Warmup was at eleven-thirty at the field behind the plant, a flat patch of dirt and crabgrass that had once been an overflow parking lot. Leo arrived in the uniform that fit him like it was tailored just for him. He should have asked Dottie how and where she had gotten it from.
'Did she take my measurements at some point before?'
Burns was on the field already, in an old wool uniform with the word Zephyrs stitched across the chest. The lineup of professional players stood in a loose half-circle around him, looking at him with a combination of curiosity and confusion.
"…and instead of the customary baseball beer," Burns was saying, "you will each be drinking a special nerve tonic which I have personally selected. It promotes vigor and enhances reflex, builds character, and has, on rare occasions, been known to cause gigantism, but the risk is statistically minor —"
A young player at the front of the half-circle — Ken Griffey Junior, a black man still in his early twenties who had already been called the best young hitter in the league — looked at the bottle Smithers was holding up with unmistakable interest. He licked his lips.
Leo watched all of this from across the field for about two seconds and decided he wanted to be nowhere near that bottle. He kept his eyes on the ground and walked along the third-base line and slipped into the dugout from the open end without anyone in the half-circle so much as turning around.
He set his bag on the bench and sat down. He looked out at the field through the chain-link.
Griffey took the bottle from Smithers and drained it in two swallows.
'Drinking straight death,' Leo shook his head.
…
Homer was sitting four feet down the bench in his own baseball uniform, watching the half-circle with a lot of sad concentration. Leo slid down two seats.
"Homer."
The yellow fatty turned. When he saw Leo, his eyes did slow processing.
"…Leo?"
"Hi, Homer."
"What are you doing here? This is the company team baseball game."
"Surprise. I occasionally work here too, Homer."
Homer stared at him.
"Since when?"
"Since before you and I met."
"…Huh." Homer turned this over slowly, his sadness returning. "I had no idea."
"You were probably too concentrated working very hard and didn't see me."
"Hmm… yes, most likely." Homer accepted this without argument.
Then he looked at Leo's uniform. He looked at his own. He looked back at Leo's. Homer's face shifted. He had found someone who would understand.
He started letting it all out. "I have been replaced, Leo. By a ringer. A man named Darryl Strawberry. He is bigger than me, faster than me, and stronger than me."
"Oh. Are you a right fielder too?"
"Yes! And I was one first! Before Strawberry!"
"Don't take it too hard, Homer. Darryl Strawberry is a four-time World Series champion. One of the most famous right fielders in the world. And it's not like you secretly made a debut in the MLB, have you?"
"No. But it still doesn't make me feel any better."
"Fair enough."
Homer turned back to him.
"So are you gonna be out there playing with them during the game?"
"Does it look like it?"
Homer looked really hard at him. "Hmmm"
Leo slowly pointed down at the bench he was sitting on to help guide Homers thinking.
"…No."
"Correct. I'm on the bench."
"Oh." Homer turned this over too. "That is also bad. The bench is where the sad people go."
Leo just nodded. He was not remotely close to being sad.
"It is where I will be, after Strawberry hits the home runs that should have been my home runs."
"Sorry."
"Sad bench, then. Together. Me and you."
"If it's any consolation, at least from over here we can drink some Duff instead of whatever that tonic I saw Burns was handing out."
…
Practice began.
Burns took the bat first to demonstrate bunting. He held it like he had never held one before. Smithers tossed a soft underhand pitch from about ten feet away. The ball met the bat. The bat met Burns. Burns went sailing backward off his feet and landed against the chain-link backstop.
Leo thought that would've killed him. The man was old and he flew off the ground fast.
Smithers screamed and ran to him. Burns was not dead, and waved him off with one bony hand without sitting up.
"I am fine, Smithers. The bat surprised me. We will try it again later."
"Yes, Mr. Burns." Smithers nodded with very worried eyes.
They were like a doomed yaoi.
A hypnotist arrived ten minutes after that. He wore a dark suit and a pocket watch on a chain and walked across the field with practiced calm. He gathered the team in front of the dugout and produced the pocket watch.
Leo, from the bench, watched the watch start swinging. Then he realized what he was doing.
He wasn't one to believe in hypnotism but why take a risk. He kept his eyes closed for the next parts.
The hypnotist's voice was low and steady. "You are all very good players."
"We are all very good players," the team repeated.
"You will beat Shelbyville."
"We will beat Shelbyville."
"You will give one hundred and ten percent —"
A pause. A long pause. Darryl Strawberry — the tall, lanky outfielder — furrowed his brow. Steve Sax — a stocky, serious-looking second baseman with a thick dark mustache and a New York Yankees jaw — also furrowed his.
