by Mike Lupica
He didn’t hesitate now the way the kid had in the top of the first.
He busted it out of the box.
Hard.
The next time he allowed himself a look toward the outfield was when he came around first. That’s when he saw that both the center fielder and left fielder weren’t running anymore, they were just standing near the warning track.
From behind him, Hutch heard Mr. Cullen, coaching first, say something one of the guys on SportsCenter used to say.
“It’s deep and I don’t think it’s playable,” Mr. Cullen said.
Hutch slowed down, but not too much, not wanting to act like he was trying to show up the other team with some dopey home run trot. He did have a brief urge to pump his fist, just because his team was back in the game now. Didn’t do that, either. Just put his head down and kept going, slapped five to Brett’s dad, their third-base coach, as he went past him, gave a quick fist-bump to Darryl as he crossed the plate, ran into the crowd of Cardinals waiting for him in front of their bench.
Cody grabbed him from behind and shook him so hard that Hutch’s red batting helmet, his lucky one, one that looked older than he was, went flying.
“That sucker flew out of here like a golf ball!” Cody said.
Hutch said, “I just closed my eyes and swung.”
“Yeah, right,” Cody said. “You know what went over the wall along with the ball? The Hulkster’s mojo.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Hutch said. “There’s a lot of ball left to be played, and we’re still down two.”
Then Darryl doubled to right center, Hank Harding singled him home, and just like that they were only down one, 5–4.
Tripp was getting stronger as the game went along, the way he did sometimes, even on nights when he didn’t give up four runs in the first. But Ronnie of the Yankees had settled back down, too, after Hank’s RBI single. The game stayed at 5–4 through the fifth and sixth.
Hutch had walked on four pitches with two outs in the sixth, and then Darryl gave one a ride to dead center, Hutch thinking it had a chance to go out. But as he came around third, he saw the center fielder catch up with the ball in front of the fence in dead center.
Still 5–4.
Stayed that way through the seventh.
Just like that, first game of the regionals, there was a chance that they were six outs away from being through. That’s the way it was in knockout tournament baseball. Mr. Cullen had Tripp on a pitch count and had pulled him after he pitched through the top of the seventh. And even though they were still behind by a run, Mr. Cullen decided to go with their closer, Pedro, right there.
In the bottom of the eighth, the Yankees brought in a reliever of their own, the one small guy they seemed to have on their team, a lefty who’d been playing right field. He proceeded to breeze through the bottom of the Cardinals’ order by throwing nothing but junk, getting out Cody, Paul Garner and Tripp, who’d moved over to play first base. Sometimes it happened that way, Hutch knew. You waited the whole game to get the hard thrower out of there, then the next kid looked like he was lobbing softballs in there underhanded, and your timing was completely messed up.
Pedro Mota breezed through the middle of the Yankees’ order in the top of the ninth, and it stayed a one-run game.
The Cardinals were up against it. Big-time. Except that the first game of the regionals wasn’t like their last game in the county tournament. This time they were the ones trying to come from behind. This time it was them who needed one run to get the game into extra innings, two to get to the regional semis.
Or come up empty and go home.
Mr. Cullen gathered the whole team around him before Alex Reyes, their leadoff guy, started off the ninth.
“We’re gonna win this thing right here,” he said. “Alex is gonna get on and so is Brett, and then we’ll see how the little guy likes facing our boppers.”
He meant Hutch and Darryl.
Now Mr. Cullen put his hand out, and they all put their hands in there with him, and at the same time everybody yelled, “Cards!”
“Cards on the table is more like it,” Cody said to Hutch.
“All in,” Hutch said.
The third baseman for the Yankees was right on top of Alex, remembering the bunt he’d laid down earlier. He came in even closer when Alex shortened up again, then had no chance when Alex pulled the bat back and chopped one past him into left field.
Brett Connors next. He was the best they had at making the other pitcher work, taking a lot of pitches. He did that now, working the count full.
Darryl had come out to stand with Hutch in the on-deck circle while Brett was at the plate. Hutch knew that was against the rules. Only one guy was supposed to be standing there. But this was another case of Darryl, looking as relaxed as could be leaning on his bat, acting as if there was a different set of rules for him.
“Must be a slow night for the Palm Beach Post,” he said to Hutch before the 3-2 pitch to Brett.
Hutch wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly. Most of his energy, all of his energy, had been directed toward Brett at the moment, as he tried to will him into taking ball four.
Or hitting one out of sight.
“What?” he said to Darryl.
“I was just sayin’ that I see the Post has got the reporter and the photographer here who covered some of my school games,” Darryl said. “Got a crew here from that Channel 12, too. How about that?”
Hutch wanted to say, How about we focus on getting a couple of runs?
What he did say was: “Let’s give them a story about us coming from behind in the bottom of the ninth to win the game.”
The lefty surprised Brett with a fastball then, one he hadn’t shown anybody yet, and Brett swung right through it.
One out, one on, for Hutch.
