Author’s Note: Due to the fact that my roots are in Ohio I’ve been a rabid Cleveland Indians fan all my life. What more enduring story is there in sports than that of the team with a storied but rocky past and so many other difficulties that rises above all that (with a little help) and becomes a contender again (and an inspiration to all the other small-clubs without hope) only to have their ultimate goal elude them. The Cleveland Indians have been put in movies (See Major League, only the first and second movies) and their fate in these has been similar in the real world, amazing accomplishment that often falls short. Watching it the other night, I pondered a TG version where a bitch with a ‘w’ who doesn’t seek to move the team for personal gain but rather wants them to learn that highest of values….teamwork. On another note, I took some liberties with the usual baseball team configuration and probably made some errors along the way. Although not fielding errors.
The Team: Pre-season –Day One
by: Rocketman
It began with missing the playoffs, then they lost their star players to free agency. The new guys from the farm teams were ok but they weren’t up to the caliber of the departing veterans. Plus some of them got injured. So lower players had to take places and that just made a bad thing worse.
Chief Wahoo was not sitting pretty when the Indians finished a modest but disappointing third behind the White Sox and Royals. The owner, a city native, once bubbly over the chance to bring a world title to his hometown began seeking buyers for his sinking investment.
And a buyer he found in a rather mysterious, willowy woman named Karenina Alben.
As her first business before spring training camp began she called the team manager, all the coaches, the general manager and all the players for the new season into a meeting room at the small Florida training stadium.
She looked them over from her podium. There was Jerry Tolette, the manager, sitting in a suit and tie like the rest of the staff. He was trim, but had the hawk-like eyes required of a manager. He folded his long arms and waited for her to speak. Beside him sat the pitching coach, Don Pike, wearing coke-bottle bifocals and a nervous grin. His sandy brown hair was trim but unkempt, far too much for a major league coach. He looked a bit like a nervous, new dad while the manager looked more like a stern elder, despite his relative youth.
Moving down the row, the hitting coach, Paul Ricks, a gray haired fellow, the laid back grandfather who’d been through it all before and now was just sitting back to enjoy the ride.
Ah and the man she’d be in closest contact with, the GM Ted Moors. He had that accountant look to him as all efficient GM’s did. Smiling was a calculating tactic for him and a required asset. She continued through the gathering.
The pitching ace, if you could call him that, Miguel Arroyo. He had good stuff but far too many walks, which left him with a drab 13-14 record. And the rest of the starters, Bill Meyer, another disappointment, but then he was nearing the end of his career. He’d floated between teams all his career, never sticking to one for more than two seasons but always doing the job. This was his second year here.
Then, Justin Weir, the one bright spot from last year, just a few starts so far, but he was learning. One could not forget the lanky, bearded Harold Evans or diminutive closer, Kerry Gilroy, both playing at par.
One could forget the mid-relievers and spare pitchers not yet in for a starter job since they seemed to come and go all the time.
And the lineup. It was respectable but nothing like the ones of years ago.
Jose Pijuaro, the leadoff guy on first base and also a criminal offender, assault, followed by, Norm Cross, great shortstop, but too big on his promotions and designer clothes to put his whole effort into the job. And the firecracker, Ferdinand Alvarez, at second base.
And the probable cleanup guy, Jordan Wick, another criminal offender, from third base, with the obsessive, Wally Kinney, at DH to follow him. Then there was Leon Demsky, who was the closest thing to leadership they probably had, but a cold bat, cold personality and poor defensive player at center field.
Then the new guys, John McGee, Sam Preston, and David Shelby, the catcher, and left and right fielders.
That was it. She took a breath (as you certainly just did) and addressed them.
"Welcome to the new Cleveland Indians season. A couple of things out of the way first. There will be a few immediate changes. I’ve been around a long time and I’ve seen what a poor team you all were last year but I have something in mind that just might be able to turn you guys around."
Shelby had his hand high in the air and Karenina Alben pointed to him. "Um, well", he said in his thick mid-west accent, "What kinda changes do ya mean?"
She leaned against her podium and responded, "Dramatic changes, effective immediately." She waved her hands a moment and sneezed. "Darn, I hate when that happens", she said about the sneeze.
The team kept staring at her. She smiled and said, "I think you all better look down instead."
And they did.
A pair of equipment managers on the other side of the stadium looked up from their work and one asked the other, "Did you just hear a bunch of women screaming?"
The other frowned and shook his head, "Just keep working, it ain’t none of our business."
The scene in the meeting room changed drastically. Where before most of the players fit in their formal attire, often snugly, it now hung loosely on them. They all seemed to be looking for an explanation and the owner gave them one.
"I am a witch, a white witch. And I’m a blue Indians fan. You guys don’t play like Indians, so I decided to take extreme measures. I bought the team and changed all of you. Now before you start launching your questions at me or begin exploring your new selves, let me tell you the provisos of this change.
"As you all know with a quick glance, you’re women roughly the same age you were but about the size you would’ve been had you been born female. As for the part of the female body you all liked as men, the breasts, you also probably know you’re not stacked. You’ve all got nicely muscled, slender, rather flexible in some cases, normal woman’s bodies."
"Now, the second bit. You will all be like this till October 3rd, the last day of the season. Your off-days will be like this, your games will be like this. And you will be playing like this…..now don’t get upset, because I added in a spell which will make it seem like you’re still the men you were to everyone else when you’re out there. When you’re off the field, your female identities will be there for you and your funds and everything else will carry over. For those of you who are married, your wives are now your husbands….it’ll take some getting used to…..all I can say is practice safe sex or at least plan pregnancies to coincide with the off-season."
"Last. If you don’t get to the World Series, you’ll spend the whole off-season like this, not just those of you that are with child…all of you. Let that be your motivation. Any questions?"
Leon Demsky had one. "Umm, gee I sound strange….well, ok, if we’re cu…."
"…I will not accept language like that, Ms. Leona Demsky."
Demsky gulped and decided it was best not to get on the bad side of a witch, "Ok, if we’re women and the other teams are men then isn’t that kinda unfair?"
"I don’t expect it’ll be, that’s something you all will have to work around….any other questions?" Everyone was too stunned by this to speak. McGee managed to get one out though, "What happens if we’re traded or someone’s traded here?"
"Anyone traded away will be under the same conditions as anyone here till the end of their baseball careers…..anyone traded here will immediately be under the same conditions as all of you."
And that appeared to be the end of the questions. She smiled, declared the meeting finished and told them to have a great physical and spring training.
A lot of them had nearly forgotten about the physical they all had at the beginning of season because of what had just happened. Norm Cross proceeded to pass out at this realization.
The others helped Norm up as Karenina exited. The GM ran after her. "Excuse me, um, Ms. Alben?" The GM quickly recognized that she had…*cough*…assets that the players lacked due to their physiques.
"Yes, Mrs. Moors?" The GM looked taken aback when Karenina addressed her. Her clothes felt wrong, as though she was wearing a Halloween costume. But then her body didn’t feel right either.
"I….I….I…I just have to say this course of action seems rather….rash."
"Oh?"
Moors shook her hands frantically, "Not meaning any disrespect, of course."
Karenina smiled like Moors always would and told her, "Good."
Karenina started to walk away when Moors sprung up with another question, "Oh, um, why did I get changed too?"
She looked back at Moors and said, "To make extra sure we win."
Moors struggled to speak, "But…but…why?!…if you wanted to win, you shoulda bought the Yankees!!" Karenina frowned at her and Moors shut up and followed her silently.
Leon (Leona now) Demsky sat by the podium shaking her head. Norm Cross, at first hoping this was all a bad dream, had woken up and was staring, unblinking, at herself. The manager and coaches, who looked a women’s society club, were discussing the situation among themselves.
The pitchers had their own little clique together and the other players were just milling about, pausing to reaffirm to themselves that this was real with a quick pat to their chest every so often.
