2. Evan
EVAN
He didn’t turn on the lights when he let himself into his apartment.
San Diego builders used glass like a hobby, and his living room was mostly windows, letting in just enough of the fading daylight for him to see.
He dropped the bag of food on the coffee table and stood in the half-dark long enough for his heart rate to settle.
Then he toed off his sneakers, set his phone face down next to his food, and turned the TV on, setting the volume just loud enough to drown out the hush of the room.
The opening ceremonies were winding down: the anthem had already been sung and the players were making their way from the baselines to their dugouts.
The camera made its last slow pregame pan over the crowd, faces upturned, cheeks flushed with the excitement of being in the building for a moment so special it guaranteed that strangers would grab each other and vow to remember every second.
The station cut to a graphic for a sponsor proclaiming themselves beverage royalty, and when they returned, the pitcher was finishing his warm-up as the first batter approached the plate.
The catcher flashed his signs between his meaty thighs, the pitcher threw, and they were off.
Evan pulled back the metal lid of the rigatoni and was hit by a wave of steam.
The scent of meat cooked slow enough to remember everything that went into it, tomatoes coaxed into robust flavor, with a curl of nutmeg from somewhere he couldn’t name.
He ate standing up for the first few mouthfuls, too hungry to pretend at manners, before sliding onto the couch and placing the container within reach on the coffee table.
Baseball on television always looked calmer than it felt on the field.
Evan could understand why some people didn’t like the game, claiming it was boring and slow and they’d rather watch paint dry.
Even he preferred to be there in person, where you could smell the cut grass, the popcorn, the spilled beer.
At home, you couldn’t feel the way your cleats gripped the dirt, the sun beating down during a mid-July day game, or the way the cool October nights could make the hair on your arms stand up.
Evan watched anyway.
The first run came in the top of the first, on a blooper that had no business dropping, the kind of weak hit that should have hung up long enough to die in a glove.
Instead, it fell in no-man’s land, sending Chicago’s runner chugging home like fate had decided to reward mediocrity.
The morning shows would call it scrappy or resilient or gritty, buzzwords people loved to use to make it look like more than luck.
Evan knew better. It wasn’t heart or hustle. It was just ugly baseball.
Boston’s answering run was something else though.
Clean. Merciless. A double, lasered into the left-field corner, the sound off the bat sharp enough to sting even through the television.
The outfielder scrambled, barehanded the ball, and fired it to the second baseman, but he was late by half a step.
Too late to hold the runner at third, egged on by the windmilling arm of the third-base coach.
The guy slid into home, the momentum propelling him back to his feet, and he jogged toward the dugout without looking back. Game tied.
Twice in the opening innings, Evan watched CJ cut off singles that wanted to be doubles.
The analysts on TV described his hustle with reverent voices, drawing arrows over paused video as they tried to explain how a guy running in a straight line was something mystical.
Evan saw it for what it was: CJ doing what CJ had always done, turning routine into spectacle and making the game tilt in his favor.
The crowd roared like it was magic, and Evan rolled his eyes, muttering under his breath.
Of course they ate it up. CJ had always had that effect on people.
His phone buzzed on the coffee table. Then again. And again. Evan sighed and dragged it closer to peer at it. The team group chat was lighting up like Christmas.
Rizzo
HOLY SHIT HARTMAN
Lugo
Dude, that last catch was nasty
Tank
Blazers should extend him forever, guy’s a machine
Rizzo
Word is he’s on the trading block tho
Evan snorted and shoved a breadstick into his mouth. That didn’t take long. Rumors about trades were the only thing that traveled faster than gossip in the league.
Lugo
Cudas should make a move
Mac
Like we’ve got that budget, lmao
Rizzo
Imagine him in our outfield tho
Rizzo
Dream
Evan typed, then deleted, then typed again before settling on a text.
Evan
Don’t believe everything you read.
Three dots appeared, disappeared, then came back.
Rizzo
Bro, it’s everywhere. Blazers can’t afford to keep him AND their pitching. They’re shopping him and supposedly we’re interested.
