Hard Drive to Short (7 page)

He didn’t feel well at all. He didn’t care whether he hit the ball or not. Always before the whole bench would yell at him
to “Wallop that apple, Sandy!” It was different now. Only two or three of the guys said anything.

The first pitch was a ball. He cut at the next one, popped it high into the air and trotted to first. He was halfway there
when the first baseman caught it for the out.

Cookie Lamarr was up next. Coach Malone had made a slight change in the lineup. Cookie used to play the last two or three
innings.

The pitch. Cookie swung. A slow grounder to short! Cookie dropped his bat and raced hard for first as the shortstop came in
for the hop. He caught the ball and tossed it to third. Kerry was out! The third baseman pegged to first. Safe!

Two away. Marty Loomis came up and belted the third pitch for a double, scoring Nibbs. Stubby flied out. The first inning
was over.

Dick Regan’s first pitch to the Ripcord leadoff man was so high that Marty Loomis couldn’t reach it. The ball sailed to the
backstop screen. Phil Peters ran over, picked it up and tossed it to the umpire. The umpire looked it over and tossed it to
Dick.

“Play ball,” he said.

Dick settled down and struck the Ripcord out. The next man blasted a double and the next walked.

“Get two!” shouted Kerry Dean at third.

A grass-cutting grounder to short! Sandy waited for the hop. The ball struck the thumb of his glove, bounced up against his
chest and rolled in front of him. He tumbled backward, chased after the ball, picked it up and heaved it. He didn’t look directly at whom he was throwing to. It was supposed to be to Ken Bock-man at first.
But the ball missed Ken by yards!

A run scored, and the umpire held up the other runners on third and second.

Sandy spun disgustedly and slapped the glove against his thigh. What a stupid play that was!

Dick walked the next man, filling the bases. He sure looked nervous. He took off his cap, wiped his face, put his cap back
on and climbed the mound. The infielders yelled, “Strike ’im out, Dick! Whiff ’im!”

Sandy didn’t feel like yelling, but now and then he did. “Come on, Dick! Come on!” he shouted.

Crack!
A single over second! Two runs scored. Then a pop fly and a grounder back to Dick, and the top of the second inning was over.

Wish it was six-forty, thought Sandy. Phil was holding his wristwatch.

Ken started the bottom of the second with a hit between first and second base.
The Ripcord infielder fumbled it, and Ken was safe at first. Then Punk Peters blasted one to left center for a double. Ken
advanced to third. Dick fanned. Then Kerry singled through second, and Ken scored. Punk ran all the way in, too, sliding into
home on a close play. He was safe, and Kerry stopped on second base.

Nibbs Spry flied out, and Sandy, after watching two strikes go by, swung at the third one and struck out.

Ripcords 5; Spacemen 3.

“What time is it, Phil?” Sandy asked.

Phil looked at the watch. “Almost six-fifteen.” He looked at Sandy curiously. “What’s the matter, Sandy? You’re not playing
at all well today.”

Sandy trotted out to short without answering.

The Ripcords picked up another run. The Spacemen didn’t. In the top of the fourth Sandy let a hot grounder go through his
legs, then missed a high pop fly, accounting for two of the five runs the Ripcords scored that half-inning. He didn’t remember
when he had played a worse game.

The score was 11 to 3 when he left for home. He knew the guys were looking at him, but he said nothing. He saw in the Sharil
Journal
the next day that the final score was 13 to 8.

S
ANDY was glad for the long Fourth of July weekend. The family rented a cabin at Deerhead State Park from Saturday through
Monday. Monday was the Fourth. Pop had had the cabin reserved for those three days since March.

Pop liked to fish, and so did Pete and Sandy. They caught nearly a dozen black bass, which Mom cooked for supper.

You have to be quiet when you fish. Talking will disturb the fish, and they won’t bite. Pop was pretty strict about it.
It was this quiet that Sandy didn’t like. It left him with all the time in the world to think — and what he thought about
was the guys: Nibbs Spry, Jules Anderson, Ike Norman and the others.

