The Big Field

by Mike Lupica

  “Keith” was never good. Keith meant she meant business.

  “Keith,” his dad said, making it almost sarcastic, making it sound like Darryl calling him “Captain,” “is lucky he didn’t get kicked off the team.”

  His dad didn’t mention boarding school nor the trip to Emerald Dunes, and neither did Hutch, not even when Hutch’s mom asked them why they were so late. His dad just said, “We drove around a bit and talked,” and left it at that.

  “Can I please go to my room now?” Hutch said.

  “Fine with me,” his dad said. “I’ve got nothing more to say, anyway.”

  He got up and walked out of the room. When he was gone, Connie Hutchinson leaned forward and said in a soft voice, “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You don’t know what I’m sorry about.”

  “Mom, can’t we just call it a night?”

  “I’m sorry it hurt you so much, seeing your dad on that field with Darryl.”

  “I’ll get over it.”

  He went upstairs, closed the door, turned on his dinky fan, flopped on the bed. He tried to close his eyes, but as soon as he did, he saw himself charging Darryl again. So he got up, got out one of his favorite DVDs, the Yankees highlight DVD from the 2001 postseason. He sat down at his desk, turned on his laptop, the used Dell they’d bought for him, inserted the disk, and found the flip play Jeter had made against the A’s.

  Hutch watched it over and over.

  Watched Jeter be in the right place, make the right decision, again and again and again, on the night when Hutch had made the dumbest decision on a ball field he’d ever made in his life.

  When he finally got tired of watching, he got back on his bed, stared at the shadows on his ceiling, and tried to imagine something that would make Jeter charge A-Rod the way he had charged Darryl tonight.

  But he couldn’t.

  “You’re coming to the game,” Cody said to Hutch, “even if I have to tie you up like they do in the movies and throw you in the trunk of the car.”

  “It’s a bus, Codes.”

  “I’m just trying to make a point here.”

  “And I’m not going,” Hutch said.

  They had been riding their bikes around the neighborhood for the last hour, making this big loop around the edges of the world they’d grown up in. They rode up and down Seacrest for a while, past some houses whose windows were still boarded up because of the hurricane last year, past an apartment complex called the Village Royal Green, got passed a couple of times by a Citizens Observer Patrol Car. When they reached the Community Center, a couple of blocks south of Gateway and Seacrest, they turned around and headed for Cody’s house.

  Cody liked to call rides like this the Tour de Hester.

  Every time Hutch would start to think Cody had dropped the subject of him traveling down to Fort Lauderdale with the team for the Punta Gorda game, he would bring it up again.

  “If I buy the burgers for lunch, will you let this go?” Hutch said.

  “No.”

  “Burgers and ice cream later?”

  “I can’t be bought.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Good point,” Cody said. “Just not today. Today my job is to be the captain of you, and make you see that as the captain of the team you should be with us.”

  “I’m not part of the team today.”

  “You’d come if you were hurt,” Cody said.

  “But I’m not hurt,” Hutch said. “My dad was right about one thing: The only thing I did last night was hurt you guys.”

  “Please come,” Cody said. “I’m asking you as your best friend.”

  “Don’t,” Hutch said.

  “You’ll figure out a way to help us even from the bench. I know you.”

  Hutch said, “And I know it will kill me having to watch from the bench.”

  Truth was, it was killing Hutch already just thinking about the game. And he knew it was going to kill him even more tonight, whether he was there or not. When he had finally gone to sleep last night, he had told himself he would feel better about things in the morning. Isn’t that what your parents always told you, that everything would look better after a good night’s sleep?

  They were wrong.

  When Hutch woke up and started thinking all over again about what he’d done, he’d only felt worse.

  About everything.

  He’d let everybody down, no matter how much Cody was trying to prop him back up.

  They went back to Cody’s house when they were finally tired of riding around, sat down in what shade there was on the Hesters’ front porch. Almost noon now, straight up. Four and a half hours until the Cardinals’ bus left from Santaluces.

