The Batboy (16 page)

“My machine, our cage, your BP,” Mr. S. said.

“Something like that,” Brian said.

“You know this is something I’d have to clear with the manager?”

Now Brian was the one talking fast. “Mr. S., if it’s a problem, if even asking would be some kind of problem for you . . .”

“Hush now and get back to work and later on I’ll get back to you.”

He found them in the dugout a half hour later. Brian tried to read his face, couldn’t. “Well,” Mr. S. said. “At least I tried.”

“He said no?” Brian said.

“No.”

“Knew it.”

“Hush again,” Mr. S. said. “No, what he
said
was, and I quote, ‘I don’t want to know about this.’ End quote. Which is now my official position as well.”

Brian said, “So I can do it?”

Mr. Schenkel walked away, saying, “Do what? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Brian wasn’t kidding himself into thinking that a few minutes in the cage, or a lot of minutes in the cage, were going to fix a swing that was about as graceful lately as if he were swinging blindly at a piñata at a party.

And it wasn’t like he was going to be standing in there at Comerica in a real game, against real pitching.

Still.

For a little while tonight,
he
was going to get some hacks where
they
did.

But when the game was over, and the Tigers had lost 2-1 to the Indians, Brian had a thought:

He was going to take some hacks with
what
?

As he and Finn were stacking the boxes of gum and sunflower seeds for the night, Brian said, “I don’t have a bat. Unless you’ve noticed a bunch of aluminum bats lying around here.”

“I got you,” Finn said. “I mean, I
so
got you. Willie said you could use one of his, that only chopsticks are lighter than his bats.”

“You
told
him?”

“Don’t worry, he says he won’t tell and he’s totally cool with it. Said if he didn’t have a date, he’d be your personal batting instructor.”

Brian stayed in his uniform when the game was over, figuring if he was going to take batting practice at Comerica, he would at least be dressed for the part. When they had finished all of their chores except shining shoes—which Finn said he’d take care of that night while Brian was hitting—Finn helped him wheel what was officially called the M6 Iron Mike out of the closet and down into the cage.

Brian already knew how to operate it because Mr. Schenkel had shown him and Finn how the first time he’d shown them Iron Mike. They knew that its hopper could handle up to 600 balls, but Brian figured a lot fewer than that would do tonight. He grabbed two bags of beat-up batting practice balls and fed them into the machine.

Finally he was in the cage, setting the speed at something he figured he could handle at the start—75 mph. Then he ran back and forth between Iron Mike and where home plate was in the cage a couple of times, to make sure the height of the pitches was set right.

When he had everything the way he wanted, he stood in there with Willie Vazquez’s bat and swung. He missed the first couple of pitches, but on the third pitch he connected, what would actually have been a nice shot up the middle in a real game, and he couldn’t believe how loud the sound of the ball on a wooden bat was in the quiet underneath Comerica. The sound jarred him and he grew nervous all over again.

He started thinking about his swing, and suddenly felt exactly the way he had with the Sting for the last month: lost. He began pulling off the ball, dropping his back shoulder no matter how hard he tried not to.

Before long he had gone through the first hopper of balls and decided he wasn’t going to waste his time much longer, he’d load Iron Mike up once more and then call it a night.

He always heard the Tigers’ hitters talking about how they had to make themselves wait at the plate. Yeah, Brian thought now, still flailing away at air, I’m waiting all right.

Waiting to feel like a hitter again.

He was about halfway through the last batch of balls when he heard somebody’s voice in the runway. All the players were gone, so it had to be Mr. S. or Finn, maybe Finn coming down to tell him his mom was here and it was time to go, wrap it up.

My pleasure, Brian thought. One more good swing, if I’ve got one in me, and then I’m gone. He watched the mechanical arm of Iron Mike come forward, watched the ball as if it were coming out of a pitcher’s hand, loaded up for a big swing.

And dropped his stupid shoulder again.

If this were a game, it would have been a straight-up-in-the-air pop-up.

No, Brian thought, the minute he heard the voice.

No no
no.

He thought of the old John McEnroe line: You can
not
be serious!

The voice belonged to Hank Bishop.

Not just the last guy in the world Brian wanted to see right now.

Hank was the last guy in the world he wanted to see
him.

T
he balls kept whizzing by Brian, one nearly clipping him before he realized he’d taken a step in Hank’s direction and jumped back.

“You’re . . . you’re not supposed to be here,” Brian said.

“Shouldn’t that be my line?”

Brian said, “I thought everybody . . . all the players . . . were gone.”

“Forgot my cell phone, then I heard somebody in here,” Hank said, showing it to Brian. Now he nodded at Iron Mike. “What’s your excuse?”

“My poor excuse for a swing.”

“Calling that a swing is pretty generous, kid,” he said, looking disgusted, like the batting cage was one more place where Brian came up short.

The hopper was empty by now. Brian thought, Just pick up the balls, wait for Finn to help you roll it back, and get out of here.

“Load it up and let me see it again,” Hank said.

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re here to hit,” Hank said, snapping at him. “So let me see you hit.”

