Baseball Great (4 page)

JOSH KEPT UP WITH
the others. He fielded the ball as well as anyone, scooping grounders, snagging pop flies, and snatching line drives like a frog snaps up gnats. His arm wasn't the strongest of the bunch, but it wasn't the weakest. Still, this bothered him, because a shortstop needs a cannon for an arm. The shortstop gets more action in the infield than anyone else. He has more ground to cover. That meant trickier glove work, and he had to make the throw to first base automatic.

The other challenge for Josh was the distance between bases. For twelve-year-old teams, the bases stood just sixty feet apart. The fourteen-year-old players competed on an adult field—ninety feet between bases—a much more difficult throw. Rocky had three younger assistant coaches, each a former collegiate player. As
a group they were silent and tough. They all cut their hair close, like Rocky, and they all knew the game.

By the time they got to batting practice, Josh had a sweat going, and his arms felt heavy. He waited outside the netting, watching one of the young coaches feed yellow rubber balls into a machine throwing seventy-mile-per-hour pitches. Each player got twenty swings, and the coach tallied the hits, duffs, and strikes. Matt Jones, the tall, red-headed boy in front of Josh, connected with just seven pitches, three of them dribblers. By the time he left the cage, Jones's eyes glistened with tears.

“That's all right, Jonesy,” a husky outfielder named Tucker said, patting him on the back. “This kid ain't gonna do any better than that.”

Josh glanced back and saw them looking at him and understood he was the one they were talking about. He ducked through the seam in the netting and picked a bat out of the rack.

“I'll put a couple past you,” the young coach named Moose said, “just so you get a feel for it. You probably haven't hit off a machine this fast before.”

“That's okay,” Josh said softly, stepping up to bat lefty. “I'm ready.”

“Thought you were a righty,” Moose said.

“My dad makes me bat both ways,” Josh said.

The young coach smirked at him and muttered
something as he nodded his head.

Josh clenched the bat in his hands and hefted it, letting it swing back and forth enough times to become part of him. When he stepped up to the plate, the coach fired the first pitch before Josh even had the bat back. Josh tried to swing; the pitch hit the neck of the bat, right near his hands, jarring his bones and stinging his fingers.

“Ow!” Josh cried, dropping the bat to the ground. His face burned like a spaceship plowing into the earth's atmosphere.

“Oh,” the coach said with a mean smile, “I thought you were ready. Sure you don't want to bat righty?”

Josh said nothing. He bent down and gripped the bat, this time staying back for a minute to readjust. When he stepped to the plate again, the coach fired the ball. The ball came right at him. He jumped back to avoid the pitch. The kids behind him snickered, and the coach held back a smile.

“Thing throws wild sometimes,” the coach said.

“That's okay,” Josh said. “I saw it with Jones.”

He stepped up for a third time and the ball came fast, right down the middle. Josh swung, and the metal bat clanged like a bell. The line drive nearly took off the coach's head.

“Not bad,” the coach said, feeding another ball into the machine.

Josh connected again, seeing the ball the instant it left the machine, knowing where he had to swing, and choosing the way he'd hit the pitch based on its height. Anything in the lower part of the strike zone he'd chop down on, driving grounders or line drives to either side of the coach. If it came higher, he'd swing through it, blasting the ball on a trajectory that he imagined would take it into an outfield hole, if not over the fence itself.

Halfway through, Rocky reappeared and stood, arms crossed, watching Josh hit a couple from one side of the plate before stepping around to bat righty.

After the last pitch, Rocky asked, “How many?”

“All forty,” the younger coach said.

“Good,” Rocky said. “We'll see how he does tomorrow after lifting weights for an hour.”

Rocky walked away. Josh slipped out through the seam in the netting, and the next boy stepped in. Up in the stands, Josh's father gave him a thumbs-up. Other parents sat scattered in the stands, too. Josh waved at his father and jogged off to the next batting station, where another assistant coach tossed balls up for him to hit into a net.

Ten minutes later, Rocky lined up the team along one side of the field for sprints. Josh took off on the first one, winning it and drawing glares from the kids around him. He put his head down and kept running, winning the next one as well.

