by Tim Green
The driver shook his head and muttered and retracted the ramp before chugging on.
“You got it, right?” Mr. Starr asked.
Ryder couldn’t speak, he only nodded and held up the ball.
“I hate when luck is necessary,” Mr. Starr said calmly. “But it is in most things. Catch your breath and take a seat. I want you fresh for this contest.”
Ryder did as he was instructed. They had to change buses at the Five Points station, but it wasn’t more than an hour before they were rolling up the sidewalk along Peachtree Street to Baseball World. The parking lot was jammed and bright-colored balloons wobbled everywhere in the breeze, eager to tear away from the fencing, light posts, and clubhouse walls, none of them making it. Parents sandwiched their kids, baseball players all, most of whom wore their Little League uniforms as a point of pride. Ryder wished he had his team uniform, but he’d have to do his best in jeans and a T-shirt.
The worst thing, Ryder soon found out, was the wait. There were hundreds of kids. He got number 237 and found a place to sit. The steady sound of bats smacking balls in the cages worried away at Ryder’s nerves. It was the sound of his undoing. Mr. Starr just sat, his eyes darting around at every player who crossed his field of vision, as if he were breaking them down, assessing their baseball skills.
Steadily, the numbers got called out over a loudspeaker. During that time, Ryder stayed warm and loose by jumping up every few minutes, stretching, and lightly swinging the bat without too much power so as not to tire himself. It was a while, nearly two hours, but finally his turn came.
“Number 237 report to cage sixteen. Number 237, you’re on deck in cage number sixteen.”
“Let’s go,” Mr. Starr said. “This is it.”
They watched the boy in front of Ryder struggle along and end up with just a sixty-two. Even though the kid was one of hundreds of contestants, it was somehow a relief to Ryder to see someone so much worse than him. A contest official sat in a folding chair with an iPad. His gut spilled down over his belt and he wore a Braves visor on his balding head. He sighed heavily and scratched his neck before dragging his fingers over the iPad and calling Ryder’s name.
“Okay,” Mr. Starr said, “let’s go. Give me that ball to hold. Lock this thing up. I’m telling you, you’re gonna get a clean hundred and win this thing outright.”
Ryder forced a laugh. He opened the cage door and stepped inside. Heavy black netting sagged above him like a spider’s web. His mouth was dry, his limbs felt shaky. He reached through the doorway and dumped his signed baseball into Mr. Starr’s lap then wiggled his fingers into the glove. He took a couple practice swings, stepped up to the plate, and nodded at the contest official.
“Okay,” the official said. “They come regular, so get reset quick after each pitch.”
Ryder nodded again. “Got it.”
The official pressed a button on the red metal box. The light went green. The whirring machine clanked and clunked, then spit out a pitch.
Ryder thought about everything he had to do. He thought about Mr. Starr’s confident cheer all morning and of the lucky baseball in Mr. Starr’s lap.
He swung.
He missed.
The air in Ryder’s lungs burst free, leaving him without any breath, oxygen-starved. He looked back at Mr. Starr through the cage.
“That’s just one. You’ll get the rest. You will.”
Ryder couldn’t believe Mr. Starr’s certainty. It meant very little to him now. Mr. Starr had been wrong about Ryder batting a perfect hundred. All around him popping sounds of baseballs being smacked filled the air. He took a breath and shook his head.
The light blinked green and the next pitch came before he was ready. He swung and missed.
“Hey!” Mr. Starr’s bark startled everyone around them, especially Ryder and the official, who adjusted his collar and gave Mr. Starr a squinty glare. “You can do this! You have to! Do you hear me?”
Ryder realized he was breathing again. He nodded his head and spoke to Mr. Starr in an urgent, hushed tone, but without taking his eyes off the machine this time. “All right.”
The whirring machine clanked and clunked and spit out a burning pitch.
Ryder swung, hard.
POP.
Solid contact. The net jumped.
“One,” the official announced, giving Ryder an awkward smile.
Ryder nodded and reset. The next pitch came.
POP.
