chapter 20
Moonshot. They say the term comes from Wally Moon, a player from the fifties, who hit bombers that the local press dubbed ‘moonshots.’ Dad had taught me the term when I was twelve, and desperate to hit my first home run.
An impossible feat for a scrawny blonde in a Major League stadium, but Dad hadn’t told me that.
He’d just kept me swinging, his pitches easy, my breath huffing smoke in the cold night air, my hits short after short after short.
He stood behind me, his hands over mine, and we swung. A practice stroke, over and over, my sore muscles learning the motion. “Look to the moon when you swing,” he instructed. “That’s what you want. A ball that disappears into it. One that goes to the moon and past. A moonshot.”
“Sounds stupid,” I grumbled, my eyes on the dirt, my swing down.
“Everything’s stupid if you look at it a certain way. Some people think it’s stupid for a girl to be named Ty.”
I looked up with a smile. “That was stupid. Ty Cobb? You couldn’t have picked a Yankee?”
“Would Thurmon have been better? Or Red? Or Whitey? Yogi? Lou? Mickey?”
“Mickey isn’t bad. Or Babe.” I grinned at him, tapping the end of the bat against my cleats.
He scowled. “Let’s focus on the moon. I’ll worry about stripper nicknames later.”
A moonshot had been impossible for me. I woke up the next day with a task almost as improbable: avoid Chase at all costs. Eye contact would be dangerous, any conversation disastrous.