Karyn looked at her and said, "No, I think that sounds absolutely awful."
Now the very life that repelled her is her own. While her husband was playing in Omaha this week, she was walking around a Wal-Mart near their Peoria home talking on a cell phone while getting their daughter, Annabelle, ready for her first day of kindergarten.
"You have no idea how many people have told me, 'I wouldn't let my husband play that long without getting to the big leagues,' " she says. "I would say, 'You never say never.' I can't make him quit; this is what he loves."
She has enjoyed the ride, which surprises her, especially considering the stops they made along the way. Karyn has a college degree, but upon becoming a baseball wife, she took on a string of odd jobs each summer so they could pay their bills. Short makes $316,000 while in the majors (prorated) and $10,000 per month in the minors.
The chase has been a strain, make no mistake about that, she says. And there have been many nights when she and her husband have seriously discussed his retirement. But baseball has a hold on her, too. She even told the organist at their wedding to play "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" as they left the church.
"Why not? It's my life now," she says.
Then Karyn sighs.
"You do feel like you are wasting years on what could be a potential career for him after baseball," she says before laughing again. "I guess we didn't think about that. We just keep doing it and it's hard to quit something that you're good at. It's just his big, fat dream and how many people in the world have a dream like that?"
On the day his big, fat dream came true they showed him a closet next to the clubhouse at RFK. Inside were piles of bats discarded by the Nationals. Short dug through them, amazed at the array of unused equipment. He found a box of bats that shortstop Cristian Guzman didn't want, pulled one out and immediately loved the way it felt. This is what he took with him to home plate when they called him to pinch hit a few innings later.
He hit the ball twice off Seattle pitcher Joel Piñeiro. One was a foul ball, the other a single to left. The contact left two black scuff marks on the bat. When the game was over, he pulled a long sock over the bat to protect it and took it, along with the rest of Guzman's discarded bats, and went back to New Orleans. Which of course brings delicious irony to this story -- while Guzman is having the worst offensive year of any big league regular in nearly two decades, Short is using his bats to chase something that hasn't been done in the minors since 1961.
"He belongs in the big leagues," New Orleans Manager Tim Foli says. He bases this judgment on one of baseball's most tired cliches: "He plays the game right." But in this case it might just apply. The Zephyrs are still talking about a game a few nights ago, when Short -- hitting .399 at the time -- kept trying to hit ground balls to the right side of the infield to move a runner from second to third, eventually grounding out to the first baseman.
"He could easily have swung away right there and tried to get his hits," says New Orleans teammate Marlon Byrd, who played 56 games for the Nationals this season. "Most guys, if you're going for .400, you're swinging to get your hits."
Every night Foli makes his plea to Nationals management: Take him, even as a pinch hitter, if nothing else. When the Zephyrs' season ends Sept. 5 and the Nationals are allowed to expand their roster beyond the 25-man limit, he likely will be called up.
"He loves the game," Foli says. "The way he comes back each time he works harder and harder. If hitting .350 isn't good enough for the major leagues he will hit .360. If .400 isn't good enough he says 'I'll hit .400.' "
Sitting in the clubhouse in Omaha, Short is asked if he could be like the Boston Red Sox' Ted Williams, the last major leaguer to hit .400, whose legend is sealed with his insistence that he play a doubleheader on the last day of the 1941 season rather than sit and protect a precarious hold on .400. Short laughs. He's not sure he could be so brazen. All he has to show for 12 years of sweat and agony are two batting title plaques and Guzman's unused bats. He needs something of his own to prove he was here.
The man he is chasing, Aaron Pointer, hit .402 for Salisbury, N.C., in 1961, though Pointer is more famous for his ensuing career as an NFL head linesman and his siblings, better known as the Pointer Sisters. For Short, the man who loved baseball too much to give it up, .400 might be all the dream he ever gets.
In the dugout Foli stares blankly into yet another empty stadium of Rick Short's life.
"I hope baseball finally gives him back what he deserves," he says.
It at least owes him that.
