The next day was her bullpen day. They had her throw to the backup catcher, a guy named Ramón, who was in his third year, after spending his first two seasons in the Dominican Summer League and the Gulf Coast League. His English was pretty comprehensible, when it came to baseball terms, but he wasn’t very comfortable with regular conversations.
Marcus hovered nearby the entire time, leaning against the fence with his arms folded, even though Ramón grinned and said, “Mamá!” while making a waving-away motion with his hand.
“Stay around sixty percent, seventy-five percent max,” Sawyer said, standing close by and holding his clipboard. “We’re going to work from the stretch today, get you on a better footing. No slide-steps, though—we’ll save that for down the road.”
Jill nodded. “I’m definitely weaker from the stretch.”
“Most of you guys are,” Sawyer said. “You’re not used to having people on base, the way you will here. It’s why your pickoff move isn’t anywhere close to where it needs to be.”
He was talking to her like a pitcher. It felt good.
The session went pretty well, although he stopped her a few times, to give instructions, or adjust her position, but she actually learned things—which was great.
“Okay, nice work, Cafferty,” he said, when she was finished. “Go get fluffed, and iced, and be sure to get some cardio in.” He turned to Marcus. “We’ll sit down with Jonesy after stretch.”
During their post-BP downtime, it occurred to her that there was an easy solution to her collared shirt problem. So, she grabbed her debit card, went up to the concourse, and walked around until she found the team store. It wasn’t officially open yet, but when she knocked on the door, they were quick to let her in—and even seemed excited to do so.
They sold Penn State gear, as well as Spikes’ team items, and she left with a navy blue women’s Nittany Lions polo shirt. They had wanted to give it to her, but that didn’t seem appropriate, even though she appreciated the offer. They ended up steering her to a shirt that had been on a clearance rack, and she was fine with that.
It was probably silly, but as she left the store with her bag, she was kind of proud of herself for solving the collar problem. It was a small thing, but somehow, it felt like an adult accomplishment. In fact, she wanted to call her mother immediately, and say, “Guess what I did!”
“Hello, Jill!” a too-hearty voice said. “How are you? I was hoping to run into you. Great to see you.”
It was Aaron Marshak, a man who was so damn determined to be her agent that he didn’t seem to grasp that that made it even more unlikely ever to happen. She had gotten used to him popping up unexpectedly for the past couple of years, although it usually felt more like he was pouncing.
“Nice to see you, too, sir,” she said, and then moved past him.
“What do you have there?” he asked.
Was it any of his business? “It’s for my stuffed animal collection,” she said. Of course, she didn’t have a stuffed animal collection, but for a few seconds, she wondered if she wanted one, and she could maybe collect mascots from every ballpark the team visited, and—then what? Give them personalities? Play imaginary games with them? Cuddle them in the dark of night?
Aaron did a double take, but then seemed to try and hide that reaction. “I wish you had let me buy that for you, Jill. It would have been my pleasure.”
“Thank you, but I’m all set,” she said.
“I hope they didn’t make you pay for it,” he said. “I can go in there and speak to them about it, if you’d like.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” she said.
“You really shouldn’t be paying for much of anything anywhere,” he said. “You don’t have to anymore.”
Jill repressed a shudder—since that was surely not a world where she wanted to live.
Aaron was the kind of guy who always wore an ostentatious gold watch, and would probably love telling her how much it had cost. In fact, from his casually draped sunglasses to his polished leather shoes, she was pretty sure he could itemize the price of every single thing he had on without a second thought.
“So, are you finally ready to sit down and do the paperwork?” he asked.
The man was a walking self-delusion.
“Come on, you’re not a little girl anymore, Jill,” he said. “It’s time to step up, and get down to business.”
“Mr. Marshak—” she started.
“Aaron,” he said.
“Mr. Marshak,” she said, again. “I have a legal advisor, and that’s all I need right now.”
Aaron shook his head, and she was afraid he might be going to sling his arm around her, so she took two steps backward, out of reach.