"That is impossible," Sax said. "No one can give more than one hundred percent. By definition, one hundred percent is the most anyone can give."
"That is correct," Strawberry agreed. "It is mathematically the ceiling."
The hypnotist looked at them. The hypnotist looked at his watch. After a moment of professional reckoning, the hypnotist decided the point was not worth fighting.
"…You will give one hundred percent, then. The most a man can give."
"We will give one hundred percent," the team repeated, satisfied.
That ended the session with the hypnotist.
It didn't take long for Burns to point at Mattingly. Don Mattingly — a Yankees first baseman with a clean fade, a serious face, and absolutely no sideburns of any length — trotted over. Burns made him stand at attention, looked him up and down slowly, and then jabbed a finger at the side of Mattingly's face.
"Those sideburns. Trim them."
Mattingly's hand went up to his face. Mattingly did not have sideburns.
"But I don't have sideburns?"
"I will not tell you again. Cut them!"
Mattingly nodded once, slowly. He said, "Yes, Mr. Burns."
He turned around and walked to some place where he was no longer visible.
…
Practice finished at one. First pitch was at six.
The team scattered — and everyone seemed to go their own way for their break. Sax wandered toward the visitor's office for a phone. The plant employees on the roster, who all worked in the same building they had just been playing behind, drifted back through the gate to the plant cafeteria.
Leo killed the few hours his own way. Working.
To his surprise, Dottie was no longer in the office, he could not find her at all.
By five he was back in the uniform that fit, in his car, driving the ten minutes to the Shelbyville Municipal Stadium.
…
The Shelbyville Municipal Stadium was small but well-kept, with real bleachers and a chain-link fence in the outfield.
The Springfield bleachers, the visiting side, were not empty.
Marge Simpson sat in the third row with Bart and Lisa and Maggie and a camcorder. A row up from them, two women were in mid-conversation. One with large, slanted eyes with long lashes, and brown hair. She wore a pink sweater, with a light blue shirt underneath, a blue skirt, and plain black shoes. Marge knew her as Helen Lovejoy.
The other was a skinny blonde in a yellow sundress with a glass of lemonade in her hand who was leaning toward Helen and saying something in the cheerful confidential tone.
Dottie sat in the front row near the dugout in the same skin-tight light-purple dress she had been wearing that morning, legs crossed at the knee, sunglasses on, a small notepad in her lap. She had magically reappeared for the game.
Leo took the long route to the dugout to avoid walking straight in front of the bleachers. Most didn't see him as he entered, but the Simpson kids were observant.
Bart, halfway through pulling a Bazooka Joe wrapper off a piece of gum, froze with the gum halfway to his mouth and pointed.
"Mom."
"Bart, finish your gum."
"Mom. Look."
"What."
"That's Leo."
Marge, who had been struggling to find the record button on the camcorder, looked up. Her hand stopped moving. The little red light on the camcorder, which she had been trying to get to come on for ten minutes, came on at exactly this moment, unnoticed by anyone in the third row.
"Oh," Marge said.
"Why is Leo on the team?" Bart said.
"I thought Mr. Leo had his own business he focused on more than the plant," Lisa said, more to herself than to anyone. She was looking at her mother now, not at Leo. "He has the office space twenty-five minutes away. He told me. So why is he sitting in the dugout next to dad?"
"He must have some specific contract," Marge said, very evenly. "Leo works with a lot of different companies. He mentioned to me once that he had one at the plant that's very big. It's probably the reason he ended up on the team. Maybe he's trying to immerse himself to understand the company more?"
"Hmmmm."
Lisa kept looking at her mother. Her mother kept looking at the camcorder, which was now actually filming the inside of the camcorder bag. The little red light continued to glow just like a light she had seen not that long ago.
…
The dugout was almost empty.
Leo stopped two steps in.
There were maybe four men on the entire bench. Homer was one of them, sitting in roughly the same posture he had occupied on the plant bench at warmup, with what looked like a donut. Lenny was a second. Carl was a third. The thin man from accounting whose name no one could remember was a fourth.
There were no ringers minus one. Almost all of them were missing.
'Did I get the time wrong,' Leo thought. 'It is five-thirty. They told me five-thirty. The umpire is on the field. The stands are full. This is the dugout.''
He set his bag down slowly.
It was then he saw Smithers and Burns at the far end of the dugout. Smithers had his hand cupped to Burns's good ear. Burns was very still. Burns had stopped using the damp cloth on his forehead and was holding it in his hand very tightly.
Burns rose from his seat.
He walked the length of the dugout with Smithers half a step behind him. His mouth was moving.