Leon stood up and addressed them, "Hey, guys……umm, whatever…we may be at a loss with this whole thing, but we gotta play, otherwise we get stuck as this, you know what the witch said." Her little speech came as something of a surprise, since it was the most that she’d said at one time since they’d known her.
Tolette agreed with her, "Demsky’s right, come on. This team has had worse things happen than this, we’re gonna work through this and win." A couple of team members objected to this. Tolette quit beating around the bush and said, "Just go take the damn physical and be on the field in 2 hours."
With that, Tolette and her sharp eyes left with the rest of the coaching staff. Seeing no other option, the players walked together down to the doctor’s office. Denise Hall and Carol White, the new team doctors, invited them in one by one for their examination.
‘Maria’ Arroyo, still rather on the tall side at five-ten but small built, went first, with the stern-looking ‘Brenda’ Meyer and jittery, girlish ‘Jill’ Weir following. Their examinations seemed ok but they all looked a little shaken by their experience.
’Candice’ Evans, no longer bearded but still fashion model lanky, emerged from her physical like the others had. Kerry Gilroy kept her name it turned out when the doctor called her. Waiting their turn, a couple players rummaged through the magazine racks but found only old copies of Cosmo, Essence, Mademoiselle and various other women’s magazines. Apparently Karenina had gotten in here too, evidenced by the female doctors on the payroll as well.
Sam Preston got a couple of strange looks from the others when she actually started reading one of the articles in a magazine. She shrugged them off.
When ‘Alicia’ Pijuaro got in the room though there was bit of ruckus and a trembling Pijuaro exited, heading for her locker. ‘Norma’ Cross yelled a couple of times and prompted the minds of the remaining players to conjure up some kinda freaky, alien medical test. Cross looked upset as she left, wanting to put at much distance between herself and the doctor.
Leona Demsky waited patiently as the players entered apprehensive but calm and exited either shaken, humbled or shocked. Sometimes all three.
When it came her turn to go in, she laid down her magazine (she’d succumbed to boredom) and walked through the door held open by the doctor.
Dr. Hall had auburn hair similar in tone to hers, although much shorter. Leona glanced in a mirror as she took her to one of the exam rooms. It unnerved her when she realized she looked a great deal like Geena Davis in "A League of Their Own", especially around the eyes. At least she was a catcher, not a center fielder like her, otherwise it would’ve been uncanny.
The exam room was small, like the kind you’d find in any doctor’s office. There were tongue depressors along the wall, and all the other gadgets they had. Dr. Hall put on a pair of latex gloves. She smiled and told Leona to remove her clothes, except for her underwear.
She complied, but had to confront a confused Dr. Hall who couldn’t rationalize her masculine attire. Cropping it up to a new fashion trend, she looked Leona over.
First the mouth, fine there. She asked her if she had any pain anywhere. Just her head, she thought to herself, with all that’d been going on recently. She told the doctor that she didn’t have any pain. Then Dr. Hall had her stretch her muscles and tested the strength. It all checked out fine with her.
She then put her stethoscope against Leona’s chest but it was too damned cold, as usual. She had her cough and breathe and did a blood-ox test. Then a blood-chem test.
Leona relaxed when she took some blood, that was usually the last thing they did. "When was your last pap-smear?"
Leona froze. Oh shit.
Dr. Hall continued, flipping through the patient chart, "I don’t see any record of one."
Leona tried the best thing she could think of, "I don’t remember." Hell, if she’d had one, she’d freaking remember.
"More than 6 months?"
"I think so."
Dr. Hall nodded, noted something and put her chart down. "Get undressed."
She only had on a pair of briefs that didn’t fit her as well as they did before, but she cautiously removed them. Hall instructed her to sit down on the exam chair. Leona did so at one end.
"Other end."
Moving as slowly as physically possible, she sat down on the other end. Dr. Hall manipulated a controller and made the chair shift and the back rise up. Leona leaned anxiously against the back, feeling as vulnerable as a child. She wrapped her feet around one other to close her legs. This helped a little bit but not much.
The doctor moved the sample tray over the chair and gathered her tools. She removed the gloves she was using, cleansed her hands and put a double pair of gloves on the tray. Next, a paper kit that the doctor broke in half. A straw with a pipe-cleaner thing on the end fell out, along with a wooden stick resembling a scalpel.
The kit had a slide on one part of it. The other part the doctor discarded. After doing this, she took a long black cord with a light on the end and a green-handled speculum out of one of the storage drawers. She plugged in the cord and attached the speculum to the end. She then carefully put the speculum on the tray and looked at Leona.
"Ok, we’re ready." She reached over, pulled out the stirrups hidden inside the chair and turned the foot pads right side up. Leona watched nervously, shrinking as far away as possible.
"Ok. Put your feet on the stirrups and we can begin." The doctor put on the double gloves and awaited Leona’s move. She glanced at the left stirrup and then the right one and then glanced at Hall as if to say, "I’d rather not."
Hall sighed, "Are you gonna be like Alicia?" Sure, thought Leona, trembling.
"It’ll be over in just a few minutes."
Leona slowly unwrapped her feet and reached them out to each stirrup, feeling more aware than ever before of what was missing. The doctor smeared some K-Y jelly on the business end of the speculum and pressed it into Leona.
Leona attempted to take a detached view of what was going on. She tried to do what she did in the batter’s box when facing a raucous crowd rooting against her…shut it out. But the alien sensation of a sterile, plastic item entering her made her feel sick. And it knocked her pride down a couple of notches from where it’d fallen thus far.
The doctor pressed further, surely stretching the muscles down there to point of tearing. She felt so exposed.
The doctor inserted the pipe-cleaner thing first and scraped an area inside her, wiping away the mucous. Leona cringed and groaned, a lock of auburn hair falling in her eyes. It was better that way because she couldn’t see anything but unfortunately she could still feel what was going on.
When the mucous was removed, the doctor used the wooden scalpel to scrape the same area and placed the sample on the side. She then sprayed the sample and closed up the kit.
"Ok, done. Not so bad was it?"
Leona begged to differ. She still had that goo up somewhere inside her. It felt awful and the feeling didn’t go away as she put her clothes back, walked out of the exam room and into the waiting room. Only laid-back Preston remained. She’d probably get the name ‘Samantha’ and it turned out she did as Hall called that name. Preston actually looked glad to be called. Leona knew that glee would be brief.
‘Darlene’ Shelby, as she gave her new name as, came out as Leona was about to leave. She raised a hand in a feeble wave that matched her body language. "Hey."
"Hey." They exited together and mutually agreed not to discuss what had just happened anytime soon. Darlene told her about the names of the others, and that ‘Tara’ McGee had made a scene, running out of the exam room and into the waiting room, half naked and screaming ‘No way! You are not gonna do that to me!’ while sprinting around. They finally tackled her and got her to calm down.
Demsky sighed and walked with Shelby. When they got to their lockers they were in for another surprise. Their clothes.
Instead of the jock strap, undershirt and all that they usually had, there was underwear of a feminine cut(thankfully cotton although pink), a sports bra, and an undershirt in the required color. The rest was the usual team uniform but with size modifications.
The rest of the team was there, some in various stages of dress and others staring wordlessly at their garments. Demsky took it in stride. She removed off her suit and other incompatible garments and began dressing.
"How are things, girls?"
The players looked in the direction of the voice and a few scowled when they realized who it was. Karenina walked through the door and looked all of them over.
"How are things? Did you all pass your physical?"
A couple of people grumbled. "That’s good. Any complaints?"
Jill Weir raised her hand, "Umm, the underwear is pink."
"Yes, doesn’t it look lovely?"
"We’re guys."
"I’d like to see your evidence of that." That silenced Weir.
"Listen, I’m not a sadist, I’m not out to inflict as much pain as possible on you….girls….although a little pain never hurt anyone. I want all of you to learn from this, grow from it. It’ll make you better players and a better team. You’ll see."
With that, she departed. Weir sighed, "I’m not wearing pink."
‘Ramona’ Alvarez told her, "You don’t have much of a choice."
