Baseball Great (3 page)

JOSH SPRINTED OUT ONTO
the baseball diamond, leaving the algebra equations, frog dissections, Greek myths, and important WWII dates behind. A warm breeze tugged at his hat. The smooth insides of the glove caressed his hand. His cleats punched clean holes in the fresh turf. From his back pocket, he extracted a pack of Big Red—the gum his dad chewed—and shucked three sticks free, one-handed, shoving them into his mouth to create a wad worthy of the day.

Instead of standing around like the others, he found his spot between second and third and stood, toes in the dirt, heels digging into the lip of the grass. They wanted him to pitch. At just under six feet and weighing 160 pounds, he was by far the biggest kid on the team. He could throw more heat than anyone, even the
eighth graders, but pitching wasn't his gift—reaction time was. He could go places as a shortstop, and that's where he needed to play. His dad said so, and his dad was a pro.

Not anymore he's not.

The words came at him like the shriek from some heckler in the stands. Josh looked around, wondering if Benji or any of his other teammates had said it.

No one had said it, though.

The other boys stood in a small circle by the dugout, watching Benji play hot hands with their pitcher, Kerry Eschelman, crooning at the sound of the slaps and crying for blood.

Josh breathed easy. While the end of his dad's career created an unpleasant tension at home, it had its upside. They wouldn't have to move to Toronto, or back to Manchester, where the Double-A team was. Josh was tired of moving. Even though Benji could be a pain, Josh couldn't imagine middle school without him.

A whistle sounded, and Coach Miller yelled, “All right, bring it in!”

Josh jogged to the backstop with the rest of the kids. The coach counted the guys and told them that, unfortunately, everyone wouldn't make the team. Sixteen was the number he would carry. That meant six would go home. Josh looked around, knowing he had to make it but thinking of his dad's words about never being in until
you're in. His dad was the team MVP, and he was out.

Josh set his jaw and punched a fist into his glove. He'd make it impossible for the coach to cut him.

Sometime during agility drills and stretching, Jaden arrived. One minute the small bleachers stood empty, the next she sat there with a little notebook and a pen, examining the field and the players as if they were fish in an aquarium. After short tosses, long tosses, and some infield drills, Coach Miller called them together again and said he wanted to see what they had in the way of offense.

“LeBlanc,” Coach Miller said, pointing at Josh with a bat. “I hear you're gonna be our big star.”

Josh looked down at his cleats and nudged the baseline with his toe.

“A baseball
great
?” Coach Miller said, chuckling and shaking his head. “You're a little young for that, don't you think?”

Josh's face felt as if it were on fire. He shrugged his shoulders, pulled on his batting glove, and grabbed the bat. When he had the rubber grip in his hands, the embarrassment melted away. He swung the bat slowly, feeling its weight, allowing his mind to wrap itself around the shape, making it part of him, an extension of his own arms and hands. Coach Miller barked out positions for the boys, telling Kerry to take the mound.

“Okay, LeBlanc,” the coach said in a skeptical tone. “Let's see some greatness.”

“COACH, COACH, COACH,” BENJI
said, stepping between Josh and Coach Miller and turning his cap around as he tugged on a batting glove. “You gotta let me go first, Coach. I'm gonna be your leadoff batter anyway, and you gotta let Eschelman warm up his arm on me, save the real stuff for our big bat.”

Benji took the bat from Josh's hands. Coach Miller looked at Benji with an open mouth, as if he couldn't believe it. Benji didn't blink; he just stepped up to the plate.

“C'mon, Coach,” Benji said, looking over his shoulder as he took some warm-up swings. “You can't win a championship standing around.”

The coach took his clipboard and stood over to the side, then said to Kerry, “Go ahead, start throwing.”

“
You
be on deck,” Coach Miller said, pointing his pen at Josh and reasserting his authority.

Josh studied Kerry's motion as he wound up for the pitch. He watched the ball zip past Benji, who took a monster swing, connecting with nothing but air.

“Getting warm, getting warm,” Benji said, holding off the next pitch with his left hand while he kicked dirt from his cleats and waved the bat in little circles with his right.

The next pitch came in, a curveball. Benji swung big again, nipping the ball and sending it dribbling down the third-base line.

“Nice hit,” Coach Miller said, “for a bunt.”

Benji stayed focused, swinging big every time, mostly whiffing and, if not, dribbling the ball into the infield or popping it up for an easy out.

“Okay, Lido,” Coach Miller said. “That's all the leadoff batting I can take. Get out into right field and send Brandon in here.”