“Two.” The official didn’t look up from his iPad, but he continued to count as Ryder continued to connect. Ryder swung the bat, over and over without even hearing the count.
“Thirty-three.”
POP.
“Thirty-four.”
Ryder’s arms started to ache, but he didn’t waver. One by one he went, swinging in an easy rhythm, thoughts of his mom’s lovely smiling face filling his mind.
“Eighty-seven.”
“You can do this!” Mr. Starr cried. “Keep going!”
He did. Swing after swing, he connected. Even when he barely nicked it, the official counted it. That’s all he had to do was make contact. Those were the rules. The hazy sunshine swallowed him whole and the sounds from the other cages blurred into a dull and distant noise. All he heard now was the official’s voice, counting out his hits.
“Ninety-six . . . ninety-seven . . . ninety-eight.”
Ryder was in a full sweat. The machine hummed and went quiet. He looked at the official, whose eyes had brightened. “Wow. Super.”
“Is that the most?” Ryder dropped his arms, the bat hanging loose in his hand.
The official shrugged. “We’ll see. Last year it was—”
“Ninety-nine. I know, but I’m talking about today.” Ryder bit the inside of his lip.
The official was intent on his iPad, touching the screen and studying it before looking up at Ryder with a grin. “Right now, you’re in the lead.”
Ryder felt the thrill of victory bubbling up from the center of his chest and making his head swim.
“There’s a big leader board in the clubhouse,” the official said. “You can watch from there if you want. It’ll be a couple more hours is my bet.”
“Mr. Starr, I’m in first.” Ryder grabbed Mr. Starr’s stiff and bony shoulder and looked into his smiling eyes.
“I just wish you hadn’t missed those first two, but you did great, Ryder. You really did. Come on. Let’s go keep an eye on things inside.”
Ryder wheeled the chair down along the other cages, aware of the stares Mr. Starr drew from kids and parents alike and wanting to burst out and tell them all to look at him instead of Mr. Starr because he was in the lead.
Mr. Starr must have been thinking something similar because he suddenly started barking out to people. “Step aside. Champ’s coming through. Step aside now. Champ’s here. Step aside. . . .”
“Mr. Starr,” Ryder whispered, “please.”
“What? They’re all looking. Might as well let them know who they’re looking at. I may be a freak show, but you are the champ.”
“Not yet, Mr. Starr,” Ryder said. “Isn’t it bad luck to say you won before you really did?”
“We got our luck right here.” Mr. Starr raised the signed baseball clutched in his claw. “Ninety-eight will do it. I feel it.”
Ryder could only shake his head.
At the door to the clubhouse, a young father in jeans and a T-shirt carrying a little girl wearing a yellow dress came out. He stopped and shifted the little girl onto his hip so he could hold the door open for Mr. Starr. The man looked right at Mr. Starr without wincing or shifting his eyes and he said hi. Mr. Starr said nothing. The man smiled and said hello to Ryder as he pushed the chair through the doorway.
“Hi,” Ryder said.
“How’d you do out there?” the man asked, cheerful as sunshine.
Ryder couldn’t help beaming. “I’m in first, right now.”
“Wow. You got that ninety-eight? We were just watching tha
t on the board. You climbed right up.”
“I climbed?” Ryder said.
“Yeah, every cage keeps the results pitch by pitch. After the first fifty it goes by percentage so you can see people climbing and falling. You got on the leader board and you just kept going. You passed everyone.” The man tweaked his little girl’s nose and kissed her forehead. “I told my stepson he’s gonna have a tough time beating that. Anyway, good luck.”
“Good luck to you, too.” Ryder turned, feeling wonderful now, and pushed Mr. Starr to a table where they could sit and watch the board as well as a big-screen TV that showed a game between the Red Sox and the Yankees.
“Why’d you wish him luck?” Mr. Starr sounded grouchy. “That wasn’t smart.”
“Why didn’t you say hello? He was nice.” Ryder didn’t plan the question, it just came out.
