Baseball Great Page 2

  At the side door, a sleepy man wearing thick glasses and a windbreaker with a security patch read the paper without looking up.

  “Hey, Glen,” Josh’s father said.

  “Uh-huh,” Glen said, licking a finger and turning the page.

  Josh stayed close, following his dad through the maze of hallways, past where they would turn for the lockers, to the end of a hall and into the elevator.

  The general manager’s office had a back wall of glass overlooking the nearby lake and the smokestacks of several power plants and a steel mill on the far shore. Josh knew the GM but had never been in his office before, and it surprised him to see that Dallas Simmons sat with his desk facing the double doors instead of the panoramic view. Dallas had white tufts of hair over his ears, but he looked young for an old guy. His skin, the color of coffee with lots of milk, ran smoothly from the top of his head to the base of his neck without a wrinkle. His hazel eyes normally twinkled like Santa Claus’s, dueling with the flash of white teeth in his easy smile.

  When he saw Josh, the light in Dallas’s eyes went out. Still, the GM cranked up a smile and said, “Josh, good to see you. Start your season yet?”

  “Tomorrow,” Josh said. “Good to see you, too.”

  “Future Hall of Famer,” Josh’s dad said, patting him on the back.

  “Gary,” Dallas said, addressing Josh’s dad, “maybe Josh can help field some balls? I’ve got that kid from Tulsa doing some extra hitting out on the field.”

  Josh’s dad gave Dallas a funny look, and his hand went around the back of Josh’s neck. “No, that’s okay. He’ll stay.”

  “Because I’d love to have him see this kid hit,” Dallas said, clearing his throat and nodding toward the door.

  “Say what you gotta say, Dallas,” his father said in a growl. “They’re bringing me up, right?”

  Dallas looked at Josh’s father for what seemed like a long time before he sighed and pinched the top of his nose. Shaking his head, he said, “No, Gary, they’re not.”

  “I’m a lefty,” his father said softly.

  “I know,” Dallas said.

  “Your MVP,” his father said.

  “They want to take a look at Dick Campbell.”

  “Campbell stinks!” his father said. “His ERA is what? Four-point-six-three? You’re joking.”

  “They think he translates.”

  “He translates?”

  “He’s twenty years old,” Dallas said, looking up wearily, avoiding Josh’s eyes. “They think he’s got potential, and he does. You’re thirty-one.”

  Josh’s father stepped up to Dallas’s big, wide desk, placing his large hands flat on its dark, grainy surface like two skillets. He leaned toward the GM.

  “You tell those butt heads in Toronto that they either bring me up,” his father said coldly, jutting out his chin at the GM, “or they can go find the Chiefs another MVP.”

  Dallas rested an elbow on the desk and dropped his forehead into his hands.

  “Don’t say that,” Dallas said, wagging his head in despair.

  “When you’re down,” his father said, “you hit where it hurts.”

  “They don’t care,” Dallas said slowly.

  “It’s like a poker game,” Josh’s father said. “I’ve played it before. They like to bluff.”

  “It’s no bluff, Gary. They thought about it. They know how well you’ve done, but bringing in a one-point-eight-seven ERA against Rochester isn’t like doing it against the Yankees. You can’t go up, and you can’t go back down.”

  His father stared hard at Dallas and said, “I wouldn’t expect you to say anything else.”

  “I tried, Gary,” Dallas said, looking up at him. “I begged them.”

  “Well,” his father said, looking back uncomfortably at Josh, “next time. We know what that’s like; don’t we, buddy?”

  Josh nodded enthusiastically.

  “No, Gary,” Dallas said. “I’m sorry. It’s over.”

  “What’s over?” his father said, standing tall and clenching his fists.

  “They agreed to let me keep you through next week,” Dallas said, “to play out the home series with Pawtucket. They’re letting me have a retirement ceremony during the seventh-inning stretch. Saturday’s bat day. There should be a crowd.”

  Josh’s father did something Josh had never seen before, ever. He let his enormous shoulders sag. His chin dipped toward his chest, and one of his big hands swept over his face.

