Hothead

by Cal Ripken Jr.

  It was twilight now. Upstairs, a light winked on in his parents’ bedroom. It was his mom—she must have just come home from work.

  Still, Connor didn’t stop. Up-down, up-down, up-down as he tried to block out thoughts. Jerkwad…why’d I…wish I’d …Ten more minutes, then twelve, then fifteen.

  Finally, he slumped to the ground in exhaustion, his chest heaving, his shoulders aching, the sweat glistening on his face.

  He felt better, he decided. But only in the way you’d feel better if someone was whacking you with a stick and they finally stopped.

  Now there was no doubt: one more blowup, and Coach would kick him off the team. For good.

  Three days later, the York Middle School cafeteria was even noisier than usual, with students talking excitedly, trays clattering, and a group of girls in one corner belting out the new Taylor Swift song as a teacher tried to shush them.

  When Connor got to the lunch table, he found Jordy and Willie engaged in a favorite pastime: pretending to interview each other. The object was to cram in as many sports clichés as possible, just the way the major leaguers did when they were interviewed after a game. Jordy was using a plastic spoon as his fake microphone, and Willie was nodding earnestly with each answer.

  “Willie, that was a breakout game for you against the Red Sox….”

  “Yeah, I’m seeing the ball real well, Jordy.”

  “Talk about that hit you had off Billy Burrell in the sixth inning.”

  “Well, I’m just trying to help the ballclub any way I can.”

  “You guys have a huge game coming up against the Yankees.”

  “Well, we play ’em one at a time, Jordy. But there’s no quit in this team. We definitely plan to take care of business.”

  “What exactly does all that mean, Willie?”

  “It is what it is, Jordy. I’m just happy to be here.”

  Connor laughed—it felt like the first time he had laughed in days. He opened a brown paper bag and pulled out the lunch his mom had packed: chicken sandwich, potato chips, apple, bottled water, and a half-dozen Oreos, the most perfect cookie known to humankind.

  “Look who’s here,” Willie said. “Mr. Short Fuse himself.”

  “Mr. Ticking Time Bomb,” Jordy added.

  “Nope,” Connor said, “I’m a new man. Mr. Calm. Mr. Cool.” He tossed a couple of Oreos to Willie. “Here, you’ll just bug me for these anyway.”

  Willie smiled and began happily devouring the cookies.

  You want a kid to shut up, Connor thought, give him Oreos. Works every time.

  Actually, Connor wasn’t feeling like Mr. Calm at all—more like Mr. Stressed Out or Mr. Hair-on-Fire.

  The night before, he had overheard his mom and dad talking in the kitchen. The conversation had started as a low murmur, but soon grew more animated, their voices rising. Apparently, this was about their monthly mortgage payment. Connor wasn’t exactly sure what a monthly mortgage payment was. Something you paid to live where they lived? But as he stood at the top of the stairs, he could tell how worried they were.

  “We could lose this house!” he’d heard his mom say.

  “Karen, calm down,” his dad had said. “No one’s losing anything.”

  “Where are we supposed to get the money, Bill? Even with overtime, I’m not making enough to—”

  “I have another job interview Wednesday,” his dad had said. “And we still have some savings left. And, if worse comes to worst, we have Brianna’s college fund….”

  “Which is supposed to be used for college!” his mom had shouted.

  Connor didn’t tell Brianna what he had overheard. She would have gone ballistic, and the last thing they needed right now was more tension in the house. But it was hard, keeping all these secrets. He looked at Jordy, who was polishing off a hamburger drenched in so much ketchup you couldn’t see the meat. Why did Connor feel he had to hide the truth from his best friend? It wasn’t like his dad was the only one looking for work….

  “So you’re Mr. Calm now?” Jordy said.

  “Yep,” Connor said. “No more flipping out when things go wrong. I’ve found my inner peace.” He closed his eyes and extended his arms with palms upraised, the pose of a blissed-out swami. “Ommmm,” he intoned.

  Jordy and Willie rolled their eyes.

  “Give me a break,” Jordy said.

