Chapter 15 Mason - Fifty-Fifty
MASON Fifty-Fifty
When I was a kid, I would look at my baseball coach and think, This must be the easiest, most fun job in the world.
Now, as I sat in my small office with the window overlooking the baseball field, I realized I was kind of right.
I mean, working with high school kids can be hard, of course.
And that first season, when we were losing, I was kind of a pariah around town, and hearing everyone’s snide remarks was annoying.
But as jobs go, it was pretty awesome. Baseball was the thing I loved the very most. And I got paid—I mean, let’s be real, not a lot, but I got paid—to do my favorite thing.
And now, I was the one with the whistle running the guys through drills.
I didn’t even have to do the running if I didn’t want to.
I mean, I did, because being in good shape has always been important to me.
Even when I was drinking every night and “working” for my dad and generally wallowing in my failure, I worked out every day.
Maybe because it was a habit? Maybe just in case my shoulder did magically heal, and I got the chance to go pro again?
I don’t know why. But, if I had to guess, I’d say the workouts were the things that kept me breathing when everything else was falling apart.
The bell rang, and I clapped my hands. I’d spent the day watching tape of our previous games against Central, making notes on the players who would be back from last year.
I was okay at the other parts of the game, but I was a great pitching coach.
I was a pitcher. Without a ball even in my vicinity, I could feel the laces in my hand, the exact weight of a baseball, the size of it.
I could picture exactly how to turn my wrist for each type of pitch, how to make it spin, how to make it straight and fast. Some of it was God-given talent, the kind that reporters and journalists and coaches used to talk about.
You know, I’ve seen some great players in my day, but what Mason Thaysden has?
That’s from God. But a lot of it was hours and hours of practice.
A lot of it was having a dad who would throw with me endlessly in the backyard, a brother who, yeah, wasn’t that athletic but loved being on the receiving end of my practice pitches for as long as I would throw them.
Drew had that now. Both the work ethic part and the God-given part.
It was a perfect alchemy that only struck every now and then.
It made me happy to be alive, happier to have taken this coaching position when I did.
I’d had three incredible years with him, to groom him, to train him.
And now I was getting to be here for the fun part, watching him get recruited by colleges this season.
If all went according to plan, he’d know where he was going to play before summer—and certainly before his senior year began.
I had lived that part. It was awesome. And I was trying to use my gift for good.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t think about what else I could do. If Drew was leaving, maybe it was time for me to move on too.
As he walked into my office now, backpack heavy on his shoulders, I said, “Get yourself a wheeled suitcase, kid. You can’t risk messing up your back or shoulders with that thing.”
He laughed. I was always getting on him about something that could hurt him, derail him, blow his shot. I wouldn’t let that happen to the “next Mason Thaysden.”
I leaned back in the old desk chair. I could feel the springs in it as I did, heard it squeak.
And I thought that maybe I should just get myself a new one.
It would be a couple hundred bucks and would make me so much more comfortable.
But, then again, there was something about it being just as it was…
It was the memory of being the kid in Drew’s seat, of getting to hear from Coach Tucker about what I needed to do, that I didn’t want to change.
This office and this school were the last vestiges of my greatness.
Still holding my pen, I nodded toward a piece of paper on the desk. “I made some notes for you for today. We can go over them if you want.”
“Thanks, Coach,” he said.
But first, there was something else I had to get off my mind. “Has anyone been talking about Maisy today?”
He looked confused, and I realized my mistake.
She was only Maisy to Daisy and me. We had a secret.
I was so excited that she was coming to my game tonight.
Was that childish? I didn’t care. I’d dated plenty, was always dating.
But when was the last time I’d genuinely liked a woman this much? I wasn’t sure.
“The baby,” I corrected. “You know, the one we found in the dumpster?” I half smiled at him.
“I hardly remember,” Drew quipped.
I looked up as someone tapped on my open door. It was Emily, the head cheerleader, in her uniform. I sighed but gestured for her to come in. “Hello, Emily.”
Emily was the girl that everyone has in their high school.
She has perfect, shiny blond hair and perfect straight, white teeth, and perfect straight, shiny As.
She’s the captain of the cheerleading squad (insert volleyball team, tennis team, whatever is the queen bee position at your school) and the editor of the yearbook and volunteers and never gets in trouble but is at every party and manages to be the most popular girl in school while also being nice.
So you want to hate her but you can’t. And what she wanted from me was nice and it was thoughtful.
And I knew she wanted it because it was something new that she had orchestrated that she could talk about on her college applications next year.
At least partially, anyway. And I respected that about her.
“So…” she said.
She didn’t have to fill in the rest. I knew why she was here. Drew looked up at her and smiled. She looked down at him.
“Emily, look,” I said, “have you ever seen A League of Their Own?”
“Sure,” she said, nodding, her ponytail and the ribbons in it bobbing up and down.
“You know how there’s no crying in baseball?”
