The Batboy

by Mike Lupica

  If they could manage all that, then they would be on their way to the state tournament.

  Yet the dream was off to a slow start. It’s impossible to hit home runs while sitting on the bench, and that’s exactly where Hank Bishop found himself the first three games against the Twins. He didn’t get a single at-bat as the Twins took two of the first three games. Today they would play one of those rare weekday afternoon games before hitting the road—a “getaway” game, as it was known. Assuming the rain held off, that is. The skies around Comerica were dark and heavy.

  Brian was talking about all this with his mom on their way to Comerica Monday afternoon.

  “Doesn’t the manager know about the batting tip you gave Hank?” his mom said. She was smiling. “The one that’s going to change the course of civilization?”

  “Funny, Mom. Good one. I should have gone right into Davey’s office yesterday when I saw that he hadn’t written Hank’s name into the batting order yet again. Set him straight.”

  They were a few minutes from the ballpark, Brian thinking that there were only a handful of these rides left for them. And this one was even more special than usual because Liz Dudley was actually coming to the game.

  And today, Brian had a feeling, Hank Bishop would finally be back in the lineup. The Twins were pitching a young right-hander named Kevin Cross, a kid with a 97-mile-an-hour heater. Even hitters completely on their game had difficulty catching up with this guy’s fastball. Yet Brian knew that Davey wasn’t about to deprive Hank, and all the local fans and media, one last chance at seeing number 500 hit at home.

  So when Brian had called Mr. S. to see if his mom could buy a ticket to today’s game, Mr. S. had told him, “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll set her up with a great seat.”

  It was the first time in years that Brian’s mom would be going to a big-league game. Brian hoped it would be a day neither of them would ever forget.

  “Today’s the day,” Brian said to Finn as they went through their daily checklist of items in the dugout, making sure they hadn’t forgotten anything. Even though by now they never forgot anything.

  “For number 500 you mean?”

  Brian nodded.

  “Let me get this straight,” Finn said. “You’re calling his shot?”

  “Something like that.”

  They went back to organizing then, checking things off one by one on Finn’s list: gum, Gatorade, water, sunflower seeds, towels, bats, helmets, rosin bags, bat rings. Brian lined up the trays of gum, making sure sugarless was right behind where Davey Schofield sat, Davey sometimes going through half a tray of gum all by himself before the game was over. In the old days, Mr. Schenkel said, before the Tigers’ manager got what Mr. S. called “religion” on living a healthier life, he used to chew tobacco. Now he chomped away, all game long, on sugarless gum.

  “You’re saying today’s the day,” Finn said, “even though your guy has gone, like, 2-for-August so far?”

  “I know his stats,” Brian said. “But what they don’t tell you is that he’s got his stroke back.”

  “And you know this . . . how?”

  “Batting practice.”

  “We barely even watched batting practice today.”

  “I’m just sayin’.”

  Finn stared at him. “You’ve got that look.”

  “What look?”

  Finn said, “What do you know that I don’t?”

  Brian grinned. “Dude, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  One thing Brian knew was where his mom was sitting. Mr. S. had come through big time, getting her a seat behind home plate. Her view today would be almost as good as Brian’s.

  Brian knew Hank hitting his 500th home run would have been a much bigger deal once. If it had happened when it was supposed to, when he was younger. If he’d never used steroids and never been suspended. If some of the other steroid guys hadn’t treated 500 home runs like some sort of speed bump to even bigger numbers.

  But even with all that, it was still huge for Brian Dudley. And he knew it was huge for Hank, even if he kept saying that his comeback wasn’t about the numbers.

  Right before the first pitch, setting up his folding chair in its usual spot, Brian looked up into the seats behind the home-plate screen. There was his mom, wearing a Tigers cap she must have bought. She waved at him, smiling.

  Brian smiled back and shook his head. His mom at a Tigers game. His mom wanting to be at a Tigers game. And now his mom gearing up.

  Compared with the improbability of all that, Hank hitting one historic home run tonight actually seemed like cake.

