by Mike Lupica
He picked up Mr. Brown again as he got to third, saw that he was halfway down the line between third and home, telling Ben he didn’t have to slide. Ben made the turn, kept coming toward Mr. Brown, allowing himself a look across the diamond, realizing now the ball must have rolled a long way in right because the second baseman — who must have gone out to take the cutoff throw — still had the ball in his bare hand.
Standing in short right, not so far beyond the infield dirt. Long way from home plate for a second baseman’s arm. The kid trying to decide whether to run it the rest of the way in, or just throw home, Ben still only a third of the way down the line, if that.
Almost like the second baseman was waiting for Ben to make the first move, like in this moment it was a game of baseball chicken.
And that hesitation was all Ben needed, not waiting for Mr. Brown to tell him what to do, knowing what he was going to do, knowing that he was going home, running right past Sam Brown’s dad, Darrelle in the on-deck circle telling Ben to slide, Ben doing just that, crossing home plate on the seat of his pants with the run that put the Rams ahead in the top of the last inning in Hewitt.
It hadn’t been a real home run, the kind that a guy like Justin Bard could hit, the kind that cleared the fence with ease and just kept rolling.
But somehow the crazy trip Ben had just made around the bases made it feel like one.
He high-fived Sam and Coop and Shawn and the rest of the guys waiting for him in front of the bench, kept the celebration to just that, telling them to stop jumping around, the game wasn’t over yet.
“Home Run McBain,” Coop said when they all finally sat down, Ben still breathing hard.
“Shortest in history,” Ben said.
“Hey,” Sam said, “stop calling yourself short.”
“You know what I mean,” Coop said. “If you can’t hit, you go to plan B. For bunt.”
“If we were the home team,” Shawn said, “would they call it a walk-off run or a run-off run?”
“We’re not the home team,” Ben said. “So let’s hope we get a few more runs this inning and then three more outs.”
“Which you’re going to get for us,” Ben’s dad said, having jogged in while Sam got ready to hit, Darrelle having struck out. “The coach wants you to start warming up.” Jeff McBain grinned. “Unless you’re too tired.”
“Dad?” Ben said. “I’m going to forget I heard that last part,” and went looking for his glove. Warmed up with Coop, went out and pitched a one-two-three bottom of the sixth, two ground balls and a pop-out to Shawn, playing first tonight instead of Justin Bard, game over.
Now Ben allowed himself to celebrate with his teammates for real in front of their bench, Mr. Brown coming over and sticking the game ball in the pocket of Ben’s glove.
“All sorts of ways to win a ball game,” he said.
“Figured I better get on base any way I could,” Ben said, “especially the way I’ve been going. And if there’s one thing I know I can still do, it’s get a bunt down. Figured it put me more in charge than the pitcher.”
“Still,” Mr. Brown said, shaking his head. “A two-strike bunt? In what could have been our last ups? Seriously?”
“You’re always telling us that baseball isn’t supposed to be serious, it’s supposed to be fun.”
“Got me there,” his coach said. “I’m always telling Sam that every game I watch I still hope I’m going to see something I’ve never seen before. And guess what? I just did.”
Then Mr. Brown told the rest of the guys to head out into short left-field for their postgame sit-down, one they always had, home or away.
Ben walked between Sam and Coop, both of them still talking about the walk-off bunt. Or run-off bunt. Whatever it had been, other than a little hit that turned into just big fun.
“Wish I had a stopwatch on you,” Coop said, “just to see how long it took from the time you bunted the ball until you slid across the plate.”
“He did slow down a little rounding third,” Sam said, “so maybe it wasn’t world-record time.”
Ben took one last look across the field then, trying to picture himself making his way around the bases, seeing the Hewitt kids in front of their own bench having their snack.
Then he stopped, because beyond the Hewitt bench and the fence behind it, he was sure he saw Justin Bard turn and start walking across the parking lot, in the direction of the truck where people could get drinks and ice cream and candy, the same kind that parked outside the field in Highland Park for Rams’ home games.
No way, Ben thought.
Why would Justin have come all the way to Hewitt and not let anybody know he was there to watch the team play?
Better question: Why would he come all the way to Hewitt to watch a team he said he was going to quit?
“Hey,” Ben said to Sam and Coop, who were a few yards ahead of him.
They stopped.
“What up?” Sam said. “What you lookin’ at?”
“I could have sworn I just saw Justin,” Ben said.
“Where?” Coop said. “Or maybe you’ve just got Justin on the brain right now.”
Ben pointed in the direction of the snack truck. By then the kid, whoever he was, Justin or somebody else, had disappeared.
Ben waited until he got back from Hewitt to text Justin, wanting to find out if he’d been at the game, but trying to make it funny.
U see my pathetic version of one of your homers?
No response.
Maybe he wasn’t back yet. And even though Ben’s friends usually had their phones with them at all times — Coop slept with his under his pillow, afraid he might miss a message — maybe Justin left his at home sometimes. Or had lost it. Or had just turned it off.
