Batting Order

by Mike Lupica

  They took a break finally and sat in the grass and drank from their water bottles.

  “I can’t wait for our next game,” José said.

  It would be against the Glenallen Giants on Tuesday night.

  “Same,” Matt said. “You know what makes me jealous about players in the big leagues? They get to play practically every day.”

  “I hear you,” José said. “If they have a tough loss like we just had, they can make it disappear the next day or night.”

  “They’re lucky,” Matt said.

  José smiled, and put out a fist for Matt to bump.

  “It’s not so terrible being us, either,” José said.

  He stood up.

  “Let’s hit,” he said.

  They both hit for a while, collected the balls, then hit a little more. They decided that before they called it a day, they both wanted to field more ground balls. José got the last one. Matt didn’t make it easy for him, throwing a hard grounder to his right, making him backhand the ball as he moved toward third base. But somehow José stopped himself, twisted his body just enough and snapped off a sweet throw to Matt at first.

  “Buen tiro!” Matt yelled.

  It meant “good throw” in Spanish.

  “Wow,” José said. “You really have been studying.”

  They met at the pitcher’s mound.

  “Still kind of working on English myself,” Matt said.

  By now José was as patient about the stuttering as most of Matt’s friends were. Not all. But most. They hadn’t been teammates for very long, but there hadn’t been one time when José had finished one of Matt’s sentences when he’d gotten stuck, or blocked.

  “We’ll keep helping each other,” José said now.

  They touched gloves.

  “Todo bien,” Matt said, grinning.

  All good.

  Something else that was good: Because school was out and it was summer now, there was an ice cream truck parked near the duck pond every day. Matt and José had both brought money with them and walked over to the truck now, gloves hung over their bats, bats on their shoulders. It was just one of those summer days that you wanted to last forever, the way you wanted summer to.

  There was a line of kids and parents in front of them, starting from the ice cream truck’s window.

  Matt stopped.

  “You know,” he said to José, “I’m not feeling it on ice cream all of a sudden.”

  “Are you serious, compadre?” José said. “The only thing I’ve been thinking about since we got to this park, other than baseball, is a double scoop of chocolate, sugar cone, with sprinkles.”

  Matt could feel his throat getting dry and his heart starting to beat a little rapidly. He heard Ms. Francis’s voice inside his head, telling him not to project, which was her way of telling him not to anticipate trouble before it happened.

  He thought: It’s been such a good day.

  “Okay,” Matt said, and took his place at the back of the line with José.

  Maybe he wasn’t projecting. Maybe he was just being plain silly.

  There were a couple of girls Matt didn’t know, about his age, right behind him and José, talking away, laughing, checking their phones, taking pictures of each other, checking the pictures, all the while discussing whether they wanted a cone or a cup.

  Matt wasn’t saying anything. He could feel himself beginning to tighten up, not just his throat and mouth, but his whole body. Usually people hated being in long, slow lines like this one. Not Matt. Not right now. He even thought about telling José to just get him a strawberry cone, two scoops, and that he wanted to go use the rest room. Or that he’d go find them a table. Anything.

  But that would be taking the easy way out. Maybe what he was feeling would pass. Maybe he could power through. He looked over his shoulder. The line behind him, and behind the girls, was as long as the line in front of them.

  Matt took some deep breaths.

  At least he was getting air in.

  Words starting with s could be the hardest sometimes.

  “Strawberry,” Matt said.

  Practicing.

  “What?” José said.

  “Gonna get strawberry,” Matt said.

  So far, so good.

  Finally they got to the front of the line. Another deep breath for Matt. The kid in the window had one of those little three-cornered hats. He looked like he was in high school. He was smiling.

  “What can I get for you guys?” he said.

  José gave him his order.

  The kid in the window turned his attention to Matt.

  “What about you, little dude?” he said.

  Then it was happening to Matt the way he knew it was going to happen, as soon as he’d seen the line.

  “S-s-s” was all that came out of his mouth, sounding like his breath.

  Nothing but air.

  José knew what was happening as soon as Matt didn’t make his order. Maybe he wanted to jump in. He knew what kind of ice cream Matt wanted. But José did not jump in. He knew better. He was playing by Matt’s rules, even though Matt wanted him to break the rules in that moment.

  The kid in the window was still smiling.

  “Can’t make up your mind?” he said finally, glancing past Matt at the line behind him.

  Matt swallowed.

  “S-s-s.”

  He did not want to be here. He wanted to walk away. Or run away. All these strangers, waiting on him now.

  “Come on,” he heard one of the girls behind him say.

  “We’re waiting,” the girl with her said.

  Matt could hear himself making his order.

  Only inside his head.

  “Is there a problem?” the first girl said.

  She had no idea.

  “Chocolate,” Matt Baker finally said.

  He heard one of the girls behind him—he didn’t know which one, no way he was turning around—sigh loudly.

  “One scoop or two,” the kid in the window said.

  Matt held up two fingers.

  The kid made the two cones, one with sprinkles, one without. Matt didn’t even like chocolate ice cream that much. It didn’t matter. The kid in the window told him how much for the two cones. Matt told José he’d pay for both. He’d brought enough money. José said he didn’t have to do that.

