Ben had nothing against going out and practicing by himself and trying to get better.
When it was baseball season he had absolutely no problem with asking his dad for the key to the batting cage behind the Y, feeding balls into the machine, working on his swing, making himself take pitch after pitch up the middle if he could, giving himself points every time he’d smack a line drive off the machine.
Ben wasn’t afraid of work.
But more than anything, he just wanted to play.
He wanted to play games, real games or pickup games with his boys. Even video games. He just loved to compete, that was the real fun of sports for him and why when one season ended he really couldn’t wait for the next one to begin.
Only now the next season for him had begun like this, in a glorified pickup game that felt as real as it could possibly be, even an hour after it had ended. Getting scalded and schooled and torched like that by the new guy.
It was why he was out here at McBain Field, the hoop with the blue halfcourt in front of it, the key and the free-throw line and the lane painted in white, even though all the paint was beginning to fade and Ben had noticed that there were even a few more little potholes than he’d noticed the last time he had been out here shooting around.
When Ben was on his way out the door his dad had said, “I assume you’re gonna be out there awhile, right?”
Ben nodded.
“Till dinner?” his dad said.
“At least.”
“Have at it.”
“Don’t worry,” Ben said. “I will.”
He didn’t need to warm up, mostly because he was still hot from the game.
It was the steals Chase Braggs had made against him that bothered him more than anything.
If there was one thing Ben was most proud of in basketball, it was the way he could handle the ball, even with small hands. He could handle and he could dribble with both hands, even at eleven. His dad had always told him that being able to dribble with both hands in basketball was like being a switch-hitter in baseball.
One of Ben’s first coaches in the Y league, fourth grade, Mr. Russell, had said to him: “The way to play this game as a point guard is not let the guy guarding you overplay.”
So even though Ben was right-handed he’d never cared if somebody tried to force him to go left, because he had a left hand, and wasn’t afraid to use it. It was why he’d always been able to drive the defense crazy because they didn’t know which hand he was going to use when he wanted to drive to the basket.
Until today, anyway.
Today Chase Braggs had been able to read him like Ben was his favorite book. Like he knew where Ben was going before Ben did. Even though they’d never set eyes on each other before the scrimmage, it seemed as if Chase already knew all of Ben’s best moves, as if they had played more games against each other than Bird and Magic did.
It was why the boy who loved to play was out here working, working hard, at McBain Field. Thinking to himself how it never really ended in sports, how even though there was always a new season coming along there was always a new challenge, some new way you had to prove yourself.
In football he’d had to prove that he was a better quarterback than Shawn O’Brien, the coach’s son, despite the fact that Shawn was so much bigger than Ben, that he looked the part of a quarterback so much more than Ben did.
And, man oh man, he had proved it, right through the last play of the championship game, that pass to Sam Brown. Only now here came Chase Braggs, an opponent he had to overcome instead of a teammate like Shawn.
Even though Chase wasn’t all that much bigger than Ben, his longer arms and greater wingspan just made him seem bigger than he actually was, especially when he was taking the ball away from Ben and making it look so freakishly easy. But it wasn’t just the steals. One time he’d backed off at exactly the right moment, right as Ben was committed to passing the ball to Sam on the wing, Chase jumping the route the way cornerbacks in football did when they seemed to just know where the quarterback was going to throw. He had intercepted Ben’s pass and almost in the same motion thrown the ball all the way down the court to Ryan Hurley for an easy two.
People always liked to talk about what a great head Ben had for basketball.
Only Chase had been in it all day.
And still was.
It was one of the reasons why Ben didn’t even think about shooting the ball the first half hour he was out here. He just dribbled. Side to side, sometimes going all the way around the small court, switching back and forth from his right hand to his left, changing direction sometimes on the fly, crossing over, keeping the ball low. Imagining Chase on him, ready to swipe at the ball with those long arms, Ben making sure to keep his free arm up, the free arm and his body between the imaginary defender and the ball.
Going back to basics.
Basketball 101.
One week before the start of the real season for the Rockwell Rams.
“It was just one lousy scrimmage,” Coop had said when it was over.
But Ben knew better. He had seen something today, found out something about his own game at the same time he’d gotten a good look at Chase’s for the first time.
He had to get better, because he was going to see Chase Braggs a lot. Three regular-season games, the first next Saturday. And then, if Rockwell and Darby managed to finish 1–2 in the league, again in the championship game.
Which right now seemed as far away as the moon he could see now in the sky.
He took a quick break now, knowing he’d start to run out of daylight soon. Running back to the house, getting a couple of the plastic stick figures his dad had brought home from the Y one time. They were the kind of stick figures you saw in parking lots and even in the street sometimes, reminding everybody that there were children in the area and to drive slowly.
There had been a delivery of them to the Y, more than Jeff McBain needed there. So he’d brought some of the extras home, telling Ben they were perfect to use when he wanted to practice his passing when his friends weren’t around.
Ben carried four of them back to the court, spread them around, started hitting them with passes off the dribble. Not minding when he’d miss and have to go chase the ball, it just made him more determined to make a sharper, better pass next time.
Ben making sure he didn’t telegraph passes to the orange stick figures the way he had when Chase had been guarding him during the game.
As easy as it would have been to just write it off as one bad day, one lousy scrimmage, Ben knew in his heart that he had looked as bad as he had because Chase was that good.