Brian filled up one of the bags, ran up and loaded up the ball hopper. Hank was still on the other side of the netting. Brian ran back to the plate. When the first pitch came at him, he didn’t even swing, he was too busy watching Hank instead of the ball.

“Don’t watch
me
, you idiot! Watch the ball!”

Brian swung and missed.

Then again.

And again.

Finally he made contact. He went through pitch after pitch, missing a lot more than he hit. And then finally Iron Mike was still and the cage was silent.

“I’m done,” Brian said, dropping the bat.

“No, you’re not,” Hank Bishop said. “Go load that sucker up again.” He shook his head. “If I left you here like this, with
that
swing, it would be like leaving the scene of a crime.”

Then, to Brian’s amazement, he stepped inside the cage.

Brian had no way of knowing if Finn might be watching from somewhere, probably as shocked as Brian at what was going on. Or if Mr. Schenkel might be taking in the show.

But he didn’t care. He didn’t have
time
to care because he was too busy listening to everything his new batting coach had to say.

Even if Hank Bishop was acting as if somebody was
making
him do this.

The first thing he’d done was order Brian to slow down the amount of time between pitches, so balls wouldn’t be flying past them while he was talking.

“Seriously?” he said to Brian. “Has anybody who actually knew what he was doing ever worked with you on hitting?”

“Some of my coaches.”

Hank shook his head. “Coaches in what
sport
?”

“I mean, my coach during the regular season this year a little bit . . . But there’s a lot of guys on the team, and he can’t—”

“More information than I was looking for. What about your dad?”

“Sure,” Brian said. “You know, the basics when I was first starting in T-Ball. But he sort of lost interest in my baseball career when he realized I couldn’t pitch.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way? But neither could he. At least not the way he seems to think he could.”

Maybe there was a time when he would have defended his dad. Not now. He just took his stance with Willie’s bat in his hands as he heard the balls in Iron Mike’s hopper start to move.

Hank came around behind him and jerked the bat down, startling him.

“Carry your hands lower,” Hank said. “You’ve developed this god-awful hitch when you drop them and it throws your timing completely off, not to mention your stride. The idea is to keep things level.”

“Feels weird.”

“Pity. Do it.”

A pitch came in. Brian swung and made contact. Not great contact. But he hadn’t swung through this one.

“Wait!”
Hank said. “And that doesn’t just mean with your hands. Keep your weight back, too. That way, when everything comes through, it all comes through together: hands, shoulders, hips, all the torque in your lower body.” He put his hands on Brian’s shoulders and turned them hard toward Iron Mike, nearly knocking him over. “Theoretically, anyway.”

Hank was wearing jeans, a plain white T-shirt, plain white Nike sneakers. Now he took the bat out of Brian’s hands, stood in there himself, and showed him what he’d been trying to tell him. He seemed to hit the first ball he saw so hard Brian thought he could have split it in two.

The sound of the ball on Willie’s bat was a lot different, a lot louder, than it had been for Brian.

Hank handed him the bat. “And stop moving your feet all around, you look like you’re sliding around on ice,” he said. “Anchor that back foot, and when you stride with your front don’t act as if you’re trying to jump out of the stupid box.”

On the next pitch Brian didn’t stride at all, doing a terrible impression of Hank’s swing.

“What was
that
?”

“Tried to shorten my stride.”

Hank shook his head. “I said anchor the
back
foot.” Shaking his head again, he said, “Scrub.”

But he didn’t leave.

Before they were finished, he changed Brian’s hands again, pulling them back more. Kept telling him not to squeeze the handle so tight, like he was trying to grind it into sawdust. He had Brian open his stance slightly, moving his front foot back and pointing it more toward where third base would have been, as a way—he said—of getting Brian to clear his hips.

And more than anything he kept telling him—
yelling
at him—to keep his head on the ball.

“You know where it started with Ted Williams?” Hank said. “His eyes. His focus on the ball. They used to say he could read the words on a record going around at 78 rpm’s.”

“Seventy-eight . . . huh?”

Hank rubbed his face hard with both hands. “Never mind,” he said. “I
have
figured out
some
thing, though.”

“What?”

“You are your old man’s kid,” he said. “Because you hit exactly like a pitcher.” And for the first time that night, he smiled.

Brian didn’t know how long they’d been in there together, or how many times he’d refilled the hopper. He kept expecting Hank to kick him out. But as he stayed longer, no matter how sarcastic he got every time Brian did something wrong, an amazing thing began to happen:

Brian started to get it.

Started to feel as if he knew what he was doing and could have sworn he saw his bat
on
the ball a few times even though he’d been told that was impossible.

Finally Hank said, “Ten more swings, and please try to make it look as if I didn’t waste my time here.” Then he jogged up to Iron Mike and told Brian he was dialing up the speed to 85 mph, Brian knowing that was as much heat as he was ever going to face with the Bloomfield Sting.

On the sixth pitch—Brian having told himself it was 3-2, bases loaded, bottom of the ninth—he waited and exploded on the ball and hit this
sweet
line drive that banged hard off the protective padding in front of Iron Mike.