It was a little white ranch house, with dark green shutters, and a small, well-kept yard. Mrs. Wilkins must have been waiting eagerly, because she came out to the front stoop to greet them before they had even gotten out of the car. She seemed to be an effusive sort, because she had a forceful embrace for each of them—and it was faintly embarrassing that they all flinched.
“Come in, come in,” Mrs. Wilkins said, using two hands to drag Jill’s gear bag out of the car—she was short, and quite round, with grey hair—and lugging it towards the house. “I have coffee and snacks waiting.”
Jill and Theo carried the other bags, while her mother brought in the groceries they had picked up at a nearby Hannaford supermarket—lots of Greek yogurt, apples, a few boxes of Chex cereal, and some Gatorade, among other things. Mrs. Wilkins bustled about, packing everything away in what appeared to be about thirty seconds, and then ushered them around the house.
“I’m so sorry my hubby isn’t here,” she said. “You just can’t get that man off the golf course!”
Jill and Theo and her mother all nodded and smiled. Which they did a lot during the next fifteen minutes, because Mrs. Wilkins was—chatty.
It was the sort of house that had lots of tchotchkes on tables and shelves, scented candles everywhere, and wall hangings and plaques with inspirational sayings—including words like “Love” and “Joy” and “Sunshine” and “Blessings”—stitched or painted on them. There were more than a few crosses and devotional items, too.
“They really love the Lord,” Theo whispered to her at one point.
Jill nodded. It certainly seemed that way.
After showing them the kitchen, the dining room, and a combination living room and den, Mrs. Wilkins led them downstairs to a finished basement, which had a bedroom with two twin beds, and a small bathroom—which included a shower. There was also a laundry room, and a room full of tools and supplies, which seemed to be used for woodworking and crafts. Then, she hustled them back up to the dining room, where tea, coffee, and homemade cookies were waiting. Delicious cookies, as it turned out, and really top-notch coffee.
“Horace and I are so excited about having Jill here,” Mrs. Wilkins said, passing around cream and sugar. “We’ve had other ballplayers stay with us, of course, but this is really something special.”
“You have a lovely home,” Jill’s mother said. “And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that she’ll have such a supportive place to stay this season.”
Jill could tell that Theo was dying to check his phone, but he seemed to be sublimating the urge by putting away cookie after cookie.
Even though the conversation was stilted, Jill was in no hurry to have it end. But, she was supposed to be at the stadium early, to meet with Sawyer to assess last night’s start, to sit down with the trainers to set up her workout regimen, and then with Jeremiah, to talk about whether the team really did want her to start being active on Twitter and such.
Mrs. Wilkins stayed inside—tactfully, no doubt—while Jill walked out to the car with her mother and Theo. She was feeling tearful, and could tell that her mother was, too.
“She seems like a very nice woman,” her mother said. “I think you’re going to do fine there.”
Jill nodded, because, really, what else could she do?
“Anything you need,” her mother said, “anything at all, you just let me know.”
Jill nodded, feeling an extremely large lump in her throat.
“Enjoy this,” her mother whispered, when they hugged good-bye. “It’s a good and exciting thing.”
Theo’s hug was surprisingly intense, too, albeit clumsy. “If anyone bothers you, tell me,” he said, quietly enough so that their mother wouldn’t hear. “I’ll happily come back and take care of them.”
She thought of Theo as being his mother’s child, for the most part—but, some of her father was in there, too.
“And keep on spitting,” he said, more loudly. “I’m counting on you!”
The last thing she had said to him, when they dropped him off at MIT for the first time—all of them standing there, blinking hard—was “Don’t blow up the lab!” Jill nodded. “Every single game. Without fail.”
“That’s right, make us proud,” he said, and gave her a light smack on the head as he stepped away.
She watched them pull out of the driveway, her arms folded tightly across her chest. The same sort of parting would have happened if she’d gone away to Stanford, too. It was probably normal, even if it didn’t feel that way.
But, okay. She was officially on her own now, and even if she wanted to run down to the dark little basement bedroom and sob, that might not be the best way to start off being an adult. So, she took a deep breath, and made sure that she was smiling when she walked into the kitchen.
“Did they get off all right?” Mrs. Wilkins asked.
Jill nodded.
“How long a drive is it for them?” Mrs. Wilkins asked.
She actually wasn’t sure. “Maybe five hours? It depends on traffic, I guess,” she said.
“Well, they should do well, at this time of day,” Mrs. Wilkins said, and motioned towards the refrigerator. “The groceries are helpful. It gives me a sense of what you like to eat. But, it would be good if you made a list for me, too.”
Jill nodded. “Yes, ma’am, although I’m sure anything you have will be fine.” This all felt very awkward, and she shifted her weight. “Um, thank you, ma’am, for allowing me to stay here.”
Mrs. Wilkins beamed. “It’s our tenth year as a host family. We love having players in our home. What time do you need to be at the ballpark today?”
Logistics. Okay, that would be an easy topic. “One o’clock, although I’d like to get there just after twelve, if possible, to play it safe,” Jill said. In baseball, arriving on time was considered being late. “And we’re leaving on the bus right after the game. So, I guess I’ll be back here on—Wednesday, I think.”
