Baseball Genius

by Tim Green

  “Please!” Jalen looked around desperately for a friendly face, landing on the least friendly face of all, the dead-eyed GM with the yellow bow tie. “I’m with James Yager. He brought me.”

  One of the policemen dropped his arm, but the other laughed gruffly. “Yeah, and I’m having dinner tonight with Jeter. Let’s go, kid.”

  The policeman holding him gave a gentle tug.

  “Wait.” Foxx looked suddenly fascinated. “Yager? Who are you?”

  The elevator door behind them rumbled open and JY dashed across the floor, pulling up just short of Jalen. He was huffing for breath. “Hey, Jeffrey. Guys. This is . . . Jalen . . . he’s okay. He’s just a kid who lives in my town. Long story, but he’s okay. He’s with me.”

  “You left a kid just sitting out there in the stadium?” Foxx wrinkled his brow. “Where were you?”

  “I had to see Mr. Brenneck.”

  Foxx knit his blond eyebrows together and spoke through his teeth in a low growl. “I told you ownership is on board with what’s happening, James. You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Yager shook his head. “No, I was getting some tickets. For the game. Jalen and a friend or two. His dad is my nutritional consultant. I promised him and . . . well . . . how many times do you get to see someone go four-for-four?”

  Foxx wasn’t amused. “I can’t have this kid in Yankee Stadium, James. Not Wednesday night. Not ever.”

  “What?” Yager was stunned. “Why not?”

  Foxx spoke through his teeth again, but this time even slower. “Because we found him digging up the infield and stealing the dirt.”

  33

  YAGER BLINKED AND SNUCK QUICK glances at each of the policemen. “Wait. What? Jeffrey, you didn’t just say he stole dirt, did you?”

  “That’s exactly what he was doing.” Foxx jutted out his chin. “That dirt’s worth money. People sell that dirt on eBay. This is Yankee Stadium.”

  “I know. I’ve been playing for this team for ten years, Jeffrey.” Yager seemed to grow taller. “He’s a kid. He wanted a little dirt.”

  “When I was a kid, I wanted a little candy,” the GM said. “You think I stole it?”

  “Well, he put it back, didn’t he?” Yager threw up his hands.

  “Yes, but only because I made him, and that doesn’t change that he stole it,” Foxx said.

  Yager bit his lip, then said, “He’s my guest. I said he could have the dirt, Jeffrey, so it’s not stealing. And he put it back.”

  Jalen’s jaw went slack. He couldn’t believe that Yager had just lied to protect him.

  The two men stared each other down for a few tense moments before Yager appealed to the police. “Right, guys? Not stealing if you have permission and you put it back.”

  “Uh . . .” The policeman who had Jalen’s arm in his grip let go. “Yeah, that’d be correct.”

  “Maybe we should let you fellas work this out in private,” said the other cop.

  “Mr. Foxx?” asked the first.

  The GM held up a hand and made small brushing motions without speaking, and the police made their way toward the exit, where the squad car waited.

  “Let’s all just relax.” Yager put a hand on Jalen’s shoulder.

  The GM glared, his face the color of the police light. “Three more games with you, James. That’s all I’ve got. Then I’ll relax.”

  “Unless I go four-for-four in the next three games.” Yager smiled and gave Jalen’s shoulder a squeeze. “This kid is like a giant rabbit’s foot, Jeffrey. You may have to put up with me for quite a while yet.”

  “We’ll see about that.” The GM spun and marched toward the doors immediately beside the security desk, where the guards gawked.

  “What are you people looking at?” Foxx roared. “Get back to work!”

  34

  “C’MON, KID.” YAGER TURNED, AND Jalen followed him to the elevator they’d come up on. They got off and passed a dark-blue wall signed in silver by what looked like all the famous Yankees who’d ever put on the pinstripes. Jalen hesitated, but Yager kept going, obviously upset. They passed the clubhouse entrance and took another door leading down some stairs into the garage.

  They rode in silence until they hit the thruway, and Yager pounded a hand on the steering wheel. “That Foxx . . . dirt.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jalen said.

  “Forget it.” Yager waved his hand dismissively.

