The DH

by John Feinstein

  He wound down and sighed. “If I go off the rails again, you’ll call me on it, okay?” He put his hand out.

  Alex felt as if a massive amount of tension had just been drained from his body. This was the Matt Gordon he knew.

  “Deal,” he said, accepting the handshake.

  Matt clapped Alex on the back.

  “Can we please go eat now?” he said. “I’m starving.”

  Matt was as good as his word. Alex saw him pull Oliver Flick aside as they were walking from the locker room to the field that afternoon. He had an arm around him, the way he had often put his arm around Alex during football season.

  “So,” Jonas said. “I guess your talk with Matt went well?”

  “I think so,” Alex said, smiling.

  “Good work,” Jonas said. “Wouldn’t it be nice to get through a season without becoming some kind of a media circus?”

  Alex laughed. Jonas was right. Chester Heights had received national attention during football season because of the whole PED scandal. Then, during basketball season, Max Bellotti had announced publicly that he was gay. Because Max was such a good player and because there had been a near riot at a game brought on by some crazed homophobes, the national media had been all over them again.

  The case could be made that a successful baseball season would be one played without the presence of any TV trucks from CNN, MSNBC, or Fox at any of their games.

  For the moment, Alex was just glad that a potential crisis inside the locker room had been averted.

  He and Jonas joined their teammates soft-tossing to one another as they awaited Coach Birdy’s arrival. Given that they were now 0–2, the atmosphere was surprisingly relaxed and loose. More surprising than that, Coach Birdy was a couple of minutes late.

  When he did show up, he was jogging, a little out of breath and clearly not happy.

  “Sorry, fellas,” he said. “Cardillo, get everyone lined up to stretch. Myers, let me see you for a minute.”

  “What now?” Jonas said.

  What now, indeed, Alex thought.

  Alex couldn’t begin to imagine what Coach Birdy wanted to talk to him about. That’s what made him nervous. He remembered the November day when he had been pulled into a meeting with someone from the state high school athletic association, who informed him that he had tested positive for steroids—which, of course, was a mistake. At that moment, though, Alex had felt as if the entire world was caving in on him.

  This unexpected meeting turned out differently.

  “I wanted to let you know that you’re pitching on Friday at Main Line,” Coach Birdy said. “Starting, I mean.”

  “But what about Warner?” Alex asked, confused. Bailey Warner hadn’t pitched especially well in the opener, but he’d been the team’s best pitcher last year, so yanking him after one start seemed harsh.

  “Bailey’s hurt,” Coach Birdy said quietly. “He was throwing a bullpen with me at lunchtime and said he felt some pain in his shoulder. Could be nothing, but his parents are taking him to see a doctor this afternoon.”

  In baseball vernacular, “throwing a bullpen” meant throwing about forty pitches between starts. Since pitchers warmed up in the bullpen, any throwing session that wasn’t in an actual game was referred to as “throwing a bullpen.” The term, Alex knew, was grammatically inaccurate, but it was part of the sport’s language, just the way—as his dad had once explained—the term “prevent defense” in football was also technically incorrect. In truth, the defense was trying to prevent offense.

  In the major leagues, where pitchers generally pitched one day, rested for four, and then pitched again, most would throw one bullpen session between starts to keep sharp. High school pitchers usually pitched on six days’ rest, so most threw two bullpens.

  “If he’s just sore, couldn’t he still start Friday?” Alex asked.

  Coach Birdy shook his head. “I don’t want to take a chance and make things worse for him,” he said. “Best-case scenario, he’ll pitch a week from Friday. You’re it for Main Line. Go stretch yourself out, and when we start to take BP, get over on the side with Mann and throw to him. Coach Bloom will be there with you. Warm up a little and then throw about forty pitches.”

  Alex was in a state of semishock, but he nodded. He jogged back to where the other guys were still stretching. He noticed—for the first time—that Bailey Warner wasn’t there. He fell in next to Jonas, who bent over in his direction and said, “So, what was that about?”

