The Big Field

by Mike Lupica

  Hutch was running across the infield, between the pitcher’s mound and first base, yelling, “Don’t!”

  But it wasn’t Hutch who stopped him.

  It was the home plate umpire.

  Darryl didn’t even know the ump was behind him. But as he tried to launch the bat he couldn’t, because the ump had a death grip on the barrel.

  Hutch stopped a few feet away, heard the ump in a calm voice say, “No.”

  Just that.

  No.

  It stopped Darryl. Or maybe confused him.

  Because hardly anyone ever said that word to him.

  “We both know you don’t really want to do that,” the ump said.

  The ump was a young black guy, a former ballplayer himself, named Anthony, who had already worked a bunch of their games up around Palm Beach. For a second the two of them just stood there, Anthony and Darryl, each of them holding on to his end of the bat, like they were in a tug-of-war, or had come up with a new way to choose up sides.

  Anthony used his free hand to take off his mask, show everybody he was smiling, that he had everything under control.

  “I’d like you to let go of the bat, son,” Anthony said. “You hearin’ me on this?”

  When Darryl didn’t say anything, Anthony, just loud enough for Darryl—and Hutch—to hear, said, “Answer me when I talk to you, son. Are you hearin’ me on this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes sir, think you meant to say.”

  “Yes sir,” Darryl Williams said, though you could see that he wasn’t used to being told what to do any more than he was used to somebody saying no to him.

  Darryl let go of the bat. As soon as he did, Anthony handed it right back to him.

  “Now go put that thing back in the rack, ’cause we got ourselves a heck of a good ball game goin’ here,” Anthony said.

  Darryl did exactly what the ump told him to do.

  Hutch thought it was as amazing as him striking out the way he just had.

  Maybe even more.

  Paul Garner, who had started for the Cardinals, left after the fifth with the game tied 5–5. Chris Mahoney, who started in left when Paul pitched, came on after that and shut out the Dodgers through the bottom of the eighth, without allowing a base runner, the best Mahoney had pitched all season by far.

  By then the Cardinals were back ahead 7–5 because Brett Connors, who hardly ever hit home runs, had hit an opposite-field dart down the right-field line that was fair by about three feet and cleared the fence by less than that.

  It stayed 7–5 into the bottom of the ninth.

  Hutch never tried to think past the next pitch when he was in the field. Sometimes he’d pretend he was the manager when the Cardinals were batting, trying to think a few batters ahead. But never when he was in the field. When he was in the field, he was in the moment, thinking what he was doing with the ball if it was hit to him or where he was going if it was hit to somebody else.

  Still:

  With two outs and nobody on and Pedro Mota having just absolutely gassed the first two Dodger hitters in their half of the ninth, he was actually thinking that they might get to the bus for once with a win that wasn’t scarier than a Saw movie.

  No such luck.

  Hank Harding promptly booted a routine ground ball that would have ended the game.

  The next Dodger batter hit one in the hole between Hank and Darryl, and Darryl made a sweet play to keep the ball from going into left field. But instead of putting the ball in his pocket, he tried to make a hero throw and get the guy at first.

  It exploded out of his hand the way balls usually exploded off his bat, and went over Tripp’s head at first and halfway up into the stands. Not only were the Cardinals not on their way to the bus, they were looking at second and third and the Dodgers being a hit away from tying the sucker up.

  Pedro hadn’t done anything wrong except get two ground balls, but you could see he was hot, so Mr. Cullen made a little talking motion with his hand, meaning he wanted Hutch to be the one to settle him down.

  When he got to the mound he said, “Qué pasa, dude?”

  “Qué this stinks!” Pedro said.

  “So how about this,” Hutch said, trying to act as relaxed as if they were already having their postgame snack. “How ’bout you get this guy to hit it to me this time, and we get out of Dodge.”

  Hutch hit him encouragingly with his glove and went back to his position.

