by Mike Lupica
“Not much into that stuff,” Ben said.
As soon as he did, Matt blew out some air, relieved.
“Good!” he said. “Me neither.”
“Why did you ask?”
Matt laughed and said, “I have no idea!”
But at least they had something in common besides baseball. Maybe it was a start. But then came another silence, longer than the one before.
Ben was the one who broke it this time.
“It was kind of cool today,” he said, “watching that kid with his dad. I can still remember my dad taking me to the park when I was little.”
Matt laughed again.
“You were never little,” he said.
“You know, you’re right,” Ben said. “Even when I was little I was already big.”
“My dad left when I was about the same age as that little boy,” Matt said.
“Yeah, but at least you’ve got a cool mom,” Ben said.
“I still always wonder what it would be like to have both parents around the way you do,” Matt said.
Ben turned slightly in his chair, and looked out the window. When he turned back he said, “Not anymore.”
Now Matt really didn’t know what to say.
Ben saved him.
“My mom is the one who left,” he said.
• • •
More than ever, Matt knew that he had to be a good listener. But first he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Do you want to know?” Ben said.
“If you want me to,” Matt said.
Now Ben was the one blowing out some air.
“She just finally got tired of the fighting,” he said. “At the end, they were fighting all the time. He’d say, ‘Nobody made you marry me.’ And she’d come back with, ‘You’re not the man I married.’ ”
Matt waited.
“She’d tell him that he was so obsessed with being a guy’s guy that he’d forgotten how to be a good man,” Ben said.
Ben leaned back in the chair and rubbed his eyes hard with both hands.
“But my dad kept going back to how she knew who she was marrying,” he said. “And she’d come right back and tell him she didn’t know the person he’d become. That he was somebody else, and that she didn’t want him to turn me into that somebody else.”
“I’m sorry,” Matt said again.
“When they’d bring me into it, I’d start to think I was the problem,” Ben said. “But I knew the problem was them.”
“My mom always told me that my dad leaving had nothing to do with her, or with me,” he said. “It was all about him.”
Ben nodded.
“There was no place for me to go in our house where I couldn’t hear them yelling at each other,” he said.
“I . . . I . . .”
Matt wasn’t stuttering. He just didn’t know what to say.
Ben waited. They both did. Finally Ben said, “I don’t want to jam you up by finishing your sentence.”
“The only thing jamming me up,” Matt said, “is not knowing how to help.”
“You’re helping me by just hearing me out,” Ben said. “I’ll be fine. My dad says we just have to man up until she comes to her senses.”
Ben smiled, even though he didn’t look very happy.
“But then, maybe my mom already has come to her senses,” he said.
“I had no idea any of this was going on,” Matt said. “You seem to be in a good mood most of the time.”
“Nobody except my dad and me know,” Ben said.
“Is your mom still in South Shore?”
Ben shook his head. “She went to stay with my aunt in Florida.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t tell her what he said about manning up,” Matt said.
“That’s just my dad being my dad,” Ben said.
There was one more silence, until Ben said, “I really did need to talk about this with somebody. And you seem like a good guy, I guess.”
Matt grinned. “Thanks,” he said. “I guess.”
He thought about asking Ben if he wanted to go throw a ball around in the backyard. But decided not to. This wasn’t about being teammates today. Just the two of them trying to figure out a way to be friends.
Or maybe they already had.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Astros beat the Scofield Pirates in Scofield on Saturday.
Matt hit the ball on the nose every time up, but came away with nothing to show for that except four hard outs. But the team won. Ben struck out a couple of times but also got a sharp single to left his last time up. He hadn’t shortened up his swing that Matt could tell. But he’d lost the leg kick for the time being. And the best thing about the hit was it came with two runners in scoring position and two outs. For once Ben didn’t try to hit the ball clear out of sight. He just went with an outside pitch to right field, and got the two runs home.
He also didn’t have his dad in his ear, or anybody else’s. After the game, when Matt asked Ben where his father was, Ben said, “A meeting.”
“On a Saturday?” Matt asked.
“Yeah,” Ben said, and left it at that, and so did Matt.
“Solid at bat last time up,” Matt said.
“Didn’t try to do too much,” he said.
“And a lot happened,” Matt said.
“Yeah.”
“I should have made a lot more happen today than I did,” Matt said.
“Are you serious?” Ben said. “You scorched the ball every time up.”
“Outs are outs,” Matt said. “That’s the way I look at things, anyway.”
“Any time you want to trade swings, fine with me,” Ben said.
“Listen,” Matt said. “My swing is mine. Yours is yours. Maybe we just learned differently, is all. Maybe I’d be a totally different player if I were as big as you.”
“You don’t want to be me right now,” he said. “Trust me.”
They were at the fence behind what had been their bench on the third-base side of Scofield Park, backs to the field, in front of the small bleachers where the Astros parents who’d made the trip to Scofield had sat.
By now the bleachers were completely empty.