Or maybe he was looking right at the screen on his phone when Ben texted him and just didn’t want to talk to him. Ben knew: Sometimes no response was just about the loudest response to a text you could get.
Basically telling you to leave them alone.
But Ben knew that was a great big no-can-do. Justin needed him even if he didn’t know that. Or wouldn’t admit that. He needed a friend, needed his teammates, needed baseball.
What Ben needed?
More of a plan than just asking Justin to come hang out with Ben and Lily and the guys. A plan that would work as well as plan B — for bunt — had worked against the Hewitt Giants.
He tried calling Justin after breakfast the next morning, got no answer, texted him again.
Want to hang out later?
Took his phone with him upstairs, fired up his laptop, checking out the box scores from last night’s baseball games, wanting to see how the guys on his fantasy team had done, Ben and Sam and Coop and Shawn having a team together in a sixth-grade fantasy league. But Ben had loved box scores even before he was in a fantasy league, loved the way they could tell you the story of a game you hadn’t even seen. Loved how neat they were, even if the game had been messy.
Box scores making a lot more sense than real life did sometimes.
But he kept looking down at his phone, knowing that if it had been Lily or Sam or Coop or Shawn, the response to one of his texts could come so quickly it was almost as if they hadn’t typed out any words, as if the thought had come directly from their brains.
Still nothing from Justin except loud silence.
He knew he couldn’t go over to his house, just show up again, not because it was such a crazy long bike ride, just because he’d tried that approach already and even though he’d found out what was bothering Justin, he hadn’t been able to get through to him. Like it was football and he thought he saw an opening and then got dropped as soon as he tried to run through it.
So come up with another play, he thought.
But what play?
Man, he thought, summer wasn’t supposed to be this hard, summer was supposed to be easy. Aggressively easy, was the way Coop put it.
How do you help somebody who acted as if the last thing he wanted in t
he world was your help?
And then it came to him. Ben smiled, feeling as brilliant as Lily Wyatt, and sent Justin Bard another text.
This time he got a response.
* * *
Justin was waiting for him at the batting cage when Ben got there, little before noon, Justin having told him in his text back he couldn’t make it before then.
“Just so we’re straight,” he said, “this doesn’t change anything.”
“Good morning to you, too,” Ben said. Smiling.
“You know what I mean. I didn’t come here to listen to you try to talk me out of bagging the season.”
“Not why I asked you here.”
“So we are straight?”
“Totally.”
Justin wouldn’t let it go.
“’Cause if you tricked me into coming, then we’re like the opposite of straight.”
“I got you over here for the exact reason I told you,” Ben said. “I need your help.”
“I read your text.”
“I can’t hit anymore,” Ben said.
“I know,” Justin said. “That was me at the game last night.”
* * *
Ben knew Justin well enough to know that he said exactly what he meant. And meant what he said. So Ben wasn’t going to push him about the team, at least not today. The Rams didn’t have another game for a couple of days, their second game against Robbie Burnett and Parkerville, on Friday night in Parkerville. Plenty of time.
For now, he was just happy that Justin was here with him. Trying to be a friend to Ben. That was all the plan Ben had, turn the thing around, let Justin try to help him, not make Justin feel like some kind of charity case.
Let him try to pick Ben up.
And if he did, if he somehow could help Ben with his hitting, all the better, just because Ben was the one feeling like a charity case these days when he was trying to get a real base hit.
The first thing Justin told him was that they didn’t need the cage, at least not right now. He picked up his bat bag, looking a lot fuller than it usually did, and told Ben they were going to use the empty field closest to them at Highland Park.
“What’s in the bag?” Ben said.
“Stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“Don’t worry about what’s in the bag,” Justin said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Ben grinned. “Mr. Brown is a lot more fun as a coach than you are, and we haven’t even started yet.”
“We’re not here to have fun,” Justin said. No change of expression. “We’re here to teach you how to hit again.”
“I looked that bad last night?”
“You’ve looked that bad since Robbie hit you,” Justin said. “A two-strike bunt? Are you joking?”
“I was desperate,” Ben said.
“That’s not the word I would have used,” Justin said. “Now come on. I did some studying on this before I came.”
“For real?”
“Your problems can be fixed,” he said, and then led Ben across the outfield.
When they got to the infield, Justin dropped his bag near the pitcher’s mound, got out a half-dozen scuffed baseballs, told Ben to go get in the batter’s box. Ben did as he was told, dropped his own bat bag near the on-deck circle, started to pull out his bat.
“Leave the bat,” Justin said.
“Batting practice without a bat?” Ben said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You can use your bat later,” Justin said.
“This is what you learned from your research?” Ben said.
“I also called my dad,” Justin said. “He knows more about hitting than anybody I know. He told me that we should really do what we’re gonna do for a couple of days. But I told him you pick up things quicker than that.”
“Thanks,” Ben said. “I think.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Justin said. “Now get in there and take your stance and I want you just to do one thing when I start pitching. Two things, actually. Watch the ball. And no matter what, don’t move.”