  Pedro went to 2-2 on the next hitter, the little guy leading off for the Dodgers, then threw him a righteous fastball in on the guy’s hands, a pitch that would have been unhittable against a free swinger. Only this guy, the Dodgers’ second baseman, was the opposite of that. Hutch had noticed all game long how good he was at handling a bat.

  Better now.

  Somehow muscling a flare toward short center.

  Hutch wasn’t off with the crack of the bat, because it wasn’t a crack—it was more like a thud. He was still on it, focused hard on it, almost seeing inside his head where he thought it was going to land. If it landed. Hutch ran toward that spot, not taking his eyes off the ball for one second, blocking out everything else, going at full speed now, tracking this baby real good.

  Knowing he was going to get there.

  Getting ready to backhand the ball.

  Reaching up with his glove just as Darryl, at full speed reaching for the ball himself, came crashing into him from the other direction.

  Two shortstops. Each thinking the exact same thing:

  I got it.

  12

  BY SOME MIRACLE, THEY DIDN’T BANG HEADS, MAKE IT ONE OF those “helmet to helmet” hits football announcers were always talking about, only without the helmets.

  Darryl had angled himself a little bit to Hutch’s right, so it was more like shoulder to shoulder.

  Hutch still felt like he’d run into a wall.

  He ended up flat on his back, Darryl next to him, already groaning his way into a sitting position. The first person Hutch saw when he opened his eyes was the field ump.

  “You okay, kid?” the ump said.

  “Think so.”

  “How about you?” he said to Darryl.

  “Yeah,” Darryl said. “Now that I find out my head’s still attached to my body.”

  The ump looked back at Hutch now. “Then would you mind if I took a look at your glove?”

  “My glove…?”

  The ump reached down then, opened up the Jeter mitt, the Rawlings PROSDJ2-50 he’d saved up for the whole school year, the 11-1/2” model, the cool-looking black one.

  The ball was still in the pocket.

  “Well then,” the ump said, “this baby is over.”

  He straightened up, jerked his right fist in the air, yelled, “Out!”

  Then, just as loud, he yelled, “Ball game over!”

  For Darryl, it was like an alarm had suddenly gone off. He jumped to his feet, stood over Hutch and pointed a finger at him. “You trying to kill me?”

  Hutch was still feeling a little shaky. But he made himself get up, too. As soon as he did, Darryl was right in his face, like a manager in the big leagues getting ready to go at it with the home plate ump.

  “I was trying to make a play,” Hutch said in a quiet voice.

  “Yeah,” Darryl said. “On me.”

  Hutch said, “D-Will, I didn’t run into you. We ran into each other.” Still not yelling, trying to talk to him in a normal voice. Mr. Cullen was there, so were some of the other fielders. They were all giving Hutch and Darryl plenty of room.

  “That was my ball,” Darryl said. “It’s always the shortstop’s ball.”

  This was the last thing Hutch wanted to be doing, especially after winning a ball game. Not just winning it, but doing it on a crazy play like this. But he wasn’t going to let Darryl call him out this way.

  “Look at where we’re standing,” he said. “It was closer to me than it was to you.”

  It was true, they were a couple of yard
s to the second base side of the bag.

  “I was calling for it,” Darryl said. “You’re telling me you didn’t hear me?”

  “I didn’t,” Hutch said. “Because you didn’t.”

  “You’re calling me a liar now?” Darryl said.

  “I’m saying if you had called,” Hutch said, “I would’ve gotten out of the way like I do when Cody or Alex calls me off on a ball between us.”

  Still Darryl wouldn’t drop it.

  He said, “You may be the captain of this team. But everybody who plays ball knows who the captain of the infield is. And it’s never no second baseman.”

  “Okay,” Mr. Cullen said, “that’s enough.”

  He reached down and handed Darryl his cap, which had gone flying when Darryl and Hutch had gone flying.

