The Big Field

by Mike Lupica

  And the only reason he knew that the Post had called him “Jeter Junior” in Saturday’s paper was because Cody called and told him all about it, not even waiting until Mrs. Hutchinson drove them to practice.

  “You really didn’t look at the paper this morning?” Cody said in the car. “Scout’s honor?”

  “Scout’s honor?” Hutch said. “Cody, you went to exactly one meeting before you quit Boy Scouts. And, no, I didn’t look at the paper, ask my mom.”

  Connie Hutchinson said, “He didn’t even check the box scores today, which usually makes me take his temperature.”

  “All I can say is, they liked you a lot better today,” Cody said.

  “So do I,” Hutch said.

  Mr. Cullen had said he wanted a short practice today, just so they wouldn’t have nearly two full days to think about Game 3. No heavy lifting, he promised. Just some BP and a little infield. Tripp could do a little light throwing on the side if he wanted to, along with Pedro and Chris Mahoney. One hour to be together as a team before he gave them the rest of Sunday off.

  When they finished a few minutes before two, they all sat down under the green canvas roof over the five rows of bleachers at Field No. 1 and swigged Gatorades and water as Mr. Cullen faced them.

  “They had their chance to knock us out last night and they couldn’t do it,” he said. “That’s why this thing is ours now. They know it and we know it. Am I right?”

  They all nodded.

  “Their time is over,” he said. “It’s done. This is our time.”

  Cody raised his hand.

  “Uh, Coach?” he said. “Isn’t that exactly what the coach said in Miracle right before the big Olympic hockey game against the Russians?”

  “Kurt Russell,” Brett said.

  “No, the coach was Herb Brooks,” Hank said.

  Brett said, “I know who the coach was. I mean the actor playing him.”

  Mr. Cullen grinned. “You got me,” he said to Cody. “I just didn’t know if I’d ever have a chance to give that speech.”

  Everybody had a good laugh at their coach’s expense. Then their parents began to show up, and the long wait until Game 3 had officially begun.

  Early Sunday night.

  Cody had gone home after eating dinner with Hutch and his mom, Hutch’s dad having had to make another one of his unexpected airport runs.

  Hutch’s plan was to watch Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN, at least until his dad came home and reclaimed the living room and the couch. The Yankees were playing the Red Sox, which meant Hutch would get a chance to watch the real Jeter in action.

  Except he wanted to be in action himself.

  He knew he was only kidding himself if he thought he could hang around the house and relax and not think about playing Orlando in less than twenty-four hours. He needed to get outside, move around, even with Jeter on television, do some baseball things.

  He called Cody and asked if they could use his dad’s key to the batting cage at Fallon Park, go hit some balls.

  “I have played enough baseball this weekend,” Cody said.

  “And so have you. You can take one night off.”

  “I know I can,” Hutch said. “I just don’t want to. Is it all right if I borrow the key?”

  Cody said that he was acting like a crazy person but, yes, he could borrow the key.

  When Hutch told his mom where he was going, he could tell by the look on her face that she thought he was acting a little crazy, too. But she said he could go ahead.

  “For one hour,” she said. “And if the park is empty, you promise you will turn your bike around and come straight home?”

  Hutch said he would, even though he was sure there was some kind of men’s softball league that used Fallon Park on Sunday nights.

  He didn’t even bring his glove with him, just his bat, slinging his bat bag over his shoulder for the bike ride. He ran into the Hesters’ house, grabbed the key from Cody, who told him he was crazy again, then rode the twenty blocks to Fallon, for his own early batting practice, twenty-four hours before the game.

  There was a softball game going on under the lights, just as Hutch suspected. Usually he would stop to watch any kind of ball game, but he only had an hour, so tonight he rode right past the big field at Fallon, past a couple of tennis courts, out toward the secluded spot behind the Little League field where the lighted batting cage was nearly hidden by a cluster of palm trees.