‘Melissa’ Wick nodded in agreement, already wearing the clothes required of her. "We gotta go out there and practice. Maybe when she sees how much we suck player-wise as girls, that cu…."
Wick’s mouth jerked as the word died in her mouth. A disembodied voice said, "No language, for that infraction your voice will be several tones higher and squeakier than before for the rest of the day. Let this be the only time I have to tell you this. This applies to all players, managers and coaches."
Wick, now with an extremely high, girlish soprano, chirped out, "I hope you rot, you witch!!!"
The others grimaced and noted this as they dressed.
Fortunately, they wouldn’t play any teams for a while, not until later into spring training. They walked onto the field and saw that there were a few diehard fans in the seats.
Rebecca Kinney turned back suddenly and pushed them into the dugout, "No way, we can’t do this."
She said quietly, her head jerking around and tossing her springy red hair all around her head, "They’re gonna know that something’s changed. They know us."
Demsky frowned, "Becca…."
Rebecca muttered sharply, "Don’t call me that."
Demsky put on a cheesy smile and said girlishly, "Rebecca dear, we gotta to go out there. Besides, they’re expecting us. Just fix your hair first, girlfriend."
Kinney didn’t expect that at all from the coldest shoulder on the bench, "Wha…?"
Demsky dropped the act and said, "Come on, I’m going out. If that witch is to be believed then we’ve got nothing to worry about. So don’t worry."
As Demsky started walking out of the dugout, Kinney tried to summon her back with something, but no excuse came to mind, so she put on her cap like the others and walked onto the field. She stopped for a moment to adjust her long hair and found some errant bangs always slipped through and into her eyes. She yanked her hair back and pushed the cap on. There, finally!!!
This was why she always kept her hair in a buzz cut!!!
Demsky waited for her turn, watching Alicia Pijuaro pick up her bat and take her stance. She had to readjust herself a couple of times because of a lower center of gravity. When she finally got into a comfortable stance, she held her bat at the ready.
The hitting coach threw the first pitch to Pijuaro. She got ready for it and swung hard but missed the ball. Furthermore when she swung she tripped and slipped, falling hard on her tush. Fortunately, it had a little more padding than the average man’s rear end. A couple of fans chuckled across the way. Obviously what they were seeing looked a lot more humorous than what the players were seeing. To them a buff, six-foot Cuban-born power hitter had just missed an easy ball and had done so in such a way it sent him to the ground.
A few fans were actually worried about whether he was injured, but they were in the minority. To the other players, Pijuaro’s arms, once huge and meaty, were just thin and slender.
Pijuaro pushed some hair out of her eyes, put on her toughness face, and readied her bat for another try. The coach threw again and this time Pijuaro didn’t miss.
She dinged it off the bat and to the feet of the coach, a gimme grounder. Pijuaro cringed, "My hands sting."
"You’ve got poor swing speed, tighten up a little", said the coach, winded.
"You okay, Paul?"
Paula Ricks took a breath, "It’s ok, I just can’t get as much on my pitches."
"Just give me what you can."
A few watched Arroyo, a hard thrower, unable to get her speed up to even 80. She topped at about 74 miles per hour and that one didn’t have much control on it. Arroyo panted and wondered what was wrong. Tolette brought Arroyo over to the batting cage to pitch to Pijuaro.
Arroyo gasped a little and got into her windup. Now that one had a little speed on it. Pijuaro took a quick swing, but it didn’t have any force behind it and the ball bounded around the battling cage. She gave it another try and the ball whacked off her arm.
"Ow!" She dropped the bat and rubbed the spot where she’d been hit. She could see the beginnings of a bruise but nothing that bad. "It’ll be fine. I’m done though."
Karenina walked onto the field, with the stares of the players following her.
"Well done, Ms. Arroyo, you have real spunk. As for Alicia, well I can only say I’m….underwhelmed…but that’s nothing new." Pijuaro clenched her fists, "Look at my arms! They’re nothing! There’s hardly any muscle in there, they’re tiny! What do you expect from me, from all of us?! We don’t have the ability hit the ball because of what you did to us!"
"As I recall, you and the others weren’t hitting the ball so well even before I changed you. Step back in the cage." Pijuaro reluctantly did and picked up her bat. She told Arroyo to give her a slider. Arroyo, recovering, got into her stance and let a nice, albeit lazy slider sail through the zone.
Pijuaro focused and delivered on this one, skying it just past the infield. It wasn’t much and would’ve been an out had in been during the game but it calmed everyone a little.
Arroyo even got a few more good, centered pitches before she had to take a break. The other pitchers were progressing as well but had to take breaks between deliveries.
Karenina smiled. At least they were giving it their all.
Batting practice ended pretty well, only Cross, Wick and Demsky got anything resembling a hit and all the players came away with aching legs, arms and hands.
The entire pitching staff took turns at pitching to the lineup and the crowd, while sparse had actually become nice despite Pijuaro’s plop.
But when fielding practice started the incongruity between before and now showed up. Demsky tried to fire a home plate throw to the catcher, but her toss only got thirty feet and a wild thirty feet at that. Catching pop ups from the ball-shooter was fine though.
Next, Tolette had them do eighty push ups, one hundred sit ups and seven wind sprints around the stadium and that was being nice to them. The push ups were the biggest hang up because of the lost upper-body strength. Sit ups went well, but by the time the wind sprints came, Tolette expected them all to be exhausted. Fortunately, they still had their speed, in fact quite a few were quicker than usual.
When they were done they took a break to drain a tub of gatoraid and rest.
"Oh geez, I’ve never been exhausted after doing so little in all my life," squeaked Wick. The other players echoed her comment. They could hardly move, like they’d just lifted their max weight or something.
Demsky asked Karenina as she was about to return to her office, "I thought you said we were still athletic?"
"You are, just not as much as you were used to. Any reasonably active woman would get exhausted by all that you girls have done. I applaud you all. Now go out there and do it till sundown."
A dozen and a half heads hit firmly against the wall.
"Oh, do be careful. Ta-ta!" Alvarez felt her aching shoulder and shook her head, "No way till sundown. Maybe before, but not now."
Tolette sighed, "You’ve gotta get better. Looking at you all, I say you made great progress today, but we can do better….come on."
Looking at each other, they wondered a moment whether the witch and the manager were in cahoots and then ambled slowly back onto the field.
And then into the gym.
No one lifted their max weight that day. Heck, very few of them could lift much more than the bar.
It took quite an effort for Demsky to remove her clothes with her cramped body. Even moving was a difficult task. She realized the cut of her formal suit had been changed as she prepared to put it on. The neckline dipped a little lower than it did in a man’s and the pants had become a skirt of the same material.
"What’s so wrong with a pantsuit?!" Exclaimed Kinney. They all were thinking the same thing, but they’d survived the situation thus far, so this was just a minor concern. And McGee, born in Scotland, said it wasn’t such a big deal.
Together they looked like a secretary’s convention. Demsky shook her head and went with the others to the bus that would take them to the hotel.
Demsky imagined taking a hot shower and sleeping straight till morning. Quite a few other players had the same game plan for the evening. The rest were shaking in their booties because they had homes and girlfriends around the area and had expected to be partying and screwing through the spring to tide them over for the regular season.
That plan seemed, at least from the looks on their faces, to be out the window.
Several of them were trying to come up with reasons to stay at a hotel, excuses that they could tell their new boyfriends. Demsky sat towards the back with Darlene Shelby and Samantha Preston.
Samantha still had a woman’s magazine with her, which she was reading intently. Darlene smiled at her and asked, "Good articles?"
Samantha smirked back, "Sorta, but reading this takes my mind off, well, everything. And it’s informative. Stuff like periods, yeast infections, hygiene, all that. We’ll have to deal with all that and having to sit to pee too."
At that moment, Leona Demsky thought to herself that Samantha was wise beyond her twenty-two years and also out of her gourd at the same time.
Darlene gulped, "I haven’t peed yet, not since before the meeting."
