THE BROKEN RADIO

A SHORT FICTION STORY OF SEATTLE MARINERS FRUSTRATION

BY ANDREW GALL
! In the summer of 1992, I would get angry at baseball and throw radios.

It was a perverted piece of rage-calming joy I discovered one night after my beloved Seattle Mariners let another of that seasons 98 losses slip away. Upon the initial throw/smash, the sounds of losing turned to silence, and I was left with a strangely cathartic feeling that only physical destruction can provide.

And when it was over, I found that I could snap the radio back together and get it working again just in time to listen to the next nights loss without interruption. So I regretted my rage for approximately one minute. If that.

This was back in the days prior to ginormous baseball TV contracts or MLBtv, meaning the number of home games broadcast into my living room were near zero (mercifully, as I think about it, given that the team was terrible). So naturally, the radio became the focus of my game-following (mostly dis-) pleasure. This was back in the days of Seattle Mariners utter abject failure, with but one winning season up against 15 losing ones. Griffey was still young and coming into his own, Randy Johnson was still walking too many guys, and someone named Bert Heffernan was a member of the 25-man roster for a time.

And as a result, the radio became broken and re-broken, again and again, whether at the hands of Dave Valle or Tim Leary or our erstwhile closer Mike Schooler (it seemed always to be Schooler, and actually, it probably was: in 1992, Mike was 2-7 with a 4.70 ERA, and holds the dubious distinction of giving up five runs in the ninth inning of two consecutive games. No wonder I resorted to throwing electronics). Soon, my radio rage became a known behavior within my family unit. Mainly because rage tends to be loud, angry, and disruptive. Id throw that damned radio hard, satisfied for a moment at the smashing before being paralyzed by fear that this time, I wouldnt be able to piece it back together again before my dad showed upeven though I always could.

A word about my dad. Hes always had a temper too. So its not entirely unsurprising that I inherited such a trait, along with his pattern baldness. His general fuse could, then as now, generally be described less as short and more as upset-viking-like. And in a twist of beautiful irony, nothing brought the wrath of my dads temper to bear more strongly than when I happened to unleash mine.

The best was the time I threw a fit over losing a toy car and in church and got carried out of there by my dads angry and shaking upper body, leaving me with an extra 50 minutes at home unencumbered by gods teachings. I felt equal parts ashamed and extremely satisfied, even though Id never previously seen him so upset.

My temper problem was well-heard and well-noted amongst neighbors, the next door empty nesters Mark and Debra Summers especially. Much like my father, I was blessed/cursed with a voice that could traverse canyons. And even though I was on the wrong side of puberty, my voice, when angry, became a slightly shrill pre-chest-hair-having boom (if thats even a possible thing) of a yell that usually uttered Dave Valle, GOD! Stupid Schooler, or I HATE Johnny Moses! (he of the lifetime WAR of -3.3. Perhaps my visceral reaction was astute after all in that case).

Some things my dad would say when I would yell about the bad baseball:

Nip it in the BUD! (the only time this has ever been shouted, Im pretty sure).

Dont lose your fucking composure! (A sentence construction that confuses, as the words fucking and composure just dont seem to belong next to each other. It was at once scolding and needlessly eloquent).

But my favorite nugget of dad-based anger-at-anger would come when he was downstairs and I was up and he was too lazy to actually investigate the source of the crash, stomp, or scream Id unleashed, in which case hed simply yell out the great catch-all:

What the HELL is going on up there?

Generally, as you may have guessed, what the Hell was going on up there was some bit of rage, likely directed at a game-tying or game-winning homer off of (once again) Schooler, who, it should be mentioned, MUST have been the later inspiration for HBOs Eastbound and Down character Kenny Powers, as the resemblance, the hair, and the fact that they were/are both fireballing and failed closers cannot be an accident, though I dont recall a foul mouth or any antics involving cocaine in the case of Schooler. Ive never seen this resemblance mentioned anywhere, though its likely that it simply isnt mentioned because no

one even knows who old Seattle Mariners from that era are (save Griffey, Randy, and Edgar Martinez, and probably Jay Buhner), especially ones who retire after 7 years with a middling ERA and then wind up becoming High School gym teachers (which Schooler did, and which is also yet another bit of Kenny Powers connective tissue).

Needless to say, with the Mariners 34-54, 16 games out of first and the All Star Break barely over with, my temper was rearing its ugly head that summer more often than it wasnt. Which meant I was getting into more than my share of nonsense-related arguments with my parents. And so it was that I found myself in the family minivan on the way home from my own little league teams final game of the season, fresh off my latest punishment for swearing at the radio at the hands of the Mariners, having been left to sit in the basement stairwell for the ninth and tenth innings after uttering a wayward GOD! after Kevin Mitchell fouled out with the bases loaded in the seventh.