At night he dreamed about them, too. But their faces seemed to be hidden in shadows from which they refused to appear. It
was awful.

He thought about Rod Temple, too. Rod had seemed so nice at times, but he never was a real friend. Sandy hadn’t minded paying
Rod’s way at the miniature golf course, or buying Rod an ice cream cone. Rod had given him rides on the motorbike to more
than make up for those favors. It just had seemed funny that every time Rod had stopped to buy something he’d discovered that
he’d left his wallet at home. Yet he wouldn’t have
dared to drive without his license, would he? Wouldn’t he be carrying that in a wallet?

Stopping at the girls’ softball game that afternoon was another example. Rod had been gone so long he seemed to have forgotten
that he had left Sandy with his scooter. A friend — a
real
friend — wouldn’t have done that.

Maybe it wasn’t all Rod’s fault. Maybe his parents were to blame more than Rod was. Their arguments could make a household
miserable to live in.

Rod was unhappy, no doubt about that. And at times he got bitter, like the time he had shouted at Sandy when they were trapped
on the side of the gorge. Maybe it was doing things like that that kept him from having friends. Friends his own age. Guess
being popular didn’t mean a guy had friends, too.

But it was my fault that I’d lost my friends, thought Sandy. I had ignored them. I had pretended I was a hotshot because I
was with Rod. And I’m ashamed to tell them that I leave the games early because I have to watch my kid sisters.

How was he going to get them back? How was he going to fix things so that they’d all be like they were before?

He didn’t know what to do, but he had to do
something.

He still hadn’t solved the problem by the time they left for home Monday night. Dad wanted to get home early, to have a good
night’s sleep and be fresh for work in the morning.

Sandy wished Tuesday would never come. The Spacemen were playing the Batwings. Though the Spacemen had
beaten them before, the Batwings were no pushovers.

It wasn’t winning or losing that really bothered him. It was facing the guys — especially Nibbs and Jules. As long as he could
remember, they’d been his closest friends. Now he and they were miles apart. He had never realized before how lonely it was
not to have at least one friend — a friend your age — who you could call up on the phone, or yell at on the street, or whose
house you could go to and spend a few hours. You might as well have never been born.

The Spacemen were up first, and Kerry Dean led off with a pop fly to the first baseman. Nibbs waited out Ed Thomas, the Batwings’
short right-hander. Then, with a two-and-two count, he rapped a hit just over Ed’s head. Ed leaped, but
not high enough. Nibbs was on with a single.

Sandy came up. He tapped the tip of his bat against the plate and looked at Nibbs standing with his hands on his knees on
first. None of that “Come on, Sandy! Blast it!” from Nibbs as there used to be. Nibbs was dead silent. From the bench came
a few scattered yells. And from the stands. It seemed that only a few cared whether he hit or not.

Crack!
A pop fly straight up into the air over his head. He dropped his bat and started to run. Nibbs had run off the bag and was
standing several feet away from it, watching a Batwing go after the ball. It was either the catcher or the pitcher, Sandy
didn’t look to see.

Then the Batwing fans let out a happy yell, and Nibbs hurried back to first.
Sandy turned two-thirds of the way to the base and jogged back to the dugout, in time to see the catcher toss the ball back
to the pitcher.

“Get one the next time, Sandy,” a fan said.

Well, at least someone was rooting for him.

Cookie Lamarr smashed a long, shallow drive between left and center fields, scoring Nibbs, and stopped on third for a neat
triple. Marty Loomis struck out to end the top of the first inning.

Duke Miller struck out the first Bat-wing hitter, and the second hit a slow grounder to him, which he fielded easily. The
next batter popped a blooping fly to him. It was Duke all the way that bottom half of the inning.

Stubby got on due to an error by the
third baseman, then went to second on Ken Bockman’s sacrifice bunt. Punk Peters singled, and Duke pounded a double, scoring
Stubby. Ike Norman held Punk up at third.

“Ducks on the pond!” yelled a fan. “Knock $em in!”

