The Man For Me

by Gemma Bruce

  Elton Jones, an older relief pitcher, was warming up next to them. Elton had spent his playing years in the independent league, moving from team to team as they replaced him with younger players. This would probably be his last team.

  Is that why Tommy quit? Because he didn’t want to be passed to another team? Because he didn’t want to be one of the ones that held on too long? Got too old. Got too injured. She shuddered. Forced her attention to what was going on in the bullpen. Elton had a decent curve and an okay change-up. His fast ball was competent at best.

  She liked Dela Rocha. He didn’t have that much speed either. He was a one-pitch wonder. An impressive slider that any professional pitcher would be proud of. The rest of his pitches were competent. At least he usually got them over the plate.

  J.T. kept one eye out for Tommy, but either he was coming in late that morning or he wasn’t coming in at all. She’d just have to wait and see. She wasn’t about to ask.

  She was sitting in the dugout watching batting practice when the team broke for a water break.

  “Fifteen minutes,” said Bernie, and went into the locker room. A few players followed him in to get Propels and Gatorades out of the fridge, but most just hung around the water cooler shooting the breeze.

  J.T. joined them. It was on breaks that you got the real color of the players, where you saw past the technique—and the scratching and spitting, though there was plenty of that all the time.

  Boz was guzzling his second cup. He’d just hit a decent double and he was feeling good. He saw J.T. and gave her a thumbs-up.

  Rob Brown clapped him on the back. “Good hit, Boz.”

  “Yeah, Boz,” said Jerry Oblonsky, reaching past him for a paper cup. “Nice one.”

  Boz grinned. “Thanks.”

  Kurtz muscled his way to the water cooler, jostling Boz’s arm. Water sloshed out of the cup and splashed onto the concrete at his feet.

  Everyone became quiet. Kurtz’s intensity was palpable. The man was a bundle of energy. Not just high on his own success, but definitely high on something. Or on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Couldn’t Bernie see what was right in front of him?

  “Hey watch it,” said Boz, shaking water off his hand.

  “Watch me,” said Kurtz. “Watch my back as I leave you losers in the dust. I’m going back to the show.”

  “Works for me,” said Oblonsky.

  Danny Lewis snorted. “Better not mess with the Boz. The way he’s been hitting, he might be right up there with you.”

  Kurtz turned on him. “Just got lucky for a couple of hits.”

  Boz crushed his cup and threw it into the trash can. “It isn’t luck, Bobby. I’m back. Thanks to J.T.”

  “That’s rich. You telling us our little girlie girl reporter is giving you batting lessons?” His eyes narrowed. “Showing you her stuff, huh? She doesn’t look like any slump buster I ever knew.”

  Boz fisted his hands. “Shut your filthy mouth.”

  Kurtz turned to her. “So you think you could teach me something about baseball?”

  “Nope,” said J.T., affecting boredom. She’d like to show him what a girlie girl could do with a bat to the head.

  “How come? You’ve been sharing with Boz here. And I hear you been sharing with Tommy, too.”

  J.T. gasped. He’d taken her totally by surprise. He was just guessing. Maybe saw their cars in the parking lot last night. Or saw Tommy pick her up at the motel. It was no secret. And he couldn’t have seen more. It was just conjecture, and she’d almost been had. “You don’t know shit, Kurtz.”

  “Yeah,” seconded Danny Lewis. “Get a life.”

  “I got a life. Which is more than I can say for the rest of you bums.” Kurtz got in Boz’s face. “Let’s just hope you don’t choke when it counts. There’ll be scouts at the game.”

  Boz’s eyes widened.

  “What’s wrong with you, man?” asked Rob Brown. “You’re acting crazy. You don’t dis one of your own teammates. You leave that for the other team.”

  “She knows her shit, Bobby,” said Boz, not willing to let it go. “So don’t give us any of yours.”

  Kurtz rolled his eyes and spit. “So maybe she should put her mouth where the money is.” He grabbed his crotch.

  Boz lunged at him.