“Why don't you let up, show-off,” the kid next to him snarled. “We all know you came in here fresh as a daisy. Save it for tomorrow when you lift with the rest of us. We'll see how fast you are then.”

Josh opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it. The whistle blew again, and he took off, this time letting a handful of the older kids beat him to the line.

Finally, Rocky blew his whistle three times, signaling for the team to join him in the middle of the field. Josh took his place in the half circle and went down on one knee, huffing, his side aching and his stomach wanting to heave.

“Not a bad day today,” Rocky said grudgingly. “Get your sleep and don't forget your supplements with dinner. You need to replace those amino acids. From what I've seen tonight from Josh, we may have a little competition on our hands, and that's a good thing. By the way, Josh, I need to see you and your dad in my office before you leave.”

Josh caught the dirty looks other players flashed his way.

“Remember,” Rocky continued, gazing around with small, dark eyes and veins bulging in his thick neck, “T-E-A-M. There's no I in team. If you're not good enough, it's not fair for you to drag down the others. Now, bring it in.”

The group of boys converged on Rocky with their hands all reaching up for his, all touching one another's.

“‘Do it to it,' on three!” Rocky said. “One, two, three.”

“'DO IT TO IT!'” they all shouted.

The cluster broke up, and the kids started ambling toward the stands where their parents waited.

Josh touched Jones on the shoulder and in a quiet voice asked, “Jones, did I do something wrong?”

Jones flinched when Josh touched him but kept walking. Without looking back, Jones said, “Yeah, you showed up.”

“What do you mean?” Josh asked, jogging to stay even with the older boy.

Jones stopped in his tracks. He glanced back at the coaches before he said in a low, snarling tone, “You think you just
join
this team? You get
chosen
. But you stumble? You're gone. Rocky finds someone better? You're gone. Some snot-nose kid with a daddy from the pros shows up to stay? It means one of us goes.”

Jones turned and started to walk away.

“But don't worry,” he said over his shoulder, sneering. “If us guys have anything to do with it, you'll be gone before that happens.”

ROCKY'S OFFICE OVERLOOKED THE
green plastic field. Rocky's desk, like the Chiefs' GM's, faced in, toward the two chairs in which Josh and his father sat. The shelves on one wall bowed under the weight of trophies and ribbons. Several photos with ribbons strung around their frames showed Rocky atop podiums and flanked by other bodybuilders. Josh looked at the coach behind the desk, the swell of his neck and biceps. He was huge, but nothing like the man in the framed photos, who looked as if he'd stepped out of the pages of a comic book, so disproportionately large were his muscles.

“A lot of metal,” Rocky said, noticing the direction of Josh's stare, “but that wall's the one I really like. My Wall of Fame.”

Josh turned his attention to the opposite wall and
the pictures lined up neatly in three rows from one end to the other. In them, Josh recognized Rocky standing with his arm around various celebrities: Jessica Simpson, George Bush, AROD, LeBron James, and Al Gore.

“Wow,” Josh said.

“And the secret to it all,” Rocky said, pointing toward the wall behind them, where the door was, “is that stuff, Super Stax. That's how you do it to it.”

Josh twisted his head around and looked back at the stacks of quart-sized cans he'd noticed when he'd walked in.

“It got me big,” Rocky said, pointing toward the trophies and then to the Wall of Fame, “then it got me rich.”

Rocky looked from Josh's father back to him and said, “But when you've got money and success, then you want to share it, and that's what I love to do more than anything. Your dad? A talent. I knew it the first time I saw him play. Intensity, that's what he's got. It reminded me of myself. And now you.”

Rocky opened a drawer in his desk, took out a can of Super Stax, and thumped it down on the gleaming mahogany surface.

“This stuff will get you everything you've always dreamed of,” Rocky said, staring hard at Josh. “It's good and it's clean. Nothing in it that isn't found in nature,
and it gives you the edge you need to train harder and get bigger and stronger and faster. This first one's on me.”

Rocky pushed the can across his desk at Josh. Under the name it said:
NEW IMPROVED BANANA FLAVOR
. Josh looked at his father, who beamed and nodded for him to go ahead.

