"Sacrifice Fly"

Theodore Wheeler made his first million before his twenty-fifth birthday, buying and selling soybean futures. He made his second million in real estate, as well as his tenth and his hundredth. By the time he turned thirty-three, his e-commerce company, hedge fund portfolio, and cryptocurrency speculation had made him the seventeenth richest man in America. 

During this extended boom, he managed to escape the insider trading accusation by accepting a paltry, off-the-record, no-liability-attached settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Whispers of fraudulent valuation and-off-the-books compensation schemes had never been proven, despite multiple IRS audits. No matter its rather exorbitant “overhead costs,” his charitable foundation was well-regarded. On paper, at least, Wheeler was the epitome of the American success story.

But all his money could not assuage the indignity of having once been cut from the JV baseball team at Apple Valley High School in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. That was half his lifetime and billions of dollars ago, but it still stung as if it happened last week.

His opportunity to remedy this humiliation came in 2018, when he purchased controlling interest in Major League Baseball’s Chicago Mammoths for $1.6 billion cash. The team enjoyed a storied history but had recently fallen upon hard times, and championships won two decades ago don’t sell tickets today. Wheeler pledged to turn things around. 

Yet for each of the next three years, the Chicago Mammoths recorded the worst record in Major League Baseball, never winning more than 67 games in a full season and only 22 in the 2020 COVID-shortened year, and the current season (now more than halfway over) was shaping up no differently. The Chicago Sun-Times roasted Wheeler regularly, even going so far as to call him the worst owner in all of professional sports. Not only that, the Mammoths’ bungling ways had begun to scare away the fans. The team was losing money, and this stain of red ink amidst his otherwise profitable holdings irked Wheeler beyond measure.

Upon entering the clubhouse at Fair Winds Country Club in Oakbrook one especially humid late-July morning, he noticed his golf partner—an old drinking buddy from their days at Cornell who now worked as a supervisor for the Chicago Housing Authority—reading the Sun-Times.

“Must you?” Wheeler sighed. 

“Don’t worry,” replied Jack Railsback. “I haven’t gotten to the sports section yet.” He folded the paper, left it on his chair, and joined Wheeler as they moved toward the first tee.

Yet that was but a temporary reprieve. Soon, with Railsback having won three of the first four holes—they halved the second after Wheeler kicked his ball out of the sand trap, a trick he employed once or twice per round—the public servant was up $600 on the billionaire, and the needle came out. 

“So after last night it’s, what, twelve losses in your last fourteen?” he ribbed, addressing his ball on the fifth tee.

Wheeler waited to respond until Railsback was in the middle of his backswing. “Yeah, but we’ve got Melendez pitching tonight.”

Railsback watched his drive catch the right rough. Moments later, though, with a chance to win the hole, Wheeler shanked a wedge into the lake, threw his club in behind it, and kicked the golf cart before he got in. 

Wheeler managed to win only three holes on the day: the seventh, when he loudly answered a phone call while Railsback was putting; the tenth, when he didn’t bother to count his out-of-bounds drive; and the fifteenth, when he walked in front of Railsback’s par putt and then (after Railsback missed) called his own six-footer a gimme. But his check for $1600, signed on the locker room bench with an impressive flourish, made all his breaches tolerable. 

“Order me a club sandwich on sourdough, toasted,” Wheeler told Railsback. “And a Sprite. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He returned to the clubhouse, where he spent another $2400 buying new golf clubs—five of his current set now residing at the bottom of various lakes strewn throughout Fair Winds Country Club. 

For most people, this would add up to be an expensive outing, but Ted Wheeler was not most people. His business ventures would earn back the $4000 even before he finished half his sandwich. He could afford to tip the waitress $100, even though he only left her a five. What he couldn’t afford was another season as owner of the most inept team on planet Earth. 

Unfortunately, no matter how much it gnawed at him, he had no idea how to change that. 

###

Jameston Chadwick was a baseball junkie. He knew how many homeruns Mike Schmidt hit in 1982 (35, third in the National League) and whether Bob Gibson had more career Wins Above Replacement than Randy Johnson (he didn’t). Growing up in Evanston, he followed the Chicago Cubs with a wide-eyed love characteristic of a boyhood crush. After graduating from Northwestern, his decision to accept an entry-level job with a minor league baseball team in lieu of a well-paying financial analyst position puzzled his parents. The next twenty years spent working in minor league baseball only reinforced their perception of his folly. But after two decades in professional baseball he finally hit the jackpot, hired by Ted Wheeler for his first Major League job—General Manager of the Chicago Mammoths. The fact that he was GM of the worst team in baseball didn’t temper his enthusiasm, but his fiancée, a hair stylist from Schaumburg, could not stop worrying about both his job security and his ulcers.

