43

I’M STANDING ON THIRD base, trying to decide whether or not to do it.

Whether or not to steal home.

It’s June: the last JV baseball game of the season. We’re down to the last inning, and the game is tied (4-4). There are two outs.

I look up in the stands behind the chain-link backstop and spot Eric and Kirsten. Eric’s reading his Baseball Encyclopedia. He’s decided not to bury the book after all. I’m glad. I wouldn’t even mind helping him find more Zeros. The more I think about it, the more I get Eric’s interest in their stories. Zeros are numbers too, if that makes sense. 

The pitcher goes into his windup and throws a fastball that the ump calls high. I’ve taken a good lead, but I trot back to the base between pitches.

I watch the pitcher nod at whatever sign the catcher gave him, lean back, show me the back of his jersey as he twists and kicks and throws. The pitch is low.

I look up at the stands again. Eric’s watching me. I wonder if he’s thinking what I’m thinking.

If I’m going to steal home, now is the time to do it.

The pitcher is a lefty, which means his back is to me when he throws. He’s pitching from the windup, which means I’ll have more time to get a running start. And the batter, Brett Jefferson, is a righty, which means the catcher is less likely to see me coming.

I let the pitcher throw another pitch. Swing and a miss. Strike one.

Mom is in the stands, too. She’s been coming all season. Dad’s also there—but on the opposite end of the bleachers. Ever since the turnstile incident, Mom has been living in the house again. It’s Dad who moved out. I haven’t visited his apartment yet. I don’t think he spends much time there, anyway. He’s usually in his office when I get to the locker room for practice and is still there watching some game or other as I change back into my school clothes to go home. I don’t ever join him, but I do stick around sometimes. I have an app on my phone that allows me to watch pretty much any sporting event, and sometimes I’ll guess what I think Dad must be watching and, sitting on the bench by my locker, we’ll see the same game, not together but close enough. I asked Eric if that was weird and he said it wasn’t. “Then again,” he reminded me, “I once tried to bury a book, so I could be wrong about that.”

The pitcher throws a low and away slider that bounces in the dirt before the catcher stops it. Amazingly, Brett, who leads our team in strikeouts, checks his swing.

If I’m going to steal home, that would have been a good pitch to do it.

Kirsten is sitting next to Eric, in the front row of the bleachers. She has a baseball hat on, and she’s covering the brim with her hands, shielding her eyes from the sun. After her season ended in the section finals, she decided to take a couple-month break from basketball. She’s come to almost all of my games and as a result, her cheeks are slightly sunburned. A few weeks ago, as I walked her home, she grabbed my hand and held it the rest of the way to her house. She still hasn’t been back to my house but just yesterday she got on her tip-toes and gave me a peck on the mouth. 

She’s tilting her head now, listening to Eric tell her something.

Time is called on the field. The catcher, the coach, and the third baseman gather around the pitcher as they talk strategy. It’s a 3-1 count, so they have to decide whether to go after the batter or pitch around him and risk a walk.

Eric’s been to almost every game, too. Afterward, Kirsten likes to tell me what new statistic or fact she learned from him. “That guy doesn’t need a Baseball Encyclopedia, Mike,” she says. “He’s a human encyclopedia.”

It’s at this moment—as the catcher and the third baseman trot back to their positions, as the coach walks back into the dugout, as Kirsten nods her head at whatever Eric’s saying—that I decide to do it.

I’m going to steal home.

I’m going to steal home because it’s the ideal situation to do it.

I’m going to steal home because Brett isn’t much of a hitter, and there are two outs, and this may be our best chance to win the game.

I’m going to steal home because this is the last game of the season and therefore my last chance to do it.

I’m going to steal home because it will give the three of us—Kirsten, Eric and me—something to talk about. This is the kind of play Eric loves, one that shows up in an obscure statistic you can only find if you look hard enough. There was a time, he told me once, when stealing home wasn’t all that uncommon. Hall of Famer Ty Cobb did it eight times in one season and fifty times in his career. But now it’s almost unheard of. Probably the most exciting play in all of baseball, and no fan ever thinks about it anymore, because no player has the guts to attempt it. “Doesn’t that seem sad?” Eric asked me. I agreed that it did.

Mostly, though, I’m going to steal home because there are people behind the backstop who will watch and wait and root for me whether I make it safely or not.

I glance once more at the stands. Both Kirsten and Eric are looking at me. They’ve turned their attention away from the pitcher and batter as if they know what’s about to happen. I glance at Dad and wonder if we’re thinking the same thing. I look at Mom and—okay, there’s no way she has a clue what I’m planning to do, but she’s watching me intently, and I have to give her credit for that. I take a few steps off third base, wait for the pitcher to start his motion, and I’m off, racing for home and whatever’s going to happen when I get there.