Plunked

by Michael Northrop

  The pitch is outside. Thank God. I reach out and bounce it to one of the extra infielders on the right side. Lame. Then the next pitch comes in on me. It’s maybe an inch or two inside, but it’s the kind of pitch that would be called a strike nine times out of ten. I just need to keep my arms in, but I don’t keep anything in.

  The pitch has a little tailing action, and in my head it seems like it’s coming straight for me. I jump back out of the way, and the thing misses me by two feet.

  “What was that?” Liu shouts from the mound.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Got fooled.”

  Yeah, fooled by a flat BP fastball. That’s believable.

  Liu gives me a weird look, winds up, and tosses another.

  This one is right down the middle, and I handle it a little better.

  The next one is outside, and I hit a solid liner. It gets caught by one of the extra fielders, but it probably would’ve been a base hit in a normal game. I start to feel a little better. I even take my little mini swings before the next pitch. And then Liu comes inside. Not much, but it’s enough.

  I bail out completely, sticking my bat out toward the plate as I throw my shoulders back out and away from it. The ball just doinks off the end.

  I look up, and I realize something: Coach Liu knows. He saw me jump off the plate on a pitch just inside. Then he went middle, then away, and watched me put two decent swings on the ball. Then he came back in.

  Just to make sure, he comes in again. I don’t even offer at it. I take a good, hittable pitch in batting practice. Right now, I’d give anything for that weak chopper I hit on the first pitch, the one I thought was so lame. I can’t believe this. I’m bailing out on everything inside.

  “What is going on, Mogens?” yells Coach Wainwright from the side of the cage.

  “Nothing, Coach,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says. “That pretty well sums it up.”

  He calls Manny in to bat next.

  I slink back out into the field. If Coach hasn’t figured it out already, Liu will let him know what’s up afterward.

  Manny doesn’t make eye contact. He looks down as we pass each other. He’s embarrassed for me. I trade my batting glove for my real one. And the worst part: I’m glad it’s over. I should be dying for another swing, but I’m not. I head out to left, and no one says anything to me as I go.

  I hear someone laughing off in the distance. I don’t need to look up to know that it’s Malfoy.

  I try to settle myself down in the field. A few batters later, Chester hits one in the air. It’s practically a home run for him, but really, it’s a blooper to shallow left. It’s dropping fast, right in front of me. I should stay back and play this one on the hop. That’s the smart thing to do, but I’m still burning with embarrassment. This seems like just what I need.

  I break into a flat-out sprint. Maybe I can make this catch. Maybe the coaches can talk about that after practice, about my glove. Maybe I can make Malfoy swallow some of that laughter. There’s no way he’d make this catch.

  I’m running as fast as I can, starting to lean forward and get low as I go. My hat flies backward off my head. The ball is sinking fast. I’m almost there. Everything is converging: the ball, the grass, my glove….

  I dive for it.

  I miss.

  “Man, you were awesome out there yesterday,” Andy says.

  We’re sitting at our normal table in the cafeteria, and someone was going to have to say something about it sooner or later.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Thanks. I hope you guys understand I’m not trying to show you up or anything.”

  “No, no, no,” says Tim. “A star has gotta shine, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Exactly.”

  “Heck of a catch out there, too,” says Chester, who made it all the way to third after my diving miss. If I’d stayed back, like a non-brain-damaged player, it would’ve been a single.

  They’re going easy on me. After six years of mostly good practices, I guess maybe I get a pass for one really bad one. But they don’t know what I know, what Coach Liu knows. I change the subject.

  “I was watching this show on cable last night, about rodents,” I say. That’s about as far away from the subject as it can get. It might be a little too far away. As soon as I say it, I’m afraid they’re just going to let it drop and go back to talking about practice. But Andy bails me out.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says. “On Discovery?”

  I know he’s just guessing, acting like he saw it, but no one else does. It’s a pretty solid guess. It would be either that or Animal Planet.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Like Most Extreme: Rodents, right?” he says, doubling down. “Yeah, that was cool.”

