Conviction (14 page)

I was up late last night mentally running through Brantley’s whole batting order, looking up stats on everyone I couldn’t remember and going over the roster. Even if I win today,
it’s feeling increasingly difficult to see how everything will just be fine. But I know God works in ways you could never imagine, and I’ve prepared harder for the game today than maybe
any other in my life, and I want to be the kind of person whose faith doesn’t waver in rough moments.

As the Brantley players come out of their bus, I have Zach Hamblin, our backup catcher, warm me up instead of Colin. Since Tuesday Colin’s been going around telling everyone about getting
“jumped” by guys from La Abra and how he should sue for assault; at practice he’s been framing my pitches to make me look bad, too. I finally got sick of it—he swung first,
and anyway has no one ever hit him in his life, or what?—and tried to nail him with a pitch, but he read me too early, and caught it. Guess he’s good at his job.

I catch myself looking over my shoulder, scanning the crowd for signs of more guys from La Abra there. Coach Cardy pulls me aside as we’re coming back toward the dugout before the game. I
can see Brantley’s lineup behind me reflected in his sunglasses.

“Listen, Seven,” he says. Cardy calls us all by our numbers, and even though he could probably tell you my exact ERA at any given point in time, sometimes I half think he
doesn’t actually know all our names. He’s not one of those coaches who cares about your grades or your school attendance or your home life. All he cares about is how you play, which is
why I like playing for him: it’s straightforward in a way that nothing else in my life, except for maybe math class, has ever been. “I wanted to hear it from you that your head’s
in the game.”

He was watching me warm up, then. I say, “It is. This game’s important to me.”

“You’re focused? Because we need a win today.”

“Yes, sir. I’m feeling good about it.”

“Good. Don’t let me down.” He lets go of my arm. “You tell your brother to come say hello.”

That’s random, but Cardy’s coached here forever, so I remember that Trey played for him, too. Maybe it’s Cardy’s way of saying
good luck
. That’s my best
guess, anyway, until I’m glancing around the stands on my way into the dugout and I see—I do a double take—Trey’s here. He’s sitting with Kevin and Jenna just behind
the backstop, and he gives me a nod. I’m so surprised he’s here I give him this big wave that probably looks dorky as shit, and then I’m embarrassed and hope no one else saw.

But that has to mean something, right? That he’s here. That feels like a small miracle all its own.

Brantley plays small ball, which means sacrifice bunts and stolen bases and advancing runners with whatever it takes. Colin’s calling everything up in the zone to avoid
them hitting grounders, and even though I eventually get out of it unhurt, I’ve walked three batters by the end of the second. Last year when we played Brantley something went wrong in my
windup, and a fastball in the fifth inning slipped and went wild. Colin laid himself out trying to block it, but it went past him and I could do nothing but watch as the runner scored from second.
That play is haunting me today.

I can feel Trey there in the stands, and I have to force myself not to look over every time I miss the strike zone. Trey was a catcher; he can probably read each mistake I make better than
nearly anyone else in the crowd. Cardy’s tenser than I’ve seen him all year, screaming at base runners to hustle so loud the veins in his forehead pop out. By the second inning,
there’s still no score. In the top of the fifth, we’re ahead, but I miss the strike zone six pitches in a row and then when I try to pick off the runner on first I almost overthrow and
Jarrod has to lunge for it, and when I get the ball back, my heart is thudding. You cannot—
cannot
—miss a throw like that.

Colin calls time. He jogs to the mound. “What’s going on with you? You almost put up an error throwing to Jarrod right there.”

“You think I didn’t notice?”

“Yeah? Then pull yourself together, how about. Get your head back in the game.”

He shouldn’t have called for time. It makes me look vulnerable. “Just call more fastballs, will you? I think we should go at them more. There’s been, like, three guys who keep
reaching across the plate. If I pitch fastballs inside, they’ll get jammed.”

“Braden, come on. There’s been
one
guy who did that, and he took a good cut off that pitch because you didn’t get it inside enough. Practically every single guy
who’s come up has waited for his pitch. These aren’t guys you can just hand over strikes and expect them to take it lying down.” He looks at me closer. “Is something
wrong?”

“What? No. You should just call more fastballs.”

He frowns. “Are you still spooked about the La Abra guys?”

“I’m not spooked about anything. I’m not even thinking about that. We just need to win this game, is all.”

His expression makes me think I’m a worse liar than I thought. “Okay, look,” Colin says, glancing back at the ump to see if he’s started out to break up our time-out yet.
“I’m sorry about the other night, all right? I shouldn’t have said that about you and your dad.”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Yeah, well, me neither. But I’ve been feeling like an ass for saying it. You’ll have your day with La Abra, all right? And it’ll be fine with your dad. Everyone knows
him. This will all blow over. For now, just forget about all that.” He nods toward the batter. “Put this guy away.”

After that, I get their center fielder to ground out and I strike out the right fielder after he takes eleven pitches off me, but I’m struggling; things don’t feel right. People
don’t always realize this, but pitching’s hell on your body. There’s that instant in every pitch when the motion takes over and your shoulder’s being wrenched to pieces and
you believe you could blow apart, you feel how close you are to some end, and today’s the first time in a long time I haven’t known I could just fight that off. It’s the
next-to-last inning, I’ve walked nine batters, and I’ve just thrown their shortstop two balls when Cardy comes to the mound to take me out.

“Coach, I’m feeling good,” I say right away before he can open his mouth. The game’s getting that desperate feeling when it careens outside of your control, but
we’re still up 3–1 and I know I can fix this if he’ll let me stay. I can get the win, and I can take that as reassurance from God that everything will be okay and I can stave off
those fears that’ve tethered themselves to me ever since that day the social worker came over. “I can keep going, Coach, I swear. I’ve got this.”

