by Mike Lupica
“I mean it,” Coop said.
“No,” Darrelle said, “I meant, wow, I just assumed you were in summer school.”
They all laughed, came together and put their hands in the middle of the circle, yelled “Beat Darby!” and started walking toward the parking lot where their parents were waiting for them.
Ben jogged to catch up with Justin.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” Justin said. “How’s your arm? I should’ve asked.”
“I’ll live,” Ben said.
They kept walking.
Ben said, “How are you feeling?”
“What’s that mean?”
The words came out of him too fast and too loud.
“Whoa,” Ben said. “You just seemed real upset last night, and you don’t seem much better today.”
“I lost the game for us,” Justin said, “in case you already forgot.”
Still loud.
“C’mon, man, you know better than that. This isn’t golf or tennis. Or even boxing. It wasn’t you playing Parkerville all by yourself. We all lost.”
“We didn’t mess up an easy ground ball,” Justin said. “And we didn’t totally mess up a rally that was about to win us the game.”
Ben said, “You are going to win us so many games this season it’ll be stupid.”
“You know what’s stupid right now?” Justin said. Eyes starting to get red again. “Everything.”
Ben realized he had left his glove on the bench. Told Justin to hang in there, he’d see him tomorrow. Saw Justin’s mom waving from the passenger side of what must have been a new black SUV for them. Watched as the car pulled away. Ben thinking it was as much like a black cloud leaving as a black car.
Sam said, “He okay?”
“Not even close.”
“But you’re gonna try to help him.”
“Yeah.”
“Shocker.”
“He’s a teammate,” Ben said, “and a friend.”
Sam smiled.
“Not like you,” he said. “Not like you.”
* * *
Ben texted Lily after dinner, still early in the night, not close to being dark yet, asked if she wanted to come over to McBain Field and hang out.
The answer was pure Lily and came right back at him, just because nobody could text faster than Lily Wyatt.
As opposed to coming over and NOT hanging out, McBain?
Ben was going to hit her with an LOL, but they both thought LOL was dumber than choir practice, and so he just told her to get moving.
Truth was, he didn’t just want to hang out, go out and sit on those swings, something they’d been doing their whole lives, from the time they were sitting on their moms’ laps. Now it was just the two of them, talking about anything and everything. And they might end up doing that later tonight, just because Ben did love it when it was just him and Lily. Listening to her. Hearing her laugh. Trying to keep up with a brain traveling faster than the speed of sound. Allowing her inside his own brain — sometimes without permission — and into his heart, just because nobody knew him the way she did.
Before they talked tonight, though, he wanted her to pitch to him.
It wasn’t going to be regulation hardballs, just some old beat-up tennis balls. Ben didn’t care. He wanted to hit. His grip on the bat wasn’t much better than it had been at practice.
He still wanted to hit on the night after he’d gotten hit.
Sam had asked after practice if Justin was okay. Ben just wanted to make sure he was. It wasn’t something he wanted to talk about with the guys, with Sam or Coop or Shawn. Or even his dad. He didn’t want them to start thinking this was an issue with him. A thing.
Him and the ball.
Lily was different. He’d always been able to talk about stuff with Lily, share stuff with Lily, that he didn’t with anybody else. She liked to tell everybody that she was one of the boys. But she really wasn’t.
When she got to McBain, she’d brought her glove with her. Like somehow she knew things already.
“Figured you might want to throw the ball around,” she said, “test out that wounded wing.”
“Wounded wing?”
“I just liked the sound of it.”
Ben said, “Actually, I want you to pitch to me.”
Lily threw a low uppercut into the air and said, “Yes!”
Then she started windmilling her arm. “You know I can pitch as well as any guy,” she said.
Making “guy” sound like something that would crawl out from under a rock.
“I know, Lils,” Ben said. “Boy oh boy, do I know.”
He ran to the garage and got a bucket of tennis balls, came back to the field with the balls and his bat, went back to the garage and got his old pitch-back net so they wouldn’t have to chase balls if he swung and missed.
Not that he was planning to do much of that.
“Tennis balls?” she said. “Really?”
“Hardballs break windows,” Ben said, “maybe you hadn’t heard.”
Lily shrugged. “Only if you hit them,” she said, walked off the forty-six feet — she knew that the way she knew just about everything else — that was the distance between the pitcher’s mound and home plate.
“This is so on,” she said.
“Can’t this just be fun,” Ben said, “since they wouldn’t let me hit this afternoon?”
Lily smiled. A great, big Lily smile. “Of course,” she said. “But can I ask one question?”
“What?”
“Don’t you want to wear a helmet?”
He took some practice swings, felt it a little in his arm, not like before. Or so he told himself.
“You good?” Lily said.
“Never better,” Ben said.
He took a couple of pitches that weren’t close to being strikes, Lily saying she wasn’t warmed up yet. Swung and missed. Fouled one back. Then tagged one over her head in the direction of the basketball court at McBain, the swings.
It was after a dozen pitches that Lily put up a hand and said, “Stop flinching.”