Starting to get darker now. Close to dinner. Ben shooting the ball now. Step-back moves and drives to the basket and the little teardrop floater he liked to use when he had to get the ball up and over taller guys in the lane. He fell once as he went down the baseline, stepping in a hole he didn’t see, skinned his knee, got right back up. What did they always tell you in sports? No pain, no gain. Every once in a while he’d stop and do one of his favorite basketball things, at least out here: Make free throws underhand. Ben’s favorite basketball movie was Hoosiers, nothing else even close, and he loved the scene where the guy Ollie made his two big free throws underhand, winning a game for Hickory High with three seconds left on the clock.
Not so long after he saw somebody shoot them that way in the movie, Ben and his dad were watching ESPN Classic, watching an old-time player named Rick Barry, and when Ben saw him shoot free throws underhand, he’d said, “I thought only the guys as old as dinosaurs shot like that.”
“Not only did Rick Barry shoot them that way,” his dad had said, “he was pretty much the best free-throw shooter I ever saw.”
“Then how come everybody doesn’t shoot them that way?” Ben had said, and his dad said, “Because they don’t want to look funny. Or not cool.”
Ben had gotten so good at doing it, alone usually, sometimes with Sam in a game of H-O-R-S-E, that he sometimes thought he was better underhand than shooting regulation.
He made ten in a row, then went back to working on his ballhandling, what he was really out here for, Saturday afternoon becoming Saturday night, the air much cooler, but Ben sweating now like he’d been running end-to-end drills in an overheated gym.
“I feel like I’m out of breath just watching you.”
Ben’s head whipped around, but he already knew the voice, knew it was Lily.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that, you know,” he said.
“A police car with its siren blaring could have snuck up on you, McBain.”
“Just practicing, is all.”
“That what you call it?”
She had arrived — quietly — on her bike. Wearing jeans and the Packers T-shirt he’d gotten her after Aaron Rodgers, his favorite football player in the world, had beaten the Steelers in the Super Bowl played at Cowboys Stadium. Ben saw she had on her new white Pumas with the pink stripe. When he’d asked why pink she’d said, “Because as good as I am at hanging with boys, I’m still a girl.”
Boy, was she ever a girl.
Now Lily said, “I’ve never seen one-on-none basketball look like a contact sport before.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Lils.”
“Really?”
“Really” with Lily, in that tone of voice, a certain look on her face, was the same as her calling him a liar. In a nice way, of course.
“Just out here trying to get better,” Ben said.
“Better than who, Kobe and LeBron?”
Before Ben could say anything to that, Lily hit him with this: “I heard about the scrimmage, McBain. And about the way Chase played. And the way you played. Or didn’t.”
“Don’t want to talk about it right now,” Ben said.
Now Lily smiled at him, like the first light coming on in the neighborhood tonight, and said, “Really?”
“I give up.”
Lily said, “That’s always best.”
They sat down on the court. Ben told her his version of the scrimmage, how good he thought Chase was, how he — Ben — didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to get after it, and get better.
“You’re always trying to get better,” Lily said. “Because that gives you a better chance of winning the game.”
“That’s the thing, Lils. I had no chance to win the game today.”
“Wow,” she said. “I didn’t know you’d taken on Darby all by yourself. That hardly seems fair.”
“Not what I meant.”
“Sounded that way to me. Let me ask you something: If you’d played your absolute best game today, would you guys have won?”
Ben was tired all of a sudden. Tired from the game, tired from his postgame practice. Tired of talking already, even with Lily, even knowing she wanted him to feel better. Ben looked past her, across the street to where his house was. How come your parents never called you when you wanted them to?
Like right now.
“Probably not,” he said. “They’re pretty good. Darby, I mean. I would’ve picked us to win the league, but that was before they got Chase.”
“Which is why you’re gonna practice until it’s too dark. Or maybe until next Saturday’s game.”
“I’m done now.”
“You think Sam and Coop and Shawn, all your boys, were so freaked by the scrimmage that they gave themselves basketball detentions?”
“It’s my job to make the other guys on the team better,” Ben said.
“Your job?”
“You know me better than anybody,” Ben said. “So you know what I mean.”
“I know you gotta chill, McBain. Aren’t you the guy always telling me that you’re never as bad as you look when you lose, and never as good as you look when you win?”
“Have you forgotten anything I’ve ever said?”
Lily smiled again. “Oh, sure. I try to forget your dumb jokes, how your fantasy teams are doing. Lots of neat stuff. You want the whole list?”
“No, thank you.”
Ben could hear his mom calling him now, seeing Lily with him and asking if she wanted to stay for dinner, Lily yelling back that she had to go, she and her parents were going out tonight.
“Here’s the deal,” Ben said. “I just got the earliest wakeup call I’ve ever gotten on a season today. I gotta find a way to get better. Fast.”
“Or what?” she said in a quiet voice, those eyes of hers on him.
“Or else we’re not going to win the championship,” he said.
Lily shook her head, stood up. “What, now every season has to end the way the football one did?”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” Lily said. “Because that’s not the way things work in sports. Not even for you, McBain.”
Lily told him he better go get something to eat, lack of food was clearly making him light-headed. Then she got on her bike and said she’d call him later, when he was making more sense.
Ben picked up his ball, drove to the basket one last time. But right before he was going to push off on his left foot, he dribbled the ball into one more hole he didn’t see and it bounced away from him.
He thought: End of a perfect day.