  Great, Hutch thought.

  Now the longest night of Hutch’s life was turning into the longest day.

  “What will you do if you don’t go?” Cody said.

  “Go to bed early and pull the covers over my head until you call and tell me we won.”

  “I sleep in that room all the time, remember?” Cody said.

  “You’d suffocate.”

  Mrs. Hester had the day off from her nursing job. She brought them out glasses of lemonade and said, “Looks to me like I’m interrupting some deep conversation, am I right?”

  “No,” Hutch said, at the same time Cody said, “Yes.”

  Mrs. Hester laughed and said, “Wait a second, I thought the two of you were always on the same page.”

  “Not today,” Cody said.

  When she was gone, Hutch said, “You’ve got a cool mom.”

  “This isn’t Jeopardy!” Cody said. “Don’t try to change the category.”

  Hutch put his glass down so hard, he was afraid he might have broken it for a second. “We either stop talking about this, or I’m out of here,” he said, the words coming out with more snap than he’d intended.

  Cody stood up now, face red, a shade he liked to call “redneck red.” He said, “You know what? Nobody’s stopping you. And if you want to be as selfish today as you were last night, I’m not going to stop you from doing that, either! You want to stay home tonight? Stay. You want to go home and feel sorry for yourself there instead of doing it with me? Go.”

  It took a lot to get Cody mad, and he hardly ever got mad at Hutch unless it was fake-mad over a video game.

  But he was mad now.

  “Who is it that’s always saying how seriously he takes being captain of the team? Oh, wait: That would be you, wouldn’t it? Well, excuse me for thinking you were going to suck it up and be a real captain tonight. You know why we’re still talking about this? Because I never thought you’d act like this much of a baby, while the rest of us go down there and try to save your sorry butt.”

  Hutch sat there and took it from his best friend, staring up at him from the top step.

  “So what’s it gonna be?” Cody said. “Are you in or are you out?”

  Hutch stood up then, so they were eye to eye.

  Then he put out his hand for the kind of regulation handshake they only gave themselves when they were shaking on something important.

  And this was important.

  “I’m in,” Hutch said.

  He knew he was going to feel like an outsider. But Cody Hester, his redneck friend with the red face, was right. Righter than he knew.

  You were either the captain of the team, or you weren’t.

  Hutch was.

  18

  MR. CULLEN WAS STANDING BY THE DOOR TO THE BUS WHEN Mrs. Hester dropped off Hutch and Cody. “I’m glad you came, Hutch.”

  “I’m sorry again about last night, Mr. C. I’ve never done anything like that before in my life.”

  “Last night was last night,” Mr. Cullen said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in sports, it’s that you can’t do anything about last night. Lord knows I used to try when I was a player. Let’s just do our best to support the guys tonight.”

  “I’ll do whatever you say,” Hutch said.

>   “How about I make you bench coach for a night? You can sit next to me when we’re at bat and hold things down when I’m coaching first.”

  “Cool,” Hutch said.

  Only he didn’t feel very cool.

  Other than when he’d sprained an ankle in Little League, he couldn’t remember one time in his life when a team of his had a game and he wasn’t playing in it.

  There was something else bothering him.

  He knew he was going to have to talk to Darryl sooner or later. Not just about what had happened last night, but all the junk that had been going on between them the whole season. Maybe if he’d had the talk last night, the way he’d planned before he showed up for practice and saw his dad on the field, he wouldn’t be in the fix he was in now.

  Hutch and Cody had grabbed two seats in the very back of the bus by the time Darryl got on. Usually Darryl liked to sit by himself in the back so he could take a nap, no matter how short the trip was. But when he looked up and saw Hutch back there, he sat down in the first row, across from Mr. Cullen, who always had the first seat behind the driver.

  The conversation with Darryl would have to be later.

  Hutch waited until the Cardinals were about to go out for infield practice, then walked over to where Darryl was standing at the end of their bench.