  “I—” he said to Dallas, then stopped.

  Josh thought he heard his father whisper that he was the MVP.

  Outside Dallas’s window the sun sparkled on the lake, and an army of puffy clouds marched across the sky. Josh’s father brushed past him and flung open the office door. Dallas called to him, but Josh’s father stood punching the elevator button, and Josh followed him. Dallas’s secretary didn’t look up from her typing as they waited for the elevator to come, and Dallas stopped calling so that when it did arrive, the ding of its bell sounded like the end of a prizefight.

  Back in the car, Josh waited until they pulled into their own driveway before he asked, “Dad, what happens now?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE NEXT DAY, JOSH stuffed his baseball mitt, cleats, and hat into his gym locker. He felt someone tap his shoulder and he turned around.

  “You see this, dude?” Benji asked, shoving the school newspaper into his face. Benji’s straight brown hair fell across his face, his dark eyes glittering up at Josh. His plump cheeks tugged at a mischievous smile. Benji was average height but stout and tough, a good athlete who was quick to laugh himself but even quicker when it came to making other people laugh.

  Josh felt his cheeks heat up. “Yeah, I saw it.”

  He pushed past Benji and out into the crowded hallway, making for the stairs and his book locker on the second floor before the first bell rang.

  “Dude, this girl loves you,” Benji said, following close.

  “What girl?” Josh asked, turning around when he reached his locker, his mind on Sheila, the tenth grader’s girlfriend.

  “This girl,” Benji said, stabbing his finger at the byline of the newspaper article about Josh. Benji closed his eyes, puckered his lips, and made kissing noises at Josh.

  “Cut it out.”

  “She does.”

  “I got other things to worry about,” Josh said, spinning the dial on his locker and choosing to tell Benji the next worst thing to his dad getting cut from the Chiefs. “Bart Wilson showed up at my bus stop yesterday after school wanting to fight me, because, he says, I’m after Sheila Conway and she’s his girlfriend.”

  “Are you?” Benji asked.

  Josh gave him a dirty look. “She sat next to me at lunch. You saw it. She’s an eighth grader. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Not keep smiling at her,” Benji said.

  “Believe me, I won’t,” Josh said, stuffing his backpack into the locker and removing the books he needed for the first two periods. “That’s what you get for being nice.”

  “Anyway, you’ve got a new girlfriend now,” Benji said, holding up the paper.

  “Cut it out,” Josh said, closing his locker and heading for homeroom.

  “You do.”

  “I’ll see you at lunch.”

  At lunch, Josh bought four milks, then found an empty table near the glass wall that looked out over the hallway. He took four sandwiches out of his bag and lined them up with an apple and some pretzels. They only got twenty-two minutes to eat, and it took all of that for Josh to put down everything he needed to stay fueled up. Benji, who wasn’t small but who was nowhere near Josh’s size, could eat his lunch in five minutes, leaving him plenty of time to talk, which he did, usually without pause.

  The long table began to fill up. Several guys Josh knew who were going out for the baseball team sat across from him, and he said hello quietly, keeping his head angled down at his food. When Benji arrived, he whistled and hooted and slapped high fiv
es with the other guys, asking them if they were ready for baseball season. Benji planned on being the team’s catcher. Josh, like the others, listened as Benji told a story about how the baseball coach’s wife divorced him after the team lost every single game last year.

  “And I can’t say I blame her, dude,” Benji said. “No one likes a loser.”

  “That’s not true, is it?” Josh asked, blinking at his friend.

  “If it’s not, it should be,” Benji said, peeling back the paper on an enormous cupcake he pulled from his lunch bag.

  “Speaking of divorce and marriage,” Benji continued, slowly licking the colored sprinkles from the brown frosting, “you set a wedding date yet with Jaden Neidermeyer?”

  The other kids laughed. Josh shook his head.

  “Yeah,” Benji said, dabbing the frosting now with his tongue, “any girl that writes an article like that is in love, deep.”

