21. Jake #2
My eyes meet my father’s, and he nods toward the far side of the dugout, urging me to follow. His eyes narrow on my shoulder the moment we’re semi-alone, then he flits his gaze to mine.
“Don’t ruin your career over pride.”
I rub the sore spot and swing my arm around, biting my tongue to keep myself from emoting how I truly feel.
“I’m fine.”
“Stop.”
He places a hand on my chest and glances behind him, making sure we’re not being watched. His attention comes back to me, and he shakes his head.
“Listen to your body. I watched you drop your slot three inches on that throw to second. How bad is it?”
“It’s just tight,” I lie, bile rising in my throat.
My heart is hammering inside my chest. This cannot be happening.
Not now. “It’s probably just the humidity.
It’s heavy today. I just need some ice and some heat rub between innings.
I’m fine. The Texas scout is right behind the screen, for Christ’s sake.
I have two doubles this series. If I pull myself now?—”
“If you throw another ball with that shoulder in that position, you’re going to tear something you can’t fix with an ice pack,” he interrupts, his eyes blazing with a protective warning.
I exhale and nearly fucking cry. He’s right.
“I spent twenty years watching catchers destroy their careers because they were too stubborn to admit they were hurting. You think those scouts want a guy who throws from his ear because his joint is full of bone chips? You’re done for the night, Jake. We’re calling the trainer.”
I shake my head in protest. “Dad, please. If I go on the injured list now, I’ll get dropped from the top of the order. I’ll lose my starts. The momentum is gone. Everything Campbell did, the press, the spotlight . . . it doesn’t mean anything if I’m sitting on the bench in a sweatshirt.”
“It doesn’t mean anything if you’re working a forklift in Sweetwater next year because your labrum is shredded, either.”
Our eyes lock for a brief moment, and I have nothing to say in return. He’s right. He knows I know he’s right. He knows this is killing me. All of it.
He doesn’t wait for my approval. He simply turns toward the training room door at the end of the tunnel and shouts, “Doc! Get out here. Jake’s shoulder is done.”
My stomach drops into a bottomless pit. I lean against the concrete wall, my right arm throbbing so hard I can feel the pounding in my head.
Ten minutes later, I’m sitting on the training table, the team doctor’s cold fingers pressing into the anterior deltoid while I try not to scream.
He moves the joint through a series of resistance tests, each one sending a fresh wave of agony down my spine until I’m dripping sweat onto the vinyl padding.
“I don’t think it’s torn,” he says, pulling off his latex gloves with a sharp snap that sounds like a gunshot in the quiet room.
“We’ll know for sure when we get back to Sweetwater, but as far as I can tell, you’ve got some bicipital tendonitis and massive acute inflammation in the subacromial bursa.
You’ve been redlining this joint for weeks, Jake, and that snap-throw tonight was the breaking point. ”
I stare at the floor, my hands gripping the edge of the table. “Can I DH? I can still hit, Doc. I don’t need the shoulder to drive through the ball.”
“Absolutely not,” the doctor says, his tone final.
“You are on a strict ban from catching or throwing for the next two to three weeks. Minimum. No throwing. No baseball activities. You’re going to be on a heavy regimen of anti-inflammatories and physical therapy twice a day before I even let you think about putting a glove back on. And that’s all if the images say so.”
Two to three weeks.
The words echo in my head, loud and destructive.
Twenty-one days. In the minor leagues, three weeks is an eternity.
It’s enough time for three different prospects to get called up over your head.
It’s enough time for the scouts to forget your name and move on to the next kid fresh out of college who doesn’t have “McKinney legs” and a busted shoulder.
When the team doctor leaves to fill out the paperwork, I walk back out to the dugout. The game is over—we lost 5-2—and the field is emptying.
I sit on the wooden bench, my right arm wrapped in a massive, ridiculous mountain of ice and plastic wrap.
I stare out at the manicured grass of the infield, the grounds crew already at work with rakes and those little vacuums they use to suck up our seed shells.
The air is still hot, but I feel completely frozen.
Everything was finally clicking into place—my family, Campbell, my swing, my future.
And in a split second, the game just reached out and ripped the floor out from under me.
My dad’s lumbering footsteps echo on the concrete as he walks down the dugout steps. He doesn’t say anything at first. He just sits down next to me on the bench, his long legs stretching out toward the warning track. He caught the rest of the game tonight. We still couldn’t win.
“It feels like the end of the world, doesn’t it?” he says softly, staring out at the pitcher’s mound.
“Yeah,” I choke out, my throat tight, my eyes burning with a hot, angry frustration I can’t check. I run my forearm over my face. “It does.”
“I missed two months of my rookie year with the same damn thing,” he continues, shifting his weight so he’s looking at me.
I glance in his direction but my gaze drifts back out to the tiny bugs hovering over the blades of grass.
“I thought the front office was going to trade me to Iowa for a bucket of balls. I spent three weeks sitting on a training table watching some kid from California hit thirty-five points higher than me.”
He reaches over, his hand resting on the back of my neck, his fingers squeezing the tight muscles there.
“But you know what I did, Jake? I learned how to read a pitcher’s tip from the bench.
I learned how to call a game by watching the hitters’ feet from the dugout.
You aren’t disappearing. You’re just moving to the classroom for a minute.
And when you get back, you’re going to be twice as dangerous. ”
I don’t look at him, but the heavy, suffocating weight in my chest lifts a fraction. I let out a long, shaky breath, nodding. “Thanks, Dad.”
The team bus back to the hotel is a quiet vault of exhausted players, the low hum of the engine the only constant sound against the dark highway.
I sit in my row, my phone glowing in my left hand, staring at the text thread with Campbell.
My shoulder is now a dull ache. The real pain is the hollow feeling in my gut.
JAKE: Doc shut me down. Severe inflammation. 2-3 weeks minimum, no catching, no throwing.
Her response is almost instantaneous, the ellipses dancing on the screen before I can lock my phone.
CAMPBELL: FaceTiming you the second you get to your room. Don’t you dare go to sleep.
My mouth inches up for a brief second before I tuck my phone away. She must be tracking my location. She’s watching me from afar. It feels nice.
When I finally click the keycard into my hotel room door, I barely have time to toss my duffel onto the floor before my phone buzzes with a video call. I slide into the lone armchair by the window, propping the phone against the ice bucket on the desk, and hit accept.
Campbell’s face fills the screen. She’s at my apartment—our apartment—sitting at the small kitchen counter with her hair pulled up in a messy bun, wearing the same oversized T-shirt she stole from me this morning.
I think she’s commandeered six of them by now.
Her dark eyes are wide, scanning my face through the camera with her usual intensity.
Her gaze softens the moment she focuses on my face.
“Get comfortable, McKinney,” she commands, her voice crisp but kind, the way an elementary teacher rounds up a group of kids from recess. “Take off your shirt, put the real ice pack on that shoulder, and lie down on the bed. Right now.”
“Campbell, I’m fine?—”
“You are currently veering into a deep, dark hole of self-pity, and I am not letting you spend the night wallowing in a Marriott,” she says, her fingers clicking rapidly against her keyboard off-screen.
“Roadway Inn,” I correct.
She waves a hand at me. “Whatever. In the time it took you to ride that bus, I built a twelve-slide media and personal development framework for this exact scenario. Turn the phone sideways so you can see my screen.”