The Big Field

by Mike Lupica

  “I’m only looking at the paper,” Hutch said, “so I never have to look at you ever again.”

  The writer must have done his homework because there was a lot in there about his dad. Near the end of the story, the writer even mentioned that Carl Hutchinson had recently assumed a “new position” with the Sun Coast Driving Service.

  Like he was Hutch, assuming a new position at second base.

  Nothing in there about him being a caddy at Emerald Dunes.

  Connie Hutchinson said, “That’s the biggest write-up in the papers you’ve ever gotten, hon.”

  “Mom,” Hutch said, “this whole thing is getting mad embarrassing now. The guy makes it out like I was some sort of one-man team last night.”

  Mouth still full, Cody said something that ended with “…hit two bombs.”

  “Seriously, Mom,” Hutch said, because this was bothering him. “I don’t want the other guys to think that because I had one good game and answered a few questions that I’m looking for attention.”

  “Sometimes you don’t have anything to say about it,” she said, then put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

  “Sometimes attention comes looking for you.”

  He looked up at her. “Did Dad see the story before he left?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The paper was open when I came downstairs, but he was already gone.”

  “You think he was cool with the way they talked about him?”

  His mom said, “I’m sure your father is as proud of you as I am.”

  “Know what I’m sure of?” Cody said.

  “What?”

  “How excited the rest of us are going to be just to be on the same field today with…the…new…American…Idol!”

  Hutch put his head down so his forehead was resting on the sports section of the Post.

  “Make him stop, Mom,” he said.

  “Too big a job for me, mi cucubano,” she said.

  One of her many nicknames for Hutch, this one meaning “firefly.”

  Hutch said to Cody, “I didn’t ask for any of this, you know.”

  He felt Cody patting him on the back.

  “No,” he said, “you certainly didn’t.”

  Then Cody laughed and said, “But you’re still gonna get it.”

  8

  “LOOK,” PAUL GARNER SAID, POINTING FROM BEHIND THE PITCHER’S mound, as Hutch and Cody came walking out of the parking lot at Caloosa Park toward the field named after Lou Gehrig. “Isn’t that the kid I saw on SportsCenter last night?”

  “Don’t start,” Hutch yelled back.

  Garner, grinning, said, “You must be joking. I’m just getting started.”

  Hank Harding, who usually didn’t say much more than “nice hit” or “nice play,” joined right in.

  “I recognize the second-generation star,” he said, putting air quotes with his fingers around second-generation star.

  “But who’s the guy with him?”

  Brett said, “The ugly guy? Never saw him before.”

  Cody made a bring-it-on motion with his hands. “Go ahead, make your silly comments, you little, little boys,” he said. “Me and the star can take it.”

  Hutch turned. “You, too?”

  Cody shrugged. “Slipped out.”

  “Do you plan to practice with us today, Hutch?” Alex Reyes said. “Or are you too tired from carrying us to victory?”

  “Can we get you something?” Brett said. “Something to drink, maybe?”

  “A new bike?” Hank said.

  “If you want to rest on your…laurels and take it easy,” Paul said, “that’s fine with us.”

  “Wait, I’ve got an idea,” Cody said. “Why don’t all you comedians kiss his…laurels.”

  Hutch laughed along with everybody else. Eventually his teammates let up on him and they all started to warm up, the conversation shifting to their next game, against Sarasota, to be played down in Fort Lauderdale.

  Darryl was the last one to show up, right before Mr. Cullen did.

  As usual, it was as if he just appeared, out of nowhere, or got beamed in the way guys did in one of the old Star Trek shows that Hutch liked to watch on the Sci Fi Channel. They’d just look up and there would be Darryl, bat bag slung over his shoulder, wearing his Nike flip-flops. Even if it was one of their late practices, way after the sun had gone down, he’d still be wearing some pair of cool sunglasses, never the same pair two days in a row. Hutch didn’t know a lot about fashion, or what things cost, but Cody did, and he had told Hutch one day that the pair of Oakley glasses Darryl was wearing cost more than both their baseball gloves combined.

