A boy told his father, I am baseball.
The boy’s father told no one, and wrote it all down.
The boy’s mother told him, “You just have to show up.”
The boy’s uncle told everyone else, “That boy can’t stop till he gets it right.”
Hitter’s stance. Aligned. Feet thirty-two inches, heel to heel. Knees flexed twenty-three degrees. Weight thirty-five percent front foot, sixty-five rear. Rear foot angled in eleven degrees.
First movement. Front foot. Up, forward eight inches, down.
Not it.
There was no second movement until the first one was good.
Reset.
Again.
Again, eighteen times.
Hands, twenty-one. Hips, thirteen. Follow-through, eighteen more.
Again.
All parts together, eleven more.
Thane Weston Briggs picked up his bat. Bring it.
A ball, a bat, a swing, contact, nope, that’s not it.
Again.
Day one.
Position players.
Spring drills.
My first in pinstripes.
Same uniform Ruth wore. 3.
Gehrig, 4.
DiMaggio, 5.
Mantle, 7.
Berra, 8.
Maris, 9.
Rizzuto, 10.
Munson, 15.
Ford, 16.
Howard, 32.
Jackson, 44.
So many ghosts stitched into navy and white.
Now me.
Sun already on the back of my neck, cut grass and infield dirt coming up warm off the field.
I never wanted to wear this uniform.
But I had to admit — I looked good in it.
And my agent and financial adviser weren’t complaining.
I was a brand now.
Not a man playing a boy’s game.
A brand. Things with my name and number on them.
Not bad for a kid from Niles, California.
In my heart, I always thought I’d spend my whole career at home in green and gold.
Oakland raised me. Oakland taught me. Oakland let me walk, the way Oakland always lets them walk once they get too expensive to keep.
Two compensation picks went back to Oakland to soften the blow. They’d help my hometown team. That was the only consolation I let myself name.
Secretly, I’d always root for my A’s. Even when I played against them. Even when they beat us — especially then. Except for when we were playing them in the playoffs. Not then. Never then.
The Yankee clubhouse welcomed me the way clubhouses always welcome a free-agent prize.
Locker assigned.
Name on tape above the slot, white tape with black Sharpie, the lettering hand-printed by an equipment guy who’d done a thousand of these and didn’t think twice about it. Pinstripes hanging inside, the fabric still smelling of the laundry where it had been pressed.
The body looked for the number first.
Forty-four was the number I had carried since Little League, through travel ball, high school, college, and Oakland. Forty-four. Reggie’s number. Here, in pinstripes, it belonged to memory now — retired since ’93, untouched since they set his plaque in Monument Park and let the number pass into the keeping of the ghosts.
The Yankees didn’t unretire numbers.
I’d known that on the plane out.
The body had wanted it anyway.
What was stitched on the back was 29.
I knew the number before I read it. Catfish’s Yankees number. Not the 27 they’d retired in Oakland — the 29 he wore the year he came east.
Filed that.
Filed that somebody had decided.
Filed that the someone hadn’t asked.
I didn’t know who’d made the call.
I never asked. The fact of it was enough.
I found a note after Uncle Bill passed, going through his things.
He’d told the Yankees what number he wanted me to wear.