Alex might have danced his way to the locker room if it wouldn’t have been completely humiliating….So he tried to play it cool, but he must have had a silly grin on his face when he walked into the locker room because Jonas looked at him for about five seconds and said, “Okay, what happened?”
“What?” Alex said, knowing the giveaway grin was plastered all over his face.
“Something happened with Christine, didn’t it?”
“Sort of.”
“What does ‘sort of’ mean?”
“She said she wants to have lunch at Stark’s on Saturday,” Alex said.
“Whoa!” Jonas said. “Good job. When should I be there?”
Alex started to say something but then realized that Jonas was giving him a hard time.
“Come at about one,” he said.
“You’re meeting at eleven-thirty, aren’t you? Maybe I’ll just come with Max and Matt and we can sit in a booth nearby.”
“Max,” Alex said firmly, “is fine. Leave Matt home.”
They both laughed. It occurred to Alex that it had been a while since he had laughed.
Coach Birdy had intentionally scheduled a “win” for their last nonconference game. St. Mary’s had just started a baseball program and was 0–4. They’d been outscored 31–2 in the four games.
Naturally, it wasn’t Coach Birdy who shared those statistics—it was the all-knowing Matt Gordon. “Everyone will play,” he predicted as they warmed up before practice on Thursday afternoon. “I’ll bet you don’t pitch more than three innings, Goldie. He’ll get the other guys some innings and make sure you’re ready for Tuesday, if needed.”
“You think I’ll be needed with you pitching?” Alex asked.
“Hope not,” Matt said. “But Bryn Mawr Tech’s always pretty good.”
As usual, Matt’s predictions were on target. It was 7–0 when Alex retired the side in order in the top of the third, and Coach Birdy waved him over as he came into the dugout.
“Good job,” he said. “I’m going to give you the rest of the day off. I’m taking Matt out too. There’s no reason to humiliate these guys.”
Alex was disappointed. He had only walked one in three innings and hadn’t given up a hit. Given the quality of the opposition, he might have had a chance to pitch a no-hitter if he stayed in.
He started to say something about the no-hitter but changed his mind. “Okay, Coach,” he said.
Coach Birdy read his mind. “I know you haven’t given up a hit, but I need to make sure you’re fresh if I need you to pitch behind Matt on Tuesday. That’s more important.”
Alex nodded.
Coach Birdy let the team’s other four pitchers go an inning each. Everyone played. The final score was 13–2.
“Could’ve been twenty-five to nothing, if we’d wanted,” Matt said as they trudged out of the dugout to shake hands with their bedraggled opponents. Alex noticed the two coaches hugging each other. His guess was that the St. Mary’s coach was grateful to Coach Birdy for going as easy on his team as possible.
As soon as they’d gone through the handshake line, Alex saw that several TV cameras had magically appeared next to the dugout.
“What’s that about?” he said to Jonas.
Jonas pointed at Matt, who had jogged over to the cameras.
“I think our buddy likes being a media star again,” he said. “Christine told me after English class today that the Daily News will have a big Sunday piece on how he’s resurrected his athletic career as a baseball player.”
“But why would they be here for this game?” Alex said. “He had two at-bats, and that was it. He didn’t even pitch.”
Jonas shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “But the two of you do manage to attract a lot of attention, one way or the other. I have a feeling this is just the beginning.”
Alex and Jonas took a wide path so they would stay out of the way of the cameras. Even so, Alex could hear Matt responding to a question as they walked by the scrum of cameras and tape recorders.
“I think once conference play begins, I’ll be ready to show people my best stuff,” Matt was saying. “I don’t think anyone has seen it yet.”
“Good thing we play baseball outdoors,” Jonas hissed.
“Why?”
“Because his ego wouldn’t fit anyplace indoors.”
Christine was waiting for Alex when he walked into Stark’s at 11:25 the next morning. The weather had finally started to warm up, and she was wearing a short-sleeved blue blouse, cutoff jeans, and sneakers. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, which was the way she usually wore it when she was riding her bicycle.
Alex noticed she was already drinking an ice tea, which meant she’d been there a few minutes.
“Pretty eager to see me,” he said, nodding at the tea as he slid into the booth, across from her. “Guess you got here early.”
For a split second, he thought he’d put his foot in his mouth again, coming across as cocky—when he felt anything but cocky.
But she smiled, which was a relief.
“You’re right, Alex. I was awake all night counting the minutes until I’d see you again,” she said. Then, still smiling, she said, “Stop trying so hard.”
She was right. He was trying too hard.
“So, how worried are you about Matt?” she said, a fast transition that caught him off guard.
“Hang on,” he said. “Did you ask me here to interview me?”
“No,” she said firmly before he could go any further. “I’m asking because I’m concerned about him as a friend and want to know what you think—presumably also as a friend.”
She paused for a moment. “I asked you to lunch because I wanted to see you.”
If, at that moment, she had asked Alex to reveal all his darkest secrets and break into the Pentagon on her behalf, he would have done it.
