Heavy Hitters

by Mike Lupica

  It was when Justin rolled off Ben and Ben got up that he saw Sam and Coop pulling Justin to his feet, each with an arm, not so much helping him as holding on to him, walking him back toward the Rams’ bench, Mr. Brown and Ben’s dad with them now.

  All of them making sure he’d gotten as close to the mound as he was going to get.

  “What’s his problem?” Pat Seeley, yelling from the mound, his infielders with him, Pat trying to make it look as if they were holding him back.

  Pat Seeley’s dad was between the mound and the third-base line by now, Ben noticing his voice was even louder than his son’s, pointing at Justin but talking to Mr. Brown, saying, “Can’t you control your players?”

  Mr. Brown turned when he heard that but didn’t respond, walking instead to where the ump was standing, about the spot where Ben had brought down Justin and saying in a calm voice, “What we don’t need here is for the adults to make this thing any worse than it already is.”

  The ump said, “Agreed,” and turned to Mr. Seeley and said, “Zip it.”

  Mr. Seeley acted now as if he’d been hit with a pitch. “Are you talking to me?”

  “I am,” the ump said.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “I do,” the ump said. “You’re a coach who needs to let me handle this.”

  Ben walked over to Justin, standing now in front of their bench. Sam and Coop weren’t taking any chances, they still each had an arm, like they were about to make a wish. Ben’s dad stood between them and the field, while Mr. Brown went to talk to the ump.

  “He did that on purpose,” Justin said.

  He was the one with the red face now.

  Ben said, “I know.”

  “I couldn’t take that,” Justin said.

  Again Ben said, “I know,” his voice even quieter than before.

  From the mound they could still hear Pat Seeley. “The guy’s crazy,” he was saying to his teammates, but wanting everybody at Seeley Field to hear him. And maybe people walking their dogs around the duck pond way in the distance.

  Sam let go of Justin’s arm and started walking toward the field.

  “Don’t,” Ben said. “We’re in enough trouble.”

  “No worries, I won’t make more,” Sam said. “I just want to tell Pat something.”

  Ben watched as Sam got as far as the third-base line, then made a time-out signal with his hands, motioning to Pat to come talk to him, like they were boys.

  Pat left his teammates and walked over to where Sam was standing, saw Sam talking to him, noticed that Pat Seeley, for what felt like the first time all night, wasn’t saying anything.

  When Sam was finished, he even gave Pat a nice pat on the shoulder. Boys to the end.

  When Sam got back to the bench Ben said, “What did you say to him?”

  “Oh, I just told him that if he said one more word to Justin, I was going to make him eat that red glove of his like it was a great big red apple.”

  Ben couldn’t help himself, even with the night having gone crazy. He smiled. “And Pat knew you sort of meant that.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  By now there was a conference going on at home plate: The ump, Mr. Brown, Mr. Seeley. Mr. Brown had been doing a lot of the talking, Ben unable to hear him, Mr. Brown’s way of speaking as low-key as Sam’s was. The only one they could hear was Mr. Seeley, wanting everybody to hear him the way Pat did, demanding that the game be awarded to Kingsland on a forfeit.

  The Rams’ players were all sitting on the bench, Mr. Brown having told them to do that, and not move until he got back. There were some parents from Rockwell in the stands behind them, Ben already knowing that neither Justin’s mom or his dad had made the trip, Shawn’s dad was giving Justin a ride home tonight.

  Justin was in the middle of the bench, Coop and Ben on one side of him, Sam and Shawn on the other.

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m gonna explode,” Justin Bard had said in Ben’s room that night after he and his mom had come over for dinner.

  Tonight he’d exploded.

  Finally Mr. Brown finished with the ump and Mr. Seeley. Came back to the Rams and said, “Okay, no forfeit, and the game continues.” Paused and said, “Obviously without Justin.”

  Ben said, “They’re not throwing Pat out of the game, too? I told you, Mr. B, he said he saw me laughing at him right before he hit me.”

  “The ump didn’t hear him,” Mr. Brown said. “And the ump said that you weren’t the one who’d hit the home run off him, there was no reason for him to be throwing at you.”

  Sam said, “That is so wrong.”

  “I know,” Mr. Brown said. “But it is what it is, and our guy is the one who charged the mound.”

  They all nodded. Justin just stared, hard, into the dirt in front of the bench, clenching and unclenching his hands.

  Mr. Brown said, “Justin gets to stay on the bench, because his parents aren’t here. Like I said: We play on. Ben, you get over to first base. And nobody on this team says another word until after we’ve beaten their butts.”

  Mr. Brown smiled when he said the last part. It was another time when Ben couldn’t believe how much Sam looked like his dad.

  “So let’s commence doing that,” he said.

  Ben jogged to first, not going near the mound, going around home plate instead. Darrelle and Sam were getting their bats and helmets. Mr. Brown hadn’t gone out to the third-base coach’s box just yet, he and Justin were sitting at the end of the bench now, just the two of them, the rest of the guys giving them room, Mr. Brown with his arm around him.

  At first base Ben said to his dad, “He might get suspended for the rest of the season, right?”