Ben said, “I’m not flinching.”
“Yes,” she said, “you are.”
Smiling as she said it, but making it sound like the most obvious thing in the world.
“You’re being ridiculous,” Ben said. “I just hit one to the swings. I think the ball is still rolling.”
“You’re hitting tennis balls against me, McBain,” Lily said, “not against one of your boys from All-Stars.”
“You know you’ve got an arm,” Ben said. “And you know you live to get me to swing and miss.”
“Well, that part is true,” Lily said. “But I hear you guys talking sometimes about how somebody has a hitch in their swing. I’m just seeing a little hitch in you, especially if the ball is anywhere near you.”
“If you think you’re being funny, you’re not.”
Ben felt himself getting agitated, hearing it in his own voice, knowing that was never a good thing with Lily Wyatt.
Now she put her hands on her hips. Never a good sign.
“I’m not trying to be funny, if I was trying to be funny, you’d be laughing,” she said. “I’m just trying to tell you something.”
“Something wrong.”
“So I’m lying?”
“I didn’t say that, Lils. I said you were wrong.”
“Because I don’t agree with you on this, I’m wrong?”
“I didn’t say that, either.”
He knew he should get out of this now, try to find a way to stop it before it got any worse, but before he could Lily said, “This is why you wanted me to come over here, isn’t it?”
Seeing right into him again.
Ben waited.
“You wanted to find out if you’re afraid of the ball,” she said. “Any ball. And now because I think you might be, even if it’s just a little bit, you’re getting mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you,” he said. “I just wanted to get some swings,
is all.”
“Do you want me to tell you what I really think?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Lily let that one go. “Your swing is fine,” she said. “It’s just that your front leg is buckling a little bit, which maybe only I’d notice, because I notice pretty much everything with you. And a few times, when the ball did come near you, you looked like you were stepping toward Mrs. Palmer’s house.”
Across the street. Like it was on the third-base side of his neighborhood.
“Maybe I did,” Ben said, wanting this to be over. “You’re probably right.”
“Don’t tell me I’m right when you don’t think I’m right.”
Ben said, “So I’m wrong if I think you’re wrong, and I’m wrong when I think you’re right?”
“You don’t think I’m right, but I am.”
“You know what I don’t want to do? Argue with you.”
“Too late,” she said. “Next time I will just lie to you.”
Ben dropped his bat, put up his hands now, like he was Mr. Brown holding up a runner who thought he could score.
“For the last time,” Ben said, “I wasn’t calling you a liar, I’d never call you that.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay for real?” Ben said. “Or are you just saying that because you want to stop talking about this?”
“Little bit of both.”
“You want to come in and watch TV?”
She shook her head. “I think I’ll head home,” she said. “You want me to help you pick up balls before I do?”
“I got ’em,” Ben said. “And, Lils? Thanks for coming over.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “I think.”
She went over, hooked her glove over the handlebar of her bike, pedaled slowly across the grass toward the street. Stopped, put a leg out to steady herself, looked over her shoulder.
“This isn’t a big deal, Big Ben,” she said. “And I’m sure you’ll be fine when you get back with the guys tomorrow.” She shrugged and smiled. “But maybe the one lying to you tonight was you.”
Before he could answer she took off up the street, Ben watching her go, watching her pick up speed until she made the turn on Stone Street and disappeared, feeling himself getting angry all over again.
Mostly because she was right.
Ben caught a break at batting practice the next day, Mr. Brown not there because of business, Sam pitching when it was Ben’s turn to lead them off.
And when Sam, or Shawn, or even Coop pitched BP, they all had just one purpose:
Lay the ball in there so their teammates could hit it very, very hard someplace.
Ben was glad he was hitting right away, just wanting to get a helmet on, get a bat in his hands. Get on with it. Or get it over with, because that’s the way he was really feeling today. Most days he couldn’t wait to get to practice and take his cuts.
But he knew this wasn’t most days.
His arm was still sore. Amazingly, you could still see the seams, even though the outline was getting fainter now. He knew he could have begged out for another day, waited until the Darby game to get back in the box. Only that wasn’t him. To him that would have practically been like faking an injury, even though the injury he’d suffered the other night was legit.
Definitely not him, whether he was feeling like himself today or not.
He had been telling himself since he went to sleep last night that he wasn’t going to flinch. One of his dad’s favorite expressions was “standing in there against the curve,” he was always telling Ben that you had to stand in there against the curve, and not just in baseball. Ben knew he wasn’t going to see any curveballs today, Mr. Brown didn’t allow his pitchers to throw them even in batting practice. He wasn’t even going to see any fastballs from Sam, just a hitter’s favorite thing in the world:
Straight balls.
“Go easy on me,” he said to Sam from the batter’s box. “I was viciously attacked by Robbie Burnett the other night.”
“We thought you got hit on purpose because you knew you couldn’t catch up with Robbie’s heat,” Sam said.
“Oh, I see,” Ben said. “I let the heat catch up with me.”
“Pretty much.”
“Shut up and pitch.”
