#al luongo

Very, very happy Valentine’s Day to @blastellanos!

Summary: Coming back from an injury is hard. Can superstitions help?

Rating: General Word Count: 1680 Relationships: Ginny Baker/Mike Lawson Characters: Blip Sanders, Evelyn Sanders, Al Luongo, Oscar Arguella Additional Tags: —

Hm. I think it’s entirely possible that Al saw the writing on the wall re: Rachel and Mike, but I’m not sure that’s something Rachel would give the front office notice on. That’s the kind of courtesy that would come out of an amicable divorce. Which is not to say that Rachel and Mike can’t play nice, but by the time we’ve seen them, a pretty significant amount of time must have passed; when everything was fresh, I kind of doubt that they were so well-adjusted.

As far as Mike and Al go, let’s see:

Al was hired specifically because of Mike. 

Mike had already been on the team about four or five years by the time Al got hired as the manager and was probably already a pretty good catcher. But Al was brought on to make him into a great one. 

I don’t think they liked each other all that much at the beginning, though. 

Mike probably chafes at being told he’s not, actually, the greatest thing to happen to the Padres since Tony Gwynn. Especially when it’s coming from someone as unmistakably paternal as Al. 

Al can probably respect that Mike’s got potential and raw talent, but all that ego’s gotta be a lot for him to deal with, especially if the Padres are his first gig as manager.

Anna’s the one who first invites Mike to Sunday dinner. All it takes to soften Al is Mike showing up on his front doorstep with a huge bouquet of flowers for Anna and candy for the girls. (The nice bottle of scotch he brought along, too, certainly didn’t hurt.)

I mean, if it happened during the season and he was still the active manager, I’d imagine it would be pretty devastating to everyone. Even if it happened during the offseason but he was still slated to come back, I’d imagine there’d be a ton of emotional backlash. After all, it’s not particularly often that an active manager dies in the middle of a season. It happens more often with players by virtue of there being far more of them, but it’s still relatively rare. 

I’d guess that the Padres go through something of a slump in the immediate aftermath? Whether or not they come back from it, dedicating whatever success they capture to Al, is less certain. It’s the kind of setback that in any sports movie ever written would light a fire under their ass and push for some kind of Cinderella story. 

If Mike and Blip—or Mike and the team in general—were still at odds by that point, that could definitely be something that would mend fences. A death or an unexpected loss is the kind of thing that would make a team close ranks and lean on one another. Sometimes, it’s hard to justify fighting with someone you love when you’ve just lost someone else. On the other hand, it could just make everything worse, bringing tensions and arguments back to the forefront because grieving people aren’t always rational and it’s easier to lash out when you’re in pain than dealing with it like a grown up.