Samantha looked over at the bus toilet, "You need some help?"
Arching her eyebrows, Darlene asked, "Are you an expert in this now?"
"No, but I’ve done it twice, so I have more experience than you. The first time I tried to stand and do it. Sure, with enough practice a woman can pee standing up, but let’s do it the easy way for now."
This took Darlene by surprise, "Where did you learn that?" Samantha, looking smug, held the magazine up and tapped it with her finger.
"I told you it was informative."
Samantha assisted others with urination abstinence as they made their way to the hotel. Pijuaro, like several other players, sat in silence, either staring at themselves or at the growing dusk outside their windows.
Wick and Cross were debating whose situation was worse. A horny supermodel girlfriend waiting for Wick or a party bash planned at Cross’s vacation home with numerous beautiful women planned to attend. What would be scarier? The missed opportunity or the possibility that the women would suddenly change into men.
Cross hung her head and Wick agreed that her situation, with its uncertainty, was worse.
Alvarez, was, as Demsky had seen him do most of last season(between yelling at people for no reason), whiling away the time listening to music on her walkman. Next to her, McGee was sleeping.
The pitchers were clustered together with the manger and coaches, also trying to burn time.
Becca Kinney, as Demsky had called her in the dugout, was looking her hair over and reading a player’s rights manual. Becca nervously turned the strands around and around with her pinkie, always her pinkie.
Demsky had seen the same panicked obsession on her all through last season. Whenever Kinney picked up an extra base hit, he’d go over the same exact process, step-by-step, making sure to be however late or early he’d been to the game that last time. If he messed up even one step then he’d beg with the manager to bench him.
Of course Tolette never did, then Kinney would go without a single hit and wait till his next one and obsess over that day.
Steadying herself with the overhead compartment handle as the bus made a turn, Demsky sat next to Kinney and smiled.
Kinney leaned into the wall and continued reading through the book.
"Whatcha lookin’ for?" Asked Demsky.
"A rule that says it’s in violation of our right for that witch to do this to us."
Demsky suppressed a laugh, knowing that it would come out sounding like a giggle anyway. "I don’t think that thing was written with our situation in mind."
"Still, something’s gotta apply." Demsky swept her auburn hair behind her ears and looked at Kinney. She looked up from her book and over at her.
"What?"
Demsky folded her arms, "You don’t like talking?"
"I thought that was you."
"That was last season."
Kinney covered her face with the book, "Then I’ll be the quiet one this season."
Disgusted, Demsky yanked the book out of her hands and tossed it under the seat.
"Hey!"
"Look at me!"
"What?!"
They stared at one another a moment, realizing that the bus was rather more quiet than it’d been a moment ago.
"Stop looking at some pointless book and talk to me!"
"Why should I?!"
"We’re teammates!"
Kinney grinned and shot back, "Oh so we’re teammates, we’re not sorority sisters or girlfriends or bosom buddies?"
"Shut up", muttered Demsky.
"Why should I? Come, sister. Let’s talk. What’s your favorite makeup, gal pal? Wanta go get a bikini wax? How about shopping? Or should we just catch a late night party, get drunk and go home with the men that in our drunken stupor we deem ‘cute’?"
Demsky only responded, "Your hair still looks a little uneven."
Kinney fumed and glared at her. Still, she glanced up at her bangs and wondered if she was right. Shifting only an instant to catch her faint reflection in the window, Kinney had to agree with her.
Trying to keep it out of her mind, she laid her hands in her lap which gave her another reminder of the newfound ease this position had. She rubbed her right eye vigorously. Leaning back, she blinked a few times and tried to rest.
Immediately she felt something take hold of her hand. It was Demsky.
"Cut it out! Why the heck did you do that?"
Demsky rubbed her hands together a moment, "I just wanted to. You looked a little uneasy. When Claudia, my ex-wife used to get like that I’d hold her hand to calm her. Instinctive, I guess."
"Well, forget about it! I’m not your ex-wife and additionally….well, that’s enough right there." Kinney tried to lean against headrest, but it didn’t feel right, too large. The slope wasn’t right. She couldn’t get comfortable.
She tried leaning against the window but that sucked too.
"Need some help?" Asked Demsky.
"Huh?"
At which point Demsky broke into song, "Leeeaan on me….when you’re not strong. I’ll be the one….to lean on. We all need somebody….to leeeaan on!"
Despite the fact the song was been sung by a man, Demsky did a rather lovely rendition. Kinney glared and said, "Are you nuts?"
"Sure, call it estrogen psychosis."
Kinney considered the offer. She sure did feel exhausted.
"Ok, but if you sing me a lullaby or anything else, I’m moving."
It was a deal.
The shoulder that Demsky gave her did feel a lot nicer than she’d expected and it allowed her to burn off some of her fatigue. Leona regretted offering though because when they stopped at hotel, she could hardly raise it.
Slinging her bag over the other arm, she followed the others who were staying at the hotel. Only Wick, Cross, and the pitching staff except Jill Weir, stayed on the bus.
The rest either didn’t have a home close enough to bother, like Demsky, or had to come up with an excuse not to go home, like Kinney.
Manager Tolette led the group through the front door and to the check-in desk. The man there, who evidently thought they were male ballplayers, handed a slip for each of them to sign. Their signatures looked considerably worse than before because of their smaller, foreign hands (and the fact they had to write unfamiliar names), expect for Shelby. Anything that happened would have made his writing better. Demsky joined the nine others who were milling about in the lobby.
A few, Samantha in particular, spied clothing stores along a section of retail shops adjacent to the lobby. Since all they had with them in their bags were an extra change of clothes and accessories that Alben had altered for them during practice there were those who contemplated bulking their wardrobe. Just in case, of course.
One can only stand so many days in the same outfit.
Samantha led the entourage of seven, with Demsky and Kinney left as old maids. Even the manager, with her coaches in tow, went to check out the stores.
The pair though were confident that what they had with them would be sufficient for the time being. Slowly their argument faded. What the heck?
Demsky, ironically, ended up with the most outfits. Only one skirt though. Mostly shorts, some cut-offs, a simple negligee, lace-free women’s boxers (a favorite among the troupe), cotton shirts, undershirts and bras. A couple shoes and a cotton socks too. That was the objective, as much without satin or silk or any analogous material.
More than one picked up swim wear. Primarily one-piece and sleeveless, along with opting for a sarong. Demsky turn out to be one of these few. She figured that she might want to go for a swim in the pool sometime.
Trudging back into the lobby with her purchases, Leona Demsky settled down into a chair and wondered whether she was being a bit rash about all this.
It wasn’t like she was buying this junk with the intention of seducing a man. She had question about Samantha though.
Tolette handed a key card to her. Fortunately it was on the Mezzanine. She just had to trudge over to elevator. No trouble, if only her arms didn’t feel like jelly due in part to the day’s practice and the transformation.
Getting up there first while her teammates finished browsing, Demsky tugged the bags along like a stone weight. Straining, she told herself only half of the length of the floor to go.
"Allow me to help you, ma’am." Glancing around behind her, Demsky spotted a man in a business suit standing over her.
"Thanks", she muttered, relenting all but original bag she’d brought.
The man had little trouble with the quintet of bags, making her jealous. "Are you here for the business seminar?"
Crap. "Something like that."
"Oh?"
Perfect counter, it encouraged the addressee to answer more specifically while allowing no possible, sufficient cop-out. She’d used it before on many a pretty lady.
"A get together for…" Think of something quick! "….female baseball players." How unoriginal.
He made a contemplative noise meant to gather his thoughts and either accept or denounce her claim. In the end, he accepted it.
"That sounds nice. I find your profession rather surprising though."
Now it was her turn for an, "Oh?"
"I expected you to be in the modeling industry with those gorgeous looks of yours." Leona laughed and barely held it above a giggle, "Oh, come on. That’s as lame as they come. Even I could come up with something better than that."
Now for the point, "You have such a lovely laugh. Please. Allow me to treat you to dinner."