“You just get on base somehow,” Darryl said, calm and cool as ever, smiling that smile of his, like the joke was on the rest of the world. “Then let D-Will take it from there. I’m gonna be all over the news tomorrow.”
Hutch tapped Darryl’s bat with his and said he was cool with that.
He started walking slowly toward the plate.
Then, for some reason, he stopped and turned and saw his dad.
His dad was sitting there at the top row of the aluminum bleachers, leaning back against the railing the way he leaned back against the couch when he was watching a Marlins game. Hutch’s mom was sitting to his left, Cody’s parents next to her.
Hutch thought: The only thing missing is a can of beer in his hand.
But for some reason, he heard his dad’s voice inside his head now, giving him the same advice he always gave when Hutch asked him, doing the only coaching he ever did with Hutch.
Don’t try to pull everything. You’re better off hitting to right.
When Hutch got into the batter’s box, he rubbed some dirt on his bat handle. He didn’t wear a batting glove, even though some guys on their team wore two. Just one more old-school thing with him, like wearing his red stirrup socks high.
Hutch dug in.
The lefty tried to get him to chase a dinky pitch, off the outside corner by a foot. Hutch took it for ball one. Then the kid basically threw him the same pitch again, one that was still outside, though not by as much.
The ump called it a strike.
“Hey, ump,” Mr. Cullen called down from the first-base coach’s box. “That pitch was closer to me than to my kid.”
The ump was out from behind the plate in a shot, taking his mask right off, using it to point at Mr. Cullen. “Zip it, Coach. Now.”
Mr. Cullen wasn’t quite ready to let it go. He smiled, walked down about ten feet from the coach’s box, said, “Just making an observation.”
“Keep your observations to yourself the rest of the way.”
“Sorry to have mentioned it,” Mr. Cullen said, walking back toward first.
Sometimes he’d get into it with an umpire, even for an exchange as brief as that one had been, jus
t to get a pitcher out of his rhythm. Hutch just stayed where he was, deep breathing, the bat resting on his shoulder, trying to think along with the pitcher. He guessed that the kid was going to keep the ball down and away, remembering what had happened when the Hulkster came in on him his second time up.
The lefty tried to go away again.
This one really did catch part of the plate. Or would have if Hutch, going the other way with it the way his dad had told him to, hadn’t laid all over it.
Like he was the one who’d gotten the mattress ball.
Hutch hadn’t been sure about his first home run of the night, not until he saw that the outfielders had stopped running.
He was sure about this one.
He still ran hard to first, because that was the way you were supposed to play ball.
But this baby was gone.
Gone, baby, gone.
This one was in his sight lines the whole way. This time he saw the whole thing: The Yankees right fielder stopping dead in his tracks after a few steps. Then the right fielder dropping to one knee as the ball left the yard.
By the time Hutch rounded second base, he didn’t feel like he was running at all.
More like he was floating.
Cardinals 6, Yankees 5.
Two dingers in the same game.
He thought of the Spanish word his mom liked to use when something made her particularly happy:
¡Chévere!
Excellent.
Most excellent.
The whole team was waiting for him at home plate, everybody jumping and pounding on each other as Hutch rounded third. Hutch saw the guy with the Channel 12 television camera standing a few feet away, shooting the whole thing, saw the reporter with the microphone in his hand standing next to him.
When Hutch was halfway down the line, he saw the reporter tap the cameraman on the shoulder with his mike, saw the cameraman nod and turn.
Then a TV camera was pointed straight at Hutch for the first time in his life.
Yeah.
Hutch was definitely floating.
7
HUTCH WAS WATCHING THE HIGHLIGHTS ON CHANNEL 12’S ELEVEN o’clock news along with his mom and dad.
And Cody.
When they showed Hutch’s game-winning swing, he stole a look at his dad, thinking this would be a baseball thing that might actually make him smile.
All he did was nod.
They didn’t have TiVo in the Hutchinson house, it being too expensive, but they did have an old-fashioned VCR taping the sports report.
Now they were watching the part where Hutch was running straight at the camera after he rounded third.
Connie Hutchinson said, “Could we pick up our head a little, so the world can see that gorgeous face?”
“Mom,” Hutch said. “I thought I was just helping us win a ball game, I didn’t know I was starring in some movie.”
On the screen now, Hutch was standing next to the Channel 12 reporter.
“Hush now,” his mom said, “they’re going to interview you.”
“Keith Hutchinson,” the reporter said, “what did that feel like, bringing your team back with one swing of the bat?”
The Hutch on TV looked as if he wanted to look anywhere except at the camera before finally mumbling, “It felt good.”
In a quiet voice behind him, Hutch heard his mom say, “Like father, like son.”
Hutch and Cody were sitting on the floor, in front of the couch. Now Cody fell over on his side, like somebody had shoved him down, grabbed his head with both hands.
“It felt good?” he said. “That was the best you could do? You hit a ball like that in the bottom of the ninth and you felt…good?”
“What was I supposed to say?” Hutch said.
Cody said, “You need to think about using me as a translator from now on, like some of the Japanese players have. Now that you’re a celebrity we can’t have you thinking for yourself.”
