Marcia looked at Andrea and then back at Matt. “You better ask him yourself,” she said. She didn't look happy.
Andrea grabbed Matt's right arm gently. “I have to go now,” she said. “My mom said she'd pick Marcia and me up outside at 10:30 and it's past that now. Thanks. I had a really good time tonight. I'll see you in school Monday.”
“I had fun too,” Matt replied. He felt like he should say more but what exactly? He waved to Andrea and Marcia as they headed toward the gym door.
“Mattster!” It was Jake. He had been in the back corner of the gym with Cody and Vance and some older kids. “Where are the girls?”
“They left,” Matt said. “Where'd you guys go, anyway?”
Vance, a strange smirk on his face, piped up. “We just went for a hike.”
“Yeah,” said Cody. “A nice long hike.”
What were these guys talking about? Matt thought. He was just about to ask when Jake said, “Sorry guys, we've gotta go. My mom and dad are picking us up outside, like ten minutes ago.”
Matt and Phil said goodbye to Jake and his cousins and watched them walk away. Then they headed to the coat check to pick up their jackets. “You guys are the last ones here,” said the ninth-grade girl working the counter. “But I've got this one left too. Do you guys know who it belongs to?”
Matt recognized the red coat with the black lining immediately. It was Jake's. “That's my friend's,” he said. “I'll get it to him.”
Matt and Phil walked up Anderson Crescent together in the cool of the spring evening. It was nice to get some fresh air after being in that sweaty gym all night, and the nighttime hush was a relief to their ears. “What did you think of the dance?” Matt asked.
“It was good,” Phil said. “That DJ had some killer speakers. My dad sells those downtown, they're like $3,000 a pair.”
They were already at Anderson and Seventh. Phil only had a few blocks left to walk to his grandmother's store. “I'll catch you later,” Matt said, smiling at his buddy. “See you Monday for sure.”
The lights were on in the living room and Matt's mom was on the sofa with a cup of tea, reading the
Post.
She looked up as he came in. “How's my dancin' machine?” she asked.
“It was pretty fun,” Matt said. “I'm not much of a machine, though.”
Matt told his mother all about the dance, leaving out the part about hanging out with Andrea for the night and especially the part about slow dancing with her at the very end.
“I'm tired, though,” he said. “And I've got hitting practice again in the morning with Charlie.”
Matt was still carrying Jake's red jacket when he reached his room. He shoved it into his baseball equipment bag. That way he would be sure to remember to return it to Jake at Monday's game. Matt undressed, carefully hung up his clothes and jumped into bed. He was really tired, but something was bothering him. Just what had Jake and his cousins meant at the dance about taking a long hike? He knew he was on the outside of an inside joke but he couldn't figure it out.
Just as he was about to nod off, it hit him. “A long hike.” Those were exactly the words Vance had used at Long Lake a couple of weeks ago. Jake and his cousins must have gone outside to smoke a joint. At the school dance! It all made sense now. That was why Marcia had come back so soon. Her dad was a drug and alcohol counselor for the school district, and she definitely wouldn't have been comfortable with that. And it also explained why Jake and his cousins had spent the rest of the dance by themselves.
What was Jake doing? Matt once again felt distant from his longtime friend. But he was kind of glad he hadn't clued into what was happening with Jake and his cousins earlier that night. At least they hadn't pressured him into going outside.
As he drifted off to sleep, Matt couldn't help but worry about his friend.
As soon as he finished breakfast the next morning, Matt grabbed his baseball glove, cap and batting helmet and jumped on his bike for the ride to South Side Middle School. By the time he arrived at the school, Charlie had already hauled out the pitching machine and had it set up on the mound.
“Sorry,” Matt said as he parked his bike. “Am I late?”
Charlie shook his head. “I just wanted to mess around with this machine a bit to make sure I had it working before you got here,” he said.
After a few warm-up swings, Charlie called for Matt to get into the batter's box. “I thought you did pretty well against Forshaw the other day,” he told Matt. “Let's get to work.”
