Split Decision (8 page)

On the Monday after the Holy Family loss, Coach Curtis put the freshmen and JV baseball teams through a three-inning practice game, which the JVs dominated, 6 to 1. Bart hit two batters, including Terrance Dylan, the only frosh to make the junior varsity team, so far. Frowning, Dylan rubbed his hip where the ball had hit him. Then he turned to glare at Bart.

Man
, thought Cody, who was putting in some time at second base,
that look from TD could melt steel!

After ending practice by striding effortlessly four times around the diamond, and beating all the JV players, as well as the freshmen, Cody trotted to the track to catch the end of the tracksters’ workout.

Chop stood in the shot put ring, trying to toss the metal orb with his left hand. It wasn’t going well. “Dang!” Chop bellowed in frustration. “I’m throwin’ like a girl!”

“Careful, Chop,” Cody said, slowing to a walk as he approached his friend. “If Robyn hears you, you’re gonna get a lecture, if not a smack upside your head.

“Besides,” he added with a wink, “I’ve seen our girl shot-putters. Their form’s a whole lot better than yours, lefty.”

Chop let out a bark of laughter. “That’s harsh, traitor—I mean, Cody. But I guess it’s true. The scary thing is … goin’ lefty with the shot is working a whole lot better than it is with the disc. I nearly corkscrewed myself into the ground a while ago. Dawg, havin’ a busted hand is killin’ me. It makes me so mad—I could kill Alston!”

Cody let pass the “traitor” dig. He narrowed his eyes and stared down his friend. “Isn’t that ‘kill Alston’ attitude what got you hurt in the first place? Haven’t you learned anything?”

Chop shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a warrior.”

Cody exhaled sharply. “Listen to me, Chop,” he said, “Proverbs says the person who controls his temper is better than a warrior who captures a city. You need to feel this. All the strength in the world won’t help you if you can’t keep your anger—and your ego—in check. Think about it. Even the mediocre freshmen weight-tossers will be able to whup your tail now, all because of your lack of self-control. You should be throwin’ with the varsity. Now you might not even make the frosh top three.”

Chop shook his head violently, as if trying to dislodge Cody’s words from his mind. “You’re pilin’ on, little brother,” he groaned. “You’re kicking me while I’m down.”

“No,” Cody countered. “I’m keeping it real. You’re not gonna make me feel guilty, just because you can’t handle the truth.”

Chop let the shot put plop in the moist sand outside the ring. “Co,” he said softly, “what am I gonna do when I move and don’t have you around anymore? None of my other friends will stand up to me like you do. They’re afraid.”

Cody arched his eyebrows. “Maybe they wouldn’t be so afraid if they didn’t think you’d get medieval on ’em.”

Chop nodded. Then he jerked his head up from the shot put area to the track. “Go, Flash,” he called. “Kick it in! Pump those arms!”

Cody and Chop watched a small group of Grant distance men enter the home stretch, Drew Phelps leading them—with Gerber tucked in behind his right shoulder. Fifty yards from the finish, Gerber nudged ahead, but then Drew seemed to find another gear and reclaimed the lead. From Cody’s perspective, it looked like Drew was the winner, in a photo finish.

“Fifty-eight!” he heard Coach Clayton call, staring at the stopwatch in his hand. “Second two hundred meters in twenty-eight seconds! Whoo-boy! For the love of Eamonn Coghlan, that was a lethal kick you both unleashed!”

Cody turned to Pork Chop. “How many quarters have they run today?”

“I don’t know for sure. That was five, maybe six. Enough to make me tired just watchin’ ’em. Clayton’s not givin’ ’em much rest in between, either.”

“Have they
all
been under sixty?”

“I dunno, but some have. I know the one before this, Phelps did it in fifty-seven. And I think that was the first time he beat Gerber. Your friend can fly, dawg.”

Cody wagged his head, wide-eyed. “Un-be-lievable,” he said. “I don’t think I could run a quarter in fifty-seven, on the fastest track in the world, and with a tiger chasin’ me!”

Chop rubbed his left hand along his jawline. “What about if Robyn were chasin’ you?”

Cody tried to stifle a laugh but was unsuccessful. He was trying to conjure a comeback when he stopped to watch Drew and Gerber dueling down the backstretch on another interval. They were stride for stride, running in perfect synchronicity. “If we were parallel to them,” he observed, “rather than watching from down here, I bet it would look like just one guy running—or maybe a set of Siamese twins, like in that movie.”

“Look at ’em fly,” Chop said, his voice filling with admiration. “I can’t believe that Drew is keeping up with a senior four-year varsity letterman. That kid is sick!”

“If he’s sick,” Cody said, “I hope it’s contagious, and that he gives it to me.”

Two days later, the Eagles’ freshmen continued their baseball season with two midweek losses to Central and Lincoln, 10 to 2 and 8 to 1, respectively. Cody and the rest of the team looked forward to a weekend game at Lost Valley, which, Chop always noted, sounded more like a salad dressing than a high school. The Vikings were notoriously weak in baseball, and Coach Curtis asserted in the days leading up to the game, “This is a team we can get well against. Get a taste of victory—finally!”

The road game began with promise. Grant put up two runs for Bart in the top of the first. Cody hit a bloop single to lead off the inning. He advanced to second on a wild pitch, then scored when Goddard doubled to left. Goddard then stole second, advanced to third on a Matt Slaven groundout, and scored on a pop fly by AJ Murphy. The two runs would be all the Eagles could manage for the game.

Lost Valley didn’t earn any runs for the three five innings. Unfortunately, for the Eagles, they benefited from three
unearned
runs. Bart hit the first two batters he faced in the third inning. A sacrifice bunt and a long fly-out later, Lost Valley had narrowed the gap to 2 to 1.

