Safe at Home (10 page)

Some team guy.

They played seven-inning games in varsity, unless the game ran late. No inning could start after five-thirty But the Hayworth-Valley game was moving along, staying at 2–2, even though both teams had had chances to take the lead. Nick’s second time up, there had been a runner on third and one out, and he’d hit a fly ball to left he was sure would be deep enough to be a sacrifice fly.

But Conor Bell, the runner on third, had started home when the ball was hit, thinking it might fall, and by the time he went back to tag, the Valley left fielder already had the ball in his glove. Conor tried to come home even with his late break, but
the throw beat him easily, and the game was still tied.

In the bottom of the sixth, though, Joey doubled and Gary singled him home, and Hayworth went to the seventh inning ahead 3–2.

As Nick and Gary were walking onto the field, Gary came up and patted him on the back, the way Coach would.

That was what it must have looked like to the rest of the team, anyway. But what Gary whispered into Nick’s ear was this:

“Try not to mess this up before we get out of here with a W.”

Then he patted Nick one more time and headed for the mound. Nick didn’t know whether it was unusual or not for Gary to get the chance to pitch a complete game, but Coach had said that his pitch count was low, and so it was his game to win or lose.

It had taken less than a week for Gary Watson to turn into Nick’s archenemy. Like Black Adam was for Captain Marvel. Still: As Nick took Gary’s warm-up throws, he was thinking he’d never rooted for a pitcher harder in his life—not even with the
Mets or Yankees—than he was rooting for Gary Watson right now.

Because if he could strike out the side one last time, the Tigers would win their opener, which would mean Nick hadn’t lost it.

Gary still had plenty of arm left. He proceeded to strike out the first two Valley batters in the bottom of the seventh.

But then, out of nowhere, because pitchers could lose it that fast, he began struggling with his control. He walked the next batter on four pitches. And the next.

Tying run at second, go-ahead run at first, game still on.

Normally Nick would have gone out to the mound and tried to relax his pitcher. Just not now. Not with this pitcher. When Nick looked out at Gary, he imagined a moat between them, like you’d see in front of a castle.

Coach Williams didn’t come out to the mound, either. He’d said it was Gary’s game to win or lose, and now it really was.

On the first pitch to the next batter, the Valley cleanup hitter, Gary threw what Nick thought was a
perfect fastball, one with some late break to it that ended up in exactly the right spot, low and on the outside corner.

The guy just got a piece of it, and rolled it toward Conor Bell at third. The problem was that Conor, with two outs in the last inning, had been playing back, not just back but on the line, guarding against an extra-base hit. Long way for him to come in. He still managed to get a good jump on the ball, darting forward as soon as he saw how slowly it had come off the bat, barehanding it like a pro, whipping a sidearm throw to Steve Carberry that would have gotten the runner by a step—if it had been on target.

It wasn’t.

The throw was wide.
Way
wide.

Like one of mine, Nick thought.

It was wide right, Steve’s right. As soon as it was past him, it was going to roll the way Nick’s wild throw to Conor had. And when this baby stopped rolling, Valley was going to be ahead.

And that’s what would have happened—exactly—except for one thing: Nick was there, backing up the play.

He had sprinted toward first with the Valley cleanup hitter, the way he’d been taught long before he ever got to varsity. Not only did he beat the runner to the bag, he kept right on going as he followed Conor’s throw, diving full-out for it as it went past Steve, feeling the ball hit the pocket of his catcher’s mitt.

As soon as Nick knew he had the ball, he scrambled to his feet and saw that the runner from second had rounded third and was halfway home.

From behind first, Nick instinctively knew he had no shot at that runner.

But he did have a clear shot at the cleanup guy, who had been so sure the throw was long gone that he’d rounded the bag hard.

The Valley kid coaching first saw Nick with the ball and screamed at his runner, “Get back!”

Too late. The runner had too much momentum.

He managed to skid to a stop, dove back for the bag just as Nick dove at
him.
The ball out of his mitt and in his bare hand now. Nick put the ball between the kid’s hand and first base, getting a faceful of dirt, what felt like a whole
infield’s
worth of dirt, at the same time.

