by Mike Lupica
“You look like you’re trying to stick that bat in your ear,” Ben said. “No way you can hit a ball like that.”
“Way,” Matt said.
No hesitation. If he didn’t trust this, Ben wouldn’t either.
He asked Ben to toss him a pitch, waist high if Ben could manage it, right over the plate. It took Ben a couple of times to put the ball where he wanted and where Matt wanted, but he finally got it right. Matt knew there was only one rule with this drill: You couldn’t take the bat back. You had to just come forward with it and, hopefully, drive the ball.
Matt did that now, and connected, the ball making that sweet sound on his bat, going over the pitcher’s mound into short center field.
“No way!” Ben said again.
“Way,” Matt said again.
They did it a few more times. Matt didn’t hit every ball well. He missed some. This stance and this approach felt as awkward to him as he knew they would to Ben. After a few minutes, he stopped to try to explain the purpose of the drill. He told himself this was just baseball. Even though he had turned this part of Healey Park into a classroom, Matt reminded himself he wasn’t making a presentation in front of the class. Just keep it simple, Matt told himself.
For both of us.
“By not taking the bat back,” Matt said, “you force your hands to go faster through the hitting zone.”
He looked up at Ben.
“Does that make sense to you?” he said.
“I guess so,” Ben said.
But he didn’t sound convinced.
“This teaches you to use your hands and arms in the right way and not waste a lot of motion,” Matt said, “and still being able to explode on the ball like you do.”
“Show me again,” Ben said.
Matt did.
And then again.
And again. It was like Sarge would say when the words wouldn’t come for Matt Baker.
He had all day.
• • •
Matt hit a few more line drives, some of them surprisingly hard. Then he told Ben to start flipping him the balls faster between swings, so he had less time to think about what he was doing, and was forced to just react to the ball. “See ball, hit ball,” Matt’s mom liked to say when she’d help Matt work on his hitting.
“You make it look easy,” Ben said.
“It’s not,” Matt said. “But now it’s your turn.”
“I’m telling you,” Ben said, “I’ll never be able to do this.”
“You won’t know until you try.”
Matt took his place to the right of the plate, balls in the grass next to him.
It didn’t go well.
Matt tossed the balls as softly as he could, imagining himself putting them on a tee. But no matter how softly he tossed the ball, Ben missed.
Then again.
And again.
“Relax,” Matt said finally, trying not to sound like a baseball dad.
“I hate when people tell me to relax,” Ben said, his voice as tight as his grip. Matt could see the guy who went around smiling all the time was gritting his teeth now.
“One of the things the coach said on this video I watched,” Matt said, “was that another key to this drill is keeping your hands and arms as relaxed as possible.”
“Easy for you to say,” Ben said.
“I’m just saying w-w . . .”
Suddenly they were both stressed. Ben started to say something. Matt could see him stop himself.
But Matt was the one who stopped, even putting a hand up. He managed to take in some air, then more.
“I was just saying what the coach on the video said,” Matt said to Ben.
“Easy for him to say,” Ben said.
“Just not me,” Matt said.
Ben eventually started to make contact, if feeble contact at first. He wasn’t hitting the balls very far. But at least he was hitting some. Finally he hit one line drive that would have gone over the shortstop’s head and into left field in a game.
But then he went back to missing.
“I can’t do this,” he said. “This is never going to feel natural. I’m just gonna go back to gripping and ripping.”
“You can’t give up yet,” Matt said. “What you’re doing is exaggerated. You won’t swing like this in BP, or even in a game. But if we keep working on it, your swing will just naturally get shorter.”
“No, it won’t,” Ben said.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” Matt said.
“The only fight going on,” Ben said, “is between me and me.”
“But if you get better, it will be worth it, right?” Matt said.
“I guess so,” Ben said.
Again he didn’t sound convinced. There was an expression Matt had heard from the NBA, about trusting the process when teams were rebuilding. He wanted Ben to trust this process, but wasn’t sure that he did. Or would.
But it was like Matt had told him before:
At least he was here.
“You really believe this will help me get better?” Ben said.
Matt nodded.
“Easy for you to say,” Ben said.
SEVEN
Sue Francis’s office was in her home on the other side of South Shore.
“This feels like summer school,” Matt said to his mom as they were driving over there.
“Have you ever complained about having to practice baseball?” Rachel Baker said.
“Mom,” Matt said, “please don’t compare speech therapy to baseball, okay?”
“Can if I want to,” she said.
“What are you, twelve?” Matt said, grinning at her.
“You know what I say,” she said to him. “Young once, immature forever.”
“Working with Ms. Francis is not like playing baseball,” Matt said.
“Wait a second,” she said. “When you practice, isn’t it about trying to become a better player?”
“Oh boy, here we go again,” Matt said.
“Speech therapy is about helping you become better at speaking,” she said.
“Baseball makes me happy,” Matt said. “Therapy is a grind.”
“But you are a grinder!” his mom said. “And getting the words out easier? That’s going to make you happy too.”