It was mind-blowing that trips like that were going to be her new normal.
They stood there, smiling at each other—uncomfortably, in Jill’s case.
“Why don’t you get settled downstairs, and packed for the trip, and then I’ll fix a quick lunch and give you a ride over,” Mrs. Wilkins said.
The stadium was about two miles away—so, while she could walk, it would be kind of arduous, carrying her knapsack and travel gear bag. “If it isn’t any—” she started.
“No trouble at all,” Mrs. Wilkins said.
The basement steps were wooden, and she tried not to clomp too noisily as she walked down. Something she would need to keep in mind, on nights when she got back late from games, so that she wouldn’t wake them up.
The bedroom was simple, and very plain. Two extra-long twin beds, a dresser, two small bedside tables, a student-sized desk and chair, and a medium flat-screen television on top of the dresser, with a remote control next to it. There was also a dorm-sized refrigerator, which would come in handy, and an Xbox setup, which she was unlikely ever even to turn on.
The house had Wi-Fi, and she had already been given the password, which was a relief. It would make Skype and FaceTime—both of which she expected to use constantly—a lot easier, for one thing. There was a closet, which was empty, except for a row of white plastic hangers. The desk and bedside tables each had a lamp, and the floor was covered with thick, greenish-blue carpet. The windows had what looked like homemade white curtains, and while there wasn’t a lot of light, it wasn’t impossibly gloomy.
The walls had an inexpensively framed poster of PNC Park, a large map of the greater Albany/Troy area, and a poster that had yellow flowers and a Scripture quote on it: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, Colossians 3:23.”
There was also a Bible with a plain black cover on the bedside table. She wanted to put it away in a drawer, but was afraid of offending Mrs. Wilkins. Were she and her husband proselytizing, or did they think that baseball players wer
e routinely observant Christians?
Which, probably, a fair number of them were. She had heard that lots of major league teams had Sunday chapel meetings—and there were plenty of athletes who started off every single interview by thanking God. Minor league teams were probably similar.
She peeked inside a drawer, and found a copy of the New Testament and a paperback of Daily Devotions for Athletes. So, she stuck the Bible in there, too, and closed it.
So far, her first official hour of adulthood was kind of weird.
CHAPTER 16
Lunch turned out to be grilled cheese sandwiches, a small salad—which included fresh vegetables from Mrs. Wilkins’s garden—tomato soup, and iced tea. Jill was too edgy to have much appetite, but it all looked good.
Before they ate, Mrs. Wilkins said grace—a long grace—during which Jill bowed her head.
“I gather your family isn’t very religious?” Mrs. Wilkins said.
That was putting it mildly. Jill tried to think of an inoffensive way to respond. “Well, it’s not that we—” She stopped. “I mean, generally, uh—”
Mrs. Wilkins smiled. “There’s no rule that says you have to be a believer, too.”
Sounded like good news for both of them.
After attempting to eat, Jill went downstairs to make sure she had packed everything she would need for a six-day road trip. Right before they left, Mrs. Wilkins sweetly provided her with a little zipped cooler bag, which she said was a care package.
Once she got to the park, she left her main gear bag and knapsack in the clubhouse, because Terence and Nicky were going to be packing the bus for getaway day that night, and she wasn’t entirely sure when they would get started. Then, she went to her dressing room to change into workout clothes, before sitting down with Sawyer and Marcus to discuss her pitching performance, and things she would need to work on. Like, say, a much better pickoff move—although it would help, in the future, if she remembered to check the damn runners. There was also talk of adjusting her position on the rubber, depending upon whether she was pitching to someone left-handed or right-handed, and Sawyer gave her a lecture about working on her focus and concentration—which she knew full well that she deserved. Her next start was going to be in Williamsport on Monday night, so she would have her first real five-day routine to follow.
After stretch and PFP—Pitchers’ Fielding Practice—drills, she met with Bannigan, the strength and conditioning guy, along with Louis and Sofia, and he explained the specific exercise and pre- and post-pitching programs they had designed for her. She mostly just nodded and listened, but occasionally interjected things like the importance, for her, of doing extra work on her legs, hips, back, and core, to offset any biological upper body deficiencies, since she counted on her lower body to help her power through pitches. It seemed as though she was a bigger proponent of long toss than the organization was, but she got a sense that they were willing to compromise. They were also okay with her scheduling time to throw a football on non-bullpen days, since she had being doing that with Greg for years, and was convinced that it helped maintain her arm-slot. Apparently, one of the bullpen guys, someone named Danny, had been a high school quarterback and had also asked permission to do the same thing, so she would have a partner—if he was so inclined.
The discussion didn’t exactly feel free-flowing, but it was going to be a long and unproductive summer if she couldn’t figure out a way to have less guarded conversations with these people.
She might as well go for the jugular, and see if that changed the dynamics. “So,” she said, brightly. “I guess we need to talk about my cycle, and how it’s going to affect my pitching.”
There was a painful silence, and then Sofia let out a short bark of a laugh. Bannigan and Louis did not join in.
Bannigan coughed a few times, and then ran his hand back through what little hair he had. “Are you, um, able to pitch during your, um, menstrual period?”
