Rivals (2010) (8 page)

JADEN GAVE HER CELL
phone number to Mickey Jr., then repeated it before climbing out. Josh turned and started up the drive for the dining hall, where his parents waited on the porch.

“Josh,” Jaden called, but he pretended he didn’t hear.

“Hey,” Benji said as the gravel crunched beneath the limo rolling off down the drive. “You know what I was thinking? What about the ice cream?”

“What ice cream?” Josh asked.

“The Mick,” Benji said. “The Mick said he knew what we needed. What was that? Just some movie line? Crap.”

“Go get some franks and beans, Lido,” Jaden said, marching past. “God forbid you run low on gas.”

Benji stopped in his tracks and Josh bumped into him.

“What’s up with her?” Benji asked.

“Who cares,” Josh said. “Let her new boyfriend deal with it.”

Benji’s eyes went wide. He looked from Josh to Jaden, then back to Josh, grinning. “Oh yeah. I
knew
it! And you are fuming, right?”

“I couldn’t care less,” Josh said, watching Jaden kiss her father’s cheek as he met her on the path and they started toward the dining hall together.

“I don’t know,” Benji said doubtfully.

“Come on,” Josh said, heading for the dining hall himself so he’d beat Jaden there. “Maybe we can get you some ice cream.”

Benji bounced along beside him. “I want the Mick’s ice cream so I can tell people, like, ‘Hey, yeah, the Mick bought me this ice cream one time.’ You know, so it wasn’t just like I saw the guy. More like we hung out a little. Don’t think I’m not reminding him about what he said when we play those guys, ’cause I will.”

“We have to beat everyone else first,” Josh said as they climbed the steps.

“We’ll cream everyone else,” Benji said. “Cream, like ice cream. Ha. Get it?”

“Get what?” Josh’s dad asked.

“We met Mickey Mullen,” Josh said.

“
The
Mickey Mullen?” his mom asked. “Not the son?”

“No, the real deal,” Josh said.

“How exciting,” his mom said.

“Yeah, people were going crazy,” Josh said, then noticed the look on his father’s face. “He’s not that big, though, Mickey. Dad’s, like, twice the size he is. Dad’s the one who should be in those action movies. The actors they get to play the bad guys must be midgets, I swear.”

“Not me,” his dad said. “Tried out for
West Side Story
in middle school and it wasn’t pretty.”

Josh forced out a laugh, and it sounded like his mom did the same thing.

“The Mick owes me an
ice
cream,” Benji said to Josh’s mom before turning to his dad. “And don’t worry, Coach. Mickey Mullen
and
his son both know that I can’t be bribed out of being your heavy hitter and doing serious damage to their defense. Not for ice cream, anyway. Money might be another story, but no one’s offered me any money. Yet.”

“Way to go, Lido,” Josh’s dad said without much enthusiasm. “You’re a true team player. Now, let’s eat.”

“Josh,” his mom said as they sat down on one end of a long table amid the noise and mayhem of more than a hundred people passing along platters of hot dogs, hamburgers, buns and rolls, beans, and potato salad, “there’s Jaden and Dr. Neidermeyer. You should invite them to sit with us.”

“No, that’s all right, Mom,” Josh said, taking two dogs.

“Joshua,” his mom said as she passed the rolls. “I’d
like to be able to ask you to have good manners, but I’ll tell you if that’s what it takes. She’s your friend and she came all this way to write about you and your father’s team. The least you can do is be polite.”

Josh clenched his teeth.

“She’s doing a lot more than writing about Josh,” Benji said, slathering a dog with ketchup and stuffing half of it into his mouth.

Josh’s mom took a dollop of potato salad as she gave Benji a questioning look, but the only thing that got past his hot dog chomping was a silly grin. She turned her eyes on Josh.

“Her editor asked her to do a story about Mickey Mullen is all,” Josh said. “We just don’t want to hear about it anymore.”

“That’s no reason not to be polite,” his mom said.

“Look,” Josh said, pointing to Jaden and her father as they sat down at another table next to the Eschelmans. “She’s fine. She knows half the team, Mom.”

His mom opened her mouth to say something, but his father put a hand on her arm.

“Laura,” he said, nodding to the plate of hamburgers, “let’s get those burgers going and let the boys start thinking about baseball instead of girls and action movies, okay?”

Josh’s mom studied his dad for a moment, then swept a strand of hair behind her ear, and said, “That’s a good idea. Let’s eat.”

Josh watched Jaden from the corner of his eye as he
pretended to listen to Benji telling a story about how his father once ate two dozen hot dogs in a contest.

“He must have gotten quite sick,” Josh’s mom said.