  “Extreme rodents?” says Tim, and now the ball is rolling. “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” says Dustin, who has started sitting with us most days. “Oh, no, a gerbil!”

  “No, but a rat can squeeze through a hole the size of a quarter,” I say. “And chew through concrete.”

  “No way!” says Andy, already forgetting that he was supposed to have watched the show.

  “Yuh-huh,” I say. “And they’re the deadliest animal in history.”

  “What?” says Dustin. “You have lost it. Seriously.”

  “Nope, it’s true. Because they spread disease. Like the Great Plague wiped out millions of people, and that was because of rats.”

  “Nuh-uh,” says Tim. “Fleas.”

  “Yeah, but the fleas were on the rats,” I say. “That’s how the disease spread so far.”

  “Yeah, but it was still the fleas that carried it,” says Tim. “So why aren’t fleas the World’s Deadliest Animal in History?”

  And then we get into a long, kind of dumb discussion about whether insects are animals or just, you know, insects. That’s fine with me. I’d rather talk about that than my meltdown at practice.

  It’s not until the end of lunch that we get back to baseball, and then it’s to talk about the next game. The five of us are clearing away our trays and heading out. We’re talking about the Rockies, and they’re, you know, “all around us,” so we can’t be giving away any trade secrets. Still, Dustin wants to know what we think about our chances, so we tell him.

  “Yeah, I think we got ’em,” says Andy.

  “Yeah, mos’ def,” says Tim.

  We haven’t played them yet, but we see those guys around all the time. I have to wait to give my take until their starting catcher walks past. Dustin nods to him in that yeah-I-have-to-wear-all-that-gear-too way. And I know he’s the Rockies’ starter this year because he’s in my gym class. He nods back at Dustin and then at me.

  Once he’s gone, I start talking. “Yeah, I like our chances,” I say. “But they’ve got some decent players.”

  Then I think of something else: “And we won’t have J.P. on the mound — at least not until Malfoy gets knocked out in the third!”

  The others laugh, except for Tim. I can see his eyes get wide. Oh, man, I think, and I turn around. Sure enough, there’s Malfoy, right behind us.

  Oh, man…

  I turn back quick, and Tim is looking right at me. I mouth the words: Did he hear?

  Tim just shrugs. I risk another quick look over my shoulder, but Malfoy’s gone. He took the turnoff toward the library.

  “Whoops!” I say, and Tim chuckles.

  “What?” says Andy.

  “Malfoy was right behind us!” says Tim.

  The rest of them look back, but that only confirms that he’s not there anymore.

  “Really?” says Dustin.

  “Yep,” I say.

  “Ooooooh!” they say. Chester starts it, and they all join in.

  “He’s gonna be steamed,” says Dustin. “That’s like” — and he pauses to count — “three disses in one.”

  It’s true. Strike one: I called him Malfoy, which he hates. Strike two: I basically said straight out that J.P. is vastly superior to him, whic
h he isn’t willing to admit. And strike three: I said he’d get roughed up and knocked out of the game. Yeah, that’s bad.

  “Maybe he didn’t even hear,” I say.

  And maybe he didn’t. I mean, it’s possible. Maybe he wasn’t even paying attention. Maybe he was thinking about, I don’t know, potions class or something.

  I’m hoping more than thinking, though. I’ve got enough trouble without that: He’s our number two pitcher and Coach Meacham’s number one son and a giant jerk-butt, anyway. Plus, well, I haven’t really mentioned this yet, but we’ve kind of got a history, Malfoy and I. I’m just starting to think about that when Dustin sums things up.

  “He’s going to be steamed,” Dustin repeats, like the case is settled. He thinks he knows Malfoy best because he catches him. I know he doesn’t. Like I said, we’ve got that history. That’s how I know that steamed wouldn’t even begin to cover it.

  We head back to our lockers. Chester and Tim peel off, leaving Dustin, Andy, and me.

  “Can’t believe I did that,” I say.