The field ump made the call at first.

“Out!”

The home plate ump saw that Nick had tagged the runner before the kid coming from third had crossed home plate.

It all meant that Hayworth had won, 3–2.

Nick was still lying there in the dirt near first base when Coach Williams and Jack Elmore got to him at pretty much the same time, telling him the game was over.

“When I talked about needing your right arm,” Coach Williams said, “I didn’t mean like
this.
”

At least it’s still good for something, Nick thought.

At Wiffle ball the next day, all Nick’s JV teammates—the guys he still thought of as his real teammates—wanted to talk about the play that ended the Valley Falls game.

“I heard you extended your arm like you were Mr. Fantastic,” Zach Dugas said, referring to the guy who could stretch himself as far as he wanted in the
Fantastic Four
movies.

Jeff Kantor said, “We’d compare you to the daughter in
The Incredibles
if, you know, she wasn’t a girl.”

“Thanks so much,” Nick said. “That’s
exactly
who I always wanted to be. I can’t believe I don’t have a poster of her up in my room, now that I think about it.” Nick put his hands together as if he were praying. “And you guys can cut it out. Please.”

He was serious. That play was just one out in a game full of them, and Nick knew it. It wasn’t as if he’d won the game all by himself.

Coach Williams liked to talk about how one bounce of the ball could change everything in sports. Yesterday, Nick was the one who ended up bouncing in the right direction on the last play of the game.

In his mind, it still didn’t make him a varsity player, didn’t make him feel as if he were a part of that team.

And it sure didn’t change anything else going on in his life right now. One lucky play wasn’t exactly like being able to say “Shazam!”

His dad didn’t want to hear about baseball that night at dinner. He had something else on his mind—and something else on the dinner table: some printouts, stacked neatly next to his plate.

Nick didn’t have a good feeling about them, judging from the expression on his dad’s face, but somehow he knew it was up to him to ask about them.

“What are those?” he said.

“Why don’t you tell me?” his dad said, sliding them across the table.

They were e-mails from Nick’s teachers.

“In fact, why don’t you read them?” Paul Crandall said. “Aloud.”

Nick did, mumbling until his dad told him to speak up. They all said pretty much the same thing about what a bright young man he was and how well liked he was by his classmates but how he wasn’t spending enough time on his homework.

What they all described as “out-of-class” work.

“At least you’re consistent,” Paul Crandall said. “I’ll give you that.”

“Wish I could be this consistent behind the plate,” Nick said, trying to lighten the mood a little.

“This has nothing to do with baseball,” his dad said. “Except in this one way: You are on notice, as of right now, about your work habits at school. Because if they do not improve between now and the end of the school year, you’re not playing town baseball this summer. Maybe in other summers you thought of baseball as your right. This summer,
it will be treated somewhat differently, as a privilege.”

“But—”

“There are no buts,” his dad said. “Or ands, or ifs, for that matter. The time for talking about all this is over, Nick. It’s time for action.”

Nick felt as helpless as he did watching that throw of his disappear over Conor’s head.

“It’s not fair,” he said.

Sometimes his mom would come to the rescue during one of these conversations.

Not this time.

“I have to support your father in this,” she said. “We both just want you to find the best in yourself, in everything you do.”

“It means in the classroom as well as on the baseball field,” his dad said.

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder,” his dad said.

Sounding exactly like Gary Watson.

There was nothing more to say. Nick didn’t feel like having dessert, just went straight upstairs and did
his homework, even though he wasn’t any more interested in it tonight than any other night.

His parents took turns checking on him. Each time, they found Nick either sitting at his desk or on the floor with his homework papers scattered around him.

The last time his dad came up, he said to Nick, “When you’re finished with your assignments, you can read comics if you want, until lights-out.”

Nick didn’t look up from the floor. “Thanks,” he said.

“We
are
doing this for your own good,” his dad said. “You
can
do this work.”