"Three misfortunes was possible," Burns muttered as he reached them. "Seven misfortunes was an outside chance. But this is —"
"Eight, sir."
"Eight, Smithers, yes."
The damp cloth in Burns's hand was now a small damp ball. He looked at the assembled men. He looked at Smithers. He looked, briefly, at the field, where the Shelbyville team had taken the diamond in matching crisp uniforms and were warming up with confidence. A million dollars was on the line.
Before Burns could open his mouth, a man trotted up the dugout steps and presented himself in front of him.
It was Mattingly. And it was not the same Mattingly. The clean fade from the morning was gone. The sides of his head, all the way up to the top of his head, had been razored clean to the scalp. He stood at attention with the bright optimism.
"Sir. Sideburns gone, sir."
Burns looked at him.
"Mattingly."
"Sir."
"I told you to trim those sideburns."
"…I did, sir."
"Go home. You're off the team. For good."
"…"
"…Fine." Mattingly turned around. As he passed Leo, he muttered, more to himself than to anyone, "I still like him better than Steinbrenner."
He walked out of the dugout. It was a good thing Leo's million dollars were not on the line or he might have felt compelled to smack the Burns and maybe even Smithers.
Burns turned back to the assembled men.
"All right, you ragtag bunch of misfits."
The men attended.
"You hate me, and I hate you even more. But without my beloved ringers… you're all I've got."
He took a breath.
"So I want you to remember… some inspiring things… that someone else may have told you… in the course of your lives… and go out there and win."
'Inspirational.' Was what Leo wanted to say sarcastically, but before he could, everyone around him started cheering.
"Now, go my revised lineup!"
The men shuffled toward the steps.
Homer, with the donut still in his hand, stood up off the bench and started moving with them.
Burns spotted him. Burns extended one bony arm and laid the flat of his hand against the center of Homer's chest.
"Not so fast, Simpson. The man who plays your position is here. Hit the pine."
Home felt like a plane hit the two towers within his heart.
"…Yes, Mr. Burns." He said dejectedly.
Burns turned his attention back to the game.
Meanwhile, Homer fell to his knees pounding the floor with both of his fists closed.
"It should have been me, not him!" he sobbed.
Leo, in passing, gave him a small look. Then went out to first base.
…
Marge raised the camcorder.
"And the man wants to hit the ball, too." A crack from the plate. "And he does. And there he goes, off in that direction. And everyone is happy."
Bart leaned over. "Mom, do you want me to handle the play-by-play?"
"I can handle the play-by-play, Bart, thank you."
She wanted to record Homer in front of the kids, but since Homer was busy scratching his balls on the dugout bench, the target of most of her recordings was Leo.
…
The game took its shape fast.
Strawberry hit a home run in the first inning. He hit another in the third. By the top of the fifth he was three for three and the Shelbyville pitcher was visibly tired of him.
Leo, who Burns had inserted at first base, made two clean catches off line drives in the early innings and turned a slow double play in the bottom of the fourth that drew an actual cheer from the Springfield bleachers.
At the top of the fifth, Leo came up with two on and one out. The Shelbyville pitcher, rattled by Strawberry, fed him a fastball belt-high over the heart of the plate, and Leo put it over the left-field fence and into the parking lot, where it bounced once off the windshield of a beige sedan.
The Springfield bleachers stood up.
Leo jogged the bases.
He could hear the loud cheering from Lisa and Bart who he waved too as ran past.
"Go Mr. Depp!" Lisa had gotten swept up in the emotions of the crowd.
"Hell yeah!"
"Language, Bart." Marge reminded him once again.
Springfield was up by four.
…
In the bottom of the sixth, the bat hit Burns.
It was Carl. Leo recognized him from Moe's the second he stepped to the plate — Carl, with the steady voice and the make-believe wife who had insider knowledge about plant promotions — took a swing at a fastball with the full earnest commitment. The bat slipped out of Carl's hands on the upswing like a bar of wet soap. It traveled, end over end, in a high lazy arc. It cleared the chain-link fence of the dugout.
It struck Mr. Burns in the face.
Mr. Burns went down.
Smithers screamed. The man Leo guessed was gay rushed to save his master.
Leo, in the dugout, had a flash of his daydream from that morning — the swing, the ball going out, the old man folding like a deck chair. It was a little different but it was just as enjoyable.
The umpire called the swing a strike.
…
By the top of the ninth Springfield was up by four and Strawberry, Homer's replacement, was due to bat with two outs and the bases loaded.
Burns, watching from the dugout with the entire left side of his face purple and a small ice pack pressed to his cheekbone, turned to Smithers.
"Strawberry. Pull him."