"You bypassed the juncture between response and invitation and it makes you sound desperate."
"Sorry, I know, I’m much too direct. So, will you?"
She desperately wanted send him away, but then something else made her want to at least take him up on a single dinner date, perhaps curiosity. Just as long as it didn’t go further than that. She had no wish to pursue a relationship like this.
But she’d been alone for several years, with only the occasional floozy to keep his sex drive in check. She finally decided on offering him a rain check, "How many days will you be here?"
"About a week."
"Same here." Actually she’d be staying a week or two longer than that with the team.
Gee, she was just lying again and again. "What’s your name, sir?"
"Kenneth Xander."
"Wow."
"And yours?"
"Leona Demsky."
"Nice to meet you, Leona."
"Nice to meet you too, Xander. Listen, how about dinner tomorrow night? I’d go now but I’m just so exhausted from the….trip."
He thought about it as she put the card in the door and opened it. "All right, tomorrow. Where will I meet you though?"
"Right here", she gestured to her room, "I should be in at about six."
"That’s wonderful." He laid the clothes in her closet and smiled. "It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Leona."
"Bye." Before leaving, he turned back and waved. Leona returned the gesture and was just glad that he didn’t blow her a kiss or something worse. Not that she wasn’t curious about that either, she was after all currently the opposite sex to that man. It was just that her mind didn’t agree with all this. Plopping down on the bed, she discarded this line of thought and turned on the television.
"….Monostat-7, the only one week yeast infection treatment that doctors recommend…."
*Click*
"….Maxi Pads with wings is better at absorbing leakage that your usual pad because…."
*Click*
"….Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman…."
*Click*
"….Ooooh, YES! YES! YES!….all new herbal shampoo…"
*Click* *Click* *Click*
"….new on Lifetime….."
Disgusted and feeling as though it was taunting her, Leona heaved the remote at the TV and wrapped a pillow around her ears. She eventually put it on FOX, where three feminine commercials a break hit her.
Seeing this was a wasted effort, she turned it off and walked over to the closet. Selecting the cut-offs and a nice, cool cotton shirt and underwear to wear, she had trouble only with the bra, as one would expect her to have trouble with due to her inexperience. She walked barefoot into the hall, tucking the keycard in her pocket.
Xander was long gone. Pity. Had he still been around, she might have actually changed her mind. Instead she spotted Samantha and asked her about the team rooms. 180-190, she said.
They chatted for a little bit. Wait a second! She’s supposed to be exhausted! They’re all supposed to be! But they weren’t, oddly enough. Her shoulder was feeling much better and as for her muscle aches, they’d miraculously faded to the point that they were just a side concern.
She asked Sam about this and found that she didn’t have that much trouble either. The dying sunlight cut through the draped window in Samantha’s room. Continuing to talk with Leona, mostly about what she thought about this whole change, Sam folded her clothes and put them away in the drawers.
Looking at Sam a moment, then checking out her own reflection in the mirror above the drawer, Leona reached a hand up to her cheek.
She waved it back and forth in front of herself a few times, drawing a friendly smile from Sam. Turning, Leona asked Sam a rather obvious question, "Do I seem like a girl to you?"
"Honestly?"
"Yeah."
"Well, you certainly have girl’s appearance. You carry yourself like a girl and have feminine gestures."
Leona frowned and examined herself again, head tilted to the right side. "Huh?"
"Well, if you’re gonna just stand around like that, you’ll never see them. Wait, I have a video recorder in my bag." Sam pulled out the recorder and aimed it at Leona.
"Just interact with me naturally."
"Easy to say."
"There you go."
"What?"
"You made a feminine motion, it hard to tell when you’re doing it but you shrugged effeminately."
"I think you’re nuts! Effeminate shruggging, wh—wh—wh—why, that’s absurd."
So she had her watch the tape.
Conceding that on a women it seemed feminine, Leona maintained that a man would look normal if he did that. Sam gave her the benefit of the doubt. They sat on the bed and talked a little while longer about the whole experience so far.
The big stuttering came when Sam asked Leona what she thought about having breasts.
"Uhh…..uhh….gee wiz. I never wanted to see them on my chest. I’m just glad they’re not the kind Alben gave the General Manager. Did you see those? Don’t want to be him."
Her, corrected Sam. "I saw them and honestly, I’d go for them if I could just try them on for a little bit, you know, walk around a little, do a curtsy and jump up and down, see how they feel. We’re lucky. I mean what if we’d come across a witch with melons in mind?"
Leona shivered.
"And what do you feel about that special place between your legs?"
Leona grunted, "Gee wiz, can’t you come up with something less….eh…uh….gosh….Oh, I don’t know."
Leona pressed her hand against her groin. "I’m reserving judgment."
"Oh, so you wanta take it for a test drive first?"
"You have a unique way of saying things, Sam."
"Thank you."
They stared at one another for a moment and the tension just broke. They collapsed in a heap of giggles. Leona brushed away a tear when things calmed down, Sam still beaming.
Then Leona commented, "That was completely pointless."
"Yeah, but it sure felt good, didn’t it?" Leona had to agree with her.
"You know what though? Before today, I haven’t giggled since I was a child."
Leona knew exactly what she meant.
Samantha didn’t dwell on it though. Instead she took her top off, much to the chagrin of Leona. "You want me to leave?"
"No, I’m just gonna get dressed and go downstairs. We can go together."
Leona gulped and gripped her hands behind her. "Ok."
Naked from the waist up, Leona tried to look away from Sam’s chest.
"Would you like to borrow some sandals?"
"Huh?" Asked Leona, head swiveling, with her eyes fixed firmly on Samantha’s head.
"It’s better not to go around barefoot. Didn’t you buy some shoes?"
"Just some tennis shoes."
"Well, I got three pair of sandals. And I’m willing loan you one."
Leona glanced down at her feet and figured that it would be best to wear sandals.
"Thank you." Presenting the pair she was offering to Leona elicited a different response. "Don’t you have another color?"
"Oh come on, they’re just pink. Now if they were fluorescent orange that would be bad." Leona thought to herself that they were bad enough as they were.
Before slipping on the sandals, she twirled them about in her hands for a little bit. Sam put on her swimsuit and tied a sarong around her waist. She grinned girlishly and examined herself in the mirror.
Then she looked over at Leona and asked her, "Didn’t you buy a swimsuit too?"
"Yeah, what about it?"
"Go get it."
"Why?"
"I wanta see how you look in it."
After a bit of urging, Leona got her swimsuit and sarong and presented them to Samantha. "Put them on."
Calmed by Sam’s pleasant demeanor, Leona took her clothing off and put on the swimsuit. It fit really nicely and smoothly in all places.
Then, in a flash, Sam grabbed Leona’s clothes from the floor, pulled her room card out of the pocket and dropped them in one of the empty drawers. She then proceeded to block the drawer with her body. Leona glared at her. "Gimme my clothes back!"
"Later, first let’s go downstairs, maybe do a little window shopping, do something fun and end it with a stop at the pool. It’ll be great. Seize the day before the sun winks out of the sky. Come on."
Leona wrapped the sarong around her (at least in her opinion) overly exposed legs. "Remember that I said something about estrogen psychosis to Kinney? Well, you have it big time."
"If you mean I have a newfound sense of fun. Well then I’m a terminal case right now. I just want to go out and do something. I know you don’t know too much about me. But let me tell you, I’ve never had a day of fun since I was five. That was my first baseball game. Peewee league. We lost ten to nothing, but it was great. I was with my friends, my dad was coaching. Then he yelled at me, hit me, said that I was a ‘fucking loser’. We won the league eventually and had pizza at a video game parlor to celebrate. I’ve never known pizza that tasted so bitter. Moving on, my dad pushed me through until I made it to Triple-A, then he died. It was a massive stroke. Most days I missed him, because he loved me in paternal way, but he pushed me so hard that some days I just wished I could take a break. I used to wish I had it easy like my little sister but as she grew up, she got pushed through softball, ballet, and a bunch of other activities. Dad gave me an easier time of it. Just baseball. But it always seemed like Sarah had more fun in her activities….hmm, oh well."
