I was shaky all day at school. At practice I could feel the eyes of my teammates on me. After we did our stretching and running, Grandison sent me along the sidelines to play catch with Miguel Alvarez. We stood about one hundred feet apart and threw back and forth. Long toss makes your arm stronger without risking injury.
It was exactly what I needed. We got into a nice rhythm, and time passed by. As I threw to Alvarez, I could hear Grandison barking at the infielders and outfielders, but he might as well have been a million miles away.
I'd been throwing for ten minutes when he strolled over. He'd watched a dozen throws or so when he stopped me. "You feel okay about pitching Wednesday?"
"What do you mean?" I said.
"Just what I said."
"Of course I feel okay. I'm looking forward to it. Why wouldn't I?"
He shrugged. "Some pitchers have trouble throwing hard after they put a guy down."
"If I'd hit him on purpose, then maybe I would," I said. "But the guy was leaning..."
Grandison put his hand up. "I've heard it already, Shane. I was there. Remember?"
"Right."
"All right, regular plan then. If Wednesday's is close, you'll be going in."
The Roosevelt Roughriders were a decent team with a decent record: 4–3 or 5–2. Something like that. While watching them as they warmed up before our game, I could sense they weren't likely to make great plays in the field but they'd catch the balls hit to them, and they'd hit any fat pitches that were laid right down the middle.
Cory Minton started. We staked him to an early three-run lead on a bunch of walks and a bases-clearing double by Jeff Walton, but Roosevelt scratched back, scoring a run in the fourth and another in the fifth. Grandison turned to me in the top of the seventh. "Shane, get yourself warmed up. You'll close the game for us."
I grabbed my glove and hustled out, Miguel Alvarez right behind me.
As I loosened along the sidelines, I felt the familiar excitement come back like an old friend. I was done with hospitals, done with explanations. It was time to pitch.
I had great stuff along the sidelines that night. I wasn't throwing any faster than usual, but the ball was moving as if it had a mind of its own. When that happens, everything is simple. All I do is aim for the catcher's glove, and in the last twenty feet or so the ball will tail a few inches inside or outside. I don't really know which way it will go, but that doesn't matter. Batters swing at a ball that looks like it's coming right down the middle, but when their bat crosses the plate, the ball isn't there.
Confident, I stopped throwing and looked out to the field. Benny Gold took a hard swing and hit a mile-high popup that the other team's third baseman caught for the last out in our half of the seventh. I threw one more practice pitch to Alvarez. It tailed down and away, an impossible pitch to hit. Alvarez gave me a little smile and a thumbs-up, and I trotted out to the mound.
"Play ball!" the ump yelled. Gold fired the ball to second; it went around the infield and came back to me. I rubbed it up a little, stepped back onto the mound, and looked toward the plate as the Roosevelt batter stepped in.
That's when the dizziness hit me. It was like being punched in the head. Everything started rocking this way and that. Gold put down one finger for the fastball, the most basic sign, but for an instant I couldn't register what it meant. I stepped off the rubber to get ahold of myself.
Gold popped out of his crouch and took two steps toward me. "You okay?"
"Yeah, I'm okay."
"All right then. Let's go."
I stepped back onto the mound. Quickly, I wound and delivered. But my great stuff was gone. Instead of letting the ball fly free and easy, I choked it. The ball bounced up to home plate. Gold smothered it, fired it back. "Come on, Shane!" he shouted, making a fist with his bare hand. "You can do it." Behind me the infielders were calling out the same thing.
Again I wound, and again I hurried everything. The ball bounced at least ten feet in front of the plate. In the stands I heard laughter. Grandison leaned through the opening from the bench and cupped his hands into a megaphone. "Relax, Shane. Relax."
Gold signaled for another fastball. I nodded, then delivered. I told myself to let the ball go, to fire it in there, but I held back, and the result was a nothing pitch that floated over the heart of the plate.
The Roosevelt hitter swung so hard he nearly corkscrewed himself into the ground, sending a line drive to deep left center that landed about ten feet in front of the fence and then bounced over for a ground-rule double. Roosevelt's players and fans screamed in delight.
Gold got a new baseball from the umpire and carried it out to me. "It's okay," he said, holding his palms down. "It's okay. Just relax and throw the ball."
He returned behind the plate. I tried to pretend there was no batter standing there. I focused entirely on Gold's glove. But as my arm came forward, I guided the ball. Instead of going eighty-five miles an hour, it went seventy-five. The Roosevelt guy, first pitch swinging, caught it solid—a mammoth drive down the left field line. For a moment I thought it might curve foul, but it was out of the park so fast it never had a chance to. The Roosevelt players danced onto the field as their parents whooped and hollered behind them.
My teammates trudged past me back to our bench and started packing their gear. The loss was sudden and unexpected. We'd led the whole game. The whole game!
I stayed on the mound, too stunned to move, until Grandison came and got me. "It happens," he said, patting me on the shoulder. "Some days you just don't have it. You'll get them next time." I nodded, but inside I was in knots. Because I did have it. While warming up I'd never been sharper.
When I stepped inside the house that night, Mom had already left for work. Instead of being up in her room, Marian was downstairs. I knew something was bothering her. She would read, get up and wander around, then go back to the sofa. Every once in a while I'd catch her looking at me funny.
Once I had finished my dinner, I went to the front room. "Something wrong?"
She shook her head. "Nothing's wrong."
"Come on. What is it?"
She looked at me angrily. "Don't you know what today is? One year ago today Dad killed himself. Mom didn't say anything, but I could tell she remembered. And you don't even miss him."
"Come on, Marian," I said, ashamed. "Just because I didn't remember the exact date doesn't mean I don't miss him."
"You don't miss him. All you care about is baseball and being a star pitcher."
"That's not fair, Marian. I don't wake up with nightmares, but that doesn't mean I don't care about Dad. Okay? So layoff."
I could see her flinch at the word nightmare, and she immediately opened her book and hid behind it. I went upstairs to my room and lay on the bed. Was she right? Was I forgetting about my own father?
Two of my grandparents had died a few months apart when I was seven. I could sort of picture them if I tried hard, but only sort of. And I never thought of them, except maybe at Christmas. But with my dad it was different. He wasn't getting hazy in my memory. The way he lived and the way he died were clear. Maybe it wasn't that I couldn't remember him. Maybe I didn't want to.