by Mike Lupica
“I think it’s gonna take more than one day to un-mess you up. It’s gotta happen in a real game, against a real pitcher.”
“Like the one we’re facing Friday night?”
Justin said, “If not against him, then who?”
“Thanks, Coach.”
“I’m not your coach.”
“Could’ve fooled me today.”
“I just couldn’t stand there and do nothing when you were that messed up.”
Same, Ben thought.
He said to Justin, “You want to come over to my house and get something to eat and just hang the rest of the afternoon?”
“On one condition.”
“Name it. I owe you for today.”
“No, you don’t.”
“What condition?”
“No more baseball today,” he said. “And no more talk about baseball.”
Ben said he was down with that, he actually had a different sport in mind for the rest of the afternoon.
Pickup basketball at the new and improved McBain Field.
Improved by Ben’s dad, who had surprised him when the snow was finally gone and it was really spring again in Rockwell. His dad said he was having a new basketball court installed at the small park all the kids in town really did think of as belonging to Ben, even though it still officially belonged to the town of Rockwell.
“Can’t have star players stepping in any more holes out there,” Jeff McBain had said at the time.
Obviously talking about what had happened to Sam during the basketball season.
“That was my fault, not the court’s,” Ben had said. “If I hadn’t kept him out there that night, he couldn’t’ve stepped in that stupid hole.”
“Right. And that pothole I drove into on Route 5 the other day, that must have been my fault,” his dad had said. “Anyway, I’m happy to spring for this, I look at it as an investment in your future, and mine.”
“Yours?”
“Yup. You’ve got a lot more years ahead of you on that court, and being able to look out the window and watch you will give me almost as much happiness as it’ll give you.”
It was called a VersaCourt and it was a cool blue color, white lines for the free throw lane and foul line and even the three-point line they were going to use in high school someday.
“It’s … perfect,” Coop had said when it was finished, the first time they were allowed to play on it. And they had played a bunch of pickup games during the spring, even when they were playing their Little League season. But they had all been so fixed on summer baseball no one had even suggested playing hoops since school let out.
Until today.
It made perfect sense to Ben, just because the last time Justin had really been Justin was during basketball, way before his dad had moved out or his mom and dad had talked to him about divorce. Way before Justin had found out he was leaving his school, his friends, his teams. Leaving the only life he’d ever known.
Playing a game of basketball wasn’t going to change that, or make it any easier for Ben to really put himself in Justin’s shoes.
For one afternoon, he just wanted them all to be in basketball shoes.
Ben and Justin had gotten to the court at McBain after Ben’s mom had fixed them a snack. They walked across the grass where the Core Four guys still played Home Run Derby with Wiffle balls, passed the swings where Ben and Lily still did some of their best talking, came up on the basketball court — halfcourt, really — that still looked brand spanking new, starting shooting around while they waited for Sam and Coop and Shawn and Lily to show up.
“Don’t tell Lily that I asked,” Justin said, “but is she a good enough basketball player that the sides will be even?”
Ben said, “I won’t tell her you asked, because that would be a bad thing for you. Extremely bad. The kind of bad that would make being grounded for life seem good.”
“I get that,” Justin said. “But you didn’t answer my question.”
“You’re telling me you’ve never seen any of her girls’ games?”
“Heck no,” Justin said.
It was amazing how many of his boys had zero interest in girls’ sports, whether Lily Wyatt was playing them or not.
“Lily,” Ben said, “can seriously play.”
“You’re serious?”
“Totally,” Ben said. “She’s Lily. Can you imagine her not being great at something?”
“Good point.”
When everyone had arrived at McBain, they decided to make the teams Ben, Sam, and Lily against Shawn, Coop, and Justin.
“You sure these teams are fair?” Shawn said. “We’ve got a lot more size.”
“You have size,” Lily said, “but we have superior speed, intelligence, shooting ability. And looks.”
She was wearing a LeBron T-shirt, but from when he was still with the Cavaliers, had her hair in a ponytail, looked happier than anybody on the court at McBain Field.
“We also have Ben and Sam,” she said.
“If LeBron’s the ‘King,’” Coop said to Justin, “Lily thinks she’s the ‘Queen.’”
“Only until they change the rules and girls can be king,” she said.
They decided to play games of eleven baskets, had to win by two, winners out. Sam guarded Shawn, Ben took Justin, Lily asked if she could guard Coop, even though he really did have a huge size advantage on her.
“You know I’m gonna post you up,” Justin said to Ben. “Just letting you know in advance.”
Grinning at him. Maybe Lily wasn’t the happiest one here, maybe Justin was, just because he was away from baseball, everything that baseball seemed to represent to him right now.
“And I,” Ben said, “am going to make you chase me until you beg for a water break. Just like when we play smalls against bigs in practice during the season.”
“What is it about you guys?” Lily said. “Are we gonna trash-talk or are we gonna play?”
“We call it chirp,” Coop said.
She made a sniffing sound and said, “But it smells like trash.”
