by Tim Green
Jalen’s skin felt too tight. He needed to move. He had to get up. “Excuse me,” he said.
“Are you okay?” Cat asked.
“Fine. I’ll be right back.” Jalen removed his sunglasses, then slipped past them and up the stairs. He found his way back to the VIP Club buffet. Food was still piled high, but only a few people remained, eating and watching the game on one of several big screens. Everything was fancy and nice. Mirrors lined the walls, silver gleamed everywhere. Jalen would have felt more at home on the moon. His eyes fell on the exit. His father had put a rumpled twenty-dollar bill into Jalen’s pocket. He couldn’t help thinking he could use it to take the subway and then a train back to Rockton.
Yager wasn’t really going to have him arrested for stealing.
He knew that deep down. Too much time had passed.
“Can I get you something?” someone with a deep southern accent was asking.
Jalen turned. A big, thickset old man wearing a tall paper hat held a carving knife above a gently steaming prime rib.
“Uh, no,” Jalen said. “I’m not hungry.”
“Are you sick?” The man’s kind eyes, like his skin, were the color of coffee, and tufts of cottony white hair peeked out from the edges of the hat band.
“No.” Jalen was sick, but not in the way the man was asking.
“Already ate?” He smiled, revealing bright-white teeth.
“No.”
“Piece of prime rib on one of these rolls with some dripping sauce might cheer you up. It’s what I always loved about makin’ food for folks.” His voice reminded Jalen of distant thunder, low and gentle.
Jalen looked at the rolls. They were small and soft for making sliders. “They shouldn’t have cut those. They dry out when you cut them.”
The man squinted at the rolls. “Exactly what I said! How do you know about rolls?”
“My dad is a cook. I help in his restaurant. For about another week anyway.” Jalen knew he sounded glum, and he wanted to explain. “Until the bank takes it.”
The man chuckled and smiled warmly at him. “Well, there’s always someone with problems worse than yours. Don’t ever forget that.”
“Like what?” The question popped out. Jalen glared and wondered how a complete stranger could have read him so easily.
The man’s eyes sparkled, then dimmed. He got a faraway look, and his mouth fell. “Like me . . . lost my restaurant too. Rib shack. Not enough insurance. Whoever hears about fires anymore? Then I lost my wife.” The man sighed. “And my little girl.”
He began to shave some meat off the roast with his carving knife, catching the pink slice on the bottom half of a roll. “Now I serve the food other people cook, and they don’t have the sense to know you shouldn’t cut rolls until you’re ready to eat ’em.”
The man’s grumpy frown faded. His eyes brightened again and he smiled as he handed Jalen the sandwich. “Try this anyway. You don’t usually get everything the way you want it, but if you stop enjoying the good things you do get, you’ve got no more sense than a pickle.”
Jalen took the sandwich and bit into it to be polite. The prime rib melted in his mouth, filling it with delicious juices that made him take another bite.
“Fought that fire with a garden hose,” the man said, “hoping for the trucks to get there in time. See, if you do everything you can, it lets you sleep at night, no matter how things turn out. Some things are bigger than we are. A lot of things, it turns out.”
Jalen blinked at the man, wondering if he knew about Jalen the way Jalen knew about pitches, that he had some instinct that told him Jalen was on the verge of quitting.
Jalen took a deep breath and let it out slow.
The old man studied him and smiled. “I’ll be here all the way up until nine if you find you’d like another of those.”
“Thank you, Mr. . . .”
The man smiled. “Moses, but no mister stuff. People call me just Moses.”
“Thank you, Mr. . . . Moses. I can’t call you just Moses, Mr. Moses.”
“Well, okay, but you eat that, then.” Mr. Moses pointed with his carving knife.
Jalen tucked the rest of the slider in his mouth and wiped his fingers and lips on a napkin. He gave Moses a final salute and a smile, then returned to his seat.
“Tanaka’s on fire.” Daniel leaned across him to fist-bump Cat. “Another K, and Garcia grounded out.”
Jalen fist-bumped Daniel as well, feeling better, feeling excited. He didn’t know if it was the warm sandwich in his belly or the man’s words in his head, but he knew he could do this. He wasn’t going to look back one day and wonder. He wasn’t going to run. He took out the sunglasses and put them on.
