[tenthreeleader]

The bus rolled toward Jackson, and Rob thought of his kids.

Ryan was fourteen. His sister Rachel was twelve.

And for all he knew, they thought he was the worst thing in the world.

He was 43 years old, riding buses in the Southern League while he tried to figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up.

If he grew up, in the eyes of some.

That would be Liza, primarily. She was the one who had fallen head over heels in love with the tall firstbaseman and married him after his rookie season in the majors at age 24.

Ryan had been born five years later, and obviously Rachel two years after that.

But then his career had ended and Liza had strayed. Rob could never figure out the reason for it – they had all the money they’d ever need even if he wasn’t a superstar.

She reminded him that he wasn’t a superstar more than once after he retired. Rob also suspected alcohol abuse was part of those denunciations but could never prove it. When they were together, she was clean as a whistle but when they weren’t, well, let’s just say she was different.

Finally, he opened one of her credit card bills and found some very curious purchases. Ordinarily when a married woman buys lingerie and rents hotel rooms, her husband is the beneficiary.

Usually…but not always.

His name was Tripp, which figured. He was twenty-two. Liza was forty.

Ryan and Rachel were eleven and six, respectively.

So Rob confronted Liza, and invited her to take a different kind of Tripp.

But once there, Ron was surprised – stunned, in fact – to hear the judge give custody of the kids to their mother, due to Rob’s employment in baseball meaning he evidently couldn’t manage his own family.

That hurt. His lawyer was still trying to get the kids back. But it was hard.

Baseball can be hell on families. It certainly hadn’t been good to Rob’s, but then he owed everything he had to the game and, like a Stepford wife, couldn’t tear himself away. He could change things, he thought, again like a Stepford wife.

Realizing he couldn’t, and having had it proven to him both in court and on the ballfield, he tried to accept his fate.

He thought he had good relationships with both his kids but three years after the divorce, he had yet to receive either a Christmas or birthday card, never mind a gift, from either one.

Not that he expected anything, mind you. It was just that he wanted to stay in touch, and after the divorce was finalized, Liza wasn’t having any of it.

Neither was Tripp, who should have had nothing to say about the matter but with the looks and intellect of a professional pool boy, he was in over his head in any event.

The two hadn’t gotten on, with the younger man trying to claim alpha-male status over a woman Rob no longer wanted to be around. So while Tripp flexed his figurative muscles instead of his pecs, Rob got on with his life.

There was visitation, of course, but in the summer that was sometimes difficult to arrange -- and it was even more difficult now that Rob was running a ball club. It was enough to make a dad despair.

The bus wheels kept turning, chewing up the miles toward Jackson. He picked up his phone.

“Hi, Jody, it’s Rob,” he texted. “Just thought I’d say hi.”

There was no answer, and finally Rob fell asleep. It was nine o’clock on a Saturday morning.

# # #