CHAPTER 56
“Skip, do you have a minute?” I lean against the doorframe of our head coach’s office and wait for the older man to wave me in.
“Too late to trade now, Reyes,” Skip says when I close the door behind me.
“Very funny, old man.”
“Look who’s talking.” Skip snatches away the bobblehead I was messing with and sets it on his side of the desk. He folds his hands in front of him and checks his watch. “We’ve got fifteen minutes until we hit the field, and I’ve still got a pre-game pep talk to come up with. Make it quick.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about–”
“You want to give my pep talk for me? We all know how much you love giving your speeches.”
I’m not sure if he’s trying to pry out information about Sierra, if it’s a commentary on how few mound visits I’ve made since she ended things, or if it’s just the usual joke about my ‘Hollywood-worthy’ pep talks.
“I want you to move me to first base,” I say. His eyes go wide, but he tries to mask his response as he leans back in his chair. He taps his closed laptop with one chubby finger and waits. “Let Williams catch.”
He narrows his eyes. “You’ve spent two seasons in a pissing match with him, and now, in the middle of the World Series, with your chance at a ring on the line, you want to let him behind the plate?”
“I have to believe this isn’t our final game. None of us came here to be out in four back-to-back losses. But if we can turn things around and fight our way back like we did in the regular season, I’m going to fall apart behind the plate. I’m beat up, Skip. And I’ll call you a liar if you ever tell him this, but Williams has come a long way the past month or so.”
“Him and Ramirez.” Skip waits for a response so I nod. “You think she can pitch another no-hitter?”
“The odds are against that, but I think she can do one better,” I say.
“You want me to play her all nine innings?” my coach shakes his head, ready to argue.
“No. I want you to add her to the line-up. She doesn’t need a designated hitter, Skip.”
“Reyes, I know you’re fond of her–”
“This has nothing to do with my feelings. You know she sandbags during batting practice with the team, right? Have you ever stuck around and caught a glimpse of what she can do once everyone else clears out?”
“Why would she sandbag during batting practice? If she can’t perform under pressure, that isn’t sandbagging, and Game Four with three losses behind us isn’t the time to test her stage fright at the plate.”
“It isn’t that. She sandbags because she’s had too many coaches tell her to. Ever since college ball, she’s had coach after coach telling her to go for the hard to reach grounders and a base hit, if she bats at all. No one wanted her going for the fences because no one believed she could.” I take off my cap and drag my fingers through my hair. “I need you to believe she can hit it out of the park.”
The stadium is alive when my rookie steps up to the plate for her first Major League at-bat.
“You better know what you’re doing,” Skip says.
I stand beside him, both of us leaning against the dugout fence with bated breath. Castillo, Pe?a, and Dante are all on base with two outs and us already down two runs in the second inning.
Sierra gets caught looking and our entire dugout is silent as a graveyard when the umpire calls the strike. She steps back from the batter box, and I know she’s in her head. Maybe I should have given her one of my trademark pep talks before Skip sent her out there. Juggling a professional relationship, my own feelings, and my need to do anything and everything in my power to secure her career in the league proves more difficult every day; watching her stand behind the batter’s box with her eyes closed and her white-knuckle grip on the bat, I wait for the other shoe to finally drop.
As if she can hear my thoughts, her eyes flash open and land on me. I give her a small nod and see the corner of her mouth twitch before she holds two fingers in front of her eyes. I repeat the gesture back at her, and she steps back up to the plate.
She’s still choked up on her old bat instead of using the one I gave her, but she swings for the fences when the next fastball comes sailing right over the plate. The bat makes contact with a massive crack that sends the ball flying foul and half her bat flying.
When she jogs toward the dugout for a new bat, I hand her Leila’s old one.
“Trust yourself,” I murmur for her ears only.
“I trust you,” she says back.
Her words are still twisting my stomach and tightening around my heart as she runs back to the plate. With a zero-two count, the bases loaded, and two outs, Sierra steps up, moves her grip down the bat, and hits the next ball out of the park.
Castillo, Pe?a, and Dante score. The team cheers them in as we take the lead for the first time this series, but I only have eyes for the woman running the bases with her fist in the air.