  Kevin Cross had won fourteen games already and was the clear front-runner to be Rookie of the Year in the American League. Not only did he throw pure gas, but he also had a hard sinker that most batters couldn’t pick up until it was too late. That sinker was his strikeout pitch, and he’d made many All-Stars look foolish already, flailing off balance at a ball that usually hit the catcher’s mitt only an inch above the dirt.

  Eventually, hitters would see him enough—in person and on film—to figure him out. Yet for now, no one was happy to be facing him.

  Brian saw Hank for only a minute in the clubhouse before the game, stopping by his locker just long enough to wish him luck.

  “Hey, Coach,” Hank said.

  He put out his fist. Brian gently pounded it.

  Brian said, “I’m just one more guy rooting for you today.”

  “Root hard,” Hank said.

  “I always have,” Brian said.

  Hank got his first shot at Kevin Cross in the bottom of the first inning, Willie on second and Curtis Keller on first with two outs.

  Now, Brian thought. Pounce on this guy early, before he gets too comfortable on the mound.

  Get it out of the way right stinking now.

  The crowd wound up being a sellout, and as Hank stepped into the batter’s box, there were cameras clicking everywhere, as if the thunderstorm that was threatening had already begun and lightning strikes were hitting Comerica.

  Brian leaned forward in his chair and stared as Hank carefully set his hands. He cocked them on his right hip the way he had that night at Royal Oak, the way he did in the old video. Didn’t even take a practice swing.

  Just stood there, waiting, still as a statue.

  Now.

  Baseball announcers liked to say that if you were lucky, you got one pitch to hit every at-bat. Hank got his with the count 2-2. The scoreboard listed the speed of every pitch, and the one before it had been 95 miles an hour. The scoreboard said it was a “fastball” even though Brian knew it had been Kevin Cross’ sinker. Impossible to hit.

  Now Cross threw that pitch again, only without nearly enough sink on it this time. Hank was sitting on it, knowing what was coming.

  And he missed it.

  Didn’t miss it entirely. He still got good wood on it. Yet he missed it by the amazingly small distance between the sweet spot and the end of the bat, the distance in baseball that changed a home run into a routine fly ball to left.

  Hank ran the ball out, knowing it didn’t have the legs to leave the park before the fans did, their sudden cheer bursting like a roll of thunder as the ball left Hank’s bat. When the ball landed harmlessly in the glove of the Twins’ left fielder and the bottom of the first was over, Hank ran back across the infield. Brian had already collected his bat. They met at the dugout steps.

  Hank was the one who spoke.

  “No worries, it wasn’t the swing,” he said to Brian in a quiet voice. “I was just a little over-anxious.”

  Brian laughed. “Well, I was a lot over-anxious.”

  Hank gently took the bat from him, went walking down the steps with it, Brian knowing he was on his way to the indoor cage.

  His next turn at bat came in the bottom of the fourth. By this point Cross had settled in and was throwing bullets. Hank struck out swinging on three pitches—good morning, good afternoon, and good night.

  The way the rookie wa
s pitching, Hank would get only two more at-bats. The game was an old-fashioned pitching duel, the Twins up 1-0 through four innings, having scored their lone run on a home run in the top of the second. Both pitchers seemed to be growing stronger as the game went on.

  The rain, meanwhile, was holding off despite the ever-looming threat. Time was running out with every pitch, and the fans could sense it.

  Hank came up to bat again in the bottom of the sixth with two men out, the Tigers still trailing 1-0. Maybe Hank sensed time running out, too, because he swung at the first pitch. He got the barrel of the bat around late against Cross’ fastball, grounding it weakly to the Twins’ shortstop.

  Inning over.

  The Twins’ second baseman led off the seventh with a single and advanced to second on a ground out to the right side of the infield. The way the Twins’ rookie pitcher was throwing, Brian knew the Tigers couldn’t allow another run.