In the fourth, Goddard dropped the ball on a called third strike, then threw off-line to Slaven at first. That meant Lost Valley ended up with its leadoff man on board instead of back in the dugout. From first base, the runner advanced to second on a passed ball, stole third, then scored on a long fly ball to center.

Then Bart settled down and retired the next nine batters.

In the seventh and final inning, Cody again led off—and drew a walk on five pitches. Noting that the pitcher had a high leg kick, he took a big lead at first. Then, for a reason he couldn’t explain, he began to daydream about track. In his mind, he pictured running a coed relay, with Robyn, Drew, and, inexplicably, Pork Chop. Noting his inattention, the Lost Valley catcher signaled for the pickoff. The first baseman readied his mitt, and the pitcher wheeled and threw—picking Cody off easily.

Cody’s blunder seemed to be the catalyst for a Grant downward spiral. Brett went down swinging, chasing a high fastball that would have been out of Randy Johnson’s strike zone, and Johnson, as Cody whispered disgustedly to himself in the dugout, “is almost seven feet tall!”

Murphy stepped to the plate and whacked a first-pitch screamer toward third. However, the third baseman leaped high in the air and speared the ball for the third out.

The Lost Valley pitcher led off the bottom of the seventh with a solo walk-off homer, and it was game over.

Cody was the first one off the bus when it rumbled into the Grant parking lot an hour later. In the locker room, he swapped his baseball pants for shorts, slid his Reebok running shoes onto his bare feet, and headed for the track.

He lost count of laps run on either lap four, five, or six. Then he ceased to care. He didn’t even glance at his watch to see how long he’d been running—until it began to grow dark. “Six o’clock,” he said to himself. “Still another half hour or so of decent light. Besides, I’m not gonna step in any potholes here at the track.”

He picked up his pace. He didn’t think about track, baseball, or any organized sport. He focused only on the next stride, then the next. He found a rhythm, and soon every anxiety within him seemed to melt and trickle away with his sweat. Even the prospect of Chop’s moving to Tennessee, which had been looming like a giant Boulder of Doom in Cody’s path, began to shrink, until it was the size of a shot put.
Shot put
.
That’s appropriate
, Cody thought with a nod.

He didn’t notice the growing darkness until he was immersed in it. Rounding a turn, he stumbled into the infield and almost went down. He carefully stepped back onto the track and muttered, “Okay, just one more lap, before I take a wrong turn and run to Kansas or something.”

Methodically, he accelerated, quickening his pace and lengthening his stride.
Feels good to be moving
, he noted.
Not standing and waiting in the outfield. Not fighting boredom and hoping like crazy that a ball might get hit my way so I can react. It’s weird; for a while out there today, I was actually hoping that one of the infielders would make an error, let the ball get by, so I could back ’em up
.

Cody entered the front stretch and exploded into a full-on sprint. He imagined Cabrera, face twisted into a sneer, running beside him, challenging him. He pumped his arms like pistons, leaning forward as he felt his quad muscles begin to constrict. For a moment, he felt tempted to slacken the pace, let the imaginary Cabrera pull ahead. But that sneer, he could see it clearly, even in the early-evening darkness. Cody spat defiantly toward his feet and strained against his pain and fatigue. He threw his body at the imaginary finish line. The cheers roaring in his head carried the echoes of track meets past—especially the ones his mom had been alive to witness.

Slowing to a walk, he interlaced his fingers behind his head, gulping hungrily for air. “Gotcha, Cabrera,” he gasped. “You can’t kick with this kid.”

Cody decided to walk two laps to cool down. Halfway through lap two, he saw a shadowy figure approaching him, with long, sure strides.
This track-walker must be a newbie
, he thought.
He’s walkin’ the wrong way. But what do I care? He can walk the wrong way and backward as far as I’m concerned. I’m just about done here. Ready to take the world’s longest-ever hot shower.

“That’s some fine running, Martin,” a gravelly voice said. The figure was now about ten yards away.

“Coach Curtis?” Cody queried.

“No, I’m the tooth fairy,” the coach said dryly.

Cody managed an obligatory out-of-breath chuckle.

“Mind if I walk with you?” Coach Curtis said.

“Not at all, Coach.”

I wonder what he wants to talk to me about
? Cody wondered, frowning.
I didn’t have that bad of a game. One for three at the plate, with a walk and a sacrifice fly. And no errors in the field—although I got only three balls hit my way. Of course, there was that boneheaded pickoff thing—

“Cody,” the coach said, breaking the silence, “I want to talk to you about track. You see, I had a talk with Coach Clayton and—”

“Sir,” Cody interrupted, “I promise that I didn’t ask Coach C to talk to you.”

Coach Curtis plucked a handkerchief from the pocket of his sweat pants and blew his nose with a series of staccato snorts. “No need to start backpedalin’ there, son,” he said after returning his hanky to his pocket. “Coach Clayton told me as much.”

“Well,” Cody said tentatively, “what else did he tell you?”

“Not much, really. He just told me to watch you run. So I did. I’ve been watching you circling the baseball field before and after practice, looking like a cheetah leading a pack of lumbering woolly mammoths. And, it’s funny, tonight when I was coming over here to do my evening walk, clear my head, I saw this guy flying around the track, and you know what?”

“What?” Cody asked, hearing suspicion in his own voice.

“I thought you were Drew Phelps.”

Okay
, Cody thought.
I’m speechless. But I can’t tell Coach that I’m speechless, because, uh, I have no speech.

“So,” Coach Curtis said, filling the pause, “what do you think about that?”