“Next game, Seven.” He holds out his hand for the ball.

“I’ve got things figured out now. I’ll get out of this inning and then I’ll throw more—”

“Give me the ball. I’m putting Harmon in.”

I pass Greg as I’m going out and he’s going in, and I motion him closer. “Hey,” I say, “Colin’s calling everything up high. Throw whatever he tells
you.”

“My command’s not the best, though. I’m better with sinkers.”

“Doesn’t matter. Picture your dad being here again, and how you’d play, all right? Whatever you do, do not lose this game.”

In the dugout, I slam my glove as hard as I can against the ground, and the other guys in the dugout fan out away from me so I’m alone on the bench. They know me; they know I don’t
like to talk to people when I’ve messed up. But things might still be okay if we just win. That’s the thing about baseball: everything’s forgiven when you win.

Greg inherits the 2–0 count with the shortstop, and walks him. Then he walks the second baseman, throwing a ball that misses so high Colin has to jump up off his crouch, and as he does,
both base runners go.

Their catcher grounds out. I try to breathe easier. Two out; we just need one more. But then Greg gives their first baseman, the eighth man in the lineup, a failed sinker that comes practically
waltzing over the plate and then hangs there like it’s dangling from a string.

It’s a gift of a pitch, the kind you pray to get, and the batter undresses it. Triple. Both the shortstop and second baseman score.

When their pitcher goes up and shows a bunt, the instinct I’ve been developing my whole life tells me they’re going to try for a suicide squeeze.
Don’t let him get a
bunt,
I tell Greg silently. The first pitch he throws far enough inside that the batter pulls back. The second one comes across the plate and the batter makes contact, but it bounces foul. The
guys are on their feet yelling for Greg to finish him. If I were Greg, what I’d do right now is hit him. I hate when people bunt on me, and we can’t afford the runner to score on a
suicide squeeze.

But whatever Colin signals, Greg shakes his head, and my heart plummets down my chest. There’s a time in every losing game when you know it’s over, and I’m pretty sure that was
it. The next pitch Greg throws, their pitcher gets a clean bunt, perfectly positioned halfway between Colin and Greg so, exactly as I was afraid of, the batter has just enough time to get in safely
and the ball can’t beat out the runner at home. And that’s it—I can feel the game disintegrate like the cloud of dust that rises over home plate as the runner collides with Colin,
safe.

In the locker room, I corner Greg on the bench where he’s untying his cleats. He lifts his head when my shadow sweeps over him. He looks near tears.

“I told you to throw whatever Colin called for.” My blood is coursing so hard my vision’s pulsing, too. “You had a two-run lead. You had to make six outs. That’s
it. Six outs before two runs.”

He looks around to see who’s listening—everyone is—then ducks his head over his cleats. “Thanks for the math. I really needed that.”

“I saw you shake Colin off. You think you know better than him? He’s been on this team three years, he’s been calling the whole game, and you think you can go in to throw your
two innings and know better?”

He drops his glove to the floor and zips his bag so hard I expect the zipper to break. He mutters, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, it’s too late for that. That might have helped when we were still winning, before you pissed away all the work everyone put into that game like you don’t give a
damn about the rest of us.”

His face is red. I should just leave. He’s not the kind of kid who can take being yelled at. And anyway, no matter what I say it won’t change the outcome. But then he says, quietly,
“It’s only a game.”

I stare at him. “What did you just say?”

From the guilty expression on his face, I think he knows that crossed the line. “Forget it, Braden, I—”

“You make me sick.” I should just leave. I should wrestle back the words fighting their way now from the shadows and get the hell out, but there was just a thin layer of netting
holding everything back and he just yanked it apart. “You know what? It’s too bad Devon Riley wasn’t pitching today. I’ll bet you’d just love to bend over for him,
wouldn’t you? No one would be surprised. Because that’s exactly what you did with his team.”

W
hen you’re from Ornette, your roots go deep; it’s home, and I’d stay here forever if I could. Trey’s one of the few people
I know who ever left. So when I was eleven and my Little League team hosted Concord in a regional playoff, it was the first time I ever played against someone I used to know.

Concord’s shortstop was Jacob Pinkerman, a guy I played with before he moved to Concord. He was one of my favorites on the team, probably my best friend after Colin at the time, and it had
been weird how one season he was there and the next he wasn’t. Before the game he came over and said hi, and I’d wanted to tell him we had an extra jersey if he wanted to switch back
and play for us. I was decent that day, and going into the last inning, we were up 7–2. I got my first batter to chase outside the strike zone, and the second dribbled a sad little shot right
to first, and then Jacob was up.

He tapped his bat against the ground before he stepped into the box, like he always did when he was nervous. I missed on a slider and then got a fastball in the inside corner for a called
strike, then he swung and missed. He swung so hard he spun all the way around, and from the announcer’s box, my dad joked, “Whoa, there. Trying to make up all five in one
swing?”

After that I sent him one right across the plate, and even though I knew my dad would get mad, I threw it soft. But Jacob swung too soon and it flew foul. I tried to throw the same pitch again,
but my fingers slipped some off the seams, just enough that the ball went too high, but Jacob thought he knew that pitch and swung on it anyway, and that was it, the game was over. Then from the
announcer’s booth came my dad’s voice saying, “And Pinkerman wastes the most cake-batter pitch Concord’s seen all day and knocks Concord from the playoffs. Strike
three.”

Afterward, in the car, my dad had a lot to say: it took me too long to locate the strike zone; I should never throw that many changeups in a row; my curveball wasn’t breaking low enough.
He said nothing about my eight strikeouts, because he was too busy telling me how when I played in the minors I’d have to rely on strategy as much as strength, and halfway through the
lecture, I interrupted him.