  Today Darryl was wearing the kind of glasses you sometimes saw big leaguers wearing, the kind that seemed to just fit your face like a mask even though they weren’t really attached anyplace.

  “A-Rod glasses,” Cody said.

  “Very cool.”

  “Just not as cool as Darryl.”

  They watched from the field as Darryl sat down on the bench, let them all see him taking a brand-new pair of black Nike baseball shoes out of the box, holding them up and admiring them before he started lacing them up, taking his time doing that, as if the laces had to be perfect. You’ve got to hand it to the guy, Hutch thought. He is cool. A couple of minutes before practice and he still acted as if he had all day to gear up.

  Brett was hitting fly balls to the outfielders and Hutch was out there shagging with them, just for the fun of it.

  “On time for Darryl,” Cody said, “is pretty much when he gets here.”

  “He’s not late,” Hutch said. “So just chill.”

  Cody was already dripping wet with sweat, as he usually was about five minutes after he started doing any kind of running.

  “Chill,” he said. “In this heat. Outstanding advice.”

  Cody ran back a few steps then backhanded a ball, threw it all the way in to Brett on one bounce—for a guy who’d mostly played second base in his life, he had a surprisingly good arm—and then said to Hutch, “I just hope Darryl sticks up for you the way you do for him, especially when you’re not around.”

  “We’re on the same team,” Hutch said. “Why wouldn’t he?”

  “’Cause even though we’re on the same team, dude, he acts as if he’s in a whole different league than the rest of us, that’s why.”

  It was time for what Mr. Cullen called their “situation room” drills.

  “Situation room” drills were game situations. Coach would leave the regular defense out there and use a couple of the pitchers and guys off the bench to run the bases. Sometimes it would be one guy on base, sometimes two, sometimes bases loaded. Then Mr. Cullen would call out how many outs there were, what inning it was, and what the score was, before hitting the ball somewhere.

  If it were a single to the outfield with, say, two runners on, the guy picking up the ball would have to make a decision about trying to throw a runner out at either third or home. If he had no play, he’d be expected to throw to the right base, or hit the cutoff man.

  Or else.

  Or else they’d do the exact same play again and keep doing it until they got it right. The base runners had to make the right decisions, too, read where the ball was and who was throwing it before they’d try to take an extra base or try to run all the way home.

  Sometimes Mr. Cullen would keep the play in the infield. Put a runner on first, another on third, saying a double play ended a one-run game. On plays like that, he’d put a runner behind Brett, let him take off for first as soon as the ball was hit.

  Right now, it was first and third, nobody out. Mr. Cullen rocketed one up the gap in right center between Alex Reyes and Cody, neither one of them having a chance to catch the ball on the fly. It landed between them and looked like it was going to make it all the way to the wall before Cody cut it off with a sliding stop. Then he scrambled to his feet and made a perfect cutoff throw to Hutch, who’d nearly sprinted all the way out to Cody’s normal position i
n right to meet the ball.

  “Home!” Hutch heard from behind him, not just one voice, but a lot of them.

  As soon as Hutch had the ball in his glove he was transferring it to his throwing hand as quickly as he did when trying to turn a fast double play, was wheeling and throwing the ball toward Brett without even looking, as if his teammates were right about him when they said he had eyes in the back of his head.

  From where he was in short right, he shouldn’t have been able to get it to Brett on the fly without setting himself.

  But he did.

  Paul Garner, who had pretty good speed, was the runner trying to score all the way from first, but when he saw how badly the throw had beaten him, he didn’t even slide. No point.

  When Hutch jogged back to second, Darryl came over and got down on his knees, and started making the I-am-not-worthy motion you saw fans making in the stands at sporting events sometimes.

  “Oh, Captain,” he said. “No wonder the papers and the TV love you so much.”

  “Cut it out,” Hutch said, grinning.

  Darryl stayed where he was. He never showed you anything on the field. But he was making a big show now. And if his plan was to embarrass Hutch, it was a solid one.