  “You both sure you’re okay?” Hutch and Darryl, looking at him instead of each other, both nodded. “Then we’ll talk this out at practice tomorrow,” Mr. Cullen said, and started walking Darryl back toward the bench.

  Cody went walking toward second base, picked up Hutch’s cap, banged it against his leg to get the dirt off it, came back and handed it to him.

  “You really okay?” Cody said to Hutch.

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go home then.”

  “Yeah,” Hutch said again.

  Hutch looked down, noticed he still had his glove on, opened the pocket and saw the ball still in it.

  “You gotta come up with a Spanish word to describe that catch, dude,” Cody said. “Because English ain’t gonna do.”

  “If I ask you a question, will you answer in plain English?” Hutch said.

  “Always.”

  “Did you hear him call for the ball?”

  Cody looked down.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We all did.”

  13

  HUTCH WAS IN THE PAPERS AGAIN. THESUN-SENTINELTHIS TIME, the big paper in Fort Lauderdale.

  The Hutchinsons hardly ever saw the Sun-Sentinel, even if the paper was sold up in Palm Beach. But somebody had called Hutch’s mom first thing in the morning and she’d run over to the 7-Eleven to get it before she had to leave for work.

  When she showed it to Hutch, he’d said, “Great.”

  “Yes,” his mom said, “it must be a terrible burden for you sports celebrities, all this media attention.”

  “Mom, you don’t understand.”

  “Your picture in the paper being a bad thing? You’re right. I don’t understand.”

  Hutch turned the sports section over and said, “It’s just going to make Darryl hate me even more.”

  “I seriously doubt that Darryl hates you.”

  “He’s the star of every team he plays on,” Hutch said.

  “And the last couple of games, people have treated me like I’m the star.”

  Connie Hutchinson said, “And that’s a bad thing, too?”

  “Darryl thinks it was his ball, that it should have been his catch,” Hutch said. “He called for it and everybody heard him except me, and so he blames me for us banging into each other…”

  He leaned back in his chair so far that he nearly tipped over, and said, “Aw, I give up.”

  “Talk to Darryl,” his mom said. “Even though it’s not the guy thing to do.”

  Hutch didn’t care if it was the guy thing to do or not. He knew his mom was right. Hutch decided to make things right with Darryl, even though he hadn’t meant to do anything wrong.

  After all, it wasn’t like he was trying not to hear him when they were both going after the ball. Wasn’t like he wanted to run into the guy at full speed and maybe lose the game in the process. If you thought about it, the only thing Hutch was guilty of was trying too hard, concentrating so much on trying to make a play and win the game that he had blocked out everything else.

  Including the sound of Darryl’s voice.

  But none of that mattered now.

  It was Hutch’s job as team captain—as a team guy—not to let things get any worse between him and Darryl, not when they were so close to winning a championship. They had to stop acting like they were on different teams instead of being teammates. Hutch wanted to root for Darryl and have Darryl root for him, mostly because he’d never been on a good team in his life when everybody wasn’t rooting for everybody else.

  So what if Hutch had been on television? So what if he was in the papers again?

  Everybody knew this was Darryl’s team.

  Everybody knew who their star really was. Didn’t they?

  Hutch thought Cody might fight him on apologizing to Darryl, just because Cody had never acted like Darryl’s biggest fan. But when Hutch told him on the way to practice what he planned to do, Cody agreed it was a good idea.

  “You know why?” Cody said. “Because you don’t need the hassle.”

  “I’m just gonna tell him that if everybody heard him except me, that’s on me,” Hutch said. “It’s what a captain should do.”

  There was a little convenience store a block away from the field, and Mrs. Hester dropped them there, so they could pick up some Gatorade. Before she drove away, she reminded them that Mr. Hutchinson was picking them up today.

  They bought two quart bottles of blue Gatorade each, threw them in their bat bags, and walked the rest of the way to Santaluces. They weren’t in their spikes yet, just wearing their flip-flops, knowing they were early, not caring. They could never be early enough for baseball. And usually they were the first ones to arrive at practice.

