by Mike Lupica
“You see what I’m talking about more when you’re at a game than when you’re watching on television,” Sarge said. “As soon as a ball is put in play, if the team in the field is on top of things, everybody out there is in motion. If they’re not, they’re the ones who should be watching the game instead of playing it.”
Now the Astros were the ones in motion, making sure they were in the right spot, making the right throws.
Sarge was right.
It was a beautiful game.
The first game of their season was on Friday night. Matt was sure they were all ready for it. And no one was more ready than he was.
Neither Ben’s parents nor Matt’s mom were in the parking lot when practice ended. So the two of them grabbed their water bottles and just sat on the infield grass, between first base and the pitcher’s mound.
Matt could tell Ben still wanted to talk about it, even if Matt didn’t.
“It’s like I was trying to tell you before,” Ben said. “Maybe this isn’t the time to be messing with my swing, with the season about to start.”
That made no sense. But Matt let it go. It had been a long day, first his session with Ms. Francis and now what had been a good, long practice.
“Okay,” Matt said.
“I talked to my dad about it last night,” Ben said. “He just told me to be myself.”
“Okay,” Matt said again.
He looked over Ben’s shoulder and saw his mom pulling up, leaning out the window and waving at him, a big smile on her face. Matt wasn’t just happy to see her. He was almost relieved.
Ben said, “My dad said he’d trade a few strikeouts for one long ball any day of the week. He said that’s what everybody’s doing in the big leagues now.”
There was no point in telling him that they weren’t in the big leagues. It was another thought he kept inside him, this time voluntarily.
“You have to be yourself,” Matt said.
“Maybe I can’t be you and you can’t be me,” Ben said.
Matt stood up then, put out his fist so Ben could pound him.
“Good talk,” he said, even though he knew it hadn’t been.
Even though he felt like yet again tonight, Ben had swung and missed.
NINE
After a late dinner, Matt went into the den to watch a game on the MLB Network, the Orioles against the Yankees. A second baseman he really liked was playing, Jonathan Schoop of the Orioles. Schoop could really hit and field his position. He was one of those players who made the hard plays look easy and never went out of his way to make the easy plays look hard just to draw attention to himself.
“You don’t root for either one of those teams,” Matt’s mom said after they’d cleaned up in the kitchen. “So why is this game such a big deal?”
“Mom, it’s baseball and it’s on. It’s practically my duty to watch,” he said. “You want to join me?”
“Not tonight,” she said, and then told him she was heading upstairs to watch some new series on Netflix.
“Everybody in it must speak with English accents,” Matt said.
“Of course,” she said. Then she grinned at him. “It’s set in England and it’s on. It’s practically my duty to watch.”
Matt settled in on the couch to watch the game. He was still thinking about what Sarge had said about the beauty of baseball and everybody being in motion. Matt hated it when people talked about how boring baseball was.
On the screen in front of him, almost on cue, Schoop went behind second base to backhand a ball that looked like a single all the way coming off the bat of Aaron Judge. He effortlessly flipped the ball out of his glove to the Orioles shortstop, who glided across second base and started a 4-6-3 double play, ending the half inning for the Yankees.
“Wow,” Matt said out loud.
“Talking to yourself, or the game?” he heard his mom say.
He hadn’t even noticed her standing in the doorway.
“Both,” he said. “What about Netflix?”
“It can wait,” she said. “Decided to watch a little baseball with my boy after all.”
He knew his mom honestly did love baseball, from the time she had been a star softball player herself.
After the commercial, Schoop was leading off for the Orioles, and hit the first pitch he saw, one that looked to be off the plate, into the right field corner past Judge for a double.
“Look at him going with the pitch,” his mom said.
“You really do know a lot about baseball,” Matt said, grinning. “For a girl.”
She punched him lightly in the arm.
“Good thing I know you’re kidding,” she said. “I mean, you have a decent sense of humor. For a boy.”
“Good one, Mom,” he said, then told her about how he’d gone with an outside pitch at practice and nearly tore the glove off Ben’s hand.
“I forgot to ask,” his mom said. “How did it work out tonight with Ben’s new swing?”
“Didn’t,” Matt said.
“Well, it will take him some time.”
“He didn’t even try,” Matt said. “He just went back to his usual way of doing it.”
“Did he explain why?”
“Yeah, he did,” Matt said. “He said his dad wants him to be a home run hitter.”
“Is that what Ben wants?” she said.
“Doesn’t seem to matter,” Matt said. “He said that guys in the big leagues are willing to trade three strikeouts for one home run, and if it’s good enough for them, it should be good enough for Ben.”
Matt’s mom picked up the remote and muted the TV.
“If his dad doesn’t want him to change the way he does things,” she said, “it’s gonna be kind of hard for Ben to do it on his own.”
“But he can do it if he wants to,” Matt said.
“How much does he want to?”
“He really listens to his dad,” Matt said.
“Not so terrible, listening to your parents,” his mom said. “Unless one of them is giving out bad advice.”
“You never give me bad advice,” Matt said to her.
“Hope not.”
“You always tell me to be myself,” Matt said.