“It's that simple,” Rocky said, standing up and turning toward the field below. “Five teaspoons of this powder in a glass of milk and you're on your way. I saw your skills. You've got the raw materials. Now, if you follow me, we'll do it to it.”

Rocky spun on them and extended a meaty hand.

“Deal?” he asked.

Josh let Rocky swallow his hand in an iron grip and did his best to keep his bones from crumbling as he shook. Josh's dad clasped the coach's hand, too, and they shook, grinning at each other.

 

Josh's dad—normally gruff and quiet—bubbled like a giddy child on the way home.

“I saw you hit,” he said. “You were great. You reminded me of me. Better. I couldn't hit like that. You're twelve, but you're big enough and good enough to play with kids two years older, and those kids are the best around. This is going to work, Josh. I
know
it is. It's what I needed.”

His father looked over at him, and his face grew serious. “It's what I never had.”

Josh sat quietly for a minute before he said, “They said it won't be so easy after lifting weights for an hour. I don't know about the weights thing. I never did that.”

His father waved a hand in the air as they pulled off the highway and turned up the hill into their north-side neighborhood.

“I talked to Rocky about that,” he said. “People used to think kids shouldn't lift until fourteen or fifteen; but all the experts are saying now that kids can start a lot earlier, especially with Super Stax. Josh, if I had what you're going to get—this kind of training—who knows how far I could have gone? I guarantee I would have been in the Majors. You don't realize it because you're so much better than the kids you play with, but that's the problem. You get out into the real world—the real world of baseball—and you realize you can't just be good. You have to be great.”

Josh said nothing until they pulled into their garage.

“I'd rather play with my friends, Dad,” he said.

His father shut off the car and stared at him. The engine ticked, and his father's breathing filled the car. Finally, he said, “You have no idea, Josh. You think friends are important? You want to be a pro player, don't you?”

Josh nodded.

“In the big leagues?”

“Yes.”

Josh's dad gripped a handful of his son's shirt and pulled Josh close.

“Then you'll do what I tell you,” his father said in a tense whisper. “What happened to me isn't going to happen to you. If I had someone like Rocky, I'd be in Toronto right now. No, I would have been in New York with the Mets. I didn't have the strength. I had all the talent but none of the training.”

Josh watched his father's eyes, the yellow rings expanding and contracting around the deep brown irises that made Josh think of the black holes in space, holes so dense and full of mass that they suck in everything—light, planets, even suns and stars—from light-years away. For a moment Josh didn't recognize his father, so distant were those eyes. A shiver ran down his spine, and he realized his father was waiting for him to reply.

“OKAY,” JOSH SAID.

“Good,” his father said, releasing him and getting out of the car.

Josh followed his father out the garage door, across the driveway, and into the kitchen. The smell of beef stew greeted them along with the smiling faces of both Benji and, to Josh's surprise, Jaden Neidermeyer. Josh's mom had set out two extra places at the small kitchen table, putting him between Jaden and Benji. Benji ate dinner with them often. Since Josh's best friend lived alone with his mom and she worked most evenings, Benji had his own place at their kitchen table. Jaden, on the other hand, hadn't even met Josh's mom until twenty minutes ago.

“Your friends were worried about you,” his mom
explained as she bent over the high chair to put a bib on Josh's little sister, Laurel. “Benji's staying for dinner, so I invited Jaden, too. Benji, fill the glasses for me, will you?”

Josh's father said hello to their guests, then plunked the Super Stax down on the counter.

“Make sure you get five tablespoons into your milk,” he said to Josh before disappearing to wash his hands. Josh washed his own hands in the kitchen sink before stirring the Super Stax into his milk glass. Jaden watched him, and he eyed her suspiciously. He'd seen her around plenty in school but had never really spoken to her until yesterday.

The pace of her involvement in his life was disconcerting. First she writes the glowing article about him in the school paper, then she sits with him at lunch, and the next thing he knows, she's having dinner with his family. Benji wagged his eyebrows at Josh as he poured the milk. Josh answered Benji's smirk with a dirty look. He could imagine what Benji was thinking: At this rate Josh would be married to her by next week.

Jaden sat with her hands and napkin in her lap, her back straight, and her wild, frizzy hair pulled back with a wide green ribbon.