  Before he got there, Hutch could hear the crack of the bat.

  Not an aluminum bat.

  A wooden bat, making the sweetest baseball sound in this world.

  Except it wasn’t a sweet sound tonight. It was the opposite of that to Hutch, because it meant somebody else with his own key had beaten him to the cage, on tonight of all nights.

  Hutch got off his bike, leaned it against one of the palm trees, and poked his head around it, curious to see who else wanted to come work on his swing on a Sunday night.

  When he did see, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  The guy in the cage was his dad.

  Hutch stayed behind the palm tree, not wanting his dad to know he was watching him.

  He still couldn’t believe his eyes, that it really was his dad, taking his stance and waiting for the wheel with the balls in their separate holders to turn slightly toward him, then coming forward with his bat when the pitch was delivered, his swing looking as smooth and level as Darryl’s.

  Hutch didn’t even know that his dad still played baseball, or that he had a key to this batting cage, because he had never mentioned the key to Hutch or offered to let him use it, even when Hutch and Cody would talk about coming over to Fallon to hit.

  But here he was, as serious standing in there waiting for the next pitch as if he were the one getting ready to play the title game. As serious as if he were standing in there against a real fastball, or curve. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, which the sign outside the Fallon cage told you to do if you were going to use the ball machine. He just wore an old Braves cap Hutch had never seen on him before, the A in white script, a dark blue cap with a red bill. His dad wore that and a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off up to his shoulders, showing off the ripped muscles in his upper arms.

  No batting gloves. Like me, Hutch thought. Bat held high. No flipping motions with the bat like you saw from some big leaguers, the ones waving the bat behind them as they waited for the pitcher to pitch. While Carl Hutchinson waited for the next pitch to come to him, he was almost completely still. Hutch had a clear view of his dad’s face. Under the lights in the hitting cage, Hutch could see his dad’s eyes focused on the ball as if it were the only thing in the world that mattered right now.

  Then another ball was on top of him and he was coming through with his arms and wrists and hands, the wood bat so loud on the ball Hutch was sure they had to be able to hear it back at the softball game, this hit rocketing right off the ball machine itself, so hard that Hutch thought it might knock the sucker right down.

  Hutch shook his head, thinking: He smoked that one.

  And in the batting cage, Hutch saw his dad smile then, smiling the way he did in the scrapbook pictures. Smiling as if he were young again.

  In that half-light you get between day and night, darkness coming faster now, Hutch heard his dad say “Yeah” to himself. Then his dad took his stance again, and as the ball was coming to him, he dropped his bat down and got it out in front of him and laid down what looked to Hutch to be a perfect bunt. The way you would if you were having real batting practice.

  The ball he bunted must have been the last one, because now he walked up to the machine and began picking up all the balls around it, the ones he had rocketed into the netting and sometimes through the netting and into the wire fence around the cage at Fallon.

  Hutch could hear his own voice inside his head, loud now, so loud he was almost afraid his dad would be able to hear it, telling him to get out of here before he was spotted. And maybe it was something else te
lling Hutch to leave, maybe the idea that this was his dad’s own little baseball world and somehow that Hutch was intruding on it. That Hutch should just leave him here in this cage with his memories.

  Hutch stayed where he was.

  He didn’t know what he would tell his mom when he got home, didn’t even know if his mom knew that his dad still came to batting cages. Hutch hated to lie about anything and hated even the thought of lying to his mom more, but he could hear himself telling her that he’d changed his mind about Fallon, that he’d just decided to ride his bike around for an hour and start imagining all the good things that were going to happen to him in Game 3.

  Maybe there’d be enough truth in what he’d tell her that it wouldn’t really qualify as a lie.

  Or maybe this was something he could talk to his mom about, even if he had to swear her to secrecy about spying on his dad this way. Maybe she knew that this was another place his dad went to find peace, even if he was doing it in a batting cage, even if he was using baseball to find peace when it was baseball that was supposed to have made him so torn up in the first place. And so sad.