Ben’s team won the first game 11–8, making their last three shots, Lily making the winner, from beyond the three-point line. Ben drove toward the basket, everybody on the other team thinking he was either going to shoot himself, or feed Sam. But Lily was wide open outside the three-point line, Coop tired from chasing her. Ben wheeled at the last second, threw the ball out to her, all she had to do was make the shot. Which she did, before breaking into her own dance version of the Harlem Shake.
Justin said to Ben, “Does she always get like this?”
Ben said, “Only when we can settle her down.”
Justin’s team came back to win the second game, though, mostly because both Justin and Coop got hot. Ben had been a little worried about how things would be with the two of them, because of the blowup on the field that day, but both of them acted as if it never happened, high-fiving each other after one of them would make another shot.
They were the Core Four Plus Two on this day, just the way Lily wanted them to be, nobody talking about baseball, or Justin’s move, just laughing and hooping and having summer feel the way it was supposed to when you were eleven.
They took a water break and decided the next game would be their last. Ben and Lily sat under the basket, the other guys sat in the shade of the big tree beyond the hoop.
“Justin seems to be having a good time,” Lily said in a voice only Ben could hear.
“Great time.”
“I really am a genius,” she said.
Ben said, “You think you’re a genius when we let you pick the toppings on the pizza.”
She turned and looked at him, face serious. “Sausage and mushrooms are better than pepperoni,” she said. “It’s just a fact, McBain.”
Ben had been thinking that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if Justin’s team won the third game, even if they had to let him do it. But it turned out he didn’t need any help. He got even hotter no
w, like somehow this was the basketball version of batting practice, and he couldn’t miss here, either.
Laughing sometimes when he’d make another crazy shot, not trying to show up Ben’s team, just because he was stupidly on fire.
But he finally missed when it was 10–6 and then it was Sam who got hot, hitting three in a row. Then Ben faked to Sam, drove right past Justin, made it 10–10.
Now Sam missed a wide-open jumper, Coop rebounded, started to feed Justin, saw that Ben was covering him all the way outside the three-point line, fed Shawn instead. Shawn leaned into Sam, then faded away, made a sweet jumper of his own.
Point game.
Justin ended up with the ball on the outside, him against Ben. No thought of letting Justin or his team win. It had seemed like a nice idea. Ben knew he wasn’t wired that way, even when he was basically playing in his own backyard.
By now he knew Justin’s game: He liked starting on the left side, where he was now, because then he could drive right. And once he started driving, he usually went all the way to the basket. But if he started dribbling left — he had a good left hand for a guy who didn’t have to do much ballhandling on their town team — he was looking to pull up and make one more jumper, the way he’d been making jumpers all afternoon.
He started driving right, big first step, getting his shoulder past Ben. But Sam left Shawn and came over, cutting him off, and Lily picked up Shawn. Coop was open, but too far away from the basket at that moment to be a threat.
Justin in the lane now, Ben on his hip, Sam in front of him. Justin should have passed, probably would have passed in a real game. But this wasn’t a real game, and he had been stupidly hot. And so he was going to take the last shot.
He went up and Sam, who could jump better than anybody in town their age, went up with him, arms straight up in the air, daring Justin to shoot over him.
Justin didn’t even try.
For the first time all day he switched the ball to his left hand, and shot it around Sam Brown, one of the mutt-ugliest shots Ben had ever seen in his life.
One that somehow hit softly off the square painted behind the basket and dropped through the net to make it 12–10.
Lily looked at Justin, hands on hips, and said, “You have got to be joking.”
“I would have even been embarrassed to call bank on that shot,” Sam said.
Shawn and Coop? They were just pointing at Lily now, and laughing, and doing their own clumsy version of the Harlem Shake.
Then Ben and Sam and Lily couldn’t help themselves, they were laughing, too, making complete fools of themselves because of Justin Bard’s fool shot to beat them.
The only one not laughing, not doing anything, just standing there, was the guy who had made the shot.
He had gone to retrieve the ball and was just standing there in the grass, staring at the rest of them, ball on his hip. Ben thinking in that moment how lonely he looked, even though he was right there.
When Justin saw Ben staring at him, he said, “I can’t.”
“You mean laugh?” Ben said. “Man, you’ve got to laugh at a shot like that.”
Justin put the ball down. Not just looking lonely. Looking to Ben, to all of them, like the saddest kid in town.
Everybody stopped laughing now, everybody seeing what Ben had seen on Justin’s face, nobody making a sound at McBain Field, all the noise and fun of the afternoon, of the last shot, suddenly gone.
Finally Lily said, “Justin, what’s the matter?”
“Everything,” he said, then turned and ran toward Ben’s house, where he’d left his bike near the front walk, running as fast as Ben had ever seen him.
Ben started to run after him. Justin was fast. But not that fast.
Lily put a hand on his arm.
“I don’t get it,” Ben said.
“I think I do,” Lily said. “All of us being this happy just made him more sad about leaving.”
They could see Justin already on his bike now, heading up the street, until he was out of sight.
Ben thinking that Justin kept finding different ways to leave this summer, maybe practicing for when he finally had to leave for good.