“Coach, you gotta give me one more,” Benji said. “Just one. One and done, Coach. One and done. Forget leadoff, I'm a heavy hitter, too. Come on, Eschelman; put one in here, you sissy.”

Benji wiggled his cleats into the dirt. The pitch came fast, and he smacked it right over the center-field fence.

“Wahoo!” he screamed, pumping his fists in the air
as he dropped the bat and jogged toward right field. “Heavy hitter! Heavy hitter!”

Coach Miller chuckled, made some notes, and pointed to Josh.

“Now, let's see what you got,” he said.

Josh hefted the bat, letting his body absorb its weight again. He studied the pitcher. In the article Jaden had written about Josh being a baseball great, the next biggest reason she said the team would win the championship was the pitching of Kerry Eschelman. Esch, as his friends called him, had pitched two no-hitters in Little League as a sixth grader. Josh saw why when he watched Esch pitch to Benji. There weren't many twelve-year-olds who could throw heat, and a curveball, and a changeup, too. That kind of pitching wasn't typical until high school.

But Josh wasn't worried.

The thing he had—reaction time, or reflex, or whatever it was called—that thing that never let a ball get by him in the infield, also let him see the ball the instant it left the pitcher's hand. He didn't just see it; he could
read
it. The placement of the hand, the laces on the ball, and the spin it had all showed up in his mind as clear as the headlines of a newspaper. And then he had the eye-hand coordination to smack it dead center with his bat.

So when Esch wound up and let fly with a curveball,
Josh watched it come down the middle and veer toward the outside corner of the plate the way most people follow the path of a ladybug slogging along on a windowpane. He swung down on it, driving it right through the hole between first and second. Esch threw two more curves and a changeup, and Josh drove them into every hole the infield had.

The next pitch came in with heat, right down the pipe, Esch trying to burn one past. Josh jumped all over it, driving it over the left-field fence. Coach Miller let a low whistle escape his puckered lips. Josh glanced at him and tried not to smile.

“Let's see you put it past him again,” Coach Miller said to Esch.

The pitcher threw three more fastballs in a row, and Josh put every one of them over the fence.

“I don't suppose you can bunt,” Coach Miller said, almost under his breath.

Josh dribbled the next two pitches down the third-base line, stepping expertly in front of the pitch, his hands gingerly holding the bat as if it were a big potato chip.

Up in the bleachers, Jaden was on her feet, clapping politely at the show. Josh and Coach Miller grinned at each other.

That's when Josh's dad stepped out from behind the dugout. He wore a short leather coat. His hands were
jammed into the pockets, and his face was darkened by unshaven stubble. He gave Josh a look that meant business and said, “Nice hitting, Son, but get your glove and come with me.”

“Dad?” Josh asked. “Why?”

“I said,
get
your glove,” his father growled through clenched teeth. “When I say do something, you don't ask why.”

Josh dropped the bat and scooped up his glove, his eyes on the ground as he shuffled toward the dugout.

“Mr. LeBlanc,” Coach Miller said, his voice sounding high and weak, almost apologetic, “Josh can't just leave. This first week of practice is to see who makes the team.”

“Well, that's nice,” Josh's father said, turning his redrimmed eyes on Coach Miller, “but Josh doesn't need to make your team. He's not playing.”

JOSH FELT LIKE A
dog bone.

His dad was a pit bull, and he chewed and chewed.

Josh just sat there in the passenger seat, listening, knowing that he shouldn't have questioned his father, especially in front of another adult and especially when his father's pursuit of a lifelong dream had come to a grinding halt.

“I'm sorry,” Josh said for the fourth time. “I'm sorry.”

His father stared at the road, teeth clenched, hands white-knuckled on the wheel, driving steadily toward a place he hadn't yet revealed. It took a few minutes, but finally his thick eyebrows relaxed, his teeth disappeared behind his lips, and he took a deep breath that sounded like the filling of a big propane tank.

His father let the breath go and said, “Okay.”

Now Josh waited, knowing not to ask. They got onto the highway and headed east, through the city and away from Onondaga Lake.

“You got talent, Josh,” his father said. “Not just banging the ball around for some chump school team, real talent. When I was your age, no one did squat for me. My old man was a drunk. The only thing he cared about baseball was that they'd bring a beer and some peanuts to you right in your seat. No one trained me. No one told me anything.”

Josh's father nodded, and he looked over at Josh as if Josh should know exactly where this was all leading.

“You know what I mean?” his father asked.

“Kind of,” Josh said, not wanting to sound completely stupid but having no idea.

“Yeah,” his father said, returning his attention to the road and getting off the highway and onto a boulevard lined with offices, shopping centers, and chain restaurants. “Look at that.”