Leona folded her arms and frowned, "Can I have my card back?"
"Sure." She didn’t want to interrupt Sam but it seemed like she was finished saying what she wanted to say. Checking her swimsuit needlessly for pockets, she asked Sam about this little dilemma and she presented a purse to her.
"It was in my bag. When I opened it here, all the clothes inside had changed, along with my wallet. It’s much better anyway, because it combines all the loose stuff I put in there. Check yours, you probably have one."
She checked and it turned out she did. Stuffing her room card in it, she slung it around her shoulder and decided Sam was right. Why not have a good time?
Sure, she was a girl. But how did that song go? "Girls just wanta have fun"?
Just as long as that fun didn’t entail anything that would cause trouble for her in the long run, then it really was no big deal.
The elevator door opened on the ground level.
After a long breath, Leona stepped out. She could see a few of the other players down here. Some were nursing beers dressed in relaxed clothes, like Pijuaro, Alvarez and Kinney. McGee sat by herself, rubbing her eyes. Darlene Shelby bolted up from her seat alone and walked to Sam and Leona.
"Umm, going swimming?"
Darlene seemed conflicted. Inside she knew all this wasn’t right, hell being even the few inches shorter that she was couldn’t be right either. But she couldn’t ignore that it all was happening.
"Later on." Responded Sam. "But first we’re gonna go check out the stores."
Shrugging, Darlene muttered, "There’s not that much of interest though. Sure there’s shops, all kinds of stuff, then there’s clubs."
"Excellent."
Leona had a lament though, "What about these clothes? They’re not the kind you can dance in that well."
"We’ll manage."
Leona flung her hand, "I’ll just go swimming. See you later."
"Humf, party pooper. Come on, I don’t want to go alone, just hang around me for a little bit." Leona clutched her sarong close around her legs. Boy did it feel flimsy especially with the shape of the bottom part of swimsuit. She could feel a draft near her drastically changed ass. Checking it, she could see no indecent exposure.
Sam picked a club named ‘the Jungle Beat.’ It wasn’t wall to wall people but it felt really active with all the music drumming.
Leona recognized most of the songs. After all, she did play in a major league stadium. Sam looked like an excited kid. She bounced along to the beat, getting into the rhythm of the floor.
Leona wanted to put as much distance as possible between herself and the dance floor. She picked a duet table and watched the action for afar. Wishing she had a windbreaker or anything that she could crawl up into and hide herself, Leona crouched down and covered her face.
The sarong would probably fall off if I try to dance, she told herself. She probably should have pined it but then she hadn’t expected to go dancing.
"Can I get you something?"
Leona jerked up and realized after a moment, that a waitress was standing in front of the table. "Oh, um, just a seltzer water."
Making a quick like flick against her notepad, the waitress went away. Leona rubbed her eyes. Why? They weren’t really all that tired.
The situation warranted that she at least do something. Even whacking her head against the wall was fine. Because she had forgotten one bit that it was technically HER head rather than his head.
Thinking about it some more, whacking sounded like a pretty good idea. But having no walls in easy reach she brought her head against the table. Not exactly a whack, more like a plop.
Shutting her eyes, she inhaled the air along the tabletop, along with the remnants of the last patron’s order and the Lysol spraying following it. Of course, she couldn’t consciously sense these traces, but they were still there.
"You sure look glum. What’s wrong?" That brought her head up rapidly, causing a rush of blood to her forehead. A stab of pain. Blinking a few times, she looked at the fellow who’d addressed her.
"Huh?" After she asked that, she was able to connect the face before her to one that she’d seen before. It was the second baseman of the Yankees, Ryan Salt.
"I said you look kinda down." She allowed the quiet revelation fill her that the man who regularly topped every offensive category and whom she shared a not so great relationship with was standing beside her. And that he was interacting with her. As a her.
Lie time. "Oh, it’s nothing. I just have a bit of a migraine."
No such luck of turning him off, rather he sat down across from her. "Sorry to hear that. Maybe you should get to bed, sleep it off. This place will just make things worse for you."
Now for a kernel of truth. "I’m here with a friend of mine. She likes to dance and didn’t want to go by herself. Actually, the pain is clearing a little. It was bad for a while though."
"That’s good to hear."
I sure hope, she thought to herself, that he’s not thinking of asking me to dance or anything like that. It’s bad enough I have that promise to Xander.
He didn’t, as first, but he did stay at the table longer than she expected. She played a game of basketball with her eyes. Up and down and dribbling around. And a game of keep away with his face. Whatever it took to convince him that she didn’t feel comfortable with him around.
"It’s sure a nice evening, isn’t it?"
"Yeah." The song that was playing ended and most of the couples on the dance floor walked back to their tables. This included Sam, who after a look around, saw where Leona was sitting. She also got a kick out of seeing her with someone.
Holding onto her dance partner, a lanky man with boyish green eyes, Sam went over to Leona. "Hiya, Leona. Who’s your new friend?"
She figured that Sam knew exactly who the man across from her was. Salt introduced himself to the both of them rather reluctantly, but neither acknowledged having known him before.
"Why don’t you two dance? I mean, we’re beat." Salt brought up Leona’s headache and Sam shot it down swiftly, saying instead that Leona felt really nervous on the dance floor.
"Two left feet", she explained, all the while Leona just sitting there, wondering if there was a way that she could twist this to keep him from asking her to dance.
Salt stroked his chin, then relented the seat to Sam’s partner. Leona stood up and Sam slid it. This left Salt and Leona facing one another, standing, neither able to come up with anything to say. Both for very different reasons.
With Leona she was trying to come up with a single comment that would turn Salt away and this whole mess without her getting into any more trouble than she already was in.
With Salt, he simply sought the single comment that would make her smile.
Salt found his first, "Do you like baseball?" Sure it was a leading and obviously manipulative question that no woman other than her would’ve found ironic. But Leona did and with little more than a smirk, Salt had gotten an emotional reaction out of her.
"Yeah."
"Have you ever been to a game?"
"Yes." No lying this time, but she might have to, depending on where this conversation went. She wondered for a minute if telling the whole truth might put him off and send him away looking for a not quite as loony catch.
"Ever been in the first row?"
"Yup and closer than that." Ahh, the purification of being able to say something and do it with a confident face because it was the truth.
Salt mused questioningly on this a bit, "What do you mean?"
Ok, now to pepper Salt with some lies, "I’m dating a major league player."
"Oh?" She could hear the question mark at the end. It sounded as though it could be replaced with a "Who is it?"
"But it’s kind of a casual acquaintance."
Salt nodded understandingly, "We should get another table."
And they found one nearby and continued chatting for a bit. He told her about his career, probably wanting to impress her. She responded with regulated amount of surprise. He asked her about the whole swimsuit thing. She responded truthfully there.
And, despite having gotten a bit sidetracked, he asked her if she wanted to dance. She listened to the song and explained that it seemed a bit too fast for her. He accepted this cop-out and asked her instead how many games she’d gone too.
"So many, that I’ve lost count." Half-hearted grins.
Then out of the blue, "Have you ever seen A League of Their Own?" A smart, albeit spontaneous comment because it allowed him to show he had respect for dramas. She figured he’d come to the same conclusion that she had in the doctor’s office.
"Geena Davis?"
"Minus the uniform, yeah." Don’t worry, I have a uniform, she thought.
She pushed her hair over her ears and glanced up cautiously at him. Then with a sigh she laid her head, chin first, on the table. Salt asked if anything was wrong.
"It’s just been a long day."
"What happened?" She didn’t really want to talk about it, but realized that women always talked about it, even if it was tough. Especially if it was tough.
"I went to work and found out that there were going to be some major changes."
"What do you do?"
What the hell do I do?, she mused. Nothing helpful came to her. Until she decided to use the truth.
