“Hit the dirt! Hit it!” cried Bus, standing beside the plate with a bat in his hand.
Barry’s cap had already blown off halfway down the basepath, and he was puffing like a steam engine as he raced for home, where Brian Feinberg was waiting for the throw-in from first base. Barry hit the dirt just as Brian caught the ball. Barry tried to slide around him, but Brian had the plate covered like an umbrella.
“Out!” yelled the ump.
Barry sat there a minute, looking up at the ump, then at Brian, and finally toward first base, where Monk was poking a fist into the air in triumph.
“Nice play, Monk!” a Junk Shop fan yelled.
Monk got T.V. out, then threw me out, Barry realized. It sure was a good play.
He rose to his feet, brushed the dust off his white uniform, and ran to get his glove and cap off the roof of the dugout. As he headed for third base, he almost collided with Coach Parker.
“Hold it, speedy,” the coach snapped.
Barry froze. That voice meant business.
“Don’t tell me that you didn’t hear me yell at you to wait on third,” the coach said firmly. “I yelled it loud enough for the whole crowd to hear me.”
“Yes, I heard you,” Barry admitted, glancing briefly at the coach. His dark, angry eyes sent shivers through him. “I’m sorry. I … I thought I had a good enough lead.”
“You thought. Listen, you’re no different from the other players, Barry. You play by the same rules as everybody else. So let me do most of the thinking here, okay?”
Barry nodded, embarrassed. Lowering his eyes, he started to trot out to left field.
“Hold it,” the coach said. “After all that running, you need to sit for a while.” He glanced toward the dugout. “Tootsie! Take left!” the coach ordered.
A short, stout kid sitting near the middle of the dugout cried, “Yippee!” Then, pulling a glove onto his left hand and tugging at his cap with his right, he ran to the outfield. He flashed a smile as he passed by Barry, but Barry didn’t see it. He was heading, head bowed, toward the dugout.
“Jack, take short.” He heard the coach snap another order.
Jack Livingston, a tall, thin redhead, ran out to replace Bus at shortstop. All at once Barry didn’t feel so bad. The coach was putting in other substitutes, too.
Barry could still hear the coach’s strong words ringing in his ears. He sure knows how to drill them into a guy, he thought. But was the coach 100 percent right? I almost scored, Barry said to himself. I wonder what the coach would’ve said if I’d been safe? He probably would have clapped like crazy.
“You play by the same rules as everybody else,” the coach had said. Barry remembered the fly ball he had dropped and retrieved in time to fool everybody. Well, almost everybody. Why did Susan have to be sitting in that particular spot on the sideline, anyway? Now he’d think about that play every time he saw her. And he saw her a lot.
“Hey, man, can’t wait till we play you guys next week.” A strong, husky voice broke into his thoughts.
Barry turned to see a kid peeking around the edge of the dugout. A kid whose face was more familiar than any other pitcher’s in the Summer Baseball Junior League.
“Why?” Barry asked Alec Frost, the High Street Bunkers’ fastball pitcher.
“Why?” Alec laughed. “Because you haven’t struck out yet. And that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to strike you out so bad the fans will forget they ever called you the hit-away kid.”