  Sure enough, out walked Davey Schofield, signaling to a lefty in the Tigers’ bullpen. The Twins’ cleanup hitter was due up next, and he had a habit of feasting on tired pitchers. Davey wanted a fresh arm to get the Tigers out of this inning.

  The move worked. The next two batters, each free-swinging lefties, were retired on only five pitches.

  Neither team advanced a runner beyond first base over the next two innings.

  Now it was the bottom of the ninth inning. Hank, due up second, walked to the on-deck circle. The wind was blowing in hard now, holding up any ball hit to the outfield. The rain, just a threat before, was finally starting to fall. Yet no one, not even the umpires, wanted to halt this game where it was.

  Brian sneaked a glance at Hank’s face. He couldn’t read Hank’s expression, which was as serious as ever. Brian wondered what he was thinking.

  The Tigers’ cleanup hitter led off and watched as the first two pitches were delivered low. Two balls, no strikes. It was the first time since the fifth inning that Cross had fallen behind a hitter. Could he be tiring? Brian thought.

  The next pitch, a 96-mile-per-hour fastball on the inside corner, answered that question. Strike one.

  The pitch after looked pretty much the same, and the Tigers’ hitter fouled it behind home plate. The count was 2-2.

  Here comes the sinker, Brian thought. Lay off it.

  The hitter did. Twice.

  A walk.

  That brought up Hank with a runner on first.

  Would Davey let him hit? Or bring in a pinch hitter?

  If Hank was wondering the same thing, he never showed it, just walked slowly to the batter’s box, the wind and the rain coming at him just a little harder now.

  The crowd rose as if on cue, the sudden ovation filling the stadium, as if everyone wanted the Bishop of Baseball to know they still believed in him.

  Brian looked up at his mom. She was standing like everyone else, cupping her hands to her mouth and shouting encouragement to Hank, words that were carried away with the wind and energy of the moment.

  The Twins’ closer had been warming up in the bullpen, but their manager left in the rookie to finish what he had started, the ultimate battle of youth versus experience.

  Hank stepped in. Took a deep breath. Set his hands again. Stared out at Kevin Cross, oblivious to the flashbulbs going off yet again.

  This was the best of baseball, Brian knew, whether a guy was trying to hit a milestone home run or not. This was the whole thing: pitcher against hitter. This pitcher’s best stuff against whatever best Hank still had in him.

  Neither one of them knowing how it was all going to come out.

  Cross reared back and blew a high fastball right past Hank, the ball smacking the glove of the Twins’ catcher before Hank had even finished his swing.

  Now, Brian thought again. You can’t let him get to his sinker. You’ve got to catch up with his fastball.

  Yet Brian had just seen: Hank couldn’t catch up with Cross’ fastball. You couldn’t will things to happen in sports, no matter how hard you tried, no matter what kind of magical powers you thought you had as a fan.

  Brian put his head down and thought, Maybe next game.

  If there was a next game for Hank Bishop.

  He didn’t keep his head down long. Good thing. If he had, he wouldn’t have seen the picture-perfect swing Hank Bishop put on the 0-1 fastball from Kevin Cross.

  Brian would have heard it, though.

  And would have known.

  Sometimes you could hear wrong. Sometimes you thought a guy had caught one and he hadn’t. Sometimes the ball didn’t have the legs or the elevation, or the wind would knock it down.

  Not this time.

  Not today.

  This baby was on its way to dead center and on its way out of Comerica, leaving the big field here as easily as balls had left the field at Royal Oak last Sunday night.

  Brian was standing now in front of his chair, the way Davey and the guys in the dugout were standing on the front step, watching the flight of the ball, watching Darby Kellogg, the Twins’ center fielder, finally stop running and just watch as Hank Bishop’s 500th cleared the wind and the rain and center-field wall.

  By a ton.

  A two-run walk-off home run that proved the Bishop of Baseball still had it.

  Now the sound of Comerica was deafening and the lights this time were coming from the scoreboard as it kept flashing “500” over and over again. The sound system cranked out “Glory Days” from Bruce Springsteen so big and loud that Brian was sure they could hear Bruce and the band in Canada.