“Wish my dad could have seen that hit,” Ben said. “Baseball’s about the only thing that makes him happy these days.”
• • •
Their next game was on Tuesday night, at home.
It was always the same during baseball season, especially the summer All-Stars season. It was as if Matt wasn’t on Daylight Savings Time. He was only on baseball time. The only days that mattered to him on the calendar were the ones when he had a game. His mom had even colored in game days on their kitchen calendar, in bright yellow. She would put a W and the score if the Astros won, a much smaller L and the score when they lost.
So far there was only that one L, from the Cubs game.
This week Matt met with Ms. Francis on Monday afternoon. As always, he talked about things that had happened to him since their last session. Today he told her about Ben coming to his house and what Ben had told him. Matt talked about what Mr. Roberson said about his mom being a coach, and how Matt had locked up tight when he’d tried to defend her.
“Not that she needed me to defend her,” Matt said.
“Sounds like she didn’t even know what you were about to defend her for,” Ms. Francis said.
“Then Ben defended me,” Matt said. “Again.”
“Tell me,” she said.
Matt did. The words came easily to him. They usually did in here. Sometimes he felt as safe here as he did in his own house. Sometimes he thought he was better talking about himself than he was talking for himself. It was a lot like when he’d do baseball play-by-play alone in his room. He could talk all night in there.
“Sounds like it’s harder for Ben with his dad than you thought, or than he’s willing to admit to you,” Ms. Francis said.
“Really hard.”
“But there’s a part of him who steps i
n when he sees that things are hard for you,” she said. “That’s what friends do.”
“It’s funny,” Matt said. “In my brain, I always thought he had enough friends.”
She smiled. “Looks can be deceiving.”
“I always thought that being big made things easy for him,” Matt said. “Maybe it’s not all people make it out to be. Being big, I mean.”
“Which people?” she said. She was still smiling at him.
“Me, I guess.”
“When you and Ben were talking in your room, even though it sounds like he was doing most of the talking, did you stutter one time?”
He told her no, that the closest he’d come was when he couldn’t find something to say that would make Ben feel better about things.
“Do you think he did feel better about things after you two played catch and he went home?” she said.
“Think so,” Matt said.
“That’s pretty big stuff, if you ask me.”
“I was thinking after he left that I don’t have a dad in my life and he doesn’t have a mom, at least for now,” Matt said.
She said, “Maybe you two have way more in common than you knew before he came over.”
Then Ms. Francis said, “And maybe things that you think are huge problems in your life really aren’t.”
“Like being small,” he said. “And stuttering.”
“Maybe,” she said, “when you find yourself worrying about somebody else you don’t worry as much about all that.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Tuesday’s game was against the Sherrill Mariners.
Last year in All-Stars, the South Shore guys had played a great, extra-inning game against them in the league semifinals, Denzel finally scoring the winning run on a wild pitch after he’d tripled in the bottom of the eighth.
“They’re still bad dudes,” Denzel said when they’d finished with their pregame drills.
“We’re still badder,” Kyle said.
“And how are you so sure that our best is still better than their best?” Matt asked him.
Kyle grinned. “Analytics!” he said.
“First of all,” José said, “we all know you have no interest in analytics.”
“And,” Matt said, “there’s no such thing as analytics for Little League.”
“Thank the lord,” Matt’s mom said from behind them.
They all laughed. Some nights, Matt thought, it even felt more awesome than usual that they had a game to play. Tonight was just one of those nights. Maybe Ms. Francis was right. Sometimes you had to remind yourself that you were probably a lot better off than you thought. Even if you were the smallest guy on the team.
Even if you stuttered.
Even if one of your parents had left a long time ago.
There was another reason Matt was a little more excited than usual about the Astros–Mariners game: His mom was head coach tonight. They’d found out a few minutes after they’d arrived at the field. Sarge had been away in business in Boston, and called from the road saying he was caught in horrible traffic and probably wouldn’t even be back in South Shore until the game was over.
Now she gathered the Astros around her before Mike Clark went out to throw the first pitch of the game.
“Okay,” she said, “you guys have one job tonight, and that’s to make me look good in front of the other parents.”
“Is that what they call peer pressure, Mrs. B.?” José said.
“Totally!” she said. “If I mess this game up, maybe no woman will ever get another chance to coach in this league.”
“Being dramatic there, Mom?” Matt said.
“Little bit,” she said.
Ben’s dad was back, but Matt hadn’t heard anything from him during warm-ups, not even during batting practice, when he would usually start in with his cheerleading for Ben. He wasn’t even at his usual spot, leaning over the fence near first base. He was seated by himself, down past first, in the lawn chair he’d brought.
Somehow sitting in the chair made him look even bigger than he actually was. Matt could barely see the chair underneath him.
“How’s your dad doing?” Matt said to Ben.
“He’s fine,” Ben said. “He promised me that he’ll keep his voice down tonight. But I guess we’ll see.”