  “Yeah,” Matt said, “I do.”

  The two of them walked away with their cones, back toward the field, stopping to sit down under a tree in the shade.

  “Sorry,” Matt said.

  It was an s word that came right out of him.

  José smiled and told him there was no need to apologize, he’d just gotten a free ice cream cone out of this deal.

  “It just happens,” Matt said.

  His breathing was back to normal. His speech was back to normal. Even if he wasn’t.

  José was still smiling. There was chocolate ice cream all over his mouth.

  “We’re a team, remember,” he said. “Something happens to you, it happens to me.”

  “Todo bien,” Matt said again.

  FIFTEEN

  Their next practice was Monday night, before the Glenallen game.

  Matt still hadn’t talked to Ben about swinging at that 3-0 pitch. He didn’t know if Sarge had talked to Ben about it, either. Now Matt wondered if Sarge would handle it at practice, or not at all.

  But before they took the field, Sarge said he wanted to talk to the whole team. It wasn’t about signs, as it turned out, wasn’t about when to swing and when to take. It was about baseball. It was about being on a team.

  “This isn’t basketball,” Sarge said. “In basketball, I swear, I’ve always thought that LeBron could walk into a gym or onto a playground court and find four guys and make them good enough to get into the playoffs. It’s different in our game. It just is. An awful lot of people will tell you Mike Trout is the best all-around player. But he’s already proven, as great as he is, that he can’t take the Angels to
the playoffs all by himself.”

  Sarge was seated on the pitcher’s rubber. The Astros were in a small circle in front of him, on the grass between the mound and home plate.

  “In baseball,” he continued, “it’s all about figuring out what’s best for you and what’s best for the team. Sometimes those two things are the same. But sometimes they’re not. That’s where I come in. Sometimes I have to tell you that what you want to do, and what you think is best for you, might not be best for our team. So I have to say something. Because what I want and what’s best for me is always best for the South Shore Astros.” He grinned. “That’s why they put Sarge in charge.”

  They groaned.

  “Couldn’t help myself,” Sarge said.

  Then he nodded at Matt and his teammates.

  “You guys understand what I’m talking about here?” Sarge said.

  Matt, who was closest to Sarge, turned around and saw his teammates nodding.

  “Good,” he said. “We’ve only played one game, and none of us liked the way it came out. But we’ve got a chance to clear all that up tomorrow. But the thing I want to leave you all with is that you’re not just playing for yourselves, you’re not playing for your parents, you’re not playing to please me. You’re playing for each other. And if I see that you’re not, and you don’t understand that, I will sit your butt down. As much as that won’t please me.”

  He stood up.

  “Now let’s play some baseball,” he said. “Too nice a night not to.”

  Matt had gotten Sarge’s message, loud and clear. He wondered if Ben had. He wondered if Ben understood that even though Sarge had been talking to the whole team, he’d really only been talking to Ben.

  It was cool, Matt thought.

  He’d found a way to call Ben out without calling him out.

  Sarge in charge.

  Matt knew Ben had been listening.

  Now he hoped Ben had really heard.

  • • •

  It was a good practice. Ben hit one of his monster home runs, but actually managed to hit a couple of solid lines, too. It seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised the rest of them.

  He didn’t seem to have shortened his swing. It didn’t look as if he’d really changed anything. Maybe he was just able to concentrate on using a more level swing tonight, at least a few times, rather than his usual big uppercut.

  But Ben had been born with that uppercut.

  When he did manage to level it off, though, he didn’t just hit line drives. He hit screamers. Matt hoped he could hit some like that tomorrow night against the Glenallen Giants, just in case there came a moment in the game when his team didn’t need a monster home run.

  Just a clean knock.

  “How’d you like those swings?” Ben said after they’d all finished batting practice.

  “I like watching all your swings,” Matt said. Then he grinned and said, “I just like some better than others.”

  Ben’s face was serious.

  “I know,” he said.

  It was as if his face was telling Matt more than his words were.

  “Hey,” Matt said. “It’s early.”

  He wasn’t trying to make Ben feel better. It was early. They’d only played one game. But one of Sarge’s absolute favorite baseball expressions came from the old Yankee catcher, Yogi Berra, whom Matt knew had played on ten Yankee World Series teams in his career.

  “It sure gets late early around here,” Yogi Berra had said once.

  It looked funny when you read it. But Yogi was making sense. If the Astros lost their second game of the season, to the Glenallen Giants, if their record fell to 0–2, they were the ones who’d start to feel as if things were getting late in All-Stars, even after just one week.

  “I guess I’ll have to figure things out on my own,” Ben said.

  “I’m here if you need me,” Matt said.

  Ben gave him a funny look.

  “I don’t need anybody in the other sports,” he said. “Not even my dad.”

  Matt didn’t say anything. It wasn’t because he couldn’t get the words out. It was because he didn’t know exactly what to say in the moment.

  “No big secret that Sarge was talking about me before practice today,” he said.