Two hours after his golf outing, now showered and bedecked in a tailored blue pinstriped suit and Italian silk tie, Wheeler entered Chadwick’s ballpark office and plopped down in a chair. “Melendez is gonna get lit up tonight, just like every other starting pitcher we’ve got,” Wheeler raged, not even prefaced by a “hello.” A vein in his forehead throbbed. “And our bullpen sucks, almost as bad as our fielding. Pritchett’s supposed to be our best hitter and he’s barely over the Mendoza line. And Barker, nineteen million a year and he can’t stay off the injured list.”

“No doubt we’ve got some bad contracts on the books,” Chadwick agreed. He’d seen such petulance from the boss before, but never quite this bad. He guessed the needling must have been especially pointed this morning. “We’ll gain some financial flexibility next year, but it may take three more years before our best minor leaguers are ready.”

“I can’t wait three more years,” Wheeler fumed. “Especially not with these players. I’ve never seen such entitlement. They want everything given to them. Free this, free that, and then they don’t even show up for marketing. McWhorter tried to bill me for a limo for a week because his Porsche was in the shop and he didn’t want to take an Über. I wish we could just start fresh. I hate to watch these ungrateful bastards sully our uniform.”

Chadwick chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Wheeler demanded.

“Oh, nothing really,” said Chadwick.

“Dammit, James.” The way he said it, this was not just a mild expletive. “Either you’re laughing at me… and I get enough of that from the press, thank you very much… or else you’ve got something on your mind. So, assuming you’d like to remain employed here, I expect you to tell me which one it is.”

Chadwick noticed he was sweating, which was not unusual when confronted with Wheeler’s wrath. The General Manager stood, wiped his face with his sleeve, and walked to his bookcase, where he pulled down a ponderous-looking volume. “The idea of starting fresh.”

“I’m listening.”

“The Official Professional Baseball Rules Book, 2021 edition,” said Chadwick. He searched through the book until he found the correct page. “Here it is. Rule 19.”

“What’s Rule 19?”

“It outlines the Major League Disaster Plan.”

“The what?”

“Well, briefly,” Chadwick explained, “if a Major League team suffers some sort of catastrophe—their bus runs off the road, a giant tsunami causes them all to drown, whatever—some event causing the death or disability of at least five players on the active roster, the Commissioner can call for a restocking draft. Like an expansion draft.”

“Interesting,” said Wheeler. He settled back in his chair. “Tell me more.”

“There’ve been several disasters in professional sports that necessitated something like this,” Chadwick continued. “For example, in 1949, the Torino soccer team in Italy. A plane crash killed all but one of their players. There was also a plane crash in the 1950s that killed the Manchester United soccer team, and in the 1970s with a Uruguayan rugby team. They wrote a book about that one. And a more recent plane crash that wiped out a hockey team in Russia, Lokomotiv something-or-other. Anyway, Major League Baseball decided it should develop some sort of contingency plan, you know, in case it ever happens here.”

Wheeler unbuttoned his suit coat. “Seems like a good idea.”

”Not that I’d ever want it to happen, of course,” Chadwick added quickly.

“Of course,” Wheeler said. He leaned forward in his chair. “That would be… tragic.”

“Besides, if you did have to rebuild through a disaster draft, your team would be terrible, since you’d be selecting from the worst players on everyone else’s roster. I’m sorry I even brought it up, actually. It was kind of a gruesome idea.”

Chadwick sat down at his desk and looked through some files. He found the one he was searching for and offered it to Wheeler. “Sir, if you wouldn’t mind okaying these expense reports. Accounting has been—”

“But if you could pick new players,” Wheeler said, scratching at his chin, “you could have an entire roster of guys making the minimum salary?”

“I suppose,” said Chadwick. 

“So your team would be in last place, just like we are now, but you’d still be profitable?”