Ben gave a look over his shoulder to where his dad was sitting in his chair.
“I just want him to be happy,” he said.
Matt thought it was supposed to be the other way around, that parents were supposed to worry more about their kids being happy. But he didn’t say that. He just reached over and pounded Ben some fist.
Mike Clark got out of a bases-loaded jam in the top of the first, finally striking out the Mariners catcher on a 3-2 pitch. Then in the bottom of the inning, Denzel singled, José flied out to left, Matt walked.
First and second, one out, for Ben.
If Ben’s dad was going to make some noise, now was the time. But he didn’t say anything.
Crickets, as Matt’s mom liked to say.
Maybe he was going to keep his promise to Ben and keep his thoughts to himself tonight.
Matt’s mom was coaching third tonight. Denzel’s dad was in the first-base coaching box. Ben stepped to the plate against Tommy O’Neill, who’d been Sherrill’s best pitcher last summer.
And just like that, Ben’s leg kick was back, his front leg up there as high as ever. Tommy came at him with a high fastball and Ben swung underneath it, missing by a lot. Matt looked across the infield at his mom. But she was watching Ben.
“Good swing,” she said.
She meant the next one. Because the last one hadn’t been anything close to the swing she’d suggested to him, the one that had plated the Astros’ last two runs in the Pirates game.
Maybe, Matt thought, this was Ben’s dad swing.
Now he used it again and swung and missed at strike two, the ball even more up in Ben’s eyes than the first pitch from Tommy had been.
But he managed to make contact on the next pitch, and hit a high pop fly to short right field, maybe twenty feet behind the infield dirt. The Mariners second baseman raced back, got underneath it, and they could all hear him calling off his right fielder.
Matt did what you’re supposed to: got himself far enough off first that he could get back easily when the second baseman caught the ball, but close enough to second that he could beat a throw if the guy somehow dropped it. Denzel, he saw, did the same thing between second and third.
They were both in the right spots when the second baseman did drop the ball.
Maybe he had a little too much time waiting for the ball to come down. Matt knew he felt that way sometimes—too many thoughts inside his head, imagining all the players in the game and all the fans staring at him.
Now they were staring at the Mariners second baseman as the ball hit off the heel of his glove and fell to the side.
The bases were going to be loaded for the Astros with just one out.
“First!” he heard the Mariners first baseman yell from behind him.
Matt was in to second by then. Denzel was in to third. So why was the first baseman yelling for the ball?
Because Ben hadn’t run the ball out.
He was only halfway between home and first, his bat still in his hand, only just now starting to run hard, having assumed the ball he’d hit in the air was a sure out. And when he did start running, it was too late, by a lot. He was out. By a lot.
Stone hit a fly ball to left that would have been an easy sacrifice fly and gotten the Astros at least one run. But it was just the third out of the inning.
When Matt’s mom made it back across the field from third base, she went right to Ben and said, “Talk to you for a second?”
He made room so she could sit next to him at the end of the bench. He already had his first baseman’s mitt on his left hand. But he had his head down. He had to know what he’d done. Announcers talked all the time on TV about guys running their teams out
of innings. Now Ben had not run his team out of a potential big first inning.
He also had to know he had broken one of Sarge’s few rules of baseball, about always running balls out, no matter what. Matt knew his mom knew that rule too, because she had heard it along with all the other parents on the first night the Astros practiced as a team.
Matt’s teammates were already on their way out to the field. Matt stayed behind, kneeling down to tie his shoes, wanting to hear what happened next; wanting to see how his mom was going to handle this on her first night of being a head coach.
“I don’t have to tell you Sarge’s rule, do I?” Matt’s mom said to Ben.
“No, ma’am,” he said.
“So you know that if you don’t run a ball out, you have to come out of the game, right?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ben said. He looked up at her. Matt wasn’t even sure Ben knew he was taking off his mitt. “Sarge says there’s never an excuse for not hustling, not in the big leagues, not in Little League.”
“There’s more to baseball than hitting,” Matt’s mom said, still keeping her voice low. “We both know that.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ben said.
He sounded like a little boy.
“And we both know that this won’t happen again,” Matt’s mom said. “But for tonight, you take the rest of the game off.” She turned to Pat McQuade, who in addition to being the team’s closer was Ben’s backup at first base. It’s why he always brought his regular glove to the game, plus a first baseman’s mitt of his own. “Patrick, why don’t you go out there and take over for Ben at first?”
She turned back to Ben and smiled and said, “You be a good teammate the rest of the night.”
Ben had forgotten to take off his batting helmet. She gave it a light rap with her knuckles and walked down to the other end of the bench.
She had just sat down when they heard Ben’s dad behind them.
“Wait a second!” he shouted. “You’re taking him out?”
Matt was just now on his way back out to second. He turned and saw Mr. Roberson come out of his lawn chair and walk fast in the direction of the Astros’ bench.
And Matt’s mom.
