The Big Field

by Mike Lupica

  THE BIG FIELD

  MIKE LUPICA

  THE BIG FIELD

  Philomel Books

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.

  Published by The Penguin Group.

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.). Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England. Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd). Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd). Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India. Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa. Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  Copyright © 2008 by Mike Lupica.

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. Philomel Books, Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lupica, Mike.

  The big field /Mike Lupica.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When fourteen-year-old baseball player Hutch feels threatened by the arrival of a new teammate named Darryl, he tries to work through his insecurities about both Darryl and his remote and silent father, who was once a great ballplayer too. [1. Baseball—Fiction. 2. Fathers and sons—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.L97914Bi 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2007023647

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-0075-9

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The great Esther Newberg, William Goldman, Susan Burden and Michael Green, the first response team as all of these books are being written. Shandel Richardson of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

  And Bene and Lee Lupica: I write a lot about parents. My own parents first showed me, and continue to show me, how to get it right.

  Once again for Taylor, Christopher, Alex, Zach

  and Hannah.

  People ask all the time why I believe in happy end

  ings. My wife and children are why.

  THE BIG FIELD

  1

  IF YOU WERE A SHORTSTOP, YOU ALWAYS WANTED THE BALL HIT AT YOU.

  Whether the game was on the line or not.

  Keith Hutchinson, known to his friends as Hutch, had always thought of himself as the captain of any infield he’d ever been a part of, all the way back to his first year of Little League. Even back then, he could see that other kids were scared to have the ball hit at them in a big spot. Not Hutch. It was the shortstop in him. If the ball was in play, he always wanted it to be his play.

  Especially now.

  Because the game was on the line now.

  And it wasn’t just any old game; it was the biggest of the summer so far.

  Hutch’s American Legion team, the Boynton Beach Post 226 Cardinals, still had the lead against the Palm Beach Post 12 Braves in the finals of their 17-and-under league, even though this year’s Cardinals didn’t have a single 17–year-old on the team. But their lead was down to a single run now, 7–6. They were in the bottom of the ninth at the Santaluces Athletic Complex in Lantana, bases loaded for the Braves. One out to go.

  If the Cardinals got the out and won the game, they moved on to the South Florida regionals next weekend, one round closer to the state finals.

  If they lost, they went home.

  Hutch walked over and stood behind second base, almost on the outfield grass, and waited there while their coach, Mr. Cullen, talked things over on the mound with Paul Garner, whom Mr. Cullen had just brought in to pitch.

  Hutch knew what everybody on their team knew, that Paul was going to be the last Cardinals pitcher of the night, win or lose. He was going to get an out here and their season would continue, or the Braves’ cleanup hitter, Billy Ray Manning, known as Man-Up Manning, was going to hit one hard someplace and it would be the Braves who’d be playing the next round.

  Hutch and his teammates would be done for the summer. Done like dinner.

  No more baseball, just like that.

  He didn’t even want to think about it.

  Paul was one of his favorite guys on the team, normally their starting left fielder, but he was only the fourth best pitcher they had. Yet Mr. Cullen had been forced to pull their closer, Pedro Mota, after Pedro had suddenly forgotten how to pitch with two outs and nobody on and the Cardinals still ahead, 7–4. First he’d given up three straight hits to load the bases. He’d wild-pitched one run home after that, before walking the next hitter to reload the bases. Finally, he hit the next batter and just like that, it was 7–6, and Mr. Cullen had seen enough.

  Now the one guy in the world they didn’t want to see at the plate, Man-Up Manning—a seventeen-year-old lefty who actually did look like a man to Hutch—was standing next to the plate, waiting to get his swings.

  No place to put him. No way to pitch around him.

  Paul didn’t throw hard, but he threw strikes, kept the ball down, got a lot of ground balls when he was pitching at his best.

  One stinking ground ball now and they were in the regionals.

  More important, they got to keep playing.

  Hit it to me, he thought.

  Mr. Cullen patted Paul on the shoulder, left him to throw his warm-up pitches. Hutch thought about going over to talk to Darryl Williams while he did. But they never talked much during the game, not even during pitching changes. When they did, it was usually only about which one of them would cover second if they thought a guy might be stealing.