Matt stood in the box as Charlie again fed balls into the whirring pitching machine. They were coming across the plate regularly now, about letter high and fast. But after missing the first few pitches, Matt began to connect consistently with the yellow practice balls, spraying them around the infield and nearly hitting Charlie a few times.
“We're at seventy now,” the manager said. “Not many guys in the league are faster than this. I'll put it up to seventy-five. That's about as quick as you're ever going to see it.”
The pitches were coming slightly faster now, but still across the plate. Within a few minutes, Matt was smacking three out of four at the higher speed.
Matt ran around the diamond collecting all of the balls he had hit and bringing them back to Charlie. As Matt gathered the balls, Charlie was tinkering with the pitching machine. “Okay, Matt,” he said. “We'll try one more bag, but I'm mixing it up this time.”
Matt returned to the batter's box. He wondered what, exactly, Charlie meant by “mixing it up.”
The first pitch was another chest-high fastball. Matt swung confidently, poking it into right field. That was a serious hit because these softer practice balls didn't travel nearly as far as a real baseball.
Charlie dropped the next ball into the machine. It was high and inside. Matt had to duck to get out of the way. “What are you doing, Charlie?” he yelled. “Trying to go for my head?”
Charlie grinned and chuckled from behind the machine. “You want to learn how to stand in there, don't you?” he said. “This is how you do it. By doing it.”
Matt realized Charlie was right. How did this kid, who couldn't even run, know so much about baseball? He settled back into the box and took a practice cut. The next pitch was outside. He left that one alone. The next was down the middle, and he swung and missed. The following two were inside, forcing him to duck out of the way.
By the time they had gone through the fifty practice balls, Matt was tired from swinging and ducking and bobbing. But Charlie had a satisfied look on his face. “You just did fifty pitches at seventy-five miles an hour,” he said. “Nobody in this league is going to throw faster, or wilder, than I just had this machine throwing. If you do what you did today in the next game, you'll be in the starting lineup before you know it.”
Matt knew Charlie was right. During this practice session, he had convinced himself that if a ball was speeding toward him, he could get out of the way in time. Otherwise, he could stand in there and take a cut. He was surging with confidence.
Matt jogged out to the field and began picking up the balls again. Charlie was folding up the pitching machine and preparing to take it back inside. “Hold up,” Matt said. “Let me help you with that.”
They grunted and groaned as they moved the clunky apparatus back into the locker room. Matt was amazed at how much weight Charlie could handle even with his bum leg. “Hey, Charlie,” he blurted out. “What's wrong with your leg, anyway?”
Charlie didn't look the least bit embarrassed or self-conscious. “About a year ago, I started getting a sore knee and then my hip starting hurting,” he said matter-of-factly. “My parents took me to a couple of doctors, and they did some x-rays and other tests and they finally told me I have Perthes' disease.”
Matt screwed up his face. “What's that?”
“Well, basically not enough blood was getting to my hip and the top of my thigh bone got all soft. It's supposed to get better on its own, but for the next year or two, I'm in this thing to keep stuff in the right place,” Charlie said, pointing to his large brace. “It sorta sucks for sports, though.”
“Does it hurt?” Matt asked.
“Not really,” Charlie said. “If I'm on it too much, like on my skateboard, it can get sore at night.”
Matt didn't know Charlie could skateboard. In fact, he didn't know much about the eighth-grade manager beyond all the things he did for the South Side team.
“How do you know so much about baseball?” Matt asked. “Like how to teach hitting and stuff like that?”
“I read a lot of books.
The Science of Hitting,
Baseball Basics
â¦that sort of thing,” Charlie said. “Plus I watch Coach all the time, pick up things he does. That's kind of what I want to doâ¦be a coach. If I can, that is.”
Matt nodded. He had to admire Charlie for his attitude. It wouldn't be easy wearing that brace while everybody else his age was running around free.
“I've got to go,” Charlie said. “Nice work out there. Just remember what we did today when you're up next game.”
“Thanks, Charlie,” Matt said. “I appreciate you doing this.”