  “Did what?” says Dustin. He’s honestly stumped for a second, even though it was just a few minutes ago. “Oh, the thing with Malfoy? Don’t sweat it.”

  “You’re the one who said he was going to be so mad,” I remind him.

  “Yeah, but who are we talking about here?” says Dustin. “He’s always mad.”

  “Good point,” I say. I want to say more, but we’ve reached Dustin’s locker.

  Now it’s just Andy and me. He’s the one guy I don’t have to explain this to.

  “Not good,” he says.

  “Nope,” I say.

  “Déjà vu,” he says.

  “Yep,” I say.

  And then he ducks his head into his locker, and I’m alone in the hallway.

  I’m thinking about what happened with Malfoy. I don’t mean five minutes ago, I mean five years. I’ll just say it: Malfoy and I used to be best friends. That’s the history. This was like kindergarten and first grade. I guess, if you want to look at it that way, he was my first best friend. “Meach,” that’s what I called him back then.

  Malfoy and I — Meach, whatever — it’s not like we had a big argument or anything. I mean, he was always a little out there. I remember once, in kindergarten, he cut all the limbs off one of the playtime dolls with those green-handled safety scissors. He cut it up and left it there for the girls to find. He did that just the one time, but there were other things.

  It wasn’t really that stuff, though. I just met Andy in second grade, and we got along better. Maybe we had more in common or something, I don’t know. It was second grade. But those two didn’t get along at all, and so there I was: monkey in the middle. And I made my choice.

  When I get home it’s like, good sweet lord, all I want to do is get to my room, you know? After a long day of changing the topic and maybe being overheard and maybe not, I just want to go upstairs, close the door, and kill something in a video game. But as soon as I drop my backpack onto the chair in the living room, there’s Dad. He’s working from home today, which he does sometimes. I guess I’d forgotten.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” he says, but there’s a little smile creeping onto his face, and both of his hands are behind his back, so I know something is going on.

  “What?” I say.

  “What?” he says, and I start searching my brain.

  What does he have behind his back? If he’d seen me at practice yesterday, or if I’d had the guts to tell him about it, it would be a gun to put me out of my misery. But he didn’t see me, and that wouldn’t explain the smile. Mercy killing or not, he’d at least feel guilty about it.

  And then I remember: It’s a new baseball season. I don’t mean Little League; I mean Major League Baseball. It’s a new season, and I know what he’s got back there. As soon as Dad sees it click in my mind, he brings them out. His smile is ear to ear now, and he’s holding half a dozen packs of brand-new baseball cards.

  Right then, my brain literally splits in half. Seriously, it’s like half of it squeezes out one ear and heads toward the stairs. That half is still bummed out and wants to be left alone. But the other half squeezes out the other ear and heads over to the couch. That half wants to see the cards.

  I just stand there for a second with no brain left in my head. The smile on my dad’s face twitches a little. Before it can collapse altogether, the bummed-out half of my brain gives in and heads for the couch, too.

  “Cool,” I say, forcing a smile.

  Before long we’re sitting on the couch, and we have the coffee table cleared off to make room. It doesn’t require a single word between us. We’ve been doing this every year for most of my life. Dad gets me a big handful of the new cards each season.

  Then we spread them out and look for good players and, especially, rookie cards. It’s like some weird combination of Christmas morning, opening day, and an Easter egg hunt.

  The tabletop is clear, and the cards are in a little pile between Dad and me.

  “Ready?” he says.

  “Ready,” I say.

  “Ready?” he says again, louder.

  “Ready!”

  By now, the bummed-out half of my brain has given in, and it’s sitting there with a big doofy smile on its face, too. With no objections, I tear open the first pack. At the last second, I remember to wipe my hands on my jeans. It can mean the difference between near mint condition and mint. Then I start spreading the first pack of cards out face up.

  “Oooh!” Dad says as I slap down a good one.

  “All-Star!” I say a few cards later.

  A few clunkers later, Dad says, “Rookie card!”