“Oh, we won’t cry,” she said. “I promise.”
“Right,” I said. “But just like how there’s no crying, there’s also no cheerleading.”
Drew shook his head at me like he was disappointed.
“Oh, you have an opinion on this?”
“Coach, come on. What could it possibly hurt to have extra people cheering for us at our games? I mean, if you ask me, it’s kind of discriminatory that basketball and football get all the cheering, and we’re like third-class citizens with no cheerleaders.”
I crossed my arms. “Wait a minute. I pour years of my blood, sweat, and tears into you, and you side with Emily?”
She sat down in the chair beside him, and I knew this wasn’t ending anytime soon. Or, at least, it wasn’t ending until Emily got what she wanted.
“Why is this so darn important to you?” I asked her.
She pointed at Drew. “What Drew said. Baseball players need love too.”
We all cracked up, and she blushed. “That’s totally not what I meant,” she said. “But look, I’m losing four seniors next year, our freshmen aren’t exactly up to snuff, and we need the practice. Please, Coach?”
“Coach, why won’t you let the girls cheer?”
What I couldn’t say was that I didn’t want them to cheer because they were distracting.
The last thing a field of teenage boys needed was a dozen girls in short skirts and crop tops jumping around on the sidelines.
But cheerleading was a sport too, and these girls worked hard and had some state championships under their belts to prove it.
I sighed. “Fine. You win.”
Emily jumped up and squealed and leaned over to hug Drew. “Thank you!” she said to him shinily.
“Him? What about me?” I asked with faux hurt.
She shook her head. “Nope. You would never have said yes if Drew hadn’t talked you into it.”
I nodded. “Accurate.”
“Hey,” she said. “How’s Sarah?”
“How should I know?” Drew said noncommittally.
“How should I know?” Emily parroted in a singsong voice. “Come on, Drew. I know her mom would kill her, and your dad wouldn’t approve, but I have eyes, and I know y’all are a thing.”
“Well, well, well,” I said. “Emily, this just got interesting. Please, take a seat.”
She did.
“We are not a thing,” Drew said. “But I do happen to know—from my mom’s church text string only—that Sarah is sick.”
Sarah was a senior and Ms. Theodora’s daughter. One of the “gifted” ones that were so challenging for her.
“So how long has this been going on?” I asked Emily, not Drew, since he clearly had deemed me unworthy of his secret.
“There’s nothing going on!” Drew said.
“Oh, like a year,” Emily said. “Since last baseball season, anyway.”
“Intriguing.”
Drew stood up like he was going to leave.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Calm down. Sit down. Don’t get yourself worked up.”
I leaned forward a little and said, “Seriously, kids. Do y’all have any idea whose baby this could be? I feel like if someone comes forward, we might be able to protect them.”
“I seriously don’t think it was anyone at school,” Drew said.
“Same,” Emily said. “I think we would know if someone was pregnant. I mean, that’s pretty hard to hide.”
“Plus,” Drew said, “I just don’t think there’s anyone at our school who would be so upset by being pregnant that they wouldn’t tell a friend or family member or have someone who could help them.”
“That’s a good point,” I said. “And Mrs. Anderson is so approachable that I think pretty much anyone here would have felt comfortable confiding in her if they needed help. Right?”
Mrs. Anderson was our guidance counselor.
She was young and cool and so good with the kids.
I envied her sometimes because she connected with them on their level so easily.
I was getting better at it. And it was the moments like this, when the kids just came in my office to talk, that made me know it.
I clapped my hands. “Okay, Emily. You have a cheerleading squad to rally.” I laughed. “Get it? Rally?”
She rolled her eyes and then sat up straighter. “Wait. You mean, like, today?”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “You’re telling me that you’ve been pestering me for weeks to cheer and you don’t have the squad ready?”
She smiled at me. “Nope. I do.”
“I figured as much.” I wondered what being a cheerleader under Emily’s regime must be like.
Constant practice, uniform checks, team-building activities.
I knew some of it was for college, but some of it was just Emily.
Real, true passion and intensity about any- and everything she loved.
I’d had that once. “Okay. Run along. I have a star pitcher to coach.”
“Tell Sarah I hope she feels better,” Emily said, winking at Drew.
“You tell her yourself, because you’ll talk to her before I will.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, turning to leave and calling over her shoulder, “Thanks, Coach! You won’t regret this!”
“I already do!” I called behind her.
Drew laughed and gestured toward the paper. “Okay, Coach. Lay it on me.”
“Is this because you want to be prepared or because you don’t want any more questions about Sarah?”
“Fifty-fifty,” he said.
“Noted.”
As I went down my list of batters, my mind wandered to the hospital, to Daisy, to the baby, to what they were doing.
And I thought that maybe Emily was right.
Maybe the boys would be happy to have some girls there cheering for them.
I looked down at my phone again, smiling, remembering that, tonight, I’d have someone cheering for me too.