  Nobody was stealing now. Hutch wasn’t paying much attention to the guy on first. Nobody was. He was a lot more worried about the runners on second and third, the potential tying and winning runs. Darryl? As usual, he didn’t look worried about anything. He was staring off, lost in his own thoughts or lost in space. Darryl never seemed to look tense or worried or anxious. He knew he was the best hitter on their team—the best player, period. And yet…

  And yet baseball seemed to bore him sometimes.

  Paul threw his last warm-up pitch. Bret
t Connors, their catcher, came out to have one quick word with him. As he ran back, the neighborhood people sitting on the other side of the screen behind home plate began to applaud, understanding the importance of the moment, as if they were all suddenly sensing the magic of what baseball could do to a summer’s night.

  Hutch watched them and thought: If we lose, some of these same people will be here tomorrow night watching the older kids play the 19-and-under game. Their season wouldn’t end. Mine would.

  Hit it to me.

  He walked away from the bag, got into his ready position, watched Brett go through a bunch of signals behind the plate, all of which Hutch knew were totally bogus. Paul had one pitch: A dinky fastball with a late break to it that guys usually couldn’t lay off of, even on balls that were about to end up in the dirt.

  Paul threw one in the dirt now, but Man-Up Manning didn’t bite.

  Ball one.

  “Be patient!” the Braves coach yelled from their bench. “He’s trying to make you chase.”

  Paul threw a strike that Man-Up was taking all the way, then missed just outside.

  Two-and-one.

  “Still a hitter’s count,” the Braves coach said.

  Is it ever, Hutch thought.

  He could feel his heart in his chest, feeling the thump-thump-thump of it the way you could feel the thump of rap music from the car next to you at a stoplight sometimes.

  Knowing that this was when he loved playing baseball so much, he thought his heart might actually explode. He loved it all the time, Hutch knew, loved it more than anybody he knew, on this team or any team he’d ever played on, loved the history of it, loved the stats and the numbers and the way they connected the old days to right now.

  Most of all Hutch loved it when you were playing to keep playing, when you were at the plate the way Man-Up was, or standing in the middle of a diamond like this and hoping—begging—for the ground ball that would get you and your teammates the heck out of here with a win.

  Paul Garner took a deep breath to settle himself, let it out, shook his pitching hand before he got back on the rubber. Because of the way Paul snapped his wrist, his ball broke more like a screwball, which meant away from lefties.

  He threw his very best pitch now, on the outside corner, at the knees, right where Brett Connors had set his glove.

  And as mighty a swing as Man-Up tried to put on the ball, swinging for the fences all the way, going for the grand slam hero swing, the best he could do was get the end of his bat on it. It would have been a weak grounder for anybody else. But Man-Up truly was a beast, even when he got beat on a pitch this way.

  He hit it hard the other way, toward the shortstop hole, between second and third.

  Instinctively, as soon as he saw the ball come off the end of the bat, Hutch was moving to his right, knowing that the only chance they were going to have, if the ball didn’t end up in left field, was a force at second.

  The shortstop in Hutch processed all that in an instant.

  Only he wasn’t the shortstop.

  Darryl was.

  2

  HUTCH WAS PLAYING SECOND, MOVING TO HIS RIGHT TO COVER the base, watching from there as Darryl was in the hole in a blink, moving faster than anybody else on the field when he had to, backhanding the ball, already starting to turn his body as he did, gloving the ball cleanly and transferring it to his right hand, snapping off a throw from his hip without even looking to see where it was going.

  Do-or-die.

  Make the play and the Cardinals win.

  Throw it away and the other guys do.

  The throw was on the money, as Hutch knew it would be.

  The break they got, one they sure needed, was that it was the Braves catcher running from first. Slowest guy on their team. So he did matter after all. Maybe if the Braves coach had known how much it was going to matter, he would have sent in a pinch runner. But he hadn’t. He was only worried about the tying and winning runs the way everybody else was under the lights at Santaluces.

  Hutch stretched like a first baseman now, stretched as far as he could while still keeping his foot on the bag, his left arm out as far as it could go….

  Willing Darryl’s throw to get there in time.

  The shortstop in him still wanting the ball as much as he ever had.

  Then it was in the pocket of his glove, the worn-in pocket of his Derek Jeter model, a split second before he felt the Braves catcher hit second base, heard that sweet pop in his mitt right before he heard an even sweeter sound from the field ump behind him:

  “Out!”

  Game over.

  Cardinals 7, Braves 6.