  Jalen was horrified by the small deposit of infield dirt still in his pants pocket, and he covered the very slight bulge instinctively. “Did you get the tickets?”

  Yager brightened. “Those I got. For Wednesday anyway. Four. Mr. Brenneck’s assistant is leaving them at the will call window.”

  “Four?” Jalen felt a surge of joy. “For who?”

  “Well, I figured you need an adult, so that’s Victoria. She’s going to have to bring Cat, and then I figured I might as well ask for four. One for your other little buddy.”

  “Daniel?” Jalen could only imagine his friend’s face when saw those seats.

  “Yeah, the wise guy. The ‘Do you feel old?’ guy.”

  “He didn’t mean it.”

  “Anyway, I thought it’d be better for you to have some cushion, right? Not jam you into the crowd. People on either side of you. This way, it’s less likely for anyone to figure out what we’re doing.” Yager wove the Lamborghini through traffic as he spoke. “So, we gotta figure some signals.”

  Suddenly Yager looked over at Jalen. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. How desperate am I?”

  “It’s not desperate,” Jalen said. “It’s smart. You’re using every resource available.”

  “I’m getting coaching from a twelve-year-old kid.” Yager sighed and shook his head, but then they talked about the signals they’d use for the various pitches. By the time Jalen got dropped off in front of the Silver Liner, they had it down pretty good.

  Jalen got out of the car but didn’t close the door. “You want to come in? My dad could make us something.”

  “No thanks, kid. I gotta get back. Get ready for Wednesday. Hit some balls in the cage, unless someone stole them all.” Yager gave Jalen a serious look, then cracked a smile. “If this works, I’ll not only pay your travel team fee, kid, I’ll give you every ball in that batting cage. If it works.”

  Jalen closed the door and the car rumbled off. A middle-aged couple was coming out of the diner, and the man stopped and stared at the car with his mouth open. “Was that James Yager?”

  “Yeah,” Jalen said, and he marched into the diner to help his dad, feeling incredibly proud and excited, but also scared because he wasn’t sure if they could really pull it off.

  35

  THE NEXT DAY IN SCHOOL, Daniel couldn’t stop grinning. He questioned Jalen every free minute they had—in the hallways, the lunchroom, gym class, everywhere—over and over about the exact location of their seats and what it had been like inside the locker room. It seemed to make up for the bragging they had to endure from the A’s players, who’d won the league championship the night before.

  Maybe most of all, Daniel was excited about the little bottle of dirt Jalen had given to him, explaining that it had come from the Yankees infield. Jalen had found two small empty bottles in the Silver Liner recycle bin, stripped their labels, and carefully added the dirt from his pocket before making new labels with a Sharpie: YANKEE STADIUM INFIELD.

  When he wasn’t showing it to anyone who’d look, even Chris, Daniel kept his hand clasped around the bottle in his pocket nearly the entire day. He told Jalen, “It’s like having a slice of Mount Olympus in your pocket. Like it can give you superpowers.”

  Cat remained pretty calm about the whole Yankees thing—not just the dirt, but going to the game and everything. When they were sitting in their hideaway after school, Jalen asked her why she wasn’t excited.

  “You mean you want me to be bouncing off the walls like him.” Cat nodded at Daniel, who had his baseball mitt on and was mimicking the s
pectacular plays they’d be seeing the Yankees make in the field, providing commentary all the while.

  “And JY snags a line drive. He zips it to first.” Daniel leaped and made a throwing motion as he fell in a pile of loose hay before pumping his arms in the air so they stuck up out of the hay he was buried in. “Turn two!”

  Jalen laughed. “No, but you don’t even seem happy about it.”

  “I’m just thinking,” she said, “about how this can help you.”

  “This?”

  “You’re a baseball genius, Jalen. You’re practically giving it away.” Cat picked a piece of hay out of Jalen’s hair. “I want you to get something out of it more than Yager giving you a pass for taking those baseballs and paying your registration fee from a foundation that’s supposed to do that already. Even he sees that you just took a shortcut to what his foundation is supposed to be doing.”

  “You mean he should pay me more?” Jalen asked.

