Prologue
FRANCESCA
Two Years Ago . . .
After seven hard-fought games, the New York Yankees celebrated their World Series championship win on the field at Dodger Stadium, and theLAfaithful were stunned silent.
I’d never heard fifty thousand people be that quiet before.
Helpless from my seat in the front-office suite, all I could do was watch. Our players drifted from the dugout back through the tunnel to the clubhouse, where there would be no champagne and beer waiting for them to douse each other sticky, and no trophy to lift above their heads, no World Series ring that would forever name them champion.
My front-office colleagues melted away too, one by one, until I was left alone. With a long breath in and then out again, I wiped the tears from eyes with the heel of my hand, grateful I’d thought to put on waterproof mascara that morning.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
Not again.
But no matter how hard I worked, it still wasn’t enough.
I worked late a lot back then.
It was expected that all baseball operations staff stay until the end of every game, but I didn’t do it because it was expected of me. I did it because I loved being there long after the final out,when all the fans are gone, the players and coaches too, when it would be just me in my office and maybe a few other diehards left.
Sometimes I’d even go into the empty stands and work with the field laid out in front of me. I’d compile my report on the next day’s opposing pitcher and how our line-up matched up, determining outfield positioning for the other hitters, going over pitch selection for our starter and the guys available out of the bullpen.
Should I have been delegating that kind of stuff? Probably, but if Frankie Sullivan, the head of major league analytics, stayed late, it sent the clear signal to the rest of my staff that I was willing to put in the hours, and that, if I’m going to do it, they should too.
Is it healthy to feel that way about your job?
Most people would say no. They at least try for a semblance of work-life balance.
That’s crap.
At least it was for me.
Hence my divorce. Though, I think that was probably more about him being a cheating scumbag rather than how much I loved my job. And it was actually one of the things my ex said he loved about me: how dedicated I was, that I was focused and driven and ambitious, and wouldn’t let anything stand in my way.
As it turned out, not even him.
Because even after he left, I still had my dream.
And that was everything.
Five years with the Dodgers and I knew I was the best in the game.
You don’t get to the top of the baseball world as a woman without not just being the best, but beingobviouslythe best.
I put in the work and left everyone else in my dust.
But, in the end, the only thing that mattered was the result. A World Series championship. And there isn’t an algorithm in the world that can predict what happens once you get there. Two teams, the best of seven games. It’s too small a sample size with too many variables to predict.
Believe me, I’ve tried.
And so had he, the last player left in our dugout, watching the Yankees celebrate.
Charlie Avery, all six foot four, two hundred odd pounds of him, with eye black streaked across his face and dirt creased over his uniform, his wrists wrapped tightly, shaggy brown hair probably still damp with sweat plastered against his forehead and his sharp blue eyes staring blankly out onto the field.
He sat like a statue until the Yankees danced back to their clubhouse and long after the fans, even the stragglers milling around for one last gasp of the dying baseball season, were shooed away by security. He sat there and so did I, two levels up and across the field, like we were the last two people left on earth.