“If you ever stop, you’re grounded,” she joked.
A few minutes later Schoop did it again, this time going to his left and into short right field, making a sliding stop, somehow side-arming the ball to Chris Davis while his momentum was still carrying him toward his own right fielder. Didi Gregorius, the Yankees shortstop, was out by a step. Schoop jogged off the field as if what he’d done was strictly routine, instead of completely spectacular. The only show of emotion from him was when he tapped Davis’s glove as the two of them went down the dugout steps.
My kind of player, Matt thought.
“That was baseball,” his mom said.
“Totally,” Matt said. He smiled at her and said, “Even with the sound off.”
Then he said, “Mom, you don’t have to stay with me. Go watch your show.”
“If you say so,” she said, trying to sound as if she were the one with the British accent.
It was a fast game, and Matt was able to watch it all the way to the end. He wasn’t one of those people who wanted clocks on the field. He loved the idea that you couldn’t run out the clock in a baseball game. He just wanted pitchers to stop stepping off the rubber after every pitch. He wanted batters to stay in the batter’s box. He loved that they had changed the rules and there were only so many visits catchers and coaches and managers could make to the mound during a game.
He didn’t want them to change everything. He just wanted them to pick up the pace a little.
When he went upstairs to say good night to his mom, she said, “You stressing on this thing with Ben?”
“Maybe there’s nothing I can do,” Matt said, “if his dad wants him to be one kind of hitter, even if Ben wants to be another kind.”
“Would be kind of a problem.”
“I just
want to help our team,” Matt said.
“You can only control what you can control,” she said. “And if Ben really wants your help, you just have to trust that he’ll ask for it again.”
She was already in bed, but got out now and hugged him. She was a major hugger, his mom. But Matt was too. There were things in his life that scared him. He knew the fear that came over him when the words wouldn’t come out. But he had never been afraid to show affection with his mom. He couldn’t even remember now if he’d ever been the same way with his dad.
“It’s not like I’m the coach of the team,” Matt said to her.
“You sure about that?” Rachel Baker said.
TEN
First game of the season.
No matter how young or old you were, Matt knew, your own opening day—or night—never got old.
He’d been excited when the Nationals played their first game in the spring, on this same field at Healey Park. But this felt even better, just because it was All-Stars, and you knew the level of competition was about to get better. It was all the best players in your town against the best players from somebody else’s town, all summer long.
Their opponent tonight was the Lake Worth Cubs. Lake Worth was about forty minutes from South Shore. Matt remembered some of their players from last year, but not all of them. One guy he did remember was the Cubs starting pitcher, a tall right-hander named Andrew Welles. He had been one of the biggest players in last summer’s league, and had thrown harder than anybody Matt had faced. He looked even bigger now. Matt was guessing that the speed of his fastball had grown right along with him.
“If they’re on All-Stars, they all must be good,” Kyle Sargent was saying before the Astros got ready to take the field for infield practice.
“So are we,” José Dominguez said.
“So let’s get this party started,” Denzel Lincoln said.
They all looked at him, shaking their heads and smiling.
“Did you really just say that?” Matt said.
“Hey,” Denzel said, “I’m feeling it, okay?”
The top of the batting order was just as Sarge had told them it would be: Kyle, followed by José, followed by Matt, followed by Ben, then Stone Russell, all the way to Denzel, who Sarge said was like another leadoff man at the bottom of the order.
Andrew Welles was warming up behind his team’s bench, on their side of Healey, while Matt and José stood near second base waiting for Sarge to start hitting ground balls.
“He looks as strong as Justin Verlander,” Matt said.
“No worries,” José said. “You can hit him.”
Matt had had a little success against Andrew Welles last summer, but not a lot.
“And you know this . . . how?”
“Because you can hit anybody,” José said, and put up his glove so Matt could slap it with his own.
They fielded some ground balls. They made some throws to Ben at first base. Stone Russell threw down to second from home plate with his great arm. José took the throw. He flipped the ball to Matt. They ran off the field, ready to play the Cubs and start the season.
Everything felt new tonight. The baselines looked as white as they could possibly look. The grass shouldn’t have looked any different than it did from their last practice, but somehow it did. Somehow it looked greener. It is all good, Matt thought. If you got a hit your first time up, you were batting 1.000. If you made an out your next time up, your average was still .500.
Matt sat on the end of the Astros’ bench and looked out at the bright white lines and the green grass and imagined a whole summer stretching out in front of him and his teammates, all the way to the finals of the state tournament if they made it that far. That would mean a game in the new stadium at the state university. To Matt, it felt as if they were trying to play their way to Yankee Stadium.
Before the Astros starting pitcher, Teddy Sample, got ready to throw his first pitches in the top of the first, Sarge gathered the Astros around him in the small grassy area between their bench and the wire fence that separated the field from the bleachers, where his mom sat. Matt gave a quick wave to her. He saw Ben’s dad, Bob, sitting a couple of rows behind them. Bob, Matt knew, was at least six-five. Even sitting down, he seemed to tower over everyone around him.
