Chapter Four
“I’m thrilled to be back home in Canada. It really is a dream come true.”
From the entrance to the shower area off the locker room, Nico listened to Jake’s session with the media, a shoulder against the tiled wall.
He could imagine the smile on Jake’s face, the way his blue eyes lit up.
Nico had put on his workout clothes—a red Caps tee and his usual white uniform pants with his red socks pulled up to his knees.
That’s the way his father had worn his uniform, that’s the way Marco wore his, and Nico wasn’t about to mess with success.
Besides, he liked the throwback look of socks over his pants, the tradition of it.
Maybe he’d heard too many rants from his father about how the guys today were going to trip over their baggy pants.
They had shorts to wear for practice once summer hit, but late spring had been surprisingly cool.
“Hey, Ag.” Third baseman Aaron Crowe nodded as he came out of the bathroom area, running a hand through his reddish hair and over his bushy, hipster beard. He paused, his brows drawn together. “You okay, man?”
Nico straightened up off the wall. “Yeah. Just waiting.” And lurking like a creeper.
He followed Crowe out into the locker room, glancing at Jake, who wore his new Caps workout clothes.
He didn’t have his socks tugged up, but his uniform pants hugged his muscular legs above his catcher’s pads. He caught Nico’s eye with a nod.
“I’ve got to start earning my keep. Talk to you guys later.” Jake grabbed his hat, glove, and catcher’s mask and hustled to catch up with Nico, briefly laying a big hand on his shoulder.
Nico’s stomach flip-flopped like he was thirteen again, and he shoved his own cap on his head, trying to think of something to say as he led the way up and out to the bullpen across the field, the artificial turf springy beneath their cleats.
The stadium was empty that morning but for cleaners sweeping up endless peanut shells in the rows and rows of stands. The rectangular bullpen for pitchers waited beyond the right field fence, and a shiver of anticipation tripped down Nico’s spine.
Every time he went to the mound, whether it was in the pen or on the field, excitement bubbled in him.
He could already feel the cowhide and seams, and he thumped his right hand into the thick baseball glove he wore on his left.
The leather was worn and soft against his fingers, and he flexed them eagerly.
That Jake was walking beside him made the butterflies flap harder than ever. Nico wanted to impress him, show him how much he’d improved. No, he didn’t just want to—he had to.
“How’s Marco?” Jake asked. “Haven’t played him this season yet. What’s our schedule? Are we going to Chicago soon?”
Dread slithered through Nico, his excitement withering. “Next month before the all-star break. Four-game series.”
“Cool, you’ll get to see your family. Is your Nonna still making that amazing cannoli?”
He smiled softly, imagining the chocolate chips melting on his tongue. “Yeah.”
Jake seemed to be waiting for him to say something else, and smiled after a few awkward beats. “Well, great. What about Valentina? Still breaking hearts?”
“Getting married, actually. She’s good.”
“Cool. Are they all going to come to a game while we’re in Chicago?”
The fist of dread tightened in Nico’s gut. “My dad will be at all of them.”
At the bullpen door, Jake smiled. “He must be so proud of you.”
Nico shrugged. “He has season tickets. Marco’s still playing there.”
“Well, I bet he’s still proud. Your mom would be too.”
If I hadn’t killed her. He tried to smile.
Frowning, Jake blocked the door. “Sorry. I guess I like to think my dad can still see me. Even if it’s a fairy tale, it’s nice.”
“No, it’s okay. I get it.” Nico wanted to think his mother was watching. Wanted to think she’d forgiven him. But thinking of her at all was like having his insides scooped out with a rusty spoon.
“That’ll be weird, pitching to your brother. Media’ll make a big deal about that.”
“Yeah.” Nico brushed by him, rolling out the tension in his neck.
In the corner of the bullpen where pitchers practiced during the day and relievers warmed up during games, Mike Andropoulos, the bullpen catcher, sat on a bench scuffing a box of new balls, a tub of Lena Blackburne’s Baseball Rubbing Mud by his feet.
In his forties with his dark hair graying at his temples, Mike glanced up.
“Hey, guys. You’re out early.” With a dab of mud on his fingers, Mike spit on them and rubbed the ball all over with sharp, rhythmic movements, the white glow dimming and becoming easier to grip.
Jake went over and extended his hand, clasping Mike’s dirty one firmly as they made their introductions. “Good to meet you. Scuffing up those shiny new pearls for us?”
Mike grinned. “You know what they say about pearls and swine.”