  “Guy’s a scrub,” I say.

  “Might surprise you,” says Dad.

  “Doubt it.”

  But a few cards into the second pack, a good one comes up. It’s another rookie, for the Cubs, but this guy is supposed to be the real deal.

  Dad makes that Homer Simpson drooling noise and pretends to reach for it. My mouth is occupied trying to break down the fossilized bubble gum that came in one of the packs. I smack the back of his hand instead.

  “But I wants it,” he says. He’s gone from Homer Simpson to imitating Gollum from the Lord of the Rings movies. “I wants it!”

  “Get your own!” I say.

  “I’ve got my own,” he says, and I know what’s coming next. “In fact, when I was just about your age now, I got my Ripken.”

  Dad’s Cal Ripken, Jr., rookie card … He brings it up every year. Ripken is in the Hall of Fame now, and the card is in the mini safe in the basement, along with the title to the house and some old jewelry from my mom’s mom.

  That’s the pot of gold, the Holy Grail, the, well, you get the idea. We’re looking for the next one of those. I want a card to put in the safe. Usually, when he mentions his Ripken, it’s like rocket fuel for me to go through the rest of the cards.

  But now I slow down, stop. I’m thinking about a TV show I saw on Ripken. He’s baseball’s all-time iron man. He played in 2,632 straight games, all for the Orioles. That’s one of those numbers that a lot of baseball fans just know, like 4,256, Pete Rose’s record for hits.

  “Two thousand six hundred and thirty-two,” I say.

  “Yeah,” says dad. “With three thousand one hundred and eighty-four hits and four hundred and thirty-one homers.”

  Most fans don’t know those stats, except maybe Orioles fans.

  “Unbelievable,” I say.

  “Believe it,” says Dad. “I saw a few of them.”

  But that’s not what I mean. I mean, all those games … How many times was he hurt or injured? How many times did he get hit by a pitch, not just off the thigh or butt, but somewhere it hurt? And he never missed a beat.

  Right then, I know two things. One: If Cal Ripken got hit in the head by a pitch, he would pick himself up and head down to first base. There wouldn’t be a cloud of people hovering over him and tears in his eyes and a pi
nch-runner who got thrown out at home. And he definitely wouldn’t bail out on inside pitches three days later. Just the thought of it is ridiculous. I mean, please: Inside pitches would bail out on him!

  And so that’s the other thing I know. Two: I’m not like Cal Ripken. I’m not a baseball player like him. Now I’m not smiling at all. The same card has been pinched between my fingers for too long, getting oil on the cardboard. The gum has run out of flavor in my mouth. It just tastes like spit so I swallow it.

  “What’s up, champ?” Dad says, finally noticing.

  “Don’t call me that,” I say.

  I slap the card down on the table. It’s nobody special. Figures.

  “What is your major malfunction?” Andy says. It’s a line from a movie, but you get the idea. He’s asking what’s wrong with me.

  “What do you mean?” I say, even though I mean, duh.

  We’re loosening up and stretching before practice on Thursday. With Andy and me, that also means loosening up and stretching our jaws. His mom just dropped us off like a minute ago.

  “What do you mean, ‘What do you mean?’” he says. “You know what I mean!”

  “Yeah,” I say, shrugging and throwing a ball into my mitt. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe, my bouncing baboon butt,” he says. Improving on the words my butt is a big thing with the guys in our grade this year. “You’ve been moping around all week.”

  “I haven’t been moping!” I say.

  But he’s right. Andy has had to put up with it the whole time, so he doesn’t let it slide. He just lists half a dozen things I’ve done, haven’t done, said, or haven’t said. Andy’s a smart guy. I don’t know if I mentioned that yet, but he is. And he has a good memory.

  “And Chester took all your Tater Tots and you didn’t even say anything! And Chester is like three feet tall! And then, right after that —”

  “All right, all right,” I say, cutting him off. I can’t stomach any more of the evidence. “I’m not moping,” I say again. “I’m just, you know, open to mopin’.”