Yes, he really had just asked that. Although, okay, she had maybe set him up. “I’ll be fine,” she said, making sure to sound brave, “as long as I can lie down between innings.”
The sound Sofia made this time was closer to a guffaw, while Bannigan and Louis exchanged—queasy—glances.
“The good news is that I almost always pitch better than usual, because it makes me really mean,” Jill said. There was even a little truth to that, on a given day, if the ibuprofen didn’t kick in.
The silence lingered extensively this time.
“For God’s sake,” Sofia said. “She’s teasing you.”
“We knew that,” Bannigan said, after looking at Louis. “Yeah, we absolutely—why don’t we go down to the weight room, and we’ll walk through some exercises?”
The general principle was low weight, high repetitions. Maintain what she had, and use the off-season to rebuild. She was a fan of doing shoulder and arm exercises with resistance bands—and it was agreed to add that to her regular workouts, as well. The weight room was—to put it politely—compact, and erred on the side of being bare bones, but there was enough equipment for players to get their work in, as long as they took turns.
A position player whose name she didn’t know asked Bannigan a question about his deadlifts, and Louis was quick to go over and join that conversation.
Jill looked at Sofia. “Do I sense palpable relief on their part?”
Sofia shook her head. “It may take them hours to recover,” she said. “Let’s go to the training room, and I’ll give you your fluff job.”
Jill wasn’t sure what that meant—but, it sounded odd.
Sofia let out a long-suffering breath. “We work out the kinks from your start last night. Then, you’ll do at least twenty minutes on the bike.”
A fluff job turned out to be yet another extensive massage, and Sofia found tiny little sore spots in her arm, shoulder, and back that Jill hadn’t even known were there. It was a whole new world to be coddled like this, and she could already see how easy it would be to get used to being considered so very damn special—and to turn into an insufferable person.
After her session on the stationary bike, she got out to the field just in time for batting practice. It was pretty hot, and it was hard not to be languid about shagging fly balls, many of which her fellow pitchers sort of waved at, or caught on a couple of bounces. But, they were all more alert than they looked, especially when they were collecting stray balls to dump into the bucket behind second base. Which was mostly her responsibility today, since she had pitched the night before.
She stood near Shosuke in right center, and they taught each other the words for cap, fly ball, grass, clouds, and sun. At least, she was pretty sure those were the right words. Either way, they did a lot of pantomiming, and it helped pass the time.
A new hitter stepped into the cage, and hit a line drive in their direction, and the unusually sharp crack got every pitcher’s attention. It was Scott, whose second swing produced an almost identical shot.
“Wow,” Jill said.
Jonesy, who was standing off to her left, nodded. “I’m not sure that kid has any idea how good he is.”
Two more shots came out to right, followed by several seemingly effortless liners to deep center and left.
She glanced at Jonesy. “It’s a different level, isn’t it?”
Jonesy nodded again. “Yeah, you can’t teach that.”
Scott stepped out, and Hector replaced him. Hector was a decent hitter—but, it wasn’t the same. His hits were scattered, and much less authoritative. And she couldn’t help thinking that even though every player on the field was a superb athlete, most of them were never going to get anywhere near the majors, and quite a few weren’t even likely to go anywhere further than this level. It was hard to ignore the fact that, in a very basic way, baseball was inescapably sad.
Jonesy locked eyes with her for a second, and she could tell that he was thinking something very similar.
“Some of them are going to grow into their bodies,
” he said. “And some of the ones you won’t expect will suddenly put it together, three, four years from now, and go rocketing up.”
She nodded. And some of them were going to get hurt, and some were going to flame out—and a tiny lucky few were going to prosper, and progress, and end up in the big leagues.
“Day at a time,” Jonesy said.
It was the only way to do it—because any other outlook would just lead to madness.
In the meantime, she could see Scott goofing around and holding Schwartzman in a headlock, and Geoff was in the batter’s box, hitting fly balls, two of which went over the left field wall. Lots of power, less authority.
Once BP had ended, she decided to run a few poles, to work off a little energy—and some remaining stiffness in her legs and hips. Her guys had gone off to the clubhouse, and the visiting team filed out to take their place. A couple of them shouted somewhat friendly, and somewhat barbed, remarks at her, but she just waved and kept running. When she left the field, several of the players said a casual hello, which felt nice, because it was a reminder that—national sportscasters’ opinions aside—she hadn’t embarrassed herself last night, and so, maybe they could react to her as a fellow baseball player.
She was supposed to have a meeting with Jeremiah at five o’clock, but even though he was obviously accustomed to being around athletes, she decided she would really rather put on a fresh T-shirt before going upstairs.
There seemed to be some kind of commotion inside the clubhouse, and she could hear yelling and swearing coming from Adler’s office, too. So, she decided to avoid all of that—whatever it was—and go directly to her dressing room.
But, as she turned down the corridor to get there, she saw that the door was open, and that several people were standing out in the hall. Mr. Brayton, Mrs. Doshi, Terence, and the head of security, whose name she couldn’t remember—all of whom looked grim.
A Season of Daring Greatly Page 17