Ramírez punched a line drive into the 5-6 hole for a single, but Tanaka struck out Avila, ending the side. The Yankees jogged briskly to the dugout. Yager was still grim-faced, serious to the point of anger. He swapped out his glove for a bat and a helmet and quickly loaded the bat, taking a couple of swings as he watched Holton warming up.
Yager didn’t look at Jalen until he rounded the plate and stopped outside the batter’s box for a last practice swing.
Jalen gave him a nod, then shifted his attention to Holton. He focused as hard as he could on the tall, birdlike pitcher, telling himself again that he could do this.
He felt Cat’s hand on his arm. “Do you see it?” she whispered.
Jalen didn’t reply, but he held up four fingers.
Yager saw him and stepped into the box.
Jalen clenched his teeth.
50
YAGER SWUNG FOR THE FENCES.
The ball popped up foul into the stands behind the visitor’s dugout.
Yager crouched to retie his shoelace and snuck a glance at Jalen. Jalen flicked his eyes on the pitcher to be sure before holding up four fingers again. Yager’s expression narrowed, as if in doubt, but he gave the slightest of nods and got into his stance.
Holton wound up and threw another four-seam fastball, but too far outside to swing. Jalen watched Holton wipe his thin red beard against his jersey and adjust his cap. He shook off the signal from the catcher. Jalen removed his glasses to make eye contact with Yager. Then he made a throat-cutting motion, because Holton was going after Yager with that nasty slider, a pitch that would break down and in on Yager, the toughest pitch for him to hit.
Jalen returned the glasses to his face. Yager took another practice swing, then a big, deep breath before stepping into the box.
“Jalen, you’re hurting me.” Cat pried his fingers off her knee.
“Sorry. It’s that slider.”
“Oh no,” Cat said.
“What?” Daniel leaned into Jalen’s face. “What’s going on?”
“Just watch,” Cat said.
Holton wound up and threw the slider. Yager swung and ripped it right over the pitcher’s head. He took off for first. The center fielder played it on the bounce before tossing it to second base. JY was on, though. The crowd roared, and Jalen wondered if it was extra loud because of all the rumors that this was the end for the Yankees star who had helped deliver the 2009 World Championship to the hungry New York fans.
Jalen exhaled and sat back in his seat. Daniel pounded him on the back, and Cat kissed his cheek before clapping wildly. No one noticed, because the whole crowd was buzzing. Yager never looked back at Jalen from his spot on the first-base bag. It disappointed Jalen, but he reminded himself that he was there to do a job, and that job wasn’t over. Yager would have two or maybe three more at bats, and he already knew Yager wasn’t going to send the tweet that would save the Silver Liner unless he was a hundred percent.
The inning ended without a Yankees score. Jalen spent the next several innings studying and thinking about the Sox pitcher so hard that the three runs scored by the White Sox offense—two on a Todd Frazier homer—barely registered in his brain.
He could only think about Yager’s next at bat.
When that chance finally came in the fifth, Jal
en was trembling. He signaled fastball for the first pitch. The fastball came in low and inside. Yager swung and missed. Jalen watched and signaled for a second fastball. Yager swung early and pulled it foul. With an 0–2 count, Yager’s face turned sour. His look seemed to blame Jalen.
Jalen ignored that. He studied the pitcher and gave Yager two thumbs-up, the signal for a changeup—a pitch thrown like a fastball but traveling slow enough to disrupt a player’s timing. It was a pitch Yager could slam if he knew it was coming, and—if he trusted in Jalen—he knew it now.
Holton wound up and threw.
In it came, slow and fat.
51
YAGER BLASTED IT FAIR DOWN the left field line.
Every fan in the stadium jumped up and cheered as Yager made it safely to second.
Didi Gregorius advanced him to third with a sacrifice before Ellsbury knocked the aging star in, making the score Yankees 2, White Sox 3 and bringing the crowd to its feet again. Even though Holton began to weaken after that, he got out of the fifth and sixth innings without another run.