Up the boulevard and off to the right, back near the highway, stood an enormous white bubble that looked like a snow-covered hill.

“Used to be an indoor tennis place,” his father said, pulling in and taking the long driveway that cut between a Sam's Club and Raymour's Furniture. “They went belly-up three years ago. That's when Rocky Valentine
took over. You heard of Rocky? Your friends talk about him? His team?”

“I think, maybe,” Josh said, “I heard someone mention his name and the Titans or something.”

“Yeah,” his father said, tossing him a quick glance. “Guy's amazing. Three years and he's got one of the premier youth baseball teams in the entire country. I'd heard his name but had no idea how good he really was. Did you know they won the East Cobb tournament down in Atlanta last year?”

“Wow,” Josh said, doing his best to sound knowledgeable, “no.”

“And this year, he says, the Titans' goal is to get to the Junior Olympics Tournament down in Fort Myers,” his father said. “And if Rocky says it's their goal, you better believe they'll get there.”

“Great,” Josh said.

As the giant bubble came closer into view, Josh read the sign that said “Mount Olympus Sports.” He knew from English class that Mount Olympus was the place where all the Greek gods lived and where the word
Olympics
came from. Titans were half men, half gods, and Josh wondered if Rocky had a reason for all the Greek references.

They came to a stop in front of the facility, pulling up behind a shiny black Porsche. The license plate said DOIT2IT.

“Guy's a businessman, too,” Josh's father said, nodding at the expensive car. “He's got a DVD out hosted by Bruce Jenner on how to make money. Owns two vitamin stores, a travel agency, a car wash, and a nightclub.

“Guy's a good guy, too,” his father said. “The minute he heard about them letting me go, he's on the phone, asking me if I want to be his VP of sales.”

“What do you sell?” Josh asked.

“I don't know,” his father said with a shrug. “Memberships. Supplements. DVDs. Time-shares. He's into everything.”

“Oh,” Josh said.

His father got out and said, “Come on. Bring your glove. Wait till you see this.”

Josh clutched his glove and followed his dad in through the double glass doors and past an empty reception desk. They passed by locker rooms on either side, one for men and one where the letters spelling “women” had been stripped away, leaving a clean outline in the grain of the blond wood. His father swung open one of two wide wooden doors in front of them, and they stepped out onto a concrete gallery with small metal bench seats rising up on either side and, out in front of them, an ocean of green plastic grass under a sky of black wires and stained white canvas.

Rocky, a muscular man with tan, oily skin, a black flattop haircut, and a stubble beard like Josh's dad,
stood in loose red sweatpants and a skintight black T-shirt. He had folded his massive arms across his barrel chest; and while his team ran through agilities from one side of the field to the other, Rocky blasted them with his whistle. Josh and his father watched for twenty minutes while the team went from agilities to push-ups, rotating in sequences of sit-ups, up-downs, and leg raises.

“They're big,” Josh said.

“It's an under-fourteen team, so most of them are ninth graders,” his dad said.

“I meant big muscles, too,” Josh said.

“There's a fitness center here. They come right from school every day and spend the first hour in the weight room,” his father said, wearing a painful smile. “Something I never did, never knew about.”

After another couple minutes, Josh quietly asked, “Do they play baseball?”

“Oh yeah,” his father said. “They play. Come on.”

Josh followed his father down the concrete steps and out onto the field. Rocky twittered his whistle, cutting short a set of push-ups and bringing his team in to a perfectly formed semicircle, the players sweating and gasping for air but keeping their heads held high even though they all got down on one knee.

“Gentlemen,” Rocky said, his voice raspy and his words guttural, as if they could barely make their way
out of that massive chest, “we have with us now Mr. Gary LeBlanc. If you're a baseball fan of any kind, and I know you guys are, you don't need me to tell you that he's the star player for the Chiefs—twelve years as a pro and a first-round draft pick right out of high school.”

Rocky unfolded his arm and extended his palm toward Josh's father in a dramatic gesture. The team burst into applause.

“Gentlemen, I know Mr. LeBlanc from doing my nutritional consulting with the Chiefs, and he and I are going into a joint business venture; but what you guys will be interested to know is that his son, Josh here, is going to see if he's got what it takes to join this team.”

Rocky turned to Josh and held out a meaty hand. Josh took it and winced under the crushing grip.

“Now,” Rocky said, turning back to his squad, “you guys do the right thing and make Josh feel welcome. We'll see how he does, and we'll see if he can help us do it to it and get to Fort Myers.”

Josh had no idea why, but he could tell by the looks on the players' faces that no matter what their coach said, every single one of them wanted to kill him.