"I work for the Cleveland Indians." And it would hold unless he asked the obvious, "What’s your job?"
Which he did.
She had to come up with something to satisfy him that didn’t seem made up. Of course she could just tell him the truth. How might that turn out, she wondered.
"I’m an accountant with the front office." This worked out just fine. He didn’t delve any deeper, so she said her concocted list of terrible things that happened, including the pap smear just to make him squirm.
Then trying to figure out how to salvage the day. She explained her friend was staying at this hotel, so figuring that they could afford to lose her for a few days, she flew down here to get a break from the rush of life.
End of story and Salt bought the whole thing. Heck, with the way he was beginning to be mesmerized by her face, he would’ve accepted any story, just so he could stare at her.
The song changed to "Deep Inside of You." It had a medium beat and melody with the guitars in the background. A pleasant rhythm that she’d been so fearing would come up. Plus it conjured up a sexual image that didn’t sit well with her.
Again, almost as though he was sensing her train of though, Salt asked if she wanted to dance to this one. Looking at him a moment, she thought to herself that it didn’t matter. It was just a dance. Just a harmless dance.
He held her hand as they stepped out onto the floor. Back and forth they rocked. He reached his arms around the small of her back, bringing her close to him. She could feel him pressing against her chest. She could smell his cologne, a pricey but repulsive brand.
This had to stop now. She pushed him away. "I’m not dancing."
He tried to reassure her he meant nothing by that, he just got a little carried away. But she wasn’t going to listen to any of it. Purse in hand, she stormed out.
Salt did not follow. Either because he had other squeezes or he actually respected her.
Walking up and down the promenade of shops and clubs, Leona wondered how Sam was faring and what happened to the seltzer water she ordered. She imagined the waitress rushing back and forth, eventually saying ‘screw it’ when she didn’t turn up.
None of the shops interested her at the moment, there were quite a few nice places though. Maybe later.
The thing foremost on her mind was the need to salvage this evening.
"Leona?" It was Salt. Well, she figured, maybe he hadn’t given up. But that was a bad thing in her book. She didn’t want this, she didn’t need this. But for some reason she turned around and let him speak.
Instead of asking questions about what flustered her or what was wrong, he simply said he was sorry. She appreciated his gesture but having used it numerous times just to get into a woman’s panties she recognized the technique.
She just wished she could tell him, let him decide for himself to leave rather than push him away so many times. But she didn’t love him! She didn’t! She didn’t even know him all that well on a personal level. It was just that sensation of the moment, the rush of foreign feelings that made her curious, made her want to sense them again.
But she couldn’t do that, it wasn’t right. She wasn’t a man though, it was natural sex. This wasn’t about naturalness though, even though she had to admit that no way did it feel any less terrifying by being normal.
Normal, what normal? She was female, she lacked a penis and in it’s place she had a split like a furry gash with fleshy petals pressed between a broken mound. No way it was normal with legs straight in that new straight with her altered center of gravity. With her legs straight and the package wedged in there it would feel a little cramped. Now with nothing dangling to be crunched, anything looser than clenched felt alien. Even then the usual shifting of the sack wasn’t there.
She slowed her ping-pong debate of thoughts down and gazed at Salt. Sam stood near the door, looking a little unsettled. Leona went over to her side and they walked away. Why should she give any goodbye notice to him? Sure he was probably muttering ‘bitch’ to himself or ‘dike’, but he’d get over it.
Talking with the now-subdued Sam, Leona learned that she had encountered a dilemma similar in nature to hers. Her suitor too had tried to put the moves on her, even though Sam had more justification. He’d grabbed her ass and made ‘let’s go to my place’ suggestions. Feeling over her head, she left when things started to get uncertain.
They talked for a little while in the lobby, noticing that all the others were gone, likely up in their rooms. Neither of them seemed tired though.
So they went swimming like they’d planned. They only had about twenty minutes before the ten o’clock closing but it was enough to kick around a little bit, float and get themselves pretty well soaked.
Then a dip in the hot tub. They got out, dripping from their suits and hair, feeling the calm, thick air move over them.
They walked back to the lobby and were met by a polite doorman who looked absolutely terrified by their dripping.
Rushing to laundry room and back, he brought them full-length towels that somehow never found their way into the room towel racks. Wrapping the towels around themselves, they walked up to their rooms by way of the stairs.
This time could have been used to chat, but since neither were in the mood to share their feelings, they moved upwards in silence.
Bumping into the intense-eyed Tolette who was pacing the floors, glancing out a window every so often, they gave their greetings. Tolette handed them thick pads of scouting reports, mostly of teams they’d be facing in spring training in the days to come.
No need to disregard normal policy just because of this life-altering change. After passing these documents out, Tolette returned to her pacing.
Sam tucked it under her arm, pulled her keys out of her purse, waved briefly to Leona and went into her room. Leona did pretty much the same and set the scouting reports down beside the television.
*click* with the remote.
"Hasn’t what I told you meant anything?…." VIP with Pamela Anderson, nothing worth it anymore.
*click*
News. It was at the sports report, first day of spring training. No stories that related to the Indians.
Listening to the program with one ear, Leona laid her sarong in the closet and picked out a lavender pair of boxers and an undershirt. Except for the lack of an opening in the crotch of boxers, it felt like old times.
Laying them on the bed, pulled off her swimsuit. The moist suit made her skin feel clammy. Drying off with a clean towel, she opted not to shower. Not tonight.
After all, she had just gone swimming. What’s the problem?! She asked herself. It’s nothing. You have to shower. So she did.
The shower felt nice and her fears of feelings being stirred during it like they were in Salt’s arms were allayed. Putting on her clothes, she got under the covers and stared at the television.
Not more than ten minutes passed before there came a knock on the door.
At first, she chose not to answer it. It might be Salt or Xander. Then she took a peek and saw that it was only Jill Weir. Unlocking the door, she pulled it open and looked Jill over.
Barefoot and wearing flannel PJs. She rubbed her hands together as though trying to warm them and asked apprehensively, "Can I sleep with you tonight?"
The twenty-year-old, a mere 5’2 now, looked more like a spooked little girl than the scrawny fire-thrower of last year. Feeling a bit lonely herself and finally feeling ready to talk about some of the things she was feeling, Leona let her in.
"Oh, I should get my bed covers", remembered Jill, seeing the bed. Leona stopped her. "It’s ok, you can sleep with me. Just don’t crowd." Jill’s eyes lit up, "Thanks."
They both tried to settle in. Leona turned off the television and the lights, leaving only the bathroom dome light on with the door open a crack, as per Jill’s request.
Neither felt that tired though. Jill turned toward Leona, fiddling with the covers in an effort to find the right placing that left her comfortable with this awful, lingering Florida humidity.
"How’d your evening go?"
"Not so good. Yours?"
Jill sighed, "I just did sit ups and stuff, trying to tire myself out, but I couldn’t. So I went down the hotel gym. I worked up a pretty good sweat. Some of the guys there tried to flirt with me. I declined their advances, though I was curious. What if I didn’t turn them down? Would it be wrong? I didn’t feel anything sexual with guys, but then nor did I with women all that much. It felt weird. Maybe Ms. Alben turned off our sex drives as a favor or something? Do you feel anything around the opposite sex? It might just be me not feeling attracted to men."
Leona admitted that she did feel a little turned on around men, but it wasn’t anything enticing. A little curious though.
"Do you think that you’ll ever, during the course of the season, bring yourself to kiss a guy? I might just out of curiosity. That’d be about first base, right? Well, I might even go for a double. But I don’t know. Isn’t that like foreplay with like the panties on and not the bra where the nipples are being….teased? So then third would be like….teased without the panties. Isn’t that about right? How far would you go?"
Leona folded her arms, "Well, as a man, I always treated sex just like baseball. If I didn’t get a home run every time I stepped to the play then I considered that a wasted at bat. And I figure if you’re at second or third then the man in coming home. Which is why I’m probably not gonna do much more with what is now the opposite sex than maybe give them a peck on the cheek."
