Alive on Opening Day (15 page)

“
Yes, but …”

“
But nothing, Dan,” Croft
held up a firm hand. “You’re going to Cincinnati, and you’re going
to call Harry right now to tell him the good news.”

“
But,” Dan wasn’t ready to
let the matter drop, “if we make it to the sectional championship
game, you’re going to need me there.”

“
It’s too late for that,
Dan,” Croft said.

Dan was confused. “What do
you mean?” he asked.

“
You wouldn’t be allowed
in the dugout, anyway.”

“
Why not? I thought the
plan all along was for me to help the team for as long as they’re
playing.”

“
And you will, Dan,” Croft
explained, “just not in the dugout. I’ve already turned in my
post-season access list to the IHSAA, and your name is not on
it.”

“
But Coach!” Dan
whined.

“
Cry about it all you
want, but there’s no changing it now,” Croft said. “Rosters and
access lists were due at the regional office, and I hand-delivered
ours a couple of hours ago.”

The news stung Dan, and
his eyes watered, but he didn’t want to actually cry in front of
Coach.

“
Come on, Coach!” Dan went
on, voice shaky. “Isn’t there something you can do?”

“
About you being banned
from the dugout? Afraid not,” Croft answered. “But I can still
offer you this.”

Croft held out a slip of
paper with what looked like a phone number scrawled on
it.

“
Phone’s in my office,” he
said. “You still remember where that is, don’t you?”

Dan nodded.

“
Well, go on, then,” Croft
directed. “The door’s unlocked.”

The coach pointed toward
the school building, and Dan turned to walk toward the side door,
stunned. When he reached the overhang next to the back hallway, he
looked back to the coach, who was still standing near his
pickup.

“
Thanks, Coach!” Dan
called before disappearing inside to make his call.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Home Run Trot

After he talked to Harry
Foster and confirmed he would indeed be in Cincinnati that weekend,
Dan disconnected the call and dialed his dad’s number at HBM. David
had returned to work, as usual, after dropping Dan off, and he
picked up on the third ring.

“
Good evening, you’ve
reached HBM Ferncastle. This is David speaking … how may I help
you?” David answered in a very official voice.

Dan guffawed. “Sheesh,
Dad, don’t you ever drop the formal treatment? I mean, come on,
it’s almost game time, after all?”

David exhaled before
answering, “You’re a real card, buddy boy. What’s up?”

David listened as Dan
filled in the details of his conversation with Croft and asked if
David could drive him to the game that night. Coach might still
drive him, but Dan wasn’t sure it would be proper since he had been
stricken from the access list. He didn’t want to get the coach in
trouble, and he sure didn’t want to jeopardize the Eagles’ season
in any sort of way.

David agreed, but said he
needed to work for another half an hour or so. If Dan didn’t mind
waiting, David would pick him up a little after 6, and they would
get to the game before 7. They might miss a few minutes but would
catch most of the action. With little choice and still feeling
stunned by the day’s events, Dan said that would be
fine.

“
Thanks, Dad,” Dan
said.

“
It’s what I do, Dan,”
David told him. “I’m a dad.”

—

By the time David pulled
into the South Pickens lot, Dan had long since made his way back
outside to tell Croft goodbye and wish him luck that
night.

“
Really wish I could be
part of this,” Dan said.

“
I know, Dan,” Croft said,
“but you have to understand why I did this, right?”

Dan nodded.

“
Besides, you ARE part of
this. You were working with the team just this morning in batting
practice and I can tell you for sure that if our offense tanks
tonight, I’m blaming you!”

Dan had been staring at
the asphalt, but at Croft’s words snapped his head upwards just in
time to see the coach break into a grin. Dan returned the smile and
delivered his own dig: “That’s good, because when we
win
big tonight, I’m
going to write a letter to Principal Stetson telling how happy I am
that I was able to help!”

The two men said their
goodbyes and Dan watched the shiny blue Ford roar down Highway 40
until it disappeared from sight beyond a grove of trees.

—

Thirty minutes later, Dan
was in the middle of his fifth slow jog around the diamond when he
saw his dad’s pickup truck pull into the back entrance to the
school lot. When Coach Croft left him, Dan began to feel the
fatigue the day’s excitement had masked, and he nearly dozed off
leaning against the backstop. A car horn on one of the major roads
passing by the school snapped him out of his daze, and Dan decided
he wasn’t ready to let his condition overtake him.

Not on that night. Not
yet.

So Dan had walked from
home plate to first base, just to clear his head and to move around
a bit. When his foot touched the bag, a bolt of electricity shot of
up his leg, and Dan sprinted for second, gazing deep into center
field, imagining a young Willie Mays tracking down a drive toward
the fence. In his mind, “Say Hey” jumped and stretched out to the
full extent of his lithe body, like a thoroughbred lunging for the
finish line at the Kentucky Derby. For just a moment, Dan was sure
he saw a real baseball disappear into the green canopy which stood
between the diamond and the bus barn, and he hopped with a whoop as
he rounded second base, thrusting his arm into the air.

Home run!

Dan slowed to a swaggering
trot when he touched third, then headed for home where his
imaginary teammates were waiting to lift him on their shoulders. In
the stands, phantom fans screamed Dan’s name and begged for more
from their hero. When he crossed the plate, he stopped and doffed
his cap, a gesture which resembled a salute since he wasn’t
wearing
a
hat.