  “Is that a direct order, Captain Hutch?”

  “Seriously, dude,” Hutch said. “Get up.”

  “Just trying to treat you the same way the me-di-a does, Captain.”

  Finally he got to his feet, smiling at Hutch as he did, as if it were all a big joke. And Hutch figured it was, except for the way he had kept leaning on Captain the way he did. Nobody on the team ever referred to Hutch that way, especially not Darryl Williams.

  Until now.

  They waited near second base while Mr. Cullen brought in Cody to do some running and sent Paul out to replace him in right, even though left was normally Paul’s position.

  Hutch said, “I’m sure the Post and Channel 12 have lost interest in me already.”

  Still, Darryl wouldn’t let up.

  “Big star like you?” he said, still with that smile on his face. “They’ll lose interest in Britney Spears or Beyoncé ’fore they lose interest in you.”

  Before Darryl could say anything else, Mr. Cullen was calling out the next situation, and they were back to baseball.

  This should have been boring stuff, going through one situation after another like this. Only nothing about baseball ever bored Hutch, not even the waiting time. It was why he never dogged it even when some of the other guys did, never just went through the motions, never took shortcuts even if the play was somewhere else, or if he thought Mr. Cullen might not be watching. He prided himself on being where he was supposed to be at all times, the way Jeter of the Yankees always was.

  Hutch always remembered the famous flip play Jeter had made in the playoffs one time, against the Oakland A’s.

  The Yankees were down 0–2 in the first round, needing a win to keep the series going, when one of the A’s hit a ball to the outfield. Jeremy Giambi, Jason Giambi’s brother, tried to score on the play. Looked like he would score. Only here came Jeter, the shortstop, flashing toward the first-base line, picking up the ball that had gone over the cutoff man’s head, making that neat backhand flip to the Yankees catcher, Jorge Posada, who put the tag on Giambi.

  The Yankees came back to win the series, and lots of people thought Jeter’s play turned the whole series around.

  Hard to say for certain.

  What was certain was this:

  Jeter was where he was supposed to be, backing up the cutoff man. He was able to make one of the most famous plays in Yankee’s history, baseball history, because he did something in the moment that he had probably done hundreds of times in a drill that a lot of his Yankee teammates probably thought was more boring than ballet.

  So Hutch kept going to the right place today, even though most of the action seemed to be running through Darryl. When Darryl made a pretty amazing relay throw of his own to the plate, from his knees, getting Cody at the plate when he should have had no shot, Hutch said, “You the man, D.”

  Darryl responded in a voice loud enough to be heard at the Little League field next door. “Oh no, Captain. How can I be the man when you the man?”

  Hutch decided then he was basically going to shut up for the rest of practice. Darryl seemed locked on this Captain routine no matter what Hutch said.

  Mr. Cullen gave them a break a few minutes after that, told them to go get a drink, because when they were done with their little break, they were going right into what he called Extreme Infield.

  Just about everybody on the field except Hutch groaned at that particular news bulletin.

  Extreme Infield, the Cardinals knew, was as much a drill for hard baserunning as it was for fielding the ball and making the proper plays. If the runners had the chance to slide hard and break up a double play—cleanly—they were supposed to do it. If they had a chance to go hard into Brett at the plate, they were supposed to do that. Tripp said Extreme Infield was like a drill his basketball coach would use sometimes, putting a bunch of guys under the basket and telling them to do whatever they had to do to get a rebound, short of assault and battery.

  The Cardinals did Extreme Infield for about fifteen minutes, with only a few knockdowns at home plate and no need for the first-aid kit, which Hutch always saw as a huge positive. Finally Mr. Cullen announced that they could quit for the day if Darryl and Hutch could turn one last double play.

  “Bottom of the ninth,” he said. “We’re up a run. First and third. Double play sends us off the field a winner. But, and this is a big but…”

  Cody, who’d been sent out to second to run, raised his hand. “As big as Tripp’s?”

