Plunked (2 page)

Saturday morning is like a military mission. We head to the batting cages at Hungry Hut, over in Haven. The Haven and Tall Pines leagues officially merged a while back. We're playing the Haven Yankees in our first game, so this is a trip behind enemy lines. It's like a war movie. I mean, there is pretty much no chance of gunfire, but some Haven players might see us and sort of scout us out. Or they might even be at Hungry Hut taking their own cuts in the cages.

We go early, so we can get there right when the batting cages open up at ten. There is no sign of the Craven Yankees. That's what we call them. It means cowardly. Kids on the Tall Pines team have been calling the Haven team that for forever, from back when people used words like that.

There is no sign of them or pretty much anyone else. The Hungry Hut doesn't serve breakfast, and it's pretty early for a burger and onion rings. A girl comes out and pushes up the cover of the pick-up window. She's wearing jeans and a T-shirt that says “I'm sassy! Get over it.” Then she goes around to the side door and you can hear her moving stuff around inside. There's a loud thump because I guess she got too sassy and knocked something over.

Cars are pulling up one after another now, but it's all kids from our team. You get to recognize the cars after a while. Kids are spilling out the side doors of minivans and heading straight over to the cages.

Most of the cars just drop them off and then hightail it back to Tall Pines. It's Saturday morning. Most of the parents have been working all week, and now it's time to mow the lawn or go to Home Depot or Stop & Shop or whatever grown-up thing they want to cross off their list first. A few of the parents get out, though: the two assistant coaches, a few of the dads who've played ball, and a few of the moms who like to watch their kids do things like take fifteen cuts in the batting cages.

Coach Wainwright is already over at the little shack, trying to wrangle a deal from the guy who works there. The guy's name is Jimmy or Joey or something like that. I come to the cages pretty regularly during the summer, and it's pretty much always this same guy. He doesn't look completely awake yet.

Coach is doing all the talking, and Jimmy/Joey is sort of leaning back to get out of spit-spray range.

“What about some sort of bulk discount,” Coach says, but not really as a question.

Jimmy/Joey looks over at us: a platoon of Tall Pines's smallest athletes. The line is long and getting longer. He looks back at Coach. “OK,” he says. “Three for the price of two. But just this once.”

He walks over to unlock his little shack, and Coach flashes us a big smile and a thumbs-up sign. Coach is a goofball sometimes.

Jimmy/Joey goes inside and starts dragging racks of bats and helmets out for us. Coach puts his hands up, meaning, Let the man do his job. Once he drops his hands, we swarm the racks.

All three coaches start shouting at once: “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” and “One at a time!” But it's like trying to stop a cattle stampede. We're elbowing each other aside and hand-fighting for the best stuff. I bulldoze my way in and am the second guy to get to the second rack of bats. You want to get a good bat and a helmet that doesn't flop around on your head or squeeze your eyes out of their sockets.

It turns out not to matter at all. Once the frenzy dies down, they make us put it all back. It's a major bummer. I'd gotten a good bat and a bad helmet, but that's still batting .500. The coaches have a point, though. Only two of
us can bat at the same time, unless we want to hit in the SLOW cage like someone's grandma. So, basically, we can all take turns using the best equipment.

It makes sense, but I still grumble a little when I hand over my bat. I'd already named it Excalibur, which was King Arthur's sword and is pretty much what I always name my bats.

Anyway, we form a line alphabetically to wait for our turn. That's no prize for me: Mogens. More than half the team is ahead of me. Katie Bowe is right up front again. That's kind of good, because she makes me less nervous from a distance. She's in game mode, anyway, with her Braves cap pulled down low.

As Dad would say, you can't pick your neighbors, and Malfoy is right in front of me. That isn't his real name. His real name is Kurt Meacham, and his dad is Sam Meacham, the other assistant coach. Some of us just call him Malfoy because he looks like the blond kid from the Harry Potter movies. Also, he is a huge jerk-butt. You can't say that, though, because it could get back to his dad. Assistant Coach Meacham is an even bigger jerk-butt. It must be a family tradition.

There isn't much talking in the line. Andy is back in the Rs, too far away to talk to. We mostly just watch kids take their hacks. If anyone says anything in line, it's: “You smoked it!” or “Doink!” or whatever seems appropriate.

The pitching machine is protected by a net, but Dustin Cuddy manages to hit one right back through the square opening where the balls come out.

“Laser-guided!” yells Jackson.

The machine takes it on the nose. It makes a sound like
kull-CHIK
and does a weird little shudder.