"Sir, he has hit three home runs today already and we are already winning by four."
"Smithers, the pitcher is a left-hander and Strawberry is a left-hander, and you do not bat a left-hander against a left-hander, regardless of score. It is called playing the percentages."
"…Yes, sir."
"Send up Simpson."
…
Homer, who was still in disbelief, stood up from the bench, where he had been finishing what may or may not have been another donut. He walked to the plate with pure joy.
Before getting to the plate, Burns stopped him and gave him many detailed instructions on how to swing based on all the code signals he would be throwing out near the third base coach box.
As Homer prepared to swing, Burns touched the brim of his cap, then his nose, then his elbow, then his ear, then his cap again, then his belt, then made a circling motion with his right hand. He paused, then did most of it again.
At some point Leo felt like he made the signal for a fireball jutsu.
Homer watched all of this and must have thought the same. Because Homer's mind, as Homer's mind often did, wandered. Homer was thinking about potato chips or some other random thing.
Leo, sitting at the corner of the dugout with his third can of Duff resting between his knees, watched the signs go on. The Shelbyville pitcher was waiting. Homer was nowhere near present. The bat, in Homer's grip, was angled like bats were not designed to be angled — the same angle Carl's bat had been at before it had left his hands and changed the color of Burns's face.
Leo cupped his free hand to his mouth.
"Homer! Swing!"
Homer's head jerked up like a man waking from a microsleep.
The pitch was already coming in.
Homer swung. It was not a good swing. It was barely a swing at all — more of an interrupted thought ending in a flailing reflex — but his hands stayed on the bat, the bat stayed in his hands, and the ball passed an unhurried foot in front of him on its way into the catcher's mitt.
"Strike."
Two more pitches went by. Homer did not threaten any of them. The third one caught the outside corner and the umpire raised his hand.
"Strike three."
Homer stood at the plate for a second longer than was strictly necessary — reviewing what had just happened in case it had been better than it looked — and then walked back to the dugout. The one shot he had had been blown.
The kids would be disappointed. He was their hero, Homer was sure of it, and he hit nothing. The only home runs they got to see was from his replacement earlier and from Leo. Not even his special weapon bat had saved him.
Burns was waiting for him at the top of the steps.
"Simpson."
"Yes, Mr. Burns?"
"That was, without exaggeration, the worst at-bat I have ever seen at any level of organized baseball."
"Thank you, Mr. Burns."
But it didn't matter.
Springfield had still won, the extra runs were not needed.
Leo finished his last beer. Then he handed one to Homer who might've really been needing one.
…
Burns collected the championship trophy from the Shelbyville mayor with one hand still pressed to the ice pack and the entire left side of his face the color of an eggplant.
"Mister Burns," the mayor said, "is your eye all right."
"I have been struck in the face by my own employee," Burns announced — the carrying voice of a man who had decided he was going to milk this for the rest of the season — "but I have won the million d — I mean the trophy, and the trophy will heal my eye in time. Smithers, the trophy."
"Yes, sir."
"Lift it for me, Smithers, I cannot lift it with this eye."
…
Dottie was waiting for him in the parking lot.
She had taken her sunglasses off again when she saw him and she had her notepad tucked under one arm and her car keys in her other hand.
"Mr. D."
"Dottie."
"That was a very good swing."
"It was, wasn't it."
She smiled at him and started walking toward her car.
Leo walked with her. "I couldn't find you after practice."
She looked at him slyly. "You should've called me, Mr. D."
"I tried. You weren't at the office."
"I had something to take care of, boss."
"Something?"
"Something." She gave him the small private smile and kept walking.
Leo didn't ask further. It wasn't too much of a concern for him.
"You know, Dottie. I think I hit that ball as well as I did because I got to hit something else this morning."
She did not look at him, but the corner of her mouth lifted.
"And what was that, Mr. D."
They had reached her car. She had her hand on the driver's-side door handle with one hip leaning against a car door.
Leo slid his hand down across the small curve of her ass over the dress and let it rest there for a second and gave it a single firm squeeze.
"This."
"Naughty…" she teased him, looking up at him through her lashes without moving away.
"Maybe we should do that again, if it helps the company."
"You are very dedicated, Mr. D."
"I try to be."
"I am free in the mornings. You have my schedule, Mr. D"
She opened the door and folded herself into the driver's seat. She looked up at him one more time through her lashes.
"See you at work again, Mr. D."
"See you, Dottie."
He closed the door for her. She backed out of the spot, gave him one last look through the windshield, and drove off.
Leo watched the car until it turned out of the lot.
Then he went to find his own.
...
...
...
[A/N]: End of extra slice of life story part