's hitting .250-something."

"You're right -- it would make for a more interesting interview."

"I don't mean you have to, y'know, humiliate me. Just don't reach for the usual bullshit about what a great prospect I am. Give it to them straight. I'll play it the same way. No false humility -- just a guy who's aware he's not going to be here for more than a few days."

"What'd you do, study journalism in college?" she asked.

"Actually, I did -- a little. I figured the best course for a jock with only moderate athletic skills would be to prepare for a not-so-distant future in radio... I knew even then I wasn't pretty enough for television."

Josie laughed. "Actually, you're not half bad-looking. A little skinny, maybe, for a jock, but I think the female fans will take to you, readily enough. You're what we call a 'sliver.'"

"A sliver?"

"Yeah. Smallish, skinny, rangy guy. Fred Astaire in spikes. Lots of women go for that type."

"How about you? Do you go for that type?"

"No ballplayers in my life, fat or thin, tall or short," Josie said. I thought she sounded a little wistful about it. "That's a strict no-no at BirdSports Network. We talk to the players. We're friendly with the players. But we are forbidden to drink with, date, or otherwise form personal relationships with the players. It's all in The Book."

"The Book?"

"Sure. We have a formal code of conduct. The Book... Do's and Don'ts for BirdSports Network minions."

"You're an extremely attractive woman. You must get a lot of offers -- from ballplayers."

"The only offers I get are from ballplayers -- worse luck," Josie said, laughing. "I mean, who else would I hear from? I'm on the road with the club half the time, and there's a ballgame practically every night when we're back in Baltimore... It's not conducive to much of a love life."

"Sounds terrible. Really! I mean, what do you do for a love life?"

"Hey, Cowboy, who's interviewing who, here?"

"I think it's 'whom, '" I said. "Isn't it? '... Who's interviewing whom?"

"An English scholar, I've got! Listen, Freddie, this is fun, but, seriously now, you're not going to get offended if, in this on-camera session, I ask you embarrassing questions like "Who the hell are you -- Freddie Bartholomew?"

"That's Freddie Brumbelow," I corrected. "I think Freddie Bartholomew was some old actor or comedian or something."

"Gaah! Now I can't even remember names! A Television Cookie who can't remember names. What chance do I have?"

"All of your work with the Orioles that I've seen has been uniformly excellent," I told her.

I was being serious now. She really was good at her job. Not just a "Cookie," who stood there with a microphone and looked hot. She had shown me, many times over, that she knew the game, and had intelligent things to say about the action on the field.

I knew she appreciated my comment. "And I think you are a very unusual ballplayer," she said.

"Yes. I'm a one-week wonder: 'Freddie Brumbelow, Pinch-Runner to the Stars.'"

The interview went extremely well. Josie Fitzgerald, I think, was delighted to be afforded an opportunity to avoid the fluff and get right down there into the nitty-gritty. For my part, I didn't have to pretend anything, I could, in the immortal words of ten thousand sports broadcasters from coast-to-coast, just "tell it like it is."

"What makes you think you're ready for the Big Leagues?" she asked me, early in the interview.

"I'm not," I responded. "I'm not ready at all. I was down in Altoona with the Baysox, minding my own business, and, Bingo! Somebody hands me a ticket to Minneapolis and says, 'Hey, Kid -- you're in the Big Leagues, now.'"

"But..." Josie responded -- and here, she feigned real confusion, almost consternation -- "... You're hitting .254 in the Eastern League and, excuse me, Freddie, but your power numbers are... not that great."

"Yeah," I interjected, breaking her rhythm a little, but at the same time, helping her to keep it looking real.

"... I mean, what were the Orioles thinking? This is -- what?... Your second season as a professional? You've been in Double-A for less than two months!"

"It's all because of the string of injuries," I explained, knowing that Josie knew all this already, but that maybe the more casual viewers wouldn't know, and might be interested when (and if) this tape ever aired. I went down the list, checking off the two Oriole infielders, the guy in Norfolk who would normally have answered the call to replace them, the fact that the Norfolk guy's own replacement wasn't even an infielder. "I'm the bottom of the barrel," I told her, shocking Josie a little, I think, by using her own cliché against her.