“You only say that because you don’t fully understand what I can do for you,” he said.
“I’m really not looking to cash in, sir,” she said.
He moved his hand dismissively. “Don’t be a fool. You have stratospheric earning potential. In fact, I have a global strategy to monetize your career, and I’d like to lay it out for you.”
“I appreciate your interest, Mr. Marshak,” she said, “but I’m really not—”
“You always say that, but this is the time for us to bring all of this to fruition,” he said. “Not tomorrow, not next year, not five years from now. Today. You can’t just be a child and stick your head in the sand and pretend it isn’t there.”
She wanted to look around and see if there were any nearby security guards or ballpark personnel to run interference—but, she could take care of this herself, right? Even though it was stressful. “Sir, I don’t know how to put this,” she said, “but I really don’t want an agent, and if I did, I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be picking you.”
He stared at her. “What?”
How would it be possible to be more clear than that? “I’m sorry, but if I decide, at any point, that I want representation, it’ll be someone else,” she said. Anyone else—up to, and including, Batty-Oscar, the bat-fetching dog.
His expression darkened so much that it was an effort not to back up a few more steps. But, instead, she folded her arms and held her ground.
“You unbelievable bitch,” he said through his teeth. “Don’t you have any idea how much work I’ve already done for you? I’ve been laying the groundwork for your future for months now. Years, really.”
Without ever noticing that she hadn’t actually hired him? And didn’t take his calls? “I’m sorry if you went to any unnecessary effort, sir,” she said.
He scowled at her. “Your fastball’s nothing special, you know. I would have been wasting my time, anyway. Your only hope is to cash in now, before everyone else figures it out.”
Nice guy. A prince, even. “Well, let’s hope no one catches on,” she said, and headed towards the clubhouse.
The next two games were uneventful, other than her spending the second one leaning against the railing—with her very own clipboard—and charting pitches. It was harder than she expected, and she had to ask Jonesy for advice a few times, and also switch from a pen to a pencil, because she kept making tiny mistakes. Since she would be pitching against an entirely different team, it wasn’t going to help her learn much about the hitters, but she could see that it was a good way to improve her concentration—and quietly absorb the way other pitchers worked, and what was, and wasn’t, successful.
They were back at the motel just before ten o’clock, and most of the team seemed to be planning to go out and take advantage of being in a college town, where potentially dateable young women were easy to find. She assumed that the availability of said women was why several players had seemed more than slightly hungover during the past couple of days.
It was easy enough to slip out of sight, and go to her room, without anyone really noticing. Hector did shout, “Come on, Ladybug, come paint the town with us!”, but she just smiled and said, “Thanks, maybe next time.”
If nothing else, she was making excellent progress with War and Peace lately.
Before settling down, she went out to the hall to get ice, where she found Scott buying a couple of drinks from a soda machine.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought everyone went out.”
Scott shrugged. “It wasn’t that fun last night, and besides, I’m trying not to break up with my girlfriend—and being around those guys could make it really hard.”
She had known that he often texted with a girl who was going to USC in the fall, and had assumed it was pretty serious.
“Did you not go, because you’re pitching tomorrow?” he asked.
That, too. So, she nodded. “Is it hard, keeping things up long-distance?”
“Yeah,” he said, and fed money into the machine, until two more Cokes popped out. “I think we’re already maybe broken up, but I’m trying to keep it going.” He shrugged again, looking far more pensive than she had ever seen him. “Anyway, Danny and I are bored. You want to hang out?”
Very much so, actually. “Sure. We could watch a movie,” she said.
Their room was something of a pigsty, so since Sofia had gone out somewhere, they ended up in her room, watching—for unknown reasons—The Lego Movie. And enjoying it.
At first, they all sat on the edge of her mattress, but that wasn’t really relaxing, and after a while, they ended up lying on the bed in a row, propped up on pillows, the way she generally watched things with Theo and Greg. There were still some snacks in the bag Mrs. Wilkins had packed for her, so they ate candy and granola bars, and drank Cokes—and it was nicer than anything she had done so far as a professional baseball player.