“Everybody get down,” yells Chester. “It's gonna blow!”

We all laugh, but a few seconds later, the machine lobs the next pitch out as usual. Dustin pops it up, and it's back to business.

I pay extra attention when Geoff Kass comes up. He's my main competition in left. There isn't much difference in our defense. I'm just being totally honest there. Straight up: We're about the same in the field. We're both pretty good. You know, steady, with the chance to make a really good play every now and then, maybe dive or whatever.

Our bats are going to make the difference. Last year, Geoff was a really good slap hitter. You know, he just made good contact and legged out a lot of singles. But he's grown some, and he's showing more power this season. That's good news for the team, but not for me.

Anyway, he's up now. You can't really tell how far a ball would go in a batting cage, since it just hits the net like anything else. But you can see when it's hit hard, and more than that, you can hear it. We can all hear it now.

Chester Jiménez is in the other cage. He's our best bunter, but his big thing is that he's so small, like super small. He draws a lot of walks because it's hard for pitchers to throw anything between the letters and knees on a guy that size. I've tried. It's like trying to drop a pebble into a water glass from 2,000 feet up. Chester knows it, too. He'll scrunch himself up as small as he can at the plate. He's doing it now, even though nobody ever got a walk in a batting cage.

Anyway, the point is, Chester is hitting grounders and soft liners. The sound is just
pop
,
pop
,
pop
, and there is no mistaking that for the deep, hard thuds coming from the cage next to him. Geoff is laying into 'em, the way you can in a batting cage, with no one on the mound trying to outthink you. A slow roller comes in, and
THUD!
He sends it the other way. Another one, straight and a little low; a third, higher with a little bend to it … It doesn't matter:
THUD! THUD! THUD!

I can feel my palms starting to sweat a little as I watch. Pretty soon, Chester and Geoff have taken their fifteen swings. They push the cage doors open and take off their helmets, and I move up two more spots.

I'm almost there, and then I am. I adjust my helmet, take the token from Coach, and step into the cage.

Grip it and rip it.

That's what I tell myself as I work the palms of my
batting gloves across the worn black tape on the handle of the bat.

I press my left foot into the asphalt and twist it back and forth in time with my gloves. The red light on top of the pitching machine blinks on like the glowing eye of a Terminator bent on my destruction. Just like always, I start to take my four mini swings, but the first pitch comes out before I'm done.

That's the thing about pitching machines: No manners.

I rush the bat back, pick my left foot up, and step into it. I drill it, a screamer into the netting, just left of center.

That's the other thing about pitching machines: You can hit them a ton! I could hear the solid contact when Geoff was up, but now that it's my turn, I can
feel
it, too. The energy shoots from my hands right down into the ground, like electricity, but it doesn't hurt. It feels great.

I watch another dirt-smeared ball roll down and disappear into the machine. There's a little
fa-chunk
sound and out it comes, a little higher and straighter than the last one. I drill that one, too, but I chop a grounder on the third pitch.

They aren't real baseballs. They can't be, with the pounding they take. They're hard rubber with dozens of little dimples on them, like oversize, soft golf balls. The machine throws them harder or softer; sometimes they'll
dip and sometimes not so much. The pitching machine is kind of a clunky thing, just a paddle that flips the ball out at you. That's why it's good: Every pitch is different, just like in a game.

Except that every pitch is more or less over the plate, something like a strike. The balls never really cut in on you too much. Even if they do, they're just hard rubber traveling medium speed. And so you can just step in and drill them. The worst thing that could happen to you is that you could swing and miss.

I do that on pitch number seven. I've hit a few scorchers in a row, and I think I just get overaggressive. That gets the mouths moving.

“Whiff!” someone yells. It's sort of distracting because you can't help but try to place the voices.

“No batta!” shouts someone else. It takes a half second but I realize it's Jackson, just kidding around.

“If you're looking for the ball,” yells Manny, our center fielder, “it's a foot under your bat!”

Yeah, ha-ha-ha. I know they're just kidding, but then Malfoy chimes in. “You suck!” he yells. “Looo-ser!”

I didn't say anything when he swung and missed, like, a minute ago. But if there's a line, Malfoy will cross it. And of course he's not going to get in trouble with his dad right there.

I guess I let it get under my skin because I barely make contact on the next one and chop it into the ground. I
flick my head back quickly to see if the coaches are watching. If they are, it's not that closely.