Matt had to admit.
She had him there.
• • •
Matt got stopped right away today, in his first few minutes in Ms. Francis’s office, which really looked and felt more like the den where Matt watched baseball sometimes with his mom.
It hardly ever happened in here. He stuttered sometimes when he was with Ms. Francis, but not very often.
He was trying to tell her what he had worked on at Healey Park the day before, joking that he had felt like the therapist as he put Ben through a drill, and how hard it had been for his teammate.
“And who was this with?” she said
All he wanted to say was, “Ben Roberson.”
But he couldn’t. It was as if the B in “Ben” had closed his mouth and made it impossible to open.
He knew about all the drills they worked on in here. They talked about him “bouncing” to the next word he wanted to say or finding a different word. Ms. Francis had told him more than once, had told him a lot, to visualize water being stopped because of a knot in a hose, and picturing himself untying the knot.
But in the moment now, the same letter that was the first in Matt Baker’s last name was tying him in a knot.
My own knot, he thought.
Except he couldn’t even say “my.”
It made him angry this time. He could feel his face reddening. He was finally able to say “My friend Ben,” but as soon as he did, he pounded his fists on the side of his chair in frustration.
“I’ll never be able to do this,” he said.
“You sound like your friend,” she said. “Are you going to let him give up?”
Matt shook his head.
“Well, I’ll never let
you give up,” she said.
She smiled. He couldn’t help himself and smiled back, then went slowly as he tried to explain all that to her as best he could. Without stopping.
“Well,” Ms. Francis said when he finished, “that was certainly a mouthful.”
“I’m sorry I got angry,” he said.
“Don’t be,” she said. “Even anger is part of the process.”
“Long one,” Matt said.
“I keep telling you,” she said, “think of it as a long season. Or even one game. You can strike out in the first inning, and still go on to play great, right?”
“I’m much better at playing a good game than talking a good game,” Matt said.
Ms. Francis clapped her hands together.
“Let’s do both,” she said.
• • •
Matt still wanted to be outside. It was baseball weather again today. He wanted to be playing catch with José or Denzel or Kyle. He wouldn’t even have minded being with Ben at Healey, as much of a grind as their session had been. He didn’t want to have to wait for practice after dinner, he wanted to be on the field with his teammates right now.
But he was here. He was with Ms. Francis. She was trying to help him and he wanted her to help him. He knew she would never quit. He knew he would never quit. He wasn’t wired that way.
He still wanted to be outside.
They were talking again about Matt identifying, or at least trying to identify, the times and the situations that made him stutter.
“It’s weird,” he said. “I know I struggle when I have to say something in front of the class. But at the same time, I can almost feel the kids in the class rooting for me. I get scared sometimes when I meet somebody who doesn’t know I stutter. But I know my friends know.”
He knew that had been another mouthful. But Matt had made it all the way through.
“Let’s talk about that a little,” she said. “You do find it happening with people you don’t know. And who don’t know that you stutter.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you ever think about telling people before it happens?” she said. “Putting it right there on the table?”
Matt shook his head quickly from side to side.
“No,” he said. “I just hope it won’t happen, so then people won’t have to know.”
“We’ve spoken about this plenty of times,” she said. “You know this shouldn’t make you feel badly about yourself, or think less of yourself. Or ashamed.”
“I can’t help it sometimes,” Matt said.
“But you can help it,” Sue Francis said, “and help yourself. I know enough about you by now to know that you refuse to let your lack of size hold you back in baseball. We’re not going to let this hold you back.”
“But it does,” Matt said. “It is.”
“It didn’t hold George Springer back,” she said.
Ms. Francis, who’d grown up outside of Houston, was an Astros fan, and proud of it.
“I wish I could beat stuttering the way he has,” Matt said.
“He didn’t beat anything,” Ms. Francis said. “This isn’t a game you win in the end with a big hit in the bottom of the last inning. This isn’t about winning and losing. George Springer still stutters. But he has refused to let it beat him.”
“I watched him during that World Series the Astros won,” Matt said. “If you didn’t know he stuttered, you wouldn’t have known.”
“Sure you would,” she said. “He still stops, and slows down, and repeats words. He talks all the time about how he’s just a normal person who happens to stutter. He says he just keeps trying to get better, the way he keeps getting better at baseball. And he sure was good enough at baseball to win that MVP award for the Series, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” Matt said.
“George used to avoid public speaking as often as he could,” she said. “And then during the World Series, with the whole world watching and all that media around, you couldn’t shut the guy up.”
“It took him a long time,” Matt said.
“So what?” she said. “You think he was ready to be a World Series MVP when he was playing Little League?”
They did some of their exercises then. Ms. Francis asked him to describe—again—what his mouth felt like and what his throat felt like when he was unable to squeeze out a word. He told her that his throat would feel so tense sometimes he was afraid it might explode.
She had him close his eyes and imagine it was happening right then, even though it wasn’t.
He did.