Kerry flied out for the second time. Then Nibbs walked, loading the bases, and Sandy came to bat.

“Sandy, put on your helmet,” said the umpire.

Sandy flushed. He had forgotten his protective helmet! He turned and started to get one, but Phil was bringing it to him.

“Thanks, Phil,” he said softly.

He put the helmet on and stepped into the box. Sweat popped out on his forehead. He held his bat over his shoulder, waving
it back and forth just a little, and
watched Ed Thomas stretch and throw. The pitch looked letter-high. He swung.

“Strike one!” yelled the ump.

“Thataway to pitch, Eddie!” cried the Batwing fans.

“Hit that ol’ onion!” shouted the Spacemen rooters.

Another pitch almost in the same spot. Sandy swung.

“Strike two!”

Sandy grit his teeth. Sweat blurred his eyes and he wiped it away. He got ready for Ed’s next pitch. It was in there again
and he swung.

“Strike three!”

A roar burst from the Batwing fans and players. Sandy, his heart a ball of lead, tossed bat and helmet toward the dugout and
trotted out to short, his eyes lowered to the grass at his feet.

The first ball Duke pitched was knocked to Sandy. Still flustered over the strikeout with the bases loaded, Sandy fumbled
it. Finally he picked it up. By then it was too late to throw.

The next Batwing hit to Nibbs. Nibbs caught the grounder and turned to toss the ball to Sandy at second.
But Sandy wasn’t there!

Sandy woke up. He had forgotten about a possible double play! He rushed to second. Again he was too late. He caught Nibbs’s
throw, but the runner was already there. Hurriedly he pegged to first. The peg was wild. Both runners advanced a base.

The Batwings kept hitting and knocked in three runs before the Spacemen could get them out. The Spacemen picked up three,
including a homer by Ken Bockman.
But the Batwings scored four runs in the bottom of the third — two on Sandy’s two errors — and climbed into the lead, 7 to
5.

When the spacemen came to bat it was almost time for Sandy to leave for home. He was first batter, and he was greatly relieved
when Coach Malone had Ike Norman pinch-hit for him. He watched Ike drop a single over second base. Then, his glove on his
hand, Sandy trotted all the way home.

His eyes popped at the sight of Mom. She and Pop were sitting on lawn chairs in the back yard, watching Jo Ann and Elizabeth
playing in the sandbox.

Sandy stared. “Mom! Aren’t you going to work?”

She smiled. “I told you this morning. I have vacation all this week.”

S
ANDY didn’t go back to the game. He didn’t care to show himself there again today, not after those errors he had made.

They were silly errors. He would not have made them if he had kept his mind on what he was doing. Like throwing that wild
peg to first base, for instance. If he had been thinking he would’ve realized that the runner was going to be safe.

He read the final score in Wednesday’s
Sharil
Journal.
The Batwings had won 9 to 8.

“Sandor,” Mom said early that afternoon, “Nibbs and your other friends have not been here in a long time. Is there something
wrong?”

He blushed. “They’re mad at me.”

Her eyes widened. “Mad? Why?”

“Well, quite a few times I went with Rod Temple on his bike instead of with them. I didn’t realize I was ignoring them. Guess
I thought Rod and I were… well, hotshots. And they don’t like my leaving the game after I play three or four innings.”

“Do they know you must come home to watch over your sisters?”

“No. I haven’t told them.”

“Then you should. It is nothing to be ashamed of. And on the baseball field be
friendly to them as you were before. Maybe they think you are still a — a hotshot, and don’t want to talk to
them
.”

Sandy thought about it. “Maybe you’re right, Mom. Maybe that’s what they think. I can try, anyway.”

Mom patted his hand. “Since I don’t work this week, I will go to your ball game and take Jo Ann and Elizabeth with me. We
will all cheer for you.”

The Sharks were up first against the Spacemen on Thursday. Mom sat with Jo Ann and Elizabeth behind the backstop screen. Sandy
wished Pop were there, too. Pop hadn’t seen a game this year. But he was working.