  “Maybe.” She shrugged. “We’ll see. If it saves his career? Why wouldn’t he? Maybe we have you sign a contract or something. But in the meantime, I think I know what else we need to ask him to do. . . .”

  Cat jumped up off the bale of hay she’d been sitting on. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Where?” Jalen stood.

  “Next door. To Yager’s.”

  “We’re just walking up to the front door?”

  “Why not? We’re neighbors, and now we’re friends and business associates.” Cat grabbed Daniel’s hand and hauled him onto his feet. “Come on. We’re going over the wall. I want to surprise him.”

  36

  UP AND OVER THEY WENT. Cat, Daniel, and Jalen marched through the trees, crossed the creek, then walked straight across the grass to the circular driveway, past the fountain, and right up to the front door, where Cat rang the bell. The sound of the Rottweilers’ barking exploded from within, and they could hear the dogs throwing themselves at the door. Jalen and Daniel shifted uncomfortably on their feet, but Cat rang the bell again despite the dogs. Then they heard a sharp command and some more noise from inside before the door swung open.

  “What?” Yager wore jeans and a scruffy black T-shirt. He peered past them down the driveway toward his gates. “How’d you get in?”

  “Let’s not get caught up on details,” Cat said. “We have to talk. Can we come in?”

  “Can I say no?” The dogs were sitting alert, with low growls leaking from their throats.

  “Not really.” Cat smiled, moving past him into the grand entryway, ignoring the dogs. “Should we sit down?”

  “Should we?” Yager asked.

  “Let’s,” said Cat.

  JY gave a command, and the two dogs disappeared.

  “Wow.” Daniel’s eyes were the size of saucers, and he had tucked himself behind Jalen. “Are they gone now?”

  “Yeah. They won’t hurt you,” Yager said before he led them into a great room overlooking the pool and the lawn they’d crossed from Cat’s place. “Sit.”

  They sat in a row on the thick-cushioned couch, with Daniel gawking at the paintings on the walls before he pointed at the bookshelves next to a huge, empty fireplace. “You read all those?”

  Yager sat across from them in an enormous leather chair, and he looked over his shoulder and snorted. “No. They’re for show. My decorator put them there.”

  “Decorator?” Daniel’s eyebrows disappeared beneath his dark bangs. “Like a cake?”

  “No, for the house,” Yager said. “The furniture, paintings, everything. I don’t know how to do it.”

  Daniel looked around and sighed in apparent disapproval. “There’s no baseball stuff. I thought you’d have some pictures. Jalen said there were pictures.”

  Jalen felt his face flush. “That’s . . . not why we’re here.”

  “Why are you here?” Yager asked, looking at Cat.

  “Quid pro quo,” said Cat.

  “Oh, really?” Yager scratched his chin.

  “Squid?” Daniel leaned forward and stared at Cat.

  “Quid pro quo,” Cat explained to Daniel. “I do something for you, you do something for me.”

  She turned to the Yankees second baseman. “Jalen is saving your career.”

  “And I’m not pressing charges. And I’m paying the registration fee for that travel team. That’s my quid pro quo.” Yager crossed his arms like it was over.

  Cat shook her head. “Well, that’s a start, but you can do something else for him that won’t cost you anything at all. In fact, you’ll get a free meal out of it.”

  “Free meal?” Yager wrinkled his brow and kept his arms crossed.

  “Wednesday, for lunch, you go to the Silver Liner. You have lunch, whatever you like, but preferably something his dad specializes in. Maybe the stuffed calamari.” Cat threw her hands in the air. “Then, you tweet about how you love the Silver Liner and that’s where you go before a game for your lucky calamari, or chicken sandwich, or whatever. Your three million followers then see you go four-for-four, and they go bonkers and suddenly everyone has to go to the Silver Liner for that famous calamari or whatever. Get it?”

  A wave of excitement washed over Jalen.

  He got it, but Yager was frowning.

  37

  IT WAS SO QUIET THEY could hear the birds twittering outside in the spring sunshine. It was a beautiful day, but Yager looked like a cloudburst.

