Thirty-Three
I RECOGNIZE A few guys on both teams from high school ball, and even a couple I played against all the way back in Little League.
There are also a couple of photographers present—“Thanks again, pal,” I say sarcastically to Vince—and a young woman reporter from the Gazette, along with one TV cameraman.
When the reporter comes over, reaching out with her tiny tape recorder and asking me how my recovery is going, I just say, “All I could ask for at this point.”
“Heard you might play tonight,” she says. “Is that true?”
“Fake news.”
She smiles and asks, “Is that even still a thing?”
“In this case it is.”
Vince, who’s able to talk me into things the way Gideon Garland could, persuades me to throw out a ceremonial first pitch—which he says would really be the first one like it in the history of the league—just because of the way the crowd has turned out to see me.
I reluctantly agree but still feel funny doing it, and even funnier throwing the ball underhanded.
But I earn myself another cheer, even more behind it than the first one, when I deliver a perfect damn strike.
Then I wave to the crowd, walk over to the bench and take a seat next to Vince, his team’s left fielder, and ask if this is a big game for them tonight.
“It’s like you told me one time,” he says. “There aren’t any small ones.”
Between innings I try to be a good sport and pose for selfies with some of the players from both teams, some of them holding up cans of Lonerider and Big Boss and Green Man, all Carolina beers, because this isn’t just a fast-pitch league, it’s a beer league, too.
But the game I watch being played out in front of me is fairly high caliber for a beer league, and after just a couple of innings, it’s like any contest I’ve ever watched, in any sport:
I’ve already identified who the best players are.
In extra innings, the game still tied at 5–5, Vince makes a diving/sliding catch behind shortstop, lands hard, and comes up limping, and badly.
It’s the last out for Rocky’s Ace Hardware, and right here the game turns into the old baseball cliché, the one about how the guy who makes the great play in the field always ends up leading off the next inning.
That guy is supposed to be Vince.
But he’s already back on the bench next to me, an ice pack on his bad knee, grimacing with pain and saying, “I’m done, dawg.”
Then he turns to me and says, “Go up there and hit for me.”
“It’s like I told you on our way here,” I say. “Not a chance in hell. The last time I swung a bat was in high school, and even if I was considering it, which I’m not, you know my right shoulder is shit these days.”
“Come on, man,” Vince says. “Even one-handed, you’re better than anybody else we can put up there.”
Suddenly I hear Taylor’s voice behind me. Somehow she’s shown up again when I least expect her to do that, sneaking up on me a little bit this time.
“You’ve never let a team down in your life,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “When it’s my team.” I shake my head. “This isn’t fair. From either one of you.”
“Hey,” Taylor says. “You’re the one who always told me that nobody ever passed a law saying that sports had to be fair.”
I look at her, then back at Vince.
But then I get up off the bench, almost like a coach just told me to get out there.
“When I strike out,” I say, “it’s on both of you.”
“Nope,” Vince says. “Getting you to the plate is on us. The rest of it is all you, big boy.”
“Think how pleased Abby will be,” Taylor says wickedly.
The two of them have never been close, mostly because Tay never thought she was good enough for me. But then, I’m not sure anybody was ever going to be.
I walk over to where all the aluminum bats are spread out on the grass. Lift a couple of them until I find the one that’s the heaviest, and longer than the rest.
I hate admitting it to myself, but it feels good in my hands.
And, just like that, I feel something else.
Crazy as I know it is, I feel like an athlete again, and not just working out in the gym.
I feel like a jock.
I’m a natural left-handed hitter even though I throw right-handed. But as soon as I take a couple of practice swings, I feel the pull—and pain—from behind my right shoulder, on the follow-through most of all.
I take a deep breath and take a couple more quick swings, hoping the pain will lessen.
It doesn’t.
If anything, it gets worse.
“Hey, you gonna take all night, Silas?” their pitcher, a kid I remember from Parsons High a couple of towns over, yells with a big smile on his face. Ronnie Eckels is his name.
“I wish!” I yell back.
He laughs, and then I step into the batter’s box, and in this moment, the crowd at Corley sounds ten times bigger than it actually is.
I take a big cut and miss wildly on Ronnie’s first pitch, and before I’m into my follow-through, my right shoulder feels as if somebody just set fire to it.
Same thing after I swing and miss for strike two.
Now the pain is enough it nearly drops me to my knees.
What was I thinking?
I ask the home plate ump for time then, step out of the box.
And take a couple of practice swings right-handed. I’d always joked with my teammates that the only reason I didn’t switch-hit was because it would have doubled my time in the batting cage, and I already thought baseball was boring enough.
But I discover that the pain isn’t nearly as bad swinging from this side.
Now I walk around the ump and dig in on the other side of the batter’s box. Ronnie Eckels is shaking his head as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing.
I call out to him, “Hey, pitch, you gonna take all night?”
The next pitch is a ball, high and outside.
Same with the one after that.
The count is 2–2.
The next pitch, though, is right down the middle. High, but not too high, the ball looking a couple of sizes bigger than it really is.
I swing and am already letting go with my right hand as my bat makes contact with the ball, catching it square on the sweet spot.
I’m one-handing the ball to deep left, hitting one over the left fielder and over the short fence out there the way I’d once seen Aaron Judge one-hand a ball out of Yankee Stadium.
Walk-off homer, 6–5 for Lester Construction. Now the people at Corley Park are really going crazy, the way my brand-new teammates are doing the same thing as they wait for me at home plate.
And I do feel as if I’m back in high school as I make my way—slowly—around the bases, not drinking in the cheers as much as the moment.
I’m just rounding second when I look over and see Abby standing at the end of the bleachers on the third-base side of the field.
The three punks from the pickup truck are a few feet beyond her. The group leader’s eyes, still nearly closed from looking as if he’d lost a fight, catch mine now, like he’s been waiting for me to look over there.
He makes a motion with his right hand as if he’s firing a gun at me.
Then he turns and does the same at Abby.