2

“SO KIRSTEN CALLED YOU Mike,” Eric said. He tossed the wiffle ball back to me. “What’s the big deal?”

“She’s never called me that before.” I leaned in and squinted as though I was getting hand signs from an invisible catcher.

We were in his backyard, playing one-on-one wiffle ball. Or, as we liked to put it, we were attending church.

The Church of Baseball.

Eric took his hand from the wiffle bat to ask an imaginary umpire for time. He stepped out of an imaginary batter’s box. “Last time I checked, Mike is your name,” he said. “Mike Duncan—unless you had it legally changed and didn’t tell me.”

Actually, if we’re getting technical, my name is Michael Jordan Duncan. Say it fast enough, and it sounds like Michael Jordan Dunking. Which, believe it or not, was intentional. My dad didn’t just name me after a sports player; he named me after a sports play. How he slipped this past my mother I’ll likely never know. It was a sore subject between them.

Eric stepped back into the batter’s box and I threw him a pitch. He whiffed.

“She usually says Michael,” I said.

“Mike, Michael.” Eric chucked the ball back to me. “What’s the difference?”

“Mike sounds way more personal. Especially with the other stuff she said.”

Eric took a few practice swings. “She said you looked different. What’s so good about different?”

“She meant tall.”

Like Kirsten, I did a lot of growing over the summer. Unlike Kirsten, my growth had been entirely vertical rather than horizontal.

“And that’s supposed to be a compliment?” Eric said. “Randy Johnson’s six-foot-eleven and he was like the ugliest pitcher in baseball history.”

He took another practice swing, then tapped the fingers of his left hand on his chest. He was making the sign of the cross like former major leaguer Ivan Rodriguez used to do before every pitch.

There were actually two Churches of Baseball.  One was Eric’s backyard, where we took turns hitting wiffle balls and pretending we were famous hitters and catchers; the other was the high school baseball field. On Sundays during the summer, when Dad wasn’t too busy with coaching, he would bring Eric and me to the high school and hit us grounders and fly balls for a couple of hours, then take us to Big Scoop, our local ice cream shop. Dad came up with the name. My mom asked where we were headed and Dad, wearing cleats and holding a bag full of baseballs, said, “Church. Where else?”

After that, the name stuck.

“I guess Walter Johnson was pretty tall and wasn’t that ugly,” Eric said. He stepped up to the tree root we use as home plate. “So maybe she doesn’t think you’re completely hideous.”

I was pretty sure Walter Johnson was a pitcher a long time ago. Did I mention Eric is a genius freak when it comes to baseball trivia? Most home runs? Most strikeouts? Most nut cup readjustments in a single at-bat? Eric could not only provide the answers but probably the exact number.

I threw him another pitch, a curveball. He whiffed again. Strike three.

As much as he knows about baseball, though, he’s always been terrible at playing it. No matter how often we practiced or how many tips from current or former players he dug up, he never seemed to get any better. I don’t know why; there’s nothing physically wrong with him. He’s scrawny enough that he swims a little in his clothes, but you wouldn’t look at him and think weakling. In fact, if you were a new kid at school, you might even assume he was a good athlete. You’d look at the baseball jerseys he always wore and see his perpetual hat hair, and you’d think he was some sort of jock right up until he was the last guy picked in gym class.

“So what’s next?” Eric said as we switched places. He became the pitcher; I became the batter. “You two get it on until she finds someone even taller?”

“Funny,” I said. 

Eric threw me a pitch and I, doing my best impression of Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr., took a swing, letting go of the bat with my left hand a split-second after making contact with the wiffle ball. The ball flew across the yard and over a wooden gate into his mom’s garden. I only realized she was in the garden when the ball came sailing back over the fence along with her voice.

“Aren’t you boys a little old for this?” she said.

“Sorry, Mrs. Pendleton,” I said.

“Sorry, Mom,” Eric said.

Eric and I grinned at each other. Mrs. Pendleton had been telling us we’re too old for wiffle ball for years.

“Reconvene next Sunday?”

“Of course.” I flipped the plastic bat in my hand so I held the barrel.

Eric took the bat and said, “Kirsten going to your game on Friday?” 

I hadn’t thought of that. 

“Let’s hope not,” I said.