“Now pick a word, or a few words, and keep them going,” she said. “Almost like you imagine a bubble bursting.”
Matt smiled.
“Batter up,” he said.
EIGHT
By batting practice that night, it was as if Ben Roberson had forgotten everything he and Matt had worked on the day before.
His swing looked exactly the same as it did before they had worked on making it shorter. He was swinging as hard as ever, and seemed to be having as much fun whether he connected or not.
Same guy, Matt thought, different day.
Matt wasn’t going to say anything to him in front of their teammates. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything at all unless Ben brought it up. But as he watch him cut and miss or occasionally hit what Sarge called one of his “big flies,” Matt couldn’t help think he’d wasted his time trying to help him.
Ben either didn’t want to put in the work and the time required to become a more disciplined hitter, or in the course of one day he had managed to unlearn everything. Maybe he’d just been going through the motions when there was no audience around, and nobody to go crazy when he did manage to hit one deep.
Maybe he was afraid of looking bad.
One of the last balls Ben hit in batting practice was a weak grounder to José’s side of second base. Matt had been moving toward the ball himself, but pulled up when he saw it was much closer to José, then waited at second base as José flipped the ball to him, as if they were about to start a double play.
They were both standing there as Ben managed to send one of those big flies over the wall in dead center on his last batting practice swing.
“He sure is fun to watch,” José said to Matt.
“What’s the Spanish word that means to mash?” Matt said.
José grinned. “Mash!” he said.
“Ben sure can mash,” Matt said.
“He’s something,” José said.
“Yeah,” Matt said. “Isn’t he?”
He left it at that. Kyle Sargent was batting now, then Matt would go after him. When it was Matt’s turn, he knew what to expect from Sarge’s pitches by now. He wasn’t just going to try to throw them over the middle of the plate. He wanted Matt to think, and he wanted him to work. So he worked him inside, and Matt would try to pull the ball. He worked him away, to see if Matt could go with the pitch to right. He threw balls too high, to see if Matt would lay off them. Or in the dirt. Matt knew Sarge didn’t do this with all the other players. He did it with Kyle and Denzel, Matt knew. The rest of the guys he would just groove pitches, as a way of helping them with their confidence.
But he wanted to challenge Matt, every single day. And when he did groove one to Matt, threw him what Sarge liked to joke was a “crush me” fastball, he expected Matt to give it a ride.
He did that with his second-to-last swing of the night, hitting one high up the wall in right-center and nearly getting it out. Maybe there was a part of him that wanted to put on a BP show of his own tonight, show Ben what hitting looked like when you did it right. So he did.
The last pitch Sarge threw him was at the knees and on the outside corner. Matt kept his weight back and his head on it and might have hit the ball as hard as the one that had nearly been a home run. Ben was at first, and it was a good thing he was paying attention or the screamer might have caught him in the middle of his chest. Ben, who had good footwork, had time to step to the side, backhand t
he ball, and toss it back to Sarge.
“Okay,” Ben yelled at Matt, grinning. “That hurt. Bigly.”
They took a water break after that, before Sarge would run them through some game situations in the field, even putting some guys on the bases.
“Talk to you for a second?” Ben said.
“Sure,” Matt said.
Ben led him out behind first base.
“Hey,” Ben said, trying to keep his voice low. “I know I wasn’t swinging tonight the way you want me to.”
All Matt wanted to do was tell him that was okay. But he couldn’t get out that word: “Okay.” When he tried, it sounded a little bit as if he were choking on something.
As frustrated as he was, Ben seemed even more frustrated. He was also unwilling to wait for Matt to get the word out. But he seemed to know exactly what Matt was trying to say because he barreled in and said, “It’s not okay!”
Matt saw some of their teammates turn around, because what Ben had just said, he’d said in a loud voice.
But there was nothing Matt could do right now. Ben didn’t seem to mind, and kept right on going. At least he lowered his voice.
“I was just afraid that if I tried all that stuff in front of the other guys tonight I’d look like an idiot,” Ben said.
The best Matt could do was nod, and drink more water. Now there was no point in saying anything at all.
Then Sarge was telling them to get back on the field, they only had about fifteen minutes left to practice, it was time to put the bats down to work on fielding and baserunning.
“Anybody can swing and miss,” Sarge said. “That’s just a physical mistake. But what our team isn’t going to do is make mistakes running the bases, or throwing to the right base.”
There were twelve players on their team, and Sarge had promised that everybody was going to get their fair amount of playing time. But having the extra guys meant he could put two runners on the bases. And for those last fifteen minutes of practice, he hit ground balls and fly balls, telling them there was one out or two outs, even telling them that they were up a run or down a run or tied. He made the outfielders hit the cut-off man on balls he’d hit out there. If they didn’t hit the cut-off man, he made everybody start all over again.
Every once in a while, when everything worked the way Sarge wanted it to, he’d stop and tell them again that what they were doing might not feel like it, but it was all part of the beauty of baseball, even if it felt like grunt work.
