by Tim Green
“I don’t know about anything.”
“Well, most things. I bet you get a phone out of this whole deal,” Daniel said.
Jalen looked down the aisle. Nearly every kid on the bus was intent on some kind of screen, either a phone or an iPad. “Yeah, phones aren’t so great.”
“I don’t know . . . .” Daniel looked hungrily at the iPad screen of the kid in front of him. “I saw Cat playing this Plants vs. Zombies game. It looked killer.”
“Phones don’t help you be a better ballplayer,” Jalen said.
“True.” Daniel sounded sorry for even hinting at such a thing.
They rumbled along for a few minutes in silence before Daniel spoke again. “Hey, what about doing some of that baseball genius stuff for me?”
Jalen rolled his eyes. “How many different pitches you think you’ll see? Guys on this level are just trying to get it over the plate as fast as they can.”
Daniel scratched his neck. “Chris throws a curveball.”
“Chris,” Jalen said with disgust. “How many boy ogres you think we’ll see? He’s a freak.”
“I don’t know, Jalen. It’s not the Rockton Little League. This isn’t even a big tournament, but I think you’re gonna see guys like Chris, maybe even better.”
“Okay, but would it really help you if you knew the pitch?” Jalen asked.
Daniel shrugged. “Maybe.”
“And what if Coach Gamble sees me signaling to you? How’s that gonna go over? You think a guy like him is going to be okay with a kid like me coaching his own team around him? I don’t.”
Daniel peered down the long bus aisle. The back of Coach Gamble’s giant head squeezed out from beneath his hatband. He was barking at Coach Benning in the opposite seat, something they couldn’t hear. Jalen almost laughed. The guy was salty even to his own assistant coach.
“Okay, well, it was just an idea.” Daniel folded his arms and tugged his hat down like he was taking a nap.
It was a short ride to White Plains, and the team unloaded and got checked in. A festive mood filled the air. There were balloons and banners, uniforms and hats of different colors for the various teams. Crazed parents sipped coffee and whispered among themselves as they evaluated the competition for their own kids. Already a concession trailer churned out the smell of cotton candy, and Jalen automatically scanned the skyline for a Ferris wheel that, of course, wasn’t there.
The Rockets’ first game, against the team from Sleepy Hollow, was scheduled to start at eight o’clock.
Jalen stayed in the back of the group of players crowding around Coach Gamble as he read off the lineup card. He remained hopeful until the bitter end. After Tuesday’s performance, he had to assume he’d bat last if he batted at all, and the final player named was Pauly. Jalen’s eyes met Daniel’s, and Jalen forced a smile and gave his friend a thumbs-up, determined still to be the best teammate he could be.
Daniel was playing left field and batting seventh. He leaned close to Jalen in the dugout before taking the field. “You could still sub in. Maybe Pauly chokes?”
“I’m not rooting against my own team,” Jalen said. “I’ll get in. Now, go get a big lead so it can happen.”
Daniel grinned and loped off.
The sun climbed quickly, heating dirt, grass, and players alike.
Jalen didn’t get off the bench after warm-ups, but he kept his spirits up, cheering on his teammates at the plate and in the field. He knew being a good teammate was an important part of the game. It was something James Yager was known for with the Yankees, and Jalen admired just about everything JY did.
They crushed Sleepy Hollow and went directly to an adjacent field to play a tougher foe, Armonk. Jalen held his breath when Coach Gamble read off the lineup but was disappointed again.
As the sun beat down, Jalen stayed sharp and cheered the guys on, even Chris, who played first base, and Dirk, behind the plate in his catcher’s gear. Jalen didn’t dare ask, but he could only assume the coaches were saving Chris’s arm for the championship game. He’d heard rumblings that the team from Bronxville was favored to win the tournament.
When the Rockets entered the sixth inning of the game with a four-run lead over Armonk, Jalen began to feel the excitement of the possibility that he might play. But Caleb Paquet gave up a single and a double to start the inning. Then Pauly Ross dropped an easy pop fly in right field, and two runs scored. Jalen bit his cheek and forced himself not to look at Coach Gamble’s reaction. He heard Coach Benning curse but kept his eyes on the field. The next batter hit a line drive down the first base line, and Chris snagged it the way a frog snaps up a fly.