“Oh yeah,” Benji said, “you should have seen it, chunks everywhere. Our dog, Bingo, didn’t care, though. He went right after them. Joke was on him, though, ’cause next thing you know, Bingo starts puking. Bad thing was that he gets it on my leg and the smell gets me gagging and next thing you know,
I
puke. Basically a puke fest.”

Josh’s mom set her burger down, cleared her throat, wiped her mouth on a napkin, and said, “So, let’s talk about baseball. I know there are, like, thirty-two teams here and you need to win four rounds to get into the finals, but who do you guys play in the first round? When do you face the Comets?”

“The first round is a team from Miami,” Josh’s dad said through a mouthful of food. “The Barracudas. The brackets got drawn randomly. We’re in the upper bracket with fifteen other teams, and the Comets are in the lower bracket. The only way we’ll face them is if we both make it to the championship game, the finals.”

“Five games in all?” Josh’s mom said. “How come we’re here for eight days?”

“They need extra time in case we get rained out,” his father said. “If the weather looks good, they’ll just have a day or two where they can spread out the schedule a bit, let some of the teams rest up. That’ll all be the luck of the draw, too.”

“First round ought to be a breeze, right, Coach?” Benji said. “Our real rivals are the Comets, right?”

Josh’s dad swallowed, shook his head, and said, “You don’t know who your real rival is until you play them. A rival is a team that’s just as good as you are, maybe even a little better, but a team you play your very best against.”

“But we only play teams here once,” Benji said.

“But you know by how that goes that you’re going to be seeing the team, or maybe just some of the players, somewhere down the line,” Josh’s dad said. “And the team from Florida? Don’t take them lightly. They play more baseball in Florida than anywhere. The kids we play will be faster, more skillful, and more experienced, especially on defense, than any we’ve seen before.”

“So,” Benji said, a look of confusion on his face, “we can’t win this? I thought we were one of the favorites to win. Us and the Comets.”

“I didn’t say we couldn’t win,” Josh’s dad said. “I just said that overall, the Florida players might be even better than ours.”

“So how do we win if they’re better?” Benji asked.

Josh’s dad winked at Josh and Benji and said, “You don’t have to
be
better—you just have to
play
better.”

SUNSHINE WASHED OVER THE
fields at Dream Park as the opening day of the tournament began. The sound of bats clanging and crowds cheering mixed with the smells of fresh grass, baking dirt, and food grilling. The day for Josh didn’t begin so well. Seeing Mickey Jr. in the parking lot surrounded by a crowd eager to have their pictures taken with him left Josh’s mind wandering. And in spite of a successful week of hitting the ball in practice, his mask felt uncomfortable. He shifted it about between pitches during his first at bat, and the loss of focus helped him to strike out. After his teammates began to connect, though, he left the mask alone and found his groove, driving two over the fence.

Only a slight breeze stirred. The air and the lush grass grew steadily warmer as morning crept toward
noon. The Barracudas maintained their lead, and Josh thought more and more about his father’s words of warning the night before.

While the Barracuda pitcher wasn’t up to the standard of Sandy Planczeck, the players around him were demons in the field, snatching up fly balls, scooping grounders, and making throws as quick and easy as sneezing. The Barracudas could hit, too, and in the top of the sixth, with three men on base, it took a solo double play from Josh, snagging a wicked line drive and tagging the runner on second before he could get back to the base, to put down the side. The Titans were still in it, only down 5–4.

Esch began the bottom of the sixth with a single, and Josh followed with a double that sent Esch home for the tying run. The next two batters went down swinging, leaving the Titans’ survival in Benji’s hands. That’s when Josh’s dad gave him the signal to steal after the second pitch. Josh stood on second like a potted plant, and the pitcher threw a high ball that Benji swung at anyway. Josh never even moved.

But on the next pitch, he took off.

The catcher got caught slacking and made the throw late, with Josh burning up the baseline and sliding safe into third. He bounced up and slapped the dirt off his pants, his heart racing at the signal from his dad to steal if it was there. To Josh, that meant even the slightest fumble by the catcher and he would go. Benji
hadn’t gotten on base yet, and—as unlikely as it was to safely steal home—Josh’s dad was betting on Josh’s speed over Benji’s bat. This time, though, the Barracudas wouldn’t be caught unaware.

Benji did his best, swinging at a curveball and missing, then missing on a changeup. Neither pitch left Josh an opening. Both times the ball smacked soundly into the catcher’s mitt with the catcher popping straight up to stare Josh down with the ball cocked back, ready to throw.

Josh’s dad tipped his hat and tugged his earlobe before tapping two fingers on his arm and then giving a series of fake signals. The initial signal, emphasized by the two fingers on his arm, meant steal home no matter what. When the ball crossed the plate, Josh would take off.

Josh took a deep breath, dug his cleats into the dirt at the base of the bag, and prayed for a ball.