“And this is going to help me … how?”
“You’re going to go back to focusing on the only thing that matters to a hitter,” Justin said. “The ball.”
“What if the ball’s going to hit me?”
“Then you can move,” Justin said. “But it won’t hit you. When’s the last time you remember me making a throwing error?”
“Never.”
“Because I never have,” Justin said. “Now let’s go to work.”
For the next half hour, that’s all they did, Justin pitched and Ben watched. The only time they stopped was every six pitches, Ben picking up the balls in front of the screen and tossing them back to him. Neither one of them spoke. Ben wondered what people passing by walking dogs, moms taking small children to the playground, must have thought, watching baseball like this, a batter without a bat.
Finally Ben said, “Am I allowed to ask how long we’re going to do this?”
“When you stop flinching completely.”
“I haven’t been.”
“Really?”
“Maybe a couple of times when the ball was inside.”
Justin held up the ball, like he was showing it to him, and said, “When this makes you stop flinching.”
About ten minutes later, Ben picking up the balls again, Justin said they were good. Walked down toward the plate.
“How come you don’t duck every time you throw a pitch in a game?” he said to Ben. “Ever wonder about that? A ball can come back at you harder than you’re throwing it. Lot harder sometimes.”
Ben said, “The only thing that makes sense to me is that when I’m pitching, I feel like I’m the one in control.”
Justin pointed at him. “Which is exactly the way I feel when I’ve got a bat in my hands. And the way you used to feel, I bet.”
“You’re right,” Ben said. “Now what’s next?”
“Wiffle balls!” Justin said.
“Now those I know I can hit.”
Justin shook his head, actually smiling for the first time all day, like he was starting to enjoy himself even though Ben wasn’t. Looking in that moment like the Justin Ben used to know.
“No hitting yet. More watching.”
Ben groaned. Justin shrugged. “Hey,” he said, “you’re the one who asked for help.”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “Be careful what you ask for.”
“Did all these drills come from your dad?”
“Some of them,” he said. “Then he told me about this website to check out.”
“And did the website say how many pitches I’m supposed to study before I get to swing at any of them?”
“They say a few hundred,” Justin said.
“What?”
“Don’t worry, McBain. I like you. But I don’t like you that much.”
He took his stance with a bat and watched Justin throw Wiffle balls. Then the old tennis balls he pulled out of his bat bag. Every few minutes, Justin would throw one of the tennis balls right at Ben. With purpose. Ben got out of the way every time.
When they stopped for a water break, Ben checking his cell phone and seeing they’d been at it for more than an hour and a half, he asked Justin if his arm was getting tired.
“What difference does it make?” he said. “You’re the pitcher, not me.” Paused and said, “I’m not anything anymore.”
“Can I say something about that?”
“No.”
“Just about baseball,” Ben said, and before Justin could stop him he said, “If you didn’t love baseball the way you do, you wouldn’t have called your dad and you wouldn’t have found these drills and you wouldn’t be doing them with me.”
Justin took a long drink of water, nearly finishing half of the big plastic bottle he’d brought with him.
“You think too much, McBain,” he said. “It’s part of the problem you’re having with hitting right now, you’re thinking too much and that’s the
worst thing a hitter can do.” He looked out across the field now, like his eyes were fixed on a point beyond the outfield walls. “Another thing my dad always taught me.”
Ben didn’t say anything. Justin took another swig of water and said, “Now we go to the cage.”
The two of them grabbed their bat bags, walked past the pitcher’s mound, past second base, back across the outfield, opened the little door in the wall in left-center, next to the sign that said “Rockwell YMCA.” Headed back to the batting cage. Ben not sure in that moment which one of them needed the other more.
But then thinking this:
If you really were friends, what did it matter?
It was three o’clock when they finished in the cage, Ben having finished what had become the longest baseball practice of his life, hitting one line drive after another.
Actually thinking he was seeing the ball better because of Justin’s drills.
“You look a lot better,” Justin said, helping him pick up balls.
“I was hitting well in the cage before,” Ben said.
“But not like today.”
“Not like today.”
“The last two buckets, you didn’t jump one time,” Justin said. “Not anything like your at bats last night.”
“It was really that bad?”
Justin nodded.
“I notice stuff like that,” he said, “even if Mr. Brown and your dad didn’t. My dad …” This time when he said it, he managed a small smile. “I don’t know if you know how great a hitter he was, right until he tore up his knee his junior year at UConn, came back, and then tore it up again.”
“Must run in the family,” Ben said. “The hitting part, not the knee part.”
“I guess,” Justin said, looking off again. “Anyway, the first coaching he ever gave me in the backyard on hitting was the best: See ball, hit ball.”
“Whoa,” Ben said, “that is way too complicated for me.”
And Justin laughed.
They picked up the balls, Ben locked the cage, they walked toward where their bikes were leaning against the fence.
“You think I got this now?”
Justin said, “Truth?”
Ben nodded.