  Josh saw the kids across from them stop laughing suddenly. Their eyes went past Benji. He turned just in time to see Jaden, her face red and pinched, reach over Benji’s shoulder and grab his hand.

  Before Benji could react, Jaden slammed the cupcake up into his face, mashing it around and leaving him with a mask of brown frosting and yellow hunks of cake.

  The entire table howled with laughter. Benji, to his credit, sat calmly, licking a clean spot around his mouth.

  “I love the game, you goober,” Jaden said, her voice tinged with a southern accent as she scowled at Josh, “not him.”

  “What did I do?” Josh asked.

  “Nothing,” she said in her light drawl. “You just sat there like a big dummy, listening to him talk about me when all I did was tell everybody how great a player you are. You know how much research I had to do? Tracking down your coach from when you lived in Manchester? Going through all those stupid Little League records in Mr. O’Dwyer’s basement that smells like cat crap?”

  Josh’s mouth fell open. He stared.

  Jaden had light brown skin and long, frizzy hair that she kept pulled into a ponytail. Except for big green eyes, which reminded Josh of a cat’s, her features were small, almost elfish, even though she was one of the taller girls and big-boned. She was both pretty and formidable. She didn’t have more than a handful of friends, and she rarely talked except to answer questions in class. But Josh thought that Jaden only seemed like a loner because she always had her nose in a book and hadn’t moved into town much more than a year ago. Deep down, he suspected she was like a treasure box, and, if you lifted the lid, you’d be blinded by gems.

  “I’m a reporter,” Jaden said, jabbing a finger in the back of Benji’s neck, “not a floozy.”

  Just then Josh saw Sheila Conway walking his way with a tray. Her long blond hair swished from side to side, glimmering. She wore a short black dress and a wide smile. Josh swallowed hard and looked up at Jaden.

  “Would you mind sitting here?” he asked her, pulling out the empty chair beside him. “Please? I’ll explain. I really need you to.”

  “Hey, dude,” Benji said, dabbing some frosting out from the corner of his eye and licking his finger, “she just smashed a cupcake into my face and you’re asking her to sit down?”

  “Please,” Josh said again, begging.

  Jaden glanced over her shoulder and saw Sheila Conway coming. Jaden nodded her head and sat right down, smiling up at the older girl. Sheila wrinkled her nose, cast Josh a dirty look, and kept on going. Josh sighed and stole a glance at her as she strutted away.

  “Thanks,” he said to Jaden.

  “Now you can leave,” Benji said, leaning forward so Jaden could see his frown. His eyes popped out at her, unblinking in the mess of frosting. “Girls, they’re nothing but trouble.”

  “Is he always this idiotic?” Jaden asked, taking an orange from her lunch bag and beginning to peel away the skin.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Josh said, grinning and extending his hand.

  Jaden returned the smile, and they shook.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JOSH SPRINTED OUT ONTO the baseball diamond, leaving the algebra equations, frog dissections, Greek myths, and important WWII dates behind. A warm breeze tugged at his hat. The smooth insides of the glove caressed his hand. His cleats punched clean holes in the fresh turf. From his back pocket, he extracted a pack of Big Red—the gum his dad chewed—and shucked three sticks free, one-handed, shoving them into his mouth to create a wad worthy of the day.

  Instead of standing around like the others, he found his spot between second and third and stood, toes in the dirt, heels digging into the lip of the grass. They wanted him to pitch. At just under six feet and weighing 160 pounds, he was by far the biggest kid on the team. He could throw more heat than anyone, even the eighth graders, but pitching wasn’t his gift—reaction time was. He could go places as a shortstop, and that’s where he needed to play. His dad said so, and his dad was a pro.

  Not anymore he’s not.

  The words came at him like the shriek from some heckler in the stands. Josh looked around, wondering if Benji or any of his other teammates had said it.

  No one had said it, though.

  The other boys stood in a small circle by the dugout, watching Benji play hot hands with their pitcher, Kerry Eschelman, crooning at the sound of the slaps and crying for blood.