Jill was ready with a question, just like a little kid, "What about the same sex?" If only she’d asked something a little longer to let Leona think about it.
Until that moment, they’d actually felt rather comfortable together in the same bed. Jill kinda wished that she could take her question back. Leona fiddled with her hair while looking at Jill’s brownish locks. "Well, I don’t know. I feel new to all this and I don’t want to jump into anything right away. It’s such a head rush when you stop and think about the fact that we are women."
"It’s ok, it’s not such a biggie with me, but I figure if I’m gonna try and find stimulation, if I need it, then it’s probably gonna be with a device or something. I used to listen to my ex-girlfriend entertaining herself with a vibrator when I came home late from Triple-A games. I could hear her moaning at times. Screaming at her peak. Most of the time she’d quit right after I came in. But a few times I tried sneaking in and I’d listen to her for several hours before she quit."
Leona thought about that for a bit.
Jill chuckled. "I figure in a couple of days, maybe a week or two, all of us will be PMSing. But seems like Kinney’s already there." Leona had to agree.
Jill chuckled a bit more and went on, "After that we’ll be having our periods, our breasts will ache, we’ll feel strange, get nausea, bloating, and real bad headaches and of course a steady flow of blood. It’s only about a cup. I wonder what that would that look like? I asked that same girlfriend about her periods once and she said when she had her first one she thought she was bleeding to death. It just seemed like so much. A cup. That’s about the amount of salad dressing you get in one of those containers. The bigger ones. Not those you get from steak houses, those don’t even saturate the top lettuce. But, back on topic. Do you figure we’ll think it’s a lot more than it really is when we have ours too?"
Feeling more like reaching over and suffocating her, Leona shrugged and muttered, "We’ll see when it comes around."
Still a bounty of questions, "What do you think about your breasts? Sure they’re not the kind you’d find in smut magazines, but they’re still bigger than Kate Moss’s, but then it wouldn’t take much to have bigger ones than her. You ever watch the women’s soccer team back a couple of years ago when they won that championship match and that lady celebrated like they always do in soccer?"
Well, I was thinking, comparing and the like, that ours, the team as a whole, kinda averages in her bra size. And it makes sense, she’s athletic and as the witch said so are we. I heard having breasts larger than ours, a low B or so, can really hinder athletics, cuts down on your speed and reaction time."
With me, it’s not such a big thing. You think about having breasts and it’s like in your mind you imagine them as torpedoes that stick out there, knocking over lamps and stuff as you walk. But these are ok. They’re kinda fleshy and that makes them unusual and then they’ve got these large nipples for breast-feeding."
I heard once on the discovery channel that a women’s breasts are not fully developed until she gives birth. Of course women complain that after a child their breasts look more like socks with an orange them, or that’s at least what my mother used to say."
Leona, truly hoping that Jill had exhausted her cash of questions, answered, "I feel kinda the same way. But they’re quite a bit of a pain, especially since we’re all used to having fat-free chest." Quite a different response from what she told Sam, but then in the meantime her opinion had changed.
But Jill came up with another one and this one actually worried Leona, "Do you think we’ll take a pay cut because of our sex? I mean women typically get paid only about seventy percent of what men are based solely on their gender."
Leona had no way of knowing, but it seemed possible that the witch would try to use that to save money on the team in case they have a poor year, which they probably would this year. All she could answer back was, "I don’t know."
Next question. And this one was a carbon copy of the one she’d asked Sam. "When you look at me do I seem like a girl to you? Do I sound like one?" Figuring sleep was a long time off, Leona flicked the light back on and glanced at Jill.
"Working backwards, your voice is a soprano so you have the tonality of a girl, just like me. Looking at you, I see a feminine, soft, woman’s face, but your mannerisms from last year are still there but effeminate. Mostly because of your form."
Jill thought about that, looking up at the ceiling, "So it still sorta seems like I’m me but it’s like I’m wearing a disguise?"
"Much more than that."
She rolled off the bed and walked around in front of it, "What about now?"
Leona muttered, "Same." Jill narrowed her eyes and put on a french accent. "How zeybout zis?" In addition, she made it sound higher as well. "Neat."
"Yeah, isn’t it? I took drama class in high school and did real well in it, but I knew I’d be a starving actor, so I focused on sports, the other thing I was good at."
Now a shift to British, "How do you like one’s accent?"
"Whatever."
More of a Scarlet O’Hare. "You know quite well what I mean when I say you’re not the most likable person to be around. Why at that play last week you were a trifle rude during the performance."
Leona grinned, "I’ll try to be more polite next time." Valley girl, with an incomprehensible combination of words which involved ‘like’, ‘you know’, and ‘whatever’ as eighty percent of the sentence construction.
When Jill finished with her performance, rather than answer the question, which she’d been trying to fish out of the lines, Leona just smiled. All the while she was saying to herself that a calm, restful sleep didn’t seem so bad about now.
Leaning back against the pillow, she tried to send a message to Jill, fortunately, she picked up on it and apologetically returned to the covers.
About a minute passed in silence before a pressing question entered Jill’s mind, "As a girl, do you think I’m pretty, or cute, maybe even sexy? With you, I’d have to say you’re all three."
Glancing over, really hoping to put this to rest, Leona murmured, "Same for you."
"How much of each?"
"Gee, pretty is high naturally, and cute ranks at the top of the three by far and sexy is there because I feel all women are sexy in some way."
Jill remained thankfully silent and pulled the covers up around her, retreating away from them after a moment when she began to feel sweaty.
Breathing softly, Jill shut her eyes, trying to sleep. Leona tried to do the same, but one eye refused to close, remaining fixed on Jill, should she open her lips to speak.
Well, she did open her lips after a little bit, but it wasn’t to speak, it was to sing.
"A long long time ago, I can still remember….how that music used to make me smile…."
She knew all the words, included a few verses that Leona had forgotten. Leona hummed a bit during the refrain, "I started singing by by, miss American pie, drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry…."
When she was done, they both lay there quietly and soon Jill was asleep.
Listening to her soft breath, Leona, her lids finally feeling heavy with the weight of this miraculous day, followed Jill’s lead.
To be continued in "The Team: Pre-season – Spring Training"
Teaser –
"What’s wrong, Rebecca?" Kinney’s eyes narrowed, growing moist. Sobbing, she murmured, "I kissed a guy."
Demsky, who was almost done touching up her makeup, asked impishly, "How was it?" Rebecca looked down at her feet, rubbing them together vigorously.
"I don’t know. I’m not supposed to like a kiss from a guy. Which I did." Kinney sobbed into the bathroom sink.
A woman came in, glanced at Kinney with a look of understanding and occupied the closest stall. "I can’t go out there."
Leona put her makeup away and inquired, "So what are you going to do?"
"I don’t know."
Putting her arm around her, Leona whispered, "I have an idea."
Character Notes ----
Jose ‘Alicia’ Pijuaro, 1st, leadoff
Norm ‘Norma’ Cross, commercializing, shortstop
Ferdinand ‘Ramona’ Alvarez, 2nd, firecracker
Jordan ‘Melissa’ Wick, third
Wally ‘Rebecca’ Kinney, DH, obsessive
Leon’a’ Demsky, cold bat, personality and defensive player at center field
Javier ‘Tara’ McGee, catcher, Scottish
Sam’antha’ Preston lf, and David ‘Darlene’ Shelby rf
Jerry Tolette, the team coach, intense---Don’na’ Pike, pitching coach, coke-bottle bifocals, nervous grin, sandy brown hair trim, but unkempt--- Paul’a’ Ricks, a gray haired fellow, laid back grandfather--- the GM, Ted ‘Tina’ Moors, accountant--- Miguel ‘Maria’ Arroyo, ace?, too many walks--- Bill ‘Brenda’ Meyer, end of career, floater--- Justin ‘Jill’ Weir, new guy---lanky, bearded, Harold ‘Candice’ Evans--- Kerry Gilroy, diminutive closer---
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