They supplied bats, of course, but Kramer brought his own, a Louisville Slugger he’d picked out of an extensive display at a sporting goods store on Broadway. It was a little heavier than average, and he liked the way it was balanced. It just felt right in his hands. Also, there was something to be said for having the same bat every time. You didn’t have to adjust to a new piece of lumber.
He brought along cleated baseball shoes, too, which made it easier to establish his stance in the batter’s box. The boat-necked shirt and sweatpants he wore didn’t sport any team logo, which would have struck him as ridiculous, but they were otherwise not unlike what the pros wore, for the freedom of movement they afforded.
Kramer wore a baseball cap, too; he’d found it in the back of his closet, had no idea where it came from, and recognized the embroidered logo as that of an advertising agency that had gone out of business some fifteen years ago. It must have come into his possession as some sort of corporate party favor, and he must have tossed it in his closet instead of tossing it in the trash, and now it had turned out to be useful.
You could set the speed of the pitching machine, and Kramer set it at Slow at the beginning of each Tuesday session, turned it to Medium about halfway through, and finished with a few minutes of Fast pitching. He was, not surprisingly, better at getting his bat on the slower pitches. A fastball, even when you knew it was coming, was hard for a man his age to connect with. Still, he hit most of the medium-speed pitches — some solidly, some less so. And he always got some wood on some of the fastballs, and every once in a while he’d meet a high-speed pitch solidly, his body turning into the ball just right, and the satisfaction of seeing the horsehide sphere leap from his bat was enough to cast a warm glow over the entire morning’s work. His best efforts, he realized, were soft line drives a major league centerfielder would gather in without breaking a sweat, but so what? He wasn’t having fantasies of showing up in Sarasota during spring training, aiming for a tryout. He was a sixty-eight year old retired businessman keeping in shape and filling his hours, and when he got ahold of one, well, it felt damned good.
Walking home, carrying the bat and wearing the ball cap, with a pleasant ache in his lats and delts and triceps — well, that felt pretty good, too.
Wednesdays provided a very different sort of exercise. Physically, he probably got the most benefit from the walk there and back — a couple of miles from his door to the Murray Street premises of the Downtown Gun Club. The hour he devoted to rifle and pistol practice demanded no special wardrobe, and he wore whatever street clothes suited the season, along with a pair of ear protectors the club was happy to provide. As a member, he could also use one of the club’s guns, but hardly anyone did; like his fellows, Kramer kept his guns at the club, thus obviating him of the need to obtain a carry permit for them. The license to own a weapon and maintain it at a recognized marksmanship facility was pretty much a formality, and Kramer had acquired it with no difficulty.
He owned three guns — a deer rifle, a .22-caliber target pistol, and a hefty .357-magnum revolver. Typically, he fired each gun for half an hour, pumping lead at (and, occasionally, into) a succession of paper targets. He could vary the distance of the targets, and naturally chose the greatest distance for the rifle, the least for the magnum. But he would sometimes bring the targets in closer, for the satisfaction of grouping his shots tighter, just as he would occasionally increase the distance, in order to give himself more of a challenge.
Except for basic training, some fifty years ago, he’d never had a gun in his hand, let alone fired one. He’d always thought it was something he might enjoy, and in retirement he’d proved the suspicion true. He liked squeezing off shots with the rifle, liked the balance and precision of the target pistol, and even liked the nasty kick of the big revolver, and the sense of power that came with it. His eye was better some days than others, his hand steadier, but all in all it seemed to him that he was improving. Every Wednesday, on the long walk home, he felt he’d accomplished something. And, curiously, he felt empowered and invulnerable, as if he were actually carrying the magnum on his hip.
Thursdays saw him returning to the gym, but he didn’t warm up on the elliptical trainer, nor did he put in an hour on the treadmill. That was Monday. Thursday was for weights.
He did his circuit on the machines. Early on, he’d had a couple of sessions with a personal trainer, but only until he’d managed to establish a routine that he could perform without assistance. He kept a pocket notebook in his locker, jotting down the reps and poundages on each machine; when an exercise became too easy, he upped the weight accordingly. He was making slow but undeniable progress. He could see it in his notes, and, more graphically, he could see it in the mirror.
His gym gear made it easy to see, too. The shorts and singlet that served so well on Mondays were not right for Thursdays, when he donned instead a pair of black Spandex bicycle shorts and a matching tank top. It made him look the part, but that was the least of it. The close fit seemed to help enlist his muscles to put maximum effort into each lift. His weightlifting gloves, padded slightly in the palms for cushioning, and with the fingers ending at the first knuckle joint for a good grip, kept him from getting blisters or calluses, as well as telling the world that he was serious enough about what he was doing to get the right gear for it.
An hour with the weights left him with sore muscles, but ten minutes in the steam room and a cold shower set him right again, and he always felt good on the way home. And then, on Fridays, he got to play golf.
And that was always a pleasure. Until Bellerman, that interfering son of a bitch, came along and ruined the whole thing for him.
The driving range was at Chelsea Piers, and it was a remarkable facility. Kramer had made arrangements to keep a set of clubs there, and he picked them up along with his usual bucket of balls and headed for the tee. When he got there he put on a pair of golf shoes, arguably an unnecessary refinement on the range’s mats, but he felt they grounded his stance. And, like the thin leather gloves he kept in the bag, they put him more in the mood, as did the billed Tam O’Shanter cap he’d put on his head before leaving the house.
He teed up a ball, took his Big Bertha driver from the bag, settled himself, and took a swing. He met the ball solidly, but perhaps he’d dropped his shoulder, or perhaps he’d let his hands get out in front; in any event, he sliced the shot. It wasn’t awful, it had some distance on it and wouldn’t have wound up all that deep in the rough, but he could do better. And did so on the next shot, again meeting the ball solidly and sending it out there straight as a die.
He hit a dozen balls with Big Bertha, then returned her to the bag and got out his spoon. He liked the 3-wood, liked the balance of it, and he had to remind himself to stop after a dozen balls or he might have run all the way through the bucket with that club. It was, he’d found, a very satisfying club to hit.
Which was by no means the case with the 2-iron. It wasn’t quite as difficult as the longest iron in his bag — there was a joke he’d heard, the punchline of which explained that not even God could hit the 1-iron — but it was difficult enough, and today his dozen attempts with the club yielded his usual share of hooks and slices and topped rollers. But among them he hit the ball solidly twice, resulting in shots that leapt from the tee, scoring high for distance and accuracy.
And therein lay the joy of the sport. One good shot invariably erased the memory of all the bad shots that preceded it, and even took the sting out of the bad shots yet to come.