Sarge was smiling. But then Sarge seemed to be smiling every time he stepped out on this field, whether it was for a practice or the first game of the season. Kyle said that usually his dad was more impatient to get to Healey Park than he was.
“The guys who played for me in the spring have heard me talk about this before,” Sarge said now. “And what they’ve heard me say is that I just wasn’t smart enough to know how good I had it when I was your age. I thought I knew how great nights like this were. But they were even better than that.”
Some of the Astros were turned around on the bench, facing away from the field. The rest were standing. Sarge was leaning against the wire fence, still with the bat he’d used to hit grounders during infield practice in his hand.
“But since kids now are way smarter than they were when I was your age, I know you guys are smart enough to appreciate the journey we’re about to start,” he said. “And I know you’re all going to appreciate the heck out of competing.”
He walked up so he was closer to them, and lowered his voice.
“Kyle’s mom asked me the other day if coaching gave me the same feeling that playing baseball used to give me,” Sarge said. “And I told her, Heck no! But this isn’t about me. This is your game now. So let’s go play it. Would that be okay with you guys?”
They all yelled “Yes!” in one voice. Matt felt as if his was the loudest. In that moment if Sarge had asked him to jump over the screen behind home plate to play this game, he was pretty sure he could have done it.
Sarge had talked about playing the season.
It was even simpler than that, Matt Baker thought.
Play. Ball.
• • •
Teddy Sample struck out the first two batters he faced. Andrew Welles was hitting third for them. Even though Andrew threw right-handed he batted left, and could really hit. He wasn’t a power hitter the way Ben was. Didn’t hit those big flies. He had a beautiful, level swing made for line drives.
Now he put a great swing on the third pitch he saw from Teddy, on the inside half of the plate, and ripped a shot between Matt and Ben. Ben didn’t react quickly enough to the ball, and had no chance at it.
Matt did.
He read the ball perfectly off Andrew’s bat and didn’t try to cut the ball off as he moved to his left, knowing it would be past him too. So he headed for the outfield grass. When he got there, he dove for the ball, making sure to keep his glove down, not wanting to have timed his play just right and have the ball skip over his glove.
At the end of his dive he got that thrill you got on a play like this, because he could feel the ball in his glove.
Now it was just all instinct. All baseball. The ball had been hit hard enough that he knew he had time. Not a lot of time. Some. He scrambled to his knees and made a strong, sidearm throw to Ben, who made a full stretch, his own body angled toward the outfield.
They got Andrew Welles by a step.
Matt was still on his knees in short right field when he saw the first base umpire signal that Andrew was out. Then he got up, kept his head down, ran off the field. He didn’t even tap gloves with Ben as he ran alongside him. No celebration. No big deal. It was still just the top of the first.
Kyle walked to lead off the Astros’ half of the first. José struck out on a high fastball from Andrew Welles, ball up in his eyes on a 3-2 count. He couldn’t lay off. Had no chance to do anything except wave at it. Strike three.
As he walked back to the bench, he passed Matt, leaned close, and said, “You know how hard we thought he threw? He throws way harder than that.”
As Matt dug in, he tapped the shin guards of the Cubs catcher, Jake McAuliffe, another kid he remembered from last
year’s Lake Worth team.
“Go easy on us,” Jake said.
“No can do,” is what Matt wanted to say.
The words wouldn’t come out.
His jaw just locked up on him. But he couldn’t worry about that right now. He was only worrying about Andrew Welles, and focusing on that fastball.
So he just shook his head at Jake, as if that’s all he wanted to say.
He bought himself another second by reaching down and using his bat to knock dirt out of his spike. Then he turned to face Andrew Welles, telling himself to forget about everything else except the pitcher.
So far he had thrown every pitch as hard as he could, and did that now with Matt, throwing one that came in about shoulder high. Maybe it would have been a strike to Kyle or José. Ball one. When Jake threw the ball back to Andrew, Andrew snapped his glove at the ball, almost swiping it out of the air, as if it had only taken one pitch for Matt’s small strike zone to annoy him.
The second pitch came in just as hard, was way inside, and backed Matt off the plate. Ball two. Matt had never been afraid of the ball, even when it was being thrown this hard, by somebody this much bigger than he was. But he didn’t want to take one off the knee or in the ribs, either.
“The big dude is kind of scary, isn’t he?” Jake said through his mask.
This time the words came right out.
“Not to me,” Matt said quietly.
The count was 2-0. But Matt knew that Andrew could see Ben waiting in the on-deck circle. He had to be thinking he’d rather have Ben lead off the bottom of the second than come up with Matt on base with a walk. Matt thought: If he doesn’t want to walk me, this might be the best pitch I’m going to see. Sometimes you only got one in an at bat.
He didn’t know why he thought Andrew might come inside again, but he did.
And Andrew did.
And Matt was ready.
It probably would have been a strike if Matt had taken it. But he didn’t take it. Maybe the fastball pitcher had forgotten from one season to the next how fast Matt’s bat speed was. He was all over the pitch, covering it easily, lining it over the third baseman’s head and all the way into the left field corner. By the time the ball was back to the infield, Matt was standing on second base with a double, and his first hit of the season, and Kyle was on third.