Nick kept scribbling away, just wanting his dad to leave the room.

He was tired of getting pep talks. Tired of everything. When baseball had started—JV baseball—he didn’t want the school year to end. Now he couldn’t wait for it to be over.

When he finally finished his English assignment, took the notes he’d been scribbling for his book report and typed them out on his laptop, he went into his box of comics, like the big old box that Mr. Boyd
used to have, and picked out a DC Comics Presents called
Superman and Shazam!

On the cover, Superman is wearing Captain Marvel’s costume, and Captain Marvel is wearing Superman’s.

Superman says, “Cap! What’s the idea of switching costumes with me?”

And the Captain says, “I’ve gained all your powers, too, Superman! While I wear this costume I’m you—and you’re me!”

They were lucky.

Nick didn’t know who he was anymore.

The second game of the season, against Thayer Academy, went worse than the first, at least for Nick.

Conor Bell was their starting pitcher this time, and even though Nick thought Conor had solid stuff, it wasn’t close to Gary Watson’s. Conor couldn’t throw as hard and didn’t have the same control. It meant more hits, more walks, more base runners.

More chances to steal.

And the Thayer runners were stealing. At will.

Conor wasn’t helping, because he had so much motion in his windup that he seemed to take twice as much time as Gary delivering the ball to the plate. Even with that, Nick knew in his heart that even if Conor had one of those slide steps that big-league pitchers used when there were runners on
base, even if he were following it up with a hundred-mile-per-hour fastball, Thayer’s guys would have still looked as happy as kids running around a playground at recess.

They stole two bases on him in the first, three in the second, three more in the third. The only time Nick got an out on any of them was when a Thayer runner overslid second base, and Joey—who’d had to jump to keep another one of Nick’s throws from going over his head—came down with this sweet move and put the tag on the kid before he could scramble back.

That was in the top of the third. The Tigers were behind 5–0 by then. And by the time Thayer’s half of the inning ended, they had tacked on two more runs.

Nick caught up with Conor before he got to their bench and apologized for what felt like the tenth time today already.

“Relax, dude,” Conor said. “Those guys aren’t putting themselves on base.”

“But I keep giving them extra bases,” Nick said.

“Listen,” Conor said, “if I ever start throwing
the ball better, maybe you won’t have to throw it at all. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Since he’d come to the varsity, Nick had felt like he only had two guys watching his back, Coach Williams and Jack Elmore. Now he felt like he could add Conor Bell to the list.

Once it was 7–0 for Thayer, though, the game started to run. The more tired the Thayer pitcher got, the more he lost his control. The harder he tried to fix that—by aiming the ball—the more it looked as if he needed MapQuest to find home plate. The Tigers suddenly had base runners, lots of base runners, and they were running, and stealing, on the Thayer catcher the way the Thayer runners had been stealing against Nick.

The Tigers wound up getting four runs in the fourth—Nick scoring one of them after he’d walked—and four more in the fifth to take the lead. All those runs seemed to relax Conor, who finally started throwing the way he wanted to. He finished his day with three perfect innings before giving way to his bullpen for the top of the seventh. And even though Les Roy, their number-three pitcher, loaded
the bases with two outs in the seventh, the Tigers got out of there with an 8–7 victory.

Somehow, despite Nick and his horrible throwing, the Tigers were 2–0 on the season. If they could win their next game, against Maumee Valley, they would go into their rivalry game against King undefeated.

King had three times as many students as Hayworth, even
recruited
good players in all sports to go there. Not only did they always win their league, they had beaten Hayworth ten straight times.

Not only that, but King’s catcher was a kid named Zane Diaz, and everybody who played ball in their area had heard of him. He lived in Sherrill, the next town over, and had been on the Little League All-Star team from there that had made it all the way to the semifinals of the Little League World Series in Williamsport two years before. Everybody had gotten to see him play on ESPN.

Zane Diaz was not only big and strong and had a ton of left-handed power as a hitter, he could throw the ball to second from his
knees.
Nick had seen him do it during a Babe Ruth game last summer.