Batting Order

by Mike Lupica

  “You’re the one who’s the whole package, Mom,” Matt said.

  “No kidding!” she said.

  They cleaned up the dishes. His mom washed them by hand. Matt dried. Then they both had strawberry shortcake with fresh-whipped cream. As usual, Matt finished all of his and then half of his mom’s when she offered it to him. She said she shouldn’t have had any dessert, she was in training.

  “For what?” Matt said.

  “For starters,” she said, “keeping up with you. Because that always feels as if it ought to be an Olympic event.”

  “That’s funny,” he said to her. “I always feel as if it’s the other way around.

  Before he went upstairs to watch baseball, his mom said, “How’s Ben doing, by the way?”

  Matt said, “Sometimes I can’t decide whether it’s his dad in his way, or he can’t get out of his own way.”

  “Funny thing about this world of ours,” his mom said. “Seems like everybody’s got things that get in their way, doesn’t it?”

  When Matt was nearly out of the kitchen, his mom said, “Hey, I’ve got a question.”

  He turned.

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “What did we have for dessert tonight?”

  “Strawberry shortcake,” he said.

  This time “strawberry” came out of him as smoothly as dessert had gone down.

  She winked at him.

  “Piece of cake,” she said.

  SEVENTEEN

  The game against the Giants was in Glenallen, which was just ten minutes north of South Shore, on a cool field that was so close to downtown it was as if somebody had built a Little League field in the town’s backyard.

  There were signs for local stores painted all along the outfield fence. There were no bleachers on the sides of the field, but there was a hill behind the outfield fence where people spread out blankets and set up lawn chairs and watched the game from there.

  The Astros players knew that the Giants had won their first game, against the Putnam Pirates. So even though this was just the second game of the season, it felt like a big game. They didn’t want to fall into an 0–2 hole, and already be two games behind the Giants or anybody else in the league.

  “Sarge is right,” Matt said to José and Denzel while they were seated on their bench waiting for the top of the first. “We get our chance to clean up the way our first game ended.”

  “Like cleaning our room!” Denzel said.

  “I hate cleaning my room,” José said.

  Matt grinned. “Well,” he said, “I hate being oh-and-one.”

  They all knew the Giants starting pitcher from last year’s All-Stars. His name was Darryl Joseph, and the Astros players on the town basketball team knew him from hoops as well. Kyle Sargent, a star guard for the South Shore team, said that not only did Darryl look like Kevin Durant, he could shoot like a madman from the outside.

  But he could really pitch, too. His delivery, just as Matt remembered from last season, was straight over the top. And as tall as Darryl was, his fastball seemed to explode on you out of the sky. Even now they could hear the pop in the catcher’s glove as he took his last warm-up pitches. For a pitcher, that sound was like the one you heard when a hitter caught a pitch on the sweet spot of his bat.

  Mike Clark was pitching for the Astros. José was leading off again. Teddy Sample, playing left tonight, was batting second for their second game. Matt was behind Teddy. Stone Russell had moved up to cleanup and Ben was hitting behind him. It wasn’t a big surprise that Sarge had juggled the batting order a little. He’d told them at their first practice that he’d be doing that.

  “You get to do everything on this team except get too comfortable,” was the way their coach had explained it.

  It was fine with Matt. As proud as he was to be in the three hole, he didn’t care where he was in Sarge’s order, as long as he was in there somewhere.

  Matt took a quick look to the hill in the outfield, and saw his mom sitting with Denzel’s mom on a blanket. José’s parents were next to them.

  “It looks like they’re ready to have a picnic out there,” Ben said.

  “Is your dad here tonight?” Matt asked him.

  “Nah, he had to go out of town on business. He’ll be back for our game against the Pirates on Saturday. All good.”

  Really good, Matt thought.

  “Facing Darryl is going to be no picnic,” Denzel said.

  “No worries,” José said. “We’re going to eat this guy’s lunch.”