  “We’ll see how long that inner peace stuff lasts,” Willie said. “The next time the boy gets called out on a close play, he’ll turn into an ax murderer.”

  Connor slid another Oreo across the table to Willie. Three cookies was a stiff price to pay to keep a kid off your back. But there were times it was worth it.

  “You da man,” Willie said with a grin.

  “I’m serious, guys,” Connor said. “Coach Hammond is getting real tired of my act. I’m real tired of it, too.”

  “But it’s such a charming part of your personality,” Jordy said.

  “Yeah,” said Willie. “And who doesn’t want a teammate known around the league as Psycho Sully?”

  “Fine,” Connor said. “Make your little jokes. But you’ll see. I learned my lesson.”

  Connor didn’t feel like regaling them with an account of his phone conversation with Coach Hammond. He was embarrassed enough without having anyone else know he was so close to getting thrown off the team.

  The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. The cafeteria was bedlam, with students dumping their trays, throwing away their trash, and shouting good-byes to each other as they hurried off to class.

  “Just don’t get tossed when we play the Yankees Friday,” Jordy said when they were in the hall.

  “Yeah, dude, we need you,” Willie said, slapping him on the back. “No more crazy stuff.”

  “Ommmm,” Connor said, smiling and doing his swami pose again.

  But when his two buddies were gone, the frown returned to his face. Was there such a thing as a stressed-out swami? Because if so, he sure qualified.

  Oh, he looked forward to playing the Yankees, just as he looked forward to every other baseball game he’d ever played in his life.

  But with everything going on at home, he had to admit baseball wasn’t quite as much fun anymore. He used to just worry about winning. Now he was worried about his parents, his house, his sister—not to mention getting through a game without exploding.

  It made a guy want to go live in a cave, like a swami. No wonder they were so calm.

  Eddie Murray Field was a shimmering green oasis in the center of town. It was a twenty-minute walk from Connor’s house, or a seven-minute bike ride if he really pushed it, which meant weaving in between stroller-pushing moms and terrorizing slow-moving senior citizens on the sidewalks as he zipped by.

  The town fathers kept the field lush and manicured. Before every game, an old man named Gus Papa would lovingly rake the red clay base paths, smooth the pitcher’s mound, and line the batter’s boxes until they gleamed in the afternoon sun.

  Connor thought it was about the most perfect place on earth. In fact, on certain days, when there was a breeze and the smell of hot dogs and popcorn wafted from the tiny concession stand and mixed with the smell of new-mown grass, he wondered if it wasn’t a little slice of heaven, too.

  One day he had asked Mr. Papa why he took such meticulous care of the little field week in and week out. The old man had leaned on his rake and wiped the sweat from his eyes with a red handkerchief. “Well,” he’d said finally, “all three of my boys played ball here. That was almost fifty years ago, long before it was named for Eddie. And this field was good to them. Baseball helped them grow into fine young men. Guess it’s my humble way of giving back.”

  Connor wondered if baseball had been different fifty years ago. He wouldn’t change anything about today. It was the Orioles versus the Yankees on this perfect field, on a perfect spring evening. About the only thing he’d change was not having his mom and dad in the stands. But his mom was working a double shift, and his dad was working
on his résumé. Still, as he did every time he saw a baseball diamond, Connor could feel himself getting jacked up to play.

  As usual, he was the first player to arrive. He jogged lightly across the outfield and then did some stretching, just the way the big leaguers did before a game at Camden Yards.

  Soon players from both teams began trickling in. The Orioles gathered down the first-base line in front of their dugout and paired up to loosen their arms.

  Willie spotted Connor and pointed an index finger at his own temple. “You’re chill today, right?” he said.

  “Mr. Calm,” Connor said. He started to close his eyes and extend his palms, but Willie waved him off.

  “Please,” he said, “not the swami thing.”

  “Yeah, give that a rest, C,” said Jordy, who was playing catch with Carlos Molina.

  Connor smiled. “You’re just jealous of my amazing new self-control,” he said. “Derived from the ancient secrets of Hindu mystics.”