  Josh breathed easy. While the end of his dad’s career created an unpleasant tension at home, it had its upside. They wouldn’t have to move to Toronto, or back to Manchester, where the Double-A team was. Josh was tired of moving. Even though Benji could be a pain, Josh couldn’t imagine middle school without him.

  A whistle sounded, and Coach Miller yelled, “All right, bring it in!”

  Josh jogged to the backstop with the rest of the kids. The coach counted the guys and told them that, unfortunately, everyone wouldn’t make the team. Sixteen was the number he would carry. That meant six would go home. Josh looked around, knowing he had to make it but thinking of his dad’s words about never being in until you’re in. His dad was the team MVP, and he was out.

  Josh set his jaw and punched a fist into his glove. He’d make it impossible for the coach to cut him.

  Sometime during agility drills and stretching, Jaden arrived. One minute the small bleachers stood empty, the next she sat there with a little notebook and a pen, examining the field and the players as if they were fish in an aquarium. After short tosses, long tosses, and some infield drills, Coach Miller called them together again and said he wanted to see what they had in the way of offense.

  “LeBlanc,” Coach Miller said, pointing at Josh with a bat. “I hear you’re gonna be our big star.”

  Josh looked down at his cleats and nudged the baseline with his toe.

  “A baseball great?” Coach Miller said, chuckling and shaking his head. “You’re a little young for that, don’t you think?”

  Josh’s face felt as if it were on fire. He shrugged his shoulders, pulled on his batting glove, and grabbed the bat. When he had the rubber grip in his hands, the embarrassment melted away. He swung the bat slowly, feeling its weight, allowing his mind to wrap itself around the shape, making it part of him, an extension of his own arms and hands. Coach Miller barked out positions for the boys, telling Kerry to take the mound.

  “Okay, LeBlanc,” the coach said in a skeptical tone. “Let’s see some greatness.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “COACH, COACH, COACH,” BENJI said, stepping between Josh and Coach Miller and turning his cap around as he tugged on a batting glove. “You gotta let me go first, Coach. I’m gonna be your leadoff batter anyway, and you gotta let Eschelman warm up his arm on me, save the real stuff for our big bat.”

  Benji took the bat from Josh’s hands. Coach Miller looked at Benji with an open mouth, as if he couldn’t believe it. Benji didn’t blink; he just stepped up to the plate.

  “C’mon, Coach,” Benji said, looking over his shoulder as he took some warm-up swings. “You can’t win a championship standing aro
und.”

  The coach took his clipboard and stood over to the side, then said to Kerry, “Go ahead, start throwing.”

  “You be on deck,” Coach Miller said, pointing his pen at Josh and reasserting his authority.

  Josh studied Kerry’s motion as he wound up for the pitch. He watched the ball zip past Benji, who took a monster swing, connecting with nothing but air.

  “Getting warm, getting warm,” Benji said, holding off the next pitch with his left hand while he kicked dirt from his cleats and waved the bat in little circles with his right.

  The next pitch came in, a curveball. Benji swung big again, nipping the ball and sending it dribbling down the third-base line.

  “Nice hit,” Coach Miller said, “for a bunt.”

  Benji stayed focused, swinging big every time, mostly whiffing and, if not, dribbling the ball into the infield or popping it up for an easy out.

  “Okay, Lido,” Coach Miller said. “That’s all the leadoff batting I can take. Get out into right field and send Brandon in here.”

  “Coach, you gotta give me one more,” Benji said. “Just one. One and done, Coach. One and done. Forget leadoff, I’m a heavy hitter, too. Come on, Eschelman; put one in here, you sissy.”

  Benji wiggled his cleats into the dirt. The pitch came fast, and he smacked it right over the center-field fence.

  “Wahoo!” he screamed, pumping his fists in the air as he dropped the bat and jogged toward right field. “Heavy hitter! Heavy hitter!”

  Coach Miller chuckled, made some notes, and pointed to Josh.

  “Now, let’s see what you got,” he said.