  “I’m starting Friday,” Alex hissed. “Warner’s hurt.”

  Jonas straightened up. “Hurt? What happened?”

  There was no chance to answer. Coach Birdy was blowing his whistle, and Alex saw Coach Bloom waving at him.

  “Myers, Mann—over here,” he said.

  Lucas Mann obviously had no idea what was going on because he turned to Alex and said, “What’d we do wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Alex answered. “Not yet anyway.”

  At the end of practice, Coach Birdy filled everyone in on Warner’s injury, telling them—as he had told Alex—that he hoped to know how serious it was by the next day.

  “It’s a long season, guys. And we’ve got three more warm-up games to get the kinks out before conference play starts. I don’t want anyone getting down about starting oh-and-two.” He paused a beat and smiled. “That doesn’t mean I want to be oh-and-five at the end of next week. We’ll play everyone in our league twice. The only wrinkle is that we play both games with Chester at the end of the season—one at home on a Thursday, and the finale at their place on a Friday. Guess they figure they want a team with pitching depth to win the conference, and those games may decide things if we’re going as well as I think we will. That’s one of many reasons I hope we’ll get Bailey back.

  “For now, I really believe we’re just fine with the guys we’ve got. So let’s get win number one under our belts on Friday and go from there.”

  They huddled up, and Cardillo said, “Number one!”

  They put their hands in and repeated after him.

  As they broke up, Alex felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “You okay, Goldie?” Matt Gordon asked. “Arm feel okay after your inning yesterday?”

  “Feels fine,” Alex answered.

  “Good,” Matt said. “You just hold ’em to about three runs, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Alex looked at him to see if he was smiling. He wasn’t.

  It was a long bus ride to Main Line Prep, and Alex spent part of it sitting with Coach Birdy, who’d called him up to the front of the bus.

  “You know the old cliché ‘The best pitch in baseball is strike one’?” Coach Birdy asked. “It means don’t fall behind the hitters. I’m not telling you to just groove your first pitch to each batter, but until they prove they can hit your fastball, throw it to a corner as best you can and get ahead in the count. If you do that, you’ll be fine.”

  It was a brisk late-March afternoon. In the locker room before the game, Alex started to put on a long-sleeved T-shirt to wear under his uniform. Matt saw him and said, “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to stay warm,” Alex answered.

  Matt shook his head. “Wrong. You wear short sleeves. You wear the long sleeves, you look soft. You wear short sleeves, it makes the batters think you’re a tough guy.”

  Alex thought that was ridiculous. “I don’t want to be a tough guy,” he said. “I want to be a warm guy.”

  “Have I ever told you something about competing that wasn’t true?” Matt asked.

  Alex sighed, reached into his bag, and pulled out his short-sleeved T-shirt.

  “Once you throw a few pitches and get the adrenaline flowing, you won’t even notice the cold,” Matt said. “You’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Alex said. “And cold.”

  As usual, though, Matt was right. Alex was chilly as he warmed up, but his arm was loose and the ball felt good coming out of his hand.

  Coach Birdy
had moved him up to second in the batting order, with Matt hitting third. In the top of the first, after Cardillo had led off with a walk, Alex lined a single to left.

  When Matt came up, Alex noticed the outfielders moving back, almost to the warning track. Clearly, they had scouted the Lions. But all the scouting in the world wasn’t going to get Matt out. Main Line’s pitcher—trying to throw strike one, no doubt—grooved a fastball on the first pitch. Matt hit the ball to dead center field, so far over the fence that Main Line’s center fielder didn’t even take a step back. He just stood and watched it soar.

  As Matt crossed home plate, where Alex and Cardillo waited to greet him, he batted Alex on the head. “If that’s not enough, Goldie,” he said, “there’s more where that came from.”

  It turned out to be more than enough. Alex took the mound with all the confidence a three-run lead can give you. Then he struck out Main Line’s leadoff hitter on three darting fastballs and never felt the cold the rest of the day. It was 9–0 after five innings—Matt had doubled his next time up and been walked his next two plate appearances—and Coach Birdy told Alex that he was going to let Ethan Sattler finish the game.