When Holton threw three wild pitches in a row and walked Yager in the seventh with one out and a 3–2 lead, the White Sox pulled their ace and sent Zach Duke to the hill, and Jalen had to reset his mind.
“What’s it mean?” Daniel asked.
Jalen chewed his lip. “A lot of nasty action. This guy’s a sidearmed lefty who gave up his fastball about eight years ago.”
Looking up his stats on her iPhone, Cat chimed in, “He used to be a starting pitcher. He was okay, but as a relief pitcher, he’s money. Lefties against him are below .200, and righties don’t do much better.”
They watched it come true as Duke sat the last two batters in the Yankees lineup with just nine pitches. Jalen called the final two correctly, a cutter and a sinker, but he worried about Yager getting a hit with the filthy pitches Duke was sending across the plate.
Then a ray of hope struck him. If Duke could shut down the next six batters, Yager would have had a perfect night. But Jalen couldn’t count on that. Just one walk or hit meant Yager would have to get by Duke, and Jalen had no idea if JY could do that, even if he did know what pitch was coming.
It felt wrong to root against his team, but Jalen couldn’t help it. He’d rather save his dad’s restaurant than have the Yankees win a single game out of 162. Still, it made him quiet, and Daniel’s groaning in the bottom of the eighth as Hall grounded out again annoyed him. He stayed silent, though.
“What’s wrong?” Cat asked.
Jalen shrugged. “Nothing.”
“I know you better than that,” she said.
Daniel excused himself to use the restroom. Cat gave Jalen a poke in the arm.
Jalen sighed and admitted to her that he hoped Yager wouldn’t get up again, even though it meant the Yankees would lose.
Cat nodded. “I get it, but you’re wrong.”
“I know. It’s awful. Who roots against his own team?”
“No, not because you’re rooting against the Yankees,” she said. “You’re wrong because you can do this. I know you can. Stop doubting.”
“You’re right,” Jalen said, then told her the story about Mr. Moses, the server in the VIP Club dining room who’d used a garden hose to try to stop a fire.
“That’s right,” Cat said. “Even if it doesn’t work—which it will—you have to do everything you possibly can. That’s all you can ever do, Jalen.”
Daniel returned and sat down, out of breath. “I hurried back,” he explained. “When I’m watching, it counts. I was watching the game last week on TV with my dad, and I went out of the room for five minutes to make a sandwich. In that time the Yanks had two errors, the Orioles scored three runs, and the Yankees lost 5–4.”
“What does that even prove?” Cat wrinkled her face.
“Proves when I’m rooting, that wouldn’t have happened.” Daniel ignored her and turned his attention to the field, as if he’d just recited some gospel.
Bryan Mitchell had taken over on the Yankees mound for Tanaka in the seventh and had a good run shutting down the White Sox through the eighth. When he gave up a walk, a single, and another walk, loading the bases with just one out, Girardi came out of the dugout, walked to the mound, and took the ball, signaling for Dellin Betances. The sleepy crowd came to life.
For a few moments, Jalen forgot his problems, lost in the wonder and excitement of Betances’s fastball and curve mix. The White Sox players swung and missed, swung and missed. With the third strikeout, the roar was deafening. Daniel jumped up and spilled his smoothie all over the wall in front of them. The four of them—even Cat’s mom—high-fived one another and everyone around them.
The Yankees dashed into the dugout, ready for a last-inning rally.
Jalen knew what it meant. If they got their rally, and even a single runner got on, he and Yager would be put to the test. But instead of feeling nervous, Jalen was excited. He wanted to be a big-league player himself one day and maybe help win a game like this. Night had closed in around the packed stadium, and the glow of the lights holding back the black, empty sky made it feel like they could all be the last people on the planet, captured in a bubble of time and space where nothing else mattered.
What had Jeter told him?
Have fun.
Jalen shivered with the thrill of knowing that he might have a hand in a big-league win. If he did, and Yager was in the spotlight, batting four-for-four and saving the game, how much better would that make Yager’s tweet? What bank would dare shut down Fabio DeLuca’s Silver Liner Diner after it won a game for the Bronx Bombers?