Matt rode home, extremely happy with the practice session and carrying a newfound admiration for Charlie. Just because a kid couldn't run didn't mean he couldn't be a valuable member of a team.
It promised to be the toughest test of the season so far for the South Side Stingers. The Churchill Bulldogs had won their first two games of the schedule, just like South Side, and the two teams were meeting in a Monday match-up on the Stingers' field.
Matt could tell all his teammates were excited about the game. On the way to school that morning, he and Jake and Phil had talked about only one topicâbaseball. Friday's dance and what had happened with Jake and his cousins had faded well into the background.
“Churchill is tough,” Phil said. “Especially Sid Logan. Remember that kid from Little League? He was major-league fast even then.”
Matt did remember. Sid Logan was a year older than he was but looked like he was about twenty-five. Logan had huge shoulders and long arms and threw with a sidearm delivery that made it difficult to spot the ball as it was coming toward the plate.
None of themânot even Jakeâhad been able to hit Logan in Little League. In fact, his team had gone all the way to the Little League World Series regionals in his final year. Now the Churchill star was in his second middle school season and people were already starting to whisper that he could be a big-league prospect down the road.
“We'll get to Logan today,” Jake proclaimed proudly. “We're all better than we were back in Little League. And he's just one guy.”
Matt nodded. But he was thinking that one guy was going to be awfully tough to hit.
Matt almost knocked Andrea over as he hurried into the classroom for advisory period. The collision knocked a book out of her hand. As he bent over to pick it up, they gently knocked heads. “Good thing we danced better than this,” she said.
Matt smiled. He had worried it might be a little weird between the two of them after slow dancing on Friday night, but things were just like they always had been. She was pretty cool, not all uptight like other girls. He liked that about her.
Amar leaned ahead in his desk as Matt sat down. “You guys an item now?” he asked.
Matt felt flustered. “No,” he said. “I mean, I don't know.”
Amar chuckled quietly as he sat back in his desk. Matt found himself a little annoyed. What was Amar giving him grief about? What was he supposed to do? Not talk to Andrea?
The school day dragged on, just as most days did in June. School was nearly finished for the year and it seemed like everybodyâfrom the students to the teachers and Principal Walkerâwere just hanging on now until the end.
The only thing that didn't feel like that was baseball. A buzz was building in the school around the undefeated Stingers team. When the final buzzer went at 3:35, Matt ran to his locker, tossed his books inside, grabbed his baseball equipment bag and headed to the locker room. He pulled on his uniform pants and jersey and laced up his cleats just like alwaysâthe left before the right. It was a superstition he had believed in since his first tyke's soccer game. No use in breaking with tradition now.
The Stingers crisply ran through infield practice as the Bulldogs arrived and took the visitors' dugout. Out of the corner of his eye, Matt saw Sid Logan stretching on the field. With his wide, sloping shoulders, lantern-shaped jaw and his massive forearms, Logan looked like a grown man. He looked even bigger to Matt than he had in Little League.
As the Stingers headed to their dugout to let Churchill take infield practice, Matt noticed Officer Peters standing behind the fence by the dugout. Sitting attentively next to him was Joker, his black German shepherd. Matt waved and his neighbor waved back.
“Good luck,” Officer Peters shouted.
Matt looked up in the stands. He knew his mom couldn't make it for this game, but he checked anyway, just in case. She wasn't in her usual seat, but the Piancatos were there and so, for the second straight game, was Phil's elderly grandmother. Too bad Mom couldn't be here, he thought. But there were plenty of other friendly faces in the crowd.
The Stingers were in the field first, and, as usual, Coach Stephens was starting Kevin Archibald at second. Also as usual, Matt held the stats clipboard. Oh well, he thought to himself. Somebody had to do it. Charlie couldn't do everything to keep this team running smoothly.
Besides being a match-up of undefeated teams, this was also going to be a battle of ace pitchers. While Churchill was throwing Sid Logan, the Stingers were countering with Steve White. There wouldn't be many hits to spare today.