  “You’re up to eighty-two pitches,” he said. “No sense making you throw any more in your first start. We’ll need that arm.”

  Alex’s arm felt fine. He had given up three hits—all singles—and had struck out eight and walked only one. It wasn’t a Matt-like performance, but it was pretty good. He didn’t argue, though; Sattler needed a couple of innings of work, and a 9–0 lead was comfortable.

  Main Line managed to get to Sattler for three runs in the sixth and even had two runners on in the seventh, but Cardillo made a diving catch on a line drive to end the game. Alex now knew—in a different way—how Matt had felt when his no-hitter and shutout had gone up in smoke on Tuesday.

  They all lined up to congratulate one another and shake hands with the Main Line players. Matt was grinning as they walked off the field.

  “You know what the good news is about this game, Goldie?” he said.

  “That we won?”

  “That too,” Matt said. “No, the good news is that you’re going to be a very good pitcher. In fact, you’re pretty good right now.”

  “Thanks?” Alex said.

  “And the best news is that I don’t have to take steroids to be better than you,” Matt said with a broad grin. “That’s the best news of all.”

  There were only a handful of reporters waiting for the players when they came out of the locker room. Coach Birdy gave them about ten minutes to talk before herding them onto the bus.

  Christine was there, along with Steve Garland and a kid Alex didn’t know from the student radio station. There were several other reporters and, Alex noticed, a crew from Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia.

  “They’re doing a story on Matt,” Christine told Alex as they watched Matt talk to Rob Ellis, who co-hosted Comcast SportsNet’s morning show, Breakfast on Broad.

  That was hardly a surprise. Matt’s near no-hitter and his prodigious hitting were bound to draw media attention. Throw in the way he had gone down in flames the previous fall and you had a natural story. Alex saw Ellis and crew approaching him.

  “Alex, nice going today. You got a minute?” Ellis asked.

  “Sure, if you want,” Alex said.

  “Just to be honest with you, we’re going to ask you about Matt.”

  Alex smiled. “Fine with me,” he said.

  Ellis’s questions were predictable but fair. It was the second-to-last one that gave Alex pause.

  “After Matt admitted to taking PEDs last fall, you were very emotional about what he had meant to your football team,” Ellis said. “Back then, did you ever think he’d be your teammate again?”

  Alex thought a moment. “I honestly had no idea,” he said finally. “I hoped that he would be, but I thought that if it happened, it would be next fall in football. But I’m really glad it worked out this way. I had no idea he was this good a baseball player, but I’m thrilled to be his teammate again.”

  Ellis had one more question.

  “Who’s the starting quarterback for Chester Heights next season?”

  “I think it’ll be me,” Alex answered.

  Ellis nodded and said, “You’ll be glad to know Matt said that for sure it would be you.”

  Alex laughed. It had been close to a perfect day.

  But it wouldn’t be a perfect night….

  Hope Alexander, Chester Heights’ reigning diva, was having one of her Friday-night parties. During football season, Hope’s parties were an almost weekly event. The rest of the year, she cut back to about once a month. She lived in a house nearly as big as the school, and her parents spared no expense when their baby girl wanted to have her friends over.

  Alex thought that Christine was the prettiest girl in the school, but Hope was undeniably the most noticeable. She was about five eleven, with long blond hair, and she dressed in a way designed to stop traffic. More often than not, she did.

  Alex hadn’t liked Hope much at the beginning of the year, but he had softened on her after Max Bellotti came out. Hope had pretty much thrown herself at Max when he first arrived at Chester Heights. When Max came out, Hope was embarrassed, but she was also one of the first people to show support for him—even when the rest of the school seemed divided on whether they liked the idea of an openly gay star basketball player. Hope’s behavior during that period made Alex like her a lot more.