THE PITCHER WOUND UP
and let one fly. Josh timed it so that he took off as the ball crossed the plate, running all out at a blazing speed.

The pitch went wide of the plate. The catcher dove and Josh felt a surge of delight. But as the catcher rolled in the dirt, he twisted and sprang to his feet with the ball in hand. He’d made a spectacular save. Josh envisioned plowing over the catcher—the ball spilling from his glove—for the big win.

But as he neared the plate, he realized that this catcher was smarter than that. Instead of waiting down the line, he’d planted himself firmly over the plate, extending the ball, pinned into his mitt with his right hand. Without a body to knock down, Josh didn’t stand a chance of running him over before he’d been
tagged out. He made that calculation in a split second, stopped, and raced back for third, thinking Benji might be able to get a hit after all.

Three-quarters of the way back, he sensed the catcher’s throw zip past his ear and saw the ball land in the third baseman’s glove. Josh reversed field again, sprinting for home. When something cracked into the back of his helmet, he grinned. The third baseman threw wild and the ball ricocheted off Josh’s helmet toward the mound. He dug in, churning forward, aware of the pitcher scooping up the ball and the catcher back in the perfect position at home.

Everyone shouted. Josh somehow sensed the catcher adjusting his glove for the throw. Josh stumbled and dove, headfirst. He heard the smack of the ball into the catcher’s mitt, but his fingers touched the bag just below it before the tag came.

“Safe!” the umpire yelled.

The Titans went wild.

After a lot of backslapping and cheering among his teammates, Josh lined up to shake hands with the Florida kids along with everyone else. Then the team circled up around his dad.

“Okay, nice win, you guys. Esch, way to get on base with that single. LeBlanc, way to close the deal,” his dad said, all business, looking down and flipping through the pages on his clipboard. “So, we advance, but we still have a long way to go—three more wins to make it to
the championship—so let’s not celebrate too hard here. Tomorrow we’ll play the winner of the Nashville Roadsters and the Toronto Eagles in the second round.”

“Roadsters?” Benji said, raising one eyebrow. “What’s that? A car or a barnyard animal?”

Josh’s dad looked at Benji and said, “They’re twenty-three and one so far this season, so it doesn’t matter what they are, right?”

“Right, Coach,” Benji said, coming to attention and saluting.

When Josh’s dad cracked a smile, the rest of the team laughed.

“The Roadsters and the Eagles play in about an hour, one o’clock on field seven,” his dad said, “so you guys get a bite to eat and let’s meet over there to scout things out.”

The team put their hands in, did a chant, and broke up. Jaden waited beside the backstop with her pad and paper. Josh wandered over, expecting Jaden to praise their performance, kicking up dust with his cleat and studying the ground.

“Hey,” he said. “We’re going to scout the next team we play. You up for it?”

“Oh, hi, Josh,” Jaden said, looking up as if she hadn’t seen him. “Nice steal at home. Exciting finish.”

“You writing about that?” Josh asked, craning his neck to see her pad.

Jaden snapped the pad shut and forced a smile.
“They’ll let me run a paragraph. Maybe two. It’s only the first round. Long way to go.”

“Yeah,” Josh said, nodding. “So. What about going with us to scout? I’ll buy you a hot dog or something.”

“No thanks,” Jaden said, picking up the backpack she’d set on the edge of the bleachers.

“A soda or something?” he asked.

“I gotta go over to field eleven,” she said, looking at her watch. “Get some follow-up stuff for my story on Mickey.”

“Junior or senior?” Josh asked.

Jaden stared at him with those green cat eyes, and the yellow flecks seemed to swirl, almost hypnotizing him. “Does it matter, Josh?”

Anger erupted inside Josh like lava busting out the side of a volcano.

“No,” he said, “it doesn’t. You want to know why?”

“Tell me,” Jaden said, sounding bored.

“Because who cares about some Hollywood actor who used to play baseball? Who cares about his stuck-up kid?” Josh asked, raising his voice.

Jaden raised her chin. “He is
not
stuck up. He’s very nice, and he helped save your butt yesterday, you and that goofy friend of yours. You guys could hardly thank him.”

“Last thing I knew, Benji was your friend too, but obviously old friends don’t matter to you when some movie actor and his kid show up,” Josh said.

“Someone calling for a heavy hitter?” Benji said, popping out from around the corner of the dugout. “I heard my name.”

“Stash it,” Jaden said to him.

“Stow it,” Josh said.

“Lovers’ quarrel, I guess,” Benji said, disappearing.

“Those guys sure didn’t do anything for
me
,” Josh said. “If anything, they did it for you so you would write good things about them. That’s all those two are worried about—flying people around to write good things. Don’t kid yourself. Those people don’t care about anything but themselves.”

“You should know about that,” Jaden said, turning to go.