  “I was out of line last night,” he said.

  Darryl looked at him, no expression on his face, not mad, not interested, not anything, almost like Hutch was a stranger, before saying, “You think?”

  “Darryl, we gotta get past this, you and me,” Hutch said, keeping his voice low. “For the good of the team.”

  “You shoulda thought about the good of the team before you sucker-slammed me.”

  He wasn’t going to make it easy.

  But why should he? Hutch thought.

  I don’t deserve it.

  And it wasn’t like he was going to stop being Darryl just because Hutch had apologized.

  Connie Hutchinson liked to say that if you were born round, you didn’t die square.

  “You’re right,” Hutch said. He didn’t like saying that to Darryl, but he did anyway, swallowing hard like he’d just taken medicine. “I’m just asking you as best I can to go out there tonight and get me a chance to play a few more games this season.”

  He put out his hand then, but Darryl picked that moment to start fiddling with the straps hanging off his glove.

  Leaving Hutch hanging until he just dropped his hand back down to his side.

  “Won’t be doing it for you,” Darryl said.

  “I just don’t want there to be any more trouble between us, is all,” Hutch said.

  “That would be up to you, wouldn’t it?” Darryl said.

  Then the Cardinals shortstop ran out to short, Hutch envying him more than he ever had, just because he had a game to play and Hutch didn’t.

  The Cardinals were going with their best tonight, which meant Tripp was starting. Cody had replaced Hutch at second, going back to his normal position, and Tommy O’Neill was playing right.

  When Mr. Cullen gathered them around him before the game, he announced that he wasn’t going to wear anybody out with one of his big rousing pep talks.

  “Rousing, Coach?” Cody said.

  “Hush and listen,” Mr. Cullen said. “Because I’ve basically got just two words for you tonight: Roger Dean.”

  Hutch hadn’t worn his uniform, even though Cody had tried to get him to. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and his favorite sneaks, an old beat-up pair of Nike Franchise Lows. As Mr. Cullen spoke, he hung back behind the guys who were in uniform.

  He wasn’t a player tonight and wasn’t going to pretend like he was, even now.

  “When we get back on that bus and go back up 95 tonight,” Mr. Cullen said, “we’re not just gonna be heading home. We’re gonna be on our way to the finals.”

  He looked from face to face and said, “Are you all hearing me on that?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then go win the game,” he said, and the Cardinals ran out to their positions from the third-base side of the field. Hutch watched them go and felt like he was watching everybody get dismissed from class early except him.

  Mr. Cullen must have been watching him watch his teammates, because he put an arm around Hutch’s shoulder.

  “You want to chart pitches?” he said to Hutch.

  “Nah. I can’t follow the game doing that, Mr. C. I don’t even keep score when I go to Marlins games.”

  He sat down at the end of the bench and Mr. Cullen sat down next to him.

  “So just hang with me, then,” Mr. Cullen said. “I watch you when you’re playing. I see you moving guys around when you don’t think I notice. I know you see stuff in games that nobody else on the team sees.”

  “I just want to see us win,” Hutch said.

  Tripp threw strike one then to start the game.

  “All right!” Hutch yelled.

  Mr. Cullen grinned.

  “Easy there, tiger.”

  For some reason Hutch remembered the night they’d all sat in his living room and watched the replay of his home run on television, Cody complaining that Hutch’s mom was calling him a cheerleader.

  Now Hutch was the cheerleader, at least for a night.

  In the fourth inning, the Pirates leading 3–2, Hutch caught Cody’s eye when he saw him shading too much toward first with a left-handed hitter, the Pirates catcher, at the plate.

  But even though the Pirates had four lefties in their order, only one of them had managed to pull the ball off Tripp so far. Now they had second and third, two out, the catcher up. A base hit was going to put them up by two runs, and Hutch, in his mind’s eye, saw that base hit going right up the middle between Cody and Darryl.