  Kurtz grabbed Boz’s head in a hammerlock. His eyes were wild and J.T. knew he would tear Boz apart if given the chance. Already Oblonsky, Brown, and Lewis were trying to separate the men.

  J.T. stepped up to Kurtz. “You want to see what I can do, Bobby?”

  That got everybody’s attention, even Kurtz’s.

  “Come on, Elton. Got a pitch or two left in you?”

  Elton Jones looked surprised, but nodded. “Sure, J.T., anything you want.” He grabbed his glove off the bench and walked out to the mound.

  Lou Pisano took his glove behind the plate and the others trotted out to the field.

  Well, hell. Now she’d done it. She felt the old familiar tightening in her gut. The trembling in her legs. If she blew this, they’d laugh her right out of the park. She’d never gain their respect, just like she’d never—well, she wasn’t going there. And she wasn’t going to clench. Not this time.

  She was going to think banana split. Whipped cream, chocolate sauce, big cherries on top.

  She lifted a bat out of the bat box. Way too heavy. The next one was even heavier and too thick at the neck for her smaller hands to get a good grip. They were all going to be too big. That was something she hadn’t taken into consideration when she made her big boast.

  Too bad she hadn’t thought to get her own bat before mouthing off to Kurtz. It was in her equipment bag in the trunk of the Mustang. So close and yet so far…

  A bat appeared before her eyes. “This ees mine. Better for you.” It was the little Dominican relief pitcher, Hector Dela Rocha.

  “Thanks, Hector.” She took the bat. It was still a bit heavy, but she could handle it.

  She walked across the grass, trying not to think of what she’d been doing here last night. She needed to concentrate. Banana split. Banana split. She took a couple of practice swings.

  “Give me your best.” She was counting on Elton pulling back because she was a woman. Which would be a good thing. He was slow and methodical but he could still fire a ball at a respectable eighty miles an hour.

  Elton took the windup, let go a curve ball. It went right past her.

  “Maybe I should move in a little.”

  “I’ll knock it down your throat if you do.”

  Several men laughed. “You tell him, J.T.”

  Pisano threw the ball back. “Hang loose, babe.”

  J.T. gritted her teeth and looked out at the field. Eight men looked back at her. The outfield had moved way in.

  Banana split. Banana split.

  “Give her something she can hit,” Rob Brown called out.

  Elton nodded. The outfield moved in another few feet.

  Elton went into the windup, let one fire.

  It shot past her.

  Now, the infield moved closer.

  Banana split. Banana split. J.T. lowered the bat, rested the tip on the ground, and leaned on it, jutting one hip out in her sultriest pose. “You didn’t tell me we were playing slow-pitch. I’ll have to adjust my grip.”

  Hoots from the other players. Elton grinned at her and nodded. The next pitch was a nice fast ball straight over the plate.

  J.T. swung. Connected right on the sweet spot. Whack! The ball sailed past Elton’s head. Rob Brown, who had moved in several feet in front of second base, belatedly jumped up, his glove stretched over his head. The ball skimmed past him and dropped into center field.

  Danny Lewis might have caught it if he hadn’t been so busy watching the ball’s progress. But it landed behind him and by the time he realized what had happened, J.T. rounded second base.

  “Throw the goddamn ball,” yelled Kurtz as she sped past him.

  Danny turned and ran, scooped the ball into
his glove, and fired it to third base, but J.T. was already heading home. Ramirez caught it; he switched hands and threw it to Pisano who was waiting at the plate motioning J.T. home.

  Abruptly he stopped, stretched forward, and opened his glove. J.T. saw it, like a slow motion replay. Ramirez was going to throw her out.

  She turned on the juice and burst forward.

  Four feet from the plate she saw Pisano catch the ball. She threw out her legs and slid. Her foot touched the rubber before he realized what she’d intended.

  “Safe,” she cried. She pushed up to her butt and looked up at Pisano. She smiled and held out her hand. “Us girlie-girl types need help getting up.”

  Pisano shook his head and hauled her to her feet.