The next Armonk batter took advantage of Chris’s size by drag-bunting a pitch down the first base line. By the time Chris charged and fielded the ball, Armonk had a man safe at first.
Then the next batter punched one through the hole between first and second. Pauly came up on it but flubbed his throw to second, allowing runners on second and third.
This time, Jalen couldn’t keep from glancing over at the coaches.
“Get him outta there, Coach,” Dirk’s dad urged Coach Gamble.
“Who should I put in?” Coach Gamble looked down at the row of boys on the bench.
The coach caught Jalen’s eye. Jalen told himself to be bold. Good things happened to people who were bold.
He nodded confidently and tried to hold the coach’s gaze.
Coach Gamble simply looked past Jalen at Sam Watts and called for him to get his glove and be ready to replace Pauly. Caleb Paquet was still on the mound for the Rockets, and the two runs off Pauly’s error seemed to have spooked him. He walked the next batter, filling the bases.
“You gotta pull him, too.” Coach Benning spoke like it was just the two coaches and the other kids weren’t even there.
“I gotta save Chris. We’re gonna need him.”
“We won’t need him or anyone if you let this circus act go on,” replied Coach Benning.
That was when Coach Gamble called time-out.
“Sam, you take first.” Coach Gamble spoke into the dugout before heading to the mound as he waved Pauly in. Coach Gamble sent Caleb Paquet to right field before pointing in the direction of Chris and hooking his finger.
Chris looked like a boy with a BB gun in a world full of empty bottles. He warmed up with just three throws before nodding to his dad, then the ump. Jalen made room for Pauly, but his crestfallen teammate kept going past him to the corner of the dugout, where he kicked his own bat.
“Let’s go, Chris!” Jalen shouted. “You got this!”
The other boys in the dugout followed Jalen’s lead, and soon they were cheering as Chris tore through his first batter with three red-hot strikes.
“You see that?!” Coach Benning slapped Chris’s dad a high five. “You see that?”
The next batter swung and nubbed a curve into the dirt two feet from home plate. Dirk pounced, scooped it up, and casually stepped back on home plate for the force out. With four pitches, Chris had extracted them from disaster. Although he’d never show it, Jalen couldn’t help feeling envious as the enormous sixth grader accepted back slaps from all around and jogged to the dugout.
Armonk was determined to keep Rockton from scoring again and changed to a short, muscular pitcher with a live arm. He sat three Rockets down in order, and Coach Gamble seemed to have no other choice but to rely on Chris to close out the win. If Coach Gamble did plan to get Jalen some action, he certainly forgot in the tension of the other team’s rally. Jalen sat the bench for the final inning but cheered anyway when Chris ended it with just six pitches.
As the coaches slapped another high five, Jalen overheard Coach Benning say, “Made it to the championship and you saved his arm.”
“Dirk looked good too,” Coach Gamble said. “That was a major-league play getting his mask off and jumping on that dribbler. We’ll need everything we’ve got to beat this next team.”
Excited by getting to play Bronxville in the c
hampionship, the Rockets headed for the bus to stow their equipment and pick up lunch before heading to the picnic area beside the ball fields. Jalen, who’d sat the whole game out, stole a sideways glace at Pauly. He’d nearly lost the game single-handedly, but at least he’d played. Neither looked surprised when Coach Gamble said, “Pauly, DeLuca, you two bring the cooler.”
Jalen looked at his father’s beat-up blue cooler, but Pauly reached for an enormous gray one, and Jalen helped him lug it to the picnic tables beneath some big shade trees. They hoisted the cooler up on a bench. Jalen caught his breath and looked back at the bus, which Coach Gamble had buttoned up tight.
Jalen hesitated, then swallowed and said, “Coach, I can get my dad’s sandwiches . . . .”
Coach Gamble squinted at Jalen, then looked over at the bus and sighed. “I think we’re good, but okay. Yup.”
The coach dangled some keys in front of Coach Benning. “Go unlock the bus, will you, Coach? You can leave it unlocked, too. I think I want the kids to get off their feet in the AC after lunch.”
Coach Benning already had a Subway unwrapped and halfway to his mouth. He frowned and set the sub down before jingling the keys and heading back to the bus. Jalen hurried behind and lifted the cooler out of the bus.