  “Now you sound like an infomercial,” Willie said.

  The first two innings went by like a heavyweight boxing match, both teams feeling each other out. The Yankees took a 3–0 lead in the third inning on two walks, an error in center field by Yancy Arroyo, and a double off Robbie Hammond, who struggled with his control.

  But the Orioles started a comeback in the bottom of the inning. Joey Zinno, their catcher, led off with a sharp single to right.

  Marty Loopus, making a rare start, followed with his usual weak bouncer to the pitcher for the first out.

  “He’s scared of me,” Marty said upon returning to the dugout.

  “The pitcher’s scared of you?” Jordy said incredulously.

  “Yep,” Marty said. “Won’t pitch to my power zone.”

  “You have a power zone?” Yancy said.

  “Sure,” Marty said. “Middle of the plate in. The whole league knows that.”

  “The whole league knows that?” Jordy said.

  The rest of the Orioles smiled and shook their heads as Marty pulled off his batting gloves and got a drink of Gatorade.

  Willie kept things going with a walk, Carlos drove in a run with a single, and Jordy doubled in two runs to tie the score.

  The Orioles dugout was a sea of noise now. One out, one on, and who was marching to the plate but Connor Sullivan.

  Standing in the third-base coaching box, Coach Hammond called time-out. He jogged down the line for a conference with Connor.

  “Pitcher’s getting tired,” Coach said. “Wait for your pitch and drive it.”

  Connor nodded and walked back to the batter’s box. He knew that was Coach’s way of saying: permission granted to swing for the fences.

  Usually, Coach Hammond didn’t want his players trying to hit home runs. It changed their swings, he said. Instead of a short, compact swing—the ideal—they’d develop a long, slow swing, trying to jack the ball out of the park. “Don’t worry about where it goes,” Coach always told them. “Just hit the ball somewhere. And hit it hard.”

  On occasion, though, Coach would make an exception for Connor, who had a sweet swing and didn’t try to kill the ball. This obviously was one of those occasions.

  Connor dug in against the Yankees pitcher, a kid named Georgie Rosario, who happened to be in his guitar class.

  He fouled off a pitch, then looked at three outside pitches without moving the bat off his shoulder. He was waiting for his pitch. Three and one count. This isn’t rocket science, Connor thought. Georgie has to throw a strike now.

  Georgie did. It was a belt-high fastball with not much on it. Connor turned on it perfectly and hit a long, soaring blast over the fence in left field.

  Just like that, it was 5–3 Orioles. As their dugout exploded, Connor went into his home run trot and highfived Coach Hammond as he rounded third base.

  “Sure!” said Marty, standing on the top step of the dugout with arms outstretched in exasperation. “They’ll pitch to his power zone!”

  In the dugout, Connor happily accepted fist-bumps and backslaps from the rest of the Orioles. Not bad so far, he thought. Just keep your cool the rest of the way.

  The Orioles were still clinging to a two-run lead in the fifth inning when the Yankees came to bat.

  Mike Cutko came on in relief of Robbie and promptly walked the first two batters, then struck out the next two. Next up was the Yankees dangerous cleanup hitter, Jake Hiaasen.

  Jake was a big kid, too—not as tall as Connor, but bigger in the chest and shoulders. During football season, he was a star running back for the Dulaney Jets, with a reputation for flattening would-be tacklers, whose eyes tended to widen when they saw Jake steaming toward them.

  “Everybody back!” Coach Hammond yelled, motioning to his outfielders.

  Marty was already so far back in right field he looked to be in a different zip code. Now he backed up even farther, until he was practically leaning against the fence.

  Mike’s first two pitches were in the dirt, and Jake held up on both. The next was a fastball at the knees. Jake took a mighty cut, but topped the ball, hitting a slow bouncer to short.

  Connor charged it and scooped the ball with two hands. The runners on first and second had gotten a nice jump, so Connor knew his only play was at first.

  He planted his left foot and threw off-balance—and watched in horror as the ball sailed high over Jordy’s head, bouncing against the chain-link fence and rolling down the right-field line as two runs scored.