  She slapped red dirt off her jeans, then looked out to Elton. “Nice pitch.” She looked down at her hand. “Oh, gee, I think I broke a nail.”

  Applause and whistles broke out around the field.

  “Eat that one for breakfast, Kurtz.” She sashayed back to the dugout with a smile on her face—and a big bruise on her butt.

  Tommy, Bernie, and Larry Chrysler were waiting for her. Tommy was wearing a suit again. He was smiling. Bernie and Larry looked like they’d just swallowed swamp water.

  “Pretty impressive,” Tommy said.

  “Are you okay?” asked Bernie. “What the hell were you doing? Are you nuts? Think of my insurance. Not to mention your pretty neck.”

  Next to him, Larry Chrysler just shook his head. “That’s all we effing need.” He turned and went back inside.

  “Sorry,” J.T. said, trying not to sound like a chastised child. “I was just giving the boys some pointers on girlie-girl baseball.” She couldn’t help it, she grinned.

  “About time someone did,” said Tommy, grinning right back at her.

  “Well, shit,” said Bernie. “This group of yo-yos needed a wake-up call. Maybe you just gave it to them. Good going.”

  Maybe, but the one thing she knew for sure, she’d just made an enemy of Bobby Kurtz. And that wasn’t good.

  Chapter 19

  Bernie called Milo Newton to the mound.

  Lou Pisano let out an audible groan. “I shoulda worn a larger cup.” He snatched up his catcher’s mitt and took his place behind the plate. All the starting positions hurried to their spots, which left the second string to face Milo.

  “Frankenberger, you’re up,” called Bernie. A kid with Adonis curls and a turned-up nose unfolded from the bench, pulled his bat out of the box, and slouched toward home plate.

  J.T. was left standing next to Tommy. He sure didn’t look like a man who only an evening ago had been facing an unknown future. He looked like he’d just stepped off the pages of George.

  She was covered butt to ankle, hand to elbow, in red dirt. She tried to brush the worst of it away. “Another meeting?”

  “Yep.”

  “Anything I should know about?”

  “Maybe. Where did you learn to hit like that?”

  “Greens learn to hit, throw, and steal. I played Division 1 in college.”

  “No shit. What position?”

  “Second base. Want to tell me about your meeting?”

  Tommy pulled a face. Shook his head. J.T. waffled between counting to ten and taking a bite, because even when he was pissing her off, he looked good enough to eat.

  “Nope. But I’ll show you.” J.T. lifted an eyebrow.

  “Come on.” He grabbed her hand, unconcerned about the dirt, and pulled her into the runway. She was beginning to fear that he had lost his mind and was going for an instant replay of the night before, but he didn’t stop until they were in the parking lot.

  She looked around. Same Beemer. Nothing new to see.

  Tommy took her by the shoulders and turned her toward the neighborhood of shotgun shacks where Patsy’s and the vacant lot were.

  “What do you see?”

  “Houses,” she said, wondering where the hell this was leading.

  “Behind the houses.” J.T. looked beyond the houses, but there was nothing but the abandoned steel mill and its four smokestacks.

  “The old mill?”

  “The new Michael and Eugenia Bainbridge Community Center.”

  “In the mill?”

  “Yep. I bought it. Signed the papers this morning. It will have to be gutted and renovated, but it’s structurally sound.”

  J.T. whistled. “You think big, huh?”

  “There’s room for two gymnasiums, classrooms, child care, a medical clinic, food bank, offices, and once the old parking lot is removed, there will be room for parking and a park and maybe even a ball field.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.” His expression immediately sobered. “I sure the hell hope I know what I’m doing.”

  “I imagine you’ll learn as you go.” She was having a hard time wrapping her mind around the idea. Just about every ballplayer had a foundation dedicated to some charity or other. Tommy was no exception. The Bainbridge Foundation supported projects like Operation Smile and Reading Readiness programs. But a whole complex. That would take more than people in the front office cutting checks.