My team, also called the Mariners (natch), was a hodgepodge of sorts: I was playing with mostly kids who were a year younger. Me and four or five others were the 12 year olds, the stalwarts, the veterans not quite good enough to make the jump to Majors, instead left in Minors for a bit more seasoning. A group of precocious, not-quite athletes of decent acumen, all with chips on our collective shoulders due to the fact that we were still toiling a level below. Nevertheless, our situation gave us a chance to be, with our nearly-a-year-older-physiques and

assured levels of maturity!well, stars. With good speed and reliable contact (doubles power, at very most), I mostly batted leadoff. Looking back, Im sure I batted around .400 that year. Lots of infield singles and soft liners in the gap. Which would be a bit more impressive if I had been faced with slightly more formidable competition than soft-tossing eleven-year-olds grooving straight ball after straight ball down the middle. Still, it was what I had and I did my best with it.

There were no playoffs that year. We were around a .500 team, though I seem to remember us winning more games than we lost. We had a catcher whose parents won the lottery that year. He got Star Trek cards and underwear to celebrate. This final game of the season we lost uneventfully. After we shook hands with the victors, good sports that we were, and said our not quite final goodbyes to our teammates, I piled in the back of the van with muddy cleats, an injured pride, and a fuming father, sweat soaking his white t-shirt, which was already pitted through from various other occasions. I remember trying it on once actually, the armpits stained a light yellow and the feeling too crunchy to fold over themselves if one wanted to. We werent poor, either. My dad easily could have afforded to buy new t-shirts. Maybe it was a comfort thing?

I had embarrassed myself that day. Not because I struck out three times, even though I had. No, the presence of the rage-induced-sweat-soaked t-shirt my father was wearing was due to the fact that after my hat trick was complete, I

tossed (though I prefer the term flipped, as it sounds more dignified and actually sort of cool) my bat away harshly against the fence, startling all the nice moms and dads in the stands, none of whom felt like looking me in the eye afterwards. My coach had said nothing at the time, nor at any point, his mind on something else that was actually fun, like sailing. None of my teammates seemed to care either, as the season was over and they wanted to get back to eating candy and riding bicycles.

But my dad, he was upset. Understandably, since I could have killed, or at least maimed, or at least really bruised, someone with that errant metal bat of mine. He said nothing the whole drive home, done with me for awhile, and that was the most scared of him Id ever been.

With the Mariners playing that night, trouble was brewing for the radio and I knew it. I listened silently to most of the game in the basement, alone, stewing on rage en route to what had grown to be a 9-3 shellacking at the hands of the Texas Rangers. Around the seventh inning, I went outside, radio in tow. I guess I probably knew a good heave was inevitable, and wanted to get outside where my throw would have maximum lift potential. Some innings-eating reliever came in and gave up five more runs for no reason, and Id heard enough. I threw it like a baseball towards the fence, bottled-up frustration officially unleashed.

It was my lifes greatest throw. That pink radio arched high in the air in the starry

night, far over the fence, and into the neighboring Summers backyard. And with a soft thump, the great Dave Neihaus play-by-play voice of the Seattle Mariners, who had told me on several occasions that pictures or descriptions of the account of the game without the expressed written consent of the Seattle Mariners and Major League Baseball were strictly prohibited, went silent leaving nothing but ambient suburban noise in its wake: a distant dog barking. The low hum of relaxed conversation. Stillness.

I was defeated, knowing in my heart of hearts that there would be no fixing this, no jamming all those radio components back into working order, no avoidance of dad wrathnot with the juice Id put behind that pitch. There was nothing left for me to do but scramble over the fence, retrieve the contents, and face the music of red-faced anger.

I lifted one foot over the other and hurdled, doing a little soft shoe upon landing into the fairly tall, yet well-manicured Summers lawn of grass. I scooped up the electronic remains of that former box of baseball sound, then stopped abruptly.

There was a single light on in the housein the kitchen. There, watching, staring, at myself and my sad excuse for dads radio parts, stood Mr. Summers, naked from the waist down. Not ashamed, not trying to hide. Merely transfixed by me, as I him. He was flanked by a woman, Lady Who Was Definitely Not Debra Summers, who had wrapped herself sloppily in a curtain, looking at me with

uncertainty.

I stood stunned and dumbly, holding the radio carcass in my left hand while my right reflexively opened and closed for no reason other than trying to physically process a next move.

Mr. Summers, making no move to cover up, slowly slid open the sliding glass door in all his pale-legged glory, never breaking eye contact with me, speaking carefully, measuredly, like a man who was actually wearing pants.

So. Whos winning?