Evan set the phone face down as his stomach tightened in a familiar, unwelcome way. He didn’t care about the rumors. Didn’t want to care. CJ Hartman’s career trajectory had nothing to do with him. That’s what he told himself, anyway.
The truth sat heavier on his chest.
Evan knew exactly how fast CJ could cut off a ball in the gap because once upon a time, he’d caught him during warm-ups every day and teased him about overreaching.
He knew the small crease that formed between CJ’s brows when he was locked in, the one TV cameras never caught but Evan could see from a hundred feet away.
He knew too well what it felt like to have CJ’s grin aimed only at him, warm and reckless in the dark when there wasn’t a stadium or a spotlight in sight.
That was ancient history. He’d buried it, locked it away, thrown the key in the bay.
The idea of CJ on the trade block, the idea of him ending up in San Diego?
That thought was sharp enough to cut through the armor he’d spent seven years building.
He shoved it down, tried to smother it under the noise of the game and the buzz of the group chat, but it lingered anyway. Quiet. Persistent. Impossible.
He grabbed his salad, eating around the tomatoes and leaving the black olives for some imaginary future version of himself that might like them.
When the broadcast cut to replay packages between innings, he grabbed a breadstick and tore it in half in the dark, butter slicking his fingertips.
He licked them clean and told himself that he wasn’t pathetic for watching the game alone instead of with his teammates.
At least watching alone meant he didn’t have to pretend it didn’t mean anything when his chest flickered every time the camera found right field.
The camera found it often.
Not because the production booth had a favorite but because CJ made himself relevant by force of will. He could read balls off the bat the way a catcher reads their pitcher, with their subtle shifts and tiny tells.
The trouble started in the fourth inning the way it always did, with small things stacking up into one big problem.
The first batter walked on four pitches.
Followed by a grounder that should have been a double play, but the shortstop read the ball wrong, leaving everyone safe.
It was the kind of inning that made managers throw their hats in the dirt and turn red with rage.
By the time the ball was cracked into right field, Evan already knew what was going to happen.
CJ charged hard, set his feet, and uncorked the ball home, all clean mechanics and too much confidence.
The ball skid-hopped on the dirt just in front of the plate and kissed the catcher’s mitt at the wrong angle.
The tag was too late and the runner was safe.
The crowd roared anyway because it was CJ and they’d decided that even his misses deserved applause.
Evan leaned forward as the camera found CJ. On the screen, he crouched with his hands on his thighs, chest heaving once, eyes narrowed, with just the smallest flicker of frustration crossing his face. CJ stood and punched his mitt once, his jaw locked.
It was a familiar look, one Evan knew too well.
He knew the stubborn set of CJ’s jaw and that he was forcing his body to relax so it didn’t show he was rattled.
He’d seen it back in college, in cramped fields under bad lights, when CJ would rocket a ball five feet off target and then crack his knuckles, daring anyone to call it a failure.
Later, in the quiet, he would admit his error only to Evan, sometimes with a laugh and sometimes with his head bowed in regret, needing someone to tell him that the error didn’t erase the player.
The analysts on TV praised CJ’s “effort” and “intent,” trying to soften the future narrative. Evan leaned back on the couch, lips pressed thin. CJ didn’t need cushioning. He would bounce back the way he always did.
He was good at that.
By the sixth inning, the score was tied two to two, the kind of tight score that made people in bars start bargaining with God and themselves—“If we win, I’ll stop drinking on weekdays.” “If we win, I’ll call my mother.”
Evan didn’t bargain. He wasn’t that kind of believer. He watched the catcher set up just off the plate and flexed his fingers around the phantom ache he knew came from catching ninety-five-mile-per-hour pitches for two and a half hours.
The seventh inning gave them a lead on a home run that carried forever before landing somewhere in the parking lot behind center field.
The camera panned to Chicago’s dugout, and Evan found CJ immediately, watching him hop up and down with his teammates as the runner rounded the bases.
CJ grinned with his whole face, eyes crinkling at the corners, mouth wide enough to show the chipped incisor that had charmed and infuriated Evan in equal measure years ago.