A mother would pick it up with tweezers. Or rubber gloves.
Gingerly. Carefully. Like a scavenger cleaning up road kill.
Then she’d drop it into the dirty clothes with a “Yech!”
”Don’t you ever wash this thing?” she’d ask.
Wash it? Wash my baseball cap? Are you nuts? You never wash a baseball cap.
See that salty brine on the top, ma? I got that from scooping up grounders in 90-degree heat. And the smell, ma, don’t you love it? You say repugnant. I say Chanel No.5.
And so it sits there on his head, day-after-day, practice-after-practice, game-after-game.
Soiled. Unwashed. Odoriferous.
Unloved by everyone except him. The young baseball player. The proud-to-wear-road-kill-cap player.
Call it superstition. Call it tradition. Call it what you will.
The cap ain’t going swimming in any washing machine.
Dirty it is. Dirty it remains.
”I’m not one of those guys who really likes to wash them,” says the wearer of one such chapeau, Brandon Green, Everett AquaSox infielder. “I’m kind of superstitious when it comes to that.
What would cause him to wash it? “Probably nothing,” he replies after a moment’s pause. “Maybe the end of the season.”
Teammates make fun of it. “I don’t care,” he shrugs. “I sweat.”
Sweat is good. Sweat is healthy. Sweat is enriching.
Green likes to sweat. That’s how he figures he’ll get to the major leagues. By outsweating the other guy.
”My thing is, I’m not the most talented player on the team as far as just being gifted,” he said before the AquaSox wrapped up a homestand with a 9-3 victory over Tri-City Wednesday afternoon. “But I like to play hard and give it my all.
”That’s my biggest pet peeve: when people aren’t trying and quit. We’ve got a couple of totally gifted guys on our team, but everybody’s got to work hard or they wouldn’t be here.”
So if manager Pedro Grifol orders him to take 100 grounders or work in the batting cage for an hour, he’ll gladly do it? “I also think there’s overwork because you can just get your body too tired to play in the game,” Green said. “You’ve got to be smart with it.”
He was in the cage swinging away the other day when Grifol walked by. “You’re gonna bust a gut,” the manager said.
” I’m just trying to get the work done,” Green said.
” I like it,” Grifol responded.
Green has something goading him besides the desire to play in the majors. Before the draft last month, he was under the impression he would be taken between the eighth and the 15th-round. And he was hoping that the team drafting him would be the Mariners. “They seemed a little more fair to (college) senior signs,” said Green, who capped a four-year career at Wichita State by winning co-Player of the Year in the Missouri Valley Conference.
The first day of the draft passed without any phone calls from major league teams. On the second day, Mariner scout Mark Lummus called. The M’s had taken Green in the 19th-round. Which didn’t exactly cause him to do cartwheels.
The scout said he detected a little anger in Green’s voice that the M’s had selected him. No, Green said, it wasn’t that. It was where he was taken that upset him.
Keep that attitude, Lummus said, and show them what you can do.
And so, that’s what Green has done.
It’s working. In his last 10 games, he’s hitting .314 with one home run and 11 RBI. It’s raised his average to .271, his homers to 4 and his RBI to 31, which stands him No. 3 in the Northwest League.
Before Wednesday’s game – in which he was 0-for-3, walked and was hit by a pitch – he was hitting .346 with runners in scoring position for 30 of his RBI and all four of his home runs.
All of this earned him a spot on the NWL West Division All-Star team, along with eight teammates. The game against the East stars is Aug.3 at Avista Stadium in Spokane.
” First season in pro ball, make the all-star team,” Green mused, “that’s what everybody hopes to do.”
He thought he could hit here and now he’s proving it. “You’ve got to have kind of a cocky attitude when you step into that box and just believe you’re better than that pitcher and what he’s got,” he said. “You especially have to believe you can hit his fastball, even if he throws in the mid-90s.”
Green had to muster some confidence that he could play a new position when he joined the AquaSox. In college, he played shortstop as a freshman, second base as a sophomore and third base his last two years.
So where did the Sox put him when he reported last month? First base. They didn’t have one. And he wanted to play.
” They said as long as you’re hitting, we’ve got to find you a place to play,” said Green, who had played only one game in his life at first base. “As long as I’m in the lineup, I’m not complaining where I’m playing. I’m just looking forward to hitting every day.”
Drafted as a shortstop, he has yet to play a game there. While the majority of his appearances have been at first base (21), he hasn’t been able to completely retire his regular infield glove. He’s also played 13 games at third and three at second.
The first baseman’s mitt – which the M’s purchased for him – has taken some getting used to. Bigger than his other glove, he also finds it a bit unwieldy and weird “carrying that big thing around.”
He’s feeling more comfortable every day at his new position, and he looked it Wednesday. With a runner on first, he took a ground ball, made a perfect throw to second and then got back to first for the relay and the double play.
It was shades of John Olerud.
Now if he can just hit like him.
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