It wasn’t just the way Michael
strode into the room that reminded me of Gary Sheffield, Yankee right-fielder
and hitter who loves the fast balls.
There was also Michael’s broad chest, muscular arms, and rich
caramel-colored skin. In fact, adding
to these similarities, Michael even wore a dark blue baseball cap with the
Yankees insignia stitched in white.
But,
unlike Sheffield who appears serious, at the plate or in the outfield, with his
lips pressed together in a thin concentrated line, Michael always had a half-smile
on his face, as if he had an amusing anecdote he couldn’t wait to share. And when Michael laughed, the sound was deep
and rich and smooth, in complete harmony with his speaking voice. I liked Michael immediately, as did his
classmates.
It just happens that way with
students sometimes. There is one who
defines the class, brings it together, makes everyone, including the
instructor, relax. It’s all because of
something mysteriously and magically called chemistry. Not love-potion chemistry, although I’m sure
Michael had that as well since I could see how some of the women in the class
smiled at him when he came into the room.
Michael had people-chemistry. He
obviously and genuinely liked people.
He looked directly at them when they spoke, he listened carefully, he
always asked questions.
So how does this happen? How does someone who seems so engaged, so
interested just suddenly walk off the field leaving his bat and his glove
behind?
The newspapers reported an
allegation of date-rape. I already knew
Michael had a problem with alcohol.
He’d written a essay about his struggles with his father, the law, and
his own addictions. His brother was in
prison; his mother, a police
officer. Those were the parts of him,
the straight and the wild, like pitches thrown in a World Series game by young
men just brought up from the minor leagues.
Power and Strength. Sometimes,
controlled; sometimes, untamed.
Michael walked across the University
at Albany campus, carrying, of all things, a ladder. No one stopped him. It
was too early for classes, the time when the mist, bidden by the morning sun,
rises off the wide manicured lawns surrounding the dormitories and the
podium. But Michael walked away from
the light. He went into the woods where
it was cold and filled with shadows.
He was supposed to be in class that
morning. I was going to return his
essay to him. At the end of his paper,
I’d written a response about the power of writing to save, to heal, to help us
reflect. He knew how to do that. There, in my hand, was the evidence of all he didn’t
realize he already understood.
I put his paper back in my folder.
I would return it to him the next time I saw him.
A little boy found him. Hanging from a tree. The same ending a Biblical story tells of an
infamous betrayal. But whom had Michael
betrayed?
From the most well known story of
baseball and duplicity, which of those eight Chicago White Sox players in 1919
would Michael most have resembled in his life circumstances? Was he as culpable for his own sins as
Shoeless Joe Jackson who admitted to taking money to throw a World Series game?
Or was Michael more like Buck
Weaver, a less than honorable man, for knowing something and not telling, but
also very human, for not wanting to cause anyone pain? Buck Weaver knew of the plot to throw the
game but had not participated nor profited from it yet was still as permanently
banned from baseball as the others whom Commissioner Judge Landis named.
Or was Michael like Landis who
refused to take into account human frailty and only wanted to wipe the slate
clean so as to no longer have to deal with the messiness of human
entanglements? Michael certainly judged
himself and declared his case worthy of only the worst punishment, a punishment
that never allows for a petitioner, a penitent, forgiveness, or
redemption.
I saw the story on the eleven
o’clock news. They showed a picture of
Michael, but in it he wasn’t smiling. I
couldn’t be sure. The report didn’t
mention that he was a student at Hudson Valley, but it did show one of his
friends from the university, a dark haired girl with a pale face and clear blue
eyes. “Michael was my best friend,” she
told the reporter. “I know him. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
In the morning I called the
registrar to ask if there couldn’t be another young man by the same name, but
she told me, with sadness in her voice, that it was, in fact, the student from
my class. Michael.
Although he wore that Yankees cap, I
don’t really know how much Michael cared about baseball--about the crack of the
bat, the arc of the ball against the clear blue sky, the green field
below. We didn’t talk about Jeter or
Posada, and we certainly never spoke about Sheffield.
I only know Michael had the straight
and the wild in him. I only know I will
not forget. I only know I will always
wonder why.