  “Yeah. It’s about time I started giving back to the community. My parents and grandparents lived here all their lives.” He paused, looking out across the rooftops. “What do you think?”

  “Me? I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

  “Maybe it’s selfish with all those incurable diseases out there. But I wanted something I could be involved in day to day.”

  J.T. stared at him. “You’re going to…?” She couldn’t even finish. Tommy was a multimillionaire. He could go anywhere and do anything—except pitch like he did before his injury. Why would he chose to come back here?

  And then another thought hit her. “Does Mayor Wiggins know?”

  “If he doesn’t, he will soon. And he’ll be pretty pissed. He had plans for razing the factory and building a new ballpark.”

  “I know,” said J.T. “I interviewed him.”

  Tommy cut her a look.

  “I thought there might be a connection between plans for the new ballpark and the accidents that have been happening to the Beavers.”

  “You really started investigating?”

  “Of course I did. Singeing the side of a building is one thing. But purposely running a man down is in another league altogether. Sanchez has a family who is dependent on his earnings. And now he can’t work. At least for two weeks. When you live at Sanchez’s level, two weeks is a long time and a lot of money.”

  “You don’t think I know? A good portion of this town lives week to week. Half of them don’t have health insurance. They need affordable medical and child care. Affordable recreation. They don’t need to be paying more taxes to support something they can’t afford to attend.” He stopped abruptly. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to rant.”

  “Maybe you should run for mayor.”

  “Me?” Tommy seemed to consider it. “Nah, too much glad-handing. So what do you say to celebrating?”

  “Celebrating?” After the way she’d ended last night, she was surprised he was still talking to her.

  “Yeah. Like dinner. Champagne. I know a nice place. It’s small but we won’t be interrupted by autograph seekers.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather celebrate with your family?”

  “I’d rather celebrate with you. What do you say?”

  “Well, sure, I guess. If you—”

  “I do. I just have something to do for a couple of hours this afternoon. But I can pick you up, say seven?”

  J.T. knew what he had to do. And now she wondered if he would be angry at her for taking over practice for a couple of days. “Okay, but first there’s something I should tell you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What?”

  Why did she feel so reluctant to fess up? She was a reporter. It was her business to pry into other people’s lives. Not. She was a sports reporter, not an investigative reporter. Well, kid’s baseball was sports. She
didn’t have to defend herself to Tommy.

  “What?” he repeated.

  Well, hell. “I was interviewing Mr. Harris about the burst pipe. And he mentioned that you coached kids in the afternoon. I assumed he meant little league, but he said no and told me where to find them. I was afraid they might not have heard the news and would wonder if you had deserted them, so I just went over to tell them that you were called out of town and—” She ran out of breath, gulped in air. “So let’s just say, they know how to slide now.”

  She waited for him to tell her to butt out. Un-invite her to dinner.

  But he just shook his head. “You are something else, you know that?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Let me change, and you can show me what you taught them.”

  He jogged away with J.T. staring after him. Was that a challenge or another invitation? And she realized she didn’t care, because the most important thing on her mind—help her, somebody please help her—was that it would give her that much more time to be around Tommy.

  Banana split, she told herself. Banana split.

  When Tommy came out again, he was dressed in sweats and sneakers and was carrying an equipment bag.

  The kids were waiting at the lot when Tommy and J.T. arrived a few minutes later. As soon as they spotted Tommy, they surrounded him with cries of “Tommy. Tommy. Tommy.”

  “We’ve been practicing.”

  “Come see what J.T. taught us.”

  “Are you going to live here and coach us?”

  Tommy laughed, not the charming sports celebrity, but a hometown idol who had also worked his way into the hearts of these young people. J.T. felt immensely proud of them all.

  “And good girls can steal,” said one of the girls. “J.T. said so.”

  “Well, Janey,” said Tommy, laughing. “If J.T. says so, it must be true.” And he shot her a smile that fired off hundreds of electric charges from head to toe.

  It was stupid to be so gullible to a little flattery. But she was and so relieved that they all, including Tommy, seemed to take her intrusion in stride.