  The rest of the guys laughed. So did Mr. Cullen, even though you could see he didn’t want to.

  “Where was I?” he said.

  “Tripp’s big old—” Cody said.

  “But,” Mr. Cullen continued, “you gotta be sure you can turn two. I’m gonna play you a couple of feet back off the grass. Not quite double-play depth but close enough, like we do sometimes. If the ball’s not hit hard enough, come home and cut off the tying run.”

  Then he proceeded to hit a hard grounder to Darryl’s left.

  As soon as Hutch saw where the ball was, he was as sure as Mr. C wanted him to be that they could get the double play.

  Easy.

  In addition to everything else Darryl Williams had going for him, size and speed and strength, he also had the softest hands for an infielder Hutch had ever seen on a kid their age. Even softer than Hutch’s. Now he fielded the ball with his glove hand. As he did, Hutch slowed down just slightly, wanting to have the timing just right, wanting to set his feet on each side of the bag just as Darryl turned and gave him one of his perfect underhand flips, wanting to be balanced as Hutch himself turned to avoid the runner and make the relay throw to first.

  Tommy O’Neill, who could play just about any position for them, was the one pretending to be the batter running toward first, and he was one of their slowest guys. Brett Connors, Hutch knew, was coming from first like a city bus.

  Hutch got to second with plenty of time to spare.

  The ball didn’t.

  It was still in Darryl’s glove.

  Hutch knew he had to hang in there, even knowing Brett would take him out with a clean slide if he could, because that was the way Brett played the game.

  Come on, D, Hutch thought.

  Gimme the rock.

  The only thing Hutch could figure was that even with those soft, sure hands, Darryl couldn’t get the ball out of his glove. Now the double play was out of the question.

  Hutch just wanted to get one, get the ball in time to keep Alex Reyes, halfway down the line at third, from scoring the fake tying run.

  Maybe it didn’t matter to the other guys, but it mattered to Hutch.

  Finally Darryl had the ball in his bare hand. Hutch saw that, thought he even saw Darryl smiling right before he let it
go, like maybe he was embarrassed to have messed up on what was such a routine play, at least for him.

  Except he was still messing it up.

  He didn’t flip the ball underhand the way he usually did when he was moving toward second. Instead he lollipopped the ball overhand, the ball floating toward Hutch like a balloon.

  This was one time when Hutch didn’t need those eyes in the back of his head. He was sure he was going to get popped.

  He was right.

  This time he didn’t have to pretend he was flying, the way he had the night before, after he’d hit that game-winning home run.

  This time Hutch really was.

  9

  WHEN HE CAME DOWN, HE CAME DOWN ON HIS RIGHT SHOULDER.

  It was a hard enough landing that he felt his breath come out of him as soon as he hit the infield dirt. As baked out as that dirt was in the summer, no matter how much they watered it at Caloosa, it was the same as if he’d landed in the parking lot.

  Brett was kneeling next to him almost right away, saying how sorry he was, asking if Hutch was okay, wanting to know where it hurt, trying to get all those things out at once.

  Looking as if he was in more pain than Hutch was at the moment.

  “I kept expecting you to turn and get out of the way as you made the relay, like you always do,” Brett said. “But you never turned around.”

  Hutch wanted to tell him that it’s pretty tough making a relay throw if you don’t have the ball, but he needed to get a lot more air in his lungs before he could do that.

  He tried to sit up instead, hoping that would help him catch his breath faster.

  Mr. Cullen was there by now.

  “Easy, tiger,” he said, kneeling next to Brett.

  Cody was standing behind them, staring down at Hutch, eyes wide.

  “Let’s take this nice and slow,” Mr. Cullen said, putting his arm behind Hutch’s shoulders and gently lifting him up.

  “You hit your head?”

  Hutch coughed, took in some air, coughed again. “No,” he managed.

  “You sure? This infield is like cement.”

  Hutch said, “I hit my shoulder. It’s like my dad says. Didn’t get my flaps down.”