  He was standing now, bat in his hands, ready to lead off the game.

  Sarge had come up behind them.

  “You guys are starting to make me hungry,” he said.

  “Hungry for a win,” Matt said.

  Sarge leaned in and said, “Let’s jump on that big kid with the ball early.”

  He jogged over to the third-base coaching box. Teddy Sample’s dad was coaching first tonight. José was ready to hit. Teddy was in the on-deck circle. Stone sat next to Matt. Ben was on the other side of Stone. And Matt got the same rush of excitement he felt before every game he played, excitement and nerves. But he knew they were good nerves in this cool ballpark, in a town not far from his own.

  He could hear Ben and Stone talking next to him, but couldn’t really hear a word they were saying, because he was focused on watching Darryl Joseph pitch to José, who took his first fastball for a strike. The pop in the catcher’s glove sounded even louder than it had during warm-ups. Game on.

  José wasn’t up there long, striking out on three pitches. But then Darryl walked Teddy and it was Matt’s turn to step into the batter’s box.

  Now it was him against Darryl.

  “Jump on him early,” Sarge had said.

  The Giants catcher said, “Hey, you’re the little dude.”

  He said it after Matt had given a quick tap to the catcher’s shin guards, the way he always did his first time at bat, the way guys did in the big leagues. It was part greeting, part respect.

  Matt didn’t say anything back. He didn’t know their catcher. He’d heard variations of “little dude” and “little guy” plenty of times before. By now he heard it and he didn’t. It was just part of the noise of the game.

  So he didn’t look down at the catcher, or acknowledge that he had heard. He just went through his routine, pulling on the brim of his batting helmet, checking his stance, now tapping the plate with the end of his bat.

  Then he stepped out, because Darryl Joseph had stepped off the rubber to tie one of his shoes.

  The catcher wasn’t done chirping.

  “Hey,” he said to Matt, “can you see over the plate?”

  Matt wasn’t going to respond to that, either. But the home plate umpire did.

  “I want you to stop talking to the batter now, son,” the ump said.

  Darryl stood up. Matt stepped back into the box. He was ready to hit.

  More than ready.

  “I was just kidding around,” the catcher said.

  “Well, I’m not, son,” the ump said. “I don’t want to hear you trash-talking anybody for the rest of this game.”

  He didn’t say it loudly. He really only said it loud enough for the catcher and Matt to hear. But the catcher shut up then. Matt stared out at Darryl Joseph.

  Be ready.

  Be Altuve, he told himself.

  They always said that he came out of the dugout swinging.

  Darryl had a high leg kick, and what the announcers on television would call a windmill motion, a lot of arms and legs before the ball came out of his hand, and out of the sky.

  It was a fastball.

  Matt jumped on it, just like Sarge had said, and knew he’d gotten all of it. This was his sound. It was a shot to right-center, splitting the center fielder and the right fielder.

  Matt was running hard out of the box, able to track the ball with his eyes, cutting the bag at first the way he’d been taught and flying toward second. As he got to second, he
could see Sarge behind third base. Now Sarge was the one windmilling his right arm, telling him to go for three.

  Fine with me.

  Teddy was already across the plate with their team’s first run. Sarge put his hands up, telling Matt he didn’t need to slide.

  Then suddenly he was waving his right arm like a madman again. Matt came around third and gave a quick look over his shoulder, and saw the ball rolling away from the Giants second baseman, who must have been the cut-off man for the throw from the outfield.

  Matt got back up to full speed as quickly as he could.

  Heading home.

  Teddy was standing next to the plate, telling him to slide. Matt did. If he accidentally sprayed a little extra dirt on the catcher, well, those were just the breaks of the game.

  Even if it wasn’t a real inside-the-park home run, even if there had been some kind of error on the play, either on the cut-off throw or the catch, Matt didn’t care, not even a little bit.

  It felt like one. Felt like he’d cleared the fence and hit one all the way up on the hill where his mom and the other parents were sitting on their blankets and chairs.