“Well, you said there wasn’t really anything to worry about,” he said. “He can talk to an agent—”
“Agents,” she said, cutting in. “It isn’t just one now. There are about four recruiting him. Do you know how many teams are going to have scouts at Tuesday’s game? Twenty—or more. That doesn’t even count the colleges.”
“How do you know all this?”
She reached to her left and picked up a thick printout from the seat next to her. She tossed it on the table. “This will be up on the web at noon and in tomorrow’s paper.”
It was the Philadelphia Daily News story that Jonas had mentioned the day before. It was written by Dick Jerardi, whom Alex had first met during football season. Alex glanced at the lead:
Matt Gordon honestly thought his athletic career might be over last November, when he was suspended from the Chester Heights football team after admitting to using performance-enhancing drugs. Not only did he have to sit out the state championship game, but his father, Matthew Gordon Sr., was fired as Chester Heights’ coach in the wake of the scandal.
“It was humiliating in every possible way,” Gordon said. “The worst part was that I did it to myself. I came very close to going to a boarding school somewhere—just to escape from the whole thing. I’m glad now I stuck it out.”
Gordon stuck it out because it occurred to him that the suspension could be a blessing in disguise. He had always wanted to play baseball—which he thought was his best sport—but his father had never allowed him to do so. Now, after his suspension was lifted in time for the start of baseball season, he’s playing the game he loves most and opening a lot of eyes with his prowess.
“He’s one of the best pitching prospects I’ve seen around here in the last ten years,” said one major league scout, who can’t be quoted by name because MLB teams aren’t allowed to discuss players who still have high school or college eligibility remaining. “He’s amazingly mature, has great control for a kid so young, and understands how to pitch. You don’t see all that in a high school junior very often.”
Alex looked up. The story was very long, and he could see where it was going.
“It goes on forever,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “It’s almost three thousand words. It’ll get national attention. You’d better be ready for that on Tuesday.”
Alex shrugged. “Like we haven’t been through it before?”
She nodded. “True. But I’m worried about Matt. In the fall, he didn’t look like the pressure was getting to him, but it did—which is why he took the PEDs. Now he’s reveling in the attention, and I’m worried he’s going to make another mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“I honestly don’t know. All the agents are a concern—that’s for sure. I talked to Coach Birdy on background the other day, and he said he thinks Matt’s crazy to give up his last year of high school. But if he says that to him, it will look self-serving.”
“He’s right—on both points.”
“I know. Problem is, Matt’s really got no one to talk to about this. He doesn’t speak to his dad, who has apparently moved out of the house. His mom doesn’t know anything about this world. So he needs us.”
“Us?” Alex laughed. “Matt might listen to you. He’s not listening to me.”
“I’ve got someone else in mind….”
“Who?”
Christine nodded in the direction of the front of the restaurant. On cue, Stevie Thomas was walking toward the booth.
Stevie Thomas was not, by any stretch, physically imposing. He was, Alex guessed, no more than five nine, and he had curly brown hair. That said, he was one of those people who made you like them almost instantly. Alex had met him in the fall during his football crisis. He remembered something Christine had said about him then: “He’s usually the smartest guy in the room. But he never gives you the impression that he thinks that.”
Now Stevie walked to the booth with a smile on his face and his hand out.
“How’s the three-sport star?” he said as Alex stood up to greet him. “Sit down, Alex, please. Hiya, Christine.”
He slid into the booth, next to Christine.
“Alex, I swear, if you weren’t such a good athlete, I’d sign you up to work with me,” he said. “Stories have a way of finding you wherever you go.”
“You find tons of stories,” Christine said.
“I go out looking. But Alex is just trying to play ball and ends up smack in the middle of one story after another.”
“This one’s not really about me,” Alex said.
“I know,” Stevie said. “It’s about Matt. But he’s your friend, your teammate, and a lot of what happened to you in the fall was because of him.”
Alex didn’t really feel like walking through all that again. It was Christine who jumped into the void left by Alex’s silence.
“The question is, what can we do?” she asked, looking at Stevie. “We both have a feeling that Matt’s headed down a dangerous path with all these agents and scouts. I mean, he’s played all of five high school baseball games….”
Stevie paused as Alex’s and Christine’s hamburgers arrived. He ordered one himself, then sat back in the cushioned seat.
“Yeah, the agents are bad news. Any agent who’s chasing around after a high school kid is looking for some kind of quick fix for his business. The first thing Matt should do is ask who their other clients are. I guarantee you none of them are repping Clayton Kershaw or Madison Bumgarner or, for that matter, Bruce Chen.”
Stevie knew who Kershaw and Bumgarner were—two of the best pitchers in baseball. He wasn’t so sure about Chen.
“Bruce Chen?” he said.
Stevie smiled. “Just retired about a year ago. Pitched in the majors for seventeen years. Point is, I’ll bet these guys chasing Matt are small-timers. They’re hoping to catch lightning in a bottle with Matt—or any one of the dozen other kids they’re probably romancing. Happens all the time.”
“So what do we do?” Christine asked.
“An intervention,” Stevie said. “I think your friend needs an intervention before it’s too late. And, as Yogi Berra might have said, it gets late early when agents are involved. Very early.”