Which was how Sofia found them, when she came into the room, stopping short in surprise.
“My God, you look like children,” she said.
Scott nudged both of them. “Hit it!” he said, and they sang a rousing, mostly on-key version of “Everything Is Awesome!” together.
Sofia shook her head. “You all are children.”
Since they were three of the youngest players on the team—yeah, the description probably fit.
Jill thought she might get grouchy about the room having been hijacked, but after a perplexed moment of staring at them, Sofia helped herself to a package of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, lay down on her bed, and watched the end of the movie with them.
“Frozen?” Danny said, when it was over.
Sofia groaned. “God, no. I need some sleep, we have an early bus tomorrow.”
“We sing good, though,” Danny said.
Sofia shook her head. “Go away, boys, and leave me in peace.”
It was late enough now, so that Jill really did want to get some sleep, so she would be in good shape for her start. They agreed that they would watch Frozen in Williamsport—and try very hard not to let any of their teammates find out. Except, possibly, for Shosuke, who she now realized was equally unlikely to have gone out drinking tonight.
In the morning, Adler’s lone comment before she boarded the bus in her new polo shirt was “Go, Lions!”
They got to Williamsport right before noon, so they went straight to the stadium, instead of checking in to their new motel. It was one of the oldest minor league stadiums in the country, so not nearly as fancy as the one in State College had been. But, it was neat, the way it was right in the middle of a regular neighborhood, with houses visible over the outfield walls. Old-fashioned ballparks were her preference.
The stadium didn’t have a special area set aside for her, so she changed in an alcove off the trainers’ room. Showering at the motel wasn’t ideal, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world, either. The clubhouse was pretty nice, and must have been renovated in the not-too-distant past, because the lockers and carpet were in very good shape.
During team stretch, some of the guys were full of tales about their adventures in State College, which she tuned out. It got pretty raunchy, and at one point, Dimitri said, “Knock it off, you frackin’ morons!”, before Marcus had a chance to say anything similar, albeit probably more formal.
On her way inside for a pre-game pitching meeting, the Crosscutters’ public relations guy came over and introduced himself. He gave her details about the post-game press conference they were going to hold, and asked if she might be willing to meet with a Crosscutters personality known as the “Director of Smiles,” and a few groups of Little Leaguers and some youth softball teams the next day, and possibly a similar event with local veterans the following day. She agreed—because, really, what else was she going to say?—and she didn’t mind, anyway.
This was the first game the Retrievers would be playing against this team, so they really didn’t have any solid information about the lineup. But Sawyer was a damned hard worker, and he had come up with high school or college film on quite a few of their hitters, so she was able to see which guy she would work high, because of his uppercut, a guy who bailed out too quickly on inside pitches, and other helpful tendencies. Marcus was going to be her catcher tonight, but Ramón was going to catch the next night, so he joined them in a small circle of padded folded chairs to go over everything. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she could translate in both directions. Marcus did pretty well with baseball-related Spanish, but not in a way which captured nuances.
She was determined to do a better job of mental preparation and focusing tonight, and hoped that the media circus would be less elaborate. So, she fixed a Swiss cheese and mustard sandwich from the pre-game spread, grabbed a banana and a bottle of water—God, she was tired of bland, predictable food; no wonder she was never hungry anymore—and sat down at her locker, facing away from the rest of the room.
Earbuds didn’t shut out enough sound, and she wished she had thought to bring a pair of good headphones with her, but they were back at the Wilkinses’ house or had maybe been trashed during her “locker inventory”—she wasn’t sure which. Regardless, she didn’t have them. People were smart enough to know not to bother a starter before a game, but it was still too easy to hear almost everything else that was going on in the room.