  It was 2–0, Astros.

  Matt popped right up, clapping his hands. The throw from the second baseman had bounced in front of him, and then behind him. The catcher hadn’t chased it. Instead, he was standing on the plate, way too close to Matt.

  They didn’t come into contact. But they nearly did.

  “Hey,” the catcher said to Matt, “you bumped me.”

  Now the ump took off his mask. Matt could see that he was smiling.

  “First of all, son, he didn’t, because I was standing right here,” the ump said. “And second, what part of me telling you to stop talking to the other team didn’t you understand?”

  The Glenallen coach came over then. He told the catcher to stop talking and just play the game. Matt didn’t say a word, just took a high five from Teddy as the two of them turned around and walked back to their bench. Stone struck out then. Ben gave the first pitch he saw from Darryl a ride, but the center fielder tracked it down a few feet from the fence.

  As the Astros took the field for the bottom of the first, Ben asked Matt what the catcher had said to him, both times.

  Matt told him.

  “Guy’s a jerk,” Ben said.

  Matt grinned, then motioned for Ben to lean down so only he could hear.

  “I’ve met bigger,” he said.

  • • •

  Darryl Joseph settled down over the next few innings. Mike Clark gave up an unearned run in the second, after a two-out error by Kyle Sargent at third. The Giants first baseman hit a home run in the fourth to tie the game at two all.

  The Astros left the bases loaded in the top of the third. José singled and, after Teddy struck out, Darryl walked Matt. Then, amazingly, Ben took a walk, twice laying off high fastballs he usually couldn’t resist. It made Matt think that maybe Ben’s dad should skip more games. But Stone struck out, and so did Kyle Sargent, and the game stayed tied.

  Mike was out of the game by the fifth inning. Sarge brought in the Astros closer, Pat McQuade, knowing that Pat could easily pitch two innings if he needed to.

  The Giants catcher hadn’t said another word to Matt. Even though the kid—by now Matt knew his first name was Joey—had as big a mouth as he did, he had to know, being a catcher, that it wouldn’t help him or his team to annoy the home plate umpire any more than he had in the first inning.

  When Matt got to the plate in the top of the fifth, there were two outs and nobody on. It didn’t change Matt’s focus, or his approach. He hated to make the last out of an inning almost as much as he hated making the last out of a game.

  Just get on base somehow, he told himself.

  He took no notice of the catcher as he took his stance, went through his routine, took a borderline pitch for strike one. Then he laid off two pitches in the dirt.

  It was 2-1.

  Hitter’s count.

  The Giants relief pitcher wasn’t a big guy. But he could throw pretty hard, and Matt saw how much natural sink his fastball had as the kid was getting ground ball outs from José and Teddy.

  He tried to come inside with the 2-1 pitch. But the ball got away from him, and ended up too far inside. Matt tried to get out of the way, couldn’t do that in time, and the ball clipped him on his left elbow. It didn’t really hurt. But it got him.

  “Take your base,” the ump said right away.

  Matt turned and handed his bat to Stone, who was walking toward the plate from the on-deck circle. He was starting to jog down to first base when he heard the catcher say, “He faked it.”

  Matt stopped, and turned.

  “The ball hit him,” the ump said.

  “No, it didn’t,” the catcher said. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I don’t have to ask him,” the ump said. “Now I want everybody to do what I told them to do at the start of the game: Play ball.”

  But Joey, the catcher, wouldn’t stop talking. Matt stood there watching, and wondered if he might be talking himself right out of the game.

  “Okay,” Joey said, still in his crouch, but looking right at Matt now. “I’ll ask: Did that ball really hit you?”

  Matt didn’t just feel the catcher’s eyes on him. He felt the eyes of everybody on the field.

  It was as if he were back in the ice cream line at Healey Park.

  “Y-y-y . . .”

  There was no place to go. No place to run, not even to first base.

  All he had to say was “Yes.”