  So without making a big show of it, any more than he would have made a big show of it on the field, Hutch just hooked a thumb at Cody and told him to move back toward second base.

  Cody took two steps.

  Hutch motioned with his head for him to keep going.

  Cody gave him an are-you-crazy? look, but did what he was told.

  When Hutch finally told him to stop, Cody pointed toward the big hole that had opened up between him and Chris Mahoney, playing first with Tripp pitching.

  Hutch grinned and made a calming motion with his hands, as if telling him everything was cool.

  Mr. Cullen had gone to get a bottle of water out of their cooler, came back with the count 2-2 on the catcher, said to Hutch, “Uh, why is Cody practically standing on second base all of a sudden?”

  He started to get up and move him back, but Hutch put a hand on his arm and said, “I told him to play there.”

  “Guy’s a lefty.”

  “I know, Mr. C,” Hutch said. “But you gotta trust your bench coach on this one.”

  Mr. Cullen took a swig of water, spit it out, and said to Hutch, “You better be right.”

  Two pitches later the kid at the plate hit a hard grounder up the middle, just to the second baseman’s side of the base.

  Cody barely had to move.

  He was all over the ball, not even having to backhand it, gloving it straight up and having plenty of time to get the out at first and get them out of the inning.

  “Oh,” Mr. Cullen said, “I get it, that was the hole I should have been worrying about.”

  “No biggie,” Hutch said, smiling to himself, feeling for a moment like he was actually in the game.

  It was still 3–2, Pirates. The Cardinals had gotten their runs when D-Will had doubled home Alex and Brett in the bottom of the first off the Pirates’ lefty starter.

  Hutch knew it should have been him bringing the runners around, could have been him if he hadn’t acted like such an idiot. But there had been nothing to do back in the first inning except stand and cheer for Darryl like everybody else on the bench.

  Tripp, working on a high pitch count, somehow made it through the top of the fifth without giving up another run. The Pirates’
starter, who seemed to match every pitch Tripp threw out of the strike zone, walking a half-dozen guys by Hutch’s count, only made it through the fourth before the Pirates’ manager brought in a big righty who looked like he ought to be playing middle linebacker in football.

  Not good.

  Not even close.

  Because as soon as he’d pitched to his first two Cardinals batters—Chris and Hank—Hutch knew this kid had better stuff than the Pirates’ starter—better command, two fastballs, one a riser, the other a mean sinker.

  The big righty, a seventeen-year-old for sure, kept the Pirates ahead by a run into the eighth. It was pretty clear to Hutch by then that they were going to pitch him the rest of the way. There wasn’t anybody warming up and the kid seemed to be on cruise control, even when the Cardinals would manage to work the count on him a little bit, which wasn’t often. The Cardinals were barely forcing him to break a sweat.

  “Got any brilliant strategy you’re working on?” Cody had said when the Cardinals came in to bat in the bottom of the seventh.

  “Yeah,” Hutch said. “Score two more runs before that guy gets nine more outs.”

  “The math sounds simple enough,” Cody said.

  But the Cardinals managed only a single base runner in the seventh, who was immediately erased when Chris Mahoney hit into a double play.

  Chris tried to make up for that by at least pitching a 1-2-3 top of the eighth.

  Six more outs for the Cardinals to get those two runs and a trip to Roger Dean.

  “I don’t know if we can hit this kid,” Mr. Cullen said before running out to coach first, just loud enough for Hutch to hear.

  Hutch said, “But he is hittable, Coach, that’s the thing. We’re just not being patient enough, making him work hard enough. We’re getting ourselves out.”

  Cody was leading off for them in the bottom of the eighth.

  Hutch grabbed him as he was putting on his batting gloves and said, “A walk wouldn’t stink here, you know.”

  “I hear you.”

  Hutch gave his arm a good squeeze.

  “Ow?” Cody said.

  Hutch said, “A walk really wouldn’t stink here.”