When it was closer to game time, she would switch to get-pumped-up rock and roll—and, especially, movie soundtracks—but for now, she picked classical. Supposedly, they had done studies that found that students who listened to Mozart before tests scored higher than people who didn’t, and maybe it would help her pitching? It certainly couldn’t hurt.
When Sofia indicated that it was time to have her active stretching session, Jill nodded, turned off the music, and headed for the trainers’ room. They were increasingly relaxed with each other, and Sofia had already figured out that she liked to have some work done on her wrist—the better to snap off curves—and that extra time on her hips was a good idea, too. Jill was also finding that she really maybe didn’t like to talk much at all before starting, so when the session was over, she nodded her thanks, and Sofia nodded back, and held up an encouraging “You go!” fist.
One last trip to the restroom, and she returned to her locker, touched the dog tag, and then put on her game jersey and belt, and made sure that her cleats were tied in precisely the most supportive, yet comfortable, way. Last of all, she checked that her hair was secure, then put on her cap and tilted the brim ever so slightly to the left. Routine. It was all supposed to be about the routine.
When she picked up her glove and jacket, Marcus appeared in front of her locker, also ready to go. It had been easy to hear increasing rumbles from the fans for the past hour or so, and she assumed that it was going to be another standing-room-only crowd, along with a heavy press contingent.
Which it was, to the degree that she lost a step on her way out of the dugout, and damn near tripped.
“Just a walk in the park,” Marcus said.
Which wasn’t at all how she felt, but Jill nodded.
The dugout was completely open, with a small raised concrete ledge out front, while the bullpen was an exposed area along the left-field line, adjacent to a picnic deck, which was crammed with fans. They were excited, and noisy, and—mostly—happy to see her.
Even with security people and police officers posted in the general area, the crowd felt so close. Much too close.
She tipped her cap—camera shutters clicking everywhere—and then set her glove and jacket down on the grass just inside the foul line, before starting her regimen of jogging, sprints, and stretches. Bannigan had modified her routine since the first game she pitched, adding stretches that included more hip and torso rotation, and some high leg kicks.
He and Sawyer were standing nearby, watching, and Bannigan came out a couple of times to assist with some of the dynamic stretches, and to say things like “Nice and slow” and “Keep it easy.”
The very fact that she was worried about her focus meant that her focus wasn’t good enough. But, her warm-up went pretty well, even though her curveball felt less sharp than usual. Once she was finished, she looked for a little girl, tossed the baseball up to her, made sure she caught it safely, and then walked to the dugout with two security people and Sawyer on one side, and Marcus on the other.
Sawyer wanted her to stay with the four-seamer, two-seamer strategy, to whatever degree possible, and her primary goals were first-pitch strikes, showing enough command to keep tonight’s umpire from jerking her around, and setting a good tempo. She liked to work fast, and last time out, she’d done far too much dithering.
The guys scored a run in the top of the first—mostly driven by Hector’s hit-and-run single into right, which let Diaz advance to third and score on Scott’s liner up the middle. It might be a slim lead, but it was nice to have, regardless, as she walked out to the mound.
The crowd reaction wasn’t entirely positive, but it was damned good, considering that she was pitching for the visiting team. She felt a flash of nerves, and touched the dog tag chain for a second, to ground herself.
Since poor Geoff was presumably at home in Oregon, looking at months of rehab, Owen was playing third. After the ball went around the infield, he walked towards the mound, and then flipped it gently to her underhand.
He probably didn’t mean anything by that—but it pissed her off, and she caught the ball with an impatient snap of her glove. Being annoyed overrode the nerves, and her first pitch—a low, inside two-seamer for strike one—had some serious bite, and late movement. Enough so that the batter stepped out of the box, and made a bit of a production of knocking dirt from his spikes, before digging in again.
And zing, went the strings of her heart, whenever she saw a hitter show some anxiety.
He was gone in four pitches, the last one intentionally in the dirt—but, he swung, and Marcus blocked it, and then tagged him smoothly, before throwing down to third.