  Matt could feel himself wanting to explode. He tried to breathe through his nose, as a way of relaxing himself. He could feel himself clenching his fists, the way his jaw was clenched.

  “Just take your base,” the ump said to Matt. To the catcher he said, “One more word and you can take the rest of the game off.”

  Then Matt heard Ben say, “I’ve got one more word.”

  The Astros’ bench was on the first-base side of the field. Ben had walked out and was standing between Matt and Joey.

  “Yes,” Ben said.

  “Didn’t ask you,” Joey said.

  He was standing by now, but seemed to take a step back from Ben, almost without realizing he had.

  “But I’m answering you,” Ben said. “You talk to one of us, you talk to all of us.”

  The ump said to Ben, “You head back to the bench, son.”

  He told the catcher to get ready to catch. He looked at Matt and just pointed at first base. Ben was still standing next to Matt.

  Now Matt was able to speak.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Ben leaned down and said, “Guess sometimes it’s okay for me to finish sentences for you.”

  He was smiling as he said it. Matt didn’t think he was kidding. He went to first. Ben went to get his bat, then headed for the on-deck circle, ready to hit if Stone Russell kept the inning going.

  They were back to baseball now, game still tied, waiting for somebody to win it.

  Matt was running on anything. So he was running hard from first when Stone lined a ball over the second baseman’s head and into right field. Sarge waved him to third. There was no throw. Matt went in standing up.

  First and third.

  Ben at the plate.

  He took a huge cut, and missed, for strike one.

  He did the same thing for strike two, the second swing looking even wilder than the first.

  Ben had put himself in the hole, that quickly, by once again trying to swing right out of his shoes.

  Ben being Ben, Matt thought, whether his dad was urging him on or not. So maybe it wasn’t as much Ben’s dad as he said. Maybe he was the hitter he wanted to be. Maybe he didn’t really want to change, even though he’d said he did.

  Matt knew what had to happen next. The Giants pitcher had to throw the next pitch—or two—anywhere except the strike zone. He had to be careful about throwing one in the dirt, because if it got past the c
atcher and got to the screen, Matt was coming home.

  But he couldn’t throw Ben anything good. All he needed to do was allow Big Ben to get himself out, which is what Matt was sure was about to happen.

  Only the pitcher didn’t waste a pitch, or try to make Ben chase.

  He threw him a strike.

  And Ben didn’t miss.

  He hit one high and deep to left field. The only question once it was in the air was if it would stay fair. It did. When it came down, it came down over the fans sitting on their blankets and chairs, and nearly made it to the street behind them.

  To Ben’s credit, he didn’t pose in the batter’s box. He ran hard out of the box even though he had to know better than anyone that the ball was gone the moment he hit it. Only when the ball came down did he slow down.

  It was 5–2 for the Astros.

  Matt and Stone waited for Ben at home plate. Matt worried, briefly, that he might say something to Joey. But he didn’t.

  He said something to Matt before they got back to their bench:

  “Was that swing too long?”

  EIGHTEEN

  Why do you think Ben even asked you for help in the first place?” José said.

  They had gone for ice cream at the Candy Kitchen when they’d gotten back from Glenallen. Matt had managed to make his order without any problems this time. Two scoops of strawberry.

  Refusing to take the easy way out.

  Making the same order he couldn’t the other day.

  Now he and José were sitting on a bench in front of the Candy Kitchen, going back over the game with the Giants, pretty much from start to finish. They talked about what Joey, the Giants catcher, had said to Matt. They talked about Ben walking over from the bench to say something to Joey when Matt couldn’t, and about what Ben had said about finishing Matt’s sentences.

  Finally they talked about what Ben had said about his home run swing when the game was over, sarcastically asking Matt if it had been too long.

  “Weird, right?” Matt said to José. “He should have been totally happy about winning the game and it was almost as if he was mad at me.”

  “He’s usually not like that,” José said.

  “He was like that today,” Matt said.