“Yes. Anyway, these expense reports need to—”

“That leaves me with one question, James,” said Wheeler, finally taking the papers from Chadwick. He opened the file, signed his name with his customary flourish, then stared at his General Manager. “Where can we find a pilot willing to crash a plane?”

###

Melendez did indeed get shelled that night, the Mammoths losing 13-2. They lost their next three games as well, falling to a league-worst record of 31-72. At least they were better (although probably not by much) than the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who Chadwick knew had ended their season with 20 wins and 134 losses. 

Following Sunday’s defeat, the team headed to the airport to begin a twelve-game road trip. The Mammoths were 12-40 on the road, so it didn’t promise to be a fruitful experience. Nevertheless, Mammoth players climbed aboard their chartered aircraft full of good humor; many of them were probably full of beer, too, or would be very soon. Before long they’d be in Seattle, preparing for the first of a dozen ignominious drubbings. 

The pilot, a tall man with gray on his temples and a firm handshake, greeted the players as they boarded. 

Once everyone was seated, the pilot took his place in the cockpit, then came over the intercom. “Welcome, Mammoths. This is Captain Walt Neidermeyer, and it’s truly an honor to be your pilot for today’s flight to Seattle. Flight time to Sea-Tac Airport is four hours and one minute, so I invite you to relax and enjoy the flight.” Moments later, the lights of Chicago disappeared behind them, and the plane streaked into the blackness.

###

By the time Wheeler read the headline in Monday morning’s Chicago Tribune, he’d already been informed about what happened. Chadwick called him first, awakening him around midnight from a bourbon-enhanced dream. The news was delivered somberly: The Chicago Mammoths’ charter flight had crashed in a thunderstorm into a cornfield in South Dakota. 

There were no survivors.

Wheeler’s next few days were a whirlwind of media requests, but he had to postpone most of them. It took him two days to get through the phone calls to the families of the 29 players, six coaches, seven athletic trainers and clubhouse staff, and five journalists who perished. The charter company could tend to the messages of condolence for the dead pilot, co-pilot, and flight crew.

Meanwhile, Chadwick juggled his own round of calls and media requests against a fevered study of the rosters of every other Major League team. The Commissioner had decided there would, in fact, be a disaster draft, and to avoid any more disruption to the season it would happen on Thursday, with this new Mammoths team returning to play on Saturday. With only three days to prepare, Chadwick scarcely left the office.

###

As dawn broke on Thursday morning, a limousine pulled up in front of Chadwick’s home. His last-minute preparations had kept him up well past midnight, and he barely crawled into the back seat, dragging his briefcase behind him. Wheeler was already there.

“You look like death warmed over,” said Wheeler, picking some lint off the lapel of his gray checked suit.

“I haven’t slept much,” Chadwick said, even now beginning to perspire despite the limo’s air conditioning. “But I guess I’m ready for this.”

“Good. We can’t afford to screw this up. You can’t afford to screw it up.”

“It’s just… I can’t help but feel I caused this somehow.”

“Nonsense,” said Wheeler, sipping coffee from a travel mug. “You weren’t flying the plane. You didn’t cause the weather. Don’t beat yourself up over this.”

“If you say so, sir,” Chadwick said, and then he fell asleep until they arrived at O’Hare’s executive terminal.

Five minutes later, they strode across the tarmac toward the small charter jet. This one-day round trip would cost Wheeler $18,000, an indulgence he abhorred despite his billions. Still, the moment the Mammoths selected their first minimum-salary player to replace Barker’s inflated contract, they would pay for this charter flight one thousand times over. 

“You know something I’ve observed?” Wheeler said to Chadwick, who despite his nap was still so tired he struggled to keep up.

“What’s that?”

“Airline pilots. You ever notice they all look the same?” Wheeler pointed at the pilot standing next to their charter jet. “Like that guy. Tall, slightly gray. If I saw him in the supermarket, I’d have no doubt he was a pilot.”

When they arrived at the airplane, the pilot shook Wheeler’s hand. His handshake was firm, steady. “Mr. Wheeler, Mr. Chadwick, welcome aboard.”

Chadwick boarded ahead of his boss. 

“It’s an honor to be flying you today,” the pilot continued. “We’ll be in New York in a little more than two hours.”

“Thank you,” Wheeler replied, “Captain, uh…”

“Neidermeyer.” He pointed at the nameplate on his left chest. “Captain Walt Neidermeyer, at your service.”

There were no survivors.