Mr. Starr kept silent, his eyes flickering from the baseball game on TV to the leader board without speaking. Ryder sighed and gave up before Mr. Starr finally spoke. “It surprised me, that’s why. That’s why I didn’t say hello.”
“Oh.” Ryder didn’t know how to respond. “You want me to get us some drinks?”
“Yes. Good idea. Don’t forget a straw.”
Ryder got up and, using money Mr. Starr gave him, bought some drinks. He tried to watch the baseball game, but his eyes spent more time on the leader board, watching certain names rise and fall and sometimes rise again. Over an hour went by and Ryder was beginning to feel pretty sure of himself when suddenly, a name popped onto the board ahead of him. A boy named RJ Leonardo appeared suddenly with fifty out of fifty—100 percent.
Ryder didn’t bother with the game on TV anymore. His eyes were glued to the leader board, his throat suddenly scratchy and dry. He barely saw all the other people pointing at the screen, but they did and he was aware of it. A buzz of excitement filled the clubhouse as the families of the leaders and the hopefuls watched to see if the order of finalists would shift. Being batboy wasn’t the only prize—the top ten finishers all got various lesser prizes. But to Ryder this was an all-or-nothing deal. If he didn’t get to be the Braves’ batboy, a signed bat or glove did him no good at all.
His life would be ruined unless he could get to Thomas Trent.
At RJ Leonardo’s sixty-eighth hit, Ryder glanced over at Mr. Starr, whose eyes were also stuck to the board.
Mr. Starr looked over at him and held out the signed baseball. “I told you, you shouldn’t be wishing your luck away to total strangers. Here, you better hold on to this. You need it.”
At seventy-two, RJ Leonardo had his first miss. The number fell to 99 percent, but RJ’s name stayed on top.
Ryder took a deep breath. Mr. Starr clucked his tongue. “Just hold that ball tight.”
Ryder held it so tight the laces seemed to be cutting into his skin. Every couple seconds, the number of hits kept climbing. It looked like RJ Leonardo wasn’t going to miss another pitch.
Then, at pitch number eighty-four, RJ missed again, dropping him to 97 percent, and his name abruptly swapped out with Ryder’s, which was back on top. Ryder gave the signed ball a shake.
“If he misses one more, we’re good,” Mr. Starr said.
“If he makes them, he’ll get back to ninety-eight and it’ll go to a tiebreaker,” Ryder said.
“Which you’ll win,” Mr. Starr said confidently.
“I hope so,” Ryder said.
“I know so,” Mr. Starr replied.
The hits kept piling up and at ninety-eight the crowd in the clubhouse erupted, not with cheers, but with comments and observations about a tiebreaker between the two top batters. Ryder heard his name as people wondered aloud about who he was. Everyone seemed to already know RJ Leonardo. Apparently he was a batting ace from some top Atlanta travel team.
Ryder had such a strange feeling about RJ Leonardo, as if he’d heard the name before, or they somehow had some kind of a connection. So, when a boy in a green-and-gray uniform came through the door with people congratulating him, he knew it had to be RJ Leonardo and he wasn’t surprised to see the nice man who’d held the door standing right beside him, holding the little girl’s hand.
The boy was tall and strong and he had a friendly face like his stepfather as he grinned all around.
“What’d I tell you?” Mr. Starr grouched. “You never should have wished that guy luck. It was his kid.”
“You said I’d win the tiebreaker anyway,” Ryder reminded him.
“That was before I knew it was him. We’re the ones with that signed baseball. That’s our luck. You wished some of it away, and directly to him, no less.” Mr. Starr’s eyes were dead serious. “I can’t be held responsible for what happens now. All bets are off.”
Ryder tried to laugh away Mr. Starr’s silly superstitions.
He didn’t need luck. This was about skill. This was about nerve.
Ryder clenched his teeth and told himself he could do this . . . that he would do this. Over the past hour, while they watched the leader board flicker with names shuffling on and off the lower part of the list, Ryder’s right forearm had cramped up and he had realized that he’d been clenching his fists as well as his teeth. Now, he massaged the muscles, hoping he hadn’t put himself at a disadvantage in the tiebreaker with a sore arm.