There were boxes of new balls—the slick “pearls”—stacked next to Mike, hard ball bags on his other side filled with the scuffed balls ready to be pitched.
Mike also caught for the pitchers and threw during batting practice.
He had been a minor leaguer who never made the Show, and Nico was pretty sure Mike worked harder, day in and day out, and for way less money than the guys on the team.
Mike tossed over a dirty ball, and Nico gripped the cowhide, tracing the red-stitched seams with his thumb.
Mike carried on with his scuffing, engrossed in his work as Nico stood on the rectangular pitcher’s rubber at one end of the pen and Jake went partway to the plate, holding up his glove for the ball.
Still standing, he tossed it back to Nico as they warmed up.
“How’s your splitter these days?”
Nico blinked. “You remember?” He’d been obsessed with mastering it the summer Jake had been around in Chicago, even though his hands were a little too small back then and he should have focused on his curveball.
“Sure. Does Loyola let you throw it at all?”
“Nope.” Ed Loyola, the grizzled pitching coach, was stubbornly against it. “They think it strains the elbow too much, having the fingers so wide apart.”
“Yeah, in San Francisco, none of the guys are doing it. Management thinks the risk is too high.”
“Obviously I don’t want to fuck up my arm, but when a splitter hits the mark…”
Jake grinned. “Nothing like seeing that ball rocket in as a strike and drop at the last second as they swing at thin air.”
“Exactly.” It really was the greatest feeling in the world when the batter swung and missed, especially to strike out.
As he and Jake talked pitches, they tossed the ball back and forth easily.
If Nico squinted, they could be back in the huge yard at his dad’s house in Chicago up in Highland Park on the North Shore.
But nope, Nico was a major leaguer now too, and he was actually going to get the chance to pitch to Jake for real.
If he’d told his scrawny, zit-faced self back then he’d ever see this day, he probably would have come in his pants before passing out.
“Do you have any preference on signs?” Jake asked. “Skip gave me the team’s bible to get me up to speed. Looks standard for the most part—one finger for fastball, two for breaker, three for slider, four and wiggle for changeup?”
“Yeah. What would you do for a splitter if I ever get to throw it?”
“Hmm. How about thumb and first finger wide apart?” Jake made the shape of an upside-down gun, cocking his wrist and holding his first finger out, his thumb down. “Good?” At Nico’s nod, he added, “Okay. Prefer pumps or outs?”
When a runner was on second and could see the signs, catchers would try to confuse them by making the pattern of signs more complex. Some used the number of outs in the inning as part of the code, others the number of times they initially flashed their fingers. “Doesn’t matter to me.”
“Let’s do pumps then. We’ll run through a few now.”
“Cool.”
After walking to the plate at the end of the bullpen, Jake squatted and pulled on his protective mask, thickly padded with a metal cage over his face.
Nico had always been amazed by how Jake could fold his tall body so compactly.
Most catchers were on the shorter side, but Jake somehow made it work.
His bulk protected the plate, and it would be hard to get wild pitches past him.
In his crouch, Jake’s fingers flew between his long legs, and Nico called out the pitches, trying not to focus on the fact that he was staring at Jake’s crotch.
There was nothing sexual about it, and never had been with other catchers he’d worked with.
Yet with Jake, Nico was captivated by every movement of his long fingers.
“Nico?”
Blinking, he jerked his gaze up to Jake’s. “Uh-huh?”
“Lost you there for a second. What was the last sign?”
“Sorry, can you do it again?” He concentrated as Jake flashed his fingers. “Breaking ball to the inside.”
“Yep.” A grin broke out over Jake’s face, his blue eyes crinkling. “Just thinking about how your grandmother thought the catchers were playing with themselves when she first started watching baseball.”
In the corner, Mike burst out laughing. “What did you say?”
Jake pulled his mask onto the top of his head and stood from his crouch, absently rubbing his left knee. “Seriously. It’s the best story.” He looked at Nico expectantly.
“Right.” Jake and Mike were waiting, and Nico cleared his throat.
“Well, she hadn’t been in America long. Moved from Italy and didn’t speak English hardly at all.
Her daughter—my mom—was dating my dad, and Nonna thought she should see what he did for a living.
She told Mom she was glad he was catching balls in the field and wasn’t one of those dirty boys playing with themselves in front of all those people. ”
“I think she still side-eyes catchers,” Jake said. “Doesn’t quite believe we’re not doing something nasty.”
His hand moving in a blur over a ball, Mike called, “Can’t really blame her, can we?”