He struggled behind Coach Benning and set his cooler down beside the big one. Everyone already had a sub. Only a few of his teammates even looked, but still Jalen held up a Silver Liner hero. Its aluminum wrapper glinted in the sun. “Grilled marinated chicken with red peppers and provolone,” Jalen said. “Anybody want one?”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Coach Gamble grunted, “No,” with his mouth full, and Coach Benning shook his head.
Only Daniel sprang forward. “Awesome, amigo. Just what I need after that win.”
Jalen and Daniel retreated silently with their food and drinks to a table on the outskirts of the team, sitting by themselves and hardly enjoying the excellent sandwiches.
“Those jerks don’t know what they’re missing,” Daniel complained, his anger rising. “I could have gone in and pitched.” He thumbed his chest and looked up with a fire in his dark brown eyes.
Jalen took a swig from his can of iced tea and willed Daniel to relax.
They talked quietly, with Jalen trying to lift Daniel’s spirits. By the time they’d balled up their aluminum wrappers and tapped the last drops of tea from their cans, most of the team and the coaches were wandering toward the bus. Jalen saw Pauly and Coach Benning carrying the empty Subway sandwich cooler between them, and he wondered if he was in trouble for not finishing the job with Pauly when a hoot and a burst of laughter caught his attention.
Back at the center picnic table, Chris and Dirk were flipping aluminum-wrapped sandwiches Frisbee-style at a metal garbage drum. Jalen’s mouth fell open as he watched Dirk miss wide left, then Chris drop one in the center with another hoot.
“Hey, that’s . . .” Jalen bolted toward them, his chest burning with a white-hot core of rage.
Dirk scored a bull’s-eye, and Chris spun a third sandwich into the trash before Jalen arrived and slapped the next one out of his hand on the backswing.
“Ow!” Chris bellowed, and turned to look at Jalen with complete disbelief. “You hit my arm My arm!”
By the tone of his voice, anyone listening might have expected Chris’s arm to fall off in a spurt of blood. Jalen took a step back, wondering if he’d somehow destroyed Chris’s entire baseball career, as the gigantic bully lowered his head and charged him with an earsplitting roar.
9
STUNNED BY CHRIS’S SUDDEN INSANE reaction, Jalen took the other boy’s fully loaded shoulder into his unprotected midsection. His feet left the ground, and he seemed to float for a moment before crashing into a picnic table. Flares of pain went off in his back and head. His breath was nowhere to be found, even though he really wanted to breathe. He somehow ended up in the grass with Chris planted on top of him, one hand gripping the front of Jalen’s uniform and the other balled up into a fist, ready to smash Jalen’s face.
Jalen saw it coming and winced.
Instead of the snap of breaking bone and cartilage, Jalen heard the sharp blast of a whistle.
“Chris!!”
Jalen opened his eyes and looked beyond Chris. First he saw Daniel at a standoff with Dirk. Dirk had his fists up, and Daniel stood frozen on one leg in his flying-crane stance. Behind them he saw Coach Gamble, whistle in hand, charging toward them, red-faced and screaming his son’s name.
“Stop!” Coach Gamble was like a powerful blast of cold air. Dirk and Daniel dropped their poses. Chris went limp. Jalen let his head fall back into the grass.
Coach Gamble grabbed his son by the scruff of the neck and yanked him off Jalen. He brought his face so close to Chris that their noses nearly touched. “Do you want to hurt your hand and end the season? Do you?”
“No,” Chris whined.
“No.” His dad released him roughly.
Jalen sat up, feeling scolded even though the coach was ignoring him entirely. Then came the question.
“Now, what happened?” Coach Gamble wasn’t asking Jalen. It was as if Jalen didn’t exist.
“Dirk and me were cleaning up,” Chris said, still whining. “Then this butt-head punched my arm while I was tossing some garbage in the can. He hit me on my backswing, and I think I tweaked it . . . .”
Coach Gamble tilted his head and glanced at Jalen.
Jalen rubbed the back of his skull, feeling the soreness.
“You tweaked it?” Coach Gamble scraped his bottom lip with his teeth. When he looked back at Jalen, it seemed he was about to explode.