  Hank made his way around the bases, carried by the music and the noise and number 500, and the Tigers were all up and out of the dugout, waiting for him at home plate as if he’d just hit a home run to win the World Series instead of an August afternoon game.

  Brian quickly took his eyes off the field because somehow he knew his mom’s were on him. Could feel them. He turned and there she was, smiling like she was the happiest kid in the ballpark. Like she was the kid who used to sit in Section 135 when Hank was young.

  Hank reached home plate and seemed to be high-fiving the whole Tigers team at once. Springsteen was still singing. Comerica was crazier than ever, no one in the mood to leave just yet. Hank finally came out of the crowd of his teammates, a few feet from home plate, stopped and pointed to all corners of the ballpark.

  While all that was going on, Brian sneaked around the celebration, picked up Hank’s maple bat in the grass on the Twins’ side of Comerica, and ran back with it to his spot near the dugout.

  That’s where he was when Hank broke away from Willie Vazquez and Curtis Keller and Mike Parilli and Rudy Tavarez and walked over to him.

  As if it were just the two of them.

  Hank Bishop smiled now, as if the last part of the celebration was the most important of all, and he reached out with his fist.

  Brian smiled back, and put out his own right hand. The two of them pounded fist in front of the whole place, Brian feeling as if he and Hank were sharing this moment in front of the entire baseball world.

  “Thanks,” Hank said.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Brian said.

  “You did a lot,” Hank said. “You showed me how to love baseball again. And reminded me why I loved it in the first place.”

  Brian’s answer was to hand him the bat.

  “I guess this belongs to the Hall of Fame now,” he said.

  Hank Bishop shook his head, handed it back to him.

  “No, kid,” he said. “It belongs to you.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The Sting won their semifinal game against Clarkson on Thursday night, the same night Brian came home to find out Hank had hit two more home runs, numbers 501 and 502, against the Indians in Cleveland, giving the Tigers a one-game lead over the Indians in the Central Division.

  Brian had two solid hits against Clarkson. The second was a single with the bases loaded in the fifth as the Sting scored five and blew the game wide open and made Coach Johnson’s pitching gamble—not star
ting Kenny Griffin—pay off.

  Even though it was now a one-game season, he had started Brendan DePonte against Clarkson, wanting to save Kenny for the finals. Before the game Brian had been sitting with Coach the way he always did, the two of them watching the other team warm up, Coach explaining any changes he’d made in the batting order, just because he knew Brian cared. Because he knew Brian didn’t just like to play the games, but wanted to coach them, too.

  Without being asked, Coach Johnson had said, “Just so you know? I’m pitching Brendan because he’s supposed to pitch the semis and Kenny is supposed to pitch the finals.”

  As if that explained everything.

  “I’d do the same,” Brian had said. “Clarkson’s not as good as either Motor City or Birmingham, anyway.”

  Coach Johnson had nodded. “Brendan will win tonight and Kenny will win Saturday night and then we’ll go to the states and figure out a way to win there.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Brian had said. “To get to Saturday night and not have the ball in Kenny Griffin’s hand would be dumber than rocks.”

  Brendan gave up two runs in six innings before Will Coben finished up. Motor City beat Birmingham in the second semifinal. So the finals were set: the Sting versus the Hit Dogs, Saturday night at Royal Oak. Same place where Kenny had pitched to Hank the other night with Brian in the outfield running down balls.

  Only this time it was all for real.

  “Pitching to Hank was pretty great, don’t get me wrong,” Kenny said after they finished their warm-ups before the final as he and Brian sat in the grass behind their bench. “But this is better.”

  They were still at least twenty minutes from the first pitch. But the bleachers, on both sides of the field, were nearly full already.

  “This is where you’re supposed to be,” Brian said. “Zackly where you’re supposed to be, as Willie Vazquez would say.”

  “It’s where we’re supposed to be,” Kenny said. “Dude, we are a team. Now more than ever.”