  He remembered the other night when he had come downstairs and found the TV set on and the beer can on the end table, and he’d just assumed his dad had gone over to Emerald Dunes to walk around. But maybe Hutch had been wrong, maybe watching the game had made him want to grab a bat and come here.

  One by one now his dad placed the balls back into the pitching wheel, taking his time, as if he were enjoying even this part of the process. When he had the machine loaded up, he jogged back to pick up his bat and get back into his stance, as if he didn’t want to miss a single pitch.

  “Bring it,” he heard his dad say to the ball machine.

  Then he was bringing it again, never overswinging, never looking as if he were trying to jack one right through the chain-link fence and out of the cage. He just stayed back, patient, the way the best hitters were, his weight back to start before he cleared his hips, sometimes keeping his head on the ball so long, or at least where the ball had been before he smacked it, that it looked to Hutch as if his head were still down when the ball was into the net.

  Hutch kept picturing the balls rolling all the way to an imaginary wall for extra bases.

  Every few seconds at Fallon Park there was the crack of his dad’s bat on the ball and that was the only sound at Fallon except for an occasional burst of laughter from the softball game in the distance. Hutch remained hidden behind the tree, just his head poking out, as he watched the boy in his dad come out with every swing.

  Finally they were sharing baseball, even if only one of them knew it.

  28

  EVERYBODY HAD LEFT THE CARDINALS’ CLUBHOUSE AND GONE OUT to start stretching before Game 3.

  Everybody except Hutch and Darryl.

  It was nothing new for Darryl. He was always the last one on the field for stretching, sometimes not even stretching at all, as if he couldn’t be bothered.

  But tonight Hutch was with him, taking his time putting some black electrical tape he’d found in the trainer’s room around the toe of his right baseball shoe, having looked down as he was getting dressed and noticed that the whole front of the shoe had come loose from the sole and was just sort of flapping around.

  Hutch had thought he could make it through the whole season with these shoes, a pair of mid-length black Nikes, but now he’d come up one game short. So he sat in front of the locker he was using tonight and took his time being a shoemaker. The locker had David Eckstein’s name over it. He was the Cardinals shortstop, the little guy with the dirty uniform and a ton of heart who’d been the MVP when the Cardinals won the World Series a couple of years ago. Another baseball team that wasn’t supposed to win, and somehow did.

  Usually Hutch would be rushing to finish the job, rushing to get on the field with the other guys. But for some reason he was enjoying the last of the waiting time tonight. He couldn’t have explained it to anybody if he tried, but after being impatient all afternoon, counting down the minutes until it was time to go over to Santaluces and get on the bus, he was fine now with the last quiet he was going to get before he got outside.

  So he was in front of Eckstein’s locker and Darryl was across the room in front of Pujols’. Hutch couldn’t remember a time all season when it had been the two of them alone, really alone, like this.

  Right before he finished up with the last piece of tape he’d ripped off, Darryl came across the room and sat at the locker next to him, the one belonging to Adam Wainwright, the Cardinals’ young starting pitcher who’d been the closer on the Series-winning team.

  “Tell you what,” Darryl said. “We win tonight and I’ll give you a brand-new pair of shoes.” He nodded at Hutch. “What size are you?”

  “Nine.”

  “Same as me.”

  Hutch said, “You always seem to have new shoes. Like you get a new pair every time you get a new pair of shades. How does that work?”

  Darryl shrugged. “People give me stuff. Maybe thinkin’ that when I make it to the big leagues and the big money starts rollin’ on in, I’ll remember they were nice to me back in the day.”

  Hutch grinned. “When you make the big leagues? Not if?”

  Darryl shrugged again. “No worries,” he said. “No doubts.”

  Hutch thought: Not only are we talking to each other like teammates are supposed to, Darryl’s the one who started it.

  Maybe it was because it was their last night as teammates, maybe it wasn’t any more complicated than that.