When the piece ended, Hutch’s mom rewound the tape, Cody telling her to stop when she got back to the celebration at home plate.
“You see me?” he said, getting up and pointing at the corner of the screen. “Right there!”
Hutch’s dad got up off the couch. “Where?” he said, squinting. “All the bouncing boys look alike to me.”
“I was the one on the right, Mr. Hutchinson,” Cody said, looking so sad it was like somebody had canceled his birthday. “You really couldn’t tell it was me?”
“Maybe when I watch it again I can go frame by frame.”
Then he said he was going to bed, he had to get up early in the morning to go to work.
Hutch watched his mom’s eyes follow his dad all the way out of the room, saw her sad eyes. Sometimes there was a look on her face like she thought he was going to walk out of the room and the house and never come back.
They sat and watched the piece all the way through, at the part now where the sports guy was standing off to the side while the Cardinals kept celebrating in the background, the celebration mostly consisting of the rest of the guys pounding on Hutch.
“I don’t see how somebody would say they can’t see me,” Cody said.
Connie Hutchinson hushed him again, saying she wanted to hear what the reporter said.
“You just heard it, like, two seconds ago,” Hutch said.
“And now I want to hear it again,” she said.
“There was another Hutch Hutchinson who came out of East Boynton once, and I covered him when I first got to Channel 12,” the reporter was saying now. “And a lot of people, myself included, thought he was the best ballplayer to ever come out of this area. But there was a new star tonight, for his old team, Post 226, and it was his son. Reporting from Santaluces Park, this is Steve Carey, Channel 12 Sports.”
Now Hutch’s mom shut off the TV.
“Okay, time for bed, star,” Hutch’s mom said. “You, too, Cody.”
Cody stood up. “Tell me you saw me when we replayed it, Mrs. H.”
She smiled at him, the sad eyes gone, at least for now. “You definitely jumped the highest.”
“You make me sound like a cheerleader,” he said.
“There’s nothing wrong with team spirit,” she said, still smiling at him. “Now I want both of you team members to head up.”
Hutch got up and hugged his mom, and as he did she said, “I’m proud of you.”
“What about Dad?” he said.
“He was, too,” she said. “But you know your father. He has a hard time expressing himself sometimes.”
Hutch thought:
Sometimes?
At least his dad had showed up. He had cared enough tonight to do that.
In a lot of ways, it was like baseball, if you really thought about it.
You took what they gave you.
Cody was on the air mattress that just barely fit between Hutch’s bed and the outside wall of his room. Hutch was on the bed. His mom had let them bring one of the downstairs fans up with them, so Cody could get some cool air on him, too.
They were talking quietly in the darkness, the room lit only by a big moon, both Hutch and Cody trying to keep their voices underneath the sound of the two fans. It was 12:30 in the morning by now, and they didn’t want Hutch’s parents to hear that they were still awake.
Even having to whisper, the two of them were completely happy like this, lying on their backs, one of them on a real bed and one of them on the floor, going back over the game a pitch at a time, like it was one of those replays of Marlins games you got on television as soon as the real game was over, until they couldn’t keep their eyes open a minute longer.
“Good night, compai,” Hutch said. His mom had told him that compai was the slang version of compadre.
“Good night, hero.”
Nobody talked then. Hutch fought sleep for one more minute, still picturing that last swing, remembering the way the ball felt coming off his bat, remembering the run around the bases.
Remembering, wo
rd for word, what Steve Carey of Channel 12 had said about him and his dad at the end of that sports report.
Especially the part about him being the new Hutch Hutchinson.
It was something his dad never called him.
It turned out Darryl had been right
Yesterday must have been a really slow day for sports news in Palm Beach County. Because there it was the next morning, on the front page of the sports section of the Post, a big story about the Cardinals’ win over Naples.
Next to it was a big color picture of Hutch jumping into that crowd of teammates at home plate, like he was suspended in midair.
The big headline over the story and the picture read this way: “First Round Heroics from Second-Generation Star.”
The sports section was waiting for Hutch and Cody on the kitchen table, along with what Cody immediately described, in Cody-speak, as a “ginormous” stack of pancakes.
Carl Hutchinson had already gone off to Emerald Dunes to caddy.
Cody pointed to the picture of Hutch.
“At least they shot you from your best side,” he said.
“All’s you can basically see is the number two on the back of my uniform,” Hutch said.
Jeter’s number.
“Like I said,” Cody said, going right for the pancakes. “Your best side.”
They put their chairs together so they could both read the story, which started out with the writer talking about how the son of former American Legion star Carl Hutchinson had turned Santaluces Park into his own field of dreams last night.
“Field of dreams,” Cody said. “It’s practically like I wrote it myself.”
“Except for the fact that it’s punctuated properly,” Hutch said.
Cody just turned and stared at him.
“C’mon,” Hutch said. “That was funny.”
“No, this is funny,” Cody said, and opened a mouth full of half-chewed pancakes so Hutch could see.