They're talking and looking up now and then. You aren't really going to impress the coaches by hitting the meatballs this thing is serving up. Plus, eight or nine kids have gone already. The coaches seem pretty well zoned out at this point, maybe just listening for that solid contact they like.

The cages are more for us, just to get our swings down and work on anything we think we need to work on.

Fa-chunk!

The next pitch is on its way and I cannot — repeat: cannot — have a third bad swing in a row. I squint down hard and concentrate on the greasy rubber orbazoid coming at me. I drill it high and hard into the net. The next one, too.

And then my fifteen pitches are up. The red eye of the machine blinks out. I hold the wire-mesh door open for the next kid. I go to put my helmet and bat away, and Andy is there, pretending to push through the racks.

“Good cuts,” he says, and then cracks a smile. “For the most part!”

“Not my fault,” I say. “That pitcher's pretty crafty.”

“Looks to me like his arm is getting tired.”

“Then you might have a chance,” I tell him.

He pretends to hit me with the bat he's pretending to try out.

I put mine back in the rack. As Andy and I are walking away, one of the younger kids picks my bat right back out. He takes a few slow swings with it, testing the balance. That's a compliment, too.

I look around. Geoff is watching me, seeing which bat I used, seeing the kid pick it up. He turns away quick, but I don't mind. I've been watching him, too.

We're still eating the ice cream bars that Coach bought us when our parents start to arrive. He bought them with the money he saved on the tokens. It's late March, and it's not like it's actually hot. It's just a nice, early spring day, and we have free ice cream, and it's like, who says being an athlete is hard work?

I lick the wooden stick clean and chuck it in the garbage can when I see Mom's car pull up. The Green Machine, we call it. It's pretty ugly: a stubby old Honda, and a weird shade of green. It's the kind of car people use to go to the train station and back, a “station car.” Except that Mom doesn't use it for that, since she works in town. She just beats around Tall Pines in it. She isn't driving today, though. As I walk across the lot, I can see Mom in the passenger seat. Dad is driving. He kind of likes the Green Machine, too.

I climb into the tiny backseat and close the door behind me. Dad starts the car and looks over his shoulder: “How'd it go?”

I really hope he won't try to make eye contact the whole way from up there.

Mom looks back, waiting for my reply and scanning me for any signs of injury. I just smile because no one ever gets hurt in a batting cage. No one except the balls, anyway.

“OK,” I say.

“Is that Siobhan over there?” Mom asks, meaning Andy's mom.

It is, but we've already pulled out of the lot. We're on our way back to town.

“Work up an appetite?” asks Dad.

“Sure!” I say. I don't tell them about the ice cream.

We decide to go to the deli counter at the supermarket because they make the best sandwiches. Mom gets a Veggie Deluxe. As near as I can tell, it's a salad between two slices of chunky brown bread. So weird.

When we pull into our driveway, I can hear Nax going crazy even before the car comes to a stop.

“Someone needs to be walked,” says Mom.

Nax is barking up a storm in the kitchen. His paws are on the glass of the door, and his eyes are wild with excitement as I cross the lawn. I've only been gone a few hours, but Nax can't tell time. He's a black Lab, nothing
fancy. Sometimes when he's being crazy we call him “the Lab experiment.”

Nax and I go for a walk on the Rail Trail that runs along the train tracks near our house. As long as he doesn't do his business right on the pavement, I don't really need to pick up after him back there. When he was little, I used to have to drag him off to the side when he started squatting, but he mostly knows the deal by now. Sometimes he even pulls me off to the side, stretching to the end of his leash and contributing some quality fertilizer to the grass and flowers and weeds along the side of the path.

Nax is a smart dog. I mean, they say Labs are smart, in general, but I think he might be a little smarter than normal. The only reason I even use the leash anymore is because of the squirrels. He goes crazy trying to chase them. If he was an athlete, that would be his sport: the squirrelathlon. He loves it. Sometimes I'll try to run along with him, just so he can chase them for more than four feet at a time. He's never going to catch one, but he either doesn't know that or doesn't care.

“Good dog,” I say as he finishes his business. He comes up, and I scratch him behind the ear, just where he likes it.

We turn around at the little pond. It used to be just a big puddle, but it has grown up just like Nax has. We have to get back because there's homework waiting. Not for Nax, of course — he's not that smart! — but for me.
They'll probably make me mow the lawn, too. It's the kind of stuff you want to fast-forward past, but you can't. This whole week is going to be like that, waiting to find out on Thursday if I'm a starter.

“Fun while it lasted,” I say to Nax. Ten feet later, we take off after a squirrel.