  “Like I said”—Yager was speaking to Jalen now—“I’m cutting you a break no matter what. That’s my part. But . . . if this works? My foundation will pick up the travel team bill and I’ll do the tweet. If it doesn’t work? Well, then you got lucky to stay out of jail, and I’m going to buy a beach house on Nantucket or something. I decided against Tahiti.”

  “Why do you even say that?” Cat asked. “Jalen showed you he can do it. And if you tweet before it happens, then it’ll be viral! Imagine it. . . .”

  “I don’t endorse things on Twitter,” Yager said.

  “Which is why it’d be so valuable,” Cat countered. “Why we want it.”

  Jalen felt like they’d crossed a line, and he wanted to tell Cat to settle down, but he knew her well enough to know that there was no stopping her. And if it did work? He could only imagine what it would do for his father. Cat was brilliant.

  “Look,” Yager said, “this whole thing is crazy, but I’m at the end of my rope, and obviously I’ll try anything. It could be a parlor trick or luck or I don’t know what, but if Jalen can really tell me the pitches before they come, it’ll be money. We still don’t know if this can work, though, and we’ve got Jeffrey Foxx out there, who’ll be doing everything he can to spoil it. So . . . if it works, then I’ll tweet about the Silver Liner.”

  Cat and Yager stared each other down until Cat shrugged and, sounding cheery, said, “Okay, deal. Jalen is gonna show you. Oh, and you will eat there Wednesday and take the picture so you can tweet right after the game and people can see where your luck came from.”

  “From the calamari?” Yager was stone-faced.

  “From the DeLucas,” Cat said. “Jalen, his dad, the calamari. What’s the diff? Oh, and we might have to talk about a contract if this works and you want Jalen to keep being your baseball genius. The first few weeks for letting him off, the Rockets’ fee, and doing the tweet settles the score, but after that we need to negotiate in good faith. Just letting you know.”

  Yager couldn’t help cracking a smile. “You should be an agent, you know that?”

  “It’s one of the possible things I’m thinking about,” Cat said. “That or a talk show host or maybe president.”

  “That too,” Yager said, standing.

  Before Jalen could stop him, Daniel had his bottle of Yankee Stadium dirt out of his pocket, and he held it out to JY. “Would you mind signing this?”

  Yager looked surprised, but he took the dirt before looking at Jalen. “Is this from the stadium?”

  Jalen was horrified, but he whispered, “Yes. There was a little bit
left in my pocket when I got home.”

  “Cat has one too!” Daniel blurted out.

  Cat shot a scowl at Daniel.

  To Jalen’s surprise, Yager laughed and got a Sharpie from his kitchen, signing Daniel’s bottle as well as Cat’s, before saying, “The other thing we are going to do is keep all this quiet. Not the bottle of dirt, I mean Jalen. No newspaper reporters. No blogs. No tweeting about a baseball genius. Just some good old lucky calamari. The rest of this stays between us. Got it? I do not want Foxx to think this is some circus trick. He and the owner need to believe this comeback is all about me. That way they’ll extend my contract, and I’ll have a cushion.”

  Yager looked around with a hard stare, but when they all nodded, his face softened and he said, “Hey, I was about to hit a few balls. If you guys want, you can take a few swings. Interested?”

  Daniel beamed. “You bet!”

  “Sure.” Jalen felt reluctant to return to the scene of his crime, but he couldn’t resist the offer.

  The Yankees star loosened up more after hitting, and he gave them both pointers that they had fresh in their minds when they showed up for their first Rockets practice that evening at the town field. Yager had Jalen lower his shoulder, and it really seemed to even out his swing. Yager had Daniel bring his bat back just a bit, and Daniel swore he could feel the added power.

  Excited and ready, the two friends showed up at practice with dreams of greatness that were quickly dampened by their new teammates. The other boys all wore slick Nike gear. They had leather batting gloves, and their names were stitched into their fancy new bat bags. Except for a derisive snort from Chris Gamble, Jalen and Daniel were universally ignored, so they paired off and warmed up their arms alone until Coach Gamble blasted his whistle, bringing them all in around home plate.

  The coach wore a red Rockets hat and hoodie, and cargo shorts that exposed a thick pair of legs so hairy that it almost looked like he was wearing really long socks. His big hands held a clipboard. A pen was behind his ear.