  “Not gonna lie, pal. They take charging the mound really seriously in Little League baseball.”

  “But, Dad, he never got there!”

  “Let’s worry about that later,” he said. “For now, let’s focus on winning the game and getting the heck out of here.”

  Pat Seeley, in what was always going to be his third and last inning, that was the limit, struck out Darrelle and actually had the chops to make a fist as he did.

  Sam at the plate now.

  And it was clear that Pat wanted no part of him, not after having been told Sam intended to shove his mitt down his throat if he didn’t shut up. So Pat threw ball one way outside. Ball two was even more outside.

  Ben thought: He’s going to intentionally walk him without making it an official intentional walk.

  Ben had thought about stealing but didn’t want to do anything to distract Sam if he did get a pitch to hit.

  Ball three was in the dirt.

  Ben just assumed the next pitch wouldn’t be anywhere near the strike zone. And it really wasn’t, over the plate but up in Sam’s eyes.

  Ball four until it wasn’t, until Sam took a vicious swing and connected and tomahawked the ball over the center-field fence, a screaming line drive from the time it left his bat, Ben watching the flight of the ball and thinking to himself as he did that it might not have been more than ten feet off the ground its whole way out of Seeley Field.

  Making the home run that Justin had hit in the top of the first look like a pop fly that had carried.

  Ben waited for Sam at home plate, knowing there was no chance, none, zero, that Sam would do anything to show up Pat Seeley, because he never showed up an opponent. Not even this one.

  As Ben double-high-fived him he said, “I couldn’t tell: You get all of that one?”

  “That one,” Sam said, looking out at the mound, a look there and gone, “was for Justin.”

  The Rams ended up winning 14–2. Ben pitched the bottom of the sixth. Usually if they had a lead like that Mr. Brown would let Darrelle — who constantly joked that he was a frustrated pitcher — mop up.

  But after the fifth, Ben had asked Mr. Brown to please let him finish the game tonight, it was important.

  “You got it,” Mr. Brown said. “I know I don’t have to tell you no funny stuff
, that’s not you.”

  One more thing that wasn’t Ben.

  He went out and struck out the side. The last out was Pat Seeley. Three pitches, nothing close to him, every fastball he threw more unhittable than the one before it. Usually both teams got into lines and shook hands. Not tonight. No gathering for the Rams in the outfield. It was like Ben’s dad had said: Win the game, get the heck out of there.

  Sam went home with his dad, Justin with Shawn and Mr. O’Brien, Coop with Ben and Ben’s dad, the car totally quiet by the time they got to Rockwell, even Coop talked out about Justin and what had happened and what was going to happen to him.

  The news the next day was all bad.

  And not just because of Justin.

  The chairman of the board of Butler County League called Mr. Brown to tell him that Justin had been suspended for the rest of the season, including the playoffs, even though Ben had managed to stop him before a fight broke out. The chairman told Sam’s dad that it wasn’t just Justin going after Pat Seeley the way he did, but that this was a second offense because Justin had already missed a game for throwing his bat.

  Two suspensions, same season, they decided he was gone.

  The other bad news was something Ben had suspected from the time Justin had landed on him, even though he hadn’t mentioned it to anybody.

  His left wrist, which had taken most of Justin Bard’s weight, the same left wrist that had gotten hit square in the batting cage that day, was swollen to twice its normal size. And way more than after the ball had hit him.

  Ben hadn’t been suspended from anything, but now he didn’t know when he might play again for the Rams.

  On the way to Monday’s practice Ben was still trying to tell his dad that the wrist felt way better than it looked, honest it did, reminding him that Dr. Freshman said he might only have to miss one game if he was lucky.

  Mild sprain, he said, not even close to being the kind of bad ankle sprain that had forced Sam to miss most of the basketball season.

  “You heard Doc,” Ben said, “if he was really worried about it he would have put me into some kind of soft cast. I’ll be good to go when we play Kingsland again on Friday night.”

  “You didn’t think it was worth mentioning when it happened?” his dad said. “So maybe we could have gotten ice on it right away?”

  “First of all, there was a lot going on at the time,” Ben said. “And second of all, which happens to be way more important? I wasn’t coming out of that game. Especially not if I was going to get one more chance to face that guy.”

  They both know which guy he was talking about.

  “You know,” his dad said, “I was thinking last night that it never changes in sports, that I’ve been running into kids like Pat Seeley since the time I was a kid. They never think of themselves as being bullies, but they are.”

  “I think that probably bothered Justin more than anything.”

  “There’s a better way of dealing with bullies, you know that.”

  “I do,” Ben said. “And I know what Justin did was wrong, Dad. But there’s just times where you want to smack the other guy. You know I felt that way with Chase during basketball.”

  “But you didn’t smack him, or even try,” Jeff McBain said. “And I never did no matter how many times I wanted to when I was growing up.”

  “I get that he broke the rules,” Ben said. “But you know it wasn’t just Pat who made him act that way last night. It was everything.”

  “We explained that Justin has been going through a tough time,” Ben’s dad said.

  “The worst.”