  “That ought to do it,” Hutch said, making sure the last piece of tape wasn’t covering one of his spikes.

  “Both your folks gonna be here tonight?” Darryl said.

  “Yeah,” Hutch said, “though I sort of always have the feeling that my dad would just as soon be somewhere else. Anywhere else, actually.”

  “Man,” Darryl said, his voice rising suddenly, like he’d gotten disgusted with Hutch all over again, “you talk some stupid dang smack for a smart guy sometimes.”

  Hutch looked up from the floor to see if he was kidding, even though Darryl Williams had never been much of a kidder, not that Hutch had ever noticed. But he could see from Darryl’s face that his mood had changed.

  That he was back to being the old Darryl.

  “What kind of smack?” Hutch said.

  “’Bout your old man.”

  “All I said was—”

  “I heard what you said, homes,” Darryl said. “Heard what you said and see the way you act toward your old man, way you talk about him sometimes when you think only your boy Cody can hear. Boo-hoo, my daddy don’t care.”

  “Hey, take it easy,” Hutch said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, homes, as a matter of fact I do.”

  “Guess what,” Hutch said, not wanting to get into this now, but not being able to help himself. “Not even I know my dad.” Thinking back to last night now, the batting cage at Fallon Park, thinking that last night might have been the closest he ever came to knowing his dad without a word between them being spoken. “So how come you know both of us so well all of a sudden?” Hutch said. “’Cause he worked you out one time?”

  Hutch looked up at the clock. He had been taking his time taping his shoes. But now he did want to be on the field, didn’t want to waste any more time with this. Whatever this was.

  “Want to know what I know about your old man?” Darryl said. “That he’s here. Seriously. When you look up over our dugout tonight, where’s he gonna be?”

  Hutch said, “That’s not what I meant—”

  Darryl waved him off. “He’s gonna be there, that’s where he’s gonna be. Watchin’ you play.” Darryl shook his head. “My mom’s comin’ tonight, too. For the second time all season, I figure. You know why only twice? ’Cause she’s too tired when she gets home from bein’ on her feet all day. Tell me somethin’ here, Captain: You think your old man ain’t too tired to come watch base
ball after carryin’ some rich man’s golf bags all day?”

  It was coming out of him now, like this was something he had saved up all season.

  About somebody else’s dad.

  Darryl said, “And by the way? You know the next time I figure my old man’s gonna show up for one of my games, if he’s even still alive? When I’m at Yankee Stadium someday, or some such. That’s when he’ll probably want to start up with all his father-son stuff. When there’s something in it for him other than me.”

  Hutch stood up. “D, this isn’t the place for this, we gotta bounce here.”

  Darryl was still sitting in his chair, acting as if he had all night.

  “I know where we gotta go and where we gotta be,” he said. “I just had to tell you because I didn’t know if I’d ever get the chance after this game here tonight: You oughta stop actin’ like such a baby on account of what you don’t got. And be a lot happier, and more grateful, for what you do.”

  He stood up.

  But he wasn’t through.

  D-Will said, “Be happy that when you are looking up in those stands tonight, you’re gonna see what I never saw one day of my life.”

  He walked through the door. Hutch followed. Late in the season, real late, he was finding out he didn’t know nearly as much about the two shortstops in his life as he’d thought he did.

  29

  THERE WERE NO INTRODUCTIONS ON THE FIELD TONIGHT THE WAY there had been before Game 1.

  They did bring out representatives from Post 38 in Orlando and from 226, and there was a young woman in an Army uniform who stood near home plate and sang the National Anthem better than Hutch had ever heard it sung before.

  So there was some ceremony tonight, even if it didn’t take nearly as long as it had on Friday night, which already seemed like a long time ago to Hutch. It was as if all the big shots from the American Legion wanted to make sure everybody at Roger Dean realized this was still a special occasion.

  As if anybody playing in the game needed to be reminded, Hutch thought.