Moments later, an official with an all-red baseball cap walked in and announced that the contest was officially complete.
“Are RJ Leonardo and Ryder Strong here?”
Ryder raised his hand and so did RJ Leonardo from his table in the corner, where he sat with his little sister and dad.
“Congratulations to both of you,” the official announced. “What we do now is a sudden-death tiebreaker with the pitches coming in at eighty-five miles an hour. It shouldn’t take long. In years past, the most anyone’s hit in a row has been seven. So . . . if you boys will make your way to cage number one, we’ll get started and have our winner.”
Everyone in the place got up. People pointed and whispered. Ryder took hold of the wheelchair and guided Mr. Starr out the front doors and down the concrete walk, following the official and knowing that RJ Leonardo wasn’t far behind. When they got to the cage, the official was fiddling with the pitching machine, adjusting the speed to a major league–caliber pitch of eighty-five miles per hour.
Ryder handed the signed ball to Mr. Starr and removed his bat from the place where he’d wedged it into the side of Mr. Starr’s chair. He wiggled his fingers into the batting glove.
“I think you should keep this in your back pocket.” Mr. Starr held the ball up with his crooked fingers.
“That’s not going to be comfortable, Mr. Starr. Don’t you think it could affect my swing?”
“Yes, it could affect your swing,” Mr. Starr snapped. “It could fill it to the brim with luck and make you win.”
“But I didn’t have it when I hit ninety-eight. Maybe it’s more lucky for you to have it. We are in this together, right?”
Mr. Starr’s mouth opened and closed like he was a fish swallowing water. “Yes, we are. Okay. I don’t think it will hurt us any, but do not wish him luck. Are we straight on that at least?”
“Okay, Mr. Starr.” Ryder’s insides quivered. He’d never hit a pitch this fast before. He had no idea if he could connect with even one.
“We’ll flip a coin to see who goes first.” The official held up a quarter. “Then we’ll take turns, one hit at a time until someone misses. If the first batter misses, the second one has to get a hit, or we continue. Ready, boys?”
RJ’s stepdad patted him on the back as he entered the cage. Ryder tried to slip past the man, but he gave Ryder’s shoulder a squeeze and said good luck.
Ryder looked from RJ’s stepdad to Mr. Starr’s burning eyes and said, “Thank you.”
That was it. He entered the cage, called heads on the flip, and lost.
“First or second?” the official asked RJ.
“Second.” RJ offered Ryder a smile and a nod.
Ryd
er could barely breathe. He thought about his mom, lying in that hospital bed, and all those machines. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
“Okay, let’s get this show on the road,” the official said. “Batter up!”
Ryder took a few practice swings and stepped up to the plate. His mind spun with images of his mom and the man who had to be his dad. If he won this, he could bring them back together. Maybe not forever, but most importantly, he could save his mother’s life.
The green light flashed. The machine whirred and clunked and the pitch came at him in a blur.
Ryder swung and nicked it.
“Did he hit that?” someone from the audience called out.
“Yes.” The official held up a thumb. “Any contact counts. Those are the rules. RJ, you’re up.”
Ryder took a deep breath and let it out slow as he stepped back.
RJ bounced into place and gave the official a nod.
The official pressed Start, the machine clunked and spit, and RJ swung.
POP.
A solid hit and people clapped.
Ryder looked around. Mr. Starr sat looking through the mesh of the metal fence just outside the door. RJ’s stepdad stood not too far away, but between and all around them was a crowd of people, young players and parents alike eager to see the tiebreaker between two sensational batters.
Ryder stepped up and connected with the ball. Mr. Starr barked and cheered and the audience clapped for him as well.
“Nice one.” RJ Leonardo stepped up.
POP.
Applause.
Ryder’s turn and just as the machine clunked, something stung in his eye. He blinked and swung, but missed.
The crowd groaned.
Mr. Starr held the ball against the fence. His mouth worked open and shut without words. Ryder stood back and took a deep breath. RJ had an easy stance as he slipped into place, as if nothing of any importance were on the line.