Jalen closed his eyes, expecting that his career with travel team baseball was about to end.
10
“JALEN, YOU SAY YOU HIT Chris’s arm to keep him from trashing those sandwiches?”
“My father made those.” Jalen swallowed. “He had no right.”
“No, he didn’t,” Coach Gamble said, surprising everyone.
“Huh?” Daniel said, looking as confused as Jalen felt.
The coach grabbed Chris by the collar again. “You don’t waste food! This bad attitude has to stop. This morning—shouting at your mother. Refusing to make your bed. Trashing food . . . Hurt your arm? I’ll hurt your arm, you do something stupid like that again . . . . And toughen up anyway.”
He let Chris loose.
“But Dad . . .” Chris grabbed his elbow, cringing.
“No. Stop that!” Chris’s dad clenched his hands by his sides and wobbled his head as he mocked his son. “ ‘I tweaked it. Boo-hoo.’ You better get it together by game time.”
The coach turned to Jalen and Daniel. The fumes of anger still lingered, and his voice was gruff. “Okay, you guys get this cooler back on the bus, and let’s go get warmed up for the big one.”
They watched their coach lumber off, shaking his head. “Sandwiches! I’ve seen it all now.”
“Wow,” said Daniel. “I thought he was gonna go nuts. Since when can the Prince of Darkness be wrong?”
“Maybe the father’s not as bad as the spawn after all.”
Daniel watched for another moment with a look of doubt. “Maybe. Come on, let’s get these things stowed. You gotta get loose if you’re gonna see some action.”
“What makes you think I’m seeing action?” Jalen couldn’t help feeling a bit excited.
Daniel picked up his side of the cooler. “I don’t know. Coach was on your side back there . . . . You haven’t played. I just figured . . .”
“Well, I hope you’re right.”
They stowed the sandwiches, and Coach Benning closed the cargo doors.
There were only thirty minutes before the championship game was scheduled to begin.
Jalen hurried to get on first so he could get to the back of the bus without another confrontation with Chris. He felt a little ashamed but reminded himself he needed to do everything he could to get a chance to play. He and Daniel had decided at lu
nch that “doing everything” meant that Jalen needed to ask Coach Gamble for some playing time.
When they got off the bus and filed into the dugout for the championship game, Jalen made his move. For all he knew, the coach might have simply forgotten about playing him. As if, he thought.
Daniel, who’d been all in favor of the move, quickly disappeared as Jalen marched right up to Coach Gamble in the dugout and tapped his shoulder blade.
The big, thick coach turned with a look of disbelief. “Yeah?”
“Coach, I haven’t gotten in for even half an inning,” Jalen said. “I gotta get in, Coach. Will you let me?”
He tried not to whimper or whine, but he felt his words came out like a teakettle taken off the flame.
“I gotta get you in, DeLuca? Gotta?” He snorted. “I highly doubt it.”
“But Coach, I think I can do better than Pauly.”
“My grandmother could do better than Pauly, and she’s dead.” Coach Gamble looked around like he was wanting some backup from Coach Benning. “Look, DeLuca, we talked to you about all this. I warned you about very limited play time, and you wanted to go ahead anyway. You made your own bed here. You did not look good on Tuesday and—heck—you missed Thursday’s practice altogether.”
“But Coach, I had to help JY on Thursday.”
“Help?” Coach Gamble scoffed. “All you did was sit in the stands eating hot dogs and Cracker Jacks. There’s no such thing as luck, DeLuca. Even if there was, you gotta make up your mind if you want to be a baseball player or someone’s magic rabbit’s foot.”
His barb hit the mark because it was true. Jalen let his eyes drop to his feet, and he spoke quietly. “I know.”
Defeated, he turned to go when Coach Gamble said, “Wait.”
11
“LOOK, DELUCA,” THE COACH SAID. “I don’t want you thinking you’re not playing because of what happened with Chris and the sandwiches. I meant what I said. He was wrong, and I also like your enthusiasm, the way you cheer the team on. That’s commendable. In fact, tell you what I’ll do . . . . If it’s a blowout, I’ll try to get you in for an at bat and maybe an inning or two in the field. That’s if, though. No promises, okay?”