* * *
Justin didn’t reply to text messages the next couple of days. So after all the progress Ben thought they’d made, they were back to that. The only good news was that Sam’s dad hadn’t said anything about Justin telling him that he was quitting the team.
So nobody knew if Justin was going to show up in Parkerville on Friday night or not, even late Friday afternoon, Ben and the guys in his basement, just killing time until Ben’s dad would drive them all to Parkerville for their seven o’clock game.
“No way he shows,” Coop said.
He was playing MVP Baseball against Shawn, but it didn’t stop him from talking. Sam liked to say that Coop’s voice would be able to survive a nuclear attack.
Now Sam said, “That’s the first encouraging thing I’ve heard.”
“What?” Coop said, fingers working his controller, face serious.
“You saying he won’t show,” Sam said. “Now I think he will.”
“Me, too,” Ben said. “But I only ever bet on the way I want things to work out.”
“I’m with Sam and Ben,” Shawn said.
“Three against one,” Coop said. “Shocker.”
“Look on the bright side,” Ben said. “It still adds up to four. As in Core Four!”
“Whatever,” Coop said, tossing his controller aside, Justin Verlander striking out Bryce Harper in the bottom of the ninth, Coop’s team beating Shawn’s. “I can take all of you.”
“What we need to do tonight,” Sam said, “is take down Robbie Burnett. We’re stressing so much on Justin, we’re kind of forgetting that.”
“I’m not,” Ben said.
“Sam’s right,” Coop said. “Payback time tonight.”
“I wish,” Ben said.
“You know,” Sam said. “You started one season off wrong because of Robbie. Tonight you get a do-over.”
“You’re sure about that?” Ben said.
“We’re all sure,” Sam said.
Ben looked at all of them, sitting on his couch. They all nodded back at him.
“Sure thing,” Coop said.
“Justin may not show up in Parkerville,” Sam said. “But you will.”
They both did.
* * *
Justin’s dad brought him.
They showed up just a few minutes after Ben and the guys had piled out of Mr. McBain’s new SUV, Mr. Bard walking with Justin over to the bleachers on the third-base side of the field, chatting briefly with Ben’s dad and Sam’s, calling over to Justin and telling him he’d be back, he was going for an iced coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts.
Justin said, “Don’t get lost, Dad.”
“Never,” his dad said.
Ben was on the bench, switching from his sneakers to his baseball shoes when Justin came and sat down next to him.
“Talk to you for a second?” Justin said, and nodded in the direction of left field.
“Sure,” Ben said, not even waiting to lace up his shoes, just walking with Justin toward the outfield.
When they were far enough away from the rest of the Rams, Justin said, “My dad talked me out of quitting.”
Ben smiled at him. “Good!”
“He reminded me that being on a team doesn’t just involve playing, it involves responsibility. And accountability. He’s always been big on both those things.”
“Same with my dad,” Ben said. “For pretty much my whole life.”
“He said that you don’t just let your teammates down when you quit, you let yourself down.”
Ben nodded.
“Just wanted you to understand why I’m here,” Justin said.
“I do.”
“My dad said you only stopped playing if you were too hurt to play. And he said that didn’t involve hurt feelings.”
Ben waited, sensing that he hadn’t s
aid everything he’d come out here to say.
He hadn’t.
“I didn’t want to say this in front of Sam and the other guys,” Justin said. “But since my dad knew what you’d been going through, he said that if I just up and walked away, I’d be letting you down, too.”
“I want you to play because you want to play,” Ben said, “not because of me.”
“My dad said that nothing that’s happening to me is baseball’s fault, basically.”
“It’s not with me, either, if you really think about it.”
“You ready to face Robbie tonight?”
“Better be.”
“You’re going to figure it out, wait and see.”
Ben put out his fist, Justin bumped it, Ben said, “How about we try to figure everything out together?”
Justin said that sounded good to him, he wasn’t doing a very good job of figuring things out for himself lately.
Robbie Burnett came over before the game, wanted to know how Ben’s arm was.
Ben flexed and said, “Perfect.”
“I still can’t believe I hit you in the first game of the season,” Robbie said.
“As long as you don’t do it tonight,” Ben said, smiling, “then we’re good.”
Then Robbie told him he wasn’t starting tonight, they were going with their other best pitcher, a lefty named Frankie Henson, and that Robbie was scheduled to pitch the last two innings.
“That’s when I’m really dangerous,” Robbie said, smiling back, “as a closer.”
“The arm you need to worry about is my right arm tonight,” Ben said, “because I’m closing, too.”
“Then it’s on.”
“So on,” Ben said.
He had a good batting practice, Justin making sure he hit behind Ben, watching every swing Ben took against Mr. Brown.
Every few pitches Ben would hear him say, “Watch.”
Ben finished with a line drive up the middle that went whistling past Mr. Brown’s head, laid down his bunt, deadening the ball perfectly, ran it out hard, because he always did, went to get his glove.
Reminding himself of what Sam said about the season starting over tonight. A do-over against Parkerville, against Robbie. But telling himself not to worry about having to stand in there against Robbie Burnett later, just telling himself to worry about the first pitch he was going to see, top of the first, against Frankie Henson.
