I couldn’t practice Friday. My thumb was twice its normal size, my wrist was sore, and I was so stiff from the collision I could barely walk. “You take it easy,” Wheatley told me. “We need you for the game tomorrow.”
So I didn’t participate in the drills. The guys razzed me pretty good, though. Curtis called me Little Jack Horner, and the football players laughed at me for being banged up after one collision. But their razzing only proved I was part of the team, so I didn’t care.
Toward the end of practice Selin came over to me. “How do you handle Josh’s slider so well?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Luck, I guess.”
“Come on,” he said. “What do you do?”
He was the experienced catcher, so it felt strange to be giving him tips. But that’s what I did. I told him about trusting the ball to break, and actually starting to move before it broke. After that we talked about the throw down to second, and I repeated some of the things Grandpa Kevin had told me.
“Thanks a lot,” he said, when Wheatley blew the whistle.
My locker was right next to Josh’s. As we dressed, he gave me a little nudge. “You better not give away too much,” he said softly. “You could end up not playing at all.”
“What are you talking about?”
He looked around. “I heard you with Selin. You teach him everything you know, and Wheatley won’t need you. You’ll end up on the bench for the whole game.”
“He’s helped me, Josh. He’s helped me a lot. And I didn’t even have to ask him. Besides, we’re all on the same team.”
“I know about teams and teamwork,” Josh answered, still talking low. “But you’ve got to look out for yourself. You don’t see me showing Reule or Wilkerson or Smith how to throw sliders. And you won’t, either.”
Walking home we talked about the upcoming games. But the whole time I thought about what he’d said in the locker room. I knew what he was getting at. I’d even thought of it when I’d been giving pointers to Selin. Still, I didn’t regret what I’d done.
Over the next two weeks our schedule was soft. The games we played were all against the weakest teams in the league, and they were all routs. Josh beat Cleveland 8–2. The two runs scored on a fly ball Mike Nelson misplayed into a triple in left field in the last of the seventh. Josh was plenty miffed about losing the shutout. He took it out on the last two Cleveland hitters, striking both of them out on wicked sliders they only waved at. His next outing was against Chief Sealth. They barely had enough guys to field a team, and when their pitcher tired, they had to bring in their right fielder and send the pitcher out there. It was like batting practice for us. The final score was 16—1. Josh went five inning’s and gave up no runs They scored the run against Wilkerson in the last inning.
The two games that Reule started weren’t any closer. We jumped off to good-sized leads in both of them, and with a lead Reule was tough. He didn’t walk anybody; he came right after hitters with his fastball. If they hit it, chances are our guys in the field could run it down.
It was great winning those games, great being part of a team that was 6–0 and ranked tenth in the state, great catching the last inning or two and getting an at-bat now and then. When I was with the guys at practice, at games, and at school I was on top of the world. But when I was alone I’d find myself thinking about those days back in Little League, when I’d been a star like Josh, not a late-inning defensive replacement. I’d wonder how it would feel to be a star again, and if I’d ever know.