Remembering the scene from
Hank Aaron’s celebration in Cincinnati, and especially the one in
Atlanta a few days later, Dan kept his left arm extended and jogged
toward the stands on the first-base side of the field, then ran
along what would have been the fence line had he been inside a
stadium with an enclosed field. Past the open expanse that bled
from right field into the grass in front of the on-site sewage
treatment plant, around the horn in center, under the chilling
shadow’s of the football bleachers in left, and looping back to
home, Dan made his slow swooping circuit.

One time, two times, three
times, before he began to lose track of how many laps he had run,
and
then
, of why
he was running the laps. With every step, Dan grew colder and less
energetic, and, when David finally pulled to a stop in the gravel
behind the backstop, Dan was sure of one thing: he was not well,
and he was getting worse all the time.

Even from a distance,
David must have noticed something was not right, because he bolted
from his driver’s seat and ran out to meet his son at second base.
Dan fell forward into his father’s arms, sobbing. David pulled him
close and squeezed him tight. David wasn’t sure what was happening
with Dan, but it didn’t matter. His boy was in pain, and it was a
dad’s duty to make things better, no matter how old his child might
be.

“
It’s OK, Dan,” David
whispered in the boy’s ear, smoothing his ruffled black hair with a
strong, steady hand. “It’s OK, son. Let’s go home, what do you
say?”

Dan nodded, but pushed
away from his father, shaking his head. “No, Dad,” he said. Then,
with more force, “No! I have to go the game tonight.”

“
But you’re clearly not
feeling very well, Dan,” David said, concerned. “It’s been a long
day, and I’m sure you’ll feel better if we get you home and in
bed.”

“
Dad,” Dan said with a
serious voice, “I’m going to have plenty of time to sleep, soon
enough.”

David’s eyes widened, and
he shook his head slowly. “No, you’ll be fine, son.”

“
No, Dad,” Dan said with a
firm voice. “It’s happening again. And quickly.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Coach Dan

David put up no further
resistance to his son on the ball diamond that night, and the two
men drove the 20 miles to Addison in near silence. What scant
conversation there was centered mostly on the weather and the Reds,
who were looking very good as summer approached, but danced around
the two topics both of them wanted and needed to
discuss.

When they made their way
to the visiting stands at Bulldog Field, Dan nudged David in the
ribs with his elbow and pointed to the hand-operated scoreboard
above the center field wall.

“
Looks like maybe they
don’t need me, after all,” Dan said, and smiled.

David’s gaze followed his
son’s index finger, and he whistled when he saw the score: 8-2
Eagles in the bottom of the fourth inning.

“
Wow,” David said. “Well,
they may not have needed you tonight, so far, but they definitely
would not be pounding the Cadets like that without your help. South
Pick was completely reliant on defense and pitching before you
started coaching them in batting practice.”

Dan deflected the
compliment, bowing his head as he said, “I haven’t really been
‘coaching’ them, Dad. We just talk about stuff, and I tell them if
I see something I think would help their hitting. Someday, all high
school teams will have access to video equipment, and then the
players will be able to diagnose their own problems.”

“
I don’t know, Dan,” David
said. “That sounds like coaching to me.”

Dan shrugged and said,
“Maybe. Whatever. Let’s see if White Water can score any runs this
inning.”

As it turned out, they
couldn’t, which brought up the Eagles and number-two hitter Jim
Franklin. As a small but quick middle infielder, Jim was good at
taking walks and slapping “cheap” singles just out of the infield,
and in this case, he managed to bunt his way on base. That brought
up Ted Waterman, who, as the team’s number-three hitter, was
expected to carry one of the best bats in the lineup.

Croft considered Ted to be
Dan’s prized pupil , though neither boy thought of their
relationship in quite that way. Just a year behind Dan, Ted had
spent most of his high school years as a spindly pitcher but
managed to add 30 solid pounds to his frame between his junior and
senior seasons. The extra heft made him stronger, but coach Croft
was reluctant to put him back on the mound for fear that Jim’s new
muscles would interfere with his delivery. At the same time, Ted
hadn’t played anywhere in the field except the mound for
years.

So, when the season began,
Croft shifted senior left fielder Eric Jasmine down into Dan’s old
slot at third and parked Ted in left field, the same place all big
bats with suspect gloves end up. And, while Ted had looked fine,
and at times special, in the outfield, it appeared Coach’s fears
about the bulkier frame slowing him down may have been warranted
after the first 10 games of the season. At that point, Ted was
hitting just .052 with no home runs and 17 strikeouts in 31
at-bats.

It was about that time
Croft began frequenting HBM’s games, and it didn’t take him long to
hit on the idea of asking Dan to join the Eagles for batting
practice one night. The coach thought he knew what the problem was
with Ted’s approach, and he had hinted at it in their hitting
sessions, but he suspected it might be better received if it came
from a peer. The coach also hoped digging in to a mentor role would
suit Dan and would give the young man even more motivation to try
and stay as involved in the game as he could.

Dan had agreed and showed
up around 6:30 that first night, just as the Eagles were spreading
out for some extra batting practice. He spent a few minutes
catching up with his former teammates and then camped out behind
the backstop, fingers laced through its chain links.

He had watched in silence
through the first few batters, only one of whom he really knew, and
offering just a quiet, “Let’s go, Ted,” as Waterman strode to the
plate. The big left-hander looked out to the mound where Croft was
pitching, setting his feet near the back of the box. The first
pitch came in belt-high, a perfect — if slow — fastball that
Waterman should have crushed but instead lunged at with an
off-balanced swing that left his hips nearly stationary but his
arms whipping around the right side of his waist.