  Now it was 5–5.

  What happened next felt like a dream—or maybe more like a nightmare. Don’t do it! he told himself, but already he was screaming “No-o-o!” and tearing the glove off his left hand and sailing it high in the air over Willie’s head.

  In a flash, the umpire bolted from behind home plate and tore off his mask. Pointing at Connor, he yelled, “That’s it, son! You’re outta here!”

  Stomping across the first-base line, Connor snarled at Jordy: “You couldn’t jump any higher for that throw? My grandma could’ve caught that!”

  Jordy’s shocked expression just made Connor angrier. Reaching the dugout, he picked up a bat and fired it angrily against the wall. It ricocheted and hit Robbie in the knee, but Robbie was too stunned to cry out in pain.

  “CONNOR!” Coach Hammond barked. “That’s enough! Get your stuff and go home. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  But Connor didn’t care about his bat or his glove or his equipment bag right now. He didn’t care about baseball, either. Like the ump said, he was outta there.

  As he bolted from the dugout and ran to his bike, he could feel the tears coming. And this time there was no holding them back.

  This time he had really screwed up.

  Connor fed four tokens into the batting machine and picked up his thirty-one-inch Rawlings bat. He took his usual stance: slightly open, close to the plate, feet shoulder-width apart, weight balanced—and waited for the silver arm to uncoil and snap forward with the pitch.

  It was quiet inside the cavernous Sports arcade, especially for a Saturday afternoon. A few kids and their parents played mini-golf, and three bored-looking teenagers were winning at Skee-Ball, collecting fistfuls of red tickets to exchange for fistfuls of cheap trinkets. Only one other batting cage was occupied, with a chubby little kid, maybe ten years old, getting tips from his dad—if you could call them tips.

  “Level swing!” the dad barked. “Don’t be afraid of the ball! No! Step into the pitch!”

  Connor shook his head sadly. Over the years he’d seen lots of kids quit baseball because their moms and dads pressured them and over-instructed them and took all the fun out of the game. This kid looked so nervous, he was probably dreaming about swim team tryouts already.

  “Get that bat ready!” the dad shouted as the kid whiffed on yet another cut. “No, too slow! Try it again!”

  Hoo boy, Connor thought. Bet the kid wishes Dad was on a nice long out-of-town business trip about now.

  The fact that Sports was nearly
empty suited Connor just fine. Right now he was focusing on what a mess he’d made of his life just twenty-four hours earlier. The way he saw it, his latest stupid blowup had succeeded in causing four disastrous consequences:

  After Connor left, the Orioles had gone on to lose to the Yankees, 8–5. It was their first loss of the season. And if anyone was voting on the goat of the game, Connor knew he’d win it hands down. In fact, he could almost feel the horns growing out of his head right now.

  In a brief phone call earlier that morning, Coach Hammond had informed Connor that his ejection from the Yankee game also carried with it an automatic one-game suspension from the league. Which meant the Orioles would be without him when they faced the Tigers next week, potentially setting the stage for—ta-da!—their second loss of the season. And that was assuming Coach hadn’t already kicked him off the team and was just waiting for the right time to tell him.

  He had succeeded in seriously hurting the feelings of his best friend in the whole world, Jordy Marsh.

  Connor wondered if he would ever get over the look on Jordy’s face after he had snarled and accused him of not jumping high enough for that terrible throw. Jordy had looked like a friendly golden retriever that had just been bopped on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper for no reason.

  His latest eruption and ejection had been observed and captured in its full glove-tossing, bat-throwing, crybaby glory by one Melissa Morrow, who was probably feeding a video clip of the whole thing to YouTube right now and planning a headline in the York Tattler that read: “Youth Baseball Star Really Is Nuts!”

  Connor could imagine the photo spread that would accompany that story, too. It would be a montage of all his on-field eruptions that would eventually be posted on Facebook, so that young ballplayers all over the world could comment and make fun of him.

  “Justin, do you want to get better or not?!” the chubby kid’s dad yelled now. “Then let’s go! Take a good hack at it!”