“I can do that,” Sam said, grinning, went into a big showy windup with a lot of leg kick, like he was going to come with his own high heat.
Then pushed one up there that was like the overhand version of slow-pitch softball.
Ben felt himself stepping toward third instead of right at Sam, he couldn’t help himself. But he still managed to time the pitch and line it over Darrelle’s head at third base and into left field.
“He’s baaaaack,” Darrelle said.
Ben knew better than that. But at least he was back in there, feeling like he’d gotten up after getting knocked down. That was really who he was, he knew that about himself. That was the athlete he’d always tried to be. When he got knocked down driving hard to the hoop in basketball, he made sure to go right back at the same guy, first chance he got. Not in a cocky way. Just his way of saying, That all you got? Same in football, especially now that he was playing quarterback. If he got put down hard, either standing in the pocket or scrambling, he made sure to bounce right back up before the guy who tackled him did, sometimes waiting to pat the guy on the back, letting him know it was all good, despite the fact that Ben was usually the smallest guy in the game.
This was different, because being a hitter in baseball was different, it wasn’t just one pitch or one swing that put you in the clear. Cleared your head.
You had to keep standing in there.
He got five more swings before he laid down a bunt. Two were ground balls to short. One a fly ball to short center. Finally there was a flare to right field that would have been a hit in a game. Ben felt like he opened up way too soon on that one, his left hip feeling like a screen door flying open in the wind. But his hands were good enough and his batter’s eye was good enough for him to put the bat on the ball.
Then he dropped a perfect bunt down the third-base line, nobody on their team being a better bunter than he was, the joke with the rest of the guys being that Ben could get a bunt down even if the pitcher tried to throw behind him, he was that good with the bat.
Done.
Ben took off his helmet, went over and placed it with the rest, laid his bat down in the grass, got his glove, ran out to shortstop. His heart still beating fast and hard, the way it did before a big at bat in a game. Ben feeling that way today in practice.
Usually there was nobody on the field who loved swinging a baseball bat more than he did. Today he just loved that he was done.
“Smoked that one over my head,” Darrelle said from third.
“Sam couldn’t have made it easier if he’d placed the ball on a tee,” Ben said. “If I can’t hit that slop, I should find another sport.”
“I’m right here,” Sam said from the mound.
“How’s the arm today?” Darrelle said to Ben.
“Better.”
But Ben knew that his arm wasn’t the problem right now, his head was.
* * *
It figured that Chase Braggs would be the starting pitcher for Darby, it just did.
Chase Braggs: Ben’s nemesis from the basketball season, the full-of-himself star for the Darby Bears.
You couldn’t make this stuff up, as Coop liked to say.
Chase had moved to Darby at the start of the last school year, turned out to be a total star in basketball, and knew it. It was why Ben and the guys had decided, after playing him in just one preseason scrimmage, that his last name was really a verb:
Chase Braggs.
It turned out that what Chase mostly wanted to do, after hearing so much from other kids in Darby about all the things Ben McBain could do in sports, was prove that he wasn’t just a bigger version of Ben in basketball, that he was better.
Which he did for most of the
season. He wanted to beat Ben in basketball, he wanted to steal the spotlight from him, he even wanted to steal Lily away from Ben once the game was over. That was why the real rivalry all winter wasn’t just Rockwell vs. Darby, it was Ben vs. Chase.
Chase got the better of it until the last game of the regular season. Ben played badly against him in their two meetings before that, and kept finding ways to act even worse when he was in the same place with Chase and Lily.
Darby would end up winning the league. But they didn’t go undefeated because Sam came back from his sprained ankle and Ben played the best he had all year, finishing it off by making the game-winning shot over Chase. The game that felt like a championship game but really wasn’t.
Ben and Chase finally made peace when the game was over, Chase even admitting that he thought the Rams were better when they had Sam on the court. It didn’t exactly make Ben and Chase boys. It was probably a stretch to say that they were friends now.
They respected each other enough to get along, put it that way. Chase had backed off — permanently — from Lily, figuring out that just being good at basketball, or even great, wasn’t ever going to change the friendship that Ben and Lily had. But Ben and Chase Braggs both knew they were going to be competing — hard — against each other for a long time, maybe all the way through high school, and that they should try to focus on that, without any hard feelings.
Starting with tonight’s game, the first time they’d met up since Ben made that shot over Chase in basketball.
“Heard Robbie Burnett thought your elbow was part of the strike zone,” Chase said when he came over to say hello to Ben and Sam and Coop and Shawn before the game, right before Darby took the field for infield practice.
“Good thing it wasn’t my elbow,” Ben said, “or I would have spent the summer in a cast. Or at least a sling.”
“Well, don’t worry about tonight,” Chase said. “Even though I have a better fastball than Robbie, I have much better control.”
Ben grinned, couldn’t help it, nice to know that Chase hadn’t stopped being Chase.
“How do you know what kind of fastball Robbie has?” Ben said. “You haven’t even faced him yet.”
Chase shrugged. “Nobody in this league could possibly have a better fastball than I do.”