The ball went around the horn, and Owen underhanded it to her again.
Which bugged her—again, and she got the next guy on an easy grounder to short.
She changed speeds enough on the third guy, so that while he got his bat on the ball, it was a little pop fly—which unfortunately fell into no-man’s-land, in front of a hustling Schwartzman in right field.
Which meant that she had given up her first hit as a professional pitcher, and she spent enough time internally berating herself so that she stupidly left a ball up in the zone to the cleanup hitter, who pounded it into left-center.
She ran into foul territory, ready to back up third or the plate—but, Scott ran it down deep in the gap, making one of those catches that looked effortless, but were actually very difficult.
Whew, okay. She closed her eyes for a second, relieved to be out of the inning, and waited, so that she could smack her glove against his, on their way off the field.
“What happens when you leave the ball up like that?” Sawyer asked, as she came into the dugout.
“Your left fielder makes a highlight-reel catch!” Scott said cheerfully.
Hector laughed. “You didn’t even leave your feet, dude. It doesn’t count, if you don’t get some air.”
Scott stopped, and pointed up at the sky. “That sound you hear? Angels singing. Because they can’t believe what a beautiful line I took to the ball.”
As far as Jill was concerned, she was one of the converted to whom he was preaching, when it came to that.
Sofia was strapping on her heat pack—she wasn’t crazy about the heat pack; they might need to come up with something different for next time—while Sawyer talked to her about not letting her front shoulder fly open, maintaining her focus, and staying aggressive.
She gave up a ground ball single in the bottom of the second, but otherwise escaped unscathed, getting a double play, and then a nice called third strike on a changeup, which caught the hitter off balance.
As she walked towards the dugout, two frat-boy types came rushing up through the stands and threw a bunch of small white objects at her. She ducked, but also reflexively raised her glove to try and catch them.
Some of the objects pelted her, and she looked inside her glove to see—several tampons.
Tampons? Really?
Dimitri, Raffy, and Marcus were within a few feet of her, and looked equally startled.
Owen, who was jogging past them to the dugout, glanced at her glove and smirked. “Good hands,” he said, and kept going.
“Those assholes,” Dimitri said, and it looked like he might leap into the stands to go after them. But, security people were already on it and waved him off, while they escorted the two guys away—and she assumed that they were going to be thrown out of the ballpark.
There were about a dozen tampons scattered on the ground, and she started to bend down, but Marcus’s hand closed around her arm.
“Leave them,” he said, his voice even—but angry. “Someone else can take care of it.”
He was right—it would not be dignified to scrabble around after a bunch of damn tampons.
Once she was in the dugout, she dumped the detritus in her glove into a big plastic trash can, resisting the urge to kick the can—or anything else she could find—as hard as she could.
“It was kind of funny,” someone—she wasn’t sure who—said tentatively.
“Yeah,” she said. “It was a scream.”
She still wanted to kick something, but instead, she slammed her glove and cap onto the bench, and then sat down.
Marcus took a seat next to her, and she could tell that his simmering was almost as close to a boil as hers was, but he didn’t say anything.
Hector and Scott and Shosuke came over and sat on her other side—which she absolutely appreciated.
Sofia approached with a heat pack, and she was going to dismiss her, but Marcus shook his head. So, Jill let her wrap the thing on with the usual ACE bandage. When she was finished, Sofia patted her on the other shoulder, and then went to check the hand—maybe he’d jammed a finger, when he got taken out during the double play—Diaz was holding in her direction.
The dugout, in general, was quieter than usual, but the team must have been fired up, because they scored six runs, and she went back out for the bottom of the third with a solid lead.
And, since she was pretty charged up herself, she set the side down easily, working off the changeup—which had great separation today, getting two easy grounders and a pop-up.
“Hey, Cafferty,” the Crosscutters third base coach said, as she strode towards the dugout without looking at the stands.
She paused.
“We all thought that was bush-league, too,” he said.
Which was good to hear, because it damn well had been.