  But not today.

  Hutch was the one who heard the sound of a ball hitting an aluminum bat, right before he saw that there were already two people on the field at Santaluces, one hitting ground balls, the other fielding them out at short, mimicking throws over to first before lobbing the ball back to home plate.

  The fielder was Darryl, who was never early to practice even though he lived only a few blocks from here with his mom. But he was early today.

  That wasn’t the biggest surprise.

  Not even close.

  The biggest surprise was the guy at the plate.

  Hutch’s dad.

  14

  CODY SPOKE FIRST, JUST BECAUSE ONE OF THEM HAD TO SAY something.

  They were standing behind the black Sun Coast town car that Hutch knew his dad must have driven here, the car hiding them from Carl Hutchinson and Darryl Williams, at least for now.

  “Is your dad, like, lost or something?”

  “Looks right at home, if you ask me.”

  Cody said, “He barely even comes to games.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So what’s he doing out there?” Cody said.

  Hutch’s dad had jogged out to short now, was crouched in front of Darryl.

  Hutch said, “Showing him how to put his glove straight down, then bring it straight up once the ball is in it.”

  It was one of the first things Hutch could remember his dad teaching him. Before his dad stopped teaching him baseball things. Hutch was seven. His dad had brought a small plywood board out into the yard, told Hutch to pretend the wood was his glove, showed him how to put it straight down on the ground and then use his bare hand to pin the ball against it.

  Then he’d shown Hutch how to keep that bare hand on the ball as the board came up, almost like a snatch move, before he set himself to make his throw.

  When he was seven, Hutch thought he could practice for a thousand years and not make it look as easy as his dad did.

  Hutch remembered everything about that day, remembered how his dad stayed out there until he was satisfied Hutch was doing it the way he’d wanted him to, finally telling him, “This is a hard game. If you’re going to learn it, you might as well learn it right.”

  Then he’d gone back inside the house, telling Hutch that if he wanted to keep practicing, he could throw the ball against the little pitchback he’d bought for him.

  Now he was out near second base doing the same thing with Darryl Williams, putting his own glove down i
n the dirt—where did the glove come from? Hutch wondered, he didn’t even know his dad still owned one—and then bringing it up in that old snatch move, making it look as effortless as he always had.

  Next he went and stood behind the pitcher’s mound, with what had to be Darryl’s bat in his hands, rocketing grounders at Darryl from there, unable to get one past him.

  Hutch watched them, thinking:

  It’s like they’re the same player.

  “You want to go join ’em?” Cody said. “We can’t hide here behind this car all afternoon.”

  “No,” Hutch said. “Still looks to me like the two of them are doing just fine on their own.”

  He could feel heat on the back of his neck, like somebody had just turned up the sun.

  How many times? Hutch thought.

  How many times had he wanted to be alone on a field, any field, with his dad the way he was alone out there with Darryl Williams right now?

  Hutch watched now as his dad walked back to home plate, heard him yell out, “One more.”

  Coach Carl Hutchinson.

  He hit one more rocket. This one was to Darryl’s right. Darryl went to his knees, made a sliding stop, whipped a throw across the diamond that would have been dead solid perfect if somebody had been standing on the bag.

  “Can’t lie to you, son,” Carl Hutchinson shouted, flipping the bat over his head as if surrendering. “That’s the way I used to pick ’em.”

  Hutch tried to remember one time in his life when his dad had said anything like that to him, but couldn’t.

  He and Cody came out from behind the car now, walking toward the home team’s bench at Santaluces.

  It was then that Carl Hutchinson noticed them.

  “Hey,” he said, “how long you guys been here?”

  Hutch said, “Long enough.” He sat down on the bench, made himself very busy putting on his socks and his baseball shoes, as if knotting the laces just right was the most important thing he was going to do all day.