  They were in the parking lot by now, car stopped. Ben’s dad turned around and said, “Justin is going to survive this — and that means all of this — you know that, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Married couples get divorced all the time,” Jeff McBain said. “That’s just the fact of things. And most of the time when they get divorced there are kids involved, and all of the time it’s harder on the kids than anybody else. But the beauty of children, and trust me, I’m a trained professional, is how resilient you guys are. So the children of divorce get through it. Justin will get through it, the way he’ll get through missing these games.”

  “I know you’re right, Dad,” Ben said. “I just feel like they’re not seeing the whole picture, is all.”

  “They’re probably not,” Jeff McBain said. “Sam’s dad and I plan to have one more conversation with Ed Goodman — he’s the chairman of the baseball board — at the end of the week, take another run at him.”

  “So you’re not giving up?”

  “I’m a McBain,” his dad said. “Where do you think you get that from?”

  * * *

  Ben missed the second Moreland game, which the Rams lost, dropping them into a second-place tie with Darby, Parkerville right behind them, the Moreland Tigers going into first place by themselves, everybody with one last game before the playoffs started.

  The Rams’ last regular season game would be against Kingsland on Friday night at Highland Park. The playoffs would start Saturday. If the Rams beat Kingsland — it would mean beating Pat Seeley again — the worst they could do was finish in second place, which meant their first playoff game would be at home.

  But that wasn’t the big baseball news of the week for their team, at least not as far as Ben was concerned. The big news was that Sam’s dad was scheduled to go over to Darby on Wednesday and plead Justin’s case one last time in front of Mr. Goodman, this year’s board chairman for Butler County baseball.

  “You think Mr. Brown will be able to change this guy’s mind?” Lily said to Ben.

  They weren’t in the swings at McBain Field on this night. Just the two of them sitting on the front steps of Ben’s house after dinner, Ben having invited Lily over to eat with him and his parents.

  Before that, Dr. Freshman had declared Ben good to go for the playoffs, telling him it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for him to take one more game off, just to be on the safe side.

  “I don’t know Mr. Goodman,” Ben said. “Dad says he used to coach in the league when his son still played. But you know how it is with grown-ups once they make up their minds about something.”

  “Does Mr. Goodman know about Justin’s mom and dad, and about him moving?”

  “Dad says he does, the whole board does.”

  “And that doesn’t count for anything?”

  “Guess not, Lils,” Ben said, and then he said, “This stinks.”

  “You did everything you could, McBain,” she said. Poked him in the arm and said, “I hear your tackle could have made SportsCenter.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel good?”

  He turned and saw her smiling at him. “You’re with me,” she said. “So it’s not like you’re going to feel bad.”

  “Excellent point.”

  They were both finishing off ice-cream cones.

  “You gotta remember something,” she said. “Just because Justin’s season is over doesn’t mean yours is.”

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  “Occasionally,” she said.

  “Another excellent point.”

  “You guys can still win, and that would mean you won in football and baseball this year and would’ve won in basketball if Sam hadn’t gotten hurt.”

  “I know all that, Lils. And after the way the season started for me, it would be an awesome thing to win the championship, make it an awesome season. It’s just that …”

  “It’s just that it was Justin’s season, too.”

  “Yeah,” he said, turned to her again, saw that she was still smiling as she wiped some ice cream from the corner of his mouth, like that was the most natural thing in the world for her to do.

  Quiet now on his street. Just the first night sound of crickets. A dog barking a few houses up. Ben thought: This should have felt like the best week of the whole summer. His wrist had healed — again — and the playoffs were starting
and the Rams were right there.

  But it didn’t feel that way.

  “He’s such a good guy.”

  “Justin?” Lily said.

  “You know what I keep thinking about, Lils? With everything that was happening to him, he didn’t have to help me when I was, like, totally lost at the plate. There was nothing in it for him, we were friends but not that kind of friends. But he did it, anyway.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  “We always talk about how there’s nothing more important to us than being a good friend and then he hauled off and turned out to be a great friend I didn’t even knew I had.” Ben shook his head, hard. “I know what he did should cost him. I get that. But who he is should count for something, too.”

  “When you’re right, you’re right, McBain.”

  “It just doesn’t do me any good or Justin any good.”

  Lily stood up.

  “Let’s take a walk to the swings before I have to go home.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I might have an idea.”

  “You can’t have your idea here?”

  “I have better ideas at the swings,” she said.

  So the two of them walked across McBain Field in the gray light you got in summer right before it got dark. He didn’t say anything and Lily didn’t say anything until they sat down. They always sat in the same swings, as long as Ben could remember, Lily on his right.

  Finally she said, “Grown-ups always think they understand kids, because they were kids once themselves. But their problem, McBain, is that they think that we think the way they did when they were our age.”

  She wasn’t done yet and he knew it, there were times when she was thinking out loud like this when Ben knew to just shut up and let her keep thinking.

  “But they don’t think like us, no matter how hard they try, because it was so long ago they don’t remember what the heck they were thinking about.”

  Ben saw her nodding and smiling, brightening this little piece of the gray light.

  Now she turned to look right at him as she said, “You need to tell Mr. Goodman about Justin.”

  “Me.”

  “You,” she said. “Not Sam’s dad and not even your dad. You.”