  They were going to the regionals.

  Even if somebody else had gone into the hole.

  “The golden boy makes one play,” Cody Hester was saying,

  “and people act like he won the game all by himself.”

  Cody was the Cardinals right fielder, and Hutch’s best friend in the world.

  “The play was kind of golden,” Hutch said. “Even you have to admit that.”

  Cody grinned. “Yeah, it was.” He was finished with his milk shake, but made one last slurpy sound with his straw, just for Hutch’s benefit. “I’m still not sure he’s the greatest teammate in the world.”

  “When you’re a great player, there’s no rule that says you have to be,” Hutch said.

  Cody said, “Seriously, though. You don’t think the guy’s a little too full of himself? He acts like he’s better than everybody else.”

  “Only because he is better than everybody else.” Now he grinned. “And I don’t think he goes around big-timing anybody. He’s just cool is all.”

  They were sitting on the steps in front of Hutch’s house in East Boynton, finishing the milk shakes they’d stopped for on the way home from the game. Cody’s dad, who worked for the phone company, had dropped them at the Dairy Queen on Seacrest and told them they could walk the rest of the way if they promised to go straight to Hutch’s, which they had.

  Hutch and his mom and dad lived here on Gateway, in a house faded to the color of lemon-lime Gatorade that his parents talked about painting every year and yet never did. Cody’s house was right around the corner on Seacrest, not even a five-minute walk away. His family had moved down to Palm Beach County from Pensacola when Cody was five, and he and Hutch had been more like brothers than friends ever since. They didn’t just have a lot in common, they pretty much had everything in common, starting with baseball. They didn’t go through life worrying about how neither one of their families had a lot of money. Or that they lived in the neighborhood that they did. Or that Cody’s house—a shade of pink that Cody liked to say even flamingos would find gross—was an even uglier color than Hutch’s.

  As long as they had each other, and a game to play, they thought things were pretty solid.

  Now they had more games to play. First the regionals. If they got through that, they played for the state championship on the big field at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, where the real Cardinals and the Marlins played their spring training games. Not only did they play at Roger Dean, they got to play on television, since this was the first year that the Sun Sports Network would be broadcasting the Legion finals, in all age groups, the way ESPN televised the Little League World Series.

  Hutch knew it would be a cool thing to make it up the road to Roger Dean, maybe get the chance to play on television for the first time in his life.

  Yet what mattered most to Hutch was that they were still playing, that they’d gotten out of the bottom of the ninth tonight with their season still intact.

  Out of the blue, Cody said, “This is going to be the greatest summer ever!”

  “You say that every summer.”

  “This time I really mean it,” Cody said. “And you know I mean it because it isn’t the summer we were supposed to have.”

  Hutch knew what he meant. That was the best thing about having a best friend—having a conversation and being able to leave stu
ff out.

  What Cody had meant was this:

  When they used to talk about winning the state championship of Legion ball, even before they were old enough to play Legion ball, it was supposed to happen with Hutch playing short and Cody playing second. The way things had always been.

  Then Darryl Williams had come along. Now he was at short and Hutch had moved over to second, forcing Cody to move to right.

  Darryl Williams was already treated like he was the LeBron James of baseball, a kid who was supposed to be the best shortstop—no, the best player—to come out of the state since Alex Rodriguez came out of Miami.

  He was the same age as Hutch and Cody, fourteen, eighth grade going into ninth. He lived in Lantana, and had played on a Lantana Babe Ruth team during the school year. But summers were for Legion ball and the best Lantana kids played for Post 226, same as the best Boynton Beach kids did. There had been some talk that Darryl, even at fourteen, was good enough to play up to the 19-and-under team from Post 226. But once Darryl showed up for tryouts, making it official that he’d decided to play for the Cardinals—maybe putting off facing nineteen-year-old pitchers for one more year—Hutch knew he would have to switch positions. It was just a question of whether it would be to another infield position or to the outfield.

  This wasn’t like when A-Rod got traded to the Yankees, and he knew before he even got there that shortstop belonged to Jeter. Hutch was new to the Cardinals the way the rest of the kids were, so it wasn’t like this was his team the way the Yankees were Jeter’s team. Hutch was moving and there wasn’t anything he could say or do to change that. Once Mr. Cullen picked the whole team, he decided to move Hutch to second and put Hank Harding, an ex-catcher, at third.