  Usually Max would be at Hope’s parties, but he was in Detroit for the weekend, visiting his father. That made Alex think about his own dad—and wish he hadn’t. He’d barely seen him since Christmas and the great fiancée debacle.

  His father had come down for the first round of the basketball playoffs a few weeks earlier, which was nice. Unfortunately, he’d brought the fiancée (neither Alex nor Molly ever referred to her by name), and that had made for another awkward scene. Alex had called his father the next day and, after swallowing hard, had said, “Dad, we want you to visit as often as possible. But not with her.”

  “Her name is Megan,” his dad said.

  “Yeah, fine. That’s not my point. It upsets me, and it upsets Molly even more.”

  “I understand, Alex, but you guys are going to have to get used to it. She’s going to be your stepmother, which means she’ll be part of your life.”

  That had pretty much ended the conversation, but Alex had thought long and hard about it after they’d hung up. Was there a rule that said you had to get along with a stepparent? He knew kids who didn’t deal with stepparents at all. On the other hand, he didn’t really want to force his dad to make a choice between the fiancée and his kids.

  Because the way it looked now, he’d already chosen the fiancée.

  The night began to go south not long after Alex, Christine, and Jonas arrived at the party. Alex had gone off to get a Coke for Christine, but when he returned, she was nowhere in sight.

  “Right there,” Jonas said, pointing at the dance floor in the massive living room.

  Alex looked and saw Christine dancing with Matt.

  “No big deal, dude,” Jonas said, reading the jealousy on Alex’s face. “Matt came over and said, ‘Hey, I feel like dancing—what do you say?’ ”

  “I’m guessing he wasn’t talking to you,” Alex said.

  “Come on. They’re friends—that’s all,” Jonas said. “He knows the deal. He just felt like dancing.”

  “There are about a hundred girls in this room he can dance with.”

  “True…,” Jonas said.

  “Hey, Jonas, dance with me.”

  It was Kim Wilkens, who was the captain of the volleyball team and almost as pretty as Christine.

  “Sure,” Jonas said, clearly happy that Kim had asked him to dance and for an excuse to not continue the conversation.

  Alex stood alone, sipping his Coke, still holding the one he’d gotten for Christine. The song ended, and Christine and Matt ca
me over to where he was standing. They were flushed and smiling. Without saying a word, Alex handed Christine her soda.

  “That looks all flat,” Matt said. “I’ll go get us a couple of fresh ones.”

  “Yeah, get me one too,” Alex said, handing Matt his almost empty cup. “Mine’s gone flat too.”

  As soon as he said it, he realized the words had come out more snidely than he’d intended because Matt and Christine both gave him a look.

  Matt walked off without a word.

  “What’s with you?” Christine said.

  “Nothing,” Alex said. “I go to get you a Coke and two minutes later you’re on the dance floor with Matt.”

  “And…?” she said.

  Alex shrugged. “And I guess I thought you’d wait for me to come back.”

  She put her hands on her hips, which, Alex knew, meant she was angry.

  “You gotta stop with the jealousy thing, Alex. Matt knows you and I are dating, and by the way, I know we’re dating too. Matt and I are friends.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Alex said, knowing she was right but still not feeling right about it all.

  Matt returned. Just as he did, the DJ put on an old Billy Joel song that Alex recognized, “Uptown Girl.”

  “Hey, I love this song,” Matt said, putting the Cokes on a nearby table. “Come on, Christine.”

  Christine glanced in Alex’s direction, as if deciding what to do.

  “I get this one, Matt, okay?” Alex said.

  Matt furrowed his brow. “Come on, Goldie. I asked her first,” Matt said. “You can get the next one.”

  “No, you can get the next one,” Alex said, realizing he was raising his voice. “She’s my girlfriend.”

  Matt smiled. “Lighten up, Goldie. It’s just a dance.”

  “He’s right, Alex,” Christine said, stepping in between them. “It’s just a dance.” She slipped her hand into Matt’s. “Come on, Matt, let’s go.”