  “I thought he was talking to all of us,” Matt said.

  “No,” Ben said. “He was talking about me taking a hero swing on that three-oh pitch.”

  “Y-y-.”

  Matt swallowed, then took a big gulp of air. He could feel the words coming.

  For now, he imagined himself checking a swing.

  “Y-you have to pick your spots,” he finally managed. “Y-you can’t swing for the fences every single time.”

  “Maybe it’s how who I am, and it’ll be too hard to change,” Ben said.

  “Hitting is hard for everybody,” Matt said. “Everybody says that hitting a pitched ball is the hardest thing to do in sports.”

  “My dad thinks I can grow up to be Judge or Stanton,” Ben said.

  Matt couldn’t let that one go. It was too good a pitch to hit.

  “Does he know how much Aaron Judge walks?” Matt said. “He walked a hundred and twenty-seven times the year he finished second in the MVP voting. And you know how many hits he had that year? One hundred fifty-four.”

  “He still hit fifty-one homers,” Ben said.

  “Yeah,” Matt said. “And got more than a hundred hits that weren’t home runs.”

  Matt felt as if he was standing on firm ground again, no hesitation, speaking fluent baseball.

  “All my dad cares about is the home runs,” Ben said.

  “But Judge got great because he became a more disciplined hitter,” Matt said. “It’s not just me saying that. Everybody does. There were times the Yankees even talked about making him a leadoff hitter.”

  “I’m the opposite of disciplined,” Ben said, then shrugged. “I just want to have fun.”

  “All I’m telling you is that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing and you can still have fun,” Matt said. “Home runs or strikeouts. I get that Judge strikes out a lot too. But he wouldn’t be the player he is if he didn’t get on base as much as he does, and put the ball in play as much as he does.”

  “I’m never going to take baseball as seriously as you,” Ben said.

  At least they agreed on something.

  SIXTEEN

  Matt and his mom were eating one of his mom’s specialties at their late dinner, homemade lasagna, with a salad on the side.

  As they ate, he finally got around to telling her what had happened at the ice cream truck the day before. She listened in silence, letting Matt tell it his way, not changing expression. He could have been talking about baseball practice. Matt made it through the whole story, everything he’d said, everything he’d tried to say, the girls behind him, all of it. Including how he saw it all coming and felt it all coming as soon as he saw the line.

  When Matt was finished, his mom reached across the table and put her hand over his, and squeezed.

  “You got through it,” she said. “That’s the important thing.”

  “Barely,” he said.

  “I don’t care how,” she said. “I just know that you didn’t get out of that line.”

  “Thought about it,” Matt said.

  Now his mom smiled.

  “I know that sometimes there’s things you can’t say when you want to,” she said. “But what’s more important to your dad and me is the things you can. And the things you simply won’t give in on.”

  Matt put down his fork.

  “I don’t want every single day of the rest of my life to be like this,” he said.

  “They won’t be,” she said.

  “Feels like,” Matt said.

  “Sometimes,” she said. “Just not all the time.”

  “You know another reason I felt bad yesterday?” Matt said to his mom. “Because José felt bad. It was like my problem had become his.”

  �
��Sounds to me as if José handled things just about perfectly,” she said.

  “He’s cool.”

  “So,” his mom said, “are you.”

  He had cleaned his plate of lasagna by then. His mom told him there was more. Matt said he was full. She raised an eyebrow. “Too full for strawberry shortcake?” she said.

  “Are you kidding?” he said to his mom. “I didn’t even get my strawberry ice cream yesterday!”

  She laughed. So did he. It was funny, he thought, sometimes he didn’t want to talk. Or couldn’t talk. But sometimes when he was with his mom like this, he couldn’t stop.

  “Can’t lie, Mom,” he said. “When stuff like what happened at the truck happens, it makes me feel smaller than I already am. And weak.”

  She smiled again.

  “You know who I’m looking at right now?” she said. “The toughest kid I know.”

  He started to say something. She put up a finger to stop him.

  “I don’t just see a tough kid who happens to be my kid,” she said. “I see somebody who got to the front of that line and found a way to be bigger than the moment.”

  “How come I can do all the things I want to do in baseball,” he said, “and sometimes I can’t even order a stupid ice cream cone?”

  “Hey,” she said, pointing a finger at him now. “Ice cream is never stupid!”

  “Mom,” he said, “I’m trying to be serious.”

  “Ice cream is serious,” she said.

  “I want to be like everybody else,” Matt said.

  “No chance,” she said. “You’re never going to be like everybody else, in all the best possible ways. You’re you, honey. You’re fast and strong and sweet. You’ve been fearless your whole life, no matter how many times you were the smallest boy in the game. And you stutter. You’ve overcome your size and you’ll overcome that, as much as anybody can. That’s it. The whole package. Like you’re the whole package.”

  “Thanks,” Matt said.

  “No thanks required,” she said. “Just keeping it real, dog.”

  Matt shook his head.

  “Maybe that was a thought that should have stayed inside your head,” he said.

  “I’m so ashamed,” she said, putting her head down, and then the two of them were laughing again.