In that moment Jalen wished he could help not just James Yager, but the entire team. What could Tollerson, Hutt, and Joe Ros do if they knew what pitches a Robertson was about to throw? He cleared his mind of that thought, though. That was for another day. Now he had to hope and pray that one of the three Yankee players batting before Yager could get on base.
That was all he and the Yankees needed.
52
TYLER HUTT DID IT.
With a 3–2 count, he jacked one deep into right field, where a fielding error turned a double into a triple.
Duke squinted at the tying run on third, then shook it off and sat Joe Ros before looking at James Yager the way a cat counts canaries. Despite a good night, Yager’s recent batting average said his time had passed, and Duke was in his prime as a closer.
The crowd jumped to its feet, and waves of cheering rolled down onto the field. Yager looked back at the first row of seats, not at Jalen, but at Cat and her mom, giving them a wink. He marched to the plate, took two swings, and looked Jalen’s way.
Jalen gave the signal for a fastball.
Yager stepped up. In came the fastball. Yager nicked it foul into the backstop and stepped back.
Jalen watched Duke, knowing he was going to throw another fastball but wanting to be sure. He signaled four fingers, and Yager stepped up. This time he whiffed, and the crowd felt it. The roar dulled, but then rebounded and grew again, this time hopeful.
Duke fought back a grin at the 0–2 count. He was noticeably confident that he could get out of the jam. Too disrespectful after Yager’s recent slide.
Jalen’s gut tightened. Everything said sinker, but Duke almost never threw his sinker. The percentage of sinkers he threw was in the single digits. It couldn’t be a sinker, but it was. Jalen just knew it, and he gave the thumbs-down. Yager stepped toward the plate but froze midstep and backed away, signaling the umpire that he needed another moment. The ump glared, then after a moment called him up. Yager stared hard at Jalen.
“Let’s go!” shouted the ump.
Jalen shook from the inside out but signaled thumbs-down again and pushed his hand toward Yager with a short, hard nod. Yager closed his eyes briefly, took a deep breath, and stepped into the box.
Duke wound up.
In it came.
Yager took an uppercut swing for the fences.
53
YAGER HIT IT ON THE sweet spot.
It was a moon shot, Yager’s first that season, a big, long, game-winning home run.
The crowd lost its mind.
Cat and her mom lost their minds.
Daniel lost his mind.
Jalen lost his breath and a buzz filled his brain. He was floating.
And then something happened that no one expected. Yager crossed home plate under the thunder of applause and waded through the backslapping mayhem of his teammates, only to appear at the wall, reach over, and hug Jalen DeLuca like his long-lost little brother.
It was a mistake they’d all soon regret.
54
YAGER BLURTED OUT THAT HE’D meet them at the diner, then disappeared into the Yankees dugout with the jubilant team. Jalen and his friends grinned at one another and chattered with excitement, standing at their seats as they waited for the crowd above them to clear.
“Excuse me!”
Jalen turned and saw a young blond woman with a microphone and a cameraman in tow. He froze.
“Hi!” The woman was at the wall now, pretty and bubbly and shoving the microphone in front of Jalen. “Wow, some win, huh? And that hug JY gave you . . . what was that all about?”
“Uh . . .” Jalen had no idea what to say. He looked at Cat for help, but she was frozen too. Jalen thought maybe the woman would go away if he said nothing, but that didn’t happen.
“Do you know JY?” she asked, pushing.
“Yes.”
“A nephew or a cousin or something?” the reporter asked.
“I . . . I help him.” The moment he said it, Jalen knew it was wrong, not wrong factually, but the wrong thing to say with a TV camera pointed at you.
Cat stepped in. “Jalen is JY’s lucky charm. Really, it’s the food at his dad’s diner that did it.”
“The . . . food?” The reporter looked to Cat’s mom for signs of a joke but saw none. “So, tell me more.”
Jalen felt relieved. Cat had saved him. He knew how mad Yager would be if Jalen blabbed about being a baseball genius. Yager had told him specifically that he didn’t want the GM or Yankees’ owner to think his comeback was a trick. Jalen wasn’t sure how he felt about that, being considered a trick, but things were going too well to mess them up with some reporter.