"But... surely you can make a contribution while you're with the Big Club," she said, finally, giving us a way to get out of the doldrums and conclude the interview on a more positive note.

"I expect, as bad as things are, they'll have to get even worse, or the club will have to get involved in a laugher, before I get into an actual game," I said. "Oh, maybe I'll get in as a pinch-runner in a tight late-game situation... But unless another infielder goes down, I probably won't be going into the hole at short for a hard ground ball anytime soon."

"But I'll bet we'll be seeing you back here, next year, or the year after that," Josie said sweetly, winding up the little exchange.

"I certainly hope so," I said. "Listen, if I could add a hundred points to my average, increase my foot-speed by twenty-five percent, and get off the dime a littler better on moves to my right, all I'd have to do to be Ichiro Suzuki would be to learn to speak Japanese!"

Josie sputtered a little bit on that unrehearsed line, but she recovered, smiled broadly, and wished me luck. "It sounds like you'll need some!" she threw in, as the cameraman shut it down.

"That was the damnedest thing I ever saw," the cameraman, who doubled as a half-assed director for Josie, said admiringly. "I don't even know if Larry will let you run that, and it might piss off some of the Club's brass; but the fans -- if they ever see it -- they'll love it!"

We beat Seattle that night, 11-2, despite the patchwork lineup. We still had a formidable offense and good pitching, so the holes in the infield and the several other regulars out of the lineup hadn't been enough to cause a team collapse. Our big night at the plate had been largely led by unlikely offensive heroes who just had a good game all at the same time. It didn't hurt, though, that our big guy, Zeke Taylor, the centerfielder, was alive and well and busting up pitching staffs all over the league.

What a monster that guy was! He was big and kind of tough looking (although he seemed to be a pussycat away from the field of battle), and he had a batting eye that was second to none. He was always in the top five in the league for homers, OBP, batting average and ribbies. He had been acquired, two years earlier, from Houston as a free agent, and he'd been the best thing to happen to Baltimore's offense since Frank Robinson.

As long as the Orioles' pitching held up, and Zeke "The Streak" Taylor didn't go down with an injury, we could play with an infield of all-stars selected from the Albanian National Team and still be competitive. And I knew I could have made the Albanian National Team's starting lineup with ease, if only I'd been born in Albania.

After having watched three games from the Bird's bench, two of which we had won in a walk, I started wondering whether maybe Paul Warren would let me into a game after all, somewhere down the line. I mean, look at his situation: We had a guy playing every day at shortstop who was, most definitely, unaccustomed to playing every day. The guy also wasn't hitting a lick, as far as I could see, and he was decidedly not going to make Orioles fans forget Mark Belanger, or even Miguel Tejada, as a glove man.

Hell, I could go oh-for-four just as well as the next substitute infielder.

Put me in, Coach!

I did get in -- as a pinch-runner -- in the eighth inning of a tight game our second night in Seattle. I was so impressed with the massive roof over the Mariners' new stadium that I almost got picked off first base a few seconds after I'd arrived there.

But I didn't get picked off. I advanced to second on a ground ball and then took third on an infield single. I died on third but, hey, I was pretty sure that those two bases to which I'd managed to advance had been enough to get me into the Book.

The Encyclopedia of Baseball.

OK, so my line would be a long mess of zeros, but I was pretty sure that even pinch runners got into the Book. Didn't they?

We won again and closed out Seattle with a sweep the next afternoon.

Sure enough, on the flight down to Oakland, I saw Amiable Amy again. I saw Josie Fitzgerald, too. She was friendly enough to actually get up out of her seat, once we were airborne, and walk back to talk to me for a moment. Unlike Amy, Josie Fitzgerald made no hand-signals on my crotch. Hey, you can't have everything.

"We haven't run your interview yet," she said. "They decided not to run it when you went in as a pinch-runner. There was too much going on in the game, and besides, the guys wanted to wait to use it when you got your first at-bat."

"But I might never get an at-bat," I said with exaggerated mournfulness. "Remember -- this isn't my real shot. Cannon fodder only -- remember?"