“I came to do a follow-up story,” she said to Josh, picking up the notebook underneath her leg, showing it to him, then replacing it, “and your mom asked me if I
like beef stew.”

Josh sat down and shot his mom a glance. She had her back to them, working over a steaming cauldron on the stove, then draining off a pot of noodles in the sink. His father walked back into the kitchen, kissed Laurel on the cheek, and studied Josh's face, waiting for him to answer Jaden.

Josh knew—after years of having dinner guests of all kinds—better than to be impolite. He'd find himself grounded for a week if he did anything to make Jaden feel unwelcome.

“Great,” Josh said, sitting down beside her with his milk. “My mom makes the best.”

Josh put the glass to his lips and swallowed tentatively. His milk tasted like rotten bananas and cough medicine. Josh made a sour face.

“What's wrong?” his father said, scowling.

“Nothing,” Josh said, forcing a smile onto his face, holding his breath, and gulping down his milk.

“Did you know Jaden's dad is a doctor at the hospital?” Josh's mom asked as she set a bowl of stew down on the table along with a bowl of noodles. “He works all kinds of crazy hours.”

“Wow,” Josh said.

“He's a resident physician,” Jaden said, beaming proudly.

Her southern accent seemed more subdued than it
had when she spoke in the cafeteria, and Josh wondered if it got more pronounced when she was nervous.

“When he's done,” Jaden said, “he'll be an orthopedic surgeon. Hopefully, he'll work for the Yankees.”

Benji wrinkled his nose and said, “Yankees? I thought you were from South Carolina.”

“Texas,” Jaden said, slipping into the drawl, “but my father grew up in New York, and we're Yankees fans.”

“Dude,” Benji said, “they stink.”

“You might say that if you're a fan of the Red Sox or one of the other lesser teams,” Jaden said calmly, “but then you'd be denying the dominance of the franchise throughout the history of baseball.”

Benji made choking noises until Josh's dad cast him a dark look.

“Sorry, Mr. LeBlanc,” Benji said, sitting up straight and folding his hands. “Would you like me to say grace?”

Josh rolled his eyes. Benji's clowning sometimes got him into trouble, but he always knew how to kiss up to the adults.

After grace, they dug into the stew, and Josh's dad asked, “Jaden, I heard you say you were here for a story. Josh's mom told me about the nice article you wrote about him in the school paper. What are you working on now?”

Jaden finished her mouthful, took a small swallow of
milk, and dabbed her lips with the napkin from her lap. She looked unflinchingly at Josh's dad and said, “The story about why he's not going to play for the team, Mr. LeBlanc. It's big news, for Grant Middle, anyway. You should have seen Coach Miller's face after you left.”

“I thought he was going to
cry
,” Benji said just as a belch escaped his lips. “Excuse me.”

“Jeez,” Josh said, rolling his eyes and, for some reason, feeling embarrassed.

“What?” Benji said. “In Mongolia, when you burp it's like telling the cook the food's great, and I love your mom's stew. You are such a good cook, Mrs. LeBlanc.”

“You're so sweet, Benji,” Josh's mom said.

“Good grief,” Josh said.

“Josh has an opportunity to play on one of the best U14 travel teams in the country,” Josh's father said to Jaden.

“What team?” Jaden asked, taking her notebook back out from under her leg and unclipping its pen.

Josh's dad glanced at the notebook, then slowly said, “Rocky Valentine's team, the Mount Olympus Titans.”

Jaden curled her lower lip up under her teeth, then quietly asked, “Mr. LeBlanc, wasn't he the guy whose team got asked to leave the U13 tournament in Dayton last summer? I remember Bud Poliquin wrote about it in the
Post-Standard
.”

Josh's dad snorted and shook his head, forcing a
smile onto his face. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“It was all kind of weird,” Jaden said, her excitement growing. “No one from the tournament would say why. All the parents were mad. Rocky Valentine never said anything to anyone, and the whole thing just went away.”

“Right, the whole thing went away,” Josh's father said, keeping